Passions in the North Country (Siren Publishing Classic) (25 page)

He looked at her in awe. “Where do you get the energy?”

“I don’t know,” she said with a laugh, “but I’ll have to find some more right now.” She flitted around the room like a bird accidentally freed from its cage. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Devon, who was as tired as Jenny from moving and arranging things all day, walked toward the door. “I guess I’d better make sure everything is ready in the ballroom.”

“You’re not too tired?”

“I am, but it has to be done.”

“Take a rest,” she said. “I’ll tell you what. To celebrate our latest success in a long line of successes, how about having dinner with me this evening, sir?”

He was exceptionally pleased with the offer. “All right. I’d like that. Where do you want to go?”

“We could have something here,” Jenny suggested.

“All right,” he said with obvious pleasure.

They chatted until the pizza man came, then sat at her table and shared the meal. The surroundings were modest and the food was simple, but Jenny was happier than any time when she and Ivan had dined out on the finest cuisine at the fanciest restaurants. The day had been long and she was tired, yet she wanted Devon to stay. His presence filled the air with a special magic and, she knew the moment he walked out the door her room would seem empty and dull.

“Tell me about your life,” he said.

“It would bore you.”

“Not at all.”

“Well,” began Jenny cautiously, fear rising up in her, “I lived in Los Angeles for the last few years and worked at a big hotel there.” She explained how she had tired of the stress and the impersonal aspect of the work. “So, I decided I needed a change and I ended up here.”

“I know your work history,” Devon said. “Tell me about you.”

“Not much to tell, really,” she answered evasively.

He wanted to know something in particular. “Do you think you’ll stay?”

“I’ve got no desire to go anywhere else right now. What about you?”

“I’m sick of moving around,” Devon said, “and never having a real home.”

“I know what you mean. The company my father worked with forced us to relocate every two or three years. I saw a lot of different places, but it was awful changing homes and schools just when I started to feel comfortable. It’s funny, but I’ve met more people than most others will in a whole lifetime, yet I never made a lot of friends. I learned not to make friends because that made it a lot easier when I had to leave.”

Devon looked at her with the rare understanding of someone making a spiritual connection, but then he drew back. “At least you had a home because you had a family. I never knew my father and my mother gave me up when I was an infant. After that I bounced around in foster families until I was old enough to make it on my own.”

“Where did you get all those skills? You seem to be able to do almost anything with your hands.”

“It came naturally to me, so maybe my father was a tradesman.”

“You never met your own father?” she said, shaking her head.

“Never met my own father or mother. I was a lone wolf, as they say.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You can’t miss what you never had, so I don’t feel bad about not knowing my parents. It made me independent. All my life I tried to learn as much as I could, and I took jobs that taught me things.”

“I’ve wondered about something for a long time,” Jenny said.

“Yes?”

“Why did you buy the North Country Inn? Usually outgoing people gravitate toward businesses such as this, but you, if you don’t mind me saying so, seem like…a private person.”

“I’m not a great people person,” he admitted.

“You’re getting better,” she said, “and I think you could be phenomenal if you tried.” She comforted him with a smile. “Why did you buy the hotel?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me.”

“No, it’s stupid, really.”

“Tell me,” she urged, looking intently at him.

He nodded in surrender. “When I was twelve years old I was staying with foster parents who tried their best to give me a normal life. I was a loner, though, and spent most of the time in my room or off by myself. One weekend they took me and their son away for the weekend and we ended up at the Riverview Hotel. It turned out to be the best time I ever had in my life. I felt like I was part of a family, like I belonged. It was an amazing feeling.”

“What did you do here?”

“We went to the town’s little fair, spent a whole day at White Sands Beach, and stayed here for two nights. Believe it or not, we actually sat in front of the fireplace and roasted marshmallows.” He looked at Jenny and his face turned crimson. “Sound foolish?”

“Not at all!” she answered, feeling deeply touched.

“It was all over so fast, but for the first time in my life I felt whole. I had fun and I felt like I was—”

“What?” Jenny asked when he hesitated. “You felt like you were what?”

“Loved,” he said, trying with all his strength to keep his voice from breaking. “When you’re a kid without a family, you can’t know how alone you feel. But that weekend I was happy. When I saw this place for sale and there were rumors of tearing it down, I guess I just wanted to preserve that special moment from my past.”

“Down at the river house there was a picture of you and an older man. He looked native. Was that from one of your jobs?”

“Yes. I worked in a wilderness park as assistant the summer before my final year at university. I was assigned to accompany a ranger named Lawrence who forgot more about the wilderness than most people will ever know. He died last year and I went to his funeral.” His lower lip quivered. “I admired that man more than anyone I’ve ever met.”

“That’s really special, Devon. You really enjoyed working with him?”

“Very much. Every day was different and the country was magnificent. I have a lot of memories from that summer that I’ll never forget.”

Jenny was absolutely intrigued. “What was the most memorable thing that happened?”

Devon assumed a serious expression. “The most memorable thing was actually a tragedy.”

“Oh?” Jenny asked with great interest.

“At the height of the tourist season, a teenage boy was mauled and killed by a black bear.”

“How awful!” Jenny said with a grimace.

“People think of bears as big, cuddly toys,” Devon said, “but plenty of people have been killed by bears, especially black bears.”

“How did it happen?”

“There were hundreds of people camping in the park, including students on weekend field trips. When we got the news of a rogue bear who had threatened some kids in the north section, all the rangers were assigned specific quadrants and told to canoe through the area, alerting everyone to the danger. Lawrence understood animals and told me this creature had the dark spirit. It was either dump
fed, sick, or crazy, but he told me the bear would kill again if it wasn’t stopped.”

“Oh, my,” Jenny said, totally intrigued.

“It was late afternoon, about seven miles deep in the woods, when we heard frantic calls. We hurried up the lake and found a teenager in the water hanging onto a dead tree quite a distance from shore. He had a broken ankle, was bleeding from a big gash on his arm, and he was in great pain. He told us a black bear had chased him and his friend and that he was able to get away only by running into the water. We asked where his friend was. He said he had no idea, but he heard a scream. That was an hour earlier.”

Jenny shook her head and listened like a child beside a campfire who’s engrossed in a ghost story.

“Since we had to get the man out right away and our canoe only held two, Lawrence told me to take him back while he hunted for the bear. But Lawrence’s sight was beginning to fail and he would have been easy pickings for a bear, especially in the dark. I explained that since he knew the park much better than me, he should take the man out to safety, using the route that would be best. There was a brief argument, but Lawrence eventually paddled me to shore and dropped me off. He handed me his rifle, the rifle his father had given to him.”

“He just dropped you off?” Jenny cried incredulously, her eyes opened wide. “You were alone?”

“I was.”

She breathed out loudly. “Whoa. That must have been gut check time.”

“For sure,” he said. “When Lawrence dropped me off the boy was about two hundred yards out in the lake, clinging to that tree and in a state of shock. Lawrence looked at me and told me the other teenager was dead. His face was gone, his stomach had been eaten, and probably part of his legs. The bear was close to the corpse, not more than one hundred yards away. He would stay until the food was gone. That’s where I was to go. ‘Find his food and kill him,’ Lawrence said. ‘But he is as quiet as a ghost. You must be quieter, and you must make the shot.’ Then he left, picked up the boy, and paddled away.” Devon paused. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard a greater silence than at the moment Lawrence disappeared around the corner of the lake.”

Jenny put her hand on his hand, her eyes gleaming.

“I suddenly noticed crows sitting at the tops of trees fifty paces to the left, deep in an old spruce forest. It was swampy, dark, almost all the trees were dead and had an ominous look, like something in a nightmare. I clung to the gun and slowly started walking toward the crows. I tried to be quiet, but sticks and branches would snap underfoot, leaving me to wonder if he heard me. Was he crouching behind that windfall, or sleeping after a huge meal? I had no idea, but several times I stopped, upward of ten minutes at a stretch, and I would watch and listen, scanning the woods with my finger on the trigger. After half an hour I saw something white. I crouched down and realized it was a shirt, only a small part of which was not saturated with blood. My heart stopped for a minute and jumped into my throat. I thought I heard something and lifted the gun, staring down the barrel. But nothing materialized. I slowly stepped forward and saw the dead boy. It was just as Lawrence said. His face had literally been ripped off and there was a cavern where his stomach used to be. There was actually steam rising from the opening.”

“Oh,” Jenny groaned.

“Should I stop?”

“No,” she insisted. “Tell me everything just as it was.”

“I saw a big rock about forty paces from the body. It was huge, about ten feet high and covered in moss. I walked over to it and realized that with the natural ledges in the granite, I could climb to a point just below the top. Right there, as if it was designed that way, was a natural crevice where I could sit quite comfortably and in almost total camouflage.” He lifted his eyebrows. “Then the waiting game.”

“Wow,” Jenny said, her eyes sparkling.

“At first I measured time in seconds, then minutes, then hours. That gave me a lot of time to think about my life, Jenny. Lawrence and I had traveled together for months and he became the father I never had. He was the bravest, finest man I ever met. He taught me many things, but what I remember the most was his philosophy on life. He told me that if I was to die, I had to die with honor, to die without fear. But now I had to kill with honor, to kill without fear.”

“Tell me how you felt, Devon. Where was your head at that moment in time?”

“I was scared and I felt that there was no shame in being scared. Lawrence told me he had been scared in his life, but not anymore. He had gotten past it, and by doing so he had become free.” He looked at her. “At that time, though, I was as scared as a woman would be if she was running from a man threatening to kill her.”

Jenny looked hard him, but said nothing.

“If I was a woman in that situation,” Devon continued, “I would get as far away as possible. I would hide in an unlikely place, trying to avoid unnecessary exposure. Maybe I would dye my hair, change my name.”

She studied his expression, trying to understand exactly what he knew.

“I had lied on the application,” Devon said, “telling them I was an experienced woodsman who often camped solo in the wilderness for days. Truth is, I had very little experience. All I knew I learned from Lawrence. He liked me and he was patient, but I never told him I was terrified of black bears.”

“You were specifically scared of black bears?”

He nodded. “Terrified. From my earliest childhood I had nightmares about them stalking me, their dark eyes, claws, teeth…breath. I used to wake up screaming as I thought of them walking toward me, refusing to stop. And now I was looking at a boy, a healthy, happy boy who had just been killed, as in my nightmare. This time it was no nightmare. It was real. The blood, the intestines on the ground, the faceless body—it was all so very real. That boy had loving parents, maybe grandparents, brothers and sisters, friends. I felt so sorry for them.”

Jenny shook her head with a look of empathy and horror.

“It was early in the morning, a few minutes to three. The moon was huge and full. It cast an incredibly eerie light over the landscape. A cold dampness had settled over me and I drew up my collar and shifted my weight. Then I saw him. At first it was just a slight movement in the moonlight and hardly registered, but then I saw his head. He was huge. Well over three hundred pounds. His face was broad and his eyes were beady. He hesitated, testing the air, sniffing for several minutes, but Lawrence had taught me well and I had set up downwind.” He paused. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”

“Yes,” she said.

He took a deep breath and Jenny could tell he was reliving it in intricate detail, running over it in his mind.

Devon waited several seconds before continuing. “The bear had come in as silently as a ghost. One second, nothing. The next second, he was there. I could see him plainly in the moonlight, and I could hear his breathing. He was really quite loud, either sick, I thought, or insane.” Devon sighed. “The bear slowly walked right up to the boy and bit him on the back of the neck. I could hear bones breaking. The teenager was like a rag doll in his mouth and the bear started to drag him back into the bushes. He made low grunting noises as he pulled. He wanted to be alone and he wanted to eat his meal in peace, but I knew what I had to do.”