That close to the river the roar of the water had made conversation impossible unless they shouted, so she’d concentrated on not falling as they negotiated over jagged boulders. There was no riverbank, not in the sense that people usually thought. At the water’s edge were rocks, period: big ones, little ones, rounded ones, and sharp ones. Some were solidly placed, some rolled underfoot. Some were slippery. Some were slippery and rolled, and they were the most treacherous. She’d had to make certain she had a secure grip with at least one hand before placing her weight on any rock. The pace was necessarily slow, so slow that she had begun to worry they wouldn’t be able to get to more hospitable ground before dark, but they’d made it to the base of the mountain just in time. Cal had found a protected slope and that was where they’d stopped.
There was no semblance of camping. It was just the two of them, sitting on the ground in the dark, eating muesli from a plastic bag and drinking a little water. Then he’d unrolled the pad and lay down to sleep, leaving her alone with her thoughts.
At midnight she said. “Cal.” and just like that, he was awake, without her having to shake him or repeat his name. He sat up and stretched, yawning.
“How did you do that?” she asked, pitching her voice low because sound carried at night.
“Do what?”
“Wake up that fast.”
“Practice, I guess.”
She gave him his watch, and he strapped it back on his wrist while she stretched out on the pad. She had wondered if it would be as comfortable as it looked. It wasn’t. It was a thin pad on the rough ground, and she could feel every root and rock; still, it was better than sleeping on the ground, because it kept the chill away.
She spread her blanket over her as he took a drink of water and sat down where she’d been sitting. She tried to doze off, if not immediately as he’d done, at least within five or ten minutes. Fifteen minutes later she was still fidgeting.
“If you’re not still, you won’t ever get to sleep,” he said, sounding amused.
“I’m not a good camper; I don’t like sleeping on the ground.”
“In different circumstances—” He stopped.
She waited for him to say something else, but he seemed inclined to let drop whatever he had been about to say, rather than rephrasing it. “In different circumstances—what?” she prodded.
More silence, broken only by a slight breeze soughing through the trees. He was just an indistinct shape in the darkness, but she could tell he’d raised his head, listening for something. He must not have heard anything alarming, because his body posture soon relaxed. His words came softly. “You could sleep on me.”
The rush of blood through her body made her feel lightheaded. Yes. Yes, that was what she wanted, what she craved. She heard herself saying, just as softly, “Or vice versa.”
He inhaled raggedly, and she smiled in the darkness. It was good to know she could do to him what he’d just done to her.
He shifted his legs, as if he was uncomfortable. Finally he muttered something, stood, and made some adjustments before cautiously sitting again. Cate smothered a giggle. “I’m sorry,” she made herself say, though she wasn’t at all sorry.
“I doubt it.” His tone was wry. “You should have one of these for a little while, just to see how inconvenient they can be.”
“If I had one, you wouldn’t be uncomfortable.”
“I said for a little while. I definitely wouldn’t want you to have one permanently.”
“I don’t need to have one at all.” A tiny devil prodded her to add, “Because you’ll let me use yours, won’t you?”
Another sucked-in breath, and some rough breathing. He said, “Damn it,” and stood again.
This time she couldn’t hold back a tiny hiccup of a laugh.
“Tucker sounds just like that sometimes,” he said. “They don’t look like you very much, but sometimes the way they’ll say things, or hold their heads—that’s when I see you in them.”
Just like that her heart squeezed. She hadn’t seen her babies since Friday morning, and it was now Sunday night. They were okay, though; that was the main thing. They were safe. And Cal was the only person who had ever said they reminded him of her. If he wanted to change the subject by talking about her boys, she was willing.
“I have a confession to make,” he muttered.
“About what?”
He cleared his throat. “I’m the one—uh—I said some things I shouldn’t have in front of them.”
Cate sat up on the pad, glad he couldn’t see her face. “Such as… damn idgit?” she asked suspiciously.
“I hit my thumb with the hammer,” he said, sounding incredibly sheepish. “I—uh—said a whole alphabet soup of things.”
“Such as?” she asked again, somehow managing to keep her tone stern.
“Well, I—Cate, I was a Marine, if that gives you any idea.”
“Exactly what should I be prepared to hear my children saying?”
He gave in, his shoulders slumping. “Do you want the words, or just the initials?”
Uh-oh. If she could recognize what he’d said by the initials, she knew it was bad. “The initials will do.”
“It started with g.d.”
“And then what?”
“Um… m.f. and s.o.b.”
She blinked. She could just hear those words coining out of four-year-old mouths—probably when her mother was in the grocery store with them.
“I heard a giggle and looked around, and there they were, all ears. I couldn’t think of anything else to do, so I threw the hammer, jumped up, and yelled, ‘I’m a damn idiot!’ They thought that was hilarious, especially when I told them ‘damn idiot’ was a really, really bad thing to say and they should never say it, and I should never have said it in front of them, but that was what you said when you were really mad.” He paused. “I guess it worked.”
“I guess it did,” she said faintly. He certainly knew how little boys’ minds worked. They had promptly forgotten the words deemed not as bad, and concentrated on what he’d told them were really bad words. She should count her blessings.
She clapped a hand over her mouth as she shook with laughter, giggling and snorting. In that moment, listening to the sheepishness in his voice, delighting over the mental picture of him swearing a blue streak and suddenly looking into the fascinated faces of two little boys, she tipped over the emotional edge she’d been hovering on—and fell.
Chapter 27
When morning came, Teague sat up and rolled his shoulders, glad the night was over and nothing had happened. He’d forced himself to stay alert through the graveyard shift, knowing that it Creed had planned anything, that was when it would take place; a person’s natural arcadian rhythm was at its lowest point in those hours—at least for those who waited and watched. Teague had expected something, anything, even if just a few experimental forays. But hour after hour he’d scanned with the scope, without seeing the bright flare of a human thermal signature. Blake had been on edge, too, getting on the radio way too often to ask if Teague saw anything, but nothing had come their way.
Dawn was overcast, with sullen, low-hanging clouds that wreathed the tops of the mountains in mist. The warmer temperatures had held during the night, but now a chilly wind was beginning to blow. September weather could be iffy, as the seasons transitioned. Teague checked the level of coffee in his thermos; it was getting low. He’d need more if this wind kept blowing.
He glanced across at Frail Stop. It looked like a ghost town, with no one moving around. No, wait—he was certain he saw some smoke rising from the far side. It was difficult to tell, because the sky was so gray and, with the clouds hanging low on the mountains, everything sort of blended together, but—hell, yeah, that was smoke. Someone had a fire going in their fireplace. That was where the people would be, where they could get warm, maybe heat some soup, make some coffee. He keyed the radio. “Blake. Check toward the river, the houses farthest away. Is that smoke?” Blake’s eyes were younger than his, more reliable.