than a painful flesh wound, he wanted her professional opinion. The bullet slice across his cheek was more worrisome—partly because it wouldn’t stop bleeding and partly because the wound was inches away from a fatal shot to his skull.
He pointed toward the kitchen where he had assembled her medical supplies. During the half hour he’d been alone in her house, he’d made friends with the dog and conducted a fairly thorough search of this cosy two-bedroom cabin. She had no television, no VCR and no computer. Her bookshelves were crammed with hardback reference works and an eclectic selection of paperback fiction, including a lot of science fiction and medical thrillers. She had a decent sound system and an extensive collection of blues and classical CDs.
Though most of her furniture was worn around the edges, nothing looked shabby. She decorated with warm, bright colors—a patchwork quilt on her bed, dozens of framed prints on the walls and flowers. Emily had captured the outdoor sunlight with glass vases of wildflowers and a golden arrangement of aspen branches on the kitchen table.
When they entered the kitchen, she assumed the brisk attitude of a nurse. “Take off your shirt.”
His left arm was stiff, but he managed the buttons while still keeping a grip on the gun. Underneath he wore a white cotton T-shirt.
“Take off both shirts.” She stood at the sink with her arms folded beneath her breasts. “I see that you gathered up a lot of bandages and brought them to the table. You shouldn’t have rifled through my things, Jordan.”
“You should’ve kept your front door locked.”
“I hardly ever lock up when I leave.” She shrugged. “There are too many other ways to break into the cabin. If someone intends to rob me, I might as well save myself the trouble of fixing a broken window.”
“Generous,” he said.
“Besides, I’ve been hoping that my ferocious watchdog would be a deterrent to crime.”
“He’s a good little fella. What’s his name?”
“Pookie.”
“Well, there’s your problem,” Jordan said. “If you want him to be a watchdog, you’ve got to name him Spike or Killer.”
“For your information, Pookie comes from pukka which is a term of nobility and respect in India.”
“Why not name him Ghandi? Here, Ghandi.”
“Moof, snoofle, moof.” The dog jumped up, ignoring the gun, and licked Jordan’s bare forearm.
“Weird bark,” he said.
“No worse than his bite.”
As he looked down at the loose-limbed golden retriever puppy, Jordan felt the corners of his mouth curving upward. Another smile.
Slowly, it was beginning to dawn on him that he was free. After six weeks of jail time, he was out in the world again, unshackled, unfettered. Freedom meant he had options, choices, the opportunity to do more than to declare his innocence over and over until the words sounded hollow and empty.
“Your T-shirt,” Emily said. “Take it off and come over here to the sink.”
He did as instructed. Though he wasn’t sure how far he could trust Emily, Jordan believed she’d do a good job of nursing. From the first time he saw her, giving a lecture on mountain safety, he’d been impressed by her professionalism. He remembered sitting at the Aspen Ski Patrol meeting with Lynette at his side. Their marriage had already begun to fall apart, but Jordan had been making an effort to share in her interests. Still, midway through the meeting, he’d become fascinated by Emily Foster. Her curly, maize-colored hair and the vivacious color in her cheeks contrasted his wife’s cool beauty. As a married man, Jordan would never do anything but look, but he certainly had taken in an eyeful. Being in Emily’s presence made him feel like springtime after the winter chill of his ice princess wife. Poor Lynette! She hadn’t deserved a bloody death. It wasn’t right that her killer would go unpunished.
“Ouch!” He reacted as Emily washed his wound with stinging antiseptic.
“Betadine antiseptic to prevent infection,” she said. “It’s a neat exit wound. The bullet burned right through without hitting the bone. You’re lucky.”
“I guess.” Although getting shot in the first place didn’t seem much like a stroke of good fortune, he had reason to hope. His improbable escape gave him a second chance, and he needed to make use of this opportunity.
She sat him down beside the kitchen table. Before she dressed the wound, she went to the refrigerator, took out a carton of orange juice and filled a tall glass. “Drink this. And you should probably eat something.”
“Thanks.” He hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and it was already past two o’clock in the afternoon.
When she went to work on his arm, Jordan barely felt the pain. He was too busy thinking, considering the options. His first priority was to evade capture. “With your S.A.R. work, you’re in contact with the sheriff’s office.”
“That’s right,” she said as she skillfully applied gauze and wrapped the bandages.
“What happens when they go after an escapee?”
“I’m not involved in that kind of search,” Emily said, “but I imagine the deputies will fan out in the most likely areas for searching. They’ll probably bring in bloodhounds.”
“How can they track the scent if I’m in a car?”
“You’d be surprised,” she said. “Not all dogs are like Pookie, you know. There was one legendary bloodhound from Denver who found a body days after the murder and miles away from the supposed scene of the crime.”
It sounded pretty far-fetched to him. “What else?”
“Probably helicopters. And roadblocks, of course.”
He’d been thinking about the roadblocks. By now, the sheriff must have determined the make, model and license plate number on his stolen vehicle.
“There,” she said as she finished the bandaging. “The cut on your face is more of a problem. Facial wounds tend to bleed a lot, and you’re going to need stitches.”
She strode toward the kitchen door.
“Hold it!” Jordan raised the pistol. He couldn’t allow himself to be lulled into a false sense of security, no matter how charming Emily seemed to be. She could make a quick call to 9-1-1 and pinpoint his location. She could make a break for her car. “Where are you going?”
“In your search of my house, you apparently missed the closet in the second bedroom. That’s where I keep a lot of my equipment, including a backpack of medical supplies. I have the stuff I’ll need for stitching in there.”
“If you don’t mind, I’ll accompany you.”
“I mind,” she muttered. “I don’t like being a hostage.”
He wasn’t exactly thrilled about his role as hostage-taker. But he didn’t have an option.
The
