The Mark of Cain (22 page)

“You really are crazy, aren’t you?”

Sampson looked him straight in the eye. “Do you even
know what the prophecy says?”

Tracker shifted his feet. “Well, no. Not exactly.”
The truth was that he didn’t even have an inkling as to what it contained.

“I do. I’ve read some of it. And I’m telling you,
it’s all beginning to make sense. You’ll see it, too. Soon you’ll see that he’s
in love with her. Soon you’ll understand why I’m not telling Them.”

“For the record, I’m against this.”

“Duly noted.”

Tracker was so peeved, he pivoted and stormed out
without another word.

***

Hara awoke feeling completely disoriented. She felt
odd, like she’d had a horrible nightmare or something, and yet she couldn’t
quite recall it. She opened her eyes, only to immediately squeeze them shut
again the moment the light hit them. She had the worst headache she’d ever had.
When she could finally suffer through a little of it, she sat up and looked at
her surroundings.

She was in a corner room filled with natural light
shining through floor-to-ceiling windows that covered two whole walls of the
room without any curtains or blinds to hide what was beyond them. Despite how
much her head hurt, she could see that the view was
beautiful
. With how
high up she was, she could see the entire city.

The bed frame was odd. It was a rectangular piece of
metal in the darkest gray she’d ever seen. It was so shiny that it reflected
everything in the room to the point that she almost hadn’t noticed it was
there. On each side of the bed was an end table with drawers made out of the
same mirror-like substance.

The comforter on the low bed was solid black. The
floor was concrete, though it was fancy looking instead of the usual stuff. In
here it was a really dark gray and glossy. Under the bed was a slightly shaggy,
light gray rectangular rug. She rubbed her feet across the thick threads in a
soothing motion as she looked around. The only color in the room came from some
contemporary paintings full of shapes and splatters on the two real walls;
nothing really recognizable.

She had never been here before, but she instantly
knew exactly where she was; the scent of Inac’s forest, ocean, spices, and musk
was strong. Especially in the bed she was sitting in. She didn’t know how she
had gotten here, or what had happened, but she found that she was wearing only
a black T-shirt of Inac’s as well as her underwear. She just prayed that they
hadn’t slept together. She would have asked him if they had, but he wasn’t in
here.

After a couple more minutes of taking in the room
until she could no longer feel her heart beating in her head as intensely as it
had been, she got up and tiptoed to the oversized, cold metal door. It was
heavy, but she managed to open it. Then, following the scent of eggs cooking,
she walked down a short hall, finding Inac in a kitchen made of metal.

Was this whole house metal? The floor in here was a
black, shiny concrete, and all the cupboards were stainless steel. The fridge,
though, was glass. She could see all the produce in it without even having to
open it. It was accompanied by a glass freezer and a large wine chiller full of
bottles.

The large island in the middle of the kitchen was
made of stainless steel with a slate top the color of Inac’s eyes. So were the
counters around the perimeter of the room. Their sides were made of stainless
steel with the same shiny black slate tops.

She found Inac at the metal stove, cooking the eggs.
He was as bare as his house, only wearing a pair of black cotton pants that
were low-riding to the point that she could see the large dimples in his
muscular lower back as well as the continuation of his tribal-lined tattoo
along his entire right side.

“Morning,” she croaked, announcing her entrance.

He turned to her and smiled. “Morning yourself. Do
you like omelets?”

“Yeah.” Wincing from the pain speaking brought on,
she added, “But first, do you have any headache medicine?”

“I went out and bought some last night. I knew you’d
be hurting once you finally woke up,” he said, moving away from the stove to
hand her some pills along with a glass of milk.

When she was done washing down the pills and was
busy nibbling on the piece of coarse bread he’d handed her, she walked over by
him and hopped up onto the frigid counter to ask, “What happened last night?”

He threw her an odd look before looking back to the
sizzling pan held over the flame. “You don’t remember?”

She shook her head. “Please just tell me we didn’t
sleep together?”

“Nope,” he said as he masterfully flipped the omelet.
“I slept on the couch.”

Reflecting in a piece of furniture on the far wall,
she could see what seemed to be a family room that was situated next to the
kitchen on the other side of another small wall. In it she could see the couch.
It looked okay to sit on, but extremely uncomfortable to sleep on.

Taking in the enormity of all the open rooms, she
asked, “Don’t you have a guest room in this huge place?”

“Nope. I don’t have guests. Instead I have an
office, a gym, and an acoustically sound music room.”

“Oh.” She’d have to remember to ask him later about
what instrument he played. “So what happened last night?”

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

She took another bite of the bread, thinking as she
chewed. After swallowing it, she said, “I remember lunch with you. Then Professor
Sampson met you. You said you were my boyfriend…. I remember going home after
class and talking to Crystal. Then my cell phone wasn’t in my purse. I realized
it was at school. I got in my car and…and then everything’s blank.”

“Hmm. That’s odd that you would forget,” he said
with a frown. “Well, from what you told me last night, you were driving to
school when your car broke down. You started walking to a gas station to use
their phone when you realized that two guys were following you and you got really
scared. You made it to a station and called me, telling me that these guys were
waiting for you outside. I came and picked you up because you were freaking
out. To calm you down, I gave you a glass of wine. You ended up drinking the
whole bottle and passed out.”

If two guys had been following her, probably to rape
her, she could see why she had freaked out.

“I drank a whole bottle?” she asked, too dazed to
take another bite of the bread that was touching her lips. She wasn’t as
shocked about drinking a whole bottle herself, but more for the fact that she
could’ve been raped last night if not for Inac.

“Yeah. Like I said, you were really scared.”

She felt herself getting faint. For some reason, she
was getting worked up all over again.

Inac moved and pulled her into his bare arms the
moment her tears started falling. She didn’t even know why she was crying.

“Hara, it’s okay. You’re safe now,” he said, rubbing
her sides despite his tight embrace. “You should know that I won’t let anything
happen to you.”

“I know. I’m sorry,” she blubbered into his warm
shoulder. “I don’t even know why I’m crying.”

“You were almost raped and just found out about it
since you don’t remember. That’s plenty to get upset over. If it makes you feel
any better, your car’s fixed and back at your house, and I got your phone.”

“Thanks,” she said, pulling away and doing her best
to give him a weak smile as he wiped at her tears with his thumb. “Thanks for
everything. You’re always so considerate.”

“That’s just because I care about you,” he
whispered.

“Really?” she asked, looking up into his sincere
eyes.

“Of course! You’re amazing. You’re so different from
anybody I’ve ever met. You’re the most understanding person I’ve ever met as
well. None of my wives would
ever
drop subjects I didn’t want to talk
about. But you do. I appreciate that immensely.”

“Wives?” she questioned, wondering if she’d heard
him right. The word froze the rest of her tears—a waterfall turning to ice—keeping
them from falling.

“What?”

“You said wives. You said that none of your
wives
would drop subjects.”

He got that “oh no” look and pulled away. Like he
hadn’t meant to say that and was backpedaling in his mind, looking for a way
out of what he’d said.

“That’s the other thing,” he said, not looking at
her. “I catch myself accidentally telling you things about myself. You know
more than I think any of my wives did.”

“How many times have you been married?”

He walked over to the forgotten omelet, picked up
the pan, and spooned the food into the trash since it was completely burned. He
didn’t say anything as he grabbed another pan and began a new one. She wondered
if this was one of those subjects she should drop. She just had to know if
maybe he rushed into things and then got sick of them. She needed to know if
she was going to get hurt.

They both stayed silent until after he had two
omelets on black square ceramic plates accompanied by hash browns, bacon, and
glasses of orange juice.

“Hara,” Inac said after they’d both sat down on the
black kitchen chairs and their plates were on the steel rectangular table. “I
don’t want you thinking that I jump into things. I’m not going to tell you how
many times I’ve been married, but I will tell you that they were all marriages
of convenience. I have never been in love, and I want to do things right the
next time around. Also, I want you to know that things between us are
different. I really do care about you. I want to make you happy. I never felt
that with any of my wives.”

Saying “any” instead of “either” meant that he had
to have had at least three past wives. He’d been married at least three times
in about ten years. She was
definitely
going to get hurt….

Needing clarification, she asked, “When you say
marriages of convenience, what do you mean?”

“Mostly that their families had money or I’d
impregnated them. Don’t worry. You don’t have anything like that. My first wife
was because she was basically the only woman around. That, and my parents sort
of forced me into it. My father said that it was what God commanded,” he said,
one lip curled in obvious disdain.

“That’s horrible! How could he say that?!”

Inac shrugged, a complete opposite of her emotional
outburst. “He was right. It just wasn’t right for
me
. I made it work as
long as I could. I even stayed with her after I was disowned. But, after a
while, I just couldn’t do something that made me unhappy.”

Trying not to scoff at what she thought was a
ridiculous notion because he obviously believed it, she asked, “Why would God
command you to do something that would make you miserable?”

“Because it was the only choice. You see, I grew up
so far from civilization that I didn’t have any friends. I just had my family
and their families. We didn’t even have anything that we didn’t make or grow
ourselves.”

“You don’t act like that. You act like a city boy
who’s always had everything he could want.”

He smiled, letting her know that he didn’t take that
as an offense. “What can I say? I’ve lived in the city for a while. The city is
where I can be myself. I never was a good country boy. If there was any kind of
trouble, it was because
I
started it.”

“Now
that
I believe,” she said, giving him a
sly smile. She could tell by the way he told his story that she was the first
to ever hear it. Maybe he really did feel differently about her than he had
with any other woman.

“And look at me,” he said with a chuckle. “I can’t
believe that I just told you all of that. I told you that you’re different.”

She felt warm. Maybe he was falling in love with her
in the same way that she was falling in love with him. Maybe one day they’d get
married and he would tell her everything he was hiding behind his black eyes.
At least, they
were
black, weren’t they? Looking at them now, they
appeared a deep gray instead. It must be the lighting. Maybe all the metal was
reflecting in them, making them appear lighter.

Inac was so vulnerable, seeming embarrassed by what
he had just told her, so she stood up and walked around to sit sideways in his
lap.

He gladly welcomed her, putting one hand around her
waist and the other on her bare thigh. The T-shirt was shorter than she’d
realized. She could feel the cloth of his pants on the skin her underwear
wasn’t covering. She really should borrow some boxers or something….

Even though she knew she shouldn’t in her undressed
state, she leaned down to kiss him. It wasn’t only because she wanted to; it
was also because of something Crystal had once said. She had told Hara that,
when her boyfriend did something good, she would reward him with a kiss. Then
he would remember the reward and do other things for rewards. She likened it to
giving a puppy a treat for going potty outside. Hara wanted to “retrain” Inac
so that he would open up more.