Rachel Lee - Killer's Prey

It would be cold out there; it always was at night this time of year, and as winter crept closer the chill would begin to really bite.

She found a bag of pretzels and ate a few. Then she grabbed the spare house key off the peg by the side door and slipped out, wrapped in her coat and scarf, to walk streets that would be quiet now. Utterly quiet, as long as she stayed away from the saloon.

How many nights as a teen had she walked these very streets, troubled by a sense of alienation that had arisen from a lot more than her age?

She tucked her hands into her pockets, and as she strolled under a streetlight realized she could see her breath. Some of the houses she passed had gone totally dark. Others displayed life in the form of flickering light from TV screens. That hadn’t changed.

But she had changed, in ways she had barely begun to understand.

The purr of an engine crept up behind her, and the back of her neck prickled. She turned and saw a police car pulling up beside her. She waited until it stopped, and the passenger window rolled down.

“Cold night for a walk,” said the now-familiar voice of the older Jake. “Want a lift?”

With him? “No. Thanks.”

“Coffee,” he said. “I’m going for coffee, and maybe a roll. Look, Nora, I’m not exactly the same ass I used to be.”

“You’re a new kind of ass?”

Silence issued from the car, then a laugh. “Aren’t we all? Come on. Get in. I don’t bite, and I hate to imagine how alone you’re feeling right now.”

As if he would care. And then there was the whole police-car thing. Her fists clenched as her heart began to pound. “I...can’t,” she said finally.

Silence, then the sound of the motor changed as he put the car in Park. He climbed out of the driver’s side and looked at her across a short distance, but a chasm of years. “I heard about it, Nora. You can sit in the front seat. I swear, we’ll just go to the diner and then I’ll bring you home.”

Why was he pressing her this way? But as much as she wanted to turn her back on him, she realized something else: he was going to keep after her until he got whatever it was he wanted. And he must want something or he wouldn’t be after her like this.

Almost closing her eyes so she could pretend this wasn’t a police car, she walked around the vehicle, reaching for the door handle then sliding in by feel.

At once she wished she hadn’t. Scents had always triggered impressions in her, and in this car she could smell fear, anger, anguish and alcohol, each scent bringing to mind imaginings of earlier passengers in this car. She clenched her teeth, battling down the torrent of feelings.

She kept her eyes closed, seeking the quiet mental sanctuary she had created for herself, a place she visualized as utterly empty and still. A place where the hyperawareness of odors usually couldn’t reach her. Where nothing could reach her.

Jake said nothing as he drove the three blocks to the diner. She couldn’t get out of that damn car fast enough, and she was walking through the door of Maude’s before Jake had finished locking up.

Maude stayed open until midnight, the only place in town that did other than one convenience store and the truck stop. She was by herself, behind the counter, taking care of paperwork. All day long this place was full, but Nora couldn’t help wondering why Maude bothered to stay open this late in a place where the sidewalks rolled up by 9:00 p.m.

Maude straightened on the chair she had pushed behind the lunch counter, blinked as she saw her, then actually smiled. For Maude that was as unusual as Mount Rushmore moving to another state.

“Well, ain’t you a sight for sore eyes, Nora.”

She managed a smile. “Hi, Maude. Keeping busy?”

“Enough to get by, which is more than some can say.” His eyes shifted as Jake entered behind her. “Evening, Chief.”

Chief? In spite of herself, Nora turned to look at Jake. “Chief?” she repeated.

“The town took a wild hair recently. Before you know it, we have a city police force,” Maude answered, her voice souring to her usual grumpy mood. She sniffed her disapproval.

“Really.” Nora slid into a booth, absorbing this information, wondering if she had lost what was left of her mind. Having midnight coffee with a man who had crushed her ego and was now a police chief to boot? Yes, she must have lost the dregs of her sanity.

“It’s no big deal,” Jake said. “The city council decided they needed a little more authority or something. I don’t know. I have six officers, is all, and we spend a lot of time cooperating with the sheriff.” He shrugged.

“I thought you were a rancher.”

“I still am. At the rate things are going, I may be back at it full-time soon.”

“Why?”

Jake smiled faintly. “It was a power grab by the city council. They didn’t like feeling that the sheriff was running everything, the town included. I sometimes think we’re a sort of auxiliary.”

“Useful as teats on a bull,” Maude grumbled.

Nora figured he was minimizing it but didn’t know why. “It must be expensive to have a police force.”

“Not with federal grants. It helped swell the city budget. Maintaining it may prove to be different.”

“So why did you do it?”

“I was already a part-time deputy. This pays a little more. Ranching isn’t what it used to be.”

Little was what it used to be. “Are the politics of it hard?”

“Nah. Gage Dalton is a good man. He doesn’t mind that we help him patrol the streets in town. His budget is tight, too. And I give him someone else for the city council to holler at.”

Maude brought them both coffee and thick slices of apple pie heavily laced with cinnamon. Nora looked around the diner, mostly to avoid looking at Jake, and felt the intervening years slip away. If it hadn’t been for some wear and tear around the edges, she could have believed she was still in high school. Red vinyl booths, a couple of battered wood tables, stools at the counter, some of which had been patched with duct tape.

But finally she couldn’t avoid looking at Jake any longer. God, he was handsome, more handsome by far than in their youth when she had often been content to just stare at him. The years had favored him, and experience, good or bad, had etched a few faint lines.

By contrast, she knew how she must look to him: emaciated, too pale, her once-thick blond hair now thin and lifeless. Stress and mistreatment could do that to a person. Her blue eyes, unfortunately like her dad’s, were three sizes too big for her shrunken face.

“You’ve been through hell,” he said bluntly.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I can understand why,” he answered. He picked up his mug and sipped his coffee. Apparently he still liked it black.

She reached for a little container of half-and-half and poured it into hers. Then she added a second for safety’s sake. No telling how her stomach would react to the assault of Maude’s strong coffee at this time of night, especially when she was feeling wound as tight as a spring.

Her hand was shaking, and Jake took the second creamer from her hand and poured it for her.

“Look,” he said as he dropped the container on the saucer, “I know you have plenty of reasons to hate me. Hate this whole town, I guess, but most especially those of us you grew up with. We were merciless. But we’re not kids any longer, Nora. And most folks think you got a hell of a raw deal.”

“Thanks,” she said shortly.

From the corner of her eye, she saw him tilt his head. She didn’t want to look at him, didn’t want to feel again the impact of his good looks.

He sighed audibly. “All I’m trying to say is that you may find folks here are easier to get along with than it must have seemed to you back in our school days.”