The Other Half of Your Heart Page 16

  “You’re never satisfied,” he snarled. “Always demanding more. Always wanting a man to do something for you. Always complaining.”

  It was then that Cara gave up her life. Knowing that she would never escape from Buck alive without a miracle, and not having really believed in miracles since Sunday school days, she pulled out all the stops. If she were going to go, she would enjoy it!

  “If I wanted someone to do something for me,” she replied sweetly, “I sure wouldn’t ask you. Do you know where I could find a real man?”

  Fury overtook Buck, distorting his expression and changing him into something Cara would never have recognized. Forgetting all in his blind hatred, he lunged for her. Without a steady hand on the wheel, the jeep slid violently over the damp greenery, sliding more sideways than forward.

  The sickening lateral movement was enough to break into Buck’s berserker rage. Cursing Cara freely and promising dire retribution, he grabbed the wheel once more and his muscles bulged as he fought the machine for mastery.

  Cara was aware of Dave, knew he was coming for her before she saw him sliding, half-sitting, half-standing, down the almost vertical incline. Coming towards the jeep at an angle, he appeared ready to jump into the wildly pitching vehicle.

  Buck’s efforts weren’t enough. The jeep slithered the other way and sickeningly tip-tilted sidewise down the steep incline, coming to rest against an enormous tree with a heart-stopping impact that threw Cara on top of Buck. Somewhere, someone was screaming.

  “Come on...” Strong hands pulled Cara up.

  “Dave...?” she asked bemusedly.

  Pulled abruptly out of the almost vertical jeep, Cara stood shakily and shook her head to clear it. How had this happened? For that matter, what had happened? And who was screaming...?

  “Are you all right? Talk to me, woman! Say something.” Dave was holding her, pulling her so tightly against him it was as if he were trying to absorb her.

  There was something oddly gratifying about the note of panic in his voice. It was nice to have someone care about her, really care about her, Cara decided, though it was ungenerous of her to make him worry.

  “I will...” she gasped in a voice so soft it was almost inaudible beneath that horrid screaming, “... if you’ll let me get my breath...”

  Immediately he released her, so suddenly that she had to stagger for balance. Cara gasped in a lungful of the damp mountain air and decided that she just might live after all.

  “You okay?” Dave asked in a completely different tone.

  “I saw you coming down the mountainside.” Cara decided to go directly to the point. Almost dying certainly changed one’s notions of what one should and shouldn’t do. “You were magnificent. Dave, I...”

  “Hold on. I can’t hear you...”

  Her voice had been low, but not that low. Cara looked questioningly at Dave as he walked over to the jeep.

  The unholy noise stopped almost as she thought about it. Dave had flipped Buck’s inert body back from the steering wheel. The horn. Of course.

  “Is he dead?” Cara’s question was neutral. Buck was limp and slumped bonelessly half in and half out of the driver’s seat. The left side of his face was covered in blood.

  “No, he’s breathing.”

  “How did you get untied?” Cara asked fuzzily. “When...?”

  “Not soon enough.” Ignoring the unconscious Buck, Dave enfolded Cara in his arms, holding her so close she could barely breathe.

  Cara didn’t care. She burrowed happily into the curve of his neck, that same curve which seemed made to fit her cheek. His skin was smooth, warm, and sweet beneath hers and suddenly, for perhaps the first time in her life, everything was right.

  “It scared me to death, seeing you sliding down that hill like that...you could have been hurt...”

  “You were worried about me?” Dave gave a relieved laugh, which came out more like a snort. His breathing was uneven. “Tarrant was carrying you away. When I saw him drive away with you...”

  “He was going to kill me.” It was a simple statement of fact.

  “Yes,” Dave replied in a dull tone.

  “And he had intended to do so from the first. From our first date.”

  Dave was silent a moment. In spite of everything, this was as hard a thing as he had ever had to say. “Yes. He probably chose you with that in mind.”

  “Because I’m stupid.” Cara’s voice was tiny and hurt.

  “No! Because you’re good and innocent and honest. Because you can’t believe that there are people like him in the world...” Dave knew he was babbling in his final capitulation and hated himself for it. He didn’t need words. He needed...

  Gently he lifted Cara’s chin. His gaze searched hers, then slowly, tenderly, savoring the moment, he lowered his lips to claim the tremulous softness of hers.

  Cara melted beneath his sweet onslaught. His lips caressed hers, softly at first, then more and more possessively. Slowly, as if tasting honey, his tongue explored the outline of her mouth. This was as different from when he had first kissed her as possible; that had been a statement of anger and lust, while this one...This was the sweetest kiss Cara had ever had. She surrendered herself to him, melting and molding against him as if they were to become one flesh. Her head swam and she ceased to be the girl she had been before, becoming with that one kiss, a woman who knew true love.

  Abruptly Dave pulled away, retaining only enough sense to keep his arms around Cara to prevent her falling. His emotions were in turmoil; all right, he no longer believed what he had thought her at first, but then he had never thought to react so strongly to her. Kisses were kisses; he had kissed a number of women in his time, some sweetly, some passionately. Never had he felt the earth drop away beneath his feet; never had he wanted to possess a woman, not just for a few hours or a few days, but for the rest of his life. It made him uncertain, and that was a feeling he didn’t like.

  Cara’s eyes fluttered open. Their confused expression made him feel oddly guilty and he wasn’t accustomed to that.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said brusquely. Clinging to the jeep for balance, Dave slithered down to the other side and surveyed the damage. “Darn!”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “The frame’s bent and both wheels are a foot off the ground.”

  “And that means?” Cara’s mind was beginning to clear, as if it were emerging from layers of gauze. Never in her life had she been kissed like that! The thoughts that had filled her mind with shapes and colors and feelings now were almost embarrassing.

  “It means no way are we going to get out of here in this. It’s going to take a crane to move it.” Hiding his treacherous emotions behind practicalities, he looked up, anger and amusement equally mixed in his gaze. “Why did you goad him like that? I was almost free and I could have handled him and saved the jeep and we wouldn’t be stuck here!”

  Cara glared back. The tender moment was definitely as over as if it had never been. “Well, I didn’t know that, did I?”

  Despite its obvious truth, her answer didn’t improve his mood one bit. “I’ve never known a female like you for jumping into things! I’ll bet you poke sticks down rattlesnake holes just for the fun of it!”

  At the moment, Cara was stiff, angry and frightened enough to want to poke several things, but rattlesnakes didn’t enter into the equation at all. “Why don’t you untie me?” she asked through gritted teeth.

  “I don’t know if I dare,” Dave replied, but he struggled back up around the jeep and began to pull at her bonds. “Good thing your boyfriend isn’t too hot at tying knots.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend!”

  “Sorry.” One more tug and the rope came free. “There.”

  Cara massaged her wrists. They were chafed and sore and the silver bracelet had left an ugly red mark. “Now what are we going to do?”

  “We’re going to get out of here somehow. If la señora and her charming companions weren’t
already on our trail, that horn sure pointed the way.”

  “What about Buck?”

  “I’m not going to worry about him. We’ve got enough to do to look out for ourselves.” Dave turned back to the jeep, then as a thought struck him, tossed the rope to Cara. “Quick! You tie him up. I’m going to call in the cavalry.”

  Cara would have questioned him, but the expression on Dave’s face didn’t leave any room for curiosity. Gripping the jeep for balance, she slithered around to the driver’s side. She hadn’t realized how steep this section of hillside was. If they hadn’t crashed into this tree, if they had just kept sliding, and eventually rolling...Visions of a fiery crash filled her mind. The señora would have been so happy.

  “Go on!” Dave snapped, digging under the dash.

  “What if Señora Arvisu finds him?”

  He looked up with a strange expression that, although she couldn’t define it, made Cara very uncomfortable. “Do you care?”

  Once again, she could feel Buck’s hands tightening about her throat, feel her lungs burning from lack of oxygen, feel the soft, dark blanket of death envelop her. He had said that he loved her, then he could do that. “No,” she replied sharply and turned to her task.

  Buck’s arms were strangely heavy. Of course, all that bulky muscle she had once admired must weigh a great deal, Cara realized. She didn’t really want to touch him, to feel that warm, moist, treacherous flesh beneath her fingers. These hands had once touched her in a near perfect counterfeit of love. These same hands that had tried to squeeze the life out of her body. How stupid was she that couldn’t detect murderous hatred under a lie of love?

  For that matter, how did one go about tying someone up it? She had been bound a lot lately, probably more than most people were in their entire lives, but her main focus had been on how to get out of the situation, not do it to someone else. Especially someone she had thought she loved.

  “Hurry up!” Dave looked up from the radio, then went back to the controls.

  Okay, the jeep wasn’t going anywhere, so neither was Buck. She propped one of his arms on the steering wheel and wrapped the rope around both, knotting it repeatedly. She wasn’t too hot on tying knots either, but maybe quantity would substitute for quality, at least for a while.

  The radio sizzled and popped, then burst out in a static explosion of Spanish. His face intent, Dave answered, his Spanish painfully slow and deliberate by comparison. Her work momentarily forgotten, Cara watched in awe as Dave talked with the unseen voice on the other end. How could he make individual words out of that rapid-fire gobbledygook when she couldn’t even tell when one word ended and another began? She was awash with admiration.

  “Who were you talking to? What did they say?” she asked when at last he turned off the radio. The forest suddenly seemed so intensely quiet without the incessant crackle of background static.

  “Capitan Fonseca is out looking for Señora Arvisu, it seems. The radio operator said that he’d relay our location to the troops. At least, I hope that’s what he said. We’re pretty far back in the mountains and this radio’s in bad shape.”

  “Not that it’s going to do you any good.”

  Cara cursed herself. Would she never learn? She had been watching Dave instead of Buck; she had never been aware of when he came back to consciousness. Now, he took advantage of their moment of startled surprise to pull a small, but very deadly-looking, revolver from his waistband.

  “Untie me.” He pointed the gun directly between Cara’s eyes. “And don’t you move, Burkhart, because I can kill her before you can blink.” Buck’s demented smile showed what a delightful idea he thought that to be.

  “It’s over, Tarrant,” Dave said slowly. “There’s no way you can get out of this. If the army doesn’t get you, la señora will. You’ll never make it.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Burkhart. The army couldn’t catch a beetle if it was under their nose, and if that stupid woman ever stops and thinks a minute, she’ll realize where I put her copy of the formula.”

  “So you were going to sell it to other buyers.”

  Buck laughed sneeringly. “Of course I was. The world is full of people who don’t object to making money any way they can.”

  “And where did you hide it?”

  “The only place I could hide it. It’s wrong, of course, but I’ll be long gone before she realizes that, if she’s smart enough to figure out where I put it to begin with.”

  Cara blinked. “Formula?”

  “Haven’t you figured it out yet, either, you stupid cow?” Buck laughed. It was an ugly sound. “God, you’re even more retarded than most women.”

  “Shut up!” Cara snapped.

  Buck raised his unbound fist, his knuckles white as they gripped the pistol butt. “Don’t talk to me like that, you murdering...”

  Time compressed. From then on Cara could only remember freeze-frame images, without sound or movement, as if taken from some obscene photo album.

  Dave leaping forward across the seat, just too far away to really surprise or be of any real threat.

  Buck pointing the gun toward Dave, a ghastly smile of delight creasing his face.

  Cara, her mouth a wide ‘O’ of terror, leaping for the gun.

  Twisting. Pulling on that heavily muscled arm with all her strength.

  Her feet leaving the ground as she was pulled over Buck’s bound arm, giving her an odd sensation of weightlessness.

  Her body bending as she found herself between Buck and Dave.

  And at last, sound as the single pistol shot, even muffled as it was, crashing through the odd barrier of silence and exploding the silent moment into a barrage of noise.

  Chapter Twelve

  “I didn’t mean to do it,” Cara repeated.

  “I know,” Dave answered again. “Hurry up.”

  “His hand just twisted...I wasn’t anywhere near the trigger...” Cara thought if she said it often enough, she just might believe it. In truth, she had no actual memory of the gun firing as it was pressed between them. She could only recall her terror when she knew, she knew, that Buck was going to kill Dave in cold blood before her very eyes. She had no memory of a conscious decision to stop him; she could only remember tugging at his arm.

  And the noise.

  And Buck suddenly slumping sideways.

  And the great red wetness spreading over the spot where his chest used to be.

  “Come on, let me give you a hand.”

  Cara looked up, slightly startled to find herself dragged back into reality. Dave was a few feet above her on the steep incline, one hand firmly gripping a tree, the other extended to help her up. Without thought, she took it and clambered upward until they stood secure on a small ledge of almost level ground.

  “Where are we going?”

  “As far away from la señora as possible. After all that noise, she can’t be far away and I don’t want to be around when she shows up.”

  “But the army...?”

  “When the army shows up, they’ll make enough noise that we won’t have any trouble finding them. All we have to do is stay alive until then.”

  “I didn’t mean to kill him,” Cara said again. “I...”

  Dave wrapped his arms around Cara and pulled her close. One hand made slow, kneading motions on the back of her neck, almost as if soothing a frightened animal. There was no passion in either gesture, and only Dave knew the cost of keeping it away. “I know you didn’t, Cara, I know you didn’t. I’m so sorry you had to see it...I know you loved him...”

  Cara raised her head from its comfy resting place on his shoulder and shook it violently. “No. I was infatuated with him. He was handsome. He was attentive. I was dazzled. I did think I loved him, but I know now that it wasn’t love, not real love. Buck was never the other half of my heart. I know that now.”

  “The what?”

  “It’s something Señora Fonseca told me. She said...”

  “Hush!” Dave tensed, suddenly alert for som
ething beyond Cara’s perception. Too tired even to be afraid, she stood silent in his arms, waiting. “Come on,” he said with sudden urgency, grabbing her hand and sprinting up the hill.

  “What...?”

  “Shhhh!”

  They ran, scrambling on all fours as much as upright. Cara could hear nothing but their own frenzied progress and concentrated on nothing but keeping up with Dave. The trees closed around them like water until she could see nothing in any direction but an encroaching crowd of trunks. Abruptly they passed over a small, sharp ridge and the ground that had until now led upward, forcing them to climb, dropped away from beneath their feet. Sliding on her back, grabbing at trees and roots to slow her progress, Cara slid down the near vertical incline until Dave’s hand grabbed her arm and stopped her.

  “This should do,” he whispered, hauling her away from that fearsome slide and onto solid, level rock.

  Scarcely as wide as a closet, the lip of rock was part of a cleft in the hill itself. The dark mouth of the hole looked more than large enough to hide them, but a wild smell came from it, intimating that at a very recent time (that morning, perhaps?), it had been home to some feral creature. A canopy of stone, fringed with trees and creepers, hung protectively above them; combined with the protruding lip of rock, the fugitives were effectively hidden from both directions.

  His back to the hillside, Dave sat down and leaned back. Sighing, he put his arm around Cara and pulled her against him in a casual embrace. Automatically her head fitted into the curve of his neck. It still felt as if it belonged there. Beneath them, the trees undulated out like a landlocked ocean.