Dark Paradise

by Tami Hoag

  Mari didn't know what to do. What she needed was someone to corroborate the evidence, at the very least someone who would be willing to listen to her as she tried to sort it all out. Drew came immediately to mind. Uncertainty came immediately after. Was this what he knew and wouldn't talk about—Bryce's little hunt club? If he knew, why hadn't he done something about it? Because he was guilty too? Like a faded dream, she could just barely remember the argument Drew and Kevin had fallen into that first day she had stopped into the Moose. They had fought about the ethics of hunting, and it was obvious that was not the first time the subject had been the source of contention for them. For all she knew, this could have been the fight that had sent Drew storming away from the lodge the previous night.

  You think you know someone and then suddenly you look at them and you don't know them at all.

  “Ain't that the truth,” she muttered.

  Almost against her will other fragments of thoughts came to mind. The night she surprised the intruder in her hotel room. A man in black. Drew standing in the room later, looking harried, wearing black.

  “God, you're going conspiracy cuckoo, Marilee.” She pushed herself away from the desk to pace again and to run her hands into her hair. “Drew isn't involved. Don't be crazy.”

  Crazy.

  Del Rafferty was crazy.

  I don't wanna know what happened to you! I don't wanna know about the tigers! Leave me alone! Leave me alone or I'll leave you for the dog-boys, damn you!

  Not didn't know, didn't want to know.

  She had discounted the whole idea of Del helping on the basis of the tiger remark. It sounded crazy. He had mistaken her for a corpse and thought he'd seen a tiger. There were no tigers in Montana. And what the hell were dog-boys? The guy was so far gone around the bend, he would never get back without a guide. Or so she had thought.

  But what if Del wasn't completely crazy? What if he had seen one of Bryce's hunts? He might have thought himself that it was insane. But Mari had seen the tiger now too. She could assure him what he had seen was real. That would give them something in common, and if she could establish common ground, maybe he would tell her what—if anything—he knew about Lucy's death.

  I don't wanna know what happened to you!

  Which implied that he did know.

  The sheriff wouldn't like Del as a witness, and J.D. wouldn't like her going up into his uncle's territory at all. But she needed to find the truth and close the door on this ugly chapter of her friend's life. Now more than ever she wanted it over and done with, dead and buried. Mentally she told Quinn and Rafferty to go take a flying leap, and went out to the barn to saddle her mule.

  CHAPTER

  27

  HE WATCHED her through the Leupold 10x scope, the Remington 700 resting comfortably against his shoulder. She looked a foot away. He could see all the strange, subtle shades in her hair, the frown of determination curving her little mouth as she talked incessantly to the mule. Beside him one of the hounds whined. He gave the dog a hard squint and it lay down with its head on its paws and a woeful look in its eyes.

  He had tracked her up from the blue rock. She came boldly, brazenly, riding that mule as if she already owned the mountain. The blondes would try to take it away. He knew that. That was why they came at night—to taunt him, to drive him away. And now she was coming back in the daylight again. Bold as brass.

  He could pick her off now. The air settled in his lungs. His finger came back and took a little slack out of the trigger, but he didn't shoot. He wasn't certain this wasn't part of the test. And he could see that this was the little blonde. The talker, not the dead blonde, not the blonde who danced under the light of the moon. J.D. would be disgusted with him if he shot this one. He had said to leave her be.

  Del let the trigger out, but remained as still as if he were a rock or a tree. Maybe J.D. didn't know that the blondes would take control. He was under their spell, wasn't he? Maybe that was their master plan and it was left to Del to stop them from taking the Stars and Bars. He would be a hero if he stopped them. His family could be proud of him again instead of secretly ashamed. He could be proud of himself, and that was something he hadn't been in a very long time. Since before he could remember. Since before the 'Nam.

  As silent as nothingness, he rose and started up the hill. The blonde was heading for his cabin. She couldn't be allowed inside. He would be there before her.

  Mari's boots scuffed in the dirt of the yard as she paced. She switched her hands from the hip pockets of her jeans to the front pockets and marched on, trudging slowly around the corral. The horses watched her with idle curiosity. Tied to a post, Clyde closed his big brown eyes and went to sleep.

  Waiting had not been part of the plan. Somehow, it had never occurred to her that Del Rafferty would not be here when she arrived. In fact, she had fully expected him to take a shot at her long before his cabin came into view. Her legs ached from gripping Clyde's sides in anticipation of the mule bolting. But no shot came.

  Not too keen on coming eye to eye with Del's reptilian doorman, she hadn't gone up to the door of the cabin to knock. She walked around the side and knocked on a window, but she couldn't see in because he had covered the glass with muslin from the inside. She called his name and tapped on the glass. The only answer she got was the ominous sound of the snake's rattle as the noise roused it from its nap.

  She checked her watch and sighed. Once Del showed, there was no telling how long it might take to get him to talk—if indeed he would talk to her at all. The sky remained heavy and lead-colored, threatening rain, threatening an early nightfall. She didn't want to be caught riding down the mountain after dark. It was dark enough in the woods during the day. She wasn't familiar with the trail or with the mule. And there was always the threat of a close encounter of the wildlife kind. Hadn't she read that grizzly bears were nocturnal?

  She leaned against the corral rail and made kissing sounds to entice a buckskin mare her way from the water trough. Her own throat was parched. It hadn't occurred to her to bring a canteen or a Thermos. She had been in too big a hurry to get to the truth. Stroking her fingers over the mare's nose, she stared back at the cabin. There was a water pump in the cabin and cans of Dr Pepper on the kitchen shelf. There was no lock on the cabin door. There was the rattlesnake.

  Of course, she knew the snake wasn't a real threat. It was in a cage. Obviously, it was too large to crawl through the double layers of chicken wire, or it would have done so. It couldn't actually bite her. Unless the force of its striking body ripped the flimsy wire, in which case it would probably land on her shoulder and bite her in the neck.

  She swallowed hard and grimaced at the taste and grit of dust.

  “Del Rafferty goes through that door every day and doesn't worry about getting bit,” she mumbled. “Of course, Del Rafferty is insane.”

  Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. A roan gelding stuck his muzzle in the water trough and splashed himself and Clyde on the other side of the fence. Clyde cracked an eye open and gave the horse a dirty look.

  Mari checked her watch again and tried to sigh, but her throat closed up and stuck to itself like a wad of plastic wrap.

  Mustering her nerve, she set off across the yard toward the cabin at a brisk, no-nonsense pace. The rattlesnake lay in its cage like a coiled length of hose. Its head came up when she was twenty feet away. Its tongue flicked the air experimentally. Fifteen feet away and its early warning system came on, the sound of the rattle skating over her skin like skeletal fingers. Ten feet away from the cage, she dropped down on her hands and knees, praying she was out of sight of the watch-snake.

  She scrambled across the packed dirt, her heart sounding like the snake's rattle. Then her hand was turning the knob.

  The shot came as she pushed the door in, and she lunged instinctively for the shelter of the cabin just as the bullet struck the snake box and smashed into the side of the building. Its latch sheered off, the door of the snake box flopped down
and the rattler dropped to the ground six inches behind Mari's right foot.

  Mari screamed and hurled herself forward into the main room of the cabin, scuttling to get her feet under her. The snake collected itself and followed her in, winding its way across the floor. Mari stared at it, her eyes burning from not blinking. Sweat beaded on her forehead, ran into her eyebrows, and dripped down. She could stay in a crackerbox cabin with a venomous snake or run outside and be shot by a madman. Wonderful options.

  “You couldn't just become a tax attorney, could you, Marilee?” she muttered, backing toward the kitchen as the snake slithered its way across the pine floor, displaying a body that had to be in excess of four feet in length and as thick around as her forearm. “You've never seen any tax attorneys scrambling to get away from rattle-snakes, have you?

  “Stupid question, Marilee. All the attorneys you know are snakes.”

  She saw too late that she had backed herself into a corner. There was no escape from the small galley area without going over the snake that was snuggling up to a pair of cowboy boots on a mat beside the stove. Mari pulled out a kitchen chair and stood on the seat, trying to recall if any of her Montana studies had mentioned rattler's abilities to scale chrome chair legs. Her legs were shaking visibly. As she stared down at the snake, she could see her heart fluttering beneath her lavender T-shirt. Her tongue felt like a dead gerbil in her mouth.

  This wasn't going at all the way she had envisioned. She had expected to approach Del Rafferty cautiously, beaming good intentions and trustworthiness. She would open with an overture of friendship and segue into an apology for intruding on his privacy. He would sense her innate goodness and tell her everything.

  But the man who stepped into the doorway of the cabin didn't look ready to confide in anyone. He held an ugly black rifle at the ready and wore a black baseball cap backward on his head, presumably so the bill wouldn't interfere with the scope when he was taking aim. His eyes were slits beneath his heavy brow. His mouth pulled down at the corners—severely down on the side with the scar. Saliva leaked across his lower lip and ran in a thin trail to the knot of flesh and down his jaw.

  Mari raised her hands in surrender. They were shaking like a palsy victim's. “P-please don't shoot.”

  “I don't want you here,” Del growled. He squared his shoulders to her and brought the rifle up. “You maybe fooled J.D. You don't fool me. You're one of them blondes.”

  “Y-yes, but I'm the good blonde,” she improvised. “Remember? I'm not Lucy. I'm not the dead blonde.”

  He squinted at her until his eyes looked like pencil lines across his face. “I know that,” he grumbled defensively. “Don't want you in my place. Nobody walks into my place.”

  “I'm sorry. My mother tried to raise me right, but I missed out on the gene for etiquette. It probably skipped a generation with me. My children will undoubtedly have impeccable manners—provided I live to bear them,” she added under her breath.

  On the mat beside the stove, the rattlesnake had coiled itself and reared up, drawing a bead on Del. Its tail buzzed ominously. Its mouth flashed pink as it hissed at him. Del flicked a glance at it, backed across the small room to the hearth, and came back with the rifle cradled in his right arm and a fire tongs in his left hand. He moved close enough to entice the snake to strike, then stepped gingerly on its head and took hold of it by the neck with the tongs. All this as if it were the most ordinary of household chores.

  Mari shuddered as he lifted the writhing creature off the floor and carried it to the door, where he dropped it into the woodbox outside and flipped the lid down with the nose of the rifle barrel. She climbed down off the chair, but kept her arms up.

  Del swung the rifle toward her as he stepped back inside. “What do you want? What did you come here for?” To taunt him, he thought. To seduce him, maybe, the way she had seduced J.D. Then he would be under the spell too, and the ranch would be lost. He would have to stay alert if he was to redeem himself. His fingers flexed on the stock of the rifle.

  Mari's gaze darted from the business end of the rifle to his face. The suspicion in his eyes boded ill. He wouldn't talk if he didn't trust her. Trust did not appear imminent. “I need to talk with you, Del,” she said as calmly as she could. “I need to talk to you about the tigers.”

  He jolted as if he had been hit with a cattle prod. The tigers. She knew about the tigers. “Is this a trick?”

  “No.”

  “Do you dance with the dog-boys?”

  “No,” she whispered, tears crowding her throat. “Did Lucy? The dead blonde—did she?”

  Del didn't answer. His brain was cooking beneath the metal plate, bubbling and throbbing. Throbbing so hard he thought it might pop his eyeballs right out of his head. He stared at the little blonde. Her eyes were deep-set and clear as colored glass. She looked right at him. Most people didn't. Most people looked at the deformed part of his face or looked past him as if he didn't have a head at all.

  “It's important, Del,” she said softly. “I know you saw the tigers. I know they're real.”

  Del just stared at her.

  It's a trick. She'll put you under the spell too.

  He didn't know what to do. He backed away a step, then turned to pace the width of the cabin, the 700 pointed at the floor. He paced hard, making military turns, as if the precise, purposeful motion would somehow direct his thoughts into some kind of order. He couldn't trust her. She was an outsider. She was a blonde. She had come into his home uninvited. Come to take what was left of his mind, no doubt. She would lure him with talk of the tigers and pull him over the edge.

  He couldn't allow that. He had to stop the blondes and make the dog-boys go away. There couldn't be tigers on the mountain. It was up to him. He couldn't be a hero.

  He mumbled some of this out loud, not aware that he was speaking, never thinking that the woman could hear him.

  “I saw the tiger too,” she said. “I know they shot it—Bryce's people. I think one of them might have shot Lucy too.”

  His eyes cut hard to her. He did not slow his pacing. “She's the dead one. You're not the dead one; you're the talker. Stop talking.”

  “But, Del, we need to talk. You need to tell me—”

  “Stop talking!” he roared. He wheeled on her, bringing the rifle up, and charged her, screaming at the top of his lungs. “Stop talking! Stop! I told you to stop!”

  Mari stumbled backward and crashed into the counter. The back of her head smacked against a shelf, and three cans of Dr Pepper tumbled off, bouncing onto the floor. There was nowhere to go. She was leaning back as far as she could, the thin edge of the countertop biting into her back. The muzzle of Del Rafferty's ugly black rifle bit into her right cheek in the hollow just below the bone. At the other end of the gun, Del was trembling as if he were standing on the epicenter of an earthquake. His eyes were wild, the irises swirling like liquid pewter, the pupils expanding outward like ink dropped into the mix. The muscles of his face pulled taut against the bone. His mouth tore open as if the mutilated side had been caught with an invisible fishhook.

  The face of death. Somehow she had expected death to be calm and sane, as if there were some logic to the scheme. She wondered if she would feel the bullet. She wondered if she would see that same revelation that had stricken MacDonald Townsend in the instant of his death. She didn't want to find out. The will to live pumped inside her. Her mind spun, scanning for a plan, a way out.

  Jesus, Marilee, if you survive this, J.D. will kill you.

  “Don't do it, Del,” she said softly. The charged air seemed to magnify the sound a hundred times. He made an animallike growl in his throat and the muscles of his forearm contracted as he prepared to pull the trigger. Mari fought the urge to close her eyes. Her lips barely moved. The words were a breath between them. “A hero wouldn't.”

  Hero. The word pierced his pounding brain like a lance. He could be a hero. Make the family proud. Redeem himself. If he pulled the trigger? If he didn't? The
questions wrestled inside him, slamming against his ribs, jostling his aching mind. His hands were shaking on the gun, the palms sweating. He could end it. He could kill her. But that wouldn't be the end. The dead didn't go away. He knew. She would haunt him, and he would have to pretend she didn't, or J.D. would be ashamed of him.

  Mari watched the battle wage within him, watched his brow tighten and furrow, watched the moisture come up in his eyes and his mouth quiver. It broke her heart. Even with his gun in her face, it broke her heart. His mind was fractured. He wanted so badly to do the right thing, but he didn't seem to know what the right thing was.

  “You can be a hero, Del,” she murmured, fighting her own tears. “Help me, Del. J.D. will be so proud of you.”

  She was offering everything he wanted. Small things to most men, but small things were all he dared ask for. To do the right thing. To make J.D. proud. He didn't ask to be made whole. He didn't ask for the kind of life other men had. Just to be a help and not a burden. To be a hero to his family, not the world. It didn't seem too much to ask, but all the prayers had gone unanswered.

  “Do the right thing, Del,” she whispered. “Put the gun down.”

  She met his eyes, not blinking, not condemning, not ridiculing. She wasn't like the other one. He knew that. She wanted him to help. She wanted him to be a hero too. The blue of her eyes was like a lake under an autumn sky, calm and deep. An angel's eyes. Something in them reached out and touched him in a place no one had tried to enter in such a long time. . . .

  “If this is a trick, ma'am,” he said softly, stepping back, lowering the rifle, “I'll kill you later.”

  CHAPTER

  28

  THE SOUND of dogs pulled Samantha up from the depths of unconsciousness, up through layers of dream and memory. There were always dogs at her grandfather's place. Skinny mongrels. The old man told stories about eating dogs. When they had supper, he would whisper in her ear that they were having puppy stew and laugh at her when she didn't eat anything but bread. She thought of Rascal and wondered if he was worried about her. She felt guilty that she'd been neglecting him. The guilt made her feel tired, and she drifted back toward the black void.