Running Blind

by Linda Howard

  He was on Carlin’s side of the truck. He didn’t dare look up, didn’t want to see her stiff, terrified face looking out the window at him. He might lose his concentration, move too fast. There were already enough things that could go wrong without him adding to the list. Hell, if a bird landed on the roof of the truck that could be enough to tilt it off-balance; good thing birds weren’t flying in this weather.

  He was farther down the side of the truck than he wanted to be, perilously close to the edge, before there was enough space under the truck for him to slide under it. Carefully turning himself perpendicular to the truck, he eased his head under the chassis—and almost laughed in relief, quickly followed by what felt suspiciously like the burn of tears. He blinked and swallowed, then blew out a big breath. The little tree wasn’t all that was holding the truck. The transmission block was caught on an underground boulder that stuck just a foot or so above the ground. The truck was solidly wedged; it wasn’t going anywhere even if that tree did break, which it almost definitely would have if the rock hadn’t caught most of the truck’s weight.

  That was the good news. The bad was that the bulk of the boulder made it more difficult for him to reach the winch cable. On the balance of things, though, he’d take having a tougher job for himself as long as the vehicle was more stable.

  “The truck’s caught on a boulder!” he yelled out to Walt, knowing that Spencer and Carlin would probably be able to hear him inside the truck, and wanting to relieve the stress everyone was feeling. “It’s secure as long as they don’t move around too much.” The last thing he wanted was for them to think they could just open their doors and get out; not only was the ground so icy they might slide right off, but the truck could still be tilted off-balance, and he was still underneath it. He’d really like to avoid getting crushed.

  The tight quarters meant his thick coat was now a liability he couldn’t afford. Carefully he backed out from beneath the truck and quickly shucked the coat. The bitter cold immediately bit through his clothing, and snow gathered on his hair, melting and refreezing. Shit! He had to get this done in a hurry before he got hypothermia.

  But hurrying was one thing he couldn’t do. Every move had to be deliberate and precise.

  He inched forward under the truck again, looking for the winch cable, this time angling himself toward the front of the truck because the boulder would have prevented the cable from coming any farther back. It was a tight fit, even without the bulk of his coat. Walt would have been the better choice, size-wise, and he still had the option of backing out, climbing back up to the road, and letting Walt do this—but the risk, though much diminished from what they’d originally thought, was still there, and he wouldn’t willingly send any of his men in his place into a dangerous situation when he could do the job himself.

  A nerve-racking minute later, he got his hand on the cable. That was the easy part. The hard part was getting it secured without jarring the truck any more than necessary. Sweat broke out on his face and froze, and the pain on his skin was bad enough he had to take a minute and wipe the ice away. He began shivering uncontrollably, so bad he didn’t dare try to attach the cable while he was shaking like that. Instead he deliberately shook and shivered as hard as he could, ramping up his core temperature enough that when he stopped, his body felt warm enough that he could resume without the shivering. He had to do that once more before he had the cable secured around the frame of the engine cradle.

  Just as cautiously as he had wormed his way under the truck, he wormed his way back out. God almighty, the cold was biting bone deep, like an animal with its fangs sunk into his body. As soon as he was clear he grabbed his coat and dragged it on, but the fabric was cold, the outer layer covered with snow, and there was precious little warmth he could get from it.

  He clawed his way up to the icy shoulder of the road, dragged himself over the edge. Micah and Kenneth had both arrived, and were standing beside Walt, though right now there was nothing they could do.

  Looking back at the truck, Zeke caught Carlin’s terrified gaze and gave her a thumbs-up. Maybe she hadn’t heard him yell to Walt; maybe, when you were in this situation, you weren’t reassured until you were actually out of the situation. His own gut had been knotted with fear; how much worse had it been for her, and for Spencer?

  As soon as he was on his feet and staggering out of the way, Walt pressed the button on the remote to start the winch. He had everything ready, even the hood up on the dually to protect the windshield if the cable broke, and an old jacket thrown over the cable itself to help smother any backlash. The motor whined and slowly began reeling in the cable. The line pulled taut, metal grating on rock as the pickup began to roll forward, scraping the underside along the boulder that had prevented it from plummeting down the ravine.

  A few minutes later, the pickup was on the road. Walt stopped the winch and free-spooled some slack in it so the cable could be unhooked. Micah hurried forward to take care of that chore.

  Spencer had opened his door and tumbled out, but Carlin still sat in the passenger seat, unmoving. Was she hurt? Urgency biting into him again, Zeke grabbed the handle and jerked it open. “Are you all right?”

  She swallowed. Maybe her lips trembled a little. She said, “My legs …”

  God almighty. Were they broken, had she suffered a spinal injury? He barked, “Your legs—”

  “No! My eggs. Eggs! If the eggs are broken I don’t know what I’ll be feeding all of you for the next week, because I’ll be damned if I’ll go back to the grocery store until the spring thaw!”

  Relief roaring through him, he reached in and un-clipped her seat belt, then hauled her out of the truck. Walt and Micah were both laughing, more than a little relief in their own reactions.

  Spencer wasn’t laughing. He stood in the snow, his shoulders hunched, looking miserable. Zeke already knew why. “Damn it,” he growled, bits of snow stinging his face. “Where are the spikes?” If Spencer had thrown them in the back of the truck—a common precaution—he’d have put them on when they turned off the paved road, he wouldn’t have slid off the shoulder, and none of this would have happened.

  Spencer looked even more miserable. “I’m sorry, boss. I thought we’d be home long before this moved in.”

  The system had come in earlier than predicted, but weather didn’t punch a time clock and they all knew it. You prepared for the worst, and that way you weren’t caught without something you needed. On the other hand, there wasn’t anything he could say to the kid that would be worse than hanging suspended like that, thinking they could fall the rest of the way if they so much as breathed too hard.

  It was over, thank God, and no one was hurt. But he didn’t know if he’d ever fully recover from those minutes of terror.

  CARLIN PULLED OPEN the back door of the extended cab. Groceries had been flung everywhere, jarred by the impact of hitting the rock and the tree. The floorboard was filled with canned goods, mostly, as well as a large pack of toilet paper. She usually put the meat and anything breakable in the backseat.

  Like the eggs.

  The eggs gave her something to focus on, something to pull her back from the edge of terror, from the sensation of hysteria building inside her. She was not going to break down in front of the men. Not. Going. To. Happen. So she plastered on a pissed expression and said, “Damn it!” as she leaned in and began putting canned goods back in bags, checking the eggs—at least a dozen were broken, maybe more. Now she’d have to think of something else to cook for breakfast for at least a few days, to make the remaining eggs last longer.

  “Leave it,” Zeke said, gripping her arm and pulling her away from the truck. “You’re riding back with me. The truck is staying here until we can get back with some spikes; I won’t risk anyone driving it a foot farther on this mountain.”

  “I can’t leave the groceries—”

  “Spencer will bring them. He can ride back with one of the other men.”

  She looked at him, prepared t
o argue because arguing seemed like a good idea right now, anything to keep her going. But the words stopped when she got a good look at him. He looked like the Abominable Snowman, his clothes caked with snow and ice; even his eyebrows and lashes were icy. He’d risked his life to save theirs. Instead of arguing she ducked her head against the icy wind, leaned into him for warmth and the support he offered.

  “I’m going to get you home. Spencer, get the groceries and ride back with one of the others.”

  “Yes sir.” Spencer pressed his lips together, his expression so guilty the dictionary could have used him as the definition of the word. “Miss Carly, I—”

  “I’m fine,” she said, breaking into an apology that she was sure would shred every nerve she had left, which wasn’t many. “You’d better worry about what you’ll be getting for breakfast, though, because we’re short on eggs now.”

  She was fine. She was. She would be.

  Zeke helped her into the passenger seat and closed her door. She didn’t utter a single word about how she wasn’t helpless, how she didn’t need his help. Instead she gathered her control for what she knew she needed to do now. As Zeke rounded the hood of the truck to climb into the driver’s seat, she let down her window and shouted to the men, “See if you can save some of the eggs! I’m serious. If they’re just cracked, save them, and I’ll use them tonight!”

  Kenneth and Micah and Walt all laughed, but Spencer didn’t. He didn’t dare.

  Carlin looked out the side window as Zeke drove back to the house. She would have been content with the silence, with not having to bear the strain of conversation, but he said, “Want me to fire Spencer?”

  Appalled, she snapped her head around and glared at him. “No, of course not! It wasn’t his fault. A deer came out of nowhere and he swerved to miss it, lost control, and there—there we went.” Wrong choice of words. It brought everything back too clearly.

  Zeke’s gaze was cool and deadly serious. “I like Spencer. If he hangs in with me, I’d planned on making him foreman one day. But he knew snow was coming in; he should’ve had those snow spikes in the truck, just in case. His carelessness could have killed you both.”

  “But it didn’t,” she replied tersely. “It was an accident. Period.” Because she couldn’t bear talking about the wreck any longer, she began telling him about their trip to Battle Ridge. She didn’t normally have diarrhea of the mouth, but this one time she chatted her head off. She talked about seeing Kat, and about how warm her coat was—her coat, not the cook’s coat, or the outerwear that came with the job. Hers. She talked a bit about how her menus for the week would have to be altered, considering what had probably been lost in the wreck, and assuming she wouldn’t make it back to town for at least a couple of days—and for an even greater assumption, that she wanted to make that drive at all until the snow melted.

  He parked in the garage, walked with her to the house. He unlocked the door to the mudroom and for once didn’t bitch about the locked doors, and they walked into the welcome dry warmth of the house. They removed their coats and hung them on the rack just past the door. Carlin sat on the bench there and removed her boots. Sitting beside her, he did the same. Then they moved into the kitchen on sock feet, and just inside the room Carlin stopped and looked around, trying to decide what to do. She felt as if she should do something, but her brain had locked and she couldn’t think of anything.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  She blinked up at him as a strange mixture of turbulence and paralysis gripped her. Kiss me.

  The words hovered on her lips, but by the grace of God she managed to keep them unsaid. What was wrong with her? She couldn’t say something like that to Zeke, couldn’t undermine herself that way. Maybe she needed a little comforting, but that was all. She was okay. She’d handle it.

  “Nothing,” she finally said. “Just thinking about what to cook for supper.”

  He grunted as he left the kitchen, headed up the stairs no doubt for a hot shower. She should do the same, but the men would be here soon with the groceries. They could put everything away, but she preferred to do it herself. She wanted to keep busy. She wanted to forget the insane words that she’d almost said aloud.

  Kiss me.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  CARLIN STOOD IN the shower and cried. She felt like a doofus for crying—she was alive, she wasn’t even hurt—but her nerves were shattered and she’d held herself together as long as she could. Finally being alone was such a relief that she almost cried from that. The men meant well, but their concern had in a way only added to the stress, because she hadn’t wanted to upset them by getting teary.

  The whole afternoon and evening had been a strain, first with the wreck, then the men fussing over her, asking her again and again if she was all right—well, everyone except Zeke. After that first sharp “Are you okay?” he’d let the subject lie, but every time she’d looked around she’d find him watching her with that sharp, narrow-eyed gaze of his that missed nothing. For the men—especially Spencer, so he wouldn’t feel guilty—she’d put up a front, assured everyone that she was fine, not even banged up. The latter might be true, but she wasn’t fine. She was so far from fine she wasn’t even in the same state with it.

  After getting dressed in her normal sleep attire, sweatpants and a T-shirt, she went into her sitting room and tried to watch some TV to settle her nerves. It didn’t work. Maybe she should just give up on the evening and go to bed. Restlessly she hovered in the doorway between the sitting room and bedroom, staring at the bed. It was bedtime, but there wasn’t any point in even going through the motions, because sleep was a long, long way from coming. Maybe if she did the normal things she would feel more normal, but she didn’t think so.

  Blowing out a deep breath, she shoved a hand through her hair and turned back into the sitting room and the TV. The noise grated on her nerves like fine grit against glass. She grabbed up the remote and turned the TV off, filling the space, her space, with blessed silence.

  Except now she could hear the clock ticking, and it reminded her of the way time had dragged by while she and Spencer hovered over death, waiting for either the tree to snap, the truck to teeter off-balance, or Zeke to arrive. Whichever happened first would determine whether they lived or died.

  Her insides hadn’t stopped shaking all evening long, and she couldn’t stop thinking about what would have happened if the truck had gone the rest of the way over the side of the mountain, if there hadn’t been a boulder sticking up just enough to catch the truck, if that terrifyingly small tree hadn’t been in the way. She still couldn’t believe the spindly looking trunk had somehow been strong enough to hold the truck so precariously balanced. Okay, so the boulder had held the truck, but the tree had balanced it. And at the time she hadn’t known about the boulder; she’d put all her faith in that pitiful little tree.

  Sitting there waiting for Zeke, not daring to move, almost not daring to breathe lest she upset that delicate balance, had been an eternity. She didn’t know if she’d ever be able to forget how it felt to teeter for so long on the razor’s edge of sure death, dangling over that high, terrifying drop. Terror wasn’t a stranger to her; she’d met it before—moments of it, keen and slicing—when she’d seen Brad on the street in Dallas and realized he’d followed her, again when she’d found out Jina had been murdered in the street and known Brad had mistaken Jina for her, not knowing where he was, if each step might be her last. But those had been moments, and sitting in that truck had felt like a lifetime, each second agonizingly slow, and so precious as they dripped away.

  What if the tree did snap? What if the truck plummeted all the way to the bottom of the mountain? If it caught fire and burned, which seemed like at least a good possibility, her driver’s license would burn and no one would ever know her real name, her family couldn’t be notified, and they would spend the rest of their lives not knowing what had happened to her.

  She didn’t want to die, hiding away so no one knew wh
o she really was. She wanted to live. She’d disrupted her life, turned her world upside down, torn herself away from both family and friends, spent months on the run, because she wanted to live.

  But until she’d sat in the truck for those endless minutes, waiting to die, she hadn’t realized that she hadn’t been living. She’d been running. She’d been enduring. She’d been surviving. But she hadn’t been living. Instead she’d been holding life at a distance, trying not to let herself get so close to anyone that she cared about them or they cared about her.

  That wasn’t living. Living was about people, about connections, about loving and being loved. It was about letting others into the warp and woof of your life, and becoming enmeshed in theirs.

  What was maddening was that her long-term situation hadn’t changed. No, not long term. She couldn’t bear the thought of Brad, fear of Brad, controlling her life for years on end. But he was at least midterm, lingering in her future like a giant black cloud, and she had done nothing, could think of nothing she could do, to resolve the situation. Hope he moved his obsession on to someone else? Hope he’d get killed in a car wreck? Boy, that was taking charge of her life, wasn’t it?

  Since Jina’s murder her emotions had gone through a number of phases, from grief and terror to numbness, then determination. She’d learned to watch her back, to stay hypervigilant, and now she’d even learned how to use various firearms—not at expert level, but at least she was less helpless than she’d been before.

  To what end, though? To stay alive but stop living?

  Restlessly she paced around the small sitting room, so angry she felt as if her skin would barely contain her. She’d let Brad do this to her. Oh, it wasn’t her fault that he was a homicidal stalker or that he’d fixated on her, but how she’d responded was completely on her. She’d let fear define her life.