On Dangerous Ground

by Maggie Price

  “You look real good alive,” he stated softly, then wrapped an arm around her shoulders and gathered her close.

  Two hours later, Sky sat on the edge of Grant’s bed, staring out the window of his motel room. It was dark now; the lights that dotted the parking lot reflected off the water from the fire hoses still pooled on the pavement. Grant stood beneath one of those lights with the fire chief and Delbert, the motel owner, who looked decidedly harassed.

  He had every right, Sky thought. The room she’d rented had been reduced to a charred, sour-smelling mess that was now cordoned off with yellow tape. With little effort, the fire chief had determined that a short in the air conditioner, which Sky had switched on moments before taking her shower, had caused the blaze.

  Her gaze lowered to the purring air-conditioning unit be neath the window in front of her. A shiver ran through her and she wrapped her arms around her waist.

  Dressed the way she was, it was no surprise she had goose bumps. With all of the stores closed for the rodeo, she’d been grateful when Delbert’s teenage daughter had offered to lend her some clothes. That gratitude transformed to heated embarrassment when Sky got a look at herself in the bathroom mirror and saw how snug the cutoffs and white halter top fit. The appreciative male glances she’d garnered from firefighters, cops and Grant had notched up her discomfort.

  Grant. What was she going to do about Grant?

  Her gaze shifted back to where he stood, deep in conversation with the other two men. The murky spill of light from overhead turned his tall, lean torso into an alluring arrangement of masculine planes and shadows.

  She could love him. The thought had her stomach quivering. No, she couldn’t, she corrected, as an ache settled in her heart. Her past stood in the way. Despite six months of therapy, regardless of Dr. Mirren’s assurances that she would again someday be ready to enter into a physical relationship, Sky knew the truth. The terrorizing memories inside her wouldn’t let go.

  She closed her eyes against a longing so deep, it cut into her soul. All she had to do was rest her head on Grant’s shoulder, and his arms would slide around her to hold, to comfort. She only had to make the move.

  But she couldn’t.

  The tears she’d fought all day swam dangerously close to the surface. She pulled off her glasses, placed them on the nightstand, then settled back against the bed’s headboard and pressed her fingers to her eyes.

  Why had fate, in the form of a few drops of blood, thrown her and Grant back together? She thought of Ellis Whitebear’s dried blood sample now stored in her evidence kit. If a killer hadn’t left a bandage at a recent crime scene, if she hadn’t made a possible mistake in her lab on a two-year-old case, she and Grant never would have made this morning’s trip to the state penitentiary. And she wouldn’t now be propped up in his bed with her nerves stretched razor-sharp.

  A mind-numbing fatigue settled over her and she struggled to hold it back. She desperately needed rest. Yet she didn’t dare go to sleep, not tonight. Just the thought of fighting her way out of the tortuous nightmare in Grant’s presence sent another chill through her. She leaned her head against the headboard and stared up at the ceiling. If she stayed awake, there was no danger of the monster roaring to life. No chance her subconscious would conjure up the shadowy form that had loomed over her in the dark all those years ago. Or the scent of cologne she would carry with her to the grave. Or the blade that had pierced her flesh. Or the terror.

  None of those things would happen, as long as she stayed awake.

  She was asleep when Grant unlocked the door to the motel room a half hour later. A fitful sleep, he decided as he stood at the edge of the bed and gazed down at her. She was lying on her side, one hand fisted against the pillow. In the soft glow of the bedside lamp, her skin looked stunningly pale against the rumpled white sheet that had slid down to her waist. When her head jerked, then turned, her long, dark hair spread against the pillow like a pool of rich mink.

  He curled his hands against his thighs while he waited for the need that clawed in his stomach to ease. Everything in his life had come easy for him, except this one woman. And he was at a loss to know what to do about her. He wanted her to trust him. Wanted her to open her heart to him. He knew none of that was going to happen, not when she wouldn’t even tell him what it was that put the shadows under her eyes and turned her sleep so fitful.

  Letting out a long breath, he clicked off the bedside lamp, turned and walked into the bathroom. Somehow, some way he would reach her. No matter how long it took, he would get through that wall.

  He had to.

  Light glinted in a shimmering arc as the blade swept in front of Sky’s eyes.

  “No!” The word ripped from her throat. Bolting upright, she flailed blindly at the dark surrounding her.

  “No!” In terrorized panic she scrambled onto her knees, her legs tangling in the sheet and bedspread as she sucked in air to scream.

  “Sky.” The deep male voice came from a space just inches away. So close. Too close.

  “No!” She lashed out wildly with her fists against the hands that settled on her shoulders.

  “Sky, it’s Grant. Sky, look at me.”

  Still caught in the terrorizing grip of the nightmare, she saw only the sharp, vicious blade. “No!”

  “Look at me.” He cupped his palm to her cheek as she cowered against the headboard. “You had a nightmare.” His voice was gentle, but firm enough to pull her out of the dark, suffocating pit. “You’re okay now.”

  “Grant?” Her heart hammered against her ribs in fast, hard blows; her lungs burned and her face was wet with sweat and tears. She was afraid to move for fear she would crack and shatter into a dozen pieces.

  “You’re okay.” The mattress shifted with his weight when he settled beside her.

  Dim light from the bathroom’s half-open door wedged across the bed. Blinking, she focused on Grant’s face, saw the concern in his gray eyes, the deep lines at the corners of his mouth.

  Choking back a sob, she shoved her damp hair away from her face with trembling hands. “Oh, God.” The pressure in her chest was unbearable. “I can’t… God, Grant.”

  “Let me hold you.”

  She shuddered once, then curved into him when he inched her forward. His arms came around her in a firm, comforting embrace. Instinctively she turned her face into his throat while the heat of his body seeped into her frozen flesh.

  “This is it, isn’t it?” He pressed a kiss against her hair. “This nightmare. It’s the thing you’ve been dealing with.”

  “Yes.” She felt a wave of nausea rising from within, and gulped in huge breaths to hold it back.

  “Why couldn’t you tell me?”

  “It was more than just that tonight,” she blurted, and found that just saying the words made her already-raw throat ache. “I need… Could I have some water?”

  “Sure.” He tipped her head back to study her face with quiet intensity before he rose. “Do you want more light?” he asked, inclining his head toward the lamp at the side of the bed.

  “No.” From experience, she knew it would take time for color to seep back into her face and the glassy fright to fade from her eyes. She didn’t want him to see her like this. “The bathroom light is fine.”

  “Okay. I’ll be right back.”

  The skimpy cutoffs and halter top did nothing to dispel the desperate cold that had settled inside her. She brought her knees up close to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. Taking long, even breaths, she concentrated on the sound of running water.

  “Here’s your water,” Grant said seconds later.

  “Thanks.” She was trembling so badly that she used both hands to reach for the glass.

  Without comment, Grant cupped his fingers around hers and lifted the glass to her lips. “You’re freezing.”

  “I’m warming up.” The water eased the ache in her throat. “Thanks.”

  “You don’t have to thank me.” He set the
glass on the nightstand, unbuttoned his shirt and shrugged it off. “This will help warm you up,” he said. “Lean forward.”

  Too shaky to protest, Sky did as instructed, slipping her arms into the sleeves when he settled the shirt around her shoulders. The linen held the warmth of his body, the calm, soothing scent of his cologne. The fist that had settled in her chest loosened its hold by one notch.

  “Why couldn’t you tell me?” Grant asked, resettling onto the edge of the bed. “Why couldn’t you tell me about the nightmares?”

  “Nightmare. Just one.” She clenched her hands in her lap. “The same one. Always the same.”

  “About the rape?”

  “Yes.” Without warning, the terror bubbled back into her brain. Gritting her teeth to hold back a whimper, she forced herself to concentrate on the hard, shadowed lines of Grant’s face. “It was… Tonight it was more. It was a flashback. I was there. He was there.” Something sharp and cold clawed at her stomach. “It was real. Too real.”

  “You can’t keep this inside you.” Grant settled his hands around her clenched fists. “I want to help you, but I can’t unless I know what you’re dealing with. Unless you tell me—”

  “I have to tell you.” The terror that had swept her into a black pit while she’d slept sounded in her voice. “I have to get it out of me, I have to get him out of me.”

  “You’re safe.” Grant stroked his thumb across her knuckles. “I won’t let anything or anyone hurt you.”

  “I know.” She wouldn’t tell him that even now she had the sensation of a hand clamping brutally over her mouth. “I can’t breathe here,” she said, pulling from his grip. “I need to get up for a minute.”

  “All right.”

  She caught the furrow of his brow as she slid her legs from the tangled bed linen and rose. She paced to the door, then back again, the bare floor cool beneath her feet. Her stomach muscles trembled as she forced her mind back to that night over nine years ago.

  “It happened during my senior year of college. His name was Kirk Adams. He was a star wrestler. Senior class president.”

  She didn’t have to close her eyes to picture the athlete’s handsome face with its strong, finely drawn features and dark eyes.

  “Each time I saw him on campus he had a different girl on his arm,” she continued after a moment. “Never the same girl.”

  “How well did you know him?”

  Sky paused in her pacing to turn and face the bed where Grant had remained seated. In the dim light coming from the bathroom his eyes were intense, unwavering.

  “Not well. He was a pharmacy major. We took the same chemistry class, and the professor paired us on a lab project. Adams asked me out a couple of times. I said no.” She dragged the heel of her palm across her forehead. “He was too smug, too sure of himself. Something told me to keep my distance.”

  “That personality type doesn’t take rejection well.”

  “You’re right, he didn’t.” Sky felt a river of ice creep up her spine. “Although I didn’t know that about him because he didn’t make a big deal of my turning him down.” She resumed pacing from one wall to the other, then back again. “One Saturday night, a girlfriend asked me to go to a party at her boyfriend’s fraternity house. She and I had been studying most of the day and a break sounded good. One hour wouldn’t hurt, I told myself. One drink wouldn’t hurt. Some people I knew would be at the party so it was safer than going to a bar.” She’d been wrong. “I thought it was safe.”

  “Adams showed up at the party?” Grant prompted when she remained silent.

  “Yes. I didn’t know he belonged to that fraternity until he walked up, handed me a fresh drink and said he had some questions about our lab project. He was smiling, polite. We talked about fifteen minutes, then he excused himself. A few minutes later I started feeling woozy.”

  Her legs suddenly shaky, Sky settled into the room’s lone chair and met Grant’s gaze across the twisted span of sheet and bedspread.

  “At first I just felt lightheaded, and thought all the studying I’d done had gotten to me. I figured if I got some fresh air I’d be okay. I looked for my girlfriend to tell her I’d wait for her in her car, but there were too many people and I couldn’t find her. By then I was really dizzy. I stumbled into some guy and spilled his drink all over me.” She stared down at her hands, fisted in her lap. She could still smell it, the sickening stench of Jack Daniel’s that had soaked the front of her dress. “I know he thought I was drunk. When I tried to tell him I was sorry, I couldn’t get the words out. My brain wouldn’t send the right message. That’s when I knew Adams had put something in my drink.”

  “A pharmacy major,” Grant said quietly. “Easy for someone with his knowledge to know what to use.”

  Looking up, she nodded. “Too easy.” She swallowed hard, forced herself to continue. “When I got outside, everything was tilting—the house, the parking lot, the cars. I kept thinking if I could just lie down, the dizziness would pass. Right when I got to my girlfriend’s car, a hand came from behind me, clamped over my mouth and jerked me off my feet.” A trembling breath escaped her lips. “I tried to scream, but nothing would come out. Tried to get away. He was too big, too strong. He shoved me into the back of a dark-colored van, then slammed the door shut.”

  She closed her eyes against the haunting memories. “Either the van was the kind with no windows in the back, or it had curtains, because inside it was pitch-black. By then the drug had wiped out my equilibrium and I couldn’t tell which way was up, so I crawled around on my hands and knees. I remember feeling a wool blanket beneath me….”

  She raised an unsteady hand to rub at the ache that had settled in her throat. “It was dark. I was so afraid. Terrified. I heard the engine turn over. The van started moving. Then I passed out.”

  Grant stood abruptly, jammed his hands into the pockets of his slacks, pulled them out again, then crossed to where she sat. The palm he placed against her cheek was gentle, but his eyes resembled steel. “You don’t have to finish this.”

  “Yes, I do.” She thought of the vicious edge of reality the flashback had put on the nightmare. “I tried to keep it inside me, but I can’t. I can’t.”

  “All right.” He sat on the bed inches from her chair, his eyes locked with hers. “Go on.”

  “When I came to, he was straddling me, ripping at my clothes. I started struggling. He grabbed both of my wrists with one hand and jerked my arms over my head. Then I heard a metallic sound. I didn’t know what it was until I felt a blade against my neck.”

  “A switchblade.”

  Sky nodded dully. “He pressed the tip in, just enough to make me bleed. He told me if I fought, he would slice my face. I didn’t know how to defend myself then. I was so messed up from the drug that even if I had gotten away I couldn’t have run far. So I did what he said.” She closed her eyes. Remembering was like walking barefoot over hot coals. “I’ve always wondered what would have happened if I had fought.”

  “He’d have cut you, maybe killed you.” Leaning closer, Grant linked the fingers of one of his hands with hers. “You did the most important thing, Sky. You stayed alive.”

  “I kept telling myself it wasn’t me he was touching.” Though she fought to keep her voice calm, it shook as the horror of the night intensified. “Even when it felt like everything inside me was tearing apart, I told myself it wasn’t happening to me.”

  Grant’s fingers jerked, then tightened around hers. When he turned his head and stared across the room, she saw the muscle working in his jaw.

  “It was so dark, I never saw his face,” she continued quietly. “But at one point he lowered his head. That’s when I smelled his cologne. It was the same scent Kirk Adams always wore when we worked in the lab. Always. That’s how I knew for sure it was him.”

  Muttering a quiet oath, Grant shifted his gaze back to hers. “During the whole time, you never got a look at his face?”

  “No. When he was done, he drove to a
secluded part of the campus and told me to get out. He turned off the lights so I couldn’t see the license tag when he drove off. Later, a campus cop found me staggering down the middle of the street. My dress was ripped and smelled like a distillery. I was crying, in shock and still so impaired from the drug that I couldn’t get out what had happened. I couldn’t even tell him my name.”

  Grant angled his head. She could almost see his mind working behind those sharp gray eyes. “Campus cops aren’t the most experienced or professional group around. Because you were staggering and he could smell booze on you, he assumed you were drunk, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You weren’t driving, so he had no reason to do a blood alcohol test.”

  “He figured I’d been partying with some guy, and when things didn’t go his way he’d gotten rough, then ditched me. After the cop put me in his car, I blacked out. He took me to the campus infirmary and told the student nurse on duty that he’d come back to take a report after I sobered up. When I finally came to, the drug had worn off enough for me to tell her I’d been raped. She phoned the doctor on call. He was a new resident on contract to the university who had never taken a vaginal swab for a rape kit before.” Sky raised a hand, let it drop back into her lap. “He mishandled the sample and contaminated it.”

  A grim realization settled in Grant’s eyes. “You never saw Adams’s face, just smelled his cologne. The worst lawyer on earth could make a joke out of an ID like that in court.”

  “Things never got that far. The information I gave about the cologne was enough for the police to interview Adams, but not arrest him. He claimed he didn’t know anything about what happened to me after we talked at the party. The police found out one of his fraternity brothers owned a black van that had no windows in the back. It was common knowledge that he always left the keys in the ignition. No one saw the van leave or return to the lot during the party.”

  “What about the wool blanket you felt on the van’s floor? Did the cops find it?”