Bait (47 page)

“Maddie,” he groaned, and held himself inside her, and came.

 

“I UNDERSTAND I'm your type,” Maddie said a long time later. Sam was lying flat on his back, listening to the dog snore and the creek run and the insects canoodle, and she was sprawled naked on top of him, playing with his chest hair.

“What type is that?” Sam asked, glancing down at her. He had been staring up at the star-sprinkled night sky, not really seeing it because there was too much else on his mind, from the firm, warm curves of the woman on top of him, to the possible whereabouts of the hunting party that was almost certainly still combing the woods for them, to the tantalizing knowledge that, thanks to Maddie's story, he now had the key to the identity of the sick bastard he'd been chasing for the past month.

The problem was, he just didn't know which door the key unlocked yet.

“Slim, pretty brunettes. Sweet little wholesome girls.” She sounded like she was quoting from memory. She also didn't sound really happy about it.

Sam considered that for a moment. She had her chin resting on her hand now, looking at him seriously. As dark as it was, he couldn't see the things that made his gut clench, like the small cut on her cheek or the red, swollen tip of her little finger. All he could see was the dark cloud of hair around her lovely, luminous face, and her eyes—those big, honey-colored eyes—gleaming at him.

“You're kidding me, right?” he asked. Then, realizing where she must have heard it, he added in a resigned tone, “You've been talking to Gardner, haven't you?”

Her eyes narrowed a little. “Maybe.” A beat. “So, am I your type?”

This, Sam felt, was a loaded question. One of those damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't conundrums beloved by women worldwide that, fortunately, he didn't have to think his way out of on this occasion, because the truth was so irrefutably obvious.

“I hate to break this to you, but if that's my type, you must be shit out of luck.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” She sounded all huffy now. For some kind of masochistic reason that he'd have to puzzle out at some other time, he loved it when she got huffy. Besides the obvious, of course, that's what had attracted him to her from the very beginning, he realized. Forget “lie down and die.” When backed into a corner, this babe was full of fight.

“Okay, you're a slim, pretty brunette, I'll grant you that. A sweet little wholesome girl? You may be stretching it there, but that's nothing I'd want to claim anyway. You leave it at that, and half the female population of the country's probably my type. But you—you're something special. You're gorgeous and sexy and smart—and no matter how hairy things get, you never say die. You got balls, babe. You're one of a kind.”

A beat passed.

“That's a compliment, right?” Maddie asked, eyeing him with a trace of suspicion.

“Yeah,” Sam said. “It is.”

“Sort of a clumsy, masculine way of saying you love me, right?”

“Absolutely.” Sam grinned, and rolled with her so that she was on her back and he was looming over her. “Darlin', in case you haven't realized it yet, you pretty much had me the first time you scowled at me.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

She was smiling up at him, and her cool, smooth hands were sliding up his arms, and he remembered, suddenly, fiercely, the explosive spurt of murderous rage he'd felt when that thug had brought the hammer down on her delicate little finger. That's when he'd first begun to suspect that, no matter how furious and betrayed and suspicious of her motives he'd felt, the feelings he had for her were not just going to go away. He'd known then that he was in love—for better, worse, good solid citizen or criminal—even if he didn't much like it. He'd still been hooked, even when he'd thought the worst. When he heard her story, though, heard the hell she'd suffered through, and the abuse and the pain, only to emerge triumphant on the other side, even if she might not quite be legally in the right, he'd been hit by a combination of tenderness and protectiveness and pride and fury on her behalf that had been like a lightning bolt striking deep into his soul.

His grandma had always told him that he would know it when it happened, and, as annoying as it was, she was once again proved absolutely right: He had recognized it right then. What he felt for Maddie was a forever kind of thing.

He wasn't quite sappy enough to put all that into words, but the way he chose to express himself was more fun anyway.

He kissed her. Then he showed her.

 

MADDIE ONLY realized that she had fallen asleep when someone shook her awake. For a moment she was disoriented, not quite understanding who it could be or where she was.

“Maddie,” a voice said from somewhere not too far above her ear.

“Go away.” It couldn't be time to get up yet, she didn't have to be at work until eight, or, actually, since it was her company, whenever she wanted to get there, and ...

“Maddie.” The hand on her shoulder shook her again. Her eyes opened.

Sam was leaning over her, looking more disreputable than ever as he hunkered down, fully dressed, beside her. There was a swollen bump on the bridge of his nose that hadn't been there before, he needed a shave badly, and he looked tired as hell. She blinked sleepily up at him, felt her heart swell with joy—and then saw the purplish-gray sky behind him, dotted with only a few stars now, and remembered with a flash of dismay where they were and what had happened. Dawn was at hand. In this case, that was definitely not good news.

“Oh, God,” she groaned, lifting a throbbing hand to her aching head, and sat up.

Sam grinned at her, or maybe smirked was a better word, in an annoying, masculine way that let her know that she was naked and he was enjoying the view. Beside him sat Zelda, looking just about as disheveled and full of get-up-and-go as Maddie felt.

“We need to be making tracks, beautiful.”

That earned him a scowl. She didn't feel beautiful. Heck, she didn't even feel human. And she had certain personal needs that absolutely did not require his presence.

“Don't you have somewhere else you need to be for a few minutes?” She was careful to add “for a few minutes” to that, because the thought of him disappearing for any longer was enough to give her palpitations.

“I brought you more water. It's right there.” He nodded at the can before giving her another of those all-seeing looks and then leaving her to her own devices.

Zelda tottered over to the can and started lapping.

“Great,” Maddie said, watching dispiritedly. When Zelda had drunk her fill, she turned and looked at Maddie and whined.

“No food. Sorry.” Maddie held out her empty hands to demonstrate, and Zelda looked disappointed. She flopped down on her belly again, and watched with a moody expression as Maddie washed and dressed in the water the dog left and did what she needed to do.

Sam came back just as she was starting to worry about him. He was carrying a stout stick a little longer than and about the thickness of a baseball bat. It was, Maddie realized with dismay, their only weapon.

“Here,” he said, handing her something. It took her a minute, but she realized that they were his socks.

“You can't go running around barefoot,” he said impatiently as she looked at the big, semiwhite things with mild revulsion. “Your feet are already all scratched up. I'd give you my shoes, but they'd fall off your feet.”

A glance down at what looked like his size-twelves confirmed that. With a sigh, Maddie surrendered the last of her hygiene standards.

“Did you see anything?” she asked as she pulled the socks on. Now that they were about to leave their little hidey-hole, she felt scared all over again.

He shook his head.

“You don't think we should just stay here, do you?” she asked in a small voice as she finished pulling on the socks and stood up. “They haven't found us yet.”

“They will eventually.”

That was so chilling that Maddie shivered. Sam saw, dropped a quick, hard kiss on her mouth and another, gentler, one on her injured hand, then headed out around the edge of the enclosure. With Zelda trailing forlornly behind her, Maddie hurried to keep up with him.

“Tell me we've got some kind of plan,” she said as they skirted the base of the cliffs. It was still dark, but dawn was definitely coming. The birds were starting to call to one another. The creek tinkled merrily alongside them. Zelda munched on trash she'd found along the creek bed. There was happiness in the world, Maddie reflected. At the moment, however, she just wasn't feeling it.

Sam grinned at her, but he must have realized that she was too scared and tired and achy for humor, because he gave her a straight answer.

“The house they took us to yesterday was on the east side of the mountain. The driveway led downhill. We're still on the east side of the same mountain, so I'm guessing that if we go far enough downhill, we'll find a road. We can follow it out, or hitchhike, which is a little dicey because we don't know who'll stop. Our best bet, probably, is to find a phone. If there was one house up here, there are bound to be more. And there's always the chance that the cavalry will show up. Believe me, they're busting their asses right now to find us.”

What he didn't add, but Maddie knew, was that finding them would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. No matter how optimistically she tried to look at it, she didn't think waiting to be rescued was going to work.

They followed the creek downstream as the sky lightened gradually above them, walking until the cliffs were a distant memory and they were once again in the heart of the piney woods. It was still dark under the trees, but more of a thick gray now than a pitch black. The air smelled of pine and dampness. The humidity was tangible. It was almost as if the ground itself was sweating. Mist hung beneath the trees like fog, making it impossible to see farther than a few feet in every direction. The footing was slippery and treacherous, especially for Maddie in her socks. The sounds of the forest were all around them, but if there were any other humans within shouting distance, Maddie couldn't tell it. Conversely, this made her jittery. Goose bumps crept over her skin. She kept glancing nervously all around, and every crack of a twig or unexpected sound made her jump.

It was eerie being there among the trees in the foggy gray hush of dawn. Especially knowing as well as she did that a shot could come out of nowhere at any time, or that behind any given bush, or hidden within any shadowy clump of trees, someone could be waiting ...

When Sam stopped, it was so unexpected that she nearly bumped into him.

“What?” she whispered, her heart pounding as she peered around him.

“Bingo,” he said, his voice low, too. “If we're lucky, we'll be back at your place in time for breakfast.”

Then she saw it. A small log cabin stood on a slight rise in front of them, its shingled roof rising above the mist. The trees had been cleared around it, and a narrow dirt track led up past it to a shed or barn or garage. Maddie's heart gave a great, hopeful leap ...

But what if they weren't lucky? Maddie had a sudden vision of Hansel and Gretel, and the witch's gingerbread house.

“What if whoever lives there is a bad guy?” Maddie asked, still surveying the house doubtfully from the shelter of Sam's back.

“Then we've got trouble,” Sam said, way more cheerfully than the situation called for. “See the lines leading to the house? There's a phone in there. You wait here, and I'll go summon the cavalry.”

“Not in this life.” Maddie grabbed his arm, alarm in every syllable. “No way am I staying here alone. If you go, I go.”

He looked around at her. What he saw in her face must have persuaded him that she meant what she said, because he sighed.

“Will you at least promise me that if there's trouble, you'll run for it and leave me to handle it?”

“Sure,” Maddie said. “I promise.”

Meaning she'd wait and evaluate the situation when and if it happened. But right at that moment, the chance of her abandoning him was looking like it was somewhere between slim and none.

Sam looked at Zelda, who was drooping like a wilted flower.

“Could we at least leave the dog tied to a tree?” Sam asked.

“She'll bark. Anyway, if they find her, they'll kill her. You heard what they said.”

“I feel like I'm leading a parade,” Sam said. “All right, come on.”

They had just started walking again when a sharp
craaak
pierced the charcoal-gray dawn. And something smacked hard into the trunk of a pine not six inches from Maddie's head.

TWENTY-SIX

S
hit!”
Sam yelled, grabbing her hand.
“Run!”

Maddie didn't need him to tell her a second time. She bolted like a deer from hunters, head low, feet slipping and sliding on the pine needles underfoot. Head spinning, heart pounding, sure she was going to die at any second, she ran as though the hit man was on her heels.

Oh, wait, he was.

Craaak.
Another bullet smacked a nearby tree, so close that she felt a blowback of splinters spray her cheek. Maddie almost screamed, but she choked the sound back just in time. It would only help the hit man take better aim. Having lost his stick, Sam pounded along beside her, head down, dodging and weaving among the trees, and somewhere, poor Zelda was lost in the gloom. Maddie had dropped the leash when she started running.

She said a heartfelt little prayer for Zelda—and for herself and Sam.