The Night In Question Page 8

  He was still gripping her shoulders. Without letting go of her he twisted his wrist just enough to glance at his watch. Then he did release her.

  “If they’re on schedule, Willa’s group should be showing up soon. I’ll get the binoculars focused and ready, Jules, but first—” He bent down easily and picked up the fallen knife, one-handedly levering the small but wicked-looking blade into its handle before holding it out to her. A corner of his mouth lifted. “You know, I’m pretty sure you nicked me, honey. But I didn’t feel a thing at the time.”

  Numbly she allowed him to deposit the small weapon into her palm. As he turned away to retrieve the binoculars she slipped the switchblade into her back pocket with trembling fingers, her thoughts chaotic.

  What had just happened between them? she thought shakily. If they’d been here under any other circumstances, right now he wouldn’t be calmly adjusting a pair of binoculars a few feet away and she wouldn’t be standing around like a statue. Under any other circumstances what he’d told her would already be happening—he’d be driving her out of her mind and she would have brought him to his knees.

  She felt the hot color mount her cheeks and turned almost angrily away, grateful for the brisk hilltop breeze that had chilled her earlier. Except they weren’t here under any other circumstances, she told herself sharply. There would never be any other circumstances between them. He was the man who could help her get her daughter back, and that was where her interest in him began and ended. For some reason, although she doubted almost everything else he’d said, she found herself trusting in his estimation of the situation—that for now, and while she was with Barbara, Willa was safe. And some part of her accepted the rest of his theory too, she admitted unwillingly.

  While she’d been in prison, it had been more bearable to hold on to the conviction that Kenneth’s murderer had been a faceless stranger than to allow herself to consider that someone close to her could have claimed four victims. She couldn’t let herself think that that someone was still out there, perhaps a part of her daughter’s life, because in prison she’d been powerless to protect Willa. But she wasn’t in prison anymore. She wasn’t powerless anymore. And this time Max Ross was working with her, not against her.

  But that was as far as it went, Julia thought edgily. That was as far as she could afford to let it go.

  “I think I hear them.” He was beside her, and as she turned he dropped the strap of the binoculars over her neck, lifting her hair out of the way as he did. “Train the glasses on that clearing. They usually take a play break there before heading back.”

  “You—you’ve watched them from here before?”

  Julia raised the lenses to her eyes, her mouth suddenly dry and her stomach seemingly alive with butterflies. Any minute now she would see her, she thought tremulously.

  A terrible possibility occurred to her, and she wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before. The binoculars slipped in her damp hands, and Max reached around from behind her to steady them.

  “I’ve kept an eye on her. I made it my business to know their routine, and at least once a week I ran a surveillance on her, just to make sure everything was still okay. Don’t worry, Jules, you’ll recognize her. She looks like her mom, only tougher.”

  A weak bubble of laughter escaped her. He’d known what she’d been fearing, Julia thought in surprise—he’d known, and he’d even managed to make her see how unlikely her fears were. She felt a quick rush of thankfulness that he was here with her, and then she forgot everything and everyone as she too caught the sound of children’s voices drifting faintly upward and she trained the binoculars on the far-off clearing.

  But it wasn’t a child that burst into sight first.

  Like a small golden bomb, a puppy exploded out of the woods and tore into the clearing, the leash he was dragging behind him clearly visible. The laughter got louder, and the next moment the previously deserted little picnic area was suddenly filled with children of all ages and sizes, their shouts of excitement and their outstretched hands only encouraging the small canine runaway to speed even more quickly around the fenced-off clearing, as if he was enjoying the chase as much as they were.

  But amid the tangle of flying arms and short, pumping legs, Julia’s eyes saw only one small figure.

  “Willa,” she breathed. “Oh, kitten-paws, is it really you?”

  Max had been right—through the magnifying lenses the little girl seemed as close as if only a few feet separated them, instead of half a mile or so of hilly terrain. She was wearing a bright pink T-shirt and a pair of baggy dungarees that she kept impatiently hitching up at the waist, and two flaxen plaits flew around her head as she raced after the puppy with the others, her blue eyes alight with excitement.

  Julia felt the tears streaming down her face. She’d grown so big, she thought with a pang. When she’d last seen her, Willa had been four years old and only just emerging from babyhood. There’d been a round chubbiness to her limbs and her cheeks that had made her seem at times like a puppy herself. Now her legs had a tough wiriness, and her eyes seemed to fill her whole face.

  Was it her imagination, or was there a shadow dimming the exuberance of that cornflower-blue gaze? she wondered anxiously.

  She was being foolish, she knew. It’s just that you’ve got two years of worrying to catch up on, she told herself in shaky remonstration. Two years of your heart stopping every time she took a tumble, two years of imagining the worst when you couldn’t hear her moving around at night, two years of bandages and warm milk and kisses on scraped elbows.

  “Two years of not being there for you, precious,” she whispered, keeping her burning gaze on the pink-clad figure reaching out for the trailing leash. “But I never stopped loving you. Don’t ever think that, kitten-paws. I was in a place where I couldn’t see the sky, but you were my sun every morning when I got up and my moon every evening when I fell asleep. I never stopped loving you. I never will.”

  She was dimly aware of the group of four or five adults who had entered the clearing and were calling to the still-tumbling children with more indulgence than admonition in their voices. But even the slim, laughing figure of Barbara didn’t take her attention away from the child her heart had hungered for for so long. Willa was healthy and loved, Julia told herself. She was a normal little girl, living a normal life. The shadow she’d thought she’d seen in those blue eyes was a trick of the light, a product of her own feverish need to get her child back. For now, as Max had said, Willa was perfectly safe….

  Except that wasn’t true, she thought slowly. No matter what had happened, she was still Willa’s mother, and she knew that wasn’t true. Icy dread washed over her, and the premonition she’d been trying to ignore for the past few minutes rose up, nightmarish and immediate, to the forefront of her consciousness.

  Willa was in terrible danger. Her daughter was in danger right now.

  She swung around to Max, the binoculars falling from her nerveless fingers and slamming against her chest. She saw the incomprehension in his eyes as she started to push past him, felt his hand on her arm holding her back. She looked up at him frantically, and knew that the burgeoning terror inside her was plainly visible on her face.

  “Jules, what’s the matter?” There was sharp concern in his voice. He glanced across the treetops to the far-off clearing by the gorge, and then back at her. His tone softened. “She’ll be with you again one day soon, Julia. I know it’s hard—”

  “She’s in danger, Max!” She attempted to wrench away from him, but he held her fast. “Let go of me, for God’s sake! Willa’s in danger right now—and I have to get to her!”

  Chapter Seven

  “How do you know she’s in danger?” Max’s eyes darkened in confusion. “Did you see something?”

  “I don’t know how I know!” The helpless words burst from her in agitated frustration. “But I’m her mother! I just know. Damn you, Max, I have to go to her!”

  “You’d never get there in ti
me.” A muscle in his jaw jumped, as if some of her fear had transferred itself to him. “For God’s sake, it’s an hour’s hike from here to there even without crossing the river. By the time we arrive they’ll all be back in their cars and on their way home. She’s perfectly safe, Julia. They come on this outing every weekend and nothing’s ever happened—”

  A thin, far-off scream ripped across the rest of his words. Julia whirled around, bringing the binoculars up to her eyes so convulsively that they jarred against her cheekbones.

  She didn’t feel them. She didn’t feel Max’s arm around her, or hear his sharply indrawn breath. She stood on the edge of the hill and watched in terror as her world shattered into a thousand slicing pieces around her.

  “Dear God—no!” The unconscious prayer came from her numb lips in an agonized moan.

  Again, the chilling tableau she was looking at seemed to be taking place only a stone’s throw away—the renegade puppy, trembling and abject now, held firmly in the arms of an older child, the stark terror on the face of a mother herding the group of children over to a nearby picnic table, the gaping emptiness in the wooden fence at the edge of the gorge where it had given way.

  Julia inched the binoculars downward. Her heart stopped beating.

  About ten feet below the crumbling edge of the steep cliff—the edge that the fence had been erected to cordon off—a pink-and-denim-clad figure hung suspended over the gorge. Even as Julia’s fingers gripped the twin barrels of the binoculars Willa suddenly seemed to lurch downward a foot or so before jerking to a halt. Blue eyes fluttered closed in the small white face.

  One of the shoulder straps of her overalls was caught on a massive root that protruded from the sheer face of the cliff. Far below her, creamy rapids tumbled and spilled over jagged rock.

  “Someone’s going to have to rappel down to her.” Max’s voice was terse. “They’ve got that extendable dog lead. It should be long enough.”

  Julia didn’t take her eyes from the scene. A movement at the edge of the cliff drew her attention. It had been two years since she’d seen her sister-in-law, but unlike Willa Barbara hadn’t changed much at all. The silky dark hair was still held back at either side of the delicate face with plain silver clips, and she was wearing the same kind of pastel twinset with a heathery tweed skirt that Julia remembered as her preferred mode of dress. But right now her hands were bunched into fists at her mouth, and the soft brown eyes were wide with terror as she looked frantically around at the small group of parents surrounding her.

  In disbelief Julia saw them, one by one, uncomfortably avert their eyes from Barbara’s beseeching gaze. The only man in the group turned away stiffly, grabbing the hand of a small boy and moving farther from the broken fence.

  “No one’s moving!” she gasped. “No one’s doing anything!”

  “I can see that.” His words were clipped with anger. “And your sister-in-law looks as if she’s about to faint.”

  “Babs has a phobia about heights,” Julia said automatically. “She can’t even climb up a stepladder without passing out from fear. But why isn’t anyone else even trying?” She wrenched the glasses from her face. “Max, I’ve got to get over there—”

  He was no longer beside her. A few feet away from her, he was slinging the duffel bag over his shoulder, his features tight. Even as she looked at him she saw him draw an implement from it, his jaw set with determination. He unsheathed the tool in his hand with one grimly swift motion, revealing a shining blade.

  “Machete,” he said briefly, meeting her eyes. “I’m going to take the straightest line I can, and this might help with the undergrowth. I only pray I’m in time.”

  “I’m coming with you.” Julia took a quick step toward him, but before she could take a second he was in front of her.

  “No. I need you here.” He looked out over the trees below. “I don’t have a compass. Whenever I come out into a clearing I’ll look for your signal. If I’m still on course, raise both your arms straight up—I’ll see you if you keep away from the bushes. If I’m not, wave me back on track.”

  “Dammit, Max—I’m not going to just stand here practicing my semaphore skills while my daughter’s in jeopardy!” She darted a lightning glance back at the faraway gorge.

  He reached out and pushed a stray strand of hair away from her forehead, his gaze locked on hers. “Honey, waiting here is how you can help her the most.”

  He was right, she thought hopelessly. Damn him, he was right. She felt the tears gather behind her eyes, and blinked them away furiously.

  “Then go,” she rasped, her throat thick with fear and pain. “Go to her, Max. Save my little girl for me.”

  “You don’t have to ask,” he said softly. “You never have to ask me, Jules. Remember that.”

  Before she could respond he dropped a quick kiss on her parted lips, and then he was gone, running through the underbrush and down the steep slope of the hillside as surefootedly as a wild animal. The trees closed around him and Julia raised the glasses to her eyes again.

  Nothing had changed. Her daughter, as motionless as a marionette with its strings cut, still hung on the root, although it seemed to Julia’s anxious gaze that the woody protrusion had bowed a fraction more since she’d last looked. The rest of the children were still huddled, white-faced and crying, around the picnic table. And still no one had moved to help her child.

  Even through the binoculars it was possible to see the sick terror etching her sister-in-law’s features, Julia thought, swallowing dryly. But although some part of her wanted to scream at the top of her lungs at Babs to pull herself together, most of her impotent fury was directed toward the rest of the adults.

  Barbara’s crippling shyness and reticence were only two facets of her timid personality, but underneath her protective shell of self-consciousness and constraint was a warm and loving heart—and from the first moment she’d laid eyes on her newborn niece, she’d given that heart to Willa. It wasn’t Barbara’s fault that she was paralysed with fear, Julia thought hopelessly. She just wasn’t physically capable of overcoming her terror.

  Even as the thought went through her mind she froze. With the ball of her thumb she adjusted the focusing knob on the binoculars, unable to believe what she was seeing.

  Barbara had shrugged out of the cashmere cardigan that was part of her twinset, throwing it down carelessly onto the ground beside her. The next moment, her face pale and set, she was reaching around to the back of her tweed skirt and unzipping it.

  What was she doing? Julia’s eyes widened as she saw her sister-in-law—a woman so painfully shy that she’d never even owned a bathing-suit—shove the bulky tweed skirt past her slim hips and step out of it. She was wearing a pair of chastely white cotton briefs that were less revealing than high-cut shorts, but even so, her bare legs seemed almost shockingly exposed. Before Julia could accept what had just happened, she got another and greater shock.

  Picking up her skirt and snatching the nylon dog lead from one of the seemingly frozen bystanders, Babs marched over to the picnic table. She squatted beside it, tied the lead to it and stood up again. Looking down, her hair a soft cloud obscuring her features, she wrapped the tweed skirt in a protective pad around her waist before beginning to cinch the bright yellow rope securely over it. Julia saw her fingers flying as she tied a series of knots, and then Barbara’s hands fell to her sides.

  Without hesitation, she walked to the break in the fence at the edge of the cliff.

  “But—but you’re afraid of heights, Babs,” Julia whispered hoarsely, her heart in her mouth. “You’re terrified of them—you won’t be able to go through with this!”

  Barbara turned her back to the sheer drop beyond the damaged fence, and now Julia could see her face again. The brown eyes closed briefly and then opened wide. The bloodless lips moved.

  Even if she’d shouted the words out she was too far away to have heard her, Julia thought tremulously. But through the binoculars it was perfectly poss
ible to read her lips.

  I’m coming, Willa. Don’t worry, darling—I’m coming for you.

  Barbara grabbed the rope in both hands. Across the distance that separated them, her eyes seemed to look directly into Julia’s. Then, her delicate frame as tense as steel wire, she walked backward over the edge of the cliff.

  Julia’s vision blurred. Shifting the binoculars just enough to dash the tears aside, she kept them focused on the perilous journey of the lionhearted woman who was attempting to save her child.

  Babs was wearing sturdy-soled moccasins. As she carefully played out the rope between her hands, her feet searched for and found what little purchase they could on the crumbling cliff-face. She planned to come down a foot or so to the right of Willa, Julia saw, her teeth sinking tensely into her bottom lip. And she just might make it—

  Babs shot suddenly downward. She jerked to a halt just as abruptly. Julia saw her eyelids flutter, and her grasp on the rope slip slightly.

  Wrenching the glasses upward, Julia saw three women, quicker-witted than their companions, brace themselves against the picnic table to keep it from sliding any farther on the pine-needle-littered earth. Even as they did, the lone male in the group reappeared, running along the path that led to the clearing.

  She’d misjudged him, she thought weakly. Coiled around his forearm were lengths of oily rope, obviously hastily retrieved from the trunk of a vehicle. As he lashed the picnic table to the trunk of a tree with one of the ropes she looked back at Barbara.

  Her sister-in-law was inching slowly downward again, and now she was close enough to Willa to touch the unconscious child. Julia saw the indecision that played across her fragile features, and knew what was going through her mind.