Promise Me

by Brent, Cora

  Grayson, however, laughed. “Yeah,” he said. “But that’s not why she would have liked you.” He appraised me for a moment. “You’re tougher than you seem. You’ll make it, Promise.” He finally took a bit of pizza.

  “Gray?”

  He raised his eyebrows and swallowed. “What?”

  “What were you studying at school?”

  “Archeology. Like Indiana Jones.” He snickered. “I’ll be you don’t know who the hell that is, do you?”

  It sounded vaguely familiar. I stared him down. “Fuck you. You could teach me.”

  His smile faded as he searched my face. “Yeah,” he said, “I could teach you, Promise.”

  We didn’t linger long after that, eating quickly and then heading for home. Grayson pointed to a rising dust cloud in the west as we departed Parker.

  I stared at the thing. It was an ominous dark wall which looked to be miles high and moving in quickly.

  “Haboob,” he said, starting the engine.

  “What?” I shouted, keeping my eyes on it fearfully. Once I’d seen a picture from one of the Great Depression’s famous dust storms as it bore down on a sleepy town in Oklahoma. The monster was heading our way looked eerily similar.

  “It’s what those big dust storms are called. We can outrun it back to Quartzsite if we move. Hold on.”

  He barely waited until I tightened my arms and then he accelerated smoothly. I pressed my face into his back, closing my eyes to the wind. I didn’t open them again until I felt the bike slowing and knew we were approaching Quartzsite.

  The dust wall, or haboob, was bearing down rapidly. Grayson pulled the bike in front of Riverbottom and I hopped off, staring at the seemingly impenetrable cascade of brown dust which appeared to swallow everything in its path.

  I couldn’t look away. Indeed, I felt as if it were magnetically pulling me forward as it towered a good mile straight up and several miles wide. I realized I was walking quickly towards it, past the trailers and beyond the dry wash. When I paused abruptly, Grayson nearly crashed into me. I turned to him in surprise. I hadn’t heard him following.

  “Look at it,” I pointed, spellbound.

  He nodded, “It’s quite a sight.” He pulled at my sleeve. “Hey, you shouldn’t stand out here when it hits. That dust brings all kinds of shit with it, makes some folks sick.”

  “In a minute,” I whispered, hypnotized by the billowing reaches as they grew closer and more finely visible.

  Gray shuffled at my side, kicking the sand. I wanted to tell him he should go ahead without me but I knew he wouldn’t. I looked up as the brown cloud began to blot out the sky. He was right; I shouldn’t stay out here. I had no doubt the thing would try to swallow me whole in its thick fog. The thought both frightened and exhilarated me.

  He didn’t pull away when I sought his hand. His fingers laced through mine and his grip grew firm. We watched as the winds began to sift through the sand at our feet.

  “Now,” I turned to him with a smile, “how about you buy me my first drink?”

  He considered. “Now’s as good a time as any.”

  We walked quickly and quietly back toward the bar. Gray continued to hold my hand. But only until we reached the threshold.

  I turned around and looked at him when he backed away. It seemed like I should say something. Or that he should say something.

  But in the end we only stared at each other mutely as the hot winds began to kick with ferocity, rapidly obscuring everything around us.

  PART TWO

  “Land of extremes. Land of contrasts. Land of surprises. Land of contradictions. That is Arizona.” -Federal Writer’s Project, 1956

  “And none but Love to bid us laugh or weep.” -Willa Cather

  “God, it’s beautiful…Love. Sex....Owning this impossibly strong man and making him forget his name when you get him to the end again and again.” -Kira Tolleson

  Chapter Fifteen

  GRAYSON

  “You hittin’ that?” Mad didn’t even need to say her name.

  “No.” Grayson didn’t look up.

  Maddox casually lit a cigarette. “You gonna?”

  Grayson pressed the magazine lever of the Mini 14, letting it fall out of the stock into his hand. “No.”

  Mad seemed to think he was funny. “Well shit, Gray, isn’t your fucking hand getting tired?”

  “Hey, don’t smoke that crap in here.”

  Mad blew out a cloud and smiled, snuffing out his cigarette on a small plate. “Come on out tonight. You had one case of bad pussy. But you know how many more are out there just dying for some leather? Indulge a little, brother.” He leaned back in the chair, propping his feet up on Grayson’s table. He was smiling. “It’s because of her, isn’t it?”

  Gray didn’t want to talk about the girl. He felt guilty enough for the tone of the thoughts which kept running through his mind. Sure, he wanted her. But he wasn’t going in that direction no matter how bad it got.

  He glanced up in time to see her wandering towards the Riverbottom, probably looking for Rachel. She was walking more confidently these days and he was happy about that. She’d also filled out a little, not so much the skinny wraith he’d found three weeks earlier. His eyes went unwittingly up and down her body. Gray remembered the way her breasts had felt on his back as she clutched him on the back on his bike a few nights earlier, when he’d driven her to Parker again for her Thursday night support group.

  And then he realized his head was again going in places that he wasn’t willing to travel so he snapped the magazine back into the rifle with a hard click.

  Maddox was looking out the window too. “Someone should show her how it’s really done,” he said in a suggestive tone, touching the front of his pants in a meaningful gesture. He was still smiling. Grayson glared at him, thinking about how that fucker could smile through a nun’s funeral. Maddox grinned back.

  Gray knew Mad liked to see how hard he could press but he couldn’t quite decide if this was just an effort to piss him off. He decided not to take the chance.

  “Don’t,” he said finally.

  Maddox raised his eyebrows. “Admit it.”

  Gray sneered. “Ain’t fucking admitting anything to you, asshole.”

  Mad slapped the table. “I fucking knew it! You want to get there first.”

  “Shut up, Maddox,” Gray said. He was done with this conversation.

  Mad frowned, changing the subject. “You gonna go out shooting again today?”

  “Tomorrow. Told Promise I’d teach her.”

  Maddox grew serious. “She’s a hot little thing, but damn, Grayson. Wouldn’t be a fucking cakewalk with her, you know,” he said, for once dropping all pretense and sarcasm.

  Grayson wasn’t having this. He stared coldly as his Defiant brother until Maddox shrugged and took his feet off the table. Mad knew enough to change the subject then and started chatting lightly about some upcoming jobs in Blythe, even one as far away as Lake Havasu.

  Once Maddox had left, Grayson looked around the sparse confines of his trailer as he tossed a rifle casing casually between his hands. He loved this place. When he’d first gotten out of Picacho it had seemed like an impossible heaven. He’d folded into Defiant easily and all these guys, even Maddox, were his heart. He couldn’t return to his old life in New York. It simply wasn’t possible.

  True, Gray had been a part of some shit since he’d gotten here. That business in Colorado. It had been a defining moment when Orion tagged him to come along for that. He’d stood outside a small room and listened to the curdled death screams of another man. He had been told why. It was more than blood vengeance; it was to protect Kira, an innocent. And so he hadn’t lost a moment of sleep over it. He’d quietly helped Orion pick up the mess and put it somewhere it wouldn’t be found. That was the moment he’d really become worth something in the Defianct leader’s eyes. But even as he rode though the days contentedly, Gray still thought about the clean world of his childhood; his mother
and father. The way they’d looked at one another.

  He shook his head, cursing his own melancholy and letting the bullet fall to the floor. The restlessness was threatening again, the broiling agitation which always simmered under the surface during his years in Picacho. He hated thinking about everything that had been stolen from him. The only way to push it away was to keep moving.

  Gray stared out the window. It was mid afternoon. The Mojave desert in July; not for the faint of heart. He decided he would go out there anyway. This world was an extreme and it suited him that way. He didn’t want his bike. He wanted to use his own two legs to walk straight into the desert as he damned well pleased. Just because he could.

  He almost knocked her over when he jumped out the door.

  “Gray,” she smiled, stumbling a little.

  She looked at him with such radiantly perfect trust. No one had ever looked at him like that before. “Promise. Didn’t mean to almost bowl you over there.”

  “No problem.” She looked down at herself and frowned. She was wearing one of her sundresses. They weren’t racy to his eyes but sometimes he could tell she was unsure about her body.

  You look damn fine, angel.

  That’s what he wanted to say. But then she might have guess the meaning behind his words. And he was having trouble suppressing the memory of how he had thought about her last night as his hand did the furious work, bringing his body to its fierce release as he imagined being inside of her.

  Grayson took a shuddery breath and she stared up at him with a curious look in her face. “Are you going somewhere?”

  He tightened the cap of the water bottle he’d grabbed on the way out. “Just a walk.”

  “Can I come?” she asked with shyness as she played with a length of her auburn hair.

  “No.” He’d said it too sharply. He could see how he’d startled her. “Not this time,” he said more gently and left her behind. He had to get her out of his head. Most of the time he was all right, even if she was beside him. But just then he knew that if she moved too close, if she touched him, it would be too much. He would seize her. He would cross the line.

  And then the warm trust in her eyes would fade. He would be just another man who wronged her in the end.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Grayson had told me to be up and ready at 6am. He was going to teach me how to shoot, just like he’d promised weeks ago. My ribs were pretty well healed. Occasionally I would twist the wrong way and suffer a twinge in my back, but overall I felt better than I had since I’d been at school. I felt normal again, part of the world.

  I’d had some lengthy talks with Rachel about what to do. Most likely Jenny was not in Arizona and therefore out of the reach of Phoenix authorities. Still, Rachel had helped me place an anonymous call to Child Protective Services. The woman I spoke to was kind and asked a lot of questions. I told her what I knew. But then she began gently asking other things. Who are you? Where are you? I ended the call, shaking. Winston Allred and Aston Talbot were powerful men. A glimpse into the vast network of the Faithful Cooperative told me just how many influential people would be on their side.

  I dressed in jeans and tennis shoes, like Gray had advised. He said there were a lot of things out there in the desert brush. Things which bit and stung. Odds were better if you kept your skin covered.

  After wrapping up some of the cinnamon rolls I’d baked with Kira the day before, I locked the door of the trailer and headed next door.

  Grayson answered the door before I even knocked. He nodded to the tin foil in my hands. “What you got there?”

  I smiled. “Breakfast.”

  He cheerfully opened the door for me. None of the strange tension lingered from the day before and I wondered if it had been my imagination. It had troubled me all day, but Gray was changeable like that sometimes. Mostly he was courteous and friendly. But then there were the times when I could swear I was the last person in the world he wanted to see. Those incidents never lasted long and so always left me questioning if I was reading him incorrectly.

  Then there were the other times. These were fewer. I would catch him watching me with a frank intensity which was an electric bolt of excitement to my core. Then he would quickly look away, hiding it. I would have chalked this up to my imagination as well, yet Rachel had noticed too. And she knew men. She knew what it was.

  But I saw no sign of anything deeper than friendship in his face as he opened the wrapped cinnamon rolls and smiled at me. “Good job.”

  “Try one before you hand out compliments.”

  He swallowed one whole. “Now may I express my appreciation?”

  “Yes. Now you may.”

  “Good job, Promise,” he said softly.

  He wanted to drive to more remote area outside town. I settled the helmet over my head and held my arms up as Gray strapped the rifle to my chest. He said it would be too difficult to carry it himself with me hanging on. The thing wasn’t heavy and it sat across my back easily. I’d never handled a gun before and felt more powerful the moment it was close.

  “Do I look like a tough bitch?” I asked, modeling for him.

  He chuckled. “You do look pretty fucking dangerous.”

  A preternatural quiet ruled this early. As I climbed on the back of Gray’s bike, it seemed like an intimate moment, as if in all the known world we were the only two people breathing.

  Gray assured me you could go shoot anywhere in the desert, as long as you were at least a quarter mile away from an occupied structure.

  “After all,” he said with a sardonic grin, “we wouldn’t want to run afoul of the law.”

  The gentleness of the morning light wouldn’t last on this summer day. Gray drove east of town, in the direction of Phoenix. He passed the outskirts of town and pulled off along a dirt road which looked fairly unused. I saw a few trailers and RV’s scattered in the wide beyond, but other than that there was nothing. I’d heard the words ‘Arizona Outback’ used before to describe this corner of the world. I understood why.

  Gray piloted the bike slowly for about another mile into the scattered brush of ironwood and creosote before stopping. Once we had climbed off the bike, he grew very brusque and businesslike, withdrawing a bag of ammunition from a storage compartment and motioning for me to hand him the rifle.

  “Now,” he said, starting to walk away and evidently expecting that I would follow. “There are some basic safety rules we need to go over.” He turned around peered at me. “You’ve never shot a gun before, right?”

  I shook my head. All of the men in Jericho Valley had substantial gun collections. But the women were not allowed to have anything to do with them.

  He nodded and continued instructing me in his deep voice. “First thing you need to remember,” he said, pulling my hands out and laying the rifle across the palms, “is that you need treat all guns as if they are loaded. You understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Second thing, Promise, is never point a gun at anything you are not willing to destroy. Ever,” he said for emphasis. He pointed toward the rugged landscape. “Number three is, be sure of your target and what’s beyond your target before you fire. And finally, don’t ever put your finger on the trigger until you’re ready to fire.”

  I frowned down at the weapon in my hands, my fingers curling around the wooden stock. “What kind of gun is this?”

  “That’s a rifle, a Mini 14.” He reached under his shirt and I was surprise to see a holster there. I hadn’t realized he wore one. He withdrew the gun secured within it. “This is a Glock,” he said, pointing the gun purposely toward the ground as he pulled back on the top of it, making a clicking noise. “We’ll shoot that one later,” he decided, putting it back in the holster. He started to walk away. “Stay here a minute. And remember what I said about where you point that thing.”

  A desiccated mesquite tree rested on its side about twenty yards out. He reached into a knapsack he carried on his shoulder and removed a series of bott
les and cans. Beer bottles from the looks of them, I decided as I squinted. He turned around and gave me a sheepish grin. “Kinda hillbilly,” he called. “But it’ll do.”

  When he returned to my side he took the gun from my hands. “Thing about shooting,” he said, starting to load the gun. “Is that it’s rather equal opportunity. A small female can learn to shoot just as well as a two hundred pound man. It’s an art. The art of learning how to stand still, see your target, and point.” With one swift motion he lifted the rifle to his shoulder and expertly fired off a shot. The glass bottle on the far right exploded.

  “Your turn,” he decided, handing the rifle to me.

  I was slow catching on. Gray stood inches away and fired out helpful instructions.

  “Remember to look through the sight.”

  “Keep your feet firmly planted.”

  “Don’t flinch when anticipating the shot.”

  Finally I managed to graze a can in the center of the row.

  He raised an eyebrow at me. “Was that the one you were aiming for?”

  “No,” I admitted with a frown.

  Gray took the rifle from me and one by one brought down each of the targets with expert shots.

  “Showoff,” I teased him.

  He laughed and walked down to the fallen tree to replace the targets. When he returned he had taken the Glock from its holster. He put it in my hands.

  “Now?” I asked, aiming.

  “Now,” Grayson told me.

  I felt the jerk of my body as I squeezed the trigger. There was only an empty click. I stared at the gun, confused.

  “See,” he said, nodding. “You’re tensing up and flinching before the shot. That’s a big reason why your aim is off.”

  “You took the bullets out without telling me,” I accused.

  “Well yeah,” he smiled. “How else could I have gotten you to realize how you were screwing up your own shot?”