Second Chance - 03 - Blind Trust by Terri Blackstock
The woman looked up and shook her head. Sherry flashed her a desperate look, but the lady was undaunted. She merely looked back down at her book.
But Clint didn’t miss it. “Come on, Sherry. It was a good try,” he said. He set an intimidating arm around her shoulders and started her toward the door.
Sherry wasn’t about to let it go that easily. “Lady, he’s—”
Clint set his hand over her mouth, out of the lady’s sight. “She gets feisty when she can’t find any pistachios,” he explained, though the woman didn’t seem to care.
And with controlling force that had been worked into his muscular arms for months, he pushed her outside and into the camper. She landed on the bed with a bounce, and turned back to see his eyes burning into her with disgusted rage, but he didn’t utter a word.
For some reason that she couldn’t name, she felt unaccountably ashamed and deeply regretful.
Over an hour later, from where she sat, curled up in her corner of the camper, Sherry watched Clint in his private torment, his head propped on the heel of his hands. Her heart ached, and she didn’t want it to. “That place where we were going. Is it where you’ve been staying all this time?”
Clint dropped his hands and his eyes meshed with hers. “Yes.”
“Did … did they think you were still there? Is that why the bomb?”
“I doubt it,” he said. “They obviously knew I’d gone home or they wouldn’t have sent that letter to you. Like Sam said, it was probably just a warning.”
“A warning about what?” Fear sprang to her eyes, and she looked out into the night, stellar lights and natural shadows dancing by the window.
Clint didn’t answer. He simply stared at her with eyes as opaque and soulful as a cloudy sky at midnight.
“Okay,” she said with resignation. “You won’t tell me. But can’t you take their warning? Can’t you do whatever it is they want so they’ll leave us alone?”
“No,” he said.
Her balled fist came down on the thin mattress. “How could you have changed so much?” she blared. “How could I have been so wrong?”
His eyes held hers for a long moment, each looking to the other for the only balm that could soothe them. But neither could give.
“You weren’t wrong, Sherry. I’m the same man I was the night of our engagement party, when Laney had her baby and we talked about what kind of aunt and uncle we would be. I’m the same man who had already made a list of names for our children. I’m the same man who had to call you three times every night after I left you, because I couldn’t stand being awake and not having you with me.”
Sherry swallowed the emotion blocking her throat and dropped her head to her knees. She heard Clint get off the floor, felt his weight move the mattress as he sat down next to her on the bed. A small light over the bed flicked on, lending just enough light for them to see each other clearly.
“Look at me, Sherry. The same man.” Sherry reluctantly looked up again, and Clint’s eyes were misty shards of midnight, cutting into her soul. Her own eyes filled, and she blinked back the evidence of her grief.
“Then what happened?” The question came in a raspy whisper.
“I can’t tell you until we’re out of danger. It’s too risky.”
Sherry’s eyes blurred as she looked at him. “Too risky? Why? Are you afraid that if you tell me I’ll see the real you even more clearly? Do you know that in all the time you were gone, it never once occurred to me that you had done anything criminal and could be hiding? The lowest thing I could come up with was that you’d been so overwhelmed with responsibility that you had to get away. But when you came back, it all came together, like whirling pieces of a horrible nightmare. Only I can’t wake up. And it keeps getting worse!”
Clint lifted his hand to touch her hair, but stopped before it made contact. “It won’t get worse, Sherry. I’m here now.”
“But I don’t want you here! Don’t you understand that you are the nightmare? You’re dangerous, and secretive, and unpredictable! I don’t know who you are, and yes, I’m scared to death of you.”
Clint touched her hair softly. “Baby, I’m not a criminal and you don’t have to be afraid of me. You’ll see that soon.”
His touch sent currents of warmth seeping through her. More than anything she wanted to bury herself in his chest and feel the security of his arms around her, telling her it would be all right. But she couldn’t.
“Don’t touch me, Clint,” she whispered.
But his other arm came around her, forcing her to lean against him, coaxing her into laying her head against his chest. The power and insistence in his embrace terrorized her. Where would it stop?
“You say you don’t love me anymore,” he whispered. “But I know how hard it is for you to let go of things. You don’t replace things in your life, Sherry, and you never forget them. I know you still love me.”
“You’re wrong.” Trembling, she tried to pull away.
Clint leaned toward her, his breath teasing her face. “I’m not wrong, Sherry. I’m not wrong.”
His lips seemed to outline hers without touching, and she closed her eyes to escape the sight of them. “I love you,” he whispered.
The moment of contact almost shattered her, for the kiss was so gentle, so sweet, that she found no trace of the violence she had sensed in him all day. But it was there, she told herself, lurking behind the tenderness, waiting to strike her when her guard was down. “Don’t,” she whispered through quivering lips. “Please, don’t.”
He let her go then, and pulled back, his brows knitted with pleading intensity. He slid his fingers down to her wrist, and she knew he could feel her pulse beating wildly. “You can lie to yourself, Sherry, but you can’t lie to me. I’ve always been able to see right through those beautiful eyes. They’ve always given you away.”
“You’re seeing your own illusions,” she whispered. “I can’t help that.”
His fingers laced through hers. “Do you know there were days when I wanted to die if I couldn’t see you again?”
She closed her eyes, and his fingers tightened between hers.
“I kept thinking of how it felt to hold you.” His hand left hers and traced the length of her leg. “The thought of holding you again was the only thing that kept me going. Without it, I would have—”
His eyes hardened as he touched what she had tucked inside her sock. Clint pulled up her pants leg and found the knife.
He held it up, and she snatched at it, fearing his wrath more than she had before. But he held it out of her reach. “What were you going to do with it, Sherry? Cut me? Kill me?”
“I was going to protect myself,” she said, springing off the bed. “You had a weapon! I needed one too!”
His eyes scorched her, and Sherry faced off with him, her mind groping for a way to arm herself against the attack being launched in his eyes.
Behind her back, she reached to the sink for any potential weapon lying there, but Clint didn’t miss the movement. In seconds he had grabbed her. She fought back, wrestling and kicking, but he became more forceful and crushing the more she fought. Holding her arms away from her, he shoved her back on the bed. Fury raged in her eyes, and her face washed crimson. “I’ll fight you until I die,” she declared. “I’ll fight you until you die!”
Chapter Eight
She expected him to strike her, to shoot her, to throw her out. His face was crimson with rage, and he took a step back. “You’re too late, anyway, Sherry,” he said. “Want me to bleed? Been there, done that.”
As he spoke, his hands worked furiously at the buttons of his denim shirt. She coiled up on the bed, fearing his wrath.
The heat in the camper suddenly seemed stifling.
He opened his shirt, and showed her a gruesome scar from his rib cage down to his waistline. “See, Sherry? Somebody beat you to it!”
She sat up slowly as she saw the long, crooked scar, and she inhaled sharply.
Clint hear
“It’s a scar,” Sherry said, the statement a question in itself.
Clint nodded.
She slid to the edge of the bed, her eyes suddenly lacking the disdain that had been there earlier. “Let me see.”
Breathing a deep sigh of resignation, he dropped his hand. Sherry muttered a groan as she examined the raw, red marking. “What … what happened?”
“It’s a knife wound,” he whispered wearily.
“Knife?” She choked on the word. “You . . you were stabbed?”
“Do you really care?” he asked with all the misery his soul contained. “You would have done it yourself if I hadn’t found your knife.”
Sherry gazed up at him, suddenly feeling the importance of making him believe she couldn’t have used it. “No … I was just going to use it for self-defense if I had to.”
His deep, unfathomable eyes misted, and he focused on the ceiling of the camper. “You know I’d rather die than hurt you.”
Somewhere, deep within her, she did know that. She touched the scar with unsteady fingertips, and he held his breath and looked down at her. “When were you stabbed?”
“Right before I left.” His eyes said more. They told her that was why he’d disappeared, that there had been a valid reason.
“Who?”
He shook his head, denying her that answer. “Not now. Not yet.”
A sob was rising in her heart, waiting at the back of her throat for her to give it voice. “You could have died,” she whispered.
“I didn’t, though.”
“Clint, tell me what happened. Please.”
“I will, Sherry. When I can. But for now, you have to trust me.”
Don’t you ever get tired of driving?” Madeline’s question cut across the darkness and the road noise. Sam glanced over at her. With a deep sigh, he said, “I get tired of a lot of things, but I still have to do them.”
“But this has been a long day. And it’s dark. And this road is so winding and eerie.”
Sam smiled and patted her hand with bold familiarity. “Thanks for worrying, honey, but I can handle it.”
“I’m not worrying about you,” she said. “I’m worried about myself. If you fall asleep and drive off the road we’ll all be killed. Why don’t you let someone else drive for a while?”
A high-pitched laugh tumbled out of Sam’s throat. “Someone like you?”
“No, I know you wouldn’t trust me. But what about Clint? He could pull his own weight.”
She could barely see him in the darkness, but she saw enough to know his face had sobered.
“Clint can’t drive. It would make him an open target.”
It took a moment for the words to penetrate, and suddenly Madeline’s eyes darted to the side mirror that gave a view of what was behind them. “Target for what?”
Sam didn’t answer. His fingers curled more tightly over the steering wheel, and his eyes narrowed.
“Are you a target? Am I?”
Sam’s finger began to tap, slowly at first, then more rhythmically. When he opened his mouth, Madeline braced herself for an admission that she did not want to hear. But all that came out was a quiet, off-key, “Da doo ron ron ron, da doo ron ron.”
Letting out an exaggerated sigh, Madeline leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes. She blocked out the worry she had for Sherry, trapped in the back of the camper with Clint. She blocked out the dread of where they were going and what would happen to her there. It was easy to do, for she had done it all her life, ever since she was a child and her parents had died in a car wreck. She had learned to turn away from pain and worry when she went to live with a distant aunt who saw her as another duty God had thrust on her. Long ago, as a curly-haired little girl, she had learned to concentrate on the present, and to take solace in whatever was at hand. And she had learned that God only put her in places that would make her the person he needed her to be.
Tonight she was in the presence of a man who represented a mixture of danger and security, so she took mental refuge in his presence and the soft, repetitive sound of his voice.
Sherry was beginning to trust him. Clint knew it because she had fallen asleep, something she would never have allowed herself to do before she’d seen the scar and realized he, too, had been a victim. Now he moved to sit on the floor beside the bed, and studied the lines of her face in the dark confines of the camper.
A helpless feeling of loss overwhelmed him at the thought of the eight months that had separated them, when he had honestly believed that nothing ever would. But more than time had come between them, he thought, focusing on the ceiling.
Peace. Lying in this moving camper in the night with the woman he loved just out of his reach was as close to peace as he could hope to be. But it was enough for now.
Sherry’s eyes fluttered open. She looked surprised to see him sitting on the floor beside her bed, watching her. “Hi,” she whispered.
“Hi.”
“I had a dream that we were married. That we were safe.” She looked up at him, her blue eyes washing through him before they closed once more.
“Soon we will be,” he whispered.
And she’s cli-imb-ing the stair-way to heav-en …” The soft, gravelly voice cut into Madeline’s sleep, pulling her out of her restless nightmare of running through the woods away from an unknown pursuer. But it wasn’t the voice that had awakened her, for she suspected there hadn’t been much silence since she’d drifted off. It was the human warmth surrounding and supporting her …
She opened her eyes, and found herself curled up against Sam’s shoulder. Startled, she bolted up.
“Well, if it isn’t Sleeping Cutie,” he rumbled.
“I … I didn’t mean to …”
Sam chuckled under his breath. “Do I look like I have any complaints?”
“But … I don’t usually …”
“Fall into the arms of strange men?”
Her face tightened with sleepy indignation, and Sam laughed again. “How’s your knee?”
Thankful that he had the decency to change the subject, she glanced down at it. “Hurts a little, but it’s better.” She glanced out the window at the blackness. “I hope Sherry is all right.”
Sam laughed. “Well, it’s so quiet back there that they’re bound to have either made up or killed each other.”
“They haven’t made up,” Madeline said on a yawn. “So they must be dead.”
“Must be.” Sam bit his grin as he glanced over at her.
A moment of quiet filled the truck’s cab, and soberly, Madeline studied his unshaven profile, the hard, angular line of his nose, the sleepy flush of his cheeks, the ruffled disarray of his brown hair. But his eyes were awake, bright, comforting. “So,” she said after a moment. “What are you going to sing for me now?”
A slow grin crept across Sam’s face, and he gave her a wink. “Got any requests?” he asked.
The sound of gravel cracking under their wheels alerted Clint that they had reached their destination, and he peered out the camper window to the small cabin lit up in wait for them. Several cars lined the gravel drive, and a small crowd formed on the front porch at their approach. The chill hand of apprehension clutched him at the sight of so many more men than had been with him before.
The camper stopped, and he heard Sam’s door slam. Several of the men approached him, exchanged words, and then the back door opened.
“You awake back here?” Sam whispered.
Clint rubbed his eyes and stepped outside so he wouldn’t wake Sherry. “Yeah. What’s going on? Who are all these people?”
Sam bit his lip distastefully. “He wanted us to beef up security since we brought our two guests with us.”
“Security was tight before. It didn’t need beefing up.”
“Tell me about it,” Sam said dryly. “But he’s running this show.”
“Terrific,” C
“So how’d it go?” Sam’s voice cut quietly across the darkness.
“Fine,” Clint said. “She still thinks I’m some kind of criminal, but she’s more afraid for me than of me now.”
“She should be, pal,” Sam said. “it’s getting down to the wire now. Looks like we just have to hold out a few more days. Then it’ll all be over.”
The words left a hollow feeling in Clint’s chest. Would it ever be over? Would he really ever be able to sleep at night without keeping one eye open for someone to spring at him out of the dark?
“Give me a minute to wake her up,” Clint told his friend. “I’ll be right there.”
“Okay,” Sam said. “But don’t be too long. They have a lot of questions for us when we get inside. And I have a few for them.”
Madeline stirred when she felt the comfort of a bed beneath her, and a strong man’s arms releasing her. The room was dark, but she looked up and saw the weary face of Sam, her captor, tucking her into bed. His silver eyes were shadowed, and the lines etched in his face seemed much more defined than they had earlier. He was bone tired, and yet he seemed to be concentrating all his efforts on covering her with the comforter he had pulled back. For a moment, she felt a jolt of fear that he’d crawl in next to her, take advantage of her now that they were alone.
His heavy hand rested on her shoulder when the comforter was in place, and she felt his pause and his warm eyes studying her. What was he thinking, she wondered, pretending to still be asleep. Was he considering what he was going to do with her? When his hand lifted, she heard him leave the room. No, Sam wasn’t a threat. It was even possible that he was a nice guy.
Relaxing, she fell back to sleep. In her dreams, an off-key humming set a rhythm in her heart, a soft lullaby that made her smile.
Chapter Nine
Clint shook Sherry gently, waking her. Slowly, she became aware that the camper wasn’t moving. She sat up. “Are … are we there?”
“We’re there,” he said softly. He touched her warm cheek. “But before we go inside, I want to warn you. There are men with holsters strapped to their chests in there. But you don’t have to be afraid. They’re not here to hold you hostage. They’re here to protect us both. Your father sent them.”