“Can you hear me?” He squatted on one knee beside her. No longer touching, but carefully watching.
Probably wondering why the hell she hadn’t moved.
Shit.
She held herself very still while she regained her equilibrium. Found herself staring into eyes so blue they looked like you could dive right in.
“I’m okay,” she managed. Her voice came out croaky, like some geriatric smoker. She forced herself up onto her elbows and her stomach recoiled.
Nat leaned back on his haunches and gave her a slow look she couldn’t decipher.
“You ever been anything but okay, Miss Reed?”
Too observant. Too perceptive. Elizabeth swallowed and nodded once, briefly. Tears burned her eyes, but she forced them away. She couldn’t afford to be weak now, couldn’t cope with sympathy. She’d made mistakes and she dealt with them the only way she knew how.
Alone.
Struggling to her feet, she flailed in the deep snow. Nat held out his hand and she hesitated only briefly before reaching out and letting him pull her to her feet. He held her hands in his, gently, but firmly.
Touching him, even with gloves on, was like touching fire. Heat and energy scoured her down to her toes.
Uneasy, she jerked away and felt even more foolish than she had before. She busily swept snow off her clothes. Out of the corner of one eye she watched Nat. He stood about a foot away, hat tipped to the back of his head, regarding her critically. He grinned openly when she brushed the snow off her backside.
“You could ride up behind me, you know,” he said, “if you’re not feeling too good.”
She looked up, forced a smile at him. Everything she’d been through, everything she’d suffered over the last few months pressed against her mind and tried to shut down the pretense.
“I’m okay.” The response was automatic and she grimaced.
“Sure, you are.” He pulled his hat forward before turning away to fetch the horses.
And she fought the urge to cry.
Tears did no good.
He stood behind her as she tried to remount Morven. Not touching her, but waiting, as if to catch her if she fell. She could feel his eyes bore into her back and knew he was waiting to give her a leg-up. If only she said the word. If only she asked.
She clamped her lips together. She didn’t want to need anybody. Didn’t want anyone’s help. She especially didn’t want to have Nat Sullivan’s hands on her body reminding her of heaven and hell with one simple touch.
Her head thumped and she felt lightheaded.
On the third attempt she managed to haul herself into the saddle with more luck than grace. Relief shunted through her body with a huff and the smile she gave him was brilliant.
“Made it.”
Nat held Morven’s reins as if judging her competence. She raised her chin a fraction, combated the wooziness by concentrating on the jagged edge of the distant mountains.
“From the depths of hell,” he said finally.
Chapter Four
Boston, April 3rd
Like a switch being thrown, Marsh figured out Elizabeth had gotten herself a decoy.
He’d captured stills from surveillance footage taken in the days prior to Elizabeth’s disappearance, and run them through in-house image-recognition programs they normally used to inspect art forgeries.
Someone had spent a day impersonating Elizabeth in her role as Juliette Morgan, before the decoy too had disappeared. It was simple, but clever. Agent Ward had gained herself twenty-four hours before every mobster from here to San Francisco had realized she’d slipped the noose.
Now he had a lead. All he had to do was track down the decoy, Josephine Maxwell.
Sounded easy.
He sat behind his utilitarian wooden desk in his neat and tidy office in his division’s headquarters. Laid out in front of him was everything he needed to know about Josephine Maxwell, except her current whereabouts.
Eighteen years ago, a nine-year-old girl had been knifed in Queens. Badly knifed if the reports were to be believed, and the doctors hadn’t expected the child to live. They’d fingerprinted her routinely—to distinguish hers from those of her attacker on the knife that had pinned her to the ground. And because she was a runaway, her prints had gone into the system.
The phone rang, but he ignored it.
He’d met Josephine once, briefly. Recognized her from the surveillance photos only after he’d put the pieces together. She looked seventeen and acted twelve. She was tall, as Elizabeth was tall, but willow-slim like a wraith. She must have worn body padding under the flashy suit she wore in the photographs. Her lips looked soft and full, the top one larger than the bottom, another subtle difference between the two women.
Breathtaking.
He placed both fists carefully on the table and stared at the file. He was missing something.
Her eyes held the essence of her beauty. Bright blue, full of mystery. A woman with the face of a princess and the temper of an alley cat. She’d loathed him on sight, not a reaction he usually got from women. He let out a long sigh and reread the report.
From the age of six, Josephine Maxwell had been in the System, removed from an alcoholic father. But every time she was placed in foster care, she bided her time and escaped back to the slums.
Marsh had an address for Josephine’s father but had no idea if he was still there. Sighing, Marsh rubbed his fingers through his short hair. He’d check it out.
The police report from the knife-attack contained a photograph of a thin, hollow-eyed girl. He chewed on the end of a Bic pen as he stared at the photograph. She was an enigma, a sewer rat with the looks of a supermodel and the wits of a street fighter. A beautiful blonde, who was about as far removed from a bimbo as cat food was from truffles.
He brought his mind back to his current problem—how to find Elizabeth. Elizabeth was thorough, smart, and she’d had plenty of time to set things up. She was also as rich as Rockefeller and a creature of habit. She was doggedly loyal to those she cared about and liked having backup plans. They both did.
And she liked to nail the bad guys.
Andrew DeLattio had destroyed the girl he’d known, the girl Marsh had recruited for the FBI and turned into a damn good undercover operative. Unlike OCU’s surveillance, his team would have protected her.
He pressed his fingers to his temples and leaned back in his chair. Marsh would only find Elizabeth if she wanted him to. Josephine Maxwell, however, was another matter.
****
“We gonna lose her?” Cal asked.
“Not if I can help it.” Nat’s teeth were clenched so hard the words escaped in a hiss. He knelt in fresh hay next to a chestnut mare. Hands resting on her heaving flank, he tried to soothe her with gentle words of encouragement. The foal was breech. If he stretched his hand far enough inside the mare, he could just feel tiny hocks. A rare event in equine labor but not insurmountable.
But that wasn’t the real problem. The real problem was that Banner, the ten-year-old Arab brood mare, was exhausted. She’d labored hard for close to sixteen hours and the foal hadn’t moved more than an inch. Nat had watched her from outside the loosebox for most of the day. Things had started okay, but as time crept on, he’d realized the mare was in trouble.
The lights were dimmed. A strip-light further up the center aisle of the stable block cast strong shadows.
Nat needed this foal. His fist curled over sweating palms as the mare bore down with another contraction. His pulse-rate accelerated until it was an unremitting roar in his ears. He needed this foal to live. He needed something to hope for.
When it had become obvious they were in for another freezing cold night in Montana, he’d turned on the heat. Spring hadn’t sprung in the Treasure State yet. He just prayed the utility company didn’t cut them off. They had a back-up generator in the root cellar, but that only supplied the main house.
Most of their horses were kept in the horse-barn next door, but nurs
ing and pregnant mares were cosseted here, in separate boxes with individual feeding regimes. The stable block was smaller than the horse-barn, built on concrete foundations that were easy to clean and maintain. Each of the twelve loose-boxes were floored with fresh hay and foam mats, more comfortable for the mares to stand on, they could be hosed down after mucking out.
Five years ago, it had been state-of-the-art.
His father had been building up the brood-stock and getting the facilities ready to turn the Triple H into a stud farm. It had been a dream they’d all shared. Now Jake Sullivan was dead and his medical bills had wiped out their finances. Paint peeled off the walls, the foam mats were ragged around the edges and the woodwork was in dire need of a coat of varnish. But there was no money for the little things.
“Veterinarian coming?” Cal stroked the mare’s sleek cheek, looked at Nat with sharp hazel eyes that had seen too much. Cal was more than just a hired hand; he and Nat had been friends since they were boys, through thick and thin.
Nat snorted. “Vet said he was pretty busy.”
Cal cursed a blue streak. Nat compressed his mouth into a thin line as he reined in his own temper. He’d phoned the vet five times and got nothing but the damned answering machine. It couldn’t be a coincidence. The vet wasn’t a local man. He was a newcomer from LA who’d just bought the practice in town. He had a penchant for shiny toys. Toys like the silver BMW Troy Strange had reputedly given him as a ‘thank you’ for saving his golden Labrador after it had chased a lone wolf up into the foothills. Damn dog was too stupid to live, but somehow the vet had saved it.
Figured. Seemed it was no longer survival of the fittest, instead it was survival of the richest.
The games his neighbor and his sex-crazed wife played were becoming more than just burrs in Nat’s side.
The mare was in second stage labor. The placenta had ruptured with a gush of yellow-brown liquid three hours ago. Nat had been buoyant, optimistic, but his mood had darkened as time had dragged on.
Normally second stage lasted twenty-to-thirty minutes.
Nat left the loose-box to fetch a length of thick cord. He scrubbed it in a bucket of hot soapy water and hoped to hell he knew what he was doing. The mare was suffering and wouldn’t last much longer.
“Called Logan.” Nat wiped sweat from his brow with his shirt sleeve, swallowed sawdust along with despondency. “He can’t get here for at least another hour.”
Logan Ryder was the former vet’s son, a friend from way back, who ranched down near Hungry Horse. His old man had died last spring, but Logan had spent his youth helping out his father and had more foaling experience than anybody Nat knew.
“One of his kids cut themselves on some broken glass,” Nat said.
“Serious?” Cal asked.
“The kid?” Nat looked up from scrubbing his hands. Shaking his head, he moved his hair out of his face with an impatient swipe. “Nah, Logan said she was okay, just needed a bunch of stitches.”
Cal nodded towards the cord. “What you gonna do?”
“Gonna get this foal out before Banner dies trying.”
Despite the chill, Nat was stripped down to his undershirt, sleeves rolled up. He soaped his hands, rinsed them well and soaped them again. Sweat gathered on his brow and ran down the sides of his face. His hair was damp with perspiration, his clothes rumpled and stained. Exhaustion weighted his muscles like water drag.
Nat made a noose with the cord and waited until the mare finished a contraction. Banner had gotten weaker, head lolling, her breath shallower after every muscle action. He inserted his hand, pushing the rope before him, then nudged the loop out in front of his fingers as he pushed against thick vaginal walls. His arms screamed with tension as he reached fully into the mare and felt just the tip of a sharp little hoof kick against his hand.
A spurt of energy buzzed around his body. At least the foal was still alive. Forcing himself to go just an inch further, he bit down in pain as another contraction hit and his arm was squeezed in a vice. Bones and joints compressed, pain shooting along nerves from his fingers to his elbow. He concentrated on the foal, not the pain, gritted his teeth and breathed out through his nose. The contraction stopped and Nat pressed forward and managed to loop not one, but two tiny hooves.
Hallelujah.
A fierce grin contorted his face as he pulled the coil tight, dragged the hooves back toward him. When he leaned forward again, he could just get a grip on the foal’s fetlocks.
“Get the rope,” he urged Cal.
Cal knelt behind him in the hay, gathered the slack as Nat tightened his grip on the foal. There was no time to waste.
“Next time she has a contraction, heave,” Nat said. He braced himself against the mare’s flank.
“Now!” Nat felt the muscles begin to bear down on his arm. He and Cal pulled as hard as they could while the contraction lasted. The mare kicked uselessly, clearly in agony, but too weak to fight.
The foal had shifted towards them.
He sensed rather than heard someone slip into the stable block and walk down the center aisle towards the stall. Pungent smells of horse and sweat filled the air. The wind rustled the skinny branches of the quaking aspens in the nearby forest so hard they rattled.
“Sas?” Nat shouted. Christ, he could sure do with some medical help.
“No,” Eliza Reed said. “It’s me.”
Nat looked over his shoulder and saw her peer uncertainly over the top of the half door.
The woman would be suspicious of water. He turned back to the mare. He didn’t have time to play tour-guide right now. Banner and her foal were dying.
Cal braced his knees on the ground as Nat prepared for the next contraction. Banner’s head lay still against the fresh hay, her breath a thin thread of steam from her nostrils.
“What’s going on? Where’s the vet?” Eliza Reed’s voice rose accusingly, clipping the Irish to a hard edge.
“Foal’s stuck.” Nat stroked the mare’s coat with his free hand. “Vet’s busy.”
Nat concentrated on the struggling mare. He’d bet a hundred-to-one the vet would have come to the aid of the likes of Mizz Eliza Reed.
“What do you mean the vet’s busy?” Her hoity-toity voice was outraged.
“Too busy for the likes of us,” Nat said not looking up. “That’s what I mean.” It was a damned shame. Banner was one of the most beautiful horses he’d ever known. Even tempered, but brave. She had pure Egyptian bloodlines and was worth thousands of dollars, but even that didn’t matter now. He just wanted this beautiful creature and her foal to live.
Another contraction began.
“Come on, Banner!” Nat urged.
Nat and Cal heaved with all their strength and again the foal shifted toward them.
Nat’s teeth came together with a snap of anger and the effort he exerted on the rope. He’d seen so much suffering and death in the last few years he was sick to his stomach of it. Please God, spare the mare.
“Come on girl.”
She was gonna die.
She was gonna die because their damned Texan neighbor had some twisted desire to force them out.
Eliza Reed slipped into the stall, skirted around them, and went to kneel beside Banner’s head.
He and Cal gathered for another effort. Banner was beginning to lose consciousness, her head laying still, her sides going lax.
Eliza laid a hand on the mare’s broad cheek, softly, like she was afraid to touch.
“Can I help?” she asked. Her luminous green eyes locked on his. Nat glanced away, but was drawn back reluctantly. There was something terribly vulnerable about that fierce determination. Something he didn’t want to acknowledge.
“Only if you believe in miracles,” Nat said.
Eliza’s eyes went flat. She shook her head.
Banner stopped breathing for a second. Nat’s stomach coiled like a snake in his gut.
“Come on girl,” Nat shouted, “Come ON!”
Time h
ad run out. They had to get the foal out of there. Cal grabbed a bucket of cold water and doused the mare’s back. She jolted and another contraction hit. Nat pulled on the cord with all his might, sinew stretching and muscles bulging with effort. Eliza joined him, straining against the rope, her breath coming in broken gasps behind him.
The foal was stuck fast. The mare shuddered suddenly and then lay still.
“Damn it to hell!” Nat shouted. The bellow reverberated around the stables, but the mare didn’t stir. He bowed his head, fighting back the tears that threatened to overwhelm him.
The mare lay motionless, her sides unmoving, her breath finished.
Banner was dead.
Banner was dead.
Failure tasted like acid in his mouth, his tongue glued to the roof with defeat.
They’d needed a miracle.
Eliza Reed was staring at him, wide-eyed, on her knees in the damp straw.
Nat’s teeth were clenched so hard they could have been fused. He swallowed. It was too late. Banner was dead. Numb on the inside, Nat took out his hunting knife, the blade six inches long and as sharp as a scalpel.
“What are you doing?” Eliza asked.
Kneeling next to the mare he put his hand on her warm flank, said a silent prayer for forgiveness and cut. He cut deep. Deep enough to expose the mare’s insides.
Despite death, the muscle contracted violently against the action of the knife. It curled up like heated plastic at the edges. Nat ignored the life-like spasms and cut deeply and quickly, careful not to slice into the unborn foal. Finally, with a whoosh of amniotic fluid Nat pulled the foal out.
It wasn’t breathing.
“Fuck.” He was vaguely aware that Cal and Eliza watched him with open-mouthed expressions of horror and distaste, but he didn’t care. Blood soaked the ground, soaked his clothes.
Nat cursed again, cleaned the mucus from the newborn’s nostrils. He clamped his left hand over the mouth and lower nostril and blew a big breath through the top nostril, deep into the tiny animal’s lungs.
Nothing.
He wiped his mouth, prayed and did it again, and again, compressed the tiny ribs down with a solid push—once, twice, three times. The foal coughed, gagged and opened its eyes.
Her Sanctuary Page 5