Tami Hoag - Dark Paradise

“Naw. There’s not much of a living in it unless you’re a star. I’m not good enough to be a star,” Will said flatly and without self-pity. “It’s time to quit playing around.” He looked at J.D. sideways and flashed the grin, weary and worn around the edges. “Never thought you’d hear me say that, did you?”

He sighed and marveled at the crispness of the pain that skated along the nerve endings in his back and shoulders. “I thought I’d go up to Kalispell and get a job. Got a buddy up there gettin’ rich selling powerboats to movie stars on Flathead Lake. I figure if I kiss enough celebrity ass, I could make back that sixty-five hundred I owe at Little Purgatory in no time.”

J.D. gave him a wry look. “You don’t know spit about powerboats.”

He grinned again, flashing his dimple. “Since when have I let my general ignorance stop me from doing anything? Besides, I could sell cow pies at a bake sale and have ’em coming back for more.”

J.D.’s smile cracked into a chuckle, and he shook his head. “Pretty sure of yourself.”

All the guile went out of Will’s face, leaving him looking naked and vulnerable and young. “No. Not at all. But it’s time to grow up. It’s past time.”

They sat in silence for a moment, neither of them able to put feelings into words. J.D. felt the weight of regret on his shoulders like a pair of hands pressing down, compressing the emotions into hard knots inside him. Regrets for a brotherhood that had been tainted even before Will’s birth. Regrets for the wedge their parents drove between them for their own selfish reasons. Regrets for not seeing the worth of what they might have had before it was too late. He thought of his priorities and he knew this might be the last chance he had to change one. Kalispell was a long way from the Stars and Bars.

He looked across the way at the mountains, black and big-shouldered beneath the clouds. A red-tailed hawk held its position high in the air, as if it were pinned against the slate-gray sky. He thought of the song Mary Lee had sung while he stood in the shadows of her porch, about pride and tradition and clinging to old ways, desperation and loss and unfulfilled dreams. And he could hear the faint echo of boys’ laughter, could almost see the ghosts of their boyhood running through the high grass and scarlet Indian paintbrush. Not all the memories were bad ones.

“You’ve got a place here if you want,” he said quietly. “Some things would have to change, but our being brothers isn’t one of them.”

Will nodded slowly. He studied the backs of his skinned knuckles with uncommon interest. “Maybe after a while,” he said, his voice a little thick, a little rusty. “I think it’s best if I leave here for a time. You know, stand on my own two feet. See who I am without you to lean on or knuckle under.”

The silence descended again and they sat there, absorbing it and feeling the paths of their lives branching off, knowing that this moment was significant, a turning point, a crossroads, but having neither the words or the desire to call attention to it. It wasn’t their way.

“If you can wait a day or two, I’ll help move the herd up,” Will offered.

“That’d be fine,” J.D. murmured, his eyes on the beat-up Chevy pickup that had just broken through the trees and was rumbling up the drive, engine pinging, gears grinding, Orvis Slokum at the wheel.

SHE COULDhear the dogs baying in the distance. Thunder rumbled farther back, just clearing the mountains to the west and rolling over the Eden valley, a warning that was coming too late.

Samantha thought she should have seen a sign, a clue, some foreshadowing of this, even though a more logical part of her brain knew no normal person could have imagined the kind of madness that infected Sharon Russell. She still blamed herself for being naive and stupid. But that was pointless and she had no time to waste.

She ran through the woods, pain shooting through her with each jarring step. Her ribs and back ached from the beating she had taken the night before. Cramps knotted her shoulder muscles from the unnatural position she had been tied in, and her hands throbbed mercilessly now that the circulation had been restored. They were swollen and discolored, and fears of amputation flashed through her mind when she looked at them, but then, that was stupid, because she was probably going to die.

None of it would matter-her hands, her ragged hair, the cut that extended in a bloody throbbing red line from her right cheekbone diagonally across her face to her jaw. It wouldn’t matter what she looked like when she was dead. It wouldn’t matter if the dogs fell on her and tore her to shreds. She would have ceased to exist.

She wondered who would mourn her passing.

The notion was stunning, impossible to grasp. She had too much life ahead of her to die now. That thought compelled her to keep her feet moving and her heart pumping and her lungs working. Instinct and adrenaline spurred her to run, and she ran with no thought to pacing herself as she hurled her body between trees and through brush. Thorny brambles ripped the bare skin of her legs, lashed them with a hundred tiny cuts, and snagged the remnant of the white silk T-shirt that hung in tatters around her neck. With no shoes, her toes caught on exposed roots, and thistles and twigs bit into the soles of her feet, but she kept running. Her head felt as if it would explode, and her lungs burned until they felt like sacks of blood in her chest, but she kept running.

South. She didn’t know where she was, but she assumed they were still on Bryce’s property. If she ran east, she would only take herself deeper into the Absaroka wilderness. North would take her back to Sharon. South. Toward Rafferty land. She had no idea how far that might be. She had no idea how far Sharon would allow her to run. She didn’t let herself think about it. She made her mind go blank and focused only on putting one foot ahead of the other. She broke into a wide clearing and sprinted across it, thinking too late that she should stick to the cover of the trees. But what would it really matter? The dogs had her scent. Better to take the quickest route than one that afforded cover. Wasn’t it?

She could hear the hounds baying, their voices carrying on thin, wavering currents through the trees. The air was heavy and still, dense with anticipation of the storm. Sound bounced through it, traveling and echoing until she couldn’t tell where it originated. Were they behind her still? Or had Sharon taken another approach, circling around to cut off her escape? She pulled up to listen and get her bearings, falling heavily against the rough trunk of a lodgepole pine.

Darkness was creeping up from the forest floor and pressing down from above, creating a nightmarish twilight. Samantha looked around her, trying to establish a heading. She was weak with exhaustion and fear and hunger; dizziness swirled around and around her brain, making it difficult to determine direction or decipher the simplest of thoughts. The sweat chilled on her skin and she shuddered and strained against being sick, against panic that was like a ball in her throat. Tears blurred her vision and rained down her cheeks, through the dirt and the blood. She tried to wipe them away with the back of her hand and cried out at the pain in her fingers and in her cut cheek.

You’ll die out here, Samantha. Naked, beaten, shot in the head by a madwoman. Stupid kid. Stupid dreamer. The dream is over now.

Stupid girl. Stupid, silly virgin.

Sharon watched her quarry through a night vision scope attached to a Browning rifle. I could kill you now, little slut . But she wasn’t ready to end the hunt just yet. She had given the little bitch a fifteen-minute head start before riding out after her. The hounds had caught her scent immediately. The scent of blood and fear. A perfume of which Sharon found herself growing fond. Lucy MacAdam had been her first human kill. She thought the rush might be addictive. The idea excited her.