Mean Streak(40)

“You gave me your word that you’d take me back, yet here I am.”

“I’ll see you safely back. Just not tonight.”

“No, tonight you were too busy burglarizing a doctor’s office and making me your accomplice.”

“I forced you to at gunpoint.”

“Not exactly.”

“Close enough. If the need ever arises, you can lay all the blame on me.”

“How? I don’t even know your name.”

He glanced at her. “You’re beginning to catch on.”

He spoke rather tongue-in-cheek, but there was truth in the statement. When she did go home, how would she ever explain him, explain any of this? Everything that had taken place since she regained consciousness in his rustic cabin seemed beyond the realm of possibility.

These kinds of adventures simply didn’t happen to people like her. In her wide circle of acquaintances, no one she knew had experienced such an unthinkable departure from their world and their ordered life within it. Was bizarre the new norm? It seemed so, because reality had become surreal.

Or was this reality? Had she really burglarized a doctor’s office? Was her fellow criminal a man who’d admitted to being in hiding from the authorities? Had she eaten from his table, used the bar soap in his shower, worn his clothes, come perilously close to making love to him?

Or would she soon wake up and find herself lying next to Jeff in their well-decorated, climate-controlled bedroom where the temperature remained constant year-round, where one day and night were more or less the same as the ones before and the ones after, where nothing too cataclysmic ever happened? Would she shake him awake, and laugh, and say, “You won’t believe the wild and woolly dream I had.”

But that scenario was difficult to envision. She couldn’t pull it into sharp focus. Details of it—the texture of her favorite sheets, the color of the bedroom walls, the sound of Jeff’s soft snores—were disturbingly indistinct, while the profile of the man beside her was shockingly familiar.

She couldn’t call him by name, but she could describe the crescent-shaped scar above his left eyebrow. His silver-threaded hairline, the lines bracketing his mouth, the ever-changing facets of his eyes—these were only a few of the many aspects of him that had become well known to her.

His voice, which at first had seemed without inflection, could be very expressive if one knew the nuances to listen for. He could whisper, when one would think that a man of his size was incapable of speaking that softly. He never failed to fold the dishtowel after using it. When he sat in his recliner to read, he mindlessly stroked the corner of his lips with his thumb, and after adding a log to the grate, he always dusted his hands on the seat of his jeans.

He’d turned her into a criminal tonight. A week ago, she would have been flabbergasted by the prospect of such a thing. But as she considered it now, she realized she wasn’t as scandalized as she should be.

When they came around a curve in the road and there was the familiar split-rail fence, the gate, his cabin, the thought that flitted through her mind was, We’re home.

She was accepting of and comfortable with the outrageousness of her situation. That, more than anything, should have frightened her.

He slowed down. “Should we stop? Is there anything you need from inside?”

“I don’t think so.”

For days she’d wanted to escape his cabin. Now anxiety tugged at her as they drove past the relative safety it represented. “Regardless of my objections, I want you to know that I do think it’s noble of you to help this young woman,” she said. “I even admire the extremes to which you’ve gone in order to help her.”

He didn’t respond, sensing there was more she had to say.

“But this isn’t my specialty and I’m ill-equipped. And if her condition is as serious as you indicate, despite her scary brothers, despite you, I’ll do whatever is necessary to get her to a hospital.”

“She won’t go, Doc. I told you. She was in Drakeland this morning. She could have gone to any number of clinics. She didn’t. She called her brothers to come get her and bring her home. They were on their way when they wrecked the truck.”

“Are the brothers expecting us?”

“I got their grudging consent to bring back a doctor. Took some persuasion from their mother.”

“There’s a mother?”

“She introduced herself as Pauline. Don’t hold the sons against her. She’s pathetic, beaten down. She’s very worried about Lisa.”

Up ahead she caught a glimpse of lights through the trees. “Is that it?”

“That’s it.”

“So they are close neighbors.”

“I already admitted to lying about that. Now, pay attention. This is important. I can’t turn my back on those guys. So if I say ‘git,’ you go, understand? No questions, no arguments, no hesitation. You just do what I say, when I say.”

“Are they really that dangerous?”

He clenched his jaw, and the ferocity of his expression was chilling. “They’re stupid and mean, and that makes them dangerous.” He patted in the vicinity of his waist. “I’ve got the pistol handy.”

“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”

“What should make you feel better is that I won’t hesitate to use it.”