Page 57 of In You
He still doesn't answer me. Moving fast as lightning, he puts his eye to the scope and has the deer felled before I can even align my scope with her neck like he taught me. My shoulders lower as the tension rolls off me in waves. I'm actually relieved.
"Let's go." He helps me up and instead of letting me go down the ladder by myself, he slings me over his shoulder and lowers me down with me gripping onto him.
Getting in the jeep we head south, following what looks like might be a trail but there's no markers to tell where we are. It becomes painfully apparent that Caleb knows his property like the back of his hand, and I offer no more questions as to what we're doing. Merely along for the ride at this point, ecstatic that I didn't have to shoot that deer.
After a few minutes of bumpy going, my teeth hurt as we roll to a stop, and I see the three men in the distance, walking with their own hunting gear complete with rifles.
"Fuckers are going to learn one day to stay off my property," Caleb mutters to himself, grabbing his rifle and then jumping out. He turns to look over his shoulder then holds his hand out. "Well, come on. I need you close."
My heart skips a beat at his words, and I take his hand, making the small jump to the ground, scrunching my nose as I feel squelchy mud just beneath the dead leaves. "Ugh," I breathe, looking up as I tuck my rifle under my arm. However, Caleb pulls me along behind him with a single handed focus, and I feel myself grow warm at how strong his hand feels around mine and the confident way he carries himself especially in the face of trouble.
We come up on the side of the men stopping about thirty feet away, and Caleb whistles loudly.
"You're on private property," he calls out, his tone stern and no-nonsense. The men turn to the side to look at us, their steps ceasing. We all stare at each other for a moment. They all look to be maybe late twenties, early thirties. Cocky type. The one in the middle is a redhead, sporting a slight beard, bushy eyebrows, hair hidden underneath a beanie like mine except his curl around the edges of it. The other two men are dark haired and the one on the left is considerably shorter than the other two.
This doesn't feel right.
The one in the middle locks eyes with Caleb, chews his gum for a second before giving him a cheeky grin. I fight to roll my eyes because if I know anything about men, we're about to dive head first into a pissing contest. But Caleb just stares at the man dead pan, no emotion in his eyes. Giving him absolutely no reaction.
The man's eyes crinkle at the corner, and then he tilts his head in a clear warning before putting his finger on the trigger.
Though his rifle is trained at the ground, I tense, and take a smaller step into Caleb, realizing we're outnumbered despite me and him having our rifles. In the woods early in the morning on a thousand acres of private wood. If some shit goes down, there's no one to hear, and no one will find us for a long, long time.
"Did you not hear me?" Caleb enunciates slowly in a strong voice reminiscent of a drill sergant.
A shiver rolls up my mind as the man in the middle laughs, the sound mocking, and disrespectful. "Yeah, I heard you, motherfucker. Who'reyougoing to tell?"
"Let me rephrase that, then. You're onmyprivate property," Caleb says in a rough clipped tone, lowering his brow. My blood runs cold at the change in him. He's presenting nothing like the soft, vulnerable Caleb I've come to get used to. The Caleb standing in front of me is a man entirely transformed. I get a glimpse of the killer that I know him to be. A muscle ticks in his jaw, then he leans over to spit, not taking his eyes off the men. "And I want you off of it.Now."
The short man to the right rolls his eyes and scoffs."Fuck off."
But the man in the middle, who hasn't moved, flicks his eyes to me and then the corner of his lips tilts up.
Caleb whistles, but it's not a normal dog whistle. I twist my lips as Ringo's ears lay down to his head, and he snarls a nasty sound, one that makes my eyes go even wider. I begin to shiver with fear. The redhead's eyes go to Ringo's then back up to Caleb's, arching a brow. But he doesn't look scared.
No. Matter of fact, he just took his safety off.
I take a very cautious step back, hugging the rifle to my front as that fear slowly turns into panic. "Caleb,"I whisper as quiet as I can, but I'm afraid my words are carried off by the wind.
"Head south," Caleb says in a hard voice. "Once you get to the trees with the blue ties, you'll be off my land and you'll be free to hunt for five the twenty acres on Arison Farms land."
The middle man doesn't even bat an eye at Caleb. He tilts his head to me and then looks me up and down in a slow assessment that has my blood pumping hot. His stare stops when he gets to my breasts. A brow lifts, and then he lowers his tone.
"She's a pretty thang, ain't she?" he says, his eyes snapping up to mine. "You look like you can take a real hard fuck. Nice and dirty." The other men chuckle when he looks back at them, but then he swings his face back towards me and hits me with a clear, evil look full of lust and bad intentions. Punctuated by him putting a hand to his cock and squeezing.
Bile rises up my throat. It reminds me of the first time Calvin gave me a look like that.
That same night he almost cut my finger off, and locked me in the basement for seven months.
The wind blows, flickering my curls softly against my face, and stinging my eyes. I look up. The morning sun glitters through the leaves of the trees, and just behind the men I see two squirrels chasing each other up the trunk of a tree. A crow cries in the distance. I look back down and then see the redhead man with a sick glare in his eye irritating the fuck out of my goddamn soul.
Who does he think he is, challenging me?
"Kill him," I say with a snarl.
Caleb snaps his head to mine. "Tamryn-"
I whip my head to his."My fucking name is Nathan."I growl, narrowing my eyes. "Do it. Now!" His eyes go wide, and flick across my face. But he's not moving fast enough for me. "Fine," I grunt. "I'll do it myself."
