Dark Paradise (35 page)

torrential downpour obscuring his vision to a watery blur and turning

the trail into a quagmire. The old truck slid and skidded, bounced and

jolted, rattling J.D.'s temper with every bump. By the time he climbed

out of the mud-splattered 4X4, he was fit to wring somebody's neck. Del hadn't

named names, but there was little doubt in J.D.'s mind that the

woman plaguing his uncle's solitary existence was Marilee.

Del's hounds came running through the puddles, baying. Zip jumped out of

the truck bed with a bark of welcome for his pals. The four dogs trotted

around the pickup, sniffing and peeing on the tires. The rain had moved

on to the other side of the Absarokas, on toward the Beartooth range,

leaving everything dripping, glistening, fragrant. A million bugs filled

the air, and the birds sang sweet spring songs.

All J.D. noticed was the mud that sucked at his boots as he stomped

across the yard toward the cabin. When he got back home, they would be

inoculating steers and heifers up to their asses in muck. On the up

side, he could put off changing the irrigation dams to the hay ground

for another day or two. He would give that job to Tucker and let Chaske

get a start on trimming and shoeing the cow horses while he drove into

New Eden to meet with the banker about the Flying K deal. The plans and

schemes and worries zoomed around in his head like the swallows swooping

through the air to feast on the postrain insect swarms.

Del appeared out of the shadows of the woodshed looking pale and angry.

His forehead was banded with lines of tension. The scar on his jaw

jerked his mouth down at the corner.

"I don't want her here," he said tightly.

"That makes two of us," J.D. grumbled.

"She never stops talking."

"She claims to be capable of silence. I haven't witnessed it yet

myself."

Del grabbed his arm in a viselike grip. His eyes were glassy. "Sometimes

she's the other one," he blurted out desperately. "I don't want the

other one coming back. I don't want anyone here. This is my place."

"I know." J.D. gentled his tone, reining back his own temper as he

turned and faced his uncle.

His heart sank like a stone. Del was on one of his mental ledges. There

had been a time when J.D. had fully expected him to hurl himself off

into the great abyss literally - but he had thought those times were past.

The old soldier had been passing fair for a long time. He did well up

here by himself - as well as could be expected, considering the war had

fractured his mind beyond repair. He tended the cattle when they came up

to summer pasture. The rest of the time he spent with his rifles and his

dogs.

City people would have called that crazy, but for Del it was a

reasonably sane existence, better than what he'd had in the V.A.

hospital, better than what he had found in countless bottles of Jack

Daniel's after he had come back from the war. He had found a balance.

Now that balance was slipping - thanks to Marilee Jennings.

"I'll take her away," J.D. said. "She'll never come back. That's a

promise."

A shudder jolted through Del. He stared at his nephew and wanted to cry

like a child. He was a disgrace: weak, crazy, a burden on his family.

The shame of that twined inside him with the threads of old memories,

old fears, things from the past, from the 'Nam. All of it coiled

together in his brain like snakes, writhing and biting one another,

impossible to separate. He had tried to calm himself, to push all the

bad stuff out of his head, but he was beyond calming. He had reached the

point where the mental fist of self-protection had closed tightly over

that small part of his mind that was sanity while the snakes battled

and twisted and his heart pumped frantically.

"What about the other one?
 
I don't want the other one coming back."

J.D. sighed heavily. "She won't come back, Del. She's dead."

Del shook his head and turned away, rubbing the disk of smooth, hard

flesh on his jaw, his fingers coming away wet with saliva. The North

Vietnamese bullet that had shattered his face and blown a hole through

his skull had severed nerves en route. Now he drooled like an idiot. He

wiped the trail of spit with his shirt-sleeve. J.D. didn't know the dead

came back to him on a regular basis. J.D. didn't know he often saw them

in the trees at night, moving among the dark trunks - the corpses of men

he had served with, the rotted bodies of men he had shot. The blonde.

People said the dead were dead and gone. They didn't know anything.

"You want me to send Tucker up?" J.D. asked, trying to hide the

resignation and sadness in his voice with a businesslike tone. "Make

sure everything's ready for when we move the cattle up?"

"No, no," Del mumbled, rubbing his scar, then its companion hidden

beneath his graying dark hair. Sometimes he dreamed the knot of mended

flesh was a screw he could remove and the whole top half of his head

would come off and the serpents would crawl out and wither and die in

the light of day. "No. I just want to be left alone. Leave me alone."

J.D. watched him stagger away, his gait burdened by the leaden weight of

the nightmares and torments that never left him. His heart ached at the

sight. His uncle had been a good man once, honorable, strong. He had

joined the marines and volunteered for combat duty because he was a

patriot and his convictions ran deep. He had given himself in service to

his country and his country had sent him back bent and broken,

disfigured physically and mentally, a twisted shell that held little of

the fine young man he had once been. He had gone away a hero and come

back another responsibility to add to J.D.'s never-ending list.

When he turned toward the cabin, J.D. caught a glimpse of Marilee

darting away from the front door, which stood ajar. His anger surging

back full-force, he strode to the door and jerked it open. She stood ten

feet from him, eyes wide, small hands clasped beneath an enormous pink

mouth on her neon-orange sweatshirt.

She looked young and frightened and unaccountably sexy. Something hot

stirred beneath his temper. Desire. It only made him angrier, and the

anger only magnified the need.

He started to reach for her, then jerked his hand back and swung it in

the direction of the door instead. "Get in the truck and don't say a

word," he ordered through his teeth.

Marilee obeyed without complaint. She wanted to get away from Del

Rafferty. There would be plenty of time to fight with J.D. once the

cabin was behind them. She darted through the door and past the snake,

then stopped to roll up the legs of her jeans and slopped through the

mud to the truck. Standing on the running board, she toed her gooey

sneakers off and tossed them to the back.

With a curt hand signal, J.D. ordered Zip to the back also and climbed

in on the driver's side. He didn't speak until they were pointed down

the mountain and the woods had swallowed up the camp behind them.

"I told you to leave him alone."

"You're not my father," Marilee said tightly. "You can't tell me what to

do. Come to think of it, neither could he."

He looked at her as if just the idea of her disobedience were

incomprehensible. "I told you to leave him alone. I meant it. Did you

think I said it just because I like the sound of my own voice?"

"I'm sure I don't know why you said it. You never bothered to explain.

It apparently never occurred to you to say,
 
by the way, Marilee, steer

clear of my uncle because he's certifiably bizarre."

J.D.'s grip tightened on the steering wheel as the pickup bucked down

the logging trail. He clenched his jaw and blinked hard, as if his fury

were impeding his vision. "You don't have any idea what you've done."

"What I've done!
 
Excuse me, but I was the one he tried to shoot."

"He didn't try to shoot you. If Del had wanted to shoot you, you'd be

dead now."

"Like Lucy?" The words were out of her mouth before her brain had a

chance to snatch them back.

J.D. shot her a narrow glare. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"What do you think it means?" she snapped. "Your uncle is a psychotic

with enough guns to invade Cuba single-handed-"

"He's not psychotic."

"He shot at me. He mistook me for a talking corpse-"

"He's got problems," J.D. admitted grudgingly while wrestling for

control of the steering wheel. The pickup roared a protest when he

shifted gears, pumping the brakes as they angled down a steep grade. "I

told you to leave him alone. If you'd listened-"

"If you'd bothered to explain-"

"I don't have to explain anything to you!" he roared, the anger and

frustration tearing through him. He hated having outsiders messing with

his life, his land, his family. He especially hated this one because a

part of him he seemed to have no control over wanted her so badly. "I

don't owe you nothing, lady, you got that?
 
You don't belong here-"

"Oh, give me a break with that King of the Mountain crap," Marilee

sneered, bracing a hand against the dash as the truck pitched violently

from side to side. "It's a free country, your highness. I'm here and I

don't give a rat's ass whether you like it or not. My friend is dead and

I'm going to find out why. I don't care what you-"

"It was an accident!
 
Christ, why can't you just leave it at that?
 
It

was an accident. It happened. It's over. Justice was served."

"Not by a long way. I don't call a fine and a slap on the wrist justice.

And frankly, there's something about this whole accident scenario that

smells like an open sewer under a hot sun at high noon."

J.D. stared at her through slitted eyes, his foot easing off the gas.

"What do you mean?"

Marilee opened her mouth to answer him and had it shut for her as the

front end of the truck flung itself downward and they came to a jarring

halt. She slammed sideways into the dashboard and fell to her knees on

the floor. J.D. banged his head on the windshield and pulled himself

back, swearing loudly. He shifted the truck into reverse and tried to

rock it up out of the hole, spewing mud in all directions as the tires

spun. The pickup stayed rooted to the spot.

"Great," he snapped, clambering down out of the cab and slamming the

door.

Marilee swung her door open and tumbled out, forgetting she was

barefoot, annoyed at the interruption of their fight. She staggered and

stumbled around the nose of the truck, struggling to keep herself

upright on the steep hillside. Mud and dead leaves oozed up between her

toes.

Zip leapt out of the back of the truck and dashed off into the woods

after adventure, a big grin on his face.

"Great job of driving, Rafferty," Marilee jeered.

He lifted a finger in warning. "Don't start with me, Marilee. I'm mad as

hell the way it is."

"You're mad?
 
I've been shot at, kidnapped, had the pee scared out of

me, and spent the last hour wondering if anyone would show up to save me

before Rambo decided to skin me with one of his many knives and fashion

lampshades out of my hide. If anyone has a right to be angry here, it's

me."

J.D. leaned over her, towering above her more than usual with the added

advantage of standing uphill. "You don't have any rights," he bellowed.

"You don't belong here. I told you to stay away!"

"And I told you to quit bossing me around!" Marilee shouted. She planted

both hands against his chest and shoved him as hard as she could.

He shoved back automatically, knocking her off balance. Marilee let out

a little shriek and caught him around the knees as she slipped. Off

guard and off balance, J.D. dropped like a felled sequoia, and they went

down the hillside in a tangle of arms and legs and bodies, grunting,