Queen, page 15
“Come on, bitch, move!” Virgil yelled above the sound of the wind, and grabbed at her coat sleeve.
Queen balked, and in that instant Virgil staggered from the unexpected jolt of her immobile body and fell backward against an overloaded limb. Snow shifted, instantly blinding him by the miniavalanche that fell across his face.
Queen bolted. It was now or never, and dying in the snow was preferable to dying at this man’s hands. Her long legs sank deep, struggling as she ran to get out of sight before his vision had time to clear.
The bullet slammed into the tree beside her head. She stopped in midstride, sinking to her knees in weary defeat as he fired one more round to emphasize his point before he started forward.
“Oh, God,” she moaned, and covered her face. She hadn’t made it, and he’d already warned her what he’d do if she tried such a stunt.
The thought of a bullet to the head was suddenly an attractive alternative to what was about to occur, and Queen tried to crawl forward, hoping that he would simply shoot and get it over with. It didn’t happen.
Anger burned in Virgil’s brain. Sanity disappeared behind the need to control and dominate. He shifted the rifle to his other hand and reached down, yanking Queen from the snow only to slam her down onto her back. He kicked viciously, and when she dodged and returned the action, it only made him laugh. He liked the fight. He liked the pain. It was what made him hard. It was what made him come.
“I think it’s time,” he said. Anger warred with the need to make her pay. It made him careless. He dropped the rifle behind him into the snow and started fumbling at the front of his pants. Just thinking about sinking himself into her hot, wet depths blinded him to all but the deed at hand.
Queen saw his hands moving across his crotch and kicked again, only this time she connected with flesh and bone. Virgil’s knee buckled, and he roared wildly with anger and pain as he struggled to stand. Furious with the fact that she’d drawn first blood, he grabbed the handgun from his jacket and aimed at her head.
Flat on her back, Queen stared up through the swirling snow into the barrel of the weapon. This wasn’t the way she’d planned to die. She closed her eyes and prayed he was a good shot.
Cody’s lungs burned from inhaling the cold. His eyes watered constantly, forcing him to swipe at them continuously with his bare hands, trying to keep his vision clear and his focus on the swiftly disappearing tracks before him. He ran until he could no longer feel his legs, and then he switched into the same mode of semiconsciousness that he’d used when he’d walked out of the desert on a broken bone. If one didn’t think of pain, it would become nonexistent.
Snow quickly covered the black cap of his hair and then just as quickly melted from his escaping body heat, running down across his face and into the neck of his coat and shirt.
Every few minutes he would stop and listen intently, his eyes trained on the landscape and the thick trees, ever searching for additional clues that would tell him where they had gone. The wind moved across the floor of the forest, constantly shifting and changing the surface of the cold, blowing snow. He cursed, refocused on the obliterating tracks, and started forward, again on the lookout for something to give him hope.
The shot came without warning. It was loud, and it echoed over and over beneath the heavy cover of trees until Cody was so disoriented, he couldn’t tell its original location. And then the second shot followed, and for a moment he lost all hope.
“Oh, God,” he muttered, tried not to think of the implications, and started running as a fresh spurt of adrenaline shot through his system.
The tracks were gone. All he was doing was running on instinct, moving through the snow with nothing but guts and determination to guide him.
And then he heard her scream and took fresh heart. At least she was still alive. He couldn’t consider the conditions. He could only hope that when he found her, she’d still want to live. He’d seen what the madman had done to his house. Queen had obviously put up a terrible fight before being overcome. He didn’t want to think of the repercussions she might have suffered because of it.
He burst into the clearing on a run and then staggered as he came to an abrupt halt between two towering pines, staring at the scene before him.
The man was huge and seemed even more so because of the hooded parka and the layers of clothing he wore. He loomed over Queen, who was lying stretched out on the snow. Cody groaned, calculating the distance between them to be just under fifty yards. Using a handgun in this low visibility was going to play hell with his odds of helping her in time to prevent further injury.
And then he saw her in the snow, silent, unmoving, and he started forward, afraid that he’d found her too late. He kept telling himself that surely God wouldn’t…couldn’t…let him get this close only to find that he hadn’t been able to stop the inevitable.
He realized that they were unaware of his presence. He saw the man kick at Queen and then drop a rifle into the snow as he began fumbling at the front of his pants.
A rage exploded, blinding Cody to all but the sight of a man in the act of violation. He shoved his hand into his pocket, pulled out his semiautomatic pistol, and aimed as he began to run.
He fired two shots in rapid succession and stopped the progress of everything, changing the texture of the world around them. Now something more than fear had been added to the drama. Death had come calling and was waiting to see whom it would claim as bullets ripped through the air between the two men.
Cody drew a deep, shaky breath and stopped just inside the clearing, only yards from the man, who had bucked from the bullet’s sudden impact. He had been hit. Expecting to see the man stagger and fall, Cody was shocked to find that it only seemed to enrage him further. The man roared, and then picked up his rifle and shook it above his head in a taunting gesture as he began to run toward Cody, who stood his ground and continued to fire.
Virgil had forgotten he still held the rifle. He’d didn’t know there was a shot in the chamber he’d forgotten to fire. All he could think of was getting to the man and removing that look on his face. He put one foot in front of the other and kept slogging through the snow, unaware of the snowflakes that were beginning to coat his face and beard, giving him the appearance of a yeti, a mythological half man, half beast, dressed in human clothing.
The second shot hit Virgil high on the shoulder. He screamed in pain as he heard the bones break. The rifle fell from his useless fingers, and still he ran. The third shot hit him in the leg.
He paused and staggered, and for a moment Cody thought he’d finally stopped the brute. But it was not to be.
Virgil threw back his head and shouted an obscenity that was lost in the howl of snow and wind. The hood of his parka fell off his head, and for the first time since the ordeal had started, Cody stared into the face of the devil.
Even from this distance he could see the spider tattoo and the black and broken teeth, bared in a growl of rage. He shuddered, wondering how Queen had fared at this man’s hands.
It was that thought that made what came next possible.
As a soldier, Cody had fought many battles during Operation Desert Storm, but never on the ground, always from a distance, in the air. He’d never seen his enemy’s face…until now.
Virgil inhaled, relishing the cold influx of air into his lungs, and ignored the pain. Moving on nothing but adrenaline and rage, he once again started toward the man with the gun.
“Sonofabitch.”
There was nothing else Cody could say to express his shock at the fact that the man had resumed motion. By all rights he should be dead on his feet. Cody looked down at his gun and then up at the man only a few feet away and knew that this shot had to find its mark. It was his last. He aimed and curled his finger around the trigger as it jerked beneath his grip.
Cody squeezed but didn’t consciously hear the shot.
Yet he realized the finality of its impact as shards of pink and red stained the snow behind Queen’s abductor.
The hole was neat and round and just above his nose. Virgil Stratton stared, but he didn’t see. His last conscious thought had been one of rage, and the last thing he’d seen had been the hole in the barrel of the gun. His huge body wavered and then fell backward with a resounding thud, sending up a white cloud of snow upon impact.
“My God,” Cody muttered, resisting the urge to collapse as Virgil had. His legs were shaking so hard, he didn’t think he could remain standing. And then he looked past the man’s body to the woman in the snow and knew that he had farther yet to go.
Queen’s body ached, and her head throbbed. And she was cold…so cold. She reached out, thinking she was home in bed, and struggled to find the covers that must have fallen at her feet. And then she heard his voice, felt his touch, remembered wanting to die, and was suddenly glad she hadn’t.
Cody had found her!
She opened her eyes and stared up into a world of cold and snow and then focused on a blue so intense that it made her burn.
“Cody?”
“Thank you, God,” he muttered, and lifted her from the snow and into his arms. He closed his eyes against a wall of threatening tears and began pressing tiny, reverent kisses across her face.
With her arms wrapped around his neck in a desperate need to feel life, Queen cried as Cody praised her courage and promised her things she would never hold him to, and she knew that she was loved.
Sounds of approaching motors broke the moment, and minutes later four snowmobiles burst into the clearing, matching red-and-black steeds of motors and steel. Each carried two riders, who came with guns aimed toward the pair enfolded in each other’s arms in the center of the clearing. In the blinding storm they were unable to tell who was holding whom.
Abel Miller was afraid to look. If he had a hostage situation, that meant Cody Bonner either didn’t make it through the snow or was already dead. And then he saw broad shoulders and black hair and knew that for once the good guys had won. The right man was still standing.
He remembered Patrick Mooney’s body and the state of the Bonner household, which he’d seen before starting up the mountain, and he shuddered. It was a justified, bona fide miracle.
“Bonner! Is she alive?” Abel Miller shouted.
Cody looked down at the woman cradled in his arms, at Queen’s bruised and battered face, saw her trying to smile around the cuts on her lips, and wrapped his hands in her hair, pulling her head closer against his chest before answering. He still needed to feel her just to know that the nightmare was over.
“Yes, she’s alive,” he said as Abel knelt at their feet. He pointed toward a snowdrift and the body that was quickly disappearing beneath the falling snow. “But he’s not.”
“Fine by me,” Abel said, and touched Queen’s arm in a silent gesture of thanksgiving.
She shuddered and turned away, hiding her face against Cody’s coat, for the time being unable to face any more of the world than what she’d already seen.
Abel’s eyes narrowed, and he resisted the urge to curse as he saw the extent of her suffering at Virgil Stratton’s hands; yet thanks to Cody, it was minor compared to Patrick Mooney’s suffering. He sighed. Her body would heal long before her mind. For the victim it was always so.
“Radio the men at base,” he called to the others. “Tell them to tell Bonner’s boys we found their daddy…and we found their Queenie. You be sure to tell them that they’re both fine…just fine.”
Cody’s heart quickened. In that moment he realized that he’d completely forgotten about everything and everyone in the world except the lady lying in his arms…his lady.
“Come on, Bonner. We’d better get you two off this mountain. Snow’s coming down right nice. It’ll be good skiing when this one is over, I betcha, or I don’t know my mountains.”
Cody nodded, understanding Abel’s offhand remark about the weather. It was time to put the horror behind them and get on with the business of living.
“Baby, can you stand?” he whispered, and cradled her face in his hands, unwilling to turn loose of her yet aware that they needed to get to shelter fast.
Queen nodded and then bit her lip and groaned in pain as she began to stagger to her feet, aided by Abel Miller on one side and Cody on the other.
Cody cursed the dead man’s soul to hell as he watched her trying to walk. In one angry motion he scooped her off her feet, ignoring the fact that minutes ago his own legs had felt like lead, and began carrying her toward one of the snowmobiles.
“Cody…you came,” Queen said, and started to shake at the onset of intruding reality. “I didn’t think you’d find me. I thought I was going to die.”
“I will always find you, lady,” he said, whispering against her cheek in short, angry breaths. “I don’t give up what’s mine.”
She sighed and relaxed against him, too sore and weary to get past the exultation of being alive. There would be time later to think of the fact that Cody had laid claim to something she had yet to offer.
Hours had come and gone since the time they’d returned to the house to be reunited with three very frightened boys.
Cody had talked to them, but to no avail. The boys weren’t convinced that their Queenie was truly all right until she’d told them so herself.
Upon her arrival she’d been whisked away to her bedroom and examined by waiting paramedics who’d been summoned by Abel Miller and his search team. Although exhausted beyond belief, she’d suffered no lasting trauma to her body beyond that of severe bruises from his beatings, scratches from their trek through the forest, and some minor frostbite.
Statements had been given and Cody had suffered handshakes all around from the authorities assembled as they’d praised him for what he’d done. He had a hard time accepting praise for killing a man but had no problem with the fact that it was Virgil Stratton, not Queen Houston, who was dead.
He prowled the hallway outside his bedroom, listening for her voice should she call out in need, and then saw Donny slip out of the boys’ bedroom and come toward him.
“I thought you guys were asleep,” Cody said.
“I just couldn’t, not yet. Dad, are you sure she’s going to be okay?” Donny’s voice cracked on the question, and he stuffed his hands in his pockets and tried not to cry.
Cody pulled his son into his arms and hugged him. Somehow, tonight, he’d been unable to stop holding the ones he loved, because for a time today he’d been uncertain of ever getting another chance to do so.
“I’m sure,” he said. “Physically she’s in good shape for what she went through. But I have to be honest with you…and I think you’re old enough to understand. Mentally it was hell, son. You guys are going to have to be real understanding and not give her any grief for a while. Do you know what I mean?”
Donny bit his lip and nodded, then shuffled his feet before continuing. “Dad?”
Cody waited. He could tell there was more to Donny’s concern.
“Did he…did the man…uh…did he…”
“She wasn’t raped,” Cody said.
Donny’s mouth curved into a slight smile and he looked away. “Good. I would hate to think of our Queenie going through anything like that. I was afraid if she had been, that she would hate us.”
“Why on earth would she hate us, son?”
Donny shrugged. “You know…because we’re men…like him.”
“Hell no, we’re not like him,” Cody said, and then swallowed his rage. It did no good being mad at his son. Donny was as innocent as Queen. “That wasn’t a man who killed Mr. Mooney and kidnapped Queen, it was an animal…and don’t you forget it.”
“Yes, sir,” Donny said. He looked at the closed door to his father’s bedroom, then sighed. “I think I’ll be able to sleep now.”
“Good night, son,” Cody said, and then added before Donny disappeared, “I love you.”
Donny grinned and gave his dad a thumbs-up sign.
Right now, answering him back might have made him cry, and Donny had seen enough tears tonight to last him a good long while.
Cody watched him until the door was shut, and then he turned to his own bedroom door, contemplating only a moment before opening and entering.
She was still in the bath. He could hear her moving around. “Are you okay?” he called, and listened when everything went quiet. Finally she answered.
“Yes. I’ll be down in a minute.”
“Right, just checking.” Cody started out the door.
“Cody!”
Her voice was just the least bit frantic and stopped his progress instantly. He ran toward the bathroom door and stopped just outside. “I’m right here.”
“Would you wait for me until I’m through? I don’t want to be in here alone.”
“Take your time, honey,” he said quietly. “I’ll be here when you get out. We’ll go downstairs together, okay?”
“Okay.”
The single word came on a sigh and a sob, and Cody spread his hand across the outside surface of the door, wanting to touch yet unable to reach the woman behind it who was in need. He shook his head at the futile gesture and then dropped onto the corner of his bed, trying valiantly to quell the rage that swept over him. But it was no use. His lady had been hurt, and if he had the chance, at that moment he’d have killed Virgil Stratton all over again.
Chapter 11
Queen stared at herself in the mirror, tracing the bruise below her eye with the tip of her finger and then jerking back at the sudden pain, sending a hairbrush flying to the floor. It clattered on the tiles, and moments later Cody burst through the door.
“Are you all right?”
The fear in his voice was all it took to keep her from being angry that he’d come in without knocking. Too many things had happened today for her to worry about propriety.
