She kept her eyes closed, but she was awake and alert and knew something very wrong was going on outside the house. She’d been dozing under a musty old Indian blanket. Now she felt a cold shadow fall between herself and the moon.
She slipped open her eyes, tilted up, and there he was—Uncle Thomas had found her. That traitor, that terrible liar.
He was standing outside the picture window. He’d brought along his sidekicks. Three or four other men. Trackers! Hunters! Killers!
Max’s mind and her body screamed, FLY.
FLY, FLY, FLY AWAY FROM HERE!
She couldn’t fly, though. Not in the living room with its low ceilings and the clutter of heavy furniture.
You’re strong. Incredibly strong.
Be strong now!
So Max rolled real fast off the sofa. A table toppled over. Magazines went flying—Los Angeles, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Details.
A metal chair came crashing through the window! Reflexively, she threw her arms over her face. Shards and splinters of glass showered everywhere around her and cut her, but not too badly.
“NO!” she screamed at the top of her voice. “Get away from me! Get away!”
The long hallway between the living room and the bedroom stretched out before her, beckoned.
Be strong! Be gone!
Moonlight white as bone streamed through the bedroom door that was half open at the end of the hall. A Jacuzzi encased in lime-green terrazzo was visible off the bedroom. Max flung herself toward the bedroom with full speed and full strength.
Don’t look back! Just go, go, go! You’realot faster than they think you are. And maybe, just maybe, they don’t want you dead after all.
The bedroom window was open—her escape hatch. She’d left it that way—just in case she needed one. And boy, did she ever need one.
She took off halfway down the hall. She was flying real fast inside the house and this was beyond tricky, beyond smart, beyond sane.
She didn’t know if she could pull it off, though. Would this work? Could it?
But then she found herself shooting through the open window like a missile leaving its halo, only the halo was almost too small for the missile. Her wing clipped the frame. Wood splintered! Pain stabbed her bad shoulder! “Ouch,” she cried out.
But Max was flying again—and for the second time, somebody was shooting at her. Trying to kill her? Or just wing and capture her?
“Screw you, Uncle Thomas!” she yelled at the top of her voice, not even bothering to look back. “Go to hell.”
He yelled at her. “I’ve got Matthew! I’ve got your brother, all right. You come back. I’ve got Peter Pan.”
Chapter 39
MAX WAS SHIVERING BADLY as she hid in the crown of the tallest, fullest fir tree she could find. If she couldn’t see them, then she figured that the hunters couldn’t see her. Was that true? Was that the way it worked? She prayed that it was so.
What was it that Uncle Thomas had yelled? His exact words? I got Matthew?… Or, I’ve got Matthew?
Were they out here trying to kill her? Or just get her back to the School?
She knew this much: Visitors had come to the School… to see her and Matthew. To examine them carefully and talk about them… and then what?
Max couldn’t stop the shaking, couldn’t make her teeth stop chattering, hitting together until they hurt. She began to cry. She couldn’t stop crying. She was sobbing like a baby.
Little baby! She mocked herself. Cry baby! Cry baby! Cry, cry, cry your baby eyes out.
She was lying on her belly and legs. Her arms were wrapped for dear life around a stout, knobby branch. Soon exhaustion overcame her and her eyes simply closed. Just like that, all systems were down.
Max slept. At least she hadn’t been put to sleep. She hadn’t been caught. Not yet, anyway.
Her mind was in a terrible turmoil when she opened her eyes again. She couldn’t believe that she’d let herself fall asleep. How much time had passed? Minutes? Hours? Where was Uncle Thomas and the other Security guards? His little band of killers?
It was still night, and she was still hugging the big, gnarly branch as if it were her best and only friend in the world. About a mile away, the house she’d been staying in was silhouetted against the moonlit sky. All the lights were off now.
She couldn’t make out movement or sounds anywhere in the woods. No hunters. No Uncle Thomas.
Only when she was sure the immediate danger had passed did Max feel the terrible, aching pain of loss. The house was no longer safe for her. She was homeless again. She wished Matthew were here, and just the thought of him brought tears to her eyes.
I got Matthew!
Or—I’ve got Matthew!
She had to think, to remember the precise sound of the words.
Which was it? Was her little brother alive, or had they put him to sleep? Was poor Matthew dead?
A strange, high-pitched humming sound broke into her thoughts. It increased steadily in volume. Hummmmmm. That was the sound.
She looked up and Max saw tiny lights tacking across the sky. The lights came closer, and the noise got even louder.
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s… a plane!
She’d seen airplanes fly over the School now and again. American Airlines, America West, United, smaller jets and prop planes. Whenever she saw an airplane, she wanted to fly. But it had been forbidden. You fly—you die! That was the School motto. Catchy, huh?
Stars blinked and twinkled everywhere, and the full moon had a kindly look on its face. It was as if the man in the moon himself were looking down on her. He seemed like an okay guy, but right now Max didn’t trust anybody.
She had an idea. A crazy one, maybe. Take it to the Max, she thought. That was her motto, and she was definitely living by those words now.
She stood up on the wide, sturdy tree branch, bounced a little on the balls of her feet. She still had her trusty ballet slippers, though they were wearing a little thin.
She spread her wings, let them rise above her head. Max took a slow, deep breath. Let it out. Took in another one, just like the other one.
“You fly—you die,” she whispered.
Then she pushed off and flew.
Chapter 40
UNBELIEVABLE!
The night air was cool and damp and thick as she cut through it as fast as a missile. The air stung her cheeks, numbed her nose, made tears slip out of her eyes.
God, it was so cool, so wonderful, so magnificent to fly. She couldn’t have even imagined how it would feel. No one could, unless you did it yourself, and who could do it but her? The pleasure of free flight overrode all thought, all other bodily sensations. She just let it happen. She stretched her wings and the air seemed to suck her upward as if it had a will all its own.
The thumbs of her hand, the dulas, or bastard wings, knew what to do automatically. Reflexively, she spread them outward, and immediately they acted as slats would, bleeding air through the slots, reestablishing airflow over the top of her wings, giving them lift.
She continued up, and up, higher than she had ever been before. Everything was so distant and tiny down below. She was nearly on a level with the approaching, groaning plane.
The air around the plane’s propellers churned up the entire night sky. She understood the man-made machine’s incredible power for the first time. As hard as she beat her wings, Max found that she was suddenly flying in place.
Then, for a split second, she was outside the brightly lit cockpit. Maybe twenty or thirty yards away. She could see inside.
The pilot turned in her direction. She thought that he saw her just for an instant. Probably not enough time for him to be sure of what he was seeing.
She winked at him. Made a face. She loved to play, and she just couldn’t resist.
Then Max closed her wings and did a fancy loop that propelled her away from the plane and any danger of a collision.
See that, mister big-shot pilot?Idon’t needaman-made p
lane to fly.Ijust needalittle sky space.
I was made for this.
Chapter 41
I KNOCKED on the cabin door, the cabin that I own, the little house where David and I had lived once upon a time. This was right up there with the weirdest things I’ve done in a while, and I occasionally do talk to geese and chipmunks.
But since Kit Harrison had gone out on a limb for me, literally, and since he was handsome as sin, I felt it was only right to accept his invitation to dinner that night. He had even promised to cook.
I’d put on a weathered chambray shirt and clean jeans. Clean, semipressed clothes—imagine that. Even a few drops of Hermès perfume I’d bought once upon a time in Aspen. I also had a bottle of decent Pinot Noir in the crook of my arm.
Very, very weird. Bringing a bottle of wine as a gift to my own house.
When Kit Harrison pulled open the door I noticed three things immediately: the clean shave, the fresh haircut, the smell of good old-fashioned Ivory soap.
“Where’d you get the haircut?” I asked.
“You don’t like it?” he said, and looked a little hurt.
I was surprised he was so sensitive about it, or anything else. He hadn’t seemed the type. Actually, he was surprising me in a lot of ways. I had been too tough on him in the beginning, and he’d even taken that well.
“Bob’s Hair Joint. In town,” he said. “Do I look really bad?”
“No, I like it. It’s very nice. You look great, actually. Bob Hatfield did a great job.”
“Thanks,” he said, and showed his modified Tom Cruise smile. The way Cruise did in Jerry McGuire, cocky and yet vulnerable at the same time. He took the bottle of wine from me, opened it with a flourish, poured two glasses.
“You look pretty great yourself,” he said. “Honestly, you do.”
“Thanks.” Suddenly I was the shy and vulnerable one. In my own house.
Kit handed me one of my wineglasses, originally purchased at Marshall Field’s in Chicago, if I remember correctly. I sipped some, then went to the refrigerator and put ice in the glass.
“Water that vino down,” he said, and grinned again. “We don’t want this dinner to get out of hand.”
“It’s not that. I always drink wine coolers.” I told a little white lie. Time was when David and I partied a bit—in Boulder, here in Bear Bluff, in Denver. Life had been good to us. For a while, anyway.
Actually, this was the first time in a year and a half that I’d stood in this room, in the presence of a man, and David’s image and taste were everywhere; overflowing bookshelves, familiar couch, the muted watercolors of northern Wisconsin on the walls. I had spent so many hours obsessing about David’s senseless murder. I felt scared, but I couldn’t tell Kit why. I felt a little guilty, too, though there was no reason to be. Was there?
I made funny, polite chatter about the fox and how she was doing and then I asked if I could help out with dinner.
“I think I’ve got it all under control. Thanks, anyway,” he said. He was doing better than controlling it; he was mastering the chicken breasts, the garlicked green beans, the grilled red potatoes, a misto salad. The smell of it made my tongue get up on its hind legs and beg.
Kit had his back turned to me, which was a good thing. I let out a big, deep breath. I couldn’t believe how nervous I was, how excited, how completely over the top my emotions were.
I accidentally brushed his butt as I got silverware out of the drawer. Firm, sculpted, very pleasant to brush against. That caused me to inhale sharply again. “Where’d you learn to cook?” I asked.
“My wife taught me what my mother hadn’t. My mother strictly specialized in Italian. Once I learned to expand my culinary art, we took turns every other night. Kind of cool, fun.”
That caught me off guard. I hadn’t thought about him that way, married, or any way, really. An Italian mother? You don’t knowathing about me, he’d said.
“My wife died,” Kit told me then.
“I’m sorry.” I really was. He’d already touched me with the idea of alternating nights cooking with her. David would never have done that.
“Yeah. It was almost four years ago.” I could see the pain etched on his face. He had loved her. It was obvious.
“What happened, Kit? You mind if we talk about it?”
“No. I’m fine now,” he said and forced a smile. “Occasionally, I even like to play the martyr.”
“Ouch. You’re tough on yourself, huh?”
“I guess. It was a small plane crash.” His voice was so low I could barely hear him. It was as if he were talking to himself. “My wife. My two little boys.” He let out a sigh, and as I watched in stunned silence, he almost lost it.
The cabin was so silent that the sputtering chicken and the stiff breeze against brittle windowpanes sounded explosive. I wanted to hug him, to make some kind of human contact, to make the terrible hurt and sadness leave his blue eyes.
“I was supposed to drive everybody to Nantucket. A family vacation, long overdue, much deserved by them. Then I had to work. I was deeply involved in my, uh, career. They took a plane up there without me.” His face sagged. “The plane went down between Rhode Island and Nantucket. It was the ninth of August in ninety-four.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
Now I felt so guilty about everything, right from the first time I’d ever seen him. I had been all wrong about Kit Harrison and it made me feel bad.
Chapter 42
KIT REFUSED to dwell much in the past; and for one night at least, so did I. We had some good, honest laughs, and talked easily for the next hour and a half. I liked his company, the breadth of things he knew about: Cosífan tutte, rockabilly, raising children, professional hockey, fiction, nonfiction, antiquities, and so on and so forth.
His personal history was pretty interesting, too. He told me just enough to whet my appetite. His father was Irish and had been a bus driver in Boston; his mom was Italian, a former nurse at Children’s Hospital. Mike and Maria were still alive and well, living in Vero Beach, Florida, these days. He had four brothers, “all of them smarter and better-looking than me.” He had attended Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts, on an academic scholarship. Then NYU Law “on a prayer.” Then came the FBI. Kit was an FBI agent, on vacation in Colorado.
I did get the sense, though, that he was holding back a few things, but maybe I was wrong, and besides, why should Kit feel obliged to tell me everything about himself just because we were suddenly on speaking terms.
“Let’s go for a moonlit ride,” I said after we had finished our dinner, which was as good as that at many a pricey restaurant in Denver. Truth was, I didn’t feel like going home quite yet. “You mentioned having a drink over in Clayton. Let’s go there tonight. I’m buying.”
He thought it was a good idea, so we took Kit’s Jeep over to Villa Vittoria. It’s a pretty good Italian place with a cozy bar, where jaded locals and even more jaded tourists seem to get along in relative harmony.
That particular weeknight, one of the older waiters was playing the piano and singing, if you could call it that. I knew Angelo and he was a sweet man, a very good headwaiter, but he was an embarrassingly bad singer. He was an uncle of the owner, which sort of explained why they let him sing on slow weeknights.
Kit and I sat at the bar, as far away from Angelo as possible. We tried to talk over the excruciating crooning, but he was miked, so it was impossible. We finally began to laugh, careful that Angelo didn’t know his singing had given us giggling fits.
“He’s dying up there,” I whispered. “I feel so sorry for him.”
“He’s sure clearing out the bar fast. I’ve never seen live entertainment have quite this effect before,” Kit said. Then he stood up from his barstool. “Hold the fort. I’ll be right back.”
I watched with building curiosity as Kit walked over and talked to Angelo. They both started to laugh conspiratorially, then the men looked my way.
Now what? I didn’t like
this too much. What were Kit and Angelo up to?
“We have a request from the audience to hear ‘Nel Blu dipinto Di Blu,’ also known as ‘Volare,’ ” Angelo announced. I thought of his butchering the beautiful old song and I cringed. “And to help me with the vocals, straight from the New England Conservatory of Music, Mr. Kit Harrison.”
Straight from the New England Conservatory of Music?
Angelo played a little intro to the old Domenico Modugno song, and I noticed that his pianowork wasn’t actually so bad. Now how about Kit’s vocals? And their duet together?
Kit leaned into the mike, and he actually looked as if he knew what he was doing. He looked pretty sure of himself. “This is for Dr. Frannie O’Neill. She’s a wonderful doctor of veterinary medicine, a real lifesaver. I hope this rendition is worthy of her in some small way.”
I modestly nodded my head, and smiled nervously. Honestly, I didn’t know what to say or think. About Kit Harrison? And especially about being serenaded by Kit and Angelo in the local hangout.
Kit began singing “Volare.” And he wasn’t just worthy of me, he was very good. He had a beautiful tenor voice, and he was in control of it all the way through the song.
New England Conservatory? Was that a cute joke, or was it the truth? Who was this man? Everybody in the restaurant and bar had stopped to listen and watch. Kit could really sell a song, and everybody was buying, even the local rednecks and their dates.
When he and Angelo finished, just about everybody was clapping, cheering them on. Kit and Angelo took a few comical bows, then Kit came back to me at the bar.
“The lovely signora approve?” Kit asked. “It was okay?”
I couldn’t even be flip. “Thank you. You were terrific, magnifico. I’m very touched. New England Conservatory?”
“Actually a bar near the conservatory. ‘Sparks.’ I played and sang my way through college and law school. I also worked summers on the Cape.”
Flashback time. Kit and I were working side by side, saving the fox. He was asking me to dinner in Clayton. Little generous acts that left me feeling both cared about and maybe too vulnerable, too fast. My throat ached from the sudden tenderness I was feeling. I was also conscious that I could easily be hurt right now.
When the Wind Blows Page 10