Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

“I can hide it on my person.”

“Not well enough to fool a pro. Lose it. It’s a death sentence. For me, certainly, given the likely lethal hypo meant for me. And, now, because you’re with me, for you too.”

“We’ll be helpless without it.”

“But alive. Trust me. It’s totally compromised. By now they know you’ve vanished too. If the hypo people aren’t after us, the authorities are.”

And Garry Randolph, maybe. He hoped. His talks with Randolph had given him the confidence to see past his injuries and memory loss, to see himself as wily and competent and apparently well trained for this rough flight down the mountains.

Was there anywhere he could head where Garry would find them? Probably, but he didn’t remember it. Yet. There was muscle memory, which would help his damaged legs work better and better as they got stronger and stronger; there was also mental recuperation, which would slowly repair the severed pathways of his memory. Hopefully. And there was gut instinct. He guessed that was his best ally at the moment.

“Get some suitable walking clothes for us at the next farmhouse. We need to clean up and dress the part before we actually bum a ride from anyone.”

“‘Bum’ a ride?”

“Beg.” He cocked his thumb. “Hitchhike.”

She nodded at the gesture. Narrowed her eyes and tilted her head. “ ‘Clean up.’ Does that mean we’ll have the cliched mountain stream bath of unacquainted couples on the run?”

He nodded. “Excellent therapy. Might motivate my legs to do a better job at moving me around. Fighting the running water, that is.”

“You may not remember much, Mr. Randolph, but what you do remember is choice.”

With that she tossed her freshly loosened hair and moved through the long grasses to the steep wooden roof of a farmhouse in the distance, one with a ramp that allowed cattle and other stock into the warmer living area during the long, snow-deep winters. It had been done that way here for centuries. Despite the three days’ struggle down the mountain meadows, Revienne Schneider looked cool and very hot at the same time.

She was either an über -competent woman with unflinching devotion to a patient, a doctor with a passion to save and rehabilitate broken lives and minds, one repelled to her soul by an attempt to kill a helpless man . . . or she was his worst enemy: an agent who saw the death plan had failed and had accompanied him to gain his trust so they, or she, could try again.

Either way, they both seemed to thrive on challenge.

Sanctuary

The farmer’s horse-drawn cart had seemed like a tumbrel in the French Revolution to Max, hauling him to the guillotine. He was tired of lying on a bed of straw, no matter how fresh.

Revienne, however, relished being off her aching feet. They hung, bare, over the cart edge, swinging with the bumpy motion. Naked, rather. With pink painted toenails. A pretty sight, except for the angry red places on heels and toes where her shoes had rubbed them raw. She’d never complained.

Revienne was able to ignore him completely for the first time during their flight. He studied her exhausted profile. Brow, nose, and chin were feminine, but strong, determined. If secret assassin she was, who would she work for? Not for money, he decided. Principle. Which might seem comforting at first, but fanatic principle had proved itself a far worse influence on the modern world than mere personal gain.

He hadn’t realized he was whistling until her profile lifted and she glanced his way. She smiled. “That tune is familiar.”

He thought about it. “Not to me.”

“Ah, a secret message from your subconscious. Whistle a bit more.”

“I’ve forgotten it now.” His subconscious would not perform for free.

She shook out her hair. “It doesn’t matter. It was something Irish. Their tunes are both lilting and somber. Come now, less somber and more lilt. Admit it, you’re as happy as I am to be off your feet.”

“I didn’t know you were on my feet.”

A frown in that alabaster forehead. “I am not perfect at the English language.”

“It was a joke. I agree. Laughing is better than moaning.”

She nodded, looking away again to the deserted sweeps of green. “They say the nearest village is Zuoz. Small, but a tourist attraction when the big German buses come through.”

“Good.” He eyed a pile of fabric beside him. “Clothes?”

“At the last farm a son had left for vocational school in Zurich. It’s hard to keep the young ones in the mountain villages these days.”

He shook out a pants and shirt, and shuddered at the heavy, narrow denim pant legs. They were a new kind of cast, ones he’d have to force his long-sheltered legs into. Painfully.

“I’ll get them on to the knees.” She’d read his mind. He’d have to watch that.

He nodded.

She glanced at the hospital pajama bottoms. “These off?”

His only underwear? No way. “The pants can go on over these.”

“It’ll be bulkier, harder.”

“Just get the two legs up to my knees. When the cart stops, I’ll lower my feet to the road and . . . shimmy into the damn things.”

“Shimmy?”

“You’ll see,” he said sourly. Not his most graceful moment, he could foresee, but it couldn’t be helped.

In another half hour, he spotted the spire of a simple church in a fold of road and hill below. Gable roofs appeared next. The horse slowed from a walk to a crawl. He pulled the lightweight wool shirt over his pajama top and over his hips.

He stared down at the mountain path beneath the heavy wheels. It still seemed to pass at a dizzying pace. To jump off would be a dangerous moment for his weakened legs. He sensed that he had jumped off far more dizzying heights, absolutely fearless. A throb of self-disgust shivered through him.

“Not until the cart stops utterly,” Revienne said. Ordered. “You are still an invalid, and under my care.”

He recognized good counsel, at least, and waited impatiently, judging every shift of the wheels for the moment when he dared to stand on his own two bare feet again, clothed and on the road to independence. And danger.

The cart and its burden of hay finally rocked almost to a stop. His hands grabbed the thick wooden edge, his mind gauging the drop, his shoulders supporting him until the flats of his feet were on the rutted dirt, then his rear supported him on the edge, easing off. . . .

She raised a hand, forbidding movement, then . . . lowered it.

Max took the plunge, felt the soles of his feet touch a solid surface and the arches settle down into solid contact. He felt pure jubilation, like the first man landing on the moon. Such a simple step for a whole man, such a great step for a semicripple.

His arms and shoulders were strong enough to cushion any shock. He released an arm to grab the quaint, knotty cane.

But. You couldn’t shake yourself into a tight pair of jeans without all your weight on both legs with both hands needed at the sides and . . . front. Shit. This was worse than the delicately negotiated mountain stream sitz baths.

“Let me,” Revienne said, brusque as any nurse. “The farmer’s son was not as tall as you, but was also very lean.”

She grabbed the heavy fabric at the sides and pulled up with each fist in turn, until they rode on his hips and would go no further. The fly was a buttoned affair and she bent her head and hands to the task.

“As I said,” she murmured halfway through, “young Johannes was not as big as you.”

“Dr. Schneider,” he rebuked.

Her face looked pink behind the veils of her loosened hair, and he could tell she was biting back a . . . giggle.

She stepped away and pulled the shirt down over the skimpy pants.