Broken Bonds

by Karen Harper

  * * *

  After Char dropped off the arrow at the sheriff’s office—Gabe was out on a domestic dispute call—she headed for Grant Mason’s home, where Kate was overseeing the dig of an ancient Adena mound, practically outside her fiancé’s back door. Kate was always good at thinking her way through things, and Char knew she could use some help.

  As usual, there were several trucks and a car parked in the loop of driveway before the large, handsome house. The front door was locked, so rather than ring the bell, Char walked around back.

  “Hi, Kaitlyn. Is Kate here?” Char asked Kate’s right-hand woman, Kaitlyn Blake. The grad student resembled Kate in coloring, in personality—even in name. Sometimes Char was felt slightly jealous of Kaitlyn since Kate seemed like a big sister to her. But, just like Grant Mason’s love, Kaitlyn’s friendship had helped Kate get through some recent betrayals and hard times.

  “Oh, hi, Char. She’s sifting out some debris for teeth and bone fragments. And probably muttering under her breath about how much the undergrads working here have to learn, or about the cave-in, which set things so far back. I’ll go get her.”

  Char sat on a patio chair and watched the busy scene until Kate appeared, looking dusty and sweaty but happy. “We’ve got a complete female skeleton, the first one!” Kate greeted her, clapping dirt off her hands. “And we’ve found what I think are the charred remains of a young male, who was probably a slave sacrifice. So, you aren’t heading back out to try to face down the person I’d like most to sacrifice—Bright Star Monson?”

  “No. I’m going to give that a little time, but I am determined to talk to Grace alone somehow—when we’re not being spied on. Kate, I went out with Matt Rowan last night and—”

  “Great! That’s worth sharing,” she said, beaming at her. Big sister Kate had always worried that her two younger sisters wouldn’t be happy because of their tough childhood when Tess was taken and then Dad left them.

  “Just listen for a minute. Matt and I were standing outside the door of my cabin...” Char’s voice trailed off. Well, she might as well just spit it out.

  But before she could continue, Kate spoke. “You moved in. Okay, I didn’t think you should, but you’re a big girl now.”

  “Thank you! Anyhow, someone shot an arrow into the door right between us.”

  “What? On top of his almost going off the cliff? Are you okay? You look all right. I’d hug you if I wasn’t a mess. Who was it? Who did it?”

  “We don’t know or Gabe would probably have him—or her—under arrest. I thought I’d bounce some ideas off you if you have a second.”

  “Sure. Shoot—I mean talk.”

  Char explained about Henry Hanson being out hunting with a bow when she visited his family and that he might be angry with her for interfering in his daughter’s life. She figured he could be a stalker of people as well as game, maybe an abuser of his wife, at the very least. She mentioned the archery range at Lake Azure and the fact someone could still have been after Matt, not her. She told her they saw two deer shortly after the shot, so it could have been a hunter’s arrow that went awry. But she couldn’t bring herself to mention how it seemed to her that Matt had blinked his lights as if it might be a signal to someone—nor how he, like her own family, didn’t want her to stay in the cabin, wanted her to move down to an empty house at Lake Azure and had really pushed for that after the arrow hit.

  “So you went back to Tess’s,” Kate said when Char took a breath. “Told Gabe what happened and slept there.”

  “No, Matt insisted on sleeping on the couch and nothing happened—you know what I mean.”

  Kate rolled her eyes. “You know, you left out Bright Star’s possibly being ticked at all of us, but especially you after you discovered that peephole. The Hear Ye faithful are supposed to be peace-loving folk, but I wouldn’t put it past him to have weapons to ‘smite’ his enemy. You did see those Bible quotes about hunting on the walls of that room, didn’t you—could he be hunting people?”

  Char’s stomach went into free fall. “I saw them but didn’t read them, except for the one extolling himself. Hunting quotes—from the Bible?”

  “Right. You’ve heard that the devil can cite scripture for his own purpose, haven’t you?”

  “Can you recall what the wall plaques said?”

  “I looked them up. Just a sec, and I’ll get what I printed out. It was a pretty easy search.”

  While Kate darted inside, Char got up to pace. Too much was happening too fast, and she couldn’t just keep running to her sisters. She’d like to run to Matt but could she trust him? At least the way they met could hardly be a setup.

  Kate rushed back out with a single sheet of paper. “You know, we found a couple of intact Adena arrows in the tomb,” she said as she passed the paper to Char. “That’s apropos of nothing, just crazed archaeologist trivia. Check out that first quote from the book of Jeremiah.”

  Char read aloud.

  “I will send for many hunters and they shall hunt from every mountain and hill, and out of the holes of the rocks.”

  “Sounds like this terrain around here, doesn’t it?” Kate asked. She leaned in, looking over Char’s shoulder and pointed at the next one, from Psalms 140. She read it out.

  “Let not a slanderer be established in the earth. Let evil hunt the violent man to overthrow him.”

  “Creepy, huh? Bright Star probably considers all of us slanderers if we don’t support him and his lunatic ways.”

  “Or if we try to take someone like Grace and Lee away from him.”

  Char read the last one from Lamentations aloud.

  “They tracked our steps so that we could not walk in our streets. Our end was near, our days were over, for our end had come.”

  She shook her head. “Kate, I agree he’s crazy, but I can’t see him—or one of his hunters—whoever that would be—stalking me. They wouldn’t even know where to find me.”

  “I just want you to include him in the mix—and be careful. Most of all, don’t even think of returning to see Grace alone.”

  Both of them jumped when a young man’s voice called out. “Kate, we’ve got a new find!”

  “Well, back to the kind of hunting I do,” she said. “Listen, you and Matt Rowan have a standing invitation to have dinner here with us. Just give me warning so I can look presentable and get food on the table. And once again, you be careful about more than just wayward arrows. I’ll just bet Matt’s the kind who could sweep a girl off her feet. And, if anything strange happens at the cabin, you come here or go back to Tess’s.”

  Char hugged Kate despite the fact she looked as if she’d emerged from a coal mine or had taken a fracking job around here. “I’ll be careful,” she promised. “Can I take these Bible quotes with me?”

  “Sure. But don’t let them get to you.”

  Or anyone get to me, Char thought as Kate headed back to her dig.

  8

  Both Matt and Char were on high alert as they drove up onto Pinecrest Mountain midafternoon. He hunched forward in the passenger seat of her truck, his head turning to check all directions. “You okay?” he asked her more than once.

  “With you riding shotgun.”

  “Sorry if my gun makes you nervous.”

  “I don’t need that to make me nervous. So, are we even going to mention to the McKitricks that their cousins are going to get a big fracking contract? I suppose they’d have to know already.”

  “Let’s see if they bring it up first. You have a specific task here, and so do I.”

  “Matt, it’s never that easy or cut-and-dried with mountain folk. Whenever I think that way—I’ll just focus on my job, get in and get out—I get involved in their lives. I’m just hoping they don’t have any extra squirrel stew around.”

  Matt appreciated that she wasn’t
dwelling on the incident with the arrow. It was in police custody now. Gabe said he’d send Jace to a sporting goods store out on the highway to ask if they knew of locals who did their own fletching, because it looked distinctively made, maybe handmade. Then he planned to send it to the BCI in London, Ohio, to have it tested for DNA and fingerprints. As if—even if they found some—it would be a match to the independent loners around Cold Creek who could fire a crossbow with such precision. Gabe had even wondered if the shooter had meant to miss the two of them, but what would be the message from that?

  Although Matt kept an eye on the road above and behind them, he was also watching Char. Unfortunately, they had to pass Coyote Rock, where he’d almost gone off the cliff. As they neared it, she was biting her lower lip, frowning, concentrating. Even so, she looked good to him. She had a natural beauty that would wear well over the years. But why was he thinking like that? And right now?

  “I do see the coyote-shaped rock formation,” she said. “You know, in Navajo land, their tradition says that coyote is a hero who learned hogan building from the beaver people. All the animals are personified in their legends.”

  “The humped beaver houses probably resemble hogans, so that’s how they made the connection. Around here, like coyotes and wolves, beavers are making a comeback. Royce and I went fishing last year in Cold Creek near where the old Hear Ye sect used to live, and I saw beavers and a small dam they’d made. They were actually changing the course of the creek, forming a pond.”

  “I don’t know why they call it Cold Creek when it’s really a river. You know, those beavers are probably near where the Fencers live. I remember from my childhood how much Joe Fencer used to love to trek around the area. He’d show up way down at our place, and Mom would give him lunch sometimes when he must have been no more than nine or ten. Anyway, he helped the search teams who went looking down by the river for Tess when she was kidnapped.”

  “I’ll take that as a character reference on him. I’m probably going to interview him tomorrow about filling Woody’s shoes as head Lake Azure groundskeeper.”

  “But if he’s coming into a lot of money...”

  “His wife thinks he’ll jump at it. She says he’ll miss farming his family’s homestead and loves to work outside. That’s something I hadn’t thought of, that even with big bucks rolling in, the people ousted could miss their old place, even if they move way up in the world.”

  “Like the Fencers could buy a house or condo at Lake Azure? How would your well-educated, well-heeled clientele there take to that?”

  “Yet to happen, but it would be interesting. Okay, I’m pretty sure that’s the turnoff,” he said, pointing.

  “If the McKitricks live up here, that’s just too far for little Jemmie to make the bus. I wish the consolidated school bus could just come up a little higher, but where would it turn around? Look. Chimney smoke. It must be right here. No dogs this time, so that’s unusual.”

  “Woody said he gave all but one that was Jemmie’s pet away when Sam was gone from local hunting for so long—when he was a sniper hunting the Taliban in Afghanistan. Sam lost his temper over that, Woody said, but I can sympathize with Sam. And I can’t imagine being a sniper, waiting patiently, taking the right shot...”

  She parked and they got out. Matt left his gun under the seat in Char’s locked truck. She hefted her purse, big as a small suitcase, and the sack of winter coats while he carried the two other big bags of clothes and groceries for the family. They came to a halt when a man stepped out onto the roofed porch with a rifle, but held sideways, not pointed at them. He had a beard and shaggy, collar-length blond hair and walked with a limp and hunched shoulders. He wore an army camouflage jacket, pants and boots.

  “You got business?” his gruff voice demanded.

  “Are you Woody’s son, Sam?” Matt asked. “I’m his friend and employer, Matt Rowan, from Lake Azure at Cold Creek, and this is my friend Charlene Lockwood.”

  “Oh, right. Heard of you. Couldn’t go to the funeral. Had to keep watch here. Look out where you walk, in case there’s a mine. But I think you’re okay. I know where most of them’s hid.”

  Matt heard Char give a little gasp. “He doesn’t mean old coal mines,” she whispered out of the side of her mouth. “Hi. Glad to meet you, Sam,” she called out. “When you missed the funeral, you were watching for what?” she asked as they walked closer. You might know, Matt thought, she wasn’t going to let him handle this strange man.

  “In the woods,” Sam said, gesturing in a wide circle with his free hand. “The enemy. Taliban.”

  Damn, Matt thought. How unstable did his PTSD make him with that gun?

  Before Char could ask another question, they heard a boy’s high voice from inside the house. “Pa? Pa? You out here?”

  Jemmie stepped out onto the roofed porch with a beagle and an older woman at his heels. Matt recognized Woody’s widow, Adela.

  “Why, Mr. Rowan, you come right in. Wind’s cold today,” she called to them. “Sam, promise you’ll set right here with Jemmie while I talk to our guests. Right nice to have guests. Beholden to you for what you give us of Woody’s past salary, we sure are. And this is your assistant?”

  “Mrs. McKitrick, this is Charlene Lockwood, a friend of mine.” Matt hoped the final say-so on Jemmie’s schooling wouldn’t rest with Sam but with his mother or grandmother. As the three of them went into the house, he added, “I know Woody had big hopes his only grandson would get to school and learn a trade, so Charlene would like to talk about that. But here, these things are for you along with more money Woody had coming. Sorry they never found his coonskin cap you wanted for Jemmie. It must have come off when he fell and ended up who knows where.”

  Matt and Char just put their sacks of goods down when Adela said nothing. She only nodded and pulled out chairs for them around a big pine table with a marred, rough surface. She poured them mugs of coffee that was so strong it looked like tar. Char shot Matt a wide-eyed glance as if to ask, Is she offended? Won’t she take the things? But then they saw that the old woman’s shoulders were heaving. She was crying without a sound, maybe over the old coonskin cap. Finally, as she was still turned away to get biscuits and some sort of berry jam from the counter, Matt saw her wipe her wet face with the palms of her hands.

  “Can’t thank you all enough,” she said, her voice breaking as she set the things on the table. “Help us get through the winter. We have real trouble keeping Sam to home, even at night, though he’s not fit to hold a job and Jemmie’s too young. We keep the bullets hid, but I’m still afraid he’ll hurt someone. Sam’s wife, Mandy Lee, she took all this about Sam pretty hard, left for a while, gone down to stay with her brother’s kin, Joe Fencer’s family. Jemmie missing her something fierce.”

  Well, that answered that, Matt thought. If Mandy Lee was living with the Fencers right now, despite the fact he hadn’t seen her at La Maison last night with them, Adela and Sam must know all about the fracking bonanza. Maybe Mandy Lee’s brother, Joe, would help the McKitricks, get Sam more help at a VA hospital or clinic. What a tragedy that old Adela and young Jemmie had to cope with the sick man without Sam’s wife around.

  “Mrs. McKitrick,” Char said, her voice calm and friendly, “is there any way that Jemmie could get down to the Coyote Rock bus stop to go to school? Like Matt said, I’ll bet that’s what his granddad would want for him, to get an education. I heard he was going to school and doing very well but not lately.”

  “Well, see,” she said, sinking in the chair across the table from them, “Woody, he used to drop him off at the school bus stop on his way down to work, pick him up later. Sam can’t be ’lowed to drive the way he is, or we’re feared he’d be goin’ off, thinkin’ he’s in the army again. Mandy Lee, she took the truck, takes me shopping sometimes, ’cause Sam only got him an old beat-up one now and I got the keys hid. And her and me—we had us a
tough discussion ’bout not tying him down to his bed or chair. He’s so strong, gets angry like all git out. Like I said, we hid all the bullets, so he got him an empty gun.”

  The whole situation depressed Matt. Just before they left, when Adela wasn’t looking, he put the plain envelope with money in it on the table. He had to admire these fiercely bold and independent people, despite the fact their isolation worked against them. And he had to admire Char for what she did among them and, in a way, how much she was like them.

  * * *

  The man was, Char thought as she peeked out her kitchen window, the second most forbidding-looking man she’d seen today. Sam McKitrick won first place, but this guy was a close second. Dressed all in black, he wore his raven hair slicked back, and his dark eyebrows seemed to meld into one over his piercing eyes as he scanned her small yard. Oh, he was kind of a chauffeur, now opening the back door of the vehicle as a silver-haired man got out. They both looked out of place in the driveway of her cabin. Her best guess was that they might be Royce Flemming and his assistant Matt had mentioned, but why would they be here?

  She stood back from the window so they wouldn’t see her staring out. The older man looked elegant. Whoever they were, what could be their business? It gave her extra empathy for the mountain families she’d visited who must wonder the same thing when she—or with Matt, as earlier this morning—got out of a strange vehicle and approached their house.

  She tugged the hem of her sweatshirt down over her jeans and headed for the door just as the three raps resounded. Should she just open the kitchen window to talk to them, to be sure—to be safe? With all that had happened lately, she really couldn’t be too careful....