Night Moves (32 page)

Lee grasped it and brought it to his ear.

"Lee? Lee?"

"Yes?"

"It's Andrew. Listen. Tony Asp just called here. He wanted to know why we didn't tell him about working today. I said we weren't. Then he told me that he'd seen Bryn's car parked on the roadside near the oldFultonplace--"

Lee dropped the phone onHammarfield's desk. "Call the police," he told Hammarfield hoarsely. "Tell them to get out to the oldFultonplace as quickly as possible."

Bryn had managed to work her hands free. She waited until Mike Winfeld had stepped out of the driver's seat to spit out the gag and tear at the bonds on her legs. Luckily the knots hadn't been tied well.

And she had been given the strength and energy of the instinct for survival.

When he opened her door she was ready. She kicked out at him with a forceful fury that sent him staggering backward. In that split second she jumped out of the car and ran.

The length of the old dirt driveway stretched before her. But she was a good runner. Her legs were strong from dancing, and it was for her life that she ran. Her lungs burned, and her breath came in increasingly painful gasps, but she kept running.

Winfeld was behind her, but she was gaining distance on him with every passing second.If she could just make the road...

Winfeld shouted something; she couldn't make out the words. But then she realized that he was shouting to the other man, his accomplice, the "fan" who had wanted to purchase thephotos.

He was standing at the end of the driveway. He had parked her van in a clump of trees and was now coming for her. She was trapped between the two of them.

Bryn veered off the driveway, into the grass and overgrown foliage. Nettles and vines grasped at her, slowing her down. She kept running, but the distance was beginning to tell on her. She could barely breathe; pain was shooting through her legs, knifing at her belly.

She ran into a grove of old oaks. Where the hell was she? Where was the road?If she could just get to the road...

She stopped for a minute. There was silence all around her. And then she heard it.The sound of a car on the nearby highway. It was to her left.

She started to run again, then gasped and came crashing down to the ground as Mike Winfeld stepped suddenly from the shelter of an oak and tackled her to the ground. He wasn't messing around with her this time. He knotted his hand into a fist and sent it crashing against her face. She didn't feel any pain; the world instantly dimmed, then faded away completely.

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The door to theFultonplace was partly open. Twilight was falling, and it looked like the perfect haunted mansion.

Lee jerked his car to a halt before the graceful Georgian columns. His bow and the quiver of arrows were beside him; he grabbed them instinctively, fitting the quiver over his shoulder as he began to race to the front door. He threw it fully open.

It took his eyes a minute to grow accustomed to the darkness within. And then he saw Winfeld, halfway up the long curving stairway with Bryn tossed over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

Winfeld saw him. "Get him!" he shouted.

Lee cursed softly. He hadn't seen the other man in the darkened foyer.The man who jumped him with a switchblade.

He was able to bring his arm crashing up against the other man's arm, the one with the knife. The switchblade went flying across the room to be lost in shadows. Lee struggled only briefly with his opponent; the man was no contender in a real fight. Lee gave him a right hook that sent him sprawling to the floor.

But when he looked up again, Winfeld had reached the upper landing with Bryn. He was moving precariously toward the railing. Lee could never reach her in time....

He looked quickly to the floor for his fallen bow, grabbed an arrow from the quiver at his back and strung it. "Winfeld!" he shouted.

Mike Winfeld paused, looking down at him.' 'Drop it, Condor. Or I'll throw her over."

Lee held as still as granite. "That's what you're planning on doing anyway, isn't it? Set her down, Winfeld. It only takes a second for an arrow to fly. If there's one scratch on her, I'll not only scalp you, I'll skin you alive."

Winfeld paused uncertainly. Lee realized that he wanted to kill theman, that he wanted to rip him apart piece by piece. His feelings were purely barbaric, purely savage.

Were they normal, he wondered vaguely. Because they were also tempered by something civilized. He wasn't God, and he wasn't a jury.

He moved swiftly while Winfeld was still pausing in his uncertainty. The arrow flew from his bow like a streak of silver. It piercedWinfeld's jacket and embedded itself into the paneling of the wall, pinning Winfeld there. Although his flesh hadn't even been scratched, Winfeld screamed and clawed at the arrow, dropping Bryn.

Dazed, she rolled across the floor. "Get up, Bryn!" Lee shouted to her. She looked around herself and saw Lee below her, then saw Mike Winfeld pinned to the wall, but tugging furiously at the arrow. She started to race for the stairs, but although Winfeld was pinned, his arms were long. And before she could pass him, he had reached into his pocket and with a sharp click produced the lethal blade of a switchblade. Lee started to reach for another arrow,then paused. Bryn had raced back to the railing. In the distance he could hear the shrill sirens of police cars.

"Jump!" he commanded Bryn.

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Bryn looked at the distance down to Lee. Her hatred of heights swam in her brain. She looked back.

The paneling was beginning to splinter. Winfeld was almost free. It was probable that he would still be willing to kill her, if only for vengeance, now that the sirens were shrilling so loudly....

She looked back down to Lee. Sharp golden eyes blazed into hers; she gazed at the beloved contours of his bronzed face, and she saw his arms waiting.

Lee didn't speak again; he stared at her, his plea and demand in his eyes. Jump, Bryn, please jump; don't make me have to kill this man to save your life when you can come to me, and the law can make all the final judgments.

Strong arms, Bryn thought.Powerful arms. Ready to catch her any time that she fell. She had trusted him with her love and her life already.

Bryn swung a leg over the railing and jumped. He buckled with the force of her weight, but he didn't fall.

He wrapped his arms around her tightly and walked out into the beauty of the twilight just as the police cars screeched to a halt before the Georgian columns.

The night, of course, couldn't end there.

Within an hour Winfeld and his accomplice were behind bars, as was the woman who had cared for Adam.

Bryn hoped that the law went lightly on the woman; she wasWinfeld's girlfriend, and she had been so terrified of him that she had been willing to do anything. She confessed as soon as the news ofWinfeld's arrest had been released, and she begged only to speak to Bryn and offer a tearful apology.

Bryn, Lee, Barbara, Andrew and the rest of the group spent hours with the police, trying to explain it all.

The police were indignant that they hadn't been called in from the beginning, but they dealt with Bryn gently. She mused that they were probably accustomed to dealing with parents who wouldn't risk a child's life at any cost. She also assumed that having the whole lot of them trying to explain things had made the sergeant in charge so crazy that he was willing to let matters rest until it came close to trial time--and then a patient DA could take over.

It was late--very late--when they all congregated back at Lee's house, exhausted but completely satisfied.

It was over.

Bryn looked around at all the faces that had become so special to her.Barbara, a friend through everything.Mick, Perry and Andrew.

Lee...

They ordered pizza and sat around, talking because they were all so wired with the release of tension.

Then Bryn found herself making a little speech to thankthem all, and the talking dwindled. Mick and Perry said their good-nights. Andrew and Barbara decided to go to the town house. Barbara kissed Bryn's cheek; so did Andrew. "We always stick together, love," he told her in a whisper for the two of them alone. "But then... you'll see more as time goes by."

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Then Bryn and Lee were alone. She yawned and said that she was going up to bed. Lee kept picking up the paper plates, soda and beer cans. "I'll be along," he told her, and she knew that he was stalling.

She didn't say anything; she went on up to the room they shared, showered quickly and slipped naked between the sheets, wondering dully if it would mean anything. His attitude had suddenly seemed so...remote. Was it over? Had he helped her, then decided that his responsibilities were at an end?

No, she thought, but tears sprang to her eyes. He loved her; he did love her. He had said it time and time again.

In the dark.Whispered words of passion in the night...

She heard his footsteps and lay still, closing her eyes. He didn't turn on the light. She heard him shed his clothing, but when he lay down beside her, he didn't touch her. She rolled against him, and he did slip an arm around her.' 'Try to sleep, Bryn," he told her softly. "It was a long, long day for you."

She didn't answer him. She stared out into the darkness with tears stinging her eyes again. Time passed; it seemed that aeons

oftime passed. But she knew that he lay as she did, awake, staring blankly into the darkness of night.

At last he must have decided that she was asleep, because he rose and walked to the French doors.

Through the shadows of the night she saw him there, and in a flicker of moonlight she saw his face, taut and gaunt.

She hesitated only briefly, then crawled from the bed and went to him. He seemed startled; he had been deep in a worldall his own, she knew.

But he put an arm around her, pulling her to him as he leaned against the door, kissing the top of her head as he held her there. "I'm sorry," he told her. "I seem to keep you awake when I can't sleep."

His body was warm; the moonlight and the balmy night air seemed to caress them both. Still his touch upon her was a distracted one.

"I couldn't sleep, either," Bryn said, and when he remained silent, she turned in his arms, staring beseechingly into his eyes."Lee...why don't you...want me...tonight?"

"What?" The query was a startled one. And then he smiled slightly, touching her cheek, and she knew she had his attention at last.

"Bryn, I always want you," he told her. "I was thinking of you. Don't you know you have a massive bruise on your jaw, and scratches and scrapes all over?"

Bryn touched her jaw. It was the spot where Winfeld had struck her, but it wasn't causing her any real discomfort.

"Lee, it's--it's just a bruise, and I don't even notice it.Really. I...I need you to hold me tonight, Lee. Dear God, I'm not that fragile, really...."

He wrapped his arms tightly around her, bending to bury his face against her hair. She felt all his tension.

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Whathad she said, she wondered, and then she heard his groan, and the blunt statement that explained it all.

"She killed herself, Bryn.Victoriakilled herself."

It all came out. Words poured from him. Jerky words, starting with the time when the prowler had come in and he had defended himself.Victoria's reaction.How much he had lovedVictoria, and how, no matter what, she had turned from him-- afraid. How she had come to think of him as a savage. How fragile she had been, so fragile that he could not touch her, or reach her.His confusion.His loss.Victoria's affairs and that terror of him that he could never understand.

Bryn had been so afraid herself--of love.Of giving everything. Yet if ever a heart had been set before a woman, bared and bleeding, this was it. And she could not deny it. She held him tightly, her words pouring out in reassurance, and then in love.

"Oh, my God, Lee, you have to see that there was nothing else you could have done. It wasn't you, Lee.

She was...self-destructive. Didn't the doctors tell you that?"

"Yes, that's what they said," he told her tonelessly.

"Oh, Lee, you've got to believe them!" she "Please...I need you, Lee. I need you now, please...."

He gripped her chin in his hand, looking searchingly into her eyes."Enough to marry me, Bryn, after hearing all that?"

"Lee, don't you see? It wasn't you! I love you enough to do anything, Lee," she cried, stunned, yet afraid again herself. "But I'm--I'm a package deal, Lee. I come with three little boys--''

"Do you doubt so much that I can love them too?" "No, I don't doubt you. I just know that it can be--"

"Hard," Lee agreed. "Yes, I'm sure that being an instant parent can be hard. We'll argue sometimes; we'll have problems sometimes. But if we start out right... equal partners... we should make it. If I'm going to be their parent, I'm going to yell at them sometimes. You'll have to respect my judgment-- and why are you laughing?"

"Because I love you so much!Because I can't believe that you really want to marry me.That you're willing to tackle it all. Oh, Lee, do you mean it? Marriage... forever and forever...?"

"And forever," he promised her huskily. "If you can really bear with me, Bryn, Bryn, I do love you so very much." "It's magic," she said tenderly and with awe, smoothing away the taut lines of strain and concern on his face. "I can barely believe it."

He ducked slightly, sweeping her into his arms, holding her fiercely, protectively...but tenderly. She felt his love and his passion in the strength of his hold.

"Maybe words aren't enough," he told her huskily. "Actions can speak so clearly. If you'll allow me, I'll try to make a believer out of you...."

Bryn smiled. "I have an open mind. Please... show me." Never had he made love to her so tenderly. And when they were replete and exhausted, they talked.Openly. About a future that would be real and secure--and beautiful.