PROVIDENCE: THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

By DixieHellcat

Despite the state legislature’s regular attempts to assure the citizens otherwise, there was very little truly educational or uplifting to do at the North Carolina Correctional Institute for Women. This was why Stella Morehouse and her cellmate Kaylee Stephens were so thrilled to discover that two guards had a regular screwing session scheduled in a currently unused greenhouse on the prison farm where both inmates worked as trustees. They made their discovery quite by accident one Tuesday afternoon in late spring, while putting away some garden tools in a lean-to attached to the greenhouse. Following some puzzling sounds, they found that several cracked panels in the wall gave them a full screen surround sound display of every thrust and groan.

Being a lesbian, Kaylee got less out of the show than Stella, but both agreed it was the best free entertainment either had seen in years, besides having great potential for blackmail. That being the case, Kaylee insisted they let Jet Carter in on their secret. Jet was Kaylee’s lover, who also worked on the prison farm, a skilled con artist, and the de facto leader of their little clique. If blackmail were to be done, she would be the one to do it. The next Tuesday, the three arranged to take their breaks at the same time, and crept into the lean-to.

Predictably, Jet and Kaylee groped each other and snickered. At least, Stella thought with thanks, it was just snickers—Jet’s guffaw could probably carry a mile under the right conditions. For her own part, she watched the sweaty man and woman on the greenhouse floor with a little sadness. For all that males, except for her little boy Harley, had been nothing but trouble to her, she still missed a good thumping more than most other things in the real world.

Then Jet put her eye to the crack and gasped. “Shit, what is it?” Stella hissed.

“Did we miss something?” Kaylee protested with her usual childlike forthrightness. “They try some pretty wild positions sometimes.”

“God damn, I’m slipping.” Jet’s face looked like she had just seen God. “Ladies, I got a question for you. Where are their uniforms…and their badges, and keys, and guns??”

The three exchanged looks of shocked realization, and then fell over each other getting out of the lean-to and around to the half-open greenhouse door. Sure enough, just inside in an untidy heap lay the naked fornicators’ belongings. The glint of afternoon sunbeams off gun butts and key rings was hypnotic. “Our ticket outta here, ladies,” Jet said, her voice low but excited. “Kay, watch for us. Stella, c’mon. I can shoot too, so I’ll take the other piece.”

Stella gaped. “’C’mon’?? Jet, have you lost your fuckin’ mind? Me, escape? I’ve only got four months till my parole hearing—“

“Four months you can waste in this shithole waiting for a judgment that may not go your way, considering your charges, or four more months to spend with your baby. We need you, Stella! You’re our cold blooded killer!” Stella grunted; after three and a half years she was getting sick of hearing that. “Who’s gonna take two dyke con artists seriously?”

“Oh, everybody takes you seriously, Jet,” Kaylee simpered.

“Shaddup.” Jet smacked her upside the head. “You’re here, Stella, so you’re in. Now c’mon.”

A million reasons not to ‘c’mon’ flooded Stella’s mind, but she found herself following, as she always followed, and the next thing she knew she was in the back seat of a prison minivan, clinging to a state issue automatic pistol with one hand and the door handle with the other. Jet floorboarded it and they careened down the dirt path from the greenhouses and out the unguarded trustee gate. She swerved to avoid oncoming vehicles, made a hard right onto the main road, and raced away from the prison with a rebel yell. “Somebody turned around back there, but I think I lost ‘em!”

“Whee!” Kaylee squealed from the shotgun seat. “You’re the greatest, honey!”

“Yeah, I am, ain’t I?” Jet leered at her lover, then called, “You still with us, Stella?”

Stella caught her breath, and looked out the van window at the houses and cars and playgrounds and fast food joints flying past them. Freedom! What could be sweeter? Anything was worth it, and she began to develop reasons why this mad dash was a good idea, to justify her actions to herself, as she did every time she got sucked into something. “A regular Bonnie and Clyde, you two.”

“Wrong!” Jet objected. “They died. We’re too good for that.”

“Besides, you’re leaving yourself out,” Kaylee added with a fond smile for her cellmate. “More like ‘O Sister, Where Art Thou?’.”

Stella decided her estimate of how far Jet’s booming laugh could be heard was pretty accurate. Jet slapped Kaylee on the shoulder. “Aww, is my lil’ sweetie full of wit or what?”

“That was a good one, Kay,” Stella grinned; Kaylee was a great friend, and it was nice to see Jet compliment her for a change. Jet turned on the radio: no news flashes yet. Stella leaned forward to peer over Jet’s shoulder at the van’s dashboard. “Half a tank of gas, and GPS engaged. That means once they know which vehicle we took, they can link to the satellite system and find us on the grid. Damn whoever invented OnStar.”

“All that means is we gotta find another ride. We’ve got time, worry wart. How long will it take Romeo and Juliet back there to get the nerve up to report their stuff missing? And then they’ll have to have a roll call to find out who’s missing.” Traffic thickened as they entered Raleigh, and Jet slowed, using her signals and smiling at the driver in the next lane like the most law-abiding citizen in North Carolina. “Something older would be good, since it wouldn’t have GPS; but something newer would be okay, if we can get the owner along with it, only long enough to give us the code to deactivate the tracking system. Don’t want to harm innocent bystanders if at all possible. You might not scruple at it though, Stella.” Stella did not reply. Jet stuck her tongue in her cheek and waggled it while she thought. “Gimme a minute…Stars and Stripes forever, willya look at that?”

They slowed for a stoplight. Just through the intersection was a neat collection of buildings with a big sign out front: PROVIDENCE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. “Perfect,” Jet declared. “Teachers don’t get paid shit. It’s a scandal, it really is. So they all drive old traps. We grab one and get their wheels. Maybe even take a coupla kids—with the teacher to tend ‘em. That was the one right thing that old boy did a few years back, when he tried to kidnap David Letterman’s kid; he was gonna take the nanny too, so he didn’t have to mess with the kid. If the media doesn’t know about us yet, this place won’t be locked down. With hostages, even if they catch up to us we get a free ride. We lose the chase and drop them at a truck stop. How much money did we get from those guards’ wallets, Stella? We could even leave ‘em a few bucks to buy the kids a burger while they wait for the cops to come. Make us look good to the media, I bet. By then, we’re long gone—my cousin has a cabin in the mountains that’ll be perfect to hole up in for a week or so till the fuss dies down.” While Jet spoke she pulled into the school parking lot and around back, where she parked near what appeared to be a gym. As they got out, she pulled a shotgun from the rack in back and tossed it to Kaylee. “I know you can’t shoot worth a shit, sweetie, but just hold it and try to look menacing.”

Stella gave the pistol in her hand a quick and furtive once-over; she’d seen the guards handle them often enough that she could find the important parts. She just hoped she could keep cool enough to hide from both her companions and anyone else the fact that she had never fired a weapon in her life.

The three burst through the double doors together to surprise a crowd of small children wearing graduation caps handmade from construction paper and yarn. They milled around the gym floor and on a stage at one end, while teachers herded them through an apparent rehearsal for a tiny commencement ceremony. Their giggles and squeals became screams when an overexcited Kaylee loosed a round of buckshot into the ceiling. “Jesus, Kay!” Jet groaned, then brandished her own gun and yelled, “Nobody move!! Nobody’s gonna get hurt if everybody stays cool! We’re gonna need a couple of volunteers to take a little ride with us. Sit down where you are, right now!”

As the startled children were tamed by their shaken teachers and sat down, Stella scanned the faces for likely prey. She didn’t like this hostage-taking turn, but since Jet had started it the least they could do was pick somebody who looked cowed enough to not try and be a heroine. The fat woman over there, maybe, or the young black girl too frumpily dressed for her age…It appeared Jet had made a choice already, though, as she strode through the silent throng, pointed to an elderly woman and gestured her to get up. When she grabbed the boy sitting next to the woman by the arm, though, he shrieked and fought her. “Damn rugrat—“ Jet growled.

“NO!!!” A body hurled itself into the space and broke Jet’s hold on the crying child’s arm.

Jet swore and leveled her gun at the man, whose headlong plunge had him struggling to keep his feet. Stella’s life rewound to one horrible moment, and she was sure history was about to repeat itself; that now as then, the next sound she heard would be a shot. “Jet, don’t!”

Jet glared at her and cursed some more, but she did not fire at the man scrambling to stand between her and the boy. “Leave my kids alone!” he cried.

Kaylee shoved the nose of the shotgun into his gut, taking her lover’s advice to look menacing to heart. “He must take after his mama,” she jeered, “’cause he sure don’t look like you.” The little boy now clinging to his teacher was chubby and dark, while the man was tall, redheaded and skinny. He wore thick glasses and a blue suit, nice but not new. “Well, okay then. Get that one, Jet, I like her hair bows.” Kaylee reached toward a tiny black girl who hid her face behind her braids.

The man scowled and actually knocked Kaylee’s arm aside, moving to place himself between her and the child. “I said, leave my kids alone!!” he yelled.

Slowly Jet pivoted on one foot and looked the angry man up and down. “You must have one active dick, if all these rugrats are yours,” she drawled sarcastically. “Not to mention some really big balls, considering we’ve got the guns and you don’t.”

Freckles stood out on the man’s pale face, but he did not budge from his protective stance. “I’m the principal. While these kids are in my school, they’re my responsibility. They’re my kids. I can’t let you hurt them.” He took a deep shaky breath. “Take me. Just leave them alone.”

He looked young to be running a school, Stella thought, but the reactions of the teachers around them backed him up. “No, Mr. Aiken!” cried one distraught young woman.

Jet laughed. “Balls, nothing! You got grapefruits, Big Red, I’ll give ya that.”

Stella moved behind Jet and spoke softly into her ear. “A man’s gonna be a tougher hostage to manage than an old lady and a kid or two, even if he does look like a librarian.”

“Look at him, Stell. He’s about as big around as my thigh. I could snap him like a popsicle stick. We won’t get trouble out of him.” She raised her voice and addressed the man again. “What do you drive?”

Aiken blinked in obvious confusion at the seemingly irrelevant question. “Uh…Ford Explorer.”

“New one?” Aiken rolled his eyes. “Dumb question, huh. Principals don’t get paid much more than teachers, do ya? How old?”

“Not old, not new. Five years.”

“That’ll do. Keep your hands up and don’t give us any shit.”

Jet grabbed his arm and shoved him toward the door they had entered through. Several youngsters began to cry, and Stella stepped forward to try and distract them. “Everybody listen up! How many of you can tell time?” Hands shot up among the younger kids, eager to please even in a crisis they dimly understood. “So many? Very good! Can everybody see that clock above your stage?” At their nods she continued, hoping to draw their attention from the sight of Jet and Kaylee ushering their principal out at gunpoint. “If you can read that clock, I want you to tell your friends when thirty minutes has passed. Got that? Thirty minutes. Till then, I want you to sit very quietly in here. Teachers, that goes for you too. No cel phones, no contacts. If our driver hears sirens, and she thinks you called them, she might freak out, and something very bad might happen. If you will do this, kids, everyone will be okay, and hopefully you’ll get to see your principal again real soon.”

‘Let’s go, Stell!” Kaylee shouted from the doorway. Stella backed away from the group, suddenly seeing Harley in every scared little face, then spun and dashed after her friends and their hostage.

+++

Clayton Aiken marched across Prov’s parking lot, wondering if he had really woken up that morning. If not, Lord, this would be a very good time to wake up from this bad dream! Nothing changed. The May breeze still blew his hair around, and he was still being prodded toward his SUV by three women with guns. Even if he could get a weapon away from them he would have no clue how to use it; for once in his life he wished he’d gone hunting with his stepfather and brother. He stopped at the driver’s door and fumbled for his keys. “This is it. You want me to—“

“I want you to shut up.” The big woman with the crew cut, whose companions called her Jet, snatched the keys from his hand. “Didn’t think you were driving, didya?” she scoffed. “Got GPS?” he nodded. “What’s the deactivation code?”

“Uh…6-2-5-4.” It was the street number of his and Tiffany’s house, where they had lived when he bought the Explorer before starting his masters program. The house was gone, as was the marriage, but he’d never gotten around to changing that code. Why, he couldn’t say. It wasn’t to preserve the few good memories, or out of some lame hope Tiff would come back to him. It was inertia, he supposed, or force of habit, or dislike of change: all those supremely dull character traits of his that had caused Tiff to leave him.

He hauled himself back to his present predicament, as Jet got behind the wheel and took the shotgun from the short plump woman holding it. “Get his jacket, Kaylee, and pat him down. Take anything he could use to get help or jump us. Tie, belt—well, maybe not the belt, his pants’ll end up down around his skinny ankles.”

Kaylee peeled his jacket off him with hyper fervor, followed by his tie, dislodging the top two shirt buttons in the process. The tie was silk, striped in burgundy and pink and white: his one really good one, though definitely not a favorite. Louise had given it to him last Christmas; she was working so hard for an engagement ring, it would have been funny if it hadn’t been so sad. She was so desperate to get married she’d even settle for boring Principal Aiken. “I won’t try anything,” he promised while she relieved him of his watch, wallet and cel phone.

“Damn right you won’t.” Kaylee cleaned out his front pants pockets, and found him and squeezed. He yelped in shock. “Wow!” she giggled. “It doesn’t do anything for me or Jet, Stell, but there’s something in his pocket you might be interested in!”

“Really?” The third woman’s composure was a marked contrast to Jet’s bluster and Kaylee’s manic energy. Clayton didn’t know whether to fear her less as a result, or more. He stole a glance at her, standing calmly beside him. With her heart-shaped face, short dark curls and pale blue eyes, she was a beauty. How had she ended up here, holding a gun on him? “Thanks for the info, Kay, but I’ll pass for now. Maybe later. We need to get out of here. I bought us thirty minutes, if those folks are smart and do as I told them, and we’ve used up five or more already.”

“Right,” Jet agreed. “Kaylee, cover him. Get in the back, Aiken. On your knees on the seat, facing rear, hands behind you.”

Mystified, Clayton complied, though he couldn’t ride far in that position. He understood their intent too late, when hands grasped his forearms and something soft brushed his wrists, then constricted tightly around them. “Oh—oh—you don’t have to do that. I said I won’t try anything. I’m not that stupid!”

“Stupid enough to offer yourself as a substitute for a bunch of rugrats that aren’t even yours,” Jet observed dryly from the drivers seat. They are my kids, Clayton thought but did not get to argue.

“That should do.” Stella’s cool voice lifted the sweaty hairs on the back of his neck. “Silk’s great stuff.” She sounded almost amused as he twisted his wrists futilely to test the bonds. “Delicate but so strong. Don’t ruin your tie, now.”

“Please,” he appealed, panic roiling his insides as the totality of his defenselessness gripped him. “I’m not very tough, I won’t give you any trouble. There’s no need to tie me up. I promise. I mean, I’m such a wimp, I couldn’t even roll this girl’s house one time—“

“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all,” Jet cut him off. “You talk too damn much, Aiken. Now that he’s situated, Kay, go get as much ammo as you can find from the minivan, and leave the keys. Stella, shut him up.”

“My pleasure.”

Behind him Clayton heard a foot kicking through the mess in his floorboard. “C’mon, please, I’ll shut up,” he cajoled while trying, surreptitiously, to loosen the knots binding his hands.

Unfortunately, his efforts were neither successful nor sneaky enough to go unnoticed. Cold steel nestled at the base of his skull. “Let’s get one thing straight, man. No matter how big a gun you got in your pants, mine is bigger and deadlier. Got it?” Stella’s tone conveyed a hint of anger for the first time. Clayton gasped, froze and tried not to throw up. A moment later she said, “Ah, the simplest answer is usually the best. Let’s see if this hanky’s big enough…yeah.” She crammed a rolled-up cloth in his mouth. “Hope you’ve washed it since the last time you blew your nose on it,” she added as she pulled the ends behind his head and tied them. “Now, get over there out of the way.” She shoved his side, and he turned and sank onto the seat, his chest tight and his legs shaking. “Anything else before we take off, Jet? Shouldn’t be hard to find supplies—this thing is a mess. I can probably find a nuclear powered spaceship in here, if you’d like to really travel.”

“You’re a riot, Stella,” Jet snorted. “Not unless we blindfold him. I don’t want him seeing where we’re going.”

A muffled cry of fear escaped Clayton’s snugly gagged mouth, and he pressed himself against the wall of the passenger compartment as Stella moved closer. She scrutinized him, so close he could smell her breath; she’d probably had a ham sandwich with mustard for lunch, some crazy corner of his awareness calmly noted amid the howling hysteria in his brain. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary, if these thick-assed glasses are any indication.” With her free hand she pulled his glasses off, and her pretty face became a blur. “Whoa, yeah, totally unfocused. I think I just effectively blinded him.”

“Good deal. Pitch ‘em,” Jet’s voice suggested as another blur, Kaylee, climbed into the front seat beside her.

“Nnugh,” Clayton tried to say. “Nnugh, uhhnn…” No, no, please! He fought to make his weak eyes fix where he thought Stella’s to be, begging her not to incapacitate him completely.

“Aw, that’s not called for, Jet,” she said after a long moment, and he breathed again. “Besides, he’ll be easier to handle if we don’t have to lead him every damn place.” Her hands moved; he hoped she was putting his glasses away in a pocket.

“True enough. Do we need to put him on the floor where he won’t be seen?” He shuddered.

“I don’t think so; these tinted windows are plenty dark…”

From the snatches of conversation that penetrated his shell-shocked mind after that, Kaylee had returned with ample ammunition to please Jet. “Okay, that’s it, we’re outta here. Strap in!” Stella reached across him and he tensed again, but she was, oddly, only fastening a seat belt around his helpless body before she sat down beside him. “Freedom train rollin’, ladies!”

With a whoop, the SUV pulled out of the parking lot. Clayton closed his eyes against the dizzying blur outside the window, and tried to believe this wasn’t happening.

+++

As apprehensive as she had been about taking a hostage, Stella had to concede that as it turned out, she had ended up kind of enjoying the hands-on business of subduing him. Men beat women down enough, literally or otherwise, and if a woman got the opportunity to return the favor it only made sense to grab it. Not that she’d never had an interest in men, like Jet, or had given up on them altogether, like Kaylee. They were good for what they were good for, as long as a gal didn’t expect more.

This Aiken fellow would be no different, of course; but she had expected nothing at all from him, and was already surprised. For one, his willingness to sacrifice himself for the kids in his school baffled her. She’d throw herself in front of a tank for Harley, sure, but to do it for a bunch of kids that weren’t even your blood? It was curious.

For another thing, he didn’t look nearly as nerdy now. With his crisp white shirt rumpled and unbuttoned, and his necktie busy binding his hands, coppery chest hairs peeked out over the neck of his undershirt (and what guy wore undershirts anymore, anyhow?) When she had moved close to take his glasses she had caught a whiff of soap and some nice after shave, not too strong. They were man smells, good man smells at that, and she hadn’t smelled man smells in far too long. His shoulders were broad and his hips slim, and if she tilted her head just so she thought she could make out the outline of the gun in his pants Kaylee had tittered about. Stella hadn’t been with a man in nearly four years, counting the time she spent in lockup before and during her trial, and the school principal was looking better all the time.

He shifted on the seat beside her, eyes still closed, and worked his lips around the handkerchief gag: trying to work it loose, maybe, or just to ease pinched skin at the corners of his mouth. He had damn fine lips, full and pinkish, the kind she liked to kiss. Stella hated kissing teeth. And those eyes! Even when squinting at her, they were way too pretty to be wasted on a man, too pretty to hide behind Coke-bottle glasses. Although she hadn’t tossed the glasses out the window as Jet suggested, and wasn’t quite sure why. True, he’d be easier to manage if he could see, and they could threaten him with blindness to make him comply, but maybe the pleading in his eyes had made her relent, too. She liked the sense of control, but she hadn’t really liked the fear she had seen in them then. They were bright green, with long reddish lashes that brushed his cheeks when his lids were lowered, as they were now. Yep, she just might have to take a little time to try this out while she had the chance, discreetly of course…

“Stell? Stella? Could you tear yourself away from your new sweetheart long enough to join the conversation?” Jet joked.

“Laugh it up, girls. Even I’m not desperate enough to go for the Geek King.” Stella trusted her friends, but still, it seemed wiser to keep one’s own counsel about some things. “I did go elsewhere for a minute though. Sorry.” She glanced out the window; while lost in thought, they had left the city of Raleigh far behind and were climbing up hills in the gathering evening. “How much farther?”

“Not much,” Jet replied.

“We turn at a little market, Jet says,” Kaylee supplied helpfully.

“Watch your tongue,” Jet cautioned with a jerk of her head toward the back seat. “Little pitchers have big ears, as my grandma used to say. And he does have big ears, for that matter. Why blind him and then tell him where we’re going? So zip it, or I might have to gag you too.”

“Ooh, you promise? You know I love that stuff!”

“Women!” Jet groaned. “Deliver me from kinky lipstick lesbians.”

Stella had to laugh. “If this was the topic of conversation, no wonder I left.”

“It wasn’t,” Jet assured her. “We were talking over future plans—in vague terms, naturally: Big Ears there may be asleep, or he may not. You know what a great forger Kay is, and I can run a con game like no other.”

“We’re too good to waste our gifts in the sticks,” Kaylee said excitedly. “We’re heading for the big city.”

“So Kaylee’s building castles in the air,” Jet finished. “Or more like Manhattan apartment suites.”

“We can do it!” Kaylee burbled. “Everything we ever dreamed of. Stella, you should come too. You’re so tough, you could do anything. I know you want to see your little boy first but we’ll work it out.”

Stella nodded but did not elaborate. Discretion still ruled her; somehow she did not want these two to know her plans, such as they were, any more than she wanted the man slumped bound and gagged beside her to know.

At a tumbledown little bait shop, Jet turned left and kicked the SUV into four wheel drive. “This puppy is perfect for this run,” she said happily as they climbed higher. “I’d get myself one if I planned to stay in this area.”

“We can get one, Jet. With what we can scam off rich folks, we can afford anything we want!”

Jet barely glanced at Kaylee. “Yeah. We.”

After a few minutes, the slant of the road, or rather path, turned downward. “Ronnie’s cabin is in a hollow,” Jet explained. “Great place, well situated. He gets some flooding occasionally, but everything’s packed away watertight, so we’re cool.” Soon a small building of rough wood appeared in the dusk. She pulled around back, under a canopy of trees, and stopped by a back door.

Kaylee scrambled out of the SUV with a squeal of delight. Stella stretched, then poked her seatmate in the ribs with her pistol. His eyes flew open—no, she hadn’t imagined how pretty they were. He tried to move, then struggled briefly against the bonds around his wrists, his arm muscles bunching and tensing beneath his shirt sleeves. Finally he stilled, screwed his eyes shut for a minute and made a whimpery little noise, as if he had really dozed off and dreamed himself somewhere less frightening. Stella thought her heart was pretty hard, but a twinge of sympathy penetrated it. “C’mon,” she said and got his glasses out of the pocket of her worn chambray prison shirt. “The quicker you move, the sooner we can get this over with and you can get back to ‘your kids’.”

She slipped the glasses on his face. “Aaak ooo,” he grunted. It almost sounded like ‘thank you’. When he could see, his eyes had a way of grabbing yours. Stella shrugged and looked away, concentrating on undoing his seat belt and shoving the door open on his side.

“Get out,” she told him, “and go inside. If you run, you’ll just die tired.” Joe had had an Army sniper T-shirt that said that. He had liked to tell people he was a sniper once, but she knew he got it at a thrift store. Aiken clambered clumsily down. Part of the clumsiness, Stella noticed as she followed him inside, derived from his huge feet, almost too big to balance on the SUV’s running board. So maybe Kaylee hadn’t exaggerated about that pistol in his pocket.

A small generator sat by the cabin’s back door, which opened into a tiny space containing several waterproof storage chests. Three doors opened from the storage area: the right into a washroom, the left into a bunkroom, and straight ahead a larger main room with cooking supplies, a rough-hewn table and some chairs, and a generous fireplace. “—wired for lights and all, but we don’t want to attract attention,” Jet was saying when Stella entered. “Siddown in the corner, jackass,” she directed Aiken, who meekly complied. “We’ll use the fireplace mostly, and the battery powered lanterns. It’s not like we’re staying the summer, after all. I do want some hot water though! So let’s get the place opened, then we can scare up supper and clean up.”

The three busied themselves sweeping, wiping and checking the generator for blockages or leakage through its waterproof housing. Stella was cleaning old ashes from the fireplace when she felt a presence nearby. It reminded her of her retarded cousin who couldn’t talk; he’d come and stand near someone, usually her, until he got noticed, then take her by the hand and lead her to whatever he wanted. She looked up and found Aiken shifting from foot to foot, with those big eyes fixed on her again. “Sit your ass down.” He looked very uncomfortable, and tried to grunt something. Stella looked around, and finding the others out, got to her feet and removed the gag. “I am an idiot,” she grumbled. “What the fuck is it?”

“Could I use the restroom, please?”

The request was so civil, so polite, that it took her aback. “Aren’t you the mannerly one?” He bit his lower lip and dropped his eyes. “Okay, okay. Who wants to put up with piss stench? But I’m not holding your dick for you.” She walked behind him and undid the striped necktie around one wrist. “Kaylee, watch him, and shoot if he twitches,” she said to the empty room while she made him put his hands in front of him and rebound them securely. “I don’t quite trust Kay with a gun,” she said casually as she drew her own and directed him to the washroom. “She’s kinda like Barney Fife. You might want to be careful around her.” She stood outside the open door, and he looked around at her with his mouth open as though to protest. She gestured with the gun toward his crotch. “If you’re waiting to be left alone your bladder’s got a long wait.” His fair face flushed, and he turned and unzipped his fly, his bound hands awkward. Stella wasn’t studying the matter, but she couldn’t help noticing her speculation from his foot size looked to be accurate—he was seriously hung. Yes, it might be nice to oblige him to give some of that up…

He finished and flushed the chemical toilet. “Thank you,” he said quietly. Stella shrugged and herded him back into the main room where Jet and Kaylee were wrestling the windows open to let the cool mountain air in. “I can help you with that, if you want me to,” he offered.

Jet spun. “Why the hell would you want to do that?”

Now Aiken shrugged. “Why should I antagonize you? You don’t know me, so you can’t have anything against me. And I’ve got nothing against you—you left my kids alone when I asked. We might as well get along.” Jet stared for a moment, then made a jerky motion with her arm for him to come over and unstick the window. “My name’s Clayton,” he introduced himself while he pushed.

“So?” Jet folded her beefy arms.

“Well, I know your names, so you should have something to call me other than, um, jackass.”

Stella stifled a snicker. “We can call you Aiken,” she pointed out and was puzzled when he gave a sarcastic little laugh. “What, is that your alias?”

“Not exactly.” He conquered the window and moved to the next. “It’s my legal name, but it’s my mother’s maiden name. My birth father was an alcoholic, and I really didn’t want to pass any more of him to children of mine than I could avoid. I never let my stepfather adopt me, though sometimes I wonder why. My mom did so much that when I got old enough I just changed my last name to hers, see, ‘cause—“

“Where’s that gag?” Jet interrupted. “This is all very nice—Clayton—but don’t bother trying to ingratiate yourself with us.”

He stopped with a window half open, and turned to her. “I thought,” he admitted more quietly, “if you knew a little about me as a person, you might be less likely to hurt me.”

“I’m not planning on hurting anybody,” Jet returned, “though I can’t speak for what our cold-blooded killer in residence over there might do if you piss her off sufficiently.” Stella wished suddenly that the floor would open up and swallow her, when Clayton looked at her with shock and renewed fear in his pretty eyes. Why wouldn’t Jet stop using her past against her this way? “Just to set your mind at ease, mister, here’s the plan. We hole up here a few days till the fuss dies down. When we move along, if you cooperate, we leave you here safe and sound. You can hike to the main road, which is about 2 miles, or if you’re nice we might even leave your phone—probably hidden somewhere in here, so we have time to get clear. So, as you say, let’s all get along till then. Now, me for a hot shower and some civvies!” Jet tugged disdainfully at her prison issue jeans and work shirt. “Ronnie brings girlfriends up here, so there’ll be clean clothes for you two too. Let’s use these rags to clean up—or maybe to start a fire for supper, huh?”

She vanished into the washroom. Stella searched the storage space and found plenty of non-perishable food to prepare, and started a simple meal of beans and wieners heated over the fire. Kaylee, with their unexpected volunteer help, finished cleaning; before long, Clayton had an actual conversation going. By the time she headed for her shower, Kaylee was giggling like a schoolgirl with a crush. Jet emerged in her cousin’s corduroys and flannel shirt and found Kaylee clean clothes while supper finished. Stella had hoped to wash up herself before eating, but resigned herself to waiting. Instead, she dished up the meal, with a fourth bowl for Clayton. He took a seat at the table, bowed his head and clasped his bound hands, heedless of Jet’s snickers, before he dug in.

The cabin had a tiny battery-powered TV, and they watched it while they ate. The news coverage was making up for lost time, with much detail on the dangerous escaped felons. “Dangerous!” Kaylee giggled. “The worst I ever did was slap a waiter’s face once when he tried to feel me up.”

The report on Stella noted she was incarcerated for bank robbery and accessory to murder, and she felt Clayton’s eyes on her again. “How did that happen?” he asked. “If you don’t mind my asking.”

“I do mind,” she snapped and shoveled another bite of beans in her mouth.

“She minds if anybody asks,” Kaylee informed him. “Don’t take it personal, or she might shoot you.” If one more person says that, she thought, I might shoot THEM. Or myself.

Clayton Aiken, as the media reported, was quite a prodigy; at barely over thrity, and after only three years on the job, he had recently been voted North Carolina’s Principal of the Year. “How about you?” Jet jeered. “Wonder if we could get any ransom for returning you.”

“Gosh, I don’t know,” he replied seriously. “I don’t think that’s ever happened before.”

“Oh, don’t tease him, Jet!” Kaylee protested. “He’s sweet.”

“Yeah,” Stella snapped as she got up with the empty bowls. “Just don’t turn your back on him.” She had to say something, because she was starting to feel he was pretty sweet too, and she could not let herself think that. The news coverage concluded with sound bites from tearful teachers pleading for their beloved principal’s safe return, dark reports that police had no new leads, and an impressive fit pitched by a woman identified as Clayton’s fiancée. Interestingly, he just sighed and did not look overly distressed at her histrionics, which made Stella very curious.

Jet commandeered Clayton to go outside with her to the small stream that ran behind the cabin. He returned staggering under the weight of two huge buckets of water, and visibly shaking. “Scared of water!” Jet mocked him. “Be good and maybe we won’t drown ya. Sissy. You’re not gonna get any trim outta him, Stella, he’s not man enough.”

“Who said I was trying for trim?” Stella retorted while dumping some water into a tub to wash the dishes. “And how would you know what constitutes ‘man enough’, anyhow?” Jet had her good points, but she could be so casually mean, and sometimes, like now, Stella was not up for hearing it. Clayton dropped heavily into a chair, and Stella ambled casually over after she finished the dishes. “Don’t mind her. Things scare her too, I’m sure. Things scare me. Cats, for one.”

“Oh my gosh!” Clayton gulped. “Cats scare me too. I ran over our kitten with the car when I was a kid, and I swear I think they haunt me for that. Ever since then I can’t stand them.”

It was oddly poignant to think of a teenage boy traumatized by accidentally killing the family pet. Maybe this guy was a cut above the usual. Stella pondered the interesting contradictions of the man while she finally got her shower; lukewarm, but good enough. She toweled off quickly, shivering a bit, and trotted into the lantern-lit storage room en route to the bunkroom where the clothes were, but froze in her tracks. Still in his chair in the main room, Clayton was staring through the doorway and directly at her naked self, his eyes wide and his mouth slightly open. So much for the benefit of the doubt! she thought. Her wiser, more cynical self had been right all along—this man was no different than all the ones who had shoved her or groped her or gawked at her when she took her clothes off for a few bucks a night. She was furious, mostly with herself for briefly letting her guard down, but forced herself to calm. Prison had been one tough school, but it had taught her to control her emotions. Joe hadn’t learned the same lesson, which was why he was dead and she wasn’t. She went into the bunk room and dressed; soft flannel felt so much better against her skin than rough prison weave. She was flushed, from the shower she was sure, and only from that. In storage, she found some paper and pencils, and hoped she might get a chance to draw. She also found some nylon rope, then strolled out into the main room.

Clayton still lounged in the chair, tipped back on two legs now. Jet and Kaylee were shaking out blankets, making pallets in front of the fire and arguing good-naturedly about who should take first watch. “I think we’ll be okay without,” Stella declared. “The cops have no clue as of yet where we are.” She strode across the room and bent to pick up the handkerchief she had dropped there earlier, stiff now from dried saliva. “What we really need to worry about—“ She crossed back and shoved Clayton; he lost his balance and fell onto the board floor with a thud. “—is being strangled in our sleep. Get over there!” She aimed a kick at his side, and he scrambled away, his bound hands on the floor with his feet, till he was backed against the wall farthest from the fire’s heat and light. Stella jerked the tie around his wrists half loose, forced him face down on the floor and bound his hands tightly behind him, then gagged him before he could protest. For good measure, she whacked him till he rolled onto his back, knotted the rope around his ankles, and snatched his glasses away.

“Damn,” Jet muttered from behind her, “I told him not to piss her off.”

Stella knelt over the hostage. His face was white in the shadows, and his eyes took up almost his whole face now, but she was so angry now she almost enjoyed his fear. “How d’ya like me now, Mr. Principal?” she whispered. “Mr. All Innocence? Get your eye full? You’re all the same, you men. Play the women’s game till you think you can get the upper hand. Well, your hands aren’t doing shit anytime soon.” She glanced down and saw what she expected. “Oh, so you get off on peeking, huh?” she hissed and gripped him through the cloth. He gasped and grunted. “Shut up. Not a sound. You don’t want to really piss me off. I’m the ‘cold blooded killer’, remember? How stupid did I have to be, to almost be taken in by you batting your girly eyelashes and biting your pretty lips?” His perfect white teeth closed around the gag; he tipped his head back and let out a low groan of frustrated arousal that made his throat visibly vibrate. Stella let go of him. “That’ll teach you a lesson, maybe,” she said. “Sweet dreams.” A small moan followed her as she returned to the flickering firelight. “You two young lovers need to watch your backs better. Good thing your cold blooded killer came along for the ride.” Both Jet and Kaylee watched in silence. Stella grabbed a blanket and rolled up in it, her gun her only companion.

+++

Eyes watering, Clayton gasped for breath through the cloth clogging his mouth. As the agony of his useless erection slowly diminished, it was replaced by the discomfort of his restraints. His fingers tingled as if they were about to fall asleep, and his ankle bones were pressed painfully together by the ropes secured around them.

He should have known things were going too well. He was no action hero, trying to lure his captors into a false relaxation, but they would never believe that. He just wanted to get by, to survive and go home. And then, and then, when he had persuaded them to treat him like a person and not a tool, he had had to go and let his mind wander, when Stella vanished into the closet-sized washroom…wondering what she looked like underneath those drab prison blues…and when she emerged, she was perfect. Just perfect. More gorgeous than any centerfold he’d ever taken a gander at, with her pert little breasts, long legs and round hips, and her curls finger-combed and crisp from the shower. What guy wouldn’t stare?

And then she’d seen him looking, and it all went to…well, down the tubes. She was a killer. She said so herself, though the way she had said it sounded so bitter. The news said so. But still…doggonit, she was so beautiful, and sometimes she seemed touchable, approachable. Not anymore, though. One slip, one moment of weakness, had seen to that.

He lay aching until the sounds of steady breathing said the three women were asleep. Then he began to try to move, laboriously squirming and wriggling. Angry with himself for letting his libido defeat his higher thought processes, he set to work to free himself. The silk necktie that bound his hands slid only a little, and his struggles to shift it and find the knots by touch only made his wrists hurt. Then he tried to untie his feet, but the ropes were knotted in front of him, and strain though he might he couldn’t twist himself into a pretzel to reach them. Finally he gave up, and lay panting on his side till his pulse slowed. Its hammer in his ears was so loud he fancied his captors could hear it, and the thought of waking them with noise terrified him even more. As enraged as Stella had been just at catching him gawking at her, if she caught him trying to escape she just might shoot him dead and save herself any more trouble. He almost sobbed aloud with fear, then bit down on the gag and fought to keep silent.

After a while, he got his knees under him and rose onto them. The bonds were brutally tight; he wasn’t going far, but he didn’t intend to. Several careful scoots, the fabric of his suit pants pulling and ripping against the rough wooden floor, got him to the corner. He pressed his sweaty forehead to the wall, and knelt there and prayed as he never had prayed before: for protection and safety, if that were God’s will; for strength to face whatever came, if His will were otherwise. He could not speak, but he knew God must hear the cries of his soul.

Somehow, he nodded off there. Pain and numbness, fear and fatigue, all blended into a void from which Clayton was yanked by a shake on his shoulder. He tried to move, or speak, or see, and could do none at first. Then the gag loosened and fell away; his jaw throbbed from its tightness, and his chin was wet from drool he couldn’t swallow with his mouth filled. A fuzzy human-colored blur moved into his line of sight, lit by what must be daylight. “Stella?” he croaked. “Please don’t kill me, Stella.”

Only silence answered his plea for a moment, and then her familiar voice. “Goddammit, nobody’s killing anybody, if I can help it.” He tried not to betray his relief, though he felt like he had the shakes inside. She untied his ankles, tied his hands in front of him, and even returned his glasses, then let him use the bathroom and splash a little water on his face and neck. Outside the windows when he joined his captors for a bowl of oatmeal with dried fruit, the weather was flawless. Half the small table was taken up with fishing gear. “I’m ready to cast!” Jet declared. “A little luck and we’ll have fresh fish for supper.”

“Isn’t it lovely up here?” Kaylee bubbled over with cheerleader-like enthusiasm; Clayton could see how she could persuade almost anyone to cash a check she had forged. “I found some home magazines, Stella, so I can really start planning for that suite. If you want some help decorating yours, just let me know. I always thought if I wanted an honest job, I could probably do that.”

“My mom does that. With your personality, you’d probably be good at it,” Clayton offered, and she giggled.

“Quit sucking up, sissy boy,” Jet warned him, so he shut up. Stella guarded him, as before, as they trooped out. He stayed as far from the stream as possible, though that did not stop Jet from harassing him about his fear of the water. Honestly, it wasn’t much different from being bullied in school as a kid, so he tried to let it go as he had back then.

The birds sang riotously and the day truly was fine. As the sun climbed higher, though, Clayton began to perspire. He sat down on a stump and set about trying with his teeth to undo his cuffs and push his sleeves up. “Got a problem?” Stella asked, strolling over with her gun in one hand, a pad of paper in the other, and a pencil behind her ear.

She probably thought he was trying to pick his hands free.“ Could you help me with this? I probably ought to leave them down, I sunburn easily, but it’s getting warm and I just can’t get this.” She paused, her face unreadable, then crouched beside him and turned up his cuffs. Her hands were warm and surprisingly gentle on his skin. “Thanks.” He glanced over at the pad and picked it up. On the top page was a sketch of a squirrel eating a nut, so real you could almost touch him and feel his fur. Open-mouthed, Clayton flipped through the pages; here was a dead stump with a new sapling bursting forth from it; there a scene of Jet standing in the stream fly fishing, while Kaylee sat on the bank with her magazine. “Stella, these are terrific!” She tried to brush him off, but he would not have it. “No, I mean it. Look at this. The texture of the bark, and the fur—you catch everything. Did you do this for a living before, uh…”

“No. Who gets paid to draw?”

“Lots of people do! Especially if they’re this good. I’m not sucking up, honest.”

She looked into his face as she had when she took his glasses in the SUV, as though searching for signs of truth. “Well, thank you,” she said at last.

“You’re welcome.” The silence stretched awkwardly. “I’m sorry about what I did last night,” Clayton finally said.

“Why, so you can try to get back in our good graces? Or because you think I’ll kill you?”

Again, she spoke of her crime with an unfathomable bitterness. “No. Because it was rude and ungentlemanly of me, and I am sorry it happened. That said though, you really can’t parade a beautiful naked woman in front of a guy and not expect him to react.”

Her laugh was sharp. “There you go again, sucking up. I don’t imagine I’m anybody’s definition of beautiful.”

“Who are you kidding? You look in the mirror lately? My goodness, Stella!”

She stared down at her pad in his hand. “Nobody ever called me beautiful,” she said softly. “And nobody’s killing anybody, by the way. I never killed anybody.”

“So you’re innocent?” Of course, everybody in jail claimed to be innocent, but Clayton strove not to sound condescending.

“No. I’m not innocent, I just didn’t kill anybody. I’m not a cold blooded killer!” she said with sudden heat, grabbed her pad and her gun and scrambled to her feet.

For some crazy reason, Clayton believed her. “Okay.” The same sense of her truth, though, gave him the sense he should not press her for her story, so he returned the subject to her drawing.

She seemed almost shy as she showed him her other pictures, but an excitement glinted in her pale eyes when he praised them. “I can draw you, if you want me to.”

“Would you? That would be so cool. I never had a portrait done.” With the fresh breeze, the laughs and calls from the stream, and the quiet scratch of Stella’s pencil on paper, Clayton could almost have relaxed, if not for the cloth that bound his hands. The laid-back atmosphere continued into the evening, when over a tasty dinner of fresh fish Jet told boastful tales of past cons, and Clayton himself offered stories of kids he had taught that had the women chuckling like old friends on a vacation.
The mood was broken when Jet noticed Stella’s pad and demanded to see it. “Waste of time,” she grunted as she riffled the pages and stopped on the one of herself and Kaylee. “Get rid of these. All of ‘em. They could be evidence.” Stella protested, but reluctantly took the pad back and tore the pages out. Clayton bit back a cry of protest himself as she tossed them on the fire; but as she closed the notebook he spied one sketch untouched…her drawing of him.

After supper, he walked up to the wash tub. “You forgot one,” he said. When she looked up sharply, he tapped the fingertips of his bound hands on the cover of the notebook lying on the table.

She caught her breath; for the first time, he thought he glimpsed fear in her face. “So—“ Her voice cracked, and she began again. “So, why haven’t you run to Jet yet? What’s your plan? Turn my friends against me, or blackmail me?”

“Neither! I just want to know why you won’t stand up to her. Kaylee I can understand, kind of, since they’re, y’know, together. But you’re too good to be a doormat. Why won’t you stick up for yourself?”

“None of your damn business.” She scooped up the notebook and strode to the fire, finding the page with his picture. It was a darn good likeness, better than Clayton thought he looked in fact. He looked away at the rip of paper torn from the binding, but she did not toss it on the fire. Instead, she spun on her heel and left the room. He mentally kicked himself. Once again, his big mouth had undone the good he was trying to do. Stella wasn’t likely to deal much more kindly with him now than she had the previous night. That memory made him shudder despite his best efforts, and he stared out the nearby window at the darkening sky.

“Cold?” Stella’s voice came from right behind him. “Need your sleeves turned down?”

“No, just thinking.” Thinking about spending another night bound and gagged… “I’m not looking forward to trying to sleep over in that dark chilly corner again.” She gave a noncommittal grunt, and he yielded and let the subject go. “Listen,” he went on, turning, “as long as I’m here, I might as well use the time. There are a lot of teaching journals out in my SUV I haven’t had time to read. Would it be okay if I went and got some of them?”

Stella readily agreed, coaxed the keys away from Jet, and escorted him out to his vehicle. Clayton settled near the fire with a stack of journals. Yesterday morning, he had taken all the dry banalities of his job for granted; now he lost himself in them, read every word on every page, and tried not to think they might be his last contact in this life with the career he had planned for years.

He was recalled at last from his mental escape by Jet’s hearty yawn. “Time to turn in, ladies?”

It was more an order than a question. Kaylee set aside her decorating magazines and began unfolding blankets. “Get a couple more, Kay,” Stella spoke up. “Our guest here has behaved himself today, so I think we should upgrade his accommodations a bit.”

“What’d you have in mind?” Jet asked warily.

“He deserves a little slack. I’d say he’s learned his lesson from last night, so no gag or tying his legs—seems excessive.” Stella’s shrug held a studied nonchalance. “And we’re probably better off if he bunks here by the fire with us where we can keep a closer eye on him, instead of over there in the corner getting into mischief. I’m a light sleeper anyhow.”

“Yeah, Jet!” Kaylee chimed in. “Might as well be nice. He hasn’t tried anything.”

“Yet,” Jet said darkly, but relented. “Okay. Hands behind him though. No risk of hanky panky. And he sleeps between me and Stella.”

Clayton wondered with a hint of amusement if his charming of Kaylee had precipitated that particular condition. It didn’t matter, though. He was freer than the night before, and he silently thanked God for it. He watched eagerly as Kaylee spread him a pallet on the floor before the hearth. Even sleeping in the slightly awkward position with his hands bound at his back was miles better than the previous night’s torment. Stella even seemed unenthusiastic when she knelt beside him to tie them, and the knotted silk, while still inescapable, was looser. “Thanks for speaking up for me,” he said with sincerity as he lay down.

She shook her head, but actually went so far as to fold the blankets around him and smooth them, knowing he could not do it for himself. “Don’t try to get up alone if you need to use the bathroom or something,” she said softly. “Jet might get a little freaky. Wake me up. I’ll help you.”

Clayton nodded and settled down with the warmth of the fire at his toes, believing at last that he might manage to survive this ordeal intact.

+++

Stella woke suddenly in the night, as she had most nights as long as she could recall. One moment she would be sleeping soundly, the next instantly vigilant, scanning the environment for threats. None presented themselves when she opened her eyes to the little cabin’s main room. The corner she faced was empty, but her memory populated it, with a lanky bound figure huddled on his knees, leaning against the wall for support and shivering in an uneasy drowse. She clenched her fists at her gut, remembering how the sight had nauseated her.

Bile had risen in her throat again in the morning when she went to wake him. His eyes had been dazed, his face streaked with tears. He had spoken her name for the first time, but that first time had been a plea for her not to kill him. It made her sick, what she had done.

She rolled over with her blankets. The dying fire put out just enough light to make out the face of the man slumbering by her side. Tonight, Clayton looked so peaceful; it was almost like watching Harley sleep, on the rare occasions she’d gotten that chance in his short life. She had to get to her baby boy, whatever it took.

As for this man: well, he was a liar, but a sweet one, who had given her a sweet lie to cling to. She settled down and let sleep creep up and cover her eyes. Drifting off, she hoped for a dream of someone who really thought she was gifted, who really thought she was beautiful.

+++

Thursday, the third day of Stella’s freedom and Clayton’s captivity, dawned overcast with a smell of rain. Kaylee curled up in a corner with a new batch of magazines to continue designing her dream home. Jet was not fond of rain, and grumpily sat down to tie more flies. Stella wanted out, rain be damned; in fact, she had loved playing outside in the rain as a kid.

Jet squashed her request. “Safer if we stay together.”

“I wouldn’t mind getting some exercise either,” Clayton offered from across the room.

“All the more reason for you to keep your ass in here, Stella,” Jet snapped, not responding to him. “What kind of hole would me and Kay be in if the state patrol showed up while you’re tripping through the woods with our insurance policy?”

“Well, I don’t know, Jet,” Kaylee surprised them all by putting down her magazine and leaning forward, her shiny face unusually thoughtful. “If the cops caught up with her, she’d have him to bargain with, of course. But if they came here, we still could too. Just tell ‘em she’s got him off someplace, and if she sees them here she’ll kill him.”

“Better yet,” Stella added, heartened by Kaylee’s unexpected support, “you’ve got his cel phone, and the cops would have no way of knowing I didn’t have one. You say I’m waiting for a call from you, and if I don’t get it then…” She hesitated, aware of his eyes on her without even turning her head, and did not turn; she did not want to see fear of her there again. “Then they, well, they don’t get him back anytime soon.”

Jet scowled at Kaylee and almost threw the fishing lure she was working on across the room. “Fuck it. Your logic is beyond me. Go on, then.”

Stella did not linger long enough for Jet to have one of her infamous and instantaneous changes of mind. She stuck her pistol in the back waistband of her pants, grabbed some beef jerky and crackers and dried apricots, and all but shoved Clayton out the door. As they hiked, she sucked in deep breaths of the cleansing air through her nose and blew them out through her mouth like a smoker tasting fine tobacco. “Man, this is great. I read a book once about Ireland, and this is the kind of day they call a ‘soft day’ over there. When the water hangs in the air, misty like this, but it’s not quite thick enough to turn into rain yet.”

“It is nice,” Clayton agreed.

“Thanks for backing me up. I really needed to get out of there.”

“I was hoping you might want to draw some more; but you didn’t even bring your pad.”

“No—no, I didn’t, did I? But with the weather like this, the paper’d get all damp; and besides, Kaylee was using it to do floor plans, and furniture layouts, and it’s not mine anyway.”

“All of which are convenient excuses for the fact that you didn’t want to make Jet mad again, aren’t they?” Clayton stopped walking. “Why won’t you stand up for yourself, Stella?”

“I have no idea how,” she snapped, sick of his nagging. “When you spend your childhood getting beat up on, you learn damn quick that making waves makes you a bigger target, and going along keeps you safer. It’s easy for you to talk big about ‘standing up’ when you’ve never walked in my shoes.”

Clayton stood very still, his vivid eyes pinning hers. “Don’t be so quick to assume,” he said quietly. “How many times were you beaten till you were bruised, and then got yelled at for bruising?” Stella’s mouth was half open with another surly reply that was never spoken; her voice was frozen by the vision, all too easily rising before her mind’s eye, of a skinny little boy with a shock of red hair, crying in a corner after being whipped. “I know what you’re talking about. I know, and bowing and scraping isn’t a permanent solution.”

“Yeah…yeah, well, maybe, maybe not for you. But going with the flow worked for me. It kept me alive. So I never learned to do otherwise. I wouldn’t have been in prison if I had. This guy Joe, I met in Atlanta. I was stripping in a club then. We saw each other for two or three years, when he wasn’t in jail, which he was a lot of the time, like when our boy Harley was born. I came back to Raleigh after that; moved back in with my mama, got a real job, and took some classes. Harley wasn’t quite a year old when Joe got out the last time, and he came up here too. He hadn’t been out a month when he had me drive him to a bank and wait out front with the engine going. I knew he wasn’t going in to do business. He tried to rob it. I saw the people inside go to the floor, and I knew, but I didn’t run. I was too scared of him. A security guard tried to stop him, he tried to take the guy hostage…they fought over the gun, and the guard got killed.” Clayton’s bound hands balled into fists, and he brought them to his mouth, his eyes big. “So you see what I meant. I didn’t kill anybody, but I’m not innocent either.

“I should’ve run. I should’ve, like you said, stood up. But I didn’t know how. The only time I ever did was one time Joe was in jail in Georgia, and his parents sent up here and tried to take Harley away from me, and my mama got a lawyer and we fought ‘em and won. She’s got him now. But that’s all.” Stella glared around her at the hazy outlines of the trees. “I wouldn’t be standing here right now if I could stand up for myself. Jet saw the opportunity and dragged me along. I told myself it was a good idea—Harley’s birthday is next month, he’ll be five, and he hardly remembers me being outside prison walls. I figured I’d go get him, and go…someplace. Maybe to Florida. My cellmate before Kaylee was this Cuban gal, a drug runner, and she said I could stay with her folks in Miami anytime, no questions asked. But that’s no life for a baby. I know it. So what does that make me? And—damn, why am I even saying all this? What must—“ She tried to cut off the appalling diarrhea of her mouth before she said something incredibly stupid, but failed. “—what must you think of me?”

“Well,” Clayton replied after a decent moment, “I understand a lot more, that’s for sure. And as far as what that makes you: I’d say it makes you a mom who loves her little boy. That’s all.”

“I’d do anything for him. I’d die for him.” She stared at Clayton in sudden awareness. “Not that that makes me solid gold. You were willing to do that for a bunch of kids that aren’t even yours.”

“But they are mine. I told you that when you…when we met. As long as a child is inside my school, they’re my responsibility. It was the right thing to do …what Jesus would do, I guess.”

“I don’t know about all that. Jesus stuff, I mean. All I know is, I’m trapped. Prison is so hard, just getting through every day. The cops’ll be watching mama’s place now, so I can’t get to Harley; but I can’t go back. They’d give me another year or more at least, and my probation hearing was set for September…” She choked back tears. She had let too much go in front of this man already; she would not cry. A part of her was a little surprised she even remembered how to. “My reputation protected me—nobody knew I didn’t kill the guy—and Jet protected me too, kind of. She’s been fond of me in a way, because I was good to Kaylee. But now…I can’t go back.”

He met her eyes in silence for a long, long few minutes. “Would you kill me?” he asked suddenly. “What they were talking about back there? If it came down to that, or going back to prison. Would you?”

The least she could do was be honest with him. “I don’t know.”

He nodded, slowly. “I guess I’ll have to accept that.” She looked away, unable to bear the naked sadness that appeared in his eyes, sure he was thinking of the children he might never see again, or maybe the girlfriend who had pitched such a fit in front of the TV cameras. “C’mon, let’s walk,” he said after another minute, and they set off again. A rough little path wound up one side of the hollow, and they followed it up until the whole expanse lay in green-gray beauty beneath their feet. Now Stella wished she had brought her pad after all. Neither knew much about plants, or birds or bugs, but they enjoyed looking around them, and even made up names for some of the things they saw. By the time they made their way back down they were hungry, and sat down to eat on a rock near the stream (but far enough away for Clayton’s comfort). He bowed his head over the food again, as he had at every meal he had shared with them. Stella almost asked what he said at those times, but refrained—she knew nothing of ‘Jesus stuff’, and it might be personal. She did ask why he was so scared of water, though. For someone as talkative as him, she didn’t get much of a reply, just a mumble about something that happened when he was a kid.

When he was a kid, and got hit till he was black and blue, and then got yelled at because his fair skin showed the marks so clearly. Stella had long since justified her own abusive childhood; she was unexpected, unwanted, and not much use. Being nothing special, she figured she hadn’t deserved much better than the string of violent men she’d ended up with. But how could someone hurt him, as good and kind and smart as he was? The question was barely formed in her brain when an evil imp pointed out that she had hurt him, deliberately, angry at her own hurt; and that she had just all but told him she would put a gun to his head and pull the trigger if she had to. No I didn’t! she retorted to the accusing thought. I said ‘I don’t know’. It’s not the same!

She still sat wrestling with her mind when she became aware Clayton was standing. “Stella, can I ask a favor? Could I, um, have a few minutes alone? I don’t mean alone alone,” he hastened to add, “just kinda away. I won’t run. There’s no place to run to, and with these big feet I don’t run very well anyhow. You can even keep my glasses if you want to.”

“No, it’s okay. Just don’t go too far.” The base of her spine itched where the cold steel of the pistol touched it, but she did not reach toward it. She merely watched, as he walked a short distance away and sank to his knees before a tree stump, folding his bound hands atop it and lowering his head over them. Jet would have been dumbfounded or loudly mocking of so open a display of faith. Stella just watched in silent uncomprehending awe.

After a while, he turned and sat on the ground with his back to the stump. He put his feet flat on the earth and rested his hands on his uplifted knees; then, he tipped his head back to face the sky, and did something Stella would never have expected. He began to sing softly.

“Why should I feel discouraged, why should the shadows come,

Why should my heart be lonely, longing for heaven and home,

When Jesus is my portion, my constant friend is He,

His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me…”

Stella was standing beside him before she even knew she had moved. She had had no intention of doing so, no will to intrude; she had been determined to give him as much privacy as she safely could, but she could not stop herself. She was driven by something, not something initiated by her, yet not altogether against her will. She gasped aloud at the sound that rose from his throat, so beautiful the birds in the trees should shut up and be embarrassed. “I’ve never heard anything like that.”

He stopped to answer her, but she wanted to cry out for him to go on and on. “Gee, thanks. It’s just an old hymn—“

“No, not the song. I mean—that.” Having heard that sparkling sound once, she almost felt grief now at its absence. “Sing some more.” Clayton hesitated. “Please?” she asked, fending off forbidden tears again. It occurred to her, fleetingly, that she could draw her gun, but forcing this would be so wrong, a level of wrongness she did not even know words to describe.

He continued:

“Let not your heart be troubled, His tender words I hear,

And resting on His goodness, I lose all doubt and fear.

Though by the path He leads me one step is all I can see,

His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me…”

Stella leaned against a tree, her legs shockingly unsteady. “Your voice…it’s incredible.”

“Well, thanks, I guess. I always sang when I was a kid, in church, or with bands, but I got away from it when I discovered teaching. That became my calling. I always loved to sing though. This one time—you remember that TV show, American Idol? It wasn’t on that long, three years I think; it didn’t do too well in the ratings, I guess. Anyway, they did auditions in Charlotte when I was in school there, my last year, and I went. The mom of one of my students talked me into it. I got cut of course; who’d want to look at me sing? They wanted a pop star, a poster boy, a teen idol, none of which I was, needless to say.

“They were in Atlanta the next week, and my student’s mom tried to get me to go, but I didn’t. I’ve never been one for taking risks. Even if I did get picked, how could I explain putting off my career as a teacher, something I’d wanted and worked for for years, just on the off chance somebody would take a chance on a big geek with a decent voice? My family had worked so hard to get me through college, and my stepfather had died just a few months before, so we were too broke to pay attention. The school wouldn’t have taken kindly to me walking in and saying ‘hey, I’m going to Hollywood to be on a talent show, so you’ll have to hold my credits till next winter’. I couldn’t throw all that away on a whim. It didn’t seem like the right thing to do.

“It still doesn’t…but sometimes I wonder. What if I had gone to Atlanta? What might have happened? So much might have changed. I got married before I went back to school to be a principal, because I felt like I needed to be married, to seem mature enough for the job I wanted; then my wife left me for another man because she needed more excitement in her life than I could give her. If I had ended up in Hollywood, a pop star—hah!—could have given her more excitement than she could handle, assuming I was even with her to begin with.

“I love my kids, I love my work. I feel called to it…but sometimes, I do wonder. Maybe God had something totally different in mind for me, something bigger. I’ll never know, until I ask Him in heaven.”

“I’ve never known anybody like you,” Stella said. “Somebody that takes all this seriously. Church, and God, and doing the right thing. What few church people I ever knew were pretty much hypocrites. Holy on Sunday and hell-raisers on Saturday.”

“Yeah, there are those, unfortunately,” Clayton chuckled. “But that’s not the way to go. You can’t try never to fall, because that’s doomed to failure. Everybody falls. And you can’t pretend to never fall, ‘cause like you said, that’s hypocrisy. When you fall down, you just have to get up and try again. Having the faith to do that is the thing.”

“That sounds so good…but it’s too late for me.”

He came to his feet in one movement, his hands never touching the ground, his legs far more powerful than Stella would have thought. “You’re breathing, Stella. That means it’s not too late.” He took her face between his bound hands; she should have struck at him but she could not move. “You’re so gifted, so beautiful. Don’t throw that away on every control freak who comes along.” The green eyes pleaded, as they had when, gagged, he had pleaded with her to have mercy on him. “Don’t throw it away.”

His voice dropped to a low, intense rasp. Time stretched as they stared at each other, then snapped back when his lips met hers. One of Stella’s hands went to the small of her back, but the other rose to rest on his forearm where the sleeve was rolled up, and relish the warmth of his skin and the softness of the gingery hairs on it. Their eyes locked again when their mouths parted. “It’s starting to rain,” Stella managed. “We’d better get back.” Clayton agreed. They did not speak during the walk back to the cabin. Now and again Stella glanced at his profile and remembered the surprise his mouth was, gentle but not weak, giving, and asking only for her willingness. She wasn’t sure which had set her head to spinning, the kiss, or the insanely considerate words that had accompanied it.

When they got back, Clayton asked Jet about a shower, and any clean dry clothes he might be able to get into. Amazingly, she didn’t argue much, and he trotted off to the washroom with a change in hand. Stella lingered in the main room, drying out near the fire and watching through the windows as the rain became a steady torrent. “What the hell are you doing in here?” Jet demanded. “Get your ass in there and keep an eye on him. Maybe a hand or two, if you’ve got a mind to.”

Stella left, hoping her flush wouldn’t be noticed. Her feelings were much more mixed than before; she’d still love to get a piece of him, but the idea of forcing him to give it up no longer enticed her. She was apologetic when she entered the washroom, and barely looked at him as she untied his hands and tossed the sodden necktie aside. At his wry laugh, though, she looked up and found him staring at the wad of ruined silk. “That woman on the news, who told the reporter she was my fiancée? She gave me that last Christmas. Can’t imagine what she’d think if she saw it now. I’m sure this was not the use she had in mind for it! She really wants to marry somebody, and she’ll settle for me.”

“Why do you say ‘settle’?”

“Hey, come on, I’m not exactly a prize.”

“Who says?” He was like no other man Stella had ever known, and she for one certainly thought he would be a prize. For a moment he looked oddly at her, before he stripped off the shreds of his dress shirt and suit pants to join the tie on the floor. “What’re you gonna do about her?” she continued.

“I don’t know. Uh, Stella…” He stood awkwardly before her, in undershirt, boxers and socks. “Could you turn around? Or maybe I could. Or you could at least close your eyes—“

“Sorry,” she returned, trying to regain the upper hand, though inside she was as embarrassed as he looked. “Jet might pop in any time, and if I’m gonna get away with letting you have your hands free, I need them where I can see ‘em. Otherwise I’ll catch hell, and you—well, who knows—so get on with it.”

Clayton bit his lip. He pulled off his socks, hopping a little on one big foot; then his T-shirt; then with a deep breath, he quickly removed his shorts. Stella licked her lips. Damn it, he was fine. “You’re…” He swallowed hard. “You’re looking at me like a starving woman.”

“I am starving. I haven’t been with a man in four years, and you look like the biggest damn steak on the menu. Where do you get off saying you’re not a prize?” She took a step forward, drawn by the strong clean lines of his lanky naked body as though by a magnet.

“Stella—“ he gasped. “I—I can’t stop you from doing whatever you want to to me, any more than I could the other night, but…please. Please don’t.”

His apprehensive words halted her like a glass wall. He had said the same words the previous morning, after that night he spoke of: please don’t, only then it had been please don’t kill me, Stella. Wouldn’t forcing him into sex make her no better than the men who had coerced or bullied her over the years? Wouldn’t it kill something in him, something she could not name yet recognized, as surely as a bullet in his head would end his life? She dropped her eyes to his bare feet. “I’m not,” she said finally. “But you said it yourself—you can’t parade a gorgeous naked man in front of a gal and not expect her to react accordingly.” When she looked up he was blushing all over. What? she thought. He’s been married and divorced and got another woman he apparently doesn’t even love trying to drag him to the altar. Didn’t anybody ever get around to telling him how hot he is? It was cute and somehow sad all at the same time. “Get in the shower. I think I can trust you alone in there with just a bar of soap. Want me to hold your glasses for you?”

He gladly handed them over and fled behind the worn canvas curtain, leaving Stella torn between patting herself on the back and kicking herself in the ass. She had ‘done the right thing’. She had not violated him. So here she stood, with nobody but Smith and Wesson for company, while he was in there, with warm water pouring down those long solid thighs and that fuzzy chest and over that tight butt, and his free soapy hands moving all over him…”Clayton?” she forced out before she wet herself.

“Hmm?”

His voice sounded tense; she wondered what he was doing in there. “Listen…I’m sorry about what I did the other night, all right? I don’t like being stared at. I guess it’s from all the men staring when I stripped, and maybe from some stuff that happened when I was a kid, but it just hits me wrong. And it just hit me wrong then, and you were—you couldn’t fight back and I took it out on you and I’m sorry. Okay?” The apology rushed out in one breath; she had been forced to apologize many times, for things she hadn’t done or meant to do, but she rarely had done it of her own free will, so she was not practiced at it.

“It wasn’t exactly okay, but I understand. I forgive you.”

Stella laughed out loud in amazement. “Nobody’s ever said that to me before. ‘I forgive you’. It sounds so—official. Like you’re really letting me off the hook.” Clayton chuckled, then all was quiet again except for the splash of water and the drum of rain outside. “It was really mean of me, to leave you all blue balled like that…I’ll make it up to you now if you want me to. I’m pretty good at hand jobs. I wouldn’t even have to come in there.”

She stuck her hand around the edge of the curtain and felt the lukewarm trickle, then the heat of his big hand engulfing hers and gently but firmly moving it…out. “That’s not necessary, Stella. Forget it.” She didn’t know whether she felt relieved or disappointed.

Jet’s cousin Ronnie was a beefy man, but tall, so the length of his clothes suited Clayton, if the width needed some help. Clayton’s belt kept the jeans up on his narrow hips, although their bagginess made Stella ponder briefly how nice his little apple of an ass would look in perfectly fitted denim. A big flannel shirt, green and white checked, hung comfortably loose on his frame, the length of the sleeves almost hiding the short piece of rope with which, secretly reluctant, she bound his wrists before him. “Now I know what I’d look like if I’d ever weighed three hundred pounds and gone on one of those Hollywood crash diets,” he grinned.

She actually giggled; she had never heard him be witty. “Yeah, well, keep those dry. Maybe the weather’ll improve by tomorrow.”

It did not, however, and Jet declared that might not be a bad thing—the muck might slow search efforts down. The escapees and their guest kept themselves busy in the cabin that Friday. Jet tied more flies; Kaylee found a bag with some knitting left by one of Ronnie’s many girlfriends, and tried to teach herself how, before she got bored and returned to her magazines. Clayton managed not to get too wet when he dashed to his SUV for another load of journals. Stella ‘escorted’ him, but refused to budge past the overhang of the cabin’s back door. “I like mist. You can run through a monsoon if you want to,” she grumbled while she punched the Unlock button on the key remote. He really didn’t run very gracefully.

For her part, Stella reclaimed the pad of paper, and sketched Clayton after he settled down with his reading, lingering on his glasses perched on his nose, the ringlets of damp auburn hair clinging to his neck, and the stubble that after four days gave his face less of a boyish air and that made her wonder how it would feel against her lips. Jet gave her a sharp glance or two, which she ignored. Jet could bitch all she wanted to; when this time was over, wherever she ended up, and wherever he did, she would have this, something to remember him by. When she moved a certain way, she felt the slightest crinkle of paper tucked into her worn bra, the sketch she had made of him in the woods. She finished, and looked her work over with a critical eye, and noticed she had not drawn the rope that bound his wrists. She did not add it. A few minutes later, when the others were distracted, she quietly pulled the sketch from the binding, folded it and slipped it in with its fellow.

In another of her boredom-fueled rambles through the cabin, Kaylee found what was apparently Ronnie’s private stash, including condoms, a beer bottle opener, and a deck of cards. A poker game was promptly organized. With arched eyebrow, Kaylee suggested strip poker. “That doesn’t seem quite fair,” Clayton objected.

“How do ya figure?” Jet jibed. “Afraid we outnumber you? Or do dyke tits turn you off?”

“Oh, on the contrary!” Clayton lifted his bound hands in smiling protest. “A guy would be sick not to appreciate three lovely ladies. But none of you want to look at my scrawny bod; I’m sure I’d enjoy looking at Stella but she probably wouldn’t enjoy it much; and you two would be happiest looking at each other. See the inequity?”

Despite his deft puncturing of her brilliant idea, Kaylee laughed. Stella did too, delighted with his dry wit and oddly touched that he had made no mention of their having seen each other’s bodies before. Jet was not particularly amused. The poker game, however, continued, with fishing washers for chips. Stella dominated play. Clayton’s skills weren’t bad, but he had a self-defeating habit of giggling when he got a good hand. “You’re too good at this,” he told her later as the group prepared for bed. “You’ve got the classic poker face.”

“Prison teaches some folks that,” she replied. “The smart ones, anyhow, the ones who need it. You learn, or you end up dead. That’s what happened to Joe. He got too mouthy with some Mexicans in the exercise yard last summer and one of them knifed him.” Clayton gulped, and did not pursue the matter further. Stella rolled up in her blankets beside him on the floor before the fire, realizing she had slept through the previous night without waking, for the first time in longer than she could recall. Mystified, but thankful, she dozed off hoping for a repeat.

She did not get it, but not because of her own inner wakefulness. Rather it was Jet who woke her, one hand shaking her shoulder and the other clamped over her mouth. “Shh!” the big woman hissed when Stella roused enough to panic and struggle briefly. She half-led, half-dragged Stella to the open back door of the cabin. “You hear that?” At first Stella heard nothing but the driving rain, and then she did hear something else, low but loud outside, almost vibrating through the floor: a rumble and crack that baffled her. At her nod, Jet blanched in the lantern light. “Ronnie told me about that. It’s a warning. The water’s building up up-slope. This hollow is gonna flood any time now.” Stella swallowed a yelp. Outside, Kaylee was shoving supplies in the back of Clayton’s SUV. Soaked, she ran back to the door. “What’re you doing back here, moron?” Jet snapped and shoved a bag of food at her.

“Okay,” Stella nodded as her brain began to function. “Give me a second to get Clayton up and—“

“’Get Clayton up’, hell! We’re out of here. Now. Mr. Righteous may stick his skinny neck out for strangers, but not Daddy Carter’s lil girl. We’ve gotta save our own skins.”

Stella’s shock silently redoubled. “You cannot be serious,” she said slowly, deliberately. “You would actually leave a man in there, asleep, with his hands tied behind him, to drown?”

“What’s the big deal of one more body, Miss Cold Blooded Killer? Now c’mon.“

Jet took hold of her arm, and she jerked it away. With the other hand she pulled the pistol from its resting place. “I,” she snarled, “am not a cold blooded killer. And I never thought you were either. Maybe I was wrong. Wait here, or go on, Jet. Whatever. It’s all about you, so do your thing, whatever it is. But I will not leave an innocent man helpless to die.”

Kaylee squished back to the door in time to hear the heated exchange. “Jet, we can’t leave him—“

“Get in the fuckin’ ride, bitch! You think I haven’t seen the way you’ve been throwing yourself at his cock? I’m not enough for you? You better be damn glad I didn’t leave your ass too—“

Stella didn’t wait around to take in the lovers’ quarrel. She raced back through the storage room, shoved the pistol back in her pants and dropped to her knees before the cooling hearth. “Clayton!” she yelled and grabbed his shoulders. “Wake up!” He let out a startled grunt. “Roll over!” His eyes fluttered open, confused from sleep, as she shoved him onto his side. “The area may be about to flood,” she explained while she hastily untied his hands. “We gotta go. Jet and Kaylee already have the—“ She froze at the sound she now heard outside, a sound she honestly had never believed she would hear: the SUV’s powerful engine revving, then fading into the soggy night. “She left. The bitch left.”

Clayton gaped and squinted, and Stella remembered his fear of the water. If she had to nurse him through hysteria, she thought she would almost rather drown. The next moment, though, he grabbed for his glasses and his eyes locked with hers in perfect comprehension. “So,” he inquired, “what do you suggest we do now?”

Another ominous rumble floated in from the back. “I suggest we run like hell.”

“Profanity aside, sounds like a plan to me.” He scrambled out of his blankets. “We got lanterns?”

Jet and Kaylee had taken the lanterns used in the main room over the past days, but Stella knew where others were stored. By the time she found them, Clayton had rolled up the blankets and stowed them, along with the matches and some leftover food, in one of the waterproof chests. “We’ll need these dry when we come back,” he said. Stella had no great confidence this place would even be here to come back to, but in that instant she loved the man for his optimism. “Lots of space in here!” he added with his head half in the chest. “Did we eat that much?”

“Jet and Kaylee took a lot of it in your SUV.”

“And then they left you?” He pulled his head out. “Why, you didn’t move fast enough for ‘em?”

“No. Because I wouldn’t leave you.”

He stood for a breath and stared at her. “You were right,” he finally said. “You’re definitely not a cold-blooded killer.” If time hadn’t been so short, she could have kissed him. Then the moment passed. “Look what I did find in here!” he exclaimed and produced two rain parkas with hoods. Neither, Stella quickly saw, fit someone her size; obviously Ronnie’s many girlfriends were not lovers of the outdoors.

“It’s huge!” she complained.

“Exactly. Maybe it’ll shed more water.” Clayton pulled one on, then dressed her in the other with quick deft movements, straightening the neck and pulling at the sleeves to get some sort of fit. It felt weirdly intimate that he did so, rather than handing it to her to put on herself, but she did not argue. Apparently satisfied with her coverage, he paused, and their eyes met again, as if he too recognized the strangeness of the moment. Then he pulled the hood up on her head. “Let’s go.” He grabbed her hand, and they ran out into the deluge.

The wind howled, and lightning and thunder clashed like warfare over their heads; but even over their din Clayton could hear a creaking groan that made his hair sit up. It sounded like the noise the Titanic made in the movie, just before it broke in two. I had to think of that now, he castigated himself. Why’d I ever go see that stupid movie anyhow…He shook off the paralyzing dread of his phobia, and looked around as well as he could through the streams of rainwater coursing down his glasses’ lenses. “It’ll come from that way!” Stella yelled and pointed in the direction of the noise: straight ahead of them, up the mountain.

“Then we’ve gotta climb out of the hollow!” A look left and right showed two forbidding slopes to higher ground, and Clayton despaired for a moment till he remembered the path they had found on Thursday. They stumbled in the darkness and wailing wind until they relocated the path, and scrambled up it, slipping and sliding in the mud. The constant squeaks and creaks up the mountain, like trees being bent and tortured and broken, spurred them on. Clayton was half blinded by the driving rain, forced to halt every minute or two to uselessly wipe at his glasses. After one such pause, he took a deep breath (and almost choked on the water he breathed in from the air) and was ready to move when Stella shouted from behind him. He spun and saw her mouth and eyes open wide in terror, as the mucky earth beneath her feet gave way.

There was no time to think. Clayton threw himself forward and landed flat on his belly with a squishy jolt. One hand caught Stella’s outstretched arm, the other her opposite elbow, and he braced his feet in the mud and pulled her back up the steep slope. For once he was thankful his feet were so darn big; they made good anchors. She lay in a heap for a moment, then dragged herself up to stand.

They pushed on, struggling upward, until nothing seemed real but the storm and the fight. Had there ever been sun, or drawings of squirrels, or a warm fire, or rope, or a school? Clayton could think of nothing but the moment, one foot in front of the other, till finally the ground before them flattened. They had reached the hollow’s lip, where they had admired the beauty below. Now, just as they achieved its rocky space of relative safety, a tremendous crack and groan shook the mountain, and a wall of muddy water roared down the hollow like a freight train. Stella clung to Clayton, making little frightened noises. Probably he would have done the same, if she hadn’t needed to hold onto him, and if he hadn’t been too scared to make a sound. Cold, wet, and utterly terrified by so much wild water so close, he prayed in the back of his head and watched.

The cabin was a black square like a child’s block, barely discernible below them in the storm, until outlined by the water rising around it. For all his earlier show of confidence, Clayton was sure now that at any instant the roof would be torn away by the clutching flood and float away with the tree branches and other debris. As they huddled together in mute horror, though, the water level began to drop, and the cabin reemerged, amazingly still in one piece. In Clayton’s arms, Stella stirred. “Should we go back?” she asked.

“Not yet. Let’s wait till it all goes away…and be sure no more is coming…okay?” She swiped at her wet face with her parka sleeve, and looked up at him and nodded, holding onto him tightly. He hoped she hadn’t realized just how scared he was, how he wanted to scream and hide his eyes from the swift and deadly flood. Thankfully, the rain diminished in intensity, until it was merely a downpour, and not what his Papa Aiken would have called a ‘frog-strangler’. Overhead the clouds began to thin, and a single bright star peeped out to light their way when they finally started back down. They staggered like drunks and hung onto each other until they again found the cabin’s back. The door hung on one hinge, and everything inside was covered in slimy mud. Clayton made a face, and then recalled seeing a snow shovel stowed under the eaves in the main room. If only it hadn’t been dislodged and washed away…It hadn’t, and with a quick mental prayer of thanks he set to work scraping some floor clean. He mucked out the hearth, and found enough dry wood in the rubber-sealed box beside it to start a fire. As was his wont, he talked the whole time. Stella had not followed him, and he suspected she was pulling out the stuff he had stored before they fled. “Okay, I think I got this set!” he called after arranging the wood, and hurried back to retrieve the matches he had saved. Stella was crumpled in a shuddering heap in the corner, the storage chests untouched. “Oh crap,” he gulped, feeling the cold and wet start to take its toll on him too, now that adrenalin’s effect was waning. “Hypothermia. Well, Lord, that generator better work!”

Well waterproofed, it did, but the supply of gas inside was small. Clayton knew he would have to nurse the warm water carefully. While it heated up, he started the fire and found an oilcloth to toss on the floor in front of the hearth. Along the way, he ran across a few other things and picked them up; he had to laugh at himself for being presumptuous enough to think he would get a chance to use them, but he stowed them within easy reach under a corner of the oilcloth anyway. He removed Stella’s dripping parka, as he had purely out of reflex dressed her in it as if she were one of his kids at Providence. If certain death had not been looming, she probably would have cussed him for a male chauvinist, if not shot him for his condescension. He carefully laid the pistol aside, then coaxed her, looking positively dazed by now, into the shower, clothes and all, at least at first. As the heat began to sink in he peeled her soaked and filthy garments off her. In her shirt he found wet paper and gingerly unfolded it. The pencil lines were almost washed away, but he could still make out the outline of his face on the pages. He was touched, and laid the sketches aside to dry. He pitched his muddy clothes out on the washroom floor beside hers and got in with her, explaining himself in calm tones he might use with a victimized child at his school while he took the chunk of soap and went to work cleaning them both up.

It took several minutes for Stella’s brain, fogged by fear and exposure, to register that the water on her body was no longer cold, and more for it to direct her eyes to focus on the rough walls around her. “We’re back,” she mumbled through cold lips.

“Sure are. Told ya!”

She persuaded her tense neck to turn enough to see Clayton cheerily soaping his hands up and reaching for her. Every self-defensive reflex drilled into her by her tough past should have kicked in the instant she found herself alone and naked with an equally naked man; but they did not. She stood still and let him move her around, lifting her arms and scrubbing twigs and mud out of her hair and rubbing his hands all over her, because for the first time in her memory a man was touching her without the sole and obvious intent of using her to pleasure himself. Clayton was caring for her, his touch gentle and reassuring.

Her knees stung when he wiped them, and she noted they were skinned. As she warmed up and calmed down, more details of the horrifying flight began to return. “I fell. You could’ve left me.”

He drew her close to him, his arms around her waist surprisingly strong—but they had been too when he had hauled her back from death. “You could’ve left me. Did you see the silt marks on the walls? The water came up four, five feet high in here, at least. I can’t swim, Stella, and with my hands tied…they would’ve left me here to—to—Lord, I’m so scared of drowning, I have nightmares about it. I probably would’ve had a heart attack just from fear, before the water ever got to me. But you wouldn’t leave me to die. Thank you. Thank you!” She leaned into his embrace, and felt strangely happy, and very tired.

The water began to run cool, and from her heaviness against him Clayton suspected Stella was half asleep on her feet. “Stay here,” he instructed her as he turned the tap off. Shivering, he jumped out of the shower space just long enough to grab an older blanket he had pulled out for this purpose, then hopped back in and dried her briskly with it. After he wrapped her snugly in a thicker, newer blanket, he swiped himself off with the worn fleece and rolled up in a dry blanket too. They could look for clean clothes later. He guided her into the main room and settled her in front of the fire. She clung to him, still unsteady on her feet, and she began to shudder when he seated her, hard enough to make him fearful she might go into shock. “Oh, gosh…um, guess maybe we’d better conserve body heat too, huh?”

As he took her in his arms, both of them lying on their sides facing, and wrapped the blankets around them, the beauty of her naked body barely registered with him …barely, but not absent. He felt himself stir against her, and sternly ordered his parts to behave. There were risks, and then there were risks. At least if anything should happen between them—as if it would, however much he fantasized about it—he was prepared. Right now he just hoped she didn’t half-wake, think she was being molested and clobber him. When he whispered to her, though, she only sighed and nestled her curly head against his shoulder. Her shivers eased, and within minutes she was snoring softly. Clayton allowed himself an incredulous little chuckle before he too lost the battle with sleep.

Stella woke later, not with her usual sudden jolt from sleep to full watchful alert, but slowly, as though swimming to the surface of a placid pond. The fire was still hearty and warm. How Clayton had kept his glasses throughout the night’s ordeal she couldn’t imagine, but they were neatly folded and lay half tucked under a folded corner of the oilcloth on which their bodies rested. She lay still and studied his face in repose once more; but this time she saw not the principal’s meekness, or the boyish vulnerability, but the man’s strength and depth of feeling. She liked the laugh lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes, and had to restrain herself from reaching out to touch them. The furrows of concern between his brows and across his forehead she did not like, and wished she could smooth away with her finger like an eraser on paper. That brought home to her what she was missing, at about the same time his obscenely lush lashes fluttered and his eyelids lifted. “I lost my drawings,” she said. “The one I did of you in the woods, and the one here yesterday. They were in my shirt.”

“I found them. They’re almost gone, though. The lines aren’t there much, I mean.”

“And my notebook’s washed away, I’m sure. Shit.”

“Don’t swear about it. It’s okay. Maybe we can find some more paper stashed around here.”

“Maybe,” she said and grinned, loving his optimism again. “I need to draw my hero again.” He giggled. “What’re you laughing at? You saved my life. I thought you said you didn’t take risks.”

“It wasn’t a risk,” he replied simply. “It was a necessity. I couldn’t’ve done anything else.”

“I could’ve been all bloated and dead someplace, but I’m here. I’m warm and dry and clean. I’m alive. You had no reason to do that for me.”

“Who says?”

Stella wriggled one hand out of the cocoon of blankets long enough to reach for Clayton’s glasses and plant them on his face, then wrapped her arm around his lean solid body again. The action gave her time to absorb the fact that along with being warm and dry, she was still very naked in this very naked man’s arms, and yet felt only comfortable and safe. It also helped her move her thoughts away from several dangerous topics. He had just tossed her own words from the shower back at her, and she wished he meant by them now what she had meant then. She also tried to divert her body from responding to his nearness, and not think about what her hands would like to be doing instead of sedately hugging him. Besides all that, his bewitching eyes could focus on her now, and she found she loved that too. “Tell me again why your wife left you.”

He almost flinched, and then his face hardened. “She said I was boring, meek, wimpy. That she needed adventure, excitement. That I…wasn’t the kind of man she wanted.”

“Hmph. Guess she’d rather have had the kind I’ve had. She’s a fuckin’ idiot.”

“Hey, that is my ex-wife you’re talking about!” he protested. “Don’t cuss her.”

“Too bad. You told me to stick up for myself, right? Well, that’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it. Any woman who had you and let you go is one motherfuckin’ idiot.”

“Stop that—“

“Fuckin’ idiot,” she challenged.

“—or I’ll have to stop you.”

Playful sparks danced in the green eyes, but Stella tensed. What kind of insane game had she let herself be lured into—she was a fugitive, after all, and now alone and unarmed. Her gaze darted around the room in sudden fear, looking for her gun, wondering where the ropes and the handkerchief were; picturing herself his prisoner now, overcome by his size and muscle. “Stella? What’s wrong?”

“How…were you planning to stop me talking?” she forced out, trying not to betray her fright. “By gagging me?”

When she made her eyes move back to him, his face was aghast. “Stella—I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t hurt you. Not ever.” One of his big hands moved soothingly across her back, and her taut muscles eased. The other slid up her side and up, and he pressed his fingertips lightly to her lips. “I meant this—unless that didn’t work—then I was thinking this…”

His long fingers tangled in her hair and brought her mouth to his. His tongue snaked past her lips, silencing her sweetly and efficiently. “Mmmm,” she hummed, her mouth filled with his moist limberness. Her hands got their way, sliding down his back to cup his round firm ass and squeeze it. He let out a gasp, muffled by their mouths pressed together, and pulled her to him; she could feel his arousal hard against her thigh, and welcomed it. She pulled her mouth away from his, but only to run her lips along his stubble-roughened cheek as she had longed to do. “Goddamn, I want you,” she gasped. “Fuck me, Clayton.”

He drew away and shook his head. “I don’t do that.” Her heart broke; she lay motionless, waiting for him to call her a slut, but instead he gently pressed her back onto the floor, unfolded the blankets and looked down at her. Despite his words, his face held no revulsion; in fact she shivered anew from the unexpected heat in his eyes, and the way they moved over her nude body like hands. “But I do want to make love to you,” he breathed.

Stella didn’t know there was a difference, but as long as she got to feel him inside her, the words he used for it didn’t matter. If he was any good at all, and could stay hard long enough, she could get herself off during the action, and that was as good a screw as a gal could wish for. She settled herself and smiled up at Clayton, admiring the golden glow the fire lent his skin, ready for him to thrust into her.

Instead, he knelt over her and smiled warmly back. “You’re so beautiful,” he murmured. “More than you know…” He lowered his head and kissed her again and again, his wonderful lips and tongue straying from her mouth to nibble on her cheeks and chin and ears and neck. And he had said she looked hungry! Meanwhile, his hands were in constant motion, in her hair massaging her scalp and making her stretch and mew like a happy tigress, then clasping her hands firmly for a few minutes, then caressing her hips and sides and tickling enough to make her giggle into his mouth over hers. The touch moved next to her breasts, and she lay still, so confused now that she dared not move, eyes squeezed shut while he stroked her skin. I don’t know what the hell this is, but if I’m dreaming and somebody wakes me up I WILL kill ‘em!

“Stella?” Clayton’s voice in her ear was different now, puzzled. “Are you okay?”

She opened her eyes. Yep, he was still there, but looking frankly distressed. “Sure, why?”

“Are…you not liking this? If you’re too tired, or you just changed your mind, that’s okay. I understand. We’ll just get some rest.” She frowned, really confused now. “Well, you’re not saying anything, or touching me back, or doing anything.”

“I didn’t know I was supposed to. I don’t know what to do.” What was it about this man that made every word out of her mouth the damned truth? “I don’t know what you’re doing. I remember the old drunks at the strip joint pawing me, but this—it’s like you’re trying to get me off.”

His mouth fell open. “Stella, it’s called foreplay. Ever hear of it?”

“I—thought that only happened in cheesy-ass paperbacks. I didn’t know guys did it for real. Joe used to say his idea of foreplay was ‘brace yourself’.”

He stared in disbelief, and she wished she could gag herself. What kind of moron must he think she was now? She’d just blown her best chance anytime soon to get fucked, or whatever he chose to call it. At least she thought so until he said, “Oh, sweetie!” and lay down and pulled her into his arms again. “No, sweetie, no. What’s the point of having sex if both people don’t enjoy it, if they don’t try to give each other enjoyment? I mean, you might as well, y’know, dance with yourself.”

She giggled again, and then paused at another realization. “I’ve never laughed naked with a man.”

“Hey, I’m a pretty laughable guy.”

She put her fingers to his mouth. “My turn to hush you now,” she said, and kissed him hard. “Except you cuss yourself without using cuss words. You say you’re boring and nerdy. I say you’re—you’re—inexplicable. I’ve never seen anything like you. You’re a mystery, Clayton. You don’t know how amazing you are. You told me not to throw myself away, but you need to take your own advice.”

“Inexplicable?” he said as if mocking her, but his brow creased and his teeth took hold of his bottom lip, as though unsure what to think of her words. “Where’d you learn such big words?”

“I did okay in school, smart guy. And I read a lot. There’s not much else fun to do in…you know.” She did not want to talk about that place, not now, and he seemed to know that. “Can you do that foreplay thing some more? It felt really good. I never felt that good with a guy before, at least not with a guy doing the stuff. Usually I have to, like you say, dance with myself, later. Unless I can sneak and do it while he’s in me, that’s the best.”

“That’s not even close to the best. You will not have to do it yourself, when you are with me.” Clayton’s eyes warmed on her again. “I,” he said, “am about to say something I hardly ever say, so listen closely.” He took a deep breath. “Every man you’ve ever been with is a fucking idiot.”

Stella burst into a laugh that felt almost as good as the foreplay. “Do I get to hush you up again?”

“Absolutely,” he smiled, and she pressed her mouth to his, moaning as he teased and pinched and rolled her nipples between his knuckles and sent quivers through her body. Damn, this making love thing was incredible. He pushed her down on her back again and his mouth sucked up first one breast, then the other, while his hands kept busy. Stella could barely breath from the sensations pounding through her. He kissed down her chest and softly on her belly—and then parted her legs and ducked his head between them.

“SHIT WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?!?” she screamed as the softness of his lips and the roughness of his stubble met her already swollen and aching crotch in a burst of pleasure.

His head jerked up. ”What is it? Did I hurt you? I barely touched you. Oh Lordy, I’m sorry…What?” he panted, and then slowed up as she stilled the shaking of her body, raised up on her elbows and stared at him like she had never seen him before.

“I thought only lesbians really…did that,” she admitted in a very small voice.

Clayton started to giggle helplessly, so hard he had to lay his head on her for a minute, while she lay baffled at his amusement. When he lifted his face to her again, there were tears in his eyes; they had to be from the laughter, didn’t they? “No, sweetie. Men who want to make their women very, very happy do that too. If you don’t want me to though, that’s fine.”

“It felt so good I don’t know if I can stand it. Didn’t you say your wife said you were boring? Not in bed, obviously!”

“I read a lot too, and I…kinda studied up. I guess I hoped if I was really good in bed, she’d forgive the rest.”

“You are good, Clayton. Just plain good. There’s nothing to forgive. And she is still a fuckin’ idiot.”

This time his grin was evil. “That’s two more cusses I have to hush you up for. I think I missed two or three more too, back there in the conversation. Guess I’d better backtrack and take care of them.”

He did, too, quite effectively and enjoyably; and while he did, Stella decided this foreplay thing should go both ways. She ran the backs of her fingernails up his sides and along his ribs, and found his little nipples by touch. He caught his breath, and moaned as she tickled them to harden. She had made him moan once before, but now it was from pleasure she was freely giving him, not from her anger and pain. It was the most beautiful—and arousing—sound she could ever have imagined. She felt downward, conscious of her own wetness, and found him hard there too. He groaned again, a deep guttural noise against her mouth, when she took firm hold of him. “If you were in me right now,” she gasped, “I think you could make me come. But we don’t have—I mean I’m not on a pill, why be, where I was, and you—“

He moved back, his fair cheeks flushed, sweat making his hair curl on his neck again. With a smile, he reached for the corner of the oilcloth, and produced what had lain unnoticed next to his glasses all along: one of Ronnie’s condom packets. Stella gaped. “You little shit. Were you that sure you were gonna get some of me?”

“No,” he said, the smile vanishing, and flushed, “but even a nerd can dream, right?”

“Nerd is definitely starting to count as a cuss word, on my scorecard,” Stella retorted, more amused than appalled really, and a little saddened even, if he truly had thought she might reject him. She administered the requisite disciplinary kiss, then leaned back and tried not to pant in anticipation while she watched him prepare. He looked up and caught her watching

“You look hungry again,” he said, and knelt between her legs and stroked himself against her till she could no longer control her cries of need. “More appetizers, or ready for the main course?” he asked with a wicked smirk.

“Oh shit—I need you in me, Clayton, now—“

He obliged, after two more hard tongue kisses, sweet punishment for her potty mouth. His gaze down at her lying beneath him, impaled at last on him, was so intense she thought she might come just from that; she had never seen a man who could fuck you just with his eyes. “’Brace yourself’, my ass,” he growled, and she knew what he meant. The actual bumping of crotches had always been the end-all of sex in Stella’s experience; now, as he began to move leisurely in and out of her, it was like the last act of a great movie. Instinctively, she started to move with him. She had tried that before with other men and gotten slapped for it, but Clayton’s smile only widened at her wriggling. “That’s it, sweetie, don’t hold back…you ready to come for me?”

“Yes, damn, yes!”

“None of those other ’jackasses’ could give you this, could they?”

“No—oh shit, no—aahh—“ Stella felt her body tense and tremble, and then explode like fireworks. She gasped for breath only to let it out in little screams of climax. Above her, his smile tightened, his cheeks twitched, and he threw his head back in a lion roar as he came. With one last groan, he dropped beside her and lay limp long enough that she almost got worried; then his arms rose heavily to fold around her.

They lay in silence a while, till Clayton proved himself more than prepared for anything—he reached under the corner of the oilcloth again and pulled out a small scrap of clean towel. Stella cleaned herself up, then after he removed the condom cleaned him gently too. He stirred the fire in the hearth to new life, then lay down beside her and with a drowsy smile reached his left arm across her to pull the blankets around them both. That was when she noticed a purplish discoloration around his wrist. She stopped him with a hand on his forearm, took his hand in hers and examined the bruises, finding an even darker set braceleting his other hand. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and sounded inadequate even to herself.

Amazingly, his smile did not fail. “I already forgave you for all that, remember?”

Wide-eyed, she let him draw her down into his arms to lie in languid calm until sleep claimed them again.

+++

They cleaned the little cabin up more in the morning light, when they could better see the mess mother nature had left. Stella was silently touched to see Clayton pad across the board floor barefoot, all wrapped in his blanket like a toga, to find clean clothes for them both. She was even more affected when he offered her hers, then gallantly turned his back. “Clayton, it’s not like you haven’t seen everything I’ve got. Hell, you’ve kissed or played with almost everything I’ve got.”

He did not turn around, but she could see the tips of his ears turn bright red. She laughed and threw on the worn sweats he had found, then tapped him on the shoulder. “Your turn,” she said and turned away. Behind her she heard the blanket drop and him hopping on one big foot to get into the too-big khakis he had hunted up. Giggling, she clasped her hands behind her and pictured his delicious body, and tried to restrain herself from spinning and attacking him. It wasn’t easy, especially when he grabbed her shoulder, turned her around, and dealt out another knee-weakening penalty kiss for her swearing.

The playful mood was short-lived though, as morning brought with it, along with clearing skies and warm oatmeal prepared over the fire, things they had not yet spoken of, things Stella did not want to speak of but knew she must. “Well,” Clayton finally broached the subject as they sat on the floor, all the furniture washed out by the flood, “what do we do now?”

“We? I’m the one in trouble, not you.”

“I’m here, Stella. I want to help you. That makes it a we.”

She sat silent for a minute. “Can’t we just be, here, for a while, before you start nagging me to turn myself in?”

“I’m not going to nag you!” Clayton exclaimed, then added more gently, “I think it’s best, though. You can get that whole chapter of your life over and done with. Pay your debt to society and go on.”

“You don’t know what it’s like in there, Clayton. It’s hard to be a person. It’s scary. I was afraid to draw, to do anything that made me stand out in a crowd.”

“You’re right, I don’t know what it’s like. But couldn’t you get help from the staff or somebody?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I was scared to try that either.”

“You may have to try, sweetie. There’s no really good option otherwise. Living on the run, you don’t stand a chance. Harley doesn’t stand a chance. We—“

Clayton stopped and looked away. Stella was startled. “We what?”

“Nothing. Nothing. I guess you don’t have to decide right now anyway. You’re the one who has to be comfortable and at peace with the decision, not me or anybody else.” He picked up their empty bowls. “We had floods of water last night, now we’ve got none to wash with. Guess I ought to go get some.”

“That’s a brave offer on your part, knowing how you feel about water.” Stella got to her feet too. She did not pursue his unfinished comment; it could have meant anything. The odds that he meant what she wished he did—we wouldn’t stand a chance—were vanishingly slim. He had a respectable, real life to go back to, and it had no place in it for a convicted felon, no matter how incredible their one night together might have been. “I won’t ask you to go alone. I’ll come too. Did you see my gun last night?” At his surprised wide eyes she hastily explained, “There are wild animals out here, you know, and that’s the only firearm we have left. I don’t want you getting eaten by a mountain lion or something.”

He gulped, his neck moving visibly. “Good point. I don’t like that idea either.” He left and returned, handing her the pistol. “I can’t tell if it’s still any good. I don’t know a thing about guns.”

“Neither do I,” she admitted, “but I think it’s okay. I—“

A rumble made them both start, but it was not the low angry throb of flood waters. Instead it was the growl of engines outside. Clayton frowned and started to go to the window. “Stella Morehouse!!” blared an amplified voice. “This is the North Carolina State Police. We know you’re there. You can’t get away. If your hostage is still all right, it would be best to keep it that way. Send him out, and come out with your hands up. We don’t want anybody getting hurt.”

Stella covered her mouth with her free hand to smother a cry, and rushed to the window, the gun in her hand. “Stay back!” she cried. “Stay back or I’ll—“

Panicking, her eyes flew to Clayton. He stood looking directly at her, motionless. He did not run, or duck, or flinch. His breathtaking eyes showed no trace of fear as they met hers, and she knew why. It was because he knew what she knew, what she had known all along and simply been afraid to admit to herself until this blinding instant. She, who had been taught so harshly the need to control her feelings, had been crept up on and captured by an emotion she had never known. She had taken Clayton’s body hostage, but he had taken her heart. She could not hurt him, not to preserve a mad dash for freedom, not to keep from going back to that lonely hellhole, not to save her own life. Hardly aware of what she was doing, she raised the gun to her head with a sob.

“NOOO!!!” In her overwrought state, the cry sounded strangely familiar, as much so as the body hurtling through the air. This time the body connected with hers, tackling her and wrestling the gun from her grasp. All was lost now, and Stella felt her knees go out from beneath her. The awaited crash against the floor never came, though. Instead, she felt herself come to rest in the warmth of Clayton’s arms. He knelt and held her tight. “No!” he whispered fiercely in her ear. “Not you too. I won’t let you do that. I won’t. Stella, Stella, oh, my beautiful shining star, don’t give up, please don’t.” The tightness she hardly knew she carried in her chest and throat gave way, and she huddled in his arms and sobbed, years and years of pent-up agony pouring out like the flood waters.

Clayton pulled her into his lap and rocked her, shushing her as he would a frightened child. Over time, he had come to believe, even before their night of passion, that she would not harm him, and anything she said otherwise was only the tough front she struggled to maintain to protect the wounded soul inside. She had just proven his point; but he had not expected to have to stop her from taking her own life. He shuddered at how close she had come, and squeezed her tighter, slackening his grip only long enough to lay the gun aside. “Sh-sh-sh, it’s okay, let it out,” he crooned.

A flicker of motion near the window caught his eye. It was a state trooper in full riot gear, glassed-in helmet and all. The face peered in and seemed shocked by what it saw. Clayton angrily jerked his head to signal go away. Couldn’t they at least let him calm her down? The figure vanished, but he knew the respite would be brief. Fortunately, Stella sniffled a few more times just then, and turned her tear-blotched face up to him. “I have to go back, Clayton,” she hiccupped. “You’re right. It’s the only thing to do. But I’m scared. I’m not near as brave as you are.”

“Oh yes you are. And this time you’re not gonna be alone, I promise. Okay?”

She snuffed again and nodded. “Would you do something for me, please? Would you check on Harley some time? He needs to see a good man, a real man. Would you?” At his enthusiastic agreement, she smiled faintly and laid her head trustingly against his shoulder. “Don’t let ‘em be too mean to me when they take me in. Those handcuffs get so tight if they’re not put on right. Not like I deserve any better, after what I did to you—“

She choked, and he stroked her hair. “You do deserve better. Nobody is gonna hurt you if I can help it.”

She kissed his bruised wrist, and did not move for a minute. Clayton heard rustling outside, and wondered how many times the cops had found themselves in this kind of situation! “Clayton?”

“Mm-hm?”

“Will you sing for me? Just one time?”

“You bet.” He searched his memory for lyrics, and instantly found the right ones.

“When you’re down and troubled and you need a helping hand

And nothing, nothing is going right

Close your eyes and think of me, and soon I will be there

To brighten up even your darkest night.

You just call out my name, and you know wherever I am

I’ll come running to see you again.

Winter spring summer or fall, all you’ve got to do is call

And I’ll be there, you’ve got a friend.”

Stella sat up straighter and wiped her wet face with her palm. “When you yelled no at me just then,” she said to Clayton’s curious face, “it sounded like when you yelled at us at the school. When you wouldn’t let us hurt your kids.”

“Yeah. I wouldn’t let them be hurt; I wouldn’t let you hurt yourself. That’s a feeling that sounds pretty much the same,” he replied, and leaned forward and kissed her tear-salted lips tenderly, before he helped her to her feet. He was glad she had not asked more; he didn’t want to talk about how her despairing movement had doubly unnerved him. He hadn’t realized his sister’s suicide when he was in college still haunted him so. Perhaps being able to save Stella would help that shadow to rest easier in his mind. She dusted herself off and he opened the door. “Come on in,” he told the startled troopers camped at the doorstep. “And don’t be rough with her. She saved my life.”

+++

The next week was a whirlwind for Clayton. He was questioned at the cabin, and downtown at the police station, and at the prison, and then every TV station in Raleigh wanted an interview. He thought wryly that if this were a taste of what celebrity was like, he was glad he hadn’t gone to Atlanta for that talent show audition!

He kept his story simple and truthful. To the inevitable few who accused him of being unbalanced by supporting Stella, who assumed he had simply succumbed to the infamous but never-proven Stockholm Syndrome, he responded, again, with the truth. It was true she was an escaped convicted criminal who had taken him hostage. It was also true she had been dragged into the crime and the escape; that she had turned on her own comrades to save his life in the flood; and that when in a position to use his life to bargain for herself, she had refused. “I believe things happen for a purpose. If I was sent into that situation to help somebody turn her life around, that’s great.”

Some listened; some didn’t. Clayton was a little surprised to find he didn’t care nearly as much as he might have a few days before. Knowing Stella had turned his life around too, it seemed.

+++

Stella had been back behind bars for a little over a month when she got word she had visitors. As she walked to the visiting area, she felt the usual mix of eagerness and sadness. She loved seeing Harley, but hated for him to see her here. Her mom had, surprisingly, not scolded much over the failed escape attempt; she knew what her alcoholic second husband had done to her only daughter, though it had taken her several years to discover it, and she understood how easily one could be cowed by rushing circumstance. Stella was thankful for her.

The little black-haired boy flew across the large room to her as soon as he saw her. “My gosh, you’ve gotten so big!” she exclaimed and squatted to hug him tight. “I can barely pick you up now!”

Stella’s mother followed, with a grin ever bigger than usual, and hugs and kisses for Stella. “Did they finally get the sentencing ironed out?”

“Yeah, mama. I told them what happened—told ‘em I didn’t expect an easy ride on account of it, but I just wanted them to know how it was.” Stella hesitated. She was not sure how to explain to her mother Clayton’s role in the proceedings, how he had attended every hearing and testified strongly how she had saved his life when Jet and Kaylee had left him to die. Their hiding place had been found, ironically enough, when Clayton’s swamped SUV, with the escapees’ drowned bodies inside, washed down to the little market at the foot of the mountain, and the owner called the police. “The judge said she did appreciate me being honest. She could’ve been a lot harder on me. As it was, I got another eighteen months, all told.”

“That’s not that long, if you think about it in school time.” The voice froze Stella in her tracks, and she spun to find Clayton in a bright red casual shirt and jeans…nice fitting ones, she could not help but note. His face was covered with a broad smile. “Summer break, two semesters, another summer break, and one more semester. Not much at all, when you think of it in grade book terms.”

“Clayton?” she gasped. He had smiled at her in the courtroom, but she had expected that, polite soul that he was. He could not have spoken to her then, even if he had wanted to, and she had doubted he did. She had received a request to fill out a visitor’s application for him, but she had assumed it was because he had been called as a witness for her: a formality, nothing more. She had had no mail or other contact with him since. Now, here he was, so vivid and bright and real amid the dullness of the drab prison. This appearance was so sudden she almost shook. More unsettling still, her mother was still smiling, and looking at him with unmistakable fondness.

Harley grinned up at her. “Thanks for sending Mr. Clayton!” he said. “We’ve had all kinds of fun. He took me to the zoo, and go cart riding, and out for ice cream. He won’t take me fishing, though. He’s afraid he’ll fall in.”

“We’ll find somebody to take you, pal, if you quit ragging on me about it!” Clayton laughed, and handed her a large flat package, which bore the obvious signs of being ripped into for inspection by the prison guards. “Thought you could probably use some drawing material.”

She took it, still half in shock. “Yeah. The chaplain is an art therapist too, and she wants me to help her do murals for the chapel walls. I can’t paint, but I can draw the outlines and other people can paint them in. She thinks I’m really good.”

“You are really good!” her mama declared. “Why, all those pretty dresses you used to draw when you were a girl—I still have ‘em all, you know. I showed them to your friend here.”

“And I showed them, along with a few other pieces, to our art teacher at Providence,” Clayton added, “who desperately needs an assistant, although it’ll take a year or more to persuade the school board to appropriate us the funds to hire you. I’m looking forward to working with you, Miss Morehouse.” As Stella tried to stammer something sensible, her mother deftly escorted Harley back to a table to finish a picture he was drawing. “Talent runs in your family,” Clayton grinned. “He’s pretty good for a five year old. You can usually tell what he’s drawing without having to ask.”

“Clayton, I—I—“ Stella shook her head in disbelief, and he frowned.

“What is it? I know you’ll like Mrs. Cole. She’s cool. She’s seventy and still rides a motorcycle. Or don’t you want the job? I think you’d like it.”

“Of course I want it!” she cried. “More than I’ve ever wanted anything…well, almost anything. But Clayton, isn’t this gonna be professional suicide for you? Trying to hire me, at Providence? The kids’ll run scared. And what will people think? They’ll never agree to it!”

“You might be surprised,” he countered. “Only a few of the kids remember you, and they liked you quite a bit. The teachers too. The kids remember you as the nice lady who was with those two ol’ mean women who made me miss graduation. The teachers remember you were the one who tried to keep the kids calm, instead of manhandling me. Sorry I missed your spiel, it must’ve been pretty good.“

Half against her better judgment, Stella began to imagine it. “If it worked—maybe they would let me get up and talk to the kids. I could tell them about me, sort of, not all the gory details; but maybe I could tell them not to make the mistakes I did, and even if they do, they can get another chance.”

Clayton’s eyes widened. “That—that would be beautiful. We have a lot of kids from difficult homes. Words like that from somebody who’s been there would make much more impact on them. And seeing you there every day—yeah! You could be such a positive example! Oh wow, by the time I get through with the school board they’ll think it was their idea. I can be very persuasive when I need to be.” The idea was dangerously enticing: a real job doing what she loved to do; respect; maybe a chance to get more education, and to help the children Clayton loved like his own. But could she endure seeing him every day? His grin faltered when she shook her head again slightly. “Stella, are you sure about this? I won’t get my feelings hurt if you don’t want it. If you think maybe seeing each other at work every day would be too much time together for us—“

“Us? Clayton, what about your fiancée?”

“The fiancée who wasn’t, you mean?” Now he shook his head, with a crooked smile. “You were right about me, Stella. I talked a good game to you, but I needed to take my own advice. When I was a kid I got bullied pretty badly, and it hurt me for years, till I decided I was happy with myself as I was and I didn’t need other people’s approval. After that, strange as it seems, people liked me better. I held onto that through high school, and college, but sometime after that…I kind of lost it. I started letting what other people thought I should be matter to me, and mold me. I don’t know what caused it, if any one thing did. For all I know, it could have been that talent show audition, when they turned me down because of how I looked and not how I sounded. It could have been any of a number of things. Whatever did it, it’s time it stopped. I’ve done the right thing for everybody else for years; it’s time I did it for me.

“So I told Louise I can’t marry her. It’d be easy, but it’s not right. And if anybody has anything to say about me and you, they can say it to my face. If there’s still a chance for a ‘me and you’, that is. I didn’t write because I know they open your mail, and what I wanted to say I felt like I needed to say face to face. I want to give us a try, Stella. If you’re willing to settle for a boring mild-mannered geek.”

Stella shifted the package under her arm. “No,” she said. “I’m not interested in a boring mild-mannered geek. I want a brave, big-hearted, sexy man.” He looked stricken. She reached out her free hand and took his. The bruises she had left on his wrists were gone now. “It’ll be scary learning to stand on my own feet, but it won’t be so bad if you’re there. I’m not ‘settling’ for anything less than you, Clayton.” His smile lit the gray institutional space. “I’ll even try to clean up my foul mouth for your kids.”

“Good.” The smile widened and took on that hint of wickedness. “I don’t think I could punish you properly for that in the hallways of the school. People really would be scandalized. Although I could always keep a running daily tally, and discipline you after work hours. Shall we practice a few times?”

His penetrating kisses kindled a fire in her heart (and other areas) that she carried back to her little cell. On the cinder block wall beside her bunk, she hung the picture Harley had drawn. He did have a good eye for color; he had even found a gray crayon to make corkscrew curls for hair on his drawing of his granny. Across the paper stood a little form with a big smile. On one side of him, a figure with black curls held his hand; on the other was a tall spindly image with a scribble of bright red atop his head and huge circles on his face for glasses rims. Each was labeled in Harley’s childish print: MAMA— HARLY—MISTR CLATON. After she finished, she sat down on the bunk and opened the package. It contained paper, pencils, erasers…and in a large manila envelope, two faded, water-damaged sketches of Clayton. A sticky note with apples and blackboards decorating its border was affixed to the envelope. It simply said, You forgot these. Stella took a little tape and stuck them to the wall next to Harley’s art, and lay and gazed at them all till she fell asleep.

+++

Hi Clayton—got your letter yesterday. Sorry so long replying, but I have an art commission! (isn’t that what they call it when someone asks you to do art for them?) Anyway, the warden came by the chapel and saw the murals we are doing on the walls, and she asked if I would come and do her nursery! Of course I will have a damn guard with me all the time, since I was dumb enough to escape once. (see there, I really am trying to clean up my language) But it will be fun. She wants teddy bears and trains, so I have been sketching ideas for 2 or 3 days now, so I just got to answer you. I love that you write real letters. Email is nice, and I can print it out and carry it, but it isn’t the same as seeing your handwriting on the page. Sometimes I think I can smell your after shave on the paper too.

I am sorry to hear the school board won’t let me work at Providence. I bet they could trust me a lot more than some mothfreaks out there (I’m getting better at this, see?!) who are working in schools. Maybe they would still let me come and talk to the kids though. It would be good for them to see that a person can fuscrew up and start over. But what you said about Mrs. Cole teaching after school art programs for disadvantaged kids and wanting me to help her—I asked my case manager and she checked and they actually have a deal with the prison work-release program! So I could do that! It was so sweet of you to say you wished we could work together. I wish we could too. But it will be okay, I think, and here is why.

I went to church last Sunday. I figured since I am spending so much time there doing the murals, I might as well. Rev Pickett has been telling me a lot about God and all. I never told you this, but when we were together I almost asked you what you said when you bowed your head over your food. I never knew because I never heard that stuff when I was a kid. But Rev Pickett said God has a reason for letting everything happen. And you know what, I think I believe her. Even things that seem really stupid at the time. Like, it wasn’t good for me to be with Joe, but if I hadn’t I wouldn’t have Harley. And it was dumb of me to go along with Jet and Kaylee breaking out of here, but if I hadn’t and they had taken you, you probably would’ve drowned, because I wouldn’t have been there to help you. And for that matter, if you had won that talent show and gone to Hollywood and been a big star, you wouldn’t have been here in North Carolina for me to meet. And if you hadn’t come with us to protect your kids, I’d be on the run or maybe dead someplace. Instead, I am doing what I love, and I have something to look forward to when I get out of here. So I guess things do work out for the best, don’t they?

Gotta go—it’s almost supper time. Hope they don’t have corned beef hash again. If they do, I guess I will just say thank you to God anyway for having something to eat, now that I know how to talk to him. (oops, I think that is supposed to be Him, it shows respect) I talk to Him now most every night too, and I thank Him for mama and Harley, and for you.

I know you’re allergic to chocolate, but could you send me some? I checked, and it’s ok. And if you could make a tape of you singing, I would really like to have it.

Thanks—

Stella deliberated long and hard before signing the letter.

Love ya, Stella.

She mailed it the next morning, and fretted. Seven days later she received a package, containing several dozen Reese’s peanut butter cups, two CDs Clayton had recorded several years ago in somebody’s studio, and a letter. The guard in charge of checking mail that day didn’t mangle the package too badly, so Stella offered her a cup. She took it with a look of real surprise, and said thank you.

The letter said in part:

I read your letter open mouthed in disbelief and joy, and then got down on my knees to thank the Lord. You are absolutely right. Sometimes the worst events of our lives turn out to have been for the best purposes.

(Besides, can you see me as a pop star? HELLO?)

It was signed, All my love, Clayton.

She really believed then.

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Hugs to Lecherous Broads Paula & Diana in the Lou, & Shari, and to Nisa of RHT/EAYOR, for your keen eyes and feedback.

Most special thanks are reserved for the Fic Ho Pimp Mama, Cella, who lets me park in her driveway, and tells me the truth about the words I send her, and for some reason loves me anyway.

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- You can contact the author at theleewit@mindspring.com.

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