Running Scared (42 page)

“Has Todd been bothering you again?” she asked, since Jon had been on vacation for a couple of days already.

“Nah, not really.” Jon flopped onto the couch and picked up an old Christmas catalog. “I was just thinking that maybe we should have Daegan over. It’s Christmas and he’s all alone; he’s just got a bunch of creeps for relatives and…well, I don’t know.” Nervously he bit at the stubs of his fingernails.

She set her cup on a nearby table. “Do you want him to come over because he’s your father?” she asked, paralyzed inside. What if Jon decided at some point that he wanted to live with Daegan, to experience having a father, to do some of that all-so-important male bonding? She swallowed hard.

“I just like him. That’s all. And I don’t see why just because you two had a fight, I can’t see him.”

“I know but—”

“Isn’t Christmas a time of forgiving, of looking out for others, of…of loving thy neighbor and all that?”

“Yes,” she admitted.

“So?”

“It’s more complicated than that,” she said, feeling her son’s eyes following her every move as she warmed the backs of her legs against the fire in hopes of chasing a deep chill that had settled in her bones.

“It’s only as complicated as you make it.”

“Look, I don’t want to argue about this—”

The phone rang and Kate’s heart nearly stopped. She couldn’t help thinking it was Daegan, but when Jon answered and his voice lowered so that she couldn’t hear, she decided he was talking to Jennifer as he did nearly every night. She smiled to herself and experienced a wave of relief that she didn’t have to deal with Daegan O’Rourke.

At fifteen, Jon was suffering the highs and lows of first love. There was even a present from Jennifer under the tree and Jon had spent all his money on a pair of earrings that he’d found in Boston before they’d returned.

She walked to the window and pulled back the curtain. Maybe Jon was right; maybe Christmas was a time for forgiving. Biting down on her lip, she silently argued with herself and thought of her private Christmas wish, an impossible request really, that she and Daegan and Jon could be a family, a loving, decent, normal family.

“Don’t be silly,” she told herself, her breath fogging on the windowpane. “There’s nothing even remotely normal about anyone related to the Sullivans. And Daegan can’t be tied down. Be glad it’s over.”

Kate’s hair fanned around her face and her whiskey gold eyes looked up at him with love and laughter. “Again?” she teased, her body naked and rosy in afterglow, her breasts already taut, the nipples dark and inviting.

“I just can’t stop.” He was apologizing again, as he always did when he was with her. It was so hard to believe that she was finally his…

“I wouldn’t want you to.”

Her fingers linked with his and she pulled his hand forward to press it against her breastbone so that he could feel her heart beat, hear the steady thud, thud, thud…

“Daegan!”

Thud! Thud! Thud!

Daegan’s eyes flew open and he blinked.

“Daegan, help me.” Kate’s voice, anxious and loud, echoed through the old house.

“Coming,” he yelled, rolling off the bed and feeling his erection—still stiff as marble with his erotic dream. “Damn it,” he grumbled, stepping into boxers and jeans and snapping the fly as he hurried to the front door, and hit one light switch with his elbow.

She stood on the porch, bundled in layers, her face peeking from beneath the hood of a red parka. Her eyes were dark and round and in one gloved hand she held a flashlight, its beam directed at the old floorboards. “It’s Jon,” she said as he kicked open the screen door and let her inside. Her face was tight with worry.

Fear clawed at his heart. “What about him?”

“He’s missing, I thought maybe…” She let her voice trail off as she saw the boxes stacked in the corners, the evidence of his moving. “Maybe he would’ve come over here. He said something about seeing you earlier and I followed tracks leading this way…”

“He’s not here,” Daegan said, grabbing a flannel shirt from the back of his couch. He found socks and boots, then donned his jacket and hat. “We’ll find him.”

“Oh, God, I hope so.”

Without a thought, he grabbed her, held her close, stared down into her worried eyes, and said, “I’ll find him, Kate. You can count on it.” Then he let her go and was out the back door and whistling for Roscoe.

Footsteps and hoofprints led from the barn. “Damn it all,” he growled, staring at the evidence. “He’s taken Buckshot.”

“But where?”

“We’ll find out,” Daegan insisted as he snapped on the lights in the barn. Loco, whinnying in protest, blinked under the harsh single bulb. “Have you called the police?”

“No, I thought, I mean I was sure he was over here. I followed the tracks and then your house was dark and—” Her voice failed her.

Desperation stilled her lungs as they hurried back to the house, where Daegan called the sheriff.

“I’ll do what I can,” Swanson told Kate once Daegan had connected with him and handed her the receiver. “But it’s Christmas Eve and we’re short a few hands. I’ll put out an APB, but I can’t promise anything.”

Kate hung up. Her entire body shook and her imagination ran in horrifying circles. “They won’t do much.”

“Don’t really need ’em. Come on.”

She was still stunned from finding Houndog whining outside her door and investigating to discover Jon missing, his window open, the butt of a fresh cigarette ground into the snow of a gutter. She’d found his tracks and had assumed that he’d decided to visit his father himself, not wait for her approval, just take the bull by the horns and show up on O’Rourke’s doorstep. But he hadn’t. Instead he’d stolen a horse in the middle of the night.
Why?
she wondered.
Why? Why? Why?

“We’ll take the truck,” Daegan said, “for as far as it will make it. After that, it’s snowshoes.”

“Oh, God.”
Where could he be? Where?

“Here.” He tossed her the keys. “Start the pickup and warm it up. I’ll get some supplies.”

“Supplies?” she whispered.

“Just in case.”

She didn’t ask in case of what and did as she was told, fighting sheer terror as she saw him toss two pairs of snowshoes, a couple lengths of rope, a pick, an axe, a first aid kit, a tarp, a lantern, blankets, and flares into the back of the truck.

“Better safe than sorry.” With a little effort he put the truck into four-wheel drive, slid behind the steering column, and followed the horse’s tracks through a field adjoining her house to the government property beyond. An old logging road, that had originally been used during the gold rush days, cut through the sparse jack and lodge pines dotting the hillside. The night scape seemed eerily serene. Much too quiet.

Grateful for the moonlight that aided the beams of the headlights, Kate stared out the windshield and silently prayed that Jon was safe.

“Why would he do this?” Daegan wondered, casting a glance in her direction.

“I wish I knew.”

“You two have a fight?”

She fingered the disintegrating upholstery on the door. “Not really…but, well, as I said, he wanted you to come over tomorrow for Christmas.”

“And you didn’t,” he guessed, his voice edged with bitterness.

“I don’t know what I want,” she admitted, biting her lower lip. “Funny, isn’t it? A few months ago I could tell anyone who asked exactly what I wanted out of life, what I expected, and then…then you came into town, into my life and now…now I can’t even figure out what it is I need in life.” Sighing, she kept her gaze trained on the underbrush looking for something, anything that would help. “Right now all I care about is Jon.”

“That makes two of us.” The road was narrow and treacherous, winding along the side of a steep cliff, cutting ever downward toward the river. “Look,” he said. “Footsteps joined him.”

She saw them, too, the double tracks. Someone was walking with Jon. Her heart froze in fear. Who? Another kidnapper? But why had Jon willingly met him? Maybe he’d decided to meet Jennifer in a secret rendezvous, but why so far away? It was miles to Jennifer’s house in town.

“Who would he meet?” Daegan asked.

“Just you…or his girlfriend.”

“Girlfriend?”

“Jennifer Caruso, a girl he’s liked for a long time, I think.”

“Does she wear size thirteens?”

“She’s small. Petite.”

Daegan’s jaw was so tight, his bone showed through his skin. “From the looks of it, Jon hooked up with a man.”

“Oh God,” she whispered, clenching her fists and gnawing at her index finger in frustration.

Rounding a hairpin corner, the truck shimmied a little and Daegan worked the wheel, letting the pickup slide toward the edge, pumping the brakes. “Hang on,” he ordered, and Kate could do little else. She closed her eyes as the ravine gaped in front of the nose of the truck. Her heart hammered and she stood on nonexistent brakes. “Come on, you overrated piece of scrap metal, hold, damn you.”

With a groan the truck’s wheels caught and again it nosed down the road the right way again. She let out her breath.

So slowly she was sure she was going out of her mind, the truck inched down the mountainside then leveled at the river, where the old bridge had long ago washed away. The water, black and menacing, rushed swiftly through the cliffs, cutting a jagged path. “We’ll have to go on foot from here,” Daegan said, “though it looks like we’re close.”

Kate followed his gaze in the darkness. “Buckshot?” Her heart stopped as she recognized Buckshot, rider-less, reins wrapped around the lower branch of a tree.

She jumped out of the truck and approached the animal. “But where’s Jon?” Back to the wind, one leg cocked, ears flat, the colt stood, only flicking his ears and snorting when Daegan placed a gloved hand on his nose. “Good boy,” he said. “Now where’s Jon?”

Both sets of footprints headed downstream, and over the rush of the water she heard voices, faint but definite.

Kate dashed forward while Daegan grabbed something from the back of the truck. “Jon!” she yelled.

“Slow down, you don’t know what you’re going to find,” Daegan warned.

She didn’t care. She wasn’t going to lose her boy again. Slogging through the snow, slipping on rocks near the shore, she ran.

“So much for the element of surprise,” Daegan said, catching her and plowing forward as they slipped at a bend in the river and spied their son and his companion. Jon was on the shore, holding a stick, running alongside the river. Someone was in the icy depths, screaming desperately, trying to grab on to Jon’s slick, outstretched branch.

“Holy Christ!” Daegan swore.

“Todd,” she whispered, sick when she saw his head sink below the rippling surface.

“Hang on, Neider, hang on!” Jon yelled, reaching out a little farther, trying to hold on to the branch of a tree that bent over the river while stretching out farther and farther.

“Wait!” Daegan yelled but it was too late. Todd grabbed hold of the stick. Jon strained under the weight of the heavier boy and the power of the current snapped the branch like a matchstick. Both boys slid into the icy depths, their heads bobbing along with the current, screams reverberating through the dark gorge.

“Jon, no! Hang on!” Kate cried.

Running toward the riverbank, Daegan kicked off his boots and shucked out of his jacket. Then, still sprinting, he wrapped the end of the rope around his fingers.

“Hurry up!” he screamed at her. “And grab the other end!”

“No, what’re you going to do?”

He dropped the coil of rope, ran around a tree, and then took off into the water, splashing and yelling at Jon to hang on while the rope uncoiled.

She didn’t think, just reached the end of the rope and looped it once more around the trunk of the tree, tying off the end and digging her heels into the snow. Watching in horror, she saw Daegan’s head surface and bob, far away from either boy. “Save them,” she prayed, wondering how she could ever have doubted him, knowing that she would never love another man as she loved him. “Please, please, save them. Jon!” she cried when he disappeared from view.

Neider crashed into a rock and clung on, sobbing loudly over the current’s roar. “You hang on, Todd! We’ll get help.” But her eyes searched the darkness of the river’s frigid depths and she saw no one.

“Help me!” Todd cried, hysteria evident in his voice.

“We will.”

“Please, help me!” Dear Lord he was probably half-frozen already, suffering from hypothermia. And Jon, where was Jon? She scanned the deadly water, her heart pounding out a cadence of dread, her mind silently screaming that they had to be safe, they had to be.

“I love you,” she whispered into the night. “I love you both.”

Was it possible because of her stupid pride that Daegan would never know how much she cared about him, that he’d never live to hear her say the words that now filled her heart and soul?

“Daegan!” she screamed. “Daegan!” And then she saw him, slogging toward her out of the icy depths of the river, carrying Jon in his arms, breathing hard. She cried out and ran forward, her arms outstretched.

“Stop!” Daegan ordered and she froze. “Stay dry, for Christ’s sake. Someone’s gonna have to drive the damned truck!” At the shoreline Jon scrambled to the ground and Daegan ordered him to the truck for blankets, then he turned, and shivering, his wet hair plastered to his face, he walked upstream and dove in again.

“No,” she whispered, watching as he let the current carry him toward Todd. Her eyes stayed on him as she removed her jacket and tucked it over her son’s shoulders. Daegan swam, gasping, crossing the water’s swift current. At last he reached the rock. Then, while the huge boy clung to him, he made his way to the shore.

Kate and Jon, teeth chattering crazily, helped by dragging on the tow line, pulling them forward, easing them to the shore. Once Todd landed on the icy bank, Kate and Daegan helped him up to the truck, with Jon wrapping them both in blankets, seating them in the warming cab.

As Daegan closed the door of the truck to keep in the heat, Kate flung herself at him, kissing his cold skin, holding him tight, ignoring his protests that she’d get wet and freeze.