It occurred to her that what she probably ought to do was get off the snowmobile and do something to generate some body heat, like running in place or something like that. On the other hand, she was afraid to take the time to do that. If the snow had already filled in her tracks from the garage to the woods by the time he realized she was gone, he’d automatically assume she was using the road and he’d overtake her much sooner and more easily than if he tried to follow her circuitous trail through the woods. Julie had deliberately been avoiding looking over her shoulder because she was afraid to take her eyes off the path and risk losing control of the unfamiliar vehicle again, but now that she realized everything hinged on how fast the snow was filling in her tracks, she couldn’t resist. She stole a swift look over her shoulder and choked back a scream. Above and still well behind her, a snowmobile was flying out of the woods and angling down toward the road, its rider crouched low over the front—an ominous specter of doom, swerving around boulders and trees with what appeared to be effortless skill.
Terror and rage overrode everything, even the numbing cold, and sent adrenaline pumping wildly through her veins. Praying he hadn’t yet spotted her through the dense trees that lined both sides of the narrow road, she looked around for a place to veer off and try to hide so that he would overshoot her. Up ahead, around the next switchback, she glimpsed a narrow plateau, but the road there was edged with boulders to stop cars from plunging over the side. Somehow, she had to angle between the boulders and slow the snowmobile down before it reached the edge of the plateau, then find a hiding place down there among the trees, whose tops rose above the left side of the road. With no time to think of another plan, Julie aimed the snowmobile for a spot between two shoulder-high boulders, then she clamped down on the brakes as she shot over the edge of the mountain.
The plateau was much narrower than it had seemed, and for terrifying seconds, she was airborne, soaring toward the tops of a thick stand of pine trees, then the nose of the snowmobile dived to earth like an out-of-control rocket, heading straight for a clump of trees and, a few feet beyond them, the creek. Screaming, Julie felt gravity tearing the snowmobile out from under her just as the middle branches of a pine tree rose up in front of her, opening their arms to her. The snowmobile plunged down the embankment, rolling over itself, sliding across the ice that had formed near the bank, and finally coming to a stop on its side, its handlebars hanging over the rushing water, its skis snagged in the branches of a partially submerged aspen.
Dazed with relief and a little disoriented, Julie lay beside the pine that had broken her fall and she watched a snowmobile shoot over the edge of the embankment. In pursuit of her . . . Forcing her body to react, she rolled over, staggered to her knees, and scrambled under the tree. The skis on his snowmobile were air-bound when they flashed past her hiding place, and Julie crawled further back beneath the branches, but she needn’t have bothered, because he never even glanced in her direction. He’d spotted her snowmobile overturned on the ice and beginning to be tugged into the stream’s rushing water, and all of his attention was focused on that.
Unable to completely assimilate what was happening or accept her own good fortune, she watched him leap off his snowmobile before it came to a stop and run toward the stream. “JULIE!” he shouted over and over again into the howling wind, and to her utter disbelief, he started walking out across the thin ice. Obviously, he thought she’d fallen through it, and just as obviously, he should have been glad that she was no longer a complication with which he had to contend.
Julie assumed he merely intended to try to recover her snowmobile, and her gaze flew to the snowmobile he’d abandoned. It was now much closer to her than to him; she could get to it long before he could and, unless he could drag her snowmobile to safety, she could still make good her getaway. Keeping her gaze glued to his back, she crawled out from under the tree, straightened, and took a stealthy step away from her hiding place and then another and another, intending to sidle from tree to tree.
“JULIE, ANSWER ME, FOR GOD’S SAKE!” he shouted, stripping off his jacket. The ice around him began to crack and the rear end of her snowmobile rose in the air as the machine tumbled into the creek and vanished. Instead of trying to reach safety, he grabbed ahold of the branches of the fallen aspen and to her utter disbelief, he deliberately lowered himself into the icy water.
His shoulders disappeared and then his head, and Julie darted to the shelter of the next tree. He broke the surface for air, shouting her name again, then he dove beneath the water, and Julie raced to the last tree. Less than three yards away from his snowmobile and absolute freedom, she stopped, her gaze riveted helplessly on the stream where he had disappeared. Her mind shouted that Zachary Benedict was an escaped convict who had compounded his crimes by taking a hostage, and she had to leave now while she had the chance. Her conscience screamed that if she left him now and took his snowmobile, he would freeze to death because he’d tried to save her.
Suddenly his dark head and shoulders broke the surface beside the submerged tree trunk, and a sob of relief rose in her throat as she saw him haul himself up onto the ledge of ice. Dimly amazed by his sheer strength of will and body, Julie watched him brace his hands on the ice, shove himself upright, and stagger over to the jacket he’d flung off. Instead of putting it on, he sank down beside it near a snow-covered boulder next to the stream.
The internal war between Julie’s mind and her heart escalated to tumultuous proportions: He hadn’t drowned; he was safe for the moment; if she was going to leave him, it had to be now, before he looked up and saw her.
Paralyzed with indecision, she watched him lift the jacket in his hand. The moment of foolish relief she felt at the thought that he was going to put it on became horror as he did something that was the macabre opposite: He flung the jacket aside, reached up, and began slowly unbuttoning his shirt, then he leaned his head against the boulder and closed his eyes. Snow swirled around him, clinging to his wet hair and face and body while it slowly dawned on her that he wasn’t even going to try to make it home! He obviously thought she had drowned trying to get away from him, and he had assigned himself the death sentence as his own punishment.
“Tell me you believe I’m innocent,” he’d ordered her last night, and at that moment, Julie knew beyond all doubt that the man who wanted to die because he’d caused her own “death” had to be exactly that—innocent.
Unaware that she was crying or that she’d started running, Julie plunged silently down the slope to where he sat. When she was close enough to see his face, remorse and tenderness almost sent her to her knees. With his head thrown back and his eyes shut, his handsome face was a mask of ravaged regret.
The cold forgotten, she scooped up his jacket and held it out to him. Swallowing past the awful lump of contrition in her throat, she said in an aching whisper, “You win. Let’s go home now.”
When he didn’t respond, Julie dropped to her knees and started trying to force his limp arm into the jacket.
“Zack, wake up!” she cried. Her shoulders shaking with suppressed sobs, she pulled him into her arms, cradling his head against her chest, trying to infuse some of her warmth into him, rocking him back and forth. “Please!” she babbled, on the edge of hysteria. “Please get up. I can’t lift you. You have to help me. Zack, please. Remember when you said you wanted someone to believe you’re innocent? I didn’t completely believe you then, but I do now. I swear it. I know you didn’t kill anyone. I believe everything you’ve said. Get up! Please, please get up!”
His weight seemed to be getting heavier, as if he was completely losing consciousness, and Julie panicked. “Zack, don’t go to sleep,” she said in a near scream. Grabbing his wrist, she began shoving his limp arm into his jacket while resorting to mindless bribery in an effort to jar him into alertness. “We’ll go home. We’ll go to bed together. I wanted to last night, but I was afraid. Help me get you home, Zack,” she pleaded as she forced his other arm into the jacket and
struggled with the zipper. “We’ll make love in front of the fire. You’d like that wouldn’t you!”
When she’d gotten his jacket on him, she stood up, grabbed his wrists, and pulled with all her might, but instead of moving him, her feet lost traction and she slid down beside him. Scrambling to her feet again, Julie raced to his snowmobile and brought it over to where he was lying. Bending over him, she shook him and when she couldn’t wake him, she closed her eyes for courage, then she swung her arm in a wide arc and slapped him hard across the face. His eyes opened, then closed. Ignoring the scream of pain that shot up her arm from her frozen fingers, she grabbed his wrists and tugged, trying to tell him something different that might make him try to get up. “I can’t find the way home without you,” she lied, yanking on his wrists. “If you won’t help me get home, I’ll die out here with you. Is that what you want? Zack, please help me,” she cried. “Don’t let me die!”
It was a second before she realized that he wasn’t completely the dead weight he’d been and that he was reacting to something she’d said and using what feeble strength he had left to try to stand. “That’s right!” Julie panted, “Stand up. Help me get home so I’ll be warm.”
His movements were terrifyingly sluggish and when his eyes opened, his gaze was unfocused, but he was instinctively trying to help her now. It took several attempts, but Julie managed to get him to his feet, loop his arm over her shoulders, and get him onto the snowmobile, where he slumped over the handle bars.
“Try to help me balance,” she said, steadying him with her arms and quickly getting on behind him. She glanced up at the path he’d taken down here, realized it would be impossible to make the steep climb back there now, and decided to follow the creek around the bend in hopes there would be a way to get up to the bridge and onto the road from there. Her former fear of the unfamiliar machine’s power forgotten, Julie crouched low over him to shield him from the wind with her body and sent the machine flying over the snow. “Zack,” she said near his ear, scanning the path and talking to him in a desperate effort to keep him conscious and hold her own terror at bay, “you’re still shivering a little. Shivering is good. It means your body temperature hasn’t dropped to the bottom danger point. I read that somewhere.” They rounded the bend, and Julie aimed the snowmobile at the only path she thought they might be able to climb.
28
HE COLLAPSED TWICE IN THE hall before Julie got him to her bedroom where she knew for certain the fireplace was filled with wood and ready to be lit. Breathless from exertion, she staggered to the bed and let his weight carry him onto it. His outer clothes were stiff and crusted with ice, as she started pulling them off of him. It was while she was yanking off his pants that he spoke the only words he’d said since she’d run to his rescue. “Shower,” he mumbled feebly. “Hot shower.”
“No,” she retorted, trying to sound businesslike and impersonal as she began to yank off his icy underwear. “Not yet. People suffering from hypothermia need to be warmed slowly but not with direct heat, I learned that in a first aid class in college. And don’t give a thought to me undressing you. I’m a teacher and you’re just another little boy to me,” she lied. “A teacher’s almost like a nurse, did you know that?” she added. “Stay awake! Listen to my voice!” She eased the shorts down his muscled legs, glanced down to see how she was doing, and felt a fiery blush heat her cheeks. The magnificent male body that was sprawled out before her eyes looked like a Play girl centerfold she’d seen in college. Except that this real-life body was blue with cold and vibrating with deep shivering chills.
Grabbing the blankets, she tucked them around him, chafing them on his skin as she worked, then she went to the closet and got out four more blankets and spread them over him. Satisfied with his covering, she hurried over to the fireplace in the corner and lit the kindling. Not until the logs were blazing on the hearth did Julie stop long enough to take off her own outdoor clothes. Afraid to leave him, she stood at the foot of his bed, watching his slow, shallow breaths as she stripped off her snowmobile suit. “Zack, can you hear me?” she asked, and although he didn’t answer, Julie began talking to him in a mindless string of disjointed comments intended to both encourage him to recover and boost her flagging confidence that he would. “You’re very strong, Zack. I noticed that when I watched you changing my tire and when you crawled out of the creek. And you’re brave, too. There’s a little boy in my class—his name is Johnny Everett—he wants to be strong more than anything in the world. He’s crippled, so he has to stay in a wheelchair, and it breaks my heart to watch him, but he never gives up. Remember, I told you about him last night?” Unaware of the tenderness in her voice, she added, “He’s very brave, just like you are. My brothers used to have pictures of you in their room. Did I ever tell you that? There’s so much I’d like to tell you, Zack,” she said brokenly. “And I will, if you’ll just stay alive and give me a chance. I’ll tell you anything you’d like to know.”
Panic set in. Maybe she should be doing more to warm him or keep him awake. What if he died because of her ignorance? Grabbing a thick terry cloth robe from the closet, she pulled it on, then she sat down on the bed beside his hip and pressed her fingertips to the pulse in his neck, her gaze riveted to the clock on the dresser. His pulse seemed alarmingly slow. Her hands and voice shook as she smoothed the blankets around his wide shoulders and said, “About last night—I’d like you to know that I loved it when you kissed me. I didn’t want you to stop there, and that’s what scared me. It didn’t have anything to do with the fact that you’d been in jail, it was because I . . . because I was losing control, and I’ve never had that happen before.” She knew he probably wasn’t hearing a word she said, and she fell silent as another spasm of deep chills racked his body. “Shivering is good,” she said aloud, but she was thinking frantically for something else to do for him. A sudden vision of St. Bernard dogs with miniature kegs around their necks for people stranded by avalanches made her snap her fingers and jump to her feet. A few minutes later, she returned to his bedside holding a glass filled with brandy and brimming with excitement over what she’d heard on the kitchen radio. “Zack,” she said eagerly, sitting down beside him and shoving her arm beneath his head so she could lift it to the glass, “drink some of this, and try to understand what I’m telling you: I just heard on the radio that your friend— Dominic Sandini—is in the hospital in Amarillo. He’s doing better! Do you understand? He didn’t die. He’s conscious now. They think the inmate in the prison infirmary who gave out the false information was either mistaken or trying to turn the prisoners’ protest into a full-fledged riot, and that’s exactly what happened . . . Zack?”
After several minutes she’d managed to get only a tablespoon of brandy into him, and Julie gave up. She knew she could find the telephone he’d hidden and call for a doctor, but the doctor would recognize him and immediately call the police. They’d take him out of here and haul him back to prison, and he’d said he’d rather be dead than go back.
Tears of uncertainty and exhaustion slid from the corner of Julie’s eyes as the minutes slipped past and she sat with hands folded in her lap, trying to think what to do until she finally resorted to a whispered prayer. “Please help me,” she prayed. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know why You brought the two of us together. I don’t understand why You’re making me feel this way about him or why You want me to stay with him, but somehow I think this is all Your doing. I know it because . . . because I haven’t felt as if You were standing with Your hand on my shoulder like this since I was a little girl—when you gave the Mathisons to me.”
Julie drew a long, shaky breath and brushed away a tear from the corner of her eye, but as she said the last of her prayer, she was already feeling steadier: “Please take care of us.”
After a moment she looked up at Zack and watched his body tremble with more chills, then he moved lower into the covers. Realizing that he was deeply asleep, not unconscious as she’d feared, she l
eaned forward and pressed a light kiss to his forehead. “Keep shivering,” she whispered tenderly “Shivering is very good.”
Unaware that a pair of amber eyes flickered open and then drifted closed again as she stood up, Julie went into the bathroom to take a hot shower.
29
SHE WAS WRAPPING HERSELF IN the robe again when it occurred to her that she could at least find the telephone he’d hidden and call her parents to let them know she was safe. Stopping beside her bed, she laid her hand on Zack’s forehead, watching him breathe. His temperature felt closer to normal, and his breathing was deeper now, in the steady rhythm of exhausted slumber. The rush of relief she felt made her knees weak as she turned to stoke up the roaring fire she’d built. Satisfied that he was warm enough, she left him to sleep and went to look for the telephone, closing the door behind her. Deciding the bedroom he’d slept in was a logical place to begin looking, she opened his bedroom door and stopped short, staring in wonder at the incredible luxury spread out before her. She’d thought her room with its stone fireplace, mirrored doors, and spacious tiled bath was the absolute height of plushness, but this room was four times as large and ten times as lavish. Mirrors lined the entire wall on her left, reflecting an enormous bed with huge skylights above it and a gorgeous white marble fireplace opposite the bed. Long windows covered the back wall then fanned out in a semicircle on the end wall to create a wide alcove for a white marble hot tub on a raised dais. A pair of curving silk sofas upholstered in an ivory-, mauve-, and seafoam-green-striped fabric were positioned by the fireplace. On the dias, on either side of the hot tub were two more overstuffed chairs and ottomans upholstered in the same colors but in a quilted flowered fabric that matched the bedspread.