“Work.” Her mouth twisted and her voice made an angry bitter sound of the word.
He stared upward. From where he sat he could barely see the top of the far wall. It was a place of ragged rock crop-pings. He could no longer hear the ‘copter. But just when he began to hope by some miracle that they’d been misled he heard the churning sound begin. It filled the canyon, rolling in like a flashflood.
Eve slapped down on the doorhandle. The door flew open and she jumped out. She slammed the door behind her and the sound was like the crack of gunfire.
“Damn you,” he snarled at her.
She ran around the car.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Her voice was cold, raging. “I’m going to signal those people in that helicopter. I’ve had all the criminals I can stomach for one lifetime.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Come back here.”
He lunged upward from the car. She turned on her heel and ran toward the rim of sunlight.
He caught her just inside it, caught her with his arms about her middle and hurled her backwards. She slipped, lost her footing and went toppling back. She struck against the wall deep under the shelf. The breath was smashed out of her.
She crouched there, her arms at her sides, staring at him. Her eyes were distended and her pale face was pulled. She looked beyond him at the helicopter shadow leaping the stones on the canyon floor.
He walked toward her, watching her warily. She opened her mouth to scream and he leaped again, catching her and clasping his hand over her mouth.
She beat at him with both hands, scratching at his face and kicking at his shins.
He thrust her back hard against the wall, pressing his body against her body so she could not kick. He pinned her arms between them.
The sound of the helicopter filled the canyon now, reverberating against the walls and pounding upon them like the overwhelming raging of the surf in a storm.
She bit his hand. He felt her teeth sink into his palm. Rage burned through him, louder than the sound of the ‘copter. He stared down into her eyes. She was staring up at him and what he saw in her eyes made his heart turn over inside him. It was a hot and pleasingly agonizing feeling. The blood throbbed in his temples and he could no longer hear the helicopter because of the blood in his temples and the rage pounding through him. He wanted to kill her. He wanted to close his hands on her throat and press until she could no longer breathe. He wanted to smash his mouth against her mouth until her mouth bled. Then suddenly he did not want to kill her at all, and knew that he had never wanted to kill her.
She writhed in his arms, her body fighting against his body. She bit down on his hand again and he felt the blood spurt into her mouth. But he closed his fingers on her cheeks, tightening his grasp.
She pulled away from him, and he wrestled her back beneath him so that abruptly she lost her balance and fell sideways along the wail, dragging him with her to the slate floor behind the car.
She tried to thrust him away from her but she could not. Her eyes were wild, but she could not speak because he held her mouth tightly in his grasp.
He pulled at her skirt, half tearing it away from her. His fingers caught the fabric of her pants and the ripping sound was lost in the thunder from the helicopter circling along the canyon like a lost child.
He heard his own voice, and realized he was talking breathlessly, the words spilling out of him. “Tell them. Yell at them. Damn you. Yell. Go on. Yell at them. Tell them about the money. All about the money. And tell them about the rape. Scream. Because you’ll have something to scream about. Now you’ll have something to tell them about.”
She was writhing beneath him but she was no longer fighting him. Her arms had gone about him and her fingers clawed into his shoulders. The sound of the helicopter rose throbbing through them, and then it faded and then it was loud again. She was against the slate of the shelf floor and she did not care. She did not know.
He did not move his hand from over her mouth. Her teeth sunk into it until his blood leaked along the side of her face, making a red streak on her jaw and throat. He did not remove his hand and then she was chewing at it, kissing it wildly and sucking at his fingers and she was crying.
There was a silence, and he did not know how long the silence had existed. He lay there and listened for the ‘copter but there was no sound of it. It’s ugly shadow had stopped leaping along the canyon. He lay there and felt her arms holding him, and then she was kissing his hand.
“I hurt you,” she whispered.
“Did I hurt you?”
“Oh God, no.”
“This rock is rough. We must have been crazy.”
“I don’t know. I don’t care.” She kissed his hand, running her tongue gently over the place where she had bit him.
He laughed, baffled. “I could never rape any woman. Not me. Because she would have to want me or I wouldn’t—”
“I wanted you, Ric. Only I didn’t know it.”
“I knew it. Last night I knew it.”
“Yes. I knew it, too, then. But that was different. Last night was not the same. Last night it could have been anyone.
“Not for me.”
“But for me. Because I didn’t know.”
“And now it’s different?”
“For me. Because now I know what it’s like. What it’s truly like. I know what you’re supposed to have, what you’re supposed to do. I never knew. So how could I know I wanted you—or anyone? How could I know it? I never knew what it could be.”
He rolled to the side of her and she burrowed close against him.
“Think,” she said. “This huge world. And I never knew what it was all about. I never knew why. I never could figure what all the shouting was for. Why did anybody care? It wasn’t much of a world. But now it is. Now it is much of a world.”
“You talk a lot.”
“I never talked before. Never. In all my life. There was never anyone so wonderful.”
He laughed. “That’s what a girl says when she doesn’t know anything. A man knows when a girl knows nothing. She tells him he’s the most wonderful thing in the world.”
“Don’t tease me. Not now. I don’t want you to tease me. I want you to love me.”
“Are you crazy? I’m dead.”
“Hold me then, with your hand. Please. Hold me because I’ve never been loved before—never truly loved— and I can’t stop wanting to be loved, yet. Maybe I’ll never stop wanting to be loved again.”
“You’ll kill me.”
She burrowed her head against his throat. Her mouth was warm, parted against his throat.
“I don’t care. It’s your fault. You started it.”
“This rock is rough.”
“I don’t care. Hold me.”
He moved his hand over her and felt her breath quicken against his throat. The excitement started in him again. She said nothing, loving him, and the silence rode along the canyon on the wind. Her fingers dug into him, and he smiled, whispering to her. “Aren’t you going to scream?” he said.
“Only when you make me scream.”
“What about the money?”
“What money?”
Chapter Eighteen
Ric sat with his back against the wall beneath the stone shelf. The sun had moved upward, cutting the shadows sharply in the canyon. He watched the mouth of the canyon. If they came on foot, they would come from there.
He licked his lips, thinking he was not as worried about those men as he was about water.
“Are you all right?” he said to Eve.
She pressed closer in his arms, pushing her face against his throat. “All right? What an empty way to express what I am right now.”
“I’ll try to find water. There may be some in this canyon somewhere.”
“Don’t leave me, Ric. Not right now.”
“I don’t want to leave you, but I’d like to keep you alive.”
She laughed. “I never l
ived before. I’ll be all right. And Ric—if anything happens, I won’t mind, because of you.”
He tightened his arm, closed his hand on her. “You say it so much better than any of the other girls.”
“You never knew any other girls, did you?”
“What are girls?”
“That’s better.” She sighed. “Oh, I know. There must have been hundreds.”
“Hundreds.”
“But I wouldn’t want you so terribly if you were different, would I? Would I?”
“Eve, there’s something I ought to tell you.”
“You don’t have to tell me anything. I’m afraid for you to. It might be something I wouldn’t want to hear.”
“I owe it to you.”
“You don’t owe me anything. I owe you—because I never knew anything until you came along.”
“Still. I better tell you. About the money.”
She smoothed his face, trailing her ringers along his cheek. She pressed closer, and he stared across the top of her head toward the twist in the canyon. He listened for the sound of voices, of the helicopter, gunfire, or perhaps the clatter of a loosened stone. There was nothing but the silence. The heat reflected from the narrow floor of the canyon. He knew they were cooler under the shelf than they’d be out in the wastes.
“Ric, I cared about the money—before I cared about you. I don’t care any more. It’s that simple.”
“Still, it’s there—and you’ll want to know.”
She smiled. “You mean when I wake up?”
“Yes. When you wake up.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. In a moment I’ll wake up in a bed in Sherman Oaks, or back at La Pueblo. You don’t know how horrible that would be for me—now.”
“Are you going to listen?”
“Why? It’s only money.”
“Eve, there’s one thing we don’t know. That’s what that helicopter and those police are doing. There’s a chance they’ve pulled away, knowing we’ll have to come out of here. But most likely they’re moving in on foot. This canyon might be a cul-de-sac—”
“I’m with you.”
“Yes. I want you with me—when they come. Any minute they might walk around that turn in the canyon, or they might come from the other way. When they come, I want you to trust me. I want you with me. You’ve enough things to doubt right now. I don’t want to be one of them.”
She laid her head back on his arm, brushed her hair from her face.
“You don’t have to tell me, Ric, if you don’t want to.”
Remembering was a painful process, and yet all of it had been out of his conscious mind only since he’d pulled Eve out of her gas-filled cottage. Before that, in all the miles west from Manhattan, he had thought about nothing else, gone over it again and again, not because he wanted to, because he could not help it. Every hurting moment of it haunted him like the words of a song you couldn’t escape.
It had been agony looking in the senator’s face. Senator Ironfield was a man nearing sixty, a man who had given up even believing he’d have a son of his own. And they’d kidnaped his child. He looked as though the face he wore was not his face at all, but a mask to conceal his inner weeping, a mask to hide the hurt nobody could bear to look at. He had held himself erect, spoken stiffly, as though all the years of training in self-control were all that kept him from falling on his knees and crying out. His voice was cold. He could not express the mildest emotion. If he did, he would break down.
“I am convinced you can be trusted,” the senator had said. “I am convinced you are the only one who can be trusted.”
He’d wanted to laugh when the senator said that to him—a man just out of prison on parole, a man the senator himself had sentenced to prison. But when he thought it over, he did not laugh, and he knew the senator was right. He could be trusted.
Why not? The senator held aces, all the aces. Ric Durazo would not lift his hand to aid the senator, but Anne had told the senator all about herself and Ric. His smile was bitter when he thought about that. Had Anne told the senator everything? He tried to think how she might have told him—quietly, across his desk? in a car somewhere? over a dinner table? or lying beside him in bed, unable to sleep, talking about Ric, and the way she had loved him, and the way he had loved her before the senator sent Ric to prison for five years.
She must have told him everything. The senator did not doubt that Ric would deal with the kidnapers for him. The senator needed a man he could trust, a man who could meet with the kidnapers, a man who’d give his life to return that baby to its parents. No other man would possibly answer his desperate need. Ric was the answer. Would he give his life to return Anne’s baby to her?
His hand tightened into a fist, aching. The senator held aces all right. Nothing in God’s world would keep him from bringing Anne’s baby back to her—if it lived.
He spoke softly to Eve now, his voice carrying the deadly hill that had ridden west with him. “Have you read about the Ironfield baby?”
He heard her catch her breath. “The kidnaped baby?”
“Yes.”
She was tense, not breathing. “Oh, Ric—you’re not one of the kidnapers?”
His laugh was mocking. “Thanks.”
She caught him in her arms, pulling him against her and crying out, “I didn’t mean that, Ric. Oh, God, I didn’t mean that. It was just—”
“Sure. I know. I’m fresh out of prison. You’re afraid to believe the best. Don’t worry, everybody feels that way.”
“No, Ric. please don’t be mad. It’s just that I was afraid. Try to understand me. If it was the worst about you, I wanted to know it. Right now. I wanted to know before I heard any more words.”
“It’s all right.”
“Oh, Ric. You are mad.”
“I’m not mad at anybody. If it makes you feel any better, I’m not a kidnaper. I’ve done a lot of other things, made a lot of mistakes. No. Senator Ironfield, the great Senator Gifford Ironfield hired me to deliver that quarter of a million dollars.”
He heard her exhale, felt her hands tighten on him .
“So that’s it,” he said. “Contact man. It was nothing I wanted, or asked for, or would have taken—except I had to. You see, there’s more in this kidnaping than just the money. The senator is a very hated man, some very old hates. It looks like whoever kidnaped his two-year-old boy did it for vengeance as well as the money. They’ve put Ironfield through hell. It doesn’t help that he’s fifty-six and this is his only child—his first. The kidnapers have made promises, broken them. They’ve accused him of double-crossing them with the police and the FBI. Finally, they gave him some new terms and that’s where I came in.”
He did not speak for a moment. A shadow flickered high against the rocks. It was a hawk.
“These terms were slick. Ironfield was warned to keep the police and the FBI out of it. He was told to call off the FBI or the child would be returned in small packages. Then they told him he could choose a man he trusted. The man was to drive to the La Pueblo in Los Solanos, New Mexico, and wait there, attracting as little attention as possible, until he was contacted.”
“Oh my God.”
“Yes. That’s what I’ve been telling myself. And that was why, whether I was innocent of assaulting Martin Kimball or not, I couldn’t afford to get mixed up with the police.”
She shuddered, buried her face against his shoulder. “God, Ric. Have I cost that baby his life?”
He closed his fingers on her arm, held her away from him. “We had two days, and one of them is gone. They swear the child is alive. Of course we have no way of knowing whether it is alive or not. But they’ve agreed to contact me before they do anything. They’re on the spot now. Delivering the baby to me is the only way they’ll get this money.”
“Do you know them, Ric? Do you know who they are?”
“No, I don’t know them. All I can do is wait for the contact man. If we hold out here until night, we’re going to try to get back
to Los Solanos. I’ve got to do that.”
“Of course you have to. You don’t have to worry about me any more, Ric.”
“Don’t I?” He sighed, staring along the narrow strip of canyon. “No use turning you over to Kimball now, unless I have to.”
“You’ve got the baby to think about. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if anything happened to it because I delayed you. Ric, we’ve got to get out of here.”
“Sure. And what will you do?”
“It doesn’t matter. Not any more. I’ll do what you told me in the first place. I’ll call Father. Truly I will.”
He glanced at the patch of sky he could see from beneath the shelf. The faded dryness of the sky made him thirstier.
“It doesn’t matter what we do—we’ve got to wait until dark.”
“All right, Ric. I won’t fight you any more.”
“That’s too bad. You fight so sexy.”
“Yes. I’m a sexy fighter.” She stared into his face. “Why you, Ric?”
“What?”
“Why you? Why did the senator choose you to contact these criminals?”
“Fight fire with fire.”
“No, Ric. Tell me. Why did he trust you?”
How could he tell her, or anyone? It was Anne’s baby, and somebody had to bring it back to her alive, or Anne herself could not go on living.
“Why not? I was born in the gutter, and I grew up there and know all the gutter tricks.”
“How did he choose you?”
“Oh, he knows me. He hasn’t always been a senator. Not Ironfield. No. A few years ago, he was a judge, and he sentenced me to prison.”
“And he trusts you?”
His laugh was chilled. “Oh, he’s convinced I can be trusted.”
She tightened her arms. “So am I. But then, I know you so much better than he possibly could.”
“It’s not that, baby. You see, the senator—he holds aces.”
Chapter Nineteen
Ric lifted Eve in his arms and carried her back to the car. He placed her gently in the reclined bucket seat. His hand lingered on her a moment. She looked up at him, eyes liquid.
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