Never Let Go (10 page)

His gaze hardened. "When will that be? When will we go to South America?"

Dinah gave him a slow, incredulous stare. "Do you honestly expect to go back with me?"

"Honesty doesn't have much to do with our relationship right now."

"Rucker, no." She reached out, gripped his shirt front, and shook her head firmly. "No. You never cease to astonish me. I'm leaving you here in the States. You're not coming to Surador."

"How are you gonna stop me?"

Dinah emphasized each word. "Do you want to put your life in danger?"

"Tell Valdivia that I'm not meddlin' in his work. I'm only interested in bringin' my daughter home."

A little shaken, she asked miserably, "And your wife?"

"You have a choice. Katie doesn't." He pivoted away from her and stared out the kitchen window. The golden light of sunrise washed over him, illuminating his grim face. "You say that you always planned to come back to me. When? The only reason you showed up on my doorstep two days ago was because you needed money."

"I planned to come home after this mission."

"What's special about this one?"

"It's the end of a project. Valdivia won't need me anymore."

A muscle worked in his jaw. "So you were gonna waltz back home and pick up where we left off ... until you decided to desert me again."

"I won't ever leave you again," she said hoarsely. "I swear it." She touched his back and found the muscles rigid with tension. "Rucker, you can trust me. You have to let me finish this job by myself." She smiled sadly. "It's a package deal, partner. You get me and Katie. But on my terms. That's the way it has to be."

His strained voice was barely audible. "Did it ever occur to you that I might not want you?"

Dinah stepped back, clutching a counter edge for support. "Don't say that! You don't mean it!"

"You're overlookin' a key problem. Your cover's been blown. You're a felon. You gonna come back to the States with our baby and spend the rest of your life hidin'?"

The blood drained out of her face and her lips parted in wordless pain. Finally she managed to say, "I'm innocent. And I plan to prove it." Dinah blinked rapidly, feeling stricken. "I never thought that you might not want me anymore."

He cursed softly and shut his eyes. His arms were braced rigidly on the kitchen sink. "You've built a life full of secrets.
How the hell can you prove that you're innocent?
"

"I can't tell you that—"

Rucker whirled toward her, his eyes fierce. "Exactly. Nothing you've done makes a damn bit of sense. I don't care how you explain it. Everything we shared is gone. It might as well have happened to two different people. I've changed. You've changed. Maybe we can't ever go back."

She gazed at him in growing despair as understanding stabbed through her. "All the suffering, all the uncertainty. All the bitterness you've felt toward me. My explanations may not matter. It'll be hard for you to forget."

"How could what you've done ever be forgotten? Hell, how can I know what to think when you won't tell me anything? All I know is that I
am
goin' to South America with you. I
am
goin' to get my daughter. There's no point in discussin' it."

Dinah gazed up into the icy determination that etched his features. Arguing would only jeopardize her mission and make him distrust her more. But she'd never let him follow her into Valdivia's clutches.

"There's a small part of you that hates me," she whispered. Dinah looked away so that she wouldn't see that observation confirmed in his eyes. She watched her fingers turn white from gripping the counter edge.

Rucker inhaled roughly. His problem was precisely the opposite. He couldn't hate her, he wanted her back desperately, and the knowledge that he was a fool for feeling that way was almost more than he could stand. "Don't manipulate me for sympathy. Don't try to get inside me. What I feel about you is none of your business,"

"That's no answer. You're deliberately being vague."

"It's the best answer you're gonna get. And don't talk to me about being
vague
."

The blankness that came over her was oddly welcome after months of anxiety and sadness. Dinah gazed up at him again while apathy washed away all expression from her face. Only a dull inner recess of her mind registered the fact that concern filled his eyes as he scrutinized her.

"You'll love Katie even if you can't love me anymore," she told him in a flat tone. "And whatever happens to me, she'll be free, and home, and safe. That's all that matters."

She turned and left the room with her shoulders squared, as if everything she'd dreamed about hadn't just begun to crumble around her.

***

Minutes after they crossed the Kentucky state line, light snow began to fall.

"Lovely spring weather," Rucker noted. He flipped the windshield wipers on and glanced at Dinah. A fast-food container lay unopened in her lap. Her hands cupped the food box loosely, so still that they might have been carved from stone.

"You need to eat," he commented.

"I'm not hungry." She placed the container next to him. "Here. The way you wolfed your lunch down, I know you must be starving. Take mine, too."

"You haven't had anything but coffee all day."

"We don't have much farther to go. A couple of hours. Maybe I'll eat then."

"You're runnin' on empty and you're gonna be sick." Rucker let anger mask his growing alarm over her lifeless attitude. His voice rose. "How the hell are you gonna do what you need to do if you don't take care of yourself?"

"I have reserves of strength that I never imagined." she replied calmly. "The past months have taught me that."

He guided the truck to the grassy roadside and jerked it into park. Rucker removed the hamburger from its container and thrust it toward her. "We're not movin' another inch until you eat."

She surveyed him nonchalantly and shrugged. "You win."

He watched her dutifully bite into the sandwich. Rubbing his temples, he wearily leaned back in the seat. After a moment he turned the radio on. Dionne Warwick's voice purred the poignant, lost-love lyrics of "A House Is Not a Home."

Rucker suppressed a grimace and snapped the radio dial to another station. Dinah made a choking sound. He looked over to find her setting the half-eaten hamburger on her knee. The unspoken pain was between them. The song had hurt.

"That's all I can take," she said in a small voice.

"Finish it."

Her unfathomable expression never changed. Moving with slow grace, as if she were doing nothing out of the ordinary, she opened the truck door and tossed the hamburger out. She shut the door, clasped her hands in her lap, and faced forward primly.

"You're messin' with the wrong man," Rucker said in a soft, lethal tone.

"I don't want anymore to eat."

He put the truck keys in his pocket, got out, walked casually around to her side of the vehicle, and picked the hamburger up. Carefully he brushed little bits of twig and grass from it. Then he wrenched her door open and held the hamburger to her lips.

"Eat it." he ordered.

Color rose in her face. "Absolutely not." He sank one hand into her thick brunette hair and held her head still. Astonished, she grabbed at his wrists and tried to push his hands away. "Why do you care if I eat or not! No! Rucker ..."

Her next words were muffled by the sandwich he deftly shoved between her teeth. She struggled, her body writhing with anger, and inadvertently took a large bite.

He pressed the heel of his hand under her chin and clamped her mouth shut, then smiled coldly at her throaty growl of dismay. "You've got no choice but to chew and swallow. This is how a vet gets medicine into an ornery cat."

She arched a brow at his tactic, her eyes flaring with humiliation, but she chewed. Eventually, she swallowed. He released her chin and dabbed the remaining bite of hamburger against her mouth. "Over the lips and past the gums, look out belly, here it comes," he chanted sardonically. His hand tightened in her hair, tilting her head back a little more.

Dinah sighed in resignation and opened her mouth. At exactly the right moment, when his blunt fingertips were brushing her lower lip, she lunged forward and caught them between her teeth.

"Dammit, Dee!" He jerked his hand away and looked at the trails her teeth had left in the pads of his fingers. His disgruntled gaze rose slowly to her satisfied one. She chewed and smiled.

Rucker couldn't help feeling proud of her. "At least you're not actin' like a wilted flower anymore. It's good to see the old fire."

"I'm not causing you any trouble. Don't complain." "No trouble?" he repeated drolly. "Lady, you wrote the book on causing me trouble."

"I'll be out of your life soon, if that's what you want."

Because she'd provoked him, and because he was tormented by conflicting needs to comfort and punish her, he retorted, "That's the best promise I've heard all day."

He shut her door and strode back to his side of the truck. When he was seated behind the wheel, he found her gazing out the window again, locked in her silent, subdued world.

***

Rucker slammed on the brakes and instinctively threw his arm across Dinah's body to protect her from the sudden momentum. She latched both hands onto his forearm. They both stared wordlessly at the roadblock in the distance.

Two Kentucky state patrol cars were angled across the narrow two-lane road, leaving only enough space for a vehicle to pass between them. Two officers stood by the window of a station wagon, apparently checking the driver's credentials.

"Could just be routine," Rucker noted grimly.

"Looking for expired driver's licenses and proof of insurance," she agreed, her breath short. "Or they could be looking for us. Damn. We're only an hour away."

Rucker put the truck in reverse and guided it in a smooth about-face. "We'll try to find a detour."

He gunned the engine and sent the old truck hurtling back the way they'd come. Dinah twisted in the seat and watched behind them, her heart pounding. "We were so close," she said in a low, frustrated tone.

"Then you ought to tell me where we're headed."

She hesitated, then offered quietly, "Near Patula."

"There's nothin' near Patula but national forest land."

"And a few homes that were allowed to remain after the government bought the land."

His brow creased with thought. "Isn't that where Dr. Scarborough had a second home?"

Dinah silently cursed her decision to give him information. "Can't you drive any faster?"

A stunned expression came over his face. "Are we goin' to see Anna Scarborough?"

Dinah grimaced in self rebuke as she kept her vigil at the truck's back window. She had said too much, too soon. "Just drive."

"What have you and that eccentric old lady got to do with each other?"

"Who said we're going to see Anna Scarborough?" she demanded anxiously, her voice rising. Dinah thought she heard the faint wall of a siren. Her palms sweating, she grasped the back of the seat and strained her eyes watching a bend in the road behind them. "That 'eccentric old lady' is a reknowned biologist," she reminded Rucker.

"And that's who we're goin' to see? Why?"

"I never said ..."

Her voice trailed off as they both heard the siren. It was closing on them quickly. Dinah turned toward Rucker and placed trembling hands on his shoulder. "We have to get off this road. Anywhere."

"Hold tight. There was a loggin' trail. . . there!"

He swung the truck to the right down a slope covered in an inch of slick snow. It slid into the snow-frosted ruts of the old road and bounced roughly.

"So much for the shock absorbers," Dinah joked grimly.

They careened into the depths of a hardwood forest, the truck's wheels spewing damp earth and humus. "We'll follow this as long as it goes," Rucker told her. His big hands fought the steering wheel as the truck slid sideways, slapping against low tree limbs.

Dinah swallowed hard and gazed at the wilderness all around them. "The patrol must have gotten a good look at the truck. If they weren't after it before, they'll be after it now."

"But they didn't see
us
."

Dinah laughed tonelessly and rubbed her forehead. "So we'll just call a taxi. Or wait for the bus. Or catch the subway."

"Or whine and give up."

"Never." She sat back and crossed her arms over her chest.

"I knew
that
would singe your hackles."

After about two miles the road came to an abrupt end in a small clearing. They let the truck idle and sat silent for a moment. Snow feathered down soundlessly.

"We walk," Rucker volunteered. "North. Until we intersect the main road beyond the road block. And then we hitch a ride."

"Before nightfall," she said adamantly.

"Woman, you're greedy." There was a slight teasing tone in his voice. She almost smiled.

They got out and gathered their canvas bags from under a tarp in the back of the truck. Rucker tucked the shotgun in the crook of one arm. "Keep your eyes peeled. And try not to scream if you see a wild pig. I've heard that they're all over the place up here."

Dinah busied herself trying to arrange her bag like a backpack. Distracted with worry over their situation, she blurted. "After Valdivia, nothing makes me scream."

She regretted the revealing words immediately. Pucker's expression turned dark with intensity. "How did Valdivia make you scream?" he asked in a low, horrified tone.

His concern brought unshed tears to her eyes. Dinah shook her head, struggling for control of her tight throat. Finally she managed to say, "I believe you could love me again. If you tried."

***

They reached the top of a hill and stopped for a second. Dinah brushed a tendril of snow-dampened hair back from her face and gazed wearily at the broad, wooded valley before them. "Rucker, I don't think we're going to intercept that road anytime soon."

"Dammit, just keep goin'."

His voice was almost vicious. Startled, she looked at him anxiously. He stood a dozen feet away, his legs braced apart and his expression dark. He yelled at her with suddenly unleashed grief and frustration. "Why did you leave me?"