Last Snow - Eric van Lustbader [118]
At length, he said, “How the devil does General Brandt think he can order a sanction?”
“That,” Thomson said, at last unthawing, “is what we’ve brought you here to discuss.”
EVER VIGILANT when it came to Alli, Jack saw a blurred shadow out of the corner of his eye and knew it was her. He turned away from Kharkishvili to see Alli racing across the rocky headland toward the cliff’s edge. Without a second’s thought he broke away and ran, calculating vectors as he did so, in order to ensure he would intercept her before she . . . did what? Was she going to hurl herself off the cliff? Was she suicidal? Had she exhibited any warning signs that he might have missed when he was paying attention to Annika?
The dogs, barking hysterically, followed him, loping uneasily, as if they had picked up on his mounting anxiety. She was still running full tilt toward the cliff’s edge when he caught up with her. Her headlong momentum pulled him along for a pace or two, which brought both of them perilously close to the steep drop-off. The dogs growled, their haunches quivering, the hair at the back of their necks ruffled, until he had dragged her back from the brink.
They fell to the rocky ground, and the dogs moved in, licking their faces until Kharkishvili called them off, and the wolfhounds scampered back to where he was standing some distance away.
“Alli,” Jack said, out of breath from both his sprint and the fright she had given him, “what on earth do you think you’re doing?”
“Get off me!” She shoved him. “Get away from me!”
She was crying hysterically, and probably had been, judging by her tear-streaked cheeks, for some time.
“What happened?” he said, alarmed. “What’s gotten into you?”
She turned her head away, into the grass, her body wracked by sobs.
“Alli, talk to me.” Annika had said that Alli wanted to tell him what Morgan Herr did to her, that her need to tell someone about her week of terror would eventually override her reticence. “You can tell me anything, you know that, don’t you?”
She struck him then, just a glancing blow to the side of his head, but he was shocked enough to lose his grip on her, and she scrambled away, first on all fours, like a wounded animal, and then, regaining her feet, making another jagged, confused run for the edge of the cliff.
Jack sprinted after her and, scooping her up, ran back in the direction of the manor house, but he stumbled over an outcropping of rock and had to put her down. For some reason he wasn’t seeing clearly, and when he raised a hand to his eyes it came away wet with tears. He sat on the grass, panting and crying, while all three wolfhounds circled the two of them protectively as he had seen them do with Kharkishvili.
To his credit the Russian kept his distance. He had turned toward the mansion, where, Jack saw, Annika had emerged. Taking in the scene, she began to run toward him. Long before she got there Kharkishvili intercepted her, turning her away so that Jack and Alli could remain alone.
Jack felt the sea wind in his hair and on his cheeks. It was soft and moist with salt and phosphorus. The clouds overhead seemed unable to stir, as if some great hand had pinned them in place. He tried to listen for the crash of the waves, but he heard nothing. It was as if the world were holding its breath.
“Alli,” he said softly, but made no move to touch her, or even to move nearer, “you don’t want to kill yourself, I know you don’t.”
Trembling and shivering, she stared at him, red-eyed, and shouted, “I’ve had fucking enough of people climbing inside my head, telling me what to do!”
“Alli, please tell me—”
“I can’t, I can’t!” she cried. Her hands curled into fists, and then they began to beat against his chest, as if he were the physical manifestation of the terror that gripped her.
In the face of her mounting hysteria he knew he had to remain calm. He didn’t stop her attack, but he didn’t withdraw from it, either. “Why can’t you?”
“Because . . .