Tymber Dalton (11 page)

Sami took the lead, and they wound their way north along a lesser-used trail. A carpet of pine needles silenced the horses’ hoofbeats, and pretty soon they came upon a small herd of deer grazing in a tiny clearing. The horses stopped short, and the deer didn’t bother looking up.

“They must think we’re pretty big deer,” Steve whispered. Sami shushed him, and a minute later the deer bounded into the woods.

The path started up a slight grade, crossing over several well-used fire roads transecting the park from east to west. The sound of dirt bikes grew louder and more frequent. Sami and Steve broke through the woods into a large clearing with a cracked, hardpan clay basin in the center. Sami kept a careful watch on the horses’ reactions. Once she decided they weren’t going to spook, she led the way across to a trail on the other side.

They emerged at the top of a small hill where several steep trails dipped into a large, dry, bowl-shaped clearing. A small hand-lettered wooden sign nailed to a slash pine tree read “McDuffie’s Pond.”

“Where’s the pond?” Steve asked.

“I have no clue.” She studied the trail. “You feeling adventurous?”

“Why? What do you have in mind?”

She nudged Jeff down the hill, lying back in the saddle for balance. Despite Steve’s protests Mutt followed. A moment later they were both at the bottom studying their options.

“Thanks for the warning. How the hell do you expect me to get out of here?”

Sami picked a trail, backed Jeff up a few paces, and looked at Steve. “Just lean forward and hang on.” She urged Jeff into a gallop, clucking for Mutt to follow, and they climbed the hill with no problem. Sami turned in time to see Steve throw his arms around Mutt’s neck and hang on as the horse charged up the hill behind her.

“Again, thanks for the warning,” he growled at the top. He had a white-knuckle grip on the saddle horn.

She had to admit she got a little satisfaction from his discomfort. “Hey, if I’d given you a chance to think about it, you would have chickened out.”

The trail angled up, ending at a small, narrow clearing overlooking a large lake-filled pit nearly a hundred feet below. Trees lined the steep, nearly vertical banks, which curved around to the west and south. She rode a short way along the top of the ridge and dismounted to look at something.

“Come here.”

She pointed out a brick pile to him. Prying one loose, she brushed off the clay dirt.
Packard-Harris Stoneworks, 1889

“What is it?” he asked.

She put it back and shook her head. “Don’t know for sure. Probably part of an old mining building. Look at that—” She pulled up a section of thick steel cable from the dirt. Following it with her eyes, she realized it ran a good section of the ridgeline and might have tripped the horses if she hadn’t spotted it. “We need to watch out for this. Probably leftover dragline cable from the mine.”

“What did they mine out here?”

“Phosphate. Used to be a railroad track running behind what’s now the north end of the park, and they loaded it there. This was one of their main pits. Buttgenbach. Didn’t you read the stuff the real estate guy left us?”

“I’ve got other things on my mind.”

She didn’t respond and mounted, picking their way to a safe trail down the far end of the ridge. There were a couple other trails, but they weren’t safe for the horses. The lake took up one end of the main pit, and they followed its edge around until the steep sides met ground level at the southern end of the depression. They circled the lake around its west side, following the far shore until they reached the northernmost end where the main park road passed within a few yards of the drop-off.

“That’s pretty steep there,” Steve commented.

“Probably why someone posted that.” Another hand-lettered sign had been nailed to a slash pine—“Suicide Trailhead.”

Sami studied the three main trails dropping into the northern end of the pit where years of erosion had created a small beach.

Steve looked at her. “Oh no you don’t. I’m not going down there.”

“The horses love this, Steve. Loosen up.” She pointed Jeff at the trail, and he went down like a rocket, keeping his footing well in the soft dirt. From years of use, the trail sank a good three feet into the earth, and sandy walls kept them from turning around once they started.

She heard Steve hollering behind her as Mutt followed, and he looked less than happy when he met her at the bottom. “Would you please stop doing that!”

“How do you expect us to get home?”

His face fell as he looked around. Suicide was the most appealing of the options out of the pit. Directly across from them, about a hundred yards, the pit’s wall climbed nearly one hundred feet almost straight up from the lake to the top of the ridge, with no ledge at all to ride along the water’s edge. To their east, the trails climbed even steeper than the one they’d just descended. Slash pines grew close to the trail, with branches low enough to slap a rider off a horse.

“We can go ahead and take the main road back to the house. Okay?”

“All right.” He shifted in the saddle. “Just get me home. I’m starting to rupture something, I think.”

She laughed and let Jeff have his head up the hill. The horse plunged up the slope, taking it without breaking a sweat. Steve was getting the hang of it and made it to the top without falling off.

* * * *

Steve regretted his decision to go riding. He thought it would be a great way to see more of the park without walking. He knew Sami was a little suspicious of his motives, but hopefully she thought he just wanted to make amends for all the work she had to do and didn’t realize he’d already made the decision to buy the house and move here permanently. He wanted her to fall in love with the place as much as he had.

Something about the place really spoke to him.

Steve handed Mutt’s reins to Sami and limped to the house. He was crawling out of the shower when she walked into the bathroom.

“Thanks for helping,” she quipped.

“That’s your job.”

Something in his tone obviously didn’t sit quite right with her. “What’s
that
supposed to mean?”

He shrugged. “I’ve got to get back to work, that’s all.”

Her face flushed—he knew he’d stepped over the line, and it was too late to take the words back. What the
hell
was wrong with him?

“Steven Corey, if there’s something you want to say, come right out and say it.”

He shook his head. “No, I’m not trying to say anything.”

“Well, it sure seems like it. Are you saying I don’t do anything?”

“No, but I need to get this book finished. We’ve got bills to pay, you know.”

“That’s the whole reason you rented this place to begin with, a change of scenery, you said. I uprooted my life, put my work aside to support and follow you, and you’re pulling the ‘I make more money than you do’ crap?”

Oh hell.
“No, I didn’t mean—”

“Then exactly what
did
you mean?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what I meant. All I know is they’re expecting a book out of me and it’s not done yet.”

“You’re the one who wanted to go riding. I didn’t ask you to go.”

“I know.” He couldn’t stop the words before they spilled out. “I feel like I need to make more money to support you.”

Of all the things he could have said that wasn’t the worst, but it ranked in the top three.

Sami’s eyes narrowed. “Are you saying you feel compelled to work to support me? Because I was doing fine before I married you, Steve, if you’ll recall. Maybe I’m not on the
New York Times
best-seller list, but I had a career and a house of my own when I met you.”

He toweled off. “I’m not saying you’re not as good a writer as I am. I’m saying that you don’t have to work because I pay the bills.”

She glared. “I do not like where this conversation is going. You know damn well it’s my money paying the bills, too. We have most of your money going into investments and retirement accounts.”

“I want to make sure we don’t waste any money.”

She crossed her arms. “Like, oh, say, renting a house in Florida on a moment’s notice?”

“I didn’t see you saying no.”

“You didn’t give me a chance to say no! You said it was an anniversary present.”

He had said that. “Well, it was, sort of. It is. I mean—”

She held up a hand. “Stop right there before you dig yourself a deeper hole. I’m going to take a shower. Go do whatever it is you want to do.” She slammed the bathroom door shut behind her.

Well, that certainly could have gone better
.

What
was
wrong with him? Was this a dry drunk? Stress getting to him? Maybe he needed a meeting.

* * * *

Sami made herself a cup of hot tea and curled up in the overstuffed corner chair. She didn’t want to be around Steve, and she damn sure wasn’t cooking him dinner after that little exchange. He really showed his ass. If they weren’t stuck in the middle of nowhere with the horses, she would have packed a suitcase, driven to Tampa, and taken the next flight home to Columbus.

This whole excursion was supposed to help Steve. At first, she thought it was working. Now she wasn’t sure. The virtual isolation had turned him even more sullen and irritable than he normally acted. Supposedly his writer’s block had broken and he was making progress, but when she tried to access his computer to look at the file, she found something new—a password to log in.

Maybe he was having an online affair. Maybe he was having a mental breakdown. If there was any liquor in the house, she’d swear he was off the wagon. He acted like he did when he used to drink.

But she knew there wasn’t anything in the house, and he was still sober. He had to be. He hadn’t gone anywhere in the car without her since they’d arrived, and she hadn’t bought any.

Maybe she’d already passed the give-a-damn point and was stupid for agreeing to this whole vacation in the first place instead of just filing for divorce and getting it over with.

At ten o’clock she closed her book and walked to his office door. She heard him tapping on the keyboard and decided to let him be. He would come up when—if—he wanted.

“Can’t interrupt Boy Genius,” she muttered.

She turned off the living room lights and realized this must be what the death of a marriage felt like.

The bedside clock read 3:07 when she woke. Downstairs, she heard the door to Steve’s study close, and his footsteps down the hall.

Away from the stairs.

She sat up and tuned her ears to the sound. He walked toward the kitchen—she heard the squeak from the one floorboard—and from there she wasn’t sure.

Then, she heard the kitchen door open and shut. The hinges on the screen door squawked, its distinctive noise unmistakable. She needed to oil it.

Sami watched from the bedroom window. He walked across the yard, barefoot, but with a strange gait like he was asleep. She considered yelling at him, then thought better of it and raced to pull on shorts and a T-shirt.

She grabbed the flashlight off the kitchen counter as she raced out the door, letting the screen slam shut behind her.

Steve was nowhere to be seen. The horses stood alert and stared toward the woods. They seemed a little spooked.
The sight of Steve probably freaked them out.

She found his footprints in the dew and followed them through the main gate and down the fence line until she lost them at the edge of the property, hidden by a cushion of pine needles.

“Steve!”

Nothing.

She walked a short distance into the woods, listening for the sound of his footsteps. He couldn’t have gotten that far ahead of her, it took her less than a minute to grab her clothes, and he was walking slower than his normal gait. “Steven Corey!”

Nothing.

A chill settled over her. Then the flashlight went out.

“Shit.” She shook it, beating it against the palm of her hand. This was stupid. The batteries were brand new, and she hadn’t dropped it.

She looked around, every noise amplified in the still darkness.

“Steven Corey, I’m going back to the house. Enjoy sleeping outside tonight.”

The moon wasn’t quite full, but it cast enough light to pick her way through the trees back to the house. As she broke through to the clearing, she thought she saw something off to the south. “Steve?” She walked along the property line, catching intermittent glimpses of whatever it was.

“Steve, this is not funny!” She tried the flashlight again, and this time it worked. She shined it toward the area and saw…

Nothing.

A shudder ran through her. A trick of the light, that’s all.

It had to be. She didn’t see a ghostly figure of a woman. She did
not
.

Sami turned on her heel and stormed back to the house, choosing anger over fear. Locking the kitchen door behind her, she stomped through the living room and made sure the front door was locked, too. Then she went upstairs to rinse the dirt off her feet.