Authors: Margaret Carroll
C
aroline spotted two familiar cars in Nan’s drive, and two familiar figures climbing out of them.
Nan’s old Buick had returned, parked alongside Ken’s Jeep.
The Kincaid men waved.
She felt a funny little pang at seeing Ken.
He flashed a smile her way. “You look right at home behind the wheel there, Alice.”
Caroline smiled.
“You can keep it as long as you like,” he said, lifting a brow.
Gus let out a laugh. “Now, there’s an offer you don’t get every day. I’ve been waiting for a test drive since the day he bought that thing.”
Caroline held out the keys, embarrassed. “Thanks. It’s a beautiful car but more than I can handle, I’m afraid.”
Ken took the keys, allowing his fingers to brush hers, and she felt their warmth. “Car looks like it’s still in one piece,” he observed. “Don’t sell yourself short.”
“I had a pretty close call out on the county road just now,” she admitted.
Concern knit his brows together. “Are you okay?”
“A little shaken but that’s all,” she replied. “I saw a big bird in the sky, close to that eagle’s nest. I looked up to get a better look and all of a sudden there was a big white Yukon heading straight for me.” Caroline felt her face color.
“No harm done,” Ken said. “Just so long as you’re okay. And if you were busy checking out our eagle, I’d say you’re going native. It’s a good sign.” He grinned.
Gus chuckled. “Next thing, you’ll be taking the day off work to go fishin’.”
“I should have been paying more attention,” Caroline said with a frown. “The other driver didn’t signal, and he turned so fast I almost hit him. I got out to help but he took off,” she said with a shrug.
“Tourist, most likely, up from Denver,” Gus grumbled. “Probably one of your clients, Ken.”
They both laughed.
“I don’t have anyone booked again till spring. Season’s about over,” Ken said with a glance at the Porsche. “She handles well, doesn’t she?”
“Like a dream,” Caroline agreed.
“Good,” Ken said. “I’m glad you liked it. You know, a car like that is easier to handle than a regular car. You just have to make the engine work for you. Downshift on the curves, stay wide to the outside on switchbacks. That car can handle a lot more than you’d think.”
The look on his face implied he believed she could, as well.
Caroline knew he was being kind. She looked at Gus and changed the subject. “How are you feeling, Gus?”
The older man dipped his head in a small bow, but it was clear the movement cost him effort. “Just fine, thanks for asking. Any better and I’d be twins.”
Ken rolled his eyes but the concern on his face was evident.
“I finished up the repairs on Nan’s car this afternoon,” Gus said. “Good as new. Like me.”
The back door opened and Nan stepped out.
The dogs raced barking down the steps and ran in circles around the Kincaid men.
Caroline noticed a stiffness in Gus’s movements when he reached down to pet the dogs.
“That’s quite a welcoming committee,” he said in a gruff voice.
Caroline shushed them and tried to make them stop jumping.
Ken patted Scout, who was heaving himself at Ken’s shins. “I can’t figure you guys out. You always act like you’re going to take a bite out of my leg, but you never do.” He laughed when Pippin crouched at his feet before rolling onto his stomach to be patted.
“It’s a terrier thing,” Caroline ventured.
“I guess so.”
Scout followed suit.
“Good to see you up and around, Gus,” Nan called, wiping her hands on her apron. “Glad you could make it for dinner.”
Caroline took the news in silence, noting Nan had failed to inform her there would be guests for dinner. No doubt she had figured Caroline would have begged off if she had known. Nan was right about that.
“Thanks for having us,” Gus said, making for the porch steps. “I don’t like to be late when Nan’s cooking.”
“Don’t worry, you’re here in plenty of time. It’s good to have the old boat back,” Nan said with a glance at the Buick.
“She’ll be all right for a while. Right as rain,” Gus said, grabbing the railing. “I still think you ought to get something new, with four-wheel drive, before winter sets in. Won’t be long now.” He looked up at the pass, where the first snow of the season shone soft and white in the fading rays of daylight.
Caroline shivered.
Nan harrumphed. “That car will do just fine for another winter, you’ll see.” She turned her attention to Caroline. “Welcome back. Alice hasn’t sat down all day. She whipped through this house like a white tornado.”
“Sounds like you need one of Nan’s famous dinners,” Ken said.
“I, for one, will not lollygag any longer.” Gus pulled himself up the steps, gripping the handrail so tight his knuckles were white.
Ken hung back, keeping a watchful eye on his father.
Ready, Caroline thought, to spring into action if he was needed.
“Ken’s the one who’s going to do all the work tonight. Nobody broils trout better,” Nan said.
“I brought my special seasonings,” Ken said, motioning to a small jar he carried in one hand. “And some chocolates for dessert from that place you like in Durango.”
“My favorite,” Nan exclaimed.
From the top of the porch steps, Gus let out a loud guffaw.
“Watch out, Mrs. Birmingham, my son is setting you up.”
Arms akimbo, Nan shot Ken a mock glare. “Is that right?”
“Uh-oh, my cover is blown,” Ken said, casually placing a hand on the small of Caroline’s back as they walked up the steps.
It was a small gesture but significant, an act of proprietorship, one that staked hope for the future. But right now it just made Caroline sad.
“Told you Nan would see straight through a bribe,” Gus teased.
Ken positioned himself near Caroline, close enough for her to breathe in his piney scent, sense his solid presence.
He stood close so they were almost touching, and she got a brief flash of a parallel universe where things were normal, where she and Ken were like any young couple having dinner with their parents. Except they weren’t. Caroline’s heart ached with sorrow for the ordinary life she had wished for and never could have.
Ken’s voice was rich, resonant at close range. “Nobody’s meaner at poker than Nan Birmingham. Hide your money, Alice.”
Caroline thought of her tiny nest egg, folded neatly inside a handkerchief in the nightstand drawer in her room at the back of the house. Ready to go on a moment’s notice.
“Nonsense,” Nan retorted. “And don’t scare Alice. Don’t you worry, my dear, it’s only penny ante.”
“I’ve got you covered, Alice. Thank you for allowing me to escort you to dinner.” Ken smiled down at her, trailing his hand lightly across her back.
She couldn’t help but feel that something passed between them in that moment and she wished she could hold it forever, separate from all the hours and
minutes and days of her life, and keep it close to her heart always. The crisp night breeze and its scent of wild earth flowing down off the summit and across the meadow, even the clouds piling up in the darkening sky, and more than anything the way Ken looked at her.
“I wouldn’t want it any other way,” she said truthfully.
He felt the same way, she realized. He tightened his hold on her, and his smile, which she wouldn’t have thought could get any wider, did. “The pleasure’s mine,” he said in a husky voice.
But Caroline knew this place and the people in it were beyond her reach. “Mine, too.” She meant it. “You know, I’m always going to remember this.” She wanted to say more, but her voice caught in her throat.
“You don’t have to remember it, Alice, we’ll just have a lot more nights like it.” He gave her a searching look, and the desire inside her to tell him everything was so strong she felt it pulling on her like gravity.
It took everything she had to tell him one more lie. “Yeah.”
They went inside, and Caroline couldn’t have felt any better if she were being escorted across a red carpet for the Kennedy Center Honors.
Nan had set the table with freshly ironed linens, a bouquet of mums, and a plate of fresh-baked corn muffins.
Looking back, the night was probably the best in Caroline’s life. She had been lonely so long she had forgotten what it was like to spend an evening joking and playing cards with friends. She let her guard down, relaxing long enough to let happiness bubble up inside
her, warming her from her toes all the way up to the top of her head. She was one of the crowd, her heart light from good food and company. This night, it was okay just to be herself, with nobody to watch her, analyzing her every word, passing judgment.
She was wrong about that.
P
orter settled on the blue plate special. Half a chicken and two sides. The chicken was stringy, heated in a microwave, with limp green beans from a can and lumpy mashed potatoes.
The waitress had stared when he asked if she could recommend the chef’s special dish. She cracked her gum and glared, her gaze lingering on the bumps and scabs along Porter’s chin. “Specialty? Of the house?”
Porter leaned across the Formica table, which was chipped and worn, repeating his request and enunciating each syllable. Like he was talking to an idiot. Which was in fact the case.
The waitress turned to the low window behind the counter, where a man with a shaved head leaned out, listening, propped on arms thick with blue prison tattoos.
She cracked her gum again.
The cook eyed Porter and sucked his teeth.
The waitress shrugged. “We got a lotta food here. That’s your personal choice.”
The cook squinted to get a better look at Porter.
Porter wondered if the place got held up often and
decided it did. The creep in the kitchen looked more like a bouncer than a cook. Christ, Porter hated the West. “I’ll have the blue plate special,” he said through tightened lips.
All business now, the waitress jotted something on her pad, rattling off beverages.
He settled on a Coke, grimacing when she yelled his order across the room. As though the goon in the kitchen hadn’t already picked up on every word.
Porter ate fast, ignoring the snickering that was most certainly directed at him, the sole customer. He paid the bill and left a nickel on the table as a dare to the goon to follow him outside.
Porter had granted his demons free rein.
A light snow was falling. He attempted to use his new Swiss Army knife to slash the tires on a beat-up Honda Civic, the only other car in the parking lot. It was harder than it looked, and in the end he settled on using the tip to siphon out all the air from the nozzle. He did a second one as well, for good measure.
When he was finished he popped the Yukon’s hatch and dug out the items he would need. Night-vision goggles, a small flashlight, and a map, even though he had already memorized the route to the Birmingham place. His heart pounded. He was about to see his young wife again.
The road was dark as ink and he was not used to this. He rounded a turn and saw a pair of yellow eyes gleaming in his path. The headlights picked up the ghostly outlines of a large body and antlers. He slowed but didn’t brake hard, not wanting to risk another skid on a dumb animal that would barely dent the Yukon’s massive front grille.
The thing disappeared at the last second in a flash of hindquarters and white tail.
Porter hated the outdoors. Except for a couple of day trips to Bear Mountain State Park, he had little experience with it.
He slowed near the Birmingham place, pulling into the scrub brush as high as he could so the Yukon could not be spotted easily by anyone driving past. But he hadn’t seen another car since the diner. He got out, and millions of tiny snowflakes whirled around him. The night was filled with sound. Wind raced through trees as though the forest was alive. A branch snapped close by and Porter jumped, crying out before he could stop himself. He grabbed the driver’s side door and tore it open, ready to leap inside to safety. But there was nothing. Porter was alone, his ears filled with the clanging of the door alarm and the racing of his heart.
He tore the keys from the ignition, and they felt sticky in his hands despite the temperature, which had dropped below freezing. He reached for the .38, slipped the safety off, and stood, trying to get used to the forest that snapped, moaned, and moved all around him.
He was alone.
He donned his Gore-Tex camouflage jumpsuit, not bothering to remove the price tags, topping it off with a black knit cap. Stuffing the .38 in his pocket, he strapped on the night-vision goggles. The forest took on another guise then, an eerie, shadowless world of gray and black, like the televised images he’d watched during the Persian Gulf invasion. Porter’s palms were sweating and he wiped them on his thighs. Despite the goggles and the gun, he was afraid. He wrapped one hand around the .38 in his pocket, telling himself he had
the advantage over anything or anyone that might cross his path tonight.
He made his way up the long grassy drive, staying in one of the wheel ruts. It wouldn’t take long for the snow to cover his tracks. Nor would he be seen or heard on the moonless, dark night.
His fear turned to anticipation when he glimpsed the house with its broad bay window in front. He slowed his pace when he got near, and what he saw made him come to a complete stop.
Inside were four figures around a table. One of them was Porter’s wife.
He felt as though he had been punched in the stomach, something he remembered well from adolescence, but this was much worse. He felt his gut collapse around the force of some unseen fist that, he knew, had wedged in deep.
Inside Nan Birmingham’s house, Caroline threw back her head and laughed.
His wife was laughing.
She was happy. Apart from him. Her corruption was complete.
The realization pitched Porter into a despair so thick his limbs felt like lead weights. His skin tingled up and down the length of his arms and legs, the result, he knew, of the amygdala inside his brain redirecting blood from his outer extremities to his gut in the classic fight-or-flight response. The sounds of the forest lessened around him, and this, he dimly noted, was another classic symptom of the fight-or-flight directive inside his brain.
He gasped for breath. His goggles fogged. He wrenched them off and dug at his eyes, which burned as
though they had been splattered with acid. The effect, he knew, of adrenaline mixed with cortisol, the stress hormone. Porter grabbed for his binoculars, the one item he hadn’t purchased especially for this trip. He’d bought them years ago to use at the opera, when all he could afford on his intern’s salary were cheap seats all the way at the back. Caroline had never needed binoculars to see the stage, he thought bitterly. By the time they were married he could easily afford season passes for the best seats in the house at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts. Not that Caroline appreciated opera.
Porter brought the binoculars into focus, recoiling from what he saw. Caroline’s face was that of a stranger, lips stretched wide in a carnal smile that was an open invitation to the man seated at her side.
Kincaid touched Caroline’s arm in a gesture that spoke of ownership, and she smiled at him.
Ken Kincaid.
Inside Porter, all hope died.
He let the binoculars drop so they bounced on the end of the strap around his neck. “No, no, no,” he moaned, blinking back tears of despair. The wind gusted, tearing his breath away. He fell to his knees, realizing his worst fears had been confirmed. He pounded the ground with his fists.
She was lost to him.
A sob tore loose from his throat. His face burned and itched and swelled like someone had put a torch to it. Porter tore at his skin, not even bothering to remove his wool gloves, rubbing with all his might until the tiny sores on his chin opened, trickling blood. He rubbed and rubbed savagely until he could stand it no longer, dropping his face down into the snow to
seek some relief while sobs tore through him and snot mingled with his tears and pus and dripped onto the frozen ground.
After a time Porter raised his head. His grief, for the moment, was spent. What moved in to take its place was a cold, hard rage. He rose slowly to his feet, raising the binoculars once more, taking his time now.
There was Kincaid. He was a big man, probably the biggest Porter had ever seen up close. His posture was relaxed and confident. As Porter watched, Kincaid raised his glass and took a long swallow. Kincaid never once took his eyes off Porter’s wife.
The old woman was there, looking at the playing cards in her hand. Nan Birmingham. An old man sat next to her, leaning heavily against the back of his chair.
The old man said something.
This made Caroline laugh again. But she did not look at the old man. She looked only at Kincaid.
Porter let out a groan of despair. Caroline didn’t play cards. She had agreed with Porter that it was a waste of time. Porter had played poker during the night shift when he interned at Bellevue, just to get in good with the orderlies. Rumor had it the old wing was haunted. The real danger at Bellevue was the patients, brought in against their will to the world’s most infamous asylum since London’s Bedlam Hospital. Bellevue was also the best classroom for the study of abnormal behavior, and Porter had been proud to win an internship.
Two months before he arrived, one of the residents had been knifed to death by a patient. Word was out that the orderlies had to be handled with care, or a radio call for help on the graveyard shift might go unanswered. So Porter played poker and let them win.
The sight of his wife now playing cards was an affront to him. He fingered the trigger of the gun in his pocket. He could shoot them all right now and end the mockery. He ran his tongue across his chapped lips, considering the satisfaction this act would bring.
But one single opportunity remained to regain the life he had lost, to get his wife back, to make her see the truth at last. He needed to put his hurt feelings aside and stick to his original plan. Dr. Porter Moross knew that the hallmark of a mature mind was the ability to delay gratification.
He moved closer, until he was near enough to hear muted sounds from inside the house.
Caroline was speaking.
The others smiled.
Jealousy tore through him. Porter was on the outside looking in, as always. He had blamed this on his skin condition. But that was a lie, and he knew it. The fact was, Porter Moross had been born a mean son of a bitch and he stayed that way. Seven years at Ivy League universities and an internship most doctors would give their right arm for had never changed that basic fact of his personality. Acknowledgment of this simple fact now made Porter laugh. Once he started, he could not stop. He laughed until tears flowed. He doubled over and eventually collapsed onto one knee.
Inside, the dogs heard it.
“What was that?” Caroline’s case of jitters had returned.
Pippin stood at the front door and barked once.
Caroline looked out the window, the cards in her hand momentarily forgotten. “What was that?”
“Eh?” Gus continued to contemplate his hand.
“Just the wind,” Nan murmured, not lifting her gaze from her cards.
Pippin whined uncertainly. He sniffed around the edges of the front door, ears pricked, tail wagging. Finally he sat, head cocked.
Scout growled.
Goose bumps rose along Caroline’s arms. She peered out the window at the darkness beyond, but all she saw was her own ghostly reflection in the pane, frowning back at her. “I thought I heard something.”
Ken set his cards down. “Me, too.”
Gus blew a breath out through his nose. “Coyotes. You need to keep the dogs inside come nightfall, ’specially when it’s cold.”
As if to prove Gus’s point, Pippin scratched at the door.
Caroline nodded, but was not convinced. She shivered. She wished the drapes were closed. But they hung open, held in place with braided loops that hadn’t been used in years. She couldn’t get used to bare windows at night, and had asked Nan about it when she first arrived.
Nan had laughed, observing she owned all the land within sight. “Nothing out there but deer.”
Caroline had accepted this, but her urban instincts were never at ease. They shifted into high gear now, making it impossible to focus on Texas hold ’em.
“If it was a coyote we’d have heard,” Nan said firmly. “It’s just deer, maybe elk.”
Caroline caught the look that passed between Nan and Ken, and realized her situation had been discussed.
Nan set her cards facedown and spoke in a soothing tone. “Before you know it, you’ll be more at home here than any place you’ve ever been.”
There was no chance of that. Caroline reached for her iced tea in an effort to hide the tears that suddenly misted her eyes.
The dogs refused to shush.
Ken pushed his chair back. “I’ll go out and take a look.”
“Guess that’s the end of that hand. Three jacks. Best I’ve had all night,” Gus grumbled, tossing his cards on the table.
Ken grinned. “You didn’t think we’d let you win, did you?” He took his jacket from a peg near the door.
Caroline was gripped with fear that was as familiar and old as a pair of worn bedroom slippers. “You shouldn’t go out there.”
“Oh, Alice, you needn’t worry,” Nan began, reaching out a hand to calm her.
Ken looked at Caroline and grinned. “Not much out there but snow and trees and probably a raccoon or a marmot trying to raid the trash. I’ll take a quick look and make sure the lids are on tight.” He gave her a glance that was meant to be reassuring, but did nothing to quell her apprehension.
She shivered.
Pippin was making sounds that were not in his repertoire, a series of excited yips mixed with high-pitched whining.
Terriers were born hunters.
“I’m going with you,” Caroline announced.
Ken shrugged, halfway into his jacket. “Okay. I’ll get a flashlight.”
Nan pushed her chair back. “I’ve got one in the utility closet.”
Ken waved her off. “Don’t bother. I’ve got one in the Jeep.”
“A pot and a soup ladle would do you more good,” Gus remarked. “The noise will scare off the coyotes.”
Caroline knew they were trying to reassure her. But nothing could slow her quickening pulse or banish the sense she had of danger.
The dogs felt it, too. Scout’s hackles were up and he continued to bark at the door. But it was Pippin who turned Caroline’s mouth dry and set her heart pounding. The Yorkie simply stood facing the door, ears erect, cocking his head one way and then the other. He turned to Caroline and barked once.
Pleading to go out.
She slipped into her parka and zipped with hands that shook so badly she missed it on the first try. She told herself for the millionth time there was no way Porter could have traced her here, two thousand miles from their home. No way, no way, no way.