Taming the Alpha

by Mandy M. Roth

  That, at least, was a good sign.

  The woman was dressed in a flannel shirt and blue jeans with hiking boots on her feet, but didn’t have a coat. Or if she did, she hadn’t been wearing it when she’d been caught in his trap. Maybe it was back at her campsite? She couldn’t have wandered far, even if she was miles and miles off the beaten track. He was getting slow; he hadn’t noticed any smoke from campfires or any other tell tale sign he had neighbors. But here she was.

  Who wanders the woods this late in the season without a coat?

  It was foolishness bordering on stupidity – if not outright madness – to come hiking out here alone, this far from civilization, and so obviously ill-prepared. He would have worried about her mental state before she’d bumped her head, but for the fact there were no asylums or hospitals she could have checked herself out of for days in either direction. Not that an escapee would flee this way, anyway when there were so many better roads to follow.

  He shook her gently, then patted the side of her face a few times with the back of his hand, trying to wake her.

  Where did you come from?

  And more to the point, what the hell are you doing out here?

  Good questions, really good questions in fact, but ones to which he didn’t have any answers. It was getting dark and the temperature would drop sharply once the sun went down, meaning he didn’t have time to find any either. The only thing he knew for sure was that he couldn’t leave her here, not in her condition.

  Looks like two for dinner after all, he thought.

  He slid one arm under her back and another under her knees and then lifted her up with him as he rose to his feet. He took a moment to adjust her weight in his arms and then set off for the long walk back to the cabin.

  In another life – back in ‘82 – Michael Goodfellow had once hiked for three days carrying a badly wounded member of his team to safety through the harsh sun-blasted valleys of the Lebanon; a short walk through the woods was nothing. He made it back to the cabin just as the sun slipped behind the mountains and counted himself fortunate that he didn’t have to make the trip in the dark.

  He carried the woman inside and laid her down on the cot in the corner. She still hadn’t woken up, which worried him, but there wasn’t anything he could do about. He wasn’t about to douse her in ice cold water. The ankle, however, was another story. He took the liberty of removing her hiking boots and examining the injury. It was definitely swollen but he didn’t think it was broken, just badly sprained. She wouldn’t be walking anywhere under her own steam without some help for several days, that was for sure, but with nothing else to do he’d try and fashion a makeshift crutch out of one of the branches he’d stripped. First though he got a bandage out of the medical chest – a literal wooden chest he kept in the closet – and wrapped her ankle to keep it steady and to help reduce the swelling.

  At that point there wasn’t much else he could do for her but to wait.

  Once she regained consciousness he could find out who she was and see about getting her back to where she belonged, so for now he busied himself with other tasks like fashioning the crutch and gutting and skinning the rabbit before prepping the vegetables to go along with it. And still she didn’t wake up.

  ***

  “Hello? Is anyone there?” English, at least. He realized it could have been any language, French, German, Italian all more likely than English, but the fact that she spoke the same language as him almost certainly marked her out as a tourist.

  He put down the book he’d been reading by the light of the lantern on the porch and pushed himself up from his chair. There was no empty bottle beside him tonight. It had been three hours since he’d returned to the cabin with the woman in his arms. He had been starting to think that she was never going to wake up.

  “Coming,” he called, then took a deep breath and stepped inside.

  The woman was sitting up in bed, examining her bandaged foot when he walked in. She glanced up at him and he noticed for the first time just how pretty she was. Not beautiful. Pretty. That was the right word. She had a narrow face with high cheekbones, a perky nose, and eyes that gleamed in the low light.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he said to her automatically, holding his hand out, palm up, like he didn’t want to startle her despite the fact that she didn’t seem frightened in the least. “My name is Michael Goodfellow. I found you in the woods about a half mile from my cabin. I brought you here because you were injured.”

  “In the woods?” she echoed, as if that was as surprising as waking up in a stranger’s bed.

  “Yes, in the woods,” he inclined his head towards the window as thought to say ‘out there’. “I’m afraid you got banged up a little before I found you.” He didn’t mention the snare trap; the last thing he wanted was to discover she was a litigious American tourist. No need to go down that road unless it was absolutely necessary.

  “What happened?” she asked, her fingers unconsciously playing over the bandage wrapped around her ankle and foot.

  “I’m not sure. It looked like you fell. You’ve got a cut on the back of your head, so I’m assuming you hit it when you went over. When I took off your boot I saw that your ankle was pretty swollen, so I taped it up for you. I hope you don’t mind.”

  She waved the thought away and inwardly Goodfellow breathed a sigh of relief. Drama was the last thing he needed.

  “Can you tell me who you are?”

  “I’m...” She paused, frowned. She lifted a hand toward the back of her head and then winced as she touched the still-healing wound.

  Goodfellow felt a bit of unease start to unfurl in his gut. He gave her a moment and then prompted her again.

  “You were telling me your name...?”

  She looked up at him, her frown deepening, and then said, “Do I know you? I feel like I know you.”

  That little ball of unease turned into a big one as he caught the unspoken implication of her question.

  “You don’t know your name, do you?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Do you remember hiking in the woods?”

  Another shake.

  “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  A slight hesitation that time and then, “Nothing,” she said in a quavering voice. “I don’t remember anything at all.”

  Not good. Not good at all.

  He could tell that she was on the verge of losing it and that was the last thing he wanted, so he kept the smile on his face and didn’t let his own nervousness show as he said, “That’s okay. A little bit of amnesia is common with a head injury like the one you’ve got. I’m sure it’ll all come back to you soon. You just need to rest up.”

  “How do you know? Are you a doctor?”

  “No, but I’ve had some experience with traumatic injuries.”

  The words were no sooner out of his mouth before he flashed back to the dream from the night before, to the all-too real sensation of holding his wife’s mangled body in his arms, her blood soaking into his clothing as she gasped out her last breath, so badly injured that she hadn’t even been aware that he was there with her in the end...

  He shook his head to chase away the vision and smiled, albeit weakly, at his visitor.

  “I’m sure you’ll be fine,” he said.

  She wasn’t ready to let it go yet, however. “I should see a doctor, shouldn’t I?”

  Well, that would certainly be easier, but...

  “Here’s the thing. The nearest town – if you can even call it that – is more than a week’s hike from here. It’s on the other side of the mountains, and it’s a tough journey even when you’re in good shape. For someone with an injured leg, it will be well nigh impossible. And even if it wasn’t, it’s dark out, there’s no way we could make the journey by foot tonight. That’d just be asking for trouble.”

  She glanced toward the window, as if to reassure herself that he was telling the truth.

  Goodfellow smiled, trying to p
ut her at ease. “Looks like you’re stuck with me for at least the night. If you still don’t remember anything in the morning, we put together a plan to get you down to Pontresina, but for now we just sit tight, alright?”

  She gave it a moment’s thought and then nodded.

  He had to give her credit; in her situation, he didn’t think he would have remained as calm as she was. His respect for her went up a notch. Maybe she was a crazy tourist, but she wasn’t a flake.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have anything to eat, would you?”

  Goodfellow smiled at that. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  They shared a meal of sautéed rabbit and fresh vegetables. Neither of them were great conversationalists – thought at least the young woman had an excuse, it was hard to be chatty when you couldn’t even remember your own name – and most of the meal was passed in silence.

  Michael was in the process of making them both a cup of what he liked to call campfire coffee when she spoke up from behind him.

  “Is that your family?”

  He stiffened.

  He knew without turning around that she was looking at the picture of Marnie and Jess that he kept on the shelf next to the bed. It had been taken on a family trip to Baja and showed the two of them laughing in the surf as the waves crashed around them. It had been a glorious day and the smiles on their faces were a mile wide. That was how he liked to remember them. The photo was his reminder of all that he had lost. All that he had allowed to be taken from him. It was his guilt embodied in a single image.

  He turned and, without looking at her, walked over to the photo and placed it face down on the shelf. Only then did he glance up and meet her gaze.

  “They were my family,” he said flatly. “They’re both dead now.”

  Seeing the pain on his face, the woman reached out a hand as if to touch his face, to comfort him, but he turned away before she could do so.

  He didn’t need anyone’s sympathy; he didn’t deserve it.

  After that, the evening was pretty much ruined. Neither of them could think of anything to say to clear the air and as a result they kept to themselves until his visitor, complaining of a headache, said she’d like to try and get some sleep.

  It was a good idea. It meant they didn’t have to sit in awkward silence. He told her to keep the bed, assuring her that he’d be just fine with a pillow and sleeping bag on the floor. Ten minutes later he could hear her snoring away softly in the corner, while he lay on his back staring up at the ceiling, lost in thought.

  He would remain that way for some time before sleep finally claimed him for its own.

  ***

  For the first time in many nights, he did not dream of his dead wife and daughter. Instead he found himself back in the middle of a war zone, lying on a rooftop in some Lebanese town he couldn’t even pronounce, no idea who the enemy was, his rifle in his hands and his spotter beside him. In the street below two squads of Marines were going house to house, looking for the group of insurgents that had attacked a convoy just moments before.

  He watched through the scope as two young women wearing the traditional abaya and hijab of the Islamic culture stepped out from behind a pile of rubble and began walking toward the patrol. Seeing two women walking together like that wasn’t an unusual sight, but something about them gave him pause.

  He keyed the mike on his radio.

  “Hold your position, Tango One. I’ve got movement on the street ahead of you.”

  “Roger that.”

  He continued watching them, trying to figure out what it was about them that had caught his eye. They were covered practically head to toe in the dark-colored robes; all he could see was the strip of skin around their eyes. Both women were looking down at the ground so he couldn’t read their expressions, either.

  At this point the women had covered about a third of the distance to the convoy and Goodfellow was starting to get a little uncomfortable. He still didn’t know what it was that had caught his attention and if he waited too much longer the pair would be close enough to cause harm to his fellow Marines if that was truly their intention. All it would take was a concealed explosive device or AK-47; at close range both would be deadly even in the hands of an amateur.

  It had to be there somewhere...

  Then he saw it. The women were walking stiffly, their hands clasped in front of them and their elbows locked securely against their sides.

  They were carrying something beneath their robes!

  “Tango One, I’ve got two females headed your way. Be advised that both appear to be carrying something concealed beneath their robes.”

  “Roger that. Can you identify what it is that they are carrying?”

  “Negative.”

  At that moment the woman on the right raised her head and looked around nervously, allowing Goodfellow to get a good look at the exposed part of her face The sight of the excessive sweat that had beaded up on her skin was all the confirmation Goodfellow needed that his hunch was correct; these women were trouble.

  Before he could radio that information to the patrol on the street below him, the pair of women suddenly threw off their robes, revealing the suicide vests strapped to their bodies, vests that contained half a dozen blocks of C4 wired to a detonator they no doubt held in their hands. Not just any detonator either, but a dead man’s switch, one that would activate the minute they opened their fist regardless of whether they were dead or alive when that happened.

  Goodfellow had seen vests just like them more times than he liked to count and knew that he had to act fast if he wanted to save the lives of his fellow Marines down on the street. His spotter was already calling out the results of the calculations for the range and windage and Goodfellow automatically dialed those into the scope, assuring that his shot, when he took it, would be as close to on target as possible.

  Below him, the women split up and began running helter skelter for the lead elements of the patrol.

  His spotter designated the faster of the two women as target one and Goodfellow focused in on her, putting the crosshairs of his scope directly in the center of her face, knowing a head shot was his best bet for putting her down quickly and completely.

  Everything around him seemed to go away as he focused one hundred percent on his target.

  He slowed his breathing, timing it with his heart beat, and brought his finger onto the trigger, ready to fire.

  In that instant the face of the woman caught in the crosshairs of his rifle became the face of his dead wife, Marnie.

  Goodfellow’s finger froze on the trigger.

  He could hear his spotter telling him to fire, then yelling for him to take the shot, but he couldn’t move. He could only stare at Marnie’s face as the would-be bombers rushed toward the troops ahead of them.

  In the back of his mind, Goodfellow began to scream...

  ***

  She watched him thrash about in his sleep and knew that he was in the grip of another nightmare. It was exactly the situation that she had been hoping for.

  She slipped out from under the covers and walked across the room on silent feet. Reaching the spot where he lay, she knelt down beside him, waiting to see if her presence would wake him. When it did not, she stretched out her hands palms down and held then over his sleeping form. Closing her eyes, she opened her sight.

  Her power sprang into focus, showing her the darkness that twisted and churned around him like a living, breathing thing. It bled from his eyes and poured from his nostrils, then twined itself about his throat like a noose determined to choke the life from him. In a way that was, indeed, what it was doing. Bit by bit, day by day, that dark despair was killing him.

  But she intended to stop it.

  Gathering her power, she focused on the beating heart in the midst of his chest, the heart that ached with the pain and sorrow that he had carried within him for so long now. She pictured a ball of soft white light – the color of rebirth, of renewal, of resurrection – gently dr
ifting down from her palms to his chest and then sinking deeper, into his chest, wrapping itself around the organ beating there like a protective coat of armor.

  Wherever the light touched, the darkness fled.

  She had only just started, however, when she sensed her benefactor stirring and knew that he was about to wake up. She had just enough time to pull her hands back, breaking the spell, before he opened his eyes and found her kneeling over him.

  He recoiled, his hands coming up defensively in front of him.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he asked.

  “You were having a nightmare,” she told him, which was true. “I was trying to wake you up. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” he answered gruffly, subtly pulling away from her, as if he sensed she’d been up to something else but couldn’t quite put his finger on what that was.

  Pretending not to have noticed his retreat, she said, “Glad to hear it. I’ll see you in the morning then” and headed back to the warmth of her borrowed bed.

  She was going to have to take more active measures, it seemed.

  ***

  The next morning Goodfellow rose before his guest and dressed in silence. He packed his satchel with a few supplies, wrote a quick note so she would know where he had gone when she woke up, and then slipped out the door and over to the storage shed. It only took him a few minutes to wheel the quad out and push it over to the edge of the clearing, where he would be far enough away that he wouldn’t wake his guest when he started the engine.

  He drove to the spot where he had found his visitor the night before and parked the quad. Dismounting, he began a careful search of the surrounding area on foot, looking for anything that could give him an idea of who the woman was or what she was doing here. A jacket. A backpack. Perhaps even a campsite with a tent and a sleeping bag. His theory was that she had simply wandered away from wherever she was staying before getting caught in his trap and if that was the case, then he should be able to find where she had come from by using some basic, deductive logic.