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“Take a breath, Bryan.” Bina’s calm voice was in stark contrast to the tension-filled air. “It’s in the past. You’re safe now.”
His shoulders lowered maybe a quarter of an inch.
“If you didn’t what, Bryan?”
“The last guy, the leader, he made me...you know. Go down on him.” He threw his head back and said to the ceiling, “I had to! He said he’d kill Curtis!”
Lowering his head, he pulled a halting breath through his nose. “They made Curtis watch, the whole time.” He put a hand across his mouth. “I can’t tell you—” He choked a sob.
Someone hissed in a breath. Beside her, Bear whispered, “Jesus.”
Hope sat stunned, suddenly and thoroughly grateful to have only taken a bullet.
“Afterward, they beat us. We tried to fight, but there were three of them.” He looked up, his horrified eyes liquid. “Do you know what steel-toed boots sound like, hitting bone?” He shuddered and tried to gather himself. “I was in the hospital for a week. Curtis...” He pulled in another shuddering breath and his shoulders collapsed. His elbows hit his knees. He buried his face in his hands. “Curtis is upstairs, still in a coma.”
The room’s air felt heavy, saturated with shock, shame and silence.
Bina’s soft voice cut through it. “I’m so sorry, Bryan.”
“That’s horrible. Did they catch those bastards?” Anger tinged Mark’s face red, leaving his horrific scar a bloodless white.
“Not yet.” Bryan sniffed. “It’s been a nightmare. I think I see them everywhere. At the hospital, at work, in the grocery store.”
“Do you think they’re still following you?” Hope asked.
“I think I’m just paranoid. From worry and not sleeping.” He looked at Bina. “But they’re still out there, so...how do you ever get over something like this?”
“You know this isn’t in any way your fault, don’t you, Bryan?”
He nodded.
“Good.” Bina’s shoulder-length helmet of black glossy hair swung when she tipped her head to the side. “How do you feel now, after having talked about it?”
He thought a moment.
Hope knew from experience that he was feeling around the edges of the hole in himself.
“A little calmer, I think.”
Bina’s smile was soft as suede. “Then I think you may have the beginning of your answer.”
She stood. “Why don’t we stand and shake off the tension? This work can be intense, and it helps to loosen our muscles.” She demonstrated, shaking out her hands and rolling her shoulders.
Hope stood and took a deep breath and did neck extensions to break the grip of muscle tension.
Popping came from her left, where Bear cracked his knuckles, then, with a hand under his chin, twisted his neck until several vertebrae popped. She winced.
Bina lowered herself into her chair. “We have more time. Does anyone else have anything they’d like to share?”
The rest of the group settled.
Hope threw back her shoulders, excitement and worry sparring in her stomach. Write it, talk about it, do it. She took a breath and pushed the words out. “I have some good news to report.”
“I think we all could use some of that,” Bina said. “Will you begin by telling us about your trauma?”
Hope walked them through the events of that day, feeling an odd detachment, as if she stood outside herself and watched. She couldn’t help the comparison to Bryan’s story. Not the story itself, but the emotion. She felt his experience in her gut—as if it had happened to her. Her own story felt as though it had happened to someone else.
She trailed off at the end, leaving the last words dangling in the air.
Bina’s brows pulled together. “You sound very detached from the trauma, Hope.”
Feeling the regard of the others, especially the solid presence on her left, she shifted in her seat. “I am. That’s because it happened to the old me.”
“The old you?”
“I can’t go back to that life. I have no interest in it any longer. So I’m starting a new one. I’ve rented a wonderful little Victorian cottage. I moved in just yesterday.” She tightened her muscles, her resolve and her courage. Once said out loud, this would be real. “And, after this meeting, I’m hoping to begin my new career.”
“Congratulations,” Mark said.
Hope didn’t know Bina well, but her face seemed to be held carefully neutral. “What is your new career?”
“I’m applying for a job as an adventure specialist.” She loved the way it rolled off her tongue, the words round and fat with promise.
“Oh, that sounds fascinating. What exactly does that entail?”
“I’m not really sure.” She smiled, projecting a confidence that would be real soon. Hopefully. “But I’m excited to find out.”
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_522363d0-6688-57f1-b197-055d43d7f034)
“YOUR PRIOR EMPLOYMENT is a bit...light in adventure. Retail experience is completely missing.” The man across the counter looked up from her application, one brow raised. Travis Kurt, the manager of The Adventure Outfitter certainly looked the part. He had brush-cut brown hair and bronzed skin with starburst laugh lines at the corners, and he had the long muscles of a gymnast. His big hands resting on the glass looked capable and trustworthy. Hope could easily picture him putting up a tent with one hand, while squeezing the life out of a venomous snake with the other.
She checked to be sure her shoulders were directly over her hips, then tilted her chin up, just a fraction. “I learn fast. You won’t find a more committed and dedicated employee.” She brought his attention to her résumé with a tapping fingernail. “My references will tell you—”
“That you were a good bank manager, I’m sure.” He nodded. “But the skills required of an adventure specialist are very different.”
“I’m sure they are. That’s why I’m applying for a retail position.” She clasped her hands in front of her, in an attempt to hide their fine tremor. Widow’s Grove was a small town. Santa Maria, its closest neighbor, wasn’t a big city, either. The employment pool was kiddie-sized. Which probably wasn’t a bad thing, since she wasn’t a strong swimmer. Okay, dog-paddler. “I plan to begin as a clerk, then work my way up.”
She hadn’t known laugh lines could look skeptical.
“Ookay.” He breathed the word out like a sigh, and pushed the papers aside with the edge of his hand. “Can you tell me what the tools in this display are used for?”
She glanced into the lighted case. The top shelf held compasses of many types, the bottom held clear plastic arm boards with Velcro straps. In the middle, plastic maps and small white marker boards. Thank God she’d reconnoitered yesterday, and done her research. “Orienteering. It’s a family of sports that require good navigational skills to go from point to point in a diverse and unfamiliar terrain, at speed. Participants are given a topographical map, and—”
“You know the definition. But have you ever done it?”
“Well, no. But—”
“How about skiing?” He pointed to ski tips, just visible over the tent display to his right.
She knew about skiing. “Alpine, cross-country or snowboarding?”
One side of his mouth lifted a fraction. “Any of them.”
“Actually done them? No. But—”
He pointed to the long delicate rods on a rack to his left. “How about fishing?”
Her brain skipped pages. “Spin cast, fly rod, Spey rod or—”
“Let’s say any of the above.” His eyes reminded her of the close-up photo of a hawk she’d happened upon while researching camping. Watchful. And a bit predatory.
“No, not actually, but—”
“Miss—” he glanced down at her résumé. “Sanderson. You’ve done your homework. That much is apparent. But our clientele actually participate in these sports. Our retail specialists require more than a Wikipedia education.” He looked her over, from her dress flats to her carefully arranged hair. “And be honest, given your background and education, why you would you want this job?”
Her courage melted like candle wax under his hot focus. When her sweaty hands threatened to slip apart, she laced her fingers and hung on. Her career ambitions were shrinking like the rear end of a galloping horse, leaving her in the dust.
Her mother’s rosary bead litany started up. You give up a perfectly respectable career, what do you expect? I scrimped and did without to see that you had an education, and you throw it away for what? To become a store clerk? You don’t have the sense God gave a paving stone. I am a total failure as a mother if this is what—
Hope cut off the tape, midscreech. She’d lived with it while her mother was alive, plus two years. She had no intention of living with it any longer. Or the life her mother had so carefully steered her to. She forced her hands to relax, letting blood return to her fingertips.
Come on, Hope. How do you expect to live a life of adventure, if you give up this easily?
She lengthened her spine and opened her mouth to say something. Something brilliant, to convince this man that she was the one for this job.
Nothing came out.
Her only fallback strategy was to pour out her sob story and hope for the best.
But she couldn’t.
Hope snapped her mouth closed so fast, her teeth clicked. She’d be darned—no, she’d be damned (take that, Mom)—if she’d gain passage to her new life through pity for her past one. Courageous people didn’t behave that way.
She took a breath, a step forward and a chance. “Have you ever in your life wanted a do-over?”
He tipped his head to the side, which she took as encouragement.
She forced her shoulders square. “You know, you go day to day through your life, not really thinking. But one day, something happens to make you stop and realize the path you’re on isn’t leading where you want to go. So you look back, and see all the steps you took to get you to where you stand now...see all the missteps that took you off the path to where you want to be.” She released her hands, spreading them in a shrug. “This job is my step back onto that path.” She glanced around the store, then back to the gatekeeper of her future. “Mr. Kurt, you may be able to find an applicant who has more experience. But I guarantee you won’t find one who learns faster, or will work harder than I will.” She curled her fingers into a fist and dropped it, soft but solid, on the glass case before her. “I have more at stake, and I refuse to lose.”
“I believe you.” The white lines at the corners of his eyes disappeared with his squint. “Okay, I’ll take a chance.”
Hope’s muscles relaxed just enough to get a full breath.
“But—”
Her muscles snapped back to attention.
He leaned on his hands, bringing his face closer. “Training is expensive, so you’d better be sure you want to do this. You’ll be required to take lessons from our experts in three sports that we sell equipment for. Your choice which.”
Not trusting her voice, she nodded.
“You won’t need to be an expert. You just need firsthand knowledge and familiarity with the equipment and how to use it.”
This man was taking a chance on her. What if she wasn’t up to the task? Was her mother right, keeping Hope sheltered all those years? Did she know something her daughter didn’t? A wisp of panic must have escaped on to her face, because he asked, “But if you’re not sure about this...”
Gravity weighed heavier than it had a moment ago, pulling the blood to her feet. She swallowed. Audibly. “Nope. I’m sure.”
He gathered the employment papers. “In the meantime, you can start as a cashier. I assume you won’t need much training there, given your background. When can you start?”
“Tomorrow.” The word, pushed from her diaphragm, came out too loud.
He smiled. “We’re closed on Sundays. Let’s make it the day after that.”
* * *
THE RUMBLE OF his truck’s glass pack mufflers vibrated through the seat, settling into Bear’s chest like a cat’s purr. A crazy extravagance, but the mufflers were a promise he’d made to the ’64 Chevy beater. He knew it looked like shit, with rust and primer spots, but he was saving the paint job for last. He wasn’t sure what he wanted yet, but it was going to be epic. He patted the plastic steering wheel. “Hang with me, honey. We’ll get you a makeover as soon as the bank balance comes up.”
Checking both ways at the stop sign, he turned onto Monterrey. The spring air blowing in the window cooled his sweaty face. Maybe a new A/C compressor before the paint job. A long low brick building on his left caught his attention. No, actually it was the sign out front—The Bar None. A neon Schlitz sign flickered in the small window, and the door stood open. He slowed, trying to peer through the typical bar murk to see if it was crowded.
Damn, I’d love a beer.
He could almost feel the vinyl bar seat under his ass.
But after his last visit to a bar, he had no interest in a repeat performance. Prison claustrophobia squeezed, making him feel trapped in his own clammy skin. He hit the accelerator.
I’ll get a six-pack at the store.
At the Piggly-Wiggly, he scanned the breakfast aisle, hunting for Pop Tarts. Spying them on the bottom shelf, he bent and took two boxes of strawberry. The Walmart in Santa Maria was cheaper, but the place was so crowded and noisy that he couldn’t relax there.
Not that he could here, either, today. He tossed the boxes in the little plastic basket he held in his other hand, and sidestepped a harried woman trying to lift a toddler headed for a full-on meltdown. He walked away, fast.
Turning into the bread aisle, an old lady in a print housedress stood on tippy-toe, trying to reach a loaf of organic whole grain. He reached and handed it to her.
“Oh, thank y—” Looking up to see him towering over her, a look flashed in her eyes. The look of a rabbit, in the shadow of a hawk.
“You’re welcome, ma’am.” Feeling the sting of being innocently intimidating, he turned away and pulled a loaf of the whitest, fluffiest, empty-calorie bread he could find. After the bland slop in prison, he now ate whatever he damned well pleased, and white bread reminded him of lunches when he was a kid.
At the checkout stand, he snagged a box of Cracker Jacks. Ducking the cashier’s stare, he paid cash and beat feet for the truck.
His jaw loosened when he turned off King’s Highway onto the road that wound through the hills that would lead him home. The hills were still green, but soon they’d shift to the brushed gold tint he loved so much. When he turned in at the ruts that constituted his driveway, grass shushed along the underside of the floorboards. Bordered by barbed-wire fences, the trail wound a quarter mile to the copse of trees that hid his cabin and barn from prying eyes. The privacy was one of the reasons he’d loved this place on first sight. He rolled into his tree-shadowed cave.
A dusty sedan stood in the packed dirt yard.
Warning sirens wailed in his head.
A skinny man in a white shirt stood on the porch, hand cupped, peering in the front window. Bear’s guard-dog temper woke, and snapping and growling, lunged to the end of its chain.
The mufflers burped as he hit the gas and roared into the dooryard. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he yelled out the passenger window, threw the truck in Park and shut down the engine. Then he was out the door and stalking for the cabin, fists clenched.
