Judith McNaught (34 page)

chance, she was sure—with the snowmobile she rode. A "perfect" ending, she thought with grim misery,

for a girl from the Chicago slums who wanted to be perfect.

Far below, through the branches of trees sliding by her, she caught a glimpse of the state road that snaked around the mountain, but it was a straight drop-off from here to there, a nearly vertical descent made even more treacherous by the trees and giant snow-covered boulders that rose up from the mountain. If she took that route, she might make better time for a few seconds down the mountain, but

there was no chance she'd ever reach the highway in one piece. Besides, before she could seriously consider going down the face of the mountain, she first had to use the bridge to get across that swollen stream. She tried to remember where the bridge was.

It seemed to her that it should be around the next sharp bend in the road, but it was hard to gauge anything when the "road" had been reduced to a narrow

path between snow drifts.

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 lashed 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
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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.

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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. "Well 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.

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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
Playgirl
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.