Mean Streak(64)

So here he was: the reason for her absence, a witness to her homecoming.

A potbellied man in uniform alighted from the driver’s side of the official vehicle, opened the rear door, and assisted her out of the backseat. With a heavy blanket draped around her shoulders, she looked small and overwhelmed. She was wearing her sunglasses, so her eyes were concealed, but her mouth was unsmiling. Her sneakers were muddy from running the mile between his cabin and the Floyds’ place.

He hadn’t counted on her waking up and realizing where he’d gone in time for her to get there and witness the beating he’d given them. He’d left her snug beneath the covers of his bed, rosy and warm, doped by sex, sound asleep. The next time he saw her, she was standing in the Floyds’ yard, breathless and aghast.

The Floyd brothers were the reason he’d come to North Carolina. He had vowed to seek retribution, vowed to get it. He just hadn’t counted on things happening how they had, or when they had.

He’d considered postponing taking action until Emory was no longer under his roof and compounding the danger. But after the incident with Lisa, after he and the brothers had declared themselves enemies, he couldn’t predict what they would do. He’d felt he couldn’t delay, that he had to act before the opportunity was lost.

Only a vow as binding as the one he’d made himself regarding Norman and Will Floyd could have dragged him from beneath the soft weight of Emory’s arm across his belly.

He hadn’t seen her until he pitched Norman through the front door and followed him out. She had looked at him with stark horror, but he had gone there with a purpose that even her revulsion couldn’t check.

The deed was done, and it was too late now to call it back. He wouldn’t reverse it even if he could. He didn’t regret doing it. He only regretted her having seen him do it.

That would be her last impression of him. Fresh blood on his hands. An indelible stain darker than that on his soul.

After leaving the Floyds’ place, he’d stopped at the cabin only long enough to go inside and retrieve Emory’s belongings. He’d set the fanny pack in her lap without so much as a blink of acknowledgment from her.

During the long drive down to Drakeland, she had only stared straight ahead, her hands tightly clasped, probably fearing that if she uttered a peep, she would rile the beast she’d seen unleashed.

On the outskirts of town, he’d pulled the pickup to the shoulder of the highway and put the gear in park. “About a half mile up ahead is a gas station. You can call somebody to pick you up there.”

He reached across her knees and opened the glove box, where he’d placed her phone. Earlier, as he’d silently moved about the cabin collecting her things while she slept, he had considered including her phone. He’d spent a night with her that he would die remembering. He would revisit it a million times in his fantasies.

But mistrust was second nature to him. He had decided to hold on to her phone until the very last minute.

Handing it to her, he’d told her that he’d charged the battery. “But I would appreciate it if you didn’t make that call until I get a few minutes’ head start.”

She’d looked at the phone as though not recognizing what it was, then she raised her eyes to his. “You completely confound me. I don’t understand you.”

“No way you could. Don’t even try.”

“You went there expressly to fight them.”

“Yes. And I think they were expecting me. Norman was asleep in the recliner, but he had the shotgun across his lap.”

“He could have killed you.”

“He didn’t react fast enough.”

“You said something to him. You said he only thought he’d missed the excitement in Virginia. What were you talking about?”

“Nothing that concerns you.”

“It does concern me! I watched two men get beaten to within an inch of their lives.”

“They had it coming.”

“Perhaps for Lisa, but—”

“Let it go, Doc.”

“Give me something.” Her voice had cracked on that. “Some explanation.”

The silver trinket had burned like a live coal deep inside his jeans pocket. She still hadn’t missed it. It was too small and worthless for her even to have noticed it was gone, but it was a treasure to him. Part of her, now his.

Wasn’t it only fair that he give her something in return? But what she’d asked for—an explanation—he couldn’t give.

After a long moment of silence, tears had welled in her eyes. “Who are you?” By her tone, he’d known that she was demanding to learn more than his name.

He’d turned away and looked out the windshield, wanting like hell to touch her just one more time, to feel her mouth open and soft under his. But if he had, it would have been harder to let her go.

So he called up the numbness with which he armed himself to get through each day. When he’d reached across her again, it was to pull the door handle. He opened it with a shove. “Bye, Doc.”

She continued to look at him with incomprehension. He kept his expression shuttered. Eventually, she’d climbed down out of the truck and closed the door. He’d driven away.

He guessed she’d done what he’d asked and hadn’t called anyone immediately because it was a good hour before the news bulletin came in over his truck’s radio that she’d been recovered.