“There are neighbors?” she asked in alarm.
“A few, but they don’t know who you are. Remember?”
“But they could find out easily enough.”
“Maybe, and maybe they don’t care to. Not everybody knows or cares who you are.”
“And yet enough do,” she said, “and that, for me, is a problem.”
“Maybe it’s a problem, or maybe the problem is you being overly paranoid.”
“Maybe not,” she said, as she swung open the door and stepped out.
He watched her as she assessed the area. He saw the boundaries, the barriers going up, the energy probes going out, and recognized somebody who had been on the defensive for a long time. But something else was going on in there too, something he couldn’t quite understand. Energy went off in directions he couldn’t keep track of. He frowned at that but didn’t say anything and just kept watching.
Finally she turned to him and said, “Will you let me in?”
He raised an eyebrow and said, “Absolutely. After you, ma’am.”
Just enough sarcasm was in his voice that she glared at him. “I don’t have to stay here.”
“Nope, you sure don’t. You are more than welcome to go wherever you want.”
“What if I took your vehicle?”
“Well, I can’t say I’d be thrilled, but it’d be easy enough to get it back.”
“And how’s that?”
“Do you think I wouldn’t track it?”
She smiled and said, “Of course you would.” She walked up to the front of the cabin and waited for him to join her. He unlocked the front door and pushed it open. As she stepped inside, he heard her suck back the breath in her throat at the view that opened up, as soon as she stepped through. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered.
“It is, indeed,” he said. “This is where I plan to retire one day.”
“One day? Why not now?”
“Because I spend a lot of my time hunting.”
“Are you sure you want to do that?” she said. “It doesn’t sound like that great of a pastime.”
“I’m helping people. Like Stefan helps others like us. What’s not to like?”
“Maybe,” she said.
He said, “Wow. You don’t even trust Stefan, much less me.”
She nodded.
“So you’ll never share information with us, based on that lack of trust, right?”
She remained silent, gave a one-arm shrug.
“And you’ll always be so cryptic?” She tried to hide her grin, and he burst out laughing at that. Suddenly he realized just how much of the problem was her inability to even recognize friend from foe and to relax in a circumstance that was well past what she was used to. He said, “I’m not here to hurt you.”
“Well, you could have tried already, and we would have had this discussion with you pinned to the ground.”
He looked at her with interest. “Well, I’m glad to see you think you have some skills.”
“I do,” she said absentmindedly. “And, if you keep pushing, you’ll find out.”
“Well, I hope I don’t,” he said, “because it would mean that I attempt to get you under control.”
At the term control, she stiffened.
He cringed at his use of the term. “I didn’t mean it in that abusive way.”
She turned ever-so-slightly and looked at him, and he saw the huge black wells of pain on the inside. “Just in case you ever think you will use that term,” she said, “I can tell you, right now, that you won’t succeed.”
He held up his hands. “Sorry. Like I said, didn’t mean it that way.”
She studied him for a long moment and then nodded. “Good thing,” she whispered, “I wouldn’t want to have to kill you.”
With that, she turned and walked toward the windows, leaving him standing there in shock, staring after her.
Chapter 7
Beth didn’t know why she was being so difficult, except that she was still edgy. The farther away from Stefan’s place she got, the more nervous she became, and all she could do was not show it. Inside the grocery store she’d been one step away from bolting out to the parking lot, stealing the vehicle, and disappearing. She’d learned a few tricks in the last few years and had befriended a couple homeless guys. One had showed her how to boost cars, and another had taught her how to pick door locks. She was decent with both after many hours of practice, but it still wasn’t the same as being safe. Having skills helped; it gave you power in a powerless world. It made you no longer a victim, after being a victim for too many years. But still, not enough.
She stood here, staring at the view, wondering how something so absolutely gorgeous could belong to one person. She shook her head, hearing him come up behind her.
“It’s something, isn’t it?” he said, his tone soft and calm, like oil on her troubled water.
She gave him a sideways glance. “I’m still struggling to understand how one person could own this.”
“A lot of people own something like this,” he commented, studying her directly.
She shrugged. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Many houses are up and down lakes, rivers, and oceanfronts,” he said, “and many are far more spectacular than this.”
“But that’s Mother Nature right there,” she said, “so close you want to believe you can just reach out and touch it.”
He walked to the left a few feet, and, as she watched, he opened up a huge sliding door that must be at least eight feet across, then motioned for her to step out with him. He stepped out first, and a huge deck ran the length of the house and around the corner. From there, steps went down to another level with another deck and a little bit of a walkway down to the lake below.
“It’s so beautiful,” she whispered. She sat near the top step, wondering if her knees would even hold her up after seeing such a place.
“Where have you been living?”
“Garages, basements, storage units,” she said, with a wave of her hand. “They were all I was comfortable with.”
“You were kept in a concrete windowless room?” he guessed.
She looked up at him and smiled gently. “Yes. So, anything other than that never quite felt safe. Odd, I know, since I was tortured in that compound, but somehow my room was not where I was trained, as they called it. Being held there for so long made me wary of anything else. Being out in Mother Nature, even like this, it took me a long time to venture out,” she said. “To go for a walk or to feel the wind on my face, it was all so foreign. As much as I loved it, the lack of security made me want to run back inside again and shut the doors. I had spent all that time under their control, doing what I was told to do, without the ability to go anywhere, and then, when I got the freedom, I didn’t know what to do with it. I couldn’t reconcile safety with it in any way.”
“But it’s different now,” he said.
She laughed. “It sure is. What’s different is the fact that even more people are out there after me, more danger that I must find a way to get around,” she murmured. “It’s certainly not that it’s any safer.” She looked at the houses barely visible on the neighboring properties on either side. “When you see that people are right there,” she said, “doesn’t it bother you?”