Exposure (30 page)

Elvis ran through the woods. He was close to the edge of the clearing when Gracie's screams seemed nearer, and he halted, not knowing what to expect. Distinguishing the sounds of someone clumsily thrashing in his direction through the underbrush, he swung the rifle up, stock to his shoulder, barrel braced by his hook, and closed one eye as he sighted down the barrel. Then he swore and pointed it up at the sky as Clare, carrying a struggling, screaming Gracie, stumbled into view. He loped over to intercept them.

"Oh, thank God you're here," Clare panted and allowed him to scoop Gracie out of her arms. The child continued to screech and wriggle and fight, oblivious to who held her.

Elvis knew he wouldn't get any information about Emma until he ti quieted Gracie, so he handed off the rifle to Clare, brought his fingers up, and without compunction tapped the child smartly on her cheek.

Her eyes went wide in shock, and he raised her up until their eyes were on a level. "You be quiet, Grace Melina," he ordered sternly. "I've got to get your Momma away from your Grandpa before he hurts her—"

"Hoots hew," Gracie agreed on a sob.

"—and I can't do that with you screaming down the forest and carrying on this way, so just knock it off." To his satisfaction, her hysteria subsided into normal tears, and he hugged her to him, whispering, "Good girl; that's my girl." She shuddered in his arms, her little lungs heaving to pull enough breath through clogged passages, and Elvis whipped out a handkerchief, holding it while she blew her nose. Breathing freely again, she let her head drop limply onto his shoulder and her thumb sought out her mouth. He looked over her head at Clare. "What's the story?"

Clare was fighting back some hysteria of her own, but she managed to say with commendable composure, "He's got her, Elvis, and they're too close to the cliff. Too close!" As soon as she and Gracie had reached the safety of the woods, she'd stopped to determine the situation. Seeing Emma and Grant rolling on the ground within feet of the cliff's edge had resurrected in her mind every nightmarish memory of Evan's death. Seeing the edge crumble out from under her son's feet, she'd turned and blindly fled, in search of the road and rescue.

Elvis snatched back the rifle and transferred Gracie into Clare's arms once again. "Go back to the car,” he instructed. "Stay with it until backup arrives, then direct them to us." Gracie started to stiffen up again, and he shifted the rifle to the crook of his arm, cupped his hand around the back of her head and pressed a kiss into her forehead next to the tiny red scar. "You be good for Clare," he instructed her sternly. "You hear me, Gracie girl? Momma and Daddy are gonna be back for you real soon." Then he turned and raced for the clearing.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust when he burst out of the woods onto the sun-washed plateau. His heart drummed heavily in his chest, and he dreaded what he would find, cursing the time he'd taken to settle Gracie; then he located Emma, struggling with Woodard near the cliff's edge. Still alive, he rejoiced as he swung up the rifle. But struggling. She was on her back, flailing with arms and legs, getting in any punch she could while scrambling to get out from under Woodard, who, facing Elvis, rose above her on his knees.

"Police, Woodard!" Elvis shouted. "Stop or I'll shoot!"

There might as well have been an invisible, soundproof shield between him and the people on the cliff. Neither Emma nor Woodard indicated, by so much as a hesitation in their actions, that they heard him. Meanwhile Emma was loosing ground. Sighting down the barrel, Elvis got Grant in the crosshairs, but it wasn't a clean shot. Woodard hunched over and straightened, twisted from side to side; Emma swung at him with both arms, lifting her torso off the ground with the use of her stomach muscles. It brought her in and out of Elvis' line of fire.

He swore to himself. "Stay down, sweetheart," he pleaded under his breath. "Dammit to hell, Em, just stay down for a minute."

He used to test excellent at marksmanship. But that was when he'd had two good hands and had practiced regularly at the police range. Nowadays, he practiced strictly with a handgun and didn't quite trust his ability to take his opponent out with a high-powered rifle—not while that man was struggling with his woman.

Then he saw Woodard draw back his arm and direct a vicious swipe to the side of Emma's head. She flopped like a rag doll onto her back in the dirt, and Grant sat up astride her, reaching for her throat.

Rage exploded in Elvis' chest. "Woodard!" he roared. Then he coldly and concisely shoved the fury aside, knowing it for what it was—counterproductive. Bragston had taught him not to let his emotions get in the way. They were always going to be there, the old sheriff had counseled; but the trick was to learn to function through them. It had been a difficult lesson to learn, but ultimately Elvis had mastered it because Bragston had expected him to.

He raised the rifle to his shoulder to squeeze off a shot.

Looking into Grant's face, Emma knew she'd better do something and fast. His expression as he glared down at her was completely feral and he was obviously beyond rational thought. His hands wrapped around her throat.

Her own hands tingled with a pins-and-needles sensation, but she used one to dig desperately at a rock half submerged in the hardpan soil and wrapped the other around a bristly clump of tall grass, pulling it this way and that, trying to rock it loose. She could feel his fingers tightening around her throat, cutting off her air.

The chunk of grass suddenly ripped free, trailing clods of dirt and she flung it in Grant's face just as lights began to explode in the forefront of her rapidly darkening vision. Simultaneously, she brought her knee up in a weak but vengeful attempt to unman him.

The knee rammed his buttock instead of the intended target, but it shoved him off balance at least; and dirt from the grass got in his eyes, momentarily blinding him. He had to turn her loose to keep from tipping over onto his head in the rocky soil, and gasping and sucking in great draughts of air, she took advantage of the situation by ramming stiffened fingers into his throat. He gagged, and she gave him a mighty shove that rolled him off her.

She heard a lightninglike crack as she rolled out from under him, but didn't have time to worry about, never mind seek out, its source. Coughing, scrambling away from Woodard on her hands and feet, she struggled to become erect and run. She made it to her feet, but then Grant's hand clamped around her ankle and jerked. She went back down, the palms she'd thrust out to catch her fall skidding along the rough, scrub-grass dotted terrain. Tears sprang to her eyes, blurring her vision. Donkey-kicking back with her free foot, she got a spurt of satisfaction when she heard his grunt of pain. The fingers around her ankle loosened and she jerked it free, scrambling to her feet once again.

She only made it a few steps before his arms wrapped around her from behind, yanking her back against his chest, lifting her off her feet. All her senses were heightened, and she was aware of the wheezing rattle of his breath, of the litany of obscene words he muttered in her ear. She fought desperately to free herself, but his grip was unrelenting. Slowly she grew still, her lungs heaving as she fought to catch her breath.

He cautiously lowered her, allowing her feet to touch the ground to support some of her weight. He wasn't taking any chances, however. He kept her back arched and her balance skewed by wrapping one arm around her neck and the other around her waist. One false move and he'd jerk her off her toes again.

"I should just break your fuckin' neck here and now and save myself a lot of trouble," he rasped in her ear.

"Oui? " she goaded. "Why don't you just do it then, you sick son of a bitch?" Then her head shot up, cracking him in the mouth, as the sound of Elvis' voice came across the plateau.

"Woodard!" he shouted, and Emma located him over by Grant's car. He was moving inexorably nearer. "Let her go, Woodard," he commanded, sighting at them down a rifle barrel. "Let her go and you can walk away from this with your life."

"Stay where you are!" Grant yelled and shuffled Emma a few feet backward.

"I can't do that." Elvis nevertheless paused. Emma and Woodard were too close to the edge, and he didn't want to risk spooking the man into doing something rash. Grant looked about a nudge away from the need for a straitjacket. "Let her go, man, or I'm going to put a bullet right through your forehead. And let me tell you, Woodard, while life in stir might not sound like a lot of fun, it's preferable to being dead."

Grant glanced quickly over his shoulder at the cliff a couple of feet behind him. Then he looked back at the sheriff, who was nearer than he'd been a moment ago. "You're wrong," he said, thinking of everything that had gone sour since that day in May. "It isn't."

And he took a giant step backward, going over the cliff.

"NO!" Elvis dropped the rifle and sprinted for the cliff's edge. That one word was the last sound Grant heard as he plummeted into space, and he experienced a hot, savage rush of satisfaction at having robbed the scar-faced cripple of his heart's desire. If he was going, then so, by God, was Emma. No one betrayed Grant Woodard and lived to tell about it.

Emma's hard head snapped back and broke his nose, and her sharp elbow viciously jabbed ribs. He regretted the reflex that made him lose his grip on her.

Then he knew only terror as he plummeted silently to the rocks below.

Emma propelled herself away from Grant's body and managed to catch onto a piece of the cliff's rim.

Ah, Dieu, thank you. Terra firma beneath her instead of a free fall through space; she would have gladly kissed it. But it was too soon to pay homage—she had only a tenuous grip on it, hardly more than her bare elbows digging desperately into the hard ground.

She thrust her arms forward, grabbed onto clumps of the sharp-bladed, tough grass, and tried to pull herself up over the brink. Her torso hung free, her legs kicking in air.

Hand over hand she pulled herself up, digging her elbows in and using them for additional leverage until she had firm earth beneath her stomach. With every movement she made, dirt crumbled from the edge of the cliff and dropped away.

"Emma! Hold still!" She raised her eyes to see Elvis drop onto his stomach and crawl toward her. "The cliff's undercut here," he said, using his own elbows to propel himself nearer to the edge. "I know it's easier said than done, sweetheart, but don't struggle, okay? Just hang on ... and try not to do anything that'll generate pressure against the fault."

She looked ahead of her and saw what he had seen—a ragged fissure in the ground perpendicular to her dangling body. She froze, except for her hands, which gripped with even more desperation the dried clumps of grass less than an arm's length beyond the crack. As her fingers assumed a death grip, she regretted her knowledge of physics, understanding even as she hung on that if the chunk of overhang supporting her weight were to suddenly drop away, her puny grip wasn't going to do a damn thing to prevent her from dropping onto the rocks below.

Suddenly, the undermined section of cliff did exactly that. With a soft rumble, a huge section of sod and scrub brush fell out from beneath her, and her one hundred twenty-seven pounds dropped like a sack of wet cement on the end of a string. Long blades of grass ripped through her clutching hands. Clawing frantically for an alternate grip, Emma was aware that her weight was dragging her toward oblivion faster than her hands could find purchase on protruding roots or rocks. Then there was nothing left to grab for and she was sliding into space.

To be yanked to an abrupt halt by a hard grasp on her left forearm.

She screamed as the ball joint of her shoulder was wrenched in its socket. Dangling now, she made the mistake of looking at the jagged boulders far below, and adrenaline shot through her. Her abused throat involuntarily loosed an entire series of rusty squawks, the pressure behind her eyes made them bulge as she stared down at the surf lapping at the craggy shore, and she barely controlled her legs' desperate desire to kick, to outrun danger.

"Emma!" Elvis roared. "Look at me—at me, sweetheart! Yes, like that. Good, good girl . . . look right into my eyes." He held her panicked brown gaze. "Grab onto my hook, now," he commanded, extending it to her. She made one grab for it and missed; then he saw determination replace the panic on her face and she reached out again and this time connected. A measure of pain faded from her expression once her right arm had taken up some of the drag threatening to dislocate her left shoulder.

Elvis started inching along backward on his stomach. Dirt and pebbles and clumps of weed and grass, weakened by their activity, continued to crumble away from the cliff's edge and fall into space, but he took his time, stayed flat, kept his weight evenly distributed on the unstable ground, and little by little dragged Emma up over the verge.

The ragged edge of the cliff scraped the soft inner skin of her upper arms, flattened her breasts, dragged her blouse from her waistband and ripped it free of its buttons, abrading the tender skin from her abdomen and chest. Embedded rocks raked her thighs, her knees, her ankles.

Elvis continued to pull her on her stomach across the rocky ground long after she'd cleared the brim. Finally, they were at a distance he considered safe, and he rocked back onto his heels, knees spraddled wide, to pull Emma into his arms. The sounds of the surf, the seagulls' mocking screams, were drowned beneath the harsh, sawing gasps of their combined breathing.

"Sweet mother of God, I pray to heaven never to go through anything like that again," he panted hoarsely, his good hand roughly stroking her hair as he rocked them both back and forth, back and forth. "Oh, Christ, Emma, I was so gut-screaming scared—I thought I'd lost you." Pulling on her hair until he could see her face, he shook her once, suddenly furious. "And how the hell would I have explained that to Gracie, huh? You just tell me how the hell—"

The words clogged into a hot ball in his throat. Wrapping his big hand around the back of her head, he pushed her face into its niche in his shoulder again, and his arms tightened around her convulsively. He recommenced rocking them, whispering swear words, words of thanks. Emma clung to him mindlessly.

Finally, she pushed back and looked into his face. Her hands stroked his cheeks, his jaw; they smoothed his hair into place. "It's over," she said, and it wasn't until the words were spoken that it abruptly sank in. Her voice was all froggy and hoarse from the abuse to her vocal cords, but still, wonderment colored her tone when she repeated, "It's really all over, cher. He is dead, don't you think? I mean, he's got to be; nobody could survive that fall."

"Yeah, he's dead." Elvis would be amazed if anyone lived through a dive onto those rocks, but he wanted to be on the safe side. "I'll send for a search party to recover his body as soon as we get back to the Suburban."

"I can quit looking over my shoulder, Elvis," Emma marveled. "And finally put Gracie into a program with other kids her own age. Oh, merde!" she exclaimed and climbed to her feet. "Gracie!" She looked down at him, still kneeling at her feet, staring back up at her. "Mon Dieu, Elvis, we've got to let Gracie know everything is okay."