Borderland (28 page)

She
stood in the yard and took deep breaths while she resisted the vision of the
bodies.

The
white Buick rolled up the drive, Cal at the wheel. He was grinning ear to ear.
Myra stood motionless as the car left her field of vision. He was parking it in
front of the house. A moment later she heard them putting up the top. Small,
stingy drops of rain were beginning to fall around her. She waited until she
heard activity in the kitchen before moving. Apparently, no hallucination was
coming. Thank God.

Inside,
Cal stopped grinning and laughing long enough to tell her they had eaten frozen
pizzas at Al's place. He then described his driving lesson, making Myra smile
at his ebullience. It made her feel better to see him so animated and happy.
She supposed she had Nolan to thank, but even as the thought entered her head
he wordlessly left the kitchen. Cal stayed and ate the leftovers as he talked,
then left to see what was on television, leaving Myra to wash up. When she
finished in the kitchen she found him sound asleep on the sofa in front of the
TV. With a sigh she returned to the pantry and hefted up the metal washtub she
had been using to catch rainwater for her hair.

The
gentle but steady rain dampened her clothes and hair almost immediately as she
carried the tub around the house to find the spot with the most runoff. She did
a double take when she glanced behind the garage and saw a nude Nolan holding a
bar of soap and lathering himself in the rain. He was humming.

Though
his back was to her, Myra's face and neck grew hot. Good sense said to go
before he saw her, but her feet seemed reluctant to move.

Her gaze
followed his movements as he made lazy sweeps with the soap. The rain pelted
away at the lather and made sudsy rivers that ran down his tanned back and
crossed the whiteness of his buttocks to stream down the backs of his thighs.

Nice,
she thought, and for a moment she found herself wishing he would turn around.
Then she noticed something: a round gouge like scar in his left buttock. A
bullet? she wondered, remembering what Cal had said earlier. Bullets, broken
bones and burns. Maybe Cal was right, she thought. Maybe Nolan was different.

Reluctantly,
Myra turned away and went back to the pantry door. In the house she retrieved a
towel from the bathroom and carried it upstairs with her so she could dry off
in her bedroom. She decided to follow through with what she had told Christa
and make an early night of it. An extra hour or two of sleep certainly wouldn't
hurt her. It might even make the cold, hair-raising hallucination sensations go
away. The decision made, she stripped down to her cotton undershirt and pulled
back the cover sheet on the bed. Within seconds of placing her head on the
pillow she felt herself begin to relax. As she drifted off, she realized that
she was more than weary. The bed itself seemed to be pulling her into sleep.

She soon
discovered why.

Myra
knew it was a dream and she also knew that she didn't want to be there. She
wanted to wake up and get out of the strange house in the dream before
something terrible happened. She was still wet, her hair still dripping, but
her clothes were different. And the people in the house were different. Cal was
there… and Patrick. They were all eating at a table with smiling strangers.
There was talk, but Myra couldn't understand it. She could hear fine, but no
matter how hard she tried she couldn't understand what was being said.

Then
Patrick and Cal were gone and she was alone in a room, looking out a window.
Outside the window people were shouting, but again she couldn't understand
them. They were doing something to a car… no…a wagon? A scream from somewhere
inside the house dragged her attention away from the window. Suddenly she was
running up countless flights of stairs and looking in rooms for… oh no...
please, not Cal's room... not again. The corpses. So many of them. Oh God,
help.

Another
scream. Cal. Where was he? Another door, the right one this time, and
then…Patrick, dead again, just like the last…the terrible blue dent in the pale
temple…eyes full of surprise. Cal? Cal, where are you? Down the stairs again,
screaming without sound and tripping over this stupid

…dress?
The kitchen. Strangers in the kitchen and Cal with them. Holding him. Keeping
him from her. Oh God, to kill that... that beast holding him. Kill her and take
Cal away from here as quickly as...

Her
forward movement was abruptly halted as a pair of hands clutched her. She
clawed and kicked at the feel of cold steel on the tender, heated flesh of her
neck. She wasn't going to make it. She wasn't going to reach Cal. The metal was
slicing flesh. She could hear and finally understand that one sound. She was
going to die. She could already feel herself slipping. The tears on her face
were mingling with the blood flowing down the front of her dress and someone
was saying …hush.

Hush?

She
opened her eyes.

"Hush,"
Nolan said. "You'll wake up the kid."

Myra sat
up. Her face was wet. Was she really awake? "Where is he? Where's
Cal?"

"He's
asleep. Or at least he was."

"Are
you sure?" Her voice sounded shrill even to her own ears.

"I
just came from there." Nolan lifted his hand and wiped at her cheek with
his thumb. "Must've been a pretty bad one. I could hear you from my
room."

Myra
fell back to the bed and turned her face to the pillow to muffle the first sob.
Her stomach muscles clenched and released as she gave way to the pressure
behind her eyes. She could still feel the blade at her throat still hear Cal's
screams above the slicing sound. When she moaned she felt the mattress heave
beneath her. Warm hands cupped her shoulders as he sat down.

"It
wasn't like a dream," she cried into the pillow. "It was too
real."

Nolan
patted her back and reached over to turn on the lamp on the nightstand.
"Tell me about it."

Myra
sobbed once, choked back another, then turned her head away from the pillow.
Her voice cracked a dozen times as she told him the details. When she finished,
her hand went automatically to her throat, as if to reassure herself.

"They
wanted Cal," she added. "They were going to keep him for their own.
Somehow I knew that."

When
Nolan said nothing she lifted her head to look at him. He was staring at the
far wall.

"What?"
she said to his expression.

He
blinked and looked at her. "Nothing. Are you okay now?"

Myra
shook her head. She didn't want to be alone. "I'm afraid to go back to
sleep."

Nolan's
mouth curved. "I think I would be, too. You want some water or a cold
washcloth? Your eyes are pretty swollen."

"No."
She hid her face again. "Right now I just want to forget the dream. It was
so real." She turned slightly and put out a hand to touch his arm. This
was real, she assured herself. He was real. He breathed, he spoke English, and
he smelled like soap. Real.

"Want
me to tell you a joke?" he said.

She
looked at him. His eyes had that familiar teasing light. Her muscles began to
relax. "No. Tell me where you go at night. When do you sleep?"

His
chest expanded and deflated as he heaved an exaggerated sigh. "Okay, I
confess. I go out to the woods and whack off while fantasizing about your
breasts."

"I'm
sure. We don't have any woods, Nolan."

He
smiled. "And you don't have any breasts. That's the fantasy part."

Myra
groaned in disgust. "If you're trying to get my mind off sleep you're
doing a fine job." Then she frowned. There was nothing wrong with her
breasts. Who was he using for comparison?

"Gotcha,
didn't I?" he said. "You were looking at your chest there for a
second."

"I
was not," she lied. "There's nothing wrong with my bust size. I'm
perfectly happy with it."

"Guess
it doesn't take much to make you happy," Nolan said with a chuckle.

"If
that's the case, you could probably make me delirious," she responded.
"I saw you showering earlier."

He
stopped smiling.

"Gotcha,"
Myra said with a low laugh.

He
nodded and gave her shoulder a light squeeze. "Feel better now?"

She did
and she didn't. She touched his arm again. "Nolan, I'm sorry about those things
I said today. I was angry with Cal for—"

"I
already said you were right," he broke in. "And you were."

Myra
held his gaze. "I don't think so. And I'm apologizing to you. Will you
please accept?"

"All
right, I accept." He stood up then. "I'm not going anywhere tonight.
Just try to go back to sleep now, okay?"

"I'm
not sure I can," she admitted. "Do you want something to eat? I'll
get up and fix something."

Nolan
looked at the ceiling. "I want you to go back to sleep. All levity and
flirtatious fun aside, it's not comfortable for me to comfort you, Myra. I am a
testosterone-producing male in my reproductive prime, and if I spend another
minute in your scantily clad company I will either rip off those cotton undies
or soil the front of my shorts. Now, unless you want me to physically keep
those bad dreams away for the rest of the night, you'll close those puffy
little eyes and go back to sleep."

"The
rest of the night?" Myra couldn't resist.

He
exhaled through his nose. "Physical angle, my ass. You're still a goddamn
tease. Goodnight, Myra."

"Thank
you," she said as he moved away. "Thank you for being…here."

He waved
over his shoulder and went out, leaving the door open behind him. Myra stared
at the space he had occupied for a long moment, wondering what he'd meant by
physical angle, and why she had the feeling there was something he had wanted
to tell her and didn't.

CHAPTER 24

Jinx had
been keeping his eye on Ed Kisner, and he didn't like what he saw. The man's
weakness was legendary. His pansy attitude and his cowardly views on the
running of the town had been recorded at every meeting. But now there was
slyness to his features, a secret, bubbling resentment that simmered on a back
burner in his brain and occasionally boiled over into his eyes. And there was a
new stealth to his movements as he went about town, almost as if he knew he was
being watched and wanted to avoid any suspicious behavior.

It was
all suspicious to Jinx. He had known Ed Kisner forever, hated him even longer.
Ed's resentment, of course could be blamed on the council replacing him as
lawman. It was a matter of pride, nothing more. There was nothing to the job,
really, just squabble-settling among the few townspeople who didn't have the
brains to shut up and walk away from an altercation. Come to think of it, there
had been more than the average number of squabbles in the last few years, even
an assault with a beer bottle Sunday night at the Bingo hall. Vic had been
quick to stop it, though. A shove here, a snatched collar there, and the two
women had been separated. Water on a catfight.

Young
women. Young men. None of them being instilled with the values Jinx himself had
learned at their age.

He
sighed to himself and went to the back room of his diner to finish his load of
fixings for the fertilizer plant. While there he noticed that the bag of
clothes he had asked Gil Schwarz to burn last Saturday was still in the corner.

"Damn
idiot," he muttered to himself. What was today? Wednesday? Five days that
bag had been here. Five days too long. The men in the gray Buick had worn
pretty fancy duds, expensive as hell, but Jinx wanted everything burned. It was
crucial to leave absolutely no evidence—not even teeth—this close to Denke. Gil
knew that. What manure cart that retard had fallen from was an enduring
mystery. And the old fool was still letting his worthless libido lead him into
grabbing anything with tits. Just last night he had dragged some limp little
redhead in the back door. Said he'd found her out on the highway with a flat
tire. She was traveling alone, so Gil had stopped, and after mauling her there
in his truck he had decided to knock her senseless and bring her into town to
show the others. The idiot. Jinx had been forced to send Tom Hamm after her
tiny yellow MG. Stupid Gil had left the thing sitting in the road for any state
patrolman to find.

The man
was out of control. That's all there was to it. He knew better than to snatch
someone so close to Denke. It was too dangerous. But he had done just that,
without waiting to find out where she was from, where she was going, or
anything else.

And it
could be trouble, Jinx thought, because her license said she was from Kansas
City. Was it a coincidence, or was this Carrie MacArthur acquainted with Vic
Kimmler in any way? He couldn't be sure, even after calling the work number
listed on her pretty little business cards, because when he asked for Carrie
MacArthur he was told she was on vacation. In a friendly but urgent voice he
asked where he might be able to reach her. The harried man on the phone didn't
know. He thought she mentioned a visit to her brother in Denver.