Blind Trust (5 page)

She sprang off the couch. “My own good? Was your leaving eight months ago for my own good? Was it for my own good that you popped back into town yesterday, just when my life was going well again? Is it for my own good that you’ve managed to make me afraid to walk outside my door?”

His eyes held her with an embrace that reached right to her soul. “Yes,” he said.

Sherry brought a hand to her forehead, beginning to ache with tension and clearer understanding. “I can’t believe this. You’ve done something illegal, haven’t you?”

Clint’s face was a portrait of regret. He took her hands and pulled her back down beside him, held her shoulders, pressed his forehead against hers. “I should never have come back.”

“But you did!” Sherry cried.

Clint slid his hands up through her hair, encasing her head in splayed fingers as he tipped her face to his. “I’m so sorry, Sherry. So sorry.”

Sherry backed away, breaking his hold on her. “Don’t touch me, Clint. I don’t know you anymore.”

“I’m the same man, Sherry.”

“What am I supposed to do, Clint? Just accept what you tell me without asking questions? Why did you even come back?” “There was reason to believe it was okay to come back,” he said, leaning toward her. “I wanted to see you again, make it up to you. I was in too big a rush, but I’d waited so long already.”

“And you didn’t count on the cops noticing?”

“Sherry, I needed you—” He reached out with the words, but Sherry shook his hands off of her and stood up.

“And I needed you! Eight months ago when our wedding was planned! I needed you all those nights that I cried myself to sleep, pretending you were somewhere thinking of me, trying to get back to me—”

“I was.”

“Yeah, right. You were off running from the law for doing who knows what! I only wish I knew what our life together was worth to you. What did you trade it for, Clint?”

A muscle in Clint’s forehead twitched. “You’re wrong, Sherry. It wasn’t that way at all.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“Because you know me better than anyone else ever has.” “The Clint I knew didn’t commit crimes. He didn’t run from his mistakes. He wouldn’t have vanished off the face of the earth two weeks before his wedding.”

“I’m the same man I’ve always been,” Clint said wearily.

“Then I have a terrific flaw in judgment!” Sherry railed, her face burning with rage. A few moments went by, and Clint stood before her, hands hanging at his sides, as if he desperately wanted to touch her but wouldn’t allow himself to again.

The spitting roar of Madeline’s Volkswagen seemed to shake the house as it pulled into the driveway.

“Is that your roommate?” Clint asked, breaking the silence. Sherry nodded. “Madeline.”

“Then I’ll go,” he said quietly. “I want you to promise me that you’ll do your best not to be alone.”

Sherry’s eyes filled with unshed tears, and she dropped onto the couch. When Clint knelt in front of her, she looked down at him.

“You’re going to disappear again, aren’t you?” Her voice was so shaky that she could barely get out the words.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Are … are you really in that much danger?”

Clint only closed his eyes, but the answer was clear.

He stood up to leave, and she rose to face him, fighting the urge to throw her arms around him and beg him to tell her that when he left he would be safe, that she would see him again. But deep in her heart she knew it was not true.

“So,” she said hoarsely, wrapping her arms around her own waist instead. The rest of the superficial words seemed to get clogged in her throat.

“So,” he said, as if he, too, struggled for an appropriate departing line, but came up empty. “I hope you’ll forgive me for messing up your life.”

Sherry forced out a dry laugh. “No problem,” she said with gentle sarcasm.

The front door opened, and Madeline, engrossed in the mail, didn’t see them as she stepped inside. When she set her purse down and glanced up, she crossed her arms and nodded as if the sight of Clint didn’t surprise her at all. “Well, well,” she said. “The prodigal fiancé, I presume?” Glancing back at the mail, she began to open an envelope.

Clint’s eyes remained fused with Sherry’s. “It’s nice to meet you too, Madeline.”

Madeline cocked a perfectly arched brow and gave Sherry a questioning look.

But Sherry still stared at Clint, as if he would dissolve before her very eyes.

Madeline pulled the page out of the envelope. “What on earth?” she muttered. “Wait a minute. Is this some kind of threat?” She waved the letter at Sherry.

Sherry took the paper and saw clipped magazine letters glued to the page. Glancing at Clint with alarm, she saw deep dread smoldering in his eyes. Slowly, she lowered her eyes to the page clutched in her shaky hand, and read aloud:

“Tell him revenge is sweet, and falls on those we love.”

Chapter Four

G
ive me that!” Clint’s face turned a deathly shade of gray as he snatched the page out of Sherry’s hand and stared at the pasted letters. “It’s even worse—”

Halting his thought midsentence, Clint reached for the envelope still clutched in Madeline’s hand. “No postmark,” he growled. He stormed to the window and peered through a crack in the curtain. “Someone hand delivered this.”

“The man in the black car?” Sherry wasn’t certain where the shaky voice came from, but she awaited Clint’s answer—any answer—with a dimension of fear that seemed set apart from reality.

“What car?” Madeline demanded curiously, shoving her curly dark hair behind her ear.

Clint seemed lost in the world outside the curtain, and Sherry swallowed back a wave of panic and stepped behind him. Touching his arm with apprehension, she made him turn toward her. “Clint, it said ‘revenge.’What does that mean?”

Clint looked at her as if she were stolen goods he had to find a hiding place for.

“Clint!” Her voice was becoming raspier as the fear in his eyes more closely mirrored hers.

Roughly, he grabbed the phone, punched out a number, waited long enough for an answer, then entered another group of digits.

“Clint, the mystery ends right now,” Sherry said in a tremulous voice. “Tell me what they meant by ‘revenge.’”

Clint slammed the phone down. “They meant that you’re in danger, Sherry,” he bit out, his eyes turning darker. “They’re after you too.”

“But I didn’t do anything!”

“You’re someone I care about,” he explained in a vicious whisper. “They’ll use you to get to me.”

“
Who
will?” she shouted.

“I don’t know!” he yelled back.

Incredulity sprang to Sherry’s eyes. “You don’t
know?
Well, what
do
you know? How much trouble are you in, Clint? How badly do they want you?”

Madeline clutched her forehead and stepped between them like a referee in a boxing match. “Wait a minute! This is beginning to sound dangerous!”

Clint swung toward her. “It
is
dangerous.” He caught a ragged breath and gave a haunted look around the room, as if its very existence threatened them. “You can’t stay here where they can get to you,” he said in a more calculated voice. “You’ll both have to come with me.”

Sherry felt as if the tension in her shock-strained heart would cause it to collapse. “I’m not going anywhere with you!”

“Wait a minute!” Madeline shouted again, stemming Sherry’s hysteria and forcing Clint to look at her directly. “What kind of danger are we talking about here? Getting eggs thrown at our cars, or our house blown up? Is this a matter of inconvenience or life and death?”

“Life and death,” Clint said.

Sherry shook her head, every fiber in her body denying the danger that was becoming apparent to her. “I’m calling the police.”

“No, the phone could be bugged,” Clint said. “Besides, there’s no time.”

“Clint, I am calling the police!” she insisted. She reached for the phone, but he grabbed her wrist and stopped her.

“Go get your things, Sherry,” he said. “We have to go.” His breath was getting heavier, and she felt the slight tremor in his grip.

“No,” she bit out. “Not until I’ve talked to—”

“Do what I say! Now!” Clint grated. “We have to get out of here! I promise you we’ll call the police after we leave here, but right now we’re getting out!”

Sherry jerked her arm away and stepped back, making a valiant attempt to assess this new version of Clint. “And what if I refuse to go?”

“I won’t
let
you refuse,” he warned, his face reddening as he set his hands on her shoulders. “You have no choice.”

Sherry jutted her chin defiantly, and crossed her arms with a bravado she didn’t feel. “How do I know that you aren’t more dangerous than the person who sent that letter?” “You
don’t
know,” he whispered harshly. “But I don’t have time to convince you. You’re gonna have to go with your instincts, Sherry, and I
know
they’re telling you to trust me.”

“That’s not what they’re telling me.”

“Then you’ll have to go with
my
instincts,” he bit out. “I’m trying to save you, whether you cooperate or not. Madeline, get her things and yours. We might be gone for a while.”

Madeline hesitated. “Like … how long?”

He was growing desperately impatient. “Look. I don’t care whether you even take a toothbrush! You have exactly sixty seconds to grab what you need or we’re going without it. And don’t try to use the phone in the bedroom. I’m telling you that if they find out where I am, we’re all sitting ducks.”

“Who’s they?” Sherry demanded.

“Not now,” he said again.

“This is kidnapping.” She closed her eyes and struggled not to fall apart as Madeline disappeared into the back of the house.

Clint wrapped an arm around her waist and held her more like a lover cherishing his woman than a kidnapper clinging to his hostage. “Sherry, you have to trust me,” he whispered against her ear. “You have to …”

“Let go of me,” she whispered. “I don’t want you touching me. You’re despicable, and dangerous, and—”

“Sherry, I’m not the threat. You don’t understand.” His pleading voice against her ear almost made her want to understand, almost made her trust him, almost made her unafraid.

Until the telephone rang, recreating her hope and shattering it at the same time.

“You can’t answer it,” Clint said, his arm tightening on her. “They could be checking—”

“It’s probably my studio at Promised Land,” Madeline said, rushing back in with two packed duffel bags as the phone continued to ring. “I told Justin to call me if—”

Clint hooked her arm as she reached for the phone, his eyes on the edge of violence. “I said to let it ring,” he whispered slowly. “It’s time to go.” He swallowed and steadied his voice.

“We’re going to go out the same way Sherry and I came in.” He set an arm on each woman’s shoulder in a brotherly gesture that could turn forceful instantly. “Open the door, Sherry. And move fast.”

Sherry obeyed the order and pulled the door open. When they were outside, the three of them running through the backyard like soldiers expecting sniper fire, Sherry felt as if someone else occupied her body while she stood outside it, watching the man she had once loved turn into a quiet lunatic who treated her like an unexpected hostage, for that was exactly what she was.

Sherry tried to make eye contact with the strangers they passed on their way to the parking lot, but each seemed too caught up in his own life’s worries to notice the cry for help in her eyes—a cry for help she was afraid to put voice to for fear that a worse danger awaited her if Clint was right. Clint opened the driver’s door and shoved them in. “Get down on the floor,” he ordered. He slid on his sunglasses and his hard hat. “And stay there no matter what happens.”

“What … what are you expecting to happen?” Madeline asked in a carefully composed voice.

Clint didn’t answer. Sherry hunched against the seat and stared up at the stern, gruff set of Clint’s jaw, the glacial blackness of his eyes, the stiff set of his mouth, as he cranked the engine and set the car into motion. His eyes shifted back and forth from the rearview mirror to the side streets as he drove, as if he expected an attack at any moment. Hard, tense muscles bulged through his clothes, testimony to the newer, more defined strength she had felt when he’d held her. He was a different man, she thought with a shudder. The old Clint had been sensitive, gentle, selfless. There had been no hint that beneath it all were secrets and terror that could make him capable of … Sherry’s heart sank as she imagined the things he could be capable of now.

But when he glanced down at her, hunched next to Madeline on the floorboard, that sharpness in his eyes vanished, and his eyes softened. For a moment a deep sadness surged through her. That glimmer of regret in his eyes cost her her strength and her hatred, and she felt only a deep, yawning void with no hope of being filled, and the fathomless need to see the Clint she loved in that hard, unyielding countenance again.

C
lint didn’t look at her again, for the fear and astonishment in her eyes tugged at his heart and distracted him from his purpose. He watched the trees as he whizzed past them, as if they were the enemy waiting for him. But somehow, in light of the things he had said and done to get the two women out of the house, he felt as if
he
were the enemy—theirs as well as his own.

Madeline’s look of composure and patience disquieted him. Sherry was probably struggling to understand the image of a new, dangerous Clint, but Madeline was more objective. She was turning the few facts she knew over in her mind, trying to concoct an escape plan for the first opportunity that arose, and probably trying to gauge his love for Sherry.

Maybe, he decided with a dismal ache in his soul, it was time to reveal his pistol. Maybe then they’d both believe him capable of carrying out his threats.

He was sickened by the idea that it had come to this. Sherry was already afraid. The sight of a .357 Magnum would terrify her. When she’d known him—really known—him he hadn’t even hunted. And now he stalked and hid like a predator, and she would see herself as his game. That almost made him want to turn the gun on himself. He’d rather do that than threaten her with it. Still, the sight of the gun might be threat enough to keep her and Madeline from trying some foolish escape that would get them all killed. What did he have to lose, after all? Her trust? His heart sank lower when he silently admitted that he’d lost that eight months ago.

His hand glided down his leg, and he pulled up his jeans, revealing the leather holster strapped to his leg. His hand closed over the small black gun. Sherry’s heavy release of breath, as if she’d expected as much from him, almost made him leave it where it was. But it was for Madeline that he pulled it out and held it in his lap, aimed at his door. A deathly quiet, broken only by the sound of the engine, fell over them for a moment, but he kept his dull, lackluster eyes on the road.

Madeline wilted and dropped her head into her knees, as if a million plans had just been shelved, but Sherry’s eyes grew colder and more determined
not
to wilt. “What have you turned into?” she asked beneath the roar of the engine.

Clint didn’t allow himself to meet her eyes. “A survivor,” he answered with metallic certainty. “And I’ve had lots of practice.”

Clint tried to harden himself to the harsh pair of blue eyes boring into him with hatred as emphatic as the love he’d known harbored there. It seemed that time stood still as she made her chilling assessment of him, the fear in her eyes not as great as the despair. But until he had them all within the bounds of safety, he could do nothing to change those opinions.

“Where are you taking us?” Madeline asked wearily, as if she had nothing left to lose.

“We’re meeting a friend who can get us safely out of town,” he said. “I called him from your house and punched out a code on his beeper. He’ll be waiting.”

“Wonderful,” Madeline mumbled. “Another one just like you?”

Clint shrugged. “I ought to warn you, Madeline. Sam’ll see the two of you as just another problem to deal with. If I were you, I’d watch what I said when I met him.”

Sherry’s delicate nostrils flared a degree, and she seemed to sit up straighter in the small space allotted her. “If we’re such a problem, then why didn’t you just leave us?”

Clint turned off of the road and started a bumpy journey beneath a thick ceiling of pines that Sherry could see from the floorboard. “I’ve told you why,” he said.

The Bronco stopped, stemming Sherry’s comment, and Clint said, “You can get up now.”

T
he scent of honeysuckle and magnolia blossoms filled the air, and the soft, comforting sound of rustling summer leaves and flitting birds played on her senses, calming her heart. Sherry inched up and saw that they had parked in a small clearing surrounded by walls of sweet gums and blossoming dogwood and a forest of towering pine trees. A navy blue van waited opposite them, and the brown-haired man Sherry had seen glimpses of for the past day and a half leaned idly beside it.