“David?” she gasped, then threw her arms around his neck and began kissing him.
For a moment, he kissed her back, then pulled away. “Honey, sweetheart, now isn’t the time for this. There are some seriously bad things going on and we need to address them.”
She didn’t like his tone. She longed to tell him about how she and Gideon had rescued R.J., then she alone had found the twins and … but as he’d said, now wasn’t the time.
“I want to tell you how to get back to Gideon’s cabin,” David said. “Then you need to go through the woods to find some children. Ariel, you can do this. You need to put aside your fears to help these children.”
Yet another man was telling her to go away. “What do you plan to do?” she asked.
David rubbed his hand over his face. “So much has happened that I can’t begin to tell you all that I need to do.”
“Why is your leg bleeding and why is there blood on your shirt?”
“I had to carry some huge kid, a teenager, nearly a mile. He’d fallen down some rocks and cut his head. Then there were these little kids—”
“And Larry Lassiter.”
“Yeah,” David said slowly, looking at her in surprise.
“Why does Lassiter think you know where Fenny’s gold is?”
“Cosmic coincidence, but how do you know about that?”
“Long story. The twins are safe and a rescue helicopter may appear at any time. Do you know where R.J. and Gideon are? And where is Lassiter?” Ariel asked.
David was looking at her as though he’d never seen her before. “I escaped him. I gave him a bogus map and when he looked in a cave, I jumped.”
Ariel looked at him a moment, searching his eyes. She had known him all her life and she knew when he was hiding something. Reaching down to his leg, she pulled the fabric of his trousers apart. The gash in his leg was deep and he was losing blood.
“The last time you tore away fabric—” David said, smiling.
“That was ages ago,” Ariel said dismissively. “You need a doctor. I want you to tell me where Fenny’s gold really is, then I want you to stay here and hide.”
“And let you go out there? Alone? Not in my lifetime,” he said and started to rise. Immediately, the wound in his leg opened up and began to bleed.
“You move from here and I’ll tell my mother I’m pregnant with R. J. Brompton’s child.”
“She’ll disown you,” David said, smiling.
“Then I’ll go to New York and you’ll never find me.”
“Ariel, really, this is ridiculous. You can’t find the cave and—”
She got up, looked about, then took a step forw
ard. She was leaving on her own and she knew he couldn’t follow her.
“Okay,” he said. “There’s a map in the front of my pack.”
She pulled the pack out of the bushes and unzipped the front pocket. “Is this the pack you found in the basement, then secretly filled when we got back from the pub?”
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I just didn’t want to bother you.”
“Ha! You wanted to keep me from doing anything. All of you have treated me as though I can do nothing, as though I’m just excess baggage. Worthless.”
“Not worthless. Not to me,” David said softly, his hand on her arm.
“David Tredwell, do you think I’m stupid? You’ve always wanted me for how you can use me. Do you think I don’t know you want a political career? Do you think I don’t know that I’d make a perfect wife for a politician? Do you think I don’t know that you put up with anything I do to you because I fit into your ambitious little scheme so well? You were giving your kisses to that dim-witted, big-breasted Britney while I couldn’t even get you to kiss my hand.”