Snap, Crackle ...

by Dale Mayer

He followed her directions, and they came up to an old farmhouse on a very large property. He pulled into the driveway, and she hopped out and stood at the side of the car.

  He exited, walked around his car to join her, and asked, “So where were you shot exactly?”

  She pointed toward the backyard. “I had come down in the morning and was standing outside, doing some stretches.” She showed him where, closer to the trees. “Right here,” she said, and she pushed forward and walked to the place where she had been shot. “I’m sure my blood is still here.”

  He studied the ground and nodded. “Possibly. I see some stains. Did you turn and look?”

  She shook her head. “No, I just bolted for the trees and through there and kept on running.”

  “And you know for sure he came after you?”

  “I don’t know anything,” she said. “I just ran.”

  Hunter didn’t respond, but he studied the ground with an intensity that made her pause.

  “What’s the matter?”

  He looked up at her, shrugged, and said, “Nothing. Why?”

  “Just the way you’re looking.”

  “Well, it’s my job,” he said. “Let’s take a look at your room.”

  Beth led the way, and he followed her.

  Chapter 22

  Beth took an outside set of steps and entered the second-floor bedroom she had rented, hating the feeling of almost being ashamed.

  Hunter frowned that the outer door wasn’t locked. Then he stepped inside and nodded. “Nice and clean.”

  She relaxed slightly, realizing no judgment was in his tone. “I was expecting you to laugh at me,” she said lightly.

  He studied her. “Why would I do that?” he said. “You survived, and that’s worth everything.”

  “Maybe,” she said, “but you don’t realize just what a prize survival is until you’re fighting for it.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “No reason to be ashamed to live here. It’s clean, rodent free. Plus you have lots of light and your own bathroom. It’s all good.” He nodded. “Now show me Sugar Mama’s room and where the other renters stayed.”

  She said, “Well, that’s the thing. A couple other tenants were here at the same time.” She looked around, frowned, and said, “But I don’t remember that I ever met them.”

  “How many people did she rent rooms to?”

  “A couple. If she could, she preferred to only allow women, but Sugar Mama was down to just me for the last year. She kept looking for somebody else, and I know a couple people were asking, so she was a little desperate for money and considered bringing in men.”

  “Why didn’t she like to rent to men?”

  “She said they always gave her trouble, one way or another, so she tried to keep from renting to them.” He didn’t say anything, and she looked at him and said, “Don’t you think men are trouble?”

  “No, not necessarily,” he said. “But I’m also male, so you know that I might be slightly biased in my view.”

  She chuckled. “I think the trouble was more sexual.”

  He stopped, looked at her. “Meaning that she felt they would attack her?”

  “No, but that they always wanted favors from her or to strike up a relationship or something. She would say that she didn’t want any more hot rods to play with, unless they were hot rods that she chose.”

  His lips twitched.

  She smiled. “She’s quite the character.”

  “I like that,” he said. “And I can see her point. If you have a lot of single men here, and she’s as much of a character as she sounds, I’m sure some of them would try their hand at a relationship with her.”

  “I don’t think they wanted relationships so much as the odd slap and tickle, as she would call it.”

  He snorted and shook his head. “Like I said, she sounds like a hell of a character.”

  “Well, that she is but a good-hearted one too.”

  “Yeah, and that’s important,” he said. “Now whereabouts did she have her rooms?”

  Beth led the way downstairs and said, “The whole downstairs floor is hers.” She walked into the center.

  “Did you have a key?”

  “She never kept it locked. She thought, when you lock a door, it only made you feel like you were safe. The truth is, you were more vulnerable because you weren’t expecting the predators outside to get inside. And, when they did, you were completely handicapped.” He stopped and stared, as she shrugged. “Like I said, she’s a character.”

  “With an interesting outlook on life,” he murmured.

  “Very,” Beth said, as she showed him the lower floor areas. “I only had a little hot pot up in my room and that tiny fridge, so she would let me come down here and cook every once in a while and often invited me for a meal too.”

  “Interesting,” he said. “It sounds like you were blessed.”

  “Yeah, she is more than a landlord. More like a friend, something I didn’t expect to have.”

  “Of course not, but the good thing is,” he said, “you did make a friend, and she helped you a lot.” He wandered around the lower rooms. “No sign of a break-in, but, like you said, she kept the doors unlocked.”

  Beth watched as Hunter studied everything. “I see that you’re looking for stuff,” she said, “but I don’t know what you’re looking for.”

  “Something that looks familiar, something that feels familiar, something that could be familiar,” he said, with a shrug. “Any number of things and typically, when I see it, I recognize it as being important.”

  She watched as he went around the main room and the kitchen and then headed into Sugar Mama’s bedroom. Beth said, “I’m not comfortable having you in there.”

  “Hey, the woman is in the hospital. We have to find out what’s wrong. I’m not snooping into her sex life or anything like that,” he said in exasperation.

  “Maybe not,” she said, “and that she’d probably share with you quite freely.”

  He smiled and nodded, then went through everything that he could and finally stepped back and said, “I want to go outside.” His tone was abrupt, as if something bothered him, but he didn’t seem to want to share. But then she hadn’t shared a ton either. Something she would have to deal with. As he walked outside, he looked around the area and nodded.

  “What are you nodding for?”

  “She was struck,” he said.

  “So now we have it as an attack. And you’re proof positive of that?”

  He nodded. “I am, yes,” he said, “but proof as far as the cops are concerned? No.”

  “Ah,” she said. “So, spooky stuff.”

  “Always spooky stuff,” he said, with a smile.

  “Why is everything spooky stuff? You know what? For the longest time I thought I was the only one, but they kept bringing in new people to the compound, and then I thought the world was full of people like us. Yet, as I got older, I realized just how rare we are.”

  “Exactly,” he said, “we gifted types are rare, and, as such, we have to look after ourselves because, all too frequently, there won’t be enough of us around at any given time to help out.”

  “I guess,” she said. He walked around the entire property and then looked again at the area where she had been attacked. But he wasn’t saying anything. “Well?” she asked impatiently.

  “Well what?” he said.

  “Are you happy with this?”

  “You mean, did I find anything? Yes, I did,” he said. “Am I happy with what I found? Well, it’s hard to be happy when a woman was attacked mostly because she knew someone. Now I want to go to the hospital and see if she’s awake.”

  Beth stopped and said, “Wait. I need to go get my money and my clothes.”

  He turned, then nodded. “I’ll be here.”

  She turned and raced upstairs. The money wasn’t hard to find in a sock under her mattress. She grabbed it and her backpack, added her few belongings, then stuffed the money in there too. She loaded a coup
le little things that she had, including the one stupid pebble that she and Lizzy used to pass back and forth as a comfort stone. She looked at it, sighed, tucked it into her pocket, and raced back downstairs.

  Hunter waited, leaning against the car, but he was on the phone this time. As she approached, he said, “Okay, Stefan, I’ve got to go.” Then hung up.

  “What was that about?” she challenged.

  “Your Sugar Mama is awake, and she’s talking.”

  *

  Hunter watched, as Beth tossed her backpack into the back seat of the car and asked, “Has that got all your money in it too?”

  “Money and clothing,” Beth said. “I don’t have much.”

  He nodded, got into the vehicle as she did, turned it on, and drove carefully to the hospital. He’d definitely seen an energy he recognized, but they looked like different fragments of Beth herself. His long conversation with Stefan hadn’t shed any light on it. He’d seen the same energy in Beth’s aura, but then she had used other people to hide her energy, so hers was completely intermingled with everybody else’s.

  By the time they reached the hospital, he was still no closer to figuring it out. He parked and led the way through to the administration desk, where he asked where Sugar Mama’s room was.

  The woman laughed. “You can see her holding court from a long way off,” she said. “She’s up on the second floor.”

  They made their way up the stairs and down the hall, and, sure enough, several people stood around an open doorway, laughing and chuckling.

  As he approached, one of the other patients looked at him and said to Sugar Mama, “It looks like you’ve got company.”

  Everybody backed away slightly, as Hunter entered the room with Beth. Sugar Mama took one look at Beth, cried out, and opened her arms. Hunter stayed at the doorway and watched, as the smiling woman in the bed reached up and hugged Beth tight. If Sugar Mama had never had a daughter, she’d adopted Beth as hers, seeing Beth as an otherwise lost soul on the streets. Sugar Mama had obviously taken her in and done her a world of good. She finally released her, then looked at Hunter and said, “Wow, when you find yourself a man, you really find one, girl.”

  Beth laughed. “It’s not like that with us.”

  “Good Lord,” she said, rolling an eye at her. “Why not?”

  He stepped forward and said, “Thank you for looking after her.”

  Her eyes narrowed, as she studied him. “I sure as hell hope you’ll solve the problem that she has got herself messed up in, so she doesn’t need people like me out there helping her, protecting her.”

  “Wouldn’t that be nice?” he said. “You can count on the fact that we’re working on it.”

  “Good,” she said. “And, while you’re at it, you can find that asshole who hit me.”

  “I would love to. We suspect it’s one and the same.”

  “Well, he was asking about her.”

  “Do you remember what questions he asked?”

  “He wanted to locate her,” Sugar Mama said. “Then he was asking some weird questions about how she’d been and how she’d been acting for the last few years. I don’t know what he was going on about. I said she was fine, and, just like always, I’d never had any problem with her. Which I haven’t,” she said, as she patted Beth’s hand. “This child has got a strong brain in her head and a will to live, and I wouldn’t do anything to take that away from her.”

  “Good,” Hunter said, “because you do understand, for some of these men, that’s exactly what they are looking at doing, right?”

  She nodded slowly. “It’s a sick world out there, if you’re not careful. I tried to teach her how to be careful, but she’s quite the innocent. She has a ways to go.”

  “I know,” he murmured. “I wasn’t planning on taking advantage of her.”

  She frowned, nodded, and said, “And I hear you. I’m just not sure whether I believe you.”

  At that, Beth burst into laughter. “I said the same thing to him.”

  She looked over, grinned, and said, “Good, I’m glad you were smart enough to at least worry about that much.”

  “Of course,” Beth said, “and answers would be lovely, but apparently they’re not that easy to come by.”

  “No,” she said, “they sure aren’t. But it’s not all bad.”

  “No,” Beth murmured, “it’s not all bad. At the same time, it’s pretty hard to find anything that’s very good about it just now,” she said, looking at him.

  “I don’t know what I can tell you,” Sugar Mama said to them both, “but I sure hope they left my house alone.”

  “We were just there,” Beth said gently. “It looks fine.”

  “Well, thank the Good Lord for that,” she said. “I think it may be time I sold out and went somewhere else.”

  “Where would you go?” Beth asked her friend.

  “Well, my sister contacted me not too long ago. She wants to share a house and to grow old together. We’ve always been the best of friends, but we never had the time or the energy to spend much time together,” she said, whispering.

  The two friends sat and quietly visited for a little bit longer, and then finally Hunter joined them. “We need to keep moving.”

  At that, Sugar Mama looked at him and said, “Who is the guy?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, looking at her. “Any chance you could give us a description?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Five foot eleven, with long black hair, older than you—late forties or fifties. Looks after himself somewhat but was anxious, like he was seriously worried about Beth.”

  Hunter looked at Beth to see a puzzled look on her face, then she shrugged. “That could have been him. I don’t know.”

  At that, Hunter froze, and he took several steps closer to Sugar Mama. “What do you mean by worried?”

  “Well, that was the thing that I didn’t get. I thought he was after her, and he was. He really was,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong. He was trying to find her, and he wouldn’t leave any stone unturned. But he was also worried.”

  “In what way?” Beth asked. Stepping forward, she grabbed Sugar Mama’s hand. “And I’m so sorry that he hurt you.”

  Sugar Mama waved her hand. “Hey,” she said, “I learned a long time ago how to avoid a man’s fist.”

  “Did he beat you?” she cried out.

  “No, but he looked like he wanted to. He would step forward with that fist clenched of his because he was so frustrated. But he was frustrated because he couldn’t find you.”

  “Did he say what he wanted?” Hunter asked her intently.

  She shook her head. “No, he wouldn’t tell me much, and, when I told him that I wasn’t into throwing young girls up to get themselves beaten, he just looked at me in surprise. ‘You don’t know the half of it,’ he said briskly, and then he backed away a little bit, and I thought he would take off, and everything would be fine. But then he turned around, and that fist was coming. I ducked but not fast enough, and I tripped backward and fell down the stairs,” she said, reaching up to her head, and she winced. “You know it’s definitely time to leave that old house. I think I’ll put it on the market and move back to my sister’s.” Then she looked at Beth in alarm. “But what about you?”

  “I won’t be staying there any longer anyway,” Beth said. “I’ve paid you the rent for the month, and I collected the rest of my belongings while I was there.” She smiled, leaned over, and kissed Sugar Mama gently on the cheek. “Thank you for all you did to help me.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you, honey, if you want one more spot of advice,” she said, “you’ll hang on to this guy.”

  Beth looked at her, then at Hunter. “Really?”

  The old woman grinned at him and laughed. “Obviously we didn’t spend enough time together,” she said, “if you don’t recognize a sugar daddy standing right in front of you.”

  Hunter snorted at that. “I’m hardly anybody’s sugar daddy.”

  “No,”
she said, “you’re better. You’re a protector.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Beth asked in confusion.

  “He’s somebody who always looks to do right and will defend the underdog,” she said. “You can’t go wrong with him. He’ll look after you. Matter of fact, seeing him with you right now makes me feel all the more certain about leaving. I was worried about it before because my sister did mention living together a little while back. But I knew that you would still need a place and would still need somebody to keep an eye out for you. But now I can see that you’ll be just fine.”

  “I hardly even know him,” she murmured.

  “Nope,” she said, “I can see that, but, if you’re smart, you’ll get to know him a whole lot better.” At that, she burst out with a raucous laughter that filled the hallway.

  Hunter looked at the others in the doorway, huge grins on everybody’s faces. He knew what they were all thinking, but he didn’t think that Beth was in any way ready for that conversation. Although no way she could have been around Sugar Mama and not understood how life worked. That just brought him back to wondering what Beth’s life in captivity had been all about when it came to relationships. He hoped that she hadn’t been put in a position where that had been part of the punishment. He didn’t want to think along those lines. But now that he’d considered it, hard not to.

  “We need to go,” he said. Sugar Mama was still grinning, when she gave a great big bear hug to Beth. And she pointed a meaty fist at him and said, “You look after that girl.”

  “I plan on it,” he said, “but she’s not being very cooperative.”

  Sugar Mama’s smile fell away. “She’s been through a lot,” she said. “If she knows that she’s in trouble or has a reason to be wary, you need to listen to her too.”

  “I got it,” he said quietly. “I trust her instincts. Don’t worry. But my instincts also need to be trusted, and right now they’re telling me to get the hell out of here.”

  At that, Sugar Mama pushed Beth away. “Go on now,” she said. “You only get one chance to listen to your instincts because, when you’re wrong, it’s fatal, so go.”

  And, with one final glance at Sugar Mama, Beth stepped out of the hospital room toward Hunter. He smiled, wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulled her up close, and said, “She will do just fine.”