Madeline slept like the dead, but that luxury didn’t come easily for Sherry. She lay on top of the covers in the big bed next to her friend and stared at the high ceiling, wishing for privacy so she could weep without being heard. She couldn’t get over what she’d learned tonight. The danger, the lies, the betrayal …
And she had believed Gary Rivers was her friend. He seemed to care months ago when she had begged him to help her find Clint. With sympathy and a listening ear, he had pretended to “pull strings” to find Clint. And when he had come to her, backing up everyone else’s story about Clint’s cold feet, he had seemed honestly sorry. Why hadn’t she seen it? Why hadn’t she suspected him of knowing where Clint was all along? She remembered the night he had shown up on her doorstep, summoning all his charm when he’d asked her to have dinner with him. He’d played on her memories of their past relationship, but he hadn’t been able to get past her memories of Clint. She had turned him down gently, despite Madeline’s protests. Had Madeline been in on it too? Had everyone in her life betrayed her? Had that entire chapter of her life been nothing more than a sadistic lie, a lie supervised by her father?
She closed her eyes and cursed herself. Wes told her that Eric had always been good at manufacturing lies, and that a man who was cold enough to abandon his wife and children could never change. She had wanted to believe differently, to prove to Wes that he was wrong. But he wasn’t.
Had her father sent Gary to her to get her mind off Clint, whose life he counted as over? Her father had thought it better to make her believe that Clint had simply stopped loving her than to tell her that he was sending him into hiding and that he might never make it out. Might never make it out! The thought played over and over in her mind, making her stomach cramp and her head throb.
She sat up on the bed and looked helplessly around the dark room. She wasn’t going to sleep until this tension found an outlet. She needed some air, some peace, some release. She turned her watch until she could see its face in the hall light. Three-thirty.
Quietly, she got up and put on her shoes. Despite the darkness, she would go out, she decided. She would slip out of the house and try to breathe. And if she could find a place, she would try to jog off some of the knots in her muscles.
She saw some guards sitting at the table in the kitchen. Quietly, she slipped past them. Outside, the air was hot and muggy, and the wind skipping across the ground was unsympathetic. It was the kind of night that forebode disaster. Sherry looked up into the opaque sky and wondered if anyone up there really cared about the sufferings of Clint or her. She searched herself and found that she still believed there was. Faith is just a flimsy means of self-betrayal, she had told Clint. But had she really believed it? Hadn’t she always had faith in him, deep down inside her somewhere?
She started to walk aimlessly, then broke into a run, despite the fact that she still wore jeans and shoes not meant for the sport. Her feet pounded the dust and dirt beneath her, and humidity encompassed her, but she ran the length of the house, and her breathing came in dry, sobbing gulps.
Suddenly, as she rounded the side of the house, she heard a clicking sound. “Freeze!” a voice commanded.
She did as she was told. Before she could protest she was slung against the house, and a man’s hands were sliding over her body, searching deftly for a weapon. “Please,” she said, cursing herself for being careless when she’d known better. “Please …”
Immediately the frisking stopped, and she turned around to look into Sam’s steely eyes. “Lady, are you crazy?” he grated. “I could have killed you! I thought you were …”
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
“You have to think, Sherry. We’re not playing here.” He let her go, and she tried to catch her breath.
“I never said we were playing. Nobody’s having fun. And you can point that gun somewhere else!”
Sam dropped it to his side. “Where were you going, anyway? Trying to pull another vanishing act?”
“No,” she answered. “I was tense. Frustrated. I couldn’t sleep, so I was trying to run some of it off. I didn’t expect anybody to jump out of the shadows and pull a gun on me. Don’t you ever sleep?”
“Not much,” he said. “I was in the kitchen, and I heard you out here sneaking around. You’re just lucky it was me.”
“Excuse me while I go count my blessings.”
She started to walk away. “You want to count your blessings?” he asked, stopping her. “Let me help you. Clint Jessup is alive. He’s healthy. He loves you. And he’s finally reached a point where there may be an end to this mess. You need more blessings?” he went on, keeping his voice low. “How about this? You’re alive, and other than a little 'frustration’that sends you flying out in the night like you’re invincible, you’re unscathed. I’d say you have a lot to feel lucky about.”
Sherry lifted her chin defiantly. He looked down at her, frowning. “Clint has enough on his shoulders without having to stop everything and mourn for his fiancée,” he told her.
“I’m deeply moved.”
“Don’t be,” he said, getting angrier. “It’s Clint’s need for you I care about. I feel compelled to keep you alive for his sake.”
The words were cold, stinging, and she glared back at him. Then, starting back to the house, she mumbled, “Madeline couldn’t be more wrong about you.”
Sam caught up to her in two steps. “What did you say?”
“She called you a pussycat. Said singing off-key was your only offense. I’ll tell her she was mistaken.”
A wistful look passed over Sam’s gray eyes, and he swallowed. “Yeah. You do that.”
And then he passed her and went into the house, as if he was the one who had been wronged.
Sherry stood staring at the door for a moment. Finally, out of fear instead of fatigue, she stepped inside the screened porch and started for her room.
Gary Rivers was leaning against the door that led from the porch into the house. Sherry ignored him and brushed past him, for they had nothing to say to each other. She’d had as much machismo as she could stomach for one night.