“Open it,” the man commanded.
Slowly, with extreme reluctance, as if by drawing the moment out he might somehow be able to prevent it from happening, Don lifted the hinged lid.
Inside the box was a stone, larger than a baseball but only slightly. The stone was perfectly round and smooth, as though it had been lovingly polished by its owner until it gleamed, although it had not been. He was aware of no more than a small portion of the stone’s history, but the knowledge he had was enough to give Don Running Bear a healthy respect for its fearsome power. He had opened the box only rarely, and never for more than a few minutes at a time, since Eagle Wing was a very young girl.
The man’s cold eyes flicked from the contents of the box to Don’s face and back again. “Is that it? It just looks like a rock.”
“You think I would keep an ordinary rock locked up in a hidden safe?”
The man gazed at Don, taking stock. Don stood impassively, the box held out in front of him, waiting. “You understand what will happen to your family if I am being misled.” It was not a question.
Don shook his head in frustration. “You’re not being misled, I told you that already.”
“Do you understand what will happen to your family if I am being misled?”
“Yes, yes, I understand! Please, if the stone is what you’re after, just take it and go, so I can tend to my wife and child. They need me.”
The stranger’s eyes bored into Don’s and for a long time neither man spoke. Nobody moved. Eagle Wing sat still under the knife blade, although her eyes were now open. They were trusting and guileless as she watched her father. Don loved those eyes. On the floor, Kai groaned and twitched, pulling against her bindings. She was still unconscious but would be coming around shortly and would need medical attention for the shattered bones in her face.
At last the man seemed satisfied. “Put the box over there,” he said, indicating a small butcher-block end table adorned with only a lamp. The table was located between the couch and the front door. Don eased the box’s lid closed, relieved not to have to look at its contents any longer, and turned his back, walking slowly toward the couch and placing the box next to the lamp as instructed.
“Now, go back to the safe. Close it and lock it and lower the trap door.” After Don had complied, the man said, “Roll the TV table back where it belongs,” and he did that, too.
“Now, stand in the corner.” Don moved to the point in the room opposite the front door. He hoped the stranger would not force him to turn around and face the wall. If he did, all would be lost. He arrived in the corner and stood facing the man, who said nothing about turning around.
The man withdrew the knife from Eagle Wing’s throat and Don breathed a sigh of relief. He had feared the intruder would try to kill them all before leaving with the box, but it seemed the man realized he would be in for the fight of his life if he murdered Don’s daughter in front of his eyes, and it appeared he wanted simply to take the box and make his escape.
The stranger slid off the stool, knife held chest-level between his body and Eagle Wing’s. He sidled around her chair and then began backing toward the door, never taking his eyes off Don Running Bear.
Don waited, not moving, forcing himself to maintain his impassive appearance, wondering how the hell he was managing to do it when his heart was hammering in his chest like a freight train pounding across the desert floor. At some point, the man with the knife was going to have to turn slightly to open the door, and Don had decided that was when he would make his move.
The stranger arrived at the end table, moving slowly and cautiously. He bent and hefted the wooden box containing the mystical stone. “It’s lighter than I would have expected,” he announced to Don, who said nothing in return. Then the man swiveled his head to the right, reaching for the knob to open the front door.
The moment the man turned his head, Don snaked his right hand into his pocket and grasped the Colt .38 revolver he had removed from the safe. His plan, if you could call it that, was to rip his grandfather’s gun out of his pocket and fire in one smooth motion, hopefully putting the man down. Even if he missed with the first shot, Don reasoned, the suddenness of the attack should catch the man by surprise, giving him the opportunity to fire again before the man could move in and either gut him with the knife or slice Eagle Wing’s throat open. Not a perfect plan, not by a long shot, but it was the best he could come up with.
And it might even have worked.
Except the gun’s hammer snagged on the metal ring holding the General Store’s keys. The ring hung from his belt loop and as Don pulled the big pistol out of his pocket, the hammer caught on it for an instant, not a long time at all, maybe half a second, but it was enough to twist the barrel toward the floor where Kai lay taped to her chair.
Don cursed, yanking the gun up toward its target and squeezing the trigger. Against all odds, he hit the exact spot he was aiming for, too, but the man with the knife was no longer there. He had dived toward the floor and into the middle of the room the moment he saw the Colt appear. His reflexes were razor-sharp. The wooden box fell off the table and the stone rolled out of it, spinning on the floor like a top.
A loud Boom! shook the tiny house on its foundation and the acrid smell of smoke filled the air. A ragged, splintered hole appeared in the front door where until a split second ago the man had been standing. Don cursed again without realizing he was doing it and adjusted his aim, preparing to fire a second shot, knowing everything was going to hell, knowing he was already too late.
The man rolled onto his back, less than a foot behind the injured Kai Running Bear. He flipped the knife in his hand, grabbing it by the blade without even looking at it, and with one smooth, easy motion, fired it at Don, who tried to flinch out of the way but didn’t stand a chance. The knife rocketed through the air with stunning speed, striking Don in the middle of the chest.
Pain blasted through his rib cage and he felt his arm go numb as he toppled to the floor. He heard the big Colt clatter to the floor as well, sliding across the polished oak and coming to rest in the corner.
The stranger rose and stepped calmly over Kai, whose eyelids were fluttering and who appeared to be on the verge of regaining consciousness just as her husband lost it. Don watched helplessly as the man stopped above him. The stranger stared for a moment, a contemptuous sneer on his hard face, then reached down and pulled the knife out of Don’s chest, twisting it viciously as he did so. Don screamed in pain and saw blood spurt frighteningly from the wound. Somewhere in the background he could hear Eagle Wing screaming as well, like they were performing some crazy duet from hell.
The man wiped the knife blade on Don’s shirt, which was already becoming soaked with his own blood. He retraced his path, stepping over Kai again, and picked up the stone. He replaced it in the ornate wooden box and secured the lid. Then he calmly looked the room over one more time and stepped through the front door.
The last thing Don Running Bear heard before losing consciousness was the rumble of an engine starting up and a car driving slowly away.
1
Present day
Hank Williams—senior, not junior; the real Hank Williams—blasted through the ancient speakers of the Ridge Runner, warbling about love and loss and liquor, not necessarily in that order, his vocal stylings floating through the tavern like a little slice of down-home heaven. Earl Manning held down his usual stool and drained the last of a Budweiser, simultaneously signaling for another with his left hand as he slammed the empty mug down on the table with his right. The smoke of a dozen lit cigarettes hung thick and heavy in the unmoving stale air. Smoking in bars and restaurants was against the law in Maine, but nobody cared about such minor details inside the Ridge Runner.
Earl had lost track a couple of hours ago of how many beers he had drunk, not that it mattered. He would continue drinking until one of two things happened: He ran out of money or the bar closed. Right now the two outcomes were running neck and neck, a
lthough drinking through all his money seemed to be pulling ahead in a race that would likely come down to the wire.
Earl had been a regular at the Ridge Runner for so long no one dared consider sitting in his spot, even when he wasn’t there. Far end of the bar, wobbly two-person table kitty-corner across the room from the entrance. Close to the john, far enough from the door to be out of the firing line of the almost lethal gusts of frigid air that swept into the room any time a patron entered or exited from late October through late April, day or night. Winter was by far the longest of the four seasons in Paskagankee, Maine.
Bartender and longtime Ridge Runner owner Bo Pellerin slopped a fresh beer on the table as Billy Ray Cyrus—the real Cyrus, not wannabe rock-star daughter Miley—whined and complained about his achy-breaky heart, whatever the hell that meant. Earl Manning considered himself something of an expert in the field of achy-breaky hearts, as his last trip to the doctor, roughly three years ago, had resulted in a stern warning from the old quack to slow his drinking pace. Earl didn’t think that was what Billy Ray was talking about.
Actually, “Stop drinking entirely,” was what the quack doctor had said, “before all that alcohol kills you.” The guy spun some bullshit about mitral and tricuspid valve deficiencies and plaque buildup in the arteries—apparently Earl’s achy-breaky heart had less to do with love and loss than a weakening muscle critical to the body’s continued operation, at least if he believed the quack, which he didn’t—just before hitting him with almost a three hundred dollar charge. Earl had ignored the outrageous bill just as he had ignored the diagnosis, vowing at that time never to return to the fucking quack’s office.
That was three years ago, and look at him, still sitting at his table just beyond the far end of the bar, still drinking—more, if anything, not less—and still very much alive. Sure, he suffered from the shakes some mornings (most mornings if he was being honest with himself); and sure, there were those disconcerting moments when he had trouble catching his breath climbing a normal flight of stairs and was forced to stop and rest halfway, but that sure as hell wasn’t due to heart trouble. After all, Earl reasoned, he was only in his late twenties, and achy-breaky hearts were for geezers, Billy Ray Cyrus’s opinion on the matter notwithstanding.
The front entrance swung open and then slammed closed. Earl barely noticed. It was almost midnight and the Runner was hopping, so the damned door seemed to be on a swivel, anyway. Plus it was early summer, meaning the cold air that normally accompanied the arrival of a new patron had gone on vacation for a few months. It would be back soon enough, but for now, the only things that might have entered the bar were a new customer and a few mosquitoes, and Earl couldn’t care less about either one. As long as he could still get Bo’s attention when his thirst demanded another beer, he didn’t give a damn if Billy Ray Cyrus himself had just walked in.
His disinterest didn’t last long, though. He glanced up, bleary-eyed, and discovered it was a woman who had entered, a woman he did not recognize, and a beautiful one at that. Aside from Blanche Raskiewicz, who had been frequenting the Runner longer than Earl and whose skin was so weathered and dried out it looked like her face had been patched together out of strips of old leather, the “fairer sex” tended to stay away from the Ridge Runner. It was not an establishment that saw many female faces.
Especially female faces like this one.
The woman was young and beautiful. Long jet-black hair cascaded in waves halfway down her back, terminating in lazy ringlets a few inches north of her butt, which was accentuated in skin-tight faded jeans with no visible panty lines. Earl knew because it was the first thing he checked. His eyes might be red-rimmed from all the Budweiser and he might almost have reached the point where he would soon begin seeing double, but he was as much an expert in panty lines as he was in achy-breaky hearts, and he would have bet his miserable life this chick wasn’t wearing any.
The face framed by that black hair could fairly be described as angelic, with flawless copper skin, a delicate, slightly upturned nose and the most intense green eyes Earl had ever seen. Her mouth was a slash of vivid red as she pursed her lips in concentration, walking slowly through the crowd, clearly searching for someone specific. Ridge Runner patrons parted before the beautiful young woman like the Red Sea before Moses. She didn’t seem to notice. She was probably used to it.
She meandered through the bar and the raucous cacophony of drunken voices dimmed, eventually fading away entirely. Even the music seemed to have stopped for the time being. An occasional cough and the shuffling of boots on the dirty floor were the only sounds. Earl wondered who the lucky bastard was that she was looking for and, more importantly, why. He knew pretty much everyone in here, and all of these dumb fucks put together didn’t have the class this babe had in her little finger. That much was obvious.
Earl didn’t care how classy she was, though. He had a prime view of this chick’s pantiless ass and that was good enough for him. She had made a hard right turn after entering the bar and was moving steadily counterclockwise around the outside of the room, still searching, peering left and right as she walked. Soon she would pass directly in front of Earl’s mesmerized face and shortly after that would be right back at the front door where she started.
Obviously, the guy she was looking for wasn’t here, which was hard to believe. Earl figured if he was the lucky son of a bitch who had made plans to meet up with this hot piece of ass at the Ridge Runner, he would camp out a couple of days in advance, just to be sure he didn’t miss her. Although, in his case, that wouldn’t have meant doing much of anything different than usual. His waking hours more or less coincided with the Runner’s hours of operation, anyway.
The girl reached Earl’s rickety table and instead of continuing past as he assumed she would, she took a seat, easing onto the empty chair next to him and fixing him with a stare from those curiously green eyes. They were spellbinding, and it took a few seconds for Earl’s brain to process the fact that she had just spoken to him. “Uh . . . ‘scuse me?”
A knowing smile flitted across her face, as if she had this effect on men all the time. Probably she did. “I said hello,” she repeated. “How are you doing tonight?”
“Just great. Getting better all the time, in fact.” It finally occurred to a stunned Earl Manning that he was the one she had been searching out, as hard as that was to believe.
“Buy you a drink?” Earl asked, frantically attempting some basic math in his alcohol-addled brain. He wasn’t sure he had enough cash left to buy anything for this gorgeous specimen, but didn’t really care, either. If he couldn’t pay that asshole Bo Pellerin at closing time he would worry about it then.
“White wine would be lovely,” she said, still smiling, her eyes locked onto Earl’s. God, but they were captivating.
Earl signaled Bo and the bartender approached with a look of incredulous disbelief written all over his face. Earl figured the same look was probably on his own face. “White wine for my friend, please,” he said, wondering if anyone had ever ordered wine before inside the Ridge Runner.
For just a moment he thought Pellerin was going to make some sort of wise-ass remark. The bar’s owner didn’t, though. Instead he turned without a word and walked back behind the bar. Bo grabbed a dusty bottle Earl had never noticed before off one of the mirrored shelves and poured the contents into what Earl guessed was a wine glass. Who the hell knew? Hopefully the damned thing was at least clean, although the prospect seemed unlikely.
Bo placed the glass in front of the chick and walked away and Earl realized he had no idea what to say next. He wracked his slow-moving brain as panic threatened to overwhelm him. This was the most stunningly beautiful girl he had ever had a shot with. The only other one who even came close was that bitch Sharon Dupont, and that had been a long, long time ago, back when she was still a high school kid, years before she had kicked her drinking habit and become a cop, of all things.
His mind snapped back to the present, and
to the awful knowledge that if he didn’t say something soon, preferably something suave or at the very least semi-coherent, this gorgeous babe was going to think he was mute and maybe mentally deficient, too. The only thing he could think of was, “Do you come here often?” which was pointless. For one thing he already knew the answer to that particular question, and for another he realized, even in his present state of drunkenness and rising panic, it was the most clichéd pickup line in the book.
She saved him.
“So, do you come here often?” she asked, and coming from her it sounded like the wittiest conversation-starter ever. Bo Pellerin dropped the wine bottle down on the bar with a thud and walked away, shaking his head as he went. The girl continued gazing at him, smiling softly, acting like he was Jake Freaking Gyllenhall or something, rather than what he was: a twenty-nine year old rail-thin raging alcoholic with bad skin and a balky heart sitting in a dive bar in the middle of God-forsaken nowhere, a rifle shot from the Canadian border.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do,” he answered, surprising himself by speaking clearly and not slurring his words. He wondered how long he could keep up that little bit of verbal gymnastics. “But I know you don’t; I would definitely have remembered you.” Earl had no idea what the hell was going down here, but he was determined to ride this train all the way to the station, and felt like he was doing a pretty damned good job so far, even if all he really was doing was hanging on for dear life and waiting to see what would happen next.
She sipped her wine and Earl gulped his beer. “I’ve been looking all over for you,” she said, as if they were a couple, rather than total strangers, as if it was perfectly normal for a model-beautiful young woman to be sitting here in the Ridge Runner chatting up a loser like Earl Manning. He was acutely aware that every man in the place—every single one—was watching them like some practical joke was being played and they didn’t want to look away because they were afraid they might miss the punch line. For just a second Earl wondered if that might be the case.
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