by Angela White
Kendle gave a sharp look of warning, pulling the clerk’s attention away from LJ. “One of those caps too.”
It was up on a shelf that required the heavy woman to climb for it, and Kendle smiled sweetly when the pie-faced female glared at her in the almost stifling heat of the general store. “Love the Dodgers. Gotta have it.”
Storekeeper or not, the woman clearly wanted to tell her to go to hell, and Kendle flashed a warning that said, Do it at your own risk. The air in the musty little shop was cold despite all of them sweating.
Luke shoved his hands into his jean pockets, embarrassed and yet impressed with the way Kendle was handling things. Plump but scrappy, with the air of a snob, Mary Jo had been born on the Island and hated outsiders. The fact that Kendle’s show had been popular even here made the frumpy spinster more jealous.
Luke sighed. Mary Jo also hated him. That didn’t help.
The moment was long and tense, and it was the vivid skin of the movie star that convinced Mary Jo. Kendle was obviously tough, and the island native chose to climb the ladder for the ball cap, muttering under her breath.
Satisfied, Kendle took a moment to look around as the sharp odor of cleaning products stung her nose and smothered the hint of Luke’s sexy cologne. There were neatly stacked baskets and racks, tasteful signs and pictures, and not a speck of dust to be found. The front glass windows were spotless as well, white curtains shut to dim the bright noonday sun, and Kendle was suddenly sure the woman now jabbing at numbers on her tiny calculator hadn’t been the one to clean any of it.
“A hundred even.”
Kendle laid the cash on the spotless counter with a frown, but said nothing at the too high price, wanting only to go. Not for herself, but for Luke, whose embarrassment she could feel. They didn’t like him here. Why? Did they know his secret? It explained his reluctance to come into town to replace the things they’d lost in the storm.
Kendle met his eye in the dimness of the store. When sparks flew between them, the storekeeper shoved the full bag at her.
Kendle spun around in time to catch it before it fell to the tiled floor. “Is there a problem?”
She observed Luke’s wide shoulders tense, wondering if they were about to mix it up, and knew the clerk wondered that too.
When the woman’s face changed from unfriendly to mean, Kendle held up a hand. “Of course there is. Let’s do it like this. I plan to be here a while. Should I spend my money with the crazy lady across the creek?”
The storekeeper seemed surprised she knew there were other options and shook her head, voice hateful.
“No. Come in anytime.”
Kendle smirked as she turned away. “Not even if you bent over and kissed my red ass! Have a great day.”
Luke held the door as she swept out, regal as any Hollywood actress he’d ever seen, and he laughed at the speechless clerk. “I’d pay to see that!”
He slipped out before she could respond and went to help Kendle store their things on the cart attached to the rear of his bike.
“She always like that?”
“Yes. Wanna go to Baxter’s? They have shoes.” Luke motioned at one of the four other shack-like, brown and green stores that made up town proper on this side.
“Same attitude, right?”
“Probably, yeah.” His voice was a low mutter.
Kendle grimaced, sweeping the tiny town again. There were patches of wild roses amid clumps of Miro trees that hung over every inch of the town, creating shaded canopies that housed dozens of multi-colored parrots. There were no cars, only two dirt bikes parked by theirs, and she saw the outlines of neat, white-fenced shacks in the distance that she assumed were the storekeeper’s homes. There were no mailboxes, no addresses on the doors, just gravel walkways and rocking chairs on the porches. The striped barber pole on the last shop made her stomach clench with longing. She missed her home, her country.
“How about we go fishing instead?”
Luke’s face lit up, and Kendle felt her first response to him, to his happiness. There was something there.
“Sounds like a plan. Now?”
She chuckled, feeling soft and attractive for a change, instead of just being grateful to be alive.
Another spark flew between them that anyone lingering in shop windows felt.
“Yes, the sooner the better,” Kendle answered.
Eager to be in the cool, quiet jungle, she swung her leg over the bike, staying back to leave him room. Kendle blushed at the thought of holding tight to Luke while they were flying along. They were getting more familiar now, and it surprised her. She never would have seen herself being attracted to a calloused, big handed, suspenders and plaid-wearing war veteran.
It was a beautiful day. Sunny and warm with a cloudless blue sky above and a saltwater breeze that made her shiver. She couldn’t–
“Leaving so soon?”
Kendle saw Luke tense at the male voice and immediately knew he not only disliked the owner of it, he hated him. When she viewed the stranger, it was easy to understand why. The man was everything that Luke wasn’t.
Pretentious shoes, expensive slacks and Polo top, deep scorn in the thirty-something island god’s green eyes. Great body and teeth, deeply tanned, manicured hands, a watch on his wrist that had probably cost more than she had made on her last show. Instead of being impressed, Kendle only wondered vaguely if the watch still worked. She had no interest in a trust fund baby.
“Introduce us,” the man ordered.
Kendle stood up when she witnessed the muscle in Luke’s stubble-covered jaw start twitching.
“Be careful, pasta boy, or–”
Kendle stepped between them before Luke could finish the threat, holding her hand out. The menace in Luke’s body language was a surprise to Kendle and like a whiff of cooking meat to the lonely woman inside.
“Roberts, Kendle. And you are?”
“In awe of your beauty,” oozed the tall playboy as he gently kissed her hand. Keeping ahold of her, he introduced himself, flashing expensive veneers. “I’m Ethan Kraft, oh goddess of survival. I own this island.”
“Just the town, fader,” Luke corrected.
Kendle pulled her hand away with a warning look that said not to get too friendly.
Ethan frowned at the nice term for someone who can’t follow through and pretended not to see the red-skinned movie star wipe her hand down the side of her jeans, as if he might have contaminated her. Luke obviously saw it, though, because his grin widened.
“Give me time,” Ethan boasted arrogantly, flashing beautiful dimples at Kendle.
She grimaced at the unspoken implication that he would have her too. Not in a million years.
“You ready?” Luke interrupted, indicating the bike.
“Yes.”
Ethan stepped forward, meaning to take her hand again.
Luke, unsure of his intentions, slapped both palms against the playboy’s hard chest and shoved him, forcing Ethan to retreat to avoid falling.
“Don’t ever touch her unless she says you can! You got that?”
Ethan bristled, but wasn’t sure about crossing Luke physically, despite being younger. “Sure.”
His countenance was hard as he watched them ride off together. Maybe she didn’t know what kind of man Luke was. Ethan strode to the store he had spotted her leaving. Maybe he would make it his job to see that she found out.
2
Later, with the sun fading behind a layer of ugly clouds rolling in from the southeast, Kendle watched Luke cast out over the calm water of the second fishing hole they’d tried. The first had been full of debris.
“You never talk about yourself. You know everything about me.”
Luke wondered how he had fared in her comparison to Ethan. “Does it matter?”
Kendle scanned her twitching line, vaguely listening to frogs and gulls calling to each other. “Sometimes.”
She heard him sink the pole into the ground next to his chair and then there
was silence, but she knew he was nervously waiting for her questions to begin. So she didn’t ask. Not only was she living on his dime out here, he had been good to her, understanding, and she wouldn’t push. If he wanted to tell her, he would do it on his own.
Kendle dug her bare feet and hands into the bur grass around them, still in love with the land. She could hear the rustle of a small animal in the underbrush, dragonflies zipping over the surface of the water. She thought she could even hear the ants and beetles crawling over the salty soil, and she held in the tears only by willpower. She was alive!
Luke outwardly relaxed when she didn’t speak, went back to enjoying the beautiful day, but inside, he was worrying over what to say. He had a horrible secret, and while she hadn’t found out today, eventually, she would. He needed to be the one to tell her.
“You want to go to town for lunch? Stacey’s Place has good chicken sandwiches.”
Kendle jerked her line hard, felt the fish get hooked.
“Not really. This is fine,” she lied, thinking if she never ate another piece of any kind of seafood, it would be too soon.
Luke got the net for her as she reeled in her catch. He was very aware of her as a woman, of how tiny she was compared to him, and he swept her curves as she fought with their dinner.
A lot more comfortable with each other now, the strength of his attention had grown since that wet ride in the dark. Slow and easy was the ticket to win her over. He could probably try now, but he hesitated to get closer to her than he already was. She was pure, he was tainted, and when she found out, their time together would be over.
The end of her time with Luke was something Kendle had found herself thinking about more and more. It wasn’t right for her to stay with him. It didn’t look good to the townspeople, but the thought of not being around him made her hurt. Soon, she would have to leave or flaunt convention to stay.
Her health had dramatically improved, red skin finally fading to brown, and she was better emotionally too, unless a smell or sound hit her the wrong way, flashed her to the ocean and its relentless grip. When that happened, she sought Luke’s comfort, instinctively knowing he understood what she was going through. Some nights she crawled into his bed and huddled against his warm body, shivering, sweating. He never mentioned it in the morning, just gently shifted her off his big chest so he could get up. He was easygoing, didn’t expect much, and the only time she’d seen him even close to upset was today. With Ethan Kraft.
“You don’t like the people here much, do you?”
Luke dropped the small grouper into their catch holder. “No. We don’t care about the same things.”
Kendle understood. The people here were rich, ostracized from civilization for one reason or another, while Luke was...what? A hermit? Definitely. A criminal? Maybe. Either way, he’d been nothing but great to her, and she would respect his privacy and not ask what his crime had been. It would eventually come out, and she would face it straight on, but for now, he was a comfort that she wasn’t ready to give up. Kendle knew there were choices coming, hard ones that would take strength she wasn’t sure she had, but for now, it was just the two of them in paradise.
Luke’s thoughts were again in line with hers, eager to put it off. It was a sin that he could never atone for.
Cawwww!
They both stared as a scattered flock of dingy cranes headed for the ocean. The couple doubted the birds would reach land again, their movements implying sickness. Neither of them mentioned it. It wasn’t an uncommon sight anymore, and served to remind them both of the homeland they’d left behind.
“How did he know who I was?”
“Same way I did, I guess. TV reception out here was good for a while. Easy for him this time.”
His tone implied the playboy hadn’t had such an easy time finding out who he was, and Kendle chuckled, thinking Luke’s cologne was so much better then Ethan’s heavy Polo. “Took him a while to figure out who you were, huh?”
“Yeah. He finally had to go through my garbage to get my fingerprints for Daddy Kraft to run.”
Kendle was horrified for him, at the invasion of his privacy. “What an asshole!”
Luke threw her a grin. “He got a mud bath for it. I ruined his four hundred dollar shoes.”
She grinned back, almost stealing his breath at her innocent beauty. It was a good moment for him, and he memorized it studiously, from the muddy tennis shoes sitting by her bare feet and the face that was great without makeup, to the sound of water lapping and a rock falling somewhere nearby.
“Did he cry?”
“No, but it was close. One of the best days I’ve had here.” Luke looked away. “Until you came.”
Her mouth opened, and he tensed for questions he knew he would at least try to answer.
“It’s bad, right?”
“Yes.”
Kendle studied the man who waited, expecting no mercy.
When she spoke, Luke felt her words reach that cold, barren part of his heart that he had been carrying for most of his adult life.
“That was the old world, and it’s gone. The people here may not believe it, but I do. You’re no longer that man.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Broken Bridges
March 23rd
Western Missouri
1
“…is Safe Haven… Red Cross convoy…survivors. Does anyone…”
Angela froze at the static-laced transmission.
The witch whispered that her boy, Kenn, and grave danger were almost at hand.
Marc came to the open passenger door, jarring her. “Everything okay?”
“That’s them. That’s who we’re searching for. You ready?”
Marc was thinking that group had to be within a few hundred miles for them to hear the transmission. “Few more minutes.”
He fished in his coat pockets for his smokes. Only another three weeks left alone with her.
Angela got out and shut the door, ignoring the gray and black wolf on the roof that edged over for her attention. “I’ll help.”
Marc understood her need to hurry, but he wanted to linger over the radio for a location. She always pointed him in the right direction, but in this big empty, it would be easy to miss them.
“We won’t,” Angela answered firmly. “I won’t.”
Marc lit a smoke, watching her quickly take care of their lunch mess. She wiped her hands down her jeans as she finished. It was something she wouldn’t have felt relaxed enough to do during their first weeks together. She was constantly growing, learning, changing, and on some things, she was as good as he was.
“They’re near Gillette, Wyoming. We’ll catch up in South Dakota, I think, around Interstate 90.”
Marc frowned. They would be facing her man by the end of next week. Ten days left. His heart twisted.
“Come on. I’ll back it up, and you can do the chains.”
Marc cracked an imaginary whip, making them both snicker. They had made good time, eating up nearly three hundred miles, and they’d chosen to tow one of the Blazers to save on fuel, something they were low on again.
“You drive. I’ll check the maps for what’s between us and them.”
Angela was settled quickly; glad he’d interrupted her thoughts. Instead of relief that she was about to be with her son, all she could feel was the fear of facing Kenny. Time to pay was close now, and she still wasn’t sure if she was strong enough to do it.
Minutes later, they were leaving Corning, Missouri, both uneasy. This was tornado country, part of the alley. It was eerie to discover one block totally normal–if you could call looted, burned businesses normal–and the next street knocked flat with nothing but piles of debris left standing. It was also farm country, crops of tobacco and river oats everywhere, surrounded by Indian grass and milkweed. There was no traffic in sight, hadn’t been for the last day, and she held in a shudder, sure she knew why. Not many people had made it through the last town.
Pattonsburg, ful
ly decorated, had real bodies in every Christmas scene, with each corpse painstakingly put in the place of the person they most appeared like. Mary, Santa, Wise Men, even the baby Jesus were represented.
She and Marc had gone around, the feeling of evil too strong to ignore. They had detoured an extra day, sure each of the “actors” had been survivors of the war, not victims. They were too fresh.
Pattonsburg had become, or maybe always had been, home to a serial killer reigning unopposed. She had marked it in her journal, and then tried to let it go. She had kept worrying over it, though, and Marc had offered to go back and challenge the mad man just to ease her horror. She’d denied him, but when the witch had asked the same question, she’d said yes with a heavy heart. After her own encounter with evil, Angela now understood that some people had earned death. The nut job in Pattonsburg was certainly one of those, and she had let the witch hunt him down while she slept. The fact that it hadn’t been by her hand physically was helping, but death was something she couldn’t handle, and if she ever had to kill again, she might–
“Angie.”
She glanced up to find Marc staring at her.
“Try to let it go.”
Angela breathed deeply. Knowing that she had saved future travelers was helping. “I will. What did you say?”
“We’ll have to cross the Missouri to get into Nebraska, unless you want to parallel it until we get below Kansas City. Flatter land might mean a better chance of finding a shallow place to cross.”
She was already shaking her head, raising her sunglasses. “That’s another week. Let’s try to find a dam or a bridge around here that’s okay.”
Marc stared, stomach suddenly uneasy.
Angela gave him a quick look that revealed a desperate need. “I feel it too, but I can’t waste another week. I can’t.”
“I won’t ask you to unless we can’t find a shallow or dam, like we did when we came over the Mississippi.”
Angela studied the mud-streaked lanes of Interstate 29. The cracked pavement was full of potholes and mud that was slowly drying in the steady breeze now that the temperatures had stayed above freezing for a few days. The wind was calm, weather clear for a change, and Angela lit a smoke. She wasn’t sure what was wrong, but knew something was since there was only darkness when she searched her mental doors.
