Shooting Starr

Chapter 11

He was sitting in the front porch rocker when his mother came out with her Sunday dress on to tell him she was heading off to church.

“Well, aren’t those pretty,” she said when she saw the flowers in his lap.

He nodded glumly. “Caitlyn picked ’em.”

“By herself?”

“Yep.”

“Bless her heart.” His mother moved to the top of the steps. “Where is she?” she asked, surveying the empty yard. “I didn’t hear her come in the house.”

The chair creaked as C.J. tipped it forward. He stared down at the flowers dangling between his knees and muttered, “I don’t know, she’s out there somewhere.”

“By herself?”

“Yep.” The chair creaked again as he leaned back in it and defiantly met his mother’s mildly disapproving look.

“You think that’s a good idea?”

He shrugged and scowled down at the wildflowers, noticing as he did that they were looking somewhat the worse for wear. He picked at a floppy daisy and his heart grew heavier. “Probably not. However, she definitely does not want me with her. She’s grieving,” he said, and took a long breath that didn’t do much to ease the tightness in his chest. “For Mary Kelly.”

“That’s the woman that was killed?” C.J. nodded. “Well,” his mother said after a moment, “she needed to.” She settled herself against the porch railing and hooked her pocketbook over her arm as if she meant to stay awhile. “I expect she’d like some comfort, though, no matter what she told you.”

“It wasn’t what she said,” C.J. said bleakly. “It was the way she looked.” He was surprised when his mother laughed and made a “shame on you” sound with her tongue.

“Son, I’m afraid you don’t know very much about women.”

He didn’t like hearing that, even if it was true. “Well, shoot, Momma,” he said, bristling, “I know enough to know when I’m not wanted-or needed.”

“You do, do you?”

He was getting tired of being the source of his mother’s amusement but knew better than to say so. Instead, he whacked the flowers across his knee without much regard for their condition and muttered bitterly, “That is the strongest, most independent, stubborn and bullheaded-”

“Whoa, now. That’s a lot for one woman to be, and not necessarily all bad.”

“Well, it ain’t all that good, either,” C.J. growled.

“So,” said his mother, ignoring his grammatical lapse, “I guess that means you’d like a woman to be weak, clingy and wishy-washy?”

He snorted, though he could feel a lightening of his spirits and a grin trying hard to break through. “After growin’ up in this family? Momma, I’ve never even met a woman who fit that description.” He paused to think about it, and the heaviness settled back around his heart. “No, I don’t want that. Of course I don’t. I just want-” What any man wants. He stopped, frustrated, because he didn’t know how to say it. Or didn’t want to say it, not out loud. To be needed…wanted. To be, for one person, at least, big shot…superhero…knight in shining armor…the alpha and omega. The light in one particular woman’s eyes.

“You want to be her hero,” his mother finished for him, but her voice was gentle and for once her eyes weren’t smiling.

He let his breath out in a gust of exasperation. “Momma, you’re always sayin’ that, but that’s not what I mean. It’s not what I mean at all.” He aimed a scowl at her and hoped he was going to be able to tell her what he did mean without making a damn fool of himself. No man wants to look like a fool, even to his momma. “I’d be happy just being her friend, if she’d let me. All I want to do is help her get through this. Sure, I’d like to be able to fix everything for her, put everything back the way it was. And, okay, I know I’m not gonna be able to do that, but at least I’d like to-” he swallowed hard, lifted a hand and finished lamely “-be there for her. You know?”

“Calvin.” His mother straightened up and walked over to him. Her hand rested briefly on the back of his neck, then moved to his shoulder and gave it a little squeeze. “What on earth do you think being a hero is?”

He looked up at her and frowned. And what did she do? Just smiled back at him, then turned and started down the steps. He was about to yell at her in protest for leaving him with an exit line like that one, but after the first step she stopped abruptly and hesitated a moment before turning halfway back to him. The protest he’d planned died on his lips; the look on her face was one he’d never seen before.

“Son, your daddy was a hero to me every day of his life. Did I need him to take care of me? I most certainly did not. I was a strong and independent woman when I met him-I had a college degree and a good job teaching school. Did I need him? No more than I needed sunshine, and air to breathe. He worked hard, your daddy did-he was away a lot, driving trucks, and Lord knows it’s a good thing I’m as strong and independent as I am or I don’t know how I’d ever have been able to raise seven children with him gone so much of the time. But he loved me and he loved his kids, and let me tell you, he never thought he was too much of a man to fix a meal or change a diaper or put a load of laundry in the washing machine, either! Lord knows he had his faults. He wasn’t perfect, but that didn’t matter.” She paused, a fierce light shining in her brown eyes and spots of color showing through the face powder on her cheeks, and when she spoke again her voice was husky and uneven. “I’ll forgive a man a lot, for his eyes lighting up every time he sees me.”

She stomped on down the steps and around the corner of the house to where the cars were parked and didn’t look back or wave goodbye.

C.J. sat where he was with his forearms on his knees and a bunch of wilted wildflowers drooping in his hands and watched her car back out onto the lane, then head off toward the highway. After a while he took a big breath and brushed at something that was crawling down his cheeks-some kind of bug, he told himself.

Yeah, that’s what it was. Had to be.

Scaredy-cat, Caitlyn scolded herself. The voice in her head kept time with the scuffing sounds her feet made as they felt their way along the gravel track, like a schoolyard taunt: Scaredy-cat, scaredy-cat, ’fraid of the dark.

She wasn’t afraid of the dark. Or she never had been before, even as a child. She remembered playing with her cousins, Eric and Rose Ellen, on Aunt Lucy’s farm, where, far away from city lights, on moonless nights the Milky Way made a shimmering path across an inky black sky. She remembered playing games of hide-and-seek in the big old barn on nights when clouds hid even the starlight, and the darkness was like a blanket across her face, and they’d taken delicious shivery delight in scaring each other silly.

This is no different, she told herself. It shouldn’t be. Why should it be, just because it’s the middle of the day and I can feel the sun on my face and the autumn breeze in my hair? It shouldn’t be, but it is.

For one thing, the scary things lurking in this darkness weren’t giggling children poised to jump out at her and yell, “Boo!” They were evil men with guns and no compunction about using them to snuff out the life of an innocent young woman…a little girl’s mother. Or mine.

And in this darkness there were no farmhouse windows ablaze with light, beacons to guide her home. In this darkness she was all alone.

You don’t have to be.

The whisper inside her head was enticing…insidious. She squelched it ruthlessly. She couldn’t allow herself to think like that, even for a minute. She didn’t dare.

She wondered now if she’d dreamed of Vasily last night for a reason. Because C.J. had kissed her, because it had felt so good to be held and to walk with his arm around her. Because it was so tempting to give in, abdicate responsibility, let someone take care of her, let someone else take care of Vasily. Only, she couldn’t do that. This was her trouble, her battle, her war, and she couldn’t risk the possibility of anyone else getting hurt fighting it for her.

She could learn to live with being blind, if she had to, but she could not live with that.

The dream remained vivid in her mind’s eye as she shuffled along the lane that ran between fields of hay and stubble, and although the autumn sun was a toasty burn across her shoulders, she shivered. Once again she could hear the bullets making angry zapping sounds as they whizzed past, missing her… Once again she saw the bleached faces of people she loved lying in pools of thick red blood, dead eyes staring up at the sky-Mom and Dad were there and Aunt Lucy and Uncle Mike, Eric and Ellie. It shocked her now to realize that one of the faces was C.J.’s.

What had she been thinking, to run away from him like that?

You wanted him to come after you, answered the traitorous voice inside her head. You hoped he would.

As before, she slapped the voice away, but not before she heard it jeeringly ask, Well, why didn’t he?

I shouldn’t be doing this, she thought, quickly redirecting her thoughts. It was selfish. I shouldn’t be out here alone.

She felt as exposed as a duck in a shooting gallery. What if Vasily’s men were out there now? What if they’d been watching her? Just been waiting for their chance to grab her?

If they get me, she thought, then Jake will have nobody to use as bait to catch Vasily. He’ll get away with it-with killing Mary Kelly. He’ll get away with everything!

I shouldn’t be here. I have to go back.

But where was “back”? She’d long ago lost count of her steps. And now she realized that she wasn’t walking on the gravel lane and that the ground under her feet was spongy with thick layers of fallen leaves. Oh, Lord-she was in the woods, she had to be. She’d never tried to orient herself or count footsteps in the woods-it was too big, too cluttered, too confusing. All the tree trunks felt alike. Now sapling trees slapped at her and their huge dying leaves rustled like dry bones as she brushed them. An exposed root rose up beneath her foot; she gasped and, stumbling, threw out a hand and scraped her knuckles on bark.

It came upon her so suddenly, as if she’d triggered a trap, one of those nets that fall out of nowhere and instantly immobilize: fear. Fear that had nothing to do with stalkers and snipers and nightmare visions of blood. This was fear as old as humankind, instinctive fear of the darkness and the unknown. Icy sweat sprang from her pores and her skin shivered. Fine hairs rose along her arms and shoulders and the back of her neck. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears, so it was a moment before she realized the whimpering sounds she kept hearing came from her.

Something rustled through the branches above her head and fell with a thump nearby. Adrenaline shot through her and in her panic she pushed away from the relative safety of the tree and fled, stumbling through thick drifts of leaves on legs that felt like melting rubber, arms thrown up to protect her face, her breath like sobs. A thorny vine caught at her, tore her clothing and slashed her skin, and she fought it as desperately as if it had been a wild animal attacking her with intelligent intent. Trying to elude it, she turned this way and that, becoming only more hopelessly confused, more terrified, more lost. This was worse than being lost in darkness-she was lost in nothingness, populated by terrors of her own imagining.

How long she thrashed and stumbled through the woods she didn’t know-probably no more than minutes…seconds, even. It seemed like hours. Like forever.

It ended abruptly when her foot sank into a hole left by a long-decayed stump. Pain shot through her; she pitched clumsily forward, half falling, half stumbling as she instinctively fought to forestall the inevitable. Then, suddenly there was an embankment, studded with moss-covered rocks and rotting logs-and down she went. She rolled…and slid…and bumped to a stop.

For a few minutes she lay as she’d landed, on her back, feet downhill on a steep incline. She felt oddly peaceful now; the terror, the nightmare panic, seemed to have vanished as quickly as it had come upon her. Covering her face with her forearms, she began to laugh silently-partly from relief, but mostly with chagrin and shame. She’d panicked-utterly and completely panicked. Never in her life had she done such a thing. She felt unbelievably foolish. Unforgivably stupid.

As she listened to the quietness fold itself around her she realized that it wasn’t silence-she could hear the musical tinkle of running water. She put out an exploring hand and felt cold liquid slide through her fingers. And now…yes, she could feel wetness soaking into her jeans on one side. The creek. She was lying on the edge of the creek, partly in the stream, which was barely a trickle this time of year.

At least, she thought, I know where I am now. She’d been to the creek with C.J. enough times; surely she could find her way back to the lane from here.

But when she tried to stand, the pain she’d forgotten about exploded through her leg. She gasped. Her head reeled and she sat down much more abruptly than she’d intended. Breathing hard and swearing fiercely, she rocked herself back and forth while she took stock of her situation. Oh, yes, she remembered stepping in that hole, now. Stupid…stupid. But she didn’t think her ankle was seriously injured-probably only sprained-and if she could manage to crawl out of the creek bed, she might be able to hobble-No. She mentally slapped a hand over her mouth. Caitlyn, haven’t you done enough stupid things today?

She sank back against the creek bank, closed her eyes and once more lifted both hands to cover her face. Oh, how she hated feeling helpless! But there was no getting around the fact that she was, at this moment, anyway. Like it or not-there was no way out of it-she was going to have to sit here, a classic maiden in distress, and wait for someone to come to her rescue.

“Okay, Bubba, ol’ boy,” C.J. said, giving the lab a neck-ruffling hug, “let’s go find her, shall we? Where’s Caitlyn, huh? Let’s go, big fella-go on, find Caitlyn.”

He was surprised to hear how calm and ordinary his voice sounded. Inside, deep in his guts, he was beginning to get worried. More than worried-scared to death. Okay, so Jake had assured him they were in the clear, that according to the FBI’s surveillance sources Vasily had no idea where Caitlyn was. Nobody had noticed any strangers lurking in the neighborhood, either, but that didn’t make C.J.’s mind rest easy. He had an idea he wasn’t ever going to rest easy again until Ari Vasily was either dead or behind bars.

Bubba gave his wrist a swipe with his tongue, threw him a panting, grinning, “Why didn’t you say so?” look and went trotting off across the hay field toward the woods. C.J. sighed. He knew Labs weren’t trackers, and ol’ Bubba was as likely to be after wild turkeys as anything, but what the hell… He took off after him. After a few steps he broke into a run.

He’d lost sight of the dog by the time he got to the woods, but he could hear him rustling around amongst the leaves not far away. “Hey, Bubba, where you off to, boy?” Then, with accelerating heartbeat, and feeling funny and self-conscious about it, he called out, “Caitlyn? You there?”

She didn’t answer, but in the tense and suspenseful silence, he could hear Bubba making happy yipping-whining noises down by the creek. He huffed out a breath and headed that way, forcing himself to walk easy, telling himself his thumping heartbeat was because he’d been running hard. Although he hadn’t.

She was still some little distance away when he caught sight of her, mostly because Bubba’s tail whipping back and forth marked her location as effectively as a flare. Without that, downhill from him and up against the near creek bank as she was, one leg tucked under her and the other in the water, he wasn’t sure he’d have seen her at all. In Sammi June’s old faded jeans and an even older Georgia Bulldogs sweatshirt that had most likely belonged to him once upon a time, her pale gold hair the color of birch leaves, she seemed to blend right in with the autumn scenery.

It had been a long time since he’d thought of her in conjunction with fairy tales. He did now, but not the Disney-type, enchanted-princess, Sleeping-Beauty-type of fairy tale. She called to mind things he hadn’t even realized he knew about-things like nymphs and elves and sprites, spirits of nature, of woods and trees, water and earth…creatures of superstition and ancient legend…beings, so those legends said, that had once populated the earth, long before mankind.

“Hi,” she said, and the vision vanished like an elf into shadows. Her voice was breathless. Her face, turned toward the sound of his approaching footsteps, was dusty and tear streaked and crisscrossed with scratches.

When C.J. saw those, the anger he felt toward her for her foolishness, which had begun welling up in him like an incipient sneeze, dissipated like pollen in the wind. Unable to say anything, he let out a half grunting, half snorting sound of sheer relief and sat down on the edge of the bank just above where she was. He was surprised to discover that his legs had become unreliable.

Bubba gave Caitlyn’s nose and mouth one last swipe with his tongue and went splashing off to see if he could find anything interesting in the creek. Her hand followed the dog in an involuntary groping motion, and a look of uncertainty flashed across her face. “C.J.?” There was fear in her voice. “That is you, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he said sourly, figuring it was okay to go ahead and let her think he was mad, now they both knew she was okay. “It’s me. Lucky for you.” He eased himself over the edge of the creek bank. “How in God’s green earth did you get down here?”

Her mouth tilted sideways. “I sort of…fell.”

“You…fell.”

She nodded and gave a gallant little gulp of chagrin. “Yep-spectacularly. I must have been a sight-too bad you missed it.”

Not thinking about what he was going to do, he hunkered down beside her in the rocks and ferns and dipped his fingers in the trickle of creek water. His hand felt unsteady as he brought it to her cheek. She flinched just a little when he touched her, and her eyes held a wary look. He slid the ball of his thumb across a scratch, spreading cool water over it like a salve. “You hurt yourself.” His voice felt and sounded like sand.

“Oh-” she touched a hand to her cheek, nudging his away “-yeah, actually, I did.” Her voice was quick, breathy. “I think I turned my ankle, too. Stepped in a hole-that’s why I fell. I don’t think it’s too bad, but I can’t put weight on it yet. I was going to try to crawl up the bank. I thought I could make it home, if I could just-”

“Cait,” he said as he let his hand drop away from her and drape across his knee, “what am I gonna do with you?” When what he really meant was, What am I going to do with these feelings inside me?

She made that funny, half-embarrassed gulping sound again. “Well, I was hoping you were going to take me home.”

He didn’t feel like laughing. “Don’t tell me you’re gonna let me help you.”

Her smile disappeared and she turned her face away from him. “I don’t think I have much choice, do I?”

With a sigh of exasperation that was more like a growl, he shifted his weight, pivoting on the ball of his foot so he could reach the leg that was stretched out in front of her, making a bridge across the tiny stream. “This it?” he muttered, and she nodded. He’d barely touched it when she stiffened and jerked her other foot out from under her, then used both it and her hands to brace herself for what was coming.

She didn’t utter a sound as he lifted her leg into his lap and, as gently as he knew how, drew back the stiff wet fabric of her jeans. He eased off her shoe, then peeled away the sock. His heart hammered beneath his breastbone as he cradled her foot in his hands. Funny-he’d never noticed before how vulnerable and sweet a woman’s bare feet were. Come to think of it, he didn’t remember ever noticing a woman’s feet, period. To hold one-her foot-like this, the skin so cool and silky soft like a baby’s, the bones so fragile and yet so strong…it was vulnerable, yes, and even sweet, but incredibly intimate, too. It must be the intimacy, he thought, that made it so erotic.

“Yep, sprained,” he said in a strangled voice, as he eased the foot off of his lap and set it gingerly on a moss-covered rock. “Not too bad-that cold creek water’ll probably keep the swelling down some.”

He retrieved her sock and stuffed it inside her shoe. When he trusted himself to look at her again, he saw that her eyes, focused on the place where a moment ago his face had been, were shimmering like sunlight on gray water.

“Tell me something,” he began. She jerked toward him in surprise as, instead of preparing to haul her up out of the creek, he settled himself beside her in the nest of crushed ferns. With his back propped against the creek bank, he asked in a conversational tone, “Why do you hate it so much? Askin’ for help, I mean. Hell, not even asking-just accepting it when it’s offered.”

She was sitting forward, her body tensed and wary, her face turned away from him. He saw her shoulders lift. “I don’t know,” she said in a muffled voice. “I guess it’s just the way I am.”

Exasperation rumbled in his throat. He scrubbed a hand over his face and fought it down, and after a moment was able to quietly say, “That’s no kind of answer. What I was asking is for you to tell me the way you are.”

He stared at her silent back, a bulwark against him, and felt defeated. Then…as his gaze traveled upward to her neck, rising pale as a newly sprouted shoot from the neckline of her sweatshirt, the bumps of her spine downy and delicate as something newly born, and as vulnerable, revelation came to him, not in a blinding flash, but as a slow and gentle warming… She’s afraid of this, he thought. Even more so than I am.

He put his hand on her back, between the draped mounds of her shoulder blades, and began to move it with a relaxed rhythm…a kneading pressure. She said nothing, but after a moment her head sank forward. Closing his eyes in thanksgiving for that small acceptance, he let his hand work its way along the valley of her spine to the top of the sweatshirt…and then beyond. Her skin was satiny and cool where it stretched across her shoulders, warm and damp farther up on her nape beneath the slightly curling ends of her hair. He thought how small and slender her neck felt in his hand. He marveled at the vibrant strength in it even as desire mushroomed inside him, wallowing like a bathing hippo in his belly. Slightly seasick, he mumbled, “How’s that?”

Her reply was faint. “Heaven.”

A tiny thrill of triumph shivered through him. He lifted his other hand to her shoulder and raised himself so he was sitting upright, the way she was, moving slowly and carefully as he might if he were trying to tame a wild animal. Leaning toward her, he slid his hands lightly down the sides of her neck and curved his palms over the places where the rounded ridges of muscle were the thickest, kneading gently while his fingers brushed the velvety hollows above and below her collarbones and his thumbs probed the wells of muscle along her spine. He smelled sweet strawberries and closed his eyes and concentrated hard on not burying his face in her hair.

She said something he couldn’t quite hear, and he leaned closer to her ear to dazedly mumble, “What?”

“I said, that feels incredible,” she said in a thickened murmur. “I never realized-” She took a breath; her chin tilted sideways. “I don’t think anybody’s ever done that to me before.”

He felt a smile coming on and didn’t try to stop it. “Is that a fact?” He slowed the motion of his hands, making a new rhythm at once gentler and deeper…more like a caress. In a voice to match that motion he said, “Well, I’m glad I’m your first.”

She answered with a high, short laugh.

Then there was silence, while he allowed his mind to wander down impossible paths…

I wish, Caitlyn thought, as an ache came from out of nowhere, swelled through her throat and face and threatened to blossom into tears. I wish you could have been my first.

Her “first” had not been a wise choice-or for that matter, her choice at all. It had come about in the wee hours following her senior prom, in the back of her date’s parents’ station wagon. He’d had too much to drink, and she…well, maybe she hadn’t had nearly enough. She remembered being frightened and overwhelmed and all too aware that he was twice her size and that she had no hope of preventing him from doing what he was so determined to do. She remembered pleading with him, though that may have been only inside her head. In any case, he’d neither heard nor heeded. She remembered the pain, and what was worse, the helplessness. She remembered the humiliation, too.

She’d never told her parents-it would have hurt them too much. Though they’d wondered why she hadn’t wanted to go out with Tyler again. He’d kept asking her-pestered her, in fact, right up until the day she left for college. But she’d never been able to look at him again after that night without revulsion, and had taken care never to allow herself to be caught alone with him. She hadn’t liked him all that much to begin with, she realized too late, and had accepted his invitation to the prom for all the wrong reasons: because he was handsome and popular and a star athlete, and she, a rather gawky, skinny late bloomer, had been flattered by his attention.

Later choices hadn’t been much wiser, perhaps, but at least she’d made sure they were her choices, and the partner, the circumstances and her emotions always under her strict control. She’d been content with that, and had never wasted time on regrets, or wished things might be otherwise…until now.

I wish… She put her hands over C.J.’s, stopping their seductive caressing motion. Her skin felt tight…stretched…on the verge of tearing. She didn’t lift her head; her neck felt too frail to hold it. “I think,” she said, and her voice was frightened and airless, “that’s the reason I hate needing help.”

“What is?” Warm puffs of breath stirred the hair above her ear. Goose bumps sprang up all over her body. She shivered, and her nipples tightened until they hurt.

“I don’t want to need anyone. I won’t-I can’t-I’m afraid-”

“What are you afraid of?” His hands, ignoring the restraint of hers, moved back and forth across her shoulders, gently stroking over the rounded part, moving the fabric of her shirt in a way that made it part of the caress.

Her breath caught in her throat. She cleared it and tried to speak calmly…rationally. “I suppose a therapist would say that I’m afraid of losing control. Of being weak.”

He was silent for a moment, considering…then softly touched the shell of her ear with his hoarse whisper. “Needing somebody doesn’t make you weak, it just makes you human. In fact, I’d say just about everybody needs somebody-”

Desperate laughter rippled through her. She sang the words of an old song in a fruity, somewhat inebriated-and shaken-tone, “‘Everybody needs somebody sometime…’”

His hand swept upward, changing the contours of her throat and nudging her chin up and back, and the last note of the song died a burbling death as his mouth closed over hers. The breath she hadn’t had time to exhale swelled in her chest, her breasts tightened and her belly quivered.

His fingertips stroked up and down along the taut curve of her throat. His lips didn’t quite withdraw but brushed hers lightly, back and forth, and even though she could have taken that breath now, she didn’t. So enthralled was she with the smooth, silky firmness of him that she forgot she needed air, forgot she couldn’t see. Light enveloped her, lovely and golden.

“I suppose,” she whispered, searching for him in the light, “you did that to shut me up…”

He didn’t answer, not with words. His mouth came closer. She felt its warmth, and her own softened in a smile. Her breath bathed his lips. They parted. So did hers, just as they touched.

“But I’m not…”

“Hush up.” His mouth bore down on hers, increasing its pressure with exquisite slowness while his hand cradled the sensitive underside of her chin and tenderly and almost unnoticed, lifted and turned it toward him. His tongue coming inside her mouth seemed only a natural progression of that growing pressure…a completion, not an intrusion.

Her body grew hot…her skin stung with a thousand tiny points of heat. Melting inside, trembling, she felt her neck muscles dissolve and her head slowly sink into the nest that seemed specially made for it in the hollow of his shoulder. Weak as a newborn, she almost sobbed when she felt the warm strength of his body…his arms…fold around her, trapping her arms against her sides. Helpless.

She’d never felt so weak…so helpless. And she never wanted it to end.