It was no use to argue and I relished the thought of being free of the threat.
“But no more secrets. Tell me if you’re in trouble. Your safety will always supersede my anger. Okay?”
“Okay.”
We trudged along for what seemed like an eternity. My legs chafed from the wet jeans clinging to my thighs and my toes were still numb and throbbing, but I felt warmer moving and my sleepiness had faded. “How far do you think we’ve gone?” I finally asked, desperate for the end to be in sight.
Mason paused, picking his way around a pile of rocks. “It’s hard to say since walking in the woods isn’t like walking down the street. It takes longer to get around the obstacles—”
“How far, Mason?”
“Maybe two miles. Heading east first took some time and distance.”
My heart sank. “And you think it’s ten miles to the border? And then how far until we find a house?”
He slowed and took my hand in his. “I don’t know. If I remember the terrain correctly, the forest is dense along the border.”
I was tired and freezing, but stopping wasn’t an option and complaining wouldn’t do any good. “Okay.”
“I’m hoping we’ll find something before too long,” Mason said, scanning the trees in front of us. “If we can’t find a home with a phone, maybe we can find an outbuilding where we can warm up.”
“I’d rather just keep going.” I didn’t want to sit around and wait for Crocker to find us.
“You can’t feel your feet and neither can I. It would be smarter to stop.”
“Well, we’ll have to find someplace first and we’ll never do it standing here. Let’s go.”
The snow had started and stopped in fits. But it was heavier now and the sky was beginning to darken. Mason picked up the pace. “With the sky this overcast, we’ll be stumbling around in the dark on uneven terrain before we know it. With this terrain, that could be dangerous.”
We had been staying on high ground to lose Crocker in case he picked up our tracks, but we began to descend, hoping to find some sign of civilization. We finally reached a valley with overgrown fields. The snow had begun to accumulate and about an inch covered the ground. There were several clustered buildings in the distance. Hope soared in my heart. A farm. But it soon became apparent that the place was deserted.
As we approached the dilapidated-looking house, Mason lifted his rifle but kept the tip pointing downward. “Rose, walk behind me.”
His change in stance turned my blood from cold to icy, and I did as he requested. “Do you expect any trouble?”
“No, but we’re in the hollows of southern Arkansas and this place might be remote for a reason. It’s better to be safe.”
One thing was certain, the house had seen better days. The wood porch was rotten and several windows were broken.
When we were within twenty feet of the house, Mason stopped. “Hello!” His voice echoed in the valley. “Anyone here? We need help.”
“Do you really think there could be people inside?” I asked in a low voice. The barn behind the house looked to be in worse shape.
“Who knows? It’s remote and deserted. Squatters could live here without running the risk of getting caught.”
“But the house looks like it’s about to fall in on itself. Wouldn’t they fix it up?”
“I guess that depends on how long they planned on staying.”
The wind swirled the snow on the ground and I shivered.
He called out again. “Hello! Is anyone home? We’re lost in the woods and we need to call someone for help.”
No one answered.
Mason climbed the four steps to the porch, stepping over one loose board and around a hole. He knocked on the screen door, which was hanging from one rusty hinge. When no one answered he opened it and turned the doorknob on the front door. It gave without him needing to apply extra force and he stepped halfway through the doorway, calling out to possible residents.
I stood at the bottom of the steps as he disappeared inside. Moments later, I heard a high-pitched cry. “Mason!” I shouted.
He appeared in the doorway. “It’s okay. I disturbed a cat. I think the only squatters are a few stray animals.”
I made my way onto the porch and through the front door, letting my eyes adjust to the dark room. The house was empty except for a kitchen chair with broken spindles and a couple of cross-stitched pictures on the walls—There ain’t no lovin’ like country lovin’ and Possum—America’s dark meat. After I read them, I understood why they had been left behind. We wandered to the back of the house. The kitchen was ransacked—half the cabinets were missing and the doors of the remaining ones were hanging open. Most of the light fixtures were gone.
“What happened here?”
“Probably a foreclosure. The owners realize they’re losing everything so they take anything they think they can sell.”
I couldn’t imagine being that desperate.
“Let’s check the rest of the house.”
We moved to the second floor and I was surprised that the staircase was in such good shape. We found three empty bedrooms and a bathroom that was missing the toilet, sink, and light fixture.
Mason stood in the hallway, taking in the upstairs one more time. “This seems like a good place for us to stay the night. We can rest and warm up and set out first thing in the morning. Unfortunately, we don’t have any food, but I do have a bottle of water in my bag we can share.”
I nodded. “I guess we could use that broken chair to build a fire in the fireplace. And there might be more wood outside.”
“We can’t build a fire, Rose. Let’s not give Crocker’s men any reason to investigate this place.”
“But they think we went south.”
“They’ll figure out we didn’t soon enough, and then they’ll fan out and look in other directions. Sure, it seems like finding us would be like finding a needle in a haystack, but we left footprints in the snow. We could be leading them straight here.”
My breath caught. “Then we might as well build a fire and get warm, right? If they might find us anyway?” Now that I’d thought of building a fire, I couldn’t give up the chance to get warm. “It’s not like we’re the only people who would build a fire on a cold, snowy night. There are other houses around. We just haven’t found them.”
“True…” He was wavering.
“Will they keep searching for us in the dark?”
He shook his head. “I’m not really sure. It would be difficult, and under normal circumstances, I’d say no. But we both know Daniel Crocker is anything but normal. Still, even if they look, they’ll be more likely to miss our tracks in the dark.”
“So let’s build a fire right after the sun sets and let it die out before we go to sleep. I don’t want to spend the night shivering and starving. We might not be able to take care of the starving part, but at least we can get warm.”
He stared into my eyes.
“I’m frozen, Mason. I’ll have a better chance of moving faster tomorrow if we warm up.”
“You have a point.” He kissed me softly.
I smiled against his lips. “So I get a fire?”
His gaze turned serious. “Do you think I could ever deny you anything?”
My smile faded. “Yes, if you thought it would protect me.”
He wrapped his arms around my back and pulled me close, kissing me so intensely that I had to cling to him to stay upright.
He smiled down at me. “Let’s build you that fire.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The unheated house was cold, but it was still a shock to go outside into the bitter wind. Mason suggested I stay inside, but I didn’t want to be separated from him.
We found kindling at the edge of the tree line as well as some bigger branches, but we had to search high and low for something to start the fire. Finally we found a kerosene lantern and a book of matches in the barn, along with three wool blankets. They stank to high-heave
n, but they were warm. I was sure our noses would adjust.
The kerosene lantern helped as we fumbled with the fireplace. Mason had busted the one kitchen chair into pieces, but it was slow to burn, the damp branches even more so. We sacrificed one of the stinking blankets to use as tinder and finally we had a roaring fire.
I spread the two other wool blankets on the floor and slipped off my soggy shoes and set them in front of the fire. My stiff jeans followed. I doubted they’d be dry by morning, but at least they’d be less damp.
Mason sat on the hearth and turned to watch me undress.
I shrugged. “We’ll warm up faster if we take off our damp clothes.”
He nodded, his eyes burning.
When I dropped my jeans to the floor, he picked them up and laid them on the hearth by my shoes. I’d already shed my jacket, so I lifted my shirt over my head, kneeling on the blanket in only my bra and panties.
Mason quickly removed his clothes too and reached for the blankets we’d taken from my farm. He pulled me into his arms, and we lay on the blankets, our limbs intertwined. I slipped my toes between his calves. “Your feet are freezing,” he teased.
I lifted my eyebrows in mock reprimand. “Someone made me walk in a creek.”
His smile faded. “I’m sorry about that.”
“It worked, right? That’s what counts.” I tucked my hands between his arms and his chest and he jerked backward out of reflex before settling in.
“I was sure Crocker’s guy was going to find us on that bluff. It’s a good thing he was sloppy or we’d be dead.”
I licked my chapped lower lip and Mason’s eyes followed the movement. “We can’t let him catch us.”
“I have no intention of letting him.” His arms tightened around me. “I didn’t just get you to lose you. God wouldn’t be so cruel.”
But God had been cruel to me for most of my life. What would stop Him in this?
I lifted my mouth to Mason’s, kissing him gently until a low sound hummed in his chest. He rolled me to my back, his mouth becoming more insistent. I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling the blanket to cover his exposed back.
He tipped his face up and stared into my eyes, the fire casting a warm glow on his face. “I feel like I’m failing you. I can’t help but wonder whether we should have headed for the road.”
“Mason, we both agreed to this plan. And I have no doubt that if we’d gone to the road we’d be dead or worse.”
“I’m supposed to protect you.”
“Who says? Why can’t we protect each other?”
His kissed me with urgency, as though Crocker might show up at any minute and take me away from him. After we made love, we lay in each other’s arms, still warming up with the heat of the fire. I soon drifted off to sleep.
When I awoke later, Mason wasn’t next to me and the fire was a pile of glowing embers. I bolted upright, clutching the blanket to my chest.
Mason stood next to the window, his rifle slung over his shoulder. Moonlight filtered through the glass, lending a soft glow to his face. He turned to face me when he caught my movement.
“What are you doing?”
“I couldn’t sleep, so I’m keeping watch.”
I leaned forward to look up at the sky through the window. “The moon is out.”
“The storm is breaking and the moonlight is fading in and out.” He looked worried. “We didn’t get much more snow, so our footprints from the woods to the house are like a neon sign.”
“Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“No, but if I had to guess, I’d say around three.”
“You said they probably wouldn’t look for us in the woods at night. Let’s get another hour or two of sleep and then take off at sunrise.”
He hesitated, but I reached my hand toward him. He gave the window one last glance and then moved toward me, crawling under the blanket fully clothed. The moment he touched my skin, I squealed. “Take off your clothes! They’re cold!”
“You’re just trying to get me naked, Rose Gardner.” He laughed and pulled off his shirt. “You are a wicked woman.”
“And you like me that way.” I kissed him and reached for his zipper.
“I had no idea how wicked you could be,” he groaned, shimmying out of his jeans and kicking them off.
I pushed him on his back, straddled his hips, and gave him a saucy grin. “Let me show you.”
When I woke a couple of hours later Mason was already up, back at the window. The sun had just begun to rise as I dressed. We on the front porch and I realized Mason had been right about our tracks. While the snow hadn’t accumulated much, it was wet and heavy and our footprints were like a giant arrow pointing toward us. Mason scooped snow into our empty water bottle and put it in his bag.
“We have two choices,” he said. “We can keep trudging through the valley and hope we stumble upon a house, or head back into the trees where there’s less snow and it’s easier to hide.”
“If you don’t think they’re right behind us, let’s go through the valley. We shouldn’t be much slower than they are, so we’ll hopefully find help before they catch up to us. If they even realize we went this way.”
“Valley it is.”
We set off north, following a gravel road that led from the house. We had traveled for twenty minutes without spotting another house or even road when a gunshot rang through the air.
We both froze, our eyes wide.
“What was that?” I asked, breathless.
“It could have been hunters.”
“Is it hunting season?”
“No. Deer season isn’t for another week. But this is rural Arkansas. Some citizens like to make their own rules on private property.”
“If it was Crocker, why would they shoot?”
Mason looked back toward the woods behind us. “Maybe to alert the others if they found our footprints. I suspect their cell phones don’t work out here.”
“What do we do?”
“If it’s hunters, heading for the trees in dark clothes could get us shot. But if it’s Crocker, the last thing we want is for him to find us out in the open...” He paused. “It all boils down to instinct.”
“And what is your gut telling you?”
“That it’s Daniel Crocker.”
“Mine too,” I whispered, my chest about to explode.
“Let’s go that way.” He pointed to the tree-covered hills to the east.
I took off with Mason behind me. Once we reached the slope, we moved parallel along the side of the hill. The terrain was steep and I lost my footing several times, righting myself before I tumbled down the slope.
Voices floated through the valley. I stopped, my ears straining to pick out words.
Mason was several feet in front of me, but he turned back, watching over my shoulder. The voices grew louder and became less muffled.
“…went this way…”
“I see their footprints.”
Mason’s eyes widened. “Shit.” He grabbed my arm and started uphill. “Let’s go higher,” he panted. “Now that they’ve found our tracks, they know we’ve been heading north. There’s a chance we can throw them off if we keep heading east and find another valley to hike through.”
“Is there another valley?”
“I don’t know, but the area is all hills and trees, so it stands to reason that we’ll find a valley if we go far enough. At least we’ll be making it harder for them to find us. What do you want to do?”
My heart raced with fear. He was right. Anything that would help us elude Crocker was the best solution. “Go east.”
He grabbed my hand and helped pull me up the hill. This one was steeper than the one we’d climbed and descended the day before. When we reached the peak, we had the option to continue along the ridge or go down the other side.
Mason gave me a long look before he started down.
The other side of the hill was the steepest yet. One glance convinced me to give up any hop
e of trying to go down gracefully. I tried to grab trees on the way down to slow my descent, but after I crashed into two, I sat on my butt and slid down, just like I used to do with Violet. But when I reached the bottom, I questioned the wisdom of my plan. The entire back side of my jeans was wet and muddy. But at least I didn’t have any broken bones and I’d descended the fastest way possible.
My joy was short-lived when I realized we needed to mount another steep hill. We spent the next half hour climbing and descending hills until we finally came into a flat area.
“I think this is a good place for us to start changing direction.”
“Okay.” I leaned into a tree. I was winded and my hands and feet were freezing again.
“I haven’t heard voices for at least fifteen minutes,” Mason said. “I think we can rest for a few minutes.” He moved next to me. “Do you want to sit?”
I shook my head. “Just let me catch my breath.”
He opened his bag and handed me the half-full bottle of now-melted snow. After taking a big swig, I gave it back to him. He drained the rest, then bent down and scooped more snow into the container.
“Do you think we lost Crocker?” I asked as he scanned our surroundings.
“I don’t know, but we have slowed them down.”
“Not that Crocker would let that stop him.”
Mason didn’t respond, pulling me to his chest instead. His body heat seeped into mine and we stood together for a long moment. “We need to get going,” he finally said in a soft voice.
I made myself step away from him. “You’re right, but at least I’m warmer now.”
He laughed. “I’ll add transferring body heat to my résumé as one of my special skills.”
We started north through the narrow valley, dodging the thick growth of trees. Snow dusted the ground, but there wasn’t nearly as much as there’d been in the other valley.
“At least there’s hardly any snow here,” I said, grateful that we weren’t leaving behind an easy trail anymore.
“The foliage is too thick overhead. That’s one of the reasons it’s good to be this deep in the woods.”
Thirty-One and a Half Regrets (Rose Gardner Mystery #4) Page 25