by Sawyer Belle
“Okay,” Brent said, thinking aloud. “So, the first thing we do is file a restraining order and a police report about what happened tonight. That way, they have his behavior on record and he’s off to jail if he comes anywhere near you. Second, we get some guns. Mine are stored up in Montana with the bike. I didn’t think we’d need them before spring, but we should get something now.”
She sucked in a deep breath at the implications behind what Brent was suggesting.
“I think I’m going to throw up,” she said, clutching at her midsection. She could feel the bile working its way up her throat and she rushed to the bathroom. Brent followed but she shut the door before he could enter behind her. Once she emptied her stomach she unleashed a torrent of tears. This couldn’t be happening. Rick was just an upset ex. He would get over her and move on. He had to. She sat on the floor beside the toilet and hugged her knees to her. Her entire body shivered. She had never been so afraid. Well, not since the night of the grizzly.
Brent had been waiting on the other side of the door to give her privacy, but when she hadn’t come out in ten minutes, he checked the doorknob. It was unlocked so he opened it. She was on the floor and shaking. He immediately dropped to her side and gathered her in his arms. She held onto him as though she were afraid he would leave.
“Make it go away, Brent,” she croaked in an emotional whisper. “Make it go away like you did before.”
“I will,” he whispered, kissing the top of her head. “I promise. I will.”
Chapter 40
The masking tape screeched as she pulled it free from the last cardboard box she had to go through. Old photos, journals, letters and school papers from her teenage years smiled back at her. She reached in to pull out pictures of her and Kelly and she couldn’t help but grin at those carefree days and the easy friendship they’d had. Her smile faded as she remembered how easy it had also been for that friendship to slip away after high school.
The new apartment was cluttered with empty, broken-down boxes and items that hadn’t found a permanent place yet. Three weeks into the new year, she and Brent finally decided on a new home and left her parents’ house. They’d not seen or heard anything from Rick since New Year’s Eve and her anxiety over him faded with each uneventful day. It had subsided so much that she and Brent felt silly and actually began joking about how fearful they’d been.
She continued to sift through photos until she came to a stack from her last summer as a wrangler at the Slanted S. There was a snapshot of her and Kelly on their first day there. Bev had taken it just before they went to bed. Each girl had an arm looped around the other’s neck with smiles as wide as the Montana sky. Mackenna ran her finger over her own face as she felt Brent embrace her from behind.
“What’s that?” he said before looking himself. “Oh man! That’s the first day we met. Look how young you were.”
“Ha!” she chuckled. “You mean how chubby I was!”
“You weren’t chubby!”
“Oh, yes I was! That was the most I’ve ever weighed in my life. I had gained so much weight because I was doing nothing but studying and schoolwork so I could graduate early. When I got to the dude and saw you looking so fine, I thought: why did I have to get fat now?!”
Brent laughed. “Well, I didn’t notice you being chubby,” he said.
“You didn’t notice me at all,” she jabbed. “You only had eyes for Kelly.”
“Yeah, and you were quick to come to your friend’s rescue, protecting her from my sexual prowess,” he teased, “only to fall victim to it yourself.”
“Oh, please,” she returned. “Don’t flatter yourself. I fell for the part of you that you would have never given to Kelly.”
“That’s right,” he said, kissing her neck below the ear. “So, remember that the next time you want to tease me about Kelly. I gave you what I would never have given her…or anyone else.”
She sighed happily against his kisses. “I’d say I earned it,” she breathed.
“Yep,” he answered, “that and the sexual prowess.”
She chuckled as he continued to nuzzle her neck. She scanned through the photos until she came to one that had been one of her favorites. It was the night she’d met Alora, the night of hers and Brent’s first dance. In the photo, Brent was dancing with Alora, cradling her like a helpless child and Alora was beaming up at her boy. Mackenna had snapped the shot, not knowing how good it would turn out.
“Look,” she said to Brent and he diverted his attention from her soft skin long enough to take in the photo. He reached up and took it, a small, sad smile playing with his lips and a knot of emotion working its way into his throat. He missed his mother terribly. He wished that she would have lived long enough to know that he and Mackenna wound up together.
He hugged Mackenna tightly from behind. He was so grateful for her. It was because of her that he and his mother shared that dance, and it was her presence that had helped him cope with her death. He didn’t know what sort of condition he would be in if she hadn’t come back into his life when she had.
Mackenna gasped and he looked where she looked. In her hand was a picture of the two of them, leaning against one of the round corral fences. She was in mid-laugh, but Brent’s face had been completely scratched out, almost to the point where there was a hole in the photograph. Brent flinched.
“Ouch, Babe,” he said. “Tell me what you really think.”
“I didn’t do that,” she said incredulously. He raised a teasing eyebrow. “I swear I didn’t.”
She shuffled to the next photograph. It was another of the two of them with the same defect. Brent’s face had been scratched out. She looked for more and found more. Every single photo of her and Brent in the stack had his face scratched out. The newly-abandoned fear began creeping back into her blood.
Brent saw it in her eyes and felt it, too, in his gut. What exactly were they dealing with? He grabbed the photos from her and tossed them in the trash, then turned a smile on her.
“There. Problem solved.” Her eyes said she didn’t think so. “Those pictures have been packed up since before we were together. He probably did that back in the summer or whenever he read your journals. Let’s not get carried away again and spoil our new home with thoughts of him.”
She nodded and then shook her head of the fear and turned back to the box.
“You’re right,” she said. “He probably did that long ago.”
She reached for the journal on top of the stack and began thumbing through it, remembering old thoughts and feelings. A sequence of scratches jumped off the pages at her. She turned to the last page of her last entry and felt an icy shiver crawl through her veins and over her skin. It spoke of her hesitation about marriage and about her desire to press on with school and not put it off. Near the end, she admitted that she still loved Brent and was still torturing herself over not having him in her life. She was missing him.
“No, he didn’t do it a long time ago,” she called out to Brent. “I wrote this last entry just before I packed the books myself, and it didn’t look like this.”
She turned the book around to face him and he scanned the script, finding that everywhere his name had been written was scratched out and replaced with the word “Rick.” His skin pimpled with gooseflesh and for the first time he believed that Mackenna was not the one in danger. It was him.
“That’s the best you can do? Seriously?” Brent stared at the police officer with wide eyes. The middle-aged man with the bulbous belly looked down his crooked nose, puckering his lips impatiently.
“I don’t know what more you think I can do,” he returned coldly. “All you’ve got there is some old ruined photographs and a notebook with scratches on it. There’s nothing that points to who did it. Y’all could have done it for all I know. So, I’ll take a photo and stick it in the file with the report.”
Brent stood tall, offended by the officer’s accusatory tone.
“Wow,” he said dryly. “Reno�
�s finest right here. This guy threatens my wife in front of witnesses, then shows up and punches her in the face in front of witnesses, then somehow manages to sneak back onto her parents’ property and damage her personal items and you don’t think this is worth more than a piece of paper in a file?!”
The officer was not amused and he showed it in the way he crossed his arms over his belly and closed himself off. Whatever ally they might have found in him was gone.
“You forgot the in front of witnesses part about the trespassing and vandalism. Oh wait! That’s because you have no witnesses. As to the other two offenses for which you do have witnesses, you and your wife chose not to press charges! So, I’ve got no reason to arrest him.”
Brent shook his head as anger sped through his blood. Mackenna placed a cooling hand on his forearm. She couldn’t believe how helpless they were. She turned pleading eyes up to the officer.
“Sir,” she started, “what can we do to protect ourselves? I understand that you’re bound by the law, but we believe this man could be dangerous.”
He eyed her somewhat more calmly than he had Brent, and when he spoke his voice was softer.
“If you really are in fear of your life, then take measures to protect yourself,” he said. “Do you own any firearms?”
“Yes,” they said together.
“Permitted, right?”
“Of course,” Brent snapped and the officer narrowed his eyes again.
“Well, make sure you’re real comfortable with your weapons. Make sure they’re loaded and easy to reach. Get a dog, a security system, come up with an escape plan in case something does happen. Get to know your neighbors. They can be a great help in dire situation. The police can only respond when the danger is present. You and your husband are still your best defense.”
Mackenna nodded stiffly. “Thank you, Officer.”
He nodded then left them at the counter.
Brent slowed the truck to a crawl as it moved through the apartment complex parking lot, looking for building sixteen. When it came into view, he parked in a spot nearby and shut off the engine. On the seat beside him was a loaded pistol and he stared at it for answers. How far was he willing to go?
This was the apartment that Mackenna said Rick had rented when she moved back in with her parents. She’d never been inside but had dropped him off plenty of times. Brent could see the second-story door from where he’d parked. He wondered if Rick was inside, if he was armed, and if he was sane. Either way, he needed to be confronted. Brent was not going to just sit idly in his apartment, waiting for the threat to come to him and his wife.
He left the truck and tucked the pistol into his coat pocket as he climbed the stairs. His heart pounded in his chest, his breath was heavier than he wanted it to be. He’d faced many wild animals, but none of them had been human. He wasted no time knocking once he reached the top of the stairs. No answer came so he knocked again. Finally, the door cracked open and an elderly black woman peered through the crack at him.
“Yes?” she asked. Brent stammered, taken aback by her presence.
“Uhh…is Rick home?”
“Rick?” she repeated. “Ain’t nobody named Rick here.”
“You mean he’s not home?”
“No, I mean he don’t live here.”
Brent’s shoulders sagged as he sighed. “Sorry to bother you,” he said. “He must have moved within the last month.”
“Well, if he did, he didn’t move from this place,” she answered. “I been here for two years.”
Brent frowned. Maybe he had the wrong apartment. He apologized again and bid the woman a good night before he made his way back to the truck. He drove around to the main office and went inside. Rows of metal mailboxes lined the area to his left and he went to it, scanning the names on the outside. He did not find Rick’s. When he began to search again, a secretary called to him from behind the front desk.
“Can I help you with something, sir?”
“Maybe you can,” Brent said with a smile, walking over to her. “This is kind of embarrassing. I’m trying to find out which apartment my friend Rick Boston lives in. We go to school together and I missed class today. He was supposed to bring some work home for me and I was supposed to get it here. He gave me the address but I must have written the apartment number wrong because I went to that door and a nice old lady gave me a piece of her mind!”
He laughed, flashing his make-your-heart-melt smile at the woman, and she laughed with a blush.
“Let’s see if I can look him up for you,” she offered, moving to her computer screen.
“Would you? Aah, man, that’d be great.”
The clacking of her keyboard filled the quiet spaces around them. Her lips pressed together in a determined line, but in the end she just shook her head woefully.
“I’ve got no record of a Rick Boston living here,” she said. “That’s odd.”
Brent showed his own genuine surprise. “Isn’t it? Man, I must not have been paying attention at all on the phone. Jeez.”
“I can’t find him in here as a past occupant either,” she said. “Sorry you came all the way over here for nothing!”
“Looks like it,” he said. “Thanks for your help.”
“No problem,” she called as he walked out of the door with a huff of frustration.
Chapter 41
She should have realized what an inconvenience it would be having only one vehicle between the two of them. Brent was quite happy to walk and take the bus on his daily quests for work while she took the truck down to her mother’s, but now that they were deep into February and the snow began to fall in thick sheets, she felt horrible imagining Brent out in it on foot. He kept teasing her that he was from Montana, where the winters were real.
He’d called down to her parents’ house to check on her, something he did each day, and also to tell her that she ought to stay the night there instead of braving the wind and snow just to be with him. As she looked at the white fury outside her window, she reluctantly agreed. When it came time to sleep, she made it up to her room, only to find her bed covered with dozens of single, long-stem roses.
“Mom,” Mackenna called out in a questioning tone. Soon, Helen appeared by her side. “Did you do this?”
“No,” she said staring at the pile of roses. She called for David. He, too, said he’d had nothing to do with the flowers being there. As the three exchanged worried glances, David checked the room. He looked under the bed, behind the curtains and in every dark corner he could find. Next, he ordered the women to stay while he checked the rest of the house.
It took a half an hour for David to check the inside of the house as thoroughly as he wanted, but he found nothing amiss. No doors were unlocked, no windows open. Every closet was as it should be. There were no signs that anyone had been there but them. When he returned to the room with the confidence that they were safely confined, they all finally decided to go to sleep.
As Mackenna burrowed beneath the thick covers, she watched the snow pelt the window angrily. Shadows shook on the walls of her room from the wind. She felt the coldness of her bed without Brent there. The blankets still smelled of roses even though they’d thrown them all out. As she finally allowed her eyes to close, she imagined that Brent was there beside her, warming her, easing her fears. The vision was so strong that her body literally began to heat up and she finally drifted off to sleep.
When she awoke, her first thought was of roses. The smell was so strong. White light was blasting through her window, beckoning her eyelids to open. She was lying on her stomach, her face toward the pillow beside her. What she saw as her eyes fluttered open was a single rose laying across the pillow. Its sweet scent reached her nostrils and she gasped, sitting upright in the bed.
She looked frantically around the room, tears rushing to her eyes. There was no one. Her bedroom door was wide open. She screamed for her parents, who came rushing down the hall to her. Helen mirrored her daughter’s horror and shock. D
avid looked a mixture of anger and disappointment at his own inability to protect his daughter.
“I’m getting the locks changed,” he said to his wife. “Today!”
Brent was almost out of his mind with frustration. Every lead he chased led to nothing but dead-ends. He went to the dentistry school only to learn that Rick had not returned for the spring semester in January. None of his classmates had seen or heard from him since. He visited Rick’s place of work at the rock climbing gym only to find that Rick had quit months before. The only evidence that the man still existed and was still in Reno came in the ways he showed them he was there.
The roses in her bedroom at her parents’ house were just a start. Mackenna would come out of the grocery store to find a rose on the hood of her truck. They’d leave the apartment in the morning only to find footprints and a rose in the freshly-fallen snow in front of their door. Pieces of his presence ate away at their peace to the point where neither was sleeping well at night.
Brent finally decided to stay awake, planting himself in front of the window facing the parking lot in front of their apartment. With the lights off, he waited all night for Rick to come to their door, to show his face in any way, but he never did. Not that night.
He was still sitting in front of the window, glassy-eyed and exhausted when she emerged from bed the following morning. She crept up to him with a fleece blanket and wrapped it around his shoulders from behind. He shrugged it off and stood impatiently. She watched as he paced angrily back and forth. She knew what was wrong but she didn’t know how to fix it. They were both stressed and wearied to the point of irritation.
“I’m sorry, Brent,” she said and he blew out a sigh.