Spirit Lake (5 page)

“Darn it,” she muttered, “stupidity sandwiched with carelessness."

Although last night's rain nourished the new green grass, the tall brown stubble left over from winter quickly dried in the warm sunshine and became easy tinder, often the cause of springtime wildfires here until the new shoots overpowered the old. His campfire could leap to life and her woodland would go up in smoke.

When a horn honked, she frowned, but went to see who was in her yard. The sheriff. Good. He could keep an eye on the stranger. She'd spent too much “worry and tend” energy on him already.

Sheriff John Petski's grim face pushed aside her good intentions.

“John, what's wrong?” She immediately spotted the small animal cage draped with a towel and dangling off one of his stout arms.

“Got a bad one, for ya, girl.” The sheriff, a fixture in town all her life and her father's best friend, could get away with calling her “girl."

He pulled the towel back off a corner. A small barn owl lay in the cage's bottom, one wing akimbo, its eyelids half shut.

Her heart leaped out to it. “What happened?"

“A camper found him lying in a puddle this morning. We had some fierce gusts last night. He's barely there, Laurel."

Laurel shoved her sleeves up. “Put him in the cage next to the hawk, but on the side with the solid wood divider so there's no fuss between them. Turn the heat lamp on for him. I'll go get a clean dropper, and judging from the size of him, I better cut up some raw beef heart and eggs, just in case that will coax him awake."

“Got it, kiddo. Hey, what kind of animal did you find over at the old mansion?"

Befuddled, she said, “There wasn't an animal. Just ... an old drifter.” Who wasn't old. Who didn't seem like a drifter. Yet, what else could he be?

John raised a fatherly warning finger at her. “Keep an eye on him. The world's filled with too many crazies these days. Call me first thing if he hangs around."

“Sure, John."

The sheriff strode around the cabin toward the animal shed. Laurel hurried inside, threw the chopped beef heart and eggs mixture in a bowl and took it to the living room. Stirring furiously, she leaned into the viewing scope for another peek at her other wildlife.

Her breath caught. The man seemed to be attempting to pitch a small nylon tent, though it kept flopping down. “Oh no,” she groaned. “You can't stay."

She put down the owl food to go find John, but his truck already bounced down her wooded driveway. She returned to the scope but the phone rattled and she almost poked her eye out against the eyepiece.

Cradling the cordless phone between ear and shoulder, she picked up the bowl in the kitchen, mixing owl food while heading for the scope. Looking through it, she muttered vaguely, “Yes?"

“Now what kind of greeting is that for your mother? What's wrong? I hear a scraping noise. Is there something wrong with your phone? I could dial again—"

“Mother, I'm a little busy."

“Not another new animal?"

Laurel ignored her mother's resigned tone and watched the man dip a can into the lake and haul it back up to the small campfire. “Yes. He, uh, came in with the storm."

“Then are you invitin’ me out to see him, at least? It's been so long since I've been out there and I'm dying to show you the material for the rental cottage curtains."

“No. Don't come. I mean, he's, uh, not cleaned up yet. Mother, I had a long night—"

“You didn't stay up all hours again?"

“It's my job, mother. Animals call and I go."

“It'd be nice if you'd go out with friends more often. Pretty soon they're going to stop calling. What man would ever put up with..."

They had this conversation at least once a week so Laurel let her attention drift to the man who had just knocked over a pot of water onto his bad leg. She winced. He hopped around on his good leg. She grinned. So used to talking to herself, she slipped and muttered, “He's got to stay off that leg."

“What, dear? What leg? Are you talking about a bird?"

Laurel watched him flailing about like an injured bird. He gripped his bad leg and collapsed onto the ground. She sucked in her breath.

“Laurel?"

“I'm here,” she muttered, but she watched the man begin working at her make-shift T-shirt bandage. His whiskery face contorted so deeply that she winced in empathy.

Her mother's voice drifted back. “...So when I get the curtains up that cottage should be rentable again."

The man dropped flat in the grass! Had he fainted?

Laurel raced to the kitchen, bowl in one hand and the phone in the other. She plunked down the bowl of owl food, then addressed the disembodied voice still talking from the receiver. “Oh, mother, I'll be in town a bit later, okay? Love you. Bye."

She grabbed clean linens and her first-aid kit. Before charging out to her boat, she called the sheriff's office. Busy signal. She called Jim Swenson's office, but was told he was out checking storm damage to a stream ten miles up the road. She left a message for him to meet her at the old house anyway, but if he couldn't, the assistant was to call 911 for her.

Racing out the breezeway and through her shed to reassure herself that the owl would live without immediate food, she ran outside and down to her dock.

Within moments, her motor sputtered and pushed her across the bay in what seemed like slow motion. The stranger's grumbly voice rose in the back of her head: “Could use a tune-up.” So what did he know about boats anyway, she grumbled inwardly right back. But now she couldn't get her mind off the boat motor. The loud, coughing boat motor that needed fixing. Damn him.

Finally reaching his shoreline, she mounted the slippery embankment, grabbing at the tall grass to pull herself up. At the top, she paused again, wondering why she was courting danger. She knew why, though. She couldn't shake the feeling that there was something different about this man, including his need to keep help at a distance. Even hobos usually took a handout.

She found him a few yards in, sitting in the tall grass with his legs stretched out and his back to her. He was attempting to pull burrs out of his hair. Without a glance her way, he growled, “Get the hell home."

Her mouth went dry. So much for his sense of humor. “Sometimes it takes two hands to separate the wild animal from its trap, or the hair from the burr."

“If I had my knife, I could cut them out."

She licked at her dry lips. “You have no business with a knife that size when you're stumbling around and passing out. You could have fallen on it."

“All hail Mother Theresa,” he ground out, his back to her yet.

She grew indignant, but drew in a controlling breath. “You could use her help with your leg."

“You already giftwrapped it. Now go."

“Your churlishness won't scare me."

“Are you so lonely that you have to hover around muddy strangers falling off trains?"

Heat splashed her cheekbones and then hit the pit of her stomach. “I already have one mother, thank you."

“You should listen to her. I could be a dangerous criminal."

Noticing his bare feet, she saw socks hanging nearby over a leaning spike of scrub oak brush. “Criminals don't usually bother laundering their socks. They're too busy running."

He harumphed. “Spilled the water. Then fell over the can. I'll run later."

His backward glance caught the sunlight and her attention. Whirlpools of darkness, his eyes sucked her in and for a moment she thought this a dream and they'd float into the air together. All that in his eyes. They harkened to something familiar within her, yet she couldn't put her finger on the odd feeling.

He looked away, but a bit of electricity remained behind. Something felt terribly wrong, enticing her, yet warning her. Her legs begged her to flee, but she couldn't run before getting a good look at that wounded leg. Or this man. She'd only seen him in the dark or from a distance in the fog. His sleight-of-face routine was beginning to grate on her.

Setting the towels and first-aid kit in the grass, she opened the kit. Her stomach knotted. “Damn. I forgot how low I was on gauze and smaller needles—"

“Stay the hell away from my leg with needles."

His voice had risen and the pitch haunted her. Maybe he just sounded like someone she knew in town. She decided she needed to hurry with this. She extracted the snub-nosed scissors and stared at the back of his head. “At least let me cut those burrs out of your hair before I leave."

“I said get—"

“I muzzle some of my animals to work on them safely."

He snorted. She took that as an assent and stood over him from behind with her scissors. The breeze picked up strands of his blackish hair, the sunlight mining coppery highlights in it. A chill trundled down her spine. She remembered another time, another sunlit day. She shunted the thought aside. The man was spooking her out! Where was Jim Swenson or the sheriff? She snipped under a burr with shaky scissors.

With only the robins chirping for sound, she grew uneasy. “You have a name?"

“A handle, as they say on the rails. Atlas."

“The Greek Titan, holding up the heavens?"

“No. My buddies on the rail lines found my using maps and atlases amusing."

Maps? It triggered a warning and a memory inside her.

Laurel stepped back, staring at his jet hair fluttering above the broad shoulders under his thin jacket. She didn't recognize any of it. Or did she? That voice, in its lighter tones, niggled her again.

“What did you say?” she asked, ready to listen hard, fear and anger trembling below the surface.

“My hobo buddies—"

“Stop there.” Suddenly, his tone hit its mark. Queasiness rocked her.

She managed a hoarse whisper. “People use maps because they want to get somewhere. Find more adventure.” Her memory dredged up an ancient globe, and a young man showing her all the places he'd lived ... and would live. “People use maps to help them run away!"

Watching his back stiffen, she eased away, paralysis climbing over her heart. Ancient rages roiled about in her soul, spilling acidic adrenaline across raw nerve endings.

Between clenched teeth, she railed to the back of his head, “It
is
you!"

She flung herself at his shoulders, shoving him hard. “I never wanted to see you again! Get away from me, Cole Wescott!"

He toppled sideways in the grass to escape her blows, his jacket flying open and papers dumping from his shirt pocket.

Dropping to her knees to pummel him more, she screamed, “You bastard! Why'd you come back? Maybe ‘cause you forgot something when you ran out of town fifteen years ago? Like me? Your wife?"

He snagged her wrists, and with strength that surprised her, he rolled over, stilling her on top of his heaving chest.

They lay on the ground, alone in the grass, a prelude they'd danced many times long ago one summer, but now his dark eyes were even darker than she remembered, more mesmerizing. They flung her soul back in agonizing leaps across the years, to hollowed-out nights when all she could do was wonder why he'd been able to leave her and get on with his life so easily.

Her head pounded. She wanted to spit at him. Instead, she forced out, “You're hurting me. But then you're good at that."

When his fingers loosened, she got up, backing several feet away, trying to control her shaky breathing and the palpitations of her stomach.

He got up in a slow fashion that pleased her immeasurably now, and he stayed planted where he was. “I didn't come here to find you, believe me. You're the last person I wanted to see."

Her insides shriveled. What did she expect him to say? “Tell me something new, you, you—"

“Bastard's acceptable."

How could she not have recognized those hawk-like eyes, ready to swoop ... or leave at a moment's notice. He dipped his head at a rakish angle, dark brows shading his eyes while they shuttered up and down her body. Her heartbeat tripped despite her resolve. Although she hadn't recognized the man physically at first, he was smooth and that much hadn't changed.

“Don't try that cute, contrite look with me. It may have worked back then, but I'm not taken in with your kind anymore."

“And what kind is that?"

“A man who runs from his responsibilities."

“I'm in trouble this time, Laurel. Real trouble. And I'm not running away from anything, except a bullet or two."

He winced for good measure before sending his gaze to his bad leg. She didn't know what to believe. What's more, she didn't want to care. Let him fill up with infection to his eyeballs and see how it feels to have nobody care what happens to him.

She said, “You were always a trouble-maker."

“That's why we liked each other."

Liked? That's what he'd felt for her back then? Mere like? Laurel retrieved the towels back up from the grass. “Whatever it is this time, I don't want to hear it."

“We were only teenagers that summer.” He hobbled toward her, a hand raking through his mass of wavy hair. “We didn't know what we were doing."

She stepped back, refusing to let the swarthy charm work on her again. “That's your excuse? Wayward kids?"

Looking uncomfortable, he asked, “Why'd you come back over here now?"

So he was changing the subject. Damn him. “I thought you might be dead by now. I see I'm too soon. I'll go back and wait."

“Still have the wildlife scope in the picture window?"

She hated that he knew her so well, that he could remember even a single element in her life that brought her pleasure. She was not interested in sharing anything pleasurable with him. Ever again.

Cradling the towels in one arm, Laurel snatched up the first aid kit from the grass. “Petski's jail hasn't changed since the day you dirtied it with your presence and he might appreciate seeing you again."

Shooting her a smoldering look, he swiped up the papers and a photo off the ground and limped over. “Here. I came back because somebody wants to kill me and harm my family, and damn it all, I won't let him destroy us."

Kill? Family? Us?

A sickening flood of numbness gripped her. He shoved the photo at her. A teenager with Cole's same piercing eyes smiled back at her. Pain spiked deep into her heart. She'd heard he'd gotten married, but a son? This old?