Deadly Expectations (12 page)

“I haven’t known her all that long.
 
I met her at one of the rallies in the summer, spent the night in her hotel.
 
My God Josh, she makes an old man like me wish he was ten years younger.

“We spent a few nights together before I called it off.
 
She’s got so much ahead of her.
 
I didn’t think it was fair for her to have one one-night stand after another with a man who’d never be any more than a ghost in her life.”

Paul hadn’t told me that.
 
Maybe that was part of it. The part he would tell his brother.

“Then a couple of weeks ago she rides down here to find me.
 
Tells me she’s pregnant.
 
She thought I’d met someone else and only came down to open the door with the kid.
 
She never left.
 
I spent a month regretting saying good-bye.
 
Now I can’t imagine a day without her.
 
And I’m going to be a father.
 
Someone is smiling on me.”

“Whoever it is send them my way.”
 
Joshua said.
 
“You let her in Paul … to this house.
 
Your life here.
 
You never did that with anyone else.
 
And she didn’t run the other way.”

“No, she didn’t,” Paul laughed quietly.
 
“She said she loves me.”

“Someone has to ask you before it
goes
too far.
 
Do you feel the same way or are you just trying to do the right thing ‘cause maybe you should have kept it in your pants?”

There was silence for a few seconds.

“I know what you’re saying Josh.
 
Even between the nights we spent together she was on my mind.
 
I stopped putting my line out.
 
Knowing I’d see her again was distracting.
 
I’m a better man for having her.

“Yeah, I feel the same way.”

Joshua didn’t say anything as I heard more scotch slosh into their glasses.
 
I closed my eyes and put my feet up on the window sill, crossing my arms and turning slightly in my chair so I could rest my head.
 
Paul’s house felt like home more than any place I’d known since losing my mother and hearing Paul tell someone else about me made me sure I belonged here with him.

“She said when she got here that she’d quit work, wasn’t going back for a while.
 
I did the same.
 
I don’t want a night without her.
 
I can listen to her breathe, my bed’s warm when I get in at three in the morning.
 
I can fall asleep sober and know if the bad dreams come I won’t wake up alone … but I haven’t had any since she got here.”

Paul paused.

“Anna thinks it’s a girl.
 
I don’t think she cares where we are, as long as I’m there with her.”

“You know when mom finds out she’ll be on the first flight here to help you pick out a ring and she’ll already have the tent booked for immediate family and five hundred of her closest friends for the reception.”

“Yeah …” Paul said.

“And there will be nothing you can do about it.”

“Uh huh.”

“Well, I like her Paul.
 
When she looks at you you’re the only other person in the room.
 
Lucky bastard.”

They were still talking when I fell asleep.
 
Joshua was complaining that he’d never meet anyone in the compound or living with his parents.
 
His mother pointing at every woman she saw and asking ‘what about her?’
 
Paul suggested he stop living with his parents.

Paul found me later and brought me up stairs.
 
The bed was cold but we were both warm.
 
His lips tasted of scotch and he pushed the hair off my forehead as I wrapped my leg over him.

Chapter 11

I struggled to reconcile what Paul told his brother and his conversation with Ray when we all thought I was asleep.
 
He and Ray had talked like they were family and our child would be part of that but Ray wasn’t related to him, Joshua was, and Paul hadn’t told him how I’d gotten here or even mentioned the man named Damian.

Then there was the woman in the mirror.
 
She’d always been right in her mean way.

I found some things in the shop I could fix up quickly and a couple of bigger projects including an older four-fifty dirt bike.
 
It would get me out if I needed it or to help if the woman in the mirror had her way.

Ray was able to pick up most of the parts I needed on his next supply run so I kept busy making the four-fifty my main project.
 
Days in the shop and nights with Paul.
 
He spent time in the shop with me in addition to whatever else he had to do running the camp.
 
He went out for watch most nights and his cold skin woke me.

The woman in the mirror had succeeded in getting under my skin.
 
After days of not thinking about the tarp behind the shed it was now all I could think about.
 
I quietly worked on my lunch smiling appropriately at Paul when he gave me a little elbow but never really pulling myself free of her words.

Stashed under the tarp.
 
Like a delicious forbidden treasure; secret and hidden.
 
I was by nature observant and cautious which served me in good stead when my wanderings found me alone in rough places.
 
Also shamelessly curious when I got the idea that someone might be keeping something good from me, a trait I shared with my sister.

Ray or Denis sometimes cluttered up the shop with their less and more helpful presences respectively but today Ray was in the middle of something and Denis and Paul were both on watch.
 
Today was ideal.
 
By the time Paul got the heaters fired back up for me my eyes were itchy with the need to see what they’d hidden.

I took a bit of time doing a few things that didn’t require a lot of attention; changed the oil on my bike and reconnected some fluid lines on the four-fifty.
 
Once I was certain I’d be alone for a while I took a quick look up the road then went down the passage between the garages.
 
She’d said the small one so I looked behind it.
 
There were several tarps there over various things.
 
Also a small garbage dumpster and some trash cans.

The first couple of tarps yielded little including a pile of folded tarps.
 
I was careful to just peek, only lifting up the edges.
 
The only thing more satisfying than having my curiosity rewarded was if it also went undiscovered.

The last one was the size of a large piece of luggage and had a couple of bungee cords hooked around it like the others to keep it in place.
 
It covered a large plastic tote and after a bit of hesitation disturbed the tarp enough to get the top off.

“Jesusfuckinchrist!”
I exclaimed as I scrambled backward before I found a spot in the snow several feet away and hastily wiped my face on my sleeves and tried to rub my hand clean on my jeans.

It wasn’t the colour that bothered me really or the non-existent smell my brain tried to imagine in compensation for its frozen absence.
 
Or even the way the fingers were partly clenched.
 
It was the first seriously dead person I’d ever seen but that wasn’t it either.
 
I stared mesmerised even though it was out of sight behind the plastic side of the tub only a tiny bit aware of my body heat melting the snow I sat in so it soaked through my pants.

“Anna?” It was Ray’s voice from inside the big garage.
 
“Anna?”

I heard him trudge over the footprints I’d left in the snow no longer caring if I got caught.

“Are you okay?” Ray asked.
 
I shook my head.
 
“Hurt?”

I pointed at the tote.

“Shit,” Ray sighed under his breath as he tried to pull me to my feet.
 
I wrapped my arms around my legs refusing.
 
I wasn’t leaving without an explanation.
 
Ray took out his radio instead of trying again.
 
“Victor Whiskey.”

“Whiskey Victor,” Paul’s voice replied after a minute.

“Ten twenty-five Station Two,” Ray said.
 
God, I wondered if he was going to take me to the house in the back seat of a car.

“Copy Victor, Whiskey out.”

“Come on Kiddo,” Ray tried.

I shook my head.
 
Ray squatted down in front of me to block my view so I stared through him.
 
Our stalemate continued until Paul arrived.

“She okay?” he asked with concern at seeing Ray kneeling over me.

“Tote.”

“Ah fuck,” Paul said.
 
“Sugar, I need you to get up and come with me.”

I looked up at Paul as I slowly clued in.
 
As I took in the man in charge who made the decision to put the dead man in the box anger and queasiness vied for my attention.
 
My hands came up as I stood and took a step back from both of them.

“Why?” I demanded mentally digging in to challenge him.

“Because I’m asking,” he said.
 
Your tone wasn’t asking at all, I thought.
 
I glanced between them at the tote. The jacket and helmet stuffed in with him I recognized.

“He tried to run me into a car.”

Paul’s face started to twist into a menacing grimace as one hand absently dropped to his knife and the other took my elbow.
 
Only his voice was calm.
 
“Then I don’t want you near him.”
 
Knuckles whitened around the handle.
 
I had no doubt the death grip on the hilt wasn’t meant for me, the hand on my elbow remained relaxed.

I stuck my chin up at him mostly in defiance but also to help keep lunch down.
 
“Why is he with the garbage?” I hissed through my teeth.

He looked incredulous.
 
Shaking his head he let go of the knife, furiously stabbing his finger at the dead man for emphasis.
 
“He tried to put my girl and my baby through a windshield!
 
He is garbage!”
 
Paul was turning a colour you could only get by mixing red with blue.
 
“Then he brought a gun to my house and tried to shoot one of my men.”

I started to nod in understanding.
 
This was nothing but petty punishment that wasn’t hurting the dead man at all.
 
I shook free of him.

“What’s on his hand?” I demanded.

He looked over then back at me.

“The shiny round thing?”
 
That was what upset me so much.
 
He shook his head.

 
“He stopped being garbage when he died Paul,” I said quietly as I tried to calm us both down.
 
The madder I got the closer I got to throwing up on him.
 
Paul crossed his arms and looked away.

“Somewhere there is someone just like me who’s thinking about him every day.
 
You can just bet she wasn’t on a motorcycle on the highway with me.
 
She had no idea where he was or what he was doing.”