Off the Beaten Path (24 page)

Jack gave her an inquisitive smile and she nodded in his direction,

“I'll tell you later.” was all she said, and smiled back at him. That was all the explanation he needed for now, he went back to preparing their food.

The realization made her sit bolt upright on the couch and almost spill her wine. “That was it,” she screamed inside her head,

“That is what made Jack so extraordinary.”

Kristin had been rolling it over in her mind ever since she had come back to the ranch. The answer had been there the whole time, right in front of her face. The tiny gesture struck her like that first blast of hot air when you step out of an air conditioned building. Most men would have stopped what they were doing and ran over to the couch to discover why she had burst out laughing. Most men would have had to know what she was laughing about before they could move on with their life. Some men might even have become angry or violent until she told them what she had been laughing about. But Jack was not most
men, he was perfectly content to allow her to enjoy whatever inside joke had made her laugh out loud, even if the inside joke was about him.

The nod and the smile he had given her had said everything. He was secure enough to not to assume that she was laughing at him. He was patient enough to know that she would eventually tell him the private joke if she wanted to. And he was confident enough to be the source of her amusement without rupturing his fragile ego. When he looked at her his eyes had held her as if he was sitting right there beside her on the couch with his hands wrapped around her.

This is the secret that Jack understood and most other men didn't. Every man on the planet knew or at least suspected that a woman needed to be held. They were all only half right. Yes a woman needed to be held, but not just physically but. Emotionally as well. And the way he had just held her emotionally made her want him even more.

Kristin stood up and walked across the hard wood floor to the kitchen. She set her wine glass down on the island and reached around him from behind like she hadn't seen him in months. She laid her head on his shoulder and left it there while he finished the dinner.

When the eggs were done Jack slid the pan to the back burner and turned around within her grasp to face her. There were tiny droplets of water around the edges of her brown eyes and the radiant smile had returned to her face. The smile that he had seen when she was laid back on the couch stroking Sam's head. They kissed for a long moment and when their lips parted she was the first to say it,

“I Love you, Jack.”

The moment the words left Kristin's mouth Jack saw her change. The change was not with Kristin though, it was Sam. Jack was looking over Kristin's shoulder when he saw Sam in a low crouch position. He could see the hair on the back of her neck stand up and her front shoulders had tensed almost to the point of shaking. Sam had her head down and was glaring at the bottom of the front door like she was trying to peer
under the door. Then he heard it, a low guttural growl resonating from deep in Sam's throat. The growl was as vicious and savage as anything Jack had ever heard before. It sounded like a cross between a wolf and a bear. It had the brutal quality of a wolf, like Sam could devour anything in her path. And certainty of a grizzly, like nothing should dare challenge her.

Jack starred straight into Kristin's eyes and said with a absolute clarity,

“Kristin, you need to go upstairs, right now.”

She thought that he was playing with her until she saw the look in his eyes. It was the same look she had seen when the street punks had been coming down the street in their direction.

“What's wrong?” She asked,

“There is someone outside, go upstairs and take Sam with you.”

Kristin gave him a nervous kiss on the lips and turned toward the stairs. She heard him say as she turned away from him in a low calm voice,

“Take the blanket up with you as you go.”

Kristin made a slight detour and gathered up the blanket that had been in her saddle bag off the arm of the couch and headed upstairs. When she reached the bottom of the stairs she said one word, “Sam.”

Sam came out of her crouch and bolted up the stairs behind Kristin as if she knew what her job now was to protect Kristin.

Jack lingered in the kitchen putting away a couple ingredients in the refrigerator and throwing his cooking utensils in the sink. He left the pan of eggs on the stove hoping that whoever was watching through the window would think that they would be coming back downstairs after making love. There were a couple of things that were painfully obvious to Jack. First, whoever was outside was not there to commit
burglary, there were a lot easier and more accessible places to rob than a log home thirty miles from civilization. Second, he knew by now that nothing was going to happen until most the lights in the house were out and it appeared that he and Kristin were preoccupied. And lastly, he knew that if the intention had been to harm or even kill both of them he would have already done so. What he didn't know was which one of them was the target. If the motive was kidnapping Jack guessed that Kristin was more than likely the target, in which case he would have to be eliminated from the picture. He had taken a risk by sending Kristin upstairs by herself, but it was a chance he had to take.

Jack turned off the kitchen light and headed for the stairs. He left the stereo on for two reasons. He wanted to give the impression that they were coming back downstairs and he wanted to give the person waiting outside a false sense of security that he could enter the house without being heard, the hunter had just become the hunted.

Kristin and Sam reached the top of the stairs and turned right in the direction of the master bedroom. When Kristin and Sam were in the Master bedroom she pressed her body against the wall behind the door and tried to calm her breathing, her heart was racing. She left the lights off but scanned the room to put her mind at ease. There was plenty of light coming in through the glass patio door and her gaze stopped at the night stand, there it was sitting right there on the night stand. In this age of smart phones and instant messages there was a regular old plug in phone sitting on Jack's night stand. She understood why, this for out cell phone service was spotty at best. She shot across the room and grabbed the receiver. She hit 911 before the handset reached her ear, nothing. The phone line was dead and this was not just a coincidence, someone had cut the line. What she had been praying to herself was just Sam sensing a wild animal and Jack being over-protecting was now a real possibility, someone was there to hurt them. The dead phone line was hard evidence that someone was out there in the dark.

Kristin sat down on the edge of the bed and breathed a troubled gasp. She realized that she was still clutching the blanket without even feeling how tight she was holding on to it. She noticed that the blanket felt heavier than just a plain piece of cloth should feel. She pulled back the folds of the cloth to see the loaded 22 magnum tucked between the layers.

Had Jack remembered that the gun was in the blanket, had he intentionally sent her up stairs with her own way of defending herself, had he left himself wide open downstairs to protect her? She took the gun from off the blanket and held it in her right hand, she held it firmly and effortlessly. The smooth wood handle and cold steel gave her a sense of calm.

She went to the bathroom and turned on the light. In her hyper- nervous state it seemed like there should be some evidence that someone was upstairs, in case anyone was watching. She could hear the lights click off as Jack left the downstairs and made his way up the stairs. When Jack reached the bedroom she had pinned herself against the wall behind the door. She heard Jack whisper,

“Don't shoot, it's me.”

Kristin knew with absolute certainty that Jack had remembered that the gun was in the blanket and that she would find it and use it if she needed to. Jack stepped through the door and looked around the edge of the door like he knew exactly when she would be waiting. He reached out his hand for her to follow him. They went down the hall to the other end of the house. When they stepped into the guest bedroom Jack turned her toward him so that he was looking directly into her eyes. The skylight in the guest bedroom cast a bright yellow glow down over her auburn hair and across her face.

Jack placed his hands gently on Kristin’s shoulders and looked directly into her eye’s, he said in a calm even voice, “If we are going to get through this alive I need you to do me a favor.” He waited for her to acknowledge that he had her full attention. Kristin’s head slowly
nodded up and down in but her eyes never left his. She could tell that she probably was not going to like what he was about to say.

“I need you to stay here and lock that door behind me, no matter what.”

The last three words that he uttered had a decisive finality to them. She started to protest but the thought didn’t reach her lips, his narrowing glance and the slight increase of pressure on her shoulders stopped her objection cold.

Jack continued, “My intention is not to kill whoever is out there. I need to find out who is behind this and why. And for that, I need to put him down without killing him.”

“What if it’s more than one person?’ she asked cautiously.

“I really don’t think that there is more than one person out there.” He said.

“Would you like to tell me how you came to this conclusion?” she asked.

“Let’s just say that I have my reasons, and it has to do with the who and the why.”

“We both know who is behind this.” She said through clinched teeth. “And be both know why.”

“Maybe it’s the lawyer in me, but I am going to need some proof of that.”

“Even if it kills you?” She said as the tears welled up in her eyes.

Jack slid his hands from curve of her shoulders up the smooth line of her neck. He kissed her hard and stepped back easily as if he was just going out to feed the horses or repair a fence.

Kristin tried to hand him the pistol she had been holding the entire time. He waved it off and said,

“If anyone but me comes through that door, shoot first, ask questions later.”

When he reached the door to the bedroom he looked down at Sam and pointed his finger at her, “Guard Duty.” Was all he said, Sam’s ears perked up sharply.

Then he slipped out the door and was gone. She walked over and pressed her ear to the door. She was listening to hear if he went back down the hall to the master bedroom of if he headed down the stairs. The stereo was still playing in the living room but she was almost sure that she heard the door to the master bedroom click shut. Kristin let her hand slide down the frame of the door and come to rest on the deadbolt lock. She turned the mechanism slowly to the lock position and knelt down to look through the keyhole, she could see a sliver of light peeking out from under the crack in the master bedrooms door. Kristin winced a little as the light vanished and almost total darkness gripped the distance between the two rooms. It seemed like the distance between her and Jack had just increased by miles instead of feet. She jumped when she felt something rub up against the front of her legs, it was Sam taking up her position at the door.

Sam wedged herself between Kristin and whatever was on the other side of the door. Sam lay down on the floor, so that her whole body was blocking the thin gap at the bottom of the door. Her nose was so close to the bottom of the door frame that it looked like she was trying to crawl under the door. Kristin could see that Sam’s ears were sharp and the tip of her nose was twitching slightly like she was trying to distinguish something different in the house.

Gerard made the hike from where he had parked the old Ford pick-up to the ranch like a man that had ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere. Every step he took on the dirt road only fueled his utter disdain and hatred for having to come to this desolate backwoods valley to do a job that he could have done back in Seattle. A job that would have taken less than an hour to carry out in the comfortable surroundings of a city he knew like the back of his gloved hand. A week ago he could have killed the cowboy on a side-street right in front of the woman and been at one of Seattle's many five star restaurants that same night. Right now he could be sitting in rooftop restaurant watching the lights of the city bounce off the water while he enjoyed a great seafood meal, a glass of twelve year old Scotch, and of course one of his regular girls that were accustomed to his peculiar sexual tastes.

He hadn't like the idea but after his last meeting with Clarence, Gerard understood clearly why his employer had insisted that he travel all the way out here to perform this task. He had explained to Gerard that there were two very good reasons why he wanted the job done so far away from Seattle. First, Clarence didn't want even the slightest suspicion that he could have been involved in the murder of his ex-wife's new boyfriend. And second, he wanted the cowboy murdered in his own house, so that every time Kristin thought about their little love nest, her only memory would be a painful one. Gerard
had immediately grasp what Clarence wanted when the last three words he spoke to him when they parted were, “Make it bloody.”

Gerard followed the fence line that ran alongside the dirt road leading up to the ranch. He slipped between the solid pine pillars that served as the sentry's to the ranch and cut across gravel driveway to a hiding place next to the barn. Some of the lights were on in the house and he could see into the kitchen from his perch next to the watched the two love-birds through the kitchen window. He watched as the woman walked up behind the cowboy and leaned against him them hey didn't have a clue what he had in store for them.