He got to his feet, glowering as he thrust Puff at her, sneezed, and stuck the side of his hand where tiny beads of blood were beginning to form in his mouth.
“Thank you,” Clara said. He responded with a glare, still sucking on his hand, then turned on his heel and marched off through the undergrowth. Clara, clutching Puff to her breast, followed.
The makeshift ponchos were little protection from the cold as the afternoon progressed. Despite the brisk pace that McClain was setting, Clara was shivering. Puff was a welcome source of warmth, and she held him tightly as she stumbled through layers of leaves and vines so thick they must have lain undisturbed for years. If only Puff weren’t so heavy. …
“McClain, wait!” Clara finally reached the point where she could walk no further. They had come at least ten miles, she knew it had to be that far or close anyway, without so much as a break. Her legs felt as if they were about to fall off, she was freezing to death, her arms were breaking from lugging Puff, and to top all that she was starving. Which last point she would not mention even if she starved to death. To do so would be sure to bring more recriminations about Puff down on her head.
“We need to keep moving.” He came back to where she had collapsed on a half rotted log. The fresh air showed up his bruises vividly, but there was an alive look to his face
that made him look almost handsome. He was at his best when facing danger, Clara realized, and scowled at him. Now
she
was at her best in her own mauve-toned home where she would be right this minute if it weren’t for him.
“I am taking a break.” She said the words distinctly, with immense dignity. For punctuation Puff meowed. McClain frowned down at Puff, his arms crossing over his chest.
“That’s the meanest, fattest cat I ever saw. He’s as big as a pony. What do you feed him, cat Wheaties?”
“Oh, ha, ha.”
“He ate our lunch. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. How about if we skin him and roast him? There’s enough meat on him to feed us for a week.”
“That’s not funny.”
“I wasn’t trying to be funny.”
“Look, just because you’re an animal hater—”
“I am not an animal hater. I like dogs. I have a dog, as a matter-of-fact. I keep him on a farm and see him on weekends. He’s a nice dog, a collie.”
“Seeing him on weekends does not count as having a dog.”
“It does too. I’m sensible about animals. They’re not kids, after all. Woofer needed a place where he could run, and more attention than I could give him when I’m gone as much as I am. So I leave him with one of my sisters.”
“Woofer?” Clara hooted. “That’s some name.”
“It’s no dumber than Puff.”
“Puff’s not dumb!”
“Oh, yeah? If that cat was very smart he’d run a mile from me, because I’m likely to turn him into a catskin cap. Any minute now.”
“You just don’t like him because he makes you sneeze. It must be embarrassing for such a tough guy to be allergic to
cats. Tel! me, did the other boys used to tease you about it when you were growing up?”
McClain’s scowl deepened. “I’m surprised somebody hasn’t strangled you before now. But maybe I can rectify that.”
“You don’t scare me, Mr. Secret Agent Man.” And, surprisingly enough, he didn’t.
McClain’s eyes narrowed. “You know, I don’t think you’ve thought the situation through. What would you do if I just walked off and left you and that damned furball to face Rostov or the cops or whoever on your own?”
Clara smiled seraphically. “Tell them every detail of your plan, of course. How you plan to access Big Floyd and see Michael Ball in Florida and—”
“Bitch.”
“So you’re stuck with us, McClain, just like we’re stuck with you. Believe me, we don’t like it any better than you do.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah!”
McClain’s eyes narrowed. His lips compressed. His arms uncrossed and his fists settled into twin balls on his hips. He leaned forward and down until his face was inches from Clara’s and gritted, “I’ve had about as much of your smart mouth as I’m going to take, lady. I thought we settled all this last night. I give the orders, and you take them!”
“Pooh!”
She stared back at him with a narrow-eyed defiance of her own. She was tired, hungry, and scared silly, and he was the least of her worries. She stuck out her tongue at him.
“You know what your problem is?” he said through clenched teeth. “You’re a man hater. I bet you’ve never had a boyfriend in your life!”
That hit home. Clara was sensitive about the lack of men in her life. Not that she wasn’t attractive. She was. She knew she was, and her mother and Lena assured her of it several times a month. She had just never had the knack of attracting men. Not like Lena.
“Have you ever been laid, Miss Man Hater? Or even kissed?”
Clara’s face reddened at the jeer. While she sputtered, he continued in a singsongy taunt, “Old maid, never been kissed; old maid, never been kissed—”
She slapped him. Right on his bruised cheek. So hard her hand stung. So hard his head snapped back. So hard he yelped. Then his green eyes darkened to emerald and shot sparks. He reached out and grabbed her by her upper arms, hurting her as he yanked her up and against him, dislodging Puff who leaped for safety with a yowl. Then in the same rough movement he was bending his mouth to hers and kissing her with a bruising force that hurt her mouth.
Clara felt the greedy heat of his mouth all the way down to her toes. Her stomach churned; her loins tightened; her toes curled. Her arms went up around his neck. She melted against him like superheated plastic. More than she had ever wanted anything in her life, she wanted his kiss.
His tongue was in her mouth. She thought she would die with the wonder of it. Quivers started at the base of her spine to race along her nerve endings. She touched his tongue with hers, caressed it, felt his heart begin to slam against his ribs. His arms went around her, straining her to him. His hands slid down to cup the round cheeks of her behind. He pulled her up against him, and she felt the size and hardness of him pressing against that part of her that suddenly ached with need. Her knees went weak. Her bead rested on his shoulder as he bent her over his arm and
slanted his mouth across hers like a man who was suddenly starving. …
Then, just as suddenly as he had grabbed her, he straightened and thrust her away from him so that she sat down hard on the log, hard enough to hurt her behind if she had been noticing such things but she wasn’t. She could only stare bemusedly into green eyes that were the mysterious dark hue of pine forests now.
“McClain,” she breathed. He sucked in a breath and his jaw clenched.
“If there’s one thing we don’t need at this point it’s that kind of complication,” he bit out. “So control yourself, for God’s sake!”
Then he turned on his heel and marched away into the forest. Clara stared after him, her emotions slowly crystallizing into anger. He was nearly out of sight before she regained the presence of mind to retrieve Puff and scramble after him.
XI
Puff picked up the sound first. The sun was hanging low in the sky; beneath the trees, the world was already verging on dusk. It had been about four hours since they had abandoned the police car. Most of that time had been spent in fuming silence as each made a conscious effort to ignore the other. Clara had finally had to put Puff down; her arms were simply too tired to carry him. To her pride—which she communicated with a superior look at McClain—the cat had the good sense to follow along behind. He was smarter than any dog, as she had known for years. Now, when she looked behind her to make sure that he was keeping up, she found him unmoving some twenty feet behind, ears pricked and tail moving as he stared unblinkingly back down the trail.
“He hears something.” They were the first words she had spoken to McClain since that soul shattering kiss.
Even without Puff’s weight to slow Clara down, McClain still managed to stay some little way ahead of her. Now he threw an impatient look over his shoulder without stopping.
“Dumb cat probably sees a bird. Keep moving.”
“No, he hears something,” Clara insisted, stopping and walking back to where Puff was still staring alertly back the way they had come. The urgency of her tone must have gotten through to McClain, because he turned and walked back to join her, muttering a curse under his breath.
“Goddamn!”
The drawn out profanity signaled a calamity of the highest order. Clara’s eyes widened as she stared up at McClain, who had stopped to listen. She too heard something, strange high-pitched sounds she could not identify.
“What is it?”
“Dogs.” The terse monosyllable was alarming in the extreme.
“What?”
He threw her an impatient glance and bent to scoop up Puff. Watching him, Clara was frightened to death. Only a disaster of apocalyptic proportions would move him to pick up Puff.
“Dogs. You know, the opposite of furball here. Get your ass in gear, we’ve got to make tracks.”
Sneeze!
He was already moving at a steady jogger’s trot, his sneakered feet kicking up the top layer of the leaves underfoot, sneezing and cursing periodically as he ran. Clara was no jogger, but fear inspired her: she managed a very creditable skip-run that kept her just behind him.
“What do you mean, dogs?” she called to him. He had Puff tucked under one arm like a football, to her amazement. Despite the sneezing that was violent enough to throw him off stride when it came, he showed no indication of abandoning the animal or leaving him to her to carry. Her opinion of him, after sinking lower than a snake’s belly after
that unforgivable order to control herself, inched back up a little. But only a little.
“A dog pack. Trackers. And who do you suppose they’re tracking?”
Sneeze!
“Us?” Clara felt her heart lurch. She had seen those prison escape movies where the baying hellhounds chased down and chewed up their prey.
“Right.”
“What are we going to do?”
He spared a quick glance over his shoulder. “Run like hell. And pray.”
Sneeze!
Clara was already praying. And thinking. The helicopter must have seen the police car. They had, as McClain had thought they might, summoned ground support. The ground support had, in turn, summoned the owner of a pack of dogs. And the dogs were on their trail. Clara thought about their slow trudge through the forest that afternoon and groaned. They should have run like rabbits before the hunters. But recriminations wouldn’t help now. Only prayer would. And quick thinking. And quicker feet.
The sound of the dogs was growing more distinct. Clara didn’t know if it was because she was aware of it or because the pack was getting closer. Would they be torn to shreds or forced to climb a tree for safety, to be held at bay until the equally fearsome humans with the animals brought them down at gunpoint? Maybe they could make somebody believe their story before it was too late. …
“McClain!” All those hours when she had coddled her writer’s block by watching old movies suddenly repaid her.
“McClain!”
“What?”
“Water! We’ve got to run through water! Dogs can’t track through water!”
“Seen any bathtubs lately?”
Sneeze!
He would be nasty on the way to a firing squad, she thought resentfully, but it took all her breath just to yell her thoughts at his retreating back. She didn’t have any to spare for arguing with him.
“We’ve got to find a creek! We can run through it and the dogs will lose our scent. Would you wait for me?”
This last was as close to a screech as she felt safe to coming with the dogs and their handlers on their trail. A stitch was stabbing through her side and she did not think she could continue to yell after a retreating McClain. It was all she could do to keep running.
“Come on, then.” He came back for her, grabbing her hand and hauling her after him. The pace he set was murderous given the stitch in her side. She set her jaw narrowed her eyes, and resolved to keep running until she fell over dead. Stitch or no stitch.
Sneeze!
“If we run parallel to the hilltop we’re bound to come across a stream. Water runs downhill, and there has to be some on this mountain.”
“Stop talking and run. Where do you think I’m going anyway?”
He was, indeed, running sideways across the mountain instead of up it. He must have watched the same old movies she had, she thought. If only they could come across a stream soon. …
Clutching his hand for all she was worth, she forced her protesting body to move like it had never moved before
Even Puff seemed to realize the urgency of the situation. He was making no protest at being carried in such an undignified way by a man he loathed.
The baying of the dogs was getting louder; throwing a scared glance over her shoulder, Clara was relieved to see that at least they were not yet in sight. But from the sound of them they were closing fast, much faster than she and McClain were escaping. The animals would catch them soon unless they found a stream.
In the end, just as the dogs’ yelping was so distinct that Clara feared they would burst into view at any second, they nearly fell into their savior. McClain yanked on her hand stepping up his pace, and as Clara looked up despairingly she saw it too: a broad, shallow stream meandering down through a leaf-filled basin. It was an ordinary little mountain stream, which at the moment was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen in her life.
McClain didn’t slacken his pace as he ran into the water, turning downstream. This didn’t make sense to Clara, as the dogs were coming uphill and they would therefore be running past them. But she didn’t have the breath to protest. Sneezing with every other step, McClain was towing her through the creek like a minnow on a line. The stream bed seemed to be made of slippery pebbles and sand. It was all she could do not to stumble on the uneven bottom and fall. The water barely came past her ankles, but with all the splashing they were doing her jeans were soon wet to the thighs. And it was cold. As cold as the ice water in the refrigerator.
The baying of the dogs grew briefly louder. Clara could hear a human voice urging the animals on. Puff’s fur stood on end, and then the sounds were behind them, gradually
growing fainter as they continued to run through the stream.
At last they could no longer hear the dogs. McClain, sneezing only sporadically now, slowed to a walk. Clara felt like dropping flat on her face with the agony of the stitch in her side, but of course if she did she would drown. Besides, McClain would very likely leave her.
“I think we’ve lost them.” He didn’t even sound out of breath, Clara thought, eyeing him with exhausted resentment. She was willing to bet he was one of those fitness freaks who ran miles every day and spent their non-running time smirking sanctimoniously at saner folk. She despised fitness freaks—but her side was aching too much to allow her to throw the kind of putdown at him that he deserved.
“Kind of out of shape, aren’t you?” he observed next, apparently having noticed her bug-eyed, crimson faced, half stooped form of locomotion.
If looks could have killed, he would have died on the spot. Unfortunately, she did not yet feel capable of words.
“All right, we’ll take a break. For one minute, no more. Here, lean against this rock. We can’t get out of the water yet.”
Clara staggered up to a thigh-high boulder that protruded from the middle of the stream. Greenish water split into a V of white ripples on either side of the rock as it flowed past. Collapsing stomach down across the boulder’s curved top, she let her hot face rest against the cool stone as her fingers curled down into the icy water. Maybe, just maybe she was not going to die. Puff, who was as wet as her jeans, was parked near her head. He growled direly.
“Not having a heart attack, are you?” He sounded
cheerfully unconcerned as he leaned against the boulder near where her face flopped.
“Go… to… hell,” she managed, trying to glare at him. But she was just too tired.
Then he sneezed again and she felt vaguely revenged.
“We’ll follow this creek for as long as we can. If we’re lucky they’ll figure we went the other way. It’ll take them quite a while to run the dogs along both sides of the creek upstream. Of course, if they’re smart, they’ll also send a foot patrol downstream. Just in case we did what we did.”
“Let’s get moving,” Clara groaned, pushing herself up and away from the boulder despite the effort it cost her. The vision of the foot patrol that he suggested transcended physical agony. McClain clapped her on the shoulder and straightened, grabbing her hand before trudging off again through the water, Puff once again tucked under his arm.
Nearly an hour later the creek ran into a river.
“Now what?” Clara stopped to stare at the rushing expanse in dismay.
“Good question.” McClain, too, was staring at the swiftly moving brown water. He had stopped sneezing, finally. Clara supposed it was because Puff was wet and the fur that brought on the symptoms was no longer irritating McClain’s nose.
“We certainly can’t wade through that.”
“No.”
Clara started to slog toward the bank. McClain tugged on her hand.
“Wait a minute. Look over there.”
“Over there” was a clump of trees, a tangle of weeds,
and an orange and black rubber raft overturned on the bank.
“Probably belongs to some hunters,” McClain observed, thrusting Puff at her before moving toward it. He had dropped Clara’s hand when they had stopped. She vaguely missed the comforting warmth of his grip. Holding Puff, who seemed to have resigned himself to being hauled about, she splashed after McClain.
“You don’t mean for us to take that thing,” her nod indicated the flimsy looking raft, “out there, do you? It looks like some kid’s toy!”
McClain looked briefly at the swollen river, then back at Clara. “It’s the best I can come up with. Unless you want to go on walking through the woods until we come across the dogs again.”
That silenced Clara. She watched as he leaned over to pull the raft into the water after a wary look around. Whoever belonged to the raft was nowhere in sight. Beneath the octagon shaped vessel was a pair of aluminum oars, neatly placed. Careful that his feet never left the water, McClain grabbed those too and threw them with a clatter of metal on metal into the raft, which was already beside him in the creek. The thing appeared to float, or at least its back side did. The front end was resting on the pebbly creek bottom beside McClain’s foot. Clara could see at least two black rubber patches from where she stood. There was no way the thing would carry McClain, herself and Puff down the swollen river.
“Hop in,” he said, pulling the ridiculously small raft out into the middle of the creek. Clara was relieved to see that the front end floated as well. Temporarily, anyway.
“It doesn’t look very river worthy,” she protested nervously, eyeing the sausage-roll sides and black rubber bottom
that was streaked with mud and littered with leaves. The chubby, patched sides reminded her of innertubes she swam with as a child. Fun then, maybe, but nothing she cared to attempt now. Not on a river, when her life was at stake.
“What do you want, the
Pacific Princess
?” he asked, naming a well-known cruise ship as he waded around beside her. Before she knew what he was about, one arm slid around her shoulder and the other around her knees. She was lifted and deposited willy-nilly on the floor of the raft before she could do more than squeal. Puff yowled and leaped for safety at this unexpected occurrence. Fortunately he too landed in the raft. Clara’s bottom was immediately as wet as the rest of her from the inch or so of ice cold water that had settled in the raft’s bottom. Puff, feeling water, that most dreaded of all substances, on his feet, yowled like a banshee and leaped up into the air, only to land again in the same puddle. He looked wildly around, then appeared to realize that there was no dry place on which to rest. With a moan, he lifted a paw, shook the water from it, washed it—then had to set it down again into the mess. He moaned again and repeated the process.
“Listen, can the he-man stuff,” Clara said furiously, sitting upright and glaring at McClain as she clutched both sides of the furiously rocking raft. He was already behind it, pushing it out toward the river. The water swirled up past his knees to his thighs.
“I’m perfectly willing to plant my ass in the raft while you push it out,” he said, pulling his poncho over his head and tossing it to her for safekeeping as he spoke. The words were matter-of-fact, but there was a glint in his green eyes that Clara disliked. She made no reply, just clutched the poncho to her chest and eyed him resentfully. If she argued
with him at this particular point she feared she just might find herself waist-deep in the muddy water. Which, when she thought about it, she was perfectly willing to leave to him.
“Move to the rear, would you? It’ll make it easier to push.”
Not being blessed with Puff’s coordination, Clara had problems getting her bottom off the bottom of the raft. The rubber gave with every movement she made, and in the end she was forced to scoot backwards to the spot McClain indicated in the stern. Puff she set in the middle. He moaned and repeated his attempts at drying his paws.