Bones of a Feather - Carolyn Haines [69]
“I can explain. Monica said I could help her, that she needed me.” He clutched my shirt. “She set me up.”
He had to be delirious. “I have to get help for you.” This was easier said than done, since I wasn’t certain I could find my way back to him in the pea soup if I went to the house for help.
“Find Monica!” He pulled himself into a sitting position by holding on to my shirt. “She’s in dire straits.” The accent was restored, and Hightower appeared to be regaining his strength. The fog had suffocated the night sounds, and I had the sense that danger lurked in the misty darkness, but my ears detected no movement. The sense of urgency to get Hightower up and moving was great, though. Sweetie was bird-dogging another intruder.
“Who attacked you?”
“The fog was so thick. I saw someone. I thought it was Monica. She struck me.” He slumped, and I thought he’d fainted.
Instead, his grip tightened and he drew me down so that his face was in my hair. “Listen,” he whispered.
I heard it then—limbs rustling and snapping and the harsh breathing of someone running.
He grasped at my neck and shoulders, trying to gain his feet. “We have to find her. She’ll do harm to herself. Like her mother. She’ll throw herself off the cliff. The Levert family is unstable.” His fingers dug into my shoulders.
My impulse was to push him back to the ground, but I controlled it. If I could get him to the path, I could leave him while I went for help. It was my only option.
“Work with me.” I put his arm around my neck and pulled him up.
“Forget about me! Find Monica!” He lurched and I almost fell, with him on top of me. That was it. I snapped. I didn’t care for the pompous man and his disappearing British accent. He was making it impossible for me to help him.
“Hightower, we’re going to the path. Then I’m going for help. But you’re going to do what I say, and if you push me again…” My threats were empty, and I knew it.
To my utter astonishment, he moaned. “I never meant for any of this to happen. Never. I’ve been in love with Monica since the first. I thought she loved me, too. I thought we’d have a future together. I would write and she would be my muse. I only threatened to write about her mother’s tragic death because—” He broke down completely. “She threw me over.”
“If you ever want to see Monica again, get up and walk!”
Sniffling and whimpering, he pulled himself together and we inched toward where I thought the path might be. He was heavy, and by the time we’d gone only a few yards, I was sweating. Off in the distance, I heard Sweetie’s loud bay. She’d treed something. “Come on, Hightower. We’re almost there.”
“Listen!”
He didn’t have to warn me. I heard it, too. Something was running toward us. It came through the underbrush fast, without regard for injury. I remembered the black horse that had nearly trampled me. I couldn’t afford to let go of Hightower. If he fell, I might never get him to his feet again.
I swung the flashlight just as a buck crashed through a hock holly and leaped right at me.
“Arrrghhh!” Hightower cried as he pushed against me, gained his balance, and began to run like he’d trained for the Iron Man competition. I hooked his leather camera strap and hung on until it broke. I fell to the ground clutching the camera and rolled, mad enough to kill him. The man had sacrificed me to save his own skin. And if he was injured, he didn’t show it as he hauled ass.
The deer veered north, Hightower south. I sat in the middle of the woods holding his camera and doing my best to hold my temper.
“Hightower?” I called out. “Hightower?”
Nothing. Far in the distance, I heard Sweetie Pie at work. I swung the flashlight beam and caught a beautiful piece of gossamer lace dangling from a limb. The same lace we’d discovered the night Monica disappeared.
The scrap of material could have blown about the property for the last three days. Or the person who’d assaulted Hightower—if he was