She nodded, shot a worried look my way, and stepped back. Then Lincoln Montvale turned to face us. He debated with himself for a moment, all in silence, and then he walked over to Devon.
Lee’s youngest brother – only brother, now – hadn’t said much through all this; whether he was in shock or just wasn’t a talkative guy at the best of times, I didn’t know. He’d stayed at Lee’s elbow, murmured the appropriate words at the appropriate moments, and seemed … distant and lost, somehow, as if he’d slipped free of his moorings and didn’t know where to find them again.
Now he stood in front of Devon, looking up at him – and he did have to look up, because although Lincoln Montvale was like a stockier, big-boned version of his older brother, he was also a lot shorter. Shorter, and not a natural when it came to wearing an insanely expensive suit, like Uncle Sheridan – Lincoln’s black ensemble looked rumpled and slept-in, and he wore it as if he didn’t quite notice or care that it didn’t fit to perfection.
Ashley, he’s upset too. Back off with your fashion appraisal, okay?
Lincoln Montvale reached up to put a hand on Devon’s right arm. When he spoke, I was startled as hell; so far as I knew, the man had barely noticed my existence, much less formed a firm opinion about me.
“Devon, I’m not sure if you’re hearing me, but try to listen, all right?”
Then Uncle Sheridan’s younger brother nodded toward me. “This young lady of yours is like a rock, Devon – she’s smart, she’s tough, and you can count on her like you can count on the sun rising. Stick close to her side, listen to what she says, and I promise you’ll get through this, all right?”
Five more hollow, rasping words.
“Yes. Thank you, Uncle Lincoln.”
Lee Montvale nudged me a bit to one side. I stretched my right arm straight out and up to keep the umbrella over Devon’s head – talking or not, I didn’t quite trust him to hold onto it by himself just yet – and I leaned in close to Lee as she whispered in my ear.
“Dear, please don’t take this the wrong way. Sheridan loved that boy like a son, we all know that, and I trust Sheridan’s heart and his judgment, always – but you do understand Devon isn’t … isn’t quite right, don’t you? He never has been since I’ve known him, not really, and I’m concerned that he won’t be able to recover from this, not in a normal way.”
Whoa, lady. I don’t care how kind and regal and distinguished you are, I don’t care whose sister you are, and I don’t care how you’re all concerned for Devon’s welfare – you are going to back off from that line of thought, right here and now.
I looked straight into those gentle, well-meaning eyes, and I didn’t bother to whisper.
“What I understand, Lee Jackson Beauregard Montvale, is that I love that man just as he is. I trust him to come back to us when he’s good and ready, and until then, I will do the best I can to take care of him. Is that something you can understand?”
Lee just stared at me for a moment, and then a radiant smile lit up her lined but still beautiful face.
“Well, then I’d say Devon’s going to be quite all right.”
She turned to Lincoln Montvale, who was grinning as if he’d known all along what I’d say to her concern. “Lincoln, I believe perhaps we should head back to Sheridan’s residence and rest up for a bit, before we have to speak to the probate lawyers again this afternoon. Ashley, please call us at any time of the day or night if you have any questions, or if you need anything at all – or if you just want to talk.”
Then she spoke to Devon. “As for you, young man, Lincoln and I will take care of all the legalities, the will and the lawyers and such – you concentrate on letting your fierce young woman take care of you, and we will get through this, each of us in our own way.”
Devon nodded.
Then Lee took her brother Lincoln’s arm, and they walked away to the gleaming black stretch limousine waiting on a nearby access road that ran through the cemetery.
I stood next to Devon under the oak tree and watched their limousine pull away. I watched it gliding along the road, following the ribbon of asphalt through a grassy field of gravestones before vanishing into the trees beyond.
Devon might have been watching the Montvales drive away too, or maybe he just happened to have his head turned in that direction while he was doing that scary, unfocused, staring-at-nothing thing – it was hard to tell.
Sleet rattled off the branches overhead, pinged and pelted against our umbrella, and dotted the icy grass all around us. I shivered even inside my sheepskin-lined black coat, as I stared at the vault where Uncle Sheridan and Alva would be hanging out for eternity.
I figured they’d probably wonder why the hell we were freezing our asses off out here like this. Uncle Sheridan would have been thinking of us before himself, as usual – and from what I knew of Alva, she wouldn’t have been a bit shy about telling us to get our asses somewhere inside before we got pneumonia or something.
Yes, ma’am.
First we needed to hustle through this icy crap to our limousine, which was parked on the access road – even from here, I could see Jimmy waiting by the left rear passenger door, standing huge and silent under his umbrella and staring at the lines of graves, as if daring all those dead people to try something. Then we’d head to Devon’s place, where I’d see if I could persuade him to shower, bundle up in a plush warm robe, and maybe eat something before –
“Ashley?”
Devon’s voice was still hoarse and dry, but it was maybe a little stronger. He didn’t quite look at me, but he did turn his head in my direction.
And now, he’d spoken to me for the first time since Uncle Sheridan died.
“I’m right here, Devon. What do you need?”
A long, quiet moment passed, beneath the grey branches and the grey sky.
“Ashley, I need … we need to go to Montana. Could you please make the arrangements?”
“You’ve got it, big guy – I’ll tell the cowgirls they better strap in and get ready, because Devon ‘Tireless Sex Machine’ Killane is headed their way.”
He almost smiled.
32. Wilderness
Thirty thousand feet over Montana, I looked down and watched mile after endless mile of prairie grass roll past beneath us, marked only by wandering rivers, fence lines here and there, the occasional road, and way more cows than was decent. Seriously, did people even live here?
The internet swore to me that they did, and now and again actual towns appeared, with streets and water towers and gas stations and bars where tall, gangly city boys full of enthusiasm and hormones could hit on country girls all night long, or at least until closing time. I even saw a few honest-to-god cities, with malls and universities and convenience stores and glowing beacons of civilization like McDonald’s and Taco Bell.
In the great blank stretches between the cities, though … well, it seemed to this born-and-bred big city girl that there was nothing much of anything out there. The scattered towns looked like outposts on a distant planet, and it somehow wouldn’t have seemed too out of place for a little NASA rover to be bumping along one of the county roads, taking pictures, analyzing soil samples, and sending back data about this strange alien landscape.
The more I looked at it, the more I couldn’t stop looking at it …
I started getting weird ideas about how the emptiness beneath us was symbolic of the emptiness inside us, about what living in the middle of all that nothing must do to people, the psychological impact of isolation, blah, blah, blah, and I decided that a little realistic input from someone who’d been here before sure couldn’t hurt.
I looked across at Devon, who was sitting by himself on the other side of the Gulfstream jet’s cabin – and even as many times as I’d been in this flying palace of his, I still couldn’t get over how it was like looking at somebody sitting on the far side of a lobby in a luxury hotel.
The big guy slouched sideways on a leather and mahogany couch, his long legs stretche
d out in front of him. His right hand rested on his thigh and his left lay on the armrest beneath the window, fingers toying restlessly with a plastic bottle of some obscenely expensive imported spring water.
Since we’d left the cemetery, he’d come up with enough words to let me in on just where in Montana we needed to go, and I’d gotten a bit out of him about where we’d stay … but now, Devon’s empty, staring eyes said he was once again absent without leave.
I changed my mind about quizzing him on the subject of our nation’s forty-first state, because I didn’t feel like I could deal with the silence that I knew would be his only answer. Instead, I just looked at him.
I looked at his hair, untrimmed for days and starting to brush the collar of the open-necked blue dress shirt he wore. I looked at the dense forest of black stubble on his jaw that was well on its way to becoming a genuine beard, because he also hadn’t shaved for days. I looked at the jeans I’d talked him into wearing because hey, let’s not dress like a GQ model out in the country, and I looked at the way the toes of his ‘I’m just pretending to be from out here’ cowboy boots dug into the nap of the carpet.
Now and again, he kicked at the leg of a nearby glass-and-chrome table. I was pretty sure he had no idea he was even doing it.
I looked at him, and I silently begged him to come back to me.
The emptiness inside Devon was a problem, but at least that weird, compelling emptiness outside the window wouldn’t be a problem for much longer. I knew that because our destination wasn’t in the flatlands below – we were going to the mountains that loomed on the horizon.
And man, but those mountains were badass.
Hulking shoulders of black rock rose above the forested foothills, as if a giant was tearing himself free of the earth to go looking for a chubby city girl to eat. Snow coated the ledges and spires and towers of stone, white and forbidding.
I knew that even now it had to be colder than Antarctica up there, and at night? At night, it probably felt about as cold as interstellar space, and I hoped this place we were staying had giant industrial heaters, at least five hundred blankets, and tons of food, so we wouldn’t end up being the subjects of a ‘based on a true story’ TV movie about tenderfoot city folk turning into cannibals – and yes, even at the time I knew I was worrying too much, but I’m just not cut out to be a country girl, okay?
I also worried about the bears.
We drew closer to those fortresses of stone, I got a better look at the dense, dark forests cloaking the lower slopes, and didn’t bears live down there among those trees, somewhere? I pictured growling shaggy mountains of fur, roaming around looking for human snacks, and I made a mental note to ask the first local I saw where I could buy a metric ton of bear spray. But would that stuff work against wolves? Cougars? Coyotes? Escaped zoo tigers?
I decided that the Discovery Channel could just bite it, because nature sucked.
The plane dropped lower, tracing the path of a valley that knifed through the rocky walls. I looked down at the river thundering along the center of the valley, wondered if piranhas lived in it, and jumped like a jack-in-the-box when Devon spoke up, right behind me.
“This place seems like another world when you’re new to it, my lovely and nervous Ashley, but I rather think you’ll come to like it.”
I twisted around to see Devon looming over me, standing just behind my seat and leaning down to look out my window – while I’d been fussing and fretting about the wildlife situation, he’d come more or less back to life and walked across the cabin without a sound.
“Um, I choose to reserve judgment on that, big guy.”
A faint smile crept across his face. “You’ll see.”
Then Devon’s smile, a ghost of that beautiful, heartbreaking smile of his that I knew so well, faded away. He turned from my window, walked back across the cabin, and dropped onto his couch again. He did sit up a bit straighter than before, though, and when he put his face to the window, I could tell that now he was actually looking at the rugged landscape below, and not just pointing his face in that direction.
Baby steps, Ashley, baby steps.
He came up with two whole sentences, he smiled a little bit, and now his eyes are tracking events and objects in the real world, and not just things that only he can see. That’s tons of progress, and once we land, who knows? Maybe he’ll say more words, smile again, take you into his arms because you need some comfort too, and then you can go from there.
And yeah, about that landing …
We followed the valley through one corkscrew turn after another, drifting closer to the rocks and trees rushing past below, and then we banked through one final turn. The wings went level again, the river swerved left to vanish into the forest, and a small grassy plateau opened up before us.
Now when I spoke to the pilot before we left, he’d described our landing site as ‘a small rural airfield,’ and based on that description, I formed a comfortable mental picture of the place.
There would be an asphalt runway neatly marked with a dashed white line down the center, and maybe some numbers or arrows or whatever. Lights would mark the landing strip on either side, and a small tower topped by antennas and radar and stuff would stand nearby, next to a modest but trim little building that served as a terminal. The four-wheel-drive SUV I’d rented would be sitting in a small parking lot next to the terminal, along with a few dusty pickups or whatever it was cowboys drove. If things got really crazy, there might be a few vending machines and maybe even a windsock on a pole.
Sounds reasonable, right?
Nope.
We touched down on a strip of dirt, bare dirt in the middle of a cow pasture, and yes, there was an actual cow wandering around munching grass off to one side. There were, however, no lights off to either side, because apparently in Montana they feel that only pussy-ass pilots need lights – and yeah, since it was early afternoon it didn’t matter, but weren’t there FAA regulations about that?
There was no tower. The terminal was a Quonset hut. The parking lot was an irregular patch next to the Quonset hut where the grass was a little thinner and browner than it was everywhere else. The SUV was there, as promised, and it shared the bumpy grass ‘parking lot’ with a Ford pickup, a mud-splattered Jeep, and a dog who was sleeping under the Jeep.
There was a Coke machine, but it was unplugged. A bait machine was up and running next to it, though, offering live crawdads and nightcrawlers to those who were so inclined. A windsock did dangle from a pole, and I chose to overlook the fact that it appeared to be made from some guy’s tattered underwear.
I figured a Gulfstream G650 probably hadn’t touched down here since the Wright Brothers were pups, and once our feet were on the ground and that beautiful, gleaming, oh-my-god-don’t-go plane spun around to take off again without us, I just knew we were going to die alone in the wilderness.
Grizzly bears would use our ribs for chew toys and wolves would pee all over our abandoned SUV while howling at the moon. Mom would curse the day she gave birth to a daughter who was foolish enough to throw away the comforts of civilization and –
“Mr. Killane, pleasure to see you out here again, it’s been a while – and who’s this pretty young thing?”
A sixty-something guy with a dinner-plate belt buckle and an honest-to-God white cowboy hat strolled up to us, nodding at Devon and tipping his Stetson to me. His jeans looked like they were worn for actual work and not standing around looking fashionably western, his faded red flannel shirt was tucked in over a gut just generous enough to indicate that he’d put away a few steaks and beers in his time, and the smile on his weathered face said he’d take care of any rogue bears and no problem, ma’am.
I thrust out my right hand. “Hi, sir. I’m Ashley Daniels, and you’re Mr. Adams, right? We spoke on the phone earlier, and you said the cabin is all set up and ready?”
He didn’t quite shake my hand – it was more like he absorbed it into his enormous paw. “That we did and that it
is, Miss Ashley – and you call me Frank, all right? Nice young lady like you calls me ‘Mr. Adams,’ and it makes me feel as old as these mountains.”
He turned to Devon and winked. “We’re all older, but some things never change – for one, I see you still favor the round gals.”
Devon stood off to one side, hands thrust into his pockets and turning slowly on one heel as he stared up at the mountains looming over us. He didn’t look our way, but a distant, distracted smile spread across his face.
“Just this round gal, now. Only this one and no others, round or flat or in between.”
“Well, good for you – nothing better for a man than the love of a good woman, I always say.” Frank followed up this nugget of wisdom by grabbing the two small suitcases I’d packed – I hoped he was right about the whole well-stocked cabin scenario – and heading for the parking lot.
He called back over his shoulder. “You just let me stow these bags in the back of your vehicle over here, and then you two can be on your way. No time to waste – the winter’s been mild as Miami up here so far, but that won’t last, so you want to get out there and enjoy the backcountry before it get buried under a couple feet of snow.”
I stood by the SUV’s flank as the Marlboro Man tossed our bags aboard. I looked up at the snow on the mountain peaks, pictured that same snow standing knee-deep down here, and shivered. If worse came to worse, though, at least they’d find our bodies when the snow melted come spring – right?
Frank’s voice broke into my nervous-city-girl thoughts. “Mr. Killane, I trust you do know better than to expect much action from the trout this late in the season, right?”
Devon had wandered over to the SUV with us, and now turned his gaze into the nearby forest. “No fishing this trip.”
“Well, I thought as much when I saw Mr. Montvale wasn’t with you. He doin’ okay these days?”
Devon turned pale. Frank raised an eyebrow and looked over at me – and even though I knew I shouldn’t blame him, I wanted to punch the old cowboy in the throat.
Five Minutes Late: A Billionaire Romance Page 37
