Fugitive Hearts

So she couldn’t really be considering kissing him goodbye, could she?

He tilted his head, leaning into the gentle caress of her palm.

Yes, she could. That’s exactly what she was considering. What did it matter how they had met or how long they had known each other? Maybe she had made the same kind of instinctive judgment as Morty. She tipped up her chin and focused on the lips beneath John’s desperado mustache.

A log popped in the fireplace. In the silence that had fallen between them, it sounded like a gunshot. John jerked back. “Dana, I’m sorry.”

“Mmm?”

“I’ve got to go.” He dropped her hand and turned away to open the door.

“John…”

Cold air surged over the threshold. He pushed his way through the snow that had drifted over the yard, carving a knee-deep path in the blanket of white. He stopped when he reached the beginning of the lane and turned to look over his shoulder.

Dana waved, then stepped back inside and swung the door shut. Biting her lip, she let her forehead thud against the wooden panels.

Oh, God. What had she been thinking? She had almost made a complete fool of herself.

Must be lack of sleep or barometric pressure or phases of the moon or…

Or maybe she had been living on her own too long. It had been two years since Hank had left. Maybe that’s why she was ready to throw herself at the first man who happened by.

But it wasn’t just any man. It was John Becker, with his haunted eyes and his endearing, rebellious hair and his tender smile and his love for his child…

“You’re pathetic,” she muttered to herself. “Right round the bend. First you’re worried because you’re trapped here with him, then you’re upset because he leaves.”

Morty meowed and sat on her foot.

“It was my imagination, that’s all,” she said to the cat. “All this creative energy floating around, ready to make up stories. I should put it to work, that’s what I should do. That’s what I’m being paid for, right?”

But instead of heading for her drawing table, she went to the window and watched until John was out of sight.

The rest of the day was a total loss. Dana did everything she could think of to get her mind back on her work. She put on her most comfortable sweater. She made endless pots of camomile tea. She organized her papers and sharpened all her pencils, but the drawing that took shape wasn’t a marmalade cat and pirate mice. It was a man’s face.

“Argh!” Dana tossed her pencil on the floor and tunneled her fingers into her hair. It was more of a doodle than a drawing, only a few vague lines, but the long hair, the mustache, those dark, haunted eyes were unmistakable.

“This is pointless,” she muttered. She needed some fresh air, she decided, going over to put on her coat. It was high time to switch into her role of caretaker, anyway.

She had almost cleared a path to the main lodge when she heard the clinking rumble of the snowplow. She leaned on her shovel and waved a greeting.

The driver turned around in the parking lot and lowered his window. “Everything okay here, Miss Whittington?” he called.

“Just fine, thanks, Mr. Duff,” she shouted over the noise of the engine. “That was some storm.”

“Forty centimeters. We been doing double shifts for three days and still aren’t finished.”

“Did you see a car in the ditch?” she asked.

“More like a few dozen. The roads are a mess with all the wrecks.”

“Any cars in the ditch near here?”

“Nope. Lucky, eh?” The engine revved loudly as the driver put it back in gear.

Dana smiled. John must have managed to get his car out and get home after all. “Thanks for swinging by,” she called.

The driver touched his hand to his hat in salute. “No problem. Take ’er easy.”

Dana waved and turned back to her shoveling. By the time she had cleared the front entrance to the lodge, she was out of breath and in need of a shower. She took the keys from her pocket and opened the front door.

A puff of warm air greeted her, along with the ringing of a phone. It had been so long since she’d heard the sound, it startled her. She stamped the snow off her boots and crossed the floor to the registration desk. “Hello, Half Moon Bay Resort,” she answered.

“Dana! Are you all right?”

It was her sister, and she sounded on the verge of panic. “Hello, Adelle,” Dana said. “I’m fine, how are you? Is everything okay?”

Adelle ignored the question and rushed on. “Why haven’t you been answering the phone? I’ve been worried sick.”

“The lines were down because of the storm.”

“That’s what the phone company said, but they claimed the problem was fixed last night.”

It couldn’t have been, Dana thought. She had checked an hour ago and there hadn’t been any dial tone.

“I’ve been trying the number at the cabin all day,” Adelle continued. “When you didn’t answer, I started leaving messages on the lodge number.”

Dana glanced at the answering machine behind the desk. Sure enough, the red light indicating recorded messages was blinking furiously. Why would the phone in the cabin still be out if the one here was working? They both branched from the same line, didn’t they? “Adelle, relax,” she said. “It was probably just some glitch at the switching station or something like that. You know how things are up north.”

“Yes, I do. Which is why I wish you’d come back to the city.”

“I will come back. As soon as I finish my book.”

“What if the power had gone off? What if you had run out of food?”

“There’s a back-up generator for the power, and there’s enough food in the lodge freezers to keep me going through ten books.”

Adelle paused, as if searching for something else to focus her worry on. “You sound out of breath. What’s wrong?”

“I’ve been shoveling snow.” Dana sighed and transferred the phone to her other ear as she slipped her arms out of her coat. She grasped the front of her sweater and flapped it away from her body to let in some cooling air. “It’s wonderful exercise.”

“That’s what health clubs are for.” Adelle huffed. “And doesn’t that skinflint Derek have a snowblower?”

“Yes, he does, but it broke down last week. I really don’t mind, Adelle. It helps take my mind off…things.”

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Positive. I’m sorry you were so alarmed. Is everything okay with you?”

“Sure, everything’s fine.”

“Did you get much snow down there?”

“I’ll say! We got so much the mayor declared a state of emergency and called in the army.”

“You’re kidding!”

“Haven’t you seen the news?”

“I don’t have a TV in the cabin, remember? And the radios there decided to break down yesterday.”

“Then you’ll have to catch a newscast, now that you’re at the lodge. The blizzard shattered all the snowfall records from here to Montreal.”

Dana toed off her boots and hitched herself up to sit on the desk. “Wow. If it was that bad in the city, no wonder you were so worried about me.”

“You’re not the only one in the family with an imagination. Remember those stories grandpa used to tell us about trappers in the old days?”

“Vividly.”

“When you didn’t answer your phone today, I was picturing you lost out in the snow somewhere and slowly freezing into a lump of ice.”

“Mmm.”

“Don’t say I’m overreacting. It could happen.”

“Oh, I know. It almost did.”

“Dana! You said—”

“Not to me, Adelle. Two nights ago I found a man on my doorstep. He was practically frozen.”

“What!”

Briefly Dana told her sister about John Becker.

“Oh…my…God,” Adelle said.

“He’s okay now. He left first thing this morning.”

“Oh…my…God! I can’t believe you took a complete stranger into your home. Haven’t you heard the news?”

“No. I told you, the radios—”

“Two days ago there was a prison break at the Kingston Penitentiary,” Adelle said, her voice rising again. “Three of the convicts are still at large.”

“Kingston’s a long way from here. And those guys would head for the city or the border. They’d be crazy to head for the bush, especially in the winter.”

“So? They might be crazy. What if this John Becker was one of those escaped prisoners?”

It was hard for Dana to believe that her thoughts had once gone along those same lines. Was it only yesterday that her visitor had made her nervous, with his height and his desperado aura?

But that was before she had seen the naked love in his eyes as he’d talked about his child. “That’s impossible,” she said. “John’s no criminal. Morty adored him.”

“As if a cat can judge someone’s character.”

“Morty hated Hank,” she pointed out.

“Hank was an idiot. But, Dana, this isn’t funny. That man could have been anyone.”

“Well, he wasn’t. He’s a salesman whose car went off the road in the storm when he was trying to get home to his daughter. And he’s one of the sweetest, gentlest men I’ve ever met,” she said firmly.

Dana wasn’t sure whether she had placated her sister by the time Adelle got off the phone. One thing was for certain. If she’d shoveled her way to the lodge in order to get her mind off John, it hadn’t worked.

She went to the floor-to-ceiling window that dominated the south wall of the lounge. From this vantage point, she could see the entire resort complex, from the caretaker’s cabin to the boathouse that was nestled by the shore. It all looked so peaceful now. The frozen lake glittered like powdered diamonds in an unbroken expanse of white. Melting snow winked golden from the tips of the pine boughs. It was hard to believe a vicious storm had raged through here less than twenty-four hours ago.

As a matter of fact, it was hard to believe anything that had happened. Fresh drifts had obliterated any tracks John may have made on his way to the cabin, and the snowplow had cleared away the tracks he had made when he had left. Had she really saved a man from freezing to death? Had he been as drop-dead gorgeous as she remembered, or had the whole incident been twisted by her lonely imagination?

“Get a grip,” she muttered to herself. Of course it had happened. Even her imagination couldn’t have conjured up someone like John Becker. Instead of wondering about him, why didn’t she just give him a call and check to make sure he had reached home safely? That would be the decent thing to do, wouldn’t it? And it would prove her sister’s ridiculous suspicions were wrong. Maybe then she would be able to get her mind back on her work.

She returned to the front desk and retrieved the Toronto telephone directory from one of the shelves. There were half a dozen John Beckers, but she couldn’t remember the exact address she had read in John’s day planner. She chose a street that seemed familiar, then, before she could give herself time to reconsider, she picked up the receiver and dialed.

The voice that answered was that of a stranger. Assuming she must have been mistaken about John’s address, Dana tried the next John Becker. She went through all six, then started on the listings for J. Becker, but still no success. Maybe her John had an unlisted number.

Her John? She closed the phone book and sighed. No, he wasn’t hers. This was pathetic. Why was she doing this? If he had wanted to extend their relationship, he could have called her, couldn’t he?

But he didn’t know her number at the cabin, did he? Unless he had already tried to contact her through the lodge…

Quickly Dana pressed the button on the answering machine to play the messages. One was from Derek, giving her his schedule for the week, one was from the local marina to say that the new snowmobile Derek had ordered was in, and the rest were from Adelle. Nothing from John.

Could he have been delayed getting home? If the storm had been as bad as Adelle had said, the highways north of Toronto would be terrible. They might even be closed. She glanced at the clock on the wall and saw that it was four sharp. The headline news channel would be starting its report.

Dana returned to the lounge and clicked on the television there. The storm and its aftermath was the number-one story. She gasped at the footage of the ravaged city—entire streets were still blocked as the public works department tried to cope with the mountains of snow. Emergency services were overloaded, and a plea was going out to the public to check on their neighbors.

Slumping down on the couch, Dana muted the sound. Perhaps it was lucky that John had ended up at her cabin. If he hadn’t gone off the road when he had, he might not have made it back to the city, anyway. At least here he’d been safe.

A face flashed on the screen, and Dana’s heart thumped. The picture was stark black-and-white, but she recognized it instantly. Long dark hair, outlaw mustache, harsh features… It was John! Oh, God. Had he been in an accident? Fumbling for the remote, she turned the sound back on.

“…still at large.”

She frowned, certain she must have heard wrong.

“The other two prisoners were apprehended without incident this morning in Montreal,” the announcer continued. “Police are asking for the public’s help in locating Remy Leverette. He is thirty-three years old, stands six feet three inches, weighs two hundred pounds and has dark-brown hair and a mustache. If you have any knowledge of his whereabouts, please contact the authorities immediately.”

It was a mistake, Dana thought, staring at John’s face. Somehow the TV station had gotten the pictures mixed up. Or maybe it was a bad photograph. The photo on her book covers didn’t look anything like her. Maybe the camera had made this Leverette person look like John.

But even as she scrambled for explanations, she knew it was no use. The truth was there in the numbers that were held in front of his chest. It was a mug shot, and there was no denying that it was John. The camera had even captured the desperate edge to his haunting gaze.

“…exercise extreme caution,” the newscaster droned on. “Leverette has served four months of a life sentence…”

A life sentence? But how could that be possible? The gentle, quiet man who had shared her cabin couldn’t have hurt anyone, could he? And if he had, it must have been an accident, or self-defense, or…

The excuses she had been grasping scattered like snowflakes on the wind with the announcer’s next words.

“In the trial that shocked the quiet town of Hainesborough last year, Remy Leverette was convicted for the brutal stabbing death of his wife.”

Chapter 4

Dana crossed her arms tightly and rubbed her palms over her sleeves. Once the sun had gone down, the temperature had plummeted. She had heaped more wood on the fire and had plugged in the electric heater, but it hadn’t helped. The cold she felt went through to her bones.

It didn’t have much to do with the temperature, though. This cold was harder to shake off because it came from within.

How could she have been so wrong? she thought, for what had to be the hundredth time. How could he have deceived her so thoroughly? And how could she have wanted to kiss him…

Damn it all, after two years of keeping to herself, of avoiding the possibility of any kind of relationship with a man, why did she have to choose now to lower her defenses? And why choose him?

He could have killed her while she’d slept. He could have done anything he’d wanted to her, and she wouldn’t have been able to stop him. No, she would have let him. Welcomed him.

He must have pegged her for a soft touch the minute he’d seen her. He knew about her books and decided to play on her ego. That wouldn’t have been hard to do—all writers were eager for even a crumb of praise. It had all been an act, a lie.

There had been so many inconsistencies, but she hadn’t wanted to see them. The expensive coat he had worn didn’t match his plain chambray shirt and jeans. The salesman’s agenda book in his pocket didn’t go with the workman’s calluses on his palms. The look in his eyes wasn’t haunted, it was hunted.

She swallowed hard to get rid of the lump that rose in her throat. What a fool she had been. About everything. And God help her, the worst of it was that even now she didn’t want to believe she could have been that wrong about John.

No, not John. Remy Leverette. Escaped prisoner. Convicted wife killer.

The sudden knock on the cabin door made her jump.

“Miss Whittington? It’s Constable Savard.”

Dana recognized the gravelly voice of the provincial police officer who had arrived twenty minutes ago. She hurried over to unbolt the door. “Did you find anything?”

“No, ma’am.” He knocked the snow off his boots on the doorstep and stepped inside. With his gray eyebrows and round, ruddy cheeks, he looked more like a kindly farmer than a policeman. “I’ve been all around the lodge buildings,” he said, pulling off his gloves and stuffing them in the side pockets of his jacket. “If anyone had been there, I would have seen his tracks. The snow hadn’t been disturbed.”

“I told you, he wasn’t at the lodge, he was here at the cabin.”

“I didn’t see any tracks here, either.”

“That’s because I shoveled the snow after he left. The plow went through, too.”

“Ah. Did anyone else see this person?”

“Well, no. And he said his name was John Becker.”

“Yes, I made a note of that. Did you call anyone, ask for help?”

“The phone lines were down. And the phone in this cabin wasn’t working. I think—” She paused, but then decided she might as well tell him her suspicions. “I think he did something to it. I replaced it with one from the lodge and that one’s working fine.”

“I see. Do you live here year round, Miss Whittington?”

“No, I’m acting as caretaker while my cousin’s in Florida. I needed someplace quiet to complete my book.”

“You’re a writer?”

“Yes. I write and illustrate children’s books.”

He pulled a small notebook from inside his jacket and scribbled a few words. “So you make up stories for a living.”

She frowned at his tone. “You sound as if you don’t believe me.”

A flat voice crackled from the radio that was clipped to Constable Savard’s belt. He retrieved it and said a few words, his cheeks flexing with a suppressed yawn. “I’m sorry, ma’am, I didn’t mean any offense, but between the traffic accidents from this storm and the sightings of the fugitive it’s been a long day.”

“Sightings? You mean he’s been seen somewhere else, too?”

Savard nodded. “Since the picture hit the news two days ago, I’ve heard he’s been spotted everywhere from Kapuskasing to Kenora.”

“Wait, I can prove he was here. I have a picture of him.”

“Why would you take his picture?”

“It’s not a photograph,” she said, going to her desk to retrieve the doodle she had made. “It’s a sketch.”

He studied the paper briefly, then handed it back to her. “It looks kind of like the picture on the news, all right.” He jotted something else in his notebook and slipped it back inside his coat, then withdrew a card and handed it to her. “Thank you for your cooperation, Miss Whittington. We’ll be in touch. If you remember anything more, please call this number. That’s for Detective Charles Sibley. He dealt with Leverette before.”

“That’s it? You’re not going to post someone here in case he comes back?”

“Did this person threaten you?”

Dana shook her head. The only thing that had been in danger from John had been her heart. “No, he didn’t make any threats.”

“We’ll investigate this report as thoroughly as possible, ma’am,” Savard said, his voice rough with weariness as he pulled his gloves back on. “But rest assured that if the person you claim to have seen really was Leverette, he’d probably be halfway to Calgary by now.”

The diner next to the gas station had been doing a brisk business right up until dusk. Located just before the turnoff to Hainesborough, it was on the main route between Toronto and the Trans-Canada Highway. It was a good place for snowplow drivers to stop and fill their thermoses with coffee and grab a few doughnuts, or for travelers who’d had to postpone their trips because of the storm to rest long enough to wolf down hamburgers or sandwiches before they got back on the road, trying to make up for lost time.

But now the crowd was thinning out. With nightfall, most people had already reached their destinations. The bell over the door remained silent, and the buzz of conversation had been replaced by the drone of a small television behind the counter.

Remy knew he could allow himself another five minutes tops before he would have to move on. Although his stomach was growling audibly, the coins he’d found on the floor of the phone booth wouldn’t stretch to buy him dinner. He would have preferred to stay here long enough for his feet to warm up past the numb stage, but the waitress had been by twice already, eyeing the coffee he’d been nursing, and he didn’t want to risk becoming conspicuous.

His immediate problem was where to go once he left the diner. Because of Dana, he couldn’t use Half Moon Bay as a base to work from, so his first priority was to find somewhere else to stay. But where? No one could survive in the bush at this time of year, and he sure didn’t have the means to pay for a motel. He had no friends he could count on—the events of the past year had proven that much. If he was lucky he might stumble over a cottage in the area that was empty for the winter…as long as his feet didn’t freeze solid while he was wandering around the bush looking.

It appeared as if he had to risk going into Hainesborough earlier than he would have wanted. Hopefully, the news of the breakout would have died down by now. He could find shelter in his office or in the construction trailer in the yard. It had been two days, and the Kingston pen was hundreds of miles from here. Besides, no one would expect to see him—escaped felons generally knew better than to return to the scene of the crime, right?

Wherever he ended up, he couldn’t count on luck being with him this time. He’d probably used up a lifetime’s quota of luck getting this far. Being in the exercise yard just as the leading edge of the storm had disrupted the power to the electric fence had been a fluke. A one-in-a-million opportunity. Two men had gone over the wall before Remy had fully understood what was happening.

The decision to follow them had been instinctive. After being a law-abiding citizen for his entire adult life, he had escaped custody without a qualm or a backward glance. Odd, how easily the old skills had come back to him. He wasn’t as agile as he’d been as a juvenile, but he’d known how to avoid detection by sticking to the alleys and back roads. He’d ditched the prison issue jacket and stolen that poor sap Becker’s overcoat. He’d hitched a ride with an out-of-province trucker. Then he’d lied to the innocent woman who had saved his life.

Damn, he’d already been through this in his mind, he thought, scowling into his cold coffee. He’d do whatever it took. He wasn’t going to leave a legacy of shame for his daughter. Somehow he was going to find a way to prove his innocence.

He lifted the mug to his lips and drained the last of his coffee, then counted out enough coins to cover it. He slid to the edge of the bench and glanced around the diner, preparing to leave when his gaze was caught by the face on the TV screen.

It was his mug shot.

The shock of seeing himself like that kept him motionless for a vital second before his pulse tripped into over-drive. Hunching his shoulders, Remy ducked his head, as if concentrating on fastening the buttons on his coat while he watched the screen out of the corner of his eye.

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