by Jodi Thomas
He straightened away from her, then slowly raised his hand once more and gently cupped her breast again. “If you don’t want this,” he whispered, lightly stroking her, “then you’d better say something.”
She waited but didn’t say a word.
He lowered his hands to her waist, then spread his fingers over her body to her shoulders.
She didn’t move, but he felt her swaying to his touch.
Turning her to face the wall, he moved his fingers down her back, dying for the need to touch her. She sighed as his hands pressed over her hips.
“Turn around,” he whispered into her hair.
She did as he asked.
“Close your eyes, darling,” he said before pushing her gently against the wall and kissing her again.
When he pulled away, he waited.
She breathed hard, glared at him, and waited for him to kiss her again.
He did. Each time bolder, hotter. Each time expecting her to struggle and pull away. Each time surprised when she remained silent and waited for more.
Slowly, she melted against him and his kiss turned tender. She hated all men, and he knew she would have cut a gentle man to shreds before he could have ever gotten so close to her. It had been so long since he’d felt anything, but now the need for her burned inside him and he had a feeling the same was true for her. He’d known the moment he’d seen her that he’d hold her like this.
Without backing away, he moved his mouth to her ear. “Now, put your arms around me, darling. That’s right.” He moved his fingers along her rib cage, gently stroking her sides. “Now, arch your back away from the wall.” She did. “That’s it, baby, press against me.”
He kissed her again, deep and long, with her body so close against him he could feel her heart pounding. The need to touch her skin became as important to him as breathing air, but the last ounce of reason in his brain thought of what might happen if the aunts or her mother stepped into the hallway. This was not the time for making love.
Stepping an inch away, he pressed his cheek against hers. “We can’t do this here. Meet me, Claire.”
“Where?” she whispered, out of breath.
“Anywhere,” he answered just before he lowered his mouth against her throat. “Anywhere,” he mumbled. “Any time.”
She moaned softly and pulled his mouth back to hers. Her kiss was filled with need, but he tasted regret. They both knew nothing more could happen.
He kissed her again the way he’d longed to kiss a woman all his life. Denver felt he’d been searching for perfection in a kiss, and he’d finally found it with a woman who hadn’t said one nice thing to him since they’d met.
“Meet me,” he whispered as she pressed her hand on his heart and pushed him away.
“I can’t,” she answered with a cry, and moved away.
He reached for her, but she was gone. He raised his arms and pushed against the wall as he let out a whispered oath. The first woman he’d wanted in forever had just turned him down. He took the knowledge of it like a blow to the gut.
It took him a few minutes to get a grip on what had happened. This wasn’t a hotel, but her home, and she wasn’t someone he could pick up, she was a respected artist and mother. He’d been swimming in waters without rules or values or restraints for so long, he had no idea how to stay afloat here.
He walked back to the living room and found Gabe and Liz sitting in a corner of the couch wrapped in one another and sound asleep. Grabbing the remote, he began to flip channels without being aware of anything that was on.
He’d done it all wrong, Denver decided. Grabbing a woman in a dark hallway wasn’t the way to start. He was thirty-five, totally alone, and bored. If he hadn’t figured out relationships by now, there was probably no hope for him. Maybe he should take his mother’s advice and go home to marry one of the list of girls his relatives had picked for him. Then he could live in the big family house and raise horses, pigs, and kids.
Denver looked at Gabriel. He couldn’t even talk to people and he’d managed to find a woman who seemed to think he was worth inviting home to meet the family.
Denver swore and decided to wake Gabe up and demand, if they’d ever been even passing friends, that Gabe shoot him and put him out of his misery.
Chapter 31
THURSDAY, 10:00 P.M.
FEBRUARY 14, 2008
TIMBER LINE ROAD
“I THINK I’M IN LOVE WITH LIZ’S SISTER,” DENVER SAID simply, as if it were a disease he’d contracted. “I’ve got all the symptoms, and I’ve been running a fever since the second I saw those brown eyes.”
“Get real. The woman didn’t even look in your direction at dinner. If you get within ten feet of her, she’ll have her future sister-in-law arrest you.”
Denver closed his eyes as if in thought. “No, I think she’s crazy about me. Only problem I see is I’m going to have to stay with you for a while to get close to her.”
“I don’t have a guest room,” Gabe said flatly.
“I’ll sleep on the floor. After the ground it was fine last night.”
“Don’t you have to go back to your job?”
“I took a few weeks off. Besides, we’ve still got to go down the road a piece and pull my Mustang out of the mud.”
“It wouldn’t be blue, would it?”
“How’d you know?”
Gabe frowned. “Lucky guess. How long have you been stalking me?”
Denver shrugged. “Awhile. About the time it started snowing. On my days off I’d catch a flight to Dallas and drive up. I figured out Wiseman was G. L. Smith fairly quickly, and then I thought you were pretending to be Leary. That twist caught me off guard. If I hadn’t seen you picking up your mail one night, I don’t think I would have ever put it together.”
Gabe pulled onto the muddy road to his place. “I should have pulled the trigger when I first saw you in the doorway. I can’t believe you managed to find me. Maybe I should start packing. If you found me, anyone could. You couldn’t have full brain capacity and think that Claire Matheson likes you.”
Denver straightened in the seat. “How many guys did you show your sketching to in the army?”
“No one but you, and I wouldn’t have shown you except you kept asking.”
“How many people know you’re G. L. Smith in town?”
“Until yesterday, one. Now the news is spreading.” Gabe smiled. “Only, no one knows any connection between Gabe Wiseman and me but you.”
“You’re safe.” Denver laughed. “Everyone here knows you as Leary, and most couldn’t care less that you draw comics. I’m guessing, in the world of art, graphic novelists are right up there between sign painters and graffitists.”
“Thanks. Where do you put artists who paint dead men?”
“At the top, of course.” He grinned. “Or maybe right under me.”
Gabe glared at him, considering opening the car door and tossing him out in the mud. Finally, he settled for saying, “It bothers me that you figured it out.”
“I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t seen your drawings. When I came here, I thought I’d find Wiseman living as Smith, not some guy I never heard of named Leary, living in Wiseman’s battered-up body. Tell me how you flipped names and vanished.”
“You make it sound like alien possession.” Gabriel laughed and gave in. He might as well trust Denver; he was two days late killing him. “Wiseman and I switched names in boot camp. We looked enough alike. He thought it would be fun. I was eighteen and the promise he’d let me drive his classic GTO was enough to sway me. I didn’t care if Wiseman wore my uniform and sneaked off the fort. I figured I could just claim he stole it if he got caught.
“Only Wiseman OD’d wearing my uniform and I was pulled out of a sound sleep by some sergeant yelling at me, calling me Wiseman. I was released from the last few days of boot camp and told to plan the funeral since Leary didn’t have any kin and I was the only guy who talked to him in camp. After that, it was easy. I shipped out un
der his name and found there were advantages to being a Wiseman. I got into schools I never would have been considered for because it seemed the guy came from a long line of dead heroes.”
“You let Gabe Leary stay dead and buried?”
“Trust me, no one cared or knew. Like Wiseman, I told everyone I had no kin. I just wanted to be a soldier, and the fact that my father couldn’t find me to borrow money or make my life miserable in general was fine with me.”
Denver nodded. “One question. When you talk to yourself, do you call yourself different names to keep all the yous straight?”
“Shut up.” Gabe’s head hurt. “Or we’ll take a vote and all three take turns killing you.”
Denver laughed.
Gabe pulled his Land Rover into the barn he’d long ago converted into a garage and shut off the engine. “When you called around town looking for me last week, I thought the men I told you about from that night in the hospital had tracked me down. But you found me through the novels, something no one else can do.”
Denver climbed out and waited until Gabe did the same before saying, “I made no calls about you, Gabe. Not last week and never around here. I followed the trail of G. L. Smith to your office and then waited for you to drop by there. When you did, I followed you home and camped out, waiting to make a move. I knew I’d be dead if I just walked up. I knew you well enough to figure that you had a darn good reason for leaving that hospital as banged up as the doctors said you were. It took me days to figure out the sensors on this farm so I could get close enough to leave you the smiling message.”
They walked toward the house, guessing who might have called. When Gabe unlocked the door, Pirate darted out for a quick run.
Both men laughed.
“I guess Pirate thought we were gone a bit too long,” Denver said.
Gabe didn’t comment. He just listened, then raised his fingers to his mouth to whistle the dog back.
Just as the signal cut the air, a gunshot came through the night in answer.
Like a movie suddenly switched into fast forward, both men moved into action. Denver pulled his Glock from his leg and hit the ground rolling. Gabe flipped off the light and slid into the blackness at the side of the house.
They waited. The night was as silent as death. Somewhere near the road Gabe thought he heard the faint sound of a car starting, but it could have just been passing by.
“Ready?” Gabe whispered, knowing Denver was close.
“Ready.”
They didn’t close the distance between them but moved parallel with one another across the rocky ground. Denver was silent, but Gabe slipped once as they moved in the direction Pirate ran. He fell to his knee and then slowly stood, ignoring the pain as he moved on into the blackness.
Gabe’s logical mind was clicking away facts, calculating the possibilities as he continued. If Pirate had heard the whistle, he would have been back long before now. They’d heard one shot. The dog had to be hit, maybe dead. He and Denver were no more than shadows, but if someone fired again, fire would be returned in a blink.
The night was cold, but Gabe barely noticed. Step by step he crossed the field.
“Found him.” Denver’s voice was little more than wind.
Gabe closed the distance, seeing the outline of a man kneeling. Once he was within a few feet of them, Gabe widened his stance and faced the road, knowing his role was guard in this mission.
“He’s alive,” Denver said. “I can’t tell where he’s hit but I can feel lots of blood. Cover me.”
Denver picked up the dog as Gabe walked a few steps behind, his eyes scanning the night.
Nothing moved as they retraced their steps.
Once they were inside, Gabe switched the alarms on, locked the door, and made sure all blinds were closed. Denver moved to the kitchen table and gently laid Pirate down.
“Know any vets?” Denver asked as he began washing off enough blood to find the wound.
Gabe looked down at Pirate. “No. I don’t think we could make it to town and find one in time.”
“I agree. We do what we can here.”
Both men had been trained to react in crisis with minimum waste of time. Denver took the lead, giving orders and demanding supplies as he put pressure on the hole on Pirate’s neck.
For almost an hour they worked, pulling the bullet out, trying to stop the bleeding, and sewing the dog up. Pirate whimpered a few times, but never fought. It was almost midnight when Denver poured hydrogen peroxide over the wound, then sat down.
Gabe covered the dog with a towel, grabbed the whiskey and two glasses, and joined Denver.
“We did the best we could,” Denver said. “But I don’t know if we did any good. He looks far more dead than alive right now.”
Gabe brushed his finger along the dog’s nose.
Denver downed two fingers of whiskey and said simply, “Let’s list what we know about the situation.”
It was as if they were back five years, putting their heads together to figure things out, to plan, to survive.
Gabe went first. “We know it wasn’t an accident.”
“Agreed. Whoever placed that shot was trained, well trained. You think they were warning you?”
“No, I think they meant to kill Pirate so they could get to me, but I’m paranoid, remember.”
Denver shook his head. “If you are, I’m in the boat with you. Someone’s after you, Gabe. Maybe they think you’re Wiseman or maybe they just hate your novels, but someone is out to get you.”
“It might be safer for you to leave.”
Denver smiled. “Not a chance. I haven’t had this much fun in years.”
“So, Lieutenant, what do we do now?”
“We act like normal folks and call in the law.”
Gabe wanted to say no, that he’d handle whoever was out there alone on his own, but he knew Denver was right. If someone was watching, it was better if they thought Gabe ran to the sheriff for protection, otherwise they might figure out that Gabe was getting ready for a battle he always knew would eventually find him.
Denver pulled out his cell and punched 911. By the time the deputy responded to the call, Gabe had covered the security panel with a poster and all weapons were out of sight.
Gabe thought the deputy was polite, but not really very interested in a dog being shot. He said it might have been a deer hunter’s wild shot or kids driving by shooting at fence posts. He said he’d turn it in.
As the deputy pulled out of the drive, Denver mumbled to Gabe, “You have a lot of deer hunters who hunt at night?”
“Nope,” Gabe answered as he stepped back into the house. “I’ve got a bunk in storage we can set up in the back room. If you’re staying, you might as well make yourself at home.”
After they’d hauled the bedding in, Gabe lit the fireplace in the main room while Denver carried Pirate in and spread the dog out on blankets in front of it.
“The bleeding looks like it may have stopped,” Denver said as he packed a bumper of towels around the dog. “I don’t see any fresh blood on the bandage.”
“We’ll know by morning.” Gabe patted Pirate. “Hang in there, partner.”
“I’ll keep the fire going.” Denver spread out on a blanket without even removing his boots.
“Fine.” Gabe stood and moved to a ladder in the entry closet. “I’ll take the first watch.”
He slowly climbed up to a small square hole in the ceiling of the closet and disappeared into a floored attic. It was warm, but dusty. He rolled over twice and reached the small vent window. Flipping the shutter, he looked out over the silent night and his land. For once he’d left the yard lights on. He’d see anyone coming within a hundred feet of the place. Whoever planned to come after him might be smart enough to make it past the first few rings of security, but he’d see them before they reached the house.
As he watched the night, he thought of Elizabeth sleeping in her office. If she knew all the trouble he was in, she would run as fast
as she could. Denver was probably right; if Gabe claimed to be Wiseman, not only did he have two strangers wanting to kill him for what they thought he saw the day of the bomb, but the army was also looking for him. If they found out he’d been only pretending to be Wiseman for ten years, he’d probably go to jail. If they thought he was Wiseman, then they saw him as a deserter. Either way looked like prison time.
Best-case scenario: The deputy was right, it was just kids or a deer hunter not noticing it was three hours after dark. If that was true, Gabe wouldn’t go to jail, he’d be carried off for being insane and his friend downstairs would be in the next padded cell.
No matter what, Elizabeth needed to stay away from him. Whether he was in danger or paranoid, she was no longer in his life.
A little after four, Denver yelled up that he’d take watch, and Gabe came out of the attic. He checked Pirate, then fell into bed asleep before he could pull up the covers.
In what seemed like minutes, Denver shook his shoulder. “Wake up, Gabe. There’s a hearse coming up the drive.”
“I didn’t hear the alarm.” Gabe was fully awake and reaching for his rifle.
“I shut it off. I don’t know who this guy is, but if he’s a killer, he’s got to be the dumbest one alive. When he saw me at the door, he waved. Looks to me like he’s just more company.”
Gabe moved to the door with Denver following in his wake. “I don’t have company.” He glanced at Denver. “You’re like the first roach. If I’d stepped on you, no more would have followed.” He’d managed to live here for four years without anyone dropping in, and now they were wearing out the road.
Denver laughed. His skin was far too tough to suffer the ping of words. “Maybe the whole world got together and figured you were already dead. They’re just sending the undertaker before the stink gets too bad.”
Gabe didn’t laugh. He felt more dead than alive most days. Until he met Elizabeth, he’d feared he might disappear and no one would notice.
He propped his rifle by the front door and stepped out onto the porch as Tyler Wright pulled up. Denver, despite his jokes, stayed behind, fully armed and ready.