Nocturne

by Heather McKenzie

  Oliver jumped to his feet and grabbed my shoulder, stopping me dead in my tracks. “What did the announcer say?” he asked, eyes widening and sweat breaking out on his forehead.

  I shrugged him off.

  “Alexander the Great, was that the horse’s name… Is that what I heard?”

  Before I could answer, he was off like a rocket, barging his way through the stands and seeking out someone with a clipboard. A poor beige-haired woman in head-to-toe denim was completely taken aback when Oliver practically lunged at her.

  “The horse, Alexander the Great. Who’s riding it?” he demanded.

  The lady whose name tag said ‘Lola’ tried not to appear shocked by Oliver’s looming presence and wild-eyed stare. He was a tornado bearing down on a daisy.

  “You mean Zander? The rider is Ben Smith,” Lola said, eyebrows drawing together as she inspected her clipboard. “They shouldn’t have announced it over the loudspeaker, though. Ben pulled him from the event. Sorry about that.”

  My jaw dropped in astonishment. Oliver’s clear head had picked up on the clue while mine was busy wallowing in doubt and misery.

  “Ben Smith… where is he? Where can I find him?” Oliver asked far too forcefully.

  Lola backed away, getting the attention of a few cowboys who were eyeing us. “Don’t know,” she said nervously.

  She knew; she just didn’t want to share. I put on my best smile and stepped in.

  “Hey, Lola, is it? Nice to meet you.” I offered my hand, widening my eyes a bit. “Sorry about my buddy here. He’s a bit…” I leaned in to share the sensitive information. “He’s a bit slow, if you know what I mean.”

  “Oh,” Lola said, face softening with pity and understanding.

  “Anyway, my buddy here likes horses. He also likes to keep track of things and gets a little worked up if there’s a change. Know what I mean? He was rather upset when the barrel event with that poor horse that…uh…”

  “Miss Lucky?” Lola said, eyes brightening as they met mine.

  “Yeah. What happened with that was—” I was clutching at straws.

  Lola suddenly became quite agreeable. “Awful. I know. Terrible thing to watch. It’s a shame.” She leaned in and whispered so Oliver wouldn’t hear, “I hear they may have to put her down.”

  “Really? Oh, that is a shame,” I said with a shake of my head.

  A flirty grin crossed Lola’s face. When I looked longingly into her eyes and returned it, her cheeks reddened. “Anyway, can you tell me if Alexander—Zander—is out of the rodeo completely? Or just for today? Forgive me, I’m a city boy and new to how this stuff works.”

  Lola’s eyelashes fluttered. She gave me the once-over, which lingered a bit too long on my chest, then she gave Oliver a sideways glance of sympathy. “Ben packed him up to take him home. I’m sure he’s not injured, though,” she said with a motherly tone. “So don’t worry about that.”

  “Ah, good to know. Thanks.” I turned to Oliver. “Did you hear that, Samson?” I said loudly, giving him a pat on the shoulder. “Everything is just fine. You can write his name on your program and show your mom later.”

  Oliver forced the smile of a yawning gator. If he could have killed me right then, he would have.

  I turned away as if satisfied with the information. Oliver followed my lead. I stopped, as if desperate for a little more small talk with Lola. “Oh, hey,” I said, swinging back around to face her. She hadn’t moved an inch, and her cheeks were even more flushed. “Where could I find Ben Smith? I’m thinking of buying a few horses. It would be nice to start off with some award-winning pedigree.”

  Lola smiled from ear to ear. “Oh, yes. Zander would be a good stud for sure.”

  “Certainly.” I suppressed a snicker. “Can you share Ben’s address or phone number?”

  “Oh gosh, no. You know how it is, the Privacy Act and all. Besides, names are the only requirement to compete here.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad.”

  “Yeah. I know he owns a ranch, not sure where though. Them small-town Saskatchewan boys keep pretty quiet.”

  I felt a slight surge of hope. “Thanks, beautiful.” I smiled, giving her a wink.

  “Anytime,” Lola cooed, and handed me a slip of paper with her phone number.

  Once out of the arena, Oliver and I practically ran to the truck. “Ben Smith from Saskatchewan. That will be like finding a needle in a haystack,” I said under my breath, weaving through cowboy hats and plaid shirts while making sure to watch my step.

  Oliver stayed close. “Samson? Really? And… slow?”

  “I had to come up with something. You were attracting too much attention. You’re a bull in a china shop with that aggression of yours. Ever consider anger-management sessions?”

  By the way Oliver fake coughed, he knew I was right. “Well, good thinking, I guess.”

  “Was that a compliment?”

  “Don’t let it go to your head.”

  Oliver got in the truck, tossing me the keys since it was my turn to drive. He grew quiet, but I could tell there was something he wanted to say. Once we hit the highway, it came out.

  “Are girls always like that around you?”

  “Huh?”

  “Do you always just bat your eyes like that and get what you want?”

  I laughed, but then realized he was serious. Maybe he wondered if that was how I’d lured Kaya into my evil web, so I changed the subject. “Where to first?”

  “Well, we need to find a computer.”

  “Okay…then?”

  “Then we have to find every Ben Smith and pray one of them leads us to Kaya. I wonder if the rodeo keeps record of the horse of the year. What was the category he was in—tie-down roper? Whatever that is, maybe it will give us some leads. What I know for sure is Kaya is a runner. One wrong move on his part and she’ll bolt. We gotta be fast about this, Luke. Got it? Or we really might lose her.”

  I nodded. The word ‘we’ wasn’t lost on me. Neither was the fact he truly did know her better than I did.

  “Where are we?” I asked, waking folded up against the truck window with a dry mouth and stiff neck.

  I must have been asleep for a while because the sun was low in the sky and Ben had turned on the heat. The landscape rolling by was identical to the scene I’d dozed off to. Flat. Vast. Miles of farmer’s fields. I wondered if we’d actually gone anywhere.

  “We’re about an hour outside of Regina.”

  “Saskatchewan?” I said incredulously, doing the math in my head of how far I might be from Luke.

  “Yeah. From there, it’s about an hour and a half to my ranch. Got a place just outside of Radville. Nice, quiet town with good people.”

  His ranch? I almost dove out of the truck. “I can’t go to your home,” I said way too quickly.

  “Oh. Right. No, of course not,” Ben said. He took off his hat. After placing it on the seat between us, he ran his hands through his thick, chestnut hair, making it stand on end. He drove silently for a minute while I chugged the remains of a water bottle, wishing there was more.

  “So, you wanna talk about it?” he asked carefully.

  I feigned confusion as I stared at the empty ditches flanking the lonely highway. “It?”

  “Yeah.” He waited. Minutes crawled by. With a sidelong glance, I noticed his straight nose and strong jaw gave him a very pleasing profile. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him, but he wasn’t skinny. He had the physique of a man who’d worked hard every day of his life.

  “Tell me please, why, and who it is you’re running from.”

  I shook my head with a gulp. “I can’t.”

  “Must have been pretty bad for you to leave with no purse, proper shoes, or wallet while dressed in a man’s shirt. Kinda seems like you had to escape with no time to grab anything.”

  I didn’t answer.

  Ben sighed. “At least tell me your name.”

  I wanted to confide in him, pour my heart out, and explain everything�
� but what he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him. “I can’t tell you that either. But thank you for the ride,” I said, feeling my throat constrict. “And the shirt and food. When we get to the next town, I’ll call my—” I paused, my mind too rattled to lie quickly. “My sister. She will come and get me.”

  “All right.” Ben clearly didn’t believe me. “Listen, I don’t mean to pry. It’s just not often a guy gets to save a damsel in distress. The real story behind it might be better than the one I make up in my head.”

  “You have no idea,” I mumbled.

  Ben took his eyes off the road for too long, studying me. “I’m just a bit concerned for your safety. Maybe I can help you.”

  Helping me was a damn death wish. “Listen, I really appreciate your help, Ben. Who knows what would have happened if you wouldn’t have been there for me. It’s just that I have to get to somewhere.”

  He cleared his throat and turned up the heat. “Somewhere, eh? Fine. Well, I’m gonna stop at the next town for dinner. There’s a bus depot and a motel there if ya need it.”

  “Sounds great,” I lied, suddenly feeling anxious.

  “Yep,” he muttered.

  Ben was a man of few words, and that suited me just fine. We didn’t speak to each other for a long while, even when a couple of empty vodka bottles rolled out from under my seat—who was I to judge? —and we remained silent until he pulled up to a busy diner on the edge of a small town. Semi-trucks and trailers were angle parked out front, and the place churned with action. We exchanged a polite handshake and a tense goodbye, and then, clutching the new T-shirt to my chest like a lifeline, I walked in a daze toward downtown.

  Five blocks of quaint buildings lined a spotlessly clean street. As I kept putting one foot in front of the other, the streetlamps came on. I found myself at the bus stop, but the doors were locked and it was closed until tomorrow. I walked back up the other side of the street, foot absolutely throbbing and that horrible feeling of panic creeping in. What was I going to do? I was alone with little money, no one to call, no place to call home… and now that unwanted, familiar feeling of the sky shaking had started up. No. I couldn’t let my anxiety take over. Not now. Not alone out in the middle of—yet again, I had no idea where I was.

  I ducked into a door with an open sign, getting some questionable glances from patrons in ‘Charlotte’s Internet Café’. As if waking from a bad dream, I headed for a booth in the corner next to a window despite the hushed whispers among a couple of blue-haired ladies. I heard the word ‘tramp,’ and quite possibly the word ‘slut’. With a gulp, I sat and kept my eyes on the napkins. The whole place was polished to a high shine with thick wooden tables and mirrored walls, and it was almost impossible to avoid my reflection—which was indeed unsettling.

  My heart was racing, but when I was handed a menu and given a friendly smile from a waiter with the worst bleached hair I’d ever seen, it slowed a bit. I forced a return smile at the young man whose name tag said ‘Whitey’. His pasty white skin, white golf shirt, and bleached jeans suited him perfectly. My impending anxiety made my hand shake when I pointed to something on the menu called the Google Special. I knew I had to order something or I’d be asked to leave… and I didn’t care what it was.

  Within minutes, a cold glass of amber ale was set before me. Without thought, I practically downed it. Feeling eyes upon me, I looked up from the empty glass to see pity on the faces of the women. I couldn’t imagine what story they were dreaming up as they snuck glances at me, filthy and covered in bruises. Runaway? Prostitute?

  Whitey returned. “Another beer?” he asked, noting my empty glass.

  “No,” I squeaked out as my stomach twisted into knots around the brew.

  “Well, ya got twenty minutes, then I gotta charge ya five bucks for every ten minutes after that, all right?” Whitey noticed my confusion and gestured at a computer he’d set down before me. “I’ll be back with yer pie in a moment.”

  He left, and I stared numbly at a laptop he’d placed on the table. Apparently, the Google Special was beer, use of the internet, and the pie of the day—all for ten bucks. Good deal.

  Please make sure your hands are clean and watch the time! Happy Googling, said a little sign taped to the lid. I opened it, and the screen sprang to life. For some strange reason, the familiar blue color was comforting. As the dark clouds rolled in outside, I felt the beer and the familiarity of the computer calm me inside. If I didn’t look anywhere else, I could pretend Stephan was in the room with me and everything was normal.

  When I took in a deep breath, the anxiety started to ebb. I decided to figure out where I was going. Wanting to search the bus schedules, I realized I still didn’t know where I was. Whitey returned with a glass of water.

  “What town is this?” I asked.

  He eyed me curiously, setting down the glass along with two pieces of pie. “You look like you could use a little extra,” he said, and triangles of pumpkin and what appeared to be apple pie were placed next to the computer. “I’m buying the extra one for you.” He grinned, but it was kind of unsettling. “This is the town of Muldare. Oh, and I’m Whitey. I mean, my name is Whitey.”

  The town of Muldare… “Thanks, Whitey. That’s very kind,” I said, now getting a strange vibe from the overly attentive waiter.

  Whitey broke out in the kind of wide toothy smile that had me tugging up the shirt over my shoulders. “We don’t get many strangers coming in here, and I noticed you looking at the bus schedule. None comin’ or leavin’ until tomorrow afternoon just so you know. So, I assume you’ll be staying at the motel? My buddy works at the front desk.” Whitey lowered his voice, so he wouldn’t be over heard. “He throws great parties,” he added with a wink.

  There was only one motel?

  I wasn’t sure if I should answer him. The eavesdropping ladies at the next table grew silent, trying to hear if I would. “Relatives,” I blurted out. “I have an aunt and uncle here. I’m just waiting for them to meet me. Not staying.” Damn, I was a bad liar.

  “Right,” Whitey said with another wink, and he strolled off to the back of the café.

  With the waiter’s eyes on me and whispers among the regulars continuing, I made a bee-line for the washroom and put on the shirt Ben had bought me. It was too tight and short, but at least it wasn’t falling off my shoulders and didn’t smell like… him. Gathering my composure and my hair into a ponytail with an elastic I’d found on the counter, I checked the clock and headed back to my table. With fifteen minutes left on the computer, I had to plan.

  Searching the bus schedule for Muldare, I discovered there was only one bus leaving for Regina tomorrow in the afternoon. I googled motels in Muldare and found only one as well, and it was fifty bucks more than what I had in my pocket. Great. What on earth was I going to do? I could seek out some patch of grass somewhere and curl up for the night, but by the glances I was getting from Whitey, I didn’t feel too safe about that. I had no one to ask for help, no one to talk to, and I yearned for Stephan terribly. Stephan. Maybe I could message him for help and he could send me some money.

  And… maybe now was the right time to read his email.

  With ten minutes left on the clock and no other options, I opened my secret Hotmail account that I’d used years ago under the fake name Chloe Alexandra. I pictured Stephan’s face, beaming and eyes twinkling as he read my ‘love notes to Prince Charming’ in our email game. What I wouldn’t do to put my cheek against his beard and wrap my arms around him.

  It didn’t take long to find the newest message from ‘Stevie Muffins’. The arrow from the mouse hovered over the subject line, and I had to steady myself before I clicked. What I’d been putting off reading sprang to life. My eyes welled up instantly at the comforting familiarity of Stephan’s first few words.

  My dearest Kaya,

  I love you and miss you terribly. I have to tell you a few things and I don’t have much time, so please forgive the short explanations in this email. I have uncover
ed a few things you need to know, and there’s no easy way to say them.

  Your father killed Lenore. She did not fall, and she did not commit suicide like he had everyone believe—she died by his hands. He thought that getting rid of her would give him ownership of Eronel and the Estate, but Lenore willed it all to you in the event of her death. Henry’s only been watching over it until you come of age to takeover, which is when you turn twenty-one. This is the real reason why you are in the middle of a war between your father and John Marchessa. You are worth a fortune.

  Henry killed the woman who’d pretended to be my mother? I wasn’t surprised. Something in my childhood memory confirmed this made sense. And as for the inheritance… that I already knew. I felt bad I hadn’t told Stephan about the day Henry came to my room and made me sign all those papers—the day I’d vowed to never call Henry Lowen ‘Father’ ever again.

  I took a sip of water and kept reading.

  Henry has been concocting a plan for years now to get control of your inheritance, and part of that plan involved Oliver. As it turns out, many years ago, Henry became Oliver’s legal guardian. I am positive Oliver isn’t aware of this. Since Oliver has no other family, that means Henry is Oliver’s only next of kin. Since an heir is what Henry needs to keep Eronel and Estate for himself, he’s been hoping Oliver would get you pregnant. This way, by getting rid of you, then your child, and then Oliver, all legal bindings to John Marchessa would be broken and the estate, Eronel, and that massive trust fund of yours would all belong to him. This is why you must hide and never come back here. You must not let Henry find you. Three years might seem like a long time, but it will fly by, and then you can take control and shut him down.

  Also, I’ve discovered Old Carl was working for a woman named Rayna Claire Gless, who is the mastermind behind The Right Choice Group and the one responsible for organizing your kidnapping. Stay far away from this woman. She only wants to get revenge on Henry by using you. Unfortunately, this woman is your birth mother. Henry took you from her when you were just weeks old. I guess in my heart I knew this. I’m sorry I didn’t listen and overlooked the truth for so long. So very sorry.