THE MORNING SIDE OF DAWN Page 22

  Or would she? he thought suddenly, remembering yet again, as he had so many times since she'd walked out, the way she had looked at him there on the trail, that heart-stopping moment he'd been afraid to believe in, hadn't believed in until she had looked at him the same way again back at the warehouse.

  Would she really go back there? After what had happened between them this morning?

  Maybe because of what had happened.

  He didn't know exactly what made him decide, but when he reached the split, he took the trail that had led to disaster yesterday. For some reason the long, slow uphill slope seemed easier today, and he took it faster than he ever had before. It wasn't until he reached the top and realized his heart was hammering far out of proportion to his exertion that he realized it was adrenaline that had driven him, more adrenaline than he'd ever produced in the toughest races of his life.

  Because this could be the most important race of his life.

  It hit him with a force that made it hard to breathe for a moment. And right now he didn't have time to deny it, to fight off the crazy feeling inside him, that feeling his mind was having so much trouble dealing with, because he'd never felt it before. But he knew what it was. But he couldn't think about it now.

  He started down the hill, trying to balance the speed his gut was screaming for with the knowledge that, this time, he didn't dare crash. He cut it loose when he could, praying the brakes would hold when he had to hit them hard. In some small, normally functioning part of his mind, he was aware his last adjustments on the suspension and steering seemed to have worked; the chair was responding like the Corvette he'd once had, the steering tight, the suspension perfect.

  He started into the curve that had been his downfall yesterday, passed the spot where his crash could have been fatal. And then he saw her, walking slowly along the narrow track, head down, looking as if the weight of the world had somehow descended on her slender shoulders.

  She was safe. He was so relieved he almost forgot to put on the brakes. When he did, she heard the sound and turned around. She started to look quickly away, as if she didn't want to face him, but something stopped her. He had a feeling it was his expression; he was finding it hard to hide his relief. And the knowledge of what he'd realized about his feelings for her.

  "You're all right," he said, as much to assure himself as anything else.

  His voice, he realized, sounded about like he must look—a little shaken and on the edge of a rather sappy grin at the sight of her.

  "Yes," she said softly, starting to walk toward him.

  And suddenly he didn't care what was showing on his face, didn't care if she could read every minute of the hell he'd been through today. He owed it to her.

  "Cassie, I—"

  He broke off as she stopped suddenly, and he knew she'd heard the same sound he had, in the bushes just below the trail.

  "It's Willis," he shouted to her. "Get up here."

  She paled, and started to walk quickly toward him. Willis burst out of the brush, heading toward her in a run made awkward by the terrain. The instant Dar saw him, he released his brakes and shoved off powerfully. Cassie stifled a tiny scream and broke into a run toward Dar.

  "No!" Willis cried out. "Don't run!"

  Cassie stumbled over a rut, and Willis grabbed for her. He called out something else Dar couldn't understand. She dodged away, but he was still too close. Willis gave Dar a quick look, as if assessing if he was any real threat.

  Write me off, Dar urged silently. I'm just a crip in a wheelchair, that's all.

  Dar was picking up speed, but it was going to be close. Willis grabbed for Cassie once more. Again she dodged to one side. Her movement gave Dar a clear path, and he shot past her. He cut left, toward Willis, praying the trail wouldn't give out under his wheels.

  Still rolling fast, steering with his left hand, Dar clotheslined the man at the waist with an outstretched right arm. Willis yelled and clawed at Dar's arm as he went down into the dirt. The chair skidded, yanked around sharply by the impact. Dar felt a sharp drop as one of the front wheels suddenly had nothing to grab but the air over the precipice.

  "Dar!" Cassie screamed, starting toward him as the chair teetered dangerously.

  "Get back!" he yelled at her, knowing the ground she was running over was unstable.

  He let go of Willis and rammed hard on the right-side handlebar, then grabbed for both push rims and shoved hard. The knobby tire bit, then dug in. He heard Cassie scream again, but didn't dare look. Another hard push, then another, and he was back on solid ground. He skidded to a halt, facing back the way he'd come, just as Willis was sitting up, looking around dazedly.

  "You don't understand," Willis said, sounding bewildered.

  "What I understand is you're damn lucky I didn't just throw you over that cliff," Dar growled at him.

  "But I only want to—"

  "I don't care what you want. Neither does Cassie. And neither, I suspect, will the police."

  He turned then, ready to hand Cassie the phone to call them, while he kept an eye on the oddly demoralized Willis.

  She was gone.

  Dar stared blankly at the empty trail for a moment. She couldn't have gotten out of sight that fast, and he couldn't believe she would have just left, anyway. That wasn't Cassie's style; she might be looking for a rock to brain Willis with, but she wouldn't run.

  But she had screamed. And suddenly that freshly crumbled spot on the side of the trail made horrible sense.

  Terror shot through him like a runaway train. She had screamed. He'd thought she was reacting to his tackle of Willis. But he should have known better; Cassie Cameron was made of sterner stuff than that.

  "Cassie."

  It came out as barely a whisper. He wheeled as close as he could to the edge. It wasn't hard to see where to look. Darker earth showed where the trail side had given way. A small piece of scrub brush was upside down, roots pointing skyward.

  And fifteen feet below, ominously still, lay Cassie's crumpled body.

  * * *

  Chapter 16

  «^»

  She was going to die.

  It was all a stupid mistake, and she was going to die for it. Dar sat staring out the window of the kind of building he'd once sworn never to be caught inside again: a hospital.

  "Nice work, Mr. Cordell."

  Dar heard Deputy Thorne's words but didn't look up.

  "That guy was no match for somebody who could bench press two of him and not even break a sweat," Sean said.

  Dar sensed rather than saw Thorne nod. "I imagine he's not the first person to make the mistake of underestimating Mr. Cordell."

  "Right," Dar said sharply.

  He jerked his right wheel sharply and spun away from them. He couldn't stand it. This was the second time in his life people had lauded him as a hero. The first time he'd wished he hadn't done anything; this time he wished he'd done it a hell of a lot sooner. Some hero he was. A hero with a lousy sense of timing. Because he'd wasted too much time, because he'd been too wrapped up in his own needs, Cassie lay unconscious in that room over there. Unconscious, broken, and maybe dying. The doctors hadn't said anything yet, not even to Sean, who at least had a claim by marriage. And the longer that went on, the more worried Dar got.

  All for nothing.

  He would never forget Willis's reaction when the man had realized what had happened. He had gone stark white, moaning a name over and over. But not Cassis's.

  "Audra," he'd moaned, crouching on his knees at the edge of the drop while Dar had finally recovered enough to grab the cell phone and call for help; he knew he'd never be able to get her out of there alone, and could hurt her even more if he tried.

  "Audra," Willis moaned again while Dar tried to explain to the paramedic dispatcher exactly where they were.

  "Shut up," he finally shouted at the man, "or I will shove you over!"

  "You don't understand," Willis said, nearly weeping now. "I never meant to hurt her. I only
wanted to help, to save her. Not like before. I was too late before—"

  Dar had barely suppressed the need to quiet the man's whining permanently. Whatever Willis had been, he was in a state of emotional collapse now, and no danger to Cassie anymore. So Dar had done what he'd wanted to do since the heart-stopping moment he'd seen her lying so still at the bottom of that drop; he went to her.

  He was no climber—he didn't do it with any kind of grace, half falling, half sliding, more out of control than not—and he battered himself a bit on the way down, but his upper-body strength stood him in good stead and he managed it. He hadn't dared to move her, even though she was twisted at an awkward angle. The fleeting thought came to him that this was how many people he knew had wound up in chairs like his, from falls like this.

  He recoiled from the idea of Cassie in a chair, even though he knew some would say it would remove a sizable barrier from between them. And now, faced with that very real possibility, he had to admit that Cassie hadn't ever seen it as a barrier; if anyone had, it had been him.

  And some tiny part of his mind that wasn't shuddering at the sight of her, so pale and unmoving, knew that it was a measure of how deep his feelings for this woman ran that he would give anything to see her simply get up right now, even if it meant she would walk out of his life. He could stand that, as long as she was alive to do it.

  So here he sat now, in a hated hospital, wondering if he was ever going to have the chance to talk to her again, to tell her how sorry he was for what he'd said, to tell her she'd been right, so very right, about him. About everything.

  He didn't know how long he'd been sitting there, staring blankly at nothing, when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He didn't jump; he was too numb to react that sharply. He just looked up, half expecting it to be some anonymous hospital person wearing that grim look they must practice for when they had to break bad news.

  It was Chase.

  Dar blinked. He'd always known Cassie looked like her brother, but the resemblance struck him now harder than ever. And he found he couldn't look at the man who had become his friend, the man who should have been able to trust him to do a simple thing like take care of his little sister.

  "I … when did you get here?" he asked, avoiding Chase's gaze, brushing at the dirt that was embedded in his pants after his scramble down the cliff.

  "A while ago. We flew back after Sean called us."

  "Oh."

  "They're still doing the CAT scan, and Sean told me you were here, so I wanted to come and thank you."

  Dar's head shot up. "Thank me?" he asked, astonished.

  "For taking care of Cassie."

  "Yeah," Dar said, his tone acid. "I took care of her so well she's lying in there maybe dying."

  "She's not going to die," Chase said firmly. "My little sister is more stubborn than anyone I know. Except maybe you." He seemed to hesitate for a moment, then went on. "Sean told me about how you and Cassie kept Willis a secret, so we wouldn't worry."

  "Yeah? Did he also tell you it was all for nothing? That Willis was just a poor, bereaved father who fixated on Cassie because she looked like his murdered daughter?"

  Chase nodded. "I saw the picture. There's definitely a resemblance."

  Dar had seen it, too, that tattered snapshot Thorne had taken from Willis. Until he'd seen that, he was working hard on hating the man. Afterward, and after Thorne had told him how the girl had died in a brutal rape, he couldn't find it in him; he could only empathize with the grief-stricken man. He knew all too well how it felt to be too late.

  "The deputy told me what you did—"

  "You mean how I fixated on Willis, because I screwed up last time and let him get away? How I was so determined to catch him this time that I wasn't watching Cassie like I should have? That she wouldn't be here at all if I hadn't—"

  Chase cut him off. "Look, if you want to beat yourself up about something you had no control over, then I can't stop you. But you can't stop me from thanking you. I think I know you well enough to know that you would rather not have gotten involved. But you did."

  "And look where it got her."

  For a long moment Chase just looked at him. "You know," he said at last, "I thought maybe you'd done it for me, or for Sean's sake, with Rory so sick, because you knew he'd feel obligated to watch out for my little sister. But Sean seems to think there's more to it."

  Dar froze. This was something he wasn't ready to deal with, hadn't even let himself think about, not when all his concentration was centered on Cassie, willing her to live, to open those green eyes and look at him again, talk to him again, even if it was to chide him about that chip on his shoulder. He hadn't even allowed himself to wonder how Chase would feel about any kind of relationship between him and Cassie.

  "Dar!"

  The bright, eager voice for once made him wince. He heard the sound of small, running feet, and barely had time to brace himself before Katie launched herself into his arms. The little girl had learned to expertly avoid entanglement with his wheels, and she landed with a solid thud against his chest that made him wince as his bruises protested. She threw her arms around his neck.

  "We came home early," she explained earnestly. "Because of Aunt Cassie. But she's gonna be okay, huh, Daddy?"

  Chase nodded. "Sure she is."

  Katie might run to him gladly, but her father was still the mediator of the most important things. Which was as it should be, Dar thought, suddenly hugging the little girl fiercely, remembering the brief image, frightening and tempting in equal measure, that he had allowed himself of Cassie pregnant.

  Katie leaned back on his lap and looked at him with glowing eyes, eyes so much like her father's, so much like Cassie's. "Uncle Sean says you saved her from a bad man."

  There wasn't a hint of doubt in the child's eyes, just pride in this further proof that she had chosen her hero well. Little did she know, Dar thought.

  "No," he said, unable to stop himself.

  "Huh?" Katie asked, her delicate little brows furrowing.

  "What he means," Chase said, kneeling down beside them and forestalling Dar from going on, "is that it wasn't really a bad man, honey. He was just confused. He thought your aunt was somebody else. But he really scared her, and Dar helped her get away from him."

  Katie considered this, then nodded. "Then she had a accident, huh?"

  Dar opened his mouth, but Chase silenced him with a look that brooked no denial. "Yes. It was an accident. While Dar was catching the man who was chasing her."

  Katie hugged Dar again, fiercely, putting all the strength of her lean little body into it. Then she sat back on his thighs and looked at him again. "Uncle Sean said Aunt Cassie was staying with you, when that man was looking for her. Does she live at the warehouse now?"

  Dar gave Chase a panicked glance, but could read nothing in his expression. What the hell else had Sean said? Had Sean guessed how far things had gone? Had he—

  "I hope so," Katie said nonchalantly, drawing Dar's startled gaze back to her.

  "You do?"

  "Sure," Katie said with a shrug. "You should be together."

  "I…" Dar swallowed, now not daring to look at Chase. "Why?"

  "'Cause you're both so pretty," the little girl said simply, as if that explained it all.

  Dar stared at her for a long moment. Then he had to turn away, blinking rapidly at the sudden stinging behind his eyelids. To Katie he wasn't a man without legs, or even a man in a wheelchair—he was simply Dar and, she'd often said, the handsomest man in the world not related to her.

  You're prettier than I am. Cassie's words echoed in his head. They were alike, aunt and niece.

  "She has a knack for honesty," Chase drawled. Dar closed his eyes then, unable once more to meet Chase's steady, too-perceptive gaze. "And her aunt is just like her," Chase added softly, as if he'd known what Dar had been thinking.

  Dar felt those words as if Chase had struck him physically with each one of them.

  "Mr. Cameron?
" Dar still didn't look up, but heard Chase move at the sound of a young male voice. "You can see your sister now. She's awake."

  Dar did look up then, quickly. "Told you she'd be all right," Chase said, grinning.

  "Yep, told ya," Katie echoed.

  Dar glanced at the young man in hospital whites, who smiled. "Yes, it appears she will be. She has a minor concussion, and a lot of bruises, but she'll be fine."

  She was going to be all right. She wasn't going to die, he hadn't killed her with his stupid pride. Dar felt a wave or relief so powerful it was dizzying.

  "You coming?" Chase asked as he scooped Katie up off Dar's lap.

  Dar shook his head.

  "Yes, Dar," Katie said imperiously. "You have to. We're all here, 'cept for baby Jason. He's with Grandma."

  "I… No. This is … for family."

  "You're family," Katie protested instantly.

  "Only if he wants to be, honey," Chase said, and carried her away in the wake of the nurse who led them down the hall.

  Wants to be. As if what he wanted had anything to do with it. He'd learned long ago not to want; it led only to frustration. And he figured he'd about run through his quota of wishes answered for one day: Cassie was alive.

  He shivered, and couldn't explain why. He felt an odd sort of quivering inside, making him want to tense all of his muscles, just to be sure he could. He moved then, not because he wanted to, but because he had to. He couldn't explain that, either. He just knew he had to be alone to deal with this. As he'd always dealt with everything.

  He propelled himself through the double doors of the emergency waiting room, out into the balmy early-evening air. There was a small alcove with a bench seat to one side, and he wheeled over there, out of the way of the ambulance entrance. His van was parked near the ramp, one of the few times he'd ever actually used a blue-marked handicap spot, preferring to leave them for people less mobile than himself.

  He should just get in the damn van and get the hell out of here. She had her family around her now; they would take care of her, and he could just bow out. He hadn't done a great job in the first place; they'd probably be glad to see him go, for all Chase's insistence that what had happened was an accident. And they'd be especially glad to see him go if Sean was planting the idea that there was something going on between him and Cassie.