by Trueax, Rain
A few hundred feet farther, he took her hand and led her up to an overhang, a sort of natural cave. He pointed to the back, and she saw the etchings carved into the rock. "What is it?"
He shook his head. "Your guess is as good as mine. I've always figured it was petroglyphs by the first people here."
"Indians?"
"Uh huh, but it'd probably take an archaeologist to know for sure."
She studied the designs, a man with a bow, several animal-like shapes, maybe goats, then another human shape, rounded in the center. "What do you think it all represents?"
"An expert would probably say it was some religious or sacred symbol carved by a shaman, but my gut feeling is some guy carved it for his woman, promising her all he'd do for her if she'd take him on."
She looked more closely at the rounded shape. "He was pretty confident, wasn't he?" Running her fingers along the carving, she felt the indentation and a strange sort of connection with the human who had carved it hundreds, maybe thousands of years ago. "This is wonderful," she said, sinking onto a flat rock and looking up at S.T. standing above her. "It's like stepping back in time."
"Look at the ceiling above you."
She did and saw the blackened surface. "Smoke?" she asked.
"Maybe they camped here year after year. Maybe only at special times."
He watched as she ran her fingers over the rough rock on which she sat. "So they might have sat here just like we are now." She looked up, her smile enough to bring him to his knees, literally and figuratively.
"He probably promised her a lot of things he shouldn't have," he said, an ironic note under-lacing his words.
"Maybe she was the one," she disagreed. "Telling him she'd always understand, then turning around and forgetting it all with their next argument."
He smiled then, the white teeth flashing against the bronzed skin enough to make her want to promise all kinds of things that she shouldn't. Against her better judgment, she reached out and touched his lean cheek.
"So where are we?" he asked, turning to kiss the fingers caressing him.
"Maybe where they were so many years ago."
"Maybe they were an old Indian shaman and his trainee."
"No, it was a young warrior and the woman he loved and they made love here."
“Would it be sacrilegious if we did too?” he asked with that smile that turned her heart upside down.
She shook her head. “I think it’d be sacred.”
He reached for her then, kissing her deeply as their tongues mated. Before him, she’d never been kissed that way but was quickly finding how much she liked it, him in her. Before it went further though, there was one more question for him. When he nodded he could protect her, she gave herself fully to him.
Taking off her clothing slowly, he laid them down on the sandy floor of the cave and then her down on it, for now fully clothed as he began to show her all the places he knew about a woman and what she wanted. As she lay there, writhing with the feelings, she wanted his clothing off too and began to remove it slowly, piece by piece as they continued touching and kissing.
When he finally entered her and came to the barrier, she knew he was surprised but by now she didn’t care and pulled him to her, breaking through it, giving her pain but erasing all of the doubts she had had. He began moving then, kissing her, holding himself back from his own release until he felt her contractions began and let himself go with her.
Afterward they lay on the clothing, his hand running lightly over her thigh. “You didn’t tell me you were a virgin.”
“Did it matter?”
“You must have waited for a reason.”
“More I never had a reason not to wait.”
They sat up and watched the river, his arm now around her. “You know there can’t be an us, don’t you?”
“I don’t know any such thing and neither do you but don’t feel you owe me something for this we shared. I made the choice knowing we had no commitment. It just… was the right time for it and you were the right man.” She felt the warmth of his muscular arm as it came around her, settling her back against him. “I have no regrets.”
"There are too many differences."
"Like?"
"I'm a half-breed."
"Is that to a plus or a minus?" she quipped.
"What would your parents think if you showed up back in Los Altos or wherever it was you said they lived with a guy who looked like me."
"It’d go something like—Hallelujah, she's finally found a man she wants," she said and laughed. She turned his face until their gazes met. “What about your mother? Would she like me?"
"I don't even know if she'd like me," he admitted with a crooked grin.
"When this is all over, maybe we can both find out," she said, her hand guiding his head down so that their lips met.
Moments or hours later, Christine didn't know because they made love again and time seemed to disappear. They again lay together, limbs entwined. "You like living in California?" he asked, his hand playing with her long hair, winding it around his finger.
"I used to... until I saw Oregon."
"You like it here?"
"Everything about it."
"Even the rain." He knew he hadn't exactly brought beams of sunshine into her life. It seemed something had been going wrong since the moment they met.
"What's sunshine without rain?" she asked, a silly little grin on her face.
"Paradise?"
She shook her head. "An arid desert. I myself like variety."
"The only variety you've had up here is picking me up off the ground and running for your life."
"Which wasn't your fault."
"Wasn't it? I should have been smarter." His voice was bitter again.
"Storm, however this ends, I want you to know I don't have any regrets."
"Not one?"
She shook her head.
"How about when you realized you'd lost your camera?"
She pretended to consider. “Well maybe one, but I did get it back."
"And if you hadn’t?"
“Cameras are replaceable."
He shook his head. "You're crazy, you know that?"
"It's been suggested before, usually by my big sisters. I don't think they'd think so now though." She reached up and kissed his cheek, letting her lips linger and trace a pattern along the strong jaw.
"You make me crazy," he murmured.
"That's good."
"And have from the start."
"I know." He rose to his feet, pulling her up beside him. "Maybe..." He stopped, tightening his lips.
"What?"
"Never mind." He smiled then and taking her hand, tugged her along with him as they headed back up the river.
#
Washing up the dinner dishes, Christine heard S.T. let out a triumphant yell. She ran into the living room. "You've got it."
"Making love was good for my thinking.” He grinned at her, the smile relaxed and happy. “And now we are past the first dragon." He punched in more keys. In moments the screen was filled with lists of names and addresses. He stopped then and looked up at her. "I almost hate to look at this."
"You're afraid your sister won't be on it?"
"If she isn't, it means he erased her. There'd only be one reason for that."
"You're afraid she's dead?"
"It's what I've thought since I made my first trip to Roseburg. There'd be no reason to hide her, not mention her if she was still somewhere."
Christine put her hands on his shoulders, wanting to give him what comfort she could.
He turned back to the keyboard, paging down through the names. When he'd finished the list, he looked up. "Nothing."
"Maybe on the flash drives."
He sucked in a quick breath. "Maybe." He pushed in the backup drive. "This looks like copies of correspondence," he said, reading down through a letter. It took him a moment to realize what he was reading, then he paged back up to start over.
<
br /> "Is that Spanish?" Christine asked, trying to read over his shoulder and only finding a word or two she remembered from her high school classes.
He nodded, paging through it, then through the next and the next. Fifteen minutes later, he gave a succinct curse.
"What is it?"
"Evangelist, hell," he gave a bitter laugh, ejecting the disk. "The son of a bitch is a gun runner."
"What do you mean?"
He pushed in a new drive. This time it was in English, a list of armaments. What was Peter Soul doing with records of weapon sales?
"Is he a survivalist?" she asked as S.T. quickly read through the lists, but he didn't answer. The next was more correspondence. Again Christine was prevented from reading all but a few words.
An hour later, the glow of the computer and the moon outside the window all that lit the room, S.T. pushed his chair away from the computer. "He has a base in Central America."
"A base?"
"A set-up similar to the one in Roseburg. From what I can tell in those letters, he's feeding an insurrection down there to keep enough chaos going to give him time to build his own power base."
She frowned. "But why?"
"Who knows? Maybe the money. Maybe he wants to be a king of his own country. He goes down there to preach and leaves a little bonus--arms to feed insurgents on both sides."
"Do you think Lane Brown found out about this? Was it why he was killed?"
"Could be, but I don't see how. If Soul kept as close an eye on him as he did me, there'd have been no time. No, I think this is just something extra."
She shivered. "He won't like us having these."
He smiled. "That's putting it mildly."
"What do we do?"
He walked over to the glass door, staring at the barely visible river below and trying to think the whole thing through. "I'm not sure. This is not what I expected to find.” The knowledge they now possessed was more dangerous than he'd dreamed it could be.
Momentarily he wished he'd never gotten into any of it, but as quickly as the thought came, he pushed it away. Something had sucked him into this. Whether it was a spiritual force, the kind Christine or his mother believed in or a more physical one, S.T. now believed he couldn't have escaped being involved. With all the building projects he'd seen mentioned in the plans for Soul's Central American branch, he knew Soul wanted and needed a builder for a lot more than a church. S.T. guessed he'd been somehow picked for the position when Lane was eliminated or maybe even before. At least now he understood what he was up against. What he didn’t understand was how Soul thought he could make him do it. He shuddered as he pulled Christine to him. Or maybe he did know.
#
Soul paced the floor. The knock at the door didn't stop him, nor did he answer it. George entered anyway. "You failed me again, didn’t you?" Soul snarled.
"I think we’ve both had our failures. I wouldn’t bring that up if I were you.”
Soul stared at him. “What are you talking about?”
George glowered and sunk into a chair. He gripped the arms, then looked up at Soul. “What are you trying to do with those two?”
“It’s none of your business.”
“I think it is. You want that woman, don’t you?”
Soul met his gaze, then broke it off as he looked at the ceiling. “You have no right questioning me.”
George just stared at him.
"You’re just using a delaying tactic. You just don’t want to admit you haven’t found them. You don’t want to admit you failed when you allowed Storm Walker to capture you.”
George jumped from his chair and leaned across the desk. “You want that woman and the man. You think you can control them, but they’re going to end up ruining everything. You’re being the fool here; and if you can’t stop yourself, maybe I can.”
“What do you mean by that?”
George sank back in his chair, his blue gaze hard on Soul’s face. “For now they’ve vanished, but we’ll run them down."
“What do you mean by that?”
“It’s nothing for you to worry yourself about,” George said with a small smile.
“I don’t like violence.”
“No, you just like drugs,” George retorted, his smile turning to a sneer.
"I can get control of him. I just need time."
George snorted. “You won’t control him… not your way, but there are ways to end the risk.”
“Stop and think before you act this time,” Soul said, his breath coming more quickly as he felt himself losing control of the whole situation. “Let’s think this through. He hasn't surfaced anywhere, has he?" Soul lowered himself into his own chair.
George shook his head, drumming his hand on the arm of the chair.
"That likely means no one else knows what he might." He glared at the dead computer. Short of bringing in someone who understood them better than he did, he didn’t know if anything had been retrieved before its collapse. He couldn’t be sure Storm Walker had been in the room. He couldn’t be sure, but he knew it inside. Storm Walker had been there and he knew too much now.
"We should have killed him that first night when we saw he wasn’t controllable any of the usual ways.”
"Too late for regrets now," Soul snapped. "And damn, I needed him, needed his heritage, his… well too late for that. He got what he wanted from the computer and deliberately coded it to crash. That’s what I believe. His cleverness is why I wanted him. Why I still want him. Why we want him."
George gave a snort. "So now it's we, is it?"
"Hasn't it always been, brother."
"Only when things aren't going well, as I recall," George retorted. He glared at Soul. “And the woman. You’re making an even bigger mistake with her.”
"That’s my business.”
“Not if it brings down everything we’ve worked for.”
“Why should it do that?”
“Because you’re not thinking with your head. Not when it comes to either of them.”
"Since you seem to think you’re the one who should be calling all the shots, what do you suggest we do next?"
George smiled. "Well we could see them buried with our other mistakes," George quipped with another smile that didn’t quite make the grade.
Soul glared at him. "You’re humor is appalling."
George shrugged. “I aim to please.”
“Get to your point. What do we do?”
"I've sent people to check possible locations he might hide with those who know Taggert. We've got a bug on his office phone. If he calls in, we'll be able to trace him back. We're trying to find out now where Christine Johnson stayed when she checked out of her motel."
"Do we have to involve her?" Soul asked, feeling things slipping from his control.
George glared at him. "She involved herself when she chose to run off with the half-breed."
Soul walked to the window and stared out. The night seemed to be closing in around him. He felt his power waning. "Prepare the ingredients for the sacrifice," he said, his voice little more than a whisper.
When George said nothing, Soul turned to look at him. "You heard me. We're not succeeding because we're not calling on our power." He knew he was weakening because he'd moved away from the power. He had to prepare himself for the ordeal that lay ahead. This was no time to weaken.
"There are better ways to strengthen ourselves, Peter."
"Not now. I know it's what we have to do now. Get things ready." He met the disapproving blue gaze fully. "And don't ever call me Peter."
"You like Lou better?" George asked, his tone sardonic.
Soul took a deep breath. "You're trying my patience. Brother or not, you will do as I say."
George rose from his chair. "Will I?"
"Who am I?"
"The master," George said with a cynical smile, then left the room.
When he was alone, Soul stared down at his finely manicured fingers. He was meant to be a wealthy man, born
to control the destinies of others. His natural birth had betrayed him, betrayed all that he was intended to be. He had come a long way down the road of changing all that. Nothing would stop him now. Not Storm Walker Taggert, not the beautiful Christine, not even his own brother, but first he had to strengthen himself, reconnect with his power.
#
Christine heard the vehicle coming down the road toward the cabin and thought how typical. S.T. was taking a shower. It was up to her to decide what to do and she didn't have long to figure it out. Could she pretend no one was here? They'd parked the Silverado in the garage, but tracks were obviously visible in the crushed pine needles littering the driveway.
She took a deep breath and walked to the door, waiting as the man got out of his vehicle. He frowned when he looked at her. "You're not Jayne," he said as he stepped up onto the porch.
"No, and I don't know you either. Who are you?" she asked, relieved he was alone.
"Jocelyn. Now who are you?"
"Friends of Jim and Jayne's. Just taking a quick break up here."
"What for?" He looked around suspiciously, then back at her.
"Is that your business?" she asked, stiffening her spine. Whoever this man was, he wasn't owed any explanations. If he wanted one, he could call the Baileys.
"A lot of stuff goes on up here. People gettin' their cabins broke into," he growled.
"Do the burglars usually hang around with no shoes on, opening the door to strangers?" she retorted.
For a moment he looked abashed, then his face hardened. "No, but don't mean they couldn't start. You want to prove who you are?"
She knew that to do so would be to look vulnerable, to look guilty. People who had a right to be someplace didn't need to explain themselves. Before she could decide what to say, she heard S.T. behind her.
"What's the matter?" he asked, pulling her back to lean against him. She knew then he'd not put on a shirt and she was against his bare chest. Looking down she saw bare feet and jeans.
"This man seems to think we broke in here," she said.
S.T. pulled her hand to his mouth giving it a kiss. "Didn't you explain we were on our honeymoon."
"I didn't think it was his business," she said, managing to conceal her surprise.