by Nancy Radke
Connor still seethed with anger. He wasn't going to tip-toe around Ramone, however much Mary pleaded. He didn't believe in pampering his enemies, especially thugs like these who were better off dead.
He spoke curtly. "I had to stop him."
"But not if it means getting yourself killed," she insisted, her gray eyes smoky with distress as she moved closer.
"I'd have taken him with me." Brave words— he could only hope they were true. It would’ve left Mary defenseless. Yet what else could he do? Ramone would shoot him on any flimsy excuse. As long as he must die, he’d take that loathsome creature along with him.
"No." She clutched the front of his coat. "I want him gone, too. But not that way. I couldn't go on, without you."
He brushed his hand tenderly across her forehead, lifting a stray lock of hair and tucking it back under her cap. She wore a regular stocking cap instead of his sleeve, and a smile touched his heart, remembering her courage as she crossed the river, her head held high. Somewhere during their short time together, she had become exceedingly precious to him.
"Yes, you could. You're stronger than you think," he said.
She shook her head, her expression grim. "I'm taking my strength from you. If you weren't along, I wouldn't be brave at all."
"You were brave facing Ramone just now."
"Not really. Just resigned."
"Huh. Seems the same to me. I should kill him before he makes good his threat."
"No. I don't want to cause the death of any person. Not again."
Not again? Whose death had she caused? Had she accidentally lost a victim she tried to rescue?
Troubled, Connor helped Mary set up her light-weight, two-man tent, wondering if he should ask her about it. But she had enough problems without fretting over the past, so he let it drop.
Judd had been talking to Ira and now limped over to Connor. "You want to live, you had better watch yourself. Ramone never forgets."
"He wanted to share Mary's tent. I took exception. So did Ira, I think," Connor said, wondering just what kind of sleeping arrangements Judd planned.
"Ira’ll kill a man without blinking, but he won't harm a woman." Judd paused, viewing Connor from narrowed eyes. "Be grateful Ramone knows that."
"Then perhaps Ira should be the one to guard Mary. I'll share with Ramone."
Judd laughed, a short sharp bark. "Forget that. I don't want you where you can take a gun from a sleeping man. You stay with Mary. It's easier to guard the two of you together."
The good news left Connor as weak as metal stressed to the breaking point. He breathed deeply to calm himself. "Fine with me."
"I'll take your coats and boots for the night. I doubt you'll go far, barefoot."
"Not likely," Connor said.
"Untie our gear from your pack," Judd ordered.
"Gladly."
Undoing the knots, Connor handed him his tents and fuel bottles. Taking them, Judd scrunched away.
The new boots had blistered their captors' feet, plus their jeans were soaked up to their thighs. Altogether very satisfactory to Connor.
If only he wasn’t so bone-weary tired. He needed to hide that from Mary, else she’d try to do more.
"Connor. Could you help me?" Mary called from inside her tent.
"Sure."
He lifted the door flap and glanced in. Although not quite four feet high at the peak, it looked surprisingly roomy for a five-pound tent.
The floor plan was shaped like a huge casket. Three arches supported the roof on the outside, the flexible poles parallel to each other rather than crossing. The rear arch was half the size of the front and center ones.
Mary was trying to open up their sleeping bags. Her hands shook, rendering her unable to untie anything but a slip-type knot.
Crawling in, Connor quickly untied the bowline she was struggling with. "Take a moment to recover," he murmured, clasping her hands. Cold hands. Capable, but so tiny in his.
She trembled and he tightened his hold, wanting to go out and slay dragons for her. If only he could face the men one by one, separately. It’d do no good to kill three, get killed himself, and still leave one of those thugs to harm her.
"Mary. It’s all right. Try to relax."
"I can't."
"Sure you can. Slow breathing, that’ll do it." He looked down on her face, her features still too taunt, as if the images remained frozen on her mind.
Mary leaned across the sleeping bag and stared at him. "Ramone’ll kill you. I can see it in his eyes."
"So what’s new? He's been looking for an excuse ever since we started."
"But not this badly. When you stand up to him— or to any of them— you provoke them."
"Someone's got to make a stand."
"Not you. Perhaps I should. It's less of a challenge when a woman does it."
Connor could hear the men talking as they finished setting up their tents. He had to downplay the danger so Mary wouldn’t wear herself out with worry.
"I don't think Ramone will try anything with Ira around."
"Are you sure?"
"Ira gave a pretty convincing demonstration."
"And Judd?"
He paused before answering. "Judd just wants the chest. I don't think he cares what the others do."
"I can't help worrying—"
"Don't. It doesn't help."
“What then?”
“Pray.”
“I feel like giving up on prayer.”
“Maybe you’re praying for the wrong things.” Maybe he was, too. “Pray for strength.”
“That’s what I’ve been praying for.”
“Oh. Well, pray for us to figure out a way to escape.”
“That too. God’s never answered my prayers before, so why should He start now?”
“But He’s with you.”
“How do I know? I’ve never seen it happen.”
He hadn’t either, but then he had never felt the need for God at his side. He had always been able to handle things by himself. Until now.
Connor shook his head. Mary needed something positive to focus on. "Let's go have the snowshoe lesson. Okay?" he asked.
"Okay."
"Don't teach them all the tricks," he admonished. "I'd like to see them trip over their own feet."
"There's not that many. With the shoes available today, you just walk normally. It's even easy to run in the aluminum frames you and I have."
"How about Judd's?"
"He bought the plastic models. Costs less, but they're about twenty percent heavier. And they don't have this wide cutout in the back that allows easy running."
"Don't show them that."
"Agreed. They’d take ours."
With a quick squeeze, he released her hands and untied the snowshoes from the packs. Mary lined the men up, gave a quick demonstration, then had them practice. They looked like scruffy penguins out for a walk, waddling at first until they learned they weren’t going to trip. Connor picked it up right away, having done some cross-country skiing.
The short session went well, Connor thought. He admired Mary’s spunk— she wasn't cowering before them.
She paused once to suggest the men move the location of their two dome-shaped tents. "Unless you like snow bombs." She pointed toward the branches overhead, heavily laden with snow. "One of those dropping their load will bust the poles."
Later she added a whispered aside to Connor, "Then they'd probably take our tent and make us sleep in the snow."
Daylight was going fast by the time Connor removed his snowshoes and placed them beside Mary's outside her tent. The four kidnapers had been forced to re-position their two tents to avoid the trees and were now four car lengths away.
Judd struggled across the distance, breaking through the crust every third step. He arrived in bad humor and snapped out his demands.
"Hand over your coats and boots. You stay in the tent," he stated. "Yo
u come out, we shoot."
"Understood," Connor replied. He pulled off his boots and handed them and his coat to Judd, then passed over Mary's things.
"Just don't leave them out in the snow, please," Mary requested as Judd limped away.
The cold bore into Connor as soon as he removed his down parka. He started to enter the tent, but Mary handed him a two quart kettle without any handles.
"Fill that with clean snow, will you? Pack it high. That should do us for supper."
"Sure." He did so, his bare feet quickly chilling as he broke away the crust, then packed snow into the container. He carried it inside the tent, letting the flap fall shut behind him.
Mary looked tired, but not as exhausted as Connor felt after carrying everyone's equipment. He watched, mind numb, as she unzipped his sleeping bag and motioned him in. He already shook, his teeth chattering— and he couldn't stop.
"Lie down and rest," she insisted. "You're overly tired and have no resistance. I'll get the stove going."
“Inside? Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Only if the tent were airtight. Which it isn’t. If it had snow on it, sealing us in, then we couldn’t.”
Climbing in, he pulled the bag around himself, thankful for the down that offered almost instant warmth. He watched her unfold a small backpacker's stove, the size of two packs of cards. It offered a stable, six-inch-square rack on which to place the cooking pot. She attached a butane cartridge and lit the gas, the tiny flame roaring mightily. Adjusting it, she set the stove out of the way with the kettle balanced on it.
That done, she pulled off her outer shirt and pants. Her silk thermal underwear covered her from head to foot and her hair flared in a wild halo around her face. With her eyes heavy with tiredness, her chin covered with a dirty smudge where she had wiped it, she looked absolutely beautiful.
She unzipped her bag and climbed in, then sat upright, re-zipping it to leave her arms free. It became an elongated coat, covering her from head to foot.
Connor raised up to look at the network of zippers.
"It's designed this way," she explained. "So's yours. You don't have to get out of your bag to eat. Now if you'll turn onto your stomach, I'll rub some of the soreness out of your neck and shoulder muscles. The load they piled on you was insane."
"It was heavy," he admitted, doing as she requested. She began to press on his neck. "Ah... that feels good."
He loved the feel of Mary's hands. Soft hands. Strong hands. She was quite a woman, both a fighter and survivor, whether she realized it or not. If he got them out of this, alive, he’d take her out on the town for a week—two weeks if she wanted.
There was so much about Mary he wished to discover. Her likes and dislikes, the things that brought her happiness. She seemed like a woman who’d take pleasure in the simple things—a flower, a smile, a word of love. When the sun had set, earlier, she had stood for a moment outside the tent, watching with what Connor considered a pensive smile, her face glowing as it caught the last rays.
A beautiful face. At least to him. Her expression radiated warmth, as soft and free of guile as a lamb.
Sometime in her life, probably before her mother's death, Mary must’ve been the delight of everyone who knew her. He wondered if he’d ever see her carefree and happy, with soft lights dancing in her eyes.
He needed to keep her hopes up—not let her get so depressed that she stopped resisting. Casting about for a topic, he said the first thing that came to mind.
19
Connor shifted in his sleeping bag so that Mary could reach the aching muscles in his neck. "We need to start thinking of ways to escape,” he said. “You have any ideas?”
"Not really."
He felt her hands stop moving, then resume, the pressure rougher, more determined. The tension eased in his neck. She worked for a few more minutes, then moved aside to check the snow melting in the pan. The filtered light within the tent cast a soft light over her, emphasizing her beauty.
He peered out through a spot where the flaps didn't quite touch. The other two tents formed a triangle with this one, each leg about twenty feet apart. As long as they kept their voices low, Judd and his loudly talking men wouldn’t hear them.
"If we stay out long enough,” she said, “they're bound to get careless. Once we get your pack down to size, we can pick up the pace again, maybe wear them out. People do irrational things when they get overtired.”
“Like me.” When Ramone challenged them, he had stopped thinking and just acted. Almost got himself killed.
“Or hypothermic. They’d be helpless—"
"And then you'd want to rescue them," he added, feeling sarcastic.
"Oh." She paused. "I didn't think about that. I don't know...." She sat back and stared down at the pan. "Maybe you could go for help."
"I'm not leaving you, Mary. Besides, I'd get lost," he said, meaning it as a joke, but knowing it could easily be true once they got further into the Cascades. At this point he could simply follow their tracks out. Piece of cake.
"How much hiking have you done?" she asked, glancing over at him, her lovely gray eyes full of interest.
"Day hikes, mainly. We had some survival training, for deserts and mountains and jungles.”
“That’s good.”
“I know how to use a sheet of plastic to condense water, but I don't think that’d work out here."
She smiled, a slight twitch of her lips. “Why do you need jungle survival when you're on a ship?"
"I don't exactly stay on the ship. I fly off it—"
"You're a pilot?"
"Yes. Flying is my life. I’d never give it up. Once you've driven a jet, you never want to do anything else."
"I see."
She looked sad and he wondered why.
"You know, there's a hot spring several miles from here,” she said, dropping two food pouches into the pan of boiling water to cook.
“There is?”
“If we made camp close to it, we could walk to the spring after dark. I wouldn't actually be barefoot— I've got insulated booties in my pack to use around the tent. You could wear all three pairs of socks. We wouldn't be able to—"
"They'd follow our tracks the next morning, in the snow."
"Not if more snow happened to fall."
"You're wishing."
"I know."
"We can't depend on wishes."
"I know that, too," she said, sighing.
"But it’s an idea. Let's say we got our snow and made it to the springs. Can we get back to civilization?"
"No." She turned off the stove. "We could build three signal fires and hope someone found us."
“It’d just lead Judd to where we were.”
“Maybe.”
"We can't plan around 'maybes,' Mary. We have to deal with facts. Something that has an outside chance to work, if we try it."
"But what?"
"I don't know.” He huddled deeper into his bag. “If we got them separated, I might get a gun."
"Our best bet is at night. While they sleep."
“Yes. I could take the gun then—”
“I didn’t mean that. I meant to walk away. We’ll need to get our boots and coats.”
“I wish I wasn't so exhausted. It's hard to think clearly."
Mary pulled the food pouches out of the pan. "You'll feel better with some food in you. This is supposed to be Salisbury steak." She handed a pouch to Connor, then carefully stirred some dry soup mix into the bubbling water before opening her own.
Tearing off the top, Connor ate the meat, surprised at how good it tasted. He could eat ten pouches of meat— his body demanded more food— but Judd hadn’t been generous. Mary was already rationing their supplies.
He watched her as she worked, intent on getting the soup hot enough for them to drink. A gentle, beautiful woman. One who did for others. Mary was that kind of person. She took care of people.
&nbs
p; And himself? He had been trained to kill. Hand to hand as well as from a distance. What did he have to offer such a woman? Nothing.
She filled a cup with soup and handed it to him. "It won't be very hot," she said. "At this altitude, water boils at a low temperature."
"I don't care. I'll take it lukewarm."
Connor found it just hot enough to drink enjoyably. The heat revitalized him. As refreshing to his body as Mary was to his spirits. He finished it and she poured him another.
"No, you take it," he protested.
"I’m okay. I've over a cupful left. You need the liquid. Drink up."
He did, watching as she filled her cup and drank from it, fascinated by the grace of her movements. He found himself watching for the way she quirked her eyebrows at an errant thought, and for the tiny smile that flickered across her lips whenever he made enough of a joke that she caught it.
Mary suddenly unzipped her sleeping bag, grabbed the pan and stood up. She had her hand on the tent flap before Connor realized it.
"Wait." He raised his voice to a shout. "We need more snow to melt. Mary's coming out. All right?"
"Come on,” one of the men shouted back.
Mary glanced ruefully at him. "Thanks. I forgot."
"No sense taking chances," he said, but felt glad that she had forgotten the danger, if for only a moment.
She opened the tent flap and hopped out. When she returned, she quickly zipped the door shut. "Forget walking to the springs," she whispered.
He laughed, but knew that he’d walk miles— barefoot— carrying her, if it’d save her life. The realization hit him like one of those snow bombs Mary had warned about.
Unsettled, he tried to joke. "I prefer the avalanche method, myself. Shove them out on a slope and watch them go."
"And you'd leave them? Injured? Or dying?"
She looked upset. She hadn’t taken it as a joke. So now what did he say? Somehow he had to get her mentally prepared to fight. Otherwise they’d lose the battle before it began.
"It'd be a good place to lose a few." He waved his hand, deprecatingly.
“But—”