Part 24 (1/2)

Wickstrom was too open, McNeely thought, to keep the suspicion out of his eyes. ”You okay now?”

”Yeah, yeah. . . .” He nodded, smiling wanly to rea.s.sure them.

”Was it the house?” Wickstrom asked point-blank.

Everything's the house! McNeely thought, but instead, he laughed. ”No. You know I'm claustrophobic. I just dreamed about it, that's all. I've had nightmares like it before. No big deal.”

”I couldn't wake you,” Gabrielle said.

”Sure you could. I'm awake.” He spread his hands to indicate the obvious.

”I mean, it was like you didn't want to be awakened,” she tried to explain. ”As if it were horrible, but still you didn't want to wake up.”

”That's ridiculous. Why would I want to stay in a nightmare?”

She shook her head, looking at him with, pleading eyes. ”I don't know.”

A long moment pa.s.sed while they looked at each other. Finally McNeely turned to Wickstrom. ”Thanks, Kelly. Sorry we woke you for nothing.”

”S'okay. Sleep well,” he said, and disappeared.

McNeely looked back at Gabrielle. She was still staring at him with a deep frown. ”Are you sure you're all right?”

”Jesus,” he said, ”you've been asking me that for ages. What makes you think there's something wrong? A few stupid nightmares?”

”Maybe.”

”There is nothing wrong with me,” he said solemnly, his hand going out to touch her cheek. ”Nothing. Believe me.” He pulled her to him and kissed her, but she turned her head away after a moment. ”What's wrong?” he asked.

”Nothing. I just don't ... want to right now.”

A dull anger ran through him. He hadn't intended the kiss to lead to s.e.x, but now that it was denied him, an unidentifiable perverseness gored his newly found s.e.xuality. ”Sorry,” he said coldly. ”You call the shots.”

”I didn't mean it like that.”

”Oh? How then?” He felt his need for her growing, but whether born of tension, desire, or rejection, he could not say.

She shook her head. ”I just want to sleep.”

”Fine.” He lay back, turning away from her and closing his eyes. He heard her turn out the light, and felt her lie down, not touching his body with any part of hers. For several minutes they lay there, and finally he felt her move until she was beside him, her hand on his shoulder.

”George,” she said, ”I'm sorry. I'm just scared.”

He turned and embraced her. ”Don't be. It's all right.” He kissed her deeply then, and though she did not resist, neither did she fully respond. But he kept on, his hands moving over her, and soon they were naked, she guiding him half-heartedly into her.

Something came over him then, a sudden anger that he knew to be irrational even as he manifested it. He began to 'drive into her, not with burning speed, but with a slow cruel force, until she moaned, not from pleasure, but from pain. But instead of stopping, or changing position to relieve the pressure that was hurting her, he continued to push down on and into her.

”Please . . .” she grunted, trying to s.h.i.+ft his weight. ”It's hurting . . .”

He thrust into her sharply once more, making her gasp, then moved down lower, on her body, relieving the tension of aching tissues he'd purposely caused. ”I'm sorry,” he whispered, and part of him was, but inside him another voice cried, Your fault, not mine. Because of you, because of you.

All because of you.

A moment later he came without pleasure, and from there they moved into separate, dreamless sleep. Sometime later the sound of her moving about in the bathroom woke him, and he looked at the towel they had kept by the bed to put under her after s.e.x. His s.e.m.e.n had drained out from her while they'd slept, along with something reddish, and now lay on the towel like a thick mixture of eggwhite and blood.

He s.h.i.+vered, folded the towel over, and tossed it on the floor.

Chapter Eighteen.

Monckton pulled Sterne's down-filled jacket up over his head. Just for a moment, he thought. Just long enough to breathe warm air again, to melt the ice that his own breath had formed on his moustache. It had grown colder since his accident, much colder. He guessed that it was below freezing, though he couldn't be certain. He tried to remember if breath would freeze above freezing. Freeze above freezing? No, that was just stupid. It must be freezing then.

He took some more deep breaths and joyed in the ecstatic warmth his lungs created within the nylon cave. Freeze above freezing. Was his mind going? He felt so stupid, as if the things he remembered, things he knew, were all slipping away from him. Is this what dying of exposure is like? he thought with a fleeting smile, and wished again that he had died when he'd fallen, landed smack-dab on his white bushy head like that b.a.s.t.a.r.d Sterne must have. Died right off and not had to worry about starving and freezing to death.

At the thought of freezing, his leg tingled again, and he s.h.i.+vered. With a sigh he pulled the down coat off his head and spread it once more over his legs and hips. All he had were a pair of denims, and they had ripped open during the fall. Thank G.o.d for Sterne, he thought with irony. If he hadn't taken his jacket off, my legs'd be icicles by now. Small favors.

He glanced at his watch again and immediately wished he hadn't. 1:47, 10-26. And in New York people would be walking down Fifth bundled against the winds pus.h.i.+ng up the stony canyons. The late lunchers would be scurrying out onto the sidewalks to get back for their two o'clock meetings, the shoppers at Bloomie's would be hunched over like stylish gnomes clutching their knapsacks. And in his own warm office Trish would be making the afternoon pot of coffee. Hot, rich coffee, the steam rising like a cloud of benediction ...

What time now? 1:48. Good. That fantasy had killed a whole minute. Call, d.a.m.n it! Renault, you fat pompous old p.r.i.c.k, pick up the phone and call! You know you'll have to sooner or later! Monckton growled deep in his throat. It was that d.a.m.nable certain hope that kept him going: Because Renault would call. He'd be coming on the thirty-first when the house opened, and Monckton was sure he would call to tell them (them! One dead, one dying) when he'd be arriving. And when he called and no one answered, then ...

Then rescue.

And if he didn't call until the thirtieth? Four days from now?

Monckton started to cry in frustration at the thought, but quickly made himself stop. He couldn't afford to waste the moisture, not knowing when and if it would rain again. He wiggled his toes and was relieved to feel them respond. The socks were thick, the boots heavy. But at this point the loss of a few toes would be a small price to pay if he could get out alive.

A sharp gust of wind caught a corner of Sterne's jacket and flipped it back, exposing Monckton's thinly covered legs to the cold. As he patted it back into place, tucking the edges beneath the muscle of his shattered leg, he felt a strange rigidity to the material that should not have been there. Was there something in the pockets he'd missed when he'd gone through them earlier? Something to eat? His stomach crawled in antic.i.p.ation as he yanked the jacket off his legs and burrowed into the pockets.

The left one was still empty, but in the right pocket he found, snagged under an overlapping seam, two wooden matches.

”Barnburners,” he whispered, using his childhood name for the big white phosphorus matches that needed no special striking surface. There'd been a box of them next to the stove in the cabin. No doubt Sterne, who smoked cigarettes, had pocketed a handful before going out to chop wood one afternoon.

At first disappointment flooded through him at finding something so inedible, but a second's thought told him that these could be a hundred times more valuable than a fragment of Hershey bar or a lint-covered cough drop. These could bring him warmth and even (he hardly dared think it) act as a signal. Wilmer was north of here, and he was on the northern side of the house. If someone noticed smoke . . .

He shook his head. Twenty miles away-who'd notice smoke from a small fire twenty miles away, even a.s.suming the absence of autumn haze?

Flame then, he answered himself. If the flame were high at night, maybe then ...

But it would have to be a high flame to clear the tops of the trees, higher than he could ever hope for. He looked around the wide balcony to see what fuel the matches could ignite. There were dead leaves in abundance, not only those he had blanketed himself with to keep out the cold, but more that the wind had trapped in the area between wall and side railing. They were still damp from the rain, but the sun was bright in spite of the chilling air. If it could dry most of the icy moisture out of them, leaving just enough to make them smoke . . .

Monckton gritted his teeth and began to drag himself over to the mound of leaves against the wall. It took him several minutes, and when he got there, he began to methodically take the pile apart, spreading the ice-crisp leaves in layers on the dark sun-warmed tiles of the balcony floor, cursing bitterly when a gust of wind would undo his handiwork.

Chapter Nineteen.