"Well, amen. We understand each other. Here's the other thing to keep in mind. I've seen people die of infections from gunshot wounds. Your blood gets infected and pretty soon every part of you is sick. You won't make it past tomorrow if you don't get some antibiotics. Now, get up and move it, or so help me, I'll drag your sorry little butt all the way back to Boston."
He stood. He gave her one more look, then turned and began making his way farther and farther away. from the mountains.
She threw aside the cookies and stumbled along after him silently for what seemed hours. Her mouth and throat grew dry as dust again. Sweat poured off her in the sweltering heat and humidity. Birds startled and squawked and chattered angrily. They terrified her, the way they swooped so near her and then darted off. Tierney paid them no attention.
Intent on getting somewhere else, ultimately to Boston~ he paid her no attention, either, trusting that she would follow where he led.
He was right. She couldn't go on much longer without medicine. The spots before her eyes were now as common as the bright green leaves on branches slapping her in the face every few feet. No matter how much peroxide he'd dumped into the wound, 'she'd gotten blood poisoning from the bullet.
She had no idea how he planned to get prescription drugs for a gunshot wound without drawing the attention he didn't want. It didn't matter. Tie. ~ would do what he had to do to keep her alive. She wouldn't put it past him to knock over a pharmacy.
She tripped over an exposed tree root but kept going, promising herself that Tierney would have to take her to a doctor and then she would get away from him. Promising herself anything just to keep going, to get out of this sweltering maze teeming with raucous birds and mosquitoes and gnats and moths.
She knew now, at least, that he intended to take her back to Boston. She had to keep her wits together until she could find a way to let Tafoya know that he could find 'her somewhere between Saugerties and Boston.
She paused long enough to pull the wrinkles from her socks, then plunged back after Tierney. She had gotten used to the forests in Wyoming. Used to pine needles, 'not ground-hugging vines. In Wyoming, even at the height of summer, the heat was never so intense as this.
But maybe it was her own fever. Shoving her way through a tangle' of bushes, she nearly ran into Tierney, who had stopped. When she looked up, she saw' why They'd reached the edge of the private property, only now, abutting the densely forested grounds, they were confronted by a solid brick wall ten or twelve feet high.
Eden slumped to her knees on a mound of rock covered with moss, barely registering Tierney's muttered curse. She wanted to make some disparaging remark about the poor planning, but her mind wouldn't work that way, barely worked at all. She shivered violently and pulled his coat tighter around her shoulders. The army-blanket shawl had fallen and she'd lost it somewhere.
She watched him hoist himself into the branches of an old oak. He climbed the tree until she could no longer see him. At last, she caught sight of him again, making a leap for the top of the wall. Somehow he made it. Poised there, crouching down, he looked in both directions, then started to duck walk along the cap until she couldn't see him any more.
Panic swept through her, "Tierney, don't leave me here!"
An interminable minute passed before he came back into view. "Eden"
"I mean it. Don't leave me here." ~ She hated the pleading tone in her voice, but she couldn't help it.
He stared down at her and spoke softly. "Eden, I'm not going to leave you anywhere."
She knew that, suddenly. Knew he wouldn't have gone to these lengths to grab her and then just abandon her, but her mind wasn't working. God, how she hated him for bringing her to this! Tears spilled down her cheeks.
She dashed at them with the sleeve of his coat and nodded. He leaped back from the top of the brick wall to the tree. Birds screeched and flocked out of the tree. A squirrel landed at her feet. and ran over her shoes. Tierney crashed through smaller branches coming down, then sat on one high over her head.
"Listen now and do exactly what I tell you, Eden. Button up the coat." She tossed her hair back and did as he instructed. "This wall goes on forever. It might take hours to get around. I want you to give me your hand so I can pull you up after me. Come on. Try it. You can do it."
Nothing she had ever faced seemed so daunting to her as the brick wall. Nothing. Not the glassed-in cubicles of Social Services where the man in his park-service truck had taken her; not walking out on the enormously powerful Winston Broussard; not the witness box. She'd been lucky to put one foot in front of the Other, and now she would have to climb. She clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a choking cry
"Come on, Eden. You can do it," he urged.
She pushed herself up from the soft moss. Staring at the tangled vines hanging from the tree branches, she shoved her hair back again and took a deep breath.
"That's a girl. Don't think. Just do it. I'm right here." His voice worked on her like a salve. He wasn't her enemy now, wasn't even the man who'd gotten her into such desperate straits.
manage to do what he told her.
She reached for his hand. He grabbed her wrist and began to pull her up to the lowest branch where she could put her feet, but as she was finding a foothold, her shoulder brushed a vine and a cloud of moths flew out at her. She gave a small cry and turned her face, then planted a foot on the branch.
All the way up, he spoke to her, crooning praise and encouragement, po~inting to the limb that would be her next foothold. He moved up and they repeated the process.
Smaller branches snapped. A jay nearly flew in her face. She couldn't lift her right arm at all, even to protect her head. Tierney made her think she could keep going. From the time she started to the time he pulled her up beside him, daylight had faded to near dark.
He hauled her up at last using his coat as a hoist. Straddling the thick tree branch where it forked off from the main trunk, he lowered her down into the circle of his arms. The top of the wall was only a few feet away. Eden collapsed against him. Tears streamed down her face now that she had made it. Her whole body trembled.
He cradled her close, holding her head to his chest, and rocked gently from side to side. "Shh, Eden. It's over. It's over. You made it."
She couldn't seem to stop shaking. If he weren't holding her together, she would fly apart into a million little pieces. His whiskers caught in her hair. His heart beat strongly beneath her cheek. He thumbed away her tears until they had dried.
After a while, her trembling eased off, too. "How's your shoulder doing?"
His lips were close to her ear. His breath felt cool to her. She coughed. "It's on fire."
He exhaled sharply and swore. "We're going to have to go. Now, before it's too late."
A car drove slowly by on the winding road below, its headlights piercing the night, making her aware how dark it had become. For the first time, she saw what lay on the other side of the wall. Or, what didn't. The brick wall ended in what seemed a sheer drop to the road, twice as far down as it had been to climb up the tree on the inside of the barrier.
She swallowed hard on the knot of fear in her throat, and sat up. "How?"
"I'm going to lower you down. You'll have to hold tight, then drop off, but it won't be bad. Have you ever seen anyone rappeYing?"
"In the movies."
"Do it just like that, right before you drop. Just a little shove with your feet against the wall, then let go. You'll fall into more bushes and undergrowth." He paused and took her chin in his fingers, turning her face up to his. "Think you can do that?"
Tears sprang to her eyes again. She nodded quickly, lowering her eyelids so he wouldn't see them glittering. She wished he wouldn't be so kind, so patient. She needed a reason to fight him, not to admire him, not to feel as if he might really care what happened to her.
She didn't want to leave the safety of his embrace, either, but she couldn't sit on this branch like a ninny all night. Or allow herself
his comfort. "Let's do it."
"Fine." He straightened and let his arms fall away from her. They moved to the top of the wall, which was wide enough to sit on. He shoved their backpacks over the edge and heard them land with a soft thud. He showed her how to get on her knees, then to lie flat on her torso and let her legs down over the other side of the wall. "I won't let go
of you before you're ready. You say when, okay? Can you do that? "
"Do I have a choice?"
He smiled at her, proud of her for hanging on to even a shred of humor. "None."
"Then what happens?"
"When I do let go and you fall, cuff up and try to relax. I'm going to lift you up now by your good arm so your body dears the top of the wall. Then I'll lower you till I can't reach any more. Got it?"
"Yes." She hadn't really. It-all seemed somehow too much to comprehend. She would have to trust him as much as her own instincts.
"Okay, Eden. Take it easy now."
He stood on the narrow ledge, bent over and clasped her left wrist. Her hand was nowhere near big enough to encircle his wrist. She clung to ~him as best she could and brought her right arm and hand in near to her body. He lifted her easily by her arm and-leaned out so her body cleared the wall, then began slowly to lower her down.
She felt him controlling her weight, shifting his own, getting to his knees, crouching, finally lying flat as he lowered her, straining hard to take the brunt of the task. "Eden," that's it. That's as far as I can reach. Kick out from the wall now, curl up and drop. Easy. Real easy. " " Easy for you to say," she mumbled. She took two deep breaths, raised her knee, placed her toes against the wall, then consciously made herself take her lower lip from between her teeth and shove off.
Chapter Eight
She wished at the instant that Tierney released her that she'd eaten those cookies.
To make herself do this at all, to leap from a wall in the dark, she promised herself she wouldn't have time to feel the terror, that her landing would be into a feathery bed-of leaves and compost and soft, willowy branches, that he~ shoulder wouldn't hurt any more than it already did.
She was lying to herself and she knew it. She felt every harrowing second of the drop, from the mind-numbing horror of failing to the bone-jarring crash into harsh, stabbing brambles.
She heard Tierney make the leap, then fall to the ground. His landing was no easier by the sound of it, but he had collected the packs and made it to her side before she could get any air in her lungs again.
"You okay?"
She couldn't do anything more than nod.
A car came roaring down the twisting road. He crouched low beside her. For an instant, the headlights caught them and she saw his face, the implacable set of his chin, the raw determination.
The car sped past. She doubted the driver had time to notice them at all. Tierney slung both packs over his shoulder and took her hand. He pulled her to her feet and then angled down the steep roadside slope to the pavement. They crossed to the other side of the road.
For what seemed to her hours, she managed to trudge along beside him in the soft night air. The downhill side of the road leveled off. Her fever continued to rage on. She could hear Tierney encouraging her for a time, but after a while, the dull roar of her heart pounding and her blood rushing drowned out his words. All she could hear then was the vague impression of a deeply resonant masculine voice.
Perspiration soaked her. She couldn't think or reason. She clung to Tierney. Half-carrying her, he kissed her damp brow and urged her on. "Another few steps, Eden. That's all, baby. Just another few steps."
Without him, she would die. For a few seconds, her mind fixed on that' one thought. Without him, she would sink to the cold, damp ground sand surrender to the fever engulfing her.
Something inside her wouldn't let go. Sommething inside her began overriding every nonessential function so that she could keep holding on to him.
Haltingly, she began to see things in a different light. He wanted her alive. She wanted to live. Stumbling blindly along beside him, she dimly recognized the truth about Christian Tierney. He only wanted to live again, too. He needed desperately to be free of the demons that possessed him, heart and soul, mind and body--like the fever that had her in its grip.
She had ~o survive.
She willed herself to put one foot in front of the other, again and again and ~gain, endlessly, until they rounded a bend and came upon a deserted intersection. The road they had followed dead-ended. A green neon light glowed in the window of an old tavern built of stone.
Only three cars were parked in front. Tierney stopped, then ran a hand through his hair. Standing concealed in the trees, he pulled her into his arms and rested his head for a moment on the top of hers.
CHILLS CONVULSED her slender body. She shivered violently. Chris drew her closer for another long moment, murmuring softly to her. He couldn't believe how incredibly hard she'd fought, how she, d stood up to him and doggedly followed him. How she'd dim bed up that tree against all odds and then let him drop her over the other side of that brick wall. He knew men, good men, who would've folded.
Her grit all but shamed him.
He knew she couldn't win this battle. The infection would spread, the fever only get worse. In the end, without immediate medical attention, she could die.
Indecision rankle ding his head. He knew enough to fear that more than anything, He hadn't slept in three days, couldn't keep a clear thought in his head. He needed to get her to a hospital or to Margo's place in Holyoke. The first required only that he get her across the road and make a call to an ambulance service: The second meant stealing a car, driving a minimum of three hours, praying he wouldn't fall asleep at the wheel or get stopped along the way.
He had no choice. He couldn't risk her life. Broussard had found a way to get to her, and if the assassin's bullet hadn't done the job, the resulting blood poisoning would. Chris's own plans had gone so seriously awry that they no longer represented a viable option.
His heart pounded painfully in his chesL The heat coming off Eden Kelley's body felt scalding to him. He couldn't indulge his indecision a moment longer. He swallowed, stroked her hair, murmured something he wasn't even aware of thinking, then picked her up and carried her across the road. He had to put her down long enough to open the heavy door leading into the tavern, then picked her up again.
The inside was nearly dark. All the tables were empty. Only a few patrons sat at the bar. The barkeep glanced up and saw Chris carrying Eden. His eyes widened to the size of saucers. He put down the glass he'd been-polishing. "Holy cow, man! What's going on?"
Eden had already lost consciousness.
"Get an ambulance up here," Chris croaked. "Now. Please."
THE LOCAL EMERGENCY ROOM admitted her under a Jane Doe.
Drawing on mental and physical reserves he hadn't plumbed in years, Chris followed the paramedics in, past plastic-laminate chairs filled with sick and hurting kids arid shaken parents. He calmly refused to take a seat or be denied entry beyond the swinging doors at the admissions desk. Once inside the large, brightly lit emergency room where the paramedics had taken her, Chris refused to let anyone but the head of the ER come anywhere near Eden.
Her vital signs were very poor. Respiration shallow at thirty-seven per minute, temperature 102. 6, blood pressure low but not critical.
The attending physician, having taken Eden's vitals from the ambulance paramedic and already put out with Chris's peremptory behavior, took one look at the wound beneath his patch job on the front of her shoulder and ordered a shot of penicillin. She snapped shut the curtain hanging from the ceiling around the gurney, closing off the rest of the busy ERA slight, wiry, gray-haired woman with horn-rimmed glasses and the intensity of a war-zone surgeon, she fixed Chris with an angry glare. "I want to know what's going on here. This is a gunshot wound. Is this woman a Jane Doe because you don't know who she is or because you shot her?"
He pulled his wallet from his bac
k pocket and flashed his badge. "This woman is a protected witness. She's Jane Doe because I said so."
The doctor's expression became pinched. "It doesn't appear that she was protected, now does it?"
He drew a deep breath and agreed that it didn't. He relied on his instincts about people, on intuition so deep it went to his core. He knew that, for himself at least; he could not survive in this job in any other way.
His gut feeling about this doctor was that he had only won a ~empOrary reprieve. He would have to satisfy her questions, but if he could do that, if he could make a believer of her, if he could convince this doctor that he was legithnate, she might be persuaded to bury altogether the admission of a gunshot victim to her ER.
Seeing that the doctor was competent ~nd that she cared, he knew his own best bet would be to get the doctor to see him in the same light.
Carly Bishop Page 11