Without warning, I listed to the left. My burden was about to throw me to the ground. Again. I cursed. Attempting to reset my balance meant listing to the right while imploring my feet to please magnetize themselves to the path. They hadn’t so far. Hands full with a newly purchased satellite phone and handheld GPS device, which hadn’t spoken up in the last thirty minutes and worried me, I couldn’t even break my fall without breaking a crucial something or the other.
“Anybody looking at me right now would swear I was drunk when I don’t drink… but I may start after this dammit!”
Having said that a lot too loud, I flinched at the echo of my voice bouncing off the tree trunks, spurring me to move faster. Hopefully, the woodland creatures didn’t hear me. I had been begging the good lord for the last hour to keep them asleep under the thick layer of snow.
This day had gone bad already. Waking up the natives wouldn’t make things work out any better. Not when the loaded gun bequeathed to me from Mr. Devereaux was in my waistband and not in my hand.
Presently, I wished I hadn’t heeded his advice endorsed by his brother, to carry the sat phone in my hand instead of the gun. It was easier to shoot at shit, ask no questions ever with it in my hand, which was why they didn’t want me carrying it. I began rethinking that advice. Brocklyn Devereaux’s concerns with being shot if he spooked me weren’t an issue if he was nowhere to be seen, right?
The wind picked that same moment to ratchet up several notches. Its howling and whipping through the leafless trees rustled the undergrowth and tested the acoustics of the red nylon on my parka jacket fresh off the department store’s rack. Combine all that noise and it was an eerie concoction of sounds that scared the bejesus out of me. Yep, I’d have shot the shit out of the wind right then.
The wind, Deidre? the saner side of me questioned.
Damn straight, the distressed side of me countered.
Yeah, I should probably leave the gun where it was.
Deciding it was more prudent and safer to pick up speed some more, I pursued a tighter grip of my thumbs hooked under the pack’s wide straps over my shoulders. If I had to outright run for any reason like say my growing anxiety getting the better of me, I didn’t want to lose the pack even though it was digging into me in quite a few places. Mr. Devereaux wanted it back for some damn reason. I just wanted back where I started before this clusterfuck began.
Regrets from going on this particular adventure solo were pouring in hard and fast now. Too bad they were a slow trickle when I got dropped off at the end of the trail fifty grand richer this morning. At the end of said trail was a cabin deep in the woods hiding an allegedly-framed embezzler. If my boss’ boss’ boss hadn’t shown me a year-old snapshot of the brothers together at some charity function, I wouldn’t know who to look for.
Recalling that photo made my womanhood clench and flood as if I wasn’t uncomfortable enough. If I thought my boss/client was gorgeous, his brother was a breathtaking, muscular, taller version of him. Just like how I liked them.
That’s not why you’re out here, Deidre.
And no one should be that attractive on paper. In the flesh might be too much to take in one sitting for the frail.
“You’d see him in the flesh faster if you had told him to meet you halfway at least, nitwit,” was my way of chastising myself for my wayward thoughts and carnal reactions to Brocklyn’s photo.
He was a client. This was business. There was nothing to stop him from offering to meet me. I would’ve insisted if his voice hadn’t been like whiskey and sugar; sinfully sweet and slightly inebriating during our short chat on Mr. Devereaux’s sat phone the day I visited him.
Right, I was supposed to call him DeAngelo now.
According to him, people on the same defense team had no need to stand on ceremony. We were almost bosom buddies after being told way too much about the Devereauxs, crossing the employee and boss divide at that point. If I was in my right mind, things wouldn’t have gotten that far because I would’ve reminded myself that I was not an expert at hiking, rustic living, recalling the path I’d just taken minutes ago, and loading my dishwasher when Mr….
Dammit!
When Deangelo described how I’d get here, you’d think an educated, intelligent black woman with no wilderness skills or direction-sense worth having but had seen plenty of horror films would’ve said no thank you very much to this liaison. If I knew nothing about the woods, I knew less than that about the man—other than he was fine—hiding in the sticks with dormant bears and snakes.
Please, God, let them be sleeping!
After thinking that so many times, it came off as more of a chant than prayer in my head.
“Stupid, Deidre. You should’ve took the fifty-K and ran. But nooooo, you had to feel bad for the Devereauxs, image how it would feel to pay off at least one loan instead of paying on it, then turn Captain Save A Boss And A Hoe.”
I didn’t judge myself too harshly for calling Brocklyn a hoe sight unseen during a conniption fit. Everybody knew anything goes during a breakdown or crack up. But if I must defend myself, Mr. Dammit. Deangelo—I might just start calling him that—called his brother a hoe first. Not my fault it stuck with me. Hopefully, it doesn’t come out my mouth when I met the man.
If I found him.
There was every chance I wouldn’t. My intelligent dumb ass didn’t consider that with a bundle of cash making stars in my eyes. Clearly, when you slapped a chunk of money in a girl’s palm with a promise of more along with a sob story in a safe room of Mr. Dammit. DeAngelo’s mini-mansion, it blinded her to her limitations. Then, greed took over, dropping the walls down between her and the little devil on her shoulder who encouraged stupidity. Like risking racking up an aiding and abetting charge, a felony and five years minimum if caught, all for another stack of cash.
With three hundred grand in debt hanging over my head, it wasn’t so much as greed as salvation from stress he laid in my palm. Money wasn’t the only thing I was saddled with by... DeAngelo. Using his first name was going to take some time to get used to even in my thoughts. The pack on my back was his and almost bigger than me. Who kept things like this lying around a safe room instead of closet anyway?
Plainly, DeAngelo did. The damn thing was waiting suspiciously on the floor when we entered his eight by eight titanium walls. Now, I was a beast of burden to the backpack. Its top scaled the branches that I could’ve walked right under and not have one fake curl on my head be grazed. To compensate for the extra height, I had to watch for low-hanging limbs then crabwalk under them like the average-sized human did. This, I discovered the hard way and my butt cheeks were still throbbing from that lesson. If DeAngelo’s driver hadn’t saw that disaster when it struck, I might still be trying to get up from the ground.
Humiliation was the only reason to be out here alone in not broken-in hiking boots and brand new cargo pants constructed of what had to be military grade material to keep frostbite at bay. Unwashed before wear, the pants were rough, chafing the hell out of my inner thighs. As if that wasn’t bad enough, I was starting to overheat in the parka with fur hood and wool lining. There was still a tag on it too, somewhere. I forgot to pull it off before putting the jacket on this morning in my haste to close down the house for the next five days. No way was I staying out here longer than that.
Visions danced in my head of stripping off everything in twenty-degree weather in spite of the noon sun shining brightly through the thin canopy of naked tree limbs. The picturesque but chilling visual of snow everywhere and bare trees that seemed to be shriveling in on themselves from the cold advised, ‘Don’t take anything off at all, Deidre. You’ve made enough dumb decisions for the next ten years in the last two days already.’
Clothes still on and still a mule for DeAngelo’s pack, I marched for another thirty paranoid minutes. A sheen of sweat popped out on my brow just as a clearing came into view up ahead. Acres of land with not a goddamn thing else but white powder on it would have been a blessi
ng compared to being in the woods, if I knew where the hell I was. Since I didn’t know, it was much more worse than hiking alone.
Unfortunately for me, I had been discouraged from calling Brocklyn out of hiding except for and only if I was dead, dying or bleeding out profusely. Braking at the divide of the forest and open field, I perused my environment, waiting for the gadget in my hand to tell me where to freaking go next. It didn’t.
I huffed, “What now?”
“Turn right,” the GPS device in my hand spoke, evidently just needing some prompting. “Thirty-two minutes to your destination.”
In the home stretch it seemed, I breathed a little easier and eyed the digital map closely, looking for assurance that bringing it all the way home was possible. To my temporary abode that was. I would’ve given DeAngelo’s left testicle, Brocklyn’s right so the receiver could have a whole pair in the swap for a street sign. Yes, I would give away their balls without permission. Getting lost was the last thing I needed and they only needed one ball technically to get off and produce children.
On closer inspection of the GPS tracker, it was a surprise to find the blue line indicating my path on the screen didn’t take a hard ninety degree right as I anticipated when told to ‘turn right’. The digital path slanted more at a forty-five degree angle toward the right. There was a fucking difference, miniscule to some but counted to me. The device was supposed to specify this clearly, out loud as per lying salesman’s pitch in Louisville.
The bastard swore the tool was created just for hikers with easy to recognize digital landmark layouts and live audio monitoring, to prevent the user from having to glue their eyeballs to the map instead of where they were going. God forbid they were caught trying to determine their location while looking down as something snuck up on them.
“Who knew where I’d have ended up if I hadn’t checked the map and just listened, you stupid metal box of shit?” I sniped under my breath at the tracker, doubted it was worth more than a paperweight, and didn’t know what I’d do if it cursed me back. “Shoot it probably.”
Irritated with the tracker now, I was liable to do something ill-advised like say shooting it, which would’ve voided returning it back to the store. Which I most definitely was going to do. My regular phone’s mapping system, inconveniently requested to be left at home, worked better.
For now, I did as instructed, walking diagonally and keeping a close eye on the map. If the path curved somewhere along the way, I wanted to curve with it. Thirty-five minutes inched by. What happened to thirty-two? Another block of woods rose in the distance. God no. Every part of me wanted to avoid them. Then, I spied a window with red gingham kitchen curtains through a cluster of trees.
“Is that the cabin?” I asked the GPS. “It looks small.”
Yes, I wholly expected it to answer me. It damn well better for the cost… but didn’t. Five minutes later, I warily stepped out on the other side of the wooded area onto the cleared land around the cabin that the curtains belonged to.
“You have arrived at your destination!” the tracker blasted my ears as if the damn thing was proud of itself.
Stopping to narrow my eyes at the device that seemed to have a mind and speed it moved at of its own much like me, I snapped at it, “Fuck you. I saw it first.”
Cussing out the GPS now, Deidre?
I could feel my conscience shaking its head at the new low I had hit. Thinking anymore about that may well bring me to tears. I settled on studying the structure that Brocklyn fled to. It was a far cry from what he was used to in Louisville. Did he want to cry too, when he found that the cabin had seen better days long, long ago?
While shooting daggers from my eyes at the two-story lodge’s left side—calling it that was generous—I hollered out, “Hello... That’s exactly what the next victim in a horror flick would do, Deidre.”
I needed to can the negativity, and I would have if the sunlight hadn’t brightened right then, haloing on the cabin as if to illuminate the exterior’s advanced state of decline. The gable roof with central attic window sloped downward over the front porch, which looked questionable at best to stand on. The stone foundation had many cracks.
I could’ve done without all those problems having actual light shed on them. Ignorance was certainly bliss if I had to live here with a stranger, could be an axe murderer.
Find the silver lining in this storm cloud fast, girl.
From my spot at the edge of the property, I scanned the cabin for its assets. It was a place to rest. The windows were clean. A low buzzing sound meant electricity was connected to… something. I was about to find out because I was a lot more than exhausted.
Soft crunches from rapid footsteps in the snow eclipsed the low buzzing and sounded off at the rear of the cabin. That was my only notice before Brocklyn, Greek God come to life from still image, turned the corner with the ends of a whip in both hands.
“Good God,” I breathed out as my eyes roamed over him pervertedly. My fantasies didn’t do him justice. He was built like a brick house with a hell of a lot more sex appeal than his photo or my mind could capture. Prime man meat perfect for climbing all over without killing him.
“Shit,” he grouched, not looking too happy to see me in the least. “Deidre, you made it.”
“Well, yeah, you… Wait. Why do you have a whip?”
That strange and unwelcomed sight had sunk into my brain fully. My mouth fell opened. A whip was not what a girl wanted to see when meeting a man, who she had been trying not to openly admit that she had been crushing on and imagining babies with, for the first time. Well, maybe some girls were into whips, but sure as hell not this one.
Ah hell, he’s a psycho. Not perfect. Should’ve known.
My private even from myself crush on him crumpled to ashes in that instance. No time to mourn its death, I had to keep him and the whip in my crosshairs. He approached with a frown on his face, a worry-line marring his otherwise smooth forehead. He wasn’t getting that whip anywhere near me, so I started backpedaling and fumbling with the pack’s buckle clip snapped in front of my coat.
“Deidre, stay calm,” he coaxed. “I was only—”
“Damn that!” I shot back.
The gun was tucked behind two too many layers in my waistband. I knew I shouldn’t have listened to them about not carrying it in my hand. An idea formed of why they didn’t want me to.
The sick fucks set me up, wanted me loaded down, tired, scrambling and easy to handle when I got here.
It worked, but not for long.
“Stop right there, Brocklyn!” I ordered at the top of my voice. He halted. So did I, desperate to get to the gun but the pack’s buckle sitting low on my abdomen seemed to be beyond my fingers’ ability to undo while on the move and edge. “What the fuck you’re going to do with that thing?”
Brocklyn had ‘that thing’ held at a good distance away him as if being careful of it. I knew I was. It was unnaturally thick in the middle that drooped to the knees of his body encased in a black ski jacket. If he stretched that whip out, it would extend longer than the breadth of his shoulders as broad as the side of a barn.
As he glanced downward, his frown deepened like he was chewing over answering me. Following the trajectory of his eyes, I’d have foamed at the mouth just from the vision he presented alone in form-fitting dark jeans incasing thick thighs and bowing shins below an angelic face.
Except, he had a goddamn whip in his hands. “I’m going to kill it, Deidre. Nice to meet you finally.”
“I can’t say the same.” Then, his narrative registered. Kill it? I stopped fumbling because he was making no sense and I couldn’t understand and fumble at the same time. “What do you mean kill it? Isn’t it already dead?”
Who killed dead things? Not normal people for sure.
But, if it wasn’t dead, what was it?
Squinting, I zoomed in closer on the whip. Suddenly, its body twisted over itself violently. I gasped. Whips weren’t supposed to do that or
get fatter in the middle before thinning out on the ends like there was a tail and head with a fat body in between. Come to think of it, there was no handle grip on it… and were those black scales like on—
“No,” Brocklyn said softly, guiltily, breaking into my thoughts and drawing my attention away from the whip undulating like it was pissed off… or had been pissed on. “It’s not dead, Deidre. I had planned for it to be before you got here if that makes you feel better.”
If it wasn’t dead, wasn’t a whip, that meant…
Oh fuck. Not this shit again.
Going into full blown banshee mode, I screeched, “IT’S A SNAKE!” as if he didn’t know what he had.
I was convinced he did, but someone else hanging around besides us might not know. This wasn’t something you kept to yourself like a crush. Now that I had alerted to the danger everyone and anything within five miles that could hear or feel the vibrations of my absolutely rational fear manifesting in soprano, and possibly woken up the dead, I did the next logical thing. Activated flight mode.
I could pump my arms better if my hands were allowed to ball up into fists, so the sat phone was flung one way, the GPS tracker another. Free to take full sprinter’s form, I spun on my heels, discharging like a bullet in a direction. I didn’t know which one, didn’t think to pick, didn’t care if it picked me as long as it took me far away from here. Staying. Was. Not. An. Option. Someone should’ve told that to the tracker still locked on the cabin’s coordinates. It kept repeating, “Rerouting,” behind me.
Chapter Three
~Brock~
“Godddddamnit!” I stressed, letting go of the King rat snake’s tail to behead it after quickly retrieving my knife from its sheath clipped to my side on my jeans’ beltloop.
Killing anything was a shame if it was effective, free pest control. If you didn’t view it as the pest. My only salvation from the bogus charges awaiting me back in Louisville, Deidre detested snakes much worse than pests. So much so, she was hauling ass like she had been shot out of a cannon on a different route from the one she came.
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