3. Chapter 3 #2
“My time’s my own right now. I’ll need to get to a darkroom soon and start going through all the rolls of Yellowstone film, see if there’s anything I need to retake.
But the deadline for the book is a long way off, and I was ahead of schedule.
I thought I’d come back here with my suitcase, if you don’t mind. ”
He looked uncertain, and I couldn’t let that stand.
“You’re always welcome here, any day, any year, for an hour or a month or however long you’ll stay.
My home is your home. I have friends, but there’s no one like you.
” Then quickly, in case he took that the wrong way, I added, “You’re my pack, even if we’re not bonded to the same Alpha.
I’m realizing how much I’ve missed that. ” Missed you.
His face cleared. “Hell, yes. Me too. Do you think there’s anyone in town who’s an amateur photographer and might have a darkroom?”
“We have a local paper. Their headquarters are one town over, but that’s only twenty minutes by car. Lindy Lamar, girl reporter.”
“Huh?”
“The paper’s run by this old man, Mr. Wilson, but a few years back, one of the local girls convinced him to let her onboard to write some gossip and horoscope columns, things like that.
Before he knew it, Lindy was riding all over on her Harley-Davidson motorcycle, drumming up news stories and taking pictures.
All black-and-white, so I don’t know if she’d have what you need, but she develops them herself. ”
“That’s a thought.” He pulled on the clean T-shirt I’d loaned him. It hung loose on his shoulders and around his belly. I liked the look of my clothes swallowing him up.
We were interrupted by a knock on the door.
“Get some pants on,” I told him. “I’ll see who needs their toilet unblocked this time.
” Part of living close to town was being available for those urgent jobs that sprang up.
I charged time-and-a-half and no one complained, so it’d been a win for me and the town.
Now I resented the idea that sewage might take me away from time with Micah.
When I opened the door, Mrs. Beaufort was standing on my front step. I glanced around and spotted her car parked on the drive.
“What’s wrong? A problem with the new fence?”
She shook her head. “I… can I come in for a moment?”
When I was young, a woman wouldn’t go into a strange man’s house, but times were changing. Anyhow, she was married and expecting, her belly big and round, not some innocent girl. I pulled the door wider. “Sure. Come in.”
She gestured me ahead of her and closed the door behind us. I was impressed with her confidence, especially when Micah coming out of the bathroom didn’t seem to faze her. She just turned to face both of us. “I need to talk to you two about Peggy Fletcher.”
“Oh.” I scrambled for words. “I’ve never touched her, barely spoken to the woman beyond ‘Is this the right color to paint the shed—’”
Mrs. Beaufort waved me to a stop. “No, no. I need your help. She needs your help.”
“Go on.”
She turned to Micah. “You, uh, went over to her house close to dinnertime. What did you see?”
Micah and I exchanged glances. He said, “I saw a brute of a man who I expect is her husband, and bruises on her arms. He said she fell.”
“Did you believe him?” She looked back and forth between us.
“Not a chance,” I growled. “Half the town knows Chuck hits her.”
“Maybe she asks for it?”
I rode over Micah’s “What the hell?” with “We both know that’s a lie. Why are you here?”
“To figure out if I can trust you. If she can.”
“If it’s a choice between her and Chuck, tell Peggy I’ll back her all the way to the Supreme Court.” Or a shallow grave for her husband, if the opportunity arises.
“Oh, thank God.” Mrs. Beaufort nodded to us. “I thought you’d understand. She’s finally going to leave Chuck. We hope.”
“Good. About time. What can we do?”
She hesitated, then said in a rush, “She needs to get out of town without Chuck stopping her. That’s not as easy as it sounds.”
“Can’t she take Chuck’s car, drive somewhere, and then leave it parked if she’s afraid of being followed. It’s her marital property. Not like she’d be stealing it.”
“She doesn’t know how to drive. She married Chuck at sixteen, and he never let her learn.”
“You then? You have a car outside, you must drive. If you need us to distract Chuck while you get her safely away, we can come up with a plan,” I promised, perhaps rashly.
But she shook her head. “My husband wants me to stay out of Chuck Fletcher’s way and, to be honest, I’m afraid of what Chuck might do afterward.” She curved a protective hand over her rounded belly. “I want to help her, but I need to keep this one safe.”
“Do you think Chuck was why Peggy lost her child?” I gritted my teeth.
“Peggy thinks so. She’s expecting again, and she wants to leave now, before he knows.”
Micah said, “Why not go to the sheriff? Report that he’s beating her?”
“Her word against his?” She turned to me. “Have you ever actually seen him hit her?”
“Well, no. Heard it. Seen the marks.”
“And that’s not evidence. He says she fell.
I’ve tried to peek and bear witness, but he has her keep the curtains closed when he’s home.
Plus, the courts don’t come down hard on a man who hits his wife.
Not unless it’s torture. You know, she says the worst part is, he makes her have relations with him, no matter how sore or sick or pregnant she is, no matter how she begs him not to.
And it’s all perfectly legal.” She turned a glare on Micah.
“Conjugal rights, you know. If a strange man forces her, degrades her, then he can be sent to prison, but put that ring on her finger and suddenly he has the right to have her, any way he wants, any time he wants.”
“There’s what’s fair, and there’s the law,” Micah said, like it was a quote.
“Exactly. Although even that’s optimistic. She can have that assaulting stranger sent to prison if she can prove it was rape, and she has three unimpeachable witnesses, and he left bruises.”
“Or if she’s white, and he’s not,” Micah suggested.
“Oh.” Mrs. Beaufort blinked and hesitated, looking him over as if seeing him for the first time. “Well. Perhaps. But none of that helps Peggy. She needs to escape, far enough Chuck can’t find her.”
“Then she’ll be out there alone, with a baby coming and no means of support,” I pointed out.
“Better than with him. She’s saved a bit of her pin money, and I’m giving her all I can.”
“So what’s the plan? Are you asking me to drive her somewhere?”
“I’d like to, but no. She’s not willing to be alone in a car at the mercy of any man, not even you.”
“Seems like we’ve hit an impasse,” I said.
“She wants to take the bus. By Greyhound, it’s a ten-hour ride to Salt Lake City, and from there, she can catch another bus to anywhere in the nation.”
“Good thought. What do you need me for?”
“We get one Greyhound bus stopping a week, and Chuck knows that very well. If he sees that she’s gone missing on a Greyhound day, he’ll track the bus down and haul her off, and I doubt a driver would stop a man retrieving his wife.”
Micah said, “Surely someone would, if she refuses to go with him. They’re not going to let a man drag her down the steps.”
“She’s afraid that if he tells her to come along, she will, out of habit or fear. She’ll get up and off the bus and walk back into his trap.”
I exchanged glances with Micah. Some men might not believe an abused woman would do that for the man she hated, but we’d lived with a powerful hierarchy, Alpha to Second to Third to Fourth to Fifth, all the way down the pack.
A low ranked wolf in that same situation might also bow his head and submit to his Alpha, no matter what horrors would follow. “Do you have a better plan?” I asked.
“We do, if you’re willing.” She raised her chin and stared me in the eyes. “If you’re not afraid of Chuck Fletcher.”
I smiled, and perhaps some of my wolf leaked into my eyes, because Mrs. Beaufort took a step back. “I’m not afraid of Chuck, Mrs. Beaufort,” I assured her as softly as I could. “How do we help?”
Her spreading grin held a little wolf too, as much as I’d ever seen in a human woman.
“Call me Hannah, for a start, if we’re co-conspirators.
And our plan is for you to drive out of town with a dummy dressed as Peggy.
Let Chuck see you go by and chase after you, but then eventually lose him.
If he thinks she’s with you, he won’t pursue the bus.
The longer you can keep him following before you return home, the safer she’ll be. ”
And then he’ll come after me. But I welcomed that. Legally, I couldn’t attack him first, but if I was defending myself, I’d have the law behind me. “You think a dummy of Peggy will fool him?”
“She has a church hat with daisies that no other woman in town owns. And a green shawl. Put those on the dummy and drive by fast.”
Micah said, “I’ve a better idea. Let me dress up as Peggy. My hair’s about the same length as hers and I can put it up in a ponytail. I can move and gesture, where a dummy wouldn’t.”
I stared at him. “You want to dress up as her?”
“To save a beautiful woman from an abusive bastard? You bet your sweet patootie I do.” He grinned. “Sounds like fun.”
I couldn’t help grinning back. “All right then. We have the start of a plan. How will we get Chuck’s attention at the right time?”