by Jaime Maddox
A little while later, as she began to unpack their feast, her head was still spinning from the orgasms Pat’s hands and mouth had given her. Feeling the delight that only sex can bring, they laughed as they enjoyed their fruit and cheese, washing each bite down with sips of perfectly chilled champagne. Still feeling her way with Pat, Sandy resisted the impulse to feed her, although she had certainly done that on many occasions with Jeannie and Diane. The intimacy of that act seemed far greater to her than the sexual experience they’d just shared, and Sandy didn’t want to open any more doors just yet.
“I like the cheese,” Pat confessed, and the surprise in her voice caused Sandy to laugh. It really was an effort to persuade her new lover to try different foods, but at least Pat was willing to consider the prospect.
“Don’t sound so shocked!”
Pat tried to appear offended at the reproach, but their overall good humor prevailed. She defended herself. “I like many different kinds of cheese.”
“Oh, yeah? Can you even name any different kinds of cheese?”
Pat held up the opened wedge in her hand and peeled the label back into place so she could read it. “Havarti.” Then she looked up and held out her hand and began tapping fingers as she counted. “American. Swiss. French. Spanish!”
Sandy leaned back onto the blanket and closed her eyes, a smile forming at the corners of her mouth. “Close enough.” She was feeling the effects of the champagne and the sex and marveled at her peace. Her time in the mountains had always been good; just the past few years had strained her. A couple of deaths did that though, didn’t they? She hadn’t been relaxing at all, and now she felt so relaxed she might fall asleep.
She heard Pat packing the remains of their breakfast, then felt her as she rested on the blanket, nearly touching her but not quite.
“What are you thinking about?” Pat asked.
It had been a long time since Sandy shared her true feelings and thoughts with someone new. Angie had been in her life for twenty-seven years and was the last one Sandy had allowed to get close. With Diane and Nellie now dead, was it time to allow someone else in?
No, Sandy decided before her reply. Not just yet. “Chuckie. You forgot Chuck E. Cheese.”
“Well, Grandmother, I don’t suppose you’ll be forgetting him anytime soon.”
She was a grandmother, wasn’t she? Considering that, she was sure a trip to Chuck E. Cheese would be in her future. Although since Leo was still drinking his meals, she hoped she’d have a year or so to prepare. “You’re probably right. Do they have champagne there?” She giggled.
“I think they must serve something. My sister eats most family meals there, and I don’t know how she could do it otherwise.” Pat had a sister a few years younger than she, who hadn’t started having children until she was in her late thirties. Sandy imagined kids that age didn’t do well at fine restaurants.
Except for Angie. Angie had adjusted to her moms’ lifestyle with ease. Whether going to Knicks games or museums or eating at five-star restaurants or cooking hot dogs over an open fire in the backyard, Angie was always up for an adventure. In that regard, she and Diane had been extremely lucky.
“I think I should teach you how to play golf today,” Pat announced.
Sandy snickered. The day before she’d finished the round three over par, twenty shots ahead of Pat. Apparently Pat wasn’t intimidated by Sandy’s formidable skills on the links. And that was good. She didn’t need to compete with anyone on the golf course except herself. “Anytime you wanna give me a lesson, I’m ready.”
Pat sat up and stared her down. “Shall we?”
They rose, and while Pat folded the blanket, Sandy carefully repacked the backpack. She spilled the champagne on the ground so it wouldn’t spill down her back, then put the bottle into the bucket and back in the bag. She tucked in the cheeseboard and all the leftovers before topping it off with the blanket.
The bag was noticeably lighter as she hauled it onto her shoulders, as promised, and began an effortless descent. Birds chirped in the woods, and they could see the first rays of sun filtering through the trees as they made their way back toward the cabin. With Sandy leading the way on the narrow trail, she pointed out the wildlife she spotted as they walked. When the woods opened into the clearing at the bottom of this rise, Sandy paused for Pat to catch her and they headed back toward the cabin, hand in hand.
Pat, with the longer legs, had shortened her stride to keep pace with Sandy, but she was a step ahead when they reached cabin’s front porch. Releasing Sandy’s hand, Pat reached for the door handle just as Sandy planted her second foot onto the cabin’s porch. The sole of her sneaker had barely made contact with the knotty-pine plank when the deafening blast of a rifle sounded in the clearing and Sandy felt herself thrown forward, crashing into the cabin door. Pain wracked her body and she couldn’t breathe as she sank to the wooden porch planks, her arms resting against the door.
She had stumbled past Pat, who immediately turned into a crouch and had her weapon drawn as a second shot hit Sandy. Pat had already turned the doorknob as she fired a shot into the woods to the left of the house, then sprang to her feet and pulled Sandy through the door, kicking it closed behind her.
“Holy fuck,” Pat cried as she rolled Sandy over to examine her. She needed to assess the scene. Whoever had fired that shot could be descending on the house at that very moment. She needed to call for backup. But first, she needed to see how badly Sandy was injured.
Their eyes met, and Pat was relieved that Sandy’s were still open. She couldn’t be dead if she was making eye contact. “Where are you hit?” she asked as she began to ease the backpack off and look for blood.
Sandy’s breath was short. “My back. And my chest. And my neck. And my head.” Sandy had broken into a sweat and Pat could see her struggling to breathe.
Her thoughts racing, Pat knew Sandy wasn’t making sense. Only two shots had been fired, so she couldn’t have been hit in four places. Seeing no blood on her white sweatshirt, Pat examined the backpack and found two large holes in the fabric over the zippered pockets on the front, but no exit holes in back. A sigh of relief escaped her lips as she realized the weighty steel of the ice bucket must have absorbed the bullets.
“Suck it up, you’re just bruised. You’re going to be all right. I need you to get your phone and call 9-1-1. Then grab that shotgun in the bedroom and all the shells. You watch the back door. I’ve got the front. And stay low.” Pat whispered the orders, and Sandy quickly began to follow her instructions.
Pat rushed the window and carefully peeked through. Quickly sweeping her eyes across the expanse of land in front of the cabin, she detected no movement. Forest bordered the clearing in every direction, and a second, closer look bore no more success in detecting their assailant. A dozen fruit trees were scattered in the clearing, and she focused briefly on those, trying to determine if their broad trunks might be concealing a gunman. It was possible.
To the left, both her car and Sandy’s were parked adjacent to the house, offering cover to the assailant if he were approaching the house in that direction. The shots had been fired from left of the front porch, and Pat looked as closely as she dared, trying to figure out where he might have been when he fired. Behind a large apple tree? In the woods themselves? Up in the tree house at the edge of the property?
More important, where might he be now? Without making herself a target in the window, she swept the clearing yet again. It had only been a few seconds since the shots were fired, and she doubted anyone could have made it across the two-hundred-yard clearing from the woods in that short time. Then she realized it didn’t matter. From the looks of the holes in Sandy’s backpack, the shooter was armed with a powerful, long-range weapon and was a threat no matter where he was positioned.
Her weapon, a Glock 17, had another sixteen rounds, and if the assailant migrated in her range, she’d need only one of them. Past fifteen yards, though, she wasn’t likely to hit a moving human ta
rget without firing a few rounds from her semiautomatic weapon. The scope she presumed was on his rifle gave him an advantage, and the power of the rifle added to it. She dropped below the window and moved to position herself where she could cover both the door and window.
The cabin wouldn’t actually be difficult to defend. One window on the front side, two on the left, and a sliding-glass door on the right were the only entry points except the front door. If the assailant came through the rear of the cabin, through Sandy’s bedroom, they would hear him and be easily able to cover the bedroom door.
Pat was convinced they were facing a single assailant. If there had been two, she would be a dead woman now, for she hadn’t been wearing the same armor her friend had. But even so, this one was good. He’d reloaded quickly and hit his mark, twice. Pat wasn’t eager to face him, even at close range with sixteen rounds in her Glock.
She surveyed Sandy’s progress as she went to retrieve the rifle and hoped the gunman hadn’t made it around the back of the cabin. Sandy would be a sitting duck in the bedroom.
Every bone in Sandy’s body hurt, and she didn’t have trouble obeying Pat’s command to stay low. She would have had trouble standing even if she’d wanted to. The fall into the door had twisted and bruised every muscle in her body. Her arthritic knees had taken a blow when she landed, and both were throbbing now. Her head had whacked the cabin door and the hard wood hadn’t been forgiving, and every movement produced a stabbing pain on the left side of her skull.
Adrenaline carried her, though, and she followed Pat’s instructions. Her cell phone was in its charger just a few feet away from the front door, on her countertop. She reached up to grab it, tenuous, expecting a bullet to fly through a window and blast it from her hand. Amazed when that didn’t happen, she dialed 911 as she crawled across the living room to her bedroom.
“Don’t linger in the bedroom! Just get the gun and get out here,” she heard Pat warn as she listened for the sound of the phone ringing.
Years earlier, when Diane had become ill, they had swapped bedrooms with Angie, giving their daughter the loft in exchange for the convenience of the first floor. As she headed that way, she was grateful for both the small size of the cabin they’d built and her decision to switch rooms. In her condition, the stairs would have presented a challenge.
The operator answered and, trying to remain calm, Sandy asked for the police. At the same time, she located the gun in the unlocked cabinet in her room, relieved she hadn’t decided to lock it and hide the key where she would never find it during a sniper attack.
“I’ve just been shot. Twice. I need the police,” she explained as she loaded a shell into the shotgun’s chamber. The gun was a necessity living where she did, for the occasional rattlesnake wasn’t up for debate about who should move from the fieldstone patio behind the cabin. Bears were equally determined to move in on the human territory. She’d never shot a bear, but the gun’s blast usually kept them away for a few months between raids on her garbage.
“Do you need an ambulance?” the operator asked. How could he be so fucking calm? “No. I. Need. Police.” She paused. “With guns. Someone is shooting at me.”
Obviously understanding Sandy’s fear and impatience, he sounded reassuring. “I’ll dispatch the police, too, ma’am. But you said you’ve been shot, and I wonder if you need medical attention?”
Sandy had crawled back into the living room and positioned herself against a wall, partially protected by a table but with a clear view of the sliding-glass door that opened to her deck. If the shooter tried to come in that way, she’d have a clear shot. And she wasn’t a bad marksman. Her grandfather had owned over a thousand acres in Hunlock Creek, and he’d always loved to hunt. He and her father did it together, and a sense of obligation rather than a love of hunting drove her out with him. Their time together was special, though, and so Sandy always went along when he invited her. Alone in the woods, they were able to talk and he taught her about guns, among other things. Conversations with him one-on-one were intelligent and insightful, not argumentative and boisterous as they were when his wife was around.
David Parker had taught her how to load a weapon and to lock the safety, how to unload and carry it, and how to shoot it as well. Like the specially made golf clubs, his rifle was designed for a lefty, and it was on that weapon that Sandy learned to shoot. The once-perfect vision and depth perception that helped Sandy sink jump shots at twenty feet also had made her an expert marksman. Although she never killed an animal except in defense of her home and her family, she’d shot the labels off her grandfather’s beer bottles, and then for fun, poked holes in the caps.
Sitting in her living room almost fifty years after he’d shown her how to use a gun, she hoped she wouldn’t have to. Her heart beat wildly and her palms were sweaty. The day promised to be a hot one, and she was inside a warm cabin wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, sitting in the crosshairs of a sniper.
She looked to Pat for comfort as she answered the operator. “I’m not really hurt, just banged up. How long before the police arrive?”
Their barracks were just down the road in Swiftwater, but she didn’t think they were just sitting there in their cars awaiting her summons. What if they were in a budget meeting? Or training at the Delaware Water Gap? Or at another shooting?
Then the operator, having identified her by her cell-phone number, asked her address. Jesus, she and Pat would be dead if the police didn’t get here soon, and the 911 operator was assuming she was in Washington Square, in the Village. She told him the address, asked him to hurry, and then disconnected the call. She needed two hands and total concentration to manage the shotgun.
It had probably been only two minutes since the first shot was fired, but to Sandy it seemed like a millennium. Sitting there, watching the panes of glass reflecting the sunlight that now bathed the house, she tried to calm her shaking hands and slow her breathing. Neither she nor Pat spoke, but she occasionally glanced in Pat’s direction for reassurance that she wasn’t alone.
She detected movement a few minutes later and saw Pat out of the corner of her eye, once again surveying the clearing from the cabin’s front window. “Police are here. Lots of them, it looks like.”
“What should we do?” Sandy asked. “Should we go out there?”
“No, we stay put. We can’t be sure the shooter is gone, even if the police are here.”
Pat kept her place at the window, though, and when the police were close enough to hear her, she opened the door of the cabin and jumped back, leaving her weapon in plain sight on the counter. She called through the open door, identifying herself and Sandy, and then calmly sat at the kitchen table.
From her vantage point, Sandy saw two officers on her deck, approaching the sliding-glass door. She ejected the round from the shotgun, placed it on the table, and with her hands raised in front of her, she approached the glass door. She slid it open just as two other officers charged into the kitchen.
After frisking and searching revealed no hidden weapons or gunmen, all but two of the officers retreated to assist with the search of the woods surrounding the cabin. Sandy and Pat seated themselves at the kitchen table with the two officers and began to answer what seemed to be a million questions.
Chapter Thirteen
Retreat
It was difficult to focus on the conversation taking place around her. Sandy’s head pounded, her heart raced, and her hands trembled.
Someone had shot her. Twice. If it hadn’t been for a Guardian Service ice bucket left over from Grandma Davis’s lifetime, hers would be over.
They sat at the table—Sandy, Pat and two Pennsylvania State Troopers. Fragments of the conversation filtered into her consciousness. “Retired NYPD. Picnic. Two shots. Expert marksman.” She became aware of Pat’s hand on her own and then slowly drew her vision into focus and was able to concentrate on the words floating toward her from around her kitchen table.
“Do you know of anyone who would want to
harm you, Ms. Parker?” Trooper Carl Beers of the Pennsylvania State Police asked.
Mystified, in total shock, Sandy shook her head. “No,” she whispered, “Absolutely not.” This attack was unbelievable. To her knowledge, she had no enemies. She had left her firm on Wall Street to take care of Diane well before the crash in 2008. If anything, her former clients would have sung her praises. She’d advised them through the bull market that had made many of them wealthy, and none of them had any reason to want to bring harm to her. From a personal perspective, she couldn’t imagine anyone she knew wanting to harm her. Her life was a good one, filled with good friends. She didn’t have any family except for Angie and…
“Oh, my God,” she said, focusing again on their faces. The unthinkable had just occurred to her. It was awful, too terrible to comprehend, but it did happen. It happened every day, she imagined. Money is the root of all evil. She knew that from the feud in her family and from her career on Wall Street. Was she seeing it yet again?
“What is it? Sandy?” Pat asked, the concern in her voice evident.
“The Davis land. There’s a lawsuit over the land. If I was out of the picture…well, I think it would make a few dozen of my distant relatives very happy.” Sandy knew Angie wouldn’t have fought the Davis descendants. Without Sandy in their way they would have their gas leases and all the millions that came with them. Could it be one of them was that desperate that they would have tried to kill her for the money they’d make in the deal?
As the thought took hold in her mind, it grew roots and became stronger. It made perfect sense! Her cousins knew this land, even better than she did. They were hunters. They had motive. Any one of them could have fired the shot that might have ended all of their trouble and then faded back into the woods undetected. Sadly, she realized that was the most plausible explanation for this attack. One of her grandmother’s relatives wanted the gas rights to the land and would kill to get it. She’d seen enough of the evil in mankind to know that men had killed for much less.