Nine of Stars

by Laura Bickle

  He watched her, as she looked up at the sky, her hair curtaining her face. Orion glowed softly above. He remembered that was the title of her favorite poem. Orion. She wasn’t a sentimental sort, but she had moments of deep feeling. There was a curious kind of romance about her, not the florid descriptions of poetry. But some of the stripped-down simplicity of prose clung to her, some grace.

  She crossed back to the trailer entrance to unlock the door. Sig bounded inside, tracking snow across the linoleum, and she turned on the kitchen light switch.

  She was startled to see Gabe at the kitchen table.

  “How long have you been sitting here?” Petra went to hang up her coat. She glanced at Sig’s dog bowl, and it was already full of kibble.

  “Since sunset. It was a pretty sunset.”

  She slipped into the chair opposite him. “We have to talk.”

  “Yes.”

  Sig jumped up on the third chair and sat upright, as if he was also a party to the discussion.

  “It seems Sig has things to say, too.”

  “Likely. He has an opinion about pretty much everything.” She reached over to rub Sig’s ears and blurted out: “I went to the doctor yesterday. He says I have leukemia.”

  He blinked, tasting something like ground-up glass in the back of his throat. “What does that mean?” he asked.

  “It means . . . I have to go get treatment. Probably chemotherapy. Could be some surgery, too, or something else. I won’t know until I talk to the specialist. From what little I understand about it, it’s gonna be an intensive process. I don’t know what the odds of success are.” She looked down at her hands. “So, yeah. Not awesome.”

  He reached across the table for her hands, scarred and beautiful, and lifted them to his lips. “I will take care of you. Whatever you need me to do.”

  Her eyes glistened. “You can’t. You can’t fix this with magic and immortality potions.”

  He sifted through his memory. He’d come to Temperance a century and a half ago as a Pinkerton agent, to investigate rumors of alchemy. While the town’s founder, Lascaris, had figured out how to conjure gold, he’d been unsuccessful in creating immortality, beyond the botched experiment of the Hanged Men—to which Gabe had been the first unfortunate sacrifice. And that wasn’t an option for Petra; that magic was all emptied out. “If there’s a way, we’ll find it.”

  “You can’t go chasing after magical solutions,” she said. “Someone will be looking for you, for what you . . . for what happened to Sal.”

  “They are. But it doesn’t matter.”

  She pulled back, disentangling her fingers. “You have to get out of town, then. You can’t let them find you and try you for Sal’s death. You’ll wind up on death row or life in prison.”

  “I know how to lay low.”

  She stood up, covered her mouth with a hand, and began to pace. “No. I won’t be responsible for them catching you. Not because you’re tied here to me, out of some foolish sense of chivalry. I can’t . . . I can’t deal with that now.” Tears spilled out of her eyes and down her fingers.

  He stood and reached for her. He placed his hands on her shoulders. “You are taking no responsibility for me. I make my own choices. Got it?”

  “You can’t take responsibility for me, either.” She shook her head. “I can hire in-home help. Likely, I’ll be barfing my guts up on a hospital floor for a solid month. I will have people around.”

  “No,” he said. “I will go where you go for treatment. I will feed Sig and read newspapers to you in bed. We will get through this.”

  He could see her leaning forward and back on the heels and balls of her feet, the way she did when she was undecided.

  “They won’t catch me,” he said. “I have a few years on the sheriff.” But a worry did work deep into his mind . . . Would they find her, and charge her as an accomplice? Harboring a fugitive was serious business.

  “But . . .” She reached up to touch his face. “This is going to be terrible. For me and for you. It makes no sense for you to stay.”

  “I am staying with you. That’s not up for debate. What is up for debate is . . . how we minimize risk.”

  She pressed the heel of her hand to her eye. “Well . . . I can take treatment at the university, far from here. Or even farther away, depending on how it works out. My insurance is pretty good. Maybe that would be good—getting away.” She sank to the edge of the futon, her hands knotted in her lap.

  He sat down beside her. “Maybe we should get married.”

  She blinked at him. “What?”

  “If I do get caught . . . they wouldn’t be able to make you testify against me. Or force me to testify against you, with respect to any aid you gave me. And I could make sure that all your treatment wishes were carried out, since your father is in no shape to do that, yet.”

  This had none of the staged pomp and circumstance of a modern era proposal. There was no romantic walk in the park and getting down on one knee with a sparkling ring, asking for her well-manicured hand. Not that she’d ever wanted such things. There was too much dirt beneath her fingernails to play the role of a princess in a happily-ever-after fairy tale.

  “Erf.” She stared out the window, at Orion sinking in the black, for what seemed a long time.

  “Just think about it,” he said.

  “It does seem like it would alleviate a lot of our mutual problems,” she admitted. “But I just never thought, well . . . I never planned on getting married.”

  “It changes nothing,” he said. “And if you like, you can dissolve it after you are healed.”

  “I wouldn’t, I just . . .” She gazed up at the dark sky. “If I were to get married, I want to be married for the right reasons.”

  “These are damn compelling reasons.”

  She nodded, chewing on her lip. “You know that I love you, right?”

  “Yes. And I love you.”

  It should have been that simple, but it never was. He reached for her face, turned it to his, and kissed her. She was as warm and alive as she had been yesterday, the day before. He had to keep believing that she would live for tomorrow and the next day. His fingers traced her collarbone, over the constellation of freckles of her shoulder. He kissed her wrists and her callused palms. He felt alive. He wanted her to feel that, too.

  She kissed him back, with an unexpected heat. Her palms slid up his chest and her fingers laced in the hair on the nape of his neck.

  He pulled her down to the bed, wanting to savor every sigh and freckle, as Orion stood guard just outside the window, shining down from the cold, remote depths of the sky.

  Gabe snored softly into the back of her hair, while Petra stared out the window. Moonlight filtered softly down on her, and she watched all that burned-out light from dead stars glittering on the snow.

  When they made love, Petra usually fell asleep right away after, tangled in his arms and legs. But this time, she’d drifted off into a muzzy half-sleep, then slipped awake. Her mind whirred around what he’d suggested. Marriage. He’d cast out the idea as if it was a simple solution to a simple problem, something as clear and utilitarian as purchasing a lock for a door.

  Petra had never given much thought to the idea of marriage. Her parents’ marriage certainly hadn’t been wine and roses. The best parts of it had been when they both managed to leave each other alone. And that’s what her father had told her: “A man wants a woman who will leave him alone.” Since Petra had a deep, introverted need for solitude, she could find that a workable notion. She had little understanding of the fights they flew into. It became clear to her that her father wasn’t giving her mother something she desperately needed. She needed his time, his undivided attention. She needed to be first in his life. And whether it was conscious selfishness or a side effect of how he was wired, it just didn’t happen. Petra had hoped she would eventually find someone she could live her life with, but she knew it wasn’t a given, and she certainly wasn’t motivated enough to go hunt a man do
wn with a harpoon and drag him back to her cave. She was fine with her own company. She had never felt incomplete without a man.

  She slipped out of bed, dressed, and let herself out of the trailer. Sig plodded sleepily after her, never one to pass up the opportunity to go pee. The cold air skimmed over her face, stealing her breath. She walked around to the back of the trailer, craning her head to take in the sequins of stars above. Orion had one boot over the horizon, and the moon had moved far beyond him.

  She hadn’t given much thought to the qualities she wanted in a partner. She wanted someone who was loyal, capable, and who would be kind to Sig. Gabe was those things, and so much more. They’d seen amazing things together, and shared a bond that she could never replicate with another person. She was content with their relationship—and the sex was amazing. He explored her body as if she was an unknown, fascinating country, and she craved the feeling of his bare skin against hers. If he had asked her to marry her under any other circumstances, she probably would have said yes. At least, she thought so.

  If she admitted it to herself, she was afraid to be marrying him because she needed him. She didn’t want to be taken care of. And she didn’t want him to marry her just for legal cover. She thought that was a lousy way to get married, each immediately becoming a burden to the other.

  Sig completed a ritual of circling the trailer and peeing at all the corners. In the canine brain, she was certain this was a ritual for mighty protection from skunks and foxes. He came to join her in the field, leaning against her leg.

  She looked down at him. Sig had given up much to be with her. He was a wild creature who had come to trust her enough to love her and sleep at the foot of her bed. She still didn’t know entirely why. But she loved him more for it.

  She looked up at Orion. She had no ideal to compare Gabe to. She loved him, without question. He was, at the present, her world. Her world would be shrinking, soon, and she wanted him in it.

  After some time, she turned around to go back to the trailer, Sig on her heels. Gabe didn’t awaken as she slipped back into bed, not even when she stuck her cold feet behind his knees.

  She fell into a deep sleep almost immediately, the sleep of the dead . . .

  . . . and was awakened by a knock sounding at the door.

  Petra blinked up at the ceiling. At first, she thought she’d dreamed it. Milky grey light had filled the trailer, suspended in a buzzy warmth as she pressed her cheek against Gabe’s chest. She was listening to his heart beating slowly, savoring the sense of stillness around her.

  It was peaceful, this dozing with her legs tangled in his and the coyote draped at the bottom of the bed. It wasn’t much, and yet it was everything. It was an illusion. She knew that, underneath her skin, abnormal cells were silently dividing deep in her marrow. Underneath Gabe’s skin, he was human. But deep in his skull, he had a hundred fifty years of regret and magic churning around.

  Was that what had prompted him to suggest marriage as a solution? The accumulated weight of regrets, and not wanting to cause more damage?

  And how fair would such a thing be to him? She knew that he had been married before, that his wife was long dead. As things stood now, he might outlive her. And then . . .

  At the sound of the second rattling knock, she reached over Gabe, fumbling underneath the futon for one of her guns. There were two Colt .44s somewhere down there, communing with the dust bunnies . . .

  Gabe placed his hands on her shoulders, stilling her.

  Sig had awoken and was slinking across the floor with his teeth bared. Petra reached down and snagged his collar with her other hand. Sig strained against her, but she didn’t let go, didn’t know what was on the other side of the door. She sure as hell wasn’t expecting anyone.

  “Ms. Dee?” An unfamiliar voice sounded on the other side.

  She craned her head. Though the slats of the blinds, she could see movement. She glanced at the window over the futon. The blinds were mostly drawn, but she thought she could detect a shadow twitching underneath the last slat.

  Shit. So much for that avenue of escape. She handed one of her guns to Gabe.

  “Ms. Dee, this is Sheriff Rutherford from the county sheriff’s office. We just want to talk.”

  A chill rattled down her spine. She glanced at Gabe. He watched the door, not moving except to hold her shoulder. His meaning was clear: Be still.

  The knock sounded again.

  Voices sounded again, circling around the trailer. She jumped when someone tried to jiggle the window over her bed. Sig turned, and she wrestled to keep him still, throwing a bare leg over him to keep him from pressing his nose to the glass.

  Something scraped at the door, and then there were the sounds of boot clomps heading away. An engine started, then receded.

  But she didn’t relax. She didn’t dare move.

  It was probably a good fifteen minutes before she disentangled herself from blankets, Gabe, and the coyote. Gabe slid out and padded noiselessly to the door. He checked through the blinds and all the other windows.

  “They’re gone,” he said.

  She sank into the nest of blankets on the futon. “They know.”

  “They don’t know anything. Not for sure. If they did, they’d have a warrant, and they’d be breaking down your door.”

  “Then what the hell was that?” Her brow wrinkled.

  “A fishing expedition. They’ll be back. Maybe not today, but soon.”

  Petra got dressed and peered out the window. To convince herself, she cracked open the door a sliver.

  A business card fluttered down, from where it had been wedged in the door frame behind the weather stripping. It was a simple embossed card with raised lettering and a black star. It said:

  SHERIFF OWEN RUTHERFORD

  COUNTY SHERIFF

  The phone number and address were printed in capital letters below. She nearly dropped it, as if it were hot. On the back was scrawled, with black ink: Call me.

  “Shit,” she swore.

  Chapter 6

  The Underworld in Sal’s Backyard

  Owen knew that he was being played.

  He’d been going door to door with his deputies, looking for evidence. Fishing, but fishing sometimes yielded a trout. He’d gotten a nibble at the post office, where a postal worker said that he’d seen the man in his wanted poster in the company of the town’s geologist last week. It had been a simple thing to look up Petra Dee’s driver’s license and find her address. There had been a couple of reports of her trespassing on Sal Rutherford’s property when Sal was still alive. She clearly knew Sal’s people, and maybe she knew them well enough to have intel on their current whereabouts.

  He liked to knock on doors early in the morning. Most people were usually still too fuzzy with sleep to come up with good lies. He knew she should be home; her truck was parked outside, covered with a skiff of snow. He’d thumped on the door and his deputies had circled around to the windows, but there had been no movement inside. Maybe she’d spent the night someplace else. Maybe. But it piqued Owen’s curiosity, and he was determined to talk to her.

  He couldn’t force it. He could intimidate, though. And he’d do that, if he had to, until he got some answers.

  “What do you think she knows?”

  Anna sat beside him on the passenger seat of his SUV. She looked out the window, wisps of her blond hair almost translucent in the growing light. She traced a bit of frost on the glass with her finger, but it made no smear.

  “I don’t know,” Owen admitted. “She might be involved with Sal’s men, hiding them.”

  “She might be in danger,” Anna suggested.

  “Could be.” Owen had seen it before, women in relationships with bad guys who controlled them. He didn’t have that sense here. By all accounts, the Dee woman was not a shrinking violet. But he’d keep the door open on that idea, just in case. He hoped she didn’t come up missing. That would be entirely too convenient for this Gabriel guy. It would keep her from ta
lking.

  His grip tightened on the wheel. He sure as hell didn’t like where any of this was going.

  His radio crackled to life:

  “S-1, this is Base. What’s your twenty?”

  He reached for the radio. “Base, this is S-1. I’m heading back your way.”

  “K-9 requests your presence at the Rutherford Ranch.”

  Owen’s eyebrows lifted. “10–4.”

  He’d asked one of the dog handlers to get out there and see if the dogs found anything weird at the ranch. They had one dog, Daisy, who was actually supposed to be a corpse-sniffing dog. They’d purchased her with Homeland Security grant money, but she hadn’t ever found much that wasn’t wrapped in bacon. Daisy was cute, though, and they’d decided not to turn her back in for a replacement. Owen had let her handler keep her, since she was useful for PR campaigns, visits to schools, and such. And she was actually pretty good at pursuit of live suspects. One took what one could get in the backcountry.

  He pulled off the road by the house and was given directions by a deputy to Sal Rutherford’s back forty, toward the curiously burned tree. It stood in stark, black contrast to the snowfield around it. The dog, a German shepherd, was digging in the snow, only her tail visible above a cloud of white.

  Owen popped the SUV door open and jumped out. He’d given a list of sites for the K-9 to search, not expecting much. Sal’s land was vast. But he’d asked the K-9 to start with the house, the barn . . . and this weird tree that he kept circling around in his mind.

  “Whatcha got, Deputy Farris?”

  Farris gestured to the dog. “Daisy’s been digging at this spot. Won’t leave it alone. Not even for bacon.”

  “Let me see.”

  Farris pulled Daisy back, and Owen stared at the ground. It looked like dead, singed grass to him, glistening under the removed layer of snow. He crouched and fingered it. He didn’t see any sign of disturbed earth. But that didn’t mean that there wasn’t anything down there. Maybe there was some bit of trace evidence the dog was zeroing in on.