The Last Time I Saw Her (11 page)

“Don't let him kill me,” Paris cried, sobbing.

“Stop!” Charlie and Michael shouted almost simultaneously. Charlie was screaming at Sayers; Michael was yelling at her and at the same time trying to pull her back to safety with hands that were no more substantial than air. The beauty of ectoplasm was that as big and bad as Michael was, he couldn't actually physically stop her from doing anything. She managed to latch on to Paris's hand as Sayers tore past Abell and Torres, who were crowded into Hughes's seat row, attempting to pull a now wide awake, shouting and struggling Hughes from the spot he'd been occupying between the seats. Charlie had no doubt at all that Abell's intent was to shoot Hughes like he'd shot the guards, and from the way he was fighting, Hughes knew it, too.

“Damn it, Charlie!” Michael tried to grab her around the waist, with predictable results. Paris's cold and clammy hand clutched hers desperately. Charlie hung on to it with every bit of strength she had, doing her best to jerk the girl free as Sayers continued to haul her down the aisle. She knew what Sayers was capable of. The thought of him with Paris—it was enough to make Charlie's blood run cold.

“What the hell's up with you?” Abell bellowed, head turning to track Sayers. At the same time, he solved the problem of Hughes's struggles by slugging him over the head with his gun. The sharp
crack
of the blow told Charlie just how hard it had been. Hughes grunted and went limp. Abell and Torres pulled his sagging body into the aisle.

“I'm outa here,” Sayers threw over his shoulder. “How hard do you think it's going to be for the millions of cops heading our way to find a
school
bus
?”

“Mr. Sayers! Let her go!” Charlie cried, giving Paris's hand another frantic jerk as the girl tried digging in her heels one more time. Tightening his grip on her arm so brutally that Paris cried out, Sayers snapped, “Get the bitch.” Charlie found her hair being grabbed from behind by Fleenor as Sayers dragged Paris and, by extension, her past him and Ware. Gasping at the sudden pain of it, Charlie lost her grip on Paris's hand.

“No!” Paris screamed, head twisting to look back as she strained toward Charlie. Her hand stretched out beseechingly. “Don't let go! Please!”

“Hey, sweet thing, you and me got—” Fleenor began, as Charlie, snarling, whipped around toward him. Without even thinking about it, she doubled up her fist and punched him as hard as she could in the nose. It was like slamming her fist into a rock. Her hand went numb. She felt the impact of the blow all the way up her arm.

“Bitch!” Fleenor howled.

Letting go of her hair, he staggered back, clapping a hand to his nose. Ware whooped with amusement.

There'll be hell to pay for that,
Charlie thought with a fresh stab of fear as she whirled to go to Paris's assistance. The girl was doing her best to fight free of Sayers, kicking and screaming and trying to grab on to the seats without success. Elsewhere on the bus, pandemonium broke out. Bree screamed. Hughes revived with a roar, causing Abell and Torres to attack him in tandem. Ruben and Creech rushed down the aisle toward the fight—

“Help!” Paris screamed, looking back at Charlie with panic in her face as she and Sayers reached the open door
.
The specter of what had happened to the guards in that doorway made Charlie's heart clutch. The bus was slowing more as it rocked into a curve. A harried glance past Sayers out the door told Charlie that dusk was falling, mist lay everywhere, and the road was empty as far as she could see.

Not a cop car in sight.

“You can stay on this death ride if you want to. I'm taking my chances on the mountain,” Sayers yelled, and he jumped, taking Paris with him.

Charlie watched in shock as the girl and Sayers plummeted to the road, hitting with a thud and rolling over and over.

Oh, no, no, no—

Then Fleenor charged up behind her, locked his hand around her wrist, and jumped, too, pulling her out with him.

Charlie didn't even have time to scream before she smashed hard onto the unforgiving asphalt.

Pain shot through Charlie's knees and palms. Landing on all fours, then tumbling uncontrollably, she felt the shock of the impact over every inch of her body. The surface of the road was hard and rough enough to tear clothes and skin, bruise muscles, jar bones.

Sharper even than the pain was the fear.

Fleenor's got me.
Vivid images of the file pictures on Fleenor's victims flashed through her head. He liked to hurt them, make them cry and plead. And he would have particular reason to want to hurt her.

Only he didn't have her. At least the fall had made him release her wrist. The realization galvanized her. A petrified glance around found him skidding on his side along the shoulder of the road, his orange uniform making him impossible to miss even in the gathering darkness, even through the gray fingers of mist.

He was perhaps two yards to her left, bouncing along the edge of the pavement. On that side, the road was lined by a ribbon of gravel backed by a forbidding stockade of towering trees. The mountain rose steeply behind him, heavily wooded and dark. There was no sign of Paris, or Sayers, but given the choices, Charlie thought they must be somewhere up in those woods. The last she'd seen of Paris, the girl had been rolling down the middle of the road—but the good news was that Sayers had lost his grip on her just like Fleenor had lost his grip when they hit. Maybe Paris had gotten away. Maybe she was even now fleeing through the woods. Searching for the girl was not an option; Charlie had to get away from Fleenor while she could. He was looking in her direction now, cursing loudly even as his body slowed. At any second his forward momentum would stop, and then he would come after her or go for his gun.

At the thought of his gun, adrenaline shot through Charlie's veins like a giant infusion of speed.

Run.
Her brain screamed the command. Despite the injuries she knew she must have suffered in the fall, her body responded. She had to get off the road; it was too open. Getting her feet beneath her, she scrambled toward the edge of the pavement, desperate to get away from Fleenor—and out of the reach of his gun. A splash of yellow amidst all the gray, the bus was already being swallowed up by mist as it rounded another turn, about to be lost from sight. The fading shouts coming from inside it almost covered the labored sound of the engine as it fought to reach the top of the steep incline. The smell of exhaust lingered in its wake, mixing with the damp scent of the mist. Charlie thought of the teens still inside, and felt her heart turn over. But there was nothing she could do for them now.

Michael.
Glancing desperately around, Charlie called to him out loud. But there was no sign of him, no answer, and she couldn't wait.

Because Fleenor was on the side of the road with the rising mountain behind him, she darted for the opposite side, the side with the guardrail protecting the dizzying drop-off that, before, she'd thought was a sheer cliff.

It was a drop-off, but it wasn't sheer, she discovered. Clambering over the guardrail, plunging into the narrow strip of trees that grew on the other side of it, she glanced desperately down the rock wall that fell away into nothingness a few feet in front of her and discovered that, at least at this point, the angle of the cliff wasn't so steep that she couldn't descend it on foot, and that there was, in fact, a path.

“I'm coming for you, bitch,” Fleenor yelled.

A frightened glance over her shoulder found him kneeling in the gravel on the opposite side of the road. As she watched, he rose laboriously to his feet, gun already in hand.

Charlie didn't wait to see any more. Heart pounding, she flung herself down that path, ignoring the pain in her knees, praying that her low-heeled shoes wouldn't slide on the wet leaves and moss that covered parts of the stone and send her plummeting—she dared take a look—hundreds of feet into the ravine below. Islands of gray mist floating below her like clouds made it seem like she was higher up even than she knew she was. All around her, the jagged silhouettes of mountains rose like blackened shark's teeth against a purpling sky.

Michael.
She no longer dared to call his name out loud. Where he was she didn't know, but she did know that he would never leave her of his own accord. The fifty-foot rule—did that still apply? Was he gone again, sucked back into Spookville?

Even as she ran for her life, as she ducked beneath small prickly bushes growing out of the cliff face and prayed that she wouldn't catch her foot on an uneven place in the rock and go flying off the path, the thought terrified her.

Fear made her chest tight. Her lungs heaved as she fought to draw in enough air.

Bang.
The bullet smacked into the stone face of the cliff beside her, so close that she felt its passing, so close that a tiny chip of rock flew in front of her eyes.

A scream tore into her throat. She swallowed it, afraid of pinpointing her location for Sayers, who was out there somewhere and might join with Fleenor to double-team her. And although attracting the cops who had to be out there on the mountain somewhere, too, would be good, she couldn't be sure that they were close enough even to hear her—so she ducked her head and ran like death was on her heels. Which, in fact, it was.

The path widened into a narrow, tree-covered ledge.

“Stop or I'll put a bullet in your back,” Fleenor shouted after her, his voice echoing eerily.

Charlie's shoulders tightened. Her skin crawled as she imagined a bullet slamming into her spine. Blessing the swirling mist and the deepening darkness equally for the cover they provided, she raced into the doubtful protection of a stand of spindly pines. Their pungent scent filled the air as she shoved through the damp branches only to discover that the ledge ended abruptly just beyond them. Coming up short as her sanctuary fell away in front of her feet in yet another sheer drop, she looked down in horror—and heard a rustle of branches warning her that Fleenor was coming after her through the trees.

Heart racing, practically teetering on the edge of the precipice as she whirled to face the copse of pines, she looked wildly around. Where she was, there was no concealment. The trees had run out, and she was standing in the open, with not even any mist in that particular spot, thanks to a cold updraft spiraling from below. It was dark, but not dark enough to hide her: the deepening charcoal of advancing dusk rather than the full-out blackness of night. The pale stone of the cliff rose starkly on one side. She was some ninety feet below the road now, and the climb up was impossible. Her only way out was back through the trees and along the path—and Fleenor, armed and murderous, was in her way.

Oh, my God, I'm trapped.

Panic had her heart pumping, reduced her breathing to ragged pants. Her palms were damp, she discovered, as her hands fisted at her sides. Turning, she looked down again. There was another ledge much like the one she was standing on some thirty feet below, down a wall of smooth, perpendicular rock. This one was maybe ten feet wide and held little in the way of cover: only a couple of large, scruffy bushes growing close to the face of the rock. Her stomach knotted as she evaluated her chances of reaching it. It wasn't a straight shot, but was maybe eight feet over, with the prospect of a fatal drop hundreds of feet into a misty, wooded chasm if she lost her grip. No way could she climb—

“Dr. Sto-o-one.” Fleenor's mocking call made the hair stand up on the back of her neck. “Here I am. Good to see you decided to wait for me.”

He could see her. His words, his tone, left Charlie in no doubt about that. A terrified glance back found him, a tall, dark form shoving his way through the trees. In the open as she was, she would be completely visible to him. From the deliberate way he was moving—no rushing for him now—he must realize that she was cornered.

The knowledge was utterly terrifying.

Go.

Crouching, lowering herself over the side, she went down that cold, treacherous cliff like a lizard, pressing herself flat against the smooth rock, digging her fingers and toes into any tiny crack she could find, sliding on her stomach when there weren't any cracks, and finally semi-falling the last few yards and pitching up in a heap on the ledge.

Then she looked up to find that Fleenor stood on the ledge she had just abandoned, peering down at her.

From her position he wasn't much more than a dark shape against the paler stone, but there was just enough light left to allow her to pick out the gun in his hand. There was no mistake: he was aiming, pointing it at her, targeting her.

Throwing herself sideways, Charlie screamed.

A second figure, taller and broader of shoulder, merged with the first. A glint of silver whipped through the air and was yanked tight against Fleenor's throat. A chain, Charlie realized, even as a choked cry was followed by a brief, violent reaction on Fleenor's part. Then his knees seemed to give out, and he sank down out of her sight.

Charlie practically dissolved with relief.

A moment later, the taller figure was looking over the edge at her. She could see little more than his silhouette against the darkening sky. Sprawled on her back on the unforgiving rock, her elbows propping her up, Charlie stared at him.

The outline of an elegant suit, the faint gleam of a white shirt, a suggestion of short, fair hair.

Her pulse leaped. There was no mistaking Hughes. But—

“Michael?” Her voice had a distinct quaver.

“You hurt?” he called down to her. That laconic question was all she needed to tell her that she'd been right, it was him. The voice was dark and gravelly but unmistakably his. Oh, my God, she'd known it, although exactly how she couldn't have said. Probably from the way he'd shown up to save her—typical Michael—or the way he'd dealt with Fleenor with such ruthless efficiency—also typical Michael—or maybe because she just did. Because she had developed a sixth sense where he was concerned. She could recognize him now at any distance, anytime, anywhere, under any conditions. She was a little fuzzy on the mechanics of how it all worked, but he'd managed to take over Hughes's body.

Thank you, God.

“No,” she replied. And smiled, at him and at the universe, too, for sending him back to her and making such a thing as body takeovers possible.

He didn't say anything more, just lowered himself over the edge of the cliff and climbed down, far more efficiently than she had done. The fact that his wrists were cuffed together made the feat even more impressive, she decided. She watched without moving, and in just a few minutes he was stepping onto the ledge. By then her previously pounding heart had slowed to a near normal beat and her ragged breathing had more or less stopped being ragged. But her muscles were still jelly, and various aches and pains were starting to make themselves felt, and she was so mentally and physically drained that lying there on the cold stone was just about all she could imagine doing ever again.

He came to stand over her.

“Fleenor?” she asked, although she was 99.9 percent sure she knew the answer. She'd seen Michael in action before. He'd been Marine Force Recon once upon a time, and the finer points of breaking a man's neck seemed to have stuck with him.

“Dead.”

She acknowledged that with a nod.

“How'd you get the handcuffs in front?” she asked next. Because the last time she'd seen Hughes, his hands had been cuffed behind his back.

“Stepped through them.”

She was sure that was far more difficult than he made it sound, but she didn't really care.

“Ah,” she said.

“You scared the hell out of me back there,” Michael said. His tone was flat, and she was unable to read anything in his face, partly because he was looking down at her, which placed his face deep in shadow. Menace radiated from him like rays from the sun. His powerful body was visibly tense. He looked impossibly tall and broad-shouldered, and formidable as hell looming over her like that. Charlie came to the conclusion, arrived at with all the objectivity of the research scientist she was, that she would never get enough of looking at him.

“Yeah, well, payback's a bitch,” she retorted with no heat at all.

He hunkered down beside her. His eyes, she saw, were still that glittering, soulless black. Aggression came off him in waves, the result, she knew, of his recent sojourn in Spookville. “What's that mean?”

His face remained in shadow and was thus impossible to read, but he was looking her over carefully. Checking for injuries, she guessed, because for her to remain flat on her back on cold, uneven rock probably struck him as a sign that she wasn't quite herself. She was taking it as a sign of that, too.

“It means that for the last seventeen days I thought you were gone. Forever. Tam told me you'd probably been terminated. I didn't think I'd ever see you again.” She said it conversationally, no drama there, while her eyes moved over what she could see of his face and her insides slowly loosened up so that her heart and her lungs and her stomach felt more or less the way they ought to feel, and her blood warmed to the point where it flowed easily through her veins. Which was when she realized just how frozen her body had been with grief since he'd disappeared.

“Miss me?” he asked. His tone was as drama-free and casual as hers had been.

To Charlie's consternation, her throat tightened and her lips quivered.

“Yes,” she said. Then, aches and pains and jellied muscles be damned, she sat up and rolled onto her knees and threw herself against him and wrapped her arms around his neck and burst into tears.

The thing about it was she never cried. Or, at least, she only ever cried over him.

“Hey, hey, hey,” he murmured, pressing his lips to her ear and her cheek and the line of her jaw because she had her face buried in the crook of his neck and that was all he could reach. The feel of his mouth, warm and
real,
against her skin, destroyed the last of her defenses. She cried as though every ounce of the anguish she'd experienced over him had been building up and had finally exploded in this, a volcanic loss of control, which was, in fact, precisely what had happened. Despite the handcuffs linking his wrists, he somehow managed to maneuver them both so that he was kneeling with his arms wrapped tight around her. She was kneeling, too, and hanging on to him like she never meant to let go. As she sobbed and clung and gasped incomprehensible things into his neck while they knelt on that narrow lip of rock with the sheer cliff towering above them and the misty chill of the twilight enfolding them, he held her and rocked her and wisely didn't try to reply, until finally the storm subsided enough so that she lay more or less quietly against him. Then he kissed her cheek for what must have been the hundredth time and said in her ear, “It's all right. Everything's all right. There's nothing to be afraid of anymore. I've got you safe.”