by Jill Barnett
Three rapid knuckle-punches that she felt hit square in his face.
“Jesus-Fucking-Christ!”
She stopped mid-punch. Good old American male swearing. The sweetest sound she’d ever heard. A small groan of relief slipped out from her mouth against his callused hand, muffled. Her throat grew tight with sudden emotion. “Thank God . . . ” she murmured.
“Quiet. Don’t make a sound, Kincaid,” he said into her ear.
She could feel tears of relief fill her eyes, and she inhaled deeply through her nose. There was a small catch in her throat as if she’d hiccupped. To her horror she was going to cry.
“Don’t start crying,” came a hissed order.
She nodded.
His arm and shoulder were across her. He was heavy. She could feel his warm breath as she lay there listening to see if anyone had heard.
From his stillness, she could tell he was listening, too.
No footsteps came down the hallway or up the stairs. There was nothing but silence. He hardly made a sound; his breathing was shallow, very evenly controlled. As she lay there on the cot in the room that had been her prison for seventeen days, she took short, sharp breaths that gave her little oxygen and wished he would take away his hand. She wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t going to make a sound.
He smelled of the desert, an odor of dry sand and even drier dust, mixed with musky male sweat, like he’d been running.
She moved her right hand slightly and touched his chest. There were metal zippers on his clothes and thick seams on a flap pocket that snapped closed.
He pinned her hand back onto the cot.
She could feel him shake his head at her before he turned to look back toward the door. She lay there on the cot, him half-crouched next to her, his upper body pinning her where she was.
Time crawled by.
“Okay,” he whispered into her ear. “I don’t think they heard anything. I’m U.S. Army Captain James Cassidy, and I’m here to get you out of here. Understand?”
She nodded.
“Good. I’m going to take my hand away. Do not talk...”
She nodded again.
He took his hand away.
She took a good long breath. It was the small hours of the morning. She could tell by the temperature of the air.
“Get dressed.”
She’d slept in her slip, so she swung her legs over the side of the iron cot and grabbed her dress from the end of the bed. She slid her feet into it and stood, shimmied into it, then reached under the hem and jerked down her bunched-up slip. She started with the top buttons and worked her way down. The belt hung loosely from the belt loops at the waist, and she pulled it together and buckled it, then reached for her cotton stockings and girdle.
She wiggled into the girdle, sat down and rolled the stockings into her hands, then slid them over her foot and up her leg. She attached the garters, front and back. Less than a minute later she was done.
He was standing next to her the whole time, watching her.
She didn’t care. She just wanted out of here. She bent down over the edge of the cot and grabbed her scarf, then stuffed it down the neckline of her dress into her brassiere.
“Let’s go,” he whispered, then grabbed her upper arm in his hand and took a step. “Quietly.”
She froze, pulled her arm back, and shook her head. “My shoes.”
He stopped moving.
“Get them. Hurry!”
They were under the table at two o’clock, seven steps from the bed. She took two steps, then another. Her foot hit something soft. A cloth duffel or pack.
She stumbled forward.
He grabbed her shoulders from behind in a hard grip, then pulled her upright and steadied her, her back against his chest.
Her breath came fast. It scared her, almost falling like that. It made her feel lost and out of control when that happened.
He spun her around so she faced him.
She could feel him looking at her.
He released one shoulder. She heard his pocket flap snap; then he was digging around inside it.
A moment later a lighter clicked.
He held it up between them.
She could smell the lighter fluid before she saw the blurred light from its flame pass in front of her eyes.
For just a moment there was nothing in the air but a sense of dawning realization.
He swore viciously under his breath and said, “You’re blind.”
“I KNOW NOW”
J.R. flicked the lighter closed with a snap. He had the sudden urge to bust the chops of a certain colonel. There was no way HQ would not have informed him that Kathryn Kincaid was blind. This little piece of info was what had been behind Langdon’s snide smile.
J.R. crossed over to the table, picked up her shoes and put them in her hand. “There, you’ve got your shoes.” He slid on his gloves.
“No one told you I’m blind.” She put on one shoe, then the other.
“It doesn’t matter. Getting out of here does.” He took her hand. “Let’s go.”
He moved toward the window.
She moved toward the door.
“Not that way.” He pulled her with him. “We go out the way I came in. Through the window,” he whispered. “Listen closely. There’s a rope hanging out here. I’m going to climb out the window, grab the rope, and brace myself on the tower. When I say to, you’ll climb out, grab a hold of the rope, and clamp your legs around it, so it’s between your legs, and grip it tightly with both hands and slide down so you’re in front of me. I’ll be behind you the whole time.” He paused for a fraction of a second, then said, “Guess I don’t have to warn you not to look down.”
“No. You don’t.”
“Then you need to let go of the rope, put your arms around my neck, and I’ll take you down to the ground.” He paused. “Understand?”
“I think so.”
“Repeat it quietly.”
She did. Verbatim.
“Good.”
He slipped out the window, took the rope, swung out, and secured it, taut, then braced his boots against the stone tower.
He looked up.
She had already crawled out onto the stone ledge, her back to him. She was sitting there, waiting.
It was a good thing she couldn’t see the drop down. This old fortress was situated on a tall and rugged cliff high above the road. Going down it was going to be like rappelling the sheer face of a mountain.
“I’m ready,” he whispered. “Grab the rope with both hands.”
She waved her arm a little in the air. He realized she was feeling around for the rope.
He should have put it in her hand. He started to climb back inside but saw that her hand found the rope and she gripped it tightly, then pulled it between her knees.
“Cross your feet together around it.”
She did.
He moved up the rope. “Put your arms around my neck.” He took one hand to show her where his shoulder was. She locked her arms around his neck.
“Hang on, Kincaid.” He pulled her off the ledge.
“There is no way I’m not hanging on, Captain.”
“Good. Then here we go.” He began to slide down, a few feet at a time. It took time, tense minutes because they were in plain sight, with only the darkness in their favor.
“You’re doing fine.” With their combined weight, it wasn’t easy to take it slowly, to slide only a few feet at a time. He could feel the strain in his arms, shoulders, and back.
“Someone’s walking below,” she hissed into his ear. “To the west.”
He froze. He’d just heard the footsteps, too. How the hell did she know it was west? He scanned the area and saw a man at the far edge of the lower wall. He was facing away from them as he lit a cigarette.
It’s three in the morning and this guy wants a smoke.
J.R. watched the small orange cigarette glow brightly in the guard’s mouth before the man exhaled a foggy cloud, then rested h
is arms on the wall.
Great.
If the guard turned this way, he could see them, hanging by the rope about halfway down the stone tower.
J.R. looked down. He needed an out. Fast.
He had a hunch the guy was going to turn around any second.
What the hell . . .
He shoved off from the wall with about a hundred and thirty pounds of Kincaid’s blind daughter clinging to his neck.
They slid like a lit fuse down the rope. A good seventy feet. Friction from the rope burned right through his gloves.
He used the rope to brake their descent. They jerked to a stop, and hung there, now low enough to be partially hidden by some trees growing inside a stone wall that surrounded the central courtyard. With Lalla Luck on his side, the crowns of those trees blocked them from view.
J.R. looked down. The place was situated on a sheer cliff. They still had a long way to go.
He didn’t dare take them on down. He couldn’t take the chance that the guy would see the rope move. So they just dangled there. Someday, J.R. figured, he would joke to his buddies that he came out of this assignment well hung.
He had to give her credit. It had been a helluva drop and she hadn’t made a sound. She was so still she made his job easier.
Her right ear was near his mouth so he whispered, “Now you know how a yo-yo feels.”
She didn’t say anything. No sense of the ridiculous. After a minute more she asked, “How long do we wait?”
“Till he leaves. The trees are in the way, so I can’t see him.”
“Me either.”
She did have a sense of humor. Good. They were both going to need it.
Her breathing was soft and even.
It was quiet in these mountains. Not much in the way of sounds. Noise always carried in the dead of night. You learned to take your voice down real low when your life was on the line. She was a smart cookie. She always placed her mouth very close to his ear when she spoke and her whispers were barely a breath of sound. He figured she’d taken her cue from him and he gave her points for that.
“He’s leaving.”
J.R. couldn’t hear anything.
A moment later, a door closed.
He waited. There were no more sounds. “Okay. Here we go again. Hang on . . . ”
Her arms tightened around him, and he took them down, five feet at time, to the road below.
“CHEEK TO CHEEK”
The truck bounced so hard over a rut in the road that Kitty hit her head on the roof of the cab. She flinched, reached up and rubbed her head, but kept quiet because Cassidy did. She was wedged in between him and the driver, a man he only called Sabri, who smelled of garlic, turmeric, and sweaty cotton baked by the sun. Cassidy was sitting on her right and had a crumpled map spread open on the dash.
They had been on this road a long time. It was not the road she’d come in on. The grade was too steep and there were more hairpin turns. Without any warning they careened around a turn so sharp that she had to brace both hands on the roof to keep from falling into the driver. It felt like they’d turned on only the left two wheels.
There was a horrible pause, the kind that precedes imminent disaster. She waited for the truck to roll over.
The truck slammed down on the road so hard she felt it clear into her back teeth.
But no one said a word.
Sabri downshifted the gears a second later—the warning of another steep turn.
She slid right, into Cassidy’s arm. The map he was holding crackled. He just shook it out before they hit another rut and she flew off the seat again.
She hit her head so hard only a mute could have kept quiet.
“You say something, Kincaid?” he asked.
She could tell he wasn’t looking at her. His voice was directed toward the map. “I said forget the yo-yo. Now I know how a martini feels.”
He laughed quietly just as Sabri downshifted again into another turn.
She made a quick grab for the seat and got Cassidy’s thigh. She held on anyway, but as soon as they straightened she let go of his leg.
He wasn’t looking at that map anymore. She could feel him looking at her for a very long time. When he didn’t turn away, she asked, “Are you a betting man, Cassidy?”
“Sometimes. Why?”
“Twenty bucks says you were just grinning.”
“Still am, sweetheart. But don’t worry. If you want to cop a feel, I won’t stop you.”
“Don’t get your hopes up. My hands aren’t that small.”
He paused. “You’re pretty quick, Kincaid . . . for a blind broad.”
“You’re pretty obnoxious, Cassidy . . . for an officer.”
The truck rattled over a rut and almost drowned out his laughter.
She braced her palms on the cab roof.
“Here, this should help.” He dropped his bulky canvas pack on her lap.
It weighed a ton. “What’s in here?”
“A few necessities.”
“Oh.” She nodded knowingly. “A tank.”
She heard him fold the map, then felt him shift and tuck it in his pocket.
“We won’t be needing a tank to get out, sweetheart. By tomorrow we’ll be in Gibraltar, and before you know it, you’ll be home again.”
“You’re wrong, Captain. I’m not your sweetheart. I’m not anyone’s sweetheart.”
Sabri shifted the gears into overdrive. The truck screeched too fast into another turn. She leaned her head back against the cab and whispered, “I just hope that’s the only thing you’re wrong about.”
PART FOUR
TEXAS
“WITH PLENTY OF MONEY AND YOU”
ACME, TEXAS, 1932
Red Walker lay in the brown stubble of a wheat field, his hands clasped behind his head and his bare feet in the warm dirt. He sucked on a couple of Sen-Sens and stared up at a big, blue Texas sky.
Everything was big in Texas.
His granddaddy Ross told him that a good hundred times.
“Everything’s big in Texas,” he would say in a booming voice that always ended with a crooked white grin that was bigger than any other Red had ever seen. He had a knobby, tanned, old farmer’s face; it was a face that was much kinder, but butt-ugly when you compared it to his daughter’s. Red’s mama, Dina Rae, was a real beauty.
His granddaddy told Red a farmer’s story, about how years before, in the days when you still dug a well with sweat and a shovel and a prayer, you could ride through the fields on horseback and that dadgummed wheat was shoulder-high.
Now it was the absolute Bible-swearin’ truth that most Texans could tell a tale as tall as a silo. They sort of figured any fool could tell the truth, but it took some sense to tell a good lie. His granddaddy was no exception, so Red never knew whether to believe him or not. If someone pulled your leg that often, well then, you’d better not believe them ’less you want to spend most of your life walking funny.
A few years later his granddaddy died on a soft summer morning, the kind of day that made you believe the angels just came right down from heaven and lifted him up there, like he’d always said they would.
In a will hand-scrawled on the back of an old wheat contract, he left a small wooden box to Red. Inside it were mother-of-pearl cuff links, a pocket knife with a real bone handle, and a few old photographs. Nestled into the south corner was a knuckle-sized hunk of real turquoise his granddaddy had carried in his pocket for some fifty-odd years, rubbing it with his fingers so “it took the worry right out of your head.” That worrying stone was smooth as spit.
After that day, on the wall above Red’s narrow bed, just where the last coat of green paint was chipping through to thirty-year-old yellow, was a small, square, jagged-edged photograph of his granddaddy. He was wearing that big old straw hat he wore every single day but Sunday for as long as anyone could remember, and he was riding good old Pete—a brute of a Morgan—through a golden field of wheat that was as tall as God.
&nb
sp; Everything’s big in Texas.
That old man was right as rain, Red thought, lying there in the field and glancing at everything around him. Out back of his own daddy’s filling station, just past the big round sign with its red Texaco star, there stood a row of pecan trees nigh on thirty feet high. In July, when the no-degree Texas sun beat down and burned the breath clean out of your mouth, those trees were the only slip of shade for ten square miles.
You could see their thick green crowns all the way from the front steps of Christ Baptist Church, and those rugged trunks were harder than hell to climb barefoot. But a single one of those fourth-generation trees could throw down enough sun burnt nuts to feed icebox cookies and pecan pie to half of Wilbarger County.
Red took out a thin red-paper Sen-Sen packet from the patched pocket of his denim overalls, flicked open the flap with one thumb in the city-slick way he’d seen a young fellow from Fort Worth do; then he held it up and shook a few of them onto his dry tongue. They tasted like a mix of licorice and his mama’s Camay soap, the kind she’d used to wash his mouth out when he repeated one of her curse words.
He’d first tried Sen-Sen to cover up the smell of the two Chesterfield cigarettes he’d smoked behind the old wooden water tower when he was eight. But now, four years later, he’d grown to like the way they made his mouth feel. They were cheaper than one of those blue packages of Clove gum and lasted longer. You got your few pennies’ worth out of a Sen-Sen pack.
He closed his eyes, figuring he’d sleep a bit. But he opened his eyes and cocked his head when he heard a distinct and distant hum in the air. He propped up on his bare elbows and looked eastward.
There, in that blue sky, was an airplane, flying right toward him.
He’d seen planes a couple of times, once up real close, when a barnstormer buzzed into Quannah on a Saturday in May a few years back and gave rides to whoever could afford to pay a dollar for one. His daddy took Nettie and him over so’s they could see that biplane in person. It wasn’t hard to figure out that his daddy had wanted to get his nose into the engine as badly as Red wanted to ride in the thing.