He just shook his head. When he did, she saw the gleam of his lustrous eyes. She’d been asleep for over six hours. They were in the exact same position they’d been in when they first got into bed. If he hadn’t slept, he must be so uncomfortable, lying there without moving.
She must have been so out of it. The memories of what had happened in the den seemed clear, but not as close somehow. They didn’t crowd her as much. Sleep had served to distance her from the bizarre events of this afternoon. Her body and mind had shut down to give her space.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly, the thought of him enduring all those hours of discomfort so that she could have uninterrupted rest made emotion pierce her. “You must be so stiff,” she said, rubbing his shoulder and dense upper arm muscles. He felt so good.
“I’m okay. Are you?” he asked, and again she experienced his wary watchfulness. She couldn’t even begin to imagine the weight he experienced at that moment; what he’d been thinking while he lay there awake, holding her for hours. Every time she considered the burden he’d carried since he was a fourteen-year-old boy, it threatened to make emotion spill out of her like an erupting volcano.
She met his stare squarely, still rubbing his muscles. “I’m going to be fine. It’s not like what you’re thinking.”
Something flickered across his shadowed features. “What do you mean?” he rumbled.
“I’m not the one with the memories, Dylan. You are.”
Her soft reply seemed to hang in the hushed air between them.
She swallowed thickly, her throat congested with emotion. “I know I should thank you, but it just seems so”—she paused, several words popping into her head: lame, trite, hollow—“inadequate to say it,” she finished.
“You have nothing to thank me for.”
Her thumb found its way into the cleft on his chin. She rubbed it distractedly, loving the feel of his whiskers, his skin.
“I disagree.” She opened one hand over his chest, needing to feel his strength in order to ask the question.
“Dylan? Why did Jim Stout think Addie Durand was dead?”
He opened his hand on her hip. She was highly aware of his touch.
“Because at one point, she stopped breathing,” he said gruffly. “According to Cunningham’s confession last April, they both thought she was dead. That’s why a ransom demand was never made. They’d sedated her too strongly on the morning after she was kidnapped.”
She caressed his chest, absorbing the feeling of him. “Go on,” she whispered.
“Cunningham took her in the car just before dawn. The plan was to dispose of her body in a nearby creek in the country,” Dylan said woodenly.
Alice held her breath and kept stroking him.
“Do you really want to hear this?” Dylan asked.
“Yes,” she gasped.
For a few seconds, they just touched and stroked one another in the grave silence.
“There’s a train trestle that runs over a creek, about fifty miles from here. It’s at a desolate place in the country.”
She leaned back and looked into his face. “You’ve been there?”
He nodded. An image flashed into her head of him making that solitary mission after hearing Cunningham’s confession last April. Her chest ached.
She sensed his hesitation. “Dylan?” she prodded.
“Cunningham took her onto the trestle planning to throw her into the creek,” he said rapidly with the air of someone grimly ripping a stuck bandage from a wound. “But just as he started to let go, he saw Addie’s eyelids flicker open, and at the last second, he realized she was still alive.”
Shivers coursed through her. “So he didn’t throw her into the creek?”
His face looked like a death mask.
“He didn’t stop himself in time. Just as he saw the little girl’s eyelids flicker, he let go. It’s about a twenty-five-foot drop, depending on how high the water was at the time.”
Alice stared at him openmouthed, her care