Hunted in Conard County

by Rachel Lee

  But she didn’t want to cut the walk short. It felt good to be striding along beside Stu, a quick walk now. Snowy, stuck to her side like the pro he was, pranced as if he was loving it.

  Given his thick coat, he was probably better suited to this weather than to Florida. She hoped she’d adapt soon.

  Stu took them for a spin around the courthouse square.

  “What are those tables and benches for? Picnics?”

  “They could be,” he answered. “If you can get one. We’ve got a lot of the older men out here playing chess and checkers as the weather allows. And recently we started seeing a group of women playing backgammon.” He pointed to the corner. “That’s the sheriff’s office. And up here,” he added as he pointed again, “is Melinda’s bakery. She generally closes around one in the afternoon, but given how early she starts baking, I’m surprised she can make it that long.”

  “No police cars?”

  “Not usually. We get to drive them home. Never know when we might be needed. In fact, around the end of the month we’ll be putting snowplows on the front of our SUVs.”

  That was new. “Really?”

  “Really. We’ve got to be able to get all over this county in an emergency. Yeah, we’ve got regular plows, but if someone on an outlying ranch gets in trouble before the plow finds them, we have to get through, anyway.”

  “I never would have thought of that.”

  “I probably never would think of the stuff you had to deal with in severe storms or hurricanes.”

  There was culture shock going on here, too, she realized. Just a little. Plows on the front of the sheriffs’ vehicles. She could hardly wait to tell her friends back home.

  “Things are so different here.”

  “Well, that ought to entertain you for a while at least.”

  They came to the back side of the square and started walking again in the general direction of her apartment.

  “I shouldn’t have suggested a longer walk,” he said a block later. “You’re starting to look too cold.”

  “I’ll make it,” she said stoutly, burying her hands deeper into her pockets. “Better clothes tomorrow, though.”

  He paused and shrugged off his jacket. “Here,” he said, draping it over her shoulders.

  “But, Stu! You’ll freeze.”

  “I’ve got a warm shirt on. Besides, this weather probably feels a lot warmer to me than it does to you. You need time to adapt.”

  “I don’t feel right about this,” she remarked as they resumed their walk. But her shoulders were already enjoying the added warmth.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll beg if I need it back. My uniform shirt is chamois, anyway. Get one for yourself tomorrow. Meantime, let’s take a shortcut back.”

  The shortcut soon took them down an alley. Alleys had nearly gone the way of dodos back in Florida, existing only in older neighborhoods. Real estate was too expensive to devote any of it to purposes like this. Yet they had them, and she’d been down quite a few while chasing someone. Bad types seemed to gravitate toward them.

  Another walker came toward them. Bundled in a hooded jacket, he walked briskly and muttered a howdy as he passed them.

  Oddly, Kerri felt the back of her neck prickle as he walked by. Old instincts awakening because this was an alley? The man had done nothing untoward except walk by and mumble a greeting. Maybe she’d been troubled only because seeing someone buttoned up and concealed like that in Florida might have meant trouble.

  She glanced up at Stu, wondering if she should mention her nutty reaction. To her surprise he had craned his head around and was looking after the man who had passed them.

  She waited until he faced front again, then asked quietly, “Something wrong?”

  “Nope,” he answered. “I was just trying to remember if I knew him.”

  “Don’t tell me you know everyone.”

  He laughed quietly. “No, I don’t. But I’m getting there.”

  And he wasn’t telling her the truth. She would have bet something about the guy had set off his cop senses. Maybe, like her, it was the location.

  She turned to her mind’s eye, recalling the man, and realized she’d seen almost nothing of him. If she’d needed to describe his face, she couldn’t have. It was the way he was wearing his hood, shadowing his face.

  Well, it was cold out here. Stu seemed to have let it go, so she did, as well. “Need your jacket? I swear it’s getting colder.”

  “It’s the way this alley funnels the breeze. I’m fine and we’ll reach the end of it shortly.”

  “Chamois shirts do that much?”

  He laughed again. “So does getting used to the cold. Next winter you’ll be running around in a sweater and vest when it’s around zero. Just like the rest of us.”

  She couldn’t imagine it but was willing to take him at his word.

  At the end of the alley, they turned down another decently lighted street. The breeze gentled here, and she no longer felt its bite so acutely. “It can’t be that cold,” she remarked.

  “It’s not. Lower fifties, maybe.”

  A sudden memory clicked in her head. “I was in a doctor’s office one afternoon with sinusitis. One of those walk-in clinics. Anyway, there was a group of people sitting at the other end of the waiting room. Mind you, this was February.”

  “Okay.”

  “So one of them said, ‘The receptionist told us they wouldn’t be busy this morning because it was too cold. Fifty-five and it’s too cold.’ And the group all laughed.”

  “Tourists?” Stu asked.

  “Must have been. But I was thinking, you try living down here for a few years, and you won’t have clothing for the chilly days, and fifty will be too cold to be comfortable. But you just sit there laughing and jawing and offending everyone in the front office, why don’t you.”

  Stu snorted. “You gotta wonder about people.”

  “All the time.” She shook her head a little. “In all fairness, I was probably a bit cranky because my head felt like a bowling ball and it hurt.”

  “How bad is the tourist invasion?”

  “Depends on where you live. In some areas it can be overwhelming. I have a friend who lives one county over and by midseason she’d be complaining that a fifteen-minute trip to the store for a loaf of bread was taking an hour because of traffic, long checkout lines...yeah, the locals can get annoyed by things like that.” That and some of the attitudes people brought with them, but she let that pass.

  They turned another corner, and she saw her apartment house ahead. “You weren’t kidding about a shortcut!”

  “I wouldn’t tease about that, not when you’re in danger of turning blue.”

  “Hey, thanks to your jacket, I’m surviving.”

  Once they got to her apartment, she invited him in, suggesting that after that walk he might need a warm drink.

  “Unless you have an early morning or something,” she added, recalling the last time. This man was so easy to be around that she was forgetting her own reluctance to create new relationships until she was more certain of herself.

  Except, even as she hesitated, she realized she was getting awfully tired of being alone most of the time when she wasn’t in class or meeting with students. Maybe she needed to get over some of her hang-ups.

  He answered, “Nothing on my schedule tomorrow except introducing you to Freitag’s, remember? Warm clothing and all that.”

  “Are you really sure you have time?” She passed his jacket back to him. Comfortable though it had kept her, it was part of his uniform.

  “Of course I do. I wouldn’t have offered otherwise.”

  She smiled and moved to the kitchen. “What would you like to drink?”

  * * *

  Ivan scurried out of that alley as fast as he dared. Imagine running into a cop in that place. Ev
en one who seemed to be out walking his girl. And what a place to walk her, anyway.

  He feared he’d looked as out of place as they had. People around here used alleys for necessary things, like putting out the trash, or parking a car to one side, half up on the grass. Most houses were fenced with a back gate, and it sure as hell wasn’t a place to take a casual stroll.

  Yet there that cop had been, along with a woman and a dog. He distrusted dogs and had watched that one while keeping his head down. He’d been bitten by a mutt when he was eight, and he’d never forgotten the feeling of those jaws on his arms.

  All these years later, he wasn’t exactly scared of them. More like respectful. And distrustful. But the dog had been well-behaved, hadn’t appeared disturbed by him, and so he’d gotten by.

  Then there was the cop. He was left to simply shake his head. A strange place to walk, yes, but it had been equally strange for him to be there. Hell.

  Well, enough scoping of houses for one night. Maybe he’d walk over to the park and see how many female joggers came running by. Despite things that happened in this town from time to time, most people felt pretty safe. Maybe too safe, but that made it easier on him.

  On the residential streets, people still occasionally walked by, but the cooling temperatures had put a stop to the front porch confabs that went on most summer evenings. It was getting to the time of year when most people hopped in a car instead of walking. Oh, there were some hardy souls. There always were.

  What he needed were the lonely, alone, or maybe too fearless. He’d find one soon.

  He was sure of it.

  * * *

  “Are you meeting people outside the school?” Stu asked as they sat in her living room. She’d ceded the couch to him and he’d settled quite comfortably. He hadn’t wanted anything to drink, however, so she nursed her green tea alone.

  “Not yet.” Maybe never. She’d never been solitary in her life but that had changed. She had too much to cope with right now, and not knowing when she might blink out, as she thought of it, kept her at home as much as possible. She put her cup on its saucer on the end table beside her.

  “I could introduce you around. There are a lot of great people.”

  “I’m sure there are. Are you the Welcome Wagon?”

  He flashed a smile. “When was the last time you heard of them? I think their name outlived them in most places. Maybe people got too busy.”

  “We all seem to be busy now.” She leaned forward a little, tensing, wondering if she should even bring this up. “Sometimes I think that gunshot took an awful lot more from me than can show up on tests and X-rays. I’ll get over it as I adjust. What about you? You said you used to be in the military police. What’s that involve? I know so little about it.”

  He waved his hand slightly, but she was sure he tensed a bit. Just a bit. He was good at hiding whatever bugged him, she thought, but she saw him with a cop’s eyes. She decided she was not the only troubled person in this room.

  “A whole bunch of stuff,” he said after a few moments. “Regular police duties, of course. Just like any police force you see around.”

  “But it went beyond that?”

  “Site security, for one thing. You’d find our people on the perimeter of most bases or posts. We protect the site, the people inside. And we do that on the battlefield, too, if that’s where we are. Posts in hostile areas. We’re in charge of internment, as well. You break a law, we’ve got the jail. You’re a prisoner of war, we take care of you, too.”

  She nodded. “So it’s a broader scope.”

  “Much. We also do reconnaissance and transport support—that can get kind of hairy. We don’t get sent out to fight, like a field unit, but our job is always to support and protect. Except, obviously, when we’re policing.”

  “Well, part of policing is supposed to be protection.” Then she smiled faintly. “Not usually as dangerous as what you were doing, I suspect.”

  “It all depended on where I was stationed. I had one or two postings that were yawners. At one I was busier trying to keep my own guys from smoking weed on duty than anything else.” He shook his head. “You take a bunch of young people, mostly men from what I’ve seen, and they’re always up to something unless they’re too busy to get into trouble.”

  He tilted his head to one side, his gaze growing distant. “I walked into one posting stateside and knew immediately that something wasn’t right. About three months later I busted thirty of my cops. Marijuana use on duty. I might have gotten them sooner, but I wanted to squash the whole thing, not just part of it. And I had to figure out how the stuff was getting on the post. That was interesting, too, because we weren’t talking small amounts for personal use. Somebody was selling larger quantities. He was the one I wanted the most, although all of them were risking the post’s security.”

  She drew a deep breath. “That was one heckuva drug bust.”

  “Didn’t make anyone feel proud, I can tell you.”

  “No? I knew some cops back in Florida who would beat their chests over a bust that big.”

  “It shamed the uniform,” he answered simply.

  She understood that as soon as he said it. It was the equivalent of a large city police force taking down that many of its own officers. Yeah, there’d be shame. But plenty of anger, too, at the people who’d brought them down. Blue was thicker than blood.

  “Did people get angry with you?”

  “Sure.” He said it offhandedly, then rose. “Time for me to split. I didn’t intend to take up your whole evening. What time tomorrow should I pick you up?”

  “What’s good for you?”

  “Say ten?”

  She rose and walked him to the door, aware that Snowy was staring intently at her. Another episode? God, she hoped not. But she sure as heck didn’t want Stu to see it.

  He pulled on his jacket, said good night, then closed the door behind him. She would have locked it out of habit, except she felt the insistent poke against her thigh.

  “Yes, Snowy,” she said wearily. “Here we go again.”

  She sat down in the recliner knowing she was about to lose time again. Chunks of her life, small chunks, going into oblivion as if they’d never happened.

  She resented that.

  Chapter 4

  Kerri was up at dawn. Not because she was a natural early bird, but because her internal clock still hadn’t quite adjusted to the two-hour time change from the East Coast.

  That had its benefits, of course. She was able to view the sunrise from the tiny balcony off her living room. It faced east, and somehow she’d lucked out because the only thing across the street was a huge vacant lot. She’d been told that land had been bought and razed by the development company that had built these apartments in anticipation of growth that never came. Now it was covered in tall grasses and weeds.

  When she’d first arrived here, she watched kids playing on a rough baseball diamond that had probably been created by several years of running feet. Now it was nearly obscured.

  When packing for this move, she’d had to squarely face her own limitations with regard to driving. She had to bring anything she wouldn’t find it easy to replace on foot. That meant she’d bought a couple of molded plastic chairs with her and could now sit on that balcony with a matching small table. Nothing else could fit out there, but it allowed her to bring out her insulated mug of coffee and enjoy the pinkening eastern sky.

  But it was cold. To her, anyway. She pulled on her jacket and grabbed a blanket from her bed to wrap around her. Her hands quickly grew chilly, but she ignored it.

  Lifting her feet, she pressed them against the railing. Snowy settled beside her, content that he’d gotten a quick trip outside and a bowl of kibble while she made coffee. Now he was happy to soak up the morning scents.

  The coffee was hot and delicious, its aroma sneaking its way o
ut through the drinking hole in the lid and filling her own nostrils with its rich, roasted scent.

  It was beautiful here, she decided as the sky slowly brightened, bringing to her view some distant mountain peaks. Truly beautiful. She really needed to lift her head from pushing at her own problems and just take the good things life was offering her.

  The air smelled so clean here, and she could see the leaves starting to change color on some of the trees. For the first time she was going to enjoy a real autumn and she anticipated it with pleasure.

  She recalled the story Stu had told her last night, about arresting all those people for drug use on the job. And about his other duties as a military policeman. Stuff she’d never associated with a police organization.

  Reconnaissance? Protection for transports? Perimeter protection against hostiles? Added to regular policing duties?

  He must have had his hands full. She also tried to imagine policing a base full of battle-hardened soldiers, all of whom were seriously armed. She suspected that could have been dangerous at times.

  She already respected him, but that tidbit last night had swelled her respect a whole lot. It also made her wonder what had brought him here. Much as she didn’t like to admit it, she knew she was hiding. She was living in a crouch, persistently expecting the next blow.

  She sighed and sipped more coffee, wondering how to emerge from this tunnel she had walked into. She could still work, and she was. While she was not the cop she had always wanted to be, she was on the fringes teaching criminal justice. Teaching young people who wanted to be cops in the future.

  She might not be able to be trusted to answer a phone at the desk in her old station, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t still be useful in other ways. She really hadn’t needed to run away from her former life and friends simply because she found it too painful and had come to hate the pitying looks.