Gentle On My Mind

by Susan Fox

  God, his mind was drifting again. Focus, man! Her strength could endanger his mission. He had to find a threat that had meaning to her. “Your family. Everyone you love. If you betray me now, I’ll kill your family. I won’t be in jail forever. I’ll come back.”

  She flinched as if he’d struck her, and her face went dead white.

  Thank God. He’d found the right threat. She had family and she loved them. The threat was a complete lie, but she had no way of knowing that. To her, he was a violent criminal on the lam with a gun he had no qualms about using.

  He was so exhausted he could barely think. Was there anyone else in her house? No, or they’d have run outside, too.

  “I’m going to tell you what to do.” He forced the words through gritted teeth. “And you will obey to the letter, or I promise you, I will kill your loved ones. If you call the police, if I go to jail, I’ll come back as soon as I get out. If you leave town, I’ll find you. You and all your family.”

  “I’ll d-do it,” she stammered, her whole body quivering. “Whatever you want.”

  “Get me into the house, then hide my bike. You have a garage or shed?”

  She nodded.

  His world was out of focus but he saw the movement of her head. “Patch up that fence. No one can know I’m here.” He knew he was speaking, but the hollow rushing sound in his ears drowned out the words. “Cover up all traces of the accident. They can’t find me. They’ll kill me.”

  “The police won’t—”

  “No! Can’t trust the police.”

  What was he saying? He didn’t know anymore. Damn, he was losing it. Couldn’t see. Couldn’t think. Had to stop talking before he said too much. What else did she need to know? “Then see if you can . . .” He paused, fighting for breath, for the end of the thought. “Keep me alive. Got it?”

  Chapter Two

  “Got it,” Brooke whispered.

  Keep him alive? The man with the gun had to know it was in her best interests to let him die. Did he know, too, that she couldn’t let even an injured bird die without trying to save it? Not that it was likely the biker would die from a few scrapes and maybe a concussion.

  His arm dropped heavily. Had he lost consciousness again? Pray God, he had.

  She grabbed the gun out of his lifeless grasp and leaped to her feet. She stepped a couple of paces away and trained his weapon on him. He didn’t move.

  After a few minutes she began to feel ridiculous. She darted forward, kicked his leg, then leaped back. There was no response. Clearly he was no threat to her now. She could run inside and call the RCMP.

  She gnawed her lip. The police. She avoided them. It was a holdover from the days when she’d been a drunk. If she told them she was holding a criminal at gunpoint, they’d assume she’d leaped off the wagon and was on a bender.

  She could persuade them otherwise. They’d lock this man up and solve her problem. But only her immediate problem.

  How long would he stay in prison? Long enough so he could be released to carry out those threats? She shuddered violently. If he hurt Evan! Or Jessica, Robin, the baby.

  Surely his threat wasn’t a serious one. But did she dare dismiss it and risk putting her loved ones’ lives in danger?

  She could call Evan. He was only a couple of miles away, up at the house he and Jess had built on her parents’ ranch land.

  No, she didn’t want the biker anywhere near her family.

  What she wouldn’t do for a drink . . . Thank heavens she didn’t keep alcohol in the house. Right now she’d have a mighty hard time resisting the temptation. She glared at the man. Why couldn’t he have crashed into someone else’s fence?

  Can’t trust the police, he’d said. Trust was an odd word for a criminal to use. No doubt he had reason aplenty to fear the RCMP because they’d jail him, but why would he say they couldn’t be trusted?

  They’ll kill me.

  Who? Not the RCMP, of course.

  Maybe he wasn’t an escaped criminal. Perhaps he was a gang member, and a rival gang was after him. Some biker gangs were involved in the drug trade and violence was a way of life for them.

  She remembered the expression in those wood-smoke eyes when he first opened them. Dreamy. Gentle. Surely those eyes couldn’t belong to a gang member.

  She shook her head impatiently. The profanity that had issued from that mouth—the cusswords that reminded her so vividly of her abusive ex-husband—certainly did. As did the gun she clenched in her hand, and the threats he’d hissed at her.

  If he belonged to a gang, how would his cohorts react if she had him arrested? They might carry out his threat and come after her and her family. For vengeance, or even as a sick, twisted matter of honor.

  How could she decide what to do when she didn’t have all the information? Lord, but she was an indecisive, gutless fool. When she’d thought him a criminal, when he’d threatened her life, she’d found the courage to stand up to him. But she’d crumbled the moment he turned the threat on her family.

  If only she could lose herself in drink and forget all these worries. Except that was what she’d done for years, and look at how her behavior had hurt Evan.

  She heard the far-off sound of an engine. What if a car came along? It would stop, and her ability to choose would be taken from her. The driver might even be Evan or Jess.

  No, she realized the noise was coming from the sky, from a little plane flying low, a mile or so to the south, in the clear morning sky. Was it headed her way?

  She couldn’t do anything that might put her family at risk. Not again. When the man regained consciousness again, she’d deal with him. After all, she had the gun. For now, she would obey his commands to the letter, just as he’d said.

  The decision gave her a sense of relief. Structure and rules were the tools she used to keep her life in balance. What threw her was the unexpected. Uncertainty meant danger, risk, the fear that she might tip back into the world she’d once known—where alcoholism and bipolar disorder controlled her, rather than the other way around.

  She remembered one of the slogans her A.A. sponsor had taught her: God never dumps more on us than we can handle.

  Life-and-death threats from a gun-wielding stranger were terrifying—but the biker had also given her a structure. Rules to follow, the means to cope. She could handle this situation, and keep her family safe.

  First, get him into the house, out of sight.

  She examined the gun, hoping the safety catch—if it had such a thing—was on. She tucked it in the pocket of her bathrobe. Then she studied the inert body. He had to weigh half again as much as she did. How on earth was she going to get him inside?

  Brooke bent down and tugged experimentally at the collar of his jacket. His body shifted. She kicked off her loose flip-flops and set the soles of her feet firmly on the ground. Then she bent over, got a good grip with both hands, and began to pull, moving slowly backward and dragging him after her, inch by painful inch across the gravel.

  Five years ago she wouldn’t have been able to budge him. She was fitter now than she’d ever been in her life—from regular workouts, riding, and gardening—but even so they’d traveled only a foot when she had to stop. She straightened, gasping for breath as she stretched her fiercely aching back. Grimly she thought that her efforts might well kill him, but at the moment she wasn’t sure she cared. And if she didn’t care . . .

  She did have the gun. The means to shoot him and ensure her family’s safety. Could she make the police believe he’d attacked her and she shot him in self-defense?

  Glancing down at the body that lay at her feet, Brooke let out a frustrated sigh. She could no more shoot him in cold blood than she could pick him up in a fireman’s lift and cart him into her house.

  A giggle escaped. The white picket fence she’d so proudly built last fall, when she’d moved into the rental house on Jess’s parents’ ranch property, had been split to kindling. A criminal’s unconscious body sprawled on her front walk between the
neat borders of impatiens, lobelias, and alyssum she’d planted on the weekend.

  The giggles filled her throat and she pressed her fist against her mouth. She couldn’t afford to indulge in hysterics. She had made her decision and she would stick to it. Besides, she had the gun. It gave her a power of her own—the ultimate power, if she could bring herself to pull the trigger.

  She began dragging him again, feeling as if her arms were pulling out of their sockets. After another foot, she gave up. “Look, mister, you’re going to have to give me some help,” she muttered, nudging him with her bare toes.

  When he didn’t stir, she let out a frustrated hiss and dashed inside the house to get a glass of cold water.

  Kneeling beside him, she said, “Last chance to wake up.” Receiving no response, she splashed the water onto his face.

  Choking and spluttering, he came to, glaring at her. “What the hell? You’re no damned angel!”

  Oh great, now he was delirious.

  “I’m no angel and I’m no weight lifter,” she retorted. “I can’t get you into the house unless you help.”

  “Fuck!”

  “I’m not too thrilled myself.”

  They’d invented new swear words since Mo’s time, she reflected as she helped the man stagger to his feet.

  Grimacing, she put her arm around his waist and he wrapped his own arm around her shoulders, leaning so heavily she almost toppled. Together they lurched up the front walk. It reminded her of herself and Mo tottering home from The Gold Nugget Saloon. Home to Evan, whom they’d left alone. Evan, who would have done his homework and fixed his dinner, if they’d left any food in the house.

  No, she was never going to drink again.

  The worst part was getting the biker up the three steps to the porch. She was almost in tears from the ache in her shoulders. They had just made it through the front door when he began to fall. Her fingers scrabbled against the leather of his jacket, but she couldn’t stop him as he crashed to the floor.

  She squatted and, with trembling fingers, felt for his pulse.

  Still alive.

  Her instinct was to tend to his injuries, but she remembered his instructions. She could even understand his logic. If “they” found him, they would kill him. The chance of him dying from his injuries was far slimmer.

  Leaving him lying on the floor, she dashed outside, slipped her feet back into her flip-flops, and surveyed the mess. Her closest neighbor, Ray Barnes, a widower and retired pharmacist, often rode his horse the ten miles into town for breakfast.

  She didn’t have a lot of time to hide the signs of the accident.

  Thank heavens the motorbike was partially propped up by her fence or Brooke never would have managed to get it upright. But, once she’d extricated it and had it rolling, it proved more tractable than the man. Soon it was locked in the garden shed.

  Her hands were coated in dirt, oil, and blood and so was her robe. How could a couple of pavement scrapes generate so darn much blood? She ran inside, using the kitchen door and avoiding the man who might be bleeding to death in her front hall, and hurried upstairs to the bedroom.

  Sunny, sitting on the windowsill, turned to watch as she ripped off the filthy robe. “Stay there,” she told him. “Keep out of his way and be safe.”

  When she tossed her robe onto the floor, a clunking sound made her remember the gun. She pulled it gingerly from the pocket and scanned the room for a hiding place. In the end, she placed the ugly black weapon in her laundry basket and bundled the stained bathrobe on top of it.

  She pulled on an old pair of jeans and a T-shirt, then ran outside again. The damage to her fence wasn’t as bad as she’d first thought. Only three boards had shattered. She had a few leftover boards in the shed, and some white paint.

  The man had lost so much blood, perhaps he really would die while she was fixing her fence. But he’d given her his list of orders, and concealing his presence ranked first.

  Brooke kicked the gravel around to hide the bloodstains. Then she cleared up the shattered boards, nailed the new ones in place, and splashed on paint. Once it dried, it would be almost impossible to tell the new pickets from the old.

  She’d just put the lid back on the paint can when she heard the steady beat of hooves on the dirt shoulder of the road. Hurriedly she shoved the can behind a fence post and stood in front of the freshly painted boards.

  Ray Barnes slowed his chestnut gelding, Timony, from a trot to a walk, then pulled to a stop beside her and touched a hand to the brim of his Stetson. “Mornin’, Brooke.”

  He was a touch deaf, so she spoke up. “Good morning, Ray. Hello, Timony.” Normally, she’d have stroked the horse’s neck, but she didn’t want to step away from the fence. Hoping to divert her neighbor’s attention, she gestured to the sky. “Another fine day.” The small plane—or another like it—was back and headed in their direction.

  He glanced up. “Yep, it is.” Then he gazed into her yard, pushing his horn-rims up his nose. “Notice you put your bedding plants in on the weekend. Early for that, isn’t it?”

  She ground her teeth. Normally, she enjoyed chatting with him, but today she just wished he’d go away. “This place is pretty sheltered. I think they’ll do all right.”

  “Maybe so.” His voice told her he didn’t agree but was too polite to come right out and say so. His eyes narrowed. “That’s fresh paint on your fence. You repainting already?”

  She sucked in a breath. Telling lies went against the grain of the new person she’d made herself into. Besides, if she said yes, she’d have to repaint the whole darn fence. “No, I, uh, there was a little accident and I had to make repairs.”

  He frowned. “Backed into your own fence?”

  “I feel so stupid.” And that was the truth: stupid for not handling this situation better. “Don’t go telling folks, all right?” If he did, people would wonder if she was drinking again.

  Ray scrutinized her face, eyes sharp behind his thick lenses. Looking for signs of a hangover? He grinned suddenly. “You didn’t tell on me when I fell down my own back steps. Just brought me food until I got on my feet again. Guess I owe you one.”

  She smiled with relief. Back in January, when the snow had been so deep she’d had to shovel her driveway every morning before she unplugged her car from the block heater and drove out of the carport, she hadn’t seen him either ride Timony or drive his truck down their plowed road in a couple of days. She’d gone to check on him. He’d been holed up, nursing a badly sprained ankle, low on food and barely able to hobble out to the barn to look after his horse. The elderly man hadn’t wanted his children to know because they were after him to give up his house and move into an apartment in town. She’d helped him out and kept his secret, figuring he knew the lifestyle that was best for him.

  “You need any help with that fence, just say the word,” he said.

  “Thanks, but I’ve got it finished.”

  The roar of a plane’s engine made them both glance up. The small plane was right overhead now, flying low. Wondering if the pilot was someone they knew, Brooke waved. When Ray did the same, the plane dipped a wing and rose in the sky.

  “Might be the Paluski boy,” Ray commented. “Heard he took up flying.”

  After her neighbor rode away, Brooke glanced at her watch. Darn, it was nine-thirty. On a normal morning, she’d be finishing up her routine at the women’s fitness center, all ready to have a shower and dress for work. The beauty salon opened at ten and Betty Anderson was coming in for highlights and a trim. But Brooke couldn’t go to work with that man lying on her floor.

  She went in the back door and tiptoed through to the front of the house, hoping a miracle had occurred and somehow he’d recovered and disappeared.

  Unfortunately, he still lay there. She bent down again, her whole body aching from the strain of the last hour’s activities, and pressed her fingers against his throat. His pulse beat steadily. A strand of long black hair, damp from the water she’d splashed
on his face, lay across his cheek and she smoothed it back.

  Unconscious, it was hard to believe he was a serious threat to her family. But she remembered the “take no prisoners” glare in his eyes when he’d pulled his gun on her. She’d read enough mystery novels to know you didn’t second-guess a criminal; you just obeyed, and hoped he’d let you escape unharmed.

  She heaved a sigh and went into the kitchen to phone Kate Patterson, her boss and friend. Years ago, Jessica—the same Jess who had married Evan—had been the first person in Caribou Crossing to give Brooke a chance after she’d made her turnaround. Jess’s aunt Kate had been the second. When Brooke finished her courses in Williams Lake, Kate hired her as a stylist at Beauty Is You.

  How could she lie to Kate?

  “Mornin’,” Kate said when she heard Brooke’s voice. “Mind picking up some donuts on your way? I’ve got a powerful craving for a jelly donut.”

  Brooke winced. She hated to disappoint anyone, and especially Kate. When she spoke, her voice sounded husky. It was strain, she knew, but it lent credibility to her words. “I can’t come in today, Kate. I’m achy and I really don’t feel well. I’m so sorry.”

  “No worries, hon. Just look after yourself. I can take a couple of your customers myself, and I’ll postpone the rest. Give me a call later in the day and let me know how you’re doing, then we’ll decide what to do about tomorrow. But my guess is you’re coming down with that summer flu that’s been going around, and you’ll be out a few days. Say, you need any groceries or flu medication? I could drop by after work.”

  Brooke shuddered at the thought of putting her friend in danger. “I’m all stocked up. Thanks for the thought, Kate. You’re the best.”

  “Take care of yourself. Climb back into bed and have a real restful day.”

  Don’t I wish, Brooke thought as she hung up. Right now double pneumonia had a certain appeal, compared to dealing with her escaped criminal or biker gang rebel or whatever he was.