Rancher's Deadly Risk (17 page)

He clutched her hip, pressing her side against his throbbing erection for one long, aching moment. Then his hand began to forage along the edge of her bra, seeking treasure.

“Linc...” she gasped, and the sound of her voice pounded in his ears along with the drumbeat of his blood.

Then the phone rang.

Chapter 7

“D
amn!” He swore sharply as the mood shattered like so much spun glass.

Cassie blinked, feeling the desire vanish as if it had been blown away by an internal tornado. “Linc?” she said, her voice a cracked whisper. Coming back to reality proved unexpectedly difficult.

“I’m sorry. It’s well past midnight. It must be an emergency.”

She nodded, and was touched when he steadied her as she sat on the edge of the bed. The shrilling phone was on the night table, and he snatched it up.

“Linc Blair.” He didn’t sound very patient. She watched him, still feeling the hunger even though it had been damped almost to quietude by the startling interruption. She hoped it wasn’t an emergency, because if he turned and took her into his arms again, she was going to explode like a banked fire that had only been waiting for fresh fuel.

But she saw his posture change. His shoulders dropped a little. “But he’s all right?” Then he said, “Thanks for calling.” He put the phone down.

He turned, his face an unreadable mask as if he couldn’t decide what he felt. “This couldn’t have waited until morning? Like there’s damn all we can do about it?”

“What happened, Linc?”

“That was Les. James Carney is in the hospital. He tried to kill himself earlier.”

“Oh, my God.” As the import of his words hit home, nausea rolled through her in waves and she doubled over. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “Oh, my God.”

The bed dipped as Linc sat beside her. He wrapped his arms around her and she turned into his embrace. Shock flowed through her in hot and cold waves.

“He’s all right,” Linc repeated over and over. “He’s all right.”

“He’s alive,” she said brokenly, as tears began to flow. “Alive and all right aren’t the same.”

“I know, Cassie.” His murmur was soothing and pained all at once. “But at least there’s still a chance to help him.”

“Where there’s life there’s hope?” She repeated the old saw, then gave way to a sob. “Oh, God, Linc, it hurts. It hurts to know how badly he must have suffered. That he would think of this as a solution.”

He held her even tighter, rocking her gently, letting her cry it out. The news about James, she realized, had been like a last straw to the stress of the past week. It was all coming out now, her worry for the student, her uneasiness about the attacks against her. But mostly she wept for James. For all she had been through at times, never had she thought that killing herself was her only way out. She couldn’t stand to imagine how that youth must be feeling.

Eventually she realized that she had soaked Linc’s shirt with her tears. “I’m sorry,” she said thickly, trying to pull away and wipe her face. But he wouldn’t let her go.

“Don’t apologize,” was all he said.

She realized he sounded angry. “Are you mad at me?”

“You? No way. But I’m pretty damn angry with some other people right now. Livid.”

Anger hadn’t come to her yet. Hurt and fear, yes, but not anger. Even some weariness somewhere deep inside, because this wasn’t the first time she had encountered depravity in some people. A teacher soon learned how many children were living in terrible circumstances, how many lived daily with fear, poverty and hunger. The secrets they carried and tried so hard to conceal, yet that were written in their behavior and misbehavior even if they denied anything was going on.

But she’d never had a student attempt suicide before.

Guilt slammed her then, overtaking sorrow. Had she somehow been responsible for this because of her intervention? Because she hadn’t just walked away after stopping the bullying in the restroom, but had instead caused those four students to get detention?

What she had seen had been bad enough, but had she made it worse? Knowing the way some people thought, it was entirely possible that they’d bullied James even more to make sure he never spoke about what they had done and were doing.

Her stomach grew leaden, and agitation caused her to jump up from the bed and pace the room. Linc reached over to switch on a lamp, probably so she wouldn’t stumble against something, but he remained seated on the edge of the bed.

“Do you know how twisted this is?” she demanded.

“What’s twisted?” he asked. “Other than the bullying you and James Carney have been getting.”

“That I may have made things worse for James by intervening. What do you do when nothing works? It’s like being caught in a spiderweb! I try to protect a student, and it only makes it worse?”

“You don’t know that,” he said quietly. “Cassie, there is no way on earth you can know if you made things worse. What were you supposed to do? Ignore it? Obviously the bullying has been ignored too much and for too long, because it’s evidently going on. Without a crackdown, it won’t stop. But you can’t blame yourself because you did the right thing.”

“I can’t? Why not? If my action resulted in that boy being bullied even more, why can’t I blame myself? God, I feel like a fool. I didn’t even pause to consider when I stepped in that I might make it harder on him. I was stupid.”

“No.”

“No? Of course I was. I saw something and reacted without considering all the possible consequences. I didn’t mediate, I just told the four bullies to get to the principal’s office.”

“Where Les, and you, would have attempted to find out what was behind all this. Mediation. But you didn’t get the chance. James even told you to stay out of it.”

“He was right. Look what’s happened.”

Linc rose. “I’m sorry, Cassie, but I don’t agree with how you feel. If nobody ever intervenes for fear of making it worse, we’ll never stop it. And right now, you don’t even know if it got worse. He may have been contemplating suicide for some time, from what his grandmother told you.”

“But what made him do it
now?
”

Linc rose, speaking quietly but firmly. “I’m sure as hell going to find out.”

“If anyone will talk to you,” she said almost bitterly. A sense of responsibility nearly suffocated her. Breathing had become an effort as her chest grew tight and her stomach twisted. “God, I need to do
something!
”

A useless wish, she thought as her mind and body roiled with reaction. It was the middle of the night. What the hell could she possibly
do
right now? As it was, doing something may have made matters worse for a young man.

“I’ll get us some coffee,” Linc said. “Then we’ll go to the hospital. If the family is still there, we can let them know they aren’t alone.”

Now she felt guilty in another way. “You have a game tomorrow. Today. This afternoon. You need some sleep.”

“It won’t be my first sleepless night with a game looming. Let’s go.”

Soon they were driving down the dark tunnel of the endless night again with a couple of travel mugs filled with hot coffee. Cassie’s eyes burned, wanting to shed more tears. But along with guilt, anger had begun to grow in her. A terrible anger, as bad as she’d ever felt.

Logically she knew the people involved in bullying James and trying to frighten her were probably a very small number. Most of the people around here, or anywhere, wouldn’t do this kind of thing. Most people were actually decent. They might sometimes be unaware, but they weren’t deliberately cruel and wouldn’t approve of deliberate cruelty.

That was the point of the antibullying campaign, to raise awareness. To make the students understand that it was happening, and sometimes it got far worse than the minor insults most endured. By making them aware of how tolerating even minor bullying could create a climate that allowed it to grow. Consciousness-raising. It worked.

Especially with students of this age, most of whom usually already felt all alone, and if bullied would probably feel ashamed, as if they were somehow responsible. As if something were wrong with
them
and not the bullies. She knew the feeling all too well.

By making more of them aware, they wouldn’t feel alone and wouldn’t feel that being bullied was their fault. The other hope was to create such an atmosphere of disapproval for bullying that there would be far less of it.

But all of that would come too late for James Carney. Over and over she reran the incident in her mind, trying to figure out what she could have done differently. Because she was absolutely convinced that she hadn’t done something she should have.

No, it wasn’t a matter of ignoring what those four students had been doing to James. It was a matter of not doing enough of the right thing. Whatever that right thing was.

She almost wanted to hit her head on the window glass beside her, to try to stir up some new thought. But new thoughts proved elusive, and she seemed to be pretty much stuck in an endless loop of guilt, grief and anger with no way out.

Throughout the drive to the hospital, Linc remained silent. She wondered if he was disturbed by her reaction, or angry that he had to make this trip in the middle of the night. Even though he had suggested it, she wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d felt he had no choice, given the way she was taking this.

Or maybe he was angry that she hadn’t taken this news better and gone ahead with making love to him. Most of the men she had dated—a small enough sample set to be sure—would have been angry about that.

She couldn’t ask him, though. Facing her own cowardice, she realized she was afraid of what he might say. What if he thought she was weird, or overreacting, or just a plain nuisance? He wouldn’t be the first.

Linc made good time to the hospital. She hadn’t noticed that he had driven any faster, but maybe the trip was starting to seem shorter as she got used to it.

As always, he came around to help her out, a gentlemanly courtesy she had thought long dead.

“It’ll be okay,” he said quietly. “We’re going to do something about this, and most people are going to be very upset if they hear about this.”

He was probably right. She was sure he was right. But the family’s privacy had to be honored as well.

Her nerves tightened as they walked to the waiting room, where an attendant had told them James’s family was waiting. Apparently he was not far enough out of the woods that his family was ready to go home.

As the one who may have started this ball rolling with her intervention last week, Cassie wondered what kind of reception she would receive. She wouldn’t be able to argue with them if they blamed her, despite what James’s grandmother had said.

James’s parents, Maureen and Jack Carney, were alone in the waiting room. They held hands, and while Jack appeared angry, Maureen looked more frightened.

Linc made the introductions—he really
did
seem to know everyone. Cassie gathered her courage and asked how James was, hoping she didn’t hear...
as if you care.

“Unconscious,” Jack Carney said. He was a slender man who, unlike many of the people in these parts, didn’t look as if he spent a lot of time outdoors. “He’s alive, but if he doesn’t wake up soon they may have to transport him for additional testing for brain damage.”

Cassie’s legs turned to water. From what Linc had said of Les’s call, she had assumed he was awake. Physically fine, if not emotionally or psychologically. Not facing possible brain damage. She nearly collapsed into one of the plastic chairs. “Oh, no,” she said weakly.

“It’s bad,” Jack said. “It’s bad. But we’re hoping.”

“I am so, so sorry.”

Linc slowly sat beside her. “Les made it sound as if James was okay now.”

“Okay?” Jack spoke bitterly. “He’ll never be okay. He’s been bullied everywhere he’s ever gone to school. I don’t know why. Do you know why?”

Cassie had to shake her head. “He struck me as a bright and very nice young man.”

“Who knows why bullies pick their victims,” Linc said. “I noticed James was quieter than most, but up until just recently, I hadn’t thought of him as withdrawn. Just quiet.”

“Of course he was quiet,” Jack said. “He’s been trying to be invisible for years.”

Cassie twisted her hands together, torn between sorrow at what that statement revealed, and anger that James’s peers had made him feel that way.

“I should have homeschooled him,” Maureen said, her voice raw. “I should have taught him myself and kept him away from all that.”

“You had a job,” Jack said. He lowered his head, his voice growing heavy. “I had no idea it was this bad. He didn’t talk about it. Sometimes the only way we found out was when teachers alerted us.”

Maureen looked at him. “Remember third grade? We didn’t know anything was wrong. I’ll never understand why the teacher didn’t mention the bullying until the end of the year. I’d have taken him out of school then if I’d had any idea. Why didn’t James tell us?” She ended on a rising note, then quickly put her face in her hands.

In the midst of her own guilt, Cassie felt Maureen’s pain like an added spear to her heart. She rose and went to sit by Maureen. She put her hand gently on the woman’s shoulder and tried to find suitable words.

“When they’re little, kids often don’t tell us things because they think we know already. They endow parents with a kind of omniscience, maybe because they’ve been caught out so many times when they were being secretive. I don’t know, I’m not a psychologist. I just know that it’s true. And then when they get older... Mrs. Carney, it’s even harder when they get older because there’s a tendency to assume responsibility when someone hurts us. All too often we think we must be at fault, and we feel ashamed.”

Maureen nodded, but Cassie had no idea if she were really hearing. Probably not. There was too much pain, worry and fear right now.

If she, a teacher who barely knew James and saw him only in class for fifty-five minutes a day, felt guilty about this, she didn’t even want to imagine how Maureen and Jack must be feeling. As if she could have. The chasm of horror these parents must have felt exceeded anything in her personal experience.