Yield (14 page)

“A woman I
’ve never met, who is my grandmother, human and has never once asked to see me, knows you, the love of my life’s grandmother, whom is across two states from each other, and somehow knew all of this would come to pass, is the person whom you think I should waste my time going to meet.  Not going to friggin’ happen lady.”

Emma gasped loud in the middle of my spill.  What did I say?

“You’re not going to tell us how you know her?”  Emma asked rubbing her fingers up and down my arm in fast motion.  Maybe to calm me, maybe herself.  Maybe both.

“You need to go see her.  I
’ve done all I can do.”  In a relative sort of way.  The woman looked defeated and fifteen years older than the time I walked through her door.  She dropped her shoulders, and started to clean the table.  As much as I was angry with her right now, I believed her.  Our world held so many dang secrets from each other, one more wouldn’t hurt.  Except this one really did.

“Even if I do believe you, driving to her house is an five hour drive and we have exactly two days left before my Emma
’s beloved man you sealed her to wants her back to make her do something she doesn’t want to do.  Part of this conversation, before it went to hell, was the painting and the treaty.  I want to know where it is.  RIGHT NOW!”

Okay.  So I was yelling at Emma and her grandmother.  I was just a little pissed.
              Emma raised her hand like she was in school.  “I can answer that.  It’s behind the painting.”

She looked above Mrs.
I’m a Lying Witch
Ryman’s head to the wall. 

“The other painting.  And I think I know how the painting got to your parent
’s house cave thing.”  She laughed.  This wasn’t a time for laughing. 

“House.  Realm.  Home. Whatever.  Anyway,” she touched her face, “I think my mother was hiding it.  You said before that the cave was used to mine gold for all the realms and not just one realm coveted one mountain all the time.  It
’s all just a guess, but I think my mom was hiding it there on purpose.  She knew it would be found one day, but probably not before I was around to see it.  And I don’t think it says quite what they think it does.”

No one spoke so I quietly nodded for Emma to go on.  She sounded like a tunnel of answers but skepticism told me they were only theories of deceit created to keep us on a wild goose chase.

“You see, the letters you wrote say I have to marry Caydon to break the curse and not continue the disastrously drama filled pattern of our stupid family.  However, I read in my mom’s journal where she said that she made sure my father would agree to a stipulation.”

Mrs. Ryman stopped cleaning and looked at me.  She looked nervous for the first time.

“It said that,” I asked in doubt.   I don’t remember that. 

“Well, not in so many words.  But it does say something like...
Warren promised me he would let me word it my way before the Cahn’s could sign
.” 

“But you don
’t know what it said?”

“Nope,” she answered me in too high a spirits. 

“But I think if we go get that treaty it will tell us something we don’t know.”

Oddly, it wasn’t weird kissing her goodbye.  I’d known her for years.

Ames started in with the questions the second we were in the Jeep.  He wanted to know first why I didn
’t tell him, and second every detail that he missed.  I think he was pissed more at himself for being away when I figured it all out, but underneath it was the fact that he hated leaving me for the reasons he did.  With the coming doom, events leading up to it, and race to reverse or change it all by Friday, it was making us both a little cranky and stressed out. 

Pulling my feet up into the bucket seat, I faced sideways to reread the letter to him and pause at each little collection of evidence I discovered.  Hearing it confirmed that my grandmother was in on it was the icing on the cake in this twisted tale.

We stopped at the gas station for snacks.  I grabbed a mountain spring water and a snack bar.  I laughed with the guy in front of me at the counter about the water coming from the mountain and what contagions it might have.  He was funny.  I didn’t know many guys that were all jokes like that.  He went on and on.  I felt better till I looked behind me.

When I turned away from the counter, Ames was glaring at the guy like he grabbed me and threatened to kill me.  I waved goodbye and ducked out the door into Ames' very quiet brooding presence.  Jealous boyfriend didn
’t totally fit the look he held though so I wondered what the guy could have done that I missed.  I disregarded it and pulled my feet in the seat when we were moving back in traffic.

We
’d just entered the highway in the direction of the cabin when something caught my eye from the side of the road.  I jerked my head and instantly flattened both hands across the dash expecting a crash or another run-in with Randor or worse.  Ames was a great driver.  He’d maneuvered every vehicle I’d been in with him to the safest point in the almost crashes we’d had.  Seems many have it out for us.

“What
’d you see?” he yelled to me, not at me.

“I thought I saw something beside me.  In the window.”  Now I just felt stupid.

He’d slowed down enough cars were honking around us.  At the sound of one angry driver blaring the horn like a madman, he flipped them off and gave them a few choice words.  I stared out my window thankful I wasn’t ever on the receiving end of Ames’ wrath.  Sometimes it scared me and sometimes it made me feel safer.  If this was how angry he got when he thought I was in danger all the times since I’ve met him, imagine what he would do when he had a daughter or son one day.

Immediately, I pushed those thoughts way, way,
way
out of my head.

“Are you okay?” he said not watching the road.  I could feel his face talking in my direction.  Feeling anxious that we should watch for “blurs” to come around again, I turned and smiled reassuringly at him.

“Yeah.  Just jumpy I guess.”

He did his familiar tightening of fingertips and palms on the wheel to hide his anger.  He really didn
’t like me upset.  I liked that too.

Strange how you notice odd things of importance when you might lose someone you care about so deeply.  Trying hard not to get caught staring, I watched him out of the curtain of my hair. 

“Sure?”

Huh!  “Of what?”

“You’re okay.  You’re staring blankly.”

I laughed to, hoping to ease his tension.  “No.  I was staring at the bloke who refuses to let me be in danger and never wants to see me cry.  He
’s kind of maddening and a little hardheaded, but I fell in love with him and it hurts a little to know he doesn’t know how much I love that about him.”

If we weren
’t moving at a steady pace of about fifty-five miles per hour, I’d have said we were sitting still in a parking lot somewhere.  The way his face stayed glued to mine was disturbingly calming and fast becoming an alarm bell for when he would check the road again.

“Ames,” I beckoned.

He stayed fixated on me.

“AMES!”  He flinched and turned back.  Luckily, nothing bad happened.

He sped up.

Faster. 

“Ames, you going eighty in a fifty-five.”

No answer.  Lord, did I frighten him?  I shouldn
’t have admitted that I love him.  I knew it was stupid. 

“Ames.  Slow down.  Why are you going so fast?”

His dark green gaze held mine long enough to say, “Because I have no intentions of letting anyone else have you.  Right now, time is the only edge I have.”

If anyone would have said to me a year ago that I
’d fall in love with a girl who smarts off at everything I do or say, refuses to wear a pretty dress to show off what she was blessed with (not gonna happen without me hooked to her side), and breaks every rule in the handbook that our people (her people) have set and abided by for hundreds of years...I’d have told them to go to hell and ride that laugh with the devil’s blessing.  And what’s uncanny about the whole outcome turning to absolute truth?  I would break every rule I’ve ever lived by to keep her beside me. 

And I
’m doing just that.

Going to see a woman who turned our entire family away just because we weren
’t human was despicable and disgusting.  But Emma asked me too.

I was still reveling over the incredibleness of her words just admitted from her lips.  She
’d shared sentiments and told me she loved me.  She even so much as told me what a good person I was and all that mess about how good I was deep down on the inside despite my past.

I always let her have that peace of mind, even if I couldn
’t see it her way.  But this time she surprised me.  A female, woman, the girl I was so deeply and madly in love with, just told me she loved that I get angry and rant and rave when she does completely stupid stuff at the risk of her own safety.  Yeah, most of the time some asshole was trying to get at her, but it was usually because she wasn’t paying attention well enough to save herself.  I had to look out for her constantly, never taking my eyes off her.  It was a chance I was willing to take.

Like the guy at the last gas station, his hands were covered in the trace.  I don
’t know why he took such an interest, but I know he was human.  It didn’t add up.  And he was way to close to her for stranger small talk and acted as if he recognized her.  She didn’t even read the bad vibes the creep was sending with his leaning too far over the counter and held a constant stare at her body.  I wanted to kill a perfect stranger.  And I wanted to know if he was more than just a random chance run-in.

Forcing myself back to the current aggravation, I focused on the fact that me blowing my top was a turn on for her.  And she just openly admitted she liked it.

So yeah, I’d kill again if I had too.  To keep every hair on her pretty little head safe.

Guess that makes her discerning voice not so credible for when it does happen, but I
’ll go on letting her think I’m the good guy.  Selfish and narrow sighted where she was concerned.  Till the very end.  I'd do anything to keep her.

Emma might be waiting for me to gush a love poem back at her for those words, but I knew her better.  And she knew me.  It wasn
’t my style.

I flipped back to the possibilities of what she might have seen in her window.  I hoped it wasn
’t one of those dang goons who liked invading my personal space.  I didn’t want Emma to see me kill another one of them.  And I knew I would if it meant keeping them from hurting her.

I left her alone for the better part of the drive down the highway.  It was after we exited and had made it two or three miles into the scarce rural pines of the Tennessee Mountains that I lost my cool enough to help her change her mind about my track record.

I wish I could see the future.  I’d have killed the craphead who brought his ugly face back in front of hers at that moment if she wasn’t there to watch.

Luckily, she was.

Ames was extremely quiet and never responded to my declaration, but I knew he was going over and over it in his mind.  His emotions were running wild with several all mixed up into a ball of stress that was already there anyway.  He liked what I said, he just didn’t know how to process it or accept it.  I’d figured out in so many months that being a man meant not expressing raw emotions aloud or in words, but rather with physical acts of varying degrees.  It’s the ones he holds back on that I’d like to see the most and that wasn’t what either of us needed to focus on right now. In other ways, he has been perfect in every way he should be.  He may not be traditional in his acts of love, but they are there nonetheless.

The Jeep rounded a curve.  I was busy staring at Ames when his hand tightened in line with his body bracing as he slammed on the brakes.  I looked forward expecting an animal or something crossing the road just as Ames started cussing the tall figure standing smack in the middle of the road.  Five hundred feet in front of us was Joshlin.

Ames swerved the Jeep, but its tires squealed as the four wheel drive kicked in.  Several series of twisting on the steering wheel with me holding on to the hand brace hooked to the door and we came to a stop just to the left of where the idiot stood.

At first, I thought Ames was aiming for him.  I couldn
’t riddle why he would run his brother down, but I bet if I asked he’d have a list of why it was a profitable thing to do in his mind.  But the good in Ames won out.  Joshlin stood unharmed in the same spot of where we found him rounding the tree-lined curve.

Maybe not unharmed in the brain.  Who stands on a highway waiting for cars to run them over?

Airborne from his seat, Ames was in Joshlin’s face with a fist before I could unbuckle my seatbelt with the shakiest hands I’d ever had.  Screaming curses flying back and forth, both men stood nose to nose on the dotted white line.  I felt the need to break it up, but felt my face might get disfigured if I got any closer than I was. 

Why was Joshlin here obviously waiting on us and how did he know we were headed to where we were? 

I heard a smack and a body fall to the ground.  They were fighting.

Leaning on the front of the Jeep, I never saw the shadow moving behind me.  Too late, he jumped sideways and caught my mouth with his hand. Dragging my feet on the ground being held captive in a very strong man
’s arms with my mouth and nose covered is very uncomfortable.

My panicked scream made no noise as I watched Ames continue to fight with Joshlin all the time facing away from where I was still being dragged to the woods.  I didn
’t know what was worse—knowing that Joshlin was once again betraying his brother or that the man who was my neighbor all these years was a major backstabbing liar who was helping Joshlin betray his brother.

Either way, Ames would be hurt.  And pissed.  No, worse than that until he saw what the motive was.

The second my foot smacked against a tree I wrangled a hand around the trunk and held on.  Blood and skin tore from my thumbs as Randor tried to force me further into the tree line.  At the point where I couldn’t hold on any longer Randor let go of my mouth long enough to probably yank my hands free of the half inch of bark I still held.  Knowing I had less than seconds to make any kind of noise to gain Ames’ attention, I screamed bloody murder to the air.  Well, I intended too.  It came out as a half pig squeal with a frog stuck in there with it, but it achieved the desired level of noise to make Ames turn and give me the most evil of looks I’d ever seen on his face.  I knew it wasn’t meant for me, but with the pop of my neck going crooked and being choked up against Randor’s chest, I was in the line of fire. 

The worst part was not his face, but what I saw next.  My screams didn
’t just help alert Ames, but also gave Joshlin the opportunity to get the upper edge.  Horrified, I watched Joshlin use some kind of long object to hit the back of Ames’ head and tumble in a heap to the ground.

For a fleeting stretch of time I still thought I
’d get away from Randor, run to Ames, watch him knock the two of them out, and enjoy Ames’ victory yells.  When Ames didn’t get back up, my hope deflated and sheer terror set in.  I really never considered
not
being saved.