Chapter Seven
I regained consciousness to the sound of sirens. I tried to stand, but my legs said no, thank you, and I slunk back down to the ground. Under the blaring of the sirens, another sound tried to intrude on my senses. My hand still held my phone somehow, and there was someone speaking.
“Sah, answer me,” Val said. “Where are you?”
I raised the phone to my ear. “Hello.”
“Sah, are you okay? What happened.”
“Um.” I looked at the large amount of blood on the pavement. “I don’t think I am okay. The asshole made another visit and brought a friend. I am in the parking lot of the hotel.”
“Okay, I am on scene. I will find you. Don’t move.”
Don’t move, okay, I can do that. I realized I had not said that out loud. “Yeah…” I let my arm drop.
*
The next thing I was conscious of was Val standing in front of the SUV. That was quick or I had passed out again. She helped me out and leaned me against her car.
“Are you still with me?”
“Mostly.”
She nodded and left me leaning while she went back to her trunk. She grabbed a first aid kit and returned before I could pitch to the ground, which I appreciated. She gently moved my head to the side.
“You probably don’t want to see this.”
I figured she was right and kept looking to the side. She ripped what was left of my shirt from my shoulder, revealing the wound, then took a half step back.
“How bad is it?” I had been starting to get my bearings back, but now vertigo crept back.
“I’ve seen worse.” She turned her body sideways, blocking my view, and took out some gauze to wrap the wound. “That will hold it until we can get you in to see a doctor.”
“That would be nice. I can make time for that.”
“Well, hang tight; it’s not first on our list. We have to hit the road before the cops find us.”
“Aren’t you the cops?”
“I am probably the only cop who will give you a chance to explain after you killed two people at the Marriott.”
“It was one person and one wolf.”
I started to walk around her car, then stopped and headed back to the SUV.
“Where are you going?”
“To get your gun, I dropped it back there.” I nodded my head toward the SUV.
“Get in the car. I will get it.”
I moved slowly around and watched as she pulled the pistol out of the car; reflexively, she ejected the clip and looked at the bullets, then turned to stare at me.
“What, you going to charge me for the rounds I used?”
“No, it’s… Nothing, just get in the car.” She flicked the safety on and slid behind the steering wheel.
I could go on and on about the car ride, but it was pretty much a blur.
Val drove us out to a hunting cabin in the middle of nowhere.
I stumbled in, found the bedroom, and collapsed on the bed.
I woke up a couple of hours later feeling a little depleted but better than I thought I would.
I had never been bitten by a wolf before, so I was not sure what to compare the experience to.
Smelling coffee, I crawled out of bed and walked into the kitchen. Val was just opening the tin of coffee.
“Damn, I thought I had smelled freshly brewed coffee.”
“Nope, I was just starting. How’s the arm?”
I rotated my left shoulder and felt no pain; matter of fact, I had not even thought about my injury since I crawled out of bed. I reached up and undid the gauze around my arm. The wound had closed and was half the size I remembered. “What the fuck?”
Val dropped the coffee pack and moved closer to me. “It was probably just a lot of shock, and you were not hurt as bad as you thought. I bet most of the blood was from the wolf.”
“No, I have hurt myself in enough different ways that I know when something is really bad, and that was worse than I ever experienced before.”
Val hunched her shoulders and went back to making coffee. I gave her my best menacing glare, but she seemed oblivious to it.
She returned with a pair of mugs and sat down. “So, what the fuck happened back there?”
I recounted all the details I could think of, only leaving out the dream. She did not need to know about that.
“He brought a wolf into the hotel. That is weird. Are you sure you can’t think of any reason organized crime might be after you or your sister?”
“Who said anything about the mafia?”
“Can you think of anybody else who brings a wolf to intimidate somebody? Let me think about this. I need to give the prosecutor a call and figure out a way for you to be brought in.”
“Okay, I need to get cleaned up. Where is the shower?”
She jerked her hands in a vaguely southern direction.
‘Where?”
“About a half mile upriver, there is a waterfall.”
“Great, well, I guess it doesn’t matter. I don’t have anything clean to put on.”
“Actually, you do. After I dropped you off, I went back to your sister’s car. She had a packed bag that escaped being trashed. I did not have time to check it into evidence at the department.”
“Okay, then I am off.”
“I will go with you.”
“Yeah, right, you’re going to go watch me shower. I don’t think so.”
“I wouldn’t watch.”
“Okay, now I am doubly offended.”
“You can’t get upset at me for both.”
“And yet I did.” I grabbed her keys off the counter and walked out the door before she had a chance to get in a rebuttal.
I was probably being too hard on her, but giving her trouble kept my mind off the fact I had killed someone.
They were trying to kill me too, I think, but I was not the kind of person who did things like that.
I remembered how I wrote Dominique as being blasé about offing people, but that was not what I felt.
It weighed on me. I mean, I had no choice, and I kind of felt worse about killing the wolf.
The wolf was just an animal. I closed my eyes and hugged myself.
I was going to have so much to tell my therapist next time.
I pushed all the thoughts to the back. I had to keep my shit together for my sister’s sake. She needed me to find her.
I opened the trunk and found my sister’s suitcase.
It was huge; my sister was a bit of a clothes horse and did not go anywhere without at least a couple of changes of clothes.
I found some underwear, jeans, and a fancy blouse as well as her bag of toiletries.
They were not my first choice, but since my current outfit was ripped and covered in dried blood, I would gladly settle for anything that was clean.
The walk up the river was relaxing, and it seemed like there was a mass of wildlife that was making noise and scurrying about.
The hunting cabin appeared to be light years away from civilization and I was confident there were no people around for miles.
As I came into view of the waterfall, I dropped my sister’s outfit on the ground and stripped out of my clothes.
I took a last look around the area to make sure that Val had not followed me and dived into the river.
I surfaced a moment later and almost jumped back out.
The water was freezing. I steeled myself and ducked my head back underwater.
After a moment I dragged myself back up on the bank and grabbed a bar of soap before returning to the river.
I scrubbed myself clean, washing away the dirt and blood, finally starting to feel like a human being again.
Suddenly, I felt a pair of eyes on me. That is one of the phrases I hate when writers use, but for the first time, I understood that it was an actual sensation.
I had no concrete reason to feel that way, but I knew something or someone was watching me.
I slowly turned around, figuring that Val’s curiosity had gotten the better of her, but I could not see anything.
Then, there was a slight rustle to my left, and I wheeled around and saw a big cat.
And when I say a big cat, I don’t mean “ooh, look at the big ole kitty, he’s so fat and adorable” I mean “holy crap, that thing looks like it will hunt me down and eat me.” It was secreted back in the woods that were on the other side of the river and seemed to be part of the shadows coming from the trees, but I could see its outline and its eyes.
They were golden and focused squarely on me.
I took a step backward, then another, taking my eyes off the feline only for a moment as I scampered up the riverbank.
I know that in cases like this, one must maintain calm and never turn your back to an animal, but I had just about reached my limit on crap happening to me, so I scooped up the clothes and ran.
“Vaaaaaaaaaal!”
I looked furtively behind me as I ran but did not see the beast loping after me, except in my head, where I kept replaying that scene on the National Geographic show where the lion pounces on the gazelle.
I slammed the door to the cabin shut and turned to find a weapon but instead found Val standing there.
“Aiiieh!” I noticed she was naked.” Where the hell are your clothes?” Then I remembered I was naked. “Aiiieh!” I tried to stretch my bundle of clothes to cover all my girly parts.
“What the hell are you screaming about?”
“There was a fucking jaguar at the river.” As soon as I said it, I felt even dumber, and considering my recent track record, that was saying a lot.
“Impossible. Jaguars are from South America. There should not even be any big cats around here. It’s okay if you are still freaking from last night.”
“You know what’s impossible? You are standing here talking with no clothes on. Why are you naked?”
“You’re naked too.”
“A fierce predator was chasing me; you were making coffee.”
“I went the opposite direction down the river to get clean while you were at the waterfall. When you started screaming, I dropped what I was doing and ran straight back.”