The Perfect Outsider (12 page)

His chest clutched and desire welled sharp and sudden in him, along with a raw urge to make her smile. He wanted to hear her laugh, see the light dance in those eyes. Bottom line, Jesse had an urge to protect her, to help her with this burden she’d undertaken.

Was that the kind of person he was? Or was it his lust speaking?

“Everything in here is run off solar power,” she said.

Jesse turned to study the kitchen—the wood cabinetry was high-end, the countertops granite. The windows at the far end of the room were tinted and large and looked out onto a valley of low scrub and pockets of trees. Light fittings were crafted from wrought iron or bone—shades made from what looked like hide. In fact, everything about the place seemed rustic high-end, artistic and wilderness-inspired.

“What is this place?” he said. “It’s incredible.”

“It was built into the caves by a manic-depressive architect who decided to go survivalist and live off the grid, but in style. There are more rooms this way,” she said, holding out her arm.

June led him down another stone passageway into a room that had been equipped as a nursery.

Lacy and her twins were sitting on one of the beds. Lacy had a book in her hands and was reading her girls a story. She glanced up sharply as they entered. The twins seemed to sense tension in their mother and instinctively cuddled closer.

Jesse stilled in the doorway, struck by the vignette. The children were brunettes, like their mother, and identical. And he knew one thing about himself with abrupt certainty: if someone tried to kill this young mother and her children again—he’d shoot the bastard dead.

What did that say about him?

“Hello,” he said to the girls, his voice coming out too deep. “My name is—” He glanced at June. “They call me Jesse.”

“You’re the bad man,” said one of the twins

“I…don’t think so.”

The kids stared at him.

Jesse suddenly felt hot, and a dark cesspool of guilt swirled inside him. With it came twinges of rage, remorse, hurt. A cool sense of betrayal.

He shook himself, wanting to bury the uncomfortable sensations but knowing on some level they were parts of his memory coming closer to the surface of his consciousness, like tiny agitating bubbles in a pot of water ready to break into a boil and release steam. And it scared him to think what lurked down there.

June touched his arm, jolting him back to the present.

“The other rooms are this way.”

“It’s a big place,” he said as she showed him a series of bedrooms, bathrooms and a games room complete with billiard table.

She nodded. “When the architect died, he left everything to his sister, who lives in the town over. She didn’t know what to do with the place. It’s not legal, no building permits, and there is no road access. Then her sister-in-law, Hannah Mendes, needed a safe house. It was the perfect solution. We heard about Hannah from Mia Finn during her deprogramming sessions. That’s where I came in. Hannah is in her seventies, works at the Cold Plains water-bottling warehouse, and she identifies vulnerable cultees and gets them out. They come here, then go into an exit-counseling program.” June showed him into a hallway that led to what appeared to be the front door.

Jesse noted a gun rack mounted near the door. A shotgun rested on the wood slats. Beside the rack was a cabinet that held ammunition. The key to the cabinet was in the lock. He saw there were boxes of both shells and slugs in the cabinet.

His gaze shifted down to June’s hips, to the Glock in her holster.

She opened a heavy oak door and he followed her out onto a stone patio covered partially by a rock overhang. The morning sun was warming the valley and the vegetation smelled like summer. A sense of familiarity washed over him, and he was gripped by a powerful notion that he belonged outdoors, that he slept often under the stars. That he needed to roam the mountains. On the back of that thought rode the dark, cold feelings of guilt again. Jesse began to itch with irritability, impatient to get deeper inside his head, find the answers.

“This is Hidden Valley,” June said. She was standing next to him, and he could smell her shampoo again. Eager was at her feet, sunlight glinting off his black fur. Jesse walked to the end of the patio where a small creek burbled, the sun warm on his shoulders. It was a calm place, a healing place, he thought.

“How did this architect bring in the building materials for the house?” he said.

“Chopper. He had a pilot friend. He also had wealth.”

Jesse whistled softly. “It’s a perfect place to hide.” He turned to June. “You said you move people from here into exit-counseling. How do the safe-house occupants get out of the valley from here?”

“We have to hike out that way, to the next town.” She nodded to the mountains. “It’s a fair trek, takes several hours. I’ve learned exit-counseling myself, so I start that right away. There’s a town called Little Gulch on the other side of that mountain. EXIT has stationed a psychologist there who handles counseling and helps with transitions.”

Jesse put his hand to his temple and felt the line of stitches. His head was beginning to hurt.

“You okay?”

“I… The idea of needing to get someone into deprogramming feels familiar somehow.”

He saw a flicker of nervousness in her eyes. “Maybe you came here trying to get someone out, Jesse. Could you have been thinking of faking your way in with a false Devotee tattoo?”

He frowned, the image of a slight, dark-haired woman curling into his mind again. He felt himself fiddling with his ring finger and a wave of nausea hit him.

“I have no idea,” he said quietly. The woman in his mind began to scream again. And this time he saw flames. He felt the heat of fire, heard it crackling, consuming, swallowing her. His mouth felt dry. He wanted June to shut up.

* * *

June saw a haunted look creeping into Jesse’s eyes and the despair in his features made her chest tighten. She couldn’t help it—she reached out, placed her hand on his arm.

“Hey,” she said. “It’s going to be okay. It’ll come back to you.”

“Maybe I don’t want it to,” he whispered. “Maybe I am some kind of bad guy, June. Maybe I’ve done something terrible.”

And again that little whisper of doubt curled through her.

“Jesse—”

But before the next word could come out of her mouth, screaming came from the bushes.

They both spun around to see Brad crashing out from the brush, his eyes wide with fear. Eager began to bark excitedly as Brad ran toward the patio yelling. “Help! Molly’s in trouble!”

Adrenaline punched through June.
The henchmen—they must be here!

She rushed indoors, grabbed the shotgun from the rack and hurriedly unlocked the cabinet, reaching for a box of shells.

Brad reached the patio and bent over, bracing his hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath. “Bears!” he said. “Molly’s trapped by a mother bear and her cubs.”

June froze, gun in hand.
“Bears?”

Brad stood up. His face glistened with sweat. “They have Molly cornered at that end of the valley.” He pointed toward the mountains.

“She said she was going to pick some berries. I followed her—I wanted to see where the berries were. But there’s a big bear and her cubs stalking her.”

June began to load the gun. Jesse placed his hand on her arm, stopping her.

She shot him a glance.

His eyes were narrowed. “Give it to me,” he said, grabbing the gun from her with force.

Shock licked through June. “No, Jesse! What the—”

He turned away from her and went back inside. She rushed after him, anger spearing into her.

“What do you think you’re doing? Give that back to me—Molly’s in trouble.”

He reached into the cabinet and took out a box of slugs. He reloaded the gun.

“Buckshot is useless against a charging bear,” he said, quickly loading the gun. He clicked it in place. “You need slugs. Even so, you have to hit just right or you’re dead.”

She stared, dumbfounded.

“Come,” he said. Then he nodded at Brad. “You, too. We stick together in a group—it’ll make us look big to the bears. Follow my lead, and whatever you do, don’t run. Which way is she? Show me,” he said to Brad.

Brad led them to a narrow trail through the low scrub.

Jesse began to hike into the bush.

“Wait!” June quickly grabbed Eager’s collar and took him back to the house. “I’m taking him back. I don’t want him to get hurt,” she said.

“Catch up to us, then,” Jesse called over his shoulder.

June ran back to the cave house with Eager and yelled for Sonya to look after him.

“How do you know this stuff about bears?” June said, breathless, when she caught up to Jesse and Brad.

“I don’t know. I just do.”

* * *

June struggled to keep up with Jesse. He moved with ease and stealth through the wilderness, like a great big mountain lion, all powerful muscle. Brad was panting heavily behind her, crashing through brush clumsily.

They crested a ridge. The sun was warm on their backs.

Jesse pointed. “There they are.”

There was a reverence in his voice that made June look up at him. He was squinting into the sunlight and crinkles fanned out from his eyes. He looked rugged—a real Marlboro mountain man, as if he belonged out here, and June felt safe with him.

She’d always been confident on her own in the wilderness. She knew how to navigate, she’d done her survival courses, she knew her firearms, but this sense of security she felt standing beside Jesse was something different. It was like having someone at your side, someone you could lean on if the going got rough, someone who’d take a few knocks and fight off the bad guys for you—as he’d done for Lacy and her daughters.

And June realized again how deeply she missed Matt and being part of a team.

The bears—a sow and her two cubs, their coats reddish-brown—were grazing along a flat part of the valley. They were beautiful, majestic.

“They’re healthy,” June whispered. “It’s not common to see them here. She must’ve brought her cubs down along the spine of the mountain range.”

“This way,” said Jesse as he began to walk along the crest of the ridge.

“We’re going to approach them head-on?” asked Brad, clearly terrified.

“I want them to see us, to pick up our scent in the wind,” Jesse said. “That way they’ll most likely just move away.”

As he spoke, the mother lifted her nose and tasted the wind.

“There.” Jesse smiled. “She got us.”

The sow stared in their direction for a while.

“Definitely black bear,” June said.

“But they’re brown,” said Brad

“Black bear can be anything from a soft cinnamon color to pitch-black,” Jesse said. “You can tell they’re not grizzlies from the shape of their heads and the sow’s shoulders. She has no hump.”

“So they’re not as dangerous?” said Brad.

“Black bears are responsible for more predatory attacks on humans than grizzlies are. You need to respect their space just the same.”

“Jesse,” June said softly. “Have you seen grizzlies in the wild?”

He nodded. Then turned suddenly to her. Sunlight danced in his eyes, and a smile curved his lips. “I recall being on a horse, in mountains, and seeing bears—brown bears. Not just once. I…feel like it’s a part of me.”

“You don’t get brown bears in this part of Wyoming,” she said. “If you’ve seen them in this state, it’s in the northwest. Maybe the Wind River range, Yellowstone, Grand Tetons.”

He closed his eyes a moment.

“And I can feel forest, snowcapped peaks, shale slopes. Being out for days at a time.”

As he spoke, June saw relief in his features. He liked what he was seeing.

“See?” She grinned, infected by his sudden good energy. “I told you it would start coming back.”

“I see Molly!” Brad interrupted. “Over there—look. She’s trapped behind the bears and can’t get back on the trail.”

June saw a figure moving through the scrub a distance behind the bruins.

“She’s downwind of them. They don’t know she’s there,” Jesse said. “Come, we need to crowd them a bit, get them to move eastward, away from her.”

He began to hike down the ridge, toward the bears, June and Brad following quietly behind. The sow reared up on her hind legs, waving her head back and forth, mouth open.

“She’s going to attack,” whispered Brad.

“She’s just getting a better look, tasting the air,” Jesse said.

The bear dropped back onto all fours and began to lumber, slowly, out of the valley, making her way east. The cubs followed.

* * *

Molly hugged June, breathless with relief to see them, but Jesse noted she had no basket, no berries.

He walked behind the three of them on the return to the cave house and more memories washed over him. This time he felt himself riding a horse again, with a packhorse tethered to his saddle. He had everything he needed for an extended stay in the mountains—his 270 Winchester rifle at his side and his twelve-gauge Remington WingMaster shotgun. His Beretta was holstered at his hip.

And in his memory he was looking for something…
poachers.
Jesse stopped dead in his tracks, pulse racing, perspiration breaking out over his body. He tried to dig deeper, but the images were gone.

Slowly he began to walk behind June, Brad and Molly again. Molly dropped something—it looked like a cell phone. She quickly scooped it up and glanced behind her to see if Jesse had seen. He looked away, pretending he hadn’t.

When they reached the house, Molly and Brad went inside, but June lingered outside in the sunshine. Jesse was pleased. He liked to watch the way the sun burned fire into her red hair. Her cheeks were pink from the walk and he realized how tired and pale she’d been looking—she still looked tired, but the color in her face stirred something deep in Jesse. He wanted to help her rest, find peace. He wanted to see her smile again.

He held out the shotgun to her.

“Keep it,” she said. “I trust you.”

Her words sent a warm rush through his chest. June made him feel good. She chased away the darker sensations lingering just under his consciousness, and Jesse realized he was falling, hard, for this woman. It worried him.