Falling Again

by Peggy Bird

  But when he still hadn’t answered fifteen minutes later, she left the office and headed east for Mt. Hood, figuring by the time she got to the cabin, she’d have contact with him.

  She parked in the same spot where they’d left the car on their last excursion, wrote a note about where she was to leave on the driver’s seat and texted Nick again. Then she waited. Ten minutes turned to fifteen. Then twenty. There was not a living soul around. Other than bugs buzzing and birds chirping, it was as still and silent as the forest could be.

  One more text. Nothing. Nick was MIA. Probably out of range of a cell phone tower. Hanging around waiting was absurd. No one was here—Tyler Radke had been sure they’d been warned off. She’d just circle the house, look in the windows, check out the shed she’d seen when she was here before, then leave. Easy-peasy.

  The hike into the cabin this time was a lot faster than the hike out had been when she was hopping. But the cabin was no less deserted. She looked in all the windows, seeing little she hadn’t noticed before, although she thought some of the flags and tables had been moved around, as if someone—or several someones—had been there.

  Going from window to window, she made her way around the cabin until she was at the shed she’d noticed but not investigated before. She tried the door. It wasn’t locked this time.

  Considering what she found, it was strange it had been left open. Inside was a collection of things she would have figured the owners of the cabin would want to keep secret. On shelves on one side were weapons of all sorts—military style automatic weapons, pistols, nasty-looking knives. Crates of what she took to be ammunition lined the floor under the shelves.

  Piled in the back were dozens and dozens—maybe hundreds—of Mayor Carter’s campaign signs, many ripped and shredded. Puzzled, she stared at the pile until a conversation she’d had with a Carter campaign staffer came to mind. She’d been complaining about an unusually large number of lost or stolen lawn signs. Fiona hadn’t taken her seriously. She should have. Here they were.

  There were also poster-size photographs of the mayor, some of them with targets on her face, many of them with bullet holes in them. Fiona finally realized what the chewed up tree and the black and white poster in the cabin were about—Mayor Carter’s photograph had been used as target practice. Now she realized what had been nagging at her since the day she and Nick had been there. This was the place where the City Hall shooters practiced.

  More shelves on the other wall held boxes with labels on them marked with poison symbols. She didn’t recognize the names of some of the chemicals, but she knew how close the cabin was to the source of Portland’s water supply, the Bull Run River. The watershed was heavily protected, but still…

  She pulled out her phone and was taking shots of everything in the shed when the light from outside was suddenly dimmed and she heard a male voice say, “So, you showed up. We were told you might be here.”

  Whirling around, she saw three young men with shaved heads blocking the doorway. They were dressed in jeans and T-shirts, which did little to hide their heavily muscled arms and shoulders. They looked to be in their twenties and all three were tattooed with the symbols of the White Power Knights.

  Before she could say or do anything, two of them stepped inside the shed. One man grabbed her and dragged her out into the open; another grabbed her phone and smashed it with the butt of the weapon he was carrying.

  The third man stood with his arms folded across his chest. “We’re supposed to find out what you know and who you’ve told before we find a permanent cure for your nosy trespassing habits. Pretty thing like you should be fun to play with while we get the job done.”

  • • •

  “Oh, hell, Trav. You didn’t.” Nick was retrieving his cameras from the trunk of his friend’s car when he came across what he’d been afraid he’d find.

  His writer buddy looked over his shoulder, pulled out a handgun, and checked to make sure the safety was still on. “You know I never go anyplace without a weapon. Why are you surprised?”

  “I had hopes crossing state lines would deter you.”

  “Nope. We might need it. Lots of varmints out here in the wilderness.”

  “A developed campsite near a manmade lake is hardly wilderness.” Nick knew he was fighting a losing battle so he grabbed the rest of his gear and shut his mouth and the trunk. “The last time we were up here we were looking for Lava Lake. I think I know how to access it this time. Got a GPS coordinate.” He pulled out his iPhone. “Shit. No signal.” He pointed to the left. “But I’m pretty sure it’s over there.”

  “Then let’s go, bro.” Travis clapped Nick on the shoulder and they followed the trail half a mile. There it was—the lake Nick and Fiona had been unable to find.

  When he’d gotten photos of the lake from various angles, Nick said, “There’s a really interesting cabin somewhere around here. We…I…found when we…I…was here before. Want to take a look?”

  Travis grinned. “From the number of times you’ve said ‘we’ today, I guess the whole woman-thing has been worth giving up the gig in the Bahamas to come here with me.”

  “Belize, not the Bahamas. And, yeah, it’s been okay.” He didn’t say any more.

  “But that’s all the intel I’m getting?”

  “Not much else to say. She’s beautiful. She’s sexy. It’s been a great couple of weeks. I’m off to New Mexico next week.” He stowed his camera in his bag. “You want to go find the cabin or not?”

  Travis stared at him for a few minutes, an amused look on his face. “We getting too close to the flame, are we? Getting burned?”

  “Go fuck yourself, Trav. I’m heading for the cabin. You coming?”

  Travis grunted a laugh and checked to make sure his gun was still in its holster. “Will it work for my story?”

  “Doubtful. It’s some sort of white power camp. Fiona’s working on a story about it.”

  “So her name’s Fiona. She even sounds sexy and beautiful.”

  Nick strode off on the trail toward the cabin without rising to the bait. Ten minutes later the two men approached the cabin from the rear. Nick started to explain to his colleague how he and Fiona had stumbled on the cabin while looking for Lava Lake.

  “We came up the trail from the other direction. It was…”

  He was interrupted by a scream. The two men stopped.

  “What the hell?” Travis asked. “That sounded like a woman.”

  Then they heard the rough sounds of male voices, several of them.

  “Shut up, bitch,” one said.

  “No one’ll hear you anyway,” another said.

  “Let me go,” the woman said. A very familiar woman—Fiona.

  Nick’s heart rate jumped. His breath got shallow. He motioned Travis back into the shadow of a grove of trees.

  “Fuck, she bit me,” a male voice said.

  “I’ll do worse than bite you if you don’t let me go,” Fiona said, her voice sounding less brave than her words did.

  Nick explained who the woman was.

  “It sounds like there’s more than one man there, too,” Travis said.

  “But there are two of us. Let’s go get her,” Nick said.

  “No, she’ll get hurt. We need the police.” Travis was waving his cell phone around, searching for a signal. When he shook his head indicating his failure, Nick tried, found a weak one and called Sam, quickly explaining what was happening.

  Sam sounded as angry as Nick had ever heard him. “What the hell are you doing up on the mountain? And why are you calling me? You’re in Clackamas County. I told you both…” He disappeared into the crackle of lost signal.

  Nick moved to another place where he could hear the end of Sam’s rant and whispered, “Sorry I haven’t memorized the county boundaries in the state of Oregon, Sam, but…”

  “I’ll call the sheriff and head up there myself. Let us handle it. Don’t interfere. I don’t want you or your friend to get involved.”

&
nbsp; “Fiona’s in danger.”

  “Did you hear me? Stay away. Now, get off the damn phone and let me get the sheriff.”

  Nick got off the phone as ordered but if he didn’t hear police sirens in the next few minutes no way in hell was he going to stay away from the scene in front of the cabin.

  He and Travis crept around from behind the cabin, listening the whole time to the sounds of Fiona and the men tormenting her. When they finally got to a place where they could see what was going on, it was enough to make Nick want to ignore what Sam said and try to get to Fiona—whatever the risk. Three muscular, young men with weapons tucked into the back of their jeans were toying with Fiona like a pack of wild animals with a frightened prey.

  Nick had been in tight circumstances before when he covered international hot spots. He’d been shot at, held at knifepoint, once even captured and held for a couple days by some teenage rebels who turned out to be nice kids. Nothing, however, including the threat he’d gotten from the tire-slasher, had scared him more than the sound of Fiona’s voice quivering with fear.

  Two of them had her in the middle of a big piece of cloth—a flag it looked like—pitching her up and down. They’d stop, the third man would slap her, ask her a question about what she knew, who she’d talked to, taunt her, then let his buddies toss her around again, throwing her higher in the air with each pass. She was mouthing off to them, which seemed to amuse them although the amusement seemed to be wearing thin as he and Travis listened.

  The look on her face confirmed what Nick had heard in her voice—she was terrified in spite of her defiant words. He couldn’t bear to see her tormented like that, but he couldn’t look away. What he saw only amped up his frustration. The woman he had fallen in love with was in danger and he was standing around like a little kid waiting for daddy to arrive and rescue them both.

  The men seemed in no hurry to do anything more violent than pass her around for the fun of it, so Nick allowed his friend to restrain him from roaring into the scene. Travis had taken the safety off his weapon and Nick wanted nothing more than to grab the gun from Travis and charge the clearing like Lancelot rescuing Guinevere from being incinerated. But he’d promised Sam he’d wait for the cops.

  Instead of the sound of law enforcement arriving, however, all they heard were the sounds of the skinheads tormenting Fiona. Nick tried to calm himself; tried to keep his anger in check. It wasn’t working.

  Then the scene in front of them changed. Seeming to tire of their sport, the skinheads dumped Fiona on the ground, the two who’d been throwing her in the air picked her up, held her by her arms as still as they could, while the third one took a knife from his boot and asked again who she had told about the cabin. When she refused to answer, he cut off the top button on her shirt. He repeated the question. She shook her head. The second button went and he slapped her. By the time the third button was gone and she’d been hit again, Nick lost it. He motioned to Travis to follow him and made a run at the skinheads.

  It was not his best move of the day. The skinheads had the advantages of being younger and more muscular than either Travis or Nick. While the one with a knife held onto Fiona, one took on Travis, kicking his weapon out of his hand before throwing a punch at him and the third one came straight for Nick.

  All Nick could see was a huge guy with more muscles that Schwarzenegger and a stance that said he’d been in more fights than Nick had. Which wasn’t hard because Nick had never been in a fight. But he wasn’t going down without trying.

  He swung at the guy and missed, getting a fist in the nose in return that made him see stars. Blindly, blood dripping down the back of this throat and over his mouth he threw another punch. It landed hard enough in the skinhead’s gut to slow him down for a few seconds, long enough for Nick to try and land another blow, but his opponent was faster. He tried to defend himself, to get in another blow, but the hits to his body came hard and fast. There was no way he could make any headway on fighting off the kid who was beating him into submission, first with his fists then, when he had Nick on the ground, with his feet.

  He could hear Fiona screaming his name, heard Travis grunt as the second guy beat on him. Neither was the sound he wanted to hear.

  Then there it was—the sweet sound of police sirens. He tried to grab the feet of the man who was kicking him, to hold him for the cops, but he was unable to get a grip on him as the guy took off for the trees, yelling, “Run.”

  “Do you have her phone?” the man who’d been fighting with Travis asked.

  “Fuck the phone. Get the hell out of Dodge,” the one who’d been holding Fiona said.

  Nick sat up, painfully and slowly. Through eyes beginning to swell, he saw Travis, who somehow looked unharmed from the fight he’d been in, pick up his gun from the ground, stand, aim and fire four shots at the retreating figures. One of the three men fell, shot in the leg from the look of it. A second man grabbed an arm, as if hit, then tripped and fell hard, where he lay not moving. The third man disappeared into the forest.

  Barely able to move without hurting in places he had hitherto not known existed, Nick wiped blood out of his eyes, and tried to find Fiona. He didn’t have to look far. She was right next to him.

  “Oh, God, Nick. Can you get up?” She looked more terrified now than she had when she’d been at the mercy of the skinheads. “This is all my fault. If I hadn’t texted you…” She began to cry as she wiped at the blood he could feel coming out of his nose with the sleeve of her shirt.

  “Text? What text?” he started but was interrupted by the entrance of an Oregon state trooper, then by a Clackamas County sheriff’s deputy, last by an EMT. It was semi-organized chaos as more cops arrived and the two wounded skinheads were cuffed, Travis was taken to a police vehicle to talk to the sheriff’s deputy, and Fiona was tended to by an EMT.

  And then there was Sam, who’d also shown up. He had no actual jurisdiction, but it didn’t prevent him from yelling—loudly enough to be heard in Portland—about what a jackass Nick been to tackle the skinheads by himself. Before Nick could defend his actions, he, too, was hustled away to have his injuries looked at by the medics while the troopers talked to him.

  He tried to explain he needed to talk to Fiona but he was blocked at every turn by some law enforcement official or other who wanted to hear what he had to say. The only thing comforting him was the fact that when he patted down his pockets, he was relieved to find he still had his cell. When they finished with him, he’d call her.

  He’d deal with Sam later, too.

  • • •

  “What the fuck were you doing here, Fiona?” Sam Richardson was clearly not in the mood to be civil.

  She’d finished talking to one set of cops and was waiting to talk to the sheriff’s deputy when he grabbed her. “My job, like I told you. What’re you doing here? Isn’t this out of your jurisdiction?”

  “I told you to stay away from here. These guys are dangerous. As you have only too fucking recently found out.”

  “You didn’t tell me any such thing. And I had no intention of meeting up with them. I heard the place was deserted. I figured with everyone in the Portland metro area looking for the City Hall shooter, I might have a chance to see what was up here.”

  “Instead you put yourself and Nick in danger.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment, seeing the blood all over Nick’s face. “Is he all right? I couldn’t get near him to find out after the police and EMTs got here.”

  “From the blood I’d say there’s not a chance in hell he’s all right. But that must not be important to you. Getting your story is more important, isn’t it?”

  “What a terrible thing to say, Sam.”

  “The truth sometimes is.” He rubbed his hands over his face. “Christ, how’m I going to tell Amanda you caused her brother to be hauled off bleeding all over the place?”

  “I didn’t ask Nick to come charging into the middle of a pack of wild animals.”

  He glared at h
er, as if to say, “You didn’t have to ask.”

  “Look, Sam, I found out who owned this cabin and came up here to see what else I could discover for my story.”

  “Your story. Your damned story is all that matters to you, isn’t it?”

  “It’s my job. Of course it matters. Doesn’t your job matter to you?”

  He shook his head. “My job is to keep people out of danger, whereas yours seems to be—”

  “Fuck off, Sam. I’m finished with this conversation.” Fiona stomped away to be waylaid by the Clackamas County Sheriff’s department contingent. She promised to meet them in Oregon City in two hours and headed for her car, furious Sam hadn’t even once asked how she was. How dare he blame her for everything when the other cops seemed to accept she was the victim not the villain.

  Yet she was furious at herself, too. Mostly for getting the man she loved into the middle of something she’d likely be having nightmares about for the rest of her life. Because in spite of her indignation at how Sam treated her, she was beginning to believe he was right—because she wanted her story, she had gotten Nick badly injured.

  She barely remembered driving down the mountain to her house, changing her clothes, and heading south to Oregon City. All she remembered for days afterward, other than flashbacks of the fear she’d felt when she thought the skinheads really were going to kill her, was the growing sense of guilt about how she had demanded Nick come meet her at the cabin only to have him leave bloodied, battered, and beaten.

  How could she ever face him again?

  Chapter 15

  For the next few days, Fiona stayed home and out of sight. She went out only to deal with more police and to make sure her doctor was satisfied she had no internal injuries. She stayed out of the way of her colleagues in the press. She had a newfound sympathy for people whose lives had been thrown into chaos by some horrific event only to find themselves the object of journalists who wanted them to endlessly relive it. All the victims wanted to do was forget.