Handful of Dreams (31 page)

Bits of snow clung to the trees and the ground. Susan paused, gasping for breath. He would follow her; him and his self-righteous determination to do the right thing. She leaned back against the trunk of a tree and sank slowly to the ground. She started to cry softly, but the air was so cold that it felt as if her teardrops turned to ice the moment they fell from her eyes. She looked up through the sheltering pines; darkness was coming, but so was a storm. He wouldn’t find her, not when the shadows protected her. Eventually she would have to go back. Or forward. She could probably reach Jud Richmond’s cottage before the storm broke if she hurried. She stood up and started walking.

He called her name by instinct. David didn’t move right away; he felt numb and more confused and tormented than ever.

What had he expected from her? It wasn’t what he had expected, it was what he wanted, longed for: Susan, hearing him, disputing him, running to him to tell him that she knew the child was his, that she loved him with all her heart, that…

At last he moved, shaking himself severely. He knew her so well. She didn’t beg, she didn’t plead, and she had a pride that never quit. And with his own wounded pride and terrible fear he had attacked her with guns blazing. Why the hell hadn’t he managed things decently for once? Talked to her, held her, admitted that none of it mattered at all, that he loved her.

Because, he answered himself, he loved her but hadn’t been able to trust her yet. Because it was still there, after all the years, the horrible feeling that love made a man vulnerable, that it bared his back to a thousand knives in a thousand different ways.

He reached the door and called her name again, frantically. The phone began ringing, but David ignored it.

“Susan!” He looked up at the sky and bit into his lip, unaware that he gouged it. Storm clouds were gathering, roiling and dark like the coming of the night.

He had to find her. He loved her; if he wanted a chance for them at all, he had to find her. And he couldn’t fail her—or himself—this time. He had to find her, hold her with all the love and the strength that he could, and admit that he was afraid but that nothing else in the world mattered if she could only love him in return….

The phone was still ringing. David stepped back into the foyer to grab his coat out of the closet. The phone was such a damned annoyance, he barely gave it a thought. She’d headed for the pines, and he had to find her before the storm broke.

But right before he walked out the door, some sense of foreboding stopped him in his tracks. No sane person let a phone ring for that long unless they were desperate.

David hurried into the library and answered the summons.

It was Jerry, and he sounded surprised to hear David’s voice, but then he went on—with relief. “David! Thank God you’re there! He’s out.”

David shook his head in confusion. It sounded as if he were supposed to know what Jerry was talking about.

“Who’s out? What are you talking about?”

“Bloggs! Harry Bloggs! That psycho you caught at the beach house! Hell, how can you forget such a thing?”

“I didn’t forget. I thought he was in jail—”

“He was! But there were only two guards on duty; Bloggs slipped the key from one of them and locked him in the cell. He knocked out the sheriff. David—he was issuing all kinds of threats against you and Susan. Is she with you?”

David looked down at his palm. It was soaking wet with sweat, but a chill of fear was making him shiver at the same time.

“I’d better find her—fast!”

“David! Wait!” Jerry yelled.

“What?”

“I think he’s already up there! Jud Richmond called in a short time ago. He was out in the woods and came back in to find his old dog, Sam, dead on the porch. His place was a mess, but only one thing had been stolen, his old sawed-off shotgun. David, listen to me, listen good, please!” Jerry begged. “The deputy’s trying to get some men through, but the storm has already started here. The road’s impassable. You’ve got to watch it like a hawk until they can get through! Be careful!”

Jerry was screeching, almost as if he were in tears. David was shaking, shaking so badly that he wasn’t sure he could walk, much less use extreme caution. He had never been so frightened in his life.

Got to find her, got to find her, got to find her…

The words took hold. He raced up to his bedroom, found his revolver, and then he was racing into the pines.

Jud’s house was dark. But he never locked his doors, so he’d just come home and find an unexpected guest. Susan frowned, berating herself furiously. The storm was about to break any second; she just hadn’t really given a damn because she’d been so upset. She paused in the clearing before the old log cabin, looked up at the sky, and suddenly realized that she cared very much. Rash, reckless emotion had made her leave the beach house knowing a storm was brewing, and she hadn’t given a moment’s thought to the baby.

Once he had just been a thought, a catastrophe that struck her life and had to be dealt with, accepted…

But now, standing in the clearing, she accepted that she was pregnant, realized how very much she wanted the child … David’s child. Peter’s grandson, Carl’s nephew. Life! And no matter what David had to say, no matter what he felt, she was going to have the baby, love him with all her heart, and give him all the wonderful things and people that were a part of him.

A snowflake touched her cheek, and she hurried up to the porch. But as she reached it, narrowing her eyes against the fall of darkness, she frowned. There was something large by the door.

Susan hurried closer and bent down, her fingers reaching out. It was only Sam. But Sam didn’t bark, and he didn’t wag his tail. He didn’t move at all.

Susan pulled her fingers away, fear razing through her like a bolt of lightning. Her fingers were all sticky; they were covered with blood.

“No!” she cried out, and then she gazed around in panic, straining to see through the shadows. Someone had killed Sam! Someone who was lurking in the shadows, someone who might be in the old hunter’s lodge, someone who might be … anywhere.

She closed her eyes for a moment while terror gripped her. She opened them again. In the darkness the pines had taken on grotesque shapes; they stood etched against a dead gray sky, swaying, reaching, transforming before her eyes into a thousand demons.

She blinked; they were pines, just pines. But she didn’t know what to do—slip into the lodge or go back through the pines? In the lodge she might find Jud, just as she had found the dog.

No.
No!

The pines, she had to get back to the pines. Susan stood slowly. The snow had begun in earnest.

She stepped off the porch, and then she ran. But just as she began to breathe more easily as shelter seemed to reach out to her, the forest was shattered with a harsh, alien sound. She looked at the tree in front of her; the bark was burned and blistered. She realized numbly that the shattering noise had been the sound of the bullet.

She turned slowly, very slowly. He was there, just behind her, laughing. A big man, full-bearded now, and even in the darkness she could see that his eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, as if he’d been helping himself to Jud’s liquor cabinet.

“Where’s Jud?” she heard herself ask.

“Don’t know, missy. The old codger is out somewhere.”

He spoke so casually, she was certain that he hadn’t lied. He would have told her that he’d blown off Jud’s head just as casually.

She didn’t back away from him; it wouldn’t have done any good. The blast from the sawed-off shotgun had hit the tree in front of her; she couldn’t possibly run fast enough to escape it.

“I’m worth a lot of money,” she told him. “Enough to buy you freedom. If I’m not hurt—” She broke off because he was laughing again. It seemed so absurd, both of them standing there, the snow falling all around.

“I don’t really want to hurt you, but if I have to, I will. I like you. I like the way you smell. I like the way you look. I like the sound of your voice.”

He took a step toward her, and she didn’t give a damn about the range of the shotgun. She turned to run.

His fist closed around her shoulder, jerking her back. She knew that she screamed, but the sound was cut off quickly as he dragged her to the ground. And then she fell silent because the muzzle of the gun was against her throat, scratching her flesh, pressing into her windpipe. His face was right up to hers.

Bloggs smelled more like a tomb than a jail. Like something old and decrepit and horrible. “You’re so white,” he crooned to her. “As white as the snow. But don’t pass out on me. Not yet. We have to find the tough guy first. And when I finish with him, you’ll be ready to jump before I can even whisper.”

He stood up, dragging her along with him, the barrel of the gun at her spine. “Don’t pass out!” he hissed.

She wasn’t going to pass out. She thought that she might be sick. She was terrified for David—unsuspecting David, enwrapped in his own torment. She thought she might well die, and she was afraid that she would burst into tears that would strip her of all awareness, all chance. The baby … She’d been so close to death so many times…. Oh, Carl, Peter! she thought, wincing against the prod of the shotgun. Was it like this? Was it like this? But, no, it hadn’t been terror for them, it had been a certain peace. God, I can bear to die! she prayed silently, but not the baby. Please, not the baby….

Which meant, of course, that if her prayer were answered, she’d have to live herself.

“Come on! Start walking, real quiet.” Bloggs’s voice was like the hiss of a snake.

She swallowed and moved. And kept praying.

There was movement: a crackle of dead branches. David straightened against a pine, leveled his revolver, and whirled around. The shadow was still distant. He didn’t pull the trigger.

Why the hell couldn’t it be light? Why was a blinding snow falling? He narrowed his eyes, felt a headache begin as he tried to see. And then he relaxed. The shadow was tall but very thin.

“Jud!” he whispered hoarsely.

“David?” A whisper came back to him. David moved away from the tree so that Jud could see him and come to him. The old man looked like death itself, gaunt and strained.

“Where’s Susan?” David demanded anxiously.

“She ain’t with you?”

“No!”

“Boy, there’s a killer out in these woods! The son of a bitch killed my dog!”

“Oh, God, Jud, I know,” David whispered in anguish.

Jud’s eyes leveled on him. “Why aren’t you with her?”

“I’m not! It’s that simple.”

“You argued?”

“She’s out in these trees somewhere.”

“Hell!” Jud spat. “She’s on her way to my place. You argued about your kid, huh?”

“We’ve got to find her.”

“Let’s head for the lodge.”

“Jud, you’re too old—”

“I can move just as smooth as you, boy.”

They started off together, hugging the pines. “You gonna marry her?” Jud formed the words more than voiced them.

“Yes, yes,” David said distractedly. If she lives! “Yes, whether it’s mine or not….”

He didn’t know that he’d spoken the words aloud. Jud suddenly stopped in his tracks, staring at David. They should have kept going, silently, but Jud was too incensed.

“What are you saying? She isn’t the type of woman to sleep around!”

“Shut up, Jud! I wasn’t talking about her sleeping around. I was talking about my own father, if you must know!”

“Your father?” Jud was so stunned, he stopped again, still whispering vehemently. “Why, you young ass! Where’d you get an idea like that?”

David sighed, worried and determined to go on. What the hell difference did any of this make unless he could find her before Bloggs did? “Jud, he was paying her a salary for her services! She—”

Jud spat on the snow. “Author services! He knew he was dying; he wanted his words down fast! He met her at Harley’s clinic the day her brother died.”

For a moment the world swept away, the pines, the forest, even the fear. All David could feel was the cold, “Dad … knew he was dying?”

“You weren’t ever supposed to know; them were his wishes. But seems to me Pete would want to think of the living, not the dead.”

David doubled over suddenly, shot through with pain, aware again of the pines, of the darkness, of the snow, falling even harder now. God in heaven! She’d led him on! Because Jud was right: He’d been such an ass! And no matter what the provocation, she’d never hurt him with the truth that his father had been dying, and David’s own obstinacy had kept him away when…

Bloggs was out there. Susan was out there.

He gripped a pine and Jud at the same time. He heard footsteps, footsteps against the snow. He practically jerked Jud off his feet to get him off the trail and into the shadows of the trees.

And then he saw it all clearly. Susan was walking past him. Bloggs had his elbow crooked around her throat, and Jud’s shotgun was pressed against her spine.

Susan. Everything he loved. Everything that gave him a chance in life. He needed her forgiveness for so much; he needed her, and he was so damned scared….

He let them move on by, horribly aware of Jud’s breathing behind him. No sound, no sound…

He waited until they had moved past, then motioned to Jud. Melding with the trees, they followed behind. Bloggs and Susan were getting closer to the beach. The snow was turning to a drizzling rain. The boulders on the sand rose like sentinels as they neared.

David motioned to Jud, who moved next to him. Jud listened to his words, then nodded. David skirted around through the trees, and Jud moved spryly, rushing up to hide against one of the granite boulders. He waited and listened.

And then he called out, “Bloggs! Harry Bloggs!”

Susan was jerked around and slammed in front of the man just like a human shield. Jud realized with real pleasure that Bloggs wasn’t at all sure in the darkness and rain where the call had come from.

“Is that you, tough guy?” Bloggs called out.

“No, it ain’t!” Jud replied. What the hell did he do now? David had just said to keep the man talking.

“It’s me—Jud Richmond. You killed my dog, you no-good bastard. That dog didn’t do nothing to you!”