Waiting For Eden (Eden Series) (26 page)

Waiting for Eden

~*~*~*~*~*~

Chapter 22

Jamie depressed the accelerator a little further
and watched the needle bump up to 70 MPH.  Too fast for a back road, but essential now.  His little brother was wigging out, and he wasn’t far behind on that frightening path himself, either.  He clenched his jaw and focused harder on keeping his driving skills tight.

The news had come in over his mother’s police scanner like some bad backwoods dream.  Two female bodies had been discovered along Route 44, in a ditch.  They would never have been noticed at all, had there not been ripe raspberries next to the road
.  An avid jelly-maker had innocently pulled over at that spot for the day’s picking. 

The location was not
too very far from Cherryville, in fact.  Both bodies were young, blonde, and female.   It was enough coincidence to make him sick inside with worry, though he tried to keep Aaron from seeing it.  And, he tried to keep from panicking even more about Alexandra’s own whereabouts.

Three times he’d tried to call her, and she hadn’t picked up.  Of course, if she was out in the barn bathing or grooming the horses, she would have set her phone down for sure.   It wasn’t highly unusual… just
unusual
. 

They’d been texting with the frequency of love-struck teenagers before the incident with Tracey. 
Then nothing.  But now they’d made up, made love, and smoothed out all of the ruffled feathers into bliss again… so why would she not check her phone at all?

Jamie saw flashing lights up ahead and slowed his vehicle as his heart-rate accelerated conversely.  He took a quick peek at his brother’s ashen face.

“Hey, why don’t I check this out alone, Aaron,” he suggested, pulling the truck off of the side of the road behind the pileup assortment of rescue vehicles, police, news trucks, and other gloom-and-doom seekers. 

“No way,” Aaron shook his head resolutely.

They approached the scene and were stopped fairly quickly by law enforcement.

“Have you identified the girls?” Jamie asked.

“Not yet.” The officer who regarded them sternly looked a mere teenager, with freckles and a pimple on his chin. 

Jamie released his breath with a frustrated whoosh.  “We are missing a family member,” he replied.  “We need to know if it’s her.”

“Come with me,” the officer inclined his head.  “We could use some local help with this one.  Nothing makes sense.”

The brothers followed grimly.  When the sheets were finally pulled back, all Jamie could feel was the hot sting of tears on his cheeks and the weight of his little brother sagging in his grip. 

They looked like golden, sleeping angels.

~~~~~~

When Alexandra tilted back
her head back to meet Michael’s eyes, the darkly menacing look he gave her numbed her completely to her toes.  His eerie smile and the promising gleam of his white teeth completed the picture of evil.  Her knees gave out and she sagged against him, her utter fear making her appear to be swooning in relief.  She heard Ridgeway chuckle behind her.

“Oh, he’s not going to save you,” Brian laughed.

She felt Michael’s grip tighten even further as he pulled her roughly against the length of his body.  Each finger felt like a red hot poker burning and grinding into the flesh of her bare arms.  Each finger would surely leave a bright purple bruise behind.  Her breath continued to stutter around in her chest.  She had never felt so small and weak.

As if she were an infant, Michael turned her around in his grip, bringing her back in contact with his chest.  The t
op of her head met his chin, and she felt his lips graze her hair.  She stared fearfully now at Brian Ridgeway’s wry grin. His eyes were hard and focused, but not on her.

“I fired you, Marcus.”  It was a firm statement, and no longer friendly.  “You failed your one mission, remember?”

Marcus?
Alex wondered.  Michael’s name was Marcus - and he
knew
Brian Ridgeway.  Worked for him, in fact.  The foreboding words of Ezra came flooding back into her head at once. This was all related.  And it wasn’t good news for her welfare.

“Why
, I haven’t failed at a thing, Brian,” Marcus returned arrogantly.  “My timeframe was merely a bit different from yours.”

“I hired you to do a job.  You didn’t
do it.  And now
I
am going to finish it up for you.”  Alex saw the flash of irritation in Brian’s face, alpha male to alpha male.  “You can go back to the city, Marcus. I really don’t think you are cut out for the country.”

“Oh, it’s rather grown on me, to be truthful
, Brian,” Marcus drawled smugly.  “In fact,
she’s
grown on me.”  He moved his hips slightly against her backside, rubbing left to right, and Alex felt his maleness there.  There was no doubt as to his intentions.  She swallowed reflexively.  Her fear was only mounting now, with jerking leaps and bounds. 

Her cell
phone was in the barn, lying on a bale in the aisle, next to where Bold waited in the cross-ties.
  The image of it flashed through her head, as well as the sudden and desperate wish for Jamie’s presence.  How would he ever know she was in such danger?

Brian stood abruptly, and his previously nonchalant face was now a thundercloud of suppressed anger.  “I need her to sign these documents.  Now, Marcus. And then you and I are going to have a little talk,
man-to-man,” he spoke forcefully, in a tone of voice that brooked no argument.

“Hmmm.”  Marcus squeezed her in his bear hug of an embrace and rubbed his chin against her scalp with the kind of familiarity that a lover would.  It made her tremble like the leaves and boughs that waved wildly now outside the living room window. 

A pre-dusk gloom had fallen, made deeper by the heavy clouds that had rolled in over the little farmstead.  The air outside was lifting from gusts pushed along by the edge of an approaching storm front, jostling limbs and rustling leaves with relentless fervor. 

“I don’t think my little Alex wants to sign your papers,” he murmured against her ear.  “Do you little Alex?”  He nibbled on a lobe, and the warm wetness of his tongue on the exposed and sensitive flesh made her shiver in turn.

“No,” she managed to breathe out loud, wandering what sort of game was being played, or through what rabbit hole she had just crawled.  It made no sense.

Brian’s face was purple.  His right hand drifted toward his briefcase.  Alex
had a mere moment to draw a breath in sharply at the implication, before being shoved in the back with stunning force.  The room blurred and she tripped, going down hard on her knees and rapping her forehead against the coffee table.  She saw stars momentarily, before her vision cleared.

She lifted her head.  Brian Ridgeway was sitting on the couch, looking slightly confused.  A crimson blossom of blood began to spread across the center of his beige dress shirt, from the middle of which the black hilt of a hunting knife protruded. 

She watched, gasping and panting in long pulls of breath from her position on her hands and knees as the man’s eyes glossed over and he slid backwards on the couch, slowly falling to one side and coming to rest on her cushions.  The stain spread wider, deeper, redder, and flowed out onto the fabric.

“Bet you never knew I was that good with a knife, did you Alexandra?” Marcus drawled. 
“Being a city guy, and all.”

Alex swung her gaze to him.  He was still standing in the same place, leaning casually against the doorjamb, eying her almost proudly.  And wickedly.  “Why?” she whispered.

“Why not?” he returned.  “So, are you ready to play with me now, Ms. Winters? Like a big girl?”

Still trembling, she wrenched herself to her feet. She felt like a new colt on gangly legs that couldn’t yet be controlled.  Another knife had appeared in his hands.  One from her kitchen.

“Some parts of the game might hurt.  But my cock inside you is going to feel
good
.”

A branch banged loudly against the window as the wind picked up with a low and drawn out howl.  The room grew perceptibly darker, the air thicker and cloying.  A thunderstorm surely approached, and a
sudden metallic taste had entered her mouth. 

Alexandra trembled violently.  Was she dreaming?  A wheelchair sat in the middle of the room.  Between her and Marcus.  Through what seemed like a shimmering mist, Marta was suddenly there. 

She heard Marcus’s gasp, simultaneous with her own whimper.  Her eyes darted to his face, and she saw it go ashen.  He saw her too.

“You-!
  I killed you, you stubborn old bitch,” he ground out, gaining composure.  “I watched you die.”

Marta lifted two pale wrists into the air in slow motion.  On each was a gaping slash, ugly and pooling with thickly clotted blood.  Marcus’s mouth worked soundlessly.

Inside her head, Marta’s voice rang loudly, urgently. 
“Go, Alex.”

Without
any hesitation at all, she turned and bolted for the front door.

Waiting for Eden

~*~*~*~*~*~

Chapter 23

The evening air was cloying
, but the dirt bike raced straight through the tendrils of humidity, breaking him free of its spidery web.   Mouse hunched his large shoulders over the handlebars and concentrated firmly on the road ahead.   Dusk was falling quickly around him.

The Honda engine whined beneath him, strong and steady.  It felt good to be in forward motion, and headed back to help the lady.  He
should’ve felt like a superhero; with the wind whipping over him and his biceps bulging as he clutched the handle bars in his grip, except he was still kind of scared inside.  Superman just wouldn’t be scared like this.  No way.

Mouse wished he was smarter, too, so he would know just what to do
all the time.  Of course, Jamie always said he was smart in a lot of ways that most people couldn’t even see.  Mouse was good with fixing things, with knowing how parts went together, and with numbers in his head.  He wanted to believe Jamie.  Mouse had big muscles too, but that didn’t count for smart, really.

Jamie told him that his Dad was wrong, and just because
Mouse couldn’t talk right didn’t make him some regular dummy.  Not long after that, they had a phone call from a teacher in Roulette who said he was giving free speech lessons.  Mouse thought they were really helping him, too.  He also thought that Jamie might just be paying for them. 

As he drove up Alex’s lane, slowing the motor, the night rushed in around him, making him breathe harder and switch on the single glowing headlight with fingers that felt
strangely heavy.  The house was still, grey, and silent.  The mares whinnied from within the pastures, wanting to come in.  Didn’t Alex realize it was way past feeding time? 

Everything was wrong, and he felt it.  Th
ere were two extra cars here now, and fancy ones too, yet the house was dark and still.  Mouse forced himself to keep the bike moving forward along the lane, and then right on into the backyard without even stopping.   He parked by the porch and stepped off of the bike.  That funny feeling twisted his gut around all over again, intensely.

At the door, waiting on the stoop for him, was a single flower.  Pretty this time, a peach hue,
and sweet as sherbet.  Cautiously, he bent over at the waist and fetched it, a grin slowly wreathing his broad features.  The flower’s scent invaded his nostrils and he felt joy again from having it.  When he stood up straight, the lady watched him from the other side of the screen door.

“Hi
, Miss Lady,” he said shyly.  “I want to help this time.”

You are such a dear boy.  A beloved boy.
You can help her.  Help Alexandra.

Her voice was clear and sweet and soothing inside his head.  It was a lot like his Mum’s voice had been.

His heart swelled up big and full and strong in his chest, and Mouse smiled at her.

~~~~~~

Alexandra was in the midst of a full meltdown, swept away in total flight mode, heart tripping along in spurts like the rat-a-tat of an automatic rifle.  She tried desperately to control it, and tamp it down.  Her mind churned and her hands shook. The stallion beneath her could sense her fear and confusion, and she focused intently on harnessing her terror to keep him calm and stable… and moving.

They were ascending into the darkening mountains.  She had shoved her phone into her back pocket after unclasping the stallion from the cross-ties,
opting to ride out as fast as she could after she realized that she had no truck keys.  The sky above her now was roiling and ominous.  Alex didn’t know whether the impending storm was a good thing or bad.  But it was time to make a decision.

She pulled back on the reins
and the stallion tossed his head impatiently, yet he yielded to her request.  Glancing nervously over her shoulder, she wondering what had happened to Michael – to
Marcus
– and whether he was now following her. 

Her stubborn brain still did not want to admit Marta had been in the room with them.  And that Marcus had actually seen her
, too.  Alex
wasn’t
crazy.  But she
was
being hunted.  And if she was found, she would certainly die.

Alex tried to punch in the familiar cell numbers with trembling fingers, but the dancing stallion made her fumble three times in a row.  She finally thought to switch to voice command and shakily pronounced, “Dial Jamie.”

The connection was audibly crackly, for she had only one bar of service.  If she had proceeded any higher into the mountains before stopping, there would have been no reception at all. 

Her hasty
and unplanned escape on horseback had been a double-edged sword.  She just might have done better to head down the lane on foot and out to the main road, taking her chances of being noticed by a local passer-by.  But her cell had been in the barn with Bold, and there was simply no turning back now.  Nor any knowing which step was wrong or right.

Several tense seconds passed before the cell signal caught on a tower and the phone rang through.  Jamie answered on the first ring.

“Alex!  Where are you?”

“Jamie.”  She hardly recognized her own voice, as it burst through her lips both trembling and unfamiliarly high.

“Alex, are you okay?  Where is Dalton?  Where are
you
??”

The ominous whine of a
familiar four wheeler engine rose up from the valley below her.  She gasped, and the useless phone slipped from her fingers as the stallion spun and bolted beneath her.  She bent over his neck and let him run.  Marcus was coming. 

~~~~~

The last time Mouse rode his dirt-bike up onto the rocky mountain trails, he had wrecked it up real bad.  Not only had he twisted his ankle and cracked a few ribs, he had busted the brake lever right off of the handlebar.  His Dad was really mad, and his crumpled up ribs had ached for months in silent accusation. 

He began his ascent cautiously.  The lady had told him that the bad man had a four
-wheeler now.  The fact worried Mouse because he knew they were much more stable than dirt bikes on tough climbs.  And it was getting dark.  The bad man could beat him.  He chewed his lower lip while he gripped the handlebars and thought about his sore, broken ribs.

Hurry
, said the lady in his head, clear as day.  It seemed like she was going to stay with him now, and that knowledge made him feel stronger inside.

Hurry, w
e’re out of time
.  But the meaning behind the urgent whisper frightened him badly, and he was really scared for Alex now.  And he was scared that he
couldn’t
save her.  He gritted his teeth in frustration and throttled the handlebars with a twist.  The dirt bike jumped forward and into the shrouding forest gloom.

~~~
~~~

“Alex!!” 

Jamie was near panic.  She wasn’t answering at all.  She was simply gone.

“Don’t hang up, Jamie!” Aaron whispered urgently in his ear.  “I’m calling the police right now, just stay connected to her signal.”

“She’s not there anymore,” he whispered back, his heart pounding in his chest.  It wasn’t a steady beat at all; it was jumping all over without rhythm.  Frantic, like a moth against a window pane with a winter’s night at wait behind it.  The helpless dread in his gut was growing simply unbearable. 

The distant drone of an approaching engine through the tinny cell phone microphone he still clutched in his grip made him gasp for breath.  His d
ismay thickened and spread malignantly.

“Dalton’s in the woods with her,” he told Aaron brokenly.  “
I think he took the four-wheeler.  We’ll never get there fast enough.”

Aaron was talking on his own phone now, quietly and urgently.  He held up his hand for silence, but met his older brother’s eyes.  “They understand the situation,” he mouthed.

Jamie shifted his truck into first and spun the wheel toward Eden Ranch.  It was all he could do.

~~
~~~~~

The anger that pulsed through Marcus’s veins felt like a drug injection.  With every heartbeat, it chugged through his blood vessels with a strange and burning sensation.  He was no longer in control at all, yet his body still functioned smoothly and efficiently, steering the ATV, maneuvering over rocks and ruts along the trail that snaked ever upward into the gloomy evening air.

The trees grew taller, with lanky twisted limbs, and their leaves rustled like a threat as they hulked over him.  He had no fear at all.  Simply purpose that must be followed.

The forest
was going to fight him though, just like the apparition that had tried back in the house.  Marcus had strode forward to flip the wheelchair and the old bitch right out of it, but when he reached the space it occupied, there was nothing but air… an odd, grey vapor. 

And then it was simply gone altogether.  The only thing remaining was the bloody carcass of Brian Ridgeway, slumped on the couch, with his stupid mouth hanging open and disbelief in his glazed-over eyes
, like some ugly ape.  Marcus had withdrawn the knife from the dead man’s chest with a sucking slurping sound, and wiped the blood on a pillow.

Lip curling in disgust at the remaining stains on the engraved hilt and the acrid, metallic scent on the blade, he had stomped to the kitchen and cleaned it properly with Dawn in the sink.

It was then that he had heard the cacophony of whinnies from the stable, and remembered Alex fleeing the house.  He had her truck keys.  She wasn’t going far.  But if she was on horseback…

With a growl, he had exited the old farmhouse, refocusing his intent, re-calculating his plan.  He didn’t know how to ride a horse,
for that had all been a ruse.  So when he had discovered the four-wheeler, shining and new, with the keys right in the ignition like an offering, he couldn’t help but laugh.  What a dumb bitch.  It would be a fun night.

T
he primeval forest had closed in around him now.  When he breathed in damp air laden with the overwhelmingly strong scent of pine, his nose tickled and his sinuses ached.  He found it harder to breathe.  It felt as if some giant pressure gradient had shifted within the mountains, squeezing hard at his lungs.  Marcus drove through a sticky cobweb draped across the trail and it clung to his cheekbones and eyelashes, clinging and moist.

He imagined
dark and filthy spiders crawling in his clean, groomed hair.  It was infuriating, maddening.  All he could think of was getting Miss Alexandra Winters in his grip.  All alone.  And he would do so, for this little game was going very well in his favor, all things considered.  No one would find her.  Or hear her demise.  He could make it linger, if he chose. 

Of w
hy the thought didn’t bring him as much pleasure as it did initially, Marcus was unsure.  But he most assuredly wanted to play with her.  For a long time, before the end.  And afterwards, after those final moments of bliss, nothing really mattered.  He had lost control, after all.  But he liked it.