Some Kind of Magic (4 page)

Pain.

That was the first thing Dylan was aware of.

The second was the groggy realization that the mothball woman was standing in the doorway, a gun—his gun—in her hand, pointing it at his head.

He squinted, trying to bring her into focus. All he could make out was shiny dark hair.

Last night, when he'd watched her come out of the tavern all bundled up, wearing that silly-ass hat, he'd figured she had to be at least a hundred.

But then, later, he'd noticed her hair. Noticed the way it reflected light. Like a kid's. It had looked so soft, still holding the magic of innocence and youth. He'd wanted to touch it. For a moment, her hair had taken him back, reminding him of his fleeting childhood.

Sorrow could be sharp. Sorrow could be dull. But the sudden stab of bittersweet longing took him by surprise, made him pull in a quick, aching breath.

Last night, he’d had every intention of waking up to untie her. He’d never meant to leave her bound for very long.

But it seemed he’d overslept.

So many mistakes. So many bad moves.

Life was hard.

And it kept getting harder.

Give him a playing field where everything was clear, where people did what they were supposed to do. That’s what he liked. He could handle that. But real life. It was like chess without the rules.

He shifted his hips against the mattress. He shoved himself to a sitting position. Son of a bitch. His side hurt like hell. He probably had a couple of cracked ribs. His head hurt even more.

“Gotta go.”

His voice sounded kind of sloppy, kind of thick, even to him.

He knew he had to keep moving, knew someone was after him, but he couldn’t remember why.

“Who are you?” she asked, the gun still pointing at his head.

“Who am I?” he asked in a contemplative voice. Good question. “You know who I am? I’m the guy who goes around to all the hand dryers in all the gas stations of the world, and once I find those dryers, I take out my trusty pocket knife and scratch the immortal words, Wipe Hands on Panties.” He paused, waiting.

She didn’t say anything, but she looked confused as hell.

“Impressed?” he asked. “You should be.” That confused her even more. Join the club. It confused him, too. But it was funny. Just funny as hell. He laughed, then quickly stopped. God, his head hurt.

He wished the room would quit swirling. “Gotta hit the road.”

“I’m holding a gun on you.”

“That’s okay. I still gotta go. Got places to go, people to meet.” What the hell was he talking about? “But you gotta watch out.” He waggled a finger at her. “I want you to know it was only because of my tactical skills that I was able to outmaneuver and beat them at their own game.”

“Beat who?”

His head was spinning. He felt drunk. He thought about his work. Thought about the people he’d taken out. He hated it, hated his life and what he had become. “I’m an assassin, you know,” he said confidentially. It was true. That’s what his life had been reduced to. “I’m nothing more than a hired gun.”

He heard her quick intake of breath. She was scared of him. He was sorry about that. But a lot of people were scared of him. He shoved himself to his feet and stood there swaying, the pain in his side mind-numbing, his head screaming.

He began to move toward her.

“Stay back.”

She jabbed at the air with the gun, holding it with both hands, taking a step away from him.

He caught up with her, backing her into a dresser beside the door. The scent of her hair stopped him for a brief second. Without conscious thought, he lifted a piece of that shimmering sweetness to his cheek, the strands snagging on his unshaven jaw. He closed his eyes and inhaled.

And inhaled again.

God, but she smelled good.

Dylan opened his eyes to see the barrel of the gun inches from his nose. He pulled back a little, so things weren't so blurry. Past the barrel of the gun was a pair of blue-green eyes, looking scared, looking nervous.

Now she looked more like a little kid than any old lady.

“Who takes care of you?” he asked, curious, concerned.

“What?” The word held astonishment, as if she couldn't quite believe what she'd heard.

“Who takes care of you?” he repeated.

The gun barrel quit its wavering. “I take care of myself.”

“A queen is strong, but she still needs a knight.”

The room tilted. His legs felt rubbery. He let go of her hair and dropped his arm.

He was thirsty.

Damn thirsty.

He pushed past her and headed in the direction of the kitchen.

In the refrigerator, he found what he was looking for: water. He unscrewed the cap and lifted the bottle to his mouth. He was still guzzling the water when he heard a click. It was the sound of a pistol being cocked.

“Get out of my house,” the mothball woman demanded. “Now. ”

He continued to drink, water running down his chin until he polished off the entire bottle. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Had he taken the bullets out of the gun? He couldn't remember. Wished to hell he could remember.

He was losing it.

He watched her as she stood there, the gun shaking all over the place.

And as he stood there staring at her, he got the oddest urge.

To kiss her.

Which was weird as hell, considering the fact that she was pointing a gun at his head.

He smiled at her.

He could see that worried her even more. “W-why are you looking at me like that?” she asked. “Quit looking at me like that.”

Instead of kissing her, he walked past her and found his coat on the couch where he’d left it. He shrugged into it, grimacing at his bruised ribs. He’d forgotten about them. It was hard to keep track of everything. There was just so damn much going on.

“What are you doing?”

She’d followed him.

“Leaving.”

He didn’t feel quite so dizzy.

He crossed the room. When he opened the door, cold air hit him full in the face, reviving him.

Hell, he was okay.

~0~

The storm that weathermen had been predicting for days had finally hit.

Heedless of the thickly falling snow, Claire watched in disgust as Hallie followed the man to her battered Jeep. “Here Hallie.” Holding the gun in one hand, she slapped the other hand against her thigh. “Come here, Hallie.”

Hallie ignored her and continued to smile her adoring dog smile directly at the very primate who’d abducted her mistress.

Claire watched as the man stuck the key in the ignition. Watched as he started the engine. Watched as he tried to pull away. The Jeep died and he had to start it again.

“I’ll shoot you!” she shouted, grasping the butt of the revolver with both hands, assuming a serious stance with legs braced apart.

He reversed, stuck the Jeep into first, and spun away, the tires sliding in the rapidly building snow.

Claire watched as her Jeep, her one connection to the outside world, disappeared around the corner.

“Damn. “

She lowered the gun.

At least he was gone. That was the important thing.

She thought about the way he’d smiled at her, a secret kind of smile, a smile that had scared her, that had made her heart flutter. And then she looked at Hallie, who was staring down the deserted road as if her doggy heart had been broken. Claire patted her head. “I guess we’ve both got rotten taste in men."

~0~

An hour later, Claire was wolfing down a breakfast bar when her gaze landed on the purse she’d dropped on the kitchen table last night. She opened it and pulled out the voodoo doll.

Hmm.

A woman on a mission of revenge, she jumped to her feet and hurried to the bedroom, to the bed to examine the pillow where the felon had rested his head. She found a couple of straight dark hairs about two inches long.

Excited, she returned to the kitchen and quickly found a squeeze container of school glue. With the glue, she attached the hair to the doll’s head. Then she turned the voodoo doll over to the bad side, found a black needle, and jabbed it into the doll’s head, at the temple.

~0~

With one hand on the wheel, Dylan tugged off his jacket, trying to ignore the pain in his side. He felt dizzy again.

He rolled down the window and stuck his head partway out, doing the dog thing. It didn’t help. He pulled his head back in.

He blinked, trying to see through the falling snow.

He blinked again. It was a slow blink this time. An I--can-hardly-keep-my-eyes-open kind of blink.

When he opened his eyes again, there was a tree, a huge evergreen tree in the middle of the road.

It didn't move when he hit it.

Claire went through the cabin, making sure the back door and windows, even the upstairs windows in the loft were locked. Then she spent some meaningful time staring at the gun she’d left lying on the kitchen table next to her purse and box of generic cornflakes. She was no weapons expert—only having been given a crash course from Libby, who’d been trying to get Claire to buy a handgun for years—but she finally figured out how to remove the cartridge.

Empty.

With the cartridge out of the way, she squinted down the chamber, the barrel pointing away from her. It was empty, too.

She’d been abducted and held hostage with a gun that wasn’t loaded. There was no sense in giving Dylan the benefit of the doubt. It was highly likely that he hadn't known there were no bullets in it.

She took the gun upstairs, to the loft. The loft wasn’t the handiest place to get to. It had once had spring-loaded wooden steps attached to a door that you pulled down from the ceiling. When that contraption went on the blink, the owners replaced it with a ten-foot stepladder. Claire actually liked it. To her, it made the loft seem a little like a tree house.

She ended up wrapping the gun in an old, soft T-shirt and hiding it in the back of a bottom drawer that she used for art supplies. Then she went back downstairs and took a shower. While her hair dried, she turned on the TV. Five minutes into one of the morning programs, the local news broke in.

“A report just in on the private plane that crashed yesterday in the Sawtooth Mountains. The identity of the injured man who walked ten miles to the nearest town to get help for his fellow passenger, is none other than reclusive chess champion Daniel French. As we reported earlier, the pilot was found dead. An interesting twist to the story is the identity of the other passenger, whom French says was alive when he left the plane to find help.”

The middle-aged announcer paused to listen to his earpiece. “Do we have that file photo? We do?” Back to the camera. “The other passenger is convicted felon Trevor Davis who made his escape from a maximum security prison two years ago while serving a fifteen-year sentence for embezzlement and fraud.”

She knew his name wasn't Dylan.

A sketch appeared on the screen, a drawing of a man with dark aviator sunglasses and a hooded sweatshirt. It could have been anybody.

“If you see this man, do not approach him. He may be armed and dangerous. Instead, contact the Idaho state police.”

Claire stared at the screen for quite a while before she realized the program had moved on to something new.

She had to get to a phone. She had to get to the police.

~0~

Claire was used to cold weather. And snow. And walking long distances. That was good, because the nearest neighbor was three miles across country, almost four if she stuck to the road. The Herman family. They were a spooky bunch, a father and three sons, none of whom practiced good dental hygiene. Claire had run into them a few times, enough to know that they were suspicious and scared of the strange woman who lived alone.

That would be her.

Claire dressed in several layers of clothing, filled her backpack, then headed in the direction of the Herman homestead, sticking to the road because of the snow.

She’d gone about a mile and a half when she spotted something near the side of the road. About fifty yards in front of her and to the right was a vehicle resting flush against a pine tree. And that snow-covered vehicle looked suspiciously like her Jeep.

Claire waded through the deep snow, sinking to her thighs when she hit the ditch that ran along the road.

With mittened hands, she dug the snow away from the Jeep until she was able to open the door. The cab was a dark cocoon. An empty cocoon except for Dylan's jacket. Correction— Trevor’s jacket. She circled the Jeep. The snow had already partially covered her tracks. Dylan's—Trevor’s— were long gone.

She made another circle, this one bigger than the last.

She almost stepped on him.

Like her grandmother would have said, If he'd been a snake he would have bit her.

Trevor was lying on his back, his eyes closed, head bare.

She peeled off one of her mittens and felt his face.

Ice cold.

She placed two fingers against his neck, the way she'd been taught in CPR class.

He groaned. Slowly, he opened his eyes.

He didn’t look good. Not good at all.

She found herself staring at his head, at the fresh cut on his forehead, an inch above the old one.

The voodoo doll.

No.

It couldn’t have been. She didn’t believe in such nonsense. If she did, she would never have done it. The pin-jabbing had merely been an outlet for her anger and frustration. She’d never meant to hurt him.

She visualized the doll, lying on the kitchen table where she’d left it, the black pin sticking in its little head.

She had to get back and remove the pin.

Trevor stared up at her with glassy eyes. His mouth moved as he struggled to form words, struggled to speak.

She leaned closer, straining to hear.

“Is this ... hell?”

A simple question. A direct question.

“No, ” she told him. “It's Idaho.”

He made a sound deep in his throat, something she thought may have been a laugh.

“I wanted to see snow," he said, snowflakes melting into the darkness of his eyes. She placed a mittened hand against his forehead, to shield his face.

“Nobody ever told me it’d be a fucking Siberia.”

He’d already mentioned his touchingly quaint affinity for the area.

“Hey, I know you,” he said, his eyes clearing slightly. “You're Max.”

“Max?”

“Maxfield, but I’ll call you Max. I prefer one syllable names, don't you?”

“Like Trevor?”

That didn't seem to sink in. His eyes were getting that vacant look again.

“We need to get you someplace warm,” she said. “The Jeep is only a few feet away.”

“It’s shot.”

“We might be able to get the heater going even if it can't he driven.”

He rolled his head in denial. “Radiator's busted.”

“Then you'll have to walk.”

Unfortunately her house was the nearest shelter by over a mile.

“Can’t walk.”

“You have to.”

He reached up, placing frozen fingers her cheek. “I feel like shit,” he explained.

“It's not that far.”

“My head hurts. I have a headache.” To further emphasize its severity, he added, "A shit big headache.”

He took his hand from her cheek, kind of waved it in the air until he found his own forehead. “Here. I hurt here.”

Had she done this to him?

He frowned, then looked around, as if unable to figure out how he’d gotten there, as if he'd already forgotten who she was.

She tried not to let him see her fear. She didn’t want to scare him. He would need every ounce of strength to get to shelter. “Your head will feel better as soon as you get inside. As soon as we get you someplace warm. My house isn’t far,” she lied. If he knew how far away it was, he would never even try. Let him think it was just around the next tree. “It’s just a short walk. ” She grabbed his arm, trying to pull him to his feet.

Impossible.

“Get up, Trevor. Please.”

“You talkin’ to me?”

“Yes.”

“Cal me Dylan.”

“Okay, Dylan. Get up. You have to get up.”

“Okay, okay. Quit your naggin' an' I will. Just quit your naggin’.”

It hurt to watch him.

Slowly, achingly, he rolled to his stomach. Then, inch-by-inch, he managed to get his knees under him. With her arms around his waist, she helped to pull him upright.

Once there, he stood swaying, arms outstretched, trying to get his balance.

When he regained some equilibrium, they began moving forward through the snow, in the direction of the Jeep and his jacket, and then hopefully home and a warm fire.