Beachcomber (28 page)

“You were supposed to roll.” Luke’s hand had dropped away from her wrist during the fall, and she had lost track of him as she landed. But he was beside her now, crouching in the mud, his head close to hers, his arm draping across her back. She felt surprisingly sick and dizzy, and the urge to flee had been supplanted by the need to collapse. For the merest instant she let her head droop against his broad shoulder. The humiliation she had suffered at his hands earlier had been pushed to the back of her mind, to be revisited when and if circumstances improved. She could see no more of him now than a dark shape, and she could not by the most convoluted stretch of her imagination figure out how he had wound up in her trunk, but she was suddenly overwhelmingly glad he was there.

“I forgot.”

“You okay?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s go.”

His arm tightened, urging her forward. Summoning every last bit of strength she possessed, Christy scrambled with him toward the piney woods that lined either side of the narrow dirt track they’d landed on. That old saw about the spirit being willing but the flesh being weak seemed to definitely apply in her case, she discovered. Her muscles were as unreliable as cheap paper plates and her bones seemed to be nonexistent.

Up ahead, taillights flared. She and Luke were beneath the trees, sliding down a shallow, muddy slope
that cut away from the track, when she caught the sudden bright flash out of the corner of her eye.

“Shit,” Luke said, having apparently seen the same thing. His hand clasped hers now. Even as his grip tightened almost painfully, Christy processed what that brilliant little burst of red meant.

The truck had stopped. The flare had been the brake lights coming on.

Did the killer somehow know they were gone? Had he seen something? Had he seen them? At the thought, Christy’s heart gave a great leap in her chest.

“Run,” Luke growled in her ear, and took off.

Oh, yeah.

She didn’t say it aloud. She couldn’t. She didn’t have enough breath. There was one good thing about abject terror, as she had already discovered: it could be counted on to provide a burst of energy when it was most needed. A moment ago, she would have thought that leaping through the undergrowth like a champion hurdler was beyond her. But she was doing it, and the way she felt at the moment she could keep on doing it all night. From somewhere in the vicinity of the truck, she heard a muffled thud, as if from something—like the trunk lid—being slammed down in frustration. Several scared glances over her shoulder later, she saw that the taillights were once again glowing a soft, steady red, with none of the brash brightness that signaled applied brakes. The only problem was, the dull red circles seemed to be growing larger rather than smaller.

Christy realized with a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach that the truck was backing up.

He’d checked the trunk. He knew they were gone. She knew it with a kind of hideous certainty that defied logical explanation.

“Luke, Luke …” She tugged on his hand to warn him. Head lowered against the droplets their passage was dislodging from the trees, he was hauling her after him in their mad dash through the undergrowth.

“What?” He slowed, glancing around. Not that he could see her any better than she could see him. With the canopy blocking most of the night sky, it was even darker under the trees than it was out in the open. But she could see the shape of him, see the dark oval that was his head, the square of his shoulders, the gleam of his eyes.

“Look.” She didn’t have to specify at what. From the way his hand tightened on hers, she knew that he realized the significance of those enlarging lights just as well as she did. Thank goodness they were far enough away now where the chance of them being overtaken was—she prayed—small.

The brake lights flared again. Christy wasn’t sure, but it seemed to her that the truck was stopping approximately in the place where they’d jumped out.

“Luke… .”

“Keep moving.”

She
was
moving, just at a slower pace than before. Her legs were starting to remember how weak they felt, and her lungs were aching as a way of protesting her decision to run like a bat out of hell and breathe at the same time.

“What the hell’s that?” There was a definite frown in Luke’s voice.

Looking back up the slope they’d just traversed, through the tree trunks and drooping branches and tangled undergrowth, Christy saw the brilliant white beam of light making a broad sweep through the woods closest to the track. It hit her then that they’d probably made a pretty big hole in the undergrowth as they’d torn through it. Big enough to track them by?
Obvious
enough to track them by?

She discovered that she really didn’t want to know the answer to that.

“He’s hunting us,” she said in a hollow voice.

“Yeah.” Hand tightening on hers, he picked up the pace again.

Panting with terror and exertion, Christy ducked her head against the cascading droplets and ran, slip-sliding on the carpet of muddy, slimy pine needles and God knew what else underfoot, dodging around trees, clambering over fallen logs and other obstructions. Heart pounding, legs and lungs aching, she hung on to Luke’s hand as if it were a lifeline in a raging sea.

They’d gone far enough and fast enough that the flashlight was no longer visible, if indeed he was still using it. The thought that he might have turned it off, that he might be right on their heels and they would never know until he sprang, sent cold chills down Christy’s spine. Glancing over her shoulder proved useless; she could see nothing but the very nearest trees, and them only as shapes. The sound of her own breathing was loud in her ears; loud enough, she feared, to block out any signs of pursuit.

But she was sure, in her heart of hearts, that he was
still pursuing them. From the way Luke was moving, he thought so, too. He was as relentless as an automaton, no longer running but moving at a fast, steady pace. She got a stitch in her side, and her legs grew more and more rubbery and her breathing more and more labored, but still she managed to keep up.

Her attacker had caught her once. Miraculously, she had survived that encounter. If he caught her again …

The thought, and the hideous images that went along with it, made her go cold all over. It also gave her the strength, and will, to go on.

With her practically scooting on her backside, they made it down another steep slope into a ravine, forded a small stream that coursed swiftly through its center, and clambered back up the other side. By that time Christy had figured out that they must be somewhere in the dense maritime forest that covered a good portion of the northern third of the island, but they’d run so far and so fast that she could not have told which way the road was, much less which direction to take to reach Ocracoke Village or any other place where they might reasonably expect to find help. All she knew was that the forest, a protected wilderness preserve where only the most gung-ho hikers and campers ever ventured, stretched on for something like forty miles.

At their current pace, even if they were traveling directly from point A to point B, which they weren’t, it would take them a day or two to walk out. For the next few hours at least, her attacker could hunt them at his leisure.

That thought made her good to go for at least another couple of miles.

Finally her legs gave out and she could go no farther. She was so exhausted she could hardly stand. Pulling her hand from Luke’s, she sat on a fallen log, breathing hard, willing her jellied muscles to toughen up even as she cast wary but fruitless looks into the surrounding darkness. A gleam of green down near the forest floor startled her; her heart leaped into her throat before she realized that what she was seeing was eyes. Several pairs of eyes.

Creature eyes. Wild, nocturnal creature eyes. Having such creatures nearby was better than having the green gleam auger the arrival on the scene of her attacker, definitely. However, it could not actually be considered good.

She only hoped that whatever was looking at her wasn’t some kind of carnivore.

“What’s up?” Luke retraced his steps to hunker down in front of her. She couldn’t see his features, but she got the impression that he was frowning at her.

“This forest … goes on for miles.” Her breathing was obviously labored.

“So?”

“I need a break.”

“We’ll take a break when we’re safe somewhere.”

“We need a plan.”

“We’ve got a plan.”

“Want to fill me in?”

“Run like hell.” She couldn’t be sure, of course, but from the sound of his voice he was smiling.

“Oh, good plan.” Okay, so she wasn’t too tired to indulge in a little sarcasm.

“Hey, it’s working so far.”

“Until he catches us.”

“Regular little optimist, aren’t you?” There was that smile in his voice again. If she hadn’t been exhausted to the point of near catatonia, aching in every muscle, joint, and major organ, and terrified out of her mind to boot, she might have found that hint of suppressed humor charming. As it was, she didn’t.

“You know, just for the record, there really is a bad guy back there who really, really, really wants to kill us,” she said.

“I’m aware.”

“We’ve done the run-like-hell thing. Now we need to start thinking this through.”

“I’m all ears.”

Christy frowned. So much for a brilliant contribution from her partner in terrified flight. That meant it was all up to her. Was that the story of her life, or what? Usually, though, she managed to come through. Unfortunately, right now she was so tired she could barely form a coherent thought.

“Okay.” She did her best with what brainpower she could summon. “Maybe we should try to find the road. You know, flag somebody down?”

“Yeah, we could definitely try that. When it’s light. Like tomorrow. For now, even if we could find the road, which is doubtful, and even if there was any traffic on it, which is equally doubtful, flagging somebody down would be too dangerous. We wouldn’t be able to tell if it was him or not until he stopped, and then it might be too late. Even if he didn’t use it on you, I
wouldn’t want to bet my life that he doesn’t have a gun.”

Good point.

Christy didn’t say it aloud. Instead she gritted her teeth, turned a deaf ear to her protesting body parts, and stood up. He stood up with her.

“So what’s the plan?” He recaptured her hand.

“For want of an alternative, I’m going with run like hell,” she said wryly. Run was an exaggeration, of course. Stumble was just about all she was capable of at the moment. If she hadn’t already locked her knees in place, they would have collapsed beneath her.

“That’s my girl.” This time she was sure he was smiling. He carried her hand to his lips and pressed his mouth to her knuckles. “If it will make you feel any better, I’m really good at navigating by the stars.”

That did make her feel better—for about two seconds. Then she glanced up. “We can’t see any stars!”

“There’s that,” Luke said, and chuckled. “Okay, so how about we go with water always runs toward the sea? See that stream over there? How about we follow that?”

Christy looked. Sure enough, just close enough to be visible she saw the merest glimmer of a shiny black surface snaking across the forest floor.

Staring at it, she frowned. Her gaze swung back to him.

“Does
water always run toward the sea?”

She saw the quick gleam of his teeth through the darkness.

“There’s one way to find out.”

Still holding the hand he had kissed, he turned and
started moving again through the tangled thicket that covered the forest floor. Somewhat less than reassured, Christy followed. But her knuckles still tingled from the touch of his mouth, and her thoughts had been given a whole new and entirely more pleasant direction. For a few blissful seconds she forgot all about her surroundings as she recalled in vivid detail just exactly how she knew that he was a really hot kisser.

Even if he had turned her down moments after she’d made the initial discovery.

Okay, there went the bliss, popped on contact with reality just like a soap bubble.

So give the man an A on foreplay and an F on follow-through, she told herself savagely. And put the whole humiliating episode out of your mind.

They kept going until she was staggering, until her legs were quivering and her feet felt like lead and she was absolutely, positively, sure that she would collapse with every step she took. Finally he stopped and dropped her hand.

“Luke?” She vaguely missed the warm comfort of his grip. Realizing that she’d been left alone in the dark perked her up—a little. A very little. Actually, after the first niggle of alarm she pretty much reverted to the apathy that had dulled her senses for the last couple of miles. Her new basic attitude was, if her attacker caught up, so be it. She was so exhausted that she didn’t even feel afraid at the prospect. At least if she were dead she would no longer have to move.

His hushed voice seemed to come from several yards away. “Hear that? I think it might be the sea.”

Now that she was actively listening, Christy definitely heard a kind of roar. Unfortunately, she was pretty sure it was only her poor overworked pulse drumming in her ears. Squinting in the general direction of Luke’s voice, she thought she saw him moving through the trees.

She was just starting to stagger toward him when someone grabbed her arm.

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