Daredevil’s Run

Chapter 10

“We’ve got some pretty hairy roads in the Smokies,” Sam said, “but I mean to tell you, I have not ever seen anything like this.” She tore her fascinated gaze away from the rocky gorge flashing by only a couple of yards from the side of the van and turned to address her husband in the backseat. “Pearse, you don’t know what you’re missing. I swear, you need to-” She broke off as she caught a glimpse of the yellow Jeep careening around the bend in the road behind them, practically on their bumper. “Oh my Lord, now what is this guy doing? Matt-”

“I see him,” Matt said, flicking a calm glance at the rearview mirror. “It’s a her, actually. In fact, I know her. She works for Alex. You’ve met her. Eve…the tall blonde?”

“You’re right-what on earth do you suppose-oh jeez!” She gave a squawk and instinctively threw up her arm as the Jeep accelerated suddenly, coming straight at them. There was a loud bang and a jolt that made her head snap back, and her heart dropped into her stomach. “Matt, what-Did she just ram us? Is she crazy?”

“I think she might be.” Matt was busy controlling the van, which was careening dangerously close to the edge of the drop-off. He glanced up at the mirror. “Here she comes again-hang on.” And he hit the gas.

Too scared now to swear, Sam jerked around in her seat to face front and settled her seat belt more securely across her chest. “Pearse,” she yelled, “wake up! Are you buckled in?”

“Of course,” came his reply, sounding groggy. “What the hell’s going on?”

“A crazy woman’s trying to force us off the road,” Matt said. His lips were stretched in a grim smile.

It was odd, how calm he felt. Somewhere in his body, he knew, adrenaline had shifted everything into high gear, but he felt none of it. In fact, everything-heartbeat, breathing, all movement-seemed to be happening in slow motion.

Oh so slowly, he lifted his eyes to the mirror…saw the Jeep coming, closing the distance…slowly, slowly. Saw it veer-but slowly-out into the oncoming lane. He had all the time in the world to deduce what the woman’s intent was, to know that this time, rather than ram him from the rear, she meant to swerve at him from the side and force him over the bank. And he was ready for her, knew just what he had to do. His hands were steady on the controls, ready to apply the brakes the instant she swerved toward him.

He saw the car coming toward them from the other direction, and that was in slow motion, too.

There was a screeching of brakes and his body strained forward against a seat belt gone rigid across his chest. As he stared through the windshield, dazed, the slow-motion spell broke. In a blink, almost too fast for the eye to follow, the Jeep swerved out of the path of the oncoming car and continued on, out of control, across the lane in front of his van to plunge, with a terrible screeching of tires and metal, over the side and into the river gorge.

Alex had managed to keep the yellow Jeep in sight, at some risk to life and limb. She saw it closing on the blue van traveling at a much saner pace, and the cold feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach spread through her entire body when she recognized the van as Matt’s. What was Eve thinking? What was she doing?

Dear God, Alex thought, she’s going to cause an accident.

Around a few more curves…and she realized that was exactly what Eve was trying to do. Her heart was racing so fast it hurt; she drove hunched over the wheel, eyes burning as she stared at the drama playing out on the road ahead, little whimpering sounds coming from her throat. And once again there was nothing she could do. Nothing.

She could only watch and utter an unconscious shriek of horror as the Jeep suddenly accelerated and rammed into the back of the van. She sobbed with relief when the van swerved and wobbled back and forth, then regained control, and realized only then that she was muttering aloud, over and over, “Hold on, Mattie, hold on, Mattie, hold on…”

The Jeep seemed to gather itself…and lunged forward once more, but into the oncoming lane, this time, moving up alongside the van.

And what came next happened so fast, Alex couldn’t even process it until it was done. The flash of a car coming around a bend from the other direction. The Jeep swerving hard to the left. The van screeching to a halt, tires sending up puffs of smoke from burned rubber. The Jeep becoming a yellow streak that crossed in front of the van and disappeared.

Then the sounds. The whoosh of a car zooming by and continuing on down the winding road, its driver probably cussing the idiot in the yellow Jeep and oblivious to what was happening now behind him. The indescribable screeching and banging of tortured metal. Her own frantic sobbing breaths.

Somehow, probably on autopilot, she managed to stop the SUV behind Matt’s van, and even remembered to hit the button for the emergency flashers. She flung open the door and half fell from the driver’s seat, at the same time she saw the van’s side door slide open, and heard the whine of the chairlift. From somewhere-the other side of the van-came the thump of a slamming door.

“Matt-oh God, Matt-” She ran to him on shaking legs.

“I’m fine,” he said, with a little jolt in his voice as his chair touched down. “It’s Eve-she went over the side.”

“I saw. Oh God, Matt, she was trying-”

“Yeah. Go see if there’s anything you can do for her.” He turned to call back to his brother inside the van. “If you can get a signal, call-”

“Already on it.” From the depths of the van, Cory’s voice sounded eerily calm.

“I see her!” Sam shouted, turning as Alex ran to join her on the edge of the drop-off. “She’s alive-out of the car-” She peered over the side and clamped a hand to her forehead. “Oh God-she’s in the river. Alex-”

Down below, Alex could see the yellow Jeep lying upside down in the boulder-clogged river, its wheels still turning sluggishly, like the futilely waving legs of an overturned turtle. She could see Eve, too, now, a few yards downstream from the wreckage of the Jeep, caught in the white-water current. As Alex watched, she saw an arm reach out…and then another, as Eve struggled to swim, to keep her head above water…and then, miraculously, grab hold of a boulder. She was holding on…somehow, but how long she’d be able to was impossible to guess. And how badly was she injured? Alex had no way of knowing that, either.

“There should be a rope in the back of the SUV,” she yelled back to Sam as she went over the side and began to slip-slide her way down the steep embankment. “When you get it, throw me a line. I’ll try to hold her…”

“Got it, Alex-coming to you. Heads up!”

She looked up and saw Matt grinning down at her, his chair perilously close to the edge of the drop as he swung the end of the rope around his head like a cowboy preparing to lasso a steer. For the first time since the yellow Jeep had gone flying past her on the highway, Alex felt her heart climb out of her stomach. She even managed to grin back at him as she reached up to snag the snaking end of the rope out of the air and loop it around her waist. She knotted it firmly, then looked up and yelled, “Okay-you got me?”

“You bet,” he yelled back. “Always!”

She felt giddy, absurdly happy-crazy, given the circumstances-but there was no other way to describe the feelings that swamped her then. She felt like a super-hero-she could do anything! With the rope around her waist and Matt holding on to the other end, she felt safe and strong and able to swim rivers and climb mountains-or move them, if need be.

She all but flew down that bank, and in moments was waist-deep in rapids, scrambling over slippery rocks to reach the boulder where Eve was barely hanging on against the powerful current.

Eve could see her coming now, and she was staring up at Alex, staring with desperate eyes that seemed to cling to her as tenaciously as her arms and hands and fingers clung to the granite boulder. Blood poured down her face and was instantly carried away by the turbulent water that surged and splashed into her face. Her lips were stretched wide in a desperate parody of a smile as she screamed words Alex couldn’t hear.

“Hang on, Eve, I’m coming,” Alex yelled. And then she was there, and Eve was sobbing, clutching at her, and dangerously near to losing her hold on the rock in the process. “Wait-Don’t try to grab me, just let me-I’ve got you, okay? I’ve got you!”

Too panic-stricken to listen, Eve relinquished her hold on the boulder and wrapped her arms in a stranglehold around Alex’s neck. And now Alex could hear what the other woman was saying, in panting words all mixed up with sobs. What she heard made every muscle in her body go slack with shock.

“Why did you do it? Why did you take him back? You lied-you said you wouldn’t. You said-Oh, why didn’t he die? He was supposed to die. But he didn’t-but I thought it would be okay, because he was hurt, and couldn’t be on the river anymore. But he came back. He came back!”

“Wait, Eve-” Alex couldn’t breathe. She wrenched the other woman’s arms from around her neck and held her away from her, stared at her, the roaring in her ears louder than the river. “Eve-” she gasped the words, shrieked them without sound “-what are you telling me?”

Eve’s eyes stared back at her, swimming with anguished tears…tears of impotent rage, mixed with water and blood. “He wasn’t supposed to come back. Alex-why did you let him come back? We don’t need him-you and me-we don’t need him, Alex. He’s not what you need-don’t you see that? I had to make him go…for good, this time. Don’t you see?”

Alex’s hands had lost all sensation. If she could have moved them, she might have flung the woman from her, flung her back into the rapids-she wanted to. Revulsion and horror filled her head-she couldn’t think, couldn’t feel. “It was you?” She said the words, not caring whether anyone heard. “Matt’s accident-it was you?”

“He was supposed to die,” Eve wailed. “Oh God-why didn’t he die?”

“She’s got her, I think,” Sam said.

“Yeah,” said Matt, “but what’s she waiting for? What’s she doing?”

He had the rope looped around his shoulders and had taken a good firm grip on it, ready to begin pulling when Alex gave the word. But now she seemed to be holding Eve off, and saying something to her-yelling at her. It almost looked like…some kind of struggle?

Behind him he could hear cars pulling up alongside the road and stopping, people getting out of their cars, calling 9-1-1 on their cell phones, coming with offers to help. Offering to take the rope.

“I’ve got this, but you can hold on to my chair,” he told them all when they asked. No way he was giving up that rope. That was Alex down there, depending on him to bring her back. They’d have to cut his arms off before he’d let go.

What the hell is she waiting for?

Then at last, he saw Alex lift her head and look up at him. She’d shifted Eve, got her on her back, piggyback style, and the rope looped around them both. And now she raised her arm to signal him she was ready. Matt waved back, then flexed his hands in the leather gloves all people in wheelchairs wore to protect their hands from blisters and calluses, thinking what a good thing they were to have at a time like this. And was aware even then of the irony in that.

He turned his head to address the two hefty guys standing behind his chair. “You guys got me?” They both affirmed they were ready, took hold of his wheels and braced themselves. “Okay, here we go.”

He began to pull on the rope, not taking his eyes off Alex as he eased up the slack, then began to pull the weight of the two women slowly up the bank. Watching, gauging the obstacles Alex had to navigate over and around, careful not to hurry, careful not to jolt her, letting her find the best way up through the brush and boulders, wrapping the rope around his bent arm to take up the slack. His muscles burned and sweat poured down his face and soaked into his T-shirt. Not since his early days in rehab, when he was first learning to bear the full weight of his body with just his arms, had he worked so hard. Or felt such triumph in it.

All the while he was pulling on that rope, pulling the woman he loved more than his own life up that hill, all he could think about was that she was here.

She was here, where she’d no earthly reason to be, except for one: she’d followed him. She’d come after him. For Alex, that pretty much constituted a miracle.

And it told him all he needed to know. For Alex Penny to let go of her pride and come chasing after him, she had to have some powerful feelings. He wasn’t foolish enough to think they didn’t still have things to work out between them, but he wasn’t ever going to ask her the question he’d asked her once before. He’d never ask her again if she loved him. She didn’t have to say the words.

He knew.

He could hear sirens far down the canyon, coming fast. Moments later the rope went slack in his hands as people rushed to help Alex with her burden. He bowed his head, breathing in hungry gulps, and didn’t see them bring her up the last few feet, over the edge and onto the hard-packed earth.

When he looked up again, Eve was sobbing and struggling against the restraints of the Good Samaritans trying to give her aid, while Alex sat motionless a few feet away. He tossed away the rope, gave his wheels a shove and rolled over to her. When he said her name, she turned her head slowly to look at him, and the look on her face scared him. She was pale, deathly so, and her eyes looked blank, like windows in a deserted house.

Shock, he thought, and reached out with a shaking hand to touch her cheek. Where in the hell were the paramedics?

So naturally, at just that moment, a paramedic came and dropped his kit on the ground beside her, then bent over to ask if she was all right.

She seemed to jerk herself back from whatever hell she’d been in and waved him away impatiently. “Go away-I’m fine.”

The EMT glanced at Matt, then turned his attention back to Alex. “Ma’am, you need to let me look at you. Unless your ancestors came from another planet and blue-green is your natural color, I don’t think you’re fine. Okay?”

“Alex,” Matt said gently, “let the man do his job.”

“I am not injured,” she said, speaking slowly and carefully, as if to a mentally deficient child. “I wasn’t involved in the…accident. I just hauled that woman’s sorry ass out of the river, and I’m a little tired. Okay? So…please-” she finished in a desperate whisper “-leave me alone.”

The EMT gave Matt another look, shrugged, then straightened up and picked up his gear. Matt turned with him and touched his sleeve. “Uh, look,” he said in an undertone, even though he was sure Alex could still hear him, “she’s upset, but I think she’ll be okay. But you should know, the reason she’s upset-that woman, the driver of the Jeep, tried to run my van off the road. Rammed me from the rear, first, and when that didn’t work, she tried to come at me from the side. She was in the oncoming lane when a car came from the opposite direction. I hit the brakes, and she swerved to avoid a head-on, lost control and went over the side. You need to tell the CHP-make sure she’s taken into custody.”

The EMT nodded gravely. “I sure will. But your friend, here, she could be in shock. You might want to keep an eye on her.”

“I’ll do that,” Matt said. “You can count on it.”

He waited until the EMT had gone to join his partner over by the wagon, then swiveled back to Alex. She was still sitting on the hard ground, with her forearms resting on her drawn-up knees. He said her name and she raised her head and looked at him. Just looked at him. Then slowly shook her head. Obscurely frightened, he reached out a hand to touch her arm. And found that she was shaking. Not great, huge shudders that would be visible to someone looking at her, but fine, vicious tremors that seemed to come from the very ground she sat on.

Truly alarmed, now, he tightened his hold on her arm and lifted her up, pulled her to him. She came without a sound, crawled into his lap and looped her arms around his neck and hid her face against him like a bereft child. He didn’t know what to do, he’d never seen her like this before. Not Alex, his Alex, who never showed grief or pain or fear, and who, if she’d ever cried at all, had only in his experience cried tears of anger. And wasn’t crying now, though it was clear even to him that she needed to.

Overwhelmed, he held her and stroked her hair and murmured comforting things to her, all the while wondering what in the world was wrong. Was it just some kind of shock, as the EMT had warned, or had she been so afraid for him…or so afraid of losing him…A shudder of emotion rippled through him and he almost laughed. I wish. But even if she’d been both those things, this wasn’t like Alex.

And gentleness clearly wasn’t working.

“Hey,” he said sternly, “talk to me, Alex. Now. Come on…” He bumped her head with his chin and tried to push her away from him-or pretended to. And it worked.

She gave a settling-down sort of shiver, then spoke at last from the depths of the nest she’d made for her face in the hollow of his neck and shoulder, in a low, husky voice. “She tried to kill you.”

“Yeah, she did,” he said with a snort. “And damn near killed herself in the process. She’s gonna pay for it, don’t worry.”

Alex shook her head, and brought up one hand to cover her eyes, even though they were already well hidden. “Not this-before. She tried-Oh God, Mattie. I can’t…I can’t tell you. I can’t-”

“Shh…sure you can. You can tell me anything, you know that. So, come on. She tried to kill me…before? When? How could-” He stopped. The words, his breath, even his heartbeat seemed to have frozen inside him.

He gripped her arms and did push her away now, forcing her far enough away from him so he could see her face. And it was a mask of tragedy, lips bruised and trembling, eyes shut tight. As he watched, tears oozed from under her lashes and ran in rivers down her cheeks. He gave her a quick, hard shake and said in a terrible voice, “Tell me, Alex.”

Again, she shook her head. And moaned, as if the anguish inside her was simply too much to bear. Then…abruptly, she drew herself up. Pulled in a shuddering breath, and another…held it and finally the words came, all at once, in a rush.

“The day you fell-your accident-it wasn’t an accident. She did it, Mattie. Eve did something to your gear. She wanted-tried-to kill you. Because of me. All this-it was because of me…” Her face, her whole body seemed to crumple, and she collapsed against him, crying as he’d never known her to cry before, in great wrenching sobs.

She didn’t stop even when Sam came over a little while later to see what was wrong, and to report that Eve had been arrested and taken to Bakersfield, where there was a county hospital that had a prison ward.

Matt just nodded and muttered, “Good…that’s good.”

Sam bent over to look at him with uncertain and worried eyes. “Matt, is she all right? Are you?”

He blinked her into focus, still in a state of shock himself, probably, the pain not quite reaching him yet. He gave a shaky laugh. “I think so. Yeah. I think we’re gonna be okay, now. We will be…”

Sam made her way back to the van in a state of bemusement, letting autopilot steer her through the crowd of EMTs, CHPs and assorted helpful bystanders and looky-loos, now beginning to disperse. She found Cory sitting on the floor in the open doorway of the van with his head resting against the frame, looking exhausted.

He lifted his head to ask the question with his eyes, and she went to him and kissed him. “She’s okay. He’s okay. They’re both…I think…more than okay.” She sat beside him, being careful not to jostle his injured shoulder and ribs.

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Then Cory began to laugh, silently and with very little movement. Sam looked at him and said, “What’s funny?”

“Oh God, no, not funny-but ironic, maybe.” He looked at her, then put his good arm around her shoulders and drew her close. “I was just thinking…about when I went after you, after the Philippines, remember? Chased you down at your mom’s place in Georgia.”

“How could I forget?” Sam said softly. “And afterward…that’s when it all came out-about you and your family. You were finally able to remember, and tell me what happened.” She closed her eyes and drew in a shaky breath. Remembering the emotional roller coaster of that day…the terrible pain, and the indescribable joy. “You should see them, Pearse. I can’t…” A tear rolled down her cheek and she brushed it away. Laughed a little. “It’s like watching us, the way we were that day. It was so hard. But afterward…”

He kissed the top of her head. “Afterward, we weren’t two separate people anymore. It was like we’d been through a crucible that melted us down and remade us into one.”

“Trust you to use a word like ‘crucible,’” Sam said huskily. “But yeah, that’s what it was. I think this might be theirs. Pearse, I wonder…is it always so hard? Does everyone have to go through this kind of stuff before they can be happy together?”

“I don’t know.” He paused. “But this business of finding my family is turning out to be a bit more dangerous than I thought. Sam, I never meant for all of this to happen-you know that.”

She laughed and leaned gently into him. “Yeah…but you’d do it again in a heartbeat, you know you would. And don’t forget-we still have two to go. The little girls.”

“Oh, I’m not forgetting. I don’t know, though-maybe I should let Holt handle it next time. When I do it, people keep getting hurt. What do you think?”

“I think,” Sam said tenderly, “that when he does find them-and he will-you’ll want to be there, even if it kills you.”

Cory laughed-then winced. “Ow-don’t say that…”

It was late when Alex and Matt drove up in front of Alex’s house. They were both in Matt’s van, Sam having volunteered to drive Alex’s SUV back to town. Naturally, Cory had elected to ride with her. The two of them were tucked in at their motel down at the riverfront park.

“Maybe we should have gone to the motel, too,” Alex said as she sat looking out the window at her pine needle-strewn walk, and the wooden steps leading up to her front porch. “I don’t have a ramp.”

“Not on your life,” Matt said. “We’ll manage.”

A shiver of strange pleasure ran through her as she opened the door and climbed out of the van. We’ll manage. She was going to have to get used to those words.

She waited while Matt descended in the chairlift, then walked beside him as far as the steps. There they stopped. Matt studied the steps for a moment, then said, “Here, hold my chair steady.”

She watched, swallowing the protests and suggestions that leaped instantly into her mind, while he pushed himself out of the chair and lowered himself onto the nearest step. Then pushed himself up to the next step. He looked at Alex, grinned and barked, “What are you waiting for? Bring me my chair, woman!”

Her chest grew tight with the emotions that seemed to be running amok inside her at the moment, and she couldn’t even trust herself to give that the answer it deserved. She hauled his chair up the steps and onto the porch without saying a word. She was maneuvering it into position so he could reach it, when there came a frantic scratching and whining from behind the front door.

“Oh gosh,” she said, “that’s Annie. What in the world? Here-” She thrust the chair aside and dug in her pocket for her keys.

“Annie?” Matt swiveled to look at her. “My Annie?”

The commotion behind the door escalated into frenzied barking. Alex got the key in the lock and had barely managed to open the door a crack when the dog pushed her way through it. She barreled across the porch, toenails scrabbling on the wood planks, and leaped into Matt’s arms, wriggling like a puppy and trying to lick him everywhere at once.

In the middle of it all, Matt was saying, “Annie? My God, she’s still alive? I thought-Jeez, it’s been five years. Hey, girl, you still know me? You remember me, girl?”

Alex, being pretty much out of tears by this time, said in a husky croak, “Dogs don’t have any sense of time, don’t you know that? She probably thinks you just took a really long lunch break.” She watched the dog, still wriggling in Matt’s embrace, nuzzling and licking every place she could reach, and folded her arms across her chest where there seemed to be a permanent ache, now. Shaking her head, she murmured, “All this time I thought she was getting old, ’bout ready to die. Maybe she was just depressed. Like she was sleeping away the time until you decided to come back for her.”

Matt grinned at her over the Lab’s graying head. “What about you, Alex? You been depressed, waiting for me to come back?”

“Don’t push it, Matthew.” But she went to sit on the step beside him.

Annie gave a sigh and settled herself with her head in Matt’s lap, and they sat there together in silence, the three of them. Annie drifted off to sleep, and Matt and Alex watched the moon come up.

Alex said softly, “You really hurt me, Mattie.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“I was there for you, all during rehab. How could you not know I…wanted you?” And how was it that even now it was so hard for her to say the words? Want…love. Yes, both of those. Why can’t I just say it?

Matt reached for her hand. “I did know. I did.” He looked up at the moon. “The truth? I was…angry, back then. At everyone, but especially at you.” He waited, but she didn’t say anything, so he took a breath and went on, and his voice was soft and hoarse with pain. “I was mad at you because you could still walk, still climb mountains, do all the things we’d always done together. I don’t know if you can understand, but…I couldn’t bear to be with you then.”

Alex cleared her throat, struggling to understand. The tears she thought she’d run out of were falling again, silently. She brushed them away, but they were still there in her voice when she whispered, “I lost something, too, Matt. I did.”

“I know…” His arm came around her, and she felt his body quiver.

She turned into him and held on to him, and felt his face press against her hair. After a while she drew a shuddering breath and said, “I don’t think I ever cried for it, either-for you. Not ’til today.”

He laughed, blowing warm puffs into her hair. “You sure made up for it.”

She straightened up, brushing tears and stray hair back from her face with both hands. “I guess we’ve got a lot of things to make up for. And a lot of things to work out-you know that, right?” It’s not like a fairy tale, where it says “Happily Ever After” and that’s it…no more problems.

Matt was looking around him. “Yeah, like a ramp for this place. And I seem to remember some narrow doorways…”

She tried to smile, but a new heaviness was creeping over her. “What about your job? Down in L.A.? Don’t you coach some kids? You can’t just…abandon them.”

He shook his head and murmured, “No.”

The heaviness inside her became misery. For a moment she was angry. This is why I didn’t want to love him. This-the sadness, the pain. The not knowing how to live without him. I didn’t want this! I hate this!

“How about this?” Matt said, gazing up at the moon. “Rafting season’s only half the year, right? The other half we’ll spend in L.A. Or…I’ll commute, if you can’t stand to live in the city. It’s only what-two and a half hours?”

And just like that, the heaviness lifted and happiness filled her again-but it felt so fragile, that happiness. So terribly, terribly fragile.