Tami Hoag - Dark Paradise

“You couldn’t just become a tax attorney, could you, Marilee?” she muttered, backing toward the kitchen as the snake slithered its way across the pine floor, displaying a body that had to be in excess of four feet in length and as thick around as her forearm. “You’ve never seen any tax attorneys scrambling to get away from rattle-snakes, have you?

“Stupid question, Marilee. All the attorneys you know are snakes.”

She saw too late that she had backed herself into a corner. There was no escape from the small galley area without going over the snake that was snuggling up to a pair of cowboy boots on a mat beside the stove. Mari pulled out a kitchen chair and stood on the seat, trying to recall if any of her Montana studies had mentioned rattler’s abilities to scale chrome chair legs. Her legs were shaking visibly. As she stared down at the snake, she could see her heart fluttering beneath her lavender T-shirt. Her tongue felt like a dead gerbil in her mouth.

This wasn’t going at all the way she had envisioned. She had expected to approach Del Rafferty cautiously, beaming good intentions and trustworthiness. She would open with an overture of friendship and segue into an apology for intruding on his privacy. He would sense her innate goodness and tell her everything.

But the man who stepped into the doorway of the cabin didn’t look ready to confide in anyone. He held an ugly black rifle at the ready and wore a black baseball cap backward on his head, presumably so the bill wouldn’t interfere with the scope when he was taking aim. His eyes were slits beneath his heavy brow. His mouth pulled down at the corners-severely down on the side with the scar. Saliva leaked across his lower lip and ran in a thin trail to the knot of flesh and down his jaw.

Mari raised her hands in surrender. They were shaking like a palsy victim’s. “P-please don’t shoot.”

“I don’t want you here,” Del growled. He squared his shoulders to her and brought the rifle up. “You maybe fooled J.D. You don’t fool me. You’re one of them blondes.”

“Y-yes, but I’m the good blonde,” she improvised. “Remember? I’m not Lucy. I’m not the dead blonde.”

He squinted at her until his eyes looked like pencil lines across his face. “I know that,” he grumbled defensively. “Don’t want you in my place. Nobody walks into my place.”

“I’m sorry. My mother tried to raise me right, but I missed out on the gene for etiquette. It probably skipped a generation with me. My children will undoubtedly have impeccable manners-provided I live to bear them,” she added under her breath.

On the mat beside the stove, the rattlesnake had coiled itself and reared up, drawing a bead on Del. Its tail buzzed ominously. Its mouth flashed pink as it hissed at him. Del flicked a glance at it, backed across the small room to the hearth, and came back with the rifle cradled in his right arm and a fire tongs in his left hand. He moved close enough to entice the snake to strike, then stepped gingerly on its head and took hold of it by the neck with the tongs. All this as if it were the most ordinary of household chores.

Mari shuddered as he lifted the writhing creature off the floor and carried it to the door, where he dropped it into the woodbox outside and flipped the lid down with the nose of the rifle barrel. She climbed down off the chair, but kept her arms up.

Del swung the rifle toward her as he stepped back inside. “What do you want? What did you come here for?” To taunt him, he thought. To seduce him, maybe, the way she had seduced J.D. Then he would be under the spell too, and the ranch would be lost. He would have to stay alert if he was to redeem himself. His fingers flexed on the stock of the rifle.

Mari’s gaze darted from the business end of the rifle to his face. The suspicion in his eyes boded ill. He wouldn’t talk if he didn’t trust her. Trust did not appear imminent. “I need to talk with you, Del,” she said as calmly as she could. “I need to talk to you about the tigers.”

He jolted as if he had been hit with a cattle prod. The tigers. She knew about the tigers. “Is this a trick?”

“No.”

“Do you dance with the dog-boys?”

“No,” she whispered, tears crowding her throat. “Did Lucy? The dead blonde-did she?”

Del didn’t answer. His brain was cooking beneath the metal plate, bubbling and throbbing. Throbbing so hard he thought it might pop his eyeballs right out of his head. He stared at the little blonde. Her eyes were deep-set and clear as colored glass. She looked right at him. Most people didn’t. Most people looked at the deformed part of his face or looked past him as if he didn’t have a head at all.

“It’s important, Del,” she said softly. “I know you saw the tigers. I know they’re real.”

Del just stared at her.

It’s a trick. She’ll put you under the spell too.

He didn’t know what to do. He backed away a step, then turned to pace the width of the cabin, the 700 pointed at the floor. He paced hard, making military turns, as if the precise, purposeful motion would somehow direct his thoughts into some kind of order. He couldn’t trust her. She was an outsider. She was a blonde. She had come into his home uninvited. Come to take what was left of his mind, no doubt. She would lure him with talk of the tigers and pull him over the edge.

He couldn’t allow that. He had to stop the blondes and make the dog-boys go away. There couldn’t be tigers on the mountain. It was up to him. He couldn’t be a hero.

He mumbled some of this out loud, not aware that he was speaking, never thinking that the woman could hear him.

“I saw the tiger too,” she said. “I know they shot it-Bryce’s people. I think one of them might have shot Lucy too.”

His eyes cut hard to her. He did not slow his pacing. “She’s the dead one. You’re not the dead one; you’re the talker. Stop talking.”

“But, Del, we need to talk. You need to tell me-”

“Stop talking!” he roared. He wheeled on her, bringing the rifle up, and charged her, screaming at the top of his lungs. “Stop talking! Stop! I told you to stop!”

Mari stumbled backward and crashed into the counter. The back of her head smacked against a shelf, and three cans of Dr Pepper tumbled off, bouncing onto the floor. There was nowhere to go. She was leaning back as far as she could, the thin edge of the countertop biting into her back. The muzzle of Del Rafferty’s ugly black rifle bit into her right cheek in the hollow just below the bone. At the other end of the gun, Del was trembling as if he were standing on the epicenter of an earthquake. His eyes were wild, the irises swirling like liquid pewter, the pupils expanding outward like ink dropped into the mix. The muscles of his face pulled taut against the bone. His mouth tore open as if the mutilated side had been caught with an invisible fishhook.

The face of death. Somehow she had expected death to be calm and sane, as if there were some logic to the scheme. She wondered if she would feel the bullet. She wondered if she would see that same revelation that had stricken MacDonald Townsend in the instant of his death. She didn’t want to find out. The will to live pumped inside her. Her mind spun, scanning for a plan, a way out.

Jesus, Marilee, if you survive this, J.D. will kill you.

“Don’t do it, Del,” she said softly. The charged air seemed to magnify the sound a hundred times. He made an animallike growl in his throat and the muscles of his forearm contracted as he prepared to pull the trigger. Mari fought the urge to close her eyes. Her lips barely moved. The words were a breath between them. “A hero wouldn’t.”

Hero . The word pierced his pounding brain like a lance. He could be a hero. Make the family proud. Redeem himself. If he pulled the trigger? If he didn’t? The questions wrestled inside him, slamming against his ribs, jostling his aching mind. His hands were shaking on the gun, the palms sweating. He could end it. He could kill her. But that wouldn’t be the end. The dead didn’t go away. He knew. She would haunt him, and he would have to pretend she didn’t, or J.D. would be ashamed of him.