Remember Me (Defiant MC) (20 page)

Annika kept a keen ear out for rattlers as Misty picked her way through the brush.  She had been in the desert long enough to be aware of its dangers.  It was a forbidding, often misunderstood, place. She loved it anyway.  She had tried many times to capture its wild essence in the words she wrote to her family in Wisconsin.  But the desert was not easily branded.

When Annika reached Lizzie Post’s property the first thing she noticed were the goats ranging in the far pasture.  She tied Misty up in front of the tiny house, believing Lizzie must have found a hired man to help with the chores since she was feeling so poorly. 

Annika smiled over the thought of Lizzie.  Tiny Lizzie Post, indomitable as any man, she was a successful lone woman when such a thing was rarely accomplished.  Lizzie had never issued a word of censure in Annika’s direction over her union with James, though the wise old woman had been very aware of her feelings for Mercer.  Sometimes Annika wondered how much Lizzie
blamed her for the permanent rift between the Dolan brothers.  More fervently, she wanted to know if Lizzie had received word from Mercer.  She dared not ask. 

Lizzie’s voice sounded bright and eager when she answered Annika’s knock. 

“Come on in,” she called. 

Annika opened the door and saw Lizzie seated in a hard-backed chair in the center of the main room.  A lap blanket covered her though the October day was quite warm.  Annika took care not to wince over the sight of the woman’s skeletal appearance.  She was visibly weaker.  She could not live long. 

Yet her face was alight with genuine pleasure as she beckoned impatiently to Annika.  When Annika stepped inside the room she saw why. 

Mercer Dolan stood in the corner, watching silently.  He did not react to Annika’s gasp. 

“Hello, Mrs. Dolan,” he said mildly. 

“Mercer,” she choked out.  “What are you doing here?

“Boy came back to see an old woman one more time,” Lizzie said, reaching a painfully thin hand towards him.  She looked at Annika meaningfully.  “And to make peace with his brother.” 

“How is my brother?” Mercer asked with an innocent smile. 

Annika felt as she might sink into the floor.  Being this close to Mercer once again felt unreal.  She had to suppress the urge to rush into his arms.  “James is well,” she lied, clasping her hands behind her back so they would not shake. 

“Aw hell,” said Lizzie, motioning that Annika ought to come forward. “I aim to die in peace knowing that my boys got each other again.” 

“How does that sit with you, Anni?”  Mercer asked.  He was mocking her, she knew it.  “I took a job down at the Scorpion so I’ll be in Contention for a spell.” 

She was shocked.  “You’re going to work as a miner?”  For the life of her, Annika could not picture the mighty outlaw Mercer Dolan crawling into a deep shaft and dutifully hacking away with a pickax.  She felt obliged to remind him of something, narrowing her eyes.  “They hang thieves, you know.” 

Mercer nodded, as if he were carefully mulling this piece of information.  “It’s a good thing I’m not a thief,” he said, flashing that devastating grin at her again.  “Nor do I run with any.” 

Annika glared at him, vividly remembering just how untrue that statement was.  Lizzie did not seem to notice the tension in the room.  She chattered excitedly, relating various memories of
James and Mercer as boys.  Then, quite abruptly, she slumped over, exhausted.  Mercer carried her small body over to the tidy bed and placed her on it gently, smoothing her white hair back from her forehead. 

Annika stared at him.  The last two years seemed to have cost him nothing.   He had not shaved closely and his clothing hung in badly wrinkled fashion on his strong frame.  But he still possessed that casual air of magnetism which made her tremble.  If anything
, he was more tempting than ever.  She hated him for it.

Mercer withdrew a silver flask and took a long swallow as he watched her, allowing his eyes to travel purposely up and down her body in a vulgar manner.  “You’re looking healthy, Mrs. Dolan,” he said with false sincerity. 

Annika glared at him again.   “Stop it, Mercer.  This is difficult enough.”

“For who, Mrs. Dolan?”

Annika was silent.  She would not be played with like this.  Many times in the past two years she’d had to push away the guilt which came with her longings for Mercer.  It was made worse by the knowledge that she had injured him.  For that she was sorry.  She realized she had never told him so. 

“Mercer,” she said, biting her lip.  “I do apologize.”

He leaned his head back into the adobe wall and closed his eyes.  “What do you apologize for, Anni?”  It was not a sincere question.  He already knew the answer.  He just wanted to hear her say it.

“Not for marrying James,” she said quickly.  “But for what it did to you, yes.  I am sorry, Mercer.  And as for James, it plagues him.” 

Mercer laughed sharply.  “Does it?”

The universe had a keen sense of timing, Annika thought.  The sting of Mercer’s words had scarcely faded when she heard a rider approaching.  She knew, instinctively, that it was James. 

She heard him dismount in haste and when he burst through the door his face was wild.   He must have caught wind of the fact that Mercer was in town and headed directly to the place he would most likely be.  

“Howdy, brother,” Mercer called casually. 

James glared at Mercer and then searched the room, looking relieved when he spotted Annika standing quietly nearby.

Mercer sipped from his flask as James broke into a coughing fit. 

“Mercer,” he finally gasped.  “What the hell are you doing back in Contention?”

“Having a drink and admiring your pretty bride.”  Mercer took another sip and frowned.  “You look wretched awful, James.  Either the shocking sight of me has woefully impaired your health or else your time spent underground has cost you some vitality.” 

James stood tall and stared at him.  As the brothers faced one another in Lizzie Post’s small house, Annika was startled by how alike they looked, each a slightly distorted mirror reflection of the other. 

James glowered.  “I hear you’ve joined Swilling’s crew?”

Mercer nodded cheerfully.  “I did.” 

“Dammit Mercer, do you appreciate the difficulties I endured last time in keeping your neck out of a noose?”

Mercer shrugged.  “Well, James, if it was so difficult you shouldn’t have bothered.”

James circled his brother.  Mercer watched him with a deadly intent look on his face. 

“BOYS!”  Lizzie Post had bolted upright in her bed.  Her thin white hair stood out in all directions and she stretched her ghostly arms out.  Each of the Dolan men cast a wary look at the other and took one of Lizzie’s hands.

Lizzie clutched at their hands and held them together.  “You boys was so little,” she said in a woefully sad voice as she shook her head from side to side.  “So little.” Annika observed the lack of focus in her eyes.  She understood Lizzie was fading.  “My boys, keep
close to each other” she rasped, and then lapsed into unconsciousness. 

James and Mercer Dolan stared at Lizzie Post in defeated silence.  She had loved them, Annika knew.  As James reached out and tenderly searched the woman’s neck for a pulse, Mercer raised his head and looked straight at Annika.  The grief she saw there melted her.  She wanted to go to him.  Slowly, James withdrew his hand, shaking his head.  When he pulled the sheet over the dead woman’s still face, Mercer emitted a heartrending sob. 

“She was the only mother I ever knew,” he said in the hurt, lonesome voice of a child. 

James moaned and let his head sink into his hands.  Annika knew how he hated to cry.  As she stepped between the brothers to say a private farewell to a woman she admired, her shoulder brushed Mercer’s arm.  As he looked at her in surprise, for once his emotions were plainly evident.  Annika read his grief, his regret, and, as his dark eyes regarded her more intently, she
read something else.  Something which should have disappeared two years ago when she became the wife of his brother, yet somehow still remained.  Annika felt it too.  It had always been like that with Mercer, an unfathomable pull of her soul.  Annika wanted to hold him, to comfort him in his despair, but of course she could not.  The choice she’d made could not be undone.  She took James’s arm and turned away. 

Contention City, Arizona

Present Day

The other cars on the road to Gaby’s place were headed in the opposite direction.  He was the only sucker headed for the low valley.  In the distance he could see the grayish white roofs of the old utilitarian homes.  They looked like burea
ucratic spawn if ever there was such a thing.  He easily found the address Jensen had given him.  She was at the end of the street.  Maddox saw her Versa already in water up to the grill. 

When Gabriela appeared in the open doorway she didn’t notice him at first.  Her face held a forlorn confusion which peeled the years back to high school and Maddox wanted nothing so bad as to hold her and make her safe. 

“Gabs!” 

She blinked at him in disbelief.  Maddox jumped out of the truck into a foot of water.  This was getting bad enough.  If the dam broke it would get worse. 

“C’mon, let’s get out of here.” 

Gaby looked back at her house and shook her head, disappearing indoors. 

“Fuck,” swore Maddox and followed her. 

It had been a valiant attempt on Gaby’s part; the doorways were all lined with heavy sandbags.  The water, however, was too much.  It trickled in and washed over the lime green linoleum. 

Gabriela stood in her living room and gazed around at the mounting disaster.   Maddox grabbed a baby picture of Miguel from a nearby end table.  Gently he placed it in her hands. 

She stared down into the face of her son.  Mad spoke low and firm.  “We gotta go, Gaby.” 

Gabriela nodded, swallowing.  “I know.” 

Quickly she ran to a room in the back of the house, emerging a moment later with an old wooden box.  Maddox took it from her, marveling over the fact that she was able to carry the heavy thing so easily.  She retreated once more and returned with a plastic bag full of what appeared to be clothing.  She looked him calmly in the eye. 

“Let’s go, Maddie.” 

Maddox shoved the box into the bed of the pickup and tossed a tarp over it.  He motioned towards the neighbors’ houses.  “Anyone in there we need to worry about?”

“No, I don’t think so,” she shook her head, climbing into the passenger seat and rubbing her eyes tiredly. “Most of these places emptied out after the housing crisis and I haven’t seen anyone else in hours.” 

The truck skidded a little as Mad struggled to pilot it through the mess of Gaby’s street.  He glanced over at her.  She sat tensely beside him, clutching the photo of her son.  Maddox reached over and squeezed her arm and she suddenly looked at him in surprise. 

“Why are you here?”

He grinned wryly.  “I’m your knight in dingy leather, babe.”

She nodded thoughtfully.  “Yes,” she said quietly, “you are.” 

As they climbed to higher ground Gaby looked back once and then sighed.   They were almost at Priest’s house.  Mad wondered if Ellen the singing Hospice nurse was still around. He accelerate the last few hundred yards, immediately fearful of the idea that Priest had died alone. 

Ellen hadn’t left though.   She hurried out into the rain as he pulled up. 

“He’s resting again.  Called out for you and your brother a few times.  Something about staying away from the hills.  Anyway, I gave him a good dose of morphine.” 

Maddox coughed and stared at his hands.  They still tightly clutched the steering wheel.  “Thank you,” he said, meaning it. 

After Ellen headed home in her Tahoe, Mad followed Gaby into the house.  After checking on Priest, who was indeed peacefully sleeping, he remembered the box in the back of the truck.  After quietly closing the door to his father’s room, he retrieved it. 

“Christ,” he said, heaving the thing on the floor.  It was scarred and weathered, positively ancient-looking.  “What the hell is in this thing?” 

She knelt on the floor in her soaked clothes.  “Everything,” she said, opening the lid.  The box was quite old and it appeared as if there had once been a lock on the lid. 

As Gabriela sorted through the contents, Maddox glimpsed papers, pictures of Miguel, and assorted keepsakes of life.  He leaned over and picked up an old book. 

He read the cover.  “
The Count of Monte Cristo
.”

Gaby looked up, smiling.  “One of my favorites.  I guess it’s been in our family for a long time.  Old Juan gave it to me when I was about Miguel’s age.” 

“What’s it about?”

Her smile faded.  “Vengeance.”

Gaby reached down into the box and withdrew the thing she had apparently been looking for.  She grinned at it wistfully. 

“Remember this?” she asked. 

“Yes,” Maddox answered slowly.  “I won that for you.” 

Gabriela nodded, holding the small pink plush kitten in her palm.  There had been a carnival in town.  It was the night they’d nearly had sex.  He’d pulled back, not wanting it to be like that for her; a quick and dirty boning on the ground by the river.  He had believed her when she whispered she loved him.  Maddox balled his right hand into a fist, remembering.  What the fuck did he know anyway?  Afterwards, after Jensen, Maddox wished he’d gone ahead and banged the hell out of her.  Even as he’d told himself he didn’t care at all.