down than from trying to keep up with him, and she wasn’t
sure how much longer she could go before she col apsed.
One of her eyes was swol en nearly shut from one of the
blows she’d taken, and her wrists were bleeding and her
hands were swel ing up like bal oons. Her shoulders felt
ready to fal out of their sockets from Chris’s constantly
jerking on the rope, and she was afraid she was getting
hypothermia because al she had on was a thin shirt under
her life vest.
Peg grasped the rope in preparation for the jerk she
knew was coming. “Please, Chris, we need to stop,” she
pleaded, fal ing to her knees the moment he did and then
col apsing onto her side with a groan. “I need water. And if
you don’t untie my hands, they’re going to fal off.”
He stood with his fists on his hips and stared down at
her. “Ain’t so prissy now, are you, Peggy?” He squatted
down and grabbed her chin, his fingers biting into her jaw.
“You want water, you’re gonna have to earn it.” He pressed
his thumb into the corner of her mouth. “Say, the longer the
kiss, the longer the drink.”
She jerked away and turned her face into the ground,
only to cry out when he pul ed her upright by her hair and
smashed his mouth down on hers. Fighting not to gag, Peg
forced herself to open her lips and push her tongue inside
his mouth, even making a soft moaning sound as she
pressed toward him.
Chris reared back, giving her hair another painful yank.
“What in hel are you doing?” he growled, the last of the
sun’s rays catching the surprise in his eyes.
Peg smiled. “I’m real y thirsty, Chris.” She shrugged one
shoulder. “And if you don’t seem to care about my family
curse, then why should I?”
“What curse?” he hissed, shoving her away.
Peg fel back, but then held up her bound hands. “Untie
me and I’l tel you why I didn’t dare go out with you after Bil y
died. Or didn’t you notice I haven’t gone out with anyone
since I became a widow? I wasn’t rejecting you, Chris; I
was saving your life.”
“What? How?”
She lifted her hands again. “Untie me and I’l tel you
about my curse. Because if I don’t,” she continued when he
hesitated, “then you can’t blame me if something happens
to you.”
Peg gritted her teeth when he jerked the knots on the
rope trying to loosen them, his fingers becoming slick with
her blood. “What in Jesus are you talking about?” he
snarled, backing away when he had them loosened enough
that Peg could finish the job herself. “What curse? What’s
going to happen?”
Peg slowly flexed her fingers, refusing to cry out at the
pain shooting through her hands with the renewed
circulation, and took a slow, fortifying breath. “You know my
mom and aunt are widows, right? Wel , my father died when
I was five, and my stepdad died within a few years of Mom
marrying him. It was the same with my aunt Bea; she lost
both of her husbands in freak accidents just like I lost Bil y.”
Chris scurried back even more. “You’re al black widows
or something?”
Peg nodded, stretching her throbbing legs out in front of
her. “Yeah, it appears al the women in my family for the last
five generations have been deadly to men. Our first
husbands never make it past the age of thirty, and if we
remarry or if any man even has sex with us,” she added for
extra insurance, “the curse kil s them off.”
His eyes narrowed. “You just married MacKeage.” He
snorted. “You hoping he’l last long enough to change his
wil and leave you a richwidow?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m not worried about
Duncan dying, because he has the power to break my
family curse.”
“How?”
“By the magic I was talking about. Remember I said
there’s something around here that’s powerful enough to
move mountains? Wel , Duncan’s tapped into it.”
Chris snorted again. “You’re fucking crazy.”
But Peg could see his doubt. “Yeah, crazy enough to
believe what I see with my own eyes,” she said, looking
directly into his. She suddenly had a thought. “I know you
and Aaron tried to burn the building supplies at our house
site across the fiord. So what stopped you right in the
middle of setting that lumber on fire?”
Peg saw his doubt turn to outright fear, and he suddenly
stood up to move even farther away. “We don’t know what
the hel happened,” he said, nervously rubbing the back of
his neck as he stared down at her. “Aaron swears
something tapped him hard on the shoulder, but when he
turned around nothing was there. And he swears to God
when he started running that something tripped him— three
times—as he made his way across the building site to me.”
Peg gave a soft snort. “I don’t think it was God; more like
a pissed-off mountain. So what put out the fire you started?”
Chris took another step back, shaking his head. “I swear
to—A deluge of water came out of nowhere and nearly
drowned me when it landed on the lumber.”
Peg widened her eyes with appropriate horror. “Oh,
Chris,” she whispered. “Forget my stupid curse; I’d be more
worried about Duncan’s magic if I were you.”
“What!” Sweat broke out on his forehead as he suddenly
looked around, his widened gaze stopping on their back
trail before dropping to her.
Peg nodded, coiling onto her side on the ground when
she felt herself getting dizzy, disguising her moan by
snorting again. “Sometimes Duncan scares the hel out of
me, too. But like you said, he is rich. So if his magic can’t
break my family curse, then I guess I’l be widowed again,
only not so poor this time.”
Chris stepped closer to stare down at her, then pul ed a
metal canteen bottle out of the pack he’d had stashed in the
woods not far from where he’d hidden the boat. He
squatted down again and held it out to her. “You’re looking
pale. But don’t drink too much or you’l puke. We stil got a
couple of miles to go to reach my campsite.”
“You sure you wouldn’t be better off just leaving me
here?” she asked, slowly pushing herself into a sitting
position to take the water from him. “You’d make better
time getting to Canada.” It took some doing to get the cover
off the bottle because her hands were shaking and more
than useless, but she final y took a long, blessedly wet
drink. She wiped her mouth on her sleeve, then canted her
head at Chris. “I’m pretty sure Duncan’s magic gets weaker
the farther away you get from his mountain.”
“There ain’t no such thing as magic,” he growled—
apparently trying to bluster away his fear. “And MacKeage
wasn’t even around here when the earthquake hit.” He
snorted and stood up, then reached down and grabbed her
life vest and pul ed her to her feet. But then he had to hold
her when she swayed toward him. “Jesus, don’t touch me!”
he yelped, stepping away.
“You’re touching me!” she snapped, jerking free, only to
have to grab a tree to keep from fal ing. “Just leave me
here. I’l find my own way back. Run, Chris; run as fast and
as far as you can.”
He eyed her with indecision for several heartbeats, then
suddenly bent to snatch up the rope before he grabbed her
vest and pul ed her away from the tree. “Oh, I’m running al
right, but not without insurance,” he snarled, wrapping the
rope around her neck. He slapped her hand away when
Peg tried to stop him from tying it into a slipknot. “Take one
more drink,” he said, lifting her arm holding the canteen.