Chill Factor (35 page)

She coughed into it. The coughs racked her whole body,
kneeling in
front of her, murmured encouragingly.

Finally, the coughing ceased. She lowered the soiled towel
from her
mouth. He took it from her. She seemed transfixed by the sight of him,
and only then did he realize how scary he must appear.

He brushed frost off his eyelashes and eyebrows, and worked
the
stiff, icy scarf down beneath his chin. "I'm not a ghost. It's me."

"You came back?" Her voice was barely audible. "Why?"

"That was the plan all along. You thought I was abandoning you
to
die so I could escape."

She nodded.

"If I had promised you that I was coming back with your
medication,
would you have believed me?"

Slowly she shook her head no.

"Right. Trying to convince you would have wasted valuable
time, so I
had no choice except to leave with you thinking the worst of me. It
wasn't easy to go."

Using the armrest of the sofa for leverage, he pushed himself
off
his knees and stood up, moving like a man decades older than himself.
Inside his boots, his feet were numb. He couldn't feel the floor
beneath them as he shuffled to the fireplace and arranged several
sticks of wood on the grate. In order to get the dying coals to ignite,
he bent down and gently blew on them. They caught, and soon hun-gry
flames were licking at the logs.

He eased off his backpack, set it on the floor, and nudged it
beneath the end table with the toe of his boot. He unwound the scarf
from his neck and removed the stadium blanket and watch cap from his
head. Along with his coat, he draped them over one of the stools at the
bar so they could dry out. Tentatively he patted the back of his head,
then inspected his fingers for fresh blood. Either his wound hadn't
bled any more or the blood was frozen.

He sat down on the sofa opposite Lilly and unlaced his boots.
He
wavered on removing the one from his right foot, knowing that his ankle
might swell so badly he wouldn't be able to get the boot on again. But
if he didn't get more circulation to his foot, he could lose toes to
frostbite.

Gritting his teeth against the pain, he worked his foot out of
the
wet boot and peeled off his sock. The ankle was slightly swollen, but
not as bad as the pain had indicated it might be. He saw no signs of
frostbite, but he roughly massaged his toes. It hurt like hell when
blood started to flow into them again, but that meant the capillaries
weren't frozen beyond repair.

While he was doing all this, Lilly had continued to sit
wide-eyed
and wordless, staring at him as though he were an apparition. Moving
slowly so as not to spook her, he got up and went to kneel in front of
the sofa again. He tried to speak her name, but it came out a hoarse
croak. "Are you all right now?"

She merely bobbed her head once.

"Jesus, I forgot your pill." He found the small brown plastic
prescription bottle beneath one of the armchairs. He got a glass of
water from the kitchen and brought it to her. She used the second
inhaler, then swallowed one of the pills. As she drank, he noticed that
color was returning to her lips, reassuring him that she was getting
adequate oxygen, although her respiration still sounded like an
out-of-tune bagpipe.

"That inhaler is good stuff," he said. "I didn't know which
one to
use. I had a fifty-fifty shot. I guess I picked the right one."

She gave a small nod.

His gaze roved over her face. She was moving and breathing,
and her
color was returning, but he feared he might be having another
hallucination, like many he had experienced on his return trek from the
car.

Lilly had been at the center of all of them. In some, he
returned to
find her blue from cold and lack of oxygen, motionless, dead. In others
she was radiant and warm
,
glowing with
life, sexually
needy, passionately taking him deep into herself.

In reality, she was neither lifeless nor lustful but dazed.
"You
must have passed out just before I came in," he explained. "I called
your name several times, but you didn't respond, didn't even move. Your
chest was perfectly still. Scared the shit out of me," he said, his
voice turning gruff. "I thought I'd gotten here too late."

In less than a whisper, she said, "So did I." Then her face
crumpled
with emotion. As though a dam that had been tenuously holding back her
tears suddenly gave way, they filled her eyes.

He reacted spontaneously. In a heartbeat, he was beside her on
the
sofa, his arm across her shaking shoulders. "It's okay now. I'm back,
and you're alive."

She fell against his chest. He lifted her onto his lap,
cradling her
like a child, enfolding her in his arms and bending his head over hers.
He felt her reflexively clutching handfuls of his sweater.

"Shh, shh." He rubbed his lips against her hair. "Don't cry,
Lilly.
You're not supposed to cry, remember? You don't want to bring on
another attack by crying."

He tipped her head up and smoothed back her tangled hair.
Thank God
her complexion no longer had the gray cast of death. Cupping her head
between his hands, he ran his thumbs across her cheeks to wipe away the
tears.

Looking directly into her eyes, he said, "Short of dying out
there,
nothing could have kept me from coming back."

His gaze lowered to her mouth. Her lips were soft, full, pink
now,
slightly parted, tremulous, damp from drinking water, possibly tears.
At the base of her throat, the smooth skin throbbed with each beat of
her heart.

Curbing the impulses dunning him, he stood up, lifting her
with him,
and carried her to the end of the sofa, where he lowered them both onto
the mattress. He sat with his back against the armrest of the sofa, his
feet stretched toward the fire, Lilly on his lap.

He guided her head back to his chest, where she rested her
cheek. He
reached for one of the blankets and pulled it over them, then hugged
her close and propped his chin on the crown of her head.

To all this, she acquiesced. He didn't deceive himself into
thinking
she played the lamb because she trusted him. He'd seen the message she
had scratched into the wood of the kitchen cabinet. She was allowing
him to hold her only because the trauma she'd suffered had exhausted
her.

Long after she fell asleep, he stared into the flames and
savored
the delight as well as the misery of having her this close, of the soft
weight of her breast resting on his stomach. Occasionally her fingers
curled into the wool weave of his sweater. He wanted to believe she was
reassuring herself that he was still there, although it might have been
simply a reflexive motion of agitation, subconscious unrest.

He tried not to think about how silkily her tongue had moved
against
his when he kissed her last night, or the twin delicacies that wet
spandex had made of her breasts in the cold waters of the river that
day last summer, or how badly he wanted to possess her, completely.

But of course in his effort not to think about those things,
they
were all he could think about. His skin hunger for her became so acute
that he ultimately yielded to it and slipped one hand beneath her
sweater.

Then he slept.

She came awake within the circle of his arms, sensing
immediately
that he was awake. She sat up but, embarrassed, kept her head averted.

"The fire needs stoking," was all he said.

With as much grace as possible, she climbed off him and sat
back on
her heels. He had to use the armrest to lever himself up. She noticed
his grimace and remarked on it.

"I'm a bit banged up."

"You shouldn't have let me sleep so long," she said. "It
couldn't
have been comfortable for you."

"I slept, too, and woke up only a few minutes ago."

"How long did we sleep?"

He checked his wristwatch. "Four hours."

Four hours
! Four hours? How had she been
able to sleep that
peacefully for that long in the arms of a man she believed was Blue?
Her near-death experience must have radically muddled her thinking.

He looked her over from head to foot. "How are you feeling?"

"Much better. Better than I would have thought, considering
the
severity of the episode." She paused, then said softly, "I didn't thank
you."

"Yes you did."

"No. I had an emotional breakdown and crying jag."

"I got the message."

"But I didn't put it into words, and I should. Thank you,
Tierney."

"You're welcome." Seconds ticked by before he turned away and
walked
toward the bar stool where he'd left his coat.

"Your limp is worse."

"Yeah, I sprained my ankle on the way to the car. I was lucky
not to
have broken it."

"What happened?"

"I couldn't see where I was going and…" He made a
gesture that said
it didn't matter how he'd injured himself. "It'll be okay."

"Was that under the dash, as we thought?" she asked,
indicating the
silk pouch on the coffee table.

He related how he had finally reached the car after almost
giving up
hope. "It was completely covered with snow, ice underneath. Like to
never have got the door open."

But he had. The toughest part, he said, was resisting the urge
to
rest. He knew if he did, he was in danger of falling asleep and
freezing.

"Once inside the car, I allowed myself about thirty seconds to
catch
my breath, then got busy. I had to wedge my arm through the gap between
your dashboard and the passenger seat, which was only a few inches
wide."

He'd had to reach further than arm's length before he finally
felt
the silk bag. "I pinched some of the cloth between two fingers," he
told her, demonstrating. "I was afraid I'd push it forward, out of
reach. But I managed to drag it toward me until I could get a better
grip on it."

"And then you had to make the trip back. With a concussion and
a
sprained ankle."

"The important thing is that I made it in time." He glanced at
the
fireplace. "We'll need more wood before the night's out."

"Are you going outside barefoot?"

He had pulled on his coat but was moving toward the door on
bare
feet. "I don't intend to stay out that long."

He stepped onto the porch and quickly shut the door behind
him.
Lilly was there to hold it open when he carried in an armload of logs.
"Thanks." As he stacked the firewood on the hearth, he said, "I saw the
message you left on the kitchen cabinet."

She didn't know how to respond, so she said nothing.

He stood up and faced her. "You're not the only one who thinks
that.
I got the motor of your car to start, turned on the radio in the hope
of hearing a weather report."

She had an uneasy premonition of what was coming.

"The FBI is looking for me," he stated bluntly, then brushed
past
her on his way to the porch again. "Apparently one of your calls to
Dutch got through after all." He slammed the door shut behind him.

Lilly sank onto the sofa. She was trembling but was unsure if
the
weakness came from relief or dismay. If he was Blue, this was good
news. But if he wasn't, she had incriminated an innocent man.

In a flurry of blowing snow, he entered with another armload
of
firewood and kicked the door shut. "The forecast calls for the snow to
end tonight. Temperatures will remain well below freezing, but
conditions will improve."

He continued stacking the logs on the hearth. His tone was
casual
and unconcerned. "The roads will remain impassable for days, but with
any luck, there's an outside chance you could be rescued tomorrow."

"Tierney—"

"We still have to get through tonight though," he said,
brusquely
interrupting. He turned to her, dusting off his hands. "That must be an
awfully distressing prospect for you."

He motioned toward the backpack beneath the end table.
"Pistol,
handcuffs, you know where they are if you feel the need for them. Now
that you've got your medication and a supply of firewood, you could
fare on your own until help arrives."

"Are you leaving?" She was stunned by how fearful she was that
he
would go again.

He snuffled a bitter laugh. "I'm tempted, but no. Now that my
name
has been broadcast, every hillbilly with a deer rifle is going to be on
the lookout for me. My hide would be the hunting trophy of the season,
and in my present state I'd be easy prey.

"No, until I can get some food and rest, you're stuck with me.
But I
won't have you cringing every time I come near you. So if you want to
handcuff me to the bed again, I'll go peacefully. Not exactly
willingly, but I won't put up a fight."

She ducked her head and looked down at the floor, at her own
stocking feet, then over at his bare toes, poking from under the wet
hems of his jeans. It didn't take her long to make a decision. "That
won't be necessary, Tierney."

"You're no longer scared of me?"

She looked at him and said simply, "If you were Blue, you
wouldn't
have come back."

"But don't you see, Lilly, I would have had to come back, for
my own
survival. I would have died out there, one way or the other."

"But you didn't have to revive me. Blue would have let me die."

"Where would be the thrill in that? Watching you die wouldn't
be the
same as taking your life. Not at all."

She studied him for a long moment, searching his eyes for
answers to
questions he adroitly dodged with more questions, or silence, or lies,
or by playing devil's advocate. He was excellent at the game, but she
was tired of playing it.

Wearily she said, "I don't know who you are, Tierney, or what
you're
about, but I don't think your intention is to end my life or I would be
dead."