Lark stared incredulously. “You and she? What is this? You’ve been in touch with her all the time?”
Mac scrubbed his hands on a piece of waste, ears growing red. “I sort of let that slip. She wants to tell you all about it. She — loves you, Lark.”
Lark spat. “She loves me — so she marries him!”
“Varden’s put on a model-husband act for the town ever since they’ve been married, but — they live in different parts of the house. He knows how Jeri feels about you.”
Lark took off his glasses wearily, eyes squinted. “I didn’t think you’d hold out on me, Mac. All these months. You know who shot me too, don’t you?”
“Maybe. There’s not a shred of proof. Right now it’s her I’m worried about. If you let her go alone, she may be too dead to come back!”
“Go alone — where?”
Mac stuffed a wad of chewing gum in his mouth, eyes hard and bright. His jaw moved rhythmically. “Ask her.”
Lark shoved him to one side, walked out front, his gaze probing around the parked tow truck, searching for her.
She was standing in shadow, irresolutely, half-turned to flee. At the sound of his approaching steps she snapped a lighter to her cigarette in a little gesture of bravado. The tiny flame wavered, blew out. A clinging, black suit left her face and hands a pale blur without substance or reality. Then he caught the perfume and remembered — many things. It gave him a choked up feeling. Four months. He had anticipated seeing her when he recovered his sight, around town. Golf course, drug store — but not close. Not like this.
“Lark?”
He knew that husky catch in her voice. It was always there.
“Lark? Mac told me you — your eyes—?” She snapped the lighter again. Her hand trembled. As she slipped it away in her shoulder bag, he caught a glimpse of an automatic hidden among feminine odds and ends of junk.
“I’ve got ’em back,” he said coldly. “Wide open too. How’s things, Jeri? How’s your hubsand?”
She flinched back as though he had struck her. “Please, Lark. Don’t be bitter. I—”
“Where’d you get that gun?”
“Mac gave it to me.”
“Oh? Simple as that. Mac gave it to you.”
“You’ve got to understand,” she said quickly, “that Mac has been helping both of us — you and me. If you’ll only listen to me.”
He opened her shoulder bag, plucked out the automatic, a .32, and laid it on the floor of the truck.
She started to protest, clamped white teeth into her lower lip instead.
“Get in my car,” he heard himself saying. “We’ll cruise around awhile.”
He felt her tremble as he guided her to his coupe.
She lifted her dark eyes just once, searchingly. “We shouldn’t be seen together.”
“Why not?”
“Someone tried to kill you, Lark. You know that.”
He opened the door for her. “Sure I know it. Get in, Red. Get in before I change my mind. This is a bad night to run into you. Don’t ask me why.”
She caught her breath.
He remembered then that he was the only one who had ever gotten away with calling her Red.
Chapter Two
Flight to Nowhere
He drove four or five miles down the river road toward St. Charles, pulled into a marshy clearing, snapped off the ignition and the lights. “Now,” he said, “Mac’s worried about you going somewhere alone. Give it to me straight.”
“It’s Gabe. He’ll be leaving tomorrow for a real estate convention in Omaha, to be gone two days. He’s done that for four months — always on the second Thursday of the month. Only—” she hesitated — “he doesn’t go to Omaha.”
“No?”
“I’ve checked. His real estate office here in Elgin is just a blind — something to make people think he works for a living. He doesn’t sell enough property to pay the rent.” A tinge of color swept her cheeks.
“Where do you think he goes then?”
“I don’t know. Last month I hired a private investigator. He lost the trail. Tomorrow I intended to follow Gabe, but Mac thought — he said you would say it was too dangerous once you understood all that has happened.”
“Uh huh.” Lark drummed on the wheel, swallowing his anger at this inference that he should feel responsibility for another man’s wife. “Why would he disappear on a certain day? The second Thursday of the month. I don’t get it. You suspect another woman, of course. You’re jealous. And you want me to—”
“No!” She whirled fiercely to face him. “Don’t you understand, darling? I despise him! As soon as it’s safe I want a divorce. Our marriage has been a sham. He was after my money... But I was helpless. I... I never even pretended to think that Gabe could ever mean—” She choked. Tears clung in the thick lashes and she winked them back. “It was always you, Lark. But you’re so darn bull-headed — sitting there glaring at me. How can I tell you what it was like when Dad lay dying?”
“The day I was shot?”
“Yes. And Gabe came out from Chicago—”
“I remember,” Lark growled. “Quite a boy, Gabe Varden. He can talk rings around me. Well, he’s ten years older. He’s had the experience. Forty, isn’t he? And he’s got soft hands, like a woman. You’re sure busting my heart, Red. After four months too. Four months of sitting without eyes, trying to get you out of my hair.”
“Lark!”
“Oh sure. What do I do now? Break out in a rash? Not me, baby. You and your easy money and your stuffed-shirt husband and—”
Her swiftly indrawn breath warned him too late. He turned his head and caught the stinging flat of her hand against his cheek. Pain cut across his eyes. For an instant things swam. A blurred flash of red hair and she was out of the car, running toward the road. Her stilted, red heels tripped, and she fell, picked herself up and went on, limping in the direction of town.
He fingered his cheek, listening to the damp frog chorus echoing thinly from the marsh. At that moment he wished Gabe Varden’s plump throat was here between his two good hands. He kicked the car to life, snapped it back on the road, turning on his lights. He waited, blinking, as a gray fog swirled in front of him, slowly ebbed away. When he came along beside her, she took to the grass and weeds. He leaned toward the open window.
“Now listen, Jeri.”
She must have found a path, her figure melted so quickly into the darkness.
Alarmed, he jammed on the brakes, leaped out, stumbling in the underbrush. The dark glasses didn’t help. He snatched them off. “Jeri!”
Far away that marsh pulsed and throbbed. He put the glasses away and inched deeper into the brush. He found her finally, huddled on the ground, and lifted her up roughly. “Why did you marry him? Why?”
“I prefer to walk!” she said coldly. “Please let go of me, Mr. Anderson.”
Sighing, he picked her up in his arms and dumped her on the seat of the car.
As she scrambled up indignantly, he grabbed her, holding her while he crawled beneath the wheel. “It was Gabe who shot me that night, wasn’t it?”
“You seem to have everything figured out — including me,” she said frigidly.
He looked at her. Her face was averted, pert little nose tilted angrily.
“You did plan that accident with your car tonight. Why?”
She turned furiously. “You couldn’t possibly guess that I wanted to see you — that I had to see you, without arousing suspicion in case I was being trailed? Mac phoned that you were all right, that you could use your eyes. We trumped up the accident. It would help to disrupt Gabe’s plans tomorrow too.”