“I’ll go in with her,” Gina said angrily and shoved past Benny to push Brook into the dinky bathroom.
In the bathroom, Brook quickly used the toilet and pulled her pants up. She turned to Gina and whispered, near panic, “Please help me. You’ve got to help me.”
Gina pushed her hair away from her face and peered into the mirror, ignoring Brook completely.
Brook tugged on the girl’s sleeve and pleaded, “Please! Get me out of here. Don’t you know what they’re going to do to me?”
Gina turned toward Brook, her eyes wide, and said, “Oh, my, god!”
Chapter 4
Lance lifted the kettle from the stove top and poured hot water into an enamel pan. Using the cabin’s hand pump, he added filtered river water to temper it. Next, he shook a little sand into the pots and scrubbed them. He then washed, dried, and put away his dishes. Carrying the pan outside, he dumped the dishwater onto his compost pile.
He used the rest of the hot water from the kettle to wash his face and hands, drying his long beard vigorously, before changing into clean clothes. Pulling his backpack from its hook, he loaded it with his latest steampunk jewelry, a wad of cash from the jar above the counter, and several bungee cords. Grabbing his jacket, he walked out the door, securing it behind him.
It was cold as he trudged down the steep terrain toward the road. Still, he enjoyed the hike. Breathing in the crisp air, he looked up at the swollen clouds gathering over Mt.Hazel, hiding her jagged peak in mists of gray.
Probably just rain this time
, he thought,
but snow will soon follow
.
Slightly over an hour later he came to the camouflaged lean-to in which he housed his ten-speed and a lightweight travois. He walked his bike the remaining distance to the road and hopped on.
Leaning over the handlebars and picking up speed, Lance felt the brisk wind freeze his face and enjoyed the steady rhythm of his heartbeat as it thumped reassuringly against his chest. He had never been in better physical shape.
Surprising a deer as it grazed along the side of the road, he braked gently and watched as it bounded into the trees. An expression of pleasure on his face, he turned his attention back to the road into town.
Kicking up a little gravel, he finally pulled into the parking lot of High Top Outpost on the edge of Haylieville and steered his bike around the side of the log building where he locked it to the rack. He checked his watch, hastened to the pay phone on the outside wall, and dialed a number from memory. After completing his call, he walked around to the front of the High Top, his boots thumping on the rustic wood of the porch. Stepping into the store, he looked around and spotted Denise behind the counter, bent over the screen of her laptop. He pulled his backpack off and set it on the polished wood countertop.
“Hey, Lance,” she called, getting up from the stool. She walked to the register and opened it. “I sold five of your necklaces and two of your sculptures. That steampunk stuff has really caught on.”
Lance nodded as he approached the counter. Denise smiled when she handed him the cash from the sales. He didn’t bother to count the money before stuffing it into the front zippered pocket of his backpack. Silently, he pulled out his newest creations and laid them on the gleaming surface for her inspection.
“Oh, these are beautiful,” she exclaimed. “You do such good work. Prices marked on them?”
“Yeah,” he answered gruffly. Denise took them back to the area with her laptop and began to enter them into her log. As she worked, she chatted with him although she knew it would be a relatively one-sided conversation. Lance wasn’t much of a talker.
“Emily just took a group out,” she said as she removed his stickers and tagged the items with Outpost labels. “She’ll be sorry she missed you.”
Denise and her sister, Emily, had transformed the shop into a thriving business. Both in their mid-thirties, the ladies shared a sharp sense for business and had turned their passions into profit. Emily gave guided horseback rides on the mountain trails while Denise ran the rest of the business, a shop for tourists who longed to spend their cash on authentic handmade RockyMountain crafts. The combination was oddly successful. Emily dealt with the stables and trails, and Denise handled the shop and the scheduling. They were mountain women, a little rough around the edges, but capable, honest and no-nonsense. They tolerated Lance’s quiet reclusive ways and allowed him to park his beat-up old pickup truck in their back lot in return for a modest monthly sum. They never questioned why he wanted to leave it there or asked him where he lived. Early on they realized he guarded his privacy like a vault, same as a lot of Colorado folks. He certainly wasn’t the only eccentric soul they encountered. Lance in turn did not pry into their affairs, valuing their privacy as they did his. Indeed, the man hardly spoke when he came in.
“Well, that ought to do it.” She opened a glass case with her key and hung the necklaces inside. “I think we’re due for another snowfall any day.”
“It’ll rain first,” Lance remarked.
Denise handed him a written receipt for his items, and he tucked it into his shirt pocket.
“You’ve got some great pieces, Lance. We get good comments on them.”
Lance nodded his thanks before walking to the cooler and extracting a bottle of water. When he reached into his pocket for some change, she waved him away. “It’s on the house,” she said. He drank half the bottle before he reached the door and stepped outside.
Digging his key from his pocket, Lance opened the truck door and tossed his backpack on the seat. Old Reliable he called her; she lived up to the name by starting right away. She might look like a junkyard reject, but she purred like a showroom gem thanks to the work he’d had done to her after he’d bought her for a song. An improperly-tagged, untitled, banged-up heap that people wouldn’t look at twice, Old Reliable had a better engine than most cars rolling around the state, though her appearance didn’t advertise the fact.
Lance, as always, drove carefully down Main Street and stopped at the lumberyard, which happened to also be the feed store in Haylieville. He bought several bags of chicken scratch, grains, and alfalfa bales for the goats, oil and wicks for his lanterns, and nails. His next stop was the grocery where he stocked up on bulk items, dried beans, pastas, flour, toilet paper, first-aid supplies, vitamins, bottled water, candles, batteries, canned goods, and so on. He grabbed several large boxes of powdered milk to take him through the winter. He smiled when he thought of Gilbert’s romantic relationship with the wild billy she had met up on the ridge. He suspected his other goat, Belinda, was enamored of the same wild buck. Combined with the does he had tamed from the roaming herd, Lance should have plenty of fresh milk come early spring.
Clean cool air streamed in the driver’s side window as he drove down into the rich valley nestled between the GarrisonRange on the northeastern side and the breathtaking WetMountains on the southwest. He glanced back in the direction of home. A gray haze hung low between Mt.Coley and Mt.Hazel. It nearly obscured their rocky summits and softened the emerald peaks that staggered in uneven lines on either side of the majestic twins. Turning his eyes back to the road, Lance continued at a leisurely pace.
He pulled into the hidden valley where he always bought his weedy hay. The farmer he dealt with was every bit as taciturn as Lance. With few words, he and Donnie struck their deal and loaded the bales into the back of Old Reliable. Donnie waved once, then stood with hands in his overall pockets and watched as Lance drove off.
Pulling into Haylieville once more, Lance thought about stopping at the small library. Much as he disdained society in general, he still had an appreciation for the internet and had spent considerable time hunched over one of the library’s two computers, researching everything from home canning to solar water heaters. His current interest was cheese-making, a process he was determined to learn. However, he decided against going to the library this day and headed back home. It would take at least three trips with the travois to haul his purchases up to the cabin, he reasoned, not to mention the time required to drive Old Reliable back to the High Top parking lot, fetch his bike, and ride home. And, the clouds were looming. In fact, rain was already falling in the high country above the tree line.
Chapter 5
Brook hung onto Gina’s response with naked hope on her face.
Gina rolled her eyes. “Can you believe this crap? I’m getting a damn zit.” She sighed with self-pity."You done yet? You need to get your ass on back across the hall; I got better things to do than hang out with you in the can.”
“Please, Gina.” Brook’s panic bubbled inside her like lava as her flicker of hope died. If only she could reason with the girl. “Please help me get away. I’m begging you. Don’t you understand I’m here against my will? I was taken!”
Gina squinted at her with an impatient expression. “Do I look like I give a shit? I don’t care crap about why you’re here except you’re interfering with my life. Taking
my
bedroom. And, I’m warning you, keep your hands off my old man.”
Brook shook her head in vehement denial. "No, no. You don't understand. I'm a married woman. A
happily
married woman. I don't want your boyfriend. I don't want to be here at all. Oh, god, why can't you see? How blind can you possibly be?"
"Blind?" Gina repeated. “You don't know me well enough to dis me, you snotty bitch. Now shut the fuck up and move your ass.”
Brook was propelled, none too gently, into the bedroom, and the door was slammed behind her. She ran to the window and peered frantically out. All that met her eyes was the side of an old, grungy, black school bus. Brook seized the lock on the window and, with a struggle, managed to turn it. She grasped the window and heaved upwards. It failed to budge. She tried again and again, straining with the exertion.
It’s painted shut. Shit, shit, shit! Now what?
Swinging around, Brook searched the room for something she could use as a tool or weapon, but found nothing useful. There was, however, a closet in one wall. Brook yanked the door open and found shelves had been built on two of the interior walls, each holding a couple of small stacks of clothes. The floor had a mound of dirty laundry but nothing else. Brook looked up, hoping to see an attic entrance, but found only solid ceiling. There wasn’t even a clothes rod.
Turning back to the bedroom, she took a second look. In one corner of the room sat a wooden chair. She contemplated this.
Can I throw this through the window?
After careful consideration, she realized the futility of the idea. The bus was much too close to the house and its windows didn’t line up with the bedroom window. She hefted the chair.
Can I attack them with this? Escape?
She dismissed the idea, realizing she might hurt one of them, but not all. It would only make things worse for her if that happened. Things looked bleak. No way out. No weapons.
Brook gulped back her sobs, trying not to bring attention to herself. Fighting a dizzy spell, she took a couple of slow, even breaths to calm herself. A phone rang somewhere in the house. Brook moved quickly to the door and pulled it open a crack to listen.
“Woman? No, I don’t know nothing about no woman. We grabbed the car, just as planned. It was right where it was supposed to be.” There was a pause and then Jase protested some more. “No man, the guys came back alone. Hold on!” There was silence for a few minutes and then Jase spoke again. “I just asked them,” he lied. “They never saw a woman. The car was in the parking lot, just like it was supposed to be, and no one was around. She must have went off somewhere else.”
Realizing this might be her one chance, Brook darted down the short hallway and into the living room, screaming the whole way. “Don’t listen to him! I’m here! I’m here! Help me!”
Exasperated, Jase pressed the phone against his body to muffle her shouts. Reacting quickly, he punched her in the midriff as she propelled herself through the doorway, her momentum contributing to the force of the blow. Brook clutched her abdomen and collapsed to the floor, the wind knocked from her.
Without missing a beat, Jase continued his phone conversation. “Nah, it’s just a movie. I’ll turn the volume down.” Brook struggled to pull in a breath. Jase covered the phone with his hand and signaled Pete and Benny to get her out of the room while loudly commanding, "Turn that damn TV down. I'm trying to talk on the phone here.”
Benny and Pete half dragged Brook back into the bedroom and left her there. She leaned against the wall near the door to listen, fighting the cramps in her stomach. Jase’s voice sounded natural, as if nothing had happened.
A few seconds later, she heard him say, “We cool then? Okay man, we’ll be expecting payment as usual. Later!”
Jase ended the call and began to berate Pete and Benny again. “D’Macio is asking about that woman. This is just fucking great. How the hell could you let this happen, Benny? How did we end up in this situation?” He looked Benny up and down. “And what the hell happened to your clothes?”
“Ripped the damn pants when I tackled the bitch. She was trying to get away. Now I’m gonna have to spend good money to buy new dress duds. I hate these fucking clothes anyway. I don’t know why Pete can’t dress the part instead of me. He can do the snatch and grab and I can drive the get-away car,” he said, as if he fancied himself a bank robber.
“What the hell? You gotta be yanking my chain!
The get-away car?
Damn, Benny, you been watching too many movies. You sound like a fucking moron.”
“That’s harsh, dude,” Benny said in a cool tone. “It’s not my fault. Like I said, she was in the car when I went to get it. I couldn’t dump her ‘cause there were people in the lot.”
“Why didn’t you dump her later?”
“Shit man, she seen our faces. We had to bring her here. We figured you’d know what to do.”
Pete, who had been silent until now, asked, “What
do
we do, Jase?”
Jase’s answer sent cold fingers of fear down Brook’s spine. “Well, she won’t be leaving here alive, that’s for damn sure. So…let me think a minute." He paused. "I guess we might as well have some fun with her before we dump her ass. You know me; I never waste a good piece of meat.”
There were sounds of movement. Horrified, Brook realized they were coming for her. Jase’s next words confirmed it.
“Not so fast boys, I’m first.”
Brook shoved the door closed and pressed into it with all her might, but she might as well have saved her strength. It was pushed open effortlessly, and all three men entered the room. Jase reached for her.
“Welcome wagon’s here to greet you,” he drawled. “We wouldn’t want you to feel neglected, now would we?”