The Complete Mackenzie Collection (13 page)

“I need a statement from you, if you think you can do it now.”

“Yes, all right.” The sedative was taking effect; she could feel the spreading sensation of remoteness as the drug numbed her emotions. She let Clay lead her to a chair and pulled the blanket tight around her once more. She felt chilled.

“You don’t have to be afraid,” Clay soothed. “He’s been picked up. He’s in custody now.”

That aroused her interest, and she stared at him. “Picked up? You know who it is?”

“I saw him.” The iron was back in Clay’s voice.

“But he was wearing a ski mask.” She remembered that, remembered feeling the woolly fabric under her fingers.

“Yeah, but his hair was hanging out from under the mask in back.”

Mary stared up at him, the numbness in her changing into a kind of horror. His hair was long enough to hang out from under the mask? Surely Clay didn’t think—surely not! She felt sick. “Wolf?” she whispered.

“Don’t worry. I told you he’s in custody.”

She clenched her fists so tightly that her nails dug crescents in her palms. “Then let him go.”

Clay looked stunned, then angry. “Let him go! Damn, Mary, can’t you get it through your head that he attacked you?”

Slowly she shook her head, her face white. “No, he didn’t.”

“I saw him,” Clay said, spacing out each word. “He was tall and had long black hair. Damn it, who else could it have been?”

“I don’t know, but it wasn’t Wolf.”

The women were silent, sitting frozen as they listened to the argument. Cicely Karr spoke up. “We did try to warn you, Mary.”

“Then you warned me about the wrong man!” Her eyes burning, Mary stared around the room, then turned her gaze back to Clay. “I saw his hands! He was a white man, an
Anglo
. He had freckled hands.
It wasn’t Wolf Mackenzie!
”

Clay’s brow creased in a frown. “Are you certain about that?”

“Positive. He put his hand on the ground right in front of my eyes.” She reached out and grabbed his sleeve. “Get Wolf out of jail, right now. Right now, do you hear me! And he’d better not have a bruise on him!”

Clay got up and went to the telephone, and once again Mary looked at the women in the room. They were all pale and worried. Mary could guess why. As long as they had suspected Wolf, they had had a safe target for their fear and anger. Now they had to look at themselves, at someone who was one of them. A lot of men in the area had freckled hands, but Wolf didn’t. His hands were lean and dark, bronzed by the sun, callused from years of hard manual work and riding. She had felt them on her bare skin. She wanted to shout that Wolf had no reason to attack her, because he could have her any time he wanted, but she didn’t. The numbness was returning. She just wanted to wait for Wolf, if he came at all.

An hour later he walked into Bessie’s house as if he owned it, without knocking. An audible gasp rose when he appeared in the doorway, his broad shoulders reaching almost from beam to beam. He didn’t even glance at the other people in the room. His eyes were on Mary, huddled in her blanket, her face colorless.

His boots rang on the floor as he crossed to her and hunkered down. His black eyes raked her from head to toe; then he touched her chin, turning her head toward the light so he could see the scrape on her cheek and the bruises where hard fingers had bitten into her soft flesh. He lifted her hands and examined her raw palms. His jaw was like granite.

Mary wanted to cry, but instead she managed a wobbly smile. “You got a haircut,” she said softly, and linked her fingers together to keep from running them through the thick, silky strands that lay perfectly against his well-shaped head.

“First thing this morning,” he murmured. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. He—he didn’t manage to…you know.”

“I know.” He stood. “I’ll be back later. I’m going to get him. I promise you, I’ll get him.”

Clay said sharply, “That’s a matter for the law.”

Wolf’s eyes were cold black fire. “The law isn’t doing a very good job.” He walked out without another word, and Mary felt chilled again. While he had been there, life had begun tingling in her numb body, but now it was gone. He had said he would be back, but she thought she should go home. Everyone was very kind, too kind; she felt as if she would scream. She couldn’t handle any more.

T
hough he was stunned by Wolf’s changed appearance, it took Clay only a moment to follow him. As he had suspected, Wolf stopped his truck at the alley where Mary had been attacked. By the time Clay parked the county car and entered the alley, Wolf was down on one knee, examining the muddy ground. He didn’t even glance up when Clay approached. Instead he continued his concentrated examination of every weed and bit of gravel, every scuff mark, every indentation.

Clay said, “When did you get a haircut?”

“This morning. At the barbershop in Harpston.”

“Why?”

“Because Mary asked me to,” Wolf said flatly, and returned his attention to the ground.

Slowly he moved down the alley and to the back of the buildings, pausing at the spot where Mary’s attacker had thrust her to the ground. Then he moved on, following exactly the path the attacker had taken, and it was in the next alley that he gave a grunt of satisfaction and knelt beside a blurred footprint.

Clay had been over the ground himself, and so had many other people. He said as much to Wolf. “That print could belong to anyone.”

“No. It’s made by a soft-soled shoe, not a boot.” After examining the print awhile longer, he said, “He toes in slightly when he walks. I’d guess he weighs about one seventy-five, maybe one eighty. He isn’t in very good shape. He was already tired when he got this far.”

Clay felt uneasy. Some people would have simply passed off that kind of tracking ability as part of Wolf’s Indian heritage, but they would have been wrong. There were excellent trackers of wildlife who could follow a man’s footsteps in the wilderness as easily as if he had wet paint on the bottoms of his boots, but the details Wolf had discerned would have been noted only by someone who had been trained to hunt other men. Nor did he doubt what Wolf had told him, because he had seen other men, though not many, who could track like that.

“You were in Nam.” He already knew that, but suddenly it seemed far more significant.

Wolf was still examining the footprint. “Yes. You?”

“Twenty-first Infantry. What outfit were you with?”

Wolf looked up, and a very slight, unholy smile touched his lips. “I was a LRRP.”

Clay’s uneasy feeling became a chill. The LRRPs, pronounced “lurp,” were men on long-range reconnaissance patrol. Unlike the regular grunts, the LRRPs spent weeks in the jungles and hill country, living off the land, hunting and being hunted. They survived only by their wits and ability to fight, or to fade away into the shadows, whichever the situation demanded. Clay had seen them come in from the bush, lean and filthy, smelling like the wild animals they essentially were, with death in their eyes and their nerves so raw, so wary, that it was dangerous to touch them unexpectedly, or walk up to their backs. Sometimes they hadn’t been able to bear the touch of another human being until their nerves settled down. A smart man walked lightly around a LRRP fresh in from the field.

What was in Wolf’s eyes now was cold and deadly, an anger so great Clay could only guess at its force, though he understood it. Wolf smiled again, and in the calmest tone imaginable, one almost gentle, he said, “He made a mistake.”

“What was that?”

“He hurt
my
woman.”

“It’s not your place to hunt him. It’s a matter for the law.”

“Then the law had better stay close to my heels,” Wolf said, and walked away.

Clay stared after him, not even surprised by the blunt words claiming Mary as his woman. The chill ran down his back again and he shivered. The town of Ruth had made a mistake in judging this man, but the rapist had made an even bigger one, one that might prove fatal.

Mary stoically ignored all the protests and pleas when she announced her intention of driving home. They meant well, and she appreciated their concern, but she couldn’t stay another moment. She was physically unharmed, and the doctor had said her headache would fade in the next few hours. She simply had to go home.

So she drove alone in the misting rain, her movements automatic. Afterward, she could never recall a moment of the drive. All she was aware of when she let herself into the creaky old house was a feeling of intense relief, and it so frightened her that she pushed it away. She couldn’t afford to let herself relax, not now. Maybe later. Right now she had to hold herself together very tightly.

Woodrow looped around her ankles several times, meowing plaintively. Mary stirred herself to feed him, though he was as fat as a butterball already, then found herself exhausted by that brief effort. She sat down at the table and folded her hands in her lap, holding herself motionless.

That was how Wolf found her half an hour later, just as the gray daylight began to fade. “Why didn’t you wait for me?” he asked from the doorway, his tone a low, gentle growl.

“I had to come home,” Mary explained.

“I would have brought you.”

“I know.”

He sat down at the table beside her and took her cold, tightly clasped hands in his. She looked at him steadily, and his heart clenched like a fist in his chest.

He would have given anything never to have seen that look in her eyes.

She had always been so indomitable, with her “damn the torpedoes” spirit. She was slight and delicately made, but in her own eyes she had been invincible. Because the very idea of defeat was foreign to her, she had blithely moved through life arranging it to suit herself and accepted it as only natural that shopkeepers quaked before her wagging finger. That attitude had sometimes irritated, but more often entranced, him. The kitten thought herself a tiger, and because she acted like a tiger, other people had given way.

She was no longer indomitable. A horrible vulnerability was in her eyes, and he knew she would never forget the moments when she had been helpless. That scum had hurt her, humiliated her, literally ground her into the dirt.

“Do you know what really horrified me?” she asked after a long silence.

“What?”

“That I wanted the first time to be with you, and he was going to—” She stopped abruptly, unable to finish.

“But he didn’t.”

“No. He pulled up my skirt and pushed against me, and he was tearing my clothes when Clay—I think Clay shouted. He might have fired a shot. I remember hearing a roaring sound, but I thought it was thunder.”

Her flat little monotone bothered him, and he realized she was still in shock. “I won’t let him get near you again. I give you my word.”

She nodded, then closed her eyes.

“You’re going to take a shower,” Wolf said, urging her to her feet. “A long, warm shower, and while you’re taking it, I’ll fix something for you to eat. What would you like?”

She tried to think of something, but even the thought of food was repugnant. “Just tea.”

He walked upstairs with her; she was steady, but the steadiness seemed fragile, as if she were barely holding herself under control. He wished that she would cry, or yell, anything that would break the tension encasing her.

“I’ll just get my nightgown. You don’t mind if I get my nightgown, do you?” She looked anxious, as if afraid she was being too troublesome.

“No.” He started to reach out and touch her, to slide his arm around her waist, but dropped his hand before contact was made. She might not want anyone to touch her. A sick feeling grew in him as he realized she might find his, and any other man’s, touch disgusting now.

Mary got her nightgown and stood docilely in the old-fashioned bathroom while Wolf adjusted the water. “I’ll be downstairs,” he said as he straightened and stepped back. “Leave the door unlocked.”

“Why?” Her eyes were big and solemn.

“In case you faint, or need me.”

“I won’t faint.”

He smiled a little. No, Miss Mary Elizabeth Potter wouldn’t faint; she wouldn’t allow herself to be so weak. Maybe it wasn’t tension holding her so straight; it might be the iron in her backbone.

He knew he wouldn’t be able to coax her to eat much, if anything, but he heated a can of soup anyway. His timing was perfect; the soup had just boiled and the tea finished steeping when Mary entered the kitchen.

She hadn’t thought to put on a robe; she wore only the nightgown, a plain white cotton eyelet garment. Wolf felt himself begin to sweat, because as demure as the nightgown was, he could still see the darkness of her nipples through the fabric. He swore silently as she sat down at the table like an obedient child; now wasn’t the time for lust. But telling himself that didn’t stop it; he wanted her, under any circumstances.

She ate the soup mechanically, without protest, and drank the tea, then thanked him for making it. Wolf cleared the table and washed up the few dishes; when he turned, Mary was still sitting at the table, her hands folded and her eyes staring at nothing. He froze briefly and muttered a curse. He couldn’t bear it another minute. Swiftly he lifted her out of the chair and sat down in it, then settled her on his lap.

She was stiff in his arms for a moment; then a sigh filtered between her lips as she relaxed against his chest. “I was so frightened,” she whispered.

“I know, honey.”

“How can you know? You’re a man.” She sounded faintly truculent.

“Yeah, but I was in prison, remember?” He wondered if she would know what he was talking about, and he saw her brow furrow as she thought.

Then she said, “Oh.” She began scowling fiercely. “If anyone hurt you—” she began.

“Hold it! No, I wasn’t attacked. I’m good at fighting, and everyone knew it.” He didn’t tell her how he’d established a reputation for himself. “But it happened to other prisoners, and I knew it could happen to me, so I was always on guard.” He’d slept only in light naps, with a knife made from a sharpened spoon always in his hand; his cell had hidden a variety of weapons, a lot of which the guards had seen and not recognized for what they were. It would have taken another LRRP to have seen some of the things he’d done and the weapons he’d carried. Yeah, he’d been on guard.

“I’m glad,” she said, then suddenly bent her head against his throat and began to cry. Wolf held her tightly, his fingers laced through her hair to press against her skull and hold her to him. Her soft, slender body shook with sobs as she wound her arms around his neck. She didn’t say anything else, and neither did he, but they didn’t need words.

He cradled her until finally she sniffed and observed dazedly, “I need to blow my nose.”

He stretched to reach the napkin holder and plucked a napkin from it to place in her hands. Mary blew her nose in a very ladylike manner, then sat still, searching in her depths for the best way to handle what had happened. She knew it could have been much worse, but it had been bad enough. Only one thought surfaced: she didn’t want to be alone tonight. She hadn’t been able to tolerate the women fussing around her, but if Wolf would just stay with her, she’d be all right.

She looked up at him. “Will you stay with me tonight?”

Every muscle in his big body tensed, but there was no way he could deny her. “You know I will. I’ll sleep on the—”

“No. I mean—if you could sleep with me tonight, and hold me so I won’t be alone, just for tonight, I think I’ll be all right tomorrow.”

He hoped it would be that easy for her, but he doubted it. The memories would linger on, springing out from dark corners to catch her when she least expected it. Until the day she died, she would never entirely forget, and for that he wanted to catch her assailant and break the guy’s neck. Literally.

“I’ll call Joe and let him know where I am,” he said, and lifted her from his lap.

It was still early, but her eyelids were drooping, and after he called Joe he decided there was no point in putting it off. She needed to be in bed.

He turned out the lights and put his arm around her as they climbed the narrow stairs together. Her flesh was warm and resilient beneath the thin cotton, and the feel of her made his heart begin a slow, heavy beat. His jaw clenched as blood throbbed through his body, pooling in his groin. He was in for a miserable night, and he knew it.

Her bedroom was so old-fashioned it looked turn-of-the-century, but he hadn’t expected anything else. The delicate lilac smell he associated with Mary was stronger up here. The ache in his loins intensified.

“I hope the bed is big enough for you,” she said, worrying as she eyed the double bed.

“It’ll do.” It wasn’t big enough, but it would do. He’d have to spend the night curled around her. Her bottom would be nestled against him, and he would quietly go insane. Suddenly he didn’t know if he could do it, if he could lie with her all night and not take her. No matter what his mind said, his body knew exactly what it wanted; he was already so hard it was all he could do to keep from groaning.

“Which side do you want?”

What did it matter? Torment was torment, no matter what side he was on. “The left.”

Mary nodded and turned back the covers. Wolf wanted to look away as she climbed into bed, but his eyes wouldn’t obey. He saw the curve of her buttocks as the nightgown was momentarily pulled tight. He saw her pale, slim legs and immediately pictured them clasped around his waist. He saw the outline of her pretty breasts with their rosy nipples, and he remembered the feel of her breasts in his hands, her nipples in his mouth, her smell and taste.