“No,” she said, realizing that she was way too exhausted to even begin to make sense of the labyrinthian possibilities that not trusting him presented. “I was just wondering, is all.”
He grunted by way of a reply, and that was the end of that.
Ten minutes later, Katharine realized with relief that the throbbing headache that had plagued her all day was largely gone. With her head resting back against the seat and her lids drooping with weariness, she watched tall green fields of corn and shorter green fields of soybeans and the occasional herd of cows or sheep stream past the window. The great thing about a nearly empty two-lane highway was that it was pretty easy to be sure they weren’t being followed. Soon she lightened up on the whole looking-over-her-shoulder thing, and even Dan glanced in the rearview mirror less and less frequently. For a while they traveled alongside the C&O canal, and she caught a glimpse of one of the long, mule-drawn canal boats, complete with costumed driver and loaded with tourists, as it maneuvered through a lock. Then the canal branched north, curving through a vast expanse of forest, and she lost sight of it.
“You know, I’ve been thinking about it,” Dan said as they passed through the tiny town of, according to the sign, Witt, which was really nothing more than a cluster of houses grouped around a four-way intersection, “and I think what you’re experiencing here may be some form of post-traumatic stress disorder.”
“What?” She frowned at him. “I thought that was just for, like, combat veterans.”
He shook his head. “Any kind of traumatic event can bring it on. What you experienced last night certainly qualifies. Impaired memory is one of the symptoms, and so is emotional detachment. Lack of trust is in there somewhere, too, I’m pretty sure. I’d have to look it up to be certain, but I think you fit the criteria pretty well.”
Katharine thought about that for a moment. This feeling she had that she wasn’t herself, that she didn’t look like this, that her possessions weren’t hers, was just—perception, she realized. It was possible—no, even likely, because what was the alternative?—that the problem lay with her mind. Likewise, the recurring lack of trust she was experiencing toward people like Ed and even Dan himself might well be the result of some kind of disordered thinking. She had nothing concrete with which to back up any of that. Everything was based on her perceptions, every reaction on her instincts.
Except for one thing.
“So how does that explain the tile?” she asked. Her head was starting to hurt again, as images of the different-sized tiles took possession of her mind. “I felt that floor. I couldn’t have imagined that.” Then, her confidence shaken, she added in a near whisper, “Could I?”
“I don’t know.” Dan shot her a glance. “I’m not an expert on this. But at least for right now, post-traumatic stress disorder is the best explanation we have.”
He was right, and she knew it. There were loose ends—like the tile—but the general theory fit the facts. Anyway, she wanted so much to believe in a simple, logical explanation for why she saw a stranger every time she looked in a mirror. Post-traumatic stress disorder was an answer she could deal with.
“How do you cure it?”
“Talk therapy generally helps, I believe. And medication. ”
“Great.” Her tone was borderline despairing. But, she told herself, it was still better than the best alternative she had been able to come up with—that somehow she had been caught up in some otherworldly mix-up and was trapped in another woman’s life.
There was no medication for that.
“Sometimes it even gets better on its own,” Dan added, on a more cheerful note. “Who knows, you may wake up tomorrow and be perfectly fine.”
“From your lips to God’s ears.” Katharine gave him a small, wry smile. Then she took a deep breath and allowed her head to drop back against the seat again. Despite the Tylenol, her headache was back in spades.
The farther they went, the more rural the scenery became. Clapboard farmhouses and ranch-style brick houses and the occasional trailer set well back from the road became the order of the day. Barns and black-painted board fences dotted the landscape, which was emerald green and rolling as far as the eye could see. In the distance, the smoky blue peaks of the Appalachian Mountains formed a towering western horizon that looked like jagged teeth biting into the sky. The sun soared overhead, round and yellow as an egg yolk stuck smack in the middle of an upside-down blue bowl, and everything—plants, animals, and humans alike—seemed wilted by its heat.
Even though she was in an air-conditioned vehicle, Katharine felt wilted, too. If she’d been just a little less anxious, she would have fallen asleep. But she couldn’t quite stop with the occasional quick glance out the back windshield. Distrust and detachment and a weird inability to recognize herself might be all in her head. The fact that someone was hunting her definitely was not.
If they were being followed, though, it had to be by a crow. She was as sure as it was possible to be that nothing any larger was on their tail.
By the time they turned off onto a hard-packed gravel road and started bumping through a forest so thick with old-growth maples and oaks and elms that their entwined branches formed a leafy canopy that blocked out the sun, she realized that thinking about his cabin as being in the back of beyond had most likely been an understatement. There was nothing around but woods. The thing was, she was almost too tired to care. Her eyelids were so heavy that she could barely keep them open. It had been a while since either she or Dan had spoken; he, too, seemed tired and engrossed in thought.
“Here we are,” he said, after the Blazer had lurched through the tenth pothole in as many minutes.
Stifling a yawn, Katharine sat up, stretched a little, and looked around.
She saw instantly—because it was the only building in sight—that he was referring to a small, one-story log cabin with a rusty-looking metal roof supported by four narrow wooden posts that overhung a low-slung porch. It was set in a grassy clearing that, because of the position of the sun, was half sunny, half in shade, with the cabin being split down the middle between the two. Beside the single step leading up to the porch, a gnarled mountain laurel, its dark green foliage heavy with purple blooms, grew. There was an outbuilding that could have been a small garage a little way behind the house. The yard was overgrown and dotted with dandelions, and, like the house, gave off an air of general neglect. It was obvious at a glance that the place was infrequently used.
Looking at it, Katharine was irresistibly reminded of the movie Deliverance. She wouldn’t have been a bit surprised to hear distant strains of “Dueling Banjos.”
What have I gotten myself into?
Gravel crunched beneath the tires as Dan turned into the driveway and stopped beside the house. He cut the engine and got out. She sat still for a moment, eyeing the cabin and its surroundings with caution.
Either you trust the guy or you don’t.
He opened her door for her, and she got out.
“So where do you fish?” she asked a moment later as she stepped up onto the porch, which was made of wide planks that looked older than dirt. Dan was right behind her, the duffel bag slung over his shoulder, the groceries in their white plastic bags in his hands. The fact that there was not another residence in sight, that she had not, in fact, seen another dwelling since they had turned off the highway, loomed larger in her mind with every step she took. As far as she could tell, the cabin was completely isolated, which meant that she and Dan were on their own.
Not that she felt nervous about that or anything.
“The Shenandoah River runs about a half-mile back that way.” He nodded toward the left of the house. She looked, but all she could see were trees and more trees. She listened, but if the telltale gurgle of water was present, it was drowned out by other, competing, nature sounds. Besides the rustle of plastic and their own soft footsteps, all she heard were birds and bugs. “I keep a runabout on a trailer out in the garage. When I want to fish, I just ho
ok it up and off I go.”
When Dan stepped past her to unlock the front door, which lacked a window and was, like the rest of the cabin, made of weathered wood, it swung open with a protesting creak.
Stepping into the house with some trepidation, Katharine was relieved to find herself in a clean and functional, if somewhat dusty, living room. The floor was scuffed hardwood with an oval braided rug in shades of tan and brown laid down on top of it. The walls were generic white. There was an orange tweed couch with a tan velour recliner beside it, both of which had seen better days. A dark wood table with a brass lamp on it sat between the two. A matching coffee table in front of the couch and an outdated TV (it had rabbit ears on top of it) on a metal stand in the far corner completed the décor. There were no pictures and no personal items. No knickknacks at all.
“Do you get out here much?” she asked, her gaze touching on a cobweb in a corner.
“Not as much as I’d like.” Dan shut the door, and gloom enveloped them. Katharine realized that the curtains—they were a limp white and hung behind the couch, which was placed in front of the big front window—were closed. “When I can.”
He walked past her, heading, she assumed, for the kitchen, which was separated from the living room by a half-wall. The top row of cabinets was visible from where she stood.
“Make yourself at home,” he said over his shoulder.
She did, by following him into the kitchen. Her head hurt, her legs felt wobbly, and she was so tired she could barely think, but still she thought it was a good idea to get the lay of the land, so to speak. The kitchen was small, ugly—green laminate counters atop mustard-yellow cabinets, harvest-gold refrigerator and stove that looked decades old, faux wood linoleum floor—and dark. He dropped the duffel bag on the floor, deposited the groceries on the small rectangular wooden table that, along with two chairs, took up most of the floor space in the middle of the room, then pulled open the thin white curtains above the sink.
The window was clearly protected from the direct light of the sun, because sunlight did not pour in, but the room was suddenly light enough so that she could see dust motes in the air.
“You know, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” Katharine said uneasily, glancing around. All thoughts of Dan as an unknown quantity aside, it had suddenly occurred to her just how very vulnerable they would be if they had been followed. This place looked about as sturdy as a Cracker Jack box. Whoever was after them could kick the door down with impunity. If that happened, there was no one around to help or hear.
Dan was putting milk and lunch meat in the refrigerator, which, she saw, except for a bottle of ketchup and some pickles, had been previously empty.
He flicked a glance at her and shook his head. “There you go with those trust issues of yours again. You’re safe here, I promise.”
“This has got nothing to do with trust issues. It’s just ... what happens if they find us?”
“Nobody’s going to find us.” He put the last of the perishables in the refrigerator and shut the door. “We weren’t followed, because I kept an eye out. That’s why I took the most backward route known to man: If anybody had been on our tail, I would have seen them. Anyway, there’s a security system—I usually don’t set it because it goes off every time there’s a thunderstorm, which is a pain in the ass to deal with from out of town—which is wired into the sheriff’s office. They’re closer than you think, and they’re usually here within just a few minutes after the thing goes off. Besides, I’ve got a gun.”
Her eyes widened. Her pulse kicked up a notch. A vision of the kind of big silver handgun she had become way too familiar with over the last twenty-four hours materialized in her mind.
“You’ve got a gun?”
“Yep.”
He moved, opened a drawer beside the stove, and reached inside. When his hand resurfaced, it was grasping a slender black pistol—she thought it might be a .22—that had clearly seen better days. It was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a government-issued weapon. The pride with which he looked at it was telling: No spook worthy of his name would be caught dead gloating over a gun like that.
Perversely, the sheer inadequacy of the weapon made her feel better. It assuaged most of the rest of her residual suspicion that he might be something other than what he seemed.
“Good to know,” she said, forbearing to point out just how useless that thing would be if they actually had to fight off the murderous-minded goons who had twice invaded her house. The fact was, if they were found, they were toast.
At this juncture, when she was so tired she was practically swaying on her feet and with her mind less than functional, all that was left to do was pray they weren’t found.
“Hungry?” he asked, laying the pistol down on the counter with a casualness that would—if she hadn’t had more important things to worry about—have made her nervous about his trustworthiness with a weapon. “I make a mean baloney sandwich.”
Katharine shook her head. “Just tired.”
She was, in fact, exhausted, which in its own twisted way was a good thing: Exhaustion, she was discovering, had a wonderfully dulling effect on fear.
“You look it. You probably ought to sack out for a while.”
She nodded. “Sounds good.”
“Bathroom’s down the hall on the right. The bedroom ’s just past it. There’s only one, but it’s all yours. Come on, I’ll show you.”
Hefting the duffel bag, he led the way toward the back of the house and showed her where everything was. Not that he needed to, because it was a very small cabin, just the living room and kitchen at one end and the bedroom, bathroom, and a utility room at the other. He pointed out the closet where a bunch of mismatched towels were stacked alongside rolls of toilet tissue and a couple of unopened bars of soap, then headed back toward the front of the house.
“Yell if you need me,” he said over his shoulder.
Katharine nodded from the bedroom doorway where she was standing, then stepped inside, closed the door, and looked around.
The bedroom wasn’t a great deal larger than the double bed that nearly filled it. The bed was strictly utilitarian, consisting of a mattress and box spring on a frame that had been pushed into the far corner of the room, probably to provide as much floor space as possible. A cheap pine nightstand with a blue ginger-jar lamp on it stood beside the bed. A scarred oak chest against the wall beside the closet door constituted the rest of the furnishings. Like the living room, the walls were generic white. The long, narrow window was covered by another pair of the cheap white curtains, which were carefully drawn. No attempt had been made at decoration: A blue velour blanket had been pulled over the top of the bed, hiding everything, including the pillows, and that was it.
Dan had said that he’d changed the sheets right before he’d left the last time he’d been there, so the bed was clean and ready to go.
She was so tired she didn’t even care.
But before she crawled into bed she had to have a shower. She felt so grungy she couldn’t stand herself. The terrible, lurking suspicion that there might still be dried blood on her from last night was something she couldn’t shake.
The thought made her stomach twist.
Carrying everything she needed with her, she went into the bathroom. Various noises from the kitchen located Dan for her just before she closed and locked the door; he was probably eating the baloney sandwich he had offered her.
Stripping off Dottie’s clothes with relief, and turning the water on full-blast, she stepped into the tub, pulled the plastic shower curtain closed, and let the blessedly hot water sluice over her. Washing her mind-bendingly straight, coarse hair without getting her nose wet proved tricky, but she did her best, closing her eyes and tilting her chin back as the shampoo rinsed away down the drain. Steam from the hot water even had the added benefit of opening her nasal passages a little, so that she could actually get a whiff of the Irish Spring soap with which the cabin came equipped, as she r
ubbed its lather into every square inch of her skin she could reach.
It was in the course of doing this that she made two appalling discoveries: number one, she had had a Brazilian wax, and number two, a small red heart with an arrow through it was tattooed on the left side of her abdomen just above her bikini line.
Holy crap.
Either of these on its own was enough to totally freak her out. Both of them together made her go all light-headed and weak-kneed. She sat down abruptly on the edge of the tub while the shower curtain billowed around her and the hot water continued to rain down on her legs.
The idea of herself with such a blatantly sexy crotch was mind-boggling. As far as she knew, she had never had such a thing done to herself in her life. But the tattoo was even worse: She knew, knew, that she would never willingly get a tattoo.
She was needle-phobic.
Hyperventilating was not a solution, she told herself sternly even as she caught herself starting to succumb to it.
The reality was, she was now a skinny blonde with expensive belongings, a bikini wax, and a heart tattoo. It might be a new reality for her, but it was reality all the same.
Post-traumatic stress disorder was supposed to explain this?
I don’t think so.
Okay. Succumbing to panic was useless, as she had already discovered. Until she was able to get her mind around these new additions to her person, the best thing to do was simply not think about them.
Or anything else.
Just go through the motions.
Forcing herself to her feet, she rinsed off the last of the soap, turned off the taps, got out of the tub, toweled herself dry, and used the blow-dryer she found on the wicker caddy in the corner to blow her (new) hair dry. Then she pulled on panties and a T-shirt—pretty, über-feminine white lace panties and a snug white T-shirt with a pink heart in the center of it, both of which fit reasonably well, and neither of which seemed like anything she would ever actually buy—wrapped herself in her robe, and staggered into the bedroom.
Obsession Page 17
