“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“My feet. I don’t have any shoes.”
From behind them came the first sounds, voices, the words as yet indistinct, though they both knew what those noises meant. The men had discovered Deke Summers had once more evaded the capture they had seemed so sure of. They would realize, however, that he hadn’t had time to go far. When they discovered that she, too, was missing and when they found the body of the man they had left to watch her—then would begin the pursuit, following them through the tangling vines and punishing branches of the forest.
Deke Summers took a step closer to her, and suddenly she was afraid. His action was unexpected and again she gasped a little with shock as he bent, locking his arm around her hips and lifting to throw her unceremoniously onto his shoulder in a classic fireman’s carry, her head and shoulders dangling over his back. Turning, he began to move again through the darkness of the woods, ignoring her almost voiceless protest.
She tried to raise her upper body, but his furious growl convinced her. “Be still, dammit, or you’re going to get us both killed,” he ordered.
Despite the questions she had about what was going on, Becki decided she was better off with a man who would slow his own escape to carry her away from his pursuers than with the strangers who had invaded her home tonight. She might know little about Deke Summers, but what she did know was far more reassuring than the nothing she understood about the men who were following them. Bullies, she decided, thinking how apt the old school-yard term was for the group who had come in the middle of the night to take, sleeping and unaware, the man who was now carrying her.
And then she didn’t think about them any more. Deke Summers had broken into a jog as soon as they’d reached the relative openness in the heart of the forest. Despite her weight, which he seemingly carried without effort, he was moving at a steady pace between the dark trunks of the tall pines, carrying her always farther away from the familiar security of home.
Chapter Four
Becki could not have estimated how long Deke Summers kept up his distance-eating pace. Gradually she felt the thin cotton of the black long-sleeve knit shirt he wore grow wet with sweat, clammy and uncomfortable under her body, chafing the softness of her breasts and stomach.
As the first streaks of dawn were starting to bleed through the night sky, she wanted to suggest that he put her down, that she could walk, but her feet were still burning from the short distance she had managed on her own when they’d begun, and she knew that would only slow them down. However, despite his strength and obviously excellent physical condition, she also knew there had to be a limit to how far he could carry her.
Still, she was not prepared when he stopped. Since she had only been able to catch occasional bouncing glimpses through the woods behind them, she was suddenly afraid he’d encountered some danger, some menace blocking the path of their retreat.
He eased her down, bending his knees to allow her feet to touch the ground before he released her. He even kept his hand under her elbow until he knew she’d found her balance. He looked back in the direction they’d come, listening for any sound of pursuit. There was nothing in the forest behind them, no sign even that they were being followed. The only noise was his own harsh breathing, panting with the exertion he’d made.
Deke turned back to find her looking at him.
“Everything’s okay,” he reassured. “I just needed a breather.”
“Are they back there?” she asked. “I can’t hear anything.”
“They’re there. But I think we’ve managed to put a little distance between, and they don’t know the direction we’re heading.”
“Are we heading somewhere?” she asked. She hadn’t thought about where he might be carrying her. Just away. Away from the pursuit.
“Always have a destination,” Deke advised softly, gentling her fear with his confidence, exactly as he would have done with a frightened animal, with a spooked and terrified horse.
“And we do?”
“Just a few miles away.”
Becki tried to think, more familiar with the area than he was, she believed, but she was so disoriented by their passage through the woods that she really had no idea where he might mean.
“The highway,” he said, reading the questions moving behind her transparent features. Deke was surprised at how clearly he’d been able to follow what she was thinking. But, then, that was what had gotten them into this situation to begin with. His awareness of what she was thinking.
“But…?”
“There’s a car. And some equipment. No shoes, I’m afraid. I didn’t know I was going to have to take you with me.”
He waited patiently for the impact of that information to reach her brain. He knew everything was happening too fast for her to assimilate it all. She had had no warning, although he had considered, after he’d been stupid enough—drunk enough, he amended—to kiss her, whether or not he should prepare her for this possibility. And then he had decided that he’d been wrong—too edgy and suspicious. Living the way he had for so long would do that to a man, he knew, so he had seen no need to frighten her with his bogeymen. No need until they had shown up tonight. And by then it was far too late to explain to her what was going on.
“Go with you?” she repeated, her voice rising slightly at the end of the phrase.
“You can’t stay here,” he said, glancing back into the midnight forest behind them.
“Why not?” she asked. “I live here. I don’t have anything to do with this. With you.”
His gaze came back to her face, studying it, evaluating how much he should tell her.
“They think you do,” he said softly.
“They think we’re…” She paused, searching for words to describe what they’d suggested, words less offensive than the crude phrase the leader had used.
“I know,” he said, saving her the trouble.
“But that’s not true. I…” She paused again. The truth had little value here. What was important, and dangerous, was their perception of the truth. “They said you killed babies,” she accused, suddenly remembering what she’d been told, but at the flinch of pain in his eyes, quickly controlled, she was sorry she’d repeated it.
“No,” he denied. Nothing else. No explanation.
“No?” she said, still a question, thinking of his treatment of Josh, his aversion to allowing the child to get too close. Could it be…She blocked that thought because instinctively she knew it wasn’t true. This man didn’t kill children. No matter what the voice from the darkness had suggested.
Deke didn’t answer her. He was tired of defending himself against their version of events, which it had never done him any good to deny.
“I’m sorry I said that,” she whispered. “I know it’s not true.”
“Do you?” he asked, the quiet bitterness in his voice unexpected after its calmness. “And how do you know?”
“Because…” she said and then paused. Because of the way I feel. Because I couldn’t feel about someone, be attracted to someone who would do that. “I just don’t think you could do that.”
He turned his head again to the almost impenetrable darkness behind, hiding his eyes, she realized. Not allowing her to read his reaction to the disclaimer she’d just made.
“Why did they say that?” she asked.
Head still averted, he answered, his voice carefully emotionless again. “Because…” He hesitated, wondering why he was bothering. Because it matters, he admitted to himself. Because for some reason it matters what she believes. “Something went wrong. A long time ago. Something I was part of.”
“Did you do something wrong?” she asked.
Right and wrong, he thought. Black and white. Good and evil. All the easy divisions people make every day. Did you do something wrong? It was the question he lived with. Was there anything he could have done differently? Anything that would have made a difference in the outcome? And still, after all this time, he did
n’t have an answer.
He turned back to meet her eyes, wide and dark, searching his face for the truth. He let her look at whatever was there, wondering what she saw. Too often when he looked into the mirror now, he no longer knew the man who was reflected there. A stranger, after so many years on the run, years of living someone else’s life.
“We have to go,” he ordered, putting an end to the discussion. Bending, he put his arm under her hips, lifting her slight weight with the muscles in his thighs. This time she made no protest as he picked her up. Sighting on the stars he could still see through the branches that spread darkly above their heads, he moved off again in the direction of the car he’d left at the other side of the huge woods that backed the two houses, always ready for a situation such as the one he’d been confronted with tonight.
Only, as he’d confessed to Becki Travers, this was a journey he had never expected to make with a woman. That possibility had not entered into his careful planning of an escape route, planning that was as automatic to him now as buying groceries for the upcoming week was to normal people. This was his life. Not one he had chosen, but one that had been forced on him. And one that now included a responsibility he had never wanted. The responsibility for the woman he carried, and for the dark-eyed little boy he knew he had to find.
WHEN THEY STOPPED AGAIN, it was full light and the heat was beginning to build even in the shaded depths of the woods. It had taken him far longer than he had hoped to reach the automobile, but he had been hampered, of course, by the burden he carried.
He eased her down by the old black Trans Am he’d bought two months ago and hidden here. He had fixed the mechanical problems he’d found, working on the car on his way to and from the carpentry jobs he’d taken. An hour stolen here and there, not enough discrepancy to cause comment. Nothing in his careful existence was allowed to draw attention to himself or to seem out of the ordinary. That was the key to hiding successfully—becoming invisible to the people who surrounded him, people who were exactly like whatever role he’d undertaken.
He allowed himself to lean against the car for a moment, a brief respite to catch his breath. His clothing was wet with sweat, but the unpleasant sensation was something he unconsciously ignored, his long-ago military training standing him in good stead. It had taught him to disregard pain and tiredness, setting his mind on the goal ahead rather than on the trivialities of the present. He glanced up finally at the woman he had carried for miles through the dark woods, standing silently just where he’d put her down. Watching him.
Becki had been vaguely aware that her cotton nightshirt was wet with her rescuer’s perspiration, but she hadn’t realized exactly how revealing that dampness was until Deke Summers’s gaze skimmed over her body, touching on the small peaks of her breasts, clearly outlined against the material. She put her right hand on her left shoulder, massaging as if trying to relax a cramped muscle. At that protective movement, his eyes lifted, finding a focus beyond her, examining the woods behind them.
“Now what?” she asked.
His eyes came back to her face at the question. He had felt the responses to her small body in his, hard and suddenly aching. And he fought them. Denying, as he had denied all along. He was too near the edge, too close to losing control—and that really scared him. Control was how he kept functioning. He had known he was in trouble here. First, the pull of the little boy, seeking his attention. And then his physical response to the woman.
He had gotten drunk and then he’d kissed her—despite the fact that caring about another person was the most forbidden luxury in his carefully emotionless existence. And the sight of Becki Travers standing before him in the light of morning, her thin shirt wet with sweat from his body, clinging to her softness in all the wrong places—wrong at least for his peace of mind—reinforced the fears that he was losing this particular battle.
She had had enough to accept in the past few hours without having to worry about his obvious sexual attraction. He turned away, opening the passenger door he’d been leaning against, trying to control not only his breathing, still unnaturally heavy, but his other involuntary response. Heavy, he thought, described both pretty well.
He was about to have to tell this woman that she had to get into the car with him and leave behind all she had ever known. It wouldn’t help that situation if she were aware of the effect she had on him. The same effect she had had since he’d first seen her. His body’s reaction would not be a convincing argument that he intended to do nothing but take care of her and Josh until he could figure out who he could trust enough to arrange some kind of protection for them. But that had been what he had tried to do before, he remembered. Arrange protection.
For an instant, the images Deke Summers never allowed to invade his mind were there, sneaking in against his constant vigilance. That way lay madness, he had recognized long ago. Just thinking about the heat and the color of the flames. And the noise. The smell. Suddenly it was all there in his head, fighting against his sanity, against his ability to function.
He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again he was still standing before the passenger door, looking blindly down into the interior of the Pontiac. He could feel the metal of the door frame biting into his palm from the force of his grip. And her hand on his other arm, which rested against the top of the low car.
“Mr. Summers?” she said hesitantly, her voice full of unease, fearful.
Who the hell wouldn’t be frightened, Deke thought. He was. Afraid of what happened when he lost control. A control he had imposed on his consciousness for four years. A refusal to remember.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
Deliberately, he turned to her, aligning his mouth in the contour that his brain told him was a smile. It felt forced and unnatural, but hell, he thought, it was forced. And pretty damned unnatural for the man he had become.
“I’m just thinking about the best thing to do.”
“And?” she questioned, her hand still on his arm. Against his will, he could feel his body responding again. It had been so long since a woman had touched him. Such an achingly long time since anyone had touched him.
“I think you’re going to have to come with me. Given what they think.”
“I can’t. This is my home. My family—” She stopped, realizing that her argument was having no effect on the surety in the blue eyes, and with what had happened during the night, she even understood. “We can go to the sheriff. He can arrange protection. Something.”
“For the rest of your life?” he asked softly.
“That’s ridiculous. No one—” she began, intending to assure him that no one would want to harm her when he was gone.
“You think he can hide you? For how long? And where? They’ll find you, Ms. Travers. They won’t give up until they find you. Or Josh.”
It was his strongest inducement, Deke knew. Reminding her of the danger to her son.
“Please let me call Sheriff Tate.”
“Look,” he said patiently, trying to make her understand. “You don’t know these people. You can’t ever know who’s involved with them. A lot of law-enforcement guys get caught up in the Movement because of their frustration. They see themselves as vigilantes, shoring up a system that doesn’t work any more.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t understand who those people back there are or what they want, but I’ve known Jim Tate all my life. He’s a good man. A family man. He wouldn’t be mixed up in anything—”
“He doesn’t have to be involved,” he said. “He just has to be…connected.” It was so hard to explain, the tenuous ties that bound them. Sometimes they consisted of only a conversation with a faceless, nameless entity, information shared without thought of its consequences, of the dark reality of those consequences. The computers somehow allowed that distance, that disassociation from normal constraints. “Just a connection. And a lot of those men who were in your house last night see themselves as good men.”
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She remembered that that had been her first assessment. She didn’t know how she could argue against his reasoning when she didn’t understand what it was based on.
“Who are they?” she asked.
“Those particular men? I have no idea,” he told her truthfully. Then against her puzzled rejection of that, expressed by the negative movement of her head, he went on. “They’re part of a network that stretches across this country. Bound together by ideology. By frustration. Fear.”
“I don’t think—” she began, denying the ridiculous scenario that the two of them were being chased by some nationwide group of conspirators.
“The militia movements. Paramilitary. Patriot groups. Tentacles spread out in all directions like an octopus, all the way to the extremities of the hate groups, the real crazies. They’re out there, all shades of the rainbow.”
“That’s what those men were? Militia?”
“I honestly don’t know where on the spectrum they fall. It’s a pretty wide range.”
“And they’re after you? Because of something you did?” Again seeing reaction in the tightening of the muscles around his mouth, she amended, “Something they think you did?”
He nodded.
“How did they find you?”
“My picture’s posted on a couple of bulletin boards.”
“Wanted posters?” she asked, thinking about the black-and-white pictures in the post office, which she never really looked at.
“Something like that. Only mine are on electronic bulletin boards sent out all over the country. One way the Movement communicates is through the Internet. There’s a lot of information shared that way. My whereabouts have sometimes been part of that information.”
“But I don’t have anything to do with that. I don’t even know you. Why do I need to come with you? Surely—”
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