Page 18 of Mean Streak

For the first time since coming back inside, he paused to really look at her, then, with a sudden move, dropped the pillowcase and closed his hands around her head. He ran his gloved thumb across her lower lip.

“I swore to myself I wouldn’t touch you. But I wish like hell I’d fucked you anyway.”

Then he bracketed her hips between his hands and forcibly moved her aside. “Stay out of sight until we’re gone. If they come back in place of me, shoot the sons of bitches and ask questions later.” In one fluid motion, he bent to pick up the pillowcase, opened the door, and left.

***

Following his interview with the detectives, Jeff was banished to the chaotic lobby, where the floor had been tracked with muddy, melting ice.

He’d eaten a snack from a vending machine and washed it down with bitter, tepid coffee, also from a machine.

He’d then claimed a vacant chair and camped in it, so to speak, while he waited for something to happen.

The longer he sat there, the angrier he became.

He had called in sick to his secretary earlier, but he was reconsidering whether or not he should notify his boss and tell him where he actually was and what was going on. But he talked himself out of that, deciding there was no sense in sounding an alarm until the situation called for it.

Alice had been worried about Emory yesterday afternoon. By now, she would be climbing the walls. He knew he should call her, but talked himself out of that, too. It would look bad if Knight and Grange discovered that he’d contacted his illicit lover while his wife was unaccounted for.

He read the Wall Street Journal and played a game of Scrabble on his phone, all the while stewing in resentment over being ignored.

An hour crawled by. When he couldn’t stand the inactivity any longer, he took to swearing under his breath, and, when he got truly fed up, he risked losing his seat by leaving it to go to the reception window and demanding that the deputy seated there summon Sergeant Detective Sam Knight immediately.

A few minutes later, Knight came through the connecting door, seeming to be in no apparent hurry, uselessly trying to tug his off-the-rack trousers up over his belly. “Must be mental telepathy, Jeff. I was just about to come get you. Come on back.”

He was Jeff now?

Knight held the door for him. The lady with the collapsed barn roof was no longer in the squad room.

Personnel were talking to one another or on their phones.

Some were at their computers. But no matter how they were engaged independently, they simultaneously paused to follow his progress over to Knight’s desk, where Grange was already waiting, looking as dour as an undertaker.

“Oh God,” Jeff moaned. “What’s happened?”

Grange answered by pointing him into a chair.

He remained standing. “Damn you, answer me.”

“Nothing’s shaking so far,” Knight replied as he lowered himself into his desk chair. “Sit down, Jeff, please.”

“That’s all you people seem capable of doing. Sitting. Why aren’t you doing something constructive to find my missing wife?”

“We’re doing everything we can.”

“You’re just sitting here!”

Realizing he had called even more attention to himself, he sat down—hard—and glared at the two detectives.

Knight said, “It wouldn’t do any good for us to go chasing around, burning up fuel, when we don’t know where she went after she left the motel.”

“What about her credit cards? Wasn’t Marybeth—”

“Maryjo.”

“Whatever. Wasn’t she supposed to be checking on charges and ATM withdrawals?”

Grange joined in. “It would have speeded things up if you’d had Emory’s credit card numbers.”

“I explained that,” Jeff said, practically having to unclench his teeth to get the words out. “Emory has her accounts. I have mine. She pays her bills—”

“Actually she doesn’t.”

Jeff looked from Grange to Knight. “What’s he talking about?”

“The accountant who keeps the medical clinic’s books also pays Emory’s personal bills. He charges her a small stipend each month. He gave us her personal account numbers.”

“Great. Fantastic. Did Maryjo follow up?”

Knight said, “Friday afternoon shortly after leaving Atlanta, your wife gassed up her car using a credit card at a service station. We’ve got that transaction on security camera video. By the way, she was dressed just like you described.”

“Why would you think she wouldn’t be?”

“Could be she’d stopped somewhere between your house and the service station and…

you know…switched clothes.” Before Jeff could respond to that inanity, Knight went on.

“Anyhow, she charged her motel room to the same card and used it again to pay for her dinner on Friday night. None of her cards has been used since.”

Jeff gnawed his lower lip. “Since Friday night?”

“Do you know how much cash she had on her?”

He shook his head, then cleared his throat and said, “But I doubt it was much. She isn’t in the habit of carrying a lot. It’s sort of a joke between us. She never seems to have any cash.”

After a lapse of several moments, Grange said, “We’ve also retrieved her cell phone records. Last call she made was Friday evening.” He smiled, but it wasn’t a friendly expression. “To you.”

“She called to let me know she’d made the trip without mishap, that she was already in bed and about to go to sleep.” He leaned forward, placed his elbows on his knees, and covered his face with his hands. “None of this is good news, is it?”

He heard Knight’s chair squeak, then the detective’s hand landed heavily on his shoulder. “Hang in there. It might look like we’re not doing much, but we’re pulling out all the stops to find her.”

As he escorted Jeff back to the lobby, Knight casually asked if he could take a look at Jeff’s handgun. “Standard procedure. You understand. If you’ll give me your car keys, I’ll send a deputy out to get it so you won’t have to go out in that mess.”

Jeff doubted the weather was the reason Knight didn’t want him to retrieve the gun himself, but he surrendered his keys without argument.

Having been assured that he would be the first to hear any updates, good or bad, he was again abandoned.

His chair had been claimed by a biker-looking type with a braided goatee that extended almost to his waist. While Jeff paced, he checked his phone for missed calls.

One of Emory’s girlfriends, whom he’d called the night before, had left a voice message telling him that she hadn’t talked to Emory for more than a week.

A client had left a message expressing his displeasure over the dive the stock market had taken and asked Jeff if he had any ideas on how to make up for the loss.

His tailor had called to inform him that his alterations were ready.

There were two missed calls from the clinic’s main number, but no one had left a message.

Alice, of course, knew better than to call his cell phone.

He spent an hour on futile pacing and was seething with frustration when Grange bustled into the lobby, wearing a hat with ear flaps and zipping up a quilted puffy jacket as he walked toward him.

“They found her car.”

“Only her car? What about Emory?”

“They’re looking.”

“Where?”

“Nantahala.”

“Where’s that?”

“You’re in it. National forest. Knight and I are rolling.”

Grange was nearly out the door before Jeff processed all that and reacted. He jogged to catch up and followed the deputy. No sooner had he cleared the exit than Sam Knight pulled a tricked-out SUV to the curb. Grange opened the passenger door and climbed in. “Stay put. We’ll be in touch.”

With that, he closed the door and the SUV sped away, leaving Jeff staring after it through the snow.

***

It didn’t take long for Emory to deduce why he’d taken her shoes. She couldn’t leave in stocking feet. He’d guaranteed that she would remain trapped here until he returned. But she’d be damned before she became part of the spoils claimed by the redneck duo if they, not he, came back.

He’d moved the sofa with ease. It took more effort for her, and it was even harder to pry up the section of flooring, but she managed with the help of a screwdriver she found in the drawer where he kept the smaller one with which he’d repaired the toaster.

She chose a pistol at random and set it on the end table with care.

Soon after they’d married, Jeff had introduced her to a small handgun he owned and had given her a rudimentary lesson on how to fire it.

But she never had. It had been a revolver.

This one had a cartridge. Recognizing the difference was almost the sum total of what she knew about firearms. But having one in reach was good for her peace of mind.

She also felt more secure once she was fully clothed. As soon as her running clothes were completely dry, she changed into them.

Left with nothing else to do, she restlessly prowled the cabin. She pawed through the contents of drawers she hadn’t explored before, but found nothing that gave away anything about her host—no journal, correspondence, receipts, not a single scrap of paper with enlightening information on it.

That itself was a reveal. He was scrupulously careful. He kept nothing that could identify him.

Going over to the shelves, she ran her index finger along the book spines, noting that the titles had been alphabetized.

She thumbed through several of them, looking for loose sheets or notations handwritten in the margins.

After a time, she concluded that the shelves he’d installed himself held nothing except books.

In desperation, she held her hands palms-down on the cover of the laptop, mentally willing it to give up its secret password like a Ouija board. It didn’t.

She added logs to the fire when it burned down.

She paced, frequently looking out the window, hoping to see the approach of the pickup.

As aggravating as it was to admit, she was worried about him.

The two men had looked disreputable enough to kill him for his boots, much less for his truck.

Perhaps the “kid sister” had been a lure.

Maybe they had deliberately crashed their dilapidated pickup into the tree as part of an elaborate scheme to rob him.

He’d told her he hadn’t met the brothers until today, but he had admitted that he knew who they were. He knew that slitting his throat wasn’t their style . What was that about? Her imagination expanded on several themes, all of them catastrophic, all ending badly not only for him but also for her.

It was an appalling thought, one she hadn’t allowed herself to contemplate before now: She might never get home.

By now Jeff would have notified the police, but would he know where to tell them to start searching?

She’d talked about her destination, but had he paid close attention or retained a thing she’d said?

Even she couldn’t remember how specific she’d been when she’d shown him the map of the national forest on which she’d marked her trail.

But even with only a general idea of where she had set out that morning, a search would be under way.

She would get home. Of course she would. And then—

What?

The crystal ball was as murky on her future from that point as it was on her immediate situation.

When she and Jeff reunited, they would be glad and relieved to see each other.

But their quarrel would only have been suspended, not settled.

The wedges between them would still be firmly lodged.

Assuming he was having an affair, upon her safe return, would he end it strictly out of a sense of obligation?

That would serve no purpose other than to keep everyone unhappy.

In fairness, how could she blame Jeff for having a lover when a stranger’s embrace and near kiss had made her burn hot?

Yes. There was that.

Her attempt to be a femme fatale had ended on an ironic twist: it was she who’d been seduced.

She had put on that mortifying display, but when he began caressing her, she stopped playacting.

He’d pulled her to him, and she’d felt him hard and insistent against her, and the truth had been undeniable. She’d wanted him.

Every feminine urge had sprung to life, and it wasn’t just the long dormancy that had made her sexual desire so acute.

It was him. She wanted to experience him, every rough surface, every gruff word, his outdoorsy scent, the whiskey taste of his breath, the arrogant jut of his penis.

She had wanted the totality of him with a reckless disregard for what was right and proper for Dr. Emory Charbonneau.

If he hadn’t ended it in that insulting manner, she would have made a further fool of herself.

Thinking about it agitated her and increased her anxiety, so that when she heard the pickup pulling into the yard, she retrieved the pistol, cradled it between her hands, and aimed it at the door.

He stamped in, looking more forbidding than she’d ever seen him. The pistol didn’t disconcert him in the slightest. He took one derisive look at it, then tossed the pillowcase containing her shoes over to her. It landed on the floor at her feet.

“Put your shoes on. We’re leaving.”

“Where are we going?”

“I’m taking you down the mountain, and I’m in a hurry.”