I didn't think he was going to answer me, he was so quiet. Then Kit cleared his throat.
"Would that be in a medical capacity?" he asked.
"No. It would be in a fellow traveler capacity," I managed to croak.
"Okay," he said. "I'm in your able hands. Let me get this shirt off."
"Oh goodie."
His blue eyes twinkled again. "Dr. O'Neill? Did you just say "Oh goodie'?"
"You can call me Frannie. I told you that before. And yes, that's what I said. Oh goodie."
Chapter 49
MAX WAS WATCHING THE TWO OF THEM from a safe distance, at least she hoped she was safe. Her mind was going about a million miles an hour.
Warm tears streamed down her face and she couldn't make them stop.
That got her angry. She hated to show any weakness, and she almost never did, but so much had happened in such a short time. She was on the run. No, she was inflight.
Max knew it was stupid, but she just couldn't keep the tears from flowing. She couldn't shake a particular image out of her mind. She'd been shocked when she saw the rock come down on the head of the poor fish. The woman doctor had been so cold when she did it. Just the way they were at the School. Cold, cold, cold.
How could she kill that fish? Put it to sleep?
It had been a living thing.
It probably had babies and a nice place to live in that beautiful stream back there a ways.
Now it was dead because the doctor had put it to sleep.
Max sat on a branch, shivering and crying softly to herself She was never going to be safe out here in the world, and she felt terribly alone and sad. She missed Matthew so much that she couldn't even bear to think about him. The world outside the School was as scary as Uncle Thomas had always told her it was. Only he'd never scared her half as much as she'd been in the last few days.
At least she had found a safe, high place where she could see the man and woman and their roaring, blazing campfire. She didn't like to admit it, but the cooking fish did smell awfully good. Her stomach rumbled, reminding her how long it had been since she'd put anything solid in it.
She wished she had someone to talk to.
The woman doctor and her friend were sitting on the edge of the hill watching the sunset. The sun, as it went down, was pretty, like orange marmalade and grape jelly mixed together. F-o-o-D, she thought. J-E-LL-Y. Sitting here, watching the same sunset they were watching, made her feel she was with them. Was she getting them all wrong? If she went to them and asked politely, would they help her? She liked to think that life could work that way. But no. She knew better.
She spied on the man and woman as they sat and talked around the fire. She could tell they liked each other, She was having conflicting thoughts about the woman doctor. She wanted so badly to trust her. That was her instinct. She just couldn't see how all the gooey, soothing, don't worry I'm not going to hurt yous in the world could be believed.
Then the couple were eating their dinner, and watching that made Max ravenously hungry. She listened as they talked and laughed, even caught a few words. Thorn in the side... over the hill... antibacterial gunk...."
She wished she could sit with them and eat a baked potato at least.
Potatoes were living things, too, but she could handle that.
She scrunched forward to watch, to see them better. What's going on now? What are they doing?
As she watched from the tree limb, the doctor went and squatted next to the man. She began to take off his clothes, his shirt first. The man was bigger than the doctor and he overpowered her! What was he doing to her?
He lay down on top of the pretty doctor, but she didn't push him away, didn't fight him at all. They were laughing, smiling, and then they began to kiss.
"They're mating," Max whispered.
Chapter 50
I HAD A FIRST-AID KIT in hand as I knelt down beside Kit. I carefully opened the buttons of his shirt. When I got to the one closest to his waist, I had to pull the bunched-up shirt out of his pants. He winced from the friction of cloth against raw skin.
"Sorry," I said. "Sorry."
"It's okay, Frannie. I live for pain."
I stared at firelight playing over taut chest muscles and a mat of bright curls. I reached for the tube of ointment, fumbled, and almost dropped it.
The lid spun off into the dirt.
I put some of the medicated goo on my fingers and carefully touched his body. Odd. My fingers were trembling a little. I could hear my own breathing, which was too loud in my ears, but I was certainly focused on the task at hand.
So much so that I was surprised when Kit lightly grabbed my wrist.
"Did I hurt you?" I asked.
He shook his head. "No, but you're killing me, Frannie."
Kit put his free arm around my waist, and in one smooth movement lifted me and set me down on my back in the grass and pine needles, half covered me with his body. He was obviously strong, probably a hundred eighty pounds, but he was also gentle.
My arms were high and tight around his neck. He pulled me against him and I felt him, all of him, against my thigh. I didn't have any fears or doubts about this, none at all. That surprised me, shocked me, actually, but there it was out in the open.
I wanted his mouth, and suddenly it was mine, as sweet and fresh as I had imagined. I was starving for this, the salty taste of him, the touch of his hands, the roughness of his day-old beard against my skin. I wanted Kit so very much, more than I could have imagined.
Kit lightly ran his hands over my breasts but there was too much fabric between us. I heard soft moaning sounds coming from my throat, which I barely recognized as my own. I tried to help him undress me. I was pulling at my workout top. I was struggling with his shorts, too. I hadn't felt like this in so long.
He looked at me and his eyes were warm and sincere and, most of all, honest. I recognized the look, and suddenly I realized how much he liked me, and how much I cared about him already. A bolt of lightning had hit me, and I never, ever saw it coming. I never suspected, never would have guessed this could happen. It was kind of scary, but also unbelievably exciting and wonderful.
Two years of grief and repression had combusted in a rare moment, I felt his hand at my belt, cinching it tighter so that the buckle's tongue would slip from its notch. I heard the zipper of my shorts give way under his fingers. I wanted this to happen. I was melting, and it was my choice.
Cool air rushed around my thighs as he slid my shorts down to my knees. I shivered, and I loved everything about the moment, our first time like this, the suddenness of it, the surprise.
I reached for his belt. The leather was stiff, unyielding. I was wrestling with the buckle when I heard him saying my name. I shivered at the sound of it and I wanted him inside me now.
"Frannie, Frannie. Wait. Stop."
Wait? Stop?
I forced myself to look at Kit's face. It was as if someone had suddenly turned on powerful bright lights. I blinked at him. Wait?
Stop?
"We're both out of our minds," he said, panting. "I don't know where I'll be next week." He sighed deeply. "I don't even know where I'll be tomorrow."
I wanted to say, so what? Instead, I felt a wave of almost unbearable sadness. One small particle of brain matter was still rational. It told me that I wasn't going to make love to Kit and get over it easily. I wasn't going to forget this night in the mountains, or him.
I nodded. "Okay," I said.
"Okay?"
"Okay. You're right. I wasn't thinking. Let's stop before we make a big mistake."
"I'm sorry," he said into my hair. He sighed again. "I really want to do this. I love being with you. It's just that -" I put my forefinger across his lips. "Don't," I said. We held each other for a good long time, long enough for our heartbeats to slow, anyway. I had stopped melting - but not really.
We kissed again, this time a gentler, more civilized kiss. To show we could still be friends? Then I stood up and pulled
on my shorts.
I found my sleeping bag in a heap where I'd left it a few hours before and dragged it to the far side of the fire. How could I have been feeling so good, and now suddenly feel so unbearably bad?
"Frannie," Kit said.
"Yuh?" I whispered. My voice sounded thick. Yuh?
"Bring your sleeping bag over here next to me."
I hesitated. Shook my head in silence. I think that maybe my pride demanded a little distance. Stop? Wait?
"Do it," he said. Then more gently, "Please. I'm the G-man, remember?
You're the civilian. I've got the gun. You'll be safer where I can see YOU."
Ah. He did have the gun.
To hell with my doctorate in veterinary medicine. Forget that I could outrun him, outclimb him, and that I'd slept in these mountains gunless and manless other times before. I picked up my sleeping bag and unrolled it next to him. I did what Kit asked me to do.
"I'm sorry," he whispered before I fell asleep. "I'm really sorry."
Very noble of you, Kit.
Chapter 51
KIT COULDN'T BELIEVE HIS EYES. The children were flying. The two of them looked so fine and free, like a pair of angels.
They did a graceful loop together and he had the sudden, terrible feeling that they might fall from grace. They were hundreds of feet in the air, easily as high as some small planes fly.
He looked around for Frannie, but she wasn't there. He didn't know where she might have gone.
He began to yell, and only hoped that the children could hear him.
"Little Mike, Tom! Come down here. Please come down before you fall. This is Daddy. Daddy wants you to come down."
They couldn't hear him from so high, so far away.
Then suddenly both of his boys began to fall, to plummet, to drop like stones.
Neither of them had wings. They were in free fall.
He wanted to rescue both his sons, but he could only catch one of them. He had to choose, but it was impossible. He had to choose one son.
He watched as Little Mike and Tom both crashed horribly to the ground. He hadn't been able to save either of them. Out of nowhere, there were EMS ambulances, Rhode Island police cars, the wreckage of a small plane.
He was there at the nightmarish crash scene. Inside the smoking plane, looking through the twisted, crumpled seats and the dead passengers.
He found his two little boys and his wife in the terrible wreckage. He gently touched them and couldn't believe that they were dead.
And then Kit woke. It was early morning, a hint of salmon pink tinted the blue of the sky. He was in Colorado. In the mountains.
Frannie O'Neill was bent over him. "Shhhh," she whispered. "She's up there. I can see her."
Chapter 52
MAX WOKE with a terrible start.
She didn't know how much time had passed, but she'd obviously fallen asleep. It was morning again. She was wet-cheeked and shivering from the cold that had swept across the mountain between sundown and sunrise.
She felt small and alone and utterly abandoned on the mountainside.
She missed Matthew and she even missed the awful, despicable School a little bit.
No! I can't think like that. I mustn't start acting like a loser. Losers lose! she told herself I'm not a loser.
Max lifted her hand to wipe her cheeks and, as she did, felt something like spiderwebs all over her. Ugh! She pushed at the irritating, clingy stuff and it shifted but didn't melt away from her face.
What was this? What was happening? She opened her eyes wide. Oh God!
She saw shapes bending over her. People! She couldn't tell how many!
They were standing between her and the sun, and it took a moment for her to understand what was happening to her. When she did, she filled her lungs with air and screamed.
She screamed bloody murder! That scared them. The shapes backed off, then crystallized as the woman doctor and the man. They'd snuck up on her in her sleep. Bastards! Creeps!
Max screamed again, louder than she'd ever screamed in her entire life. The inside of her head was white with fear. She couldn't think straight, could only flail wildly at the net. But pushing only made the string snag and catch on her fingers and wings, her legs, feet.
Ohgodohgod what was this? What could she do? She had to escape!
They had her in some kind of strong animal net. They had caught her!
The creeps!
Max scootched back on the ground until she was up hard against the bark of a quaking aspen. The leaves clicked and clattered together as she tried to raise herself to her feet. She was crying and shrieking, beating her wings furiously, hurting herself, trying to hurt them somehow. She wasn't, though. They were too crafty - too human.
The woman doctor was talking to her, but she couldn't, wouldn't listen to what she was saying.
She would not be put to sleep! She wouldn't give up now! She wasn't a loser!
The man reached out to her and she batted his hand away. She struck out hard at him, remembering how Uncle Thomas would grab her to get control, to get his way.
The man's hand reached toward her again. Feinting one way - then clutching. Sneaky, crafty man!
He was trying to grab her and win. She bit his hand, really hurting him, and heard him say a swear word.
She kicked out hard with her strong legs. Missed him. "Take it easy," he was saying. "Just take it easy. Jesus, she's strong, Frannie."
His hand came again, reaching near her face, reaching for her wings.
Uncle Thomas was in her mind She could see his despicable face.
Ugh! Ugh!
Max covered her head, bent over, made herself into a little ball, but she couldn't escape the terrifying net. It dripped over her in folds and there was no end to it.
Oh, I made a horrible mistake. I shouldn't have been watching them. I shouldn't have rested The doctor was talking to her. Trying to, anyway. Typical doctor crap.
Always so soft, the whispers, the lies coming so gently, so easily. Just like with Uncle Thomas and the other creeps.
"Everything's going to be okay," I said. "We won't hurt you. I'm a doctor. It's okay."
Either she didn't understand me or she didn't believe me, because she opened her mouth impossibly wide and screamed again. Her screaming was the most awful sound I've ever heard, like an animal shrillness but with a human undertone that made me think of the cries of mother seals, or maybe mother whales when their families are in danger.
I wondered if she had a human larynx, an avian syrinx, or both. The syrinx has no chords, just a sac at the bottom of the windpipe. It contracts to force air out. And maybe I had just heard it at full blast.
It hurt my ears to listen to her. My eyes, however, couldn't get enough.
Just as I'd thought, almost everything about her was, well, human but not in conventional proportions. Her eyes were round, and incredibly intense, and seemed intelligent, or at least very focused. Her hair was light blond, quite long, and hanging way below her shoulders. Some of her feathers were also blond, which made some sense, since both feathers and hair are made of the same material, keratin.
As I gorged on the vision of her, the girl was punching out at Kit.
I got a real good look at her mysterious, absolutely marvelous appendages. They were muscled and jointed as human arms are, but the forearms were shorter. Her fingers were elongated and cloaked in feathers out to the last joints of the digits.
Because they were made tofly, Frannie!
Jesus, Jesus. She was a miracle. She couldn't be - and yet here she was. How could this have possibly happened? How could she be here?
How could I?
Her beautiful wings were feathered in pure white, and in the early morning light, I saw glints of blue and silver shining through. A strange feeling came over me then - I think I almost envied her. She was so beautiful, and she had such an amazing gift.
She could do what nearly all of us wish we could do - this little girl could fly. Ho
w in the name of God had it happened? Was she a miracle?
An angel? No. Angels can disappear, get out of a net.
I snapped myself out of my trance, my inner thoughts. This was the wrong time and wrong place for it.
The girl was in a panic. She could damage her wings, and she could just as easily go into shock. I'd seen animals die of fright before. Their hearts just seemed to burst.
When Kit had tried to touch her, she'd been obviously threatened by his hand coming toward her. When I tried, she panicked, but not as fiercely.
James Patterson - When the Wind Blows Page 13