An Inconvenient Husband (15 page)

His anger and the
wintry chill in his eyes almost frightened her. Warning bells clanged
discordantly in her head but she was unable to stop herself. "But when the
plan didn't work anymore," she went on, "when I wasn't home anymore
to serve you hand and foot, you dropped me cold. You figured out something
else. You didn't care if I came home or not! You could manage without me just
fine!" Her voice shook. "You didn't need a wife!" She stopped
talking, clenched her teeth together, feeling fragile, as if a mere breath of
air would shatter her in a thousand pieces.

He scraped back his
chair and swore viciously, his face a mask of anger as he looked down at her.
"This is the craziest diatribe I have
ever
heard," he
said with cold contempt. "Spare me!" He turned abruptly and strode
out of the room as if he couldn't bear to be in her presence a moment longer.

She was left behind,
sitting motionless in her chair as an aching emptiness took hold of her.

She had never thought
of herself as a dutiful wife serving her husband, not until later, in
retrospect, when fear and pain had created a new image to supplant the old
happy one.

There hadn't been
anything like old-fashioned duty in the way she had felt when he came home from
his business trips. They were magic times, times she looked forward to for
weeks while studying and writing and taking classes, trying hard to work ahead,
to get done as much as possible so that when Blake came home she would have
free time to spend with him.

She'd cook the most
spectacular meals for the two of them, decorate the house with flowers and
candles, burn incense, play romantic music, spray perfume on the bedroom lamp
shades.

Many times they didn't
even make it to the bedroom to make love...

She moaned, pressing
the heels of her hands against her eyelids. It hurt so much to think about it,
about those wonderful, wild, passionate nights when everything had been so
right, so perfect between them.

It was all lost and
gone, yet still it haunted her. She could not force away the images. She
lowered her hands and sucked in a shuddering breath. Slowly she came to her
feet and moved into the corridor to go to her room.

From the office came
the steady clickety-clack of the computer keyboard. He was working again,
writing his report, escaping from her. She dragged in an unsteady breath, her
stomach twisting, thinking of the phone calls in the middle of the night,
thinking of the phone ringing and ringing in their empty Washington town house.

At two in the morning
she was still wide awake. She'd heard Blake go to his room an hour ago and the
house was silent. She couldn't stand being in this house with him any longer.

She had to get away.

Now.

She was sitting up in
bed, dressed in jeans and a T- shirt, as she had for several hours, and stared
at the small bundle of her possessions she'd just stuffed in a plastic bag. It
was pathetic; she felt like a refugee.

She tried to think
clearly. Blake was asleep. He wouldn't hear her leave if she was quiet. The
keys were in the Land Cruiser; she'd noticed him leaving them in the ignition.
She still had his credit card. She'd drive back to KL check into a hotel and
call Nazirah. Nazirah could contact her father and get her passport and handbag
and bring it to the hotel. It was all simple enough.

She slipped
noiselessly out of the room, down the wooden stairs. She sat in the car, ready
to turn the keys, feeling a moment of panic. It was pitch black all around. No
traffic signs and no streetlights to help her out. Well, what could go wrong?
All she had to do was follow the track for twenty minutes or so until she hit
the village where the surfaced road would begin. This would lead to Paradise
Mountain. From there it was a piece of cake to get back to the main road
leading to Kuala Lumpur.

Holding her breath,
she started the engine. It made a horrendous sound in the silence. What if
Blake woke up?

Well, so what? He
couldn't do a thing about her driving off, could he?

She drove away, seeing
no lights come on in the house. She expelled a slow sigh of relief, yet not all
tension was gone, she could tell. Her hands were clenched tight around the
steering wheel as she maneuvered down the uneven track. She tried to relax. By
the end of the day tomorrow she'd be on a plane out of the country. She should
hold on to that vision.

Half an hour later she
still had not reached the
kampung.

Where was the village?
Surely she should have reached it by now? Her eyes caught the fuel indicator
and her heart made a sickening lurch. She was low on gas, but not out. Well,
there was probably enough to reach Paradise Mountain and they had a pump there.
Maybe there was even one before that. She still had a little cash left over
from the money she had borrowed for her market expenses.

A while later she
glanced at her watch again. Forty minutes had passed since she'd left the
house. Her chest tightened with apprehension. She peered into the darkness,
hoping for a light somewhere to give an indication of life. Nothing. The trail
seemed even narrower than she remembered. Maybe because it was night and the
forest seemed more oppressive.

Was she imagining it
or were the headlights not as bright as they had been? She moved on slowly down
the rutted track, soon realizing with a sense of horror that the lights most
certainly were getting dimmer and dimmer. Realizing, too, that her foot on the
accelerator was hitting bottom while the Toyota was barely moving. The fuel
indicator was still telling her she was low, but not out.

Something was wrong
with the car.

She prayed she would
see the village soon. She couldn't possibly have missed it, could she?

The lights were very
weak now and the surrounding forest was getting darker and darker. The track
was only faintly visible in front of her and the car was hardly moving at all.

In fact, it was dying.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Moments
later the Land
Cruiser had died altogether. Nicky sucked in a deep breath and tried not to
panic. In times of crisis you were supposed to keep a cool head and not panic.
She knew that. She took in more air. Oxygen for the brain, that's what she
needed.

Now, if only she knew
something about cars... She could get out and have a look under the hood. No, she
couldn't. It was pitch dark; she wouldn't see a thing. Anyway, she knew nothing
about cars. The problem could be staring her in the face in broad daylight and
she wouldn't know it.

She gave a tortured
moan and dropped her head on the steering wheel. She had done it again. Her
emotions had taken possession of her and here she was, stuck in the middle of
nowhere in the middle of the night on a track in the Malaysian jungle. No
lights anywhere, no houses, no paved road. What had happened to the
kampung?
She should have come right through the middle of it. It should be here
somewhere! But there were no houses and not a sign of human life anywhere.

Maybe she had taken
the wrong track. It would have been easy enough to do in the dark, only she
hadn't seen another track before. All she'd been aware of was the one coming
and going from the village to the house.

Tiny flashes of light
flitted between the trees. Fireflies. Fireflies were comforting, but not the
eerie shrieks and cries coming from the forest. She shivered. No way was she
getting out of the car.

She was in trouble,
deep, dark trouble.

Young American Tourist
Perishes in Malaysian Jungle. She could see the newspaper headline clearly in
her mind. If she had pencil and paper she could write the article herself and
leave it for the reporters after they found her. She could give them all the
juicy details on how she'd been kidnapped by her ex-husband, how torrid passion
had flourished in the isolated mountain house, how she had tried to escape the
terror of—

"Stop it!"
she said out loud. "Stop it, you idiot. Do something constructive.''

Like what?

Search the car for
something useful. Whatever that might be. She groped for the glove compartment,
opened it and fished around inside, finding, to her considerable delight, a
flashlight. Not only just a flashlight, mind you, but one that actually had
working batteries in it. Hope sprang up as she swept the light around the car's
interior. Light! Never before had she been so happy to see light.

She searched through
the vehicle, finding the car tool kit, but not anything for survival gear. Good
Lord, it was irresponsible in an area like this not to— She stopped herself.
She was hardly the one to talk about being responsible. Blaming others for
their shortcomings was not going to help her now. Besides, everybody who
normally used this vehicle wouldn't get lost. It was she herself who was to
blame for doing something so brainless as to rush out in the middle of the
night in a remote area like this.

It began to rain, a
slow, steady downpour, splashing on the leafy greenery, drumming on the roof of
the car. Well, she was dry. And cold. She hugged herself, shivering. How could
it be so cold in the tropics?

She'd brought this
upon herself. When her emotions got the best of her, she acted like an idiot.
Oh, God, why couldn't she learn? Why couldn't she be more rational?

Once, years ago, she'd
been an emotional wreck, too. She'd been alone, and it had been the middle of
the night as well—a torpid summer night in Washington, D.C., when finally
something inside of her had snapped. The fear and anxiety she had felt for
months had changed into fury. She hadn't run away from Blake physically, then;
he hadn't been home. She'd run away symbolically by writing a letter, a very
short one.

The next morning,
hyped up on coffee and rage, she had express-mailed it. For several days after
that she had lived in a manic frenzy, her feelings yo-yoing between terror and
hope, her thoughts filled with prayer and fear. At night she kept dreaming the
dream, always the dream she didn't understand. Then Blake's answer had come by
telegram: If That Is What You Want Do What You Need To Do Stop Blake.

She had stared at the
words in shock, then slowly feeling had returned and the grief had been greater
than she had been able to bear, too great even for tears. She'd pushed it back,
fighting it, denying it until she'd learned not to feel. To be cold inside like
an arctic lake.

And she had done what
had to be done.

It had been easy.
Forms were filled out, papers signed. All of it done without the two of them
ever seeing or even talking to each other. Nothing to it. Easy as pie.

Except, when it was
finally over, she'd been a divorced woman, and Blake was no longer her husband.

And she no longer
dreamed the dream.

Nicky hugged herself
and rubbed her arms. She wasn't very good at feeling helpless, but she couldn't
think of anything useful to do except stay where she was and wait until
morning. Maybe someone would come by. Maybe once it was light she should walk
and follow the trail back to the house. She curled up in a ball and tried to
sleep, but she was cold and uncomfortable and frightened and the spooky sounds
coming from outside did not have a soporific effect.

The darkness
stretched, time crawled. She was beginning to feel numb. In her mind, as a
mental exercise, she wrote an article about her experience, trying valiantly
for a touch of humor. Humor was not to be found. There was nothing remotely
funny about sitting here in a primordial forest freezing and scared to death
and wondering if you'd actually survive the ordeal.

The rain stopped, but
the darkness was as impenetrable as ever. The air was damp and cold. She heard
the hooting of an owl, or what sounded like an owl, a ghostly, lonely sound.
She shivered. She longed for the dawn, for a human voice, for a cup of coffee.
How long could one night last?

Then there was light
flooding the car. And the sound of another vehicle, a sputtering engine
laboring closer.

Moments later the door
was wrenched open and the fierce beam of a flashlight shone on her face,
blinding her. Instinctively she threw an arm across her eyes.

"What the hell
are you doing here?" came Blake's voice, harsh and ragged—the most
beautiful sound she had heard in all her life.

Relief flooded her,
rushing warmth through her stiff body. "The car broke down," she
managed to say, her voice sounding hoarse and shaky.

"How in God's
name did you get it into your head to do a crazy thing like this?" His
voice was rough with rage. "Driving away in the dead of night, driving
away without putting gas in the car!"

"I'm not out of
gas," she said hoarsely. "And don't you yell at me! Something is
wrong with the car. It's dead. The lights went out and the engine quit."

"Where the hell
did you think you were going?"