His terrible uncertainty sent a cold shiver racing up her spine. She wanted to call out to him, to stop him from going out the door, but her tongue was glued to the roof of her mouth. The only thing she could do was watch helplessly as the rough wood door banged shut behind him.
Despite the fact that he’d told her to keep away from the windows, she crept to the nearest one, the one in the living room that over looked the driveway. The room was dark so she knew whoever was out there wouldn’t be able to see in. Even so, she kept the side, carefully away from the glass.
A nondescript white sedan pulled down the driveway another few feet before it came to a standstill. Headlights swept over the yard, pointing towards the woods, since the car was at the wrong angle to illuminate the cabin.
Amanda squinted hard to see the driver, but the night was too dark, the headlights too blinding. She thought she could make out the shape of a man. A large man. She breathed in a raspy breath, fear coiling in her stomach. The tight shivers that raced up her back turned into an icy clamp that froze her backbone and made the hair on the back of her neck and arms stand on end.
She couldn’t see Jason, but she heard the scrape and clomp of his boots as he stalked over the porch and down the steps. He stalked into her line of view a second later, carefully putting himself between the intruder and the window where he probably knew she was standing, disobeying his orders.
He held the shotgun aloft and trained it towards the driver side of the car.
“Get out of the car,” he commanded, the tone of his voice sending another flurry of shivers through Amanda. That voice, like the look on his face right before he walked out the door, was a tone she’d never heard before.
She knew her husband had a past. It was obvious, though he never spoke of it and she never asked. It was there, always between them, hovering in the background. She knew now, that he always felt it would catch up with him, while she had naively assumed that they were safe, that the past was the past and though it might haunt Jason’s memory, it meant them no harm.
The driver side door slowly opened. A minute later, the large form of a man slowly unfurled himself from the seat. He raised his hands in the air, took one halting step forward, and crumpled to the ground. He lay there, flat on his face, prone and unmoving. When it was clear it wasn’t some trick and the guy wasn’t going to get up, Amanda rushed out onto the front porch.
Jason turned at the sound of the cabin door opening. Their gazes met and she knew right away that their peaceful, tranquil, happy life was over.
Chapter 4
The Fighter Once More
Jason
“Help me get him inside.”
He could tell Amanda was waiting for him to take the lead. He put the safety back on the gun and set it carefully down on the porch steps.
Amanda let out a shaky breath that could be heard echoing through the still night. Finally she forced herself to move. She made it down the steps, her bare feet crunching on the gravel drive. She hadn’t bothered with shoes.
Her hair was in disarray, the rosy afterglow of their lovemaking still on her cheeks. She was so incredibly beautiful, illuminated in the car’s headlights, that Jason could have wept.
Amanda slowly picked her way to the car. The door was still open, the engine still running. She ducked inside, turned the keys and killed the ignition. The rattle and clink of metal on metal cut through Jason’s skull.
He felt sick. Bile churned in his stomach, rose up his chest and burned hot and acrid at the back of his throat. He knew who the man was. The man who burst from his past to end up face down in the gravel of his driveway.
Andrew Murphy. The Irish fighter. Jason’s old teammate, if what he was on could have been called a team.
No it can’t. It could never be called that. Slavery. That’s what it was. What he’d done was nothing short of a blood sport. Those trapped into it hardly ever got out alive. No, a team it was not.
“Do you know him?” Amanda asked frantically as she bent to inspect the man.
The headlights cut out then and they were left in total darkness. Jason blinked hard, trying to force words past a throat that refused to open. How could he tell Amanda, this woman that he loved so much, what he’d done? How could he tell her that she was going to have to leave him, take his son and flee, before the rest of his past arrived on their doorstep?
Grief like he’d never known choked the life out of his chest. His heart stopped, refused to beat. Blood rushed through his head, through his ears, despite the dead organ in the cage of his ribs.
He wasn’t a man who knew fear easily, but he knew it then. He somehow thought that he’d left it all behind. He’d wrongly dared to hope that Romano Ricci would never find him.
“Jason? Do you know him?” Amanda repeated roughly. She placed her fingers at the side of Murphy’s neck.
“Yah,” Jason finally forced out through the horrible cotton wadded in his throat. “I know him.”
“He’s still breathing.” Amanda was remarkably calm given the situation. She didn’t know the half of it, but she knew this wasn’t normal.
“I’ll get him inside.” Jason forced his leaden feet forward. Gravel crunched wickedly under the heavy soles of his boots. “I want you to take the car. Take it into the woods. Down the road we started to cut for your mom’s cabin. Hide it there.”
“What? Are you serious-”
“Yes. Go now.” He pointed towards the car, a deadly calm steeling over him.
Amanda’s brow wrinkled in confusion. He thought she would deny him his request or voice one of the thousand questions burning in her beautiful mossy green eyes. Instead she nodded once, a brief incline of her head. She moved, got into the car, started it up, backed down the drive and slowly turned towards the left, towards the road that they had started to plow through the woods. The site where Joan’s cabin would be located was just in the process of being cleared. There was plenty of room to hide a vehicle.
Jason steeled his resolve. The minute he brought Murphy into his cabin, it was like letting his past in through the front door. It would poison everything and everyone.
What choice do I have? He’s already here.
There and in dire need of medical attention, Jason realized, when he flipped the man over. Murphy wasn’t small. He towered well over six feet, had shoulders and a chest like a mountain and the legs to match. He looked every inch the raw fighter that he was.
The hard angles of Murphy’s face were covered in dried blood, welts and bruises. Jason would almost have believed that the damage had been inflicted in the ring. Almost. If it wasn’t for the fact that Murphy was here, his car probably stolen, lying face down in the dirt and gravel.
He had no choice. He had to get him inside. Blood slowly leaked out of Murphy’s crushed nose and torn, swollen lips. Bloody spittle formed at the corner of his mouth and trickled down his chin. It was clear that he was not in a good way. If he survived long enough to tell Jason why he’d come, it would be a mercy.
“Here we go,” Jason grunted. He bent, dug one hand under Murphy’s massive shoulders and, using all his strength, hoisted the prone form upright. He wrapped his other arm around the guy’s waist and half dragged, half carried him towards the porch steps.
Blood had already soaked its way through Murphy’s gray t-shirt and the movement opened up god knew how many wounds. Fresh, warm blood leached over Jason’s arms, soaking into his own shirt. His sweat combined with the metallic blood and in an instant he was transported back to the cage…
Concrete floors if they were lucky. Dirt if they weren’t. The metal bars surrounding them, the mesh that kept outsiders out and the fighters in. The screams, the yells, the cries of those gathered around, those who actually came to watch. The harsh rasp of broken breath and broken bone, the smell, always the smell of iron scented blood…
“Jason?”
Jason started so hard he nearly dropped his burden. He craned his neck around to find Amanda standing there,
eyes wide at the sight of the prone man in Jason’s arms. She had that dazed look that victims who witnessed a violent crime often had. That deer in the headlights look. He realized that she hadn’t seen his face before he went down. She hadn’t seen the blood.”
“Go inside ahead of me,” Jason coached her gently, speaking to her like he would a frightened child. He hated himself in that moment. Hated that he’d ever been weak enough to allow himself to love her, to drag her into this and thus endanger her. His mind conjured up an image of his son, tender, smiling, so very beautiful and innocent.
No. I can’t go there. He’d go mad if he thought of losing Ross too.
“And do what?” Amanda asked shakily. She’d walked back the entire way barefoot. It was a miracle she wasn’t leaving bloody foot prints in her wake as well.
“Put some water on to boil. Get some clean towels, bandages, the peroxide, a needle and thread, and the whiskey.”
“A needle and thread? God, Jason.”
“I know. Please just do it. You know as well as I do that we can’t take him to a hospital and he needs immediate attention.”
Amanda crept closer. Her eyes swept over the limp man. “Good god, Jason, he looks like he needs surgery. He’s probably bleeding inside.”
“That might well be, but I know this man and he’s tough as fucking nails. Tougher. It would take a lot to kill Andy Murphy. He’s taken worse beatings than this and lived to tell the tale. There’s a good chance that his liver and lungs and whatever else might normally be damaged are built of steel.”
“I hope so.” She said nothing more, just turned and fled back inside the cabin.
Jason was left alone with his burden once more. His heavy, accelerated breathing punctuated the still night. He glanced up at the sky, the purple black blanket of shimmering stars, the treetops just behind him, the gentle hum of the wind, the buzz of an insect nearby… it was all so normal and so beautiful.
My home. My sanctuary.
He didn’t want to face losing it, but he knew that his peaceful way of life was at an end. If any of them wanted to get out of this alive, he knew he would have to become the fighter once more.
Chapter 5
The End Of Their World
Amanda
When she was a little girl, Amanda had once asked her mother what the end of the world would look like. They’d watched a movie about a post-apocalyptic world and she’d wanted to know if that’s what it would really look like. Would it really be so hard to survive? What would happen to cause such a catastrophic event? Would the world really make it through the worst humanity could throw at it?
Now she knew. She knew what the end of the world looked like. It looked like a broken man, laid out on their couch, his blood soaking into the worn, faded leather. It looked like the hard glint of fear and the underlying brokenness flashing through her normally unshakable husband’s eyes.
It felt like everything she thought she knew coming to an end.
The end of the world, her world, came while the rest of the world went right on functioning. It didn’t seem fair, somehow, that it should happen that way.
The end of the world looked like Jason working on the worst of the stranger’s wounds, his shotgun set down beside a pot of bloodied boiled water and soiled bandages. It looked like a needle and thread, bandages, peroxide and a whiskey bottle on their coffee table. It smelled like the horrible tang of metal and sounded like the groans of a man who should, from the look of him, probably be dead.
“Jason…” Amanda hovered on the periphery, hardly daring to sit. She didn’t know what she could possibly do to help so she stood, wringing her hands, utterly useless.
His eyes, those eyes that she loved so very much, swiveled to her face. They looked like the eyes of a stranger. Haunted. Dangerous. The eyes of a man she thought she knew and didn’t.
“Can you pass me another bandage? I think I’ve got the worst of this cleaned up. They beat him up pretty good, but it was like I said. I think he’s going to pull through. He’s used to it. His body, I mean. It gets used to taking blows. It builds up resistance, just like your immune system.”
“I don’t even want to know what you’re talking about,” Amanda whispered in a halting, broken voice.
She forced herself to get another clean bandage from the dwindling pile on the table and pass it on to Jason.
He wound it tightly around an open gash on the side of the man’s skull. How Jason even recognized the guy, Amanda wasn’t certain. His features were so swollen, bruised and bloody, he didn’t even look human. It frightened her to think of the men who had done this. How could anyone be so cruel to another human being?
“Don’t think about it,” Jason ground out. “It will make you crazy if you do.”
“Think-think of what?” Amanda stammered.
“About who did this. About the violence and cruelty inside of people. I swear I will keep you safe like I always have. Nothing will happen to you. You are the love of my life. I would die before I saw you hurt.”
Amanda’s legs turned to jelly as a jolt of fear, stronger than anything she’d ever felt in her life, crippled her. She collapsed onto her knees, gripping the edge of the coffee table for support. Jason worked beside her, his eyes on her face, his hands sealing up the gash, working surely, so sure it was obvious he had done this before.
“I… dear god, don’t talk about dying,” she gasped.
Jason blinked hard before he finally tore his eyes from her face, back to the man on the couch. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Just… don’t.”
“I have to take his shirt off.”
“You have to tell me what the hell is going on!”
“I will. I will, Amanda, I promise. Just help me right now. Just a little while longer.”
Because she almost didn’t want to know, because she was more afraid of the truth than the unknown, because if she didn’t know what was out there, she could almost still pretend it didn’t exist, she dove into helping Jason finish up.
Together they removed the man’s shirt and pants. At first it was embarrassing, stripping down someone who wasn’t even conscious, but the more they worked, the more clinical and detached Amanda felt.
Her horrible fear eventually faded into numbness. She grew tired and then exhausted, tending the man’s wounds. His torso looked as bad as his face. It was a mass of cuts and bruises. His legs fared better, with only a few bruises here and there. Obviously whoever had done the job had focused on beating him in all the places it actually counted.
They were just about through when the man’s shallow breathing changed. He let out a low moan and his eyelids raised open a fraction. They were almost swollen completely shut. What little of his eye showed was horribly bloodshot.
“Jason?” the man croaked past a dry throat.
“I’m here, Andy.” Jason grabbed the guy’s hand to reassure him.
Amanda stepped back a pace, far enough that she wasn’t within reach of the now conscious stranger, but not far enough away that she couldn’t hear what was being said.
“I got out. Finally… came to warn you. They’re coming… never stopped looking. Ricci was wild when you got away. The one man in all those years who escaped his clutches. They found Gerard Domas last month-threatened his wife and kid until he talked. They let him go legit and he was never Ricci’s to run, so he couldn’t do much. Just scared him. He didn’t know anything. Said he’d run into you a year ago in Boulder.”
Jason tensed and Amanda’s breath caught in her lungs. She remembered the guy and his wife at the baby store. They’d run into them in the crib section when she was four months pregnant. Jason hadn’t wanted to speak to the guy. He’d tried to turn around and leave, but she’d tried to strike a conversation. She hadn’t known. She couldn’t have known. She still didn’t know the extent of whatever was happening, but she knew it was bad.
“Where is he now?” From the tone of Jason’s voice, he obviously didn’t want t
o hear the answer.
“Like I said…” the man had to pause and take a breath that rattled in his chest before he could continue. “He wasn’t Ricci’s. Didn’t want-trouble- with Van. He… got-away. Went to Mexico or something-overseas… maybe. Took… his family.”
It was clear that the guy couldn’t keep talking. He let out a low moan, coughed and bloody spittle appeared on his lips.
Jason bent and ran a hand gently over the guy’s forehead. It struck a chord in Amanda. She’d never seen her husband be so kind or familiar with another person who wasn’t her. He loved their son, but he had no one close in the world. The way he looked at that man on the couch, it was like he was looking at a brother he hadn’t seen in years.
“Just rest now, Andy. You’ve come a long way to warn me. I won’t forget it. I’ve cleaned you up and you’re going to survive. You just need to take it easy. You’ll be right in the morning.”
The man coughed again and his eyes closed. He breathed a long sigh and it was impossible to tell if he was even still conscious.
A horrible thought gripped Amanda. She didn’t know the first thing about Jason’s family. Not really. She’d always assumed he didn’t have one. That man on the couch truly could be his brother, for all she knew.
After a minute Jason stepped away. He gathered up the soiled cloths and dirty water. He motioned with his eyes for Amanda to follow him. He didn’t have to bother. She would have chased him down wherever he went. She needed answers and he was the only one who had them.
Jason dumped the pot of dirty water into the sink. Amanda’s stomach churned as she watched the bloody water swirl over the white porcelain before disappearing down the drain. He rinsed it out calmly, as though he was washing their damn supper dishes.
He threw the dirty rags in the garbage, all with such maddening calm.
Amanda couldn’t take it anymore. She ran across the kitchen and gripped Jason’s arm roughly. She forced him to turn and face her. Her eyes searched his face, wondering for all the world if this was the last time she’d ever see him in this kitchen.
Mountain Man Secret_Back On Fever Mountain 3 Page 3