Shameless (The Contemporary Collection) (33 page)

He was going to close the door. She saw it begin to move and shot out a hand to hold it. “How can I forget?” she demanded. “Tell me that, and I might go.”

He drew breath, though whether to answer or to take some action to dislodge her, she could not tell. In that instant the light went out behind him.

It was a power failure, perhaps, from a falling tree limb hitting the lines; it happened all the time in bad weather. The blackout might last two minutes or two days, depending on the damage and how much outage there might have been in more populated areas. In a way, Cammie was glad of the dark. It made her feel less exposed in what she was trying to say.

She removed her outstretched hand from the door panel, shifting to touch the solid, warm wall of Reid's chest, feeling him flinch from the touch. “Please,” she said. “There's so much I have to tell you. I know this may not be a good time or place, but if I don't do it now, I may never find the courage again.”

“Don't.” The ragged command cut across her plea. He clamped his hand around her wrist, dragging it away from his body as if he could not bear the touch of it.

She swayed toward him, pulled a little off balance by his hold. It was then, in the sudden glare of lightning, that she saw the suitcase and duffel bags stacked beside the door.

“Oh, Reid, you can't!” she cried. “You can't go away again. I don't intend to push you into anything, or even to say what you might not want to hear. But I can't stand it if you go.” She reached out to grasp his shirt in her free hand as she moved closer. “What happened last night was an accident, nothing more. I won't let you—”

The shot exploded with a flat, hard report. Above Cammie's head there was a rushing, soundless whistle. The door frame shattered into stinging splinters.

She was yanked forward with hard strength, caught in a rough embrace. Immediately she was spun free. She tripped over a duffel bag and came up against the side wall with a jar that made her draw a gasping breath of pain and protest. At the same time, the door of the Fort slammed shut.

“Get down,” Reid rasped.

The solid thud of a bar sliding into place at the door was echoed by the blasting of a rifle in quick succession. The shots thumped into the thick, heavy door. Reid ducked away in haste, a moving shadow among the dark shadows of the room.

Cammie slid to the floor, glad to relax her trembling knees. Her voice a strained whisper, she said, “Why? For God's sake, why?”

“He wants us dead.”

She ignored the irritation in his voice for being forced to state what he considered the obvious. “Yes, but for what reason? And who can it be?”

Reid was moving in and out of rooms, slamming what appeared to be shutters of some kind over the glass in the windows. “For now, he's just a sniper. One who made a bad mistake.”

Reid's voice seemed disembodied as he advanced and retreated in the dark. At the same time, it was so quietly lethal that it sent a chill along her spine. She moistened her lips. “What are you saying?”

“He's in my territory, he's going one on one, and he's shown his hand. More than that, he picked the wrong first target: you instead of me.”

“Me?”

“You moved, or he would have had you.” Reid's voice came to a sudden, compressed halt, as if his words were cut off by lack of air. When he spoke again, the sound was closer, almost at her side.

“That won't happen again, not ever,” he said with grim and implacable promise. “Whoever is out there may not know it yet, but he's mine.”

REID SWUNG AND GLIDED FROM THE ROOM AGAIN.
Cammie listened to his swift, almost silent retreat. If moving around was safe for him now that the windows were shuttered, it had to be safe for her. She got to her feet to follow, leaving the entrance area and trailing his moving shadow along the hall. Her tone urgent yet soft, she called after him, “We need to phone Bud; he can have a patrol car out here in ten minutes.”

“I don't think so.”

She had been afraid that would be his answer. “You can't go alone after whatever lunatic is out there.”

He came to a halt outside his study. It was a moment before he spoke. “Whoever is out there has killed one person, maybe more. Now he's after you, and I expect I'm next on his list. If the police take him, he'll plea bargain attempted murder or maybe cop an insanity plea. He'll get seven years and be out in four or less. I don't like the idea of looking over my shoulder for him again that soon.”

“The police frown on taking the law into your own hands these days. You're the one who'll wind up in prison.”

“Maybe.”

He was moving away from her again, into the study. There was a sudden gleam of light, as if from a pocket flashlight. In it she could see him crouching over an array of electronic equipment on the desk in front of him.

She stepped toward him with her hands clenched at her sides. “That isn't all of it. You want to be rid of whoever is out there because that's the only way you can feel right about leaving. Do you think I don't know why you've been watching me? I'm not blind.”

“Especially now that whoever is after you has shown his hand.” The words had a bitter edge.

“I've known since you took care of Keith at the camp house,” she corrected him. “I guessed even before that, when I found you in the woods behind the house. What I don't quite understand is why.”

She waited with tightly held breath for his answer. There was none. His concentration seemed to be on whatever piece of equipment he was taking from a heavy zippered bag. Her lips tightened before she tried again.

“So now you've decided that you don't want to be my bodyguard anymore, and you think a permanent solution to the problem will give you the most peace. There's only one thing wrong with that. I can't let you take the chance.”

He paused in what he was doing to flash the intense beam of light in her direction. He held it steady a blinding instant, then flicked it away again. His voice hard, he said, “If there's anyone who could stop me, Cammie, it would be you. But since I'm doing my best to keep you alive, I have to follow my own judgment.”

Her teeth snapped together in exasperation. Turning from him without another word, she made her way in the darkness back down the main hall toward the rustic staircase. Under the stair steps was a telephone alcove of the kind that had been built in old houses back when a single, centrally located phone was considered adequate for a household. There were other phones in the house now, she knew, but this one was in the most protected place.

She was surprised that Reid didn't follow her. She realized why when she lifted the heavy black receiver of the old fashioned telephone.

The line was dead. Phone service was out along with the electricity. Or, more likely, both had been cut off.

Cammie dropped the receiver back into its cradle. As she stood there, she heard a quiet drumming overhead. The rain had begun. Heavy and insistent, it hit the house in windblown waves.

Somewhere out there the sniper was waiting. Or he might be moving, maybe disabling the Jeep and the Lincoln in the garage so they couldn't leave, circling the house, looking for entrance. Or he could be setting a trap outside the exit he thought they might use for an escape.

One thing he would not be doing was sitting still where it was safe and dry. He might think he had chosen his time and arranged matters so they had few chances to get away, but he had to take them soon, in at least the next few hours. The storm would end, people would start moving again, daylight would come. The Fort was isolated, but there would be traffic on the road by good daylight as people who lived farther back in the reserve went to work. He couldn't risk a commotion then.

What was Reid going to do? There was no percentage for him, so far as she could see, in remaining inside the Fort. He had to be planning on slipping out of the house and going after the sniper. That meant that he had put the safeguards, the bolted door, the shuttered windows, in place for her sake. He was going to leave her shut up inside the house.

It came to her abruptly, as she stood there, what he was doing in the study. That zipped case he had been handling; it was the kind that held a cellular phone. Among the equipment in the room was the computer on his desk. No doubt it had a battery power supply used to save work during the frequent power outages. The cellular phone could be hooked up by modem to Charles Meyer's computer in New York, completing the circuit for the distress signal Michelle Meyer had described with such fond humor.

Reid was setting up a final safeguard before he left her. As soon as that was done, he would be gone out into the night. That was why he had let her leave him just now: he knew she couldn't use the phone, and he hadn't wanted her to see what he was doing.

She whirled, running back toward the study. She heard the hum of the computer even before she came through the door. It sat on the desk with its message blinking in neon blue-and-white on the screen, while the indicator lights on the cellular phone indicated transmission. Reid was standing before the gun cabinet on the far wall, methodically loading a high-powered rifle with a light-gathering scope.

“Why?” she demanded. “What's the difference between you sending your signal code and me calling Bud?”

“Two things,” he answered tersely. “Number one, letting Charles make the calls gives me the extra ten minutes or so I need to get rid of our sniper. And two, he'll reach a wider circle of police protection, just in case.”

“In case you don't make it? Or — just in case it could be Bud out there?”

His face was grim as he gazed at her in the dim light of the computer screen. “In case of need, period. I prefer to cover all the bases.”

He had finished loading. Zipping up the dark, close-fitting jacket he had put on, he began slipping extra cartridges into the pockets. His preparations were almost complete.

There was about him a sense of distance. In some peculiar way, he was not just getting ready to leave her, but, rather, had already gone.

As she watched, he reached inside the gun case and took a small, compact pistol from the top shelf. He walked to the desk and placed it on the polished surface.

Without inflection he said, “This is for you. It's not very big, and you'll have to pull the hammer back to fire it, but it's loaded with .22 long hollow points that are guaranteed to stop a man in his tracks. If you decide to use it, don't do anything foolish like shooting over the target or into the ground. Aim for the body and shoot to kill.”

“Surely, you don't think—”

“I don't know,” he interrupted her in hard, overriding tones. “Don't ask questions, just listen carefully. This is what's called a safe room: inside lock, solid walls, one exit, no windows allowing entrance, and a phone for calling help, if necessary. I want you to stay here with the door bolted until I get back.”

He was a stranger, a commander issuing orders, expecting obedience. It was as if he had put away all feeling, donning the impenetrable efficiency of a machine at the first sound of gunfire. If there was any trace of the man she had laughed with and loved, he was gone. It was almost as if Reid, with calm and deliberate intention, had killed him.

Cammie felt bereft, and more alone than ever in her life. Still, she couldn't give up. If he was in the midst of a fight, then so was she.

“It's because you hurt me, isn't it?” she said slowly. “That's why you're like this. It happened in spite of everything you did to prevent it, and you can't stand that. Somewhere in your mind you've put me together with the little girl who died in Israel. You have to save me because you couldn't save her. I know — at least, I think I know how much her death hurt you. But you didn't choose to see her die any more than you chose to injure me. These things happened because of other people, other agendas. You aren't to blame.”

He made a small gesture of protest, but she went on without pause. “More than that, Reid, I'm not a child. I'm nobody's victim, and I'm not dead. You didn't kill me because you couldn't. You drew back; I felt it. You saved me, not only from Keith and from whoever is out there, but from yourself. You are not now and have never been an animal who kills with no mercy.”

But he was gone, retreating from the words she spoke as he might before advancing danger. One moment he was framed in the doorway, his face pale and strained and his eyes dark hollows of pain. The next, there was only empty space, and silence.

Cammie bit her bottom lip and squeezed her eyes shut. Nothing. She had accomplished nothing.

Except possibly the wrong thing. If ever Reid needed to be a killer, it was now. If he was not, or if she had disarmed him with what she had said, he might well die out there in the dark.

The pistol really was very small. As she moved slowly to pick it up, it fit easily into her palm, with the barrel not quite as long as her middle finger.

She stood with her fingers gripped around it, listening while her chest ached with the press of unrefined terror. One of the greatest moments of danger for Reid would be when he stepped outside. The sniper could be waiting, expecting him to leave the cover of the house.

The minutes slid past. Everything remained quiet except for the steady pounding of the rain and an occasional rumble of thunder. Surely Reid was outside by now.

Cammie slipped the little pistol into the top of her jeans pocket, though more because Reid had left it for her than because she felt the need of it near her. Moving to the door, she put her hand on the dead bolt.

Lock it behind him, Reid had said.

The urge to go after him was so strong. She didn't want to be locked away where she couldn't see or hear; every instinct rebelled against it. It was even possible that she could be of help to him.

She might also get in his way, especially if he didn't know she was anywhere near him. Even if he did know it, keeping track of her could be a distraction he didn't need. He was capable of handling the situation alone, if anyone could.

She was held back, she thought, by the same old considerations that always kept women out of a fight. That they had validity didn't make them any easier to bear.

She flipped the lock, then turned back toward the center of the room. Her gaze fell on the cellular phone and computer. The message was completed, the line of type on the screen told her so. The telephone was free.

Reid had trusted her not to use it. The exact words had not been spoken aloud, but had been implicit in the explanation he had given her. She moved forward and put her hand on the receiver anyway.

She took it away again. She couldn't interfere with what he had done. If he was right, and something happened to him because of her, she couldn't stand it.

There was a folder lying on the desk next to the computer. Slightly longer than legal size, it was yellowed by age to a dark golden color verging on brown. The edges were curled and worn, and there rose from it the mustiness of age and a faint hint of cigar smoke.

Cammie had seen enough turn-of-the-century office files in the antique business to recognize one when she saw it. It was curiosity that made her reach out and lift the edge of the folder.

There was a single handwritten document inside. The penmanship was looping and graceful, done in black ink with a sharp-nibbed pen. The language was formal, with a scattering of legal phrases, though the intent of the writer could not have been more plain. The subject was a transfer of property. There was not one tract of land involved, but two, and both were described in exacting detail. The signatures had been witnessed and notarized. The names inscribed at the bottom were perfectly clear.

Lavinia A. Wiley Greenley.

Justin M. Sayers.

Cammie let the folder fall closed. How long had Reid had it? Where had it come from? Why in Heaven's name hadn't he produced it? Or at least mentioned it?

What did it matter now? She knotted her hands into fists as she swung away.

The room was too small and cluttered for pacing. It seemed to be closing in on her. What if the sniper decided to burn the house down? She might never know it until it was too late. If she came running out at the last minute, killing her would be too easy.

Was Charles Meyer making the calls that would bring help, or was the message blinking in New York in an empty room? If he got it, who, exactly, would he contact if not Bud? Would the state police come charging in with sirens blaring or descend in a helicopter on the front lawn? Would CIA friends of his and Reid's, or maybe regional FBI operatives, arrive in a motorcade with horns blasting? And how long would any of it take? How long did Reid actually have to complete his self-imposed mission?

Where was Reid now? She could see him in her mind's eye, gliding through the wet, dripping night, ducking under tree limbs, pausing to listen. Did he have some idea based on logic and past experience about where to find the man with the rifle? Was he closing in on him? Would he confront the sniper head-on, or would he try to circle and come in behind him? Would he fix the man in his sights with the light-gathering scope, or would he close in for a quiet coup de grace?