by Karen Leabo
Christine didn’t want to move. She’d found the most perfect corner of heaven she could ever have imagined, and she was loath to let it slip away.
She’d forgotten how good it could be—only really, nothing had ever been this good. She shivered to think of what Ryan could do when he was whole, when he could actually move.
“Are you cold?” he asked solicitously.
“No, I’m perfect.”
“I’ll say.”
“I mean it. I’ve never felt happier. I know that sounds silly.”
“Huh-uh. It’s like there’s a big ball of sunshine and flowers all around us.”
She couldn’t tell whether he was serious, or making fun of her. She decided to pretend he was on the level. “That’s very poetic, but it describes exactly how I feel.”
He chuckled. “I used to write bad poetry in high school. It made the girls think I was deep and mysterious.”
“You are deep and mysterious,” she said, rubbing her cheek against his beard-roughened chin. It felt good. “I could know you a lifetime and still not figure you out.” And that, she was afraid, was hitting a little too close to the truth. She wanted to spend the rest of her life getting to know him.
Was it a girlish fantasy? Men liked sex. Men rarely turned down sex. This meant everything to her, but it might be nothing to Ryan. It wasn’t as if he’d pursued her. She’d given him little choice in the matter.
He said nothing more, but he continued to hold her tenderly. She contented herself with that. Now wasn’t the time to dissect what tonight meant, if anything. Lately, she’d been living moment to moment, so she might as well continue.
Eventually she eased away from him, carefully maneuvering herself to lie beside him so that she didn’t jar his arm. “How does your shoulder feel?”
“Mmm...could be better.”
“What about dinner? Do you want something now?”
“I’m starved. No, don’t get up,” he said when she started to move. “Lie here with me a little longer. I’ll get up in a while and find the leftovers.” He pulled the covers back up over both of them.
“After that, will we leave here?” she asked. “In the dark, it would be easier to move around without being seen.”
“You’re right, but—I’m sorry to say—I don’t think I could walk fifteen feet in my current state. Maybe by morning.”
His weakness, and the fact that he readily admitted to it, worried her. How much blood had he actually lost? How long would it take for his body to replenish what he’d lost? Would he really have made any progress by morning?
“I could go on my own and bring back help,” she suggested.
“No way,” he said flatly. “We have to stick together. I would worry myself into a coma if you left here without me.”
“And I guess I would worry about leaving you here alone,” she admitted. All this mutual worrying gave her a warm feeling inside. “All right. We’ll stay together.”
“We can take turns sleeping tonight,” Ryan said. “At least one of us should be awake, in case Denny makes an appearance.”
“You think he might? I figured that if he was going to find us, he’d have done it by now.”
“Hate to burst your bubble, but we’re a long way from safe. Denny could be hanging out in town, talking to people, asking questions, finding out if either one of us has relatives in the area.”
Christine shivered. “I hadn’t thought of that. If he’s determined, it’s only a matter of time before he shows up here.”
“Yeah.”
After that cheery realization, neither one of them could sleep. Christine went downstairs and reheated the rice dish, despite Ryan’s protests that she needn’t wait on him. She wanted him to conserve his strength. He would need it tomorrow.
After Ryan ate, they lay in bed, talking quietly, listening for the sound of a car engine through the cracked window, jumping at every animal noise outside.
Eventually Christine drifted off, secure in the circle of Ryan’s arm. She awoke maybe a couple of hours later to find Ryan lying on his side, watching her.
“What, was I snoring?” she asked drowsily.
“No. You’re just so pretty I can’t stop staring at you.”
She felt self-conscious about that. What if she’d drooled in her sleep or something? She flipped over and turned her head to look out the window so that he couldn’t see her face. “You must be tired,” she said. “Why don’t you try to get some sleep? I’m awake now.”
“Sleep is the last thing on my mind.” He leaned forward and kissed her ear, her jaw, until she felt compelled to turn her head and meet his lips with her own. He kissed her—not with burning passion, but with a reverence that shook her to her core. She hadn’t known it was possible to communicate anything except lust with a kiss, but Ryan’s kiss had spoken of something far deeper than mere physical longing.
Oh, did she dare hope? What if this was just wishful thinking on her part? Or some new game he was playing? She’d just realized that when it came to love, there were a lot more things that could go wrong than could go right.
“I want to make love with you again,” he murmured. “Once wasn’t enough—not that twice would be.”
She was sorely tempted. Her body clamored for more of the pleasure she’d taken from him earlier. But every bit of exertion she put him through now would translate into less energy he would have by morning. “No, Ryan,” she said firmly. “Please sleep. I’m getting up and getting dressed. I’ll watch for Denny, don’t worry.” She slid from the bed before he could stop her.
He sighed. “I couldn’t possibly sleep.”
She remembered giving a similar argument when she was a little girl and her father was trying to get her to take her nap. And her father would say, “Just try. If you can’t sleep, think of something pleasant—like riding your pony.” She would take his advice, and before she knew it she would be waking up, her nap over.
“Just try,” she said now to Ryan as she pulled on her jeans. “Think of something pleasant, like... What’s your favorite thing to do?”
“Mmm, I think we just established that.”
Oh, dear, they were back to that subject again. It was nice to envision him falling asleep thinking of her, though. “Visualize a long, hot bath,” she suggested. He couldn’t possibly find any more appealing image. She longed for a good soak herself.
As soon as she was dressed, she grabbed the gun, stuck it in her waistband and slipped out of the room. Ryan didn’t offer any further protest. She lit an oil lamp she’d found earlier in her rummagings, then washed the rice pan and straightened up what little there was to straighten in the kitchen. When she checked on Ryan a few minutes later, he was sleeping. Thank God.
She watched him for a few minutes, her heart so full it ached, then withdrew and returned to the living room. With nothing to occupy herself with, she simply sat in a chair by the window, watched, and waited for Denny to come.
The sound of a car engine startled her, and she realized she’d been dozing. The gun was still clutched in her hand, though, so she couldn’t have been too far gone.
A car was coming along the dirt road toward her at a faster-than-safe speed. She saw the lights bouncing up and down with each bump and pothole it hit, heard the whine of the engine.
The car slowed as it neared the driveway. The lights flashed to bright. Was the driver trying to find an address, perhaps? Oh, please, don’t let it be him! she prayed.
Her prayers were dashed when the car turned into the driveway. Only someone looking for them would come here. And only one person she knew was looking for them.
She thought about calling upstairs for Ryan, then decided not to. This fight was between her and Denny. Ryan had nearly gotten himself killed during the last confrontation. He would be safer where he was. She still held out hope that Denny didn’t mean to kill her, that he wanted the million-dollar ransom—the ransom that didn’t exist and, in all likelihood, never would.
S
he flipped the safety off the Glock, raised the window, knelt in front of it and braced the gun on the sill, ready to fire. The wall might provide her with some cover.
Her hopes for a reprieve evaporated when the car stopped in front of the house with a neat little fishtail that set it at a ninety-degree angle to the driveway, facing right. It was a red Firebird, all right. The right front fender was badly crumpled, causing Christine to wonder what the car had been through since she first saw it, two-and-a-half days ago.
The driver climbed out, hitched up his pants and strolled around the car, as confident as a bulldog approaching a helpless kitten—or at least that was the way it appeared to Christine.
She decided she’d show him helpless. The best defense was a good offense, right? She waited for him to walk around the car, then aimed for the ground right in front of his feet. She squeezed off bullet number one.
The man did a frantic little dance, then raced for the protection of his car, diving behind it.
Christine congratulated herself. She’d made that bullet count for something. But she had only three left now.
Ryan awoke to the sound of gunfire—a single gunshot, to be precise, and it seemed to be very near. He raised up so suddenly that his head spun. His shoulder throbbed. Then he remembered precisely where he was and what was going on, and he nearly fainted from fear. Who had fired the gun, Chrissy or Denny? Was she even now lying in a pool of blood downstairs?
Galvanized by those unpleasant thoughts, he forced himself out of bed, grabbed his jeans and walked—though he wanted to run—downstairs. “Chrissy!” he called as he cautiously descended each step. He wouldn’t be any help if he toppled head over heels down the stairs into a heap of broken bones.
“Here!” she called back. “Find a weapon. Our friend is back, just like you said he would be.”
Ryan felt sick to his stomach, whether from fear or the food he’d eaten or general debilitation, he didn’t know. But it gripped him like a vise in the gut.
When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he found Chrissy kneeling by the window, gun poised.
“Are you okay?” he asked. She looked fine, but so had he for a while after he was shot.
“For the time being. There might be an old knife in the kitchen. If not, I know there’s a meat-tenderizing mallet. That will have to do.”
Ryan’s blood ran cold. This was it, then, kill or be killed. Was he up to it? Hell, yeah, of course he was! What was he thinking? To protect Chrissy, he would stab a rhinocerous to death with a toothpick. He gathered more strength than he thought possible and went to the kitchen to find a weapon.
He returned to the living room, having found two bricks, one very rusty knife, and the meat-tenderizing mallet Chrissy had mentioned. Chrissy hadn’t moved. “What’s happening?” he asked.
“Everything’s status quo so far,” she answered, keeping her voice low. “He’s behind his car, probably trying to figure out what to do now that he knows we’re not defenseless.”
Yeah, Ryan thought. Chicken-doo guys like Denny thrived on beating up on people who were weaker than him.
Ryan tried to figure out where his best vantage point would be—by the door, where he could attack Denny if he breached their walls, or at the window in the next room, ready to hurl bricks if the enemy got within twenty feet.
“Chrissy?”
“Yeah?” she answered, never taking her eyes away from the window.
“If you have to, can you kill him?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “I have three bullets left. I’ll go for his knees with the second-to-last one. If that doesn’t work, the last one is for his heart.”
God, how had he ever believed she was a bored, spoiled rich girl? She had three times more guts than anybody he knew. But he also knew that she would never again submit herself to the indignities, the deprivations, those lunatic terrorists had put her through. She’d said the kidnapping had changed her, and now he saw what she meant.
“I’ll use the gun if you want me to,” he said.
She shook her head. “I’m the better marksman between us. You’re better with knives and bricks, I’ll bet.”
Her answer made perfect sense. Still, he would spare her from killing, even in self-defense. With a nod, he moved into the next room, which had been Josette’s never-used dining room. The window would afford him excellent access to anywhere on the front porch.
The eastern sky was just turning pink. As it gradually lightened, it appeared that Denny was going to wait it out, maybe see if his quarry would make a move first.
They could go out the kitchen door, he thought, and cut across the fields behind the house. Maybe Denny would never see them. Or maybe he was planning on a move like that, and he would cut them down like pop-up targets at a shooting gallery.
A flash of movement inside the car, now visible as morning dawned, made Ryan sharpen his focus. What was the man up to? That soon became apparent when the passenger window glided open, and Ryan found himself staring down the barrel of a rifle.
Instinctively Ryan backed away from the window. “Move aside, Chrissy,” he called. “He’s got a gun pointed at the—” He never finished his warning. Rapid gunfire shattered the silence of the morning. Bullets shattered glass, chipped plaster, splintered wood. As abruptly as the shooting had started, it stopped, and an eery silence reigned.
“Chrissy, you okay?”
“Yes. You?”
“No hits here.” But they were lucky, damn lucky. There were bullets lodged in the walls, the ceiling, the furn’s-ture--everywhere but in them. “We can’t afford to wait around anymore, Chrissy,” he said. “Can you get a clear shot at him? If you can, take him out. The next round of bullets, we probably won’t be so fortunate.”
“I can’t get a clear shot,” she said. “Too much glass is in the way, too much car.”
“Then do something to at least scare him. Shoot out a window. We know from experience how scary that is.”
His order was no sooner issued than Ryan heard the sharp report from Chrissy’s pistol and the instantaneous shattering of glass. The Firebird’s rear window was gone, except for a few pieces of glass clinging to the edges.
“Good job, Chrissy.”
“Did I hit him?” she asked, sounding both hopeful and fearful.
Ryan peeked around the window casement. He could clearly see Denny moving around. It looked like maybe he was reloading his gun. “He’s okay, still wiggling,” Ryan said.
“Ryan?”
“Yes, Chrissy?”
“I love you.”
Before he could react, the car’s engine started up.
A surge of triumph roared through Ryan’s blood—what little there was of it. “Hey, I think you did it! I think he’s running like a dog with a tail between its-”
His words were cut off by another round of gunfire.
“Hit the floor!” he called just as he followed his own advice. He jarred his shoulder. Blinding pain flashed through him, like a million volts of electricity, and he wondered if he’d been hit again. But the shots ceased as abruptly as they’d started. The car roared, gravel popped under tires, and the Firebird careened away.
Ryan whooped. “All right, we did it. He’s gone!”
There was no response from the other room.
“Chrissy?”
Still no response.
“Chrissy!” When he heard nothing, Ryan pushed himself up on his hands and knees. It took him a few moments to gain his feet. He half walked, half stumbled into the other room. And there he saw his worst nightmare. Chrissy was lying on her back, as white as the sheets draped over the furniture—except for the bright streak of crimson across her forehead, dripping blood into her golden hair.
Chapter 16
Ryan had scarcely let that horrifying image gel in his mind when another reality intruded—the sound of a police siren. Coming this way? How could the cops have been summoned?
He grabbed one of the sheets covering the fu
rniture and dabbed at the blood on Chrissy’s forehead. It didn’t look all that bad—maybe just a graze from a bullet, or a cut from a flying piece of glass. He ripped a piece of sheet off, folded it several times and pressed it firmly to the bleeding area.
Chrissy was breathing, at least.
The siren got louder. Ryan looked up through the window and saw the flash of red and blue lights coming down the driveway. Thank God. His and Chrissy’s ordeal was almost over, and they’d survived. At least he was feeling pretty hopeful that they would. Chrissy was still unconscious and he didn’t know why.
The cop car bore a Virginia Highway Patrol logo on its door. A big-bellied officer squeezed his way out the driver’s door, his hand on the gun at his hip, looking up and down, side to side. Ryan felt his first inkling of doubt.
Though he hated to do it, he left Chrissy for the moment and went to the door. He swung it open before the officer could knock and found the officer with his gun drawn, grinning.
“Hold on there, young man, what’s the hurry?”
“Please,” Ryan said, instinctively throwing his hands in the air, although he could get his right hand only partway up. His shoulder protested with screaming pain. “There’s an injured woman in here. She’s been shot or cut by flying glass, she’s unconscious, and she needs to get to a hospital.”
The cop’s smile vanished. “You shot her?” He stepped inside to see for himself.
“Not me! Some maniac in a red Firebird drove up the driveway and opened fire on our house! Yesterday he shot out the back window of my car. I took a bullet in the—” He stopped. Chrissy was sitting up, her hand to her forehead, looking more than a little confused. But she was conscious, thank God.
“What happened?” she asked, staring at the blood on her hand. “Ryan?”
He was at her side in an instant. “You’re hurt, honey. This officer is going to take you to a hospital. Right?” He looked at the cop, who had yet to identify himself.
“I guess that’d be the thing to do. Whose gun is that?” he asked, pointing to the blue Glock, which had dropped from Chrissy’s hand.