“Hold tight. There was a loggin’ trail … there!”
He swung the truck to the right down a slope covered in an inch of slick snow. It slid into the snow-frosted ruts of the old road and bounced roughly.
“So much for the shock absorbers,” Dinah joked grimly.
They careened into the depths of a hardwood forest, the truck’s wheels spewing damp earth and humus. “We’ll follow this as long as it goes,” Rucker told her. His big hands fought the steering wheel as the truck slid sideways, slapping against low tree limbs.
Dinah swallowed hard and gazed at the wilderness all around them. “The patrol must have gotten a good look at the truck. If they weren’t after it before, they’ll be after it now.”
“But they didn’t see us.”
Dinah laughed tonelessly and rubbed her forehead. “So we’ll just call a taxi. Or wait for the bus. Or catch the subway.”
“Or whine and give up.”
“Never.” She sat back and crossed her arms over her chest.
“I knew that would singe your hackles.”
After about two miles the road came to an abrupt end in a small clearing. They let the truck idle and sat silent for a moment. Snow feathered down soundlessly.
“We walk,” Rucker volunteered. “North. Until we intersect the main road beyond the road block. And then we hitch a ride.”
“Before nightfall,” she said adamantly.
“Woman, you’re greedy.” There was a slight teasing tone in his voice. She almost smiled.
They got out and gathered their canvas bags from under a tarp in the back of the truck. Rucker tucked the shotgun in the crook of one arm. “Keep your eyes peeled. And try not to scream if you see a wild pig. I’ve heard that they’re all over the place up here.”
Dinah busied herself trying to arrange her bag like a backpack. Distracted with worry over their situation, she blurted, “After Valdivia, nothing makes me scream.”
She regretted the revealing words immediately. Rucker’s expression turned dark with intensity. “How did Valdivia make you scream?” he asked in a low, horrified tone.
His concern brought unshed tears to her eyes. Dinah shook her head, struggling for control of her tight throat. Finally she managed to say, “I believe you could love me again, if you tried.”
They reached the top of a hill and stopped for a second. Dinah brushed a tendril of snow-dampened hair back from her face and gazed wearily at the broad, wooded valley before them. “Rucker, I don’t think we’re going to intercept that road anytime soon.”
“Dammit, just keep goin’.”
His voice was almost vicious. Startled, she looked at him anxiously. He stood a dozen feet away, his legs braced apart and his expression dark. He yelled at her with suddenly unleashed grief and frustration. “Why did you leave me?”
She started backing away, her eyes full of tears but her chin up. “Don’t start that again, not now. We have too many other things to worry about …”
“I want an answer—I want the truth!” He leaned the shotgun against a tree and threw his canvas tote off his shoulder. Then he strode toward her. “An answer,” he commanded harshly. “I won’t play by your rules anymore! If you want my help, then you better talk!”
“You wouldn’t believe the truth right now! And it would only complicate things! Put you in more danger!”
The ground made an ominous sound under his boots, as if a heavy piece of wood were cracking. “I’d rather be in danger than in hell—which is where I’ve been for the past ten months! Talk!”
She made a strangled sound of utter defeat. “All right, all right! I was—”
The ground gave way beneath him in a wrenching collapse that upended rotten boards and timbers like the broken bones of some strange animal. Dinah screamed as he disappeared into the maw of the violent earth.
Seven
Dinah ran to the side of the gaping hole, which was easily six-feet wide. She succumbed to a sense of terror unlike anything she’d ever felt for herself. She dropped to her knees and gripped the edge of a timber.
“Rucker!” Her voice was as jagged as the torn wood.
He was pinned about fifteen feet down in the corner of what appeared to be the entrance to an old gem mine. Several thick timbers were jumbled over his legs, but he sat upright with his back jammed against a wall shored with rotting planks. His head drooped forward.
“Please God, let him be all right,” Dinah whispered. “Rucker!”
He raised his head slowly, gasping for breath, then nodded to show that he’d heard her. His face was drawn with discomfort.
“Hold on,” she told him. “I’m coming down!”
Dinah threw one leg over the edge of the hole and pushed tentatively at a long timber that angled to the bottom. It seemed sturdy.
“Don’t try it!” he called. “Everything else might collapse!”
She hesitated, struggling to control the reckless impulse that made her think only of going to him quickly. “Are you hurt?”
“Nothing a Band-Aid couldn’t fix.” He struggled fiercely for a moment, and his helpless torment wrung a cry of despair from her.
Heaving for breath, he halted the vain effort and looked up at her wearily. “My legs are trapped.”
She looked down into the dark shaft and shivered for him. Dinah didn’t have to ask to know that the ground underneath him was cold and probably damp. A furious sense of determination hummed in her veins. She had to get him out of that horrible gravelike hole.
“I’m going for help!”
His grime-covered face became terribly haggard looking. “Don’t lie—this is the chance you’ve been waitin’ for. You won’t be back.”
Her mouth gaped in horror. “You’re wrong.”
Rucker laughed humorlessly. “Go on. But have the decency to tell somebody where to find me before I catch pneumonia.”
Bitter disappointment made her head droop in defeat. If he truly believed that she could leave him there to suffer, then little was left of the love he’d once felt for her.
“I’ll go for help,” she repeated dully. “I give you my word. If you don’t want to believe in it, that’s your problem.” She frowned with concentration, thinking. “There’s a rope behind the seat in the truck. I’m going to get it. Maybe I can drag these timbers off of you somehow.”
“You can’t budge these things. Just go. Get the hell out of here. I don’t expect any loyalty from you.”
She shook her head in exasperation. “I’d like to come down there and punch you.”
They looked at each other in silence, his gaze furious and hers challenging. Dinah ignored the insult in his attitude and told him staunchly, “It’ll take me nearly an hour to walk back to the truck—two hours, round trip.”
His voice was wary. “I won’t hold my breath.”
“Good. Blue isn’t your color.” She vaulted to her feet. “I’ll leave the shotgun with you. I’d probably just fall and shoot myself in the toes.”
He scowled at her. “Take it. Remember the wild pigs I told you about?”
She chuckled ruefully. “The only wild pig I’m concerned about is you. I’m not leaving you trapped in this pit with no way to protect yourself.”
“I’ll be all right if you keep your word and come back.”
Dinah groaned in disgust and warmed the air with several colorful oaths she’d learned from him over the years.
She retrieved the shotgun and removed the shells. Then she lay on her stomach by the collapsed mine and gingerly dropped the gun into his upraised hands. The shells followed. Dinah winced as she noticed that he was already shivering. She pulled the wool muffler from around her neck and tossed it to him.
“Cover your thick skull.” She tried to joke. “And call down to the front desk. Tell the manager you’ll be checking out of this crummy hotel soon.”
“Not me. I ordered a chicken dinner from room service.” He held the muffler in one big hand and looked up at her with troubled eyes
. “Just tell me this. What were you goin’ to say when I was comin’ toward you a few minutes ago?”
She smiled pensively. “Sorry. You missed your chance. Believe me, I know what’s best for you to know and not know.”
His jaw worked as he sought to control his new frustration. He stared away from her and his tone became lethal. “Just turn around and start walkin’. Don’t look back. You ought to be good at that.”
She gazed at him miserably, nodded, and left.
• • •
He appeared beneath the oak tree as if the mountains had magically set him in her path—without sound, without warning. The black-haired giant might have been some ancient warrior unleashed by a wizard’s spell. He had a long beard. From her perch on a low limb, Dinah stared down in amazement.
He swung his thick walking staff as if he were hitting a golf ball—only the end of the staff connected with the haunch of a grunting wild boar. The animal squealed in alarm and disappeared into a snowy thicket.
The giant tilted his head back and gazed up at her unemotionally. She held a noose of rope in one hand. “What were you going to do?” he inquired in a deep voice devoid of any discernible accent.
“Lasso him and tie him to a limb so that I could get down.”
“And then?”
“Think of some way to get my rope back.”
“Good plan, except for the last part.”
Dinah studied him shrewdly. This huge man might be their ticket out of trouble or he might be trouble personified. She gritted her teeth.
“I need help. My husband fell into an old mine shaft. Up that way.” She pointed.
“How far?”
“About thirty minutes from here.”
He held up a massive hand. “Come down, please. I’ll go with you.”
His politeness offset his threatening appearance. Dinah knew that she couldn’t escape from him, regardless of whether he was friend or enemy. Trusting instincts that had saved her more than once during the past ten months, Dinah tossed him the rope and scrambled down from the tree.
Rucker held his wristwatch overhead so that it caught the dim afternoon light. She’d been gone nearly three hours.
He groaned from much more than physical discomfort. Could she really do it? Walk away and leave him again, this time in a dank prison with the cold numbing his trapped legs?
No. She couldn’t do that to him. He had to believe in the woman he’d lived with, made love to, and cared for—the woman who’d cared for him in return. Shivering, he leaned his head back on the muddy plank wall and tried to summon images of vindictive retaliation if he were wrong about her. But grief complicated the images and wiped away his satisfaction. If he took revenge it wouldn’t ease his gut-wrenching sorrow.
A rustling sound made his stiff fingers fumble for the shotgun. He squinted upward and aimed the gun as best he could. A huge, darkly furred shape appeared at the edge of the hole and peered down at him. Oh, hell. A bigfoot.
But Dinah halted beside the bigfoot and fell to her hands and knees. “How are you?” she called frantically.
A thrill sleeted through Rucker’s body. She hadn’t deserted him, even when she easily could have. Stunned, he only stared up at her in confusion and wonder.
“Oh, no! He’s half-conscious,” she cried.
Rucker blinked quickly and shook his head. His voice came out as a hoarse rasp. “I’m fine. But room service sucks.” She sagged with relief. The thing beside her made an amused sound and moved out of his range of vision. “What was that?” Rucker asked.
“A mountain man. Drake Lancaster. We crossed paths, and he offered to help.”
A thick rope tumbled into the hole. Rucker tied it to one of the timbers. Drake Lancaster’s shaggy head poked over the edge of the hole again. “Good.” He wound his end of the rope around hands the size of small platters and began to pull. A timber that must easily weigh three hundred pounds creaked, swayed, and rose slowly in the air.
Dinah continued to kneel beside the hole. Rucker caught her gaze, and she extended a hand even though she couldn’t reach him. The gesture contained desperate concern and reassurance.
“Believe in me now,” she urged him. “Believe.”
Rucker never took his eyes from her. The warmth and hope that swelled inside his chest drove away his chills. She cared about him. Regardless of her vague and unsavory reasons for leaving him, she still cared about him. And if he was a fool for believing that, then so be it.
Drake Lancaster was the stuff of legends or nightmares, Dinah thought. He had a dangerous aura about him, the same aura she always sensed around Valdivia. Whether he measured honor by Valdivia’s brutal standards she had no way of knowing, but it didn’t matter.
He must be seven feet tall. His effect was accented by coal black hair and the long beard. Obsidian eyes glittered with intelligence from the background of what little she could see of his rugged face.
Now he stopped at the crest of a hill, and his brown greatcoat flapped back to reveal a heavy pistol strapped low on the leg of corduroy trousers. The handle of an enormous knife protruded from a sheath stuck in his belt. Lancaster pointed across a valley to several quaint log cabins that could be seen through the still leafless forest.
“There. Tom Beecher’s rental place. Closed for a couple of weeks while Tom’s on vacation, but the water pipes haven’t been drained and the gas and electricity are on. Break the lock on the big cabin to your far right—that’s Tom’s personal cabin—and you’ll find whatever supplies you need for the night. I’ll tell him who broke in, and why.”
Dinah looked at Rucker, who shared her expression of weary curiosity. His clothes were filthy and damp. His legs were unsteady, and he leaned on Lancaster’s walking staff. His determination to make the hour-long trek from the collapsed mine to this spot brought tears to her eyes. She held his elbow, trying in vain to help support him.
“Lancaster, you don’t care where we’re from or where we’re goin’,” Rucker noted grimly. “Why?”
The great, shaggy head turned toward them slowly. The look he gave Rucker would have cowed most men. Dinah watched her husband straighten subtly, his eyes unyielding. Dinah drew a soft breath of pride.
Drake Lancaster assessed him for a moment, then abruptly smiled. He held out a huge hand. A look of kindred respect crossed Rucker’s face. His mouth crooked up at one corner as he shook the giant’s hand.
“None of my business,” Lancaster finally answered. “You don’t ask me questions, I don’t ask you questions.” His gaze swiveled to Dinah. “He was worth saving,” Lancaster noted.
“I know. Thank you.” She was spurred by a feeling that there was a great deal more to Drake Lancaster than either she or Rucker suspected. He looked like a man unaccustomed to comfort or gratitude. Dinah kissed her fingertips, then reached up and touched them to his angular cheekbone. “Thank you again.”
His dark eyes softened a little. He looked at Rucker. “You’re lucky.”
Dinah dropped her gaze and waited for Rucker’s response.
“I know,” he answered.
Lancaster half-bowed in a way that reminded her of some old-world gallant. Then he strode off without a backward glance. They stood for a moment, watching him until he disappeared in the snow-frosted woodland.
“Someone is looking out for us,” Rucker commented.
Dinah pointed toward heaven. “You mean …”
“I hope that’s what I mean. It just seems odd, that human tank appearin’ all of sudden when we needed him.”
Dinah touched his cheek tenderly. His face was sallow with fatigue, and she suspected that she looked just as tired. “We deserve a little luck. That’s all it was.”
He mused over that idea for a moment then nodded. “You’re right.”
Dinah gestured toward the cabins. “Let’s go. Lean on me and think of good things. A real bed. Food. We’ll finally get a decent amount of sleep. Then onward to the highway at daybreak.”
His
undaunted green eyes burned into her with a hungry, primitive look that made her breath pull short. They had exposed too many raw emotions over the past two days to hide behind niceties now.
“We belong in that bed together,” he told her.
While her heart thudded wildly, she gave him a jaunty look. “I’d planned on it.”
The blue tinge to his mouth frightened her, and she knew that he needed warmth and food to fight the effects of the mine shaft.
“Damned legs,” he grumbled, as she helped him to a chair by the cabin’s hearth.
“They would have to be attached to you,” she teased gently.
She and Rucker studied the rental cabin they’d selected for the night. It was a one-room dwelling, much smaller than the owner’s cabin where they’d gathered canned food and necessities such as matches.
The furnishings were cheap but comfortable—an upholstered couch and chair that had probably seen better days in some family’s den, a kitchenette with old white appliances, a tiny bathroom with a shower and tub unit made of molded plastic.
But the atmosphere was cosy, with a high-beamed ceiling, a stone fireplace, and a rough-wood floor covered in thick rugs. Dinah turned on the water heater first, then the space heater. Its red coils began to emit delicious heat. She adjusted the cabin’s wall lamps so that their light was low and soothing.
Then she knelt by Rucker, who was rubbing his long legs from thighs to calves in an attempt to restore sensation. “Let me do that.”
He took her hands in his. “Sssh. You’re just as worn out as I am.” The affection that flared between them suddenly made the cabin seem very warm. He leaned forward and brushed a kiss across her parted lips. “Forgive me for doubtin’ you today. Forgive me.”
Dinah rested her forehead against his and gloried in the sensations his firm mouth had aroused. “My darling, I know that you still have lots of reasons to distrust me. But just for a little while, can we pretend that everything’s all right?”
“I’ll try,” he whispered.
Her throat burning, she rose awkwardly and stroked a gentle hand across his dirty cheek.