CHAPTER 18
NATALIE WAS STILL dreaming when the first fat raindrop hit her cheek. That raindrop was followed by another—and a kiss on her forehead.
Zach ran his knuckles over her cheek. “Wake up, angel. We need to get out of here—and fast.”
She opened her eyes, felt herself being hauled to her feet. She blinked, looked around, still groggy and confused. “Is it raining?”
Thunder crashed overhead.
“A monsoon has moved in. If we don’t haul ass, we’re going to get caught in a flash flood. Get your pack on, and let’s leave this death trap.”
And then she remembered.
They’d taken shelter early this morning at the bottom of a dry wash.
He’d warned her that it was dangerous because they were in the middle of monsoon season and people died every year when the washes, which were dry most of the time, turned into raging rivers.
But she’d been so tired that she’d barely been able to put one foot in front of the other, so he’d relented.
She grabbed her pack, shook it to dislodge anything that might have climbed into the harness, then slipped it on her aching shoulders. She hadn’t come all this way to die in a muddy ditch. “Let’s go.”
Zach grinned, his stubbled face turning from rough to handsome as hell in a heartbeat. “Yes, ma’am.”
By the time they reached the spot where they’d descended into the wash, it was raining hard, the fine desert silt turning to butter beneath Natalie’s feet. Zach climbed out of the wash, and she tried to follow, but the bank was too slippery and too steep.
A flash of lightning. The crash of thunder.
She tried again, grabbing on to a clump of grass and digging hard with the toes of her boots, but she just wasn’t strong enough to lift both her body weight and the weight of the backpack. Breathing hard, she felt herself sliding backward. Below her, the water was already ankle deep—and rising.
She hadn’t been afraid before, but she was now.
“I can’t do it!” She looked up only to be blinded by raindrops.
Zach was shouting something to her, but she couldn’t hear it over the rumble of thunder and the rush of water and wind.
Again she tried, and again she slipped, the water up to her knees and tugging hard, threatening to pull her off balance.
Oh, come on! You can’t drown in the damned desert, girl!
Then something hit her face.
A rope.
A loop had been tied on the end of it.
She didn’t need to hear what Zach was saying to know what to do. She slipped it over her head and beneath her arms and held on tight, the current sucking at her feet.
And slowly Zach dragged her up the muddy embankment until she lay at the top, covered head to toe in mud and breathing hard.
Then he was there beside her. “You okay?”
She nodded, still trying to catch her breath, the shock of what had almost happened catching up with her. “I could’ve drowned.”
“That was too damned close.” He got her to her feet, lifted the rope over her head, then tucked a gloved finger beneath her chin and kissed her. Rain spilled over his face, catching in his stubble. “Let’s get out of this storm.”
She glanced over her shoulder and felt her knees go weak.
The place where she’d just been standing was now a deep, roiling current.
THE THUNDERSTORM LASTED for almost an hour, changing the landscape.
Low-lying areas were now muddy marshes. The washes were brimming and impassible.
And everywhere the fine desert silt was slick and muddy.
This slowed them down considerably and left footprints that any idiot could follow.
But it also made the journey more difficult for Natalie, her feet slipping with each step.
Zach slowed the pace, trying to find a dry place where they could rest until dark, some place that wasn’t already occupied by snakes or arachnids trying to avoid the wet.
He was about to explain to her why it would be okay in these circumstances to sit next to a spider, when he saw an outcropping of granite a bit farther up the hill to their right.
He helped her up the slippery slope, then shooed away the bobcat that had taken shelter in a deep alcove on the north side of the outcropping.
Larger than the space they’d camped in that first day, it would get them out of the wind and the rain and give them a safe place to rest until nightfall.
He took Natalie’s hand and helped her inside, dropped his pack and then took hers. “Take your jacket off. It’s drenched.”
He shed his jacket, as well, then grabbed the woolen blanket.
He drew her down beside him in the soft, dry sand and wrapped the blanket around both of them, hoping the wool would hold in their body heat and help them dry off.
Being wet out here at night would put them at risk of hypothermia.
And there was nothing like walking in cold, wet BDUs to chafe one’s inner thighs.
He could write a dissertation on that subject.
Petroleum jelly. You knew you’d forget something. Damn it, McBride!
The rain had rinsed off most of the mud that had coated her, her lashes wet, her hair sticking to her cheeks, droplets beading on her face. She huddled up against him, shivering. “Don’t we have to get skin to skin for this to work?”
“Are you saying you want to get naked with me, angel?”
She smiled through chattering teeth, two little dimples appearing in her cheeks. “That’s not what I meant.”
“No? Too bad.” He drew her tighter against him, wrapping his arms around her, doing his best to share his surplus body heat.
For a while, they sat there, watching the rain fall, water spilling over the edge of their little shelter like a translucent curtain, partly concealing them from the world beyond. Gradually, her shivering subsided, and she began to relax into him.
“What did you want to be when you grew up?”
The question came out of nowhere.
“I wanted to drive a dump truck. Then I wanted to be a fireman. Then I wanted to be an astronaut. Then I wanted to be a football star. And then I went to college and had no clue what I wanted to do.” He glanced down and saw her smiling. “What about you? Did you grow up wanting to be a journalist?”
She shook her head. “No. I wanted to be a vet and take care of horses.”
“Really?” For some reason, that surprised him. “What changed your mind?”
“Math. I’m no good at it. I barely got through college algebra. I was much better at English, so I ended up majoring in journalism. I discovered I really loved it. Beau always told me he . . .” Her words trailed off into silence.
“Hey, it’s okay. You can talk about him with me.” Zach wasn’t insecure enough to be jealous of a dead man. Besides, he had no claim over Natalie.
Two days at most, McBride.
He glanced down, saw a bittersweet smile on her face. “He always told me that journalism was my destiny because I was always asking questions.”
That sounded like Natalie. “Did you meet him in college?”
She shook her head. “I met him the night I graduated from high school. I was from the Garden District and went to Louis S. McGehee High School—that’s a private girl’s school—and he was the football star at St. Bernard High School, a public school in Chalmette.
” Her accent grew stronger when she talked about her hometown.
Zach found it almost irresistible. “I went out with some friends to celebrate—we were wearing matching pink gowns and wrist corsages—and a guy he was with started picking on me and plucking the petals off my corsage. Beau made him stop and apologize.”
“It takes a lot of courage for a man to stand up to his male friends.” Particularly when it revolved around how they treated women. “He sounds like a good guy.”
“He was.” She smiled, a sad smile. “I ran into him about a week later at a White Stripes concert at Tulane. He asked me out. We ended up dating throughout my three years of college—”
“Three years?” It had taken Zach five.
“I skipped a grade in middle school and graduated early from college due to advanced credits.” She said this without a hint of arrogance. “I turned twenty-one the year of the storm.”
Hadn’t he known she was smart? “Sorry to interrupt.”
“We dated through college, despite my parents’ fears that he was just after their money.
We were well off, and his family wasn’t.
They didn’t like his accent, thought he seemed uncultured.
But they eventually came around. He worked hard to earn their respect, and I think they saw the man he truly was.
He turned down a football scholarship and worked his way through college.
He’d just gotten accepted to law school when . . .
“We couldn’t live together because that would have freaked my parents out, but we spent lots of time together.
He proposed to me on my twenty-first birthday over champagne at Commander’s Palace.
He had a ring tucked in the pocket of his sports jacket.
I was so surprised, and the ring was so beautiful—antique white gold with a one-karat diamond.
He said he’d been saving his money since the night we met.
I accepted his proposal and . . . In less than two months, he was gone and my folks, too. ”
Something twisted in Zach’s chest at the depth of her grief. “I’m so sorry.”
“They didn’t like each other at first, but they died together because they all loved me.”
“Don’t you dare blame yourself, Natalie. It wasn’t your fault.”
But she didn’t seem to hear him.
“Now the Chalmette I knew is gone. St. Bernard High is gone.” Her voice quavered, and he knew she was near tears.
“There have been so many times when I wished they hadn’t found me in the morgue.
I wasn’t afraid anymore. I had blacked out.
It would have been so easy to die. Then Beau and Mama and Daddy would still be here. ”
A part of Zach wanted to tell her not to think like that, but he understood that feeling only too well. It sucked being the one left behind.