Strange Bedfellows

Cassandra was furious. “Oh, stop it! We’re stuck, and that’s that!”

“Damn it!” he exploded as he turned off the ignition and slammed his fist against the steering wheel before pressing his head back against the headrest. “I’d rather be in Alaska, snowbound with a polar bear!”

Cassandra pleated the skirt of her long, full cotton dress with her fingers, wondering why her anger had felt so good, why she suddenly felt so free, so liberated. Why had watching the unflappable Sean Frame lose his cool made her feel so much more in control?

Who knew?

Who cared?

She only knew she liked the feeling. “Oh, really, Mr. Frame?” she shot back, staring straight at him. “Well, I’d rather be tossed overboard into a school of hungry piranha. Or is that piranhas? Piranhi?”

He turned his head on the headrest and eyed her carefully, assessingly. She saw the way his open, sparkling-white shirt collar pressed against the side of his tanned chin, and her stomach did a small flip. “I’d rather,” he bit out challengingly, “be in orbit for six months with a rabid rhesus monkey.”

So, he wanted to play “can you top this insult?” did he? She narrowed her eyes, her heart pounding. “I’d rather be trapped in an elevator with an amateur rap group on their way to their first audition.”

“I’d rather be locked in a bank vault with the entire Mormon Tabernacle Choir—all of them singing the Hallelujah Chorus and suffering with laryngitis.”

This was fun!

“Ha! Kid stuff!” Cassandra exclaimed joyfully, then struggled for another comeback. “I’d rather—I’d rather be shipwrecked with Bill O’Reilly!”

Sean gave out a shout of laughter, then held up his hands in surrender. “You win, Cassandra. You win. Although, I must say, I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“Neither did I,” Cassandra answered quietly, frowning at her own audacity, then smiling as she realized he had addressed her by her first name.

Then Sean waved his right hand as if asking for silence. “I think I see something moving out there,” he said, using his sleeve to wipe steam off the inside of the window and peer into the now almost total darkness outside the Jeep. “Hand me my flashlight.”

“Since you asked so nicely, Sean,” Cassandra grumbled, remembering again how much she really didn’t like this man, although it had been rather nice to hear him call her Cassandra instead of Ms. Mercer. But that didn’t change the fact that he probably couldn’t find the word please with half a dozen flashlights!

“Here,” she said, shoving the thing at him. “Maybe it’s Bullwinkle Moose come to rescue us. Because, if you haven’t noticed, there aren’t any lights to be seen anywhere below us, except those at the hospital. The substation must have been knocked out by the slide, considering it’s only about a half mile higher up on the mountainside.”

Sean didn’t answer her but only cursed as he reached to roll down the window, then realized that the Jeep had push-button controls and the engine had to be engaged in order to operate them. He turned the ignition key to the “accessories” position with a determined hand, then lowered the window and stuck the flashlight outside. “There! Over there! Some nut’s trying to walk out of here. Hey! Buddy! We’re over here!”

Cassandra leaned across the seat, her chin on Sean’s shoulder as they both peered into the rain and darkness. “I see him!” she shouted excitedly, earning herself a dark look from her companion. “Sorry,” she added more softly. “But I do see him. If he can make it through the mud, why can’t we? I mean, anything has to be better than spending the rest of this miserable night up here.”

She didn’t say it, but the words with you hung in the air, heard by them both. She took off her glasses, which she really only needed for driving—but wore almost constantly—and which were steaming up, anyway, and placed them on the dashboard.

“Do you want to take the chance of being caught in another slide?” Sean leaned his head out the window, looking down. “There’s a boulder smack up against my door and the back door, holding both of them closed. Lovely dent in the metal, by the way. The road, if we could reach it from the shoulder, is nothing but a river of mud and boulders. We can’t get out your side because your doors are smashed up against the guardrail. If we do get out of here, it’s going to have to be through the back hatch.”

“If we could reach it? If we get out of here?” Cassandra moved her body a little closer to his. “Don’t you mean when we get out of here?”

He turned his head, looking at her from only mere inches away, then put his hand on hers, squeezing it—which was the first time she noticed that she had been gripping his shoulder tightly. “We’ll get out of here, Cassandra. I promise.”

Well, as long as he promises, her inner self said, even as Cassandra tried, and failed, to relax her hold on his shoulders.

Then Sean aimed the flashlight onto the muddy roadway once more, and at the man who now stood about twenty yards away from them, obviously not able to move closer without possibly injuring himself in the debris littering the roadside. “Do you think it’s really wise to try to walk out of here, sir?” he called over the sound of driving rain and crashing thunder.

The man waved his hands as if trying to ward off some unseen danger. “I must go on!” he yelled at them. “I—I must go on!”

“What a strange reaction. Do you think he’s injured?” Cassandra asked, immediately concerned for the man. “Do you recognize him?”

“I wouldn’t recognize Jason in this dark and rain,” Sean told her, then motioned for her to be silent while he spoke to the man once more. “I think you can make it to the Jeep if I light the way with my flashlight. You’ll be safer with us until the storm’s over and somebody comes to check on the slide.”

“No!” the man shouted back, sounding frantic. “I must go on! There’s something I must do…someone I must—I need your flashlight. Yes, that’s it. Give me your flashlight! I’ll send help.”

Sean moved the flashlight, centering its beam on the stranger’s face so that Cassandra saw the man’s wet hair—it seemed to be blond, but she couldn’t be sure. His eyes, however, made her gasp aloud, for they were an intense blue, and they seemed oddly vacant, as if the man was unsure of himself, of his surroundings. Which was silly, because she had never seen a more determined-looking man—save Sean Frame, of course.

The man held up his hand to block the harsh light from his eyes, took a few steps toward the Jeep, then called again. “The flashlight. Just give me your flashlight. And tell me the name of this road so I can give directions to a tow truck.”

Cassandra rolled her eyes as Sean did as the stranger said, then watched as the flashlight arced through the air, to be caught by the tall, lean man with the strange blue eyes. “Well, there goes our only light,” she grumbled, not knowing why she was angry. “We could have used it as a rescue beacon, you know.”

“I think he’ll make it,” Sean said as he watched the man moving away, picking his way through the mud and boulders. “The slide can’t be more than a quarter-mile wide, I imagine. Once he’s free of this area he shouldn’t have any problem making it to the gas station at the bottom of the hill. With any luck, we’ll be out of here by morning.”

Cassandra couldn’t help it. She wanted to be out of here now, out of the Jeep, away from Sean Frame, away from her thoughts about Sean Frame. “Oh, really. He’ll make it. But we have to stay here. That doesn’t make sense, Sean, and you know it.”

“Look at your shoes, Cassandra,” he told her, closing the window and turning on the radio. “You can’t walk out of here in those high heels, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to carry you. That man, whoever he is, is only responsible for himself. I’m responsible for you, and you’re staying right here. We’re staying right here until someone comes and gets us. Now, be quiet, and I’ll see if I can find a radio station that’s still working.”

“You’re the living definition of a benevolent despot, do you know that? One man in charge of everything, and thinking he’s doing his subjects a great big favor by taking care of them. I mean, Mr. Grimes could use you for show-and-tell in his European history class,” she groused, silently agreeing that her shoes had definitely not been made for slogging through calf-deep mud.

And if there were another slide…?

No. She’d stay where she was. She wouldn’t like it, but she’d stay.

The speakers crackled as Sean punched buttons, trying to find a working station. “You’ll run down the battery unless you turn the motor back on while you do that,” she told him, looking for reasons to hate him. “It can get cold up here, you know, and I’d like to think we can use the heater once in a while.”

“I don’t know if the mud has covered the tailpipe, but I’m fairly certain it has. Better to be a little cold than die of carbon monoxide poisoning, I’ve always said. It’s a good thing you picked me up, Cassandra, because you never would have made it out here alone.”

“If I hadn’t stopped to pick you up I’d be home right now, warm and dry and feeding Festus, who is probably starving by now and writing me out of his will,” she pointed out, she hoped, reasonably.

“Festus? Who in hell is Festus? Ah—got one! Let’s listen.”

“Pandemonium continues throughout the Grand Springs area, with Vanderbilt Memorial Hospital running on its backup generators as the blackout continues. The power outage is to blame for many accidents at intersections where the signals are not working. There have been several mud slides in the area, and motorists are urged to remain at home except in cases of emergency.

“Just a minute, folks. I’ve just been handed a few updates. All right. There are still several dozen people trapped in elevators around the city, so if your loved one is late tonight, don’t panic—he or she may still be stuck at the office.

“And now, back to music. We’ll give a rundown of cancellations and postponements at ten past the hour and interrupt for any updates. Also check us out on Twitter and Facebook. And please, folks, remember. It’s still raining out there, and the weather center is warning of dangerous lightning and the possibility of more slides. There are no reported fatalities yet, but this isn’t over. Again, please, stay where you are.”

Sean turned off the radio, and Cassandra stared at the windshield, at the dark and the rain and the continuing streaks of lightning.

“Oh, God,” she breathed quietly, and closed her eyes.

Chapter Three

Sean switched off the ignition and sat back against the seat, his eyes on Cassandra Mercer.

He realized that he’d never looked at her before—really looked at her. He’d known her for nearly two years, both before and after Jason had transferred to Burke. They’d tangled immediately and often, also both before and since Jason had taken to destroying school property and otherwise “acting out,” as Cassandra called such unacceptable behavior.

But he’d never really looked at her before.

She had a lovely face, actually, one that was usually hidden behind oversize tortoiseshell eyeglass frames. A flawless complexion. Her nose was small, pert, perhaps a bit audacious. And he liked her eyes—a soft brown ringed with amber and framed by long, thick, straight black lashes.

He liked her eyes. A lot.

He was certain her hair, however, would have to be considered by many to be her best feature. It was long and thick and a warm honey brown, streaked with blond highlights. A pity she always seemed to just scrape it back from her face and tie it at the nape, as if she didn’t know how to do anything else with it.

Sean reached up and scratched his right cheek with his left hand, then rubbed his chin—a habit he’d had so long he didn’t even wonder when it had begun—and contemplated Cassandra Mercer’s mouth. Wide. Full. Quite lovely when she smiled. Not that she’d ever smiled at him before tonight.

Did she smile at Jason when she had him in for their “little talks”?

She had a long, slender neck. He hadn’t noticed that before, either. But, then, he’d never seen her with her head pressed back against a car seat before, her profile brought into clear focus with each new slashing bolt of lightning, a long, thick strand of gold-streaked brown hair having escaped its prison to caress her cheek, frame her face.

Damn.

“I’m sure Frank Sanderson has everything well in hand,” he said, hoping to reassure Cassandra as he faced front once more, putting both hands on the steering wheel as if ready to drive out of the mud and back down the mountain—to safety, to sanity. “He’s been a good police chief.”

Cassandra rolled her head to the left, and Sean felt her gaze on him. “There’s someone in Grand Springs who actually meets with the grand Sean Frame’s approval? Wow. Now, who was it who said there was nothing new under the sun?”

He raised an eyebrow, trying not to smile at her remark. “My congratulations, Cassandra. You’ve hidden your Mr. Hyde personality for two entire years. I never would have suspected you had an affinity for sarcasm—or a sense of humor. I thought you were pure Dr. Jekyll, hell-bent on solving all the world’s problems through love and compassion—with several dozen off-the-wall theories about children, that have nothing to do with common sense, thrown into the mix.”

“I apologize. Being balanced on the side of a cliff, waiting for either rescue or the next mud slide must have unleashed the wild woman in me. But, to get back to what we were discussing—what would you do for Jason if you were in charge of his guidance and development?”

He rubbed his chin again, harder this time. “Cassandra, I am in charge of Jason’s guidance and development. I’m his father, remember?”

Cassandra sat up straighter in her seat. “Oh, don’t be so thick, Sean,” she said quickly, probably not noticing that his mouth opened before he quickly bit back what he was going to say. For he had decided that this was a very interesting development, watching Cassandra Mercer outside the meeting room, with nary a single copy of Robert’s Rules of Order to get in the way of whatever she felt, whatever she had to say.

It was as if he was watching a wren metamorphose into an eagle.

“We all know you’re his father,” she continued in a rush. “I’m speaking of Jason’s academic guidance, and his social development as evidenced by his interaction with his peers and teachers. I’m here to guide Jason. That’s why I’m called his guidance counselor.”

“How did you guide him last week, Cassandra?” Sean shot back, getting angry in spite of himself. Besides, he felt more comfortable being angry with Cassandra Mercer. That way he didn’t have to think about the fact she was wearing a particularly appealing perfume that was difficult not to notice within the confines of the Jeep. “Point out that there are bigger windows in the gym? You know, where he’d get more bang for his buck? Hey—why waste time with small windows when he could break ones that cost twice as much?”

“Now you’re just being asinine!” Cassandra slapped a hand over her mouth almost before the words had escaped, her lovely brown eyes opened comically wide in what had to be shock at her own audacity. “Oh! I didn’t mean to say that,” she protested through her slightly spread fingers. “I’m so sorry! Really!”

“No,” Sean returned quietly, shaking his head. “You meant to say it. You’ve probably got a sampler at home with those very words embroidered on it. You’re a good actress, Cassandra Mercer, playing the caring, nurturing female and the consummate educational professional, speaking in that quiet, repressed-virgin way of yours, quoting statistics at me in meeting after meeting, your voice like water dripping on a stone as you cite sources that back up your harebrained theories. But all the time, deep inside yourself, you’re making little voodoo dolls of me, aren’t you? And mentally sticking pins in them. Tell me, do you go home from school board meetings and throw darts at a picture of me you’ve nailed to your wall?”

Cassandra’s bottom lip began to tremble, and Sean was immediately contrite, knowing he’d gone too far, said too much. Why did this woman have this effect on him? Why did he dislike her so much? It wasn’t as if she was some sort of threat to him, for crying out loud!

“Look, Cassandra,” he began, not exactly in the mood for female waterworks. He had enough to deal with tonight, stranded here smack in the middle of nowhere, with the distinct possibility of being buried under several hundred tons of mud and rock if the rest of the mountainside decided to give way. “I’m sorry if I said—”

His apology, his plea for calm, both quickly dissolved under the warm, throaty sound of Cassandra’s bubbling laughter.

“Jason is so much your son that it’s almost scary!” she said as she struggled to control her giggles. “All bluster and bravado—all bristly and willing to attack at the drop of a hat in order to cover up any hurt, any pain. Voodoo dolls? Dartboards? Jason accused me of searching his locker, maybe even bugging it, because I seem to know too much about him.”

Then she sobered. “And neither of you realize that you’re both as clear as any of those gymnasium windowpanes Jason smashed. That you’re both so scared and insecure and full of love that you’re simply afraid to give for fear of having it flung back in your faces. You, because of your childhood, Jason because of the divorce, his mother’s remarriage, even the new baby.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Sean said angrily, but he didn’t look at Cassandra as he denied her words, couldn’t look at her. “Jason is spoiled rotten, and that’s why he’s a discipline problem. Sally always bribed him to be good, bought him a brand-new car the day he turned sixteen, forgave him when he started lifting money from her wallet last summer to buy videogames and new jeans, allowed him to set his own curfew. He doesn’t want love, Cassandra. He wants to be left alone. He wants his own way. He wants to control his own life, even though he has no idea what real life even is. And he hates me because I took away that new car, I make him stay on a reasonable allowance, and I damn well make sure he’s home at a decent hour.”

Cassandra shook her head in what looked to be exasperation, and her words tumbled out quickly, as if she was thinking and speaking at the same time. “Don’t you see what’s wrong here? Don’t you see? Both you and your ex-wife are teaching Jason that outlandish, unacceptable behavior is the way to privilege and material things and—even more important to him, I’m sure—what he believes should be his share of parental attention. When he lived with your ex-wife, and was bad, he got anything he wanted. Did you say this started last summer? Interesting. His grades were good until he transferred to Burke this past fall.”

She shook her head, frowning. “But never mind that now. We’ll get to that another time. Now that he lives with you, he may have lost some of his material things, some of his privileges, but he certainly isn’t wallowing in abject poverty, and he sure as heck has gained your full attention. Do you understand now? You and your ex-wife have been allowing the tail to wag the dog, and neither of you is right!”

“Oh, really?” Sean answered, feeling his jaw muscles growing tight. “So Sally and I are both lousy parents, and we’re responsible for Jason’s stupid behavior in school, his lousy grades. Is that the footnoted version? Will you be citing sources for me next?”

Cassandra turned sideways on the front seat, drawing her long legs up beside her on the cushion, her features animated, her eyes sparkling as another flash of lightning turned the deepening night to day. “Think about it, Sean. I talked Jason into taking early SATs—Scholastic Aptitude Tests.”

“I know what SATs are,” Sean interrupted. “I just didn’t know Jason took them. He never told me.”

“Of course he didn’t! If you knew he’d had the highest score in all of Burke, you’d probably be ten times as hard on him for darn near failing two subjects this past quarter. Jason is a lot of things, but he isn’t stupid! Why, he’s probably smarter than you and your ex-wife and me put together. Which is why it’s so terribly sad to watch him throwing all his potential away because he thinks he’s so totally unloved. He’s intelligent, yes, but he’s still not mature enough, emotionally, to see what he’s doing. But you are! Which is why I’m actually feeling rather glad we’re stuck here—not that I want to be here much longer, of course. Now that you’ve told me more about Jason’s background, your own background, maybe I can really make some progress with him.”

She subsided against the seat once more, as if she’d just realized she’d said too much. “If you want to, that is. And if you promise not to go running to Jason and tell him you know about his SAT scores. Because if he thinks I ratted on him, I’ll lose what little ground I’ve gained with him this past semester, and—well…”

“You don’t have to explain that one to me, Cassandra,” Sean admitted, his anger draining away. “I’m very much aware of the term, and would never rat on you.” Then he looked at her again, envying Jason for his ability to bring such animation, such genuine interest, to Cassandra’s face. “You really like him, don’t you.”

Her smile lit up the night with twice the voltage of the continuing lightning strikes. “Oh, yes. He’s a great kid. Funny, intelligent, inventive. But always with this underlying sense of sadness about him, you know? It’s like he’s this clumsy, eager, half-grown puppy with big sad eyes. I just want to hug him sometimes.” She shook her head. “He’d have a fit if he heard me say that!”

“Yes, he probably—listen! Listen closely. Did you hear that?”

Cassandra sat up straight, turning her head from side to side, as if activating some inner radar. “Did I hear what?”

“I’m not sure,” Sean said, turning the ignition key to the accessories position again and pushing the button that lowered his side window, so that he could see out into the darkness. “Some sort of whooshing noise…like something’s on the move out there again.”

And then he saw it. Saw the mountain moving, sliding toward them. Again.

“Damn it all to hell!” He closed the window, turned off the ignition and made a grab for Cassandra, cradling her body tight against his as a wall of rock and mud slammed into the side of the Jeep.

The sound went on forever. The slam of rocks, the oozing, sucking, rushing sound of ground giving way and turning to a river of mud. Boulders hit the side of the Jeep, rocking the vehicle on its chassis, grinding it against the guardrail as it lifted and began to slide downhill along with the mud.

Sean employed his long legs to brace himself against the floorboards and used one hand to pull on the headlights, something telling him that, even if they tumbled down the mountainside, maybe the Jeep’s battery would last long enough to allow the headlights to serve as a beacon for possible rescuers.

If the Jeep wasn’t buried ten feet deep beneath a mountain of mud.

If one of the boulders didn’t come crashing into the Jeep at window level, ripping off the roof and killing the two of them instantly.

With Cassandra’s head buried against his shoulder, he looked out the front windshield, watching the area the headlights illuminated, seeing the melting mountainside even more clearly with each new bolt of lightning.

They were going forward, parallel with the roadway, sliding down the mountainside toward Grand Springs one lurching, heart-stopping yard at a time, the Jeep kept upright only by the strength of the guardrail.

The screech of metal against metal, the Jeep’s frame scraping along the guardrail, sent sparks into the air and turned their wild ride into a bizarre, frightening, macabre amusement park adventure.

And then he saw it. A boulder so big it was higher than the roof of the Jeep. Wider. Wedged between the guardrail and a huge, overturned tree.

And the Jeep was heading straight for it, swept along at about thirty miles an hour—or so it seemed to Sean—held against the rail like one of those tin rabbits that circle a dog-race track.