PhD Protector

by Cindi Myers

  Chapter Seven

  Erin clawed at the ground as she slid over it, rocks and chunks of ice tearing at her skin and catching at her clothes. She bounced and skidded down the slope, grappling for purchase and finding none. She felt, rather than saw, Mark hurtle past her, and realized she was screaming, her throat raw, the sound echoing off the rocks around them.

  Then, as suddenly as she had started moving, she stopped, something bulky and soft cushioning the blow of her landing. Somehow, she had landed on Mark. He wrapped his arms around her. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  Hearing his voice, knowing he was all right, made her all but sob with relief. “I think so. You?”

  “A lot of bruises, but I’m okay.” He sat up, bringing her with him. “I still have the rifle.”

  “I lost the blanket,” she said. She peered up the slope, but could make out nothing but lighter and darker gray smudges of rock. “What happened?”

  “I think the ledge gave way. We’re lucky we didn’t fall farther.” He stood and helped her to her feet. They had come to rest in a dry wash, choked with rock and shrubby trees. The air smelled of fresh pine and damp earth. Though the sky was beginning to lighten, she could no longer see the road from here. The knowledge of how close they had come to death shook her. “We could have been killed,” she said. She touched the collar at her neck—it could have gone off. She swayed, unsteady at the thought.

  “We weren’t.” His voice was strong. “We just have to stay alert. We won’t take unnecessary chances, but we won’t be so cautious we miss our best opportunity to get out of here.”

  “Do you think the guards heard us?” she asked.

  He glanced overhead, back the way they had come. “I think if they had, we’d know it by now. The snow swallows up a lot of sound. For now, we had better stay put until daylight, when we can see where we’re going. We need to get back up to the road and we can’t do that in the dark.”

  She hugged her arms across her chest and shifted from foot to foot. “It feels colder down here. Maybe I’m in shock.” Her feet ached with cold, and her fingers and face were numb.

  “Canyons like this trap the cold.” He picked up a branch that had probably been broken in their fall. “Let’s build a fire. That will warm us up.”

  “Do you think that’s safe?”

  “We can shelter it under the overhang of the cliff, where it will be harder to see from above. As long as we keep the blaze small, it should be all right. We need to warm up before we go on.”

  “Good idea.” She moved alongside him, gathering kindling.

  “Are you feeling okay?” he asked. “No dizziness or unsteadiness?”

  “I’m okay.” She picked up a large pinecone. “Maybe I just needed to move around.” She would take his advice and not think about what had almost happened, and focus instead on what she wished would happen. She would envision warm rooms, hot food and people around her who weren’t trying to kill her.

  When they had gathered a double armload of kindling and larger pieces of wood, he cleared a space on the frozen ground and set about building a fire. He worked quickly, his hands deftly arranging the smaller sticks and larger pieces of wood. He lit a match and touched it to the mixture of pine needles and pocket lint he had piled beneath a pyramid of twigs. The flame caught and spread, licking at the sticks until they, too, were ablaze.

  “You look like you’ve done this before,” she said, moving to stand closer to the warmth, and thus to him.

  “I always did my best thinking in the wilderness.”

  “What are your best thoughts now?”

  He didn’t answer right away, the snap of the fire the only sound. “I’m thinking that I’m glad I’m not doing this alone,” he said after a moment.

  The desolation in his voice pinched at her. She had endured only a few weeks of deprivation thanks to Duane. Mark had been the madman’s pawn for fourteen months. “You’ve been alone too much lately,” she said.

  He sat back on his heels and stared into the fire, the shadows of the flames flickering across the planes and hollows of his face. It wasn’t a classically handsome face, but his strong jaw and high forehead hinted at his strength and intelligence. “I’m not someone who tolerates the company of others well,” he said. “Though I make exceptions for people I care about.”

  Was he saying he cared about her? She pushed the thought away. “Why do you think they decided to move us?”

  “I want to hear your theory before I share mine.”

  “I wondered if they heard us talking about our plans to get away and decided to preempt them.”

  He nodded. “That’s what I wondered, too. But it could have just as easily been part of Duane’s original plan, to keep us off guard.”

  “Do you think they’re still looking for us?” she asked. “I mean, maybe now that they have that trunk and what they think is a bomb, Duane will be happy and let us go.”

  “A man who will go to the kind of trouble and expense he has in order to carry out a plan he’s concocted isn’t going to just drop things,” Mark said. “And he doesn’t let people get away with crossing him, either.”

  “No.” She ran a finger under the edge of the collar. “No, he doesn’t.” She was a prime example of what happened to people who crossed Duane. He never simply forgot about them and let them go. She lowered herself to the ground beside the fire. As her body thawed, her mind became less numb, too. “Can they do anything with the contents of that trunk?” she asked. “I mean, could they find another scientist or explosives expert to build them a real nuclear bomb?” Knowing the trunk even existed had come as a shock to her.

  Mark sat on the ground beside her, and fed a larger stick to the blaze. “It’s doubtful. Given more time and money and higher grade ore, it might happen, but Duane strikes me as a man who’s running out of patience.”

  “I think you’re right, and that worries me. He has a lot of resources, and from what I’ve seen, he doesn’t mind throwing lots of money and man power at whatever goal he’s after. What if he brings in dogs to track us? Or follows us with a helicopter?”

  “He might do those things, but the fall could work in our favor. The searchers won’t expect to find us down here. That could throw them off the track. We need to take advantage of whatever lead we’ve gained.”

  “It would help if we had the slightest idea where we are.” She craned her head to scan the embankment they had slid down. Boulders the size of furniture and logs scattered like straw pocked the landscape.

  “I’m pretty sure this drainage runs north-south.” He pointed to the heavy growth of moss on the side of a tree near them. “Moss like this tends to grow on the north side of trees. The road ran that direction, too, so I think we’re paralleling the road, but about fifty feet lower.”

  “So we keep following this and we’ll get to wherever the road leads?” she asked.

  “Maybe. Or we could end up in a box canyon that goes nowhere.” He joined her in looking up the slope. “As I said before, I think we’re going to have to climb back up there.”

  She swallowed. “And to think I left my mountain-climbing gear at home.”

  He caught her gaze and held it. “I’m glad you still have your sense of humor. Things could get pretty tough before we get out of here. But we’re going to be tougher.”

  Right. Except that with him she felt more vulnerable than she had in years—since before Duane had come into her life and distorted everything she knew about love and trust. “Do you know what frightens me the most?” she asked.

  “No, but I’m willing to listen if you want to tell me.”

  She stared into the coals that glowed orange amid the remnants of branches white with ash. “I’m terrified that I missed my chance to stop him,” she said. “When I first left home I didn’t tell anyone the things I knew�
�and the things I suspected—about Duane’s activities, because I worried about what it would do to my mother. I thought if I kept quiet, she would be all right and I could forget all about him. When she came to live with me I suggested we go to the authorities, but the idea upset her so much I didn’t pursue it. These last few weeks with him and his men—learning the extent of his madness and the lengths he will go to in order to carry out his twisted plans—I realize how much my silence has cost. What if he finds someone to arm that bomb and he kills hundreds, even thousands, of innocent people? How can I live with the knowledge that I could have stopped him, but when I had the chance I chose to do nothing?”

  “You were afraid for yourself, but even more frightened for your mother,” Mark said. “Believe me, I know how paralyzing that kind of fear can be. It’s the same fear that kept me working in that cabin for months. Duane bought my silence with his threats to my daughter, but in the end the cost was much greater. I lost my perspective and I almost lost my will to go on. You’ve given that back to me. Now I realize the only way I can protect Mandy is to fight back against the vision of the world that Duane wants to make a reality.” He reached over and took her hand. “It helps me to know I’m not fighting alone. And I think we have an advantage over Duane.”

  “We’re not insane. I suppose that helps.”

  A ghost of a smile flitted through his eyes before he sobered once more. “He thinks we’re both passive, cowed by what he’s done to us. He’s guilty of one of the primary errors in scientific research—making a false assumption. He’s expecting one result—for us to fail—and has an unconscious bias to pay more attention to any evidence that supports his assumption. We can take advantage of that and attack him when he’s not expecting it.”

  Everything Mark said made perfect sense, and Erin found herself believing he might be right. But the reality of their situation—stranded in the middle of nowhere in bitter cold, with a bomb strapped around her neck—made it more difficult to visualize the success he seemed so sure was theirs. She took a deep breath. “I guess the first thing we need to do is get out of this ravine.”

  “Right.” He glanced at the sky. Though low clouds obscured the sun, it was now light enough to see clearly. He stood and began to kick dirt onto the fire. “It won’t be the easiest climb, but it’s doable. We’ll take it slow and choose the route carefully. You go first and I’ll be right behind to catch you if you start to fall.”

  She helped him put out the fire and scatter the ashes, even as she mourned the loss of warmth. As they worked, the cold was already seeping through her clothes, making her teeth chatter. They swept branches over the area and scattered gravel, trying to obscure any obvious signs that they had stopped here. Then Mark turned to survey the slope they had to climb. “It’s a little less steep there, where that gravel has washed down.” He traced a line in the air and she followed the direction he was pointing. “Those trees and bushes will give us hand-and footholds,” he said. “And the overhang, just to the right, gives us some cover while we check things out up top.”

  “Right. Piece of cake.” She rubbed her hands together. “You go that way and I’ll find the elevator.”

  He chuckled and put a hand at her back. She liked the way it felt, his palm pressed to her spine, providing both guidance and reassurance. They stopped at the bottom of the area he had indicated, which didn’t look any less steep to her. “Grab hold of that branch and put your foot on that tree root, then pull yourself up,” he instructed.

  Proceeding this way, with him directing her from behind, the climb wasn’t so bad. She managed to push away the image of her falling and sending them both crashing back down, and focused on carefully placing each foot and using her hands to haul herself up. Before she had traveled too many feet she was panting and beginning to sweat, her earlier chill forgotten.

  The trouble began about halfway up, when a narrow stream of cold water, perhaps from some underground spring, trickled down the bank, turning the soil in the area to slick mud. When Erin tried to plant her foot, it skidded from under her, and only her death grip on a spindly scrub oak kept her from hurtling back down the slope.

  Mark was at her back once more. “Try digging your toe in and kicking in a step,” he said.

  She did as he suggested and after three hard kicks was rewarded with a firmer foothold. She proceeded this way up the rest of the slope, until she came to rest under the sheltering overhang of a rock outcropping. She was winded, her hands aching from gripping the cold, slippery branches and rocks that had served as hand-and footholds. Her hands, face and clothing were streaked with a reddish mud that smelled slightly metallic and felt gritty against her skin.

  Mark joined her beneath the rock overhang after a few minutes. He looked as disheveled and dirty as she felt, but a grin split his face. “I haven’t climbed like that in months,” he said. “It felt good.”

  She couldn’t help but return the smile. “It does feel good.” She’d won a battle of sorts—against the steep slope and against her own fears. “What next?”

  “Let’s wait here a bit and catch our breath and see if we hear anything alarming up there.”

  But the only sounds to break the early morning stillness were the deep intake and exhalation of their own breaths, the trickle from the dripping spring, and the lonesome call of a dove.

  “I think we’re okay.” Mark spoke in a whisper, his mouth close to her ear, his warm breath tickling her neck above the metal collar, sending a startling current of heat through her. “I’ll go first, then I can pull you up,” he said, shifting to move past her.

  A tremble shot through her when his body brushed hers. She told herself it was simply the aftereffect of adrenaline from the climb, but the word liar came quickly on the heels of that thought. This strong, virile version of a man she was already attracted to stirred a more primitive desire deep within her. Mark Renfro might be an overly serious scientist, but right now he was a very sexy scientist.

  She pressed her body against the cool earth and listened to the scrape of rock against his boots and the soft grunts of exertion he made as he swung onto the ledge from which they had fallen earlier. She didn’t even realize she had been holding her breath until she heard his voice again and saw his hand reaching down for her. “All clear,” he said. “Hold on tight and I’ll pull you up.”

  Half climbing, half letting him lift her, she struggled onto the ledge and lay for a moment in the dirt, panting. He helped her to her feet and led the way along a narrow path that must have been made by animals. From time to time she caught a glimpse of the road, but the landscape around them remained silent. Maybe Duane’s men had temporarily abandoned the search and were awaiting further instructions from their boss. Or maybe they had headed off in another direction.

  All we need is a little more time, she thought. As soon as we get to a phone, we’ll be all right.

  They walked for the better part of an hour without speaking. The sun disappeared completely behind a bank of heavy clouds and the wind picked up, cutting through Erin’s jacket and jeans. She hugged her arms across her chest and bowed against the wind, gritting her teeth to keep them from chattering. She ached with the cold, and stumbled once, almost colliding with Mark, who marched stoically along in front of her. He had to be almost as chilled as she was, but he showed no signs of it, walking confidently upright, the rifle slung across his chest. Knowing he was watching for any sign of trouble, she was able to relax a little. Think warm thoughts, she told herself. Hot chocolate. Mulled wine. Chicken soup. Roaring fires and warm quilts. Naked bodies twined together beneath those quilts, in front of that fire...

  A shout broke the stillness—a man’s voice, risen in alarm. Mark dived to the side of the trail, pulling her with him, even as gunfire raked the area where they had just stood. She pressed against him, trying to make herself as small as possible. “How did they find us so soon?” she whispe
red.

  He shook his head, his hands gripping her shoulders, holding her tightly to him. “I don’t know, but they aren’t that close. The shots came from somewhere on the ridge to our left. He must have spotted us and fired from there.”

  “If you’re trying to reassure me, it’s not working. With that rifle, he doesn’t have to be close in order to kill us.”

  “Point taken. But if we can keep from getting shot, we have a better chance of evading them at this distance. It will take them a while to get to this trail. By the time they do, we’ll be gone.”

  “But he has us pinned down.”

  “Not necessarily. He may not have seen where we ended up.”

  “Don’t make assumptions, Professor.”

  “Then let’s perform a little experiment.” Before she could object, he picked up a rock about the size of his fist, wound up and fired it out of their hiding place. It landed with a clatter fifty feet up the trail and bounced twice before coming to rest at the base of a tree. A split second later bullets thudded into the tree, sending splinters flying. Mark grinned.

  “What are you so happy about?” she asked.

  “He didn’t fire at us. He didn’t see where the rock came from. He was only reacting to the movement and sound. We can use that to our advantage.”

  “How?”

  “We’ll head that way.” He pointed down the trail, back toward the cabin. “If we move slowly and keep to the cover of the trees, he shouldn’t see us.”

  “But it’s the wrong direction,” she said.

  “When they give up and start moving in another direction we can backtrack,” he said. “Right now it’s more important to get away from them than to stick to our goal.”

  He was right, of course, but that didn’t make this knowledge any easier to accept. At this rate she’d be frozen or crippled by the time they reached safety. Better to swallow the bitter medicine and get on with it. “I’ll follow you,” she said.