Hell Bent

by Arlene Knowell

  “Hey!” Pat interjected. “I disagree. I’m very picky about who I let have me.”

  Mindy couldn’t believe her ears. She didn’t even want to guess the number of women who’d helped him carve notches into his bedpost. “And if I didn’t know you so well, I might actually believe that.”

  He pulled her into a playful headlock scuffing her hair before releasing her. She instantly reacted with another elbow, then a desperate attempt to correct her hair. She didn’t like that Pat was laughing at her, teasing her with a poking finger to the ribs. “Come on admit it. You’re hot for him.” He teased.

  She admitted that Gunny Newhope looked scrumptious standing there on the sidewalk holding his clipboard. In fact, he even looked good in cammies and she never dreamed she’d think that of any man. The last thing that she would ever be willing to confirm to her brothers was that she was hot for the super, smoking-hot military policeman. She nodded but kept her eyes straight ahead, “You’re crazy.”

  “He sure would look strange at the dinner table with blond hair.” Pete pushed on a pair of stylish shades. “But at least he has brown eyes.”

  If Mindy was thinking clearly she would have caught the loaded statement, but she was still so wrapped up in Gunny Newhope that she never saw it coming. Before she could stop herself, she said, “His eyes are blue.” She turned her head to catch one last glimpse of him before Pete drove away.

  “Really, now?” Pat pinched her playfully on the arm. “Did you happen to get his ID number off his dog tags?”

  “Stop it,” she warned, fighting impossibly against the laugh that finally escaped her.

  “Maybe you just happened to notice how many caps he had on his teeth,” Pete said as he joined the teasing.

  Her face blushed red. The twins were top notch spies. Pat and Pete wouldn’t let her rest when it came to Gunny Newhope. They’d harassed her in the past for weeks about a man named Jack Hampton. He was a young sergeant Pat had met in the mess hall. Pat had conned Hampton into meeting Mindy without informing him she was hell bent against having a Marine or any other military man in her life. She admitted that he was very handsome, but the fact that he was a Marine coupled with the fact that he was obsessed with heavy metal music brought the relationship to an abrupt end before it ever started.

  “I cannot believe that the two of you acted like a couple of ten-year-olds back there,” she snarled. “You embarrassed the fool out of me.”

  “You’re avoiding the subject.” Pete added with wide to

  the point eyes. “You’re hot for the guy. There is nothing wrong with that, he seems like an okay dude.”

  “Can we change the subject?” She pressed a palm toward each of the twins. “If you will remember we came here because someone is trying to kidnap me.”

  “Oh hell, Mindy, we were just trying to help you hook a good man.” Pat reached to meet Pete’s high five over her head.

  She swatted their hands. “Act your age. I don’t need a good man. At least I don’t need that kind of good man,” she snapped as she straightened her shirt. “Why do you not understand that I don’t want to live the military bit my entire life?”

  “You don’t know anything else, Mindy,” Pete insisted, the jolly tone of his voice dissolving.

  “And nobody in our family ever will until somebody jumps ship.” She folded her arms across her chest.

  Pat turned the blowers full on her. “You were heatin’ up over him, I saw you."

  She wanted to laugh. She’d certainly been caught drooling over the cookies in the jar. Any woman who wasn’t blind would have reacted the same way to the MP named Shane Newhope. In fact, if he was anything other than military she would be on him like a barnacle on a ship.

  “He was a nice looking man, yes,” she agreed. “With big blue eyes, but if you’d taken as much interest in what he was writing as you were in getting me hooked up with him, then you both would have noticed he was wearing a wedding band.”

  Of course, it wasn’t true, but it would be enough to get the matchmaking twins off her case for another day.

  Two

  Mindy wasn’t excited about the twins being gone. But sometimes their jobs took them away. It happened that this week they were both gone at the same time. Pat was away on a high priority secret mission while Pete was in the middle of another Hell Week.

  She enjoyed the security of being at home. It wasn’t very often that a girl could lie down in her bed and know that a Navy SEAL and a Force Recon Marine were in the beds across the hall. Peter and Patrick Austin, Mindy hated to admit, were probably every woman’s wet dream. Their dark hair and eyes were like lures to a hungry fish in a small pond. They were a couple of tall drinks of water, standing in excess of six feet, with attitudes and confidence to match. Flirting was a finely tuned art for the twins, and they rarely failed to successfully extract their female prey from the hoards of willing victims.

  Pete and Pat would die for each other without a second thought. They had also battled each other for the past thirty-two years to gain the title of the biggest bad-ass of the Austin family.

  Mindy’s great, great grandfather had fought in the Civil War. Her great grandfather was a World War I hero, who saved the lives of nine men and lived to tell the story. Grandpa Austin followed suit as a Marine Drill Instructor in World War II. Their father kept up the military tradition by becoming an Army Green Beret medic.

  Christmas at the Austin house wasn’t about the football games on television, or the presents under the tree, it was about who had the greatest war story to tell. The twin’s, even with their Special Forces status, still faltered in the war story event, at least until the attack on the Pentagon and World Trade Centers in 2001.

  ~ * ~

  Mindy hesitated to answer the ringing phone, terrified that it would be the stalker. It had been almost three weeks with no activity and excluding the occasional uneasy feeling of someone’s stare, her life was getting back on track.

  She answered and was pleasantly surprised to hear the voice of Gunny Shane Newhope. Of course, he wasn’t calling for the reason she’d hoped. He was just going through some old reports making follow up calls. Just her luck, she’d met a man who’d shaken her to the core and he’d needed a report to remember her. It didn’t matter anyway, she wasn’t about to get herself trapped in the military life.

  “I still don’t have enough evidence to turn the case over to NCIS. I have requested that they get his phone records. The problem is that they don’t consider it a criminal case until there has actually been a crime. So you are stuck with me for the time being. If you have any problems just give me a call.”

  “Thank you.” She placed her hand over her heart. “I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  “Well, in case it does, don’t hesitate to call. We’ll get someone on it immediately.”

  Part of her was disappointed, the part of her that found him so stunningly attractive she couldn’t function in his presence. She hoped the offer to call if she needed him was assurance he’d come running. Considering he’d said they’d get someone one on it immediately, he might or might not be that someone.

  ~ * ~

  The phone rang again the following evening. Mindy reached for the phone without hesitation. There’d been no clue the stalker was going to follow through on his threat. “Hello.”

  An ominous male voice whispered, “I’m going to get you.”

  “Who is this?” Her bold tone belied the instant frantic pace of her heart.

  An evil Dracula-like laugh filled the phone. “You’ll see

  soon enough.”

  Mindy dropped the phone when the line went dead, and scrambled for her cell phone. She punched in the numbers for the MP station and waited impatiently while the line connected.

  “Gunnery Sergeant Newhope, may I help you?”

  “This is Mindy Austin,” she said, holding her composure. “A man just threatened me on the phone.”

  “Threatened you how?” he asked, his v
oice smooth and confident.

  “He said he was going to get me.”

  “Are you home alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you happen to get the number he was calling from?” he asked.

  She turned her attention toward the phone receiver still lying in the floor. Her hand wrapped around the cool plastic, lifted it and pressed the review button near the small screen on the back of it. “Unknown caller.”

  “I suspected that,” his voice grunted over the phone.

  “Isn’t there something you can do?” she asked, desperation finally rearing its head in the sound of her voice.

  “Well, Ms. Austin, being totally honest, that call could have been from anyone. I’m a military police officer. I can’t just come into the civilian world to investigate a phone call.”

  Her eyes flowed over the living room as fear climbed through her body like a slow rising tide. Someone had just threatened to kidnap her and the man on the phone wasn’t offering the help he’d promised yesterday. She was alone, and she hadn’t realized exactly how alone until this moment. “I see.”

  “I’m sorry that I can’t be of more help.” his voice admitted with a note of sadness.

  “That’s okay, at least one of my brothers should be home in a few days.” she explained, hoping that the fear she could hear in her own voice wasn’t as noticeable to him. She understood he couldn’t run out and arrest someone based upon her word, but something told her that before it was all over he would wish he had.

  ~ * ~

  The next night when her phone rang she waited for

  the caller to speak into the answering machine before she grabbed the phone to talk with Gunny Newhope. They spoke for a few minutes. It made her angry with herself that she couldn’t carry on a simple conversation with him without her hormones roaring into overdrive. He was all business, which bothered her even more. She wanted him to want her more than she’d ever wanted or needed anything in her life. He told her to call if she had any more problems and the MPs would take care of everything. She pursed her lips in disgust and shook her head. Suddenly she wanted to get the attention of a testosterone filled, gung ho military man and she couldn’t. Sometimes life just left her wondering what would happen next.

  She thanked him again, a click indicating he’d disconnected from the line. What did she expect? He wasn’t likely to change his perception of her overnight. Obviously he was as interested in her as he would have been a fresh case of the clap. Her brothers had assured her that she could have him, but of course she didn’t want him or at least she didn’t want them to know it. Excluding his stunning blue eyes, hard body, fearless grit and perfect smile, there wasn’t anything special about him. He would be easy enough to forget. The throbbing sensations that came with the thought of him, however, might take a little longer.

  ~ * ~

  She’d had an uneasy feeling since the threatening phone call the day before, but she figured that human nature played a part in that. The front door was locked, she was sure of it. It wouldn’t hurt to check once more. The low shag carpet was cool and soft on her bare feet. The deadbolt was active, as was the standard lock on the knob. She turned toward the short hallway and nodded in disgust. It was senseless to search her brothers’ rooms again, there wasn’t anyone in them. The windows were all locked, she’d checked three times.

  A wary smile teased her lips, because their apartment seemed so tiny when they were all home. Now that she was alone, it rivaled the largest building in the world. She felt tiny, and as the streetlight outside the front window flickered, she felt increasingly smaller.

  A noise, in the kitchen, caught her attention. It was an

  insignificant sound, most likely the pages of the hunting magazine flipping from the breeze of the ceiling fan. It was also enough to scare her crazy. She crept toward the swinging door that divided the two rooms, and hesitated to push through it. What if he was there, waiting for her?

  The laminated wood was cool and smooth to the touch. Oddly enough, she’d never noticed that before. Until this moment it hadn’t mattered. She sighed with relief to push into the kitchen and find the magazine pages in mid-flip. If her father could see her now he’d disown her.

  She resolved herself to the fact that she was alone, settled into her bed and to her surprise slept soundly through the night. The following evening, however, things took a drastic turn. While lying in her bed a strange sound echoed through the house. She looked around the room, her imagination running wild. She was certain there was no one in the apartment, she had checked. There was no closet unopened, and no monsters beneath the beds. She took a deep breath and attempted to gather her composure. She had to stop acting like a little girl.

  The sound grew louder. Something was scratching on her bedroom window. She stared at the window, mere inches away. There was no mistaking the sound, it was fingernails against the glass. Her heart thudded into a dangerously fast pace. She pulled the covers closer to her face, and then realized how senseless the gesture had been. The crisp white cotton sheets weren’t going to protect her from the bad guy. That only worked on television. She slid from the bed without a sound. She wrapped her hand around the gun on her night stand and settled against the wall to listen. She sighed when the scratching stopped. Relief rushed over her, and she released a slow steady breath that she’d held far too long.

  She almost jumped out of her skin when the sound returned, this time at the front window. Someone was prying at the latch. The window was locked, she had checked it herself. 10:15 glowed red from her alarm clock next to her bed. She reached for her cell phone and remembered that she’d had it with her when she’d gone to check the kitchen window for the third time tonight. She felt like a trapped animal, unable to summon help, and no one she could depend on even if she did. She scrambled through the apartment by memory, gun firmly in hand as she fumbled for the house phone. She dialed Shane Newhope’s number slowly, not trusting her shaking hands to key in the numbers correctly. On second thought, she clicked the receiver back into the cradle. She couldn’t call him in the middle of the night, on a hunch, that Sanback was outside her door. She’d already called for help once. Newhope had answered the call, but offered nothing more than a doubtful voice.

  For almost five minutes there was no activity and she hoped they’d given up. The sound of someone picking the lock echoing throughout the room proved otherwise. She gripped the gun tighter, tip-toeing toward the window. If this was someone playing a joke then it was a deadly one. She was too scared to play stupid games. She moved her left hand from the gun and reached nervously toward the blinds. She wasn’t sure what she’d do if it was Sanback. The part of her that listened, as her father taught, wanted to just start shooting. The part of her that valued human life, however, was scared stupid that it would come down to Sanback’s life or her own.

  She craned her neck and found the dark figure outside her door. If it was possible her heart pounded even harder, painfully hard. She couldn’t tell who it was, but he was trying to break into her house and it shouldn’t matter. The man outside the door nodded in what looked like frustration and arched his head back as if relieving the tension from his neck. When her eyes rested upon Sanback, her heart nearly stopped. She backed toward the phone, gun pointed rigidly toward the door. Again she keyed in the number, her heart pounding as adrenalin coursed through her veins like liquid fire.

  A strange voice answered the phone but that didn’t stop her. “My name is Mindy Austin. Gunny Newhope said you would help me.”

  “He’s right here, ma’am, I’ll just let you talk to him.”

  “Please hurry,” she said, her voice level but desperate.

  “Gunnery Sergeant Newhope.”

  “This is Mindy Austin,” she whispered.

  “Ms. Austin, are you okay?” His voice divulged an uneasiness that made Mindy’s heart pound even harder.

  Mindy explained that Sanback was attempting to pick

  the front door loc
k. Luckily for her, the double deadbolts were keeping him at bay. But the stalker was determined to gain access into her home. The fear was evident in her voice, even if she was trying to paste on the strong face her father had always demanded.

  “Have you called 911?” he asked.

  “No.” she whispered. “I called you.”

  “Listen to me Ms. Austin,” Newhope’s voice ordered. “Call 911, in the event they may have an officer closer than I am to your location. I am on my way to your house.”

  She pressed her finger onto the telephone disconnect button then released it. Her nerves were so jangled she was barely able to dial for emergency help. She didn’t care who got there first, the civilian or the military police. If she had her way she’d rather one of her brothers come home. That wasn’t likely to happen.

  She laid the phone receiver onto the floor. The 911 operator had asked her to stay on the phone, but she wasn’t about to stand ten feet from the front door and wait for a kidnapper to come crashing inside. She wiped the sweat from her forehead with her upper arm, making sure that she never lost grip of her gun. Quickly she backed into her bedroom, and wondered where she should hide. She could get under the bed, but she’d have a lousy shooting advantage if it became necessary. In the corner between the dresser and the wall was an option, but he could easily get his hands on her there, especially if the gun misfired. The closet was her best option, and she so hated small dark places.

  ~ * ~

  Mindy settled into the corner of her closet, praying and listening. Her breath echoed in the darkness while she struggled to regain her composure or give herself away. She hoped that she was hidden well enough that he wouldn’t find her, but common sense told her that the closet would be the first place he’d look. The clothes, hanging around her, brushed against her face as she trembled in fear.

  When the front door opened, she swallowed hard. She was about to find out what she was really made of. She tried to listen against her heart pounding in her ears. She laid the gun into her lap for a few seconds, her hands were starting to slip. Taking a deep breath, she clasped her sweaty hands together and hoped her nerves would settle. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Slow down, slow down. Her fear wasn’t of firing the gun. She’d learned long ago not to pick it up unless she was willing to use it. Her fear was that the gun might misfire, leaving her to deal with the intruder with no other weapon. Pat had told her to take her pistol to the gun shop, but she hadn’t listened. The gun had misfired while Pat was target shooting. The big bad Marine made a huge deal out of it. Of course, the next shot had fired off flawlessly and Mindy had put off dealing with the man down at the gun shop.