Page 32 of Price of Angels

Holly felt a dozen muscles unclenching, in her neck and arms and her midsection. His stalwart caveman assuredness was a balm to her tattered nerves. Maybetatteredwasn’t the right word. Maybe she’d been born with incomplete, split ends. How could a child born of her father’s seed be at all normal or complete or full-up with love?

“So what’s the plan for this afternoon?” she asked, voice light and perky in her ears.

“We’re gonna see how you take to the guns, and get you shooting straight.”

She made a face. “I’m not sure I’ll be any good at it.”

He shrugged. “Won’t know till you get up there. It’s not hard.”

“I’m not very strong, though. Well, not at all, really.”

“You don’t have to be. You’ll see – anybody can handle a gun; it’s skill, not strength.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you a good teacher?” she teased.

Taking her eyes from the road a beat too long, she searched for a reaction in him. There it was, that tiny twitch in the corner of his mouth. The Michael-smile. “No complaints.”

“Oh,” she went on, feeling bolder, smiling, a lightness in her chest. “So you take a lot of girls shooting, huh?”

“None of them ever talked as much as you.”

She laughed. “I think you need more talking in your life.”

He made a grunting sound that wasn’t necessarily a disagreement.

He didn’t encourage her chattering, but didn’t discourage it either, so she kept talking, about how pretty this shade of blue was in the sky, about what kinds of guns he’d brought with him. He answered her questions. He watched the city slip away as they left Knoxville for the rural outskirts, and he also, she noticed, was as relaxed and loose-limbed as she felt. There was no tension in him. He was totally at ease, head resting against one upraised hand, body rocking gently as the old Chevy’s struts jostled them back and forth. His tiny smile made several appearances, and Holly was heartened. He was a severe man; she liked the idea that she could provide him with a distraction from that severity. She’d never been useful in this way to anyone. She could get high on the sensation, if she wasn’t careful.

He directed her through a series of turns that led them deeper and deeper into sprawling farmland. Acres of rolling pasture, yellow, brown, and cropped low for winter, the bare trees crowding at fence lines and around cattle ponds. The sky opened up above the fields, wider and bluer and all-encompassing, hanging over the silhouettes of the Smoky Mountains.

“It’s beautiful out here,” Holly said, delighted by the gravel drives and the hail-dented tin mailboxes. The cows slept in the sun, chewing their cud. Starlings swept from the treetops in spiraling clouds of black wings.

“Hmm,” Michael said. “Turn right at the next driveway.”

There was no box, no sign, just a crushed-gravel path she might have missed for the tangle of honeysuckle-choked hickory trees.

She braked to a halt in the road. “Here?”

“Yeah.”

The Chevelle bucked as they left the pavement, steel frame creaking as the tires bit into the uneven gravel footing.

Through the close-reaching branches of the trees, they started up a gentle slope, driveway crowded with limbs, and came upon a closed gate, aWarning Private Propertysign. Wood and wire fence fed off from either side, disappearing into the trees.

“I’ll get it,” Michael said, climbing from the car.

A heavy new length of chain held the gate to the post, secured with a combination lock that Michael spun and unfastened with a few quick moves. He opened the gate and waved her through. In the rearview mirror, she watched him lock it behind them.

She felt a tightening in her stomach. This was a guarded, private place that he’d brought her inside. Up this unnoticed driveway, behind a locked gate, any number of horrible things could happen to her.

She felt the film of sweat slick across her chest, the back of her neck, as she remembered breaking the rusted lock and chain during her escape. The way her damp palms had slipped on the shovel handle. The frightened pattering of her own breath as she listened to the awful clatter of the chain sliding loose.

That was then, and this is now, she told herself, but the sound of the chain links tapping against the gate sent her spinning back. The strike of metal against metal quickened her pulse, and tightened her hands on the wheel.

“You had to lock us in?” she asked as Michael climbed back inside and shut the door.

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