Lori spent the next few minutes doing damage control with Nicholas and his dad, making excuses for Chase’s behavior that she pulled out of thin air. “One of the reasons Mr. Chase relates to the campers is that he’s mourning the loss of some close friends earlier this spring. Sometimes he flashes back.”
“I know what that’s like,” Nicholas said solemnly. “Tell him I said sometimes it helps to pinch yourself.”
“I’ll do that.”
Or maybe she’d just pinch him herself.
After she saw the Lancasters off, she loaded up Mortimer and took him back to her dad. Cam invited her over to dinner that night—he planned to grill steaks in the backyard—but she begged off, telling him she already had plans. It was the truth.
She had a blockhead to pinch.
She screeched her car to a halt in a cloud of dust in front of the yurt and she yanked open the door and marched inside without bothering to knock. The blasted man was standing in front of the open refrigerator door. Channeling responsible women everywhere, she snarled, “Don’t just stand there with the door open. You’re wasting energy!”
“It’s not a good time, Lori.”
“Not a good time? Well, bless your heart. I guess when you call Nicholas to apologize for being such a jerk you can tell him it just wasn’t a good time. Shut the refrigerator door!”
“Dammit!” He grabbed a beer and slammed the door and whirled on her. “You are not my mother!”
“No, I’m damn sure not. But neither am I a doormat for you to wipe your feet on.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“You drag me into this dog-introduction business and then you leave me hanging? Ten minutes, Chase. You needed ten minutes to see it through.”
“I know. I’m sorry. Dammit, I’m sorry!”
The torment in his expression served to bank Lori’s temper. “What happened? Why did you throw Mr. Lancaster’s phone at him?”
“I didn’t throw his phone.”
“Yes you did. What’s the deal, Chase? You can’t keep it all inside. You have to talk about it.”
“No I don’t,” he fired back, his eyes closed, standing with his hands clenched at his sides and breathing as if he’d just finished a marathon. “I damned well don’t have to talk about anything. I have all I can handle living with the pictures flashing through my mind.”
Lori’s heart went out to him. He looked so tortured. “Talk to me, Chase. Tell me what hurts you so.”
Before she quite realized he moved, he advanced on her two solid steps. “No. No. It’s ugly, Lori. So black and evil and ugly. Not for you. Never for you. You are … clean. Clean and white and … ah, Lori. As much as I have to remember them, want to remember them, I want to forget it. All of it. I need to forget. Please help me forget.”
Chase backed her against the yurt’s wall and kissed her. It was a desperate kiss, full of pain and loneliness and guilt. His hand lifted to her breast, cupped her, kneaded her. His thumb flicked her nipple and sent electric shivers racing up and down her spine. Chase moaned into her mouth. “Lori. My Lori. Where have you been?”
She tore her mouth away from his. “You left me, Chase. I waited … I waited for you. You gave up on me.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
Then his hand was in her hair, tugging, exposing her neck. His teeth nipped and tugged as he unerringly found those sensitive spots he’d learned eons ago. Sensitive places he’d discovered a lifetime ago. Places no man had found in quite the same way during the years that had followed.
Chase.
She’d missed him. Dear heaven above, she’d missed him.
So she kissed him back.
Her response seemed to release whatever dam held him back and he devoured her mouth with lips that ravaged. His tongue plunged and plundered and took. His hands moved across her body, delved beneath her shirt, and made her shudder and shiver and want. Oh, how she wanted.
He held her pinned against the wall, the evidence of his need hot and hard and huge against her belly. The familiarity of it coaxed a whimper from her throat.
At the sound, he tore his mouth away from hers. He gazed down at her with molten-chocolate eyes that stared straight into her soul. In a voice rough with arousal, he demanded, “Say yes.”
She couldn’t speak. She wished he hadn’t asked. It would be so much easier if he hadn’t asked.
His hands gave her shoulders a shake. “Lori!”
“Yes!” she cried, her voice a little wild. “Yes, Chase. Yes.”
Triumph glittered in his eyes. He lifted her and carried her to his bed where he stripped her naked and made love to her with an intensity that was both familiar and new. She moaned, she thrashed about. As he nibbled and licked his way down her body, when he pushed her thighs apart to allow him access to her core, she threaded her fingers in his thick dark hair and surrendered to the pleasure. As the first climax slammed into her and sent her soaring, Lori sobbed out his name.
When he filled her, when her body clenched around him and gripped him hard, when his thrusting stoked the cinders of her desire back into flame, Lori wondered how she had survived without him.
And as they lay entwined together in the aftermath of passion, her body aching deliciously, the hum of satisfaction singing in her veins, she asked herself the more immediate question.
How would she survive if he left her again?
Long minutes of silence ticked by. She had yet to come up with an answer when Chase’s voice rumbled beneath her ear.
“When I left Eternity Springs the last time, I thought I was headed for Tibet to raft the Hidden River Gorge. It’s the one ride a river rat dreams about.”
Lori went still. She knew about the Hidden River Gorge. His mother had cried on her mother’s shoulder about the trip last January. Lori had looked it up. “The Hidden River Gorge is your Everest.”
“Yeah.”
He rolled over onto his back, keeping her tucked against him as he told her about floods and fears and feuds. He spoke of ignoring his intuition and making a fateful decision to climb onto a helicopter for an unnecessary trip. He spoke of Bradley Austin’s skill in crash-landing the helicopter and David Whitelaw’s youthful confidence in the people back at camp. He painted a vivid picture of the landing zone and walked through the decision to leave it to scout out a campsite that offered some shelter from an approaching storm.
“I picked up my pack and camera bag out of habit. I carried it everywhere. The grass was dense. I hiked for ten, maybe twelve minutes before I started climbing. Needed the vantage point of height.”
Lori waited, her mouth dry, tension zinging on her nerves. It seemed like an hour passed before he continued, though she suspected it wasn’t more than a minute.
“They came up from below and surrounded Bradley and David. Ten men. Armed to the hilt. They were not like the locals who’d worked with us. They looked different. Foreigners, as much as me. I watched them through my long-range lens and for a few minutes, they just talked. I began to think it might be okay.”
He paused again and Lori wanted to tell him never mind. She didn’t want to hear any more. But she knew she had to hear it. She knew Chase had to tell it.
“Then they set the helicopter on fire. Bradley lost it and started yelling. This little short guy took the butt of his weapon and slammed it into his gut. Bradley doubled over and David … well … the kid went Rambo. Tried to wrestle the gun away from the little SOB. Didn’t get the gun but he got in a few good licks. I thought for sure they’d shoot him right then and there.” He sucked in a breath and exhaled a heavy sigh. “Better if they had.”
Chase continued the story, explaining how he had trailed the men and their captives for days, always on the lookout for an opportunity to effect a rescue. “By the third day, I was having trouble keeping up. Staying awake. One time it caught up with me and I slept hard for hours. When I woke up, they were long gone. I picked up their trail easy enough, but I’ll always wonder if I missed my chance to rescue them then. It was the last chance, because when I caught up with them, they’d joined a larger group. It was a training camp. Instead of being outnumbered ten to three, they had us by forty.”
Lori wanted to lift her head and look at him, but she sensed he wouldn’t welcome it. The only movement she dared was to splay her fingers wider across his bare chest.
“Still, I hid and I watched. I’m good in the woods, but I’m still surprised they didn’t sense I was out there. I know that Bradley and David never mentioned a third man. They never gave me up. Otherwise, the bastards would have started looking for me. They’d have found my ass. I hadn’t tried to hide my trail because I figured someone on the side of the good guys would come looking for us. I have to live with that. I escaped and they were loyal to the end. And nobody came. I hoped. I prayed.” He paused a long moment, then in a tight, raspy voice repeated, “Nobody came.”
He rolled away from her, sat up, and grabbed his boxers from the floor where they’d fallen. Standing, he pulled on his shorts and padded barefoot across the room to the sink. He filled a glass with water, drained it, then repeated the action.
Lori sat up and kept the sheet clasped to her chest. She was trying to decide whether to speak or keep silent when he finally spoke again in flat, rapid words.
“They chained them to a post. They beat them. Every single day, they kicked them and clubbed them and beat them bloody. I watched. I couldn’t do a damned thing about it, but I stood witness for them. And … I took pictures. I wanted evidence to show when our rescuers arrived, and besides, it was second nature to me. Taking pictures is what I did. I kept clicking the shutter. Click. Click. Click. I hear it in my sleep now. It was a death knell.”
Lori covered her mouth with her hand. She sensed what was coming.
He stretched out his arms and gripped the counter, his muscles flexing with the force of the action. “The third day in camp, they unchained Bradley and David and stripped them naked. Gave them soap and a pail of water and told them to wash. I thought it was good news. I thought someone was coming for them. I thought maybe the good guys had pinpointed our location by satellite and worked out a deal and there would be a prisoner exchange or something. Those things happen, right?”
For the briefest of moments, he met her gaze. His mouth twisted bitterly. “In the movies, maybe. Not in real life.”
Oh, Chase.
“In real life I was trying to figure out a way to get rescued with them without putting my own ass in the wringer. But then the little son of a bitch from the first day set up a tripod and mounted a video camera on it. They tossed Bradley and David something orange. Jumpsuits. The moment I saw that they were jumpsuits, I knew. Bradley and David did, too.”
“Oh, dear God,” Lori murmured. Because it didn’t feel right to be naked now, she scooted out of bed and pulled on his T-shirt.
He turned around then, his tortured gaze seeking hers. “I don’t know why I didn’t set down my camera. I even changed the lens so I could get closer shots. I took the pictures, Lori. I did it instinctively. I took photos of the bastard as he pulled on a black face mask and spouted some long diatribe in a language I didn’t know.”
He closed his eyes. “I took photos from beginning to bloody end.”
Tears running down her face, Lori crossed the room to him. She wrapped her arms around him.
“So much blood,” he said, his voice cracking. He stood so stiff and still that he could have been another boulder on the mountain.
“I will never forget it. I will never forget them. They were brave, Lori. In the end, they were so brave. And I was such a damned coward, hiding in the rocks. Watching. Taking…”—his voice broke on a sob—“pictures.”
She murmured soothing sounds, stroked her hand across his back, patted him as she would a child.
For a long moment he stood, silent and shaking. When finally he cleared his throat and continued his horrifying tale, anger fired his words. “They burned the bodies. The little SOB kept the camera rolling for that, too. When it was … over. Finally, over … the leader had a long talk with the cameraman. Obviously giving him instructions. He packed the camera in a backpack and he and one other guy headed out of camp. I knew what I had to do. I couldn’t let them upload that video onto the Internet and use my friends for their ungodly cause. I couldn’t let that happen.”
“Of course you couldn’t.”
He shook her off then and began pacing the room like a tiger. “I followed them. I stalked them. I figured I’d have to ambush them. I decided to wait until they were asleep and sneak into their camp and kill them. I had the knife I carry in my pack—the knife Trevor took—so I was going to slit their throats. Turn the tables on them. I imagined it. I pictured every move. I was cold-blooded and ready to kill.”
Lori’s heart ached for him. Tears welled in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks.
“But … I couldn’t do it. I’m not an Army Ranger or a Navy SEAL. I’m a lousy river rat. When the time came, I was too much a coward to do it. A sorry, yellow-bellied coward.”
No, Chase. You’re not a cold-blooded killer.
“I still couldn’t let them get away with the video, though, so I went for the camera. Got sloppy about it and made noise and then the bigger guy was on me with his knife.”
Unconsciously, his hand lifted to the scar across his collarbone. “I got the knife away from him, and I was damned lucky that the little a-hole was slow to wake up because it allowed me to fight them one at a time. I couldn’t have taken two of them at once. I remember … I remember the little guy’s laughter. His partner was dead and we were rolling on the ground and I had sixty pounds on him at least. He laughed. Craziest sound I ever heard. I still hear it in my sleep. He laughed … until he stopped.”
Thank God.
“At that point, it all blurs for me. I went a little crazy, Lori. I threw their bodies off a cliff and I took a rock to the camera and smashed it to smithereens and threw it after the bodies. Then I did the same to my camera. It made me sick. I puked my guts out. It all made me sick. It still makes me sick. I don’t ever want to pick up a camera again.”
“Oh, Chase.” Lori went to him again and wrapped her arms around him. This time, he accepted her embrace and returned it, holding on to her hard. “That’s the most horrible, terrifying, devastating story I’ve ever heard. My heart breaks for your friends and I am so sorry this happened to you. But I am also overwhelmed by gratitude that you survived. That you triumphed.”
“My hands are bloody, Lori. I’m not proud of that part.”
“And I can’t feel bad for them. I am sorry you carry the weight of it, but you killed them in self-defense, Chase. And thank God you did. You absolutely had to go for the camera. You’re a photographer. You know better than most the power that images have, and I’m sure that’s why you realized how important it was to prevent those images from seeing the light of day. Those men were your colleagues. Bradley Austin was one of your best friends. You couldn’t allow their lives … their deaths … to be turned into propaganda. Of course you had to do everything possible to destroy those horrific images. I’m so glad you did and you need to be glad, too. Think about their friends and families and all the people who loved them. You saved them such heartache. Oh, my God, Chase. If I put myself in their place … it would have killed me. And your dad and mom … Ali seriously wouldn’t have survived it.”
Lori stepped back and lifted her hand to his cheek. She waited for his gaze to meet hers, and then she spoke with quiet intensity. “You saved their families, Michael Chase Timberlake. You did that for your friends. You were strong and brave and—”
“I wasn’t brave,” he interrupted. “I was scared shitless.”
“And you acted in spite of your fear. That is true courage, my love.”
His eyes grew watery. His jaw hardened as he clenched his teeth and swallowed hard. “It was the most awful thing.”
“I know, baby. I know. Here…” She took hold of his hand and pulled him back toward the bed. “Lie down with me again. Let me hold you. I need to hold you.”
And, she thought, he needed to be held.
For the longest time, that’s what they did. All they did. And in that silent embrace, they both sought and found comfort. Then, sensing that it was something his spirit needed, she told him of the love and support offered by the people of Eternity Springs to his family during the time that he was missing. She touched upon her own heartache and then described in detail the all-encompassing joy that filled the Timberlake home and soon the entire valley at the news that their prayers had been answered and Chase had been found. “You are loved by many, Chase.”
He rolled up on his elbow and studied her intently. “Does that include you, Glitterbug?”
She reached up and tenderly pushed a lock of dark hair away from his eyes. “I never stopped loving you. God help me, but I never could stop.”
“I know the feeling,” he said. “We were idiots to let it go so easy.”
“Yes.”
“I won’t do it again,” he vowed.
As he lowered his mouth to hers in a honeyed kiss, Lori’s hand stroked up and down his back.
Feeling for his wings.