Scott Nicholson - Chronic fear

The courage to change the things I can…

Her eyes widened in fear, her small mouth an O of shock and disappointment.

Roland had one last fleeting thought-it’s not me, it’s the Seethe, it’s always the Seethe-but just as whiskey trumped reason every single time, his self-righteous fury infected him with the obsessive fever of revenge.

“Alexis was right,” Wendy said.

That’s not what I want to hear, honey. What I want to hear is that you’re sorry, that you didn’t mean to make me murder for you. I want you to apologize for being a slut, even if you can’t help it.

He thrust his hand toward her face, meaning to grab her hair and twist until she submitted, but she was faster. She scooped up the jar of rinse water and splashed it toward him, and the dark gray liquid slapped him in the face like a rag. She shoved past, knocking over the easel as she fled.

Roland wiped his face with his shirt sleeve and let out a bellow of anger. Eyes stinging, he kicked at the painting, and the toe of his leather boot went through the huddled monkey on the canvas.

He drew the pistol as he ran, but she was already in the woods by the time he regained his vision.

The bitch painted me. Well, there’s a price for that. Yeah, we’re going to have us a talk about respect and submission and surrender.

A long, long talk, the kind that would make Sebastian Briggs proud.

Leaves rattled ahead of him. So he’d be hunting a tiger instead of a fox. Seethe didn’t care one way or another.

As he entered the woods, he forgot all about government conspiracies, mysterious e-mails, and death threats.

It was the worst of both worlds, but then again, with Roland, the worst was always just a matter of time.

Gundersson had been caught by surprise when the couple returned early. Their walks were usually twenty minutes, and over the last three days, he’d taken the opportunity to search the downstairs and the bathroom. He’d been searching the loft, looking for any signs of Seethe, when Roland’s boots banged on the porch below.

Gundersson had lifted the screen from the window above the bed, swung it up on its hinges, and climbed through, dangling by his fingers to lessen the distance of the drop. Still, it was good twelve feet, and when he hit the ground, his ankle twisted on a tree root. The chickens had squawked in alarm, and Gundersson hissed a quiet curse of pain.

He heard them talking inside the house, ignoring the chickens, and he made his way into the woods. The pain was worse by the time he reached the trail. He crouched beside the creek and massaged his ankle, waiting to see if someone would notice the window. He was good at leaving no trace, a real Boy Scout.

The forest immediately around the cabin was dense with laurel tangles, crabapples, and blackberry vines, pocked here and there with old-growth oaks and maples like the one he used as a surveillance post. He didn’t have time to reach the tree, and he wasn’t sure he could climb it with his game leg, anyway.

Then the argument had started, and he figured he might overhear something important despite the gurgling of the water over stones. He caught “Sebastian Briggs” and he figured “Alexis” referred to Dr. Morgan, which suggested the couples had been in contact. But the sudden explosion of Roland’s anger caught him unaware, and now Wendy was running right toward him.

He rolled to his feet and lightning raced up his leg. He put weight on the injured ankle and realized he’d never make it to concealment.

Might be broken.

His orders were clear: Avoid detection at any cost. He couldn’t afford to blow this mission through overconfidence. And he’d been warned what would happen if he was forced to leave corpses.

I’ll chew your ass like bubble gum and leave you stuck on the director’s toilet seat, Harding had said.

Wendy was coming up the trail about twenty yards from Gundersson, slapping at limbs and panting hard as she ran. He glanced around and saw a tiny recess where water had washed away soil beneath a hemlock’s roots. He lay down in the cold, shallow water and wriggled into the damp crevice. He wasn’t completely concealed, but he hoped they were too preoccupied to notice.

“I know you’re in there!” Roland shouted, just now entering the woods, apparently moving a little more slowly than she was.

Is he talking to me? Shit, if he saw me “Wendy!” Roland sounded more angry than concerned.

Ah, a lover’s spat. With firearms.

Through a gnarled web of exposed roots, he watched Wendy jog along the trail, lithe and graceful but gasping for air. She was dressed in her stained painter’s frock, a psychedelic camouflage that would hide her in a Phish concert but not here in the Blue Ridge forest. Then she was gone, and Gundersson lifted himself from the bone-chilling water.

Roland had stopped yelling for Wendy, so Gundersson couldn’t place his location. The bracing water had numbed his ankle a little, so he hobbled onto the opposite bank and found refuge in the scrub. He considered drawing his weapon, but that wouldn’t fit his cover story.

After a full minute, he got curious and wriggled like a snake until he could peer through the low willows. Some wild mint crushed beneath him, mixing with the fecund, earthy aroma of the creek. He gingerly pushed a blackberry vine aside and saw Roland scanning the spot where Gundersson had tended his ankle. After a moment, Roland bent down and picked up something from the ground.

Gundersson felt his pants pocket. Shit.

He’d placed three tiny wireless microphones in the cabin, but the place was so small he hadn’t needed the fourth. And it must have worked out of his pocket while he was rolling around in pain.

So much for getting answers the easy way.

“Wendy!” Roland shouted again, the anger leaving his voice. “I found something.”

After a moment, he added, “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Wow. If you actually have to say those words, it’s not a good sign.

Judging by the awkward bulge in Roland’s pocket, he would probably hurt if he had to. And he wasn’t hunting foxes this time.

“Wendy!” Roland called again. “It’s not you. It’s them.”

Gundersson ground his teeth together. On the bright side, at least Wendy was unlikely to find his camp. He’d have to scuttle the mission, and Harding would be an unhappy camper as well, but at least he’d avoided disaster.

All he had to do was wait it out, then limp half a mile through the woods and collect his gear, and “I know,” Wendy called.

From right behind him.

Gundersson rolled up on his side and considered going for his gun. She was unarmed, standing above him with flared nostrils and darkly intense eyes. She wasn’t menacing, given her small stature, but she was crouched and tense as if ready to explode. He wondered if she knew jiu jitsu or karate, and figured that was probably racist, because she was more American than Asian.

He decided to wait on the gun until Roland decided for him.

“Over here,” Wendy called to Roland.

As Roland splashed through the creek, Gundersson managed a smile. “I hope I wasn’t trespassing,” he said to Wendy.

“I hope you weren’t, either. My husband is a little paranoid.”

Gundersson started to agree, but then remembered his cover story. He adjusted his tone to sound casual and a little rural. “I’m a travel writer, doing a piece on backwoods hiking for Appalachian Today. I followed this trail up from Buffalo Bald,” he added, remembering a colorful name from the map. “Twisted my ankle and fell in the creek.”

“Where’s your camera?” Wendy said.

It was in his watch, but he couldn’t tell her that. “I just take notes,” he said. “They send the photographer separately. I can’t even take a mug shot without getting my thumb in the way.”