Willing Hostage (29 page)

Glade closed a hand on the paddle, but his weight pulled Leah off her feet and the two of them were hurtled against the side of the jutting cliff wall.

Charlie swept past and disappeared around the edge of the wall.

Leah found footing and dug in her heels, holding the paddle with one hand and pushing backward on sandstone with the other, as the water tried to pull him away to follow Charlie downstream.

Brian, clinging to his overturned boat, shot out of the rapids. “He … lp,” he cried to Leah. Then he too was gone.

Glade lunged forward until his hands gripped shore and she pulled him in.

She rolled him over on the rocks above the water and stuffed wads of wet Kleenex from her pocket into his bleeding nostrils.

Leah drank long from the bottle of chalky Maalox and then capped it.

The supine cat beside her finally stirred to roll over and hump and retch, as he had so long ago before a plane had chased them all under the bushes. Leah felt suddenly as if she'd known the cat and the man all her life. What had happened to Leah Harper that these two could command a piece of her independence, could insinuate themselves into her dreams, her plan for living? Why had this waited to happen to her until it was too late? Life seemed very precious now.

Hot sun began to dry her clothes. She sat with knees pulled tight to her chest and watched the man pace up and down the rocky shore, hugging himself and shaking.

Leah giggled and couldn't stop it before it turned to laughter.

Glade stopped to stare murder. “Will you tell me what is so goddamned funny?” The low deadly voice lost its effect when shaken with tremble spasms.

“You.” And she laughed again and walked down to him. “You were scared … you … the great big he-man spy. Death scares you, too.” She ducked his sideswipe and, still laughing, sat helplessly on the rocks.

“Well, what the
hell
did you expect?” He resumed his pacing. “I came up under the boat twice … there's no air under there … and almost drowned … and what do I get? A laugh!”

“Oh, you want sympathy … that's good. Like I got at Little Joe?”

Glade lifted her to her feet and she buried her face in his wet shirt, wound her arms around him. His body shuddered against her.

“I saved your big, dumb life. For what, I don't know. For the Yampa or the goons or Welker or Bradshaw? Why did I bother?”

“Leah, we've still got a chance. This isn't Russia or.… There are going to be too many groups vying with each other at Split Mountain Ramp for anybody to quietly do away with us. That's why I set it up that way.”

“I just don't trust anyone anymore.” She tightened her arms and wished that her dark-browed protector hadn't revealed his fear.

They were back on the river, Glade using a piece of driftwood for the paddle he had lost at Warm Springs.

“What's the next surprise?” Leah marveled at how well her ulcer was withstanding the shocks of the river.

“Nothing like Warm Springs. But there is Echo Park coming up. There's access to the river there, too.”

She sat rigid and silent and tried not to think.

“You're upset, aren't you? Because I can be afraid. Leah, what do you want from a mere mortal? Everybody knows fear. You want perfection.”

“But you've always been so steely. And if we've got danger ahead.…”

“You'd feel better if you had your murderer back.” Resignation in the cold monotone.

“Yes … no.… Oh, I'm just scared.”

“Yet you were angry when I killed two goons. What do you think I'm going to do if we meet up with some more of them, try to talk them out of it? Those men at the condominium were skulking around with silencers just waiting to pick me off.”

“Then how did you kill them?” She turned to the grim lips over the cleft in his chin where the beard didn't grow, the massive brows, the wide square forehead under dark tumbled curls and thought sudenly, “I've never wanted to live this badly in my life.”

He relaxed a little. “I crept up—”

“No.” Leah reach a hand over the duffels and past the Siamese. “I really don't want to know how you killed … I really … didn't want to love you either.…”

He took her hand. “You want a fairy-tale lover. Strong and competent and too gentle to defend himself. You sound like the rest of the country.”

“I just don't believe in killing.”

They managed the next rapids like a professional team, but then it wasn't Warm Springs. While they were still pumping out, a voice hailed them ahead. Brian waved from a rock near shore.

As they paddled toward him, Brian stood up, looking bedraggled and anxious. He put his hands in the air. “I'm not armed.”

“I am,” Glade said coolly. “Where's Charlie?”

“I lost him.” He ran fingers through thin, wet hair, and when he climbed into the boat, he almost swamped them.

They proceeded down the river with each man sitting on opposite sides of the rim behind her, but the extra passenger put Leah higher in the air.

“I … never knew a river could be like this. Thanks for picking me up.”

And Leah wondered why they had. Everyone seemed to be the enemy now.

“You really did a job on those goons,” Brian said with awe and not too comfortably.

“Echo Park is coming up soon,” Glade countered. “Does your boss plan to meet us there? Or Bradshaw?”

“I think so, but they don't want to kill you, Glade, honest.”

“Then why not wait till I get to Split Mountain Ramp? What's the goddamned hurry?”

“They're afraid the goons'll get to you first. We got word that there were more than the two you took care of and.…”

“And everybody wants to be in on the kill. Bradshaw and Welker don't trust each other.”

“Listen, Wyndham, the bureau wants to help you. If you'd only listen to Joe. You don't want to end up with the agency and Bradshaw alone—”

“Where's Swords?”

“He's flying in.”

“He'd better be.”

And then they passed Charlie. He floated in a slow death circle in an eddy near the shore, face down and unresisting, his hair streaked with foam. Leah swallowed and looked away. The Yampa had given her retribution. It was not a pleasant feeling.

“Leah, there's a paddle coming up on your side. Grab it,” Glade said calmly as if Charlie's body did not exist.

Cottonwoods and sandbars appeared around a curve in the river.

“You've got to trust the bureau,” Brian continued his argument.

“Echo Park,” Glade announced softly.

A mountain rose in the middle of the river with sun glaring down on it so hard it almost made sound. A looming formation of sandstone and across from it a haven of grass and giant trees in a long valley. Leah heard birds singing and longed to beach the boat there forever in peace and rest and off the rampage of water.

But she changed her mind when they skirted a sandbar and the river turned at the base of the barren mountain.

A truck parked along the shore of Echo Park and in the water next to it an empty rubber boat … She turned to warn Glade just as Brian said, “The bureau is your only chance. You can't trust the agen—” He stopped with a surprised jerk as a cracking sound echoed back from the sandstone mountain. A small … reddish hole appeared in the middle of his face. His knees rose to hide the hole as he tipped off the pontoon rim and disappeared.

“Paddle!” Glade screamed at her. “Keep your body moving back and forth.”

Leah wanted only to scrunch up in the bottom of the boat, close her eyes, and hope to ride it out. But the weapon that made that hole in Brian's face could deflate the boat and put a hole in her easily. She thought of Sheila and paddled any which way, bobbed forward and back, and they moved like a car gone wild with a drunken driver along the edge of Echo Park.

One second she was looking at a swirl of sky with sandstone mountain jutting into it, and the next—murky river and black rubber. “A bullet would be a faster way to die than drowning,” she thought and heard the clapping of helicopter blades over the sound of her heart and the Yampa. Brian's friends had arrived too late.

The helicopter lowered behind cottonwoods and two men with long weapons broke from the trees and ran toward the boat tethered to the shore.

“Now, straight ahead and balls out!” Glade commanded. “Pray for rapids so they'll have to paddle instead of aim. The cavalry has saved us only for the moment.”

Where the sandstone mountain ended, another river joined them and they swooped ahead on the force of the combined waters.

“Where's Goodyear?”

“Our feline crawled into the bag when Brian left us. Faster, Leah, they're gaining. Be prepared for dodging tactics again when I yell.”

They zoomed ahead. The river and Glade's strong arms sent them on so fast, Leah felt her paddle wasn't contributing much.

“I didn't want to love you either,” a voice announced behind her. “And I wish I'd never gotten you into this.”

“Can't you shoot back?”

“I don't have the range they do.”

The river dropped in a whoosh with the familiar roller-coaster feeling but without the rapids and Leah heard the rifle's snap.

“Leah, are you hit?”

“No.”

“A bullet just slammed into the bag behind you. Move from side to side this time, keep your head low, and dodge!”

Her spine prickled, waiting for the searing bullet. She rocked back and forth and river and sky and trees whirled in front of her.

“Suck hole ahead,” he yelled. “Guide to the left!”

Aching muscles paddled on adrenaline, sweat pierced pores to join the mist flying back at her off the rim. Her breathing and heartbeat drowned the sound of the Yampa and a spume of water loomed ahead.

There wasn't much room to maneuver between the approaching suck hole and the cliff face that formed the bank. They headed straight toward the cliff wall.

“Back off!” Glade yelled.

She fell into the boat to escape the scraping stone.

“You're strong enough when you're scared,” Glade gasped.

The other boat approached the suck hole.

Both men paddled now, both wore life jackets. The one in front had more nose than the other and was more slender. His hair lifted as the boat scraped the mammoth boulder and swung around to enter the suck hole backward. Glade had been right. She knew them when she saw them. They were the men Leah had seen in the restaurant in Craig.

Chapter Thirty-five

Glade raised his revolver and sighted along a tree limb. They had pulled over to shore and hidden the boat behind trees to watch for the goons.

“They couldn't have made it out of that suck hole.” Leah licked the chalk of Maalox from her lips.

“Some types can get out of anything. What I saw of those two makes me scared as hell. When we're on the river they've got the advantage and the range. We'll wait.”

They waited. No boat. No goons. Leah relaxed.

“I don't like it,” he said. “I don't see any debris from their boat coming down river.”

When they entered the river again, Glade was quiet. He kept glancing over his shoulder. It made her uncomfortable.

Surely the only danger lay ahead at Split Mountain Ramp now and on the river itself. Those men could not have survived that suck hole.

She'd forgotten their faces already. She could visualize their boat and life jackets, their arms swinging paddles.…

“Glade, I feel a little sick.”

“We forgot lunch. Have some granola. We'll stop at Jones Hole for tonight.”

At dusk a sign announced Jones Hole. Leah had the odd thought that in no matter what outlandish place she found herself, there were always signs.

The Mormons' giant pontoons were pulled up on the beach and in the process of being unloaded. There was soon a crowd to welcome them in.

Dave helped Leah from the boat. “We didn't figure you'd make it out of Warm Springs in that little boat. We kept pulling over and waiting for you. Haven't been here long ourselves.”

“We got a late start. Is the ranger here?” Glade pulled the boat out of the water and Goodyear took off through the trees.

“No. River's closed and he left. I just broke into his cabin and used his radio. The patrol's going to sweep the river for you two. Guess I panicked.”

“Did all of your party get through?” Leah asked.

“Yes, but we've got several hysterical women. They're lined up at the outhouse.”

Leah stumbled past the ranger's cabin and picnic tables to a clearing on the other side of a grove of trees. The women greeted her with relieved exclamations and she took her place at the end of the line.

Leah learned that she was now in Utah but that these Mormons came from Denver.

“You know,” Rayleen said, “we were just taking a tally and realized that if we don't make it off this river, we will orphan a total of twenty-seven children.”

They bowed their heads beside the foul-smelling building and Cindy, of the bedraggled pixy haircut, led a prayer of thanks that they had all survived their day on the river.

Leah prayed with them.

“You look positively green, Leah.” Rayleen sat next to her at the picnic table. “You've sure got your work cut out for you. Any man who would bring a bride with an ulcer on a river-trip honeymoon … and then have nothing along to eat but granola.…”

Once again the Mormons shared their food with them. They'd boiled eggs for Leah. Everyone else had steak.

“How long have you had your ulcer?” someone asked from across the table.

“Since about fifth grade.”

“How could you mistreat your body that much that early?” The entire table hushed to hear her answer.

“The doctor said it was because I was jealous of my younger sisters.” Leah had the feeling no one believed her.