Material Witness (14 page)

Jake jumped to the ground and took
Cassie by the hand. Just as he suspected, the light on this end of the house
was dim. They could use that to their advantage.

“Quickly, into the woods.”

“Aren’t we going back down to the
guard’s station?”

The heater in the basement kicked to
life. Jake could hear the whine of the motor turn on and then shut off…and then
turn on again.

“Run!”

Jake dragged Cassie behind him like
his shadow. She kept up with every step without question, without the slightest
drag. If he was wrong, they’d make it to the woods, turn around and wait for
Agent Bellows and his crew to come up the driveway and check on the problem.
But if he was right, they had mere seconds left until the whole safe house
turned into a Fourth of July fireworks display gone bad.

Time dragged on at a turtle's stroll
as they ran. The wood line was in sight. They needed to get as far away from
the house as they possibly could, needed to clear the boulders lining the
property, needed shelter. They raced over the boulders clinging to a prayer.

And then it happened in slow motion.
White hot fire burst forward, bowling them over like a tidal wave crashing to
shore, sending them tumbling down the slight pitch leading into the woods.

The heat was intense, singing his
skin with its fury. His lungs felt as if they would explode.

When they stopped rolling, Jake
forced himself to look back toward the path they'd just escaped from. It was
gone. The whole house erupted into the sky like a mushroom explosion in a military
testing field. Bright spitting fire burned angrily from what was left of the
safe house, licking flames high into the sky as fiery wood and ash rained down
all around them.

He hadn't landed near Cassie after
the initial explosion. Frantically, he searched the brightly lit area for some
sign of her. He was sure they’d both cleared the line of boulders before
impact.

“Cassie?” he called out. He couldn’t
hear anything. Not the fire, not the sounds of the night or even his own voice.

And then he saw her. Cassie was
scrambling on her hands and knees. Somehow, within seconds, Jake managed to
grab hold of her, pulling her to the base of a spruce tree with low-growing
branches at the entrance to the woods. Flames sprayed like hellfire, hitting
the intrepid spruce, which acted as their shield.

Jake held Cassie tight beneath his
body, their chests locked together as he protected her from falling debris the
hammered tree limbs couldn't hold back. They had to move before their meager
shelter burst into a fireball.

He glanced down at Cassie’s face, saw
the shadows of destruction and smelled the scent of burning pine needles and
sizzling sap. His heart stopped beating when he pushed her hair from her face.
Her long dark lashes fluttered open as she peered up at him.

“Seems to me we’ve done this before,
Detective,” she said, her voice shaky.

Her face was streaked with ash, and
she managed a weak smile. Jake couldn't fathom how she did it, but she did.

Rolling to his side, he said
disbelieving, “We were almost just incinerated, and you can joke about it?”

“I have to,” she said on a choked
sob.

It was then Jake saw the tears well
in Cassie’s eyes and knew she was in shock.

“If I don't, it'll take control of
me, and I have to be in control. As horrible as this is, if I can't get up and
say, 'Hey, I'm alive. Isn't that great?' I'll cry. And I don't want to cry
anymore. I can't cry anymore, Jake.”

 The full impact of what had just
happened hadn't really hit yet. He was numb and would probably be like that for
a while. But it would hit them both. And when it did, he wanted Cassie to be as
far away from this
safe
house as he could possibly get her.

“Jake, that was no accident.”

“I know. It's not going to take the
Gestapo more than a few minutes to race up this hill, Cassie. Pretty soon, this
whole area will be swarming with Feds. We need to get out of here.”

“Jake, who did this? Who keeps doing
this to me?” She kept gulping for air, and her bottom lip was trembling.
Despite what Cassie had just said, she was going to cry, and she had every
right to do it.

Later.

“Listen to me, Cassie. Are you hurt?”
His voice was firm and commanding. He had to get through to her.

She shook her head stiffly. In a few
hours, they'd both be feeling the effects of rolling down this hill and being
blown back against the trees. He'd find some way to deal with it then.

But not now. Right now, they had to
move.

“Who is doing this to me, Jake?”

“I don't know. We’ll figure that out
later. Can you walk?”

She nodded quickly.

“Good. If you can walk, then you have
to run. You have to run right now. Do you hear me, Cassie?”

“What about the car?”

“We’ll never get out of here with
that car. Hopefully, no one will know for at least an hour or so that we
weren't inside the house when it blew.”

Jake quickly tugged Cassie to her
feet and pulled her through the woods as fast as he could, scraping past low
branches and brush. They had to move fast. In the confusion that was sure to
come, they just might be able to escape.

* * *

Cassie couldn't feel her feet anymore.
They were frozen. The Smoky Mountain night air bit into her skin like a
mosquito on a hot night. She could no longer feel the branches that were
tearing into her skin as they ran. Somewhere deep in her mind she knew it had
nothing to do with the outside temperature. It was just raw fear of knowing she
was being hunted like an animal.

Jake held her hand and pulled her
along. It was too easy to lose each other in the thick of the forest and the
dark of the night, he'd said. In the beginning, she was right up with him,
running alongside, forgetting that she couldn't feel her feet or the squeeze of
his hand as he held hers. After an hour or two—she wasn’t sure how long the
minutes or hours dragged along—she was now lagging behind.

“Shouldn't we try…to make it…to the
road?” she asked, her words coming in short bursts.

Jake finally stopped moving and
glanced back at her. It had stopped drizzling. The clouds had parted and a half
moon had hung itself high above them at some point during the last hour. There
was enough light poking through the bare tree limbs for Cassie to see Jake’s
face, see the hard lines of worry as well as the primal instinct of survival.

“We’re safer hidden in the woods.”

“We don't know where we're going.”

He glanced up at the moon, then turned
his head toward the darkness ahead. “Listen for a second.”

She did as he asked. She’d finally
regained her hearing, but all she could hear was her heart hammering against
her chest and the crack of a twig beneath her sneakers. There were more distant
noises. And owl maybe? She couldn't tell.

“There's the highway. I can't guess
how far, but it sounds like it is coming—.” Jake abruptly stopped as he turned
back to look at her. Cursing under his breath, he pulled off his jacket.
“You're freezing. Why didn't you tell me?”

“I'm fine. I didn’t feel cold when we
were running.”

“I should have noticed.”

He helped her into his leather coat
and began rubbing up and down her arms. The movement stimulated her
circulation.

Her eyes fell to his empty holster.

“Jake, your gun is missing.”

He stopped rubbing her arms and
snapped his attention to his holster, his hand folding over the empty pouch. He
cursed again.

“The leather snap is completely
broken off. It must have happened when we rolled down that hill after the explosion.”

“What are you going to do?”

“We can't go back for it now.
Dammit!”

She pulled the leather jacket tighter
and felt a chill shoot through her whole body.

“We have to keep moving,” he said.
“We should reach the highway soon. We have a better chance of catching a ride
without being detected, especially this time of the night. Tell me the truth.
How are you holding up?”

Her legs ached and a scrape along her
neck was starting to sting and throb. Cassie was thankful she really couldn't
feel her feet. Now that she had a little taste of warmth again, all she could
think about was dropping to the ground and falling asleep.
Not a good sign.

“I'm good to go,” she said.

“That's my girl,” he said with a hint
of a smile.

Less than an hour later, Cassie was
standing by the side of the road watching a tractor trailer slow down to a
stop.

She ran behind Jake as they made
their way to passenger side door. Jake climbed up the rig and spoke to the
driver through the window.

“We’re headed north. Are you going
that way?” Jake asked. Cassie couldn’t hear the driver’s response, but when
Jake opened the rig’s door and reached down for Cassie’s hand, she thought
she’d faint with joy.

Moments later she placed her head
down on a pillow in the back cab of the gigantic eighteen-wheel truck.

“You’re an answer to a prayer,” Jake
had said to the driver when they’d climbed in.

“I’m no answer to anything,” Bernie
had said. “I could use the company.”

Cassie let Jake do the talking. She
took a moment while they talked to look at the driver.

His name was Bernie and he was a
small man with thin straight brown hair that was getting even thinner at the
center of his head. His beady eyes reminded Cassie of a mouse, but his smile
seemed sincere.

Cassie had quietly questioned Jake
about the wisdom of taking a ride while they were walking the road earlier. But
Jake insisted any risk in taking a ride was far less than being found wandering
on the road by the very people responsible for that gas leak. Now that her head
was on a soft pillow, she was infinitely glad that Bernie had found them.

“The cab has a hell of a heater,”
Bernie said. “But just in case you're still shivering, there's a nice wool
blanket on the mattress there, too. Snuggle up and stay warm, why don't ya.
Can't think of why y'all decided to leave home without a warm jacket.”

Bernie was talking to Jake now, but
looking at Cassie through the mirror on the dash. She was wearing Jake's black
leather jacket and she knew it looked ridiculously huge on her. She let the
scent of Jake, and the comfort it brought her, wrap around her like the jacket
as she stared back at the eyes peering at her in the mirror.

“How far up north are you going?”
Jake asked.

“I’m headed to Toronto.”

A spark of an idea that felt like
hope zipped through Cassie's mind. “We're going in that direction. Our place is
in the Catskills,” she blurted out.

Jake's snapped his gaze back to her.
She sat upright in the bed and nodded her head. She could tell by the way his
eyebrows slightly furrowed at the center of his forehead that he knew she was
up to something, but wasn't sure.

“That's right,” Jake said, playing
along with her. After all, they had nothing else but a ride going a few hundred
miles away from people who just tried to kill them.

Cassie couldn't see the driver's face
to be sure if he bought the story.

“Well, it's a good thing I rolled on
by,” he said brightly. “I can take you all the way. That is, if you don't mind
a detour or two for drop off and pick up along the way.”

“No, that would be great,” Cassie
said.
Perfect in fact.

“Don't mind if I mention, you two
look like road kill. I just had myself a few ZZ's at the truck stop a few miles
back. I'm good for another twenty or so hours. Looks like you both could use
some shut-eye though. I'll wake you when we stop for breakfast. I know a good
truck stop that has the best steak, eggs and hash right off the interstate.”

“I appreciate that. Breakfast is on
me,” Jake said.

Bernie haled a laugh that seemed out
of character for a man of his stature. “Well, I hope your wallet is padded,
because I have a hearty appetite.”

“You and me both.”

Jake climbed into the back of the cab
and crawled on the mattress, pulling the blanket over both of them before
settling in close to Cassie. Immediately she was engulfed by his heat.

It was more than just body heat. Jake
was strong and warm and she craved the comfort and protection he provided. He
didn't put his arms around her and it surprised Cassie just how much she wished
he would.

It was probably for the best, she
reasoned silently. Part of her feared the way she'd crumble in Jake's arms if
she allowed herself. She couldn't do it. She had to stay in control.

But there was also this small
fragment of her that wanted to say “to hell with control.” Why couldn't she
allow a man to be strong for her?