Finding You

by Carla Neggers

  Seth.

  Was her brother all right?

  She couldn’t get ahead of herself. She had to believe Seth was fine unless she had proof otherwise.

  Could he have pushed you?

  No. No, no, no. Whoever had pushed her hadn’t given a damn if she’d cracked her head open on a rock and died on the spot. Seth did give a damn. He was her brother.

  All this time she’d refused to believe that anyone, least of all herself, was in any real danger. Daniel’s near-fatal helicopter crash aside, a few creepy phone calls, thefts, and break-ins hadn’t seemed life-threatening. Unnerving, frustrating, annoying, the work of someone who plainly had it in for her—but not someone really, seriously dangerous. What if she were dealing with a killer?

  Of course, if the bastard who’d pushed her scooted down the hill and finished the job, she’d know for sure, wouldn’t she?

  Her gallows humor didn’t make her feel any better. She was still trapped under a tree in the middle of the woods, and if she did try to extricate herself, and the tree twisted and fell on her chest or neck, she could end up in a worse mess.

  She racked her brain. If not Seth, who could have pushed her? Who’d want to?

  “Who wouldn’t,” she muttered under her breath, opening her eyes and staring up at the clear blue sky above the canopy of pine and oak and yellow-leafed maples and poplars. It was going to be a gorgeous day. Surely she was being overly dramatic. Surely she could wriggle out from under the tree without seriously injuring herself.

  But when she moved her trapped legs, the tree shifted and creaked ominously, one thick branch, she now noticed, maybe a foot above the back of her head. If it came down on top of her, she’d have a face full of tree. She stopped moving her leg.

  She tried to distract herself from her immediate situation. Suppose one person were responsible for all the mayhem—the calls, the helicopter crash, the thefts, the break-ins. That person would have to be someone who had been in Texas when the Maguire-Foxworth helicopter went down and someone who was here now.

  Seth, the Vanackerns, Daniel Foxworth.

  Or it could be some unknown individual who’d thus far remained out of sight, off everyone’s list of suspects.

  Cozie sighed. Nothing made any sense. Her leg hurt, and she was going to end up with a caffeine-withdrawal headache to go with everything else.

  Why would a Vanackern sabotage a helicopter that Julia was supposed to be aboard?

  Of course, she had changed her mind at the last minute and hadn’t been on board. So why sabotage a helicopter in which two men the Vanackerns didn’t know, one of whom they’d never even met, were flying?

  Seth’s guilt, Cozie had to admit, sounded more plausible, if only marginally so.

  “So forget the chopper.” Her voice was hoarse; she sounded rattled—scared—even to herself. “Life is full of bizarre coincidences and the chopper crashing into the Gulf of Mexico could be one of them.”

  Her head was throbbing now. Her left foot itched where she couldn’t reach. What if her assailant had gotten to her brother? What if—

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself. Don’t.”

  She was thirsty. What she wouldn’t give for a glass of cold apple cider.

  A rustling sound up on the hill startled her, and even with her pounding heart she shut her eyes and prepared to feign unconsciousness.

  But she heard a dog’s pant, and then Zep catapulted toward her, saliva flying, tongue wagging. He licked her face.

  “What are you doing out? Don’t touch the tree, Zep,” she warned. “All I need is to be killed or paralyzed by my own damned dog. Where were you twenty minutes ago?”

  Something caught his attention, his ears going up. He started barking and streaked back up the hill, out of sight.

  “Useless mutt.”

  Still, she could feel the panic well up inside her. She hated not being able to move, being trapped, a sitting duck. The tree probably had ants. Termites. It’d just be a matter of time before they were crawling over her.

  She shuddered. Meg and Aunt Ethel knew Seth was hiding in the monk hut, but it’d be several hours before they figured out she was missing and thought to look there.

  “You’re going to have to take your chances with the tree, kiddo,” she told herself.

  Probably she was exaggerating the potential for real damage. If she was quick, prepared, she could get out of its way or flip over onto her stomach and let her back take the blow. The steep incline of the hill could work to her advantage. With its greater weight, the tree would want to keep on rolling, hopefully without her.

  Zep’s barking died down, and she heard a male voice say, “Hey, Zep, old fellah, where’s your sneaky master?”

  Hell’s bells. Daniel. Cozie didn’t know whether to be mortified or relieved. She’d damned near rather take her chances with the tree or wait until Meg and Aunt Ethel found her.

  “Cozie? You here?”

  Then again, he was your basic military type. He was looking for her and he wouldn’t stop until he found her.

  “I’m down here,” she yelled, trying to sound more in control of her own fate than, from all appearances, she was.

  “Where?”

  Was that a note of concern in his voice? She called, “Under the damned pine tree.”

  “Are you all right?”

  She could hear him making his way toward her, wasting no time. Give the man a mission. “I’m stuck. I—” She hated this. “I could use a hand.”

  He was there. He circled around the fallen tree to her prone, trapped body. “You want to repeat that?”

  “You heard me.”

  As he squatted down beside her, Cozie had to acknowledge a relief so powerful and immediate it brought tears to her eyes. Daniel was there. She was going to be all right.

  “No broken bones?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  His expression was grim, his gray eyes two pits of cold, hard steel. “A pity.”

  “I can see I don’t have to worry about being coddled.”

  “Not when you insist on putting your head in the lion’s mouth. It’s a case of getting what you ask for.” But he gently pulled a twig from her hair. “I take it you didn’t fall.”

  “I most certainly did not. I know every inch of these woods. I was pushed.”

  He rose and walked around the tree, surveying the situation. “By whom?”

  “I didn’t see who—whoever it was hit me from behind. You didn’t see anyone?”

  “No.”

  “Seth…”

  She sighed, warning herself not to jump to conclusions. “Are you going to get me out of here?”

  “Would you like me to rush the job and break your leg? On the other hand,” he said, walking back toward her, “that might not be a bad idea. It’d slow you down.”

  “How’d you figure out where I was?”

  “Deductive reasoning. With you sneaking around out here yesterday and then again this morning, it made sense Seth would be hiding out nearby. So I took a look at my map of Woodstock and, lo and behold, there was a note of this old Druid’s cave. Sounded like a good possibility to me.”

  “Very clever,” she said.

  He stood above her, looking very tall in his Texas boots, which were close enough to her head she could smell their leather. “Well, Ms. Cozie, you’re in a fix.”

  She tried to rise up on her elbows, but the movement caused the tree to press painfully into her left leg. “How do I know it wasn’t you who attacked me?”

  “Honey,” he drawled, “after last night I’d think you’d allow that when I attack you, you’ll know it.”

  “Get this tree off me.”

  “As you wish, ma’am.”

  Moving to the middle of the tree, he bent at the knees and seized the trunk and raised it up off her. She scrambled free. Then he pretty much tossed the whole damned tree to one side. He wasn’t even red in the face.

  “Maybe it wasn’t as heavy as I thought,”
she said.

  Daniel brushed his hands off on his pants. “Maybe you’re not as strong as I am.”

  She sat up, slowly. Her shin ached. She fought an unreasoning wave of panic now that she was free. “I didn’t have good leverage.”

  He laughed and held out a hand to her. “All right, I suppose if I’d been in your position I’d have needed someone to peel that tree off me, too.” His tone, however, was not serious.

  “Don’t patronize me. You’d have plucked that thing off you like a matchstick.”

  “Hell of a matchstick.” She took his hand, and he pulled her to her feet. “You all in one piece?”

  He hadn’t released her. Standing close, she could hear his breathing. His hand was warm and steady on hers. “More or less. I just need to get my circulation back in my legs.”

  “Nice scratch,” he said, and gently touched her forehead.

  She swallowed. “I’m okay now.”

  “You sure? You want me to carry you up the hill?”

  Her mouth went even drier. “I’m heavier than I look.”

  His grin was slow and sexy, utterly confident. “Honey, you don’t look very heavy at all.”

  This just wasn’t going to do. She backed away, but pain shot up from her left leg and it went out from under her. To her further humiliation, Daniel had to catch her by the elbow to keep her from falling flat on her face. “I’ll be fine in a minute,” she said, but she could hear her own uncertainty.

  “Want me to take a look?”

  “Daniel—”

  “It’s okay,” he said softly. “Whoever pushed you is gone.”

  He seemed to sense that she’d used up all her reserves, her humor, her bravado, the parts of her she could steel to anything, and that what shreds of strength she had left needed a break. She needed just a few minutes to tremble and fight tears and acknowledge she’d been pushed down a hill and damned near killed. She let herself sink against the warmth of his chest, let him take her weight. Circulation returned to her lower legs. She felt the pain of every scratch and scrape. But a little of Aunt Ethel’s special antibacterial ointment and all would be well.

  She drew away from him and pulled twigs and leaves and pine needles from her hair. “Let’s get this over with,” she said, and started back up the hill.

  She was too sore and shaky to move very fast, but determination and the thought of Daniel right behind her, ready to catch her if she stumbled, kept her going at a steady pace. When she came to the stone-lined chamber in the hillside, she was breathing hard, her badly scraped shin aching. But she didn’t hesitate.

  “Seth?”

  She peered inside. His camping gear was packed, his sleeping bag rolled up. “Maybe he decided to come forward and got his stuff ready,” she said as Daniel came up beside her.

  “He could also have figured the wind was changing and decided to clear out, but you interrupted him making his exit.”

  Cozie just scowled and sank onto a small boulder while Daniel disappeared inside the monk hut and Zep wandered about uselessly. If Seth were nearby, Zep would find him.

  Daniel emerged a few minutes later, his expression immediately telling her something was seriously wrong. She got stiffly to her feet. Adrenaline still had her heart pumping at a rapid rate.

  In one hand he had a small mechanical device with little wires sticking out of it. She had no idea what it was.

  But she could guess. “A detonator cap?”

  He gave a curt, grim nod. “There are about a half-dozen of them in there. Whoever sabotaged my helicopter could have grabbed more than they could use from the case the caps were stored in. Maybe there was no time to put the extras back—or maybe the timing device was attached to blasting caps inside the case and the saboteur needed to make room.”

  “How convenient,” Cozie said, “that they should show up now.”

  His eyes narrowed on her. “You think someone planted them here?”

  “Of course!”

  His expression remained intense, uncompromising. She wouldn’t, she thought, want to get on the wrong side of Daniel Foxworth. He said, “If they’re mine, I’ll know it. We keep detailed records.”

  “Are you going to the police?” Her throat was tight and dry, her body rigid with rising tension.

  “I don’t take any pleasure in this, Cozie, and I’m still not ready to jump to any conclusions. The police can come out here and search the area, take fingerprints, do whatever it is they do. I’ll wait and see what they find out.”

  “Good of you.”

  “In the meantime,” he said patiently, “we need to get you back to the house and doctored up.”

  She brushed back strands of tangled hair with a shaking hand. Her fingers were cold and stiff. “I’d like to wait for Seth.”

  “Cozie, he’s not coming back. If he pushed you, he won’t risk it. If he didn’t, he’s probably not too far off and realizes I’m here.”

  “He didn’t push me,” she said stubbornly.

  He didn’t bother arguing it. “Let’s go.”

  But she didn’t move.

  He sighed. “All right, what’s on your mind?”

  “You didn’t plant those detonator caps yourself, did you? You didn’t have them on you already when—”

  “No,” he said without expression, without hesitation. “No, I didn’t.”

  She nodded, accepting his denial. If he could ask tough questions, so could she. “Then whoever pushed me planted them.”

  “Cozie—”

  “I know it could have been Seth,” she said. “Technically.”

  And she got to her feet unassisted, wincing at the pain shooting up from her left leg. The tree had done a damned good job on it.

  Daniel shook his head. “J.D.’s going to have to meet you.”

  “He’d go ahead and carry me, wouldn’t he?”

  “Damned straight.”

  “You’re thinking about it?”

  He almost managed a smile. “I’ll leave that for you to wonder.”

  As he walked behind Cozie, Daniel didn’t want to admit how badly she’d scared him any more than she wanted to admit how much she hurt. She was limping and dazed, but too damned proud even to lean on him.

  “You’re worse than J.D.,” he muttered, staying close to her. “When we were in Scotland putting out an oil fire, he practically blew himself to bits—but damned if he’d let anyone give him a hand. He had so much blood in his eyes he couldn’t even see.”

  “What a charming story,” Cozie said as she struggled along.

  “I walked behind him and caught him when he passed out. You haven’t seen J.D. He’s got fifty pounds on me.”

  She gave him a cool look over her shoulder. He would lay odds she had no idea how pale she was. “I have no intention of passing out.”

  “Neither did he.”

  “Well,” she said, resuming her limp along the old farm road, “I’m not J.D.”

  “Thank the good Lord for that. I’ve never wanted to kiss J.D.”

  He thought he saw a different kind of hesitation in her gait, one not brought on by pain and exhaustion. “That’s not what I meant. You feel responsible for J.D. He’s your partner and your friend; you two go back a long ways. You don’t need to feel responsible for me.”

  “Did I say I feel responsible for you? I’m just tired of crawling along behind you waiting for you to collapse when I could be carrying you and moving a whole lot faster.”

  She dropped to the side of the road. “You can go ahead of me.”

  He stopped. “Not a chance, sweetheart. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

  She frowned. He suspected she had a tough time knowing when he was deliberately trying to get under her skin and when he was doing it by accident.

  “How bad’s the left leg?” he asked.

  “It’s just the shin. I must have scraped it worse than I thought.”

  “Let’s have a look.”

  She licked her lips. “It can wait.”
>
  “You know,” he said, dropping to one knee in front of her, “you’d last about ten seconds in the military before someone beat you senseless. Maybe not even that long.” He carefully raised her pant leg, exposing a well-shaped calf and a shinbone that was nastily bruised and scraped. “Looks like a tree fell on it.”

  “I didn’t notice it much before. Adrenaline, I guess.”

  “Well, it doesn’t need stitches—it’s hardly bled. But walking on it can’t be any fun. We don’t have much further to go. You can make it?”

  “Of course.”

  The woods lightened as they crossed the stream, with more birches and poplars and fewer pines and hemlocks. It was a perfect autumn morning by weather and scenery standards. Cozie didn’t seem to notice. The scratch on her forehead stood out against her pale skin, and Daniel knew if he’d caught whoever pushed her, he’d probably still be beating the daylights out of the bastard.

  But he also knew he was right to have come to Vermont. The answers to what had happened to him and J.D. over the Gulf of Mexico were here.

  Cozie seemed to be in more pain than she wanted to admit. He sighed. “I’ll bet you don’t weigh more than the nozzle of one of my hoses.”

  His comment gave her a good excuse to stop. “There’s enough gossip circulating about me without having my first-ever tenant dropping dead of a heart attack carrying me through a field.”

  With that, she resumed walking, her limp less pronounced if only through sheer willpower. Daniel followed along in the rear. “According to the old man in the country store, I’m more than your ‘first-ever tenant.’ I gather there’s been a fair amount of speculation about your love life over the years.”

  Cozie cocked her head around at him. “Who is this old guy?”

  “He said he’s some friend of Ethel and Thelma.”

  “Royal. Royal Thornton. It has to be. Kind of on the short side, wears a Red Sox cap? He’s been after Aunt Ethel for years. He thinks I’m just like her.” She made a face and turned her attention back to the road. “Well, it’s none of his business what I do up here or with whom.” Another quick look back. “Or are you just making this up?”