Another Chance (14 page)

Lambert was on
the road again.  He’d spent the night at a nice motel in Mobile and would
soon arrive in Tallahassee, Florida.  He knew it wasn’t but a couple of
hours from Tallahassee to Lake City, but he would get a room for the night
soon, because when he arrived in Lake City he wanted to drive around the town
and see what the layout was like.  Since Jordan’s address was a post
office box, he didn’t know exactly where to find her, but he was getting
closer.  Knowing that she was that near started his heart pumping
faster.  It had been so long since he’d seen her, one would expect her
face to have faded from his memory, but if he shut his eyes, he could still see
her face as if it had only been yesterday.  That head full of natural gold
hair framing a face with softly arched brows, just a shade darker than her
hair, above eyes that were almost a golden brown.  Her delicate nose
perched above full, generous lips that hid straight white teeth.

There was no
denying that Jordan was beautiful.  But she wouldn’t be beautiful for
long, once he got his hands on her.  She had been able to go on with her
life, but for the last five years, he had been cooped up in a cage like an
animal.  If she hadn’t fought with him that night, they would have been
out of the house before her husband ever realized what had happened.  It
was her fault that he had killed the man.

Lambert
frowned at the long stretch of highway ahead of him.  All he’d wanted was
for her to love him the way that he loved her.   The way he’d always
wanted someone to love him.

Frank Lambert
didn’t remember his mother ever hugging him or telling him that she loved
him.  Most of his memories of her were blurred with the smell of beer and
cheap perfume.  And her boyfriends.  There had been lots of them over
the years.  Some stayed just one night, some for a few months.  Those
were the ones he had hated most.  They always thought they had the right
to boss him around just because they helped buy the food and pay the
bills.  When he was really little, he had done as he was told or he got
slapped around, but Frank was soon old enough and smart enough to duck out of
the house when things got rough.  When he knew his mother and her friend
would be passed out, he would slip into his room through a window and was often
gone when they woke up the next day.  By the time he was ten years old, he
was not a stranger to surviving on the street.  He knew how to grab things
from stores and run before the clerks could catch him and was a master at
finding places to hide.  As he grew older, he learned to slip things
inside his clothes without being noticed.  He loved to do that.  It
made him feel superior to the people he was stealing from.

He didn’t join
gangs, nor have friends because they all wanted to tell him what to do too, and
he wasn’t interested in helping others.  He knew he had to look out for
number one, because no one else would.

Frank attended
school because they fed him and he was bright enough to make passing grades
without any encouragement or help.  His teachers didn’t recognize anything
special about him and he didn’t put forth extra effort.  He just wanted to
get by unnoticed.

When he was
thirteen, he came home one day and found his mother dead.  He didn’t know
or care what caused her death.  His only concern was that she wouldn’t be
around to pay the rent and that meant he would now be out on the street for
real.  He swore at her loudly and kicked her dead body, then packed his
few belongings and all the food he could find into a plastic shopping bag and
left the house.

He took up
residence in an old abandoned house in town and from there, continued to go to
school.  As he grew up, staying in school was the only steady thread in
his life.  He stole when he could and was not above robbing people he met
on the streets at night.  Some of the local prostitutes gave him a little
money when they needed him to run errands for them.  He was an attractive
young man and was popular with them because he didn’t judge them.  He
would go to their drug dealer and pick up a hit for them and they knew he could
be trusted not to use any of it.  For that, he received a financial reward
and sometimes a place to spend the night.

By the time he
was seventeen, burglary was his main source of income.  At school he had
asked a couple of girls out on dates, but the ones he wanted to date were
looking for more in life than a dead end and flatly refused him in spite of his
good looks.  He started slipping around their houses at night, peeping in
their windows.  He became so fascinated by this that he got careless and
ended up in jail.  He spent a couple of weeks there and was then released.

That started
Frank’s drifting.  He took futureless jobs and lived on the fringes of
society, moving from small town to small town trying to keep a low
profile.  His life choices however, sooner or later drew unwanted
attention from law enforcement officials, so he moved on again.  His
reading material consisted of magazines ranging from Playboy to detective
thrillers and if he could get his hands on it, he craved hard core porn rags.
He began to fanaticize about a woman who would love him so much she would get
pleasure from his rough handling of her, or she might share his desire to hurt
others and help him with his perverted sport.  In his mind, she would be
so beautiful that no one would think her capable of such and in fact, she
wouldn’t realize her own desires, until he stole her away from all she knew.

He thought he
had met that woman twice before, but in the end, they were trembling weaklings
and he had found it necessary to kill them.  Taking the first one’s life
brought him an unexpected jolt of perverted sexual pleasure and with the second
one, he spent a long afternoon practicing new ways to bring suffering to one
who had not lived up to his expectations.  It was his idea of a delightful
afternoon.

However, when
he saw Jordan Larson, he saw a woman with inner strength and outer beauty and
he knew she was the woman of his dreams.  He was disappointed when he
found out she was married, but to his way of thinking, that was just a slight
inconvenience.  He took his time, flirting subtly with her when she was at
the store.  She was special and he didn’t want to rush her.  He
wanted her committed to him.  In his mind, she was responding favorably when
she smiled and spoke to him each time she was at the store, and he never
noticed that she treated the other employees in the same respectful way.

Lambert’s
whole world was wrapped around himself.  His wants and needs were all that
mattered and he saw nothing wrong with doing whatever was necessary to achieve
his goals.  The thought that other people had things they cared about
never occurred to him and if they had, he simply wouldn’t have cared.  He
loved that he could make them fear him and dread the things he could do to them,
but beyond that, they just didn’t count.

Except Jordan
Larson.  She counted!  He had been prepared to let her become a part
of his life and learn to share his pleasures.  She and she alone was the
woman who could make his life complete, but in the end, she had spurned his
love.  Not just by struggling with him when he tried to rescue her from
that boring, unappreciative insect  she had married, but she sat in the
courtroom and told the jury that he never meant more to her than just an employee
at a store where she shopped!  She denied that she had a special
attraction to him and that secretly she was glad her husband was dead! 
She said that she reviled the man who had killed her husband.  His actions
were despicable. She couldn’t believe he thought she had been attracted to him
and she wished it had been her who died instead of her husband.  She had
signed her own fate!  His love turned to hate!  She had looked so
pitiful, sitting there on the witness stand with her eyes swollen and red, with
tears running down her cheeks.  It had all been a lie!  She had fed
those stupid jurors what they wanted to hear and they had convicted him!

Then he smiled
as he looked down that long highway ahead of him.  Once he had her with
him, alone, as strong as she was, she might entertain him for a day or two,
before he allowed her to die.  But she would die.  A long, slow
death.  Before he allowed her that release, he would know that she was
broken.  She would beg to spend the rest of her life with him, serving him
and loving him.  And she would.  Only, the rest of her life would be
entirely up to him.

After she
turned out her lights for the night, Jordan couldn’t resist standing away from one
window but looking through it down toward the tepee, for a few minutes. 
Feather had made sure a camp fire was alright with Jordan, then she and Daniel
had created a fire ring with some rocks they apparently had stored in the front
of the camper/horse trailer, after which, they built a small campfire.

As she looked
out the window, Jordan could see the brother and sister sitting on what looked
like stools facing each other across the smoldering embers from the fire. 
They seemed to be having a lively conversation and every little bit one of them
would laugh.  She could hear the musical sound and it made her feel
lonely.  Once, Daniel Cetan looked toward the house for a long minute,
almost as if he knew she was watching them.  She felt a rush of warmth, realizing
that he was thinking of her at the same moment that she was thinking of
him.  Her feelings of loneliness intensified and she envied their easy
camaraderie. She hadn’t experienced that in a long time.  She felt very
alone.  She spoke softly to Bhrandii and the two of them walked to her
room.

Jordan didn’t
remember really being lonely since she’d stopped seeing the psychiatrist about
four years ago.  She had learned to accept that David’s death was not her
fault.  That Frank Lambert alone had caused that tragedy.  She knew
she had learned that in her brain, but wasn’t sure that her heart had ever been
able to accept it.  She lay there for some time, thinking about the
brother and sister who so obviously enjoyed each other’s company.  They
must be very close.  She wondered what her life would have been like if
she had been blessed with siblings.  Finally she drifted off to sleep.

The next
morning, when she let Bhrandii out for his morning duties, he made a bee line
for the barn and as she watched, she could see Daniel Cetan moving around
outside.  He must be an early riser.  Her traitorous dog jumped
around him playfully as if greeting a long lost friend.

She wondered
if there really was anything to Daniel having a special way with animals. 
He certainly had a way with her dog.  She closed the door and went to do
her few minutes of Bible reading and then to take her morning shower.

When she
emerged from the house, Bhrandii came running up to greet her.

“I guess you
were having so much fun at the tepee that you forgot all about having
breakfast.”  Her scolding was just words to the dog and when they were
directed at him, there was always affection in her voice.

She could
smell delightful smells coming from the grill suspended over the campfire and
as she approached, Daniel Cetan stood up from squatting near the fire, his eyes
watching her approach.  “Good morning,” he spoke softly.

Jordan felt
her insides curl as she looked back at him.  Why did he have to be such a
physically attractive man?  Why couldn’t his nose be big or crooked
instead of straight and perfect?  Why couldn’t he have been short and
squatty instead of tall and so handsome?  Why couldn’t his eyes be close
together and squinty instead of setting in the most ideal place in his face and
being the most startling thing about him?  Why did he have to look so darn
good in worn Wranglers and a tee shirt?  She returned his greeting and
made as if to walk on down to the barn.

“Feather and I
would be honored if you would have breakfast with us.”  He invited.

As he spoke,
his sister emerged from the tepee smiling broadly.

“Please eat
with us, Jordan.  Wolf has cooked the last of the buffalo meat this
morning.  Have you ever eaten buffalo?”

Jordan’s steps
hesitated.  “No,” she admitted.  “I’ve never eaten buffalo.  In
fact, I thought they were endangered.  I didn’t know that anyone ate
buffalo meat anymore.”

Feather smiled
and dropping her eyes, chuckled softly.  “It’s meat that came from the
herd that our people have on the reservation.  Every year a few of the
bulls are slaughtered for the people.  There are always more bulls born
than are needed to sustain the breeding program, so some of our people get to
make use of them, just like in the old days.  Our grandfather was one of
those honored by the last hunt.  Wolf sat in his place at the powwow
because Grandfather was already gone.  We got the pelt and his share of
the meat and cured it, just like in the old days.  Grandfather would have
been proud.”

She stretched
her arm toward the big tepee.  “The skins for the tepee were from previous
years.”

Jordan looked,
then, at the leather covering of the lodge and realized it was real leather
hides stitched together, not tarpaulin as she had imagined.

The smell of
the cooking food wafted in her direction, causing her mouth to salivate. 
She didn’t usually eat breakfast until after she had fed the horses and moved
them out into paddocks.  Then she usually had a bowl of cereal or a frozen
pastry that she popped into the toaster.

“It smells
very good, but I don’t want to intrude.  I’m just going down to feed
up.”  She took a step toward the barn.

While she
spoke to Feather, Wolf had moved around the fire and was standing between her
and the barn.  When she stepped away from the fire, she was brought up
short by his wide chest, blocking the way.