Price of Angels (12 page)

              “So what’s the plan for this afternoon?” she asked, voice light and perky in her ears.

              “We’re gonna see how you take to the guns, and get you shooting straight.”

              She made a face. “I’m not sure I’ll be any good at it.”

              He shrugged. “Won’t know till you get up there. It’s not hard.”

              “I’m not very strong, though. Well, not at all, really.”

              “You don’t have to be. You’ll see – anybody can handle a gun; it’s skill, not strength.”

              “Yeah?”

              “Yeah.”

              “Are you a good teacher?” she teased.

              Taking her eyes from the road a beat too long, she searched for a reaction in him. There it was, that tiny twitch in the corner of his mouth. The Michael-smile. “No complaints.”

              “Oh,” she went on, feeling bolder, smiling, a lightness in her chest. “So you take a lot of girls shooting, huh?”

              “None of them ever talked as much as you.”

              She laughed. “I think you need more talking in your life.”

              He made a grunting sound that wasn’t necessarily a disagreement.

He didn’t encourage her chattering, but didn’t discourage it either, so she kept talking, about how pretty this shade of blue was in the sky, about what kinds of guns he’d brought with him. He answered her questions. He watched the city slip away as they left Knoxville for the rural outskirts, and he also, she noticed, was as relaxed and loose-limbed as she felt. There was no tension in him. He was totally at ease, head resting against one upraised hand, body rocking gently as the old Chevy’s struts jostled them back and forth. His tiny smile made several appearances, and Holly was heartened. He was a severe man; she liked the idea that she could provide him with a distraction from that severity. She’d never been useful in this way to anyone. She could get high on the sensation, if she wasn’t careful.

              He directed her through a series of turns that led them deeper and deeper into sprawling farmland. Acres of rolling pasture, yellow, brown, and cropped low for winter, the bare trees crowding at fence lines and around cattle ponds. The sky opened up above the fields, wider and bluer and all-encompassing, hanging over the silhouettes of the Smoky Mountains.

              “It’s beautiful out here,” Holly said, delighted by the gravel drives and the hail-dented tin mailboxes. The cows slept in the sun, chewing their cud. Starlings swept from the treetops in spiraling clouds of black wings.

              “Hmm,” Michael said. “Turn right at the next driveway.”

              There was no box, no sign, just a crushed-gravel path she might have missed for the tangle of honeysuckle-choked hickory trees.

              She braked to a halt in the road. “Here?”

              “Yeah.”

              The Chevelle bucked as they left the pavement, steel frame creaking as the tires bit into the uneven gravel footing.

              Through the close-reaching branches of the trees, they started up a gentle slope, driveway crowded with limbs, and came upon a closed gate, a
Warning Private Property
sign. Wood and wire fence fed off from either side, disappearing into the trees.

              “I’ll get it,” Michael said, climbing from the car.

              A heavy new length of chain held the gate to the post, secured with a combination lock that Michael spun and unfastened with a few quick moves. He opened the gate and waved her through. In the rearview mirror, she watched him lock it behind them.

              She felt a tightening in her stomach. This was a guarded, private place that he’d brought her inside. Up this unnoticed driveway, behind a locked gate, any number of horrible things could happen to her.

              She felt the film of sweat slick across her chest, the back of her neck, as she remembered breaking the rusted lock and chain during her escape. The way her damp palms had slipped on the shovel handle. The frightened pattering of her own breath as she listened to the awful clatter of the chain sliding loose.

             
That was then, and this is now
, she told herself, but the sound of the chain links tapping against the gate sent her spinning back. The strike of metal against metal quickened her pulse, and tightened her hands on the wheel.

              “You had to lock us in?” she asked as Michael climbed back inside and shut the door.

              “It always stays locked,” he said, and she could detect no tension in his voice or posture. “It’s private property.”

              “Yours?”

              “The club’s.” He glanced over at her. She could just see the shadow of his lashes flickering as he blinked behind his shades. “Well go on. We don’t have all day.”

              “Right.” She took a deep breath, and put her boot on the accelerator.

              The gravel drive began a steady climb through a dense patch of forest, and then leveled out, swinging through big, gradual turns. Though it was afternoon, there were still edgings of frost on some of the shriveled limbs, and the blanketing pine needles, here in the tree-created shadows.

              “How much farther is it?” Holly asked, and hoped her voice didn’t sound too choked.

              “A little ways,” Michael said, unconcerned. He looked relaxed, even more so than earlier. Wherever they were, he liked this place. It brought him peace.

              Maybe that meant he wasn’t planning on killing her when they finally stopped.

              The drive climbed again, this time through a series of fast, switchback turns, the path carved into a hillside that just didn’t seem to end.

              And then, suddenly, the trees fell away and they were in the open, and the brilliant sun was pouring over them, and Holly gasped a little.

              Ahead of them lay a dilapidated farmhouse of white clapboard, porch spindles missing, tin roof eaten by rust. It looked like something from a horror movie. All around it was open pastureland, dotted with trees, fields bisected by little lines of oak and sweet gum and hickory and pine.

              “Take a right,” Michael said, and his voice startled her. When she’d seen the house, all thought had left her, and fear had flooded her system. “Head up to the barn.”

              The Chevelle rolled to a slow halt.

              She had to wet her lips to speak. “The-the barn?”

              “Up there.” He tapped at the window with a fingertip. Then, voice becoming serious: “Hey.” He pushed his shades up onto his forehead and she saw the seriousness in his hazel eyes. “Take a right, go to the barn, and we’ll shoot. Okay?”

              She took a deep breath, and then another. The inside of the car felt too small, suddenly. Under the leather cuffs at her wrists, she felt the old familiar burn of the ropes.

              It was the house. That awful, once-white house, so much like the house behind the rusted lock and chain, the one she’d broken with a shovel. She looked at that house, and she felt her arms and legs pulling. Felt the greasy sheets beneath her bare back.

              So don’t look at the house. Look at Michael.

              His eyes were very large, in the shade of the car, without the usual, purposeful narrowing. Pretty, animal eyes, she reminded herself. She loved his eyes. They were full of intelligence and cunning. And now, they were boring into her.

              “Okay?” he repeated.

              It was a reassurance. He wasn’t going to pet her head and tell her it would be alright, but in his own way, he was reassuring her.

              Realizing that eased the knot in her stomach. Allowed her to breathe.

              “Shooting,” she said. “Right.”

              “Right.” He tapped the window again. “Out behind the barn. Drive us up there.”

              She nodded, and some of the feeling came back into her hands and wrists. “Okay. I can do that.” And with a few more shaky deep breaths, she could, accelerating again, turning the car up the hill, toward the hulking shell of an old barn.

              It was old fashioned, as far as barns went: weathered gray planks for siding, high, steep roof that peaked in the center and fell down to level above two separate wings of inside space, with a wide center aisle. There were open sliding windows above the yawning mouth of the main door: had to be a hay loft. At the end of a wooden arm, a rusted pulley dangled above the loft windows, catching in the breeze.

              Holly parked in front of it, in the ghostly tire tracks packed into the dirt. Evidence of many others before them.

              And Michael, in what felt like a show of true kindness, began talking. Soothing her, in his own indirect way.

              “There’s a nice level spot around the other side, and the plants will give a little cover for the sound.”

              “Is there anyone around to even hear us?”

              “Nah, not really. And if they do, nobody cares. There’s all kinds of shooting that goes on around here.”

              “How reassuring,” she said, dryly.

              “It should be. We’ve got absolute privacy.” And he leaned into the backseat for the backpack he’d left there earlier.

              Tangled grass grew right up to the edge of the barn on the other side, the unmown stalks dead and brown and matted to together like the coat of an old unloved dog. But the ground was fairly level, once you got down the gently graded slope against the wall, and moved down into a little hollow nestled among the eleagnus. Birds shot from the brush at their approach, doves fluttering hard to escape their path. Two rabbits darted for cover, brown coats gleaming in the bright winter sun.

              Holly smiled, and slowly, slowly, her pulse began to settle, and her nerves to firm up.

              “What a pretty old farm,” she murmured. “Why’s it abandoned?”

              Michael shrugged. “My boss inherited it when his old man died. I think it had bad memories, or something.”

              “Hmm. I can understand that.”

              “Yeah?” He cast her a fast, unobtrusive look that she met with silence, then shrugged again. “Wait here, and I’ll get everything set up.”

              With his backpack and his leather jacket and his perfect-fitting jeans, he walked about fifteen yards straight out from the place they stood, to a place where three sheets of plywood were set up between two rickety sawhorses. The plywood was full of little holes where daylight shone through – they weren’t the first two people to use this spot for target practice.

              Michael let the bag fall to the ground, and crouched to pull things out of it: paper targets, tape, a few old beer bottles. Behind her sunglasses, Holly watched not what he withdrew from the bag, but the man himself, soaking in all the little details she wasn’t afforded in the dark of Bell Bar every night. The way the leather stretched tight across his back, highlighting the exact shape of his shoulder blades, and the sleek muscles around them. The way his jeans gapped a little in back and she could see the white waistband of his…yeah, boxer-briefs, if she had to guess, dark gray, contrast stitching. All over his body, his muscles were compact and close to his body; a wealth of strength without all the extra bulk. She loved the proportions of him. The way at six feet, he was taller than the other men in her life had been, but the height never made her feel any smaller. It was never really size that made a person feel little, after all, but words. Deeds. Evil intent.

              But the time he’d finished setting up a line of targets and beer bottles for her to shoot, and was walking back, Holly had realized something. She wanted him. She’d never thought she’d feel that way, not after all that had happened. Sex was an awful, filthy thing for her. But she wanted this man. And even though the idea of actually being with him scared her witless, she couldn’t deny the acuteness of her fascination, the deep physical ache inside her. It didn’t even have to be sex; she craved something small, some tiny gesture of affection and intimacy.

              Pathetic.

              “Okay.” He reached her, and the bag went on the ground again. He spread a black-stained kitchen towel on the soft bed of grass, and then the guns came out. “We’ll start with this” – a small revolver with a long blue barrel that glimmered in the sun – “and move on to these” – another revolver, larger, heavier, with a shorter barrel, and two matte semiautos that had the hair on the back of her neck standing up.

              He tipped his head back, so he was looking up at her as he crouched on the ground. As if he could read her thoughts, he said, “Don’t be intimidated. They won’t jump up and shoot you all by themselves. They only do what you make them do.”

              She took a deep breath. “I know.”

              “What’s scarier: these? Or the fact that you felt scared enough to try and hire a hit man?”

              She frowned at him. “Not a very good hit man.”