David Morrell - The Protector

"How did…" Prescott's question was a gasp.

"Surely a smart guy like you can figure that out. The vest's made of polymer fibers. It's designed to resist only the blunt force of a bullet."

"The knife's sharp enough to slip past the fibers?"

"You pass the quiz." Cavanaugh jabbed again.

But Prescott had used the pause to regroup. Instead of lurching farther back, he surprised Cavanaugh by throwing the shotgun and charging, pinning Cavanaugh's arms to his side before Cavanaugh could do anything more than nick him again. With his hands clasped behind Cavanaugh's back, Prescott flexed his muscles, tightening, squeezing.

Cavanaugh felt as if metal coils were around him, contracting ever tighter. He couldn't move his chest, couldn't work his lungs. Staring at Prescott's frenzied eyes a couple of inches away from him, he suddenly felt light-headed. The floodlights on the terrace seemed to dim. His arms were so tight against his sides that he couldn't use the knife. He was so close to Prescott that he couldn't raise his knee to kick him in the groin.

In desperation, he hooked his right leg behind Prescott's left ankle and yanked. As Prescott toppled backward, Cavanaugh pushed, landing on him, knocking the wind from him.

Prescott's arms loosened just enough for Cavanaugh to pull free. They rolled away from each other and scrambled to their feet.

Cavanaugh jabbed with the knife.

Prescott dodged back.

Cavanaugh jabbed again.

Prescott dodged farther back, hit the waist-high wall, and went over.

"No!" Cavanaugh shouted.

Rushing, he grabbed Prescott's left arm just before he would have dropped out of sight.

Prescott dangled, his shoes scraping against the cliff. He could barely speak. "Please… don't… let… go."

"My shoulder still hurts from when you shot me." Cavanaugh stretched over the wall, clinging to him. "I'm not sure how long I can hold you."

Prescott jerked his other arm up and grabbed Cavanaugh's hands. Far below, the waves pounded the rocks. "Scared."

"I know," Cavanaugh said. "Thanks to your hormone, I'm so frightened, I'm not sure I can control my hands."

As if demonstrating the point, Prescott's blood-streaked arms began to slip through Cavanaugh's grasp. "For God's sake," Prescott said.

"Where's the antidote?"

"What?"

"Tell me where the antidote is."

Sirens blaring, cars stopped in front of the house. Doors slammed.

"Tell me where the antidote is. I'll let you live."

Prescott's arms slipped farther.

Cavanaugh's trembling hands weakened.

Prescott gasped.

Wincing, Cavanaugh gripped tighter. "Where's the antidote?"

"Put your hands where I can see them!" Rutherford yelled from the side of the house, aiming a pistol at Cavanaugh.

"I guess I'd better do what the man says." Cavanaugh made a motion as if to release his hands.

"No, wait!" Prescott said.

"The antidote! Where is it?"

"In the house!"

"Keep talking." Cavanaugh clung with all his might.

"Where I was hiding! Behind a monitor! In a red aerosol container!"

"It better not be bug spray, or I'll make you wish I'd dropped you!"

"Pull him up!" Rutherford rounded the corner, accompanied by FBI agents and police officers, all aiming pistols. A similarly intense group rounded the opposite corner, pistols and shotguns aimed.

Still hanging over the wall, clutching Prescott, Cavanaugh asked, "What's going to happen to him, John? Will the government make a deal?"

"Not anymore. Too many people know what happened last night. The newspapers and TV stations all along the coast are asking questions. So are the cable news channels, the networks, the East Coast papers. If the government bargained with a multiple killer in exchange for what he knows, there'd be even more questions. He'll be punished."

"Whatever it is, it won't be enough. Prescott, listen to me," Cavanaugh said, pulling him up. "In prison, you'd better let yourself go to pot again, because a buff guy like you will attract a lot of romantic attention from the inmates. Or maybe you'd better take a new batch of muscle stimulant and buff yourself up even more so you can fight off all their advances. You're just beginning to understand what fear is."

In the mercilessly bright lights of the ICU room, Cavanaugh sat sleeplessly next to Jamie, watching for the slightest flicker of her eyelids, the slightest twitch around her mouth. The respirator had been removed from her throat. Her chest rose and fell on its own. The flashing, beeping monitors for her pulse, blood pressure, and heart rhythms showed steady improvement.

"Twenty-four hours, and no setbacks," her surgeon said. "An excellent sign."

Cavanaugh nodded, hoping.

"Why don't you go away for a couple of hours and get some rest?" the surgeon suggested.

"If it's all right with you, I'm staying."

At 6:37 in the morning (Cavanaugh noted the time precisely), Jamie's green eyes finally opened. She looked groggy, dazed, in pain. But when she recognized him, her bruised face managed a look of affection.

"Can you understand me?" he asked.

She nodded almost imperceptibly, the effort tiring her.

"In case you don't remember, I'll tell you often," Cavanaugh said. "As soon as you're able, we're going back to Wyoming. We're heading home. We're staying."

Groggy, she tried to study him.

"If I'd agreed to go home when you wanted, you wouldn't have gotten shot. I don't know how to make it up to you, but somehow I will."

With effort, she asked, " Prescott?"

"I found him."

Worry clouded her eyes.

"He's alive. John has him in custody," Cavanaugh assured her.

The beeping of the monitors filled the silence between them.

"I want to prove to you how sorry I am," Cavanaugh said. "You're more important to me than anything. From now on, there's nothing I won't do for you."

Her eyelids weakened.

"I'm sure that's too much for you to understand right now. But I'll be here the next time you wake up, and I'll tell you again. I'll keep telling you." Cavanaugh had trouble with his voice. "Until you forgive me."

Cavanaugh touched her hand.

Jamie's fingers nudged his, almost too faintly to be noticed. But it was enough.

"I'll be here," Cavanaugh said. "Feel how steady my hand is." The antidote was working. "I'll watch over you."

She nodded, her closed eyelids relaxing. As she drifted back to sleep, her bruised lips formed what might have been a smile.

My father was killed during World War II, shortly after I was born in 1943. My mother had difficulty raising me and at the same time holding a job, so she put me in an orphanage and later in a series of boarding homes. I grew up unsure of who I was, desperately in need of a father figure. Books and movies were my escape. Eventually I decided to be a writer and sought help from two men who became metaphorical fathers to me: Stirling Silliphant, the head writer for the classic TV series "Route 66" about two young men in a Corvette who travel America in search of themselves, and Philip Klass (whose pen name is William Tenn), a novelist who taught at the Pennsylvania State University where I went to graduate school from 1966 to 1970. The result of their influence is my 1972 novel, First Blood, which introduced Rambo. The search for a father is prominent in that book, as it is in later ones, most notably The Brotherhood of the Rose (1984), a thriller about orphans and spies. During this period, I was a professor of American literature at the University of Iowa. With two professions, I worked seven days a week until exhaustion forced me to make a painful choice and resign from the university in 1986. One year later, my fifteen-year-old son, Matthew, died from bone cancer, and thereafter my fiction tended to depict the search for a son, particularly in Fireflies (1988) and Desperate Measures (1994). To make a new start, my wife and I moved to the mountains and mystical light of Santa Fe, New Mexico, where my work changed yet again, exploring the passionate relationships between men and women, highlighting them against a background of action as in the newest, Burnt Sienna. To give his stories a realistic edge, he has been trained in wilderness survival, hostage negotiation, executive protection, antiterrorist driving, assuming identities, electronic surveillance, and weapons. A former professor of American literature at the University of Iowa, Morrell now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.