Killing Casanova (18 page)

A half hour later Troy’s four-wheel drive kicked in, and Cassie lost all orientation to direction as they bumped along the access road north of the field.

“I see one of Caswell’s trucks by the gate, but I don’t see Jake or anyone else.”

“How high is the alfalfa this time of year? Could he be in the field?”

“He could be, but the water is on, so he’d be awfully wet.”

The truck slid to a stop, and Cassie jumped from the cab.

“Jake! Are you here?”

“It looks like someone was here. There are fresh tire tracks, it looks like another truck.”

“Jake! If you can hear me make some noise so I can find you.”

Cassie heard Troy’s footsteps moving down the road further, and she turned her face into the slight wind that wound from the willows. She could smell the water, alfalfa, and a salty wetness. Cassie wrinkled her brow and tried to sort out the sounds and smells pulsating around her. The pit in her stomach was disconcerting her as she focused on the hint of a sound. Taking one hesitant step toward the gurgle of a nearby river, Cassie heard the moan of an injured animal just beyond her. The salty smell turned rusty and tasted of blood.

“Jake!” she screamed, hearing the sound more distinctly.

Cassie scrambled toward the noise, collapsing to her hands and knees when the tangle of willows slapped against her face. Her thoughts scrambled nearly as desperately as she did as she found the edge of a riverbank and slid down onto the damp ground beneath the tree. Movement and a pain-filled groan led her hands to the thick curling of what she immediately recognized as Jake’s hair. He moaned, and tried to move toward her but she put her hands against his chest.

“Shhh, baby, hold still, you’re hurt, and I don’t know what’s wrong yet.”

Cassie cautiously touched his forehead and scalp, finding only a surface cut above his eyebrow. She felt across his cheeks and down his jaw, until her fingers brushed the ragged edge of damp skin and mud. She moved beyond the wound to his neck, throat, and then his chest but found no other wounds. His chest was unmarred and his arms and legs seemed to be as strong as ever. Jake kept trying to push himself up from the riverbank only to collapse with the effort.

“Lie still, Jake, you’ll make it worse. Your jaw might be broken, and there’s blood everywhere. Hold on, and I’ll get help.”

Cassie pulled the two-way radio from her pocket and reported her location to Troy. Troy promised he would get the ambulance and sheriff before disconnecting.

“I told you I would track you down.” Cassie told him as she held onto his hand. “Technically I’m an hour or so early, but I couldn’t wait any longer. Ever since we killed Casanova last night, I haven’t been able to keep away from you.”

Cassie felt her heart tearing with the sounds Jake was making in response, and she put her hand over his lips. “Don’t talk. The way I see it you are stuck listening to me say I told you so, and you are helpless to fight back.”

Luckily, in Lindley the ambulance was a pick-up truck so the rough road held no insurmountable obstacles in getting to them. Once Jake had been strapped to a backboard and hooked to an IV, Cassie let go of his hand and let them load him in the truck. She and Troy followed them back to the emergency clinic, where they waited beside a paper curtain for news.

• • •

Robert and Debra Caswell showed up, and Cassie and Troy did their best to explain what they knew, which wasn’t much. Debra wanted to know if Jake had been unconscious beside the river all night long, since he had never gotten around to making a phone call to his mom. Robert timidly informed Debra that Jake had checked in with him about the alfalfa field and the truck, and he forgot to report it to Debra. Cassie was grateful for Robert’s confession; it kept her from having to explain to Debra why Jake had not come home last night.

In a small town like Lindley, the news of their golden boy being attacked spread like wild fire. The waiting area was full of Casanova’s admirers, as well as Jake’s friends and family. Despite her ignorance of how many people were listening or who they were, Cassie did not want to talk about her and Jake with any of them.

Hours passed interminably and most of the spectators moved on. Troy filed a report with Sheriff Harris, then returned to The Rocking J.

In the quiet that followed, Cassie told Robert and Debra everything they knew about the fire, Carter, the rattler, and Jake’s plans to talk to Carter.

“Why didn’t he tell me about any of that when he talked to me about the field this morning?” Robert fumed. “The only reason I’ve been helping that Langdon kid is because I know Jake feels responsible to that family. It’s good for the boy to accept responsibility, but if I had known Carter was this big of a problem, I would have kept him as far from Jake as I could.”

“Jake never wanted it to be that big of a deal. I think he believed Carter would eventually figure out the truth and leave him alone,” Cassie said.

“He thought that deeply about it?” Debra asked, quirking an eyebrow.

“Jake does a lot more thinking than people know,” Cassie said. She felt the eyes of Jake’s parents on her, and the heat bloomed in her cheeks.

Cassie heard the squeak of wheels, and Debra jumped to her feet as a nurse pushed a rolling bed past Cassie. As they passed her, Cassie felt Jake take her hand so tightly that she was forced to follow him.

She figured Robert and Debra were somewhere nearby, but she heard and felt only the pound of her own pulse and the digital beep of Jake’s heart monitor in her ears.

“Well, it’s not as bad as it looked,” a voice was explaining. “The weapon cut through some tissue and muscle along his jaw line, but severed no major arteries and didn’t break his jaw. He is going to be sore for a long while. He’ll need to be on a liquid diet for about a week and avoid too much talking, but he should recover with nothing but a wicked scar for memories. The CAT scan showed no swelling or bleeding on his brain, but he’ll have one heck of a headache that should be treated with ibuprofen every four hours. He will need the dressing on the stitches replaced every day, and we will remove them in a week to ten days. Any questions?”

Robert and Debra began barraging the doctor with follow-up questions, but Cassie just held onto Jake’s hand. When the doctor had mentioned “the wicked scar,” Jake’s grip faltered and slipped out of Cassie’s grasp. She was holding it again, but it was weak and flaccid beneath her fingers, and Cassie wondered if the pain medicine had taken effect. He was still and silent in the bed, and Cassie thought about slipping away.

As she moved away from his side, Ed Harris joined them. Cassie smelled the distinct aroma of his Stetson cologne before she heard his voice and stiffened automatically.

“If Jake can’t talk for a while,” Ed drawled. “We can wait to take his statement. He’s got a pretty bad head injury, though, and his recollections might not be reliable.”

“Jake’s head is fine,” Robert snapped. “He can write down all you need without talking.”

“Of course, Robert. I just thought he might want to clear his mind for a few days before he files the report, that’s all.”

Cassie heard the sleeping volcano in Robert Caswell’s heart begin to percolate, and she jumped in before they were all caught in the eruption.

“Sheriff Harris, from what I heard in the waiting room today, you will be getting a number of complaints from local women about Carter’s behavior. Whatever Jake has to say about this is just one of Carter’s worries. He will be facing sexual assault charges along with attempted murder and arson, too.”

“Now, Miss Taylor, we do things around here a little differently than in the city. Folks don’t jump the law on every good ol’ boy who gets a little drunk and stupid.”

“Caswell Farm is part of a federal land grant, Sheriff. That makes the stable fire a case of federal property destruction at the least. This is out of your hands now, and I have a copy of Carter admitting to the fire in a digital file on my computer. If you’re prepared to have federal scrutiny on your police department procedures, then be my guest. Do your investigation like one of the good ol’ boys, but understand that Carter nearly killed him twice and it stops now.”

Cassie bent over and kissed the top of Jake’s head, ignoring the jerk of him flinching. Picking up her cane, she swung it broadly and listened as the room’s occupants cleared out of her way.

“Jake,” Cassie snapped. “Hold still so I don’t hurt you.”

Jake caught her hands in his and glared into her unseeing expression.

“I can change the bandages myself, Cass. Leave it alone.”

“I know you can, Jake. I just wanted to feel how it’s doing. I’ll be careful, I promise.”

“Leave it, Cassie. I get the stitches out tomorrow. I don’t need the reminder that it’s there.”

Cassie made a face at him, then moved to the other side of the porch swing. Jake had been home for a while, but between the swelling and the stitches, communication between them had been difficult at best. Now, with the cut healing and his jaw stiff but moveable, he didn’t have silence to hide behind anymore.

“What’s wrong, Jake, are you in pain?”

“Nothing is wrong. I have the same decisions to make as I did before. Carter tried to knock my head off, and I have new problems to consider.”

“What kind of new problems?”

“My deadline for the land grant was extended, but I’m committed in September so it won’t do me any good. My face is not exactly the poster boy that modeling agencies are looking for; and I can’t even look in the mirror anymore without triggering nightmares. Is that enough or do you need more?”

Jake watched Cassie’s expression harden under his flinging of hurtful words, and he flinched away from it. She had been with him through the whole mess. Women had come out of the woodwork to file charges against Carter, and Lilly had even showed up to make a report. There was an official investigation into Carter’s activities on the farm, and Carter was in hiding until it ended up resolved or charges were prosecuted. Either way, it was because of her turning her sim card over to the arson investigator and filing reports with the sheriff that Carter was finished harassing both of them.

She hadn’t left his side during his recovery. She’d made him milkshakes and mashed potatoes. She was tender, patient, and constant. But he couldn’t explain to her what was really bothering him. She saw him the same, her mental picture of him had not changed. How could he explain how traumatic it was for him to look in the mirror and see only the line of marred flesh along his jaw? There would never be the rough and rugged look for him again. The crooked line would part his unshaven features leaving a permanent scar. How could he explain it to her?

“Cassie, I’m sorry. I’m not ready to talk about this. Can we leave it alone?”

“What were we talking about that you’re not ready for Jake? I asked if you were in pain.”

Jake gritted his teeth and his jaw screamed at him for his thoughtlessness. He must have made a sound because Cassie quickly moved toward him and then caught herself.

“If you aren’t in pain, you have a funny way of showing it.”

“This isn’t going to work, Cassie. You can’t possibly understand what I’m dealing with, and I can’t explain. Things changed. I changed. You can’t help me. You can’t even see what is bothering me.”

“What can’t I see, Jake?”

“My horribly scarred and disfigured face; you’ll tell me how it doesn’t matter, and you never saw my face anyway, but that’s the problem. How could you understand when none of it matters to you? It matters to me because I have to look in the mirror and see the expressions of everyone who sees the scar. It makes a difference to me. Maybe that makes me less of a man, but it matters.”

“Just because I don’t see faces doesn’t mean I don’t understand that they are important.”

“I can’t do this with you, Cassie, it’s like complaining to a cancer patient that I have a paper cut. I need to figure me out, alone.”

Cassie got off the swing and took her cane from where it leaned against the wall of The Rocking J’s ranch house. Placing it against the wall where the porch met the house, she walked away from him toward the front door.

“I understand plenty. I’m blind, not stupid. I’ll see ya around, Casanova.”

Jake fought back a wave of sharpened truth, slicing its way into his heart. She had never called him that, and the sting of its ragged truth cut him deeply. He watched her go around the corner and listened as her footsteps climbed the stairs to her apartment. The dark feelings were eating at him, something beyond that she was literally blind to his problems. He knew she would make him look at it differently; she’d been doing that since the day he met her. The truth of that terrified him. If she made him look at it differently, then she would be seeing something different too. Even the thought of her touching his face sent chills down his spine, and he had come tonight to send her away.

He prepared himself for anger, tears, disappointment. Most women he knew met his breakups with those reactions. She had called him Casanova. Somehow the use of his nickname left him cold in the hot August heat. She already saw him differently.

Jake drove the Mitsubishi home that night under the watchful gaze of Cassiopeia once more. That night all those months ago, she had seemed so volatile and unsteady. Now as he gazed up at the pale blue light that hovered around her stars, Jake saw the constancy of Cassie’s sight.

• • •

With the stitches removed and the sun evening out the tan on his skin, the scar loomed like a pale light across his face. He thought it would get better, but everywhere he went he saw people’s eyes inadvertently drawn to it. His eyes were constantly drawn to it, too: in the bathroom fixtures, when he glanced in the rearview mirror, he couldn’t escape it; the scar itself even haunted his dreams.

Cassie called him the day after he got his stitches out, just to check on him, she said. He had seen her occasionally when he picked up Heidi, but she never sought him out, and he never gave her the chance. His chest ached every time he saw her, the sadness in her eyes affirming his worst fears. He was classified with Dylan now. He could understand why Dylan had been too much of a coward to face her. Those haunting blue eyes had the ability to make him feel naked in front of her.