Gone Wild (8 page)

*

I opened my eyes and felt rejuvenation, not the quick panic that usually accompanies waking up in a strange bed. The bright sunlight flooding through the cabin windows made the entire mountain feel safer than it had last night in the dark. Adam’s side of the bed was empty.

I sat up and
stretched. Hearing nothing, I wondered if Adam had gone out to sleep on the couch. I opened the door slowly, peeked out the crack in the door and saw that the couch was deserted, the sheets and pillows neatly folded on the end.

I let the door swing all the way open and scanned the large main room. Adam was nowhere to be
seen. I checked the porch and the large open area around the cabin, not finding him anywhere. I felt a chill run up my legs, but I told myself I wasn't going to freak out. There were a million places he could be. He most likely had not been chopped up into little pieces while I slept peacefully in the next room.

After sitting on the couch for a few moments wondering what to do, I ventured over to one of the many bookshelves to scan the spines. Much like the pile on his bed stand, this collection ran the gamut from fantasy to psychology. He had fiction and nonfiction, even some poetry. I pulled down one of my
own favorites—a novel in verse by an obscure writer and opened the cover. The title page had been signed and even included a brief note:
To an eagle-eyed reader who knows way too much about the female body, I hope you find what you're looking for out there.

I waited ten minutes before I let myself do what I'd been thinking about doing since the moment I woke up and discovered no trace of Adam.
After ten minutes, I officially began snooping. My gaze swept the room looking for frames or snapshots, but there were no photographs. A small standalone closet sat by the door so I opened it and found only coats and boots.

It wasn't until I went back into the bedroom and opened the large wardrobe against the wall that my snooping panned out. In the bottom half of the closet, one section was closed off by thick glass with a lock built into it, and behind the glass was a line of guns long enough to keep a troop of soldiers armed for days. I ran my fingers across the glass, trying to move the door over, but the glass didn't budge. The logical voice in my head told me it was sensible for Adam to have an arsenal in his bedroom. He was a mountain man and mountain men needed to protect themselves from lions, and tigers, and bears
—or whatever. However, the scared shitless voice in my head made me feel like my feet had been dunked in a bucket of ice water.

Hanging on the wall behind the guns, also behind the glass, were various
ly shaped knives, all so clean I could see the light from the windows reflected in them, and in their reflection I could see the silhouette of a man in the doorway behind me. I spun around and met Adam's suspicious eyes with my own.

"Please tell me you didn't concoct this whole man in my cabin story just so you could steal my guns." He grinned, but I couldn't even pretend to be in on the joke. In fact, his grin made the ic
y feeling worse. And when he took a step toward me, I backed up against the glass.

"What is this?" I asked.
My voice sounded like a little girl’s.

He st
opped in his tracks, realizing my fear. The grin slid off his face, replaced by something else.

"It's a gun cabinet."

"But why, why do you need so many?" I glanced behind me and then quickly back to him.

"It's
—" He searched the room, his eyes suddenly nervous as he couldn’t come up with an end to the sentence. His lack of an explanation scared the hell out of me and I unconsciously backed farther away from him.

"Ina, come on," he said. "Don't be
—"

"Paranoid? Crazy?"

"No." He stopped coming toward me. "Do you want me to leave? If I am making you uncomfortable, tell me to leave. I will."

He waited for a response, but I stalled to deliver one because that didn't sound like something a killer would say. Plus, he had all of last night to spontaneously attack me. I'd even slept in the next room from him. I mean, if h
e'd wanted to do something, that would've been the opportune time.

"I'm sorry," I finally admitted, taking a long breath and letting down my guard. "I'm just so scared." I looked over at the weapons in the case and back to him. "Why do you have all of this?"

"Because I have some of the same fears as you," he said, walking over to the wardrobe and shutting the wooden doors over the glass. "Knowing I can protect myself helps me overpower the fear." He turned around and leaned back on the closed doors, folding his arms across his chest and turning his head sideways to look directly at me.

I thought about his words. "I have an idea," I said.

"Shoot," he said with a smile.

"Funny," I deadpanned.

"What's the idea?"

Maybe if I knew how to use one of these, I wouldn't be so scared." I ran my fingers over the glass
and watched his thoughts change his face. I couldn’t tell what he thought about my idea, but his expressions seemed to be growing more positive.

He
reopened the doors, reached into his pocket, took out a key, and opened the lock, then slid over the glass door. He reached into the case and pulled out a silver handgun. "I could teach you to protect yourself if that's what you want. You should be able to stay at your cabin without being afraid." He gave me an intent stare. “You should be able to do whatever you want without fear.”

"Y
ou don't think someone's been in my cabin? You think the fear is all here." I pointed to my head.

"I did
n't say that. I was just there. Didn't look like anyone’s been since we checked it out yesterday. No one's tried to break in. I didn't see any fresh footprints."

"So I was
overreacting?"

"No," he answered immediately. "You saw the shed. When you feel unsafe, follow that feeling. I'll never doubt your gut feeling or your response to it." He kept our eye contact and his eyes seemed to blaze with sincerity as he spoke. I swallowed, grateful for not being called out for coming to this mountain unprepared to deal with the dangers of the wild. "I'm not asking you to join the NRA, but, what I am saying is, every snap of a branch won't frighten you anymore when you know you have the power to eliminate any danger with a few flicks of the wrist."

A laundry list of dirty pictures went through my mind as he said those last few words. Then my eyes landed on the handgun.

In college, I'd taken part in anti-gun rallies in the name of curbing violence. I'd never ima
gined in my life I'd need to use a gun, but now I could understand Adam’s point. How much safer would I have felt at my cabin if, at the back of my mind sat the realization that I could protect myself if need be? I already suspected that most of my fears were pretty baseless. What if I could eliminate them by learning a new skill?

*

"Have you ever handled a gun?" he asked as he loaded bullets into it and then slammed shut the chamber.

"No." I stared down at the heavy weapon in the palm of his hand. "It's not like I don't understand how important it is to be able to defend myself. I learned some self-defense moves in college. I attended a one-day seminar."

"How do you feel about firearms?"

I shrugg
ed. "Scared, I guess. They seem like accidents waiting to happen, you know?"

"In many people's hands that's exactly what they are, but if you know how to use them, they can be your security. Once you know how to use a firearm, you can walk these trails knowing no one can stop you." He nodded down to the gun as if he wanted me to take it from his hand, but I hesitated.

"I'd hope that if I ever find myself in a situation where a gun is required, someone like you would be there to help."

He smiled a little. "I hope so, too, but that's not always the case. I'll tell you what," he said. "If you ever need me while you're here, just whistle as loud and long as you can. I'm so attuned
to the noises around here I'll probably hear it."

I nodded.

"But just in case I can't get to you in time, well, I'd feel a lot better if you could do this yourself."

"You really think I could shoot a person?" I asked. In all honesty, I saw myself choking if I ever needed to shoot someone.

He didn't answer right away and I wondered if he was unsure of the answer, unsure of whether I could shoot a gun, but that wasn't it. "I think that in a battle over your life or someone else's, you could shoot someone, although I hope you never have to."

"I'm afra
id I'll shoot myself in the butt or something." I laughed and cast my eyes to the ground.

He thrust his palm into my line of sight
with the weapon still sitting in it. I didn't take it.

"Didn't you come out here to push yourself, to try new things? Don't think of it as learning to shoot a person. Think of it as arming yourself with knowledg
e. Honestly, the chances you'll ever need to shoot someone are slim, but the confidence you'll gain just from knowing how to do it will save your life a million times."

I nodd
ed and swallowed. My mother would never approve of this. The old me would shudder away from the unfamiliarity without a second thought, would be content with the knowledge that all I had to do was whistle and someone else could save me, and that's exactly why I needed to do it.

Slowly, I mov
ed my hand closer to his and lifted the gun by its handle. It was heavier than I thought it would be as it dangled from my hand. Adam maneuvered the fingers of my right hand around the grip. I tried to ignore the tingling in my belly as I felt his fingers and inhaled his rich scent. Instinctually, I slipped my index finger into the curve of the trigger.

"Don't put your finger on the trigger until
you're ready to shoot."

I quickly p
ulled my finger away. Embarrassed, I wondered if this was a good idea again, but then I swallowed and reconfigured my hands so that the gun felt secure and safe in my grip. Once I'd learned how to arrange the fingers of my shooting hand, Adam directed me to wrap my other hand around the gun to steady it so I could aim.

He was standing so close to me and his speaking voice seemed to be getting lower and lower. I focused as hard as I could
on the gun. Having such a sexy teacher made it tough. I was concentrating on my fingers as he told me to move them fractionally into perfect position. I saw the fluffy tail of a squirrel hopping along in the area I was pointing and quickly moved the gun so the barrel was pointing down toward the ground, away from the animal.

"What if I hurt someone?" I asked, letting my glance move over to Adam. His eyes were intense.

"What if someone tries to hurt you?"

I nodded and watched him rifle through the knapsack he'd let fall to the ground. I wondered what he was looking for. He pulled out a single orange. Then he walked over to the clearing where a few slats of wood had been messily built into a shelf. Th
e squirrel seemed to sense he didn't want to stick around. He hopped into the brush. Adam knocked a couple of shot-up beer cans from the ramshackle shelf and placed the orange directly in the middle. Then he walked back to my side.

"When you pull t
he trigger," he explained, "the gun’s going to jerk. Keep it steady as you can, but expect it. Hold on tight. Don't let the sudden intensity scare you."

"What's that orange ever done to you?" I joked.

"That orange is threatening your life," he said. "It's you or that orange."

I nodded and concentrated as he explained how to use the sigh
ts to center my aim. I flinched when he laid his hand on my shoulder, but then relaxed when he squeezed the muscles I didn’t realize I had clenched so tight.

"I'm going to keep my hand right here," he said in a calm voice. "I'm not scared of you being in control of a gun, and I don't want you to be either."

His words boosted my confidence. I aimed for the navel.

"Once you have it in your sights," he whispered, "don't hesitate. Hesitation kills."

When the tip of the sights finally came together at the navel, my finger slipped in and squeezed the trigger fast. Prepared for it, I absorbed the resulting explosive buck of the gun into my forearms. It was much louder than I anticipated. My heart beat franticly despite the fact that all I had really moved in the last few seconds was a single finger.

"Did I hit it?" I whispered, scanning the top of the shelf for the orange. It wasn't there. Adam's hand still gripped my shoulder. As promised, he hadn't m
oved it from me during the shot, but I had stopped feeling overwhelmed by his touch.

"Let's see," he said. I handed him the gun as we walked to the s
helf. The smell of burnt orange lingered in the air, and I started to locate the pieces of rind and torn orange that had been blasted all over the ground.

"
Wow," I whispered. "We did it."