The One Worth Waiting For (2 page)

He roused himself again when the wheels of the plane hit the ground with a bucking roll. He felt the jar in his back and had to grit his teeth to keep from gasping out loud with the pain. The good thing was that the pain brought consciousness once more. He was in Charlotte. He forced himself to look at his watch. Nine p.m. He needed to get a car, or maybe a bus, perhaps a taxi.

His mind felt groggy, and he couldn’t quite focus on which mode of transportation was best to use. He rose slowly when he could finally disembark, feeling the pain hit him again, and knew he was running out of time.

Sooner or later, the blackness would not be denied.

He managed to grip the seats and used them to help him walk out of the plane.

His mind still wasn’t working well by the time he made it downstairs to the car-rental area. Car, taxi, bus. Car, taxi, bus. Think, man, think.

He was supposed to get a car, he thought dimly. He had the license, the cash. But what if he passed out again? He should take a taxi. He had the cash. He could give a fake name. But the destination would be known, and once they saw Maddensfield, they wouldn’t need to see his real name to know it was him. Same with the bus.

Car then. It had to be a car. He thought he might black out any minute. He turned, and without preamble, slammed his fist against the brick wall. The pain was brilliant, flashing through his head like an entire Fourth of July fireworks display. Oh, he hurt. He truly hurt.

Hunched and shivering, muttering words he didn’t even understand, he rented a car in the name of Robert Fulchino from the shocked-looking desk clerk.

He had to think hard when he got into the car. The mechanics of driving felt slow and rusty, actions he hadn’t performed in a long time. At least he could recall them, despite the fact so many other things remained behind the thick mist in his mind.

He turned the car onto the interstate and headed home.

He had to pull over twice, the fog grew so thick. He could feel the tremors begin to overtake him and knew a fever must be setting in. He’d lost too much blood, not to mention the nice lump on his head from the time he’d pitched forward onto the sidewalk. The arriving medics had been a little shocked to see the corpse suddenly stand and walk away. They’d been even more shocked when he’d pulled a gun and told them that if they followed him, he’d shoot them both.

Of course, he’d had to ditch the gun to board the plane. He had a feeling he would regret that later.

The second time he pulled over, he knew he’d been out longer. His watch now said it was 3:00 a.m., and it should only have taken him two hours to get to Maddensfield. He wasn’t doing very well.

For the first time, he wondered if he would make it.

And then he calmly slammed his mangled fist into the dashboard and allowed the pain to work its magic once more.

He pulled back onto the highway and drove through the North Carolina night. Maddensfield. Suzanne. Maddensfield. Suzanne.

Forty-five minutes later, haggard and half-delirious, he pulled into the town. He had enough sense left to remember to ditch the car in the forest on the edge of town. His brother, Cagney, was the sheriff now and could retrieve the car in the morning.

Two more miles to Suzanne’s house.

Garret slammed his fist into a tree, then started walking. The lucid moments were farther apart. The sky seemed to move with him, and his shirt and jacket were soaked to his skin. He wanted to take off his coat, but knew he mustn’t. He needed the warmth. Even if he was hot, he needed the warmth.

But then suddenly, he was chilled again, so it didn’t matter. It was cold, and the moon was chasing him, and he could no longer get away. Dimly, he knew he was muttering under his breath, mentioning names though the faces remained lost to him.

Zenaisa. Zlatko. Zenaisa.

The porch loomed ahead, and the relief staggered him. He didn’t knock on the door so much as fall against it. His two-hundred-pound frame made a loud, heavy thud, enough to wake her. He had a final intriguing thought of Suzanne appearing with a shotgun and shooting him, then collapsed to his knees on the porch.

“Who’s there?” came the voice that had haunted him over fifteen years and hundreds of thousands of miles.

He tried to find his voice, but no words would come out.
Zenaisa.
He felt a horrible, wrenching pain down deep in his gut, and this time, he nearly welcomed the blackness.

The porch light flickered on, blinding him with its fierceness. He waited, clinging to the last strands of consciousness. The door cracked open, and he saw the long brown tangle of her hair.

He tried to grin, but it was hard to grin from one’s knees, especially when the fever sent another racking chill through his body.

“Oh, my God,” Suzanne Montgomery said quite clearly in the night. The door flew open.

“I told you,” he managed to whisper. “I told you someday.”

Then, his mission at long last accomplished, he plunged forward unconscious at her feet.

Chapter 1

H
is head pounded, the images swirling in his mind like a looping roller coaster suddenly gone berserk. He thought once he stood in a broiling world of flames. He could feel the fire lap at his skin like a lover, hot and greedy and voluptuous, and he smelled the scent of searing skin and burning hair. He saw the fire grip his arm and knew he’d truly died and gone to hell.

Sometimes, though, the fire disappeared, running away until he had only the ache in his arm as a reminder. And then he was a lost soul, walking through lands he didn’t recognize, talking a tongue that held no meaning. He saw the bodies, scattered across the ground, and this time he smelled a death so putrid not even fire could cleanse it away. The weight of an ax rested strange and heavy in his hand. Slowly, he turned his head to see the buzzards circling in the sky overhead.

He knew without feeling that tears washed through the soot on his cheeks.

Then came the rain, cleansing and fresh and pure, smelling faintly of mountains and honeysuckle. He should have loved the rain, but with rain always came the woman. He saw her standing with her hair plastered down her back, her dark eyes somber and accepting in the night while tears flowed quietly down her cheeks. He looked at her, and his chest burned as if he’d been sprinting for a good fifty yards and still had ten to go.

He always turned away from the woman, and it seemed that inevitably, in this sick carnival ride of his mind, the fire found him once more and lured him into its burning grasp.

He bolted up, gasped out, “Mitch,” and then the flames claimed him again. Licking, searing, tasting, grasping.

He fought and wrestled and burned. He died and sprang to life. He cried for people he did not know and turned away from the woman he knew too well. He lived, he lost and he warred, bearing out the sickening twists of his mind, seeking again the brief moments of startling clarity. The ride had to end. The roller coaster had to straighten out. He fought for it. He raged.

But mostly, he burned.

The eighth trip through the whirlwind, his eyes opened, and he managed to glimpse the present. He could see the swimming images of a man and woman, heads bent together in serious consultation.

“We have to send for Dr. Jacobs, Cagney.”

“I don’t know, damn it. He came here shot and alone, obviously running from something. We have to consider that.”

“Consider what? Do you know how to fight a 104 degree fever?”

The man shifted on his feet uncomfortably, and Garret struggled for his voice. No one. No one must know.

“No, damn it,” the dark-haired man swore. Cage, Garret thought, and tried to reach out for his younger brother.

“Besides,” the woman continued, “Dr. Jacobs has been the doctor here forever. You’re the sheriff, Cagney. He’ll keep quiet if you tell him to. Everyone around here knows Garret’s a Navy SEAL and half of his life is so darn classified not even Mitch knows about it.”

“What if he says something?”

The woman turned slightly, and Garret saw the face from the rain. He worked harder for his voice, but the flames wouldn’t relinquish their grasp.

“Have you understood a word he’s said? I don’t even recognize the language.”

“Mitch.”

There. Once more his older brother’s name slid out of the void, scrabbling over thick, water-parched lips. Both heads swiveled immediately, and he forced the roller coaster to hold steady.

“Garret?” Cage whispered. Immediately, he was over at the bedside, bending down. “Can you hear me, Garret?”

A water glass was held to his lips from the other side; dimly he recognized Suzanne had come over. But the fire was fierce again, licking tantalizingly close, curling his hair.

“Mitch…has…to go. They’ll try him next.”

Cage frowned and exchanged heavy glances with Suzanne.

“Who’s ‘they,’ Garret? Tell me who’s ‘they.’”

“He has to go. Him and Jessica. Everyone knows…brothers.”

The roller coaster lurched sickeningly, carrying him closer to the edge and the excited, lapping flames. The heat, the searing heat. Sweat rolled like tears down his cheeks.

“Are you sure?” Cage asked sharply. “For God’s sake, Jessica’s eight months pregnant.” And Mitch would never agree to run from some unidentified danger alluded to in a feverish haze.

Garret’s mind lurched once more, a sharp curve in the carnival ride suddenly thundering ahead. He was going to crash. He was going to burn.

With extreme effort born of desperation, his massive fist leaped up to clutch Cage’s shirt. “Get them out of D.C.,” he demanded fiercely, his black eyes burning bright. “Get them out of D.C.”

Then he hit the corner, his mind looping around and around through the blazing, tortured corridors of his shattered memories. The flames, the bodies, the rain. Over and over. His mind exploded and the darkness rushed in.

Cage swore, his gray eyes meeting Suzanne’s with stark worry as Garret’s hand slipped lifelessly from his brother’s shirt. “You’re right,” he said shortly. “We’d better call Dr. Jacobs.” He swore again, an uncharacteristic sound from his normally calm lips.

Mitch’s wife, Jessica, was eight months pregnant with twins, her former graceful model’s body swollen and ungainly with her burden. Last time Cagney had seen her and Mitch, they’d been reveling in the joys of their newfound love and finally tranquil life. Oldest brother Mitch had eased back from his position as an independent specialist for the witness protection program in the FBI, while Jessica was taking night courses to earn a master’s degree in education.

This new interruption would not be welcomed, but Cagney didn’t dare dismiss Garret’s warning. Cage sighed and massaged his left leg and the old bullet wound that still twinged. Cagney and Garret had always had their differences, and in particular Cagney had never liked how his brother had treated Suzanne Montgomery fifteen years before. But family was family. When push came to shove, if Garret needed a liver, Cagney would be the first in line, and he knew Garret would do the same.

The only problem was that Garret didn’t need a liver right now. He needed help with a problem Cage knew nothing about. All he had to go by were the contents of Garret’s wallet and a stashed money belt. The wallet held a driver’s license and credit cards for a Robert Fulchino, while the money belt revealed five thousand dollars in cash, another set of fake ID, a Swiss Army knife and, Garret being Garret, a pack of three condoms. Suzanne had blushed nicely when Cage had pulled those out.

“You’d better call Mitch,” Suzanne said now, interrupting Cage’s troubled thoughts with her own steady voice. “I’ll get Dr. Jacobs over here. It will attract less attention than Maddensfield’s sheriff doing it. Perhaps you should call Mitch from a pay phone.”

Cagney nodded, not surprised any more by Suzanne’s quick assessment of the situation. Assuming that Mitch’s phone line was tapped, a pay phone would be safest. Suzanne’s own background as a schoolteacher hadn’t prepared her for these things, but she’d spent plenty of time at the Guiness household as Cagney’s closest friend. Certainly in the past ten years, the Guiness brothers had had plenty of cause for secrecy.

Cagney realized he was scowling and forced his face into its normal calm expression. “Give me ten minutes,” he said, “and I’ll be back.” He jerked his head toward Garret’s redflushed, unconscious form. “Will you be all right with him?”

Suzanne raised a droll eyebrow. “Cagney Guiness, the man’s been shot. He’s unconscious and feverish. He’s hardly going to ask me to dance. Now get to Mitch and let me take care of things here.”

Cagney gave in by throwing up his hands in mock surrender. Suzanne took care of half this town anyway, either raising its children through her kindergarten classes, counseling its marriages through her church groups, or nursing its sick of her own pure volition. He was a fool even to doubt her abilities with Garret. Except, of course, Garret wasn’t just anyone. He was the man she’d followed around like a moon-eyed half-wit fifteen years ago and cried herself to sleep over when he’d boarded that bus and left Maddensfield for good.

Cage found himself frowning for the second time in five minutes and once more chastised himself. Suzanne was a big girl, and fifteen years was fifteen years. Certainly, more pressing issues needed his attention now.

He banged out of the house and limped down off the huge porch to find a pay phone.

Mitch answered on the third ring. “Mitch. It’s Cagney. Get to a pay phone and call me at this number.” Cagney rattled off the number, then hung up the phone without further explanation. Given Mitch’s involvement with the FBI, none was necessary. Sure enough, three minutes later, the pay phone rang.

“What’s wrong?” Mitch demanded abruptly. “I’ve been having that damn feeling again. Tell me no one’s dead.” Mitch had a history of premonitions before disasters. He’d already boarded a flight for North Carolina when Nick, the husband of their younger sister, Liz, had been shot years ago.