Bad Nights

by Rebecca York

  “You have to stop walking,” she said.

  “When we find shelter.”

  “What if we don’t?”

  “We’ll make one.”

  “Why don’t we do that now?”

  “Because a cave is better, for a lot of reasons,” he answered, thinking that she was speaking to him again. Had she stopped thinking of him as a cold-blooded killer, or had she simply decided that it was impractical to give her traveling companion the silent treatment?

  The rain was falling harder by the time they reached an open area strewn with weeds, large boulders, and hidden rocks that made walking difficult. He picked his way carefully across, leaning on his stick and cursing when he almost went down a couple of times. Beside him, Morgan also stumbled, and he slowed his pace to accommodate both of them.

  He wished he could see the surface of the wall better, but the driving rain obscured his vision as did the thick vines trailing down the rock face. Virginia creeper, wild strawberries, and honeysuckle, he thought. Along with some lichens and moss.

  After stopping a few yards away from the barrier, he looked up and saw where a pile of rocks had fallen. There might be more coming down, especially in the rain, but he couldn’t worry about them now.

  Stepping up to the wall, he braced his knees and made sure his bad leg wasn’t going to go out from under him. Then, with the walking stick, he began to pull the vines aside, looking for an opening beyond the cover of vegetation.

  At first he saw nothing but stone and more stone. Choosing a direction at random, he began moving to the right, continuing to sweep the vines aside. He felt his spirits leap when the walking stick pressed through the green covering into a cavity beyond.

  In the next second, he smelled something rank that made the hair on his arms prickle. A low growl of warning confirmed his fears.

  “Get back,” he shouted to Morgan.

  Even as he called out, a large tan shape leaped from the cavern beyond the vines.

  It was a two-hundred-pound mountain lion, its teeth bared and its eyes fixed on the man who had invaded its lair.

  As the animal sprang, Jack acted instinctively. Raising the walking stick, he bashed at the charging animal. The blow helped deflect the attack, but he felt a ripping sensation in his shoulder as he went down under the impact of the beast’s body and knew its sharp teeth had mauled him.

  When he whacked at the lion again, it switched directions, heading for what looked like an easier target—Morgan.

  She screamed as it sprang on her, raising her hand to protect her face.

  Ignoring the pain in his shoulder, Jack swung around, pulling the gun from the waistband of his slacks. With little time to think, he fired.

  Chapter 10

  The animal roared, then leaped away. Jack saw where the bullet impacted the fur of its right shoulder, heard its scream of rage.

  But before he could assess the damage, it reconsidered its options. Turning tail, it fled across the field and swiftly disappeared.

  Jack felt a wave of regret. He’d taken the animal by surprise, and it had reacted by defending its den. He’d wounded it, possibly fatally. That made him feel worse than killing Gibson. What did that say about him?

  No time for self-evaluation. He’d better focus on keeping himself and Morgan alive. He went absolutely still, his eyes scanning the woods behind them and the field surrounding the cliff. When none of Trainer’s men emerged from behind the trees, he breathed out a small sigh. Maybe they were too far away to have heard the shot. Or if they had, maybe they’d think it was a hunter in the area.

  He prayed he and Morgan were in the clear, because he suspected neither of them was going anywhere anytime soon.

  Turning, he looked at Morgan who was lying on the ground, her face white as paper.

  He hurried toward her, his gaze traveling swiftly over her, zeroing in on the shredded sleeve of her jacket. Blood oozed out of the fabric, mixing with the rain that was still falling steadily.

  “It got you.”

  “Did it?” She tried to push herself up and winced, her face going even paler as she saw the blood.

  When her eyes closed and she fell back against the wet ground, he feared she was going into shock.

  He came down beside her, reaching to touch her shoulder. When she didn’t move, he felt his chest constrict. Cautiously he pulled the torn fabric aside. The flesh beneath was mauled, but the bites didn’t look deep. And the oozing blood told him that the animal hadn’t chomped into an artery.

  “Hang on,” he murmured.

  “I am,” she said in the barest whisper.

  He gathered her close for a moment, needing to hold her before he eased away.

  “I’m going to leave you for just a minute.”

  She made a mumbling sound.

  After taking a flashlight from his pack, he made his way cautiously toward the cave where the charging animal had emerged. With the gun in one hand and the light in the other, he shouldered the vines aside and stepped into the darkness beyond.

  When he shined the light around the chamber, he saw spiderwebs in the upper reaches. On the floor were animal droppings and bones, but not what he had most feared. Thank God there were no cubs inside. The lion had not been defending her family.

  Hurrying back to Morgan where she still lay in the rain, he scooped her up in his arms and carried her just inside the shelter, leaning her shoulders against the rough cave wall, before going back for the packs and the sleeping bag.

  When he returned, Morgan was sitting limp and still with her eyes closed and her head canting to one side. Her hair and clothes were plastered to her from the rain. He looked down at his own clothing and saw that his condition was similar. Their light jackets were soaked through.

  They’d have to do something about the wet and cold, but first things first. He took one ground cloth from a pack and spread it out. Then he unrolled the sleeping bag and laid it on top, followed by another ground cloth. When he’d finished with the bedding, he picked up Morgan and carried her over, then laid her down.

  She wrinkled her nose as she took in the animal scent of the cave. “Ugh.”

  “Better than being cold and wet,” he answered, glad that she had noticed the lion smell. It meant that she was still reacting to her surroundings.

  He would have liked to clean up the cave for her, but there was no time for such niceties now. He had to make sure they were safe.

  Picking up the flashlight again, he walked farther back into the cavern, noting that the ceiling sloped lower as it angled into the cliff.

  He walked about sixty feet toward the back, seeing that other animals had used the shelter. Hopefully none of them were coming back anytime soon. He also saw a circle of stones and charred sticks. Other people had been in here, but not recently, he decided as he kicked at the ashes.

  The idea of lighting a fire was very tempting, but he knew it wasn’t a good idea. Not when the flames and smoke could lead Trainer and his men to the shelter. The cave went farther back. There might be another way out, but he wasn’t going to look for it now.

  When he came back to the cave entrance, Morgan’s eyes fluttered open and fixed on him.

  “Where were you?” she whispered.

  “Making sure we didn’t have any company.”

  Coming down beside her, he gave her a considering look. Her face was pale and wet with perspiration, and he knew she needed medical attention. Rummaging in the pack, he pulled out the first aid kit.

  “I’m going to take a look at your arm.”

  When Morgan nodded, he tried to push back the wet sleeve of her jacket to get to her wound. But it was too waterlogged and too bulky.

  “Can you take your jacket and shirt off?”

  When she didn’t respond, he unzipped the jacket before reaching for the buttons at the front of the shirt.

  Her eyes flew open and her hand stopped him as he began to ease the top button open.

  “What are you doing?’

&
nbsp; “I’ve got to look at that bite. I can’t do it with your shirt and jacket in the way.”

  She considered that. “Oh, right.”

  Her hand dropped back to her side.

  He worked the buttons as quickly as possible, then raised her shoulders up so that he could pull her good arm out of the shirt and jacket at the same time. Then he turned to the injured side. Carefully he peeled the fabric away from the mauled flesh, trying to keep his focus on her arm. But it was impossible not to notice the front of her body.

  She was wearing a light pink bra of some delicate fabric that was almost transparent from the water that had soaked through. He hadn’t looked at a woman’s breasts in a long time, and he didn’t want to do it now, but they were on display, and there was no way to keep himself from admiring her. Her breasts were medium-sized and nicely rounded. And he could clearly see the dark circles of her nipples through the fabric. The cold had puckered them so that they stabbed against the cups, drawing a response from him that he told himself he didn’t want and certainly didn’t need under the present circumstances. They were still in bad trouble. The only way they were going to get out alive was if he kept his focus on the mission—not on Morgan Rains’ breasts.

  He didn’t have a relationship with this woman. He didn’t want a relationship with her. Or anybody else, he silently added. Yet circumstances had thrown them together, making it impossible for him to ignore his reactions to her.

  Her shirt was stiff with blood and had stuck to her skin. He opened a water bottle and wet the fabric, peeling it away as gently as he could, but she groaned as the material came free.

  “Sorry.”

  “Not your fault,” she answered.

  He spared another glance at her face. Her skin was still pale, but she seemed more alert than when he’d first started undressing her.

  That was good from a medical point of view, but not so good for the awareness arcing between them.

  A few moments ago, she’d been out of it. Now she was as focused on him as he was on her.

  Grimly, he finished removing the shirt, then turned his attention to her injury. The animal had left teeth marks in her forearm, above her elbow.

  She dragged her gaze away from him to look at her arm.

  “It bled a lot.”

  “That’s good. With bites.”

  “Um.”

  He poured on more water, then opened the first aid kit, relieved to find antiseptic, which he soaked onto a gauze pad that he used to wipe the wound.

  She winced, then took her lower lip between her teeth.

  “Sorry.”

  She gave the same answer as before. When he had finished cleaning the area, he wrapped strips of gauze around her arm and tied it off, before reaching for her pack and pulling out a dry shirt.

  “Can you get into this?”

  “I think so.”

  “An analgesic will help.”

  “There’s some in the first aid kit, right?”

  He looked in the kit again and found the tablets. He hadn’t even been thinking about them, but they’d also help the sprained ankle.

  They both took two, washing them down with water.

  When they’d finished, she started pulling on her dry shirt, and he started unbuttoning his wet one.

  Like hers, it was stiff with blood. Carefully, he wet the fabric and worked it off his shoulder so that he could look at his own injury.

  More bite marks.

  Morgan sat up and scooted closer, inspecting the wound. “You need antiseptic too.”

  He nodded.

  This time she was the one who washed his wound with water and gauze, then poured pungent liquid on more gauze and stroked it onto the wounds. She also put more salve on the burn marks from the torture session.

  “We should be on antibiotics,” she said.

  “Yeah, if we had any,” he answered as he pulled on a dry flannel shirt.

  Her teeth had started to chatter in reaction to the cold.

  So had his. “We’ve got to get warm.”

  She looked toward the cave entrance. “And we can’t light a fire, right?”

  “I think that might lead Trainer to us.” He looked from her jeans to his and back again. “Get out of your wet pants.”

  “I didn’t bring any more.”

  “Neither did I.”

  Standing up, he pulled off his wet jeans and laid them out on the cave floor, glad that the tails of his shirt reached to his thighs.

  “You too,” he said, making his voice firm as he fought to keep his teeth from clacking together.

  She lay back, unbuttoning the wet pants, then working the zipper and lifting her hips so that she could wiggle out of the garment.

  He took it from her and spread it on the cave floor beside his.

  “We both need to get into the sleeping bag,” he said.

  He expected her to protest, but apparently she understood the practicalities of the situation. And perhaps she had stopped being revolted that he’d murdered a man in cold blood. He didn’t discuss that with her. He simply unzipped the side of the bag so that she could slip inside.

  “Move over so you’ve got the closed edge.”

  Again she did as he asked, and he slipped in after her, pulling the top ground cloth over the bag as an extra covering. He thought about turning so that his back was to her front. But that would expose his chest to the cold. Instead, he took her in his arms.

  He was bone weary and in pain from everything he’d endured. Which should have made him numb, but he couldn’t stop from reacting.

  As he pulled her against the length of his body, he tried not to think about her tempting breasts, her narrow waist, the curve of her thigh. The position was much too intimate, with Morgan at his front and cool air at his back where the zipper of the sleeping bag was open.

  She said nothing, even though she couldn’t fail to be aware of his erection rising between them.

  He didn’t apologize.

  “We’ve both had a rough day. We should try to get some sleep,” he murmured.

  She answered with an unsteady laugh. “Is that what you call it? A rough day.”

  “Yeah.”

  Without his conscious thought, his hands skimmed over her back. Maybe he was comforting her. Or comforting himself. He didn’t want to examine his motives too closely. It felt good to hold on to her. Perhaps to hold on to anyone after all the months when he’d denied himself solace.

  Gradually she relaxed against him, her head drifting to his shoulder.

  “Get some sleep.”

  “I don’t think I can.” She dragged in a breath and let it out. “We haven’t had much time to talk. Tell me something about yourself.”

  He didn’t want to talk about himself, but maybe a conversation would help defuse the situation.

  “Like what?”

  “Where were you born? Where did you grow up?”

  He could tell the truth or lie. Lying seemed like too much trouble at the moment, especially since he’d have to remember what he’d said. “My dad was an army sergeant. I was born at Fort Bragg. I grew up on a lot of different bases, including in Germany, but one army base is a lot like the next.”

  “But unsettling to a kid. When you move around all the time, you’re constantly having to make new friends.”

  “I got used to it. And the other kids were in the same boat.”

  “I would have hated it. I liked staying in the same school and the same neighborhood.”

  Deliberately switching the focus to her, he asked, “Where did you grow up?”

  “In Washington, D.C. My dad worked for the city government. We only moved once. From a little apartment on upper Connecticut Avenue to a house near Chevy Chase Circle. On Kanawha Street. Do you know D.C.?”

  “A little.”

  “We lived in the Woodrow Wilson school district.”

  “That red-brick school on Nebraska Avenue?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then you went away
to college?”

  “I got a scholarship from American University, so I stayed in town.”

  He liked listening to her talk. He wanted to ask more personal questions, like where she’d met her husband and how long they’d been married, but he kept those to himself.

  ***

  Wade Trainer stood with his back straight and stiff as he watched six of his men tramp through the remains of the house, wet ashes sticking to their boots and the pant legs of their uniforms as they sifted through the charred remains. The only reason it was possible to do it was because the rain had wet down the remains of the fire.

  There were still pieces of wood left. And household objects. The men would unearth a knife or a spoon from the kitchen or the frame of a lamp or a doorknob, then toss it back into the soggy black mess.

  He waited for someone to call out that they’d found a bone or anything else that could be identified as human remains. Or maybe a watch Barnes or the woman had been wearing. So far, they had found no indication that the couple had been in the house.

  How hot did it have to be to turn bone to ash? He pulled out his smartphone and found Google, then typed in the question. Which led him to “cremation.”

  In a crematorium, the temperature was between 1600 and 1800 degrees Fahrenheit. But the fire in the house couldn’t possibly have been that hot. There would be something left, wouldn’t there?

  He was watching the men methodically working the grid he’d laid out for them, when Chambers screamed, the sound fading as he disappeared from sight.

  Everyone went stock-still, looking to Trainer for guidance.

  From out of sight, Chambers had started to call out frantically.

  “Help me. I think my leg is broken. Help.”

  “Get him,” Wade ordered.

  The other men began converging on the spot where their comrade had disappeared.

  Hamilton knelt cautiously and looked down below the level of the floor.

  “Jesus Christ, you jerk; don’t just stare at me,” Chambers shouted.

  “Where are you?” the man above asked.

  “In some kind of hole.”

  Had the floor burned through, exposing a crawl space below? Or was there something else down there, Wade wondered.