As You Were (26 page)

“None of your business, Rocko.”

“We’re just jealous, Helki,” MadCap said. “We want you to teach us your secrets...”

“Shut up,” Helki grinned.

“Please, Sensei,” Madcap said with forced reverence. “Please teach us.”

They all laughed.

Brittany zipped and snapped up Tru’s Army jacket and pulled on her leather gloves, telling herself that it was ridiculous to imagine him out there somewhere. No one could have stayed outside last night in this weather, not even a lunatic. She picked the revolver up off the table, aware that in taking the pistol along, she verified that her fear was stronger than her rationale, and opened the kitchen door, careful of the broken glass. She paused just outside the door, the thought occurring to her that leaving it unlocked might allow him to go inside and hide while she was in the barn. She was proud of her forethought, and pulled the key out to lock the door behind her.

She paused on the steps almost involuntarily, her eyes drawn to the deep-freeze against the wall on the patio. In her mind, she saw Max’s face as it had been the night before, through the kitchen door window. Brittany took a steadying breath and focused on the barn.
I can’t let this make me crazy. I promised Tru I’d feed Juts and Wheezie, and once that’s done, I can lock myself in again.
Then she had a horrid thought. What if he had harmed the horses?

Once inside the barn, the familiar sight of the Morgans pawing and snorting, incited an almost euphoric gratitude. She went over to them and stroked their noses. “I’m sorry, you guys.” Brittany scooped oats from the metal garbage can and dumped it in the feed bins, taking the ice pick to the water trough as she had seen Tru do.

Wheezie reared her head and Brittany looked into the Morgan’s mirroring eyes. She saw his reflection before he grabbed her.

They struggled, and she lashed out with the ice pick instinctively, catching him in the arm, but feeling that the blow was ridiculously ineffective. He knocked the pick from her hand, and she remembered the gun. Quickly, she grabbed it from her outside coat pocket but he stopped her before she could aim at him, slamming her gun hand against the barn wall in a painful blow. The weapon fell from her hand and he picked it up and trained it on her.

“You know, it was pretty fuckin’ cold out here in the barn last night, Brittany. I hope you’re worth the wait.” A grin slithered across his face. “Run,” he commanded. Brittany clenched her aching hand and began to back slowly out of the barn as he followed menacingly. “Run!” he shouted, pointing the revolver at her and squeezing the trigger.

The bullet struck the ground next to her and Brittany whirled and dashed out the double doors and around to the back.
Why didn’t I go toward the house?
She chastised herself with horror.
He would have caught me before I got there, and could fumble the door open and get it secured again,
she amended, hoping she was making the right decision as she slipped on the

incline and slid down, stumbling to the bottom. She lifted her gaze to see him standing at the crest of the slope. He fired again, and Brit heard the bullet whiz past her head. She lunged into the woods, wet, snow-crusted limbs striking her face and neck, their burdens dripping between her collar and neck.
I should have headed for the road...But it’s too late, now
... She continued to thrash her way through, aware of the tenderness in her hand from his action to disarm her, and not knowing where she was going, only wanting to go anywhere Max wasn’t. At odd intervals, he fired at her, and the adrenaline in her veins kept her moving in blind panic.

She ran, faltered, fell, got up and ran again, until she came to the back of the tributary, recalling it was the one that she and Tru had ridden to. She searched for an escape route, but only found herself at a face-off with him as he appeared at the ridge and looked down at her, laughing, descending upon her.

Huffing the frigid air from her aching lungs, she spun around and saw that the water flowed between her and a possible escape through the woods. She turned back to look at him and he advanced more slowly, as if savoring this moment when he had finally cornered his prey. His foot came down on the packed earth by the rushing stream, and he raised the pistol, aiming it at her chest. “Go for a swim, Brittany,” he coaxed, snarling. “I know how much you like the water.”

She looked back at the rushing rivulet, the image of it enveloping her with a memory she wished vehemently to forget. A shot spit at the dirt by her feet and she whirled and leaped into the icy torrent, flailing toward the opposite bank, tears freezing around her eyelids before leaving her eyes. She turned to look back at him when he called her name. He trained the gun on her, and she could not get her balance in the eddy. He squeezed the trigger. She didn’t hear a report. It did not come.

He cursed and threw the empty gun down, jumped into the water behind her, his hands forcing her below the surface of the freezing deluge of rushing current. She struggled for air, choking on the icy gulps that slipped into her mouth and filled her throat. Her arms were already numb with cold, and she felt herself flailing uselessly, understanding with stark clarity that hypothermia would take her just as surely as his vicious hands around her throat.

She sunk beneath the surface briefly, struggled back up, heard a sound she could not define, and saw him moving back into the current away from her, as if he’d lost his balance. He was looking up at the crest of the incline. Her eyes swept to the hillside, at the figure with a rifle...
Tru!
Her heart leaped in her chest, and she swam haphazardly back to the bank toward the hill, her body quaking and growing leaden with the effects of the frigid water. Her body felt like it weighed five hundred pounds.

Hawkeye, Hawkeye, Hawkeye...
She fell on the bank, heaving and gasping, the cold wind chilling her to the marrow, as Tru fired at him again. Max held to a bleeding portion of his shoulder, and climbed up the opposite bank, disappearing into the woods.

Tru leaped down the rest of the hillside, swinging the rifle over her shoulder by the strap, and threw her an arms around Brittany. “Brit! Are you okay?”

Her teeth chattered so violently, that she could not form the words to answer. Tru removed her own raincoat and placed it around Brittany, helped her up and half-dragged her up the hill and back to the barn.

Once inside, Tru grabbed a horse blanket and threw it around Brittany. “Let’s get you in the house, and I’ll call the sheriff.”

Brittany managed to clatter out, “He cut the phone line.”

Tru cursed. “I knew it! Don’t worry, I’ll call the sheriff on my cell. Then I’m going to hunt down that fucker and blow his head off,” she told the shivering Brittany, lifting her to her feet.

“Don’t—“ Brittany spoke through clattering teeth, and Tru doubted for a moment Brittany’s sanity, until she continued with, “I want to help you kill him—“ The unmistakable anger in Brit’s voice was clear, though vibrated by the palsy of cold.

As they started for the barn doorway, Max appeared there, like a dripping, puffing gargoyle, and threw himself at Tru. They fell together onto the barn floor, and Max’s hand found the ice

pick Brittany had dropped earlier. He pushed Tru down beneath him, and raised the pick high above her struggling body. A loud,
thwang!
reverberated through the barn, and Max fell forward. Tru pushed him off her and saw a violently shaking Brittany holding the snow-shovel. “Butt-stroke to the head!” she rasped in a learned hand-to-hand combat phrase from training, almost crazed with her victory.

Tru thought,
I’m glad you remembered that
...
looked around quickly and then rushed into the tack room. She returned seconds later with the nail gun and a long extension cord. Plugging it in, she knelt beside the motionless young man, pinched the sodden material of his clothing out flat next to him, and began punching nails into his clothes and through the planking, until a halo of nail-heads surrounded his torso and arms.

Tru grabbed Brittany, who had collapsed against the wall, shivering, and helped her across the large span of yard to the back door.

Once inside, Tru guided Brittany to the master bedroom and peeled off the raincoat, the trembling woman’s gloves, then sloughed the Army jacket off her. She found a robe and some warm socks, and put them on her, followed by a blanket. “Okay, stay here, and warm up a little until I get back. Don’t get in the shower, though, that would be too quick...”

Tru exited without waiting for a response and hurried out to the Cherokee. She slid into the front seat and got her cell phone from her bag and told the sheriff what had happened. That done, she went back into the barn.

Max was still very securely nailed to the floor, but now unconscious. Tru stepped over to him, and could not help but smile at Brittany’s quick thinking.
A snow shovel.
She thought of the bayonet training they had had in the Army.
Butt stroke to the head!
she’d said.

A ripping sound brought her attention back in time to see Max writhing against the nails, some fabric at his side torn away. He grabbed for her ankle, clamping a hand around it. “I fucked your girlfriend—” he grinned maliciously.

Tru used her other foot to mash his wrist back to the floor, picked up the nail gun, and drove a nail into his palm. Max screamed his pain and anger and made a collection of threats. She didn’t want this to turn into some real life reflection of a cheesy B movie with the bad guy getting loose and coming after them again. Art should imitate life, not the other way around. So for good measure, she moved around to the other side of him and shot another nail in his other palm. Screaming and cursing at ear-splitting decibels, he promised all manner of vengeance to her back as she dropped the nail gun and walked out of the barn, leaving him effectively crucified like a modern-day Antichrist.

32

A FULL HOUR LATER, BRITTANY SAT AT THE TABLE in sweatpants and -shirt and a heavy robe, sipping greedily from a cup of Morning Thunder tea. She couldn’t bear any more coffee and Tru told her it had the stimulant, Maté in it.

Tru sat across from her with her own mug, and her cell phone vibrated in her pocket. She pulled it out and flipped it open. “Hi Macy.”

“Everything okay on Lezbo Mountain?”

“Oh Macy, you have no idea...so much has happened...I’ll have to call you later, though, I’m kind of in the middle of something.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes. It’s okay now. Just a long story...”

“Well, I can’t wait to hear it...and I also can’t wait to tell you this—”

“Can it wait, Macy?”

“Well, I guess it could, but I think you’re gonna wanna know...it’s about Travis and that night at the hotel.”

Tru’s eyes darted to Brittany, who was focused on something beyond the window panes. “Really? Well... what?”

“On the drive back from the airport, I thought about our conversations...I had this idea I wanted to check out. So I stopped by his place on the way home...”

“Okay...” Tru glanced at Brit, who caught her eyes and smiled wearily.

“On the pretense of a sisterly visit, which of course he was suspicious of, I borrowed his bathroom, and while I was in there, I found a little bottle with white pills in it. I took one with me when I left, and looked up the imprint on the Internet when I got home. Guess what they were?”

“I give up.”

“Rohypnol.”

“What? What’s that?”

“A Roofie. A date-rape drug—”

“Oh my god,” Tru breathed, then when it hit her fully: “Oh my god!”

“Yes! You see? That’s why you didn’t remember anything, and that’s why you were passed out. It wasn’t the alcohol at all. He dosed you.”

Brittany noticed her expression, and mouthed “What’s wrong?”

Tru shook her head. “I can’t believe...”

“I can. I called him up and confronted him and he didn’t admit it, but he did seem amused. I told him I never wanted to see him again, and that I no longer considered him my brother. I told him to go to hell.”

“You did?”

“Yes I did.”

“Did he take you seriously?”

“Oh yeah.”

“I’m sorry, Macy.”

“Why are you sorry? He did something reprehensible to you. It’s unforgivable. I now officially hate his fucking guts.”

Tru sighed laboriously. “Well, I’m at least relieved to know it wasn’t...” She remembered to be discrete, since Brit was now paying attention to the one-sided conversation. “You know...
but I’m sorry about...
you know.”

Brittany rolled her eyes. “Do you want me to give you some privacy?”

She covered the phone. “No, I’ll tell you about it later...”

“So...
I know you need to go,”
Macy said
. ”but I had to tell you that. Call me later.”

“Okay.” Tru snapped the phone closed, staring at her hot tea, assimilating.

Brittany was still frowning. “What’s going on?”

A knock interrupted further discussion of it. Tru got up to let the sheriff into the kitchen door, and he removed his hat, placing a handbag on the table. “I think this belongs to you, Ms. Jabot.”

Sheriff Packard was a stout, broad-shouldered man who played professional football before a knee injury left him with a permanent limp. His three years as sheriff were successful ones, and he was well-liked in the Castle Mountain area.

He removed his gloves and brushed snow and moisture from his thick, sand-colored beard. “Are you going to be okay, young lady, or would you like a ride to the hospital?”

Brittany tried to smile warmly, but ‘warm’ was something she was still working on. “No, sir. I’m okay, I think. I had a shower a few minutes ago.” She began to rummage through the purse that did not seem familiar, but obviously belonged to her.

Tru looked out the window toward the barn, where deputies and paramedics had finally freed Max from the barn floor. Tru motioned Brittany over to the window where they watched Max emerge from the barn in handcuffs, both his hands wrapped in bloody gauze, the sides of his

clothes torn and gaping open in places. There were bright blood stains on both his arms. The two women cringed in unison, the sight of him reinforcing their very real brush with death.

Tru put a supportive hand on her shoulder and addressed Packard. “What’s the story on this Max-guy, Sheriff? Did he snap recently, or has he always been a homicidal maniac?”

The sheriff sniffed. “Well, first, I need the details about what exactly went on here, if you don’t mind giving a statement. And we’ll need you both to come down and file official charges, of course, after this report.”

“Sure, anything. I hope they lock him up and throw away the key. He almost killed us.”

The sheriff took a chair at the table beside Brittany, while Tru brought him a cup of Maté tea. “This guy would have killed you, Ms. Jabot. His name is Max Bradke. He’s the Highwayman.”

Tru and Brittany shared a look. They both saw the papers everyday, and Tru recalled the first time she heard about him, from Macy at the Lost & Found, and then in the paper each time he claimed another victim.

Tru took a chair at the table with them. “I knew he was a little strange, and he made me uneasy, but I had no idea he was that dangerous—until today, of course.”

Sheriff Packard clicked out the ballpoint on his pen. “He’s a very disturbed young man. He gets real pleasure out of chasing women down, as if they are animals. He’s a hunter, but his prey is women...
with blond hair and blue eyes...” He glanced over at Brittany.

Tru dropped her forehead into her palm. “Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah. You two should thank whatever God you pray to. You’re very lucky to be alive.” Packard pulled a slim cigar from his breast pocket and lit it with a torch lighter, and had a sip of coffee. Tru had to edit the knee-jerk need to offer him an eCigar instead. “Now, then. I need to take a statement from each of you. Start from when you first met him and go from there.”

Brittany related her version of the story, deftly leaving out the personal relationship between she and Tru, and telling him she remembered seeing Max at a convenience store, the night she had her accident. Tru was surprised by this, knowing it meant Brit’s memory grew stronger.

Tru’s embellishment followed, regarding her arrival at the house to find the window of the kitchen door broken, and seeing the footprints into the barn, with two sets leading out. She grabbed her rifle and followed the prints to find Max in the stream, trying to drown Brittany.

Packard took brief notes in a small spiral tablet with an odd sort of shorthand, offering any information he had, and promising more after they interrogated Max at the sheriff’s office. He looked up sheepishly. “Ah, I realize you two ladies have been through holy hell today, but I’ve got to ask—”

“What?” Tru watched him tap a stubborn ash from the end of his second cigar.

“Well, now, I’ve seen a great many ways to apprehend a suspect since I came to work here...
but I don’t think—” A smile creased the middle of his beard. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone nail a guy to the floor, and crucify him in the process.”

Brittany gave Tru a curious expression. “Crucify?”

Tru lifted one sardonic brow. “He tried to grab me when I went back out to check on him. I didn’t want him to get away. I put nails in his palms.”

Brittany absorbed this, remembering the bandages on his hands when they led him out of the barn. “Fitting for the Antichrist, I suppose.”

Tru gave a half-humorous laugh, because that’s what she was thinking when she left him impaled and walked out of that barn.

Packard cleared his throat meaningfully. “Touché.”

“She’s not above using a nail gun to protect me, Sheriff.” She stole a glance at Tru.

Packard chuckled. “If you ever want a job with the sheriff’s department, let me know. But we use bullets in our guns.”

Tru snickered, and stood with him to open the kitchen door. He paused. “Oh, about all that sabotage he pulled on the phone: I’ll call the utility companies for you and let them know. They should be out here by tomorrow.” Tru nodded. “So, you’ll be okay until the wires can be fixed?”

“I have a cell phone.”

“I do, too, apparently,” Brittany said, pulling the waterlogged cell from the purse on the table. “But it drowned.”

At Tru’s assurance that they would be okay, he replaced his gloves and wide-brimmed, plastic-covered hat. “Oh, I’ll have a couple deputies stay behind and unplug that chimney. You’re going to need it tonight.”

She shook his hand and thanked him as he touched his hat in parting and stepped outside.

Tru grabbed the tea kettle of hot water and the box of Morning Thunder tea and came over to sit next to Brit, warming her cup with a refill. “Are you really okay? If you’re not, I’ll take you to the hospital myself. Your hand is swollen.”

Brittany shook her head, spooned some cream and sugar into the cup and took another drink. “I’ve had plenty of hospitals already. I’ll be okay as soon as I get some heat into my bones again.”

“There’s a clinic down the mountain. If your hand doesn’t look better in a day or two, we could have it checked, to make sure it’s not broken.”

Brittany nodded. “The paramedic said she thought it was okay. I can make a fist, it’s just sore.”

Tru remembered something Max said. “Um...
Brit... Max didn’t...
do anything else to you, did he?”

She frowned at her. “What? What do you mean?”

“He said something out in the barn before I... crucified him.”

“What did he say?”

“He said
, I fucked your girlfriend
.”

Brit let out an exasperated sound. “God, no. He probably just wanted you to think that. Crazy prick.” Tru let out a sigh of relief, and gave Brit’s arm a reassuring squeeze. “I’m glad I came home when I did. I knew something was wrong.”

Brittany covered Tru’s hand with her own. “You saved my life, is what you did.”

They both looked out the bay window as the sheriff traveled out of the back drive toward the road.

Brittany caught her eyes firmly. “I’m very thankful for that Hawkeye badge you have, Tru. “

Tru’s eyebrows lifted. “How did you know about that?”

Brittany took another drink of the hot tea. “I snooped a little while you were gone,” she confessed, pushing away from the table, and padding into the living room when she heard the footsteps of the deputies on the roof. “And I remembered a lot of things.”

“Oh?” Tru followed her. “Like what?” She grabbed the blanket and put it around Brittany as she sat down on the sofa.

“Like probably all the most important stuff. Travis. You were right about him. It was all his doing. And there’s something else I think you need to know...”

“What?”

They heard footsteps on the roof; the deputies, clearing out the chimney. A few seconds later, some limbs fell into the pit, followed by a knock on the kitchen door. Tru jumped up to go to the door. The deputy told her through the broken window that the chimney was all clear and it was safe to use the fireplace again.

She thanked him and as the deputies departed, she grabbed the duct tape from the drawer and cover the hole in the door temporarily, and hurried back into the living room to stack kindling, breaking up the limb and putting it on the grate too. A few minutes later, the fire was crackling and Tru sat back down on the sofa next to Brit.

“You were saying—”

Brittany stared into the growing flames, feeling the warmth moving toward her. “I remembered that night. All of it. And you know...
I didn’t have that much wine...and the way I felt right before the shower...
I think he might have...
put something in my drink.”

“Oh fuck!” Tru rasped. “Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?”

Brittany was confused.

“When Macy called earlier...
she told me she found a date rape drug in the medicine cabinet at his apartment.”

“No shit?”

“Yeah, and that’s because of what I told her happened at the hotel with me and him. I only had like two and half drinks that night. It didn’t explain me being unconscious. So he drugged me, too.”

They sat in stunned silence for a long moment.

Brittany spoke first. “Maybe he just didn’t give me much...maybe he was experimenting with doses...
and gave me less, because he wanted me to be awake for it...I mean, I was able to drive, but I was so groggy. I remember that...
I did feel drugged. Maybe I had the accident because of it...”

This newest realization stilled them again for a while.

“He needs to die,” Tru said.

Brittany placed a hand over Tru’s. “But I want you to know, for what it’s worth...in the shower—”

Tru closed her eyes, dreading.