Shooting Starr (16 page)

 

That night, for the first time since the shooting, Caitlyn dreamed of Ari Vasily. Or rather, she dreamed of being chased by cloaked, faceless men, and the sound of gunshots zipping past her, and all the people she loved in the world falling down around her, one by one, in pools of thick crimson blood.

She awoke drenched in sweat with her head pounding so fiercely she feared for a moment C.J. was right, and that she had after all contracted some awful flu bug as a penance for dumping them both in the pond. Her weakness frightened her. She was so recently out of the hospital and her customary confidence in her own good health so badly shaken that she wavered on the brink of rousing Jess.

But as she lay rigid, trying to work up the courage to get out of bed, her galloping pulse slowly receded and so did the throbbing in her head. She drew long, measured breaths and concentrated on relaxing every part of her body, but she knew it was no use trying to sleep again. Every time she closed her eyes she saw those puddles of blood…viscous and unimaginably
red.

She got out of bed, taking the bedspread comforter with her, and felt her way to the rocking chair. She pulled it close to the open window and sat curled up in it with her feet under her, wrapped in little yellow butterflies dancing on a field of pink, until she heard the birds begin to chirp in the dawn.

 

She didn't want to tell C.J. about the dream. She wouldn't tell him. Damned if she would. It was a dream, and she wasn't a child; she didn't need anyone to soothe her nightmares away.

She didn't need
him.

But the feel of his arms around her, warming her wet, shivering body like a warm fire on a wintery Iowa evening…of his mouth, cold and hard on hers. The memory of those things was like a haunting and annoying phrase of music that had stuck in her brain and kept recurring when she least expected it, no matter how hard she tried to push it away….

 

It was Sunday. They were returning from their walk, strolling slowly along the grass and gravel lane, side by side but not touching, each occupying one of the low, graveled tracks where the tires ran, separated by the grassy hummock between. It had been scary for her the first time they'd done that, and she'd reached for him across the median, needing the touch of his hand to give her courage. Gradually, though, she'd stopped feeling as though she were about to fall off the edge of the world, and learned to judge her way by the feel of the gravel under her feet and the rise of the ground on either side of the path. She was learning to walk with her head up and the sun on her face and the morning breeze in her hair.

Normally, those things would have made her smile, drink deeply of the winey autumn air and quiver inside with that recurring and always unexpected happiness. This morning, she smiled, but the muscles of her face felt pinched and achy, and the restless emotion that vibrated through her wasn't joy.

No, she ruthlessly told herself, I won't tell him about the dream. I don't need him to comfort me. I don't need him to hold me. I don't need— Oh, God…I can't.

They were approaching the yard. She knew that because there was shade from the oaks and hickories that sheltered the house, and because the dogs had left them and gone off to their favorite nap spots in the flower beds. She veered onto the grass that grew along the sides of the lane, kept neatly mowed by Jess to the place where the ground rose
to the pasture fences. There she knew, because C.J. had told her, began the riot of yellow sunflowers and black-eyed daisies and goldenrod and tall grasses headed out with waving plumes, the thickets of scarlet sumac and tangles of pink and purple and white morning glories, all laid out in a glorious harmony no human floral designer could ever hope to match.

“I want to pick some flowers to take back to the house,” she announced, breathless for no reason, holding her hands out in front of her and finding nothing. She'd taken several reckless, unsteady steps toward the fence when she felt C.J.'s body brush against her back. Her breath caught and her heart gave a scary lurch.
I can't let him touch me…I can't let him hold me again. I can't.

“Whoa, hold up,” he murmured, his voice a vibration near her ear. She felt his arms extend along the outsides of hers. “Okay, now…turn to your left, about…ten o'clock. Couple more steps…now you've got it…feel that?”

She nodded and gave an uneven cackle of laughter as she felt leaves prickle her hands and then the sturdy stalks of goldenrod…the spindlier stems of some sort of flower. A grass plume tickled her face and drifted into her mouth. She spat it out and waved it impatiently aside, focusing with all her concentration on what her hands were feeling.
Seeing with my hands…is that what I'm doing?
A strange, fierce excitement rushed through her, sanding her skin with goose bumps.

C.J. made a gruff sound, the beginnings of words, and she silenced him with a shake of her head and a sharp “No, don't tell me. Let me do it….” as her fingers climbed as talk of goldenrod and found the feathery yellow plumes. She let them trail through her fingers. They felt silky soft, delicate as lace. She measured an elbow's length down and broke one off, then two more. Her insides quivered, emotions as finely balanced as drops of dew on the edge of a leaf.

“I can hold those for you,” C.J. offered, but again she shook her head, forcing his nearness from her mind.

Her fingers were busy, following a slender, slightly furry stem to its terminal.
Yes!
There it was—a daisylike flower. She broke it off with her right hand and added it to the collection in her left. With a little burr of tension humming in her chest she picked daisies—sunflowers?—until she couldn't find any more, then seined the air with her hands until they snagged the tickly plumes of grass that had teased her face at first.

Oh, but the grass leaves were sharp and left her hands and forearms stinging with tiny cuts, and the stems were tough and resisted her efforts to break them. She straightened, brushing tickling leaves—or bugs? Flies? Bees?—away from her face and gave a small grunt of frustration.

“Let me get that for you.” C.J.'s warm shape brushed her back…her shoulder…her arm. His clean, familiar scent mingled with the dusty smell of weeds and grass in her nostrils. It took all her willpower to hold herself still. Trembling, she listened to the squeaky, popping sounds the grass stems made as he broke them, knowing that if she turned her face toward him, his would be right…
there.
In her mind a vision rose, indistinct and soft with lavender shadows—crinkly brown eyes, a lock of sandy hair falling over one, a sweetly smiling mouth.
Dimples—yes, I remember now…he has dimples.

“Looks nice.” His voice was much too near as he added the stems of grass to her bouquet. “Think you've 'bout got enough?”

For some reason she couldn't answer him. Gathering the sheaf of flowers and foliage close to her chest, bugs, prickles and all, she felt her lips part, then close again.

“Ready to go back to the house?” A hand was firm and warm on her elbow.

She nodded but didn't move. A shudder rocked her. “I dreamed about Vasily last night.”

Her eyes burned and the shivers were sweeping through her in waves, deep inside where they wouldn't show. And now she knew why the nightmare had upset her so and why she hadn't wanted to tell him about it. Why she dreaded needing him so. They were shivers of shame.

She heard a breath taken and released, and C.J.'s arm came across her shoulders. She slipped away from that gentle promise of comfort and stepped carefully from the grass to the gravel…then across the center ridge of grass…more gravel, and then the leaf-strewn grass that began the broad sweep into the yard and under the trees. She felt him moving beside her, but he didn't speak and didn't touch her again. She tried to fool him with a soft, breathy laugh.

“It's the first time, can you believe that? The first time since the shooting.”

“Can't see how that's a bad thing,” C.J. said. His hand on her arm as he guided her around a tree trunk had a diffident, tentative feel. “He wouldn't be pleasant to dream about.”

She felt a solid, but giving, bump against her hip. Her searching hand caught at the rope attached to the old tire as if it were a life preserver rather than a child's swing. She fingered the rope and leaned into it casually, swaying a little to disguise her relief at finding something to hold on to. Something to give her her bearings. From here it was exactly twenty-two steps to the front porch.

C.J. watched her sway slowly in the dappled light, one arm hooked around the rope of the swing, the other cradling sprays of grasses and sunflowers and goldenrod. But though pollen from the goldenrod spangled her hair and cheeks and the shoulders of her sweatshirt like pixie dust, it wasn't fairies and fantasies he thought about when he looked at her now. And though the bottom edge of the sweatshirt played peekaboo with her slender and supple flesh when she lifted her arm, he didn't think about how firm and soft it would feel…not then. There was something weighing her
down—a misery, a sadness he could almost see, as if a heavy net had been thrown over her. He wondered, he hoped she'd tell him what it was, if he was patient enough not to rush her.

“I haven't…” She hesitated, and he held his breath; her voice seemed to come from a great distance, from across a chasm he didn't know how to cross. “I haven't even thought about him, about…the shooting. Even when we've talked about it, I haven't really
thought
about it. Felt it—” she let go of the rope and touched her chest “—in here.”

“That's understandable.” He found himself moving toward her—toward that chasm—and made himself stop. “I guess you've had one or two other things on your mind.”

She tilted her head toward him and gave a brittle laugh. “Yeah? What's the second one?” He stared at her, not understanding, and she made a disgusted sound and began walking away from him. Pacing, rather; he could hear her counting under her breath as he quickened his own pace to catch up with her.

“I've been thinking about
me
—that's all.
Myself.
Being blind. Worrying about whether I'm going to see again. Oh,
damn.
” She halted and threw up her arms with a cry that was half a sob. “Where
are
they?”

Ignoring the question, which made even less sense than the rest of what she'd said, C.J. said in bewilderment, “Jeez, Caitlyn, why shouldn't you? That's a hell of a lot for anyone—”

“Yeah?” A look—silver daggers—slashed past his shoulder. “So I'm blind—big deal. At least I'm
alive.
What about Mary Kelly? Where is she? She's
dead.
” Her eyes darkened, and without their silvery flash her face became a mask. She turned away from him, thickly muttering, “Where are the damn steps? I counted—they should've been here. Dammit, where—”

“Your vector's a little off,” C.J. said with dazed relief. This, at least, was something he could deal with. “You
missed by about ten feet. If you come around to…oh, say two o'clock—”

She came around, all right, but not toward the house. She kept right on coming until the sheaf of wildflowers whacked him in the chest, and her face, uplifted to his, was a mask of grief. “Mary Kelly's dead,” she whispered through lips that barely moved. “I had her blood all over me. I didn't—I never—”

Her face crumpled. With an anguished cry she turned and stumbled away from him, fleeing blindly across the lawn, leaving wildflowers scattered like jackstraws at his feet.

H
e was sitting in the front porch rocker when his mother came out with her Sunday dress on to tell him she was heading off to church.

“Well, aren't those pretty,” she said when she saw the flowers in his lap.

He nodded glumly. “Caitlyn picked 'em.”

“By herself?”

“Yep.”

“Bless her heart.” His mother moved to the top of the steps. “Where is she?” she asked, surveying the empty yard. “I didn't hear her come in the house.”

The chair creaked as C.J. tipped it forward. He stared down at the flowers dangling between his knees and muttered, “I don't know, she's out there somewhere.”

“By herself?”

“Yep.” The chair creaked again as he leaned back in it and defiantly met his mother's mildly disapproving look.

“You think that's a good idea?”

He shrugged and scowled down at the wildflowers, no
ticing as he did that they were looking somewhat the worse for wear. He picked at a floppy daisy and his heart grew heavier. “Probably not. However, she definitely does not want me with her. She's grieving,” he said, and took a long breath that didn't do much to ease the tightness in his chest. “For Mary Kelly.”

“That's the woman that was killed?” C.J. nodded. “Well,” his mother said after a moment, “she needed to.” She settled herself against the porch railing and hooked her pocketbook over her arm as if she meant to stay awhile. “I expect she'd like some comfort, though, no matter what she told you.”

“It wasn't what she said,” C.J. said bleakly. “It was the way she looked.” He was surprised when his mother laughed and made a “shame on you” sound with her tongue.

“Son, I'm afraid you don't know very much about women.”

He didn't like hearing that, even if it was true. “Well,
shoot,
Momma,” he said, bristling, “I know enough to know when I'm not wanted—or needed.”

“You do, do you?”

He was getting tired of being the source of his mother's amusement but knew better than to say so. Instead, he whacked the flowers across his knee without much regard for their condition and muttered bitterly, “That is the strongest, most independent, stubborn and bullheaded—”

“Whoa, now. That's a lot for one woman to be, and not necessarily all bad.”

“Well, it ain't all that good, either,” C.J. growled.

“So,” said his mother, ignoring his grammatical lapse, “I guess that means you'd like a woman to be weak, clingy and wishy-washy?”

He snorted, though he could feel a lightening of his spirits and a grin trying hard to break through. “After growin' up in this family? Momma, I've never even
met
a woman
who fit that description.” He paused to think about it, and the heaviness settled back around his heart. “
No,
I don't want that. Of course I don't. I just want—”
What any man wants.
He stopped, frustrated, because he didn't know how to say it. Or didn't want to say it, not out loud.
To be needed…wanted. To be, for one person, at least, big shot…superhero…knight in shining armor…the alpha and omega. The light in one particular woman's eyes.

“You want to be her hero,” his mother finished for him, but her voice was gentle and for once her eyes weren't smiling.

He let his breath out in a gust of exasperation. “Momma, you're always sayin' that, but that's not what I mean. It's not what I mean at all.” He aimed a scowl at her and hoped he was going to be able to tell her what he did mean without making a damn fool of himself. No man wants to look like a fool, even to his momma. “I'd be happy just being her friend, if she'd let me. All I want to do is help her get through this. Sure, I'd like to be able to fix everything for her, put everything back the way it was. And, okay, I know I'm not gonna be able to do that, but at least I'd like to—” he swallowed hard, lifted a hand and finished lamely “—
be
there for her. You know?”

“Calvin.” His mother straightened up and walked over to him. Her hand rested briefly on the back of his neck, then moved to his shoulder and gave it a little squeeze. “What on earth do you think being a hero
is?
”

He looked up at her and frowned. And what did she do? Just smiled back at him, then turned and started down the steps. He was about to yell at her in protest for leaving him with an exit line like that one, but after the first step she stopped abruptly and hesitated a moment before turning halfway back to him. The protest he'd planned died on his lips; the look on her face was one he'd never seen before.

“Son, your daddy was a hero to me every day of his life. Did I need him to take care of me? I most certainly
did not. I was a strong and independent woman when I met him—I had a college degree and a good job teaching school. Did I
need
him? No more than I needed sunshine, and air to breathe. He worked hard, your daddy did—he was away a lot, driving trucks, and Lord knows it's a good thing I'm as strong and independent as I am or I don't know how I'd ever have been able to raise seven children with him gone so much of the time. But he loved me and he loved his kids, and let me tell you, he never thought he was too much of a man to fix a meal or change a diaper or put a load of laundry in the washing machine, either! Lord knows he had his faults. He wasn't perfect, but that didn't matter.” She paused, a fierce light shining in her brown eyes and spots of color showing through the face powder on her cheeks, and when she spoke again her voice was husky and uneven. “I'll forgive a man a lot, for his eyes lighting up every time he sees me.”

She stomped on down the steps and around the corner of the house to where the cars were parked and didn't look back or wave goodbye.

C.J. sat where he was with his forearms on his knees and a bunch of wilted wildflowers drooping in his hands and watched her car back out onto the lane, then head off toward the highway. After a while he took a big breath and brushed at something that was crawling down his cheeks—some kind of bug, he told himself.

Yeah, that's what it was. Had to be.

 

Scaredy-cat, Caitlyn scolded herself. The voice in her head kept time with the scuffing sounds her feet made as they felt their way along the gravel track, like a schoolyard taunt:
Scaredy-cat, scaredy-cat, 'fraid of the dark.

She wasn't afraid of the dark. Or she never had been before, even as a child. She remembered playing with her cousins, Eric and Rose Ellen, on Aunt Lucy's farm, where, far away from city lights, on moonless nights the Milky
Way made a shimmering path across an inky black sky. She remembered playing games of hide-and-seek in the big old barn on nights when clouds hid even the starlight, and the darkness was like a blanket across her face, and they'd taken delicious shivery delight in scaring each other silly.

This is no different, she told herself.
It shouldn't be. Why should it be, just because it's the middle of the day and I can feel the sun on my face and the autumn breeze in my hair? It shouldn't be, but it is.

For one thing, the scary things lurking in this darkness weren't giggling children poised to jump out at her and yell, “Boo!” They were evil men with guns and no compunction about using them to snuff out the life of an innocent young woman…a little girl's mother.
Or mine.

And in this darkness there were no farmhouse windows ablaze with light, beacons to guide her home. In this darkness she was all alone.

You don't have to be.

The whisper inside her head was enticing…insidious. She squelched it ruthlessly. She couldn't allow herself to think like that, even for a minute. She didn't dare.

She wondered now if she'd dreamed of Vasily last night for a reason. Because C.J. had kissed her, because it had felt so good to be held and to walk with his arm around her. Because it was so tempting to give in, abdicate responsibility, let someone take care of her, let someone
else
take care of Vasily. Only, she couldn't do that. This was her trouble, her battle, her war, and she couldn't risk the possibility of anyone else getting hurt fighting it for her.

She could learn to live with being blind, if she had to, but she could
not
live with that.

The dream remained vivid in her mind's eye as she shuffled along the lane that ran between fields of hay and stubble, and although the autumn sun was a toasty burn across her shoulders, she shivered. Once again she could hear the bullets making angry zapping sounds as they whizzed past,
missing
her….
Once again she saw the bleached faces of people she loved lying in pools of thick red blood, dead eyes staring up at the sky—Mom and Dad were there and Aunt Lucy and Uncle Mike, Eric and Ellie. It shocked her now to realize that one of the faces was C.J.'s.

What had she been thinking, to run away from him like that?

You wanted him to come after you, answered the traitorous voice inside her head.
You hoped he would.

As before, she slapped the voice away, but not before she heard it jeeringly ask,
Well, why didn't he?

I shouldn't be doing this, she thought, quickly redirecting her thoughts.
It was selfish. I shouldn't be out here alone.

She felt as exposed as a duck in a shooting gallery. What if Vasily's men were out there now? What if they'd been watching her? Just been waiting for their chance to grab her?

If they get me, she thought, then Jake will have nobody to use as bait to catch Vasily. He'll get away with it—with killing Mary Kelly. He'll get away with everything!

I shouldn't be here. I have to go back.

But where was “back”? She'd long ago lost count of her steps. And now she realized that she wasn't walking on the gravel lane and that the ground under her feet was spongy with thick layers of fallen leaves. Oh, Lord—she was in the woods, she had to be. She'd never tried to orient herself or count footsteps in the woods—it was too big, too cluttered, too confusing. All the tree trunks felt alike. Now sapling trees slapped at her and their huge dying leaves rustled like dry bones as she brushed them. An exposed root rose up beneath her foot; she gasped and, stumbling, threw out a hand and scraped her knuckles on bark.

It came upon her so suddenly, as if she'd triggered a trap, one of those nets that fall out of nowhere and instantly immobilize:
fear.
Fear that had nothing to do with stalkers and snipers and nightmare visions of blood. This was fear
as old as humankind, instinctive fear of the darkness and the unknown. Icy sweat sprang from her pores and her skin shivered. Fine hairs rose along her arms and shoulders and the back of her neck. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears, so it was a moment before she realized the whimpering sounds she kept hearing came from
her.

Something rustled through the branches above her head and fell with a
thump
nearby. Adrenaline shot through her and in her panic she pushed away from the relative safety of the tree and fled, stumbling through thick drifts of leaves on legs that felt like melting rubber, arms thrown up to protect her face, her breath like sobs. A thorny vine caught at her, tore her clothing and slashed her skin, and she fought it as desperately as if it had been a wild animal attacking her with intelligent intent. Trying to elude it, she turned this way and that, becoming only more hopelessly confused, more terrified, more lost. This was worse than being lost in darkness—she was lost in
nothingness,
populated by terrors of her own imagining.

How long she thrashed and stumbled through the woods she didn't know—probably no more than minutes…seconds, even. It seemed like hours. Like forever.

It ended abruptly when her foot sank into a hole left by a long-decayed stump. Pain shot through her; she pitched clumsily forward, half falling, half stumbling as she instinctively fought to forestall the inevitable. Then, suddenly there was an embankment, studded with moss-covered rocks and rotting logs—and down she went. She rolled…and slid…and bumped to a stop.

For a few minutes she lay as she'd landed, on her back, feet downhill on a steep incline. She felt oddly peaceful now; the terror, the nightmare panic, seemed to have vanished as quickly as it had come upon her. Covering her face with her forearms, she began to laugh silently—partly from relief, but mostly with chagrin and shame. She'd panicked—utterly and completely panicked. Never in her life
had she done such a thing. She felt unbelievably foolish. Unforgivably stupid.

As she listened to the quietness fold itself around her she realized that it wasn't
silence
—she could hear the musical tinkle of running water. She put out an exploring hand and felt cold liquid slide through her fingers. And now…yes, she could feel wetness soaking into her jeans on one side.
The creek.
She was lying on the edge of the creek, partly in the stream, which was barely a trickle this time of year.

At least, she thought, I know where I am now. She'd been to the creek with C.J. enough times; surely she could find her way back to the lane from here.

But when she tried to stand, the pain she'd forgotten about exploded through her leg. She gasped. Her head reeled and she sat down much more abruptly than she'd intended. Breathing hard and swearing fiercely, she rocked herself back and forth while she took stock of her situation. Oh, yes, she remembered stepping in that hole, now.
Stupid…stupid.
But she didn't think her ankle was seriously injured—probably only sprained—and if she could manage to crawl out of the creek bed, she might be able to hobble—
No.
She mentally slapped a hand over her mouth.
Caitlyn, haven't you done enough stupid things today?