Wild Poppy

by Victoria Johns

  She bolted away from me, and Bullet—who clearly sensed there was something different happening—gave me that lopsided grin before he went to make sure she had company for the night.

  I stayed outside.

  The things I was contemplating doing to her were at odds with the faith I’d once devoted my life to. If I went back inside right now, I was either going to scour the pages of my Bible or beat off furiously.

  Both felt like a sin right now.

  The Bible no longer held the answers for me, and doing something that should feel natural to a red-blooded man like me just didn’t feel right at the moment. I think that was the fault of Father O’Farrall. He didn’t kick me out of the church. It felt like he gave me a pass, and that, from a man of the cloth, wasn’t natural.

  Whatever I was about to do, I was winging it and it was becoming harder and harder to take it slow.

  As I stood up, my cell phone rang. When I looked at the screen, I saw Vinnie’s name. He had my number in case of emergencies and always looked after Bullet while I traveled. The old farmer, who was my nearest neighbor, had been saved a job since Penny came to town. I’d normally see more of him while I was at home, but I’d been busy, and Bullet wasn’t being as nomadic himself between our two properties. I’d called him the night I got home from my escape ride out and asked him a question. I was hoping I was about to get the answer to it.

  “Because it’s you,” he started. “Because I’m old and I’m pretty sure that when I do finally die, my cock of a son in law will sell me out.”

  This was good news, but I only knew that by how I’d felt about the words he said. I was finally learning to stop looking for answers for some things and trust how they made me feel instead. It was probably about as close to faith as I was going to get. “How much?”

  “Land or money?” he muttered before continuing. “Let’s say a hundred acres. Going rate is about five and a half an acre, but because I’m as cranky as I am old, and all about pissing off that son in law, I’ll let you have it for four grand a pop.”

  “You’re losing out on some serious wedge there, Vinnie.”

  “No, I’m keeping like it should be. Not letting some developers come in and bulldoze it for city slickers. You promise me you’ll never do that, and I’ll give you first option on the rest when I feel like real retirement.”

  “Done. You get the papers drawn up, and I’ll get you the money.”

  Vinnie went quiet but stayed on the line. I could sense he hadn’t finished and as he’d just put me ahead of his pain in the ass son in law, I figured the least I could do was give him time and freedom of speech. “You puttin’ in roots, laddie?”

  “Maybe.”

  “With Penny?”

  “She’s just a neighbor, and a dognapper.” I laughed, but it was forced.

  “Whatever.” He chuckled, his throat raspy before he began to cough. I’d always been pretty convinced that Vinnie would outlive me, but at times like this, he sounded old.

  The phone clicked and I let my eyes wander. Very soon, I was about to be a very big land-owner and most of what I saw in front of me, was going to be mine.

  The next day was the same as all the rest, working productively around… my estate, and in the not too distant future, I would be able to call it that. I never expected that would be how I’d use a big chunk of the money I’d earned off some of the jobs I’d done with the Carnals before the Black Sentinels. Until now it had just been lying idle. Years ago, I’d bought these two lodges as an escape when I needed to blend in and hide away after my murder spree. When I came back to check on Penny for Shadow, I had no real plans to stay, but the idea had grown on me and it was becoming obvious that Penny was happy here. After the suffering she’d experienced, I’d be happy to share all of this with her, and if space and the comfort of an easy breezy life would bring her back to life, then I would. Hell, I’d build a fucking moat around my hundred acres and fill it with crocodiles if I thought that would help.

  After lunch, I moved the two armchairs from downstairs up to my room. With the floor to ceiling window in my bedroom, we’d get a full view of what was going on at the loch. Penny’s lodge—which was really my lodge—didn’t have the huge window, which was why I’d left this one for her. I’d asked her if she wanted to bring a blanket up with her, in case she got cold. Get me, caring about whether she was warm, cold or just generally comfortable.

  Late afternoon, I’d just finished putting out a little card table between the two chairs when I heard a knock from downstairs. “Can I come up?”

  “Sure. You didn’t ask last time.” It felt necessary to keep going with my usual snarky attitude. Things were already weird and uncomfortable as it was.

  Bullet arrived first, his nails scratching on the floor, and like he remembered where he was, he jumped up on the bed—which I’d made—sniffed my pillows and flopped down on the middle. Penny came through the door carrying a box. “I brought... stuff.”

  “Okay, pull up a seat. It’s already started.”

  She pulled out bags of chips, crackers, bits of cheese, cold meats, a couple of plates, some knives and some butter she’d transferred into Tupperware.”

  “This our dinner?”

  Penny looked embarrassed. “I thought we could snack and watch.”

  “Looks good. What about—”

  I stopped as she reached back into the box and pulled out beers and shook a bag of popcorn. “I don’t know how you people manage without the real stuff.”

  “How will we ever cope?” I muttered sarcastically.

  I sat down first and stared out of the window while she organized all the food on the table. “So, tell me about it.”

  “Not sure about all of the history, but what started as a little local thing on the edge of the loch turned into this big thing.”

  She stopped and stared at me, the beer she’d opened and held halfway across the table for me now suspended in mid-air. “That it?”

  “I’m not really a local.”

  “How long have you been out here?”

  Oh... she was going to get into the nitty gritty this early on. I at least thought I’d have to be the one to start it and only planned to do that after she’d had a couple more glasses of wine than normal. “Came out here after my sister died.”

  She turned to me, shocked, a look of pity on her face. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to pry or upset you.”

  I nodded. It was as close to saying okay as I could get. “But I also traveled, a lot.”

  “What’s the Black Sentinels?” Penny blurted out, and then looked like she wished she could take the words back immediately. “I saw it on your leather jacket,” she admitted.

  “Motorcycle club—I spend a lot of time with them.”

  “Are they…in the US?”

  “They are. Look…” I pointed out of the window and thankfully managed to distract her. The boats on the loch were floating and moving around in the wind, some small, some bigger, all with sails and bunting hanging off them and how none of them crashed into each other and sunk was a mystery. They moved back and to in coordinated chaos.

  “I’ve never seen anything so pretty,” she breathed and leaned closer to the window. “It’s like dancing but on water. I wish we were there.” I felt bad; maybe I should have taken her after all. “But next year, for sure.”

  For the next hour, we watched the boats on the loch, drank beer and dropped crumbs of cheese everywhere. Bullet, it seemed, was luckier than usual. I doubted he got blue cheese on a regular basis. At times when the wind was blowing in the right direction, you could hear the folk music. Time flew by and neither of us moved until Penny decided she needed to use the toilet. The sun had gone down and the fireworks were about to start. She wobbled a bit as she got out of her chair and I automatically reached out to steady her. I thought about helping her down the stairs, but she seemed to right herself after a couple of paces.

  I sat back down and looked outside again. The first roun
d of fireworks burst into the night’s sky, the colors clear for miles. “Hurry up, Penny. You’re missing the fireworks.” I was sure she’d have heard them anyway.

  Another five minutes passed, and she hadn’t returned. “Penny?”

  I sat quietly, trying to tune out the fireworks and listen for anything downstairs, as Bullet jumped off the bed and headed down there. I decided if it was okay for the dog, I’d follow, too.

  Bullet leaped through the living space toward the bathroom at the side. When he got to the door, he dropped to his belly, sniffed the gap at the bottom of the door and whined. “What is it, boy?” He looked back at me and barked.

  Something was wrong. A bark that loud should have stirred her, at least caused her to call out with some kind of reaction.

  “Penny?” I gently rapped my knuckles on the doorframe and paused for a second to listen, but only heard the intense booming from the fireworks outside before the lights brightened up the whole room. I looked at Bullet on the floor and noticed that there were no lights on in the bathroom. Unable to hold off any longer, I pushed the door open and saw her frame huddled in the corner. She was sat on the floor braced in the small space between the toilet and the wall with her knees up against her chest, her head rested on them, and her hands clasped over her ears. I could hear her breath hitching and see her frame shaking.

  I dropped to my knees and reached for her. “Penny? Love, what’s going on?”

  “Stay back! Stay away from me! I won’t go with them!”

  “Go with who?”

  Bullet pushed around me and nudged at the hands on her head. When that didn’t bring her round, he whined, and when that failed to work, he licked her hand. Suddenly, her head shot up and she looked at me, her eyes glazed and some of her hair plastered to her forehead with sweat. I held out my hand to her. “You’re safe.” She looked at me and looked at my hand, before taking in where she was. I spotted the moment she came back to the present. “Come on, let me help you up, get you some water.”

  When Penny took my hand, her fear registered with me through the sheer clamminess of it. When I’d got her upright, I picked her up and gave her no choice in the matter. My mind was completely set on what I did next and there was no way I was leaving her. “Where… where are we going?”

  I walked her outside, and when another loud firework exploded above us, she clung to me like she was trying to fuse with my body. “It’s okay, just fireworks.”

  I pushed through her door, hoping that being somewhere more familiar would calm her down. I pulled a bottle of water from her cooler and walked her upstairs, and when we got to her bedroom, I could smell her scent everywhere. This was her personal space and I’d not been in here since the last time I’d slept in the bed, long before she arrived..

  God, I missed my big sleigh bed. It was made out of old trees that I’d felled a few years before, planing all the knots and bumpy grain like a labor of love until it was smooth.

  “I’m okay now.”

  “Yeah? Then why are you shaking like a leaf?” I pulled back the covers and placed her on the mattress, pulled off her boots and threw them behind me somewhere. “Scoot over.”

  “I don’t—”

  I pulled off my boots, threw them in the same direction as hers and climbed in bed behind her. “It’s just fireworks. We’ll watch from here.” I pulled her to me and cocooned her in my arms before pulling the covers back up. When I laid my head against the pillow, I resisted groaning, but fuck, it was pure Penny. Clean feminine shampoo, all citrusy, almost as amazing as the real thing in front of me.

  While she lay there, her jumping got less with every bang and I wanted to kick myself clear across the room. “It’s just, the bangs... they, uh...”

  “You don’t need to explain. Fireworks are not for everyone.”

  I’d insisted she watch them, having no real concept of the flashbacks it might cause her. It was only by some small mercy that I was still here. I could have left her to suffer this on her own.

  I had to figure out a way to tell her that I knew who she was and what she’d been through, because each time I stopped her from explaining was just driving a void between us. Eventually I’d have to come clean that I knew all along, and if she was anything like me, she wouldn’t take kindly to being deceived.

  Chapter Twelve

  Penny

  I’d been here for months and months and not had any kind of flashback to my life before Pitlochry. I used to love fireworks. The fourth of July was one of my favorites, and I could remember visiting Disneyland and seeing the fireworks there. They were magical. If Fraser hadn’t come and looked for me, I’d probably have still been in that bathroom, cowering by the side of the toilet.

  Fraser was gone when I woke up in the morning. It was probably for the best, but I couldn’t deny that I was disappointed. I should have had a terrible night’s sleep, but I didn’t. The way he held me as the fireworks continued was so unselfish. When I’d laid in my bed with him, I did it with my eyes scrunched shut, but after a while, he gave me the strength and courage to open them, to watch the colors taking control of the sky without fear. Bullet had stayed, and when I looked at him, tears poked at my eyes when I thought back to how he’d been so loyal last night, concerned enough to help bring me out of my memory.

  I didn’t hear the bombs often, but my first experience of it rolled into something horrible. At first, I didn’t know if they were bombs from American planes or home-grown ones from the insurgents. I’d moved around so much in the beginning that it was hard to tell how close to the troops we were. I figured it out eventually, though, because I was an integral part of the celebrations. My ‘husband’ and his band of armed brothers had rigged up some explosives high in the mountains and caught a troop of soldiers who were sent to scan the area. It was seen as the ultimate high-five, raping and fucking the American ISIS bride, while her countrymen burned and died a slow, painful death from their IED’s, sticking the proverbial finger up to the grand ole US of A.

  “Oh, fuck! What must he think of me?” I panicked immediately. Like I didn’t know whether to pull the covers over my head and pretend the world didn’t exist or throw up first and then retreat.

  I heard the sound of chopping outside, and braved a look to the window that had caused me so much pain last night.

  He was out there. Shirtless again, his body covered in a sheen of sweat and wood chippings, mindlessly chopping. Fraser ignored where the axe spat the split log halves. He just held the weighty axe on one side, bent down to pick up another stump, placed it on the perfectly heighted tree stump and repeated the motion.

  He was so fucking handsome.

  Everything about him screamed that he had a pure soul that cared about other people. His muscles seemed to be formed from hours of working in the outdoors as he’d not been near a gym once since he’d come back from his disappearing act.

  Maybe that was it.

  Maybe my mind was in a core meltdown because I was settled. I’d given up on looking out for me. I’d gotten close to someone who’d become a friend when I had no right to be comfortable in life. I expected my new life to be all about cloak and dagger stuff, hiding in plain sight just to stay safe, and Fraser had made me think that there could be more to life than just existing like I was expecting to. I decided a while ago that if I got to safety, I would be happy with the day to day of just being able to breathe easy.

  I thought about how different things had been since Fraser came back.

  Was that what I needed?

  Did I need to go somewhere to remind myself that I was just blessed to be alive?

  Yes. That was what I needed.

  It was time to move on.

  I lurched out of bed, grabbed a super small day sack from under my bed and put a change of clothes in it. I’d got my passport and some emergency cash taped to the underside of my bed frame so they were easy to grab in a hurry.

  Bullet appeared at the doorway, and my heart split the tiniest bit. “Oh
, boy.” I dressed quickly and walked to him. “I need to do this. I’d take you if I could.”

  He walked forward, and sat down on my feet, breaking my heart just a little bit more. I kissed his head, ruffled his ears and went downstairs and out the house. Fraser was still outside chopping wood as I tiptoed out, praying I was quick enough to make it without drawing his attention. Pulling the door to the garage open just enough so I could sneak through with my day sack, I looked at the car and the motorcycle.

  The car would be safer, but the bike would be quicker.

  I walked to the bike, pulled the tarp to one side and looked at the electrics that ran along it tucked deftly between the seat, the frame and the fairing.

  “I’m gonna be pissed if you fuck with my bike.” Dammit. Fraser had crept up on me again. “Where are you going?” I stood up and spotted Bullet by his feet. I reckoned I know how he’d found me, and I glared at the four-legged fur ball, just to let him know I was disappointed in him. “Don’t blame the dog. He appeared without you, a rarity these days.”

  We stood there staring at each other. The longer the silence went on, the more I knew he wanted an answer to his original question. “I need some space.”

  “I can respect that.” As Fraser put his hands in his pockets, I saw all of his muscles clench.

  “Is that it? Can I go now?”

  “On my bike?”

  “Yeah,” I replied hopefully.

  “No,” he answered simply, and I felt deflated when that hope crashed. “Where would you go?”

  “I don’t know.” I threw my hands up in frustration. “When you take off do you know where you’re going?” When he didn’t answer, I knew I had him.

  “You really want to take the bike?”

  “I think it could be fun.”

  “It is. So, I’ll do the riding, you can enjoy the scenery.” Fraser turned and walked off. What just happened? Was he going to come with me? “Do not touch that bike while I get my stuff,” I heard him shout as he got further away.