and touched his sleeve. “Uh, look,” he said in an undertone, even though he was sure Alex could still hear him, “she’s upset, but I think she’ll be okay. But you should know, the reason she’s upset-that woman, the driver of the Jeep, tried to run my van off the road. Rammed me from the rear, first, and when that didn’t work, she tried to come at me from the side. She was in the oncoming lane when a car came from the opposite direction. I hit the brakes, and she swerved to avoid a head-on, lost control and went over the side. You need to tell the CHP-make sure she’s taken into custody.”
The EMT nodded gravely. “I sure will. But your friend, here, she could be in shock. You might want to keep an eye on her.”
“I’ll do that,” Matt said. “You can count on it.”
He waited until the EMT had gone to join his partner over by the wagon, then swiveled back to Alex. She was still sitting on the hard ground, with her forearms resting on her drawn-up knees. He said her name and she raised her head and looked at him. Just looked at him. Then slowly shook her head. Obscurely frightened, he reached out a hand to touch her arm. And found that she was shaking. Not great, huge shudders that would be visible to someone looking at her, but fine, vicious tremors that seemed to come from the very ground she sat on.
Truly alarmed, now, he tightened his hold on her arm and lifted her up, pulled her to him. She came without a sound, crawled into his lap and looped her arms around his neck and hid her face against him like a bereft child. He didn’t know what to do, he’d never seen her like this before. Not Alex, his Alex, who never showed grief or pain or fear, and who, if she’d ever cried at all, had only in his experience cried tears of anger. And wasn’t crying now, though it was clear even to him that she needed to.
Overwhelmed, he held her and stroked her hair and murmured comforting things to her, all the while wondering what in the world was wrong. Was it just some kind of shock, as the EMT had warned, or had she been so afraid for him…or so afraid of losing him…A shudder of emotion rippled through him and he almost laughed.
And gentleness clearly wasn’t working.
“Hey,” he said sternly, “talk to me, Alex. Now. Come on…” He bumped her head with his chin and tried to push her away from him-or pretended to. And it worked.
She gave a settling-down sort of shiver, then spoke at last from the depths of the nest she’d made for her face in the hollow of his neck and shoulder, in a low, husky voice. “She tried to kill you.”
“Yeah, she did,” he said with a snort. “And damn near killed herself in the process. She’s gonna pay for it, don’t worry.”
Alex shook her head, and brought up one hand to cover her eyes, even though they were already well hidden. “Not this-
“Shh…sure you can. You can tell me anything, you know that. So, come on. She tried to kill me…before? When? How could-” He stopped. The words, his breath, even his heartbeat seemed to have frozen inside him.
He gripped her arms and did push her away now, forcing her far enough away from him so he could see her face. And it was a mask of tragedy, lips bruised and trembling, eyes shut tight. As he watched, tears oozed from under her lashes and ran in rivers down her cheeks. He gave her a quick, hard shake and said in a terrible voice, “Tell me, Alex.”
Again, she shook her head. And moaned, as if the anguish inside her was simply too much to bear. Then… abruptly, she drew herself up. Pulled in a shuddering breath, and another…held it and finally the words came, all at once, in a rush.
“The day you fell-your accident-it wasn’t an accident. She did it, Mattie. Eve did something to your gear. She wanted-tried-to kill you. Because of me. All this-it was
She didn’t stop even when Sam came over a little while later to see what was wrong, and to report that Eve had been arrested and taken to Bakersfield, where there was a county hospital that had a prison ward.
Matt just nodded and muttered, “Good…that’s good.”
Sam bent over to look at him with uncertain and worried eyes. “Matt, is she all right? Are you?”
He blinked her into focus, still in a state of shock himself, probably, the pain not quite reaching him yet. He gave a shaky laugh. “I think so. Yeah. I think we’re gonna be okay, now. We will be…”
Sam made her way back to the van in a state of bemusement, letting autopilot steer her through the crowd of EMTs, CHPs and assorted helpful bystanders and looky-loos, now beginning to disperse. She found Cory sitting on the floor in the open doorway of the van with his head resting against the frame, looking exhausted.
He lifted his head to ask the question with his eyes, and she went to him and kissed him. “She’s okay. He’s okay. They’re both…I think…more than okay.” She sat beside him, being careful not to jostle his injured shoulder and ribs.
They sat in silence for a few minutes. Then Cory began to laugh, silently and with very little movement. Sam looked at him and said, “What’s funny?”
“Oh God, no, not funny-but ironic, maybe.” He looked at her, then put his good arm around her shoulders and drew her close. “I was just thinking…about when I went after you, after the Philippines, remember? Chased you down at your mom’s place in Georgia.”
“How could I forget?” Sam said softly. “And afterward…that’s when it all came out-about you and your family. You were finally able to remember, and tell me what happened.” She closed her eyes and drew in a shaky breath. Remembering the emotional roller coaster of that day…the terrible pain, and the indescribable joy. “You should see them, Pearse. I can’t…” A tear rolled down her cheek and she brushed it away. Laughed a little. “It’s like watching us, the way we were that day. It was so hard. But afterward…”
He kissed the top of her head. “Afterward, we weren’t two separate people anymore. It was like we’d been through a crucible that melted us down and remade us into one.”
“Trust you to use a word like ‘crucible,’” Sam said huskily. “But yeah, that’s what it was. I think this might be theirs. Pearse, I wonder…is it always so hard? Does everyone have to go through this kind of stuff before they can be happy together?”
“I don’t know.” He paused. “But this business of finding my family is turning out to be a bit more dangerous than I thought. Sam, I never meant for all of this to happen-you know that.”
She laughed and leaned gently into him. “Yeah…but you’d do it again in a heartbeat, you know you would. And don’t forget-we still have two to go. The little girls.”
“Oh, I’m not forgetting. I don’t know, though-maybe I should let Holt handle it next time. When I do it, people keep getting hurt. What do you think?”
“I think,” Sam said tenderly, “that when he does find them-and he will-you’ll want to be there, even if it kills you.”
Cory laughed-then winced. “Ow-don’t say that…”
It was late when Alex and Matt drove up in front of Alex’s house. They were both in Matt’s van, Sam having volunteered to drive Alex’s SUV back to town. Naturally, Cory had elected to ride with her. The two of them were tucked in at their motel down at the riverfront park.
“Maybe we should have gone to the motel, too,” Alex said as she sat looking out the window at her pine needle-strewn walk, and the wooden steps leading up to her front porch. “I don’t have a ramp.”
“Not on your life,” Matt said. “We’ll manage.”
A shiver of strange pleasure ran through her as she opened the door and climbed out of the van.
She waited while Matt descended in the chairlift, then walked beside him as far as the steps. There they stopped. Matt studied the steps for a moment, then said, “Here, hold my chair steady.”
She watched, swallowing the protests and suggestions that leaped instantly into her mind, while he pushed himself out of the chair and lowered himself onto the nearest step. Then pushed himself up to the next step. He looked at Alex, grinned and barked, “What are you waiting for? Bring me my chair, woman!”
Her chest grew tight with the emotions that seemed to be running amok inside her at the moment, and she couldn’t even trust herself to give that the answer it deserved. She hauled his chair up the steps and onto the porch without saying a word. She was maneuvering it into position so he could reach it, when there came a frantic scratching and whining from behind the front door.
“Oh gosh,” she said, “that’s Annie. What in the world? Here-” She thrust the chair aside and dug in her pocket
