Authors: Alicia Scott
"I beg your pardon!" Her chin came up
lightning fast, her eyes blazing to life. She looked a trifle indignant and
more than a little hurt. "I will not be belittled by a term like 'shrink.'
Do you have any idea how important marriage counselors are? Do you have any
idea of just how difficult it is? What it's like to spend your days listening
to people say how much they love each other and their children, and then
proceed to scream at each other over everything from how she spends all the
money on furniture to how he always leaves the toilet seat up? It's … it's …
hard."
Abruptly, her voice broke. She looked away, appalled by how much her voice had
risen, how much her chin was trembling.
She could feel the sting of tears in her eyes
and the telltale thickness in her voice. Nerves, she told herself. Delayed
shock and extreme fear. But she knew, of course, that it was much deeper than
that.
She'd been very weepy lately and for no reason
that she could understand. She hated crying. Crying didn't solve anything, as
her father had always told her. But for some reason, she found herself on the
verge of tears a lot these days. Once, she'd been in her office, listening to a
young couple explain that they really did want to save their marriage because
while they knew they had their differences, they
did
agree that they
loved their children more than anything and they would do everything in their
power to maintain their family for their kids.
And all of a sudden, Maggie had had to ask them
to excuse her for a moment because she knew she was going to cry. She'd hustled
the startled people back into the waiting room, barely getting her door closed
in time, and then she'd just stood in the middle of her office and bawled like
a baby. She was twenty-seven years old and all she could think was had her
parents ever talked about her like that? Had they ever loved her, had they ever
thought of her first? Had they ever spoken of her with pride or affection?
Stephanie had never once said, "I love you." Neither had her father.
And sometimes late at night, she found herself
holding the heart pendant around her neck and thinking of her dad. Maxmillian.
Maxmillian the chameleon. Even after all these years, she knew so little about
him. Even Lydia hadn't understood her son. When she spoke of him, she recalled
his high school days as class president, Eagle Scout and student voted most
likely to succeed. No one understood the man he'd become. Why he'd loved the
women he'd loved, why he'd traveled like he'd traveled. He'd been, and then he
was gone, and sometimes Maggie felt this huge, gaping hole she just couldn't
fill.
All she had left was a cheap gold locket and a
silly little girl's secret she'd still never divulged because it was the only
part of her father's life that was uniquely hers.
One night, she'd found her hand on the phone,
already dialing C.J. in Sedona. Not to talk, not for anything. But just to see
if he was still there, to make sure he hadn't disappeared as well. She wanted
to do the same thing with Lydia and Brandon, except she already knew Brandon
wouldn't pick up. He was traveling the world. He had become as distant and
enigmatic as Max even though he'd sworn to be there for her forever.
People just came and went in her life. She
didn't know how to make them stay. She didn't know how to make anyone stay.
"Hello.
Shopping!"
Cain
abruptly announced. He turned to her with a triumphant smile that abruptly
faded away. "Are you … are you all right?"
She gazed at him helplessly, pinned by those
peering green eyes.
Don't look at me like that, don't ask me that kind of
question.
She glanced away sharply, blinking her eyes against the tears and
clutching the door handle as if that would give her strength. She couldn't look
at him and she couldn't bear to cry twice in one day. "I've … I've just
been kidnapped," she whispered at last. "How all right should I
be?"
"Of … of course." But she could still
feel his gaze upon her back. The silence stretched in the tiny cab. She didn't
know why he didn't snarl or growl, why he didn't act a little more mean. She
didn't know why he kept looking at her like that and she wished he would stop.
Finally, he turned away. She heard a small
sound as he cleared his throat and could almost picture his hands flexing and
unflexing on the wheel.
Another moment passed in silence, then she
realized that Cain was now pulling over the truck. She glanced up to see a row
of mud-splattered cars and pickup trucks, and the bright orange Caterpillars of
a work crew excavating a broad space for a new housing development.
"What?" she asked, bewildered.
"New truck."
"No!"
"Yes." He turned their truck in at
the beginning of the line of vehicles. She glanced toward the construction
crew, waiting for one of them to notice. They were intent upon their work.
Cain opened the door and hopped out, yanking
her with him. She tumbled out behind him with less grace.
"You can't do this," she whispered
urgently, tugging in vain on her half of the handcuffs. "Stealing the
first truck was bad enough."
"Keep your head down."
"Are you listening to me?"
"Of course I am. Stealing is wrong, bad,
evil. I've broken one of the commandments and I'm not a nice person. Did I miss
anything?" His gaze was sardonic, and because he outweighed her by one
hundred pounds, he slowly and methodically dragged her toward his intended
prey.
"Haven't you looked at the construction
crew?" she continued desperately. "These people are hard at work to
earn paychecks to support their families. You can't steal their only vehicle
while they try to earn a living like that. It's just … just—"
Cain whirled on her abruptly and the cold, hard
look in his eyes killed the words in her throat. Oh, she'd gotten to him all
right, and now she wished she'd never opened her mouth. He bent down over her,
huge and imposing, and she bent back as far as she was able. Even then, she
felt his breath against her cheek.
"Shut up," he whispered with
deceptive softness, his eyes pinning her into place. "I know what I'm
doing, Maggie. Don't ever think I don't know it's wrong. Don't ever think I
don't have regrets. But I'm ready to live with them and you're just along for
the ride. Got it?"
Weakly, she nodded her head, still unable to
breathe. Her stomach was suddenly tight. Her limbs quivered with an emotion she
didn't completely understand. He seemed fierce enough to tear up the world and
strong enough to do it.
He straightened abruptly, looking suddenly
uncomfortable. Then with another scowl, he turned back to the trucks. Very
slowly, she drew in a ragged breath.
He popped open the door of a little blue Toyota
truck. "Ladies first."
He turned back toward her. His eyes no longer
glowed with a feral gleam. Now they were perfectly expressionless, merely
waiting. "Come on, Maggie," he said and she caught the edge of warning
in his voice.
She stepped forward without another word and
slid into the vehicle.
With the gun tucked into the waistband of his
jeans, Cain lowered his head beneath the dash and got on with the business of
hot-wiring a car. The car roared to life in under sixty seconds. The man was
amazing. She couldn't even program her VCR and he made stealing a car look as
simple as turning on a flashlight.
"Here we go," he announced grimly and
swung the truck back onto the road.
The orange Caterpillar froze. The men glanced
over, then one of them did a double take. Maggie didn't have to roll down her
window to hear the man cry, "Hey, that's my truck!"
Cain said nothing, but his face was grim. He
floored the gas pedal and they zipped away. She glanced back at the poor
construction crew, the men waving their arms frantically for the vehicle to
stop. The men quickly disappeared, lost in the distance. In addition to
hot-wiring cars, Cain seemed to have a penchant for driving them
fast.
Where did men learn that kind of thing, anyway?
She looked at him with open reproach. "Do
you think this vehicle is insured?"
"I don't know." His voice was
clipped.
"I hope it was insured. I don't think that
man has much money."
Cain's grip tightened on the wheel.
"It must be very hard, working like that
to support your family," she continued relentlessly, "and then
through no fault of your own, having your truck stolen. What do you think he'll
tell his wife?"
"You don't even know if he has a
wife."
"He looks like he has a wife. Probably two
kids, too. Cute little kids who used to like to ride in the back of the truck
with the sun on their cheeks."
"All right!" Cain threw up his hands
and cracked as thoroughly as any suspect under intense interrogation.
"He'll get it back!" he exclaimed harshly. "We won't hurt the
vehicle, we won't take it far. End of day, he can still drive his truck home to
his wife and two kids and one hound dog. My God, you are like the Betty Crocker
version of the Gestapo!"
Maggie finally relaxed. "Yes, but it's
expensive to replace an automobile."
Cain appeared to grind his teeth, his gaze
locked on the road with almost grim determination. "You know," he
said abruptly. "I'm not as big a cad as you think, Maggie." He
glanced at her briefly. His tone was stiff. "I've gone hungry. Where I
grew up, dinner was what you could shoot or pick off a bush."
She looked at him expectantly but he didn't say
anything more on the subject. His attention focused one hundred percent on the
road.
"Look for a map," he ordered curtly.
But then it became unnecessary. Like a miracle,
a road appeared on his left, forking out. He didn't ask, he didn't debate. He
seized it as a gift from God and picked up the pace. That road led to another,
then another. If something appeared, he took it, and soon they were so lost
they couldn't even find themselves, let alone anyone in high pursuit. He
settled down to drive and the fields took on a green blur around him.
Cain had been eighteen when he'd first met Kathy. Eighteen and fresh from
Idaho, a hillbilly former survivalist who wanted desperately to join mainstream
society. Kathy hadn't laughed at him or made him feel self-conscious. Instead,
she'd seemed genuinely intrigued by his blunt statements and matter-of-fact
approach to life. If people wanted platitudes, they didn't hang out with Cain.
They'd been just friends in the beginning, Cain
too preoccupied with carving out a life to think of anything more. But then
things had slowly slid into place. He'd enrolled in Portland State and
discovered that the formulas, theories and music that so often haunted his mind
suddenly had meaning. His professors didn't greet him with raised brows or
dismissive gestures as his father had done. Instead their eyes widened and they
demanded to hear more.
Cain had always known he was different. Most
people thought in words; he had a tendency to think in numbers or notes. He was
most intrigued by the number eight, of course. It was the basis for everything.
Chess, mathematics, music, even the periodic table. Nature had recurring themes—life
truly seemed to favor the cycle—and inevitably, the basis of such cycles was
the number eight. He'd once tried to speak to his father about it. Zechariah
had said harshly, "Chess isn't about numbers, boy. Who cares about
numbers? Chess is all about killing the king, that's what you should care
about. We are the last of the Minutemen, the last of the true patriots. We must
safeguard freedom against the ZOG and don't you forget it."
Cain had never had anything in common with his
father.
But at Portland State, he'd suddenly belonged.
He'd made friends for the first time. At least he'd thought they were friends.
Later, he'd had cause to question everything.
He'd made it through college in three years,
taking classes year-round and discovering his true calling. Graduation had
given him more job offers than he'd known what to do with and suddenly life had
been on track.
And somehow, he and Kathy had become more than
friends. He didn't remember the exact moment, anymore. He didn't remember the
first date. He remembered other things instead. For his twenty-third birthday,
she'd given him a marble chess set and challenged him to a game of strip chess.
For each piece you lost, you had to remove a piece of clothing. Kathy had been
lousy at chess and he'd had her naked and laughing in no time. He remembered
the time she'd served him French toast wearing nothing but a pair of red high
heels.
She'd been a generous woman, warm, intelligent
and funny. She'd made a small home for him and given him laughter when he hadn't
laughed since his mother had died.
He wished sometimes he'd had something to give
her in return. Maybe it was the way he thought. Maybe it was because he'd spent
so much time alone after his mother's death, but he didn't fit like other people
fit. Even in the middle of a room filled with people, he was somehow separate,
apart, isolated. Kathy complained that he didn't seem to need her. He'd
answered that he didn't understand why she would want that. People should be
with each other out of choice, not need.