Ridley Pearson - In Harm's Way

She fell into a trance of self-hatred and confusion, her eyes glazed over for minutes at a time, not seeing, not hearing, yet unable to tear herself away. She thought this must be the same sick attraction that people had to horror films. Morbid curiosity. She had projects to complete. Phone calls to return. She needed a shower. Some food. But there she sat, legs tucked up into her chest, chin on the back of the couch. The terror she’d experienced a few nights before had been the anomaly; she rarely felt such things anymore. They’d been burned out of her, as if her body had developed an immunity to fear. It was not that she felt brave-far from it. Numb more aptly described her. Resolved. For all the work, all the so-called progress, the countless hours poured into not seeing herself as a victim, she had little to show for it. An e-mail along with one thud on a wall, and she’d recoiled, reverted, regressed. She’d failed to find her way out, knowing with absolute certainty what this was about, whom this was about.

That was why, when the sound of a car came up the driveway, when its engine idled a long thirty seconds before shutting off, she knew in a moment of clarity what was coming, and yet felt helpless to prevent it. She didn’t believe in fate; destiny was, to an extent, something one could control. There were external forces and powers, certainly, and these were things to be reckoned with. But there was also determination and hard work and, from somewhere in the distant reaches of her mind, this idea of faith. For all the times she’d told herself to fight back if ever given this chance, she now felt more inclined to accept the inevitable. Monsters were real.

She knew this firsthand.

A knock on the door.

She held her legs more tightly.

Noises in the bushes.

When Walt’s face pressed to the glass, sliced into stripes by the blinds, staring into the darkened room, she suppressed a laugh, covering her mouth and slumping down to where she hoped he might not see her.

The gap between what she’d anticipated and seeing Walt was too enormous, too much for her to bridge at a moment’s notice. Instead, she froze, hoping he might go away. And then, by the time she’d come to her senses and wanted to see him, longing for his company, she was far too embarrassed to move. How could she possibly explain herself when her one great wish in life, the sum of all her effort, was to never have to explain herself to anyone? To be accepted for who she was, not who she’d been.

He tapped on the glass. She willed him to go away.

And this particular time her will proved the stronger. She thought she heard the door to the main house close, but didn’t get up to look. She knew she owed him, if not an explanation, at least an excuse, but didn’t pick up the phone.

The motor came back to life and the Cherokee’s backup lights shone brightly against the blinds. Slats of light flooded the room as she hung her head, cursing herself for squandering such a chance.

The sound of the motor mixed with the hum of the refrigerator and the rush of blood across her eardrums, and finally faded completely. For the next twenty minutes she sobbed beneath a blanket. Entirely alone.

As the low rumble of a vehicle broke the silence, she knew it had to be him, and she mentally thanked him for giving her a second chance. She hurried to a mirror and worked on her face, wondering if it could be salvaged. A car door thumped shut. She did the best she could: some tissue to the eyes, some lipstick, and she headed to the door to greet him.

Walt and Beatrice ascended the hill trail, the dog working ahead of him, swinging left and right in unpredictable patterns, her nose to the ground. The only discernible sounds were her huffing and snorting as she vacuumed the pine straw. He would never understand how the seemingly random nature of a dog’s scenting could produce results, but he’d witnessed it too many times to doubt its success. The only command he’d given her had been “Find it,” a birding command that had been honed and modified by trainers to have her search out a human scent, dead or alive. She could do so with laser precision. Given her current agitated state, she had not yet locked onto any scent of importance, a fact that had Walt looking over his shoulder back at the lights of the Engleton place, and up the slope toward the ridge that led to Hillabrand’s. Without Gilly’s silence, the more intelligent strategy would have been to work Beatrice up that ridge, attempting to pick up the intruder’s scent. But Gilly’s well-being trumped any such notion.

He pushed himself more quickly up the hill, burdened by the added weight and encumbrance of the emergency backpack and by carrying the shotgun in his right hand. His radio called him-backup was just arriving to the Cherokee, fifteen to twenty minutes behind him.

Beatrice stopped abruptly and lifted her head. Walt paused as well, watching her. She scented the air, looked back at him, her eyes iridescent in the glare of his headlamp, and then continued on. False alarm.

A quarter mile later he broke off trail and Beatrice extended her search area, ensuring they weren’t leaving a scent behind. Soon, she was working ahead of him again, her paws crunching, her nose sucking and snorting. She would disappear for a few minutes and then circle back to measure his pace and reestablish herself. He would cluck for her, letting her know he’d seen her. It was too dark, and he was in too big a hurry to do any tracking; he left all the work up to her.

His thoughts wandered back to Fiona and a series of mental photographs in his mind’s eye: the dark shape of her huddled on the couch; the chair misplaced in the center of the room; the absolute dark of the place-both the cottage and the main house without a single light inside, but the motion-sensing exterior lights working; the calm of the pond; the night sounds all around him. Had he seen her car? He thought it had been there, but couldn’t remember its exact location. Why had Kira been hiding behind that tree with a baseball bat?

Beatrice circled back from the dark and nudged his hand: she’d found something. How long had she been gone? One or two minutes. Walt picked up his pace, and in her excitement she rushed ahead of him and out of the glare of his headlamp.

Thirty seconds later, she reappeared and returned to nudge his hand, her tail beating furiously.

“Good girl! Find it! Find it!”

He was jogging now, the backpack bouncing, the funnel of light in front of him setting everything in the forest in motion as shadows stretched and danced. His boots crunched on the trail, his breathing was raspy and heightened.

He recognized his location. He was just below the level ground of the illegal campsite. Bea had led him around to the northern edge.

There, ahead of him, was the unmistakable shape of a human form, its back to a tree. Unmoving. He whistled Bea away-imagining it as a crime scene before he reached the corpse. She jerked as if a rope had been attached, returning to his side and heeling. He reached down and patted her head.

Gilly Menquez came into the beam of the headlamp. Something in his hand at his side. A gun?

A bottle of wine.

Empty.

Walt came to a stop in front of the man. Menquez was snoring. Passed out. Walt nudged him with the toe of his boot. Menquez snorted but didn’t awaken.

Walt’s eyes drifted back into the dark forest, imagining the lights of the Engleton place, the black pearl of the small pond cut into the hill. Anger welled up in him. He staggered back and slumped against a tree, his radio already in hand.

Fiona came awake to the rough sensation of Angel licking her hand.

The bird songs told her it was early morning. As she blinked repeatedly to clear her eyes, as her fingers uncurled and absentmindedly stroked Angel, she became acutely aware of a hangover headache, dry mouth, and blurred vision. She tried to sit up, but the pain in her head cautioned her to take her time. She reached back and felt a long horizontal knot along the base of her skull, then looked up to see the edge of her kitchen counter directly above and connected the two. To her left, the collapsible footstool was overturned, and this too fit into the picture.