Maggie's Man

by Alicia Scott

  Cain was quiet, his finger tapping the steering wheel, his mind racing ahead to try and divine the point she was heading toward. "Do you want to believe I won't hurt anyone else?" he asked carefully. "Will that make you feel better, Maggie?"

  "I'm just thinking out loud," she said and shrugged innocently. "I'm just thinking, here's this man who's supposed to be dangerous and I haven't seen you hit so much as a wall. By your own admission you don't drink. I've seen you angry, I've seen you desperate, but for crying out loud, you didn't even swear. You've threatened me, but you've never actually hit me. You've never thrown things, you've never had a rage-filled tantrum. For a man who allegedly committed a crime of passion, I have yet to see you so enraged that you couldn't control your own impulses. In fact, you appear to be an amazingly restrained and cerebral person."

  "Maybe I've just matured over the past six years."

  She looked at him quite seriously. "I don't think so. You know, Cain, you've never said you killed her. You said you allegedly killed her."

  He didn't say anything. He wasn't sure he could. And suddenly, he didn't know anymore what he wanted.

  "Tell me," she whispered softly. "Did you kill your girlfriend? Did you kill Katherine Epstein?"

  He found he couldn't breathe. He found that the words wanted to escape from his throat without his permission, and he'd said them so many times before and it had never mattered. He realized abruptly that he just couldn't take it. He couldn't claim innocence and then survive the look of open doubt that would wash over her clear, expressive face.

  He'd stood alone so long now. He wanted to just remain there, an island who could never be touched by another betrayal. He didn't need as other people needed, he reminded himself. He'd grown up alone, moved to the city alone, survived six years of solitary. Maybe he had become an island. He was simply untouchable.

  "It doesn't matter," he murmured to his inquisitive companion. "It doesn't matter."

  Maggie frowned, looking ready to contradict him, but suddenly headlights appeared up ahead. She perked up instantly, leaning forward. He glanced at the speedometer and forced himself to maintain a steady pace. The headlights before them appeared stationary in the rainy night, and the only car he could picture watching the road on a night like this was a police car.

  Maggie leaned forward even more, her gaze peeled.

  But it wasn't a police car. It appeared to be a hatchback of some kind, tilted off the road, its tires deep in the red mud. As they drove by, a young couple appeared, their hair plastered against their rain-soaked faces, their arms waving frantically for help.

  Cain winced instantly. It was already too late. Maggie's gaze was on his face.

  "There's no one else around," she said for her opening statement.

  "Exactly. Including us."

  "It's cold out, they're soaked to the skin. They could catch pneumonia and die."

  "Only in a Bronte novel."

  "Cain." She touched his arm and they both flinched. For a moment, his eyes abandoned the road and stared at her simple white fingers resting on his arm. She had short, sensibly cut nails. She had a small, sensible hand.

  The truck tugged to the right. He yanked the wheel in the other direction and almost overcompensated them right into a ditch. Her fingers dug into his arm, and he straightened the truck quickly.

  "Please," she whispered.

  "I'm an escaped murderer," he said, but for some reason it sounded as if he were pleading with her.

  "All right," she said earnestly, her shoulders assuming that determined look he knew too well. "I'll make a deal with you."

  "You're a hostage. What kind of deal can you make?"

  "I'll cooperate."

  "Cooperate? Maggie, I have a gun. Of course, you'll cooperate."

  "But it's only under duress, don't you see? You have to handcuff me to yourself, or to the bed. You have to plan when you sleep, you have to do all the driving and worry about my every move. You're the one who said you needed to be well rested to successfully pull this off. How are you ever going to be well rested if you're constantly having to worry about me?"

  He blinked in the darkness. Her argument was amazingly lucid, which frankly scared him.

  "So," she continued, sounding not at all cowed but actually quite brisk, "if you go back and just check on them, I'll cooperate. You might not even have to get out of the truck. Just pull up, you know. I'll roll down the window and ask them what they need, make sure it's no medical emergency or crisis, and the whole thing will be done in just five minutes. They'll be helped, and you'll have my unlimited cooperation for twenty-four hours. I could even do some of the driving and you could get more sleep. You must be very tired."

  His eyes narrowed. He turned this scenario over in his head several times even as his foot was somehow slipping off the gas pedal of its own volition. "I let you drive and you can drive us straight to the authorities," he pointed out quietly.

  She actually appeared indignant. "I beg your pardon! I'm a woman of my word!"

  Well, he'd been put in his place, he thought dryly. "But you'd be helping a murderer," he persisted nevertheless. "Surely even a 'woman of her word' doesn't lose sleep over turning in a murderer."

  Her fingers curled around his forearm again. He found himself staring at her once more and her strong, pale face was sober. "Listen to me. You've already said it yourself. You're going to get to Idaho one way or another. There doesn't seem to be much I can do about that. I wish I was like Brandon or C.J.," she said abruptly, and for a minute, her tone was wistful. "But I'm not. I never will be. I'm just me, and I'm telling you if you will stop and give five minutes to help those two poor abandoned people, I'll cooperate. Cain, it's such an awful night and they're all alone in the middle of nowhere. We can't just leave them like that."

  "Maggie," he said quietly, "when you buy six-packs, you take off those plastic rings, don't you? You take off the rings and cut them with scissors so the dolphins won't get them stuck around their snouts and slowly starve to death."

  "Of course! And everyone else should as well!"

  "And those commercials to support a child overseas, paying for their food and shots and ABCs—you adopted one of those children, didn't you?"

  "Well, two."

  "And when you pass homeless people you buy them meals?"

  "Everyone has hard luck sometimes."

  "Of course." He knew he shouldn't do this. He knew turning around was the height of stupidity and he was not a man who could afford to be stupid. But she sat so regally at the edge of the bench seat, looking earnest and sincere and so well intentioned, he couldn't find the word no. Was it that she reminded him of his mother, and the natural grace and beauty she'd had? Or was it that she reminded him how it felt to be a man and not prisoner number 542769?

  "You've given me your word," he reminded her quietly.

  She nodded just as soberly. "My word."

  "All right, Maggie. I accept your proposition."

  He slowed the truck down and turned.

  The couple appeared again as they drove up, looking soaked to the bone and unbearably happy that help had finally arrived. Cain pulled the truck alongside after instructing Maggie to lock her door. He was very conscious of the gun tucked against his skin as Maggie unrolled her window.

  "What's wrong?" she shouted above the rain.

  "Car's stuck," the young man shouted back. He didn't look a day over eighteen and the freckles stood out prominently on his cheeks. Maggie looked instantly at Cain.

  "All right, all right," he surrendered, not even needing her to ask. "We've taken it this far."

  He pulled the truck up ahead of the car, leaving it parked on the road since the sides did look thick and muddy. "Stay here," he said. "This should only take a minute."

  "I can help, too," she replied and jumped out into the rain-soaked night as he was opening his mouth to protest. Cooperation? This was cooperation?

  He shook his head and advanced, the rain slaking across his
face and instantly molding his clothes to his body. He kept his arm crooked protectively over the spot where he'd tucked the gun.

  "Thank God you stopped," the young man gushed instantly. "Me and my wife have been stuck here for two hours now. Damn, is it wet and cold. I was beginnin' to think that was just it—we're never gonna get out."

  Cain eyed the car. Its wheels were deeply mired in the mud. Luckily, it was small and didn't look like it weighed much. "I'll get around back," he suggested. "You lift from the front."

  The boy nodded, and Cain got to it. He didn't want to linger any more than he had to, especially with Maggie standing there getting soaked to the bone as she patted the young wife's hand and assured her everything was going to be all right.

  Cain had just bent his knees to grasp the bumper of the old automobile when he realized the young man hadn't followed him. He looked up, already scowling through the sheets of rain.

  And faster than he could blink, the young man reached beneath his sweatshirt, ripped out a gun and leveled it against Maggie's head. She froze instantly, her eyes turning into huge blue saucers.

  "I'll take the keys to the truck," the young man announced. His body rocked side to side, his Adam's apple bobbed. His young face was a case study for desperation. Even then, Cain had to blink several times to register what was happening. Just how many gun-toting felons were running around this state anyway?

  "The keys!" the young man barked, and pressed the gun against Maggie's forehead. She whimpered helplessly, her blue eyes rolling to Cain, begging for his assistance.

  He still had his gun. He wasn't as brilliant a shot as Ham, but he'd trained with a firearm every day of his youth. He could take out the kid, though the boy might pull the trigger reflexively, hitting Maggie.

  A man had to be prepared. A man had to be ready to make sacrifices. War has casualties, his father barked. A man accepts those casualties! No pain, no remorse, no regret. You kill or be killed! That is the world today, my sons, that is how we live.

  His gaze returned to Maggie's pale, rain-soaked face. Her red hair was plastered against her cheeks, already looking like blood. Her blue eyes beseeched him.

  Slowly, he lifted his hands in the air. "All right," he said quietly, keeping his voice calm because the kid and his wife looked close to panic. "Take the truck. We won't try to stop you. Just lower the gun."

  "The keys," the kid insisted.

  "I don't have the keys," Cain confessed steadily. "I hotwired the vehicle."

  The kid stared at him incredulously. "You stole that truck?"

  "Yes."

  "You stole that truck and then came back in this kinda weather to help two strangers?"

  "Yes."

  The kid looked over at his female accomplice, a thin slip of a woman, and then started laughing. "Jesus, sir," the kid exclaimed. "You're stupider than anyone I ever met."

  "That could be," Cain agreed dryly. Maggie, still wary of the gun, flushed, her eyes squeezing shut. "Take the truck," Cain repeated. "I won't try to stop you. Just lower your gun."

  The kid looked at him one last time, then looked at Maggie, then at his wife. He shrugged and abruptly tucked the gun back into his jeans. Cain's hand twitched spasmodically, but he kept it fisted at his side. If he pulled out his gun now, Maggie might get caught in the cross fire.

  A man accepts casualties. Not this man, Dad. I don't play that game. I will not live my life like that.

  And I will find a way to triumph anyway.

  Two minutes later, their big, blue, beautiful stolen truck with his supplies and her purse went tearing off into the night.

  Cain strode forward and caught Maggie just as her knees gave out and she sank toward the rich red mud.

  "Oops," she whispered, her soaked lashes fluttering against her rain-soaked cheeks.

  "Oops," he agreed and cradled her wet, boneless body in his arms.

  Chapter 8

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  "All right. Give it some gas."

  Inside the relative warmth and shelter of the car, Maggie obediently pressed on the pedal. Behind her, Cain pushed against the tiny vehicle, his face contorted with fierce effort. The tires spun in the rich red mud. Cain pushed harder, his broad shoulder pressed against the muddy bumper, and Maggie could feel the vehicle rock and buck as if even it felt tired, wet, filthy and ready to get on with it.

  But the greedy mud didn't release its grasping, sucking grip.

  "Stop," Cain called out at last, his voice frustrated. Maggie's foot obediently slipped away. She studied him in the rearview mirror as she sat quietly, waiting for the next command. He was soaked to the bone now, his clothes molded to his solid frame and liberally streaked with mud. Rain dripped steadily off the black rim of his baseball cap, hammering against his cold white cheeks and running down his strong, corded neck. He didn't seem to notice the discomfort or chill. He simply stood there, his green eyes narrowed as he contemplated his options.

  He looked strong and enduring against the dark night sky, calm and steady. The Rock of Gibraltar, Maggie thought. He spoke like that, too. He looked her in the eye and, even under the worst circumstances, maintained a low, rumbling baritone that soothed.

  It was her fault they were in this mess, so to speak. But he hadn't yelled at her—as her mother would have. He hadn't turned away from her stonily—as her father would have. He didn't try to protect her from the consequences or tell her it wasn't really her fault—as Lydia, C.J., and Brandon would have.

  He had simply looked at her levelly and said, "I guess we have a new vehicle now. Let's get it on the road."

  Now, he crossed his arms over his chest, still analyzing the car speculatively, as if it were some riddle that would be easily solved if he could just deduce the key. Then abruptly, he scowled and raised his foot to kick the car, in the universal gesture of "logic be damned, let's kill the beast." Safely ensconced in the front seat, Maggie placed a hand over her mouth to hide her smile.

  Finally, she popped open the door. He looked up immediately.

  "I'll help push," she said, planting her first foot outside the car. The wind had picked up, and it slapped the rain against her bare calf like an angry, hissing woman.

  "You don't have to do that," he said immediately. "Honestly, Maggie, I don't think it will make a difference."

  "I'm stronger than I look," she said haughtily, bringing up her chin as she got out of the car anyway. The rain hit her hard, instantly molding her silk blouse against her arms and torso and chilling her to the bone. Despite her best intentions, she shivered, then crossed her arms across her chest for warmth.

  Though he didn't say anything further, Cain still looked skeptical, which aggravated her bruised pride. "I will have you know," she said as she took her first step into the squishy, sucking mud with her sandaled foot, "that I could build hay forts with the best of them, tossing and stacking straw bales into rebel hideaways just as well as C.J. and Brandon. They, of course, thought I should play Princess Leia to their Han Solo and Luke Skywalker. Princess Leia be damned. I always opted to be Chewbacca." Her foot disappeared completely into the mud, and with it, her favorite sling-back pumps. She stared down at the red ooze in shock while the rain raked over her back.

  "Hay forts? What's a tiny rich girl doing building hay forts and playing 'Star Wars'?"

  "Having fun," she said impatiently and experimented with raising her foot. The mud clung tight, pulling her foot down deeper like a gaping, gulping mouth. With a slight shiver, she pulled earnestly and was finally rewarded by the mud giving up with a popping, squishy gasp. Her foot came flying back to her, just in time for a next step. She proceeded with pigheaded determination and shivering fear. "We—C.J., Brandon and myself," she supplied, continuing to talk so she wouldn't have to think of the mud, or the rain, or the chill, "spent our summers on my grandmother's dairy farm in Tillamook. Have you ever been to Tillamook?"

  Cain shook his head. "I've just eaten the cheese. It's very good cheese."

  "The cheese, c
ertainly. But Cain, you haven't lived until you've eaten the fudge. Oh my, that fudge…" She sighed wistfully, already tasting the white fudge with caramel strips melting creamy and rich on her tongue. She forced herself back to attention.

  Cain still stood patiently behind the right rear wheel of the car, waiting for her to get around the vehicle. Once she'd made her intention clear, he hadn't tried to stop her but simply accepted her decision. She liked that about him. She liked that about him immensely. He respected her decisions, and for the first time in her life that made her feel strong.

  "Well," she forced herself to continue briskly as she braved another cautious step and promptly watched her second Italian leather shoe sink into the red ooze, "you should go to Tillamook. It's nestled between the mountains and the coast like this tiny green emerald, shrouded in mist and filled with rolling green hills dotted with black-and-white heifers. You can hear the cows chewing their cud in rhythm with the crashing waves. My grandmother came to Tillamook in 1928, the year the Kellogg-Briand Pact outlawed war, Mickey Mouse was born and President Coolidge refused to aid our farmers mired in the agricultural depression. Her parents had set out from New Mexico to Oregon. My grandmother's youngest sister, Vivian, died during the first week from a scorpion sting. Her oldest brother, Joseph, died in Utah from an overdose of penicillin, given to him by an ignorant doctor. But they finally made it to Oregon and to Tillamook." Maggie arrived to the corner of the vehicle and stopped walking long enough to look at Cain proudly as she finished the story she'd been told more times than she could count. "My grandmother said she took one look at the tall, mist-shrouded mountains and lush, fertile fields, and knew she'd found home. And I will tell you there is no place on earth as beautiful as Tillamook, and you've never smelled sweetness until you stand in the middle of an alfalfa field in August as they bale the grass, and you've never seen stars until you sit on a patio and look up at the Tillamook night. Those were the best summers of my life. The … the best…"