Page 10 of Mean Streak

“Too bad. Otherwise you could have shot me instead of attacking with your fingernail and a butcher knife. It would have taken less energy.”

Again, he was making fun of her. She struck back. “Was yours a violent crime?”

His grin dissolved. No, not dissolved, because that denoted a gradual fade. His levity vanished in an instant, that corner of his mouth dropping back into place to form the firm line it usually was. “Extremely.”

His blunt reply filled her with desperation and a wrenching sense of despair. She wished he had denied or mitigated it. Still clinging to a vain hope, she said, “If it was something you did during wartime—”

“It wasn’t.”

“I see.”

He gave a harsh laugh. “You don’t see a bloody thing.”

He stood up so suddenly, she nearly jumped out of her skin. In reaction, she shot to her feet, sending her chair over backward. When it crashed to the floor, she cringed.

He stepped around the table, picked up her chair, and set it upright with angry emphasis, banging the legs against the floor. “Stop jumping every time I move.”

“Then stop scaring me.”

“I’m not.”

“You are!”

“I don’t mean to.”

“But you do anyway.”

“Why? I’m not going to hurt you.”

“If that’s true, then let me call my husband—”

“No.”

“—and tell him that I’m all right.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“We’ve been through this. I’m tired of talking about it.

I’m also tired of going outside to pee against a damn tree, which I’ve been doing all afternoon so I wouldn’t disturb your rest. But now I’m going into the bathroom to use the commode and grab a shower.

Make yourself at home. Snoop to your heart’s content,” he said, spreading his arms wide at his sides. “The place is all yours.”

He collapsed the screen with several loud claps of wood against wood and set it in its original position against the wall. “It stays here.”

At the door of the bathroom, he switched on the light, but before going in, he turned back. “You wouldn’t make it ten yards beyond the door before getting lost, and I don’t feel like going after you tonight. So deep-six any plans you have to bolt.”

Then he went into the bathroom.

As soon as he’d closed the door behind him, she retrieved the laptop from the sofa, where he’d placed it when he set the table for their supper. She sat down with it at the dining table, raised the top, woke it up, and placed the cursor in the box for the password.

Her fingers settled on the home keys. And stayed there. How could she possibly guess what his password was when she knew absolutely nothing about the man? Not his name, birthday, hometown, occupation, hobby. Nothing.

She tried dozens of combinations anyway, some with military themes, most of them ridiculous, but, as expected, none was successful in unlocking the computer.

“Damn it!”

“No luck?”

Startled, she turned around in the seat of the chair, not having heard him leave the bathroom. He was wearing only his jeans and was carrying his boots, socks, and sweater. If she’d thought he was intimidating before, he was even more so like this. Damp hair. Barefoot. Bare-chested.

Flustered, she turned back to the laptop, none too gently lowered the cover, and stood up. “Go to hell.”

“You said that already.”

“And I meant it.”

She walked around him and headed for the bathroom.

“I saved you some hot water.”

She slammed the door and went to flip the lock, only to discover there wasn’t one.

Longing for a shower, lured by the clean smell of his soap and shampoo but afraid of being naked, she settled for washing out of the basin with one of his damned neatly folded washcloths. She dabbed it against her blood-matted hair, but it did little to break up the scab and, besides, it hurt.

Hanging on a hook on the back of the door was the flannel shirt she’d slept in last night. She’d changed back into her running clothes before he’d returned that morning, but now she couldn’t resist replacing them with the shirt.

She also yielded to the temptation of using his hairbrush on the parts of her head not affected by the sore goose egg and scab. However, the intimacy implied by that was unsettling. She cleaned her teeth with her index finger.

She switched out the light before opening the door. He was sitting in the recliner, reading a paperback book by the light of the lamp. In her absence, he’d put on a plain white T-shirt and white socks. He didn’t raise his head or otherwise acknowledge that she was there.

She slipped between the sheets and removed her tights, then rolled onto her side to face the wall.

A half hour later, he turned out the lamp. She was still wide awake and acutely aware of him as he approached the bed. She squeezed her eyes shut and held her breath.

Wild with fear, she mentally chanted, Please don’t, please don’t, please don’t .

But alongside that silent plea for him not to molest her, not to kill her, was another, equally strong, that he not disappoint her.

It was stupid and inexplicable, but there it was.

For reasons that had nothing to do with fear, she didn’t want him to be a degenerate, a rapist, a murderer, or in any way deranged or evil.

“I know you’re awake. Look at me.”

Except for her heart hammering against her ribs, she lay unmoving.

The mattress dipped when he placed his knee near her hip. Alarmed, she rolled onto her back and gasped when he planted his hands on either side of her shoulders, bridging her body, blocking her view of the rafters, that worrisome metal bar, everything except his face.

“When the weather clears, I swear to you that I’ll take you down the mountain. I’ll see to it that you’re safe. Until then, I won’t hurt you. Understand?”

Incapable of speech, she bobbed her head once.

“Do you believe me?”

With absolute honesty, she whispered, “I want to.”

“You can.”

“How can I, when you won’t answer the most basic questions?”

“Ask me a basic question.”

“What’s your name?”

“What’s it matter?”

“If it doesn’t matter, why won’t you tell me?”

“Trust me, Doc, you go meddling in my life, you won’t like what you find.”

“If you didn’t want me to meddle you shouldn’t have brought me here.”

He came as close to smiling as he ever did. “You’ve got me there.”

She analyzed his features, searching for clues into the terrible thing he’d done. It was a strong face, unrelievedly masculine, but evocative of mystery more than menace. “Why are you hiding from the authorities?”

“Why does anyone?”

“So they won’t get caught.”

“There you have it.”

“As a law-abiding citizen, I can’t simply—”

“Yes you can,” he said insistently. “You can simply leave it alone.”

Suddenly she was tired of his veiled threats and decided to challenge him. “Or what? What will you do? You’ve promised not to hurt me.”

Even had she not been able to see his eyes in the darkness, she would have felt them, taking in her mouth, throat, the open neck of the shirt. They moved as low as the vee of her thighs before coming back to hers.

She held her breath.

He whispered, “It wouldn’t hurt.”