Shooting Starr

Chapter 14

Her cry, like that of a small, wounded animal, wrenched his heart. His tenderness for her was like a fine sweet down, softening the ruthless edges of his passion. His hands were gentle and certain; all sense of urgency and amazement fled.

“There are other ways to see,” he murmured, smiling with his voice while his lips and fingertips traced smiles on her skin. “I can touch you…see you with my hands…”

At his first light touch her breasts felt small and virginal; his mind’s eye saw them firm and perfect as a classic sculpture, ivory warmed with the delicate blush of desire. But…they filled his palms with unexpected voluptuousness, and his senses with sheer delight. By contrast, though slender enough to encircle with his hands, the muscles in her torso were taut and supple. And he remembered, with a little kick of excitement under his ribs, her unexpected strength.

She was “seeing” him, too; he could feel her hands skimming over his ribs…his back. Everywhere they touched they left a fever in his skin, as if he’d been too long in the sun. His breathing grew choppy. His muscles tensed and quivered. Enveloped in the glow of his love for her, he could feel lust crouching like a tiger just beyond the edges of the light. His ability to focus on his finer senses was slipping away; the tiger’s growl was louder, and he needed all his concentration to keep it at bay.

He had to keep it at bay. He had to. Otherwise he might not be able to hear her say no.

“Cait,” he whispered. His hands were on her waist; he slipped his fingers into the top of her jeans and felt her belly quiver. “Caty, are you sure about this?”

“Yes…I’m sure.” Her words gasped softly against the base of his throat. Her fingertips were tucked into the waistband of his jeans, too, he realized then, and he groaned when he felt them slide around to his back, warm on his skin. “Are you?”

Laughing, groaning, he leaned to kiss her. Then drew away with his hands still poised on the fastenings of her jeans. “There’s just one thing…”

“Yes?”

He didn’t know how he managed to say the words. He was hard…hurting for her, in a way he’d never hurt before, his tongue glued to the roof of his mouth and his heart pounding so it seemed a miracle he could even stand. But he mumbled, “I didn’t bring you here for this…”

And as he did the light came on. His conscience, shining into the darkest reaches of his soul. And he knew it was true, what he’d told himself and her. Because one thing he knew-if he’d had seduction on his mind, he’d at least have made damn sure he was ready for it.

At the moment, though, he didn’t know whether to be relieved that his motives were pure or ashamed for his unpreparedness. Breath and nerves and heartbeat bumped around inside him like birds in a cage as he kissed aside her murmured assurances. “No-what I mean to say is, I don’t know if I have anything. It’s been a while…”

He felt her stillness…and deep inside, her shivering. After a moment she whispered, “Are you sure you don’t-”

“No-I have to look. Just a sec…” It took only a little more than that, and he held his breath while he walked her the few steps to his dresser and opened the top drawer. While he rummaged blindly in the jumble of odds and ends and loosely folded underwear, he felt her hands on his back, felt her fingers drawing patterns up and down his spine. He laughed painfully. “You might not want to be doing that…just yet.”

Her mouth was busy exploring his chest, kissing…laving…nibbling…tasting…but she murmured something indistinct and firmly shook her head.

Weak in the knees, his mind fogging, he wondered dazedly whether that meant she had confidence in him, or simply didn’t care whether he had a condom or not. Which he couldn’t see as being in keeping with her character; Caitlyn hadn’t struck him as the reckless type. On the other hand, she was stubborn. He’d noticed that when she set her mind on doing something, she went ahead and did it, and didn’t count the cost.

“Got one,” he muttered, and his belly went hollow with relief as his fingers closed around the small foil packet.

I wonder, Caitlyn thought as tears of thankfulness squeezed between her eyelids, what I would have done if he hadn’t had one… Thank God she would never have to know.

Laughter woven with whimpers shook her body as she lifted her arms around his neck. He lowered his mouth over hers and she felt the button on her jeans give way. Denim scraped roughly over her hips, and his hands followed, a light but slightly catching caress, like satin. Where they touched, her skin sizzled and burned as if she’d passed through fire. Her heart thundered when she pulled away from his kiss; her breath staggered drunkenly while she wriggled the jeans down to her feet. Before she could step out of them, though, C.J. grasped her buttocks and pulled her hard against him, and her breath left her body in a gasp of utter shock…and purest joy.

Soaring, weightless, she threw her head back, and his mouth closed, hot and demanding, on her proffered throat. While he arched above her, his arms lifted her up and into him, and her legs parted and went around him as if they belonged there, just as they had before.

No-not as before. Now there was nothing between her and excruciating, overwhelming sensation-nothing at all. His hands stroked and molded the nerve-rich places on her buttocks and the back of her thighs. The hard ridge of his jeans abraded her swollen, tender places. Heat roiled in her belly and pulsed between her thighs. Darkness swirled around her like velvet.

She was sobbing when he laid her down. Frightened by that-she’d never made such sounds before-she writhed, bewildered and cold, until she felt his body stretch out alongside hers and his warmth flow over her like breath. She remembered the silkiness of his skin and wanted it touching her…all over. His mouth was hot and feverish on hers, but her breasts were cold, hard, aching. Her belly quivered. Her pulse pounded in places far distant from its source.

She reached for him, whimpering. His hands stroked, stinging, over her thighs, and moved them gently apart.

Prepared for his weight, wanting it so desperately, she knew a moment of surprise when she felt only the silky tickle of his hair instead. Briefly it feathered over her belly and thighs, like cool water on her parched skin… Then his mouth touched her. Sensation drove through her like a shaft of steel.

She uttered a high, shocked cry. Her body bucked…arched…but his hands were firm and strong on her thighs and his mouth so incredibly, exquisitely gentle. Her body clenched-everything inside her seemed to buckle, collapse, fall apart like a house of cards. Great sobbing gasps tore through her chest, and as she reached for C.J.’s warm, comforting body in the darkness, she was whimpering incoherently, “Please…please…”

When she surfaced, she was lying on top of him, with her cheek on his sweat-damp chest and his heartbeat a muted drumming in her ear. Her body still throbbed and quivered, that terrible shaft of sensation only shards now…bright little stabs of pleasure-pain quietly twinging in far-off places.

She drew a long, shaken breath…and fury washed over her. Struggling to raise herself within the circle of his arms, she pounded on his chest with clenched fists. “Why did you- I wanted- You-”

His arms tightened around her. His chuckle gusted unevenly in her ear. “Easy…easy…”

“But I wanted-”

“You wanted…to be in control. Didn’t you?”

Had she? Somehow, that seemed irrelevant to her now. She felt strangely bereft as she stared dumbly down at him in the darkness. Then she felt his hand curve around the back of her head. He drew her to him and kissed her deeply.

“I wanted that, too,” he whispered. “And now you are. I’m all yours, sweetheart. Do with me what-”

She stopped him with her mouth, laughing, her nose bumping into his and her breasts brushing his chest, and he thought about how much he’d wanted to do just this-laugh with her in his arms. Now it seemed a gentle torment.

She lifted her head and made a happy, growling sound in her throat, then slowly, slowly eased her full weight onto him, bringing her knees up alongside his ribs and sliding her body over his in a lazy, all-over caress. She felt like the softest velvet…the lightest down.

He held himself still…except for his hands, which he allowed to skim over her back from shoulders to buttocks, torturing himself some more. When they reached her bottom-he couldn’t help it-they paused…asked…

But she denied him, chuckled softly and scooted backward, trailing kisses. He groaned, fearing what was coming. Her control was one thing; his was very much in doubt.

She must have known that, because after her lips had left kitten tracks across his abdomen, she moved quickly back astride him, nesting him excruciatingly in her damp feminine softness. He groaned again-he couldn’t help it-and whispered, “Sweetheart-”

She leaned down to kiss him. “I want you, too…inside me. But I…don’t know if I can…this way. It’s been such a long time…”

And so, in the end, it was neither her control nor his, but a mutual joining…and not an easy one, nor painless-she was tight and he was hard. It had been a long time for him, too, but somehow the more satisfying for that.

As they laughed a little, dazed and giddy, he drew her down to him and raised his knees behind her to make of himself a cradle for her body, and holding her close, touching her everywhere he could, began to rock her, slowly at first, mindful of her tenderness.

His mind was full of her. Images of her, in all the ways he remembered: fairy princess, woodland sprite; pointing a gun at him; glaring silver-eyed from the back of a police car; lying bandaged and bruised in a hospital bed; sun-dusted and blind, picking wildflowers. But the memory that came to him most clearly-fierce and tender in his mind-was his own impression from way back then, almost at the beginning: she’s real.

Yes…real. Her femininity warm and pulsating around him, her body strong and supple in his arms, her lips tender and soft under his…neither princess nor sprite, hijacker nor saint, just a woman-powerful, vulnerable…human.

And the codicil, lovely as a sonnet: She’s mine.

The thought ignited in his mind, exploded and took off like a skyrocket…a shooting star. Soaring with it, he forgot to be tender and careful, slow and gentle. He forgot everything except how much he loved her, the joy and the certainty of that, and the miracle that she was here with him in his bed…warm, real…and that she’d come to him on her own. She’d come to him.

Dazed and enraptured, he opened wide his heart and mind, his body and soul, and returned the gift to her the only way he knew how.

C.J. Starr was a happy man as he babied his big blue Kenworth up the grade of the Blue Ridge Mountains, heading north. He had it all-clear weather, the road ahead dry and dusty, a sweet and powerful diesel engine humming along under him, reefer trailer loaded with North Carolina apples, and the woman he loved-the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on-waiting for him back home in Georgia. One day soon he’d take and pass that bar exam, find a nice little town somewhere in the South that could use another old-fashioned family-type lawyer, buy a big old house with a nice big staircase and plenty of bedrooms, and then he’d marry Caitlyn and they’d see about getting those bedrooms filled up with kids.

Kids. When he thought about kids, a face came into his mind, like a small shadow over his happiness: a thin, pale face with chin-length black hair with bangs cut straight across and great big black eyes-scared, hungry refugee eyes. Maybe, he thought, the first one of those kids could be adopted.

Yeah, he thought, smiling to himself, that’s what we’ll do. When this is all over. When Vasily is put away. When Caitlyn is safe. We’ll find Emma, Caty and I, and bring her home to live with us.

The other little cloud in his blue sky wasn’t as easy to define or to banish. It had to do with the way things had ended with Caitlyn last night.

He’d wanted her to stay with him, of course. He’d have loved to spend the night sleeping with her body curled up next to his, the scent of her hair in his nostrils…wake up in the morning and see her face smiling at him across the rim of his coffee cup. But she’d insisted on having him drive her back to his mother’s house. And hadn’t that given him a weird feeling, to walk her into his momma’s kitchen while his body still throbbed with hunger for her, his appetite for her in no way quenched.

Outside, in the glow of the yard light he’d held her and kissed her one more time, missing her already, but when he would have told her he loved her, she stopped him with fingertips pressed against his lips. Those silver eyes of hers had gazed for a long intense moment into his-he’d swear, it was almost as if she could see him-and then, just before she’d stood on her tiptoes to kiss him, she’d said, with a funny little break in her voice, “Thank you for this night.”

Thank you for this night. As if, he thought, she didn’t expect to have another.

The notion put a chill in his heart and a weakness in his knees, so the next truck stop he came to he pulled off the interstate. Most likely he was making something out of nothing. Most likely all he needed was a dinner break.

He was sitting in the driver’s section of the restaurant having his usual on-the-road dinner of chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes and gravy and coleslaw, keeping half an eye on the overhead television, which was once again tuned to CNN Headline News. He’d watched, without paying real close attention, the usual pentagon briefing on the military buildup in the Middle East and the war on terrorism, and pictures of the devastation caused by the latest hurricane down in Cuba. Then he saw something he didn’t quite believe at first. When he did believe it his hands went numb and the bite of steak he’d just taken turned to grit in his mouth.

Caitlyn.

There she was, big as life, plain as day…talking to someone, looking, not at the camera, but at some interviewer off to the side. For an instant he dared to hope it was old footage, an update on the case, maybe. But no-the short, pale hair, cut in feathered layers like the petals of a chrysanthemum, couldn’t quite hide the healing scar that slashed across her forehead.

The camera moved back, and he saw that she was sitting on a sofa in what looked like one of those made-up TV interview sets, with shelves full of books and a big vase of flowers behind her. Beside her on the sofa was C.J.’s sister-in-law, Charly-his own lawyer. And sitting in the chair facing those two was someone else he knew-Eve Waskowitz, the TV documentary filmmaker. Wife of Special Agent Jake Redfield of the FBI.

Caitlyn was speaking. Belatedly, C.J. tore his eyes from the women and focused on the closed captioning.

…nine o’clock tomorrow morning.

Interviewer: Will you be disclosing the whereabouts of Emma Vasily?

Caitlyn Brown: My position on that hasn’t changed. I’ve said I don’t know where she is. I still don’t. And I will not disclose my contacts, so…

Interviewer: And are you prepared to go back to jail?

Caitlyn: I guess that will be up to the judge to decide.

Interviewer: Ms. Brown, what made you decide to turn yourself in? If you don’t intend to obey Judge Calhoun’s order-

Caitlyn: I never intended to spend the rest of my life as a fugitive. I just needed some time to heal…the shock of getting shot…Mary Kelly murdered…and then losing my eyesight. I didn’t know whether I was going to be blind-

Interviewer: So, as I understand it your eyesight has returned.

Caitlyn: Yes, that’s right. Not all the way yet-I see indistinctly and not really in color-sort of the way you see when there isn’t much light. It’s getting better all the time. The doctors said there was a chance it would come back as the swelling went down and it looks as though they were right.

Interviewer: I know you must be so happy.

Caitlyn: Well…relieved might be a better word. How can I be happy when Mary Kelly is still dead? She isn’t ever going to get well.

Caitlyn’s face disappeared. Now there was the anchorman again, and the white-on-black rectangles ticking across the screen: You can catch the rest of Eve Redfield’s exclusive interview tonight on…

C.J. didn’t see anything more. Next thing he knew he was on his feet with his dinner check in his hand, staring down at what might as well have been written in Chinese. He remembered throwing some money on the table and walking outside into a crisp autumn night. He remembered standing beside his truck, leaning his forehead against the cold steel door and waiting for the ground to stop heaving under his feet.

Déjà vu, that’s what it is. This can’t be happening again. It can’t be.

He was about to climb into the cab when some sort of instinct-self-preservation, maybe-stopped him. He was in no condition to drive. He’d be an eighty-thousand-pound menace on the road if he did, a disaster looking for a place to happen.

He took deep breaths to steady himself, then walked slowly around the tractor-trailer, checking his lights and brake lines, plodding methodically through all the steps of a complete safety check, forcing himself to concentrate on that. Little by little his mind cleared, and the sense of shock and betrayal that had just about swamped him began to recede. And when it did, he realized he wasn’t angry with her. He was barely even surprised. Caty’s stubborn. When she sets her mind to do something, she goes ahead and does it, and doesn’t count the cost.

Thank you for this night. He ought to have known, when she said that, the way she’d said it. The way she’d looked at him with that silver light in her eyes.

He wasn’t angry or surprised, but he was disappointed. Disappointed she hadn’t shared with him the incredible fact that her eyesight had come back. That hurt, way deep down inside, more than he wanted to admit or even think about. Disappointed, too, that she hadn’t trusted him enough to let him in on what she was planning to do.

Trust you? a little voice way back in his mind mocked him. Why should she trust you? Aren’t you the one that turned her in to the cops the last time she did that? And be honest, Calvin James Starr, wouldn’t you have tried to stop her this time, too?

His answer to that was: You’re damn right I would.

Because what he was most of all was scared to death. He knew exactly what Caitlyn was trying to do, with her television interview, announcing to the world her intention to turn herself in, even giving the exact time and place. She was staking herself out like a lamb in a clearing, to lure the tiger-Vasily-into the open. And it would probably work; he had an idea that most of the time in situations like this, the tiger ended up dead. Only thing is, most times the lamb did, too.

Nine o’clock tomorrow morning…

Cold washed over him and settled in the pit of his stomach. At nine o’clock tomorrow morning the woman he loved was going to walk into a killer’s gunsight, and he was roughly six hundred miles away from being able to do anything to stop her. Six hundred miles. His only hope of getting there in time was to drive nonstop for ten hours and pray for good weather and no traffic tie-ups.

He took his cell phone out of its belt holster and punched in Charly’s number. After five rings her voice mail picked up. He didn’t leave a message. He didn’t have Jake Redfield’s number with him, so he called information and got the Bureau headquarters in Atlanta. After a couple of transfers and some waiting around he was told that Special Agent Redfield was on assignment. Was there someone else who could help him? Would he like to leave a message? C.J. said, “No, thank you,” and disconnected.

His mind was clear and calm now, as he climbed into the cab of the idling Kenworth and turned on the running lights. A few minutes later he was roaring back onto the interstate, this time heading south.

The weather gods were against him. A cold front moving in from the west had, as usual, stalled out against the mountains and decided to dump its load of cold, sleety rain right there in the Virginias instead of saving it for the drought-stricken northeast. Between the nervous four-wheeler drivers poking along at fifty and the crazies trying to get around them, traffic was a zoo. Then there were the truck lane gear and speed restrictions on the grades, and a long slow crawl through construction outside Charlotte… C.J. was tense enough to bite nails when he finally left the interstate at the Anderson exit and began to make his way down the stop-and-go main drag through town to the courthouse.

The way he remembered it, the designated truck route wouldn’t let him go down Main Street, which had been subjected to one of those downtown renovation projects, including a lot of planter boxes and trees and the traffic flow restricted to one lane each way. He remembered the courthouse; the mall in front that was a patchwork of concrete and brick pavers, with more planters and shade trees and benches to sit on, and the stone steps that rose to the courthouse door. The steps Caitlyn had been making her way down, flanked by Mary Kelly and a platoon of police guards, that bright, sunshiny morning in September…

C.J.’s stomach flip-flopped as the TV news videos played over and over again in his mind. It’s not going to happen, he told himself. He won’t shoot her. She’s the only one who knows where Emma is. He won’t shoot her…he won’t shoot her…

He repeated the words like a mantra. Or a prayer.

Before, when he’d dropped Caitlyn and her charges off at the police station, he’d taken the route on the east side of Main. This time he was on the west side, which was going to bring him into the parking lot directly behind the courthouse. Right on time, he thought, glancing at his watch just as he saw the light up ahead turn yellow.

Damn. He stomped on the brake and brought the truck to a creaking, hissing stop, then sat drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. Cold sweat trickled down the center of his chest. His leg, tense on the brake pedal, had developed a muscle twitch. Through the half-open window of the cab he could hear the clock on the bell tower across the street from the courthouse-the one from which the sniper had taken his shots-begin to strike the hour.

Come on, come on, dammit. Turn green…

And then he saw her. Them. Caitlyn and Charly. There they were, crossing the street from the parking lot about a block and a half in front of him. Caitlyn was wearing a light-gray tailored business-type suit she must have borrowed from Charly-he couldn’t imagine where else she’d have come by such a thing-but he’d have known that chrysanthemum cap of pale-gold hair…that graceful, light-as-a-fairy walk anywhere.

His heart just about shot through the roof of his mouth. Heart hammering, wired and helpless, he gripped the steering wheel hard enough to break it off in his hands, while his mind shouted futilely, Caitlyn, wait!

He was so focused on the two women he failed to notice right away the long white sedan with dark tinted windows that was moving slowly toward them from the opposite direction. Not until it stopped, and the passenger side door opened, and a man got out. Even though he’d been half expecting it, C.J. was so frozen with shock it was a second or two before he realized the man was wearing a ski mask.

It happened so quickly. The man didn’t hesitate, but rushed straight at the two women, grabbed Caitlyn’s arms from behind and at the same time kicked Charly savagely in the back of her legs. As she crumpled to the pavement, he was already turning, half dragging, half carrying Caitlyn toward the waiting car.

But by that time C.J. had the Kenworth in gear and, as truckers used to say, the pedal to the metal. He hadn’t thought about it, didn’t know he was going to do it, he just reacted. Caitlyn was in trouble, and in the best hero fashion he went charging to her rescue with the only weapon he had.

Had the light changed? He didn’t know nor care. Horns blared as the powerful diesel engine roared and roughly eighty thousand pounds of eighteen wheeler rolled through the intersection. Through a red fog of rage C.J. saw the ski mask swivel toward him, as if in slow motion. He saw the mouth form a round black O of astonishment. He had one brief glimpse of Caitlyn’s face, bleached white with shock, and then, with a hideous screeching, grinding, breaking sound, his Kenworth’s front bumper plowed into the hood of the white sedan.

For a moment he sat frozen, staring down at the wreckage through the windshield of the cab. Truth was, he was pretty shocked at himself, now that the deed was done, even though the driver of the sedan didn’t seem to be hurt much. C.J. could see him flailing around inside the car, trying to untangle himself from the airbag and at the same time get the door open-it had apparently been jammed shut by the collision.

What he didn’t see was Caitlyn, or the guy in the ski mask. Not until the door on the passenger side of his cab suddenly opened and Caitlyn came hurtling through, propelled by a powerful shove. Right behind her was the ski mask-and something else. For the second time in his life, C.J. found himself staring at the barrel of a gun.