Forever After (31 page)

“As safe as we can get. Like I said, it’s way to hell and gone out in the middle of nowhere. Nothing but a rutted, dirt road leading in to it. I doubt a two-wheel drive would even make it, and it’d be a hell of a trek on foot.”

She turned her face toward her window. “There aren’t many houses out this way, are there?”

“No. And they’ll get scarcer. A few miles farther up the road, there are only vacation homes, mostly around the lake, some peppering the forests. It’s a popular hunting and fishing area up there.”

The isolation up at the cabin would be both good and bad, Heath thought. On the one hand, unexpected visitors would be unlikely. On the other hand, though, there was always the possibility someone might find them, and in that event, they would be a long way from any kind of help.

He clenched his hands on the steering wheel, trying to sort and organize everything Meredith had told him. Organized crime, mob killings, vicious Dobermans. Some of it sounded almost too fantastic to be true. But, by the same token, he remembered reading an article recently about union corruption and links between top officials and organized crime.

Heath knew next to nothing about large-scale crime networks. He’d seen enough movies about them to know they existed and that men in the ranks—thugs, goons, soldiers, or whatever else you wanted to call them—were shrewd, well-trained, and merciless in the execution of their orders. When Heath thought about battling it out with dudes like that, it scared the piss out of him. But, then, he figured he’d have to be nuts not to be a whole lot scared.

The highway narrowed to two lanes as they climbed into the sharp mountain curves. Heath devoted his full concentration to his driving and watching the rearview mirror. Every few minutes as he brought the Bronco out of a curve, he glimpsed headlights coming into the turn behind him.

He increased his speed and began watching for a side road, preferably a dirt logging route. The Bronco was a high-clearance, all-terrain, four-wheel drive, and he could take it places a car couldn’t follow. If he dropped off the main highway, cut his lights, and drove like a bat out of hell, he could probably lose anyone trying to tail him. If, of course, it
was
a tail. Maybe he was just being paranoid. But the way he figured it, better to be safe than sorry.

Unfortunately, they were into the sharp curves, and there were no cut-offs. At least not any that he saw. What he did see were headlights coming up fast behind him.
Too fast
. He tromped the gas pedal.

“Wh—What are you doing?” Meredith asked.

“Is Sammy still buckled up?”

She glanced back. “Yes, but she has the belt loose to lie down. Why?”

“Tighten the slack.”

“I can’t.”

He remembered the handcuffs and swore under his breath. He hadn’t buckled Meredith into her seat because he’d wanted her to lie down. “Then all you can do is brace yourself. Get your feet up under the dash and push back as hard as you can against the seat. I think we may be in for a rough ride.”

“Why?”

Before he could reply, the car rammed into them. The jolt knocked the Bronco’s back end sideways just as it nosed into a curve, and the vehicle went into a broad slide, the tires squealing.

“Damn!”

Heath had barely managed to regain control when the other car rammed the Bronco again.

“
Oh, my God!
” Meredith cried as the Bronco crashed against the guardrail. “Heath? Heath! Don’t let them roll us! Oh, God, don’t let them roll us!”

She twisted in the seat, trying to see Sammy. The child had awakened with a start and was shrieking in terror. “Mommy! Mommy!”

Meredith would have given anything to be in the backseat holding her daughter. But in handcuffs, she couldn’t even reach for her. Through the rear window, she saw the headlights coming up fast again on their back bumper. In the nimbus of light, she was able to tell that the other car was a light-colored, full-sized sedan.

“Watch out!” she screamed. “They’re coming at us again!” The Bronco jerked at the impact. She fell hard against the door, cracking her head on the window. For a second, all she could see was black spots.

“Get your feet under the dash, dammit! Brace yourself!”

Meredith knew Heath was right. She would be of no use to Sammy if she went through the windshield. She turned in the seat and pushed hard against the floorboard with her feet. In the backseat, Goliath began to bark, the sounds nearly drowning out Sammy’s pathetic wailing.

The expression on Heath’s face was frightening. The glow of the dash lights etched his features with an eerie green iridescence and reflected off his tousled dark hair.
His lips were drawn back from his white teeth in a snarl. He darted glances at the rearview and side mirrors, his hands clenched on the steering wheel as he fought for control of the vehicle. He seemed to know instinctively what to do, turning sharply into the direction of the slide, then correcting to bring the rear of the Bronco back around.

“All right, you sons of bitches!” he said as he righted the vehicle. “You wanna play rough? Come and get it!”

He slammed on the brakes. The sedan behind them was forced into the opposite lane to avoid the unexpected collision. As the automobile came alongside the Bronco, Heath swung the steering wheel hard to the left, careening into the other lane and knocking the car off the road. Meredith watched in horrified astonishment. In the darkness, the sedan’s headlights appeared to be unattached orbs, bouncing crazily through the blackness, illuminating trees and boulders in dizzying, erratic flashes.

Then she realized the force of the sideswipe had sent the Bronco careening to the right and into a skid. Just as Heath managed to regain control, the four-wheel drive’s right rear tire lost traction on the gravel shoulder, and the vehicle began to fishtail. Meredith thought sure they were going to crash, but with impressive driving skill, Heath brought the Bronco to a stop just inches before it plunged sideways into a deep ditch at the edge of the road. The engine coughed and died.

Meredith tried to peel herself off the door, but the Bronco seemed to be leaning sharply in her direction. Evidently, they’d come closer to going off the edge than she cared to consider.

Dead silence
. Even Sammy and Goliath had fallen quiet. Heath sat there, gripping the wheel and staring, as if he couldn’t quite believe they were stopped. Then the faint sound of a voice drifted through the night to them. He swore, depressed the clutch, and turned the ignition keys.

“We have to get out of here!” he said, his speech clipped and agitated.

Meredith nearly wept with relief when the engine roared
back to life. Heath was right; they could waste no time in getting away. At least one of those men had survived that wreck, and he could come running across the road at any moment with his gun blazing.

Heath shifted into first and tromped the gas. A shrill, whining sound filled the interior of the Bronco. “God
dam
mit!”

“What?”

“Mommy! Mommy!” Sammy wailed.

“It’s all right, sweetie!” Meredith cried, unable to tear her gaze from Heath.

“A back tire is off in the ditch,” he said. “We’re high centered.”

“You mean we can’t go?”

He leaned down to shove and jerk on the shorter of the two floor shifts. Meredith didn’t know what he was doing, and her heart was pounding too hard to ask. He tromped the gas again. This time, in addition to the squealing of the back tires, the front wheels grabbed at the gravel shoulder for traction. She realized then that he had put the vehicle into four-wheel drive. The Bronco heaved, then fell back, heaved, then fell back. Meredith rocked forward with it, hoping the transfer of weight might help. But despite all her efforts and Heath’s, they didn’t go anywhere.

“Christ!” He shut off the headlights and everything else on the dash, including his police radio, which had been emitting occasional bursts of sound and static. Then he pressed a lever to roll down the back window, jerked off his seat belt, and threw open his door to leap from the vehicle.

“Get down on the floor. Both of you!” he ordered in a hushed voice as he closed the door almost soundlessly.

Meredith twisted in her seat. Through the side windows, she glimpsed his silhouette against the moonlit sky as he ran to the back of the rig.

She leaned over the console, straining to see him in the darkness through the wire mesh. “Heath?” She heard the rasp of gunmetal, the unmistakable sound of a rifle action,
and then the click of a bullet being jacked into the chamber.

“Oh, dear God,” she cried. “Don’t go out there after them! They’ll kill—”

“Meredith, shut up!”

His voice cut through her panic like a sharp knife. She jerked and gulped.

“Your voice will carry! You don’t want to draw their fire. Get Sammy down on the floor! And then get down there yourself!
Now!
Keep Goliath here with you.”

She saw the shadowy flash of his outline as he loped away into the blackness.

After that, there was only an awful quiet. Meredith felt her teeth chattering and bit down hard. She had to think. Through the side window, she could see the other car’s headlights, tipped at a crazy angle. It looked to her as if the sedan had slammed into a pine tree. She couldn’t tell how badly the car was damaged or if it was likely that more than one passenger had survived the collision. She only knew that if more than one of Glen’s men was out there, Heath was outnumbered and seriously outgunned.

She seriously considered opening her door and making a run for it with Sammy. If they went deeply enough into the woods, maybe those men wouldn’t find them. Only it was dark, so horribly dark. And the terrain around here was undoubtedly rugged. Wearing handcuffs, she wouldn’t be able to carry Sammy or even hold her hand to help her keep her footing.

“Sammy, get down on the floor, sweetie.”

“Mommy?” the child squeaked. “I’m scared!”

“Don’t be scared, sweetkins. Heath will take care of us,” Meredith assured her as she slid off her seat onto her knees. “See? I’m getting down on the floor. Be Mommy’s big girl, okay? Let’s show Heath how good we can follow directions.”

“I don’t want to.”

A burst of gunfire rent the silence, an awful
rat-a-tat-tat
, the sound so loud and explosive that Meredith nearly wet her pants. Sammy shrieked. Then another lethal burst of
noise erupted through the night, followed by several pinging thuds that vibrated through the Bronco.
An Uzi
, Meredith thought nonsensically.
That gun sounds just like Dan’s Uzi
.

Goliath whipped toward the noise and leaped at the window, snarling and baring his fangs. Sammy was still huddled on the seat. If she didn’t get down, one of the bullets might hit her next.

“Sammy!” Meredith angled her body over the console to bring her face closer to her daughter’s. “You get your little fanny down on the floorboard.
Now!
Do you hear me?”

The child mewled and blubbered, but she unfastened her seat belt. As she slid off onto the floor, another shot exploded through the darkness, the
ka-boom
of a high-powered rifle.

Meredith leaned over to watch Sammy lie down. “All the way. Flat against the floor, Sammy. There, that’s good.”

Goliath followed the child down onto the floorboard, placing his paws on each side of her legs to stand over her. By the animal’s stance, Meredith knew he would die before he let anyone touch her. Meredith could only pray it didn’t come to that.

“Mommy?”

“What, sweetie?”

“Don’t go ’way.”

Meredith pressed herself as close to the console as she could. “I won’t, punkin. I’m right here. If you reach up, you can feel me.”

Sammy twisted an arm up behind her back and touched Meredith’s hair. “You stay, okay?”

“Wild horses couldn’t drag me away.”

Eternity
. Meredith knew the meaning of that word now, and it wasn’t measured by mere units of time, with centuries passing into millenniums that stretched to infinity. Eternity was a state of mind in which every breath you drew
took a thousand years to expel, the rasp of your lungs resounding against your eardrums, the loud thuds of your heart spaced a hundred years apart. It was living forever in a black time warp, with gunfire exploding all around you and not knowing, from one heartbeat to the next, if your heart would ever beat again. It was lying only inches away from your child, yet unable to see her clearly in the shadows, your terror mounting because she lay so still and didn’t seem to be breathing. It was staring at the faint glimmer of blond curls, searching for red-black splotches of blood, until your eyes burned in your skull like smoldering coals.

Eternity was knowing that your life, pathetic though it had become, rested entirely in the hands of one man who had loped off into the darkness to do battle against impossible odds. It was seeing him in your mind, memories flashing in a colorful blur like the rapidly turned pages of a picture book.
Heath
. Looming, bigger than life, his body strapped with muscle. His skin as coppery brown as old bronze. His sable hair, always in need of a trim, trailing in lazy, wind-tossed waves over his high forehead, the gleaming thickness of it furrowed from the habitual raking of his fingers. It was remembering his eyes and how they changed with his moods, gunmetal gray when intense, a twinkling slate-blue when he laughed, and as turbulent as a stormy sky when he grew angry or worried. It was recalling his hands, which could look as large as supper plates when his long, blunt fingers were splayed, the palms as thick and leathery as sun-dried slabs of meat. It was remembering the touch of those hands, how they radiated a comforting warmth, and how gentle they’d always been despite their bruising strength.

Eternity was remembering how he had cupped your shoulder with one of those hands, and how easily you’d let your faith in him be shaken. Eternity was the guilt you felt because you knew he was out there in the darkness somewhere, possibly dying for you, and that if he survived, as
grateful as you might be, there would still be a part of you that feared him.

And, lastly, it was hating yourself because you knew your feelings were wrong. Horribly wrong. It was knowing that you had become a sick, twisted person, trapped in the maze of your own emotions, some pure and good, others dark and evil. It was knowing that no matter how hard you tried, you would never claw your way free of the memories or overcome the unreasoning fear. Your rational thoughts and your twisted ones chased after each other inside your mind in endless circles—the hateful and fearful side of you always winning.

Eternity was lying across a console until your breasts felt flattened and your ribs crushed, with your eyes streaming tears and your lips whispering soundless prayers for your child, and for yourself, and for a man whose survival had become inseparably linked with your own. It was begging God to protect him, your heart breaking at the thought of his getting hurt or losing his life, and knowing on some level that you were hopelessly in love with him, whether you wanted to be or not.

Eternity was realizing with a start that you’d become so lost in your churning thoughts that you hadn’t noticed the sudden silence. No gunshots. Just an awful quiet that made the darkness close in around you, blacker than black.

Meredith lifted her head, holding her breath to listen. All she heard was the night wind whispering in the towering pine and fir trees, the mighty trunks occasionally creaking and groaning as they swayed in the gusts.

“Mommy?” Sammy whispered shakily. “Where’s Heef?”

Meredith straightened to peer out the window. The headlights across the road had gone out. Now there was only darkness for as far as she could see—a whispering, shifting darkness filled with black shadows that seemed to move toward her when she stared at them.

“Quiet, Sammy.”

She heard a footstep in the gravel and flattened herself
against the console again, her limbs turning to water. Goliath whined and growled.

“
Quiet
!” she rasped.

Another footstep. Someone was coming. The question was, who? Craning her neck, Meredith stared, her eyes dry and bulging from their sockets. In her temples, she heard the rhythmic
swish
of her own blood.

In that moment, she wanted to scream at the injustice of it all. Heath had gone out there and died for them. Oh, God. And now those men were coming. She couldn’t run. Not without being able to carry Sammy. All she could do was lie there, waiting to die herself. And afterward, poor little Sammy would probably wish she were dead, too. Glen would get his hands on her. If Sammy survived the years of abuse with her little mind still intact, she would emerge into adulthood as crazy and spiritually decayed as her father had been.

The black, hulking outline of a man appeared at the opposite window. She heard the latch of the driver’s door click. Cool air rushed in as the door swung wide, the hinges giving a metallic
clunk
. Meredith tried to brace herself for a spray of lead, knowing that the man could cut loose with an Uzi at any moment. Only none of her muscles would tense. Terror had short-circuited the signals from her brain.

“Are you all right in here?” The deep, masculine voice was pitched to a panicky alto. The barrel of his rifle smacked against metal as he propped it in the crack of the door and came scrambling over the seat to grab her. “Son of a
bitch
! Meredith? Oh, Jesus, no!”