by Rachel Lee
“I will.”
“And I have a suggestion for today,” Coop offered. “Glenda needs her sleep, but you need to get out of this house. How about a long drive in the mountains? It’s a perfect day for it.”
Kylie’s first impulse was to refuse. She felt safe within these walls with him, safer than she’d felt since the attack.
But as soon as the feeling chased through her, she realized how unfair she was being. She wasn’t the only one in jail in this house. Coop was giving up his entire vacation, his chance to get to know his remaining family better, to watch over her. He must be desperate to get out and about.
“That sounds wonderful,” she answered with a smile. And honestly, he was right. She needed to leave the safety of her cave once in a while. It wasn’t as if she would be alone.
And the man who’d sent the rose wouldn’t be likely to bother her when Coop was around, and certainly not while they were driving the mountain roads.
Shortly after Glenda went to bed, they packed a small cooler with a little ice and some bottled water, and made a few ham sandwiches. “I never travel without food,” Coop explained. “We might be gone only an hour. Then again, you never know.”
A valid point, she thought. She’d certainly seen enough of life to know the unexpected was part of it.
She was glad she brought a jacket, though. As the road wound higher into the mountains, the air grew a little chillier.
“I hear there’s a ghost town up here,” he remarked as they passed through the dappled shadows cast by the trees.
“Up this road another five miles. It’s fenced off, though, because it’s too dangerous. It was a gold-mining town and the mines started collapsing a number of years ago.”
She twisted a little on the seat. “You heard about it from Connie?”
“Yeah. That’s where her ex took Sophie when he kidnapped her all those years ago.”
So it was natural he wanted to see it. “When I was younger we liked to come up here at night and get spooked. Boy, was it easy to get spooked.”
“Who was ‘we’?”
“Julie, Ashley, Connie, Glenda and some of the guys. The guys especially liked it because it was easy enough to make us scream.”
“In the dark? I bet.”
“And I’d bet teens are still doing it. They started with the orange plastic fencing and warning signs, but a couple of years ago they went to something a lot sturdier and hard to get past. The problem is, nobody knows how far those shafts extend out from the town. The ground for quite a distance around may not be safe at all.”
“Then we’ll be careful. I’m surprised nobody’s looked into it, though.”
“Jurisdiction,” she answered. “Who owns it? It was once a town. Outside the county limits. Not inside the state or national forest. I suppose the state is responsible regardless, but they’ve got better things to spend money on.”
“And why do I think that a certain number of foolish young men take the fences and warnings as a challenge?”
She laughed quietly. “You’d probably be right, but so far nobody’s been killed in a cave-in.”
“As far as you know,” he said in horror movie tones.
That elicited a genuine laugh from her. It was such a beautiful day, and finally she was over her discomfort at being out. For the first time since the attack, she felt truly happy to be alive.
When they reached the ghost town, he pulled into the rutted turnout. “Wanna explore?”
“As long as we’re careful.”
“Careful is my middle name. That’s why I’m still alive.”
It was true, she thought as she stepped out of the car. Given what he did, recklessness would be a very dangerous thing, something to be used only when there was no other option. “So you commanded other men?” she asked, watching him pull out the cooler and a blanket that had somehow come to be in the backseat. The blanket reminded her of one of Connie’s, she realized. So maybe it was.
“I prefer to think I led them.” He shoved the door closed with his hip. “But yeah, sometimes I ordered.”
He looked around, spied the ramshackle remnants of the old town through the trees. “Let’s get a little closer, then sit for a while and soak it in. Places like this always fascinate me. I could spend hours making up stories about them.”
“Then tell me some stories,” she said, willing to enter the mood. Reality would return soon enough. Or maybe, she thought as they walked closer to the dilapidated town, this was reality.
*
Todd watched them drive out of town. He wished he could follow, but it was still too early in the year for a lot of traffic up there. He’d stick out like a sore thumb if he ran into them.
Then there was the house. He drove back to it, studying it briefly before moving on. He’d been inside it a few times in high school with a bunch of other kids and he supposed it probably hadn’t changed much.
Back then he’d been part of “the gang.” The group that did lots of things together on weekends. He thought Kylie had been the only one of the group who seemed to have a problem with him, and only after they dated—which meant there was something wrong with her, not him.
Maybe she was going to show Coop the old ghost town. They’d had a lot of fun times up there, scaring one another, but mostly the girls. Once he and Jim Reasoner had busted through the fence and given the girls a real scare. He could still hear them squealing warnings to be careful while he and Jim had used flashlights to explore as much as they could.
He would never have admitted it, but with each step he took on that unstable ground, he’d feared it would give way. He wasn’t going to be a coward in front of Jim and all those girls, though.
So they’d poked around, and their flashlights made everything even eerier, until the moment when he and Jim could have sworn they saw a man standing in one of the doorways. Not solid, but awfully dark, like a slice of night. He knew that Jim had seen it, too, because of the looks they had exchanged.
Then Jim had given them the perfect way out. “I think we’ve scared the girls enough for one night.”
Never had either of them spoken of what they’d seen. Instead they acted like nothing had happened. That was fine by Todd. He could just imagine what the others would have said about the two of them seeing a ghost.
Afterward, he and Jim had been more reluctant to go there after dark, and never again had they crossed the fence. It was almost a relief when it got replaced by a sturdier one. It might not keep anything in, but it sure as hell made it impossible for anyone to tease him into going in there again.
Then he pushed the old memories away, except for being part of the gang. The gang that included Kylie, who had scorned him. He’d made her squeal in Denver. He was going to find a way to separate her from Cooper and make her squeal again.
Even if it meant killing Cooper, an idea that was beginning to appeal to him.
*
Coop walked around the edge of the fence. Kylie noted that he lightened his step as he moved, making little noise and certainly not coming down hard on the ground. Kylie imitated him, walking behind him at his insistence.
“This is really cool,” he said when they reached the halfway point. “Imagine the people who came all the way up here looking for riches and living in those little shacks.” Like the pockmarked ground, many of those shacks had begun to collapse. Weathered gray, the small town looked exactly like a place that had been forgotten for a long time.
“There were sure never any mansions,” she agreed. “And not much gold, I’ve heard. A few nuggets out of the river, some dust, but they never found a vein like they hoped. My science teacher in high school said the ground was all wrong for gold. If there’s much up here, they were looking in the wrong place.”
“Sad,” Coop replied. “Very sad. And I guess a lot of these guys brought their families.”
“What makes you say that?”
He pointed at a window with a shred of cloth stirring in the breeze. “Onl
y a woman would put up curtains.”
She laughed again, suspecting he was right. “What else can you tell me?”
“Hard life. Was Conard City here back then?”
“Yeah, just getting started to support the ranchers.”
“Then I bet they bought their booze in town and brought it up here. It’s not a hike or horseback ride you’d want to make every day.”
She was surprised that he’d thought of booze, but he was probably right. “I heard there were a few gunfights, but not big ones. Two guys quarreling usually.”
“Booze would certainly help that along.”
“Do you suppose they brought children, too?”
He nodded. “Most likely. Probably a lot of them were single guys, but in those days if you had a wife and kid, you couldn’t leave them behind. How would they survive without the breadwinner? Besides, kids would be useful in the mining, the same way they were on farms.”
Child labor. Of course. “The things I never thought about.”
“Life was different back then, at least here. It’s still like that in large parts of the world, though.”
She looked at him, realizing he’d probably seen it in a lot of the places he went. “So in Afghanistan, the kids work?”
“From a pretty early age, whether it’s in shops or on farms. Some are lucky and get to stay in school till they’re ten or twelve. Some even longer if their parents can afford it. But mostly they’re needed to help support their families.”
He smiled at her. “It used to be that way here, too. And I bet you still see some of it on family-owned ranches.” Then he looked around. “I suggest we sit under a sturdy tree. If it hasn’t tipped over, the ground beneath is stable enough to hold it.”
Something that never would have occurred to her. They spread the blanket beneath the tree, but the shadows made the air even chillier, and soon Coop pulled it up so it was wrapped around their shoulders. “That iced water in the chest doesn’t sound real good right now.”
She laughed. “I’d forgotten it gets chillier up here.”
“I shouldn’t have.” But he was smiling. “This is a wonderful place.”
“It’s fascinating. But you see those piles of dirt where nothing is growing?”
“Yeah.”
“Over a hundred years and the stuff they pulled out of the ground is still poisonous with heavy metals. There’s been occasional talk of cleaning it up, but it never seemed like a big enough problem. It’s far enough away from water supplies here that I imagine most of it just seeps back into the ground where it belongs.”
He nodded, scanning the area. “I never thought about that.”
“Nobody’s exactly worrying. It’s so far out of the way. But what amazes me is the amount of labor that went into digging it out. Men with shovels, buckets, picks...and if they were lucky a mule to help haul it. It’s a wonder they didn’t die from overwork.”
“Or something else, considering what they were digging. Imagine inhaling that stuff. Probably swallowing it.”
Birds, that had evidently quieted at their arrival, began to call here and there. It was still early enough in the spring that the migratory birds hadn’t all returned, but the sound of birdsong, even just a little, helped make the moment relaxing. Kylie felt herself letting go of a major amount of tension, some of it she hadn’t even been aware she was holding. It was so easy now to lean into Coop and let every bit of her unwind. When his arm wrapped around her waist, she realized she hadn’t felt this much peace since she awoke in the hospital.
She didn’t want to go home. She wanted to stay here forever, wrapped in this man’s strength and warmth, and let everything blow away on the breeze that ruffled the very tops of the trees.
Life could still be good. It could still be almost perfect. She let that realization sink into her battered heart and soul, let stirrings of happiness replace it.
Then Coop shifted, turning her toward him within their cocoon of blankets. He smiled into her eyes as he cupped her chilly cheek with a warm hand and stroked it gently with his thumb.
“You are one beautiful woman, Kylie Brewer. You make me crazy with wanting you.”
She caught her breath, staring at him in amazement. She’d sensed his desire, even tasted a bit of it, but driving him crazy with it? It felt like an injection of power through her entire body.
“You know I have to leave,” he said, still holding her gaze, still caressing her cheek. “Uncle Sam will call and I’ll have to go.”
Her happiness in the moment teetered, in danger of falling.
“I don’t make promises I can’t keep,” he said. “I need you to understand that. I’ll have to go, and even if you wanted to come with me, you couldn’t come to some of those places. I want to make love with you, but I need you to understand my limitations. I already made a promise to the government and the United States Marines.”
“I understand.” She did, too, except she wondered why he thought these caveats were suddenly so important. She’d understood from the outset that he would only be here until his leave was over. That one of these days all too soon he’d have to go back. It made her sad to even think about it, but she’d already accepted it. It had been built-in from day one.
He moved his hand, brushing hair back behind her ear. “I like looking at you,” he said. “You’re a feast for my eyes. And if we weren’t up here on this mountainside, I’d be so tempted to love you. Thank goodness it’s too dang cold.”
She didn’t know how to take that. “You’re grateful it’s too cold? What does that mean?”
He dropped a chilly kiss on her lips. “Only that you know my intentions and now you’ll have time to think about them. I don’t want to take anything from you that you aren’t willing to give.”
So he thought he’d be taking and giving nothing in return? She didn’t feel that way at all. At this point in her life, a long-term relationship was the last thing she felt comfortable thinking about. But a fling with this gorgeous man? She suspected it would give her the kind of memories she’d recall in old age to warm her on chilly nights.
Assuming, of course, that she didn’t forget the whole thing. But the thought surprised her by amusing her. Making love would involve a heck of a lot more than her short-term memory. She suspected Coop would imprint himself so deeply on her that she’d remember nearly every touch.
And, oh, how she wanted those touches. Part of her felt as if they would help bring her back to life, moving her away from the precipice she had felt was so close since the attack. Reminding her of all the good things she had to look forward to, rather than the bad things she’d forgotten.
A journey of discovery, an opening door when for weeks now she’d felt as if every door was closed.
If a brief fling was all he could give her, what could be wrong with taking it? Since she’d learned her memory loss wasn’t physical, after all, but rather something that would be corrected by therapy and time, she’d felt an increasing thirst for life, and Coop was part of the thirst she was feeling.
God, she just wanted to be a woman again, to put aside all her worries for a little while. Including the maniac who still seemed to be after her. If she let him, he’d just keep leaching every possible moment of joy from her life.
Was she scared? Of course she was. But she was also extremely tired of being held in thrall by that fear, by some man she couldn’t even remember. It was as if he controlled her life by remote, impressing fear on her until she sacrificed everything but her terror of him.
She could feel a shift coming inside her, as if a dungeon door were opening and letting in the light. If she had only another day or two, then let them be good days.
She snuggled closer and was pleased when his arm tightened around her. “Can I be honest?”
“Please. I prefer it.”
“Then...I want you, too. However little or much you can give me. I know it might only be a few days. But I might only have a few days.”
She felt him s
tiffen, and for a long time he didn’t say anything. Then, “Kylie?”
“What?”
“I’m better than that.”
“Better than what?”
“If that guy comes near you, I’ll take him out. But apart from that...I don’t want to take advantage of you because you think you have only a short time left.”
She was stunned. “I didn’t mean it that way at all!”
He twisted until they were face-to-face. The chilly mountain air crept under the blanket, but she barely felt it and he didn’t seem to notice at all.
“Then what did you mean?”
“Only that I know you have to leave! Time is short no matter which measure I use. Him or you. I get it. I still want to live as much of that short time as I can. I’m tired of moping around and feeling as if everything is pointless. I’m tired of being afraid. I want to grab the goodness that life offers with both hands for however long I can have it. I want you.”
He wrapped both arms around her then, holding her so tightly his muscles felt almost like steel. “I live on the edge so much of the time that I grasp what you’re trying to say. All I want is for you to be as sure as you can. I don’t want to leave any regrets behind me.”
Boy, that sounded pretty final. No prettied-up suggestions that he might ever return or want anything more from her.
Squeezed in his embrace, she nodded, although she knew she still had some thinking to do. Maybe she’d been harboring some furtive hope that he’d say he’d come back. He’d just made it clear that wasn’t in his plan.
So did she want this fling or not? That question suddenly loomed as large as the threat against her.
*
Todd was beginning to go a bit crazy. Kylie was within reach yet out of reach. That damn Cooper was always there, and on the rare occasions he stepped out, Glenda was home.
How was he going to separate that herd? The pressure to finish Kylie off was growing like a disease in his system, raising his emotional temperature to the boiling point. He no longer questioned his desire to get rid of her. That was lost in the mists of time.