But he didn"t even notice. Even though the sound seemed like a shot in the cold air, it didn"t even faze him.
She went to strike again, but to her amazement, both men were up.
"You"ve lost!" Gabe shouted again. "You"ve lost!"
But DeFeo didn"t want to give up the fight. His face was contorted in a hideous mask of rage, and he stared at Gabe, as if he knew somewhere he had been defeated, but he just couldn"t accept that it might be so. He was going to lunge at Gabe again, but then another sound seemed to rip apart the crisp air and the icy mountaintop.
A roll of thunder. There was no lightning, there was no sign of a coming storm...
But the sky suddenly lit up as if the earth had spun crazily toward the sun for one bizarre moment; then the sound of thunder roared again.
The night returned to darkness.
DeFeo turned, and started to run. Gabe tore after him.
"No, Gabe!" Morwenna shouted. "Let him go!"
Gabe looked at her briefly. "I can"t," he said quietly.
He turned and ran after DeFeo. She saw Gabe catch hold of DeFeo again.
"Stay still-give in and stay still, please!" Gabe begged the other man.
It wasn"t to be. DeFeo let out with a punch that landed hard on Gabe"s jaw.
"No," DeFeo cried. "You have to win, and you know it. And I just have to escape you."
The man sounded almost gleeful.
Gabe twisted to secure the other man"s arms, but DeFeo wasn"t willing to give in. In the struggle, they began to roll. They rolled hard and fast, and she shrieked again in horror; they were rolling toward the ledge. She could barely see in the darkness of the night, but she could still hear the two and they kept rolling...
"Gabe!" she cried.
But she couldn"t see the two men any longer; she couldn"t hear them. There was no crunch of snow. There was no grunting, no sound of blows falling...nothing.
She felt Shayne behind her, setting his hands on her shoulders.
"Oh, my G.o.d!" she breathed. "We"ve got to find him."
"We"ll go after him," Shayne promised. "We"ll go after him. But we"ve got to work here first. And fast."
"Shayne-"
"Bobby is caught," Shayne said, and he looked into her eyes. "And...I"m sorry, Morwenna, so sorry, but if Gabe does lose...DeFeo could come back."
"Just get me out!" Bobby cried.
"Come on. Cindy-" Shayne began, spinning around.
Cindy was already waiting at the tree. "I don"t even know what just happened. But we"ve got to get Bobby out from under there. And we"re going to be all right. Come on!"
Morwenna looked at Shayne, and together they hurried to the tree. Shayne took the front position. Morwenna strained. Her muscles ached to the core. They strained and pulled, and slowly, with Shayne shouting instructions, they brought the snowmobile back to rest on its tracks.
She fell back in the snow, exhausted and amazed that Shayne"s system had worked. Her brother walked to the snowmobile, hunkering down to help Bobby up. Bobby winced, trying to stand.
"Nothing broken," he said.
"The tavern is just up ahead. Take Cindy. Get her back to the tavern," Shayne said.
Bobby nodded, realizing that he couldn"t help.
"Can you make it without the snowmobile?" he asked Bobby and Cindy.
"We will make it without the snowmobile," Bobby a.s.sured them. "You two need it."
Cindy nodded, hurrying to Bobby to lend support to help him limp along.
But, as Morwenna watched, Cindy paused, staring at Shayne with anguish in her eyes. She rushed to him, caught hold of his jacket, rose to her toes and kissed his lips.
And, if only quickly, Shayne kissed her back.
"We"ve all got to move!" he commanded.
Cindy nodded and ran back to Bobby.
Shayne mounted the snowmobile. The headlight was still on; he turned the key in the ignition and nothing happened. He turned it again.
And the motor sprang back to life. Shayne carefully eased it into Reverse, and the mangled machinery moved.
"Go!" he said to Bobby and Cindy. He looked at Morwenna. "Climb on!" he told her.
She did so quickly, and they moved on into the darkness of the night.
Chapter 11.
Bobby"s leg was killing him. He was sure that he hadn"t broken any bones, but he had done some mean damage to himself.
He leaned hard on Cindy for support, and they moved through the night. He could hear the strain of his breathing; even in the dim light of the moon that shone down upon them, he could see the ma.s.sive mist of each breath he took.
Cindy labored at his side.
"I"m sorry!" he said.
"Oh, Bobby," she returned. "I"m all right, really. I"m tougher than I look, and I was never really hurt badly. I was frozen...blacked out a bit, but I"m all right. You can lean on me."
"Maybe you should run ahead," he suggested.
"Never," she told him. "Bobby, I don"t understand anything about tonight."
"I"m not sure we even know what happened," he said.
"That light..." she murmured.
"Strange, huh?"
"Very!" she said. Then she stopped in her tracks. "Bobby!"
"What?"
"I can see it!"
"See what?"
"A star!"
"What?"
She laughed. "I see a star, and it"s actually the tavern! The electricity must have just gone back on. Look! It"s all lit up, and it seems like a zillion colors are shining out-oh, it"s the lights on the tree, Bobby. I can see the tree with the star on top! Look through the pines, and you can see the tree right through the window!"
He paused, and he peered through the trees.
And he smiled, unaware of the pain in his leg.
The star at the top of Mac"s tavern tree seemed brilliant. It was a guide, and it was a sign.
They were almost there.
"Cindy, come on. Hot chocolate is so close I can almost taste it!"
They took the beat-up snowmobile around bend after bend.
And there was no sign of either Gabe Lange or Luke DeFeo.
Shayne drew to a stop, revving the motor as he tried to look around.
"Morwenna," he murmured. "We"re not going to find them."
"No, no, no!" she said. "They"ve gone over the ledge. Oh, Shayne..."
"Maybe not, Morwenna. Gabe is a resourceful fellow."
"We can"t give up! We can"t give up."
"Morwenna, you can"t go over the ledge. It"s a far drop down."
"We can"t give up."
"We have to. It"s dark-the light isn"t showing us much. They might be down over the ledge, but safe on some kind of outcrop. They might have wound up taking the fight up one of the slopes. They could have wound up in the trees anywhere."
He was right; she felt ill.
"Oh, Shayne!"
He turned and touched her cheek. "We could be heading for frostbite now, Morwenna. We have to go back. We need a helicopter, and we need light. We"ll get Dad and Mac, we"ll see if anyone has been able to get hold of someone who can really help," he said gently.
She nodded and leaned her head against his back. "Shayne, we tied him up!"
He nodded. "Yep."
"Genevieve never stopped believing in him."
"No," Shayne agreed. He cleared his throat. "DeFeo arrived in a cop"s uniform, Morwenna. We had no choice."
"But he saved Genevieve"s life. And then...he might have saved all of us."
"He did save all of us," Shayne said.
She nodded against his back. Her heart ached. This hurt. This hurt in a way that was far worse than anything she had ever felt. It seemed silly and irrelevant that she had cared at all that Alex had been on a beach-chasing Double-D Debbie.
Shayne revved the motor and carefully turned the snowmobile.
When they finally reached the place where the fight had begun, Morwenna begged him to stop for a minute.
She crawled off the snowmobile and carefully moved toward the ledge.
"Wait! Be careful. I"ll get a light."
She heard her brother swearing softly as he struggled to open the bent-up storage compartment on the side of the snowmobile that had hit the ground. She heard a wrenching sound as it gave, and then she was aware that Shayne followed her to where she stood with a high-powered flashlight.
Silently, they searched the terrain below them. The moon was casting a decent glow, and they looked and looked.
"Anything?" she whispered.
"No," he said.
"Try farther down, Shayne. Cast the light down."
He did.
But no one was there.