Skin and Bone

by T. L. Keary

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “I’m pretty sure you’re trying to kill me this weekend, Sawyer.”

  Ezra gasps for air as he flops back on the mattress. If it were light, I’d see his flushed red chest. I’d see his wild hair, styled by my greedy hands. I might even see him pulling the compromised condom off.

  I giggle in the dark, laying my hand on his chest. “Are you complaining?”

  His hand covers mine and he chuckles. “I am exhausted and spent after doing that four times today,” he says, and I can hear the smile on his face. “But I’m not complaining.”

  “There’s just so much lost time to make up for,” I tease him. “I’m not wasting any more of it.”

  He makes a noise of pleased affirmation, stroking his fingertips up and down my arm.

  It takes everything I have in me not to flinch away.

  I don’t know if this was something he did to Sawyer all those years ago. It must have been. But I can’t be sure. So for now, I have to endure what feels like tickling.

  “I’ll be right back,” I whisper as I pull my clothes back on. “I have to pee.”

  “You want me to come with?” he asks. “It’s way dark out there.”

  “No, I do not want you to come with while I go pee in the woods,” I say, laughing. “I’ll just be a few minutes.”

  He makes another noise, and I can already hear the tiredness in his tone.

  He’ll probably be asleep before I even get back.

  Pulling my boots on, I step out of the tent and zip it closed behind me. I aim across camp and step behind the truck, squatting in the dim moonlight.

  When I’m finished, I walk up to the truck, to the back tire on the passenger side.

  I unscrew the cap. I pull the screwdriver from inside my boot and twist out the needle inside the valve system.

  Immediately, I feel the soft rush of air as it leaves the tire.

  Now, I just need to make sure I wake up before Ezra and put everything back together in the morning.

  The camp area got pretty quiet this afternoon. Everyone was headed back into town, back to work.

  There will be no one to help us in the morning.

  We should be stuck for another couple of days.

  Another couple of days alone. Giving it our very best to pick a winning swimmer.

  I tuck the screwdriver back into my boot, and head back to the tent.

  I was right. Ezra is out cold when I step inside, drifting off in a satisfied haze.

  I smile to myself as I look at him through the dim moonlight.

  He looks so sweet when he’s sleeping.

  The plan was to leave early so Ezra could get back and get some work done today, so I wake before the sun. The tire is entirely flat, and I put it all back together, no one the wiser.

  I’m almost done making breakfast when Ezra wakes up.

  “How’d you sleep?” he asks as he presses a kiss to my temple on his way into the trees to relieve himself.

  “Probably not quite as good as you,” I tease him, smiling knowingly. I put plates out and start dishing up.

  “Hey, you’re the one who can’t keep their hands to themselves,” he chuckles.

  I thought this would be harder. That Ezra might question more. That he’d bring the past up more. That’d I’d have to rely on my memories of someone else.

  But it hasn’t been that difficult. I have the advantage of time. It’s been thirteen years since we were in high school. Ezra doesn’t bring it up all that often. Things are just progressing forward.

  We eat together and Ezra jokes and tells me some story of one of his crewmembers. And then we clean up breakfast and pack all the food into the cooler.

  “How fat were you trying to make me this weekend?” Ezra jokes as he carries the cooler to the truck. “You could have fed a whole army with as much food as you packed.”

  “Hey, better too much than too little,” I joke. I take my time in packing things up.

  And timed just as I planned, I hear Ezra set the cooler in the back of his truck, and then swear.

  “What’s wrong?” I call out. With my back turned to him, I let the smile curl on my lips.

  “The truck has a flat tire,” Ezra says, annoyance and disappointment filling his tone.

  “What?” I say in disbelief as I turn and walk to his side. He’s crouched down, examining the tire. “Did we catch a nail or something?”

  He takes a moment to examine, feeling the inside of it, running his fingers along all the edges. “No, I don’t think so.”

  I let a little panic and concern seep into my voice. “Ez, you’ve got to be to work today. There’s…” I make a show of looking around. “There’s no one left up here but us.”

  No. Wait a second.

  That’s not right.

  Ezra places his hand on my knee, a calm, comforting movement. “Hey, you know me better than that. I’m always prepared.”

  No.

  No, no.

  My stomach sinks.

  Ezra stands and goes to the toolbox mounted across the bed of his truck. He unlocks a compartment and hoists out something black and heavy.

  It’s an emergency roadside kit. The kind that’s a big battery and has jumper cables.

  The kind that has a little air compressor built in.

  “Oh, that’s lucky,” I say dumbly, my mind scrambling to sort through this.

  I plan things.

  Things go according to those plans.

  I don’t like it when my plans change.

  “You want to go deflate the air mattress while I fill this up?” he asks as he hooks the air pump onto the tire and flips it on, filling the air with noise.

  Shit.

  Shit.

  There’s nothing I can say, no excuse I can give for staying now. I can only head back to the tent and begin packing everything up.

  As we take the tent down together when it’s been emptied, my mind is racing as I try to come up with any way to keep us here.

  I can’t slash a tire or we really will be stuck up here, and that will be too obvious.

  I can’t fake an injury, the logical fix to that would be to rush back into town for medical help.

  I can’t injure Ezra, because I would never do that, and again, that would logically take us to a hospital.

  I can’t think of a way out of this.

  So, twenty minutes later, we’re all packed up, and slowly, we head down the rough, dirt road, back toward Snohomish.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Sawyer

  We set our alarms for early Monday morning. Six AM and the alarm clock starts screaming. Through the house, I hear Davis’ phone go off, too. We both get up, and I hear him getting ready as I dress and brush my hair.

  At six-thirty, we climb into the truck and back out of the garage. Davis points us in the direction of Ezra’s house. Just a few minutes pass and we pull down the driveway. Davis backs us along the side of the shop where we’re out of view from the driveway and the front door or garage, but we can still see everything.

  “I’ll keep watch for a while if you want to go back to sleep,” Davis says as he looks around, no evidence that Ezra has returned yet.

  I shake my head. “I’m fine.”

  He doesn’t say anything in response, and together, we keep watch for Ezra’s return.

  We don’t know how far they went to camp, but considering everything we now know about Charity, I’m going to assume it was somewhere fairly far and definately remote. Depending on how early they left this morning, we could be here for a few hours.

  “Aren’t you worried about all this time you’re missing from work?” I ask. “I mean, I know it’s only been a few days, but I have a feeling there are no real days off when you own a quarter of a town.”

  Davis smiles. “You’re right,” he says. “There is no such thing as a day off. But I have an entire office of employees. I have two assistants, two property managers, a finance lady, a maintenance guy, and an i
ntern.”

  “Are you trying to show off?” I ask.

  “Doesn’t hurt to know exactly who you’re dealing with.”

  I can see why Davis has a reputation. He has a lot of power, and he knows how to flex it. I can see why some people really don’t like him and wouldn’t trust him.

  But I appreciate his honesty. I admire the way he just knows who he is.

  “So, you planning to try to get your old job back when we sort this all out?” Davis asks.

  I look out the window, my eyes fixing on one random tree. I shake my head. “I have no idea how I’m going to piece my life back together, honestly.”

  Together, we watch, waiting for Ezra to return home.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Ezra drops me off at my rented house and helps me carry everything inside.

  “You sure you don’t need to shower all that camp smoke off with me?” I say, teasing and sultry.

  “As great as that sounds, babe, I’m headed straight into the job,” he says. I hold on to his hand, but he walks backward toward the door.

  “Hey,” I say, pulling him to a stop. I rock up on my tiptoes and wrap my arms around his neck. “This was the perfect weekend. Thanks for going with me.”

  “It really was great,” Ezra says, smiling as he kisses me. He grips my shirt hungrily and I take one step back, aiming for the bedroom, but he pulls out with a laugh. “I really do have to get going, Sawyer. I’ve got so much work to catch up on.”

  “Oh, fine,” I say with a pout, sticking my lower lip out.

  “I’ll see you later,” he says with a smile and steps out the door.

  When he’s gone, I aim for the shower.

  Our days are ticking. My most fertile day was yesterday. But I’d really like to get in two more chances at it today.

  So, I wash up. I do my hair in soft waves. I perfect my makeup in the mirror, smiling back at myself with Sawyer’s face.

  I don a cute salmon-colored dress.

  I head to the grocery store and get all the fixings for Ezra’s favorite lunch. I head home and put it all together, and at twelve-thirty, I get in Sawyer’s car and aim for Ezra’s job site.

  It’s across town, back behind the main strip of commercial buildings. He’s been working on five different homes, all of them at different stages. But this one is at the earliest stage.

  When I pull up, it’s full steam ahead. There have to be four different crews here, all trying to get stuff done, all stuffed onto a half-acre lot. There are people everywhere. I take the only spot available to park in, scanning the crowd for Ezra.

  I find him standing only twenty feet away, looking over the plans for this new house, talking to one of the crewmembers. I’m close enough, I can hear all the details of this bathroom plumbing that’s going to be an issue and how the roof pitch is going to have to be adjusted if the owner really wants to add in that loft into the attic.

  “Hey, boss, can I talk to you for a minute?”

  One of the younger crewmembers walks up to Ezra. From his expression, he looks nervous.

  “Yeah, what’s up, Daniel?” Ezra asks, dismissing the first worker.

  I pause in the car, holding the basket in my lap.

  “So, uh, I don’t want to stir drama and put my nose in business where it doesn’t belong,” he says, not even looking Ezra in the eye. “But I know that you and Sawyer just got back together and you’ve been real happy about it.”

  “Just say what you’ve got to say, Daniel,” Ezra says, and I appreciate the exasperation in his tone. He’s as sick of this townie drama as I am.

  “K, well, you know I live not too far from you and that I like to ride my motorcycle on the weekends,” Daniel continues. “But I saw…” He hesitates again, looking around to make sure none of the other crew members are listening to this juicy news he’s about to tell the boss. “I saw Sawyer coming in and out of your brother’s house all weekend. She…she was spending nights there, too.”

  Cold hard dread drops into the pit of my stomach. It hits with an explosion that sends all my limbs numb.

  “Nah, not possible,” Ezra says with a confident shake of his head. “Sawyer was with me all weekend. We went camping over two hours away. Just cause my brother’s dating some blonde doesn’t mean it’s Sawyer.”

  Daniel opens and closes his mouth, a confused expression crossing his face. “But…she, I mean, she looks just like Sawyer.”

  “Not all blondes look the same, Daniel,” Ezra says with a smile. He reaches over and smacks Daniel’s arm before he takes two steps forward.

  But he stops then when he looks up, and there is Davis.

  “Hey,” Ezra says with a smile. “Speak of the devil.”

  “Ez, I need to talk to you,” Davis says, and his expression is dark and hard.

  “It’s going to have to wait till tonight,” Ezra says, taking another step forward. “I am slammed today. Hey, uh, are you seeing someone?”

  Davis hesitates, and I can see the gears turning in his head. “Yeah,” he answers after too long of a pause. “I am.”

  “About time,” Ezra says, his tone light and teasing.

  “Ezra, seriously, I need to talk to you,” Davis says, following after his brother. “This is important.”

  “Look, I’m sorry,” Ezra says, not stopping. “But like I said, today is crazy. It’s going to have to wait until I get done with work today.”

  He walks off and Davis stops there, looking after his brother. He stands there for a moment, and I can practically feel the debate going on in his head. But finally, with a deep breath, he turns and walks back to a black truck.

  The passenger seat is empty.

  I curse, over and over, as I slide down in my seat and watch him pull away from the curb and down the road.

  Sawyer has somehow gotten out of the bunker. And everything in me knows that Davis had something to do with it.

  Was there something I missed? Were they previously connected? Why did Sawyer really call Davis before I took her?

  And how the hell did he ever find her?

  When I’m sure he’s far enough he can’t see me, I sit back up, catching sight of his truck before it turns right down another road. I straighten, making sure no one saw me, and pull out onto the road.

  I follow at a safe distance. I can’t see details of him, so there’s no way he can see details of me. We roll through one street, two. And then we turn onto the main road and I watch as he pulls into the small parking lot of a pristinely renovated building with a sign that reads Knox Properties.

  I stop down the road a little bit, just where I can see.

  Davis parks the truck, climbs out, and walks inside.

  He’s an immediate threat. From the look in his eyes, I know he was planning to tell Ezra whatever he knows. He’s probably in there plotting my demise right now.

  Sorry, Ezra, I think to myself. As much as I care about you and as much as I know you love your brother, he’s become too much of a liability to our happily ever after.

  I don a big, wide hat, the one I planned to sport for our cute picnic. I slip on some sunglasses and get out, going to the trunk. I grab the cutters and hide them in my oversized bag.

  I take a casual stroll down the sidewalk, searching for security cameras. There’s one pointing off the front of the building, toward the main entrance. There are two across the street, but from their angle, I can tell they won’t capture the parking lot.

  There is one camera aimed right at the parking lot.

  But it’s low.

  I take a swing at it with the cutters, being careful not to get in the frame. It sparks and then hits the ground with a crack. I’m careful not to touch it, I simply kick it across the parking lot into the overly landscaped garden beds.

  There. Problem number one solved.

  If I were the real Sawyer, I’d probably care about how dirty I’m getting this dress. But it’s a necessary part in getting access to what I need.

  Snip. Snip. Snip.


  I calculate the velocity at which he’ll travel. If he leaves when the main road is fairly quiet, I doubt he’ll even try to stop as he pulls out of the parking lot. This main road is a forty-five mile per hour road. It runs for a few miles before you leave the city boundaries. He’ll have to turn off somewhere.

  I wish I could guarantee he’ll be traveling faster.

  But this is what I have to work with.

  Eager for a little more insurance, I climb under the hood of the car, and do a little rearranging; ensuring that when he crashes into something, there will be a nice, fiery explosion.

  When the deed is done, I snap a picture of his license plate so I can use it to look up his address and head back to the car.

  I can’t imagine anywhere else that Sawyer would be. If she hasn’t gone to the police yet, she could only be at Davis’ house. I thank the crewmember that gave me that information. It makes my job much easier.

  You can find so much information on the web these days. With a quick search and three minutes of investigation, I have Davis’ home address.

  I have to work quickly, though. I need to find the closest veterinarian, but preferably one outside of city boundaries.

  And I have to hope that I can do it in time before Davis gets very far.

  Shit. I don’t like working in a hurry like this.

  It’s messy. It leaves so much room for error.

  But when my hand is forced, I’ll do whatever it takes.

  I pull back onto the road, and lay on the gas.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Sawyer

  It’s been a frustrating morning.

  First, Ezra never came back to his house. After sitting there clear until noon, we finally came to the conclusion that he’d gone straight to work. When his phone continued to go straight to voicemail, we had to take a guess that it was dead.

  And Davis suddenly decided to be all protective and cautious. He made me wait at the house while he went and tracked Ezra down to warn him. Only when Davis finally found him, Ezra wouldn’t give him the time of day.