What Doesn't Kill Her

by Christina Dodd

  “Ha! Have you met Rae?”

  She pulled away, incredulous at his lack of sympathy. “Could I spend five minutes basking in relief?”

  “Sure. Bask.” With finely tuned humor, he said, “She’s still asleep.”

  Kellen wiped her face and blew her nose. “Thanks,” she muttered. She looked up.

  Max was smiling as if he saw something wonderful in her; in snotty, blubbering little ol’ her.

  She tossed the tissues into the wastebasket.

  He took the roll of toilet paper out of her hand and put it to one side. “Done with that?”

  “Um, sure.” Her voice quavered a little.

  He stroked her cheek, pushed her hair behind her ear, cupped his hand behind her neck.

  Together, they leaned toward each other. Their lips almost touched, and—

  The workroom door slammed open.

  They jumped apart.

  Zone couldn’t see them, but he announced, “The Triple Goddess is real. She’s real. This is the discovery of a lifetime!”

  “Um. Great, Zone,” Max said. “That’s just dandy.”

  Kellen leaned around the back of the recliner and viewed Zone, standing there with his glasses in his hand, his eyes shining with excitement. “Whoop.”

  “Yes!” Zone punched the air, went back into the workshop and slammed the door.

  “Where were we?” Max asked.

  “I think we were going to, um, kiss. But the moment is gone. Right?”

  “No, it’s not. I could kiss you every moment of every day, no matter who stops us.”

  They leaned together again.

  “Mommy! Daddy!” Rae’s cranky sleepy voice halted their advance. “I want a drink of water.”

  Kellen looked deep into Max’s eyes. “No matter who stops us?”

  “Except her.” Max stood. “I’ll do it. My butt hurts from sitting on the floor anyway.” He looked her over. “You need to go back to bed.” Which was a tactful way of saying she’d been upset and crying, was tired and injured and in general looked like hell. He offered his hand.

  She let him pull her to her feet. Come to think of it, her butt hurt, too.

  Rae was sitting up, rubbing her eyes. “What were you doing back there?”

  “Not kissing, that’s for sure,” Max muttered.

  “I was telling your daddy about some little girls I used to know,” Kellen said. “Some little girls I met from when I was a soldier.”

  “I’m not sleepy.” Rae could hardly hold her head up. “Tell me.”

  “Someday I will. They deserve to be remembered.”

  30

  The next morning, Zone scratched his chin through his beard. “That peckerhead Nils Brooks is having a fit over that goddess. That guy is a pain in the ass.”

  “You won’t get an argument from me,” Max replied.

  The men were in grumpy moods, Zone because he was going to have to give up the Triple Goddess before he was done examining it, and Max because last night...well. Kellen slid a look toward him and caught him watching her. Because of last night’s kissus interruptus.

  She wasn’t feeling grumpy at all. All that crying and gut-wrenching conversation followed by a good hard sleep and a decent breakfast had left her feeling positively cheerful. Getting dressed in the clean clothes Max had brought her and strapping her holster to her side returned her sense of accomplishment and reminded her of her own competence. It had been a difficult, dirty, murderous few days, but she and Rae had survived, and by the grace of God and Max, they had completed Kellen’s mission.

  She gave herself a mental high five, took her cup of Zone’s killer coffee and went out on the lookout’s porch, high on a ridge and twelve feet above the ground. A wind came up in the night, pushing the fog and clouds away, leaving a morning so pristine she saw the view Wade had spoken of—mountains and valleys, greens and browns and grays, blue sky fading to a pale horizon, and far, far in the distance, the ruffled deep blue Pacific. The cool air smelled like old gods in a new world, kissing her cheeks to give them color and bring her joy in this one moment when she still lived...and hoped. It was so peaceful—

  Rae opened the door and dragged a kitchen chair out in a terrible scraping of wood and metal against wood. “Mommy, this is for you to sit down because Daddy says you shouldn’t be standing all the time yet and Zone said you have a limp and they called Bills Brooks and he’s on his way.”

  “Nils Brooks.”

  “Nils Brooks,” Rae repeated. “He’s on his way in a helicopter. Isn’t that cool? Do you like my leggings? Daddy brought them. When I get to day camp, I’m going to do a show-and-tell and tell everyone about the Triple Goddess, but I can’t show a photo because Zone won’t let me. Did you know the Triple Goddess is valuable and priceless? It’s going to be in a museum. I kissed her goodbye on all three mouths. Did you kiss her?”

  Peace was overrated.

  Kellen helped her daughter place the chair against the wall out of the worst of the breeze.

  From inside the lookout, Zone shouted, “You born in a barn? Shut the door!”

  Rae rolled her eyes at Kellen and slammed the door. “Sit down!” she commanded Kellen, and when Kellen did, she sat on her lap and was, miraculously, quiet. She leaned against Kellen and looked around and shivered because she hadn’t bothered to wear more than a sparkly short-sleeved T-shirt, leggings and a tutu.

  So Kellen put her arms around her and hugged her close.

  Rae quickly decided there was such a thing as too much peace. “I like this place. Can we live here?”

  “You can’t have karate classes if you’re up here.”

  “Karate!” Rae’s fist shot out. “Hyah!”

  “But maybe we could rent a lookout next summer.”

  “I’d need a cell phone.”

  Oh, this was going to be good. “Why?”

  “How else could I call my friends?” Apparently, even before the words were out of her mouth, Rae realized that wasn’t going to fly, so she added, “How can I call Daddy to come and save us if I don’t have a cell phone?”

  Kellen’s temper rose fast and hot. “Daddy did not come and save us! I’m willing to give him credit for the last sprint, but we—”

  “Listen!” Rae jumped to her feet. “Do you hear that?”

  Kellen exhaled her frustration. “I do.” She opened the door and called, “The helicopter is here.”

  Max glanced at the monitor on the kitchen table. “There’s no one out there.”

  Zone strapped on his sidearm and handed Max a rifle. “Let’s take every precaution.” He looked at Kellen.

  She patted the holster strapped to her side under her jacket. Because the helicopter should be carrying Nils Brooks, coming to pick up the Triple Goddess and carry it to safety. But by the time Kellen and Rae woke this morning, Max and Zone had been out to the battle site and located the bodies, mangled by the predators who nightly patrolled the woods: bear, coyotes, bobcats and hawks. The firearms had all disappeared. That left one man out there, a ruthless killer, unforgiving of failure, who if he could, left no evidence of his passing.

  They would take no chances now.

  Max came out on the deck and held the rifle at ready. “Go inside, Rae.”

  “I want to watch!”

  “As soon as we recognize the guy inside the helicopter, we’ll let you watch.” Kellen put a gentle hand in Rae’s back and pushed her into the lookout.

  “This might be a bad guy?” Rae asked.

  “Might be,” Kellen agreed.

  “I am really tired of bad guys,” Rae said in disgust. “They make my life very difficult.” She went inside.

  “Smart kid.” Zone stood just inside the door with the well-wrapped Triple Goddess slung over one shoulder and Kellen’s bag slung over the other.

  Kel
len watched the fast two-man helicopter hover over them, then drop slowly over the almost-flat bare gravel below the lookout.

  The engine slowed. The door opened. Nils Brooks stepped out. He was the pilot. There was no one else.

  “Perfect,” she breathed.

  Max lowered the steps from the deck to the ground. He started down, but Kellen caught his arm. “No. I get to do this.”

  He stepped back and allowed her to go down first.

  She ran down the short slope to meet Nils. She opened her arms.

  He was grinning. “It’s real?” He opened his arms and prepared to hug her. “It’s really real?”

  She sucker punched him in the face.

  He staggered backward, stumbled down the slope and fell on his rear.

  She pulled her weapon and stood over him, pistol pointed at his bleeding nose. “That’s for not giving me all the facts before I took the job!”

  He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket—of course, the American aristocrat Nils Brooks would have a handkerchief on him—and mopped at the bleeding. “I needed you, and what with having a kid and all, I was afraid you wouldn’t do it.”

  “I ought to cut off your balls.”

  “You got up here alive!” He made it sound like she’d been skipping all the way.

  “Barely! With my kid and all in tow!”

  Nils sat up cautiously. “You can’t blame me for your daughter stowing away.”

  “I can blame you for everything.” Kellen heard the rattle of stones behind her as someone descended the path.

  “Do I get to hit him now?” This time, Max wasn’t yelling. This time, his voice was low and vibrant and oh so completely different from last night’s meltdown. This time, he was ready to kill.

  She stepped back and let Nils scramble to his feet. “Nils is a dirty fighter,” she said.

  “That’s right. Defend your boyfriend from me.” Nils balanced on the balls of his feet, ready to attack.

  She looked him in the eyes. “He’s an ex-football player with a reputation for foreign bar fights. Take him on if you want.”

  Nils hesitated. Exchanged a long hard stare with Max. Stood flat-footed again. “Where’s the Triple Goddess?”

  “Zone’s got her. There were four mercenaries, and she was left behind.” Max used a tough guy voice Kellen had never heard from him before. “I rescued her.”

  Diverted, Nils paid no attention to the tough voice. “The mercenaries didn’t grab her when they had the chance?”

  “Before anyone touched her, one mercenary killed the other three,” Max said.

  “He wanted the head for himself,” Nils declared.

  “Maybe. But he knows where the head is, the outlook isn’t impervious to attack, and there’s been no attempt to retrieve it.”

  While Kellen listened to the men rehash the events and try to make sense of them, the events of the past weeks flashed through her mind. Everything at the winery had been calm, normal, boring. Then Roderick Blake had shown up, climbed on the roof, knocked a tile onto the ground where it blasted into shrapnel, and everything since had been skewed by pain, fear and a sense of putting a puzzle together...while blindfolded.

  She was missing a crucial piece. It was almost in her grasp, and if she had one moment of peace to think, she knew she could—

  A great spattering of stones rattled down the trail, and Rae arrived at a run. “Hi, I’m Rae Di Luca. You must be Bills Brooks! We’ve been waiting for you. Daddy wants to shoot you. Mr. Zone said he’d watch. Mommy said you’d give me a ride in the helicopter. I’ve never ridden in a helicopter before!”

  “Hi, Rae. I’m Nils Brooks.” Nils knelt on one knee in front of her. “I can’t take you for a helicopter ride right now, but—”

  “You can.” Kellen nudged Rae out of the way and knelt, her posture a mirror of his. “Max and I have to get down the mountain. There are killers out there hunting for...for the head. I am not subjecting my child to danger when the treacherous son of a bitch who put us in this situation is in front of us with a way to get her out and get her home.”

  “Mommy!” Rae was reproachful. “I thought you liked Bills Brooks?”

  Kellen answered Rae, but she never took her gaze away from Nils. “I trust him to care for the head, and you. There’s a difference.”

  Nils stared at Kellen. Looked up at Max, then at Zone who had silently arrived. Nils nodded, stood, brushed the dirt from his knee. “I guess you’re going for a ride, Rae Di Luca.”

  “Cool! Where are we going?”

  “You’re going home,” Kellen said. “To the winery. Your grandma will be excited to see you.”

  “Di Luca Winery in the Willamette Valley. You think you can find that, Brooks?” Max’s voice still held that soft sibilant threat, like a snake giving warning of a strike.

  “I can find it.”

  “Good,” Max said. “You’ll take our daughter there. You’ll deliver her into the hands of her grandmother. Then you can fly with that head wherever the hell you want and do whatever the hell you want with it. Don’t call us again. Ever. About anything.”

  Kellen watched Max out of the corners of her eyes. She had pegged him as a man who was kind and gentle, intelligent and businesslike, devoted to his family and friends. She hadn’t realized that devotion included a threat and a promise of violence in defense of his loved ones.

  Something to add to her mental dossier.

  “Wait. I’m going home?” That hadn’t occurred to Rae, and she backed up, eyes wide. “I don’t want to go home! I want to stay here. I like it here!”

  “Now, honey—” Max began.

  Kellen interrupted. “Mommy and Daddy aren’t staying here. We’re going to hike down the mountain. You remember the mountain? Not enough food, no fire, no s’mores, no fun?”

  “Bikes! Mountain bikes! We could get mountain bikes and—”

  “Kid, there’s no place to get mountain bikes within a day’s walk of here.” For Zone, that was incredibly patient.

  Max put his arm around Rae’s shoulders. “You’ll be home in an hour. You can tell your grandma all about your adventures. You can play with your princesses. You can eat whatever you want—”

  “Not Spam,” Rae said sulkily. “Grandma won’t let me have Spam.”

  “Kid, you ate all my Spam,” Zone said.

  “You can call your friends and tell them where you’ve been,” Kellen coaxed.

  “Why aren’t you coming in the helicopter?” Rae asked.

  “It’s a Robinson R22. They aren’t kidding when they call it a two-man helicopter. At this elevation, I’d never get it off the ground with that much weight,” Nils said. “I need to get going. Are you coming for a ride in the helicopter, Rae? Or not? You’re afraid, aren’t you?”

  Rae’s skinny chest swelled with indignation. “I am not!” she yelled.

  “Okay, then.” Nils winked at Kellen and headed for the helicopter. “Let’s go.”

  Rae ran after Nils.

  Kellen and Max ran after Rae. They ducked below the slowly rotating blades, hooked Rae into the seat, told her to be good, put her headphones on, kissed her and waved her off.

  As the helicopter rose in the air, Max said, “Brooks is better with kids than I expected.”

  “If the pictures are to be believed, he’s got a ton of family, nephews and nieces.”

  “I thought he was hatched.” Max nudged her with his elbow. “I didn’t have a reputation for foreign bar fights. When I was in football, I was clean as a whistle.”

  “He doesn’t know that.”

  They turned to walk back to the Horizon Lookout.

  Zone blocked the path.

  Uh-oh.

  “I’m headed down to pick up supplies—Spam!—report those guys and their deaths. Call me an accomplice, but I won’t mention either o
f you. The trip will take me three days, down and back. You’ve got three days here to heal—” he glared at Kellen “—make sure your killers lose interest and get your stupid relationship figured out.”

  Kellen stared at him, her eyes so wide they felt stretched and dry.

  Zone marched up the path to the lookout, picked up the large camping backpack leaning against the bottom step, hoisted it over his shoulders and said, “Be gone before I get back.” He walked into the canyon, down the path, took a sudden right and disappeared from sight.

  “Where did he go?” Kellen asked.

  “When we were out searching for the bodies, I figured out pretty fast he knows this area way better than anyone else. He takes paths no one else could ever find.”

  “So he’s going the back way?”

  “Looks like it.”

  They were alone.

  Awkward. Kellen tilted her head and watched Zone disappear into the canyon. “I get the feeling he doesn’t like us in his space.”

  “He doesn’t like anyone in his space. His instructions to me were to not get ourselves killed while he was gone.” Max pressed his index finger into the middle of Kellen’s back, urging her toward the lookout. “Standing out in the open makes me uneasy. Shall we go up?”

  More awkward. “Of course.” She was limping, damn it, undernourished and unready to make a hike of twenty-five miles over rough terrain, even if it was mostly downhill.

  But she was also unprepared to be alone with Max, her former lover and the father of her child. Zone had not only told them to work out their relationship, he had shone a spotlight on their relationship so neither of them could ignore it. Now they were going to be alone for three days. Alone. Isolated from mankind and civilization alone. We can’t avoid discussing and deciding our relationship alone.

  She wasn’t prepared. She would never be prepared.

  Kellen hadn’t seen the lookout from the outside before, what with being unconscious and flung over Max’s shoulder when she arrived. Now she examined the twelve-foot-tall foundation of concrete block topped with a white-painted hut surrounded on all sides by a three-foot wide deck. She saw solar panels on the roof and a few crooked wires sticking up like Dr. Seuss reindeer antlers. “Interesting. How is he generating enough power to run the place?” Casual conversation with Max. Very good.