Some Kind of Magic (8 page)

Back to square one, she thought, peeling off clothes that were almost dry. Not bothering with a bra, she grabbed a flannel shirt from the hook on the back of the door and slipped it on. But when she tried to button it, she couldn’t make her left hand work.

Two minutes later she was still struggling. Dylan knocked on the door. “Hurry up.”

“I am.”

She was still working on button number two. Damn. It was next to impossible with only one hand.

The doorknob turned and he walked right in. “Here. Move your hands.”

“I can do it.”

“I'm standing right here.”

“I don't want your help.”

“For chrissake.” He brushed her hand away. She watched as he buttoned her shirt, all the while aware of her nakedness under the soft flannel. There had been a moment back there when she had wanted him to kiss her. And even now, the thought of such a kiss scared her. But it also intrigued her. She kept wondering what his mouth would feel like pressed to hers.

“What’s a girl like you doing with a set of handcuffs?” he asked, his head bent in studious concentration.

“You mean someone who smells like mothballs and drinks castor oil?”

“No, I mean someone who lives in the mountains by herself and chops her own firewood.” He actually sounded curious about her, wonder of wonders. Maybe she wasn’t quite as boring as she thought.

“They were a present.”

“From Anton?”

“Maybe.” It was none of his business.

Was it her imagination, or did his hands linger over the last button?

When he was finished, he ran his fingers down the entire row, starting just below her chin and ending above her belly. “There,” he said looking up, his hand still on her stomach.

“Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

They were standing in the tiny bathroom, face-to-face, toe-to-toe.

She inched past him, her heart racing. She didn't look back, but she knew he was watching her. In the living room, she discovered that he'd loaded the stove with wood. From the bathroom came the sound of the shower.

Still cold, Claire slipped on her down jacket and crocheted cap. She fed Hallie, then put a kettle of water on the stove and waited for the room to warm up.

Whenever she was really cold, she went outside to the sauna. It used electric heat, and took only a short while to warm up. But lately she'd been trying to conserve on the electricity, plus she didn't think her relationship with the criminal had moved to sharing a sauna, and somehow she thought he would probably follow her there.

A few minutes later, she heard him in the bedroom, shoving the bed back where it had been. Maybe it was because she was exhausted, but the whole handcuff thing seemed so stupid now. The guy was harmless. Was it really her duty to be a good citizen and turn him in? She didn't know. She just wondered who Olivia was.

~0~

Five minutes later, she was curled up in the corner of the couch in front of the stove, a cup of hot chocolate in her hands. Behind her, Dylan opened the front door, letting in a blast of arctic air. He whistled.

Hallie made an instant appearance, slobbering all over Dylan, her nails tapping on the wooden floor as she danced around in excitement.

Dylan good-doggied her and pet her hard, the way guys did when they roughhoused with dogs. Claire didn’t think Anton had ever given Hallie a single pat on the head.

“There’s water for hot chocolate on the stove,” she said over her shoulder.

She heard him banging around in the kitchen. A few minutes later, he sat down on the floor near the fire, his back against the couch. Hallie dropped down beside him, her head resting on his thigh.

“How much trouble can you get into if the police catch you?” Claire asked.

He ruffled the thick hair around Hallie’s neck. His wrist was red and raw-looking from his angry tug at the bed.

“I don’t know.”

She swallowed. “A life sentence?” She could barely get the question past her tight throat.

“I don’t know.”

The room was getting almost hot. Claire suddenly remembered her jacket and cap. She took them off.

“That’s the ugliest damn thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said, staring at the cap with the same horrified expression Libby often used.

“I like it.”

“Why?”

“Because it was a present. Because someone went to the trouble to make it for me.”

The heat, after the cold, was making them both drowsy.

Ten minutes later, Claire was half-asleep in one corner of the couch. She opened her eyes once to see Dylan sprawled out in front of the fire.

She didn’t know another thing until pounding at the front door had her sitting upright, her heart hammering in alarm the way it always did whenever something awakened her from a deep sleep. Hallie ran to the door, barking.

Claire was surprised to see that it was light out.

She checked the wall clock—6:45 A.M.

Knock, knock.

“Claire!'" A man’s voice.

On the floor near her feet, Dylan stirred. His eyes came open to stare at her. Scared.
Don’t say anything
.
Please.

“Just a minute!” Claire shouted, rubbing her face, getting to her feet.

She sneezed violently. Once. Twice. Behind her, she heard the sound of Dylan scrambling across the floor, getting the hell out of there.

She opened the door just in time for another sneeze. “Sorry,” she mumbled behind her hand, eyes watering.

Sheriff Docherty.

Hallie gave him a welcome of her own, the usual crotch sniff.

“Hallie.” Claire pulled her away.

“I stopped by yesterday and nobody was home. Then this morning we found your Jeep. You okay?”

“Fine.” She sniffled. “Except for a cold.” Hallie wandered a few feet away, then squatted in a pile of snow. Poor girl had a weak bladder.

“I don’t want to scare you, but you probably heard there’s a criminal loose. You sure everything is okay?”

Claire looked down at the bucket of frozen vomit Dylan had left at the door. She looked back up. “Fine.”

“Haven’t seen anything, have you?” he asked, watching her intently. All she would have to do was nod, or mouth the word
help
. He wasn’t slow. He would understand.

“Like I said, I have a cold. I’ve been holed up here, trying to get over it. I was probably asleep when you stopped by yesterday. That cold medicine really knocks me out.”

“If you see or hear anything, get in touch with me, okay?”

She gave him a rough smile. She’d always suspected that Sheriff Docherty liked her. Seeing her at this time of day would cure him of that. She felt kind of sorry for him. Nothing worse than a shattered dream.

Dylan stood wedged into a corner of the loft, his heart hammering, his breathing ragged.

He listened to the sound of Claire’s voice, waiting to hear the policeman’s surprised shout. Waiting to hear heavy footfalls. Waiting to have a gun pointed at him. Instead, he heard Claire telling the person at the door that she had a cold. Then, instead of telling him that Dylan had stolen her Jeep, she said that she herself had run into the tree.

Dylan strained to hear the rest of the conversation.

“Could you do me a favor and call a tow truck?” she asked.

“You should get a phone,” the man answered in a concerned voice. He liked her. Dylan could hear it in the guy’s voice. Kind of a shy respect, but also frustration. He wanted her to be safe, but it wasn’t his place to say too much.

He said his good-byes. The door slammed.

Dylan listened to the fading sound of the police vehicle. Then he collapsed to the floor. A minute later, he rolled to his back, a bent hand to his chest. That was close.

Little by little, he began to relax. Little by little, he began to take note of his surroundings. An artist's studio. The loft was an artist's studio. There were a couple of worktables, two easels, flood lights, tubes of paints—watercolors, not oils or acrylics. Bottles of artist's ink. Brushes, pens, mat boards, sketchpads, rags.

He got to his feet and moved to the center of the room where the skylight dropped a rectangle of sunshine on the wooden floor. He'd found himself wondering what Claire did for a living, speculating about the possibility of her being a musician, or maybe a writer. So ... Claire was an artist. She’d painted the pictures he'd seen downstairs.

How strange ...

His thoughts went back to another time, to another artist he’d known in another life, a friend who’d blended his dreams in pastels on public sidewalks. That was so long ago.

Dylan picked up a paint tube. Mars Violet. He put it down and picked up another. Hooker's Green. He smiled to himself. Rose Madder. Raw Umber. What great names. Cool names. He'd always loved paint names.

He heard footsteps on the ladder. He didn't turn. He put down the tube of paint and approached the worktable where a dozen or so pictures, some finished, some not, were strewn.

She liked birds. No, she loved birds. But there were other things, too. Flowers. Frogs. Doorways with vines. Trees. Grasshoppers.

He picked up a watercolor of a grasshopper. It was so damn detailed. He hadn't known grasshoppers had all those dots along their legs. He hadn't known they were such a miracle.

“He's gone.”

“Mmm?”

“The policeman. He's gone.”

Dylan was so absorbed in her paintings that he'd forgotten about the person at the door.

He turned. “Are all of these yours?” he asked, even though he knew the answer.

She crossed the room, walking under the shaft of sunlight and beyond to stand at the table next to him. “I'm putting together a proposal for a card company.” She shifted the pictures around, uncovering one miracle after the other, then just as quickly covering them back up, as if she couldn't bear to look at her own work. “People always say my drawings are too exact. That they lack imagination.” She sounded frustrated and dissatisfied with what she’d created, obviously not seeing what he saw.

“Who told you that? The same people who look at a pile of twisted metal and call it art?”

“Maybe that pile of twisted metal
is
art. Maybe the whole idea of art is to create something new, not duplicate what's already there.”

“You aren't duplicating. You're showing me what I missed, what I never took the time to notice. You're helping me to see things with clearer eyes.”

She looked at him for a long moment, as if trying to decide if he was feeding her a line.

“Why'd you do that?” he asked.

“What?”

“Not tell the cop I was here.” Had she been scared that he'd do something drastic that might hurt her, or hurt the cop?

“I didn’t want to get you into any more trouble than you're already in. I didn't want them to find out you'd abducted me.”

That surprised him. Surprised the hell out of him. “I wish I could do something for you in return.”

“Like what?”

“I don't know. Knit you a goofy-ass hat maybe, but I don't know how to knit.”

“If you just turn yourself in, they would go easier on you. You know that.”

He ignored her. Instead, he took both of her hands and slowly lifted them to his mouth.

“Don't.” She tried to pull her hands away, but he wouldn't let her. “My hands are so ugly.”

“They're beautiful.” He kissed one set of raw, dry knuckles at a time. “Take good care of these babies.”

You’ve never killed anybody, have you?” Claire’s nose was stuffy, so her question came out more like, “You’ve nebber killed anybuddy, hab you?”

She was propped up in bed, a pile of quilts over her, reeking of cough drops, and Vicks VapoRub, a mound of rumpled tissues on the bed and floor.

“No.”

She believed him. Did she believe him simply because she wanted to?

Yes.

That was never a good reason to believe somebody.

He sat down on the edge of the bed. “There are limits to what I’ll do.”

“You’d better stay back. You don’t want to catch this.”

“I have a strong immune system.”

“Nobody has a strong enough system to keep from getting this cold. It's bad. Really bad.”

“I've never had a cold.”

Having a cold always dropped her IQ about twenty points, but no way was she falling for such a whopper. “Everybody gets colds.”

He blandly lifted his eyebrows, as if to say she could believe him if she wanted to. It didn't make any difference to him.

“I've got to get up.” She tossed the covers, tissues flying, but she didn't make a move to get out of bed.

Dylan covered her again. “Stay in bed. I'll cut some wood and do whatever else needs to be done.”

“Hallie. Hallie needs to be fed.”

“I'll take care of it.”

She let her head fall back against the pillow, thinking,
I could get used to this
.

~0~

Trying to be as quiet as possible, Dylan tore a piece of duct tape from the roll, then smoothed it across the rip in his jacket where the down was coming out. Then he put on the jacket, feathers flying. He blew, trying to keep them away from his face. He'd found a wool cap in a wooden box by the door. He slapped it on his head, curving the bill the way he liked it. Nothing worse than a flat bill. He shrugged into Claire's backpack, the straps adjusted to accommodate his larger frame. One last thing.

Before leaving, he opened her purse and pulled out her wallet. Three-hundred bucks. What was she doing going around with three hundred bucks in her purse?

Trying not to think about what he was doing, he stuffed all but fifty dollars deep in the front pocket of his jeans and headed out the door.

He took off, sticking to the tracks left by the cop’s vehicle. He was almost to the end of the lane when he realized Hallie was following him.

“Stay,” he commanded, looking back at the house.

Hallie just wagged her tail and jumped on him, leaving huge paw prints on the front of his jacket. “Dumb dog. I don’t think Claire would appreciate it if I took you, too.”

He felt bad enough leaving the way he was, he didn’t need Hallie’s reproach to drive home his betrayal. But this might be his only chance, and it wasn’t like he was going keep her money. He’d pay her back as soon as he got someplace safe where he could put in a call to Zeke, the brain behind Dylan’s financial dealings. Wouldn’t Zeke be surprised to hear from him? Good ol’ Zeke. He’d taken care of everything while Dylan had been away.

He headed back to the house, Hallie at his heels. He opened the door and silently motioned for her to go inside. Instead she sat there smiling up at him. “Go on,” he whispered, motioning with his hand again. She just sat there.

He shoved her, pushing at her rump with both hands. Once she was inside, he quickly shut the door, turned, and ran.

~0~

Claire woke up to the sound of Hallie scratching at the door to get out.

“Dylan?”

Scratch, scratch, scratch
.

It was getting dark. Where was Dylan?

She tossed back the covers and got out of bed, the floor cold as ice on her feet. Where were her socks? She couldn't find her socks.

“Dylan?”

Scratch, scratch, scratch
.

“I'm coming, Hallie.”

Hallie whined that high-pitched excited whine she used when she thought she’d found something really great like a dead squirrel. Claire let her out, quickly shutting the door behind her. Outside, Hallie took off around the house, barking.

Idiot dog.

Bleary-eyed, her head feeling as big as a watermelon, Claire turned around, intending to drag herself directly back to bed, when she stopped. In the middle of the kitchen table was her purse. And beside her purse, was her open wallet. She picked it up and looked inside. Two twenties and a ten.

The son of a bitch had taken most of her rent money.

You just lie there and rest. Ol Daddy Dylan will take care of everything.

Grrr! She could pull out her own hair. How could she have been so stupid? So blind? He’d taken care of everything all right. Now what was she going to do? There was a shop in town where she sold her artwork on commission, but winter was the slow season, the really slow season. So slow that she rarely sold anything from the beginning of January until tourist season started the end of May.

Damn.

The antique furniture wasn’t hers. The only thing of value she owned was her Jeep, and it wouldn’t be worth much now with the crumpled front end. She would have to see if she could pay her rent a little late. Maybe she could sell a picture somewhere.

Damn.

~0~

Claire’s cold lasted a week. During that time Libby came by and gave her a ride into town to pick up her Jeep. On the way there, Claire almost told Libby about Dylan. “You know those handcuffs you gave me?” she began.

“Use ’em yet?” Libby asked in a tone that said she knew she hadn’t. “How about that voodoo doll? Did you put some of Anton’s hair on it?”

“Anton? No ...” Claire said vaguely. “I haven’t done that.” She couldn’t bring herself to tell Libby about her abduction. Libby may have been a good friend, but she also loved passing on a juicy story. The weird thing was, Claire didn’t think of it as an abduction. And even though he’d robbed her and smashed her Jeep, leaving her with a repair bill she wouldn’t be able to pay, when she looked back on the whole thing it was like recalling an adventure. And now, with that adventure behind her, it didn’t even seem real.

She would catch herself daydreaming about him, and she would have to remind herself that the guy was a loser, an even bigger loser than Anton, who before Dylan had come along had been King of the Losers. So why hadn’t she turned him in?

She’d heard the police were no longer looking for him. That made her even more aware of her negligence in the law-abiding citizen department. She'd never done anything illegal in her life, except for an occasional U-turn.

Of course, there had been that time she’d accidentally gotten stoned. How was she supposed to know that Magic Muffins meant the little goodies had pot in them? She just thought it meant they were made from some super-duper recipe. They’d been super-duper all right.

“I still don’t get what you were doing out during that blizzard,” Libby said, bringing Claire back to the present. “You really need to get a phone, Claire. I mean it. At least a cell phone for emergencies.”

“You're right.” But that didn't mean Claire had any intention of getting one, not in the near future anyway, not when she didn't even have money for rent, thanks to her brief moment of misplaced compassion.

After picking up her Jeep and returning home, Claire came across the voodoo doll with Dylan's hair still glued to it. She stared at it for a long time. She picked up a black pin. Then she put it down, turned the doll over to the good voodoo side, picked up a white pin, and stuck it in the chest.

~0~

Dylan lay fully clothed on the bed of the hotel room with its orange spread and matching curtains, hands behind his head, watching an old episode of
Kids in the Hall
. When the skit ended, Dylan reluctantly changed channels. He should be watching the news to see if his disappearance was still a big deal. Claire had surely turned him in by now.

He didn't have to channel-surf long before he came upon an interview with the guy who'd walked away from the plane crash, the chess player, Daniel French.

He was talking about how bad Dylan had looked when he'd last seen him.

“Do you think he could have walked to safety?” the interviewer asked.

The man thought a moment, then slowly shook his head. “I seriously doubt it. He couldn't have gone far on his own. And then with that storm ... I'm afraid he's buried out there under ten feet of snow and nobody's going to find him until spring.”

The interviewer thanked the man, then turned back to the camera. “There you have it. An opinion that has been echoed around here for the past three days. The search has been called off. Every day that goes by has officials more convinced that the mysterious man going by a string of aliases has chosen a false name for the last time. Back to you, John.”

“How will anyone know what name to put on the death certificate?” John asked with that forced time-to-toss-in-a-joke voice.

“I don't know,” the correspondent on location said, unable to come up with a reply, probably pissed that good ol' John had made him look stupid.

Dead.

Being presumed dead was something Dylan had always fantasized about. What better way to start over? He clicked off the television, pulled the phone off the dresser to rest it on his stomach, and put in a call to New Orleans. He needed money. Maybe a new identity. Zeke could get both those things. He had another thought. Claire hadn't turned him in. He wished he could thank her for that. He really did.

Zeke was surprised and pleased to hear from him all right.

“I figured you were hiding out somewhere, just waiting for things to cool down,” Zeke said.

They bullshitted for a little while, then Dylan said, “Zeke, I need you to send me some cash.”

“No problem.”

“What about a fake driver's license and credit cards?”

“That, too.”

Dylan gave him the motel name and address.

“Whose name do I put on it?”

Dylan thought a moment. “Charles Black.” After hanging up, Dylan lay back in bed, hands behind his head, and stared up at the ceiling. Taking to Zeke had reminded him of the old days. His mind spun backward, to a time when life had been more magic than hardship.

Early childhood for Dylan had been a series of new and exciting locations. His parents were missionaries, moving from place to place, country to country, living in one poor village after another. He and his sister, Olivia, had ridden camels in Sudan. In Ethiopia, their classroom was nothing more than a thatched roof above a dirt floor, their beds made of the same woven material that kept out the sun and heat. Dylan had seen the highest mountain in the world, and he'd waded in the very sea Moses had parted. His heart had been stolen by a little girl in Madagascar who wore beaded gowns and carried a lemur on her shoulder, the lemur making his hissing cockroach seem pretty insignificant. And even though he was too young to understand the unrest in South Africa, he’d felt the injustice of it.

While living in South Africa, he and Olivia would lie in bed at night and listen to their parents talking from the kitchen. Dylan’s father, normally a gentle man, a person who had never once raised his voice to his children, would shout in anger, and bang his fist on the table in frustration.

South Africa was the beginning of the end.

One hot night, Dylan was awakened from a deep sleep by a woman’s screams. That was followed by a series of popping sounds and angry foreign voices, then the echo of booted feet— men running away.

Heart pounding, feeling sick to his stomach, Dylan left the bedroom and stepped into the narrow hall that led to the kitchen. Under the light of a bare bulb, his parents lay dead, murdered.

He didn’t know how long he stood there, unable to move, unable to pull his gaze away from the horror. Behind him, he heard Olivia’s groggy voice. “What’s wrong?”

“Go back to bed.” He turned and pulled her down the hallway to the bedroom, where she went back to sleep and he sat on the end of the bed, waiting for an adult to show up.

Dylan was ten years old.

He and his sister were taken to the American Embassy by Father Sebastian, a red-faced Irishman who’d worked with Dylan's parents. There they followed a long hall to be presented to a man behind a desk in a room that smelled like stale cigars. In one corner, an oscillating fan moved back and forth, clicking every time it reached the end of its sweep.

The man asked them about relatives.

Dylan’s father had never spoken about any of his family. “My mother has a brother,” Dylan offered. He'd seen him once, and hadn't liked him. The man had been a loud contrast to his father's quiet, almost shy reserve. He drank a lot and called his wife “the little woman.” Dylan didn't know what his aunt's real name was.

They had a hard time finding Uncle Hank. It seemed he'd changed his name and moved to Louisiana “because of a little trouble with the law,” Uncle Hank later put it.

And so Dylan and Olivia found themselves living with their loud, obnoxious uncle and timid aunt. On the day of their arrival in the little Louisiana town of Black Water, his uncle gave Dylan a pat on the head and a pellet gun, telling him to go shoot sparrows. Later, when he was by himself, Dylan poured the pellets out on the ground.