Charlotte Boyett-Compo- Wyndsheer (8 page)

She changed the subject.

“What do you do to pass the time when you’re not rescuing women from plane crashes?”

He molded his hand to her breast. “You mean when I’m not ravaging them while I keep them drugged?”

She looked up at him. “Did you do that to me?”

“Aye.”

“Bastard,” she said then kissed his shoulder. “Wicked, wicked bastard.”

“I carve.”

Her eyebrows drew together. “Carve what?”

“Statues,” he said. “I sell them to a gallery in Doverton.”

“What kind of statues?”

“Eagles, wolves, mountain lions.” He ran his thumb over her nipple. “Naked woodland nymphs.”

“Where did you learn to carve?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I just found myself whittling one evening and when I was finished, it was a pretty fair rendering of an owl. I gave it to Elspeth for her birthday. A hiker saw it on the shelf in her store and asked who’d done it. He knew a man who knew a woman who knew a gallery ....” He shrugged again. “They pay me good money.”

“Who’s Elspeth?” she asked.

“A spry little old lady who’d jump my bones in a heartbeat if I stood still long enough,” he said with a grunt of humor. “She owns the general store down in Lamb’s Grove.”

“I imagine many women would jump your bones if you gave them a chance,” she teased him.

“Many have,” he said and plucked at her nipple.

“How many?” she asked, eyes narrowing.

He shifted so he could replace his fingers with his lips upon her nipple, drawing the hardening little bud into his mouth. With his teeth lightly clenching the coral tip, he gazed up at her through his eyelashes. “More than my share.”

“All of whom pale in comparison to me,” she said smugly.

“Um hum,” he said and began suckling her, his hand dipping down to the apex of her thighs. With his thumb stroking back and forth across her soft fleecy triangle, he insinuated his middle finger into her wet warmth. The moment that finger curled upward to press against that mysterious spot he sought, her hips lifted off the bed.

“Oh yeah, Wolfman!” she gasped and she felt the rumble of his laughter against her breast.

* * * *

She was sleeping soundly when he left her, being as quiet as he could so he would not have to reassure her still again that he would return. He knew she was afraid of being trapped there below ground, but he had no intention of that happening. He would return even if meant slaughtering the agents he would be leading to a fate none of them could have ever envisioned.

With one last look at the woman who had claimed him, heart and body and soul, he eased the wooden door of the cabin closed, took five steps to the hinged rock portal, opened it and left, securing the doorway behind him. After lighting a lantern, he retrieved his gear from the weapons niche, and then set out on the winding, twisting corridor that would take him to the outside world. Two hours later, he was standing in front of Elspeth’s store, impatiently awaiting the arrival of Wendt and his team.

“You want a cup of coffee, Mac?” Elspeth asked him when she opened her door.

“I’m good, lady,” he replied. “Go back to bed. It’s not even light yet.”

“I don’t sleep as well as I used to,” she said, coming out to stand with him. She hugged her bathrobe around her. “How is the girl?”

He did not look at the old woman. “Content and being taken care of as she never has been before,” he replied quietly.

“In more ways than one I imagine,” Elspeth said with a grunt.

“Have you clothes for her in a size eight?” he asked. “What she was wearing was mostly destroyed and she’s been wearing my shirts but they swamp her.”

“I’ve jeans and some t-shirts,” Elspeth said. “Panties that would fit her. What size bra?”

He shrugged and held his hands out as though weighing melons. He gave the old woman a bewildered look. “I don’t know. They fit nicely in my hands.”

Elspeth snorted. “About a 36C, I’d say.”

“Would you bundle the stuff up for me—socks, too and anything else you think she might need--and put them in a rucksack?” he asked. “I’ll get them on my way back.”

“You betcha,” Elspeth said then frowned. “There comes that Wendt fella. He walks like he’s got a stick up his ass.”

“If he gives me any shite, he
will
have a stick up his ass,” Jamie replied.

“Be careful, son,” she told him then turned to go back into her store.

Wendt had a dark blue watch cap pulled down over his white-blond hair. His very pale blue eyes were hard as he came toward the Lycant. Behind him, his partner walked beside another man who was frowning deeply.

“You ready to go?” Wendt demanded.

“I’ve been ready, G-man,” Jamie responded.

Hobart was the only one who greeted the Lycant, nodding at him in the way of warrior to warrior. “We had some bad news last night,” he said. “There was a monorail accident in Mauvrie where Agent Groves’ lived. Her husband was among the casualties.”

“You consider it bad news,” Wendt snapped. “I consider it a blessing for Allison.”

Jamie considered it a blessing, too. It meant there was one less problem in her life and with the man’s passing, she was a widow, free for him to make his legal mate--which he intended to do.

Hobart sighed deeply as though he were embarrassed for his partner. He looked away from the Lycant’s appraising stare.

“We’re wasting valuable time. Let’s get this show on the road,” Wendt grumbled.

Hitching the rifle he carried slung over his shoulder more comfortably against him, Jamie stepped off the wooden sidewalk and onto the mud-streaked street, heading toward the vast unsettled terrain west of Aonair Ridge.

* * * *

The woman who had told her lover just before falling asleep in his arms that she preferred he continued calling her Mairi instead of her given name of Allison, turned over to find the bed beside her empty, the sheet cold. She opened her eyes, knowing he’d gone and for just a moment felt the hard-rimmed blade of panic scrape down her spine. She sat up so quickly she got lightheaded and had to put a hand to her temple to still the spinning. Heart racing, she threw aside the covers and ran to the cabin door, flinging it open to find a solid wall of rock less than six feet from where she stood.

Palms sweating, hands trembling, she walked to the dark expanse and ran her hand over it, knowing she’d not find the way to open it, feeling the claustrophobia pushing brutally at her. She pushed all along the rock face and swept her palms over nearly every inch, but there wasn’t even a hint of movement nor did she find a single ridge or crack. When she finally gave in to the hopelessness of the situation, she turned away, her shoulders slumping and went back into the cabin.

She refused to think about what would happen to her if Jamie did not come back. He had explained the water was pumped up from a vast underground lake so that supply was limitless but food and fuel was another matter.

“There will be enough wood for at least two weeks,” he’d told her. “You’ll find a stack of it to the left of the cabin door.

She had seen the cords neatly placed there but it was the food that concerned her.

“I have enough canned goods to last a month or more so there’s no need to worry,” he’d assured her.

Staring at the rows of cans and jars on the shelves, she thought if she rationed what was there, she might have enough to eat for twice that long--maybe even longer if she was very careful.

“But he’s coming back,” she said firmly and went over to sit in his rocker. “He is.”

Her gaze fell on the low chest where he’d told her he kept his carving tools. Curious, she got up and knelt in front of it, opened it and was amazed at the variety of unfinished carvings he was in the process of doing. She took a few out and looked at them, touching the notches and whirls, deep indentions and creases that made the animals look very real. Spying a sketchbook, she picked it up and flipped it open. The first sketch made her draw in a quick breath.

It wasn’t just the attention to detail that her lover had captured in the portrait he’d drawn in pencil, but the loving care with which he’d created it. The drawing was of her sleeping and he had given it an ethereal quality that made tears spring to her eyes. He had captured her in a defenseless moment--unaware, unprotected--and yet he had infused the work with a possessiveness that told her all she needed to know about his true feelings for her.

Page after page of her face followed. In one she was laughing. In another she was frowning. In still another she was looking out at the viewer with one eyebrow elevated in challenge, yet her lips were pursed with what could only be amusement. He had drawn her sitting, standing, lying down but her favorite was the one of her sleeping beside a faceless man, held closely in his arms, tight against his heart.

A single tear fell down her cheek but she did not reach up to bat it away. The beauty of the drawings had nothing to do with the way she looked, but with the way they had been crafted. Her lover was an incredibly talented artist with a knowing eye for both detail and action. She was sure no one had ever really looked at her the way Jamie MacGivern had, nor understood her the way his drawings implied.

Carefully closing the sketchbook, she laid it atop the carvings and shut the lid of the chest. Her hand lovingly tracing the top of the chest, she laid her head down and smiled.

She sat there for a very long time, considering her options. She was not a woman given to rash judgments or quick decisions. Her acceptance of her present situation surprised her but--upon concentrated thought--she realized it was what she been searching for, what she’d needed for a very long time.

Her entire life had been lived methodically with an eye on career advancement. From high school through college, her goal had been to be her own woman. Her job had meant everything to her, her marriage next to nothing. An arranged affair between their families, the marriage had been a sham from the start. She had neither loved nor particularly respected Stephen. Not interested in having his children or being the social butterfly he demanded she become, their life together had been one long series of shouting matches and chilling silences. Every once and awhile, the shouting matches were punctuated with brutal slaps--a black eye on two separate occasions--and simmering resentment on both sides. The last black eye she’d taken had resulted in her accompanying her husband to the emergency room with an unhinged jaw from where she’d hit him with a cast iron skillet.

Glancing over at the collection of cast iron cookware in Jamie’s sparse kitchen, she smiled. She knew beyond any doubt that none of those heavy implements would ever be needed to settle an argument between her and her lover.

Getting up, she went back to the bed and stretched out across it on her stomach, her chin propped in her hands. When Jamie returned, she was prepared to make a commitment to him and to the life she knew she wanted to share with him.

Chapter Five

Jamie led the team of searchers along a serpentine path that was as treacherous as it was dense. They had left behind any semblance of a marked trail and were now on the most dangerous part of the Ridge, The higher they climbed, the more inhospitable the terrain.

“I see what you mean about her not having come this way,” Hobart told the Lycant. “I don’t know how she could have.”

“Shut the hell up,” Wendt ordered. “There have to be other trails leading away from the crash site.”

“There aren’t
any
trails. No one ventures on this side of the Ridge,” Jamie said as he stopped to take a drink of water from his canteen. “I tried to tell you that. Climbers don’t come over this far.”

“You shut up, too,” Wendt growled. “How do I know you aren’t leading us away from where she might be sheltered?”

Jamie locked stares with the agent. “You don’t.”

“This area makes me very uncomfortable,” Jacobson, one of the other agents remarked. “I have a feeling we are being watched.”

“You are,” Jamie said, shifting his gaze to the agent. “But I can promise you it isn’t by your missing woman.”

“There are people living up here?” Hobart asked.

The Lycant smiled nastily. “There are no humans living on this side of the Ridge.”

“Then what’s tracking us?” Jacobson asked. He rubbed his neck and turned to look behind them, searching the thick undergrowth. “What kind of animal is it? Bear? Panther? What?”

“You have entered the domain of An Fear Liath Mor,” Jamie answered. “And he doesn’t like intruders.” He surreptitiously massaged his back. The always-there pain wasn’t yet severe but it was getting there.

“The what?” Hobart queried.

“The Big Grey Man, the Guardian,” Jamie told him with a smirk. “He’s twenty feet of badass trouble.”

Wendt cursed beneath his breath. “You’re full of shit, MacGivern.” He put a hand to the front of his trousers and tugged. “I’ve got your twenty feet of trouble right here!”

Jamie snorted and recapped the canteen. “Yeah, you shake that little thing at him when he comes charging you, Wendt. I’m sure he’ll quiver in his furry tracks.”

“Fuck you, MacGivern,” Wendt snarled.

“Cody, knock it off,” Hobart warned. He, too, was feeling edgy, experiencing uneasiness he couldn’t explain and his partner was exhibiting belligerent behavior that was rapidly causing him concern.

“I’ll only say this once,” Jamie said, sweeping the agents with a steady look. “We’ll be reaching Féinmharú Crag soon. It’s a flat piece of rock that juts out over Blight Canyon. When we pass it, you might suddenly have an overwhelming desire to go to the edge and take a look over the side. My advice to you is not to do it.”

“Why not?” Hobart asked.

“Men have been known to jump off the ledge for no apparent reason,” Jamie replied. “One minute they’re looking over the Crag and the next they’re splattered on the rocks below and with no way to retrieve them. You can’t repel these cliffs. Men have died trying. A helo can’t hover over because of severe downdrafts. If you fall, your remains will stay until the buzzards pick ‘em clean. Just keep away from the edge and you should be all right. If you hear music, ignore it.”