Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 23:06:38 -0500 Reply-To: Sandra1012@AOL.COM Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: Sandra McDonald Subject: "Not Every Problem" 3/4 ********************part 3********************************** "Sit down," Tessa said. "We'll rest for a minute. Let me see your arm." He shook his head vehemently. Tessa thought best not to push his fragile equilibrium. She would apologize later, when they got out of this mess. Suddenly aware of a parchness in her throat, she glanced about for the stream. It had disappeared some time back, and there was no sign of fresh water. "What was that?" she asked. "What was what?" Richie said. "That sound," she said. "Stay here." Taking Mac's sword with her, she went up the next slope. At the top was a dirt road. Jubilantly she waved at Richie to join her. Then movement caught her peripheral vision, and she whirled on a tall man in a green sports jacket coming down the road. He stopped at her, staring in surprise. "Don't hurt me," he said, backing away a step. He easily outweighed her by a seventy pounds, and had the rugged look of an outdoorsman. Tessa gaped in confusion, then remembered the sword in her hand. "No," she said, putting it down on the ground. "I'm not going to hurt anyone. I'm looking for help." "Are you lost?" "My friends and I were run off the road." He rubbed his jaw and squinted in concern. "The highway's about a mile back, missy. You must have gotten turned around in the woods." "What are you doing way out here?" she asked. He grimaced. "Flat tire. I was looking for a short cut back to town, to get a tow. Where are your friends?" "One is here," Tessa said, and went to help Richie up the last of the incline. He was sweating profusely, and his complexion had taken on a pasty green tinge. He sank to the ground with her help, and the stranger bent to help. "You need a hospital," he said, and reached inside his jacket. "Let me call 911. I've got a phone." Tessa swooped up the sword and put the tip against his throat. "Don't move," she warned. "Tessa, what are you, nuts?" Richie asked from the ground. "If you have a phone," she said icily, "then why don't you call a tow truck for your car?" He gave her a cold, grim smile. "Well, I guess you're just too smart for me, Miss Tessa. Is that your name? Your friend back in the car is dead, you know that?" "I doubt it," Richie said, half under his breath. Tessa put pressure on the sword, forcing him back from Richie. "Open your jacket slowly. Take out whatever it was you were getting." He did have a cellular phone. He also had a 9mm pistol and a wallet. No sword. Tessa made him toss both to Richie. Richie tossed her the wallet and then used his good hand to aim the gun at the man. Tessa spared a look at the driver's license. Sean Corbin. She'd never heard of him. "Well, Mr. Corbin. Stand against that tree. Take off your pants, your jacket, your shoes and your socks." Corbin did as told, clearly unhappy, but unwilling to go against his own gun. She made him toss over his pants and then sit down against the tree. She used his belt to tie his hands behind the tree, and Richie's belt to tie the man against the tree at his neck. Just before she gagged him with his socks he growled, "You're both never going to make it to town." "We'll make it before you do," Tessa promised, with more confidence than she actually felt. She scooped up the jacket and moved to get Richie to his feet, but he resisted. "I'll stay here and watch him," he said wearily. "No," she said, and dragged him upright. Richie hissed with pain, his leg nearly going out beneath him, and he glared at her angrily. "Why not? I'm not going to get very far anyway." "If I can do it, you can do it," she snapped. She wrapped Corbin's jacket around Richie's shoulders. "You're coming with me, like it or not." For a moment he looked as if he would wrench away from her grip, but then he pursed his lips and started limping with her help. Tessa started him up the dirt road, carefully balancing sword and gun, hoping to find Corbin's car with its allegedly flat tire. Richie was rapidly deteriorating. He had to lean against her more and more heavily, and every step brought a barely concealed grunt of pain. The woods grew so dark around them that Tessa could barely make out two feet in front of her. Despite MacLeod's injunction and her own worry, she seriously considered leaving Richie so she could return with help later. Richie must have been thinking the same thought, because he forced out, "Tessa, go on without me. I'll wait for the cavalry." Tessa dragged him along stubbornly. "The last time your cavalry came over the hill, they shot at us." As if in response, three gunshots ripped through the air somewhere behind them. They stopped, breathless, frightened, clinging to each other. "Mac?" Richie asked, his voice a gravelly whisper. "Maybe," Tessa allowed. She pulled Richie forward again, mindful that she was supporting most of his weight now. "Come on." A few minutes later they found a parked Toyota Celica at the junction of the dirt road and the highway. Tessa mentally kicked herself for not remembering to check if Corbin's keys had been in his pants or the jacket around Richie's shoulders. She found them in the jacket and breathed a prayer of relief. After easing Richie into the passenger's seat she slid behind the wheel and found a crumpled map of the area, marked with circles and lines of travel. She started the car and turned on the headlights. The twin lights illuminated the woods and beginning fog. A shrill ring stopped her from shifting into gear. Richie, leaning back against the seat with his eyes closed, made no attempt to retrieve the cell phone from his jacket. Tessa found it and opened it. "Hello?" she asked. "Tessa? Thank God." "Duncan!" she nearly shrieked. Richie opened his eyes. "Where are you?" "Coming to help you, I thought," MacLeod answered. He sounded worried. "Where are you?" "Tessa," Richie warned, gesturing towards the road, twisting frantically to lock his door. Tessa saw a looming figure silhouetted between the lights, his face knotted with anger, something long and thin held up between his arms towards the canopy of trees above. A sword. She might have cried out; she didn't remember. Tessa dropped the cell phone to the floor and scrambled for Corbin's weapon. Then her door ripped open, and she found herself confronted by a very large man with hair to his waist and a wild gleam in his eyes. "Where's the other one?" he demanded. "The one like me?" *** MacLeod woke from the dead for the second time in as many hours, and found the ravine clear of anyone but himself. He waited a second for realization to flood back in, and then raised himself from the cold mud. His formerly beige sweater was a mess of blood and ripped yarn, culminated by two bullet holes in his chest. MacLeod pulled his jacket closed, fought down a shiver against the cold, and looked around in consternation. The accident. Richie and Tessa. A man with a gun, after them. MacLeod reared to his feet. He had to find Tessa and Richie before the gunman did. But he took a few seconds to scramble back up to the wrecked Ford, hoping to find some clue as to who the gunman was, why he needed to kill innocent bystanders. He found the driver just as Tessa had described. She'd said he was shot, but hadn't noticed the wounds on his chest were exit wounds. He'd been shot in the back. Only a coward shot in the back.. A coward, or a man desperate to protect something. "Freeze!" a man's voice shouted down at him. MacLeod didn't move. He had no desire to get killed again; he didn't have the time. "Stay right where you are," the voice ordered, and MacLeod waited somewhat impatiently for the sound of feet in the leaves to tell him someone had come down from the ridge and was now only a few feet behind him. "I didn't kill this man," MacLeod said loudly. "We were in a car accident. That's my car, down there." He gestured with his head and felt the unmistakable press of a gun's barrel against the back of his skull. "You better be telling the truth, mister," the voice warned him, cold and steely but tinged with sorrow. "That's my partner you're looking at." "I'm sorry," MacLeod said. He didn't move as he was patted down. His wallet was lifted from his back pocket. "Turn around," the man ordered. MacLeod turned and found himself face-to-face with a shorter black man whose age was probably in his late twenties, early thirties. He wore a business suit and a raincoat, and his glasses were wet from drizzle. "State your name." "Duncan MacLeod," the Highlander offered. "Look, I can prove that's my car down there. The registration's in the glove compartment. Your partner hit us on the highway and we crashed down here. Myself and two friends. Now there's a man after them. Shot at them, and is chasing them in the woods." "Is that so? So why didn't he shoot you?" "I was pinned in the wreckage. He didn't see me. Look, I don't have time to play twenty questions with you. My friends are hurt, and need our help. You look like a policeman, act like one." The black man tossed him back his wallet. "Special Agent Michael Wallace. You're lucky that I believe you." Then he moved past MacLeod to the car, and inspected the corpse of his partner. When he straightened, his face was a grim mask. "Which way did they go?' MacLeod pointed. "You get up to the road and wait by my car," Wallace ordered. "No way." "I'll find your friends - " "No," MacLeod said harshly. "Not without me. And don't give me anything about interfering with official business. We're going together." ***************end of part 3 ********************************* =========================================================================