by Carly Bishop
“Eden, go sit down,” Tierney interrupted. “Do you need help?”
She recognized the warning, but what could he do to her in front of this man who thought he was such a damned hero? Maybe if she could push him into manhandling her, the FBI pilot would take a hint. She angled her head so it would stop spinning. “No, thank you. I just want David Tafoya to know that he shouldn’t stop looking for–”
“Things will be taken care of, Eden,” Tierney soothed, rising easily from the copilot seat, turning to her in the cramped space too short to accommodate his height. His eyes shot warnings only a fool would defy. “David Tafoya knows his job. He won’t stop looking until the shooter is apprehended.”
“I want him to know where I am,” she shrilled, insistent, defying him to silence her, but it was all to no avail. The two of them exchanged glances.
“He will, miss,” Haggerty said, taking the same patronizing tone, meant to calm a female bordering on hysteria. “Just as soon as they catch the guy who tried to kill you.”
The white spots glared again in her vision. She had to try one more time. “You don’t understand—”
“I think he does, Eden,” Tierney said firmly, turning her from the cockpit. “You and I are going to have to reach an understanding, lady,” he muttered beneath his breath. But as soon as he planted her back in her seat and got a good look at her, worry creased his forehead. He sank to his haunches before her. “Eden, your eyes are glassy. Are you hot?”
“If I am, will you take me to a hospital?”
His jaw tightened. “You never give up, do you?”
“No.” She shook her head slowly. “This is wrong, Tierney. Please. Let me go. Let Haggerty call Tafoya.”
He lowered his head for a moment, and for that few seconds, Eden prayed he was reconsidering. He wasn’t. She knew that when he looked back up at her and his expression seemed to her carved from granite. “Buckle up. Do it now.”
SHE FELT EVERY FOOT of the descent in her stomach. She felt the wheels grabbing on the tarmac through her feet and legs, all the way to her chest. She had begun to grow hot, but as Haggerty applied the brakes, she shivered. Her seat was positioned backward, facing the tail of the jet, and the shuddering sensations as her body was drawn back were dangerously disorienting. She had eaten nothing all day. Still her stomach heaved.
Tierney was out of his copilot position and looking out the windows long before the jet came to a halt. The skies were a wintry gray though the trees on either side of the airstrip were a lush, rich green. Eden watched, feeling sick inside, while he shouldered both their packs and bent low to release her seat belt. He pulled her to her feet and eased her arms, the damaged shoulder first, into his heavy black leather coat.
Already opening the door, Haggerty lowered the steps. The two men looked at each other for a moment, as if reaffirming their agreement, then Tierney scooped her up into his arms. Angling her body feet first through the cabin door, he descended the stairs, then set her on her feet.
Haggerty followed long enough to gauge the remaining length of the airstrip, then shook hands with Tierney. “I didn’t see them sending out the militia,” he hollered over the idling jet engines. Eden thought he meant whoever owned the property.
Tierney’s luck seemed to be holding. Holding her hair down, she cried, “Please, call Tafoya,” but her voice was lost, and Haggerty, scrambling up the short flight of steps, never turned back.
If Tierney heard her, he ignored it. “Come on, Eden. Let’s go.” He took hold of her left hand and began running toward the chain-link fence separating the airstrip from a thick grove of trees. At the fence, he picked her up again and set her over the railing, then vaulted over it himself and took off running again, pulling her behind.
She heard the jet gaining momentum and rising into the air. They had no sooner cleared the fence and run several yards through the tangled undergrowth when a car screeched to a halt at the end of the airstrip where Haggerty had just lifted off.
Tierney paused at the thick base of an old maple tree, not because he was winded, Eden thought. Not for her, either, but to see if they had been observed. The two men getting out of the dark-colored car only stared after the plane, one of them with binoculars. Clearly bent out of shape, gesturing angrily, they weren’t talking nearly loud enough to be heard.
Tierney gave a curt, satisfied nod. “They didn’t see us get out.” Through the haze and the swath cut through the trees for the airstrip, Eden could just make out the heights of the Catskills. Tierney readjusted both their packs on his left shoulder. He took her hand again and lit out through the grove of trees in a direction opposite the mountains.
The thick canopy of branches and leaves blocked out most of the scant, gray daylight. After a long time, maybe an hour, he let go of her and just led the way, beating a path through vines big around as her thumb, and dense undergrowth that made her footing treacherous.
She caught the toe of her shoe on something, stumbled and fell. It wouldn’t have been enough to keep her down if she’d had any energy stores to draw on. Or if she had wanted to go on.
She didn’t. Not with Christian Tierney. She huddled close to a tree trunk, leaning sideways against it, and kept quiet. It took him maybe a minute to circle back to her.
“What are you doing?”
She scraped her hair back and met his angry hazel eyes with defiance. It would help if her vision wasn’t messed up, if she didn’t see two of him, or if the white spots would go away. “Resting...no, that’s not... I’m not going to go on.”
His jaw cocked to the side. He shook his head, then dropped to his haunches and let their packs fall to the ground from his shoulder. Taking her face in his hand, he ordered her to look at him, and then he swore softly.
Scoping things out around them, he listened a moment for any hint of pursuit. He sank down beside her. He sat a moment, knees drawn to his chest, arms resting on them, his head bent low. “We can risk a few minutes, Eden. No more.”
“Maybe you didn’t understand. I’m not going with you anymore.”
He ignored her. Lifting his head, he flexed his broad shoulders, then scrubbed away at his eyes with both fists. The childlike gesture caught her terribly off guard.
She swallowed hard. It would be so much safer not to notice the child in the man. Not to see his exhaustion. “You can’t go on like this much longer, either, Tierney. You’re in almost as bad a shape as I am.”
“Yeah.” He looked at her, smiling a little. That caught her off guard, too. “But we are going on.”
She lowered her eyes, ignoring him.
He hauled his pack nearer and began digging through it. “I’ve got some bottled water in here. A tin of deviled ham.”
A bird screeched and dive-bombed near her after some unseen quarry. She shuddered. “Water, please. My mouth is so dry.”
“Yeah, well, it comes with the territory. Fever. Thirst. In a couple more hours, without something to stop it, you’re going to have one hell of an infection going.” He broke out the water and twisted off the cap. “Here. A little at a time.”
She drank in small sips, then gulps, while he opened the tin of ham. He scooped some out with his fingers and ate it, then tried to hand her the tin.
“No.” She made a face. “It smells vile.” She shrugged at his look. “Canned meats make me gag. I’m sure I had more to eat than that when I was growing up, but all I remember are canned tamales and little weenies.”
“What I remember is ketchup on macaroni.” He smiled. She liked the look of his lips curved upward that way, liked it so much she turned away. He scooped out the rest of the small can and stuffed the seasoned meat into his mouth. “Guess I’ll have to break out the Oreos, huh?”
Her eyes darted greedily back to him. “Oreos?”
He nodded, sucking the remains of the deviled ham from his finger. “A handful, Eden. Then we have to beat it out of here. If those two guys back there reported a trespass, it won’t be long before someone put
s two and two together.”
Please, God, she thought. Please let Tafoya figure it out. She avoided Tierney’s eyes and said nothing, but took a few cookies from the crumpled package.
Her prayers must have been excruciatingly transparent. She knew without looking at him that he realized what her silence was about. Trembling, she risked meeting his eyes.
His smile, any trace that he had ever in his life smiled, was gone. Her heart began to pound. She felt the throbbing above her right breast—and only then remembered that all she had on beneath his coat was her silk jersey camisole and gauze taped down to protect the wound.
She flushed and pulled the edges of the coat together.
He watched her trying belatedly to cover herself, when it was her transparent motives that most needed concealing. He closed up the bag of cookies.
“I’m not going to apologize for hoping someone can stop you, Mr. Tierney.”
“You’d better hope no one does, Eden, because if they do you’re a dead woman.” He crammed the cookies back inside his pack. “You needed water. Fine.” He shouldered both packs, then sank down on his haunches again to be right in her face. “But don’t push me. I’m only going to say this once, so listen up.”
He jerked the collar of his coat up on her shoulders. “You want to tell the United States Marshal Service to screw off, that’s your right. If you want to put your life in David Tafoya’s hands when this is all over, that’s your business. But right now, I’m the only thing standing between you and sudden death.” He grabbed her wrist and shook her. “Broussard wins. It’s over. Are you clear on that? Are you?”
“I’m very clear on that point,” she snapped, fighting back her tears, “since you’re the one baiting Broussard to come after me.” She jerked her wrist from his grasp, but she knew it was only because he allowed it that she broke free.
“Well, amen. We understand each other. Here’s the other thing to keep in mind. I’ve seen people die of infections from gunshot wounds. Your blood gets infected and pretty soon every part of you is sick. You won’t make it past tomorrow if you don’t get some antibiotics. Now, get up and move it, or so help me, I’ll drag your sorry little butt all the way back to Boston.”
He stood. He gave her one more look, then turned and began making his way farther and farther away from the mountains.
She threw aside the cookies and stumbled along after him silently for what seemed hours. Her mouth and throat grew dry as dust again. Sweat poured off her in the sweltering heat and humidity. Birds startled and squawked and chattered angrily. They terrified her, the way they swooped so near her and then darted off. Tierney paid them no attention.
Intent on getting somewhere else, ultimately to Boston, he paid her no attention, either, trusting that she would follow where he led.
He was right. She couldn’t go on much longer without medicine. The spots before her eyes were now as common as the bright green leaves on branches slapping her in the face every few feet. No matter how much peroxide he’d dumped into the wound, she’d gotten blood poisoning from the bullet.
She had no idea how he planned to get prescription drugs for a gunshot wound without drawing the attention he didn’t want. It didn’t matter. Tierney would do what he had to do to keep her alive. She wouldn’t put it past him to knock over a pharmacy.
She tripped over an exposed tree root but kept going, promising herself that Tierney would have to take her to a doctor and then she would get away from him. Promising herself anything just to keep going, to get out of this sweltering maze teeming with raucous birds and mosquitoes and gnats and moths.
She knew now, at least, that he intended to take her back to Boston. She had to keep her wits together until she could find a way to let Tafoya know that he could find her somewhere between Saugerties and Boston.
She paused long enough to pull the wrinkles from her socks, then plunged back after Tierney. She had gotten used to the forests in Wyoming. Used to pine needles, not ground-hugging vines. In Wyoming, even at the height of summer, the heat was never so intense as this.
But maybe it was her own fever. Shoving her way through a tangle of bushes, she nearly ran into Tierney, who had stopped. When she looked up, she saw why. They’d reached the edge of the private property, only now, abutting the densely forested grounds, they were confronted by a solid brick wall ten or twelve feet high.
Eden slumped to her knees on a mound of rock covered with moss, barely registering Tierney’s muttered curse. She wanted to make some disparaging remark about the poor planning, but her mind wouldn’t work that way, barely worked at all. She shivered violently and pulled his coat tighter around her shoulders. The army-blanket shawl had fallen and she’d lost it somewhere.
She watched him hoist himself into the branches of an old oak. He climbed the tree until she could no longer see him. At last, she caught sight of him again, making a leap for the top of the wall. Somehow he made it. Poised there, crouching down, he looked in both directions, then started to duck walk along the cap until she couldn’t see him anymore.
Panic swept through her. “Tierney, don’t leave me here!”
An interminable minute passed before he came back into view. “Eden—”
“I mean it. Don’t leave me here.” She hated the pleading tone in her voice, but she couldn’t help it.
He stared down at her and spoke softly. “Eden, I’m not going to leave you anywhere.”
She knew that, suddenly. Knew he wouldn’t have gone to these lengths to grab her and then just abandon her, but her mind wasn’t working. God, how she hated him for bringing her to this! Tears spilled down her cheeks.
She dashed at them with the sleeve of his coat and nodded. He leaped back from the top of the brick wall to the tree. Birds screeched and flocked out of the tree. A squirrel landed at her feet and ran over her shoes. Tierney crashed through smaller branches coming down, then sat on one high over her head.
“Listen now and do exactly what I tell you, Eden. Button up the coat.” She tossed her hair back and did as he instructed. “This wall goes on forever. It might take hours to get around. I want you to give me your hand so I can pull you up. after me. Come on. Try it. You can do it.”
Nothing she had ever faced seemed so daunting to her as the brick wall. Nothing. Not the glassed-in cubicles of Social Services where the man in his park service truck had taken her; not walking out on the enormously powerful Winston Broussard; not the witness box. She’d been lucky to put one foot in front of the other, and now she would have to climb. She clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a choking cry.
“Come on, Eden. You can do it,” he urged.
She pushed herself up from the soft moss. Staring at the tangled vines hanging from the tree branches, she shoved her hair back again and took a deep breath.
“That’s a girl. Don’t think. Just do it. I’m right here.”
His voice worked on her like a salve. He wasn’t her enemy now, wasn’t even the man who’d gotten her into such desperate straits.
He was the man who would get her out of this if only she could manage to do what he told her.
She reached for his hand. He grabbed her wrist and began to pull her up to the lowest branch where she could put her feet, but as she was finding a foothold, her shoulder brushed a vine and a cloud of moths flew out at her. She gave a small cry and turned her face, then planted a foot on the branch.
All the way up, he spoke to her, crooning praise and encouragement, pointing to the limb that would be her next foothold. He moved up and they repeated the process.
Smaller branches snapped. A jay nearly flew in her face. She couldn’t lift her right arm at all, even to protect her head. Tierney made her think she could keep going. From the time she started to the time he pulled her up beside him, daylight had faded to near dark.
He hauled her up at last using his coat as a hoist. Straddling the thick tree branch where it forked off from the main trunk, he lowered her down into the circle of his arms
. The top of the wall was only a few feet away. Eden collapsed against him. Tears streamed down her face now that she had made it. Her whole body trembled.
He cradled her close, holding her head to his chest, and rocked gently from side to side. “Shh, Eden. It’s over. It’s over. You made it.”
She couldn’t seem to stop shaking. If he weren’t holding her together, she would fly apart into a million little pieces. His whiskers caught in her hair. His heart beat strongly beneath her cheek. He thumbed away her tears until they had dried.
After a while, her trembling eased off, too. “How’s your shoulder doing?”
His lips were close to her ear. His breath felt cool to her. She coughed. “It’s on fire.”
He exhaled sharply and swore. “We’re going to have to go. Now, before it’s too late.”
A car drove slowly by on the winding road below, its headlights piercing the night, making her aware how dark it had become. For the first time, she saw what lay on the other side of the wall. Or, what didn’t. The brick wall ended in what seemed a sheer drop to the road, twice as far down as it had been to climb up the tree on the inside of the barrier.
She swallowed hard on the knot of fear in her throat, and sat up. “How?”
“I’m going to lower you down. You’ll have to hold tight, then drop off, but it won’t be bad. Have you ever seen anyone rappeling?”
“In the movies.”
“Do it just like that, right before you drop. Just a little shove with your feet against the wall, then let go. You’ll fall into more bushes and undergrowth.” He paused and took her chin in his fingers, turning her face up to his. “Think you can do that?”
Tears sprang to her eyes again. She nodded quickly, lowering her eyelids so he wouldn’t see them glittering. She wished he wouldn’t be so kind, so patient. She needed a reason to fight him, not to admire him, not to feel as if he might really care what happened to her.
She didn’t want to leave the safety of his embrace, either, but she couldn’t sit on this branch like a ninny all night. Or allow herself his comfort. “Let’s do it.”