Shooting Starr (11 page)

Jake looked over at C.J. and let out a breath. “That's it, then. They're off. From here on I guess it's up to you.”

C.J. glanced at him, then squinted off in the direction of the disappearing van. “Yes, sir,” he said.

It was up to him, all right—tell him something he
didn't
know. Up to him not only to keep Caitlyn Brown safe, but to somehow put her life back on its rails. Seemed like a lot to expect of a man most people would have thought was still trying to figure out his own direction in life. C.J. was well aware there were some who'd have said it was
too
much.

They'd have been wrong. C.J. didn't know how he knew that, but he did.

He didn't know, either, how to describe the way he felt, watching that van drive off down the road with Caitlyn Brown inside.
Bigger,
somehow, than he'd felt only a few weeks ago. Definitely older, but also denser…stronger…more like steel than human flesh and bone. Maybe, he thought, thinking of fairy-tales again, it was something like the way one of those knights of old had felt when he strapped on his armor and took up his sword and shield and rode off to find him a dragon to slay.

 

Caitlyn woke from a light doze as the car's tires crunched over graveled ground. All motion stopped, and Eve's touch was a feathery tickle on her arm.

“Caty—honey, we're here.”

She heard Eve's door open and felt the caress of a breeze that carried with it the smell of fall and the feel of evening…a coolness, a softness and the rich brown smell of leaves. Eager for more of it, she groped for the handle and opened her own door without waiting for help, and then she could hear the faint spatter of the leaves as they fell all around her, shaken loose by the breeze. In the distance she could hear doors opening and closing, footsteps and voices and the soft woofs of well-mannered dogs.

She swung her legs around, felt with her feet for the ground and stood up, and then had to clutch the door to
keep from falling. Her head swam with dizziness—a little from car sickness, perhaps, but mostly just exhaustion. Though she'd managed to sleep a little after they'd exchanged the bumpy van for Eve's comfortable sedan in Atlanta, it had been hours since they'd left the quiet and safety of that hospital room. Too long for someone recovering from a head injury to be out of bed.

“Hold on, I'm coming…” Footsteps crunched and Eve's worried voice came closer. “How're you doing, hon'? You okay?”

“Just a little tired,” Caitlyn muttered, hating her swimming head and hollow stomach. This weakness was new to her; she couldn't remember ever having had a sick day in her life before. Not like this. “I'll be okay….”

“It's been a pretty long day,” Eve consoled, in her bright and cozy way, as she hooked an arm around Caitlyn's waist. “Don't try to be brave or sociable, nobody expects you to. You're probably going to want to go straight to bed. Plenty of time tomorrow to start getting acquainted…learning your way around. Hold on to me, now—”

“My head aches,” Caitlyn said in a small voice.
Damn
the weakness.
Damn
the pain. Her ears rang; she drew a shivering breath, on the verge of confessing that she simply didn't have the strength to take another step. She thought how appallingly humiliating it was going to be to collapse in a heap in front of total strangers.

“Here—what the hell are you doing?” The voice was gruff as the welcoming woofs of the dogs, soft as the patter of breeze-carried leaves.

She shuddered and felt the breeze of movement and the warmth of a solid body, and an arm much bigger and stronger than Eve's wrapped itself around her waist. Another hooked behind her legs, and she gave a gasp as she felt herself swept up, then cradled against a heaving chest, a thumping heart. A warm, earthy scent filled her senses,
strange but somehow familiar…a mixture of soap and Southern cooking and diesel fuel and man, and a hint of an aftershave she'd never learned the name of.

“I got you….”

“Put me down,” she said faintly. “I'm too heavy to carry.”

“Shoot, you don't weigh as much as a feather,” C.J. scoffed. But his breathing was quick and sharp, and she was certain he lied.

And yet she couldn't bring herself to struggle, or even argue, not another word. Which ought to have astonished her, alien as it was to her nature to surrender any kind of control without a fight. Except that this didn't
feel
like surrender at all. It felt…nice.

Was it shameful to enjoy this so much—the feel of muscular arms around her and the steadfast thumping of a man's heartbeat against her cheek? If it was, Caitlyn thought with a silent sigh, then so be it.
So be it.

She only knew then that she was weak and he was strong, and it felt
good
to rest her head against his shoulder and let herself be rocked by the rhythm of his long, masculine stride.
Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch
across the gravel…then the hollow thump of booted feet on wooden steps, scuffing and scraping across wood planks, the squeak of an old-fashioned screen door.

Soft voices, kind voices…

“Bring her right on in here this minute, son. Poor little thing…I expect she's about worn-out.”

“Sammi June's room's all ready for her, C.J. It's the one closest to the bathroom, and she'll be next to me so I can look in if she needs anything. That's the second—”

“I know which one it is,” C.J. said with an impatient-sounding grunt. “It was mine before it was Sammi June's.”

“Are you hungry? I've got roast chicken and butter beans and mashed potatoes 'n' gravy and squash pie out in the kitchen….”

They were all murmuring the way people do when they're trying not to wake up a sleeping baby. Caitlyn was neither one of those things, and it took just about that long for her pride to bestir itself from its unaccustomed dormancy. Her body arched and stiffened—a silent demand—and either C.J. understood or she'd caught him by surprise, because after the first instinctive tightening against her struggles, his arms relaxed and she found herself upright and on her own two feet.

Though none too steadily. As her world tilted on its axis, she clutched at one of those arms with one hand while she held out the other and said in as firm a voice as she could muster, “Hi, thanks so much for having me. I'm Caitlyn Brown.”

The hands that sandwiched hers were small-boned but warm and strong. From a level considerably below hers, a no-nonsense voice crooned in the distinctive music of the South, “Well, we're glad you could be here. I'm Calvin's momma. Call me Betty.”

Caitlyn blinked and adjusted her gaze downward. For no good reason that she could think of her eyes were stinging again. “Thank you,” she whispered, then faltered. She could think of nothing else to say. She feared she was one good peppery sneeze away from bursting into tears.

“And I'm Jess—C.J.'s sister. One of 'em, anyway.” The hand that claimed hers next was bigger, longer-boned, its touch cool and sure. The voice, with a more muted accent, came from higher up, maybe even a little above Caitlyn's five foot seven.

So, she thought, his mother is short and his sister is tall. “You're the nurse,” she said, smiling. She felt a painful little bubble of fear.
I wonder what they look like. They're so kind…I wonder if I'll ever see their faces.
She imagined them both with C.J.'s chocolate eyes and dimples…golden hair for the sister, silver for the mother. She imagined them beautiful, to match their voices.

“Would y'all like to come on out to the kitchen and have some supper?” Betty asked. Her touch was warm on Caitlyn's elbow. “Eve, you'd better stay and have a bite.”

“Thanks, but I need to be getting home.” Eve's voice, from somewhere close behind Caitlyn, interrupted by a rustle and a breeze and the brush of a body…the soft murmurs and barely audible grunts people make when they hug “Before my kids forget they've even got a mother. I haven't seen much of them lately. Mmm, thank you so much, Betty…Jess.”

Then it was Caitlyn's turn to be caught up in a brief but fierce embrace. Eve's hair, smelling faintly of lemons, tickled her cheek, and her voice said huskily next to her ear, “Caty, honey, you're going to be
fine.
You take care, now—I'll come see you soon….”

Caitlyn's mumbled thanks were swallowed up in the general babble of goodbyes and you-come-back-nows, and then Eve was gone, her leaving punctuated by the bang of the screen door.

Kind voices haggled good-naturedly over her, discussing her wants and needs as if she weren't there, the way people do with small children:

“Let's everybody come on in the kitchen, now, Caitlyn needs to sit down. You all can do with some supper—Calvin, I know you love my squash pie—”

“Momma, she's tired. She might just want to go to bed.”

“Well, some soup, then. Build up her strength. Some soup, and—oh, I know, how about some hot cocoa? That's what Granny always used to fix us—”

“I think I would just like to go to bed,” Caitlyn interrupted in a thin, unnatural voice. A child's voice. “If that's okay…”

A child was exactly what she felt like—a very small, bewildered child, lost in a vast darkness. She wanted nothing more than to crawl into a corner, curl herself into a terrified ball and howl until her parents came to find her.
Surrounded by well-meaning strangers, she wanted only to hear a familiar voice, feel familiar arms around her, the touch of gentle, loving hands.

“Of course it's okay. Momma, I'll just help her up—”

“Well, okay then, you go on. I'm going to make her a cup of cocoa. I'll bring it in a bit.”

“You think you can make it up those stairs, hon'? Here—put your arm around my waist. C.J., if you take—”

“I've got her,” C.J. growled.

There was an instant of silence, then the push of air, warm and dense…and there were those arms again, seeming almost familiar now, one around her waist, the other behind her legs. She was lifted, and there was the same sharp, rapid breath blowing puffs at her temple and the same steady heartbeat thumping under her cheek. She caught a whiff of that half-forgotten aftershave, and the other C.J. smells…and somehow those were already familiar to her, too.

The terror receded a little, but not the darkness. And not the urge to cry.

S
he couldn't give in to it. Not now. Not here.

She tightened her lips and muttered, “You don't have to do this.” There was no answer. She could feel his chest and belly bunch and tighten, hear his breathing deepen as he took the stairs at a quick and steady pace. “You're going to kill yourself,” she said grimly, breathing almost as hard as he was.

He let go a huff of laughter that sounded faintly wounded. “You don't have a whole lotta faith in me, do you?”

“I don't mean to insult you, but it's not like you're an athlete or something. You drive a
truck.
”

And yet, all along her side was the unmistakable resilience of firm masculine muscle, and somewhere in the neighborhood of her bottom she could feel the flat, rigid plane of a belly that carried not even a hint of a trucker's gut. An image rose in her memory…a long, lean form pacing across the barren concrete apron of an abandoned gas station. And the way he'd faced her, the angry-cat tension
in him—a hissing, spitting fury one blink away from drawing blood.

Not
too
lean, though; his arms felt rock solid and steel strong. And—how could she have forgotten?—she remembered the way he'd overpowered her and so easily taken her gun away.

Plus, they'd reached the top of the stairs, and he hadn't dropped her or keeled over yet.

“I keep in shape,” he muttered. She heard and felt the impact of his foot against a door. Her head reeled as he twisted his body and swung her around to carry her through it.

Before her head had stopped spinning, she heard a faint grunt and felt the bump of a mattress under her bottom…and before she was in any way ready for it, a fearsome emptiness all around her. Panic caught her up like a midsummer Iowa dust devil, taking her breath away. Strange that she should be so terrified at the thought of being left alone when only moments ago she'd thought that was what she wanted most in the world.

“Calvin—” she blurted out, and heard a startled grunt in response. She rushed on, desperate to keep him there if only for a moment longer. “I heard your mother call you that. Okay, so now I know what the
C
stands for. What about the
J?
”

“James.” It was gruff and short, but at least he hadn't withdrawn from her any further. Listening hard, she heard the whisper of a reluctant exhalation. “After my dad. The Calvin comes from my grandaddy—on my momma's side.”

“Calvin…” Caitlyn murmured it again, drawing it out slowly to divert his attention away from her momentary lapse of poise. The absurd attack of panic was ebbing. Now that she could be reasonably certain she wasn't going to be abandoned in the next second or two, she felt thoroughly ashamed of her neediness.

I'm only blind, after all, she scolded herself. I'm not a child. I'm a grown woman. I am not helpless. I just can't see.

C.J. was glad she hadn't been able to see him wince. His annoyance with her had evaporated. He wasn't sure where it had come from and was glad to let it go. Ashamed now of caring about which name she chose to call him, he stood looking down at her, thinking how small and hunched she looked—like a sick canary with those feathery tufts of blond hair sticking up out of the bandages around her head. Wishing he knew what to do for her. Wondering if he should go. Wanting to stay.

“I'd rather you didn't call me that,” he said. “Momma's about the only one still calls me Calvin.”

“Why? What's wrong with it?” Her eyes lifted, searching for him, but only made it as high as his chest. He could feel their touch there, a patch of prickly warmth as if he'd rubbed it with that salve his high school football coach used to use for sore muscles. “I loved that comic strip—what was it called?—the one with the little boy and his make-believe tiger?”

He thought about sitting down beside her on the bed, then decided he'd better not, not with sensory memories of the weight and shape and warmth of her body still burned into his muscles, nerves and sinews. He shifted his weight awkwardly instead. “Yeah, I did, too—used to doodle little cartoon pictures on everything, kind of like my signature, I guess.”

“So?”

“So…I don't know. What was a pretty cool name when I was a little kid didn't seem so cool for a grown man.”

She tilted her head to one side while she considered that. While he considered what it was about her and this conversation that was making him feel less like a grown man than he had in years. “So, why didn't you just shorten it to Cal?”

“I did, for a while in high school. I think I picked up the idea for the C.J. from my brother Jimmy Joe—he'd taken to calling his boy J.J., and well, you know…I thought it was—”

“Cool?”

He gave a little snort of laughter. “Yeah.”

She smiled at him—or at his chest, rather—and he smiled back. And then it came to him that for the first time in his life he was in a situation with a woman where his smile and his dimples weren't going to be of any advantage to him.

Before he had time to mull that over in his mind, he noticed that Caitlyn was rubbing her hands back and forth over the bedspread she was sitting on, sort of stroking the delicate slipperiness of it, feeling it with her fingers in a way that made his mouth go dry. Her head was tilted to one side and there was an expression on her face he couldn't read.

“Did I hear you say this room used to be yours?”

Then he realized what the look on her face was. She was teasing him. Unexpected delight gathered in his chest like bubbles in a glass of soda pop.

“Yeah,” he said, letting his grin leak into his voice, “but that was a while ago. The decor now is all Sammi June's—that's Jess's daughter—”

“You told me about her. You said she's away—in college?”

“That's right.” C.J. snorted. “Here and I thought you were asleep when I was telling you that.”

There was a pause while he watched a smile hover over her lips, the way he'd once watched, with breath suspended, a butterfly light on his finger. Then, hushed and husky, she asked, “Tell me the truth. Is it
pink?
”

In the same kind of voice, teetering on the edge of laughter, he intoned, “Oh,
yeah.
”

“Rosebuds?” It was a horrified whisper.

“Nope. Butterflies—little bitty yellow ones.”

“I had tulips.” She sighed, and her smile took on a wistful quality that made her seem even younger than she was. “Pink ones—two different shades, hot and baby—with green leaves.”

He didn't know whether it was the smile or the silvery sheen that had come into her eyes, but all at once C.J. had a tightness in his throat and a tingling behind his eyes and nose. This, naturally, prompted the typically masculine urge to get the hell out of there before he did anything to disgrace himself. He was trying to think how to do that without coming across as a heel or a craven coward when Jess came in. He almost kissed her, he was so relieved.

“I brought up your things,” Jess said as she set the small sports bag she'd brought with her on the foot of the bed.

“Can't be much.” Caitlyn was groping for the bag with one hand. “The clothes I was wearing, um, before, I guess? They gave me the basic necessities when I was in jail, and Mom brought me some things in the hospital, but—” She stopped, and C.J. saw her throat move as she swallowed. Her eyes darted back and forth, and there was a desperate look in them now, as if, he thought, they were trying to find a way out of a trap.

“Well, I, uh, guess I'll leave you two to figure things out,” he muttered, backing up until he bumped into the bedroom door, which he grabbed on to as if it was the only oar in a sinking rowboat. “I'm gonna, uh, I'll just…okay, well, I'll be down in the kitchen if you need me.”

If you need me?

As he made his escape Jess was saying to Caitlyn, “Don't you worry about a thing, I'm sure we can find you anything you need. You're welcome to borrow Sammi June's clothes—she isn't gonna mind a bit. You look to be pretty near the same size.”

His sister had the situation well in hand, it appeared. What he couldn't figure out was why he didn't feel happier
about things turning out the way he'd planned. Maybe it was selfish, but he hadn't planned on and didn't much like feeling useless.

He went downstairs to the kitchen and found his mother standing by the stove stirring a big pot of butter beans. She looked around when she saw him, and her face lit up the way it always did when she set eyes on someone she cared about, even if it hadn't been but a few minutes since she'd seen them last. Unless she happened to be displeased with that particular person at that particular moment, of course. That was the great thing about Momma, C.J. thought—she never left you in any doubt as to what her feelings were.

“Sit down, son,” she ordered as she put down the spoon and picked up a potholder, and C.J. did so with no arguments. His stomach had begun to growl with his first whiff of that roast chicken, and he watched hungrily as his mother took a plate out of the oven that was already piled high with chicken and mashed potatoes and what looked like fried okra. She added a spoonful of beans and then ladled some gravy over the mashed potatoes and set the plate in front of him.

Mumbling, “Thanks, Momma, looks good,” he picked up his fork and dug in. The first bite tasted so good he caught himself making little humming, crooning noises. His mother chuckled. “Granny Calhoun used to say you know the food's good when you start singin' to it.”

He grinned and took a big slug of milk, then said, “Guess I was hungrier than I thought I was.” He was thinking about Caitlyn, up there in the dark, wondering if maybe she was hungrier than she'd thought she was, too. He thought he might take her up a plate, soon as he was finished….

While his mother was getting herself a glass out of the cupboard and pouring it full of buttermilk, he found himself looking around the kitchen, taking in the usual clutter of lists and notes stuck on the door of the fridge with magnets,
the pencil and ink marks on the pantry door frame where everybody's height had been measured since long before C.J. was born, the sweet potato plant in a macramé sling left over from the seventies hanging over the sink and the row of late tomatoes ripening on the windowsill, the red teakettle on the back burner of the stove and the drainer that was never empty of dishes. He'd seen all those things so many times without thinking much about how they might look to a stranger, caring only about the warm fuzzy feelings they brought into his heart.

Now, though, everything looked and felt different to him. Instead of the familiar warmth there was a strange sweet sadness inside him because of one particular stranger upstairs who couldn't see any of it, and he wondered why he regretted that so much. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine himself being in that room and not able to see it. He thought how he'd describe it for somebody blind….

“You tired, son?” His mother's voice was gentle.

He shrugged away the sweet sad thoughts and didn't try to explain. He looked down at his plate, saw it was empty and pushed it away. Across the round oak table from him his mother sat quietly watching him and sipping at her glass of buttermilk. She'd take buttermilk, he remembered, when her stomach needed settling down—during stressful times, mostly. He cleared his throat and shifted awkwardly and wondered why it was so hard to tell somebody you love a whole lot how much you appreciated what they were doing for you.

“Momma,” he finally said, “about Caitlyn—” Then he picked up his milk glass and set it back down and frowned at it. “I really do appreciate you doin' this. I mean—”

His mother waved a hand the way she might've batted at a fly and made a sound he couldn't have spelled if he'd tried, then added, “Lord knows it isn't the first time I've taken in something or someone you kids figured needed watching out for.”

“Yeah,” C.J. said, “but you never had to deal with somebody blind before.”

“Phoo. Granny Calhoun was mostly blind, there at the end.”

“Granny was old, didn't do much but sit in her rocker. Caitlyn is—”

He broke it off, and his mother prompted, “Caitlyn is…?”

But he didn't know what it was he wanted to say, so he snapped, “Well, she sure ain't
old.
”

He waited for her to scold him for saying ain't, but she just looked at him and after a while she set down her buttermilk glass and said, “I know who she is, son. I've seen the news, read the papers. I know she's President Brown's niece. I know she's the one you told me about that hijacked you last spring.”

C.J. scowled at the glass he was turning round and round on the placemat in front of him and cleared his throat a couple of times. “So,” he finally said, “if you know all about her, how come you're still willing to take her in?

His mother took a sip of buttermilk. “I said I know who she is. Didn't say I knew all about her. The question is, do you?”

He lifted his eyes and studied her face long and hard, but for once in his life he couldn't figure out what she was trying to say. After a minute or two she rose, picked up her glass and carried it to the sink. She took a plate out of the cupboard and picked up a pie server, and while she was cutting him a big slice of squash pie and topping it with a spoonful of whipped cream, she said with her back to him, “You know the fact she's kin to the president doesn't carry much weight with me. Any more than the fact that she hijacked you and your rig at the point of a gun.” She whipped around to face him and pointed at him with the pie server, and her look was the one that could put the fear of God in a guilty man's heart. “Not that I approve of what
she did, mind you. You told me she said she did it because she believed she didn't have any other choice, that she feared for that woman and her little girl's lives. Calvin James, tell me the truth, now. Do you believe her?”