Authors: Anna del Mar
But Red had a caring voice too, a soft, sinuous, melodic voice he used when it suited him, one that had tricked me sometimes, especially at the beginning.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll help you out.”
He was lying. Again. Pleasantries were Red’s preamble. They came right before the horror. He was up to no good whenever he was nice to me. Poor Pepe. He’d been just a puppy. All those deaths. Red said they were my fault. I dug my nails deeper into my scalp.
“What’s wrong? Are you hurt? Lia?”
Smooth, his voice was so smooth. I resisted the urge to do as he said. He’d kill at will, regardless of what I did. He’d kill me too and, some days, I wished he’d do so, sooner rather than later. I rocked back and forth on my heels, shivering. If only I were invisible.
“Jesus, Lia, hang on.”
The metal floor rattled with a thud. Steps. Silence. Someone crouched next to me. I braced for the blow. Instead, a gentle hand landed on my shoulder. I shrank into the corner.
“Lia, baby, don’t be afraid.” The smooth voice again. “It’s me. Ash. Can you hear me?”
Lia
. Red never called me that. He didn’t know. He never knew. Red’s touch hurt. This touch didn’t hurt. Fear made it very hard to think straight.
Ash knew my real name. I hadn’t told him anything, but he’d known everything about me from the very beginning. I opened my eyes.
“I need you to let go, baby.” He pried my nails away from my head one finger at a time. “Can you feel it? You’re hurting yourself.”
Oh, yeah, I could feel where my nails had sunk into my scalp and drawn blood. I wanted to explain how pain was necessary to sanity, but I was shivering too hard. I had no voice left in me, no strength to spare beyond breathing.
“Those damn flashbacks, they seem so real, don’t they?” Ash kissed my hands and tucked them into my lap. “You’re in shock, but it’s fine, we can deal with shock.” He examined my scalp, blotting the scrapes with his fingers. “If you have to hurt yourself, the scalp is a good spot. Nobody can see the tiny cuts, but you can feel them so good.”
Did he really understand?
“When we got hit, pain was the only way I knew I was alive.” He wiped off a bit of blood dribbling down my forehead. “I looked around and saw the wounded and the dying, the mess of blood, gore and body parts. The pain told me I was dying, but it also told me that I was alive.”
He knew. He knew!
“You’re alive, Lia,” he said. “You’re still in the fight. You’re going to be fine. But we do need to get you out of here. Can you help me, please?”
Help him? Yes. That’s what I was supposed to do. Help Ash. My brain responded to that and so did my body. I reached out with a trembling hand and touched his face, tracing the grim lines bracketing his mouth and the worry lines etched between his eyes.
“Is it really you?” I said. “Are you sure?”
“It’s me.” He held out his cane. “Remember this?”
Ash carried a cane. But Red was tricky. Red was cunning and sly.
“The man who hurt you,” Ash said. “Did he speak to you like I do?”
I shuddered. “Sometimes he pretended to be nice.”
“But did he like talking to you? Did he like listening to your voice like I do? Did he tell you the truth, like I always do?”
“No truth,” I mumbled. “Never the truth.”
“Did he cuddle you in bed every night?” Ash put his arms around my shoulder and, rubbing the cold out of my arms, drew me against him. “Did he watch you dream while you slept? Did he love holding you like I do?”
My eyes queried his. “You love holding me?”
“I do,” he said.
I looked down on my knees. “You like holding me even though you know I’m dirty?”
“You might be a little smelly at the moment.” He lifted up my chin, made eye contact and smiled. “Nothing a shower can’t fix.”
“Not dirty outside,” I mumbled. “Dirty inside.”
He frowned. “Inside?”
“Like dirty laundry, you know, used and stained.”
“Oh.” His Adam’s apple bounced up and down his throat.
I looked away. Why had I brought this up, here and now? It was something I’d never said before, something I hadn’t acknowledged until this very moment, not even to myself.
“Lia, baby, look at me.” He thumbed the line of my jaw and waited until I met his stare. “Whatever happened to you, you’re none of those things. You’ll never be that to me.”
“But you know, right?”
“I got blown to pieces by an IED that killed some of the best men I knew.” He wiped the tears from my cheeks. “You got messed up by a son of a bitch who fucked up your life. No lies. No pretenses.”
I leaned my head against his shoulder and breathed in his scent, which was hard, because the stink of the dumpster had poisoned my sense of smell. Still, I recognized water, earth and cedar; consolation, shelter and courage.
“Just in case you still have doubts...” He lowered his head and kissed me, a soft brush of lips that confirmed his identity for good. My body ratified his DNA as the only person on this earth who could make me feel like life was worth the pain even as we sat at the bottom of a giant garbage bin in a poorly lit back alley.
“It
is
you,” I whispered.
“Now you know.” He braced his hands under my elbows. “Can you get up?”
I got to my feet. My knees were iffy. I clung to him until I found my balance. Everything looked hazy, undefined and out of focus. I shuffled toward the light as if I was ancient.
Ash clasped his hands and offered a stirrup to my foot. “Ready?”
My brain sputtered an afterthought. I remembered something important. I turned around in circles until I spotted the little raccoon. By now, the creature panted with exhaustion. Its little pink tongue stuck out of its mouth. Its eyes flickered with desperation.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Ash cautioned. “Raccoons carry lots of diseases and this one could maul you.”
“He’s tired.” I approached the creature tentatively. “I doubt he has much fight left in him.”
“Let me do it,” Ash said.
“I can do it.”
He glanced at my shaky hands. “Are you sure?”
“I
need
to do it.”
“Okay.” He handed me his utility knife. “But you can’t go at it all alone.” He took off his jacket and circled the growling raccoon. “You’ve got to learn to rely on your friends. You’ve got to learn to trust your team.”
In one swift movement, he flung his jacket over the raccoon, dove to the ground and held it down. “Now,” he said. “Be careful.”
“Easy.” I knelt next to the raccoon. “Let’s get out of here.”
My fingers quaked like aspen leaves, but the ropes were frayed and easy to cut through. My knuckles brushed against the raccoon’s coat. It was so soft and it reminded me of poor Pepe. Damn the tears streaming down my face. The old wounds gaped and oozed, but I forced myself to breathe and cut the last rope.
“Ready?” Ash said.
I stepped away. “Go home, buddy.”
Ash went from knees to feet in a flash. The raccoon leaped and, hackles raised, lunged toward me. Ash intercepted it with his cane, which ended up getting the brunt of the critter’s frustrations, before it bounced off the walls and darted out of the dumpster.
“You’re welcome,” I called after him.
“That was close.” Ash cocked his eyebrows. “Better?”
“Much.” My knees locked and my mind flowed with a measure of clarity.
“Up,” he said and this time I accepted the boost and vaulted over the side.
Behind me, Ash wrapped his fingers over the edge of the metal wall and pulled himself up and out like the athlete he was. He landed on his good foot without a sound.
The cool air freshened my lungs and cleared my mind. The night was quiet. I gawked. Charlie Nowak was fastened to the lamppost by the chain coiled around his neck. His jacket was ripped in several places. Bruises darkened his face and blood oozed from his violently crooked nose. He wasn’t breathing too comfortably either.
“Once a bully, always a bully,” Ash said. “If I remember right, you were also the class clown.”
“Please,” Charlie rasped. “I can’t breathe!”
“A pile of shit like you is a waste of good air.” Ash undid the chains from the lamppost. “If you ever bother Lia again, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?”
“Y-yes.”
It wasn’t a threat or a boast. It was a promise. There was no violence to Ash’s voice, no showing off, bluster or excess testosterone. He meant exactly what he said.
“Walk.” He led Charlie by the chain. “Climb up the crates.”
“But why?” Charlie struggled to scramble up the crates with his hands fastened behind his back.
“Genius.” Ash boosted Charlie up. “You’re about to get a dose of your own medicine.”
“Ash?”
“Stay out of this, Lia.”
“But—”
“No buts,” Ash said.
“It was a joke,” Charlie said. “I never meant to hurt her.”
“But you did,” Ash said. “You frightened her, and for that, you’ll pay.”
Ash grabbed his cane by the ends and, wedging it beneath Charlie, pushed him up as if he was a barbell. Charlie teetered on his belly at the edge of the dumpster, babbling senseless pleas. With a final thrust Ash pushed him in. Charlie made a monumental racket when he landed. Ash closed the lid and jammed it shut.
“That’s done.” He wiped the dirt off his hands.
“Remind me never to piss you off.” I wavered. “We can’t leave him there all night.”
“After what he did to you, I could.”
The fury I spotted in his eyes frightened me. It brought memories of Red’s simmering violence, always boiling beneath his skin. I stumbled away from Ash. Were all men vicious at heart?
Ash pulled me into his embrace. “Don’t run away from me.” He kissed the top of my head. “I said I
could
leave him there to be shredded by the garbage truck. But I won’t.”
I let out a long breath and held on to him with all I had. I didn’t realize how stiff and cold I was until I made contact with his body.
“Repeat after me.” He placed his jacket over my shoulders. “I will not get into a smelly dumpster all by myself. I’ll count on other people to help to solve my problems.”
It was a credo that went against everything I believed.
“Others can help,” Ash said. “You don’t have to go at it alone.”
But I did have to go at it alone, if I wanted my friends—and Ash—to survive.
I gulped down the fear and forced my thoughts to flow. “How did you end up showing up when you did?”
“I had some informal meetings with a couple of people tonight, including the sheriff.”
“You went in the bar?”
“I did,” he said.
“Wow,” I said. “I bet that took some serious effort on your part.”
“The one time I manage to go in there and sit for a while, and you’re nowhere to be found.”
“Why do I have a feeling that you being around wasn’t a coincidence?”
Ash ignored the question and whistled instead. Neil sprang from the darkness, trailing his service leash.
“Where was he?” I said.
“I wanted him to hang back, so I left him in the truck.” Ash picked up the leash and patted Neil behind the ears. “You did good, boy. It’s something we’ve been working on. I didn’t want him in a fight.”
I squeezed his hand. “I didn’t want you in a fight either.”
“Most fights are better fought sooner, rather than later.”
“But how did you know about Charlie?”
“It wasn’t so hard to figure out,” Ash said. “I put my ear to the wind. The day after you came home with those bruises on your wrists, his guys were calling him ‘Blue Balls.’”
“You did more than put your ear to the wind,” I realized. “You decided he would try again. That’s why you insisted on driving me to and from work. Have you been waiting all these nights for him to make his move?”
“I told you I’d watch your back and I meant it.”
“But Ash—”
“If all the intelligence suggests that an attack is coming, then it’s coming.” he said. “I’d rather fight on my own terms and turf, than when it suits the other guy best.”
“You can’t do this.”
“What?”
“Fight my battles, come to my defense.”
He rolled his eyes. “So now you’ve graduated from being my caretaker to acting as my personal shrink, and you’re drawing all kinds of conclusions, including the one that infers that I’m somehow craving fights.”
“If it fits...”
“Then you don’t know squat about me,” he said. “You’re also blind as a bat.”
“You have to stop coming to my aid,” I said. “It’s dangerous. I don’t want your apples.”
“Apples?”
“Great-grandfather’s skittish mare?”
“Ah, that old story.” He had the grace to look chastened. “I thought Jordan would get it.”
“He got it all right,” I said. “But you don’t. I want you to stop trying to help me. It’ll kill you.”
“And that matters to you? Whether I live or die?”
“Of course,” I said. “A lot.”
“Lia Stuart.” He smiled. “That’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
He kissed me again, a hard kiss that had glorious music playing in my ears. I swear. I couldn’t reason when he kissed me. I couldn’t even stand on my own two feet without swaying like a drunk.
He wrenched his lips from mine. “Christ, kissing you is like an ambush to my body.”
“Lobotomy,” I muttered, almost incoherent with want. “Electroshock.”
He smiled. “We’d better stop. I can’t be held responsible for my actions otherwise. Come along.”
“Where are we going?”
He squeezed my hand. “Try to roll with the punches. Okay?”
Chapter Eleven
Ash, Neil and I walked out of alleyway and around to the parking lot where the truck was parked. The sheriff, Mario and Barb and Gary Woods were having a smoke outside the bar. I tried to shake off Ash’s hold but he clung to my hand as we approached the little group.
“Phew.” Barb waved her hand in front of her nose. “What’s that smell? Something’s stinking up this joint tonight.”
Ash ignored Barb’s remarks and walked right up to the sheriff. “You might want to have a look at the dumpster behind the building,” he said. “I took care of some trash that might be of interest to you.”
“Dang it, boy.” The sheriff dropped his cigarette on the ground and squashed it with his boot. “You didn’t do anything silly, did you, son?”
“Only what had to be done to protect my girl.”
His girl?
The eyes of everyone in the group turned to me. Barb gawked. I’d tried to prevent this very thing from happening, but Ash had disregarded all my warnings. How was I supposed to keep him safe when he did stuff like this?
“Gary,” Ash said, “I’ve known you for a long time. You’re a decent man. I haven’t decided yet what to do about the lease, but I can’t do business with you if your foreman’s out of control.”
“Excuse me?” Gary said.
“You heard me. Charlie Nowak has been harassing Lia. Today, he tried to trap her in the dumpster. I judge a man by the quality of his friends, and Charlie is rotten piece of shit.” Ash turned to Mario. “I’m going to take Lia home now.”
“By all means,” Mario said. “You okay, hon?”
I nodded, because I couldn’t speak. The night had rattled me in all kinds of violent ways, but my brain was stuck on two words.
His girl
. I’d never been anybody’s girlfriend. People had died just for being my friends.
We drove out of town with our windows cracked open to dispel the smell clinging to us. Neil found the stink fascinating. From his perch on the backseat, he kept trying to bury his nose in my hair.
The darkness hurled a dusting of fine snow at us. The truck’s headlights illuminated thin flakes swirling in the wind like silver. Ash concentrated on the driving. My heart and my brain waged a fierce battle. It hurt like hell, but the brain won at the expense of the heart.
“We need to clarify some things,” I said.
He glanced at me. “I was afraid of that.”
“Tonight you called me your girl in front of all those people.”
“Yes.”
“It was a dangerous thing to do,” I said. “And it’s not true.”
His knuckles whitened about the wheel. “Here we go again.”
“I mean it,” I said. “I appreciate your help. I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t showed up. But you don’t have to tell everyone and their mothers that I’m your girlfriend in order to protect me. Now we have to do something drastic to dispel that very dangerous myth.”
“Lia,” he said in that stubborn tone of his. “You
are
my girlfriend.”
“I’m not.”
“But you are,” he insisted. “You told Gunny Watkins. It was your idea in the first place.”
“I’m your caretaker. Remember? I’m not your real girlfriend. I’m your pretend girlfriend.”
“Maybe at the beginning,” he said. “But you don’t like pretending and neither do I. I might be a tad literal sometimes, but here’s how it goes. I promised you I’ve got your back and I do. You said you were my girlfriend and, as it turned out, you are.”
“Ash, please,” I said. “You can’t even flirt with the notion. I can’t love anybody.”
“I know.” Resignation tainted his voice. “Because people suffer when they love you, people die. I admit it, it’s pretty damn grim.”
“Don’t you dare make light of the danger.”
“I’m not minimizing the danger. I believe you. But right this minute, you’ve got another problem.”
“What is it?”
His eyes burrowed into my head. “You like me.”
“I don’t.”
“I don’t mean to be cocky, but you have feelings for me. You take care of me, but you also care for me.”
“How would you know that?”
“I’ve got ears to hear and eyes to see,” he said. “I’m not a total fool. The things you do for me? You care for me. I think you may even love me. I’m not letting go of that. For the life of me, I can’t figure out how I got so lucky, but hell, I can’t complain.”
I willed my mouth to close. “It’s not true. It’s not possible. It’s not safe.”
“Sorry,” he said. “You. Love. Me.”
“Don’t say it, Ash, please. He’ll come. You’ll die.”
“Who, Lia? Tell me: who will come?”
The memory hit me, Red’s chilling grin as he squeezed the trigger and killed a stranger right before my eyes.
“Did you see the way the motherfucker looked at you?”
Red had asked me as the man bled out in the alleyway.
“No respect.”
“Ash, you have to leave now.” I panicked. “Or maybe I’ll leave. Yes, that may be the safest course of action. He’ll never have any reason to come here if I take off.”
He stared at me as if I’d grown horns. “I’m talking about love here and you’re talking about bolting?”
“Stop it, Ash.”
“Then help me out, please. I’m dating a girl who keeps her go bag packed.”
“You’re not dating me and I’m not your girlfriend,” I snapped. “Don’t you understand?”
He shrugged. “You love me and there’s nothing you can say or do that’ll change that. So I think we should just accept that and move on.”
I threw my hands up in the air. I’d squared off with Mount Everest and it wasn’t about to move. “You’re crazy, you know that? You drive the right kind of truck, because your skull is thick as a ram’s. You’re reckless.”
“And you look pretty when you’re mad, even if at this moment you’re also very stinky.”
He turned the truck onto a snow-dusted gravel road. I realized I hadn’t been paying attention to our route or to the fact that the snow had ceased falling and the night had cleared.
“Where are we?” I said. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.” He parked before a rusted gate topped by a sign that said Trespassers Will Be Shot.
“What are you doing?” I said when he opened the door. “I don’t want to be shot.”
He hopped down from the truck, limped over to the gate and, after fiddling with the lock, opened it and motioned for me to drive the truck through.
“What now?” I said to Neil as I slid over to the driver’s seat. “Your owner is the most maddening human on the planet.”
Neil grumbled in what I interpreted as complete agreement.
Ash closed the gate behind us and climbed on the seat next to me. I drove the truck for a while, edging potholes as big as moon craters and mounting rock beds that tested the Ram’s clearing. We passed an abandoned rock quarry and the remains of an old mine.
“What’s all this?” I said. “The road to the end of the world?”
“Almost there,” he said.
At last, the headlights illuminated the end of the abysmal road, where an old cabin stood like a relic of a time gone by. The rocky slopes of a spectacular mountain rose behind the cabin, framed by the brilliance of a million stars.
“Wow.” I turned off the ignition and took in the extraordinary sight. “What’s this place?”
“Welcome to Heaven.” Ash too stared at the sky. “This was our family’s original homestead. We’ve been using it as a hunting cabin for generations.”
“Is this part of your lands?”
“The best part, if you ask me,” he said. “Come on.”
We stopped by the rustic cabin but only briefly. It was one room, with an old heating stove and a pair of bunk beds at one end. I was surprised because even though it was obviously very old, it was clean and provisioned. The cabin had no electricity or running water, which probably explained why Ash had chosen not to live there when he returned to Copperhill. He lit a miner’s lamp and, after grabbing a bag from an old cabinet, motioned for me to follow him.
The night was clear but cold. The stars lit our path, along with the lamp. Neil led the way down a deer track that ran along a tumbling creek. The song of water on stone enlivened the narrowing canyon and appeased my frazzled nerves. The track dead-ended at the base of the mountain. Neil, Ash and the light disappeared into what looked like a crack in the mountain.
I peered into the fissure suspiciously. A cave? Not another dark, confined place. I couldn’t handle any more of that tonight.
Ash reappeared briefly, holding up the lamp and grinning like a toddler with a secret. “Come on.”
“But—”
“I promise, you’re going to like it,” he said, before disappearing again.
I stepped into the crack with trepidation. My steps crunched on a bed of gravel and sand. I took a deep breath and scurried across a short, natural tunnel to emerge at the other side, where I came to a dead stop and gawked.
I stood in a hanging valley perched between high peaks that rose dark and silent all around me. The valley opened up to what would have been an expansive view of the range during the day. In the darkness, it looked like a roiling sea, frozen beneath the stars. A tumbling creek crossed the vale and dropped over the edge. Neil stood like Simba on top of a boulder at the crook of the valley, framed by a cloud of steam.
I edged my way around the boulders and entered yet another world, where three hot springs bubbled and steamed to the side of the creek where they formed deep pools. The air filled my lungs with the bland scent of rock and minerals. The miner’s lamp burned at the edge of the middle pool, casting a magical glow on the frothy water.
Ash stood waist deep in the center of the spring. Steam wafted from his upper body. He looked like some divine creature fashioned from granite, a spawn of rock and water, nature’s exquisite work of art. The scars made elegant patterns on his body, like mineral veins on marble. The pool hissed and gurgled around him, warbling the same jubilant notes that played in my heart. Water dripped from his head and torso, worshipped his body and celebrated his existence, claiming him as surely as I longed to claim him. The current foamed and fizzled against his skin, an intimate caress that had me dripping too.
“That pool over there is too hot,” he said. “That one over there is not hot enough for a night like this one. But this one, this one’s perfect.”
It was perfect, but only because he was in it.
“What are you waiting for?” Ash said. “Come in.”
Two sets of old arguments seesawed in my mind. Not in the plan. Very tempting. Not smart. But I stank. It was a great reason to justify my impulse. I’d have to take off my clothes. The mere thought had my stomach churning and my face burning.
“I won’t look.” Ash turned his back to me. “I promise.”
The disconnect between my brain and body widened. The sight of his broad shoulders and back didn’t help. Then my brain kicked in.
Don’t do it. Bad idea. Run, run now.
I turned around to go back to the cabin, but instead, I found myself shedding my clothes with astonishing swiftness. In my head, a fresh new voice cheered me on, urging me to seize the moment, to live beyond survival, to live for the sake of living.
The spring welcomed my body with a delicious embrace. I immersed myself in the hot pool until the water closed above my head. I held my breath and stayed underwater for as long as I could. The tiny scrapes I’d inflicted on my scalp stung at first. Then the sting went away, replaced by an increasing sense of full-body healing. My muscles relaxed. The knot in my stomach loosened up. The cold fused into my bones melted along with the fear. I looked up. Beyond the layers of flowing water, the galaxy smiled down on me.
When I finally came up for breath, the air that poured in cleared my lungs and refreshed my senses. The stink of the dumpster was gone for good. Where I stood, the water covered me comfortably all the way to my armpits. Across the spring, Ash sat on a rocky ledge, staring at me with a look that curled my toes.
“Nice?” he said.
“More like magical.”
His smile rivaled the sky. “Want to come over?”
“I... I don’t know.” I gulped loudly. “Yes and no?”
“Okay,” he said. “I get that.”
It was only a flicker in his stare, but I was like a satellite tuned exclusively to his channel. Despite his best efforts to conceal it, a look of resignation dulled his eyes. So many questions. Should I? Could I? I was tired of fighting myself, eroded from resisting my impulses. I knew what he wanted—no—what he needed. I needed it too. Could I do it for him? Could I do it for myself?
I traced the spring’s swirling whirlpools with my hands. “I’m really scared.”
“Because you think someone will try to hurt me if he thinks we’re together?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve been to war,” he said. “I’ve volunteered to go on missions with piss-poor odds for success. This is my life too. Don’t I get to pick the risks I take? Don’t I get a choice?”
“You’ve been away for a long time,” I said. “You were hurt. You were in the hospital for a while. Have you considered that maybe this isn’t a choice on your part?”
“Ah.” His lips pressed into a tight, white line. “Let me get this straight: my personal shrink thinks I’m drawn to her out of necessity or reaction rather than choice.”
“Admit it,” I said. “Given our situation, it could be.”
“Christ, Lia.” He shook his head. “You’re so smart and yet you can be so clueless. It’s like you’re tone-deaf or something. You never know how people really feel about you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Jordan,” he said. “The guys at the bar. Me. We’re all into you, and you don’t even notice.”
“That’s not true.” Why would anyone in their right mind want me? “But here’s something that’s true: you’re healing quickly. Anytime now, Gunny Watkins will grant you a full medical release. You’ll be able to meet new people, go places—”
“And where would you have me go?”
“Wherever you like,” I said. “You’ll be healthy and free.”
“What about you?”
“I can never be free.”
“Hear me out,” he said. “And try not to be mad at me.”
“Mad at you?”
“Gunny Watkins gave me the medical release when she called that day in the truck a while back.”
My mouth fell open. “What?”