Willing Hostage (14 page)

“Stole what from whom? Why?” She had a right to know if he had indeed involved her in this dangerous business, even mistakenly.

The twig waved back and forth, making the shadows ripple over the planes of his face and the rock behind him. “Some papers from the oil company where I worked because the agency ordered me to. Okay?”

“Why did you run? Why didn't you just photograph them and put them back?”

“Because I made the mistake of reading them and I couldn't stomach what I read.” A hissing sound as he doused the twig in the dregs of his coffee.

Glade Wyndham looked so huge, so strong across the fire, so relaxed in the shadowy wilderness night. Leah resented her reliance on him, the fact that every time an owl hooted or something rustled the grass she wanted to shift to his side of the fire.

“What's a bag job done on a farm?” Could he become so angered by her incessant questioning that he could go off, leave her alone here on the Flat Tops? Could she survive without him?

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“I realize to bag something in your jargon is to steal it … but I heard Charlie say something about showing off bag jobs on a farm when I first saw you at Ted's Place.”

“Oh,
the
farm. It's a place for field training agents … how to climb barbed wire and avoid mine fields and drink a lot … kind of thing you can't get out of a textbook at headquarters in Langley. If I hadn't turned renegade I could have retired there as an instructor. I'm not a caseworker, my specialty is breaking and entering, safes—”

“And murder?”

He shrugged. “I took care of a hit man once and there have been others. But that's not my specialty. Sometimes I was just in the right place at the wrong time.”

A keening on the wind, far away but eerie, high-pitched, joined by others until it sounded like a chorus of yips that synchronized to a drawn-out yowl wailing mournfully toward their fire …

Leah scooted across dirt and rocks and grass painfully, her rear never leaving the earth or missing a bump. She was now on the same side of the campfire as Glade Wyndham. “What's that?”

The wail of twenty saddened banshees in unison …

… drowned out by deep-throated male laughter. A hard protective arm drew her in. “You're a funny woman, Leah. You can keep your head while being chased by airplanes and gazing on the disfigured corpse of a tortured woman, but howling coyotes chase you right into the arms of a murderer.”

“It's just all this … this openness—”

“There're walls even here,” and he sounded sadder than the coyotes. “They're getting tighter every day. You just can't see them yet. But the coyotes and deer and elk can—”

“Do coyotes attack people?”

“No, they're waiting for sick ewes or does or tiny lambs … for the weak.”

“Like you? Like you and Welker wait for people like me? The weak and honest?”

The low laughter drowned out the coyotes again. “No, Leah, I'm honest, too. That's how the whole problem started. If I'd just done my job.” He snuggled closer until one whole side of her warmed without the help of the fire.

“I wish.…”

“What?”

He stood suddenly and left her to the cold night. “Nothing, Leah Harper. Nothing.”

“But why has it taken everybody ten months to find you?” she persisted, telling herself she didn't mind the rebuff.

“You don't know much about big organizations, do you?” He emptied the last of the coffee on the fire. “They're ponderous machines. But once they do get everything together and rolling, they can come down very heavy on anyone who gets in the way. And you and I, Leah, are in the way.”

There is nothing to do at night on the top of the world, no light to read by, nowhere fun to go, no TV. They crawled into their sleeping bags and listened to each other lay awake … to the creaking and the rustling and the night wind … and then to rain.

Still smelling of singed fur, Goodyear sat on Leah's stomach and washed. Then he curled up on the parka rolled under her head, used her shoulder for a pillow, and purred ferociously into her ear.

Glade stirred restlessly beside her.

She had the feeling they were both thinking of the same thing … and she didn't want to. She'd noticed mother nature clicking behind his passionless composure. Maybe it was just her own ego, playing tricks. But Leah wasn't interested. It was too cold, crowded, and uncomfortable. It would just be something to do, a way to use each other. She had been used enough.

Big, dark, mysterious—all the attributes to snare the lonely. Murderer, thief, criminal—what other things would he admit to? What more could he?

Sudden ruthlessness, sudden gentleness, the warmth of his laughter, the cruel grip on her arm, the understanding pauses on the trail, the heat of a kiss.…

“Glade? Would you really have killed me at that fishing cabin when you thought I was Sheila?”

“Yes.” The flat finality of his clipped words.…

Chapter Eighteen

“I'm not much of a cook,” Glade apologized.

“Oh, it's delicious.” Leah moved to a drier part of the rock. The night's rain had left little puddles. “What is it?”

“It's supposed to be a pancake,” he said with disgust.

The pancake was raw dough surrounded by a charcoaled exterior. The metal plate had chilled it to crunchy. She took a gulp of Tang to unstick the dough. “The syrup is … sweet,” she said encouragingly. He'd mixed purple powder with water to make a raspberry syrup … sort of.

“These have to cook one at a time. Ready for another?”

“No, I think this will do it.” Leah forced down every last congealed lump and tried to smile. Her ulcer considered shoving it back. She fought it down and worked harder on her smile because she didn't want to hurt his feelings.

The irony of that made the smile real, if bitter. He'd told her last night that he could have taken her life and by morning she worried about hurting his feelings. There was something wrong with women. Or was it just Leah Harper?

“I grew up on a ranch west of here. We camped often but we didn't have all these fancy directions on foil packets. Pork and beans in a can, steak skewered on a stick over the fire. We slept in the open or pulled ponchos over us if it rained. But we couldn't have carried it on our backs. We had packhorses.”

Leah stared at him. “You were a cowboy?”

“Mostly just a boy.” If Leah hadn't known better, she'd have said there was a hint of shyness in his grin, the way his eyes dropped to the little stove.

“Here in Colorado? Can't we go to your people at the ranch?”

“When my father died, he willed me an education and my older brother got the ranch. Until last summer I hadn't been back for twelve, fifteen years.”

“Well, your brother then.…”

“Cal sold out … to an oil company.”

Glade ate five pancakes while Goodyear watched the tiny transparent animals in the shallow pond. Some looked like corkscrews, others like cockroaches, still others like beetles. They didn't swim. They squiggled through the water.

“The pond freezes to the bottom in winter. Those little creatures probably live their lifetimes in one summer.” He poured coffee and added pointedly, “Not everyone can look forward to a long life span.”

She'd never dared so much coffee but it was warming and smelled like roasting nuts on the cold air. Only the afternoons were livable up here. “And you think your days are numbered?”

“And yours if I don't think of something.” He sat on the rock and “thought” the whole blessed day, staring at the curve of Big Marvine.

Leah decided he was a boob man and tried not to go crazy with boredom. Mother nature clicked all around her but didn't disturb Glade Wyndham. It must have been her imagination the day before.

By afternoon she was pacing through the buttercups despite her sore feet. Glade sat motionless with the tip of his thumb stuck between his teeth. Goodyear batted lazily at a grass frond, rolled over on his back with his tail and hind legs angled up the side of the rock and the lush buff of his oversized stomach exposed to the sun. He resumed his nap unaware of how uncomfortable and ridiculous he looked.

Leah stretched out beside him and stroked the proffered underside, dozed to the tune of his fantastic purr—and awoke to find Glade Wyndham staring through her.…

The rigid mask had slipped, leaving a look of helplessness on the tanned face … tumbled curls over a wrinkled brow … firm mouth gone slack with … remorse? Fear?

For a moment, before he focused and realized she stared back, before face and body tightened to withdraw into the strong male, Leah had the insane desire to comfort him.

They both blinked. “Well, have you thought of a way to save our necks?” she asked, reaching for Goodyear in her confusion. But the cat had left her side to sit aloof by the pond and watch them.

“When I met you in that restaurant in Oak Creek, I was supposed to meet a reporter for the Denver
Post
. He didn't show.” Glade stretched and stood to find a stone at the pond's edge. “It was just me then. It didn't matter so much.” He skipped the stone across the water and picked up another. “You've complicated everything.”

“Why a reporter?”

“The only thing I could think of to do with the papers—and I thought all winter—is to turn them over to the press. But I don't know how to do that and save our hides, too. There are too many very talented people after us.”

“Couldn't your brother—”

“I want to keep Cal out of this. They've probably got him well covered by now, anyway.” Another rock skipped across the pond's surface and Goodyear crouched.

“I still don't see … Why do you want to get the papers to the press?”

“Have you ever seen a pile of mine tailings?”

“I don't even know what they are.”

“It's what's left after the earth has been disemboweled. I've seen it in thousands of places, piles of mine tailings over a hundred years old, some here in Colorado. And do you know what?” Dark eyes looked through her. “There isn't even a weed growing on them. After all this time.” He returned to his thinking position on the rock and to his silent mood.

Leah walked to the top of the hill and looked back at the pond where the man and the cat sat like statues.

Glade had grown up on a ranch with his brother, Cal, had become a mining engineer and a CIA agent, had stolen the property and run out on both jobs. The property was so important that Welker was willing to pay a high price for it and involve Leah, that Charlie would see Glade had a fatal accident, and the goons would kill anyone who got in the way of their search for Glade, including Sheila and presumably Leah. And oil shale … and weeds didn't grow on mine tailings.…

Leah shrugged and wandered back down the hill.

“Swords,” Glade announced over a freeze-dried pork chop at dinner. “Maybe he can get us out of this.” He looked hopeful for a moment and then shook his head. “No, that's too long a shot even for this.”

“Who's Swords?”

“That hit man I took care of?” He pointed his fork at her. Leah backed away. “He was about to take care of Swords. He seemed pretty grateful at the time.”

“Is he powerful enough to get around the FBI and the CIA and—”

“He's powerful enough that it'd be hard to even get in touch with him. Still, he's better than nothing.…”

Leah awoke in the green nylon tent and would have jerked upright if there had been room. “What's that?”

“Sheep,” Glade answered irritably.

The sounds were distant, a few bells and many complaining ba-a-as. It sounded like a restaurant full of indigestion.

“Shepherd's just moving them in. No fire this morning. We'll eat and break camp.”

“Where will we go? Have you thought of anything?”

“We'll walk out of here. I want to get to a telephone.” His fist struck at the nylon roof. “The property has to get to the newspapers. I'll try again. It's all I can do.”

“That's fine for the property but what about us?”

“I'll keep working on that, Leah. Maybe Swords will.… I'll have to work on it.”

They had plastic bacon chips in their Styrofoam eggs and broke camp. Glade had everything on their backs in record time.

They started toward Big Marvine. Three nights of sleeping on the ground had not rested her sore muscles and all the old aches were soon back. But his fear and worry that catastrophe was closing in on them kept her moving.

They crossed rolling hills and as they crested one they saw the sheep they'd been hearing since dawn. It looked as if white fluff balls had been scattered across the green, as if someone had blown the fur tops from giant dandelions. The sheep grazed near two small bright lakes.

Glade and Leah angled away to skirt the lakes on the far side and soon the lakes and sheep were lost from sight.

“Where was the shepherd?”

“He's around.”

“Do you think he saw us?”

“They don't miss much.” He stopped to point out a hoof track in a damp patch of dirt. “Elk.”

“Why don't we see any wild animals? Here we are in that great wilderness I've heard so much about.…”

“They won't show themselves to us. We're the enemy.” His boots were suddenly smeared with Siamese. Goodyear purred, rolled, rubbed, nudged, and then tried to climb Glade's pant leg.

“What's the matter, fella?” he asked gently, picking up the cat. “Can't take a little hike? You're in worse shape than your mistress.”

“If I remember right, you once told me I had a great body.”

“Yeah, like a stick with arms.”

More elk tracks as they neared the base of Big Marvine. “Hunters come up here in the fall, slaughter only the biggest, healthiest, best of the herds. People. The enemy.”