While Marcie watched the trimming, a man came out onto the cabin’s porch, stopped, looked up and cursed, then took long strides to the base of the ladder. “Don’t move. Don’t breathe,” he said in a low, commanding voice. He took the rungs every other one, climbing quickly until he reached the blonde. Then he slipped an arm around her, somewhere above what Marcie realized must be a little pregnant bulge and beneath her breasts and said, “Down. Slowly.”
“Jack!” she scolded. “Leave me alone!”
“If I have to, I’ll carry you down. Back down the ladder, slowly. Now.”
“Oh for God’s—”
“Now,” he said evenly, fiercely.
She began to descend, one rung at a time between his big, sturdy feet, while he held her safe against him. When they got to the bottom, she put her hands on her hips and glared up at him. “I knew exactly what I was doing!”
“Where is your brain? What if you fell from that height?”
“It’s an excellent ladder! I wasn’t going to fall!”
“You’re psychic, too? You can argue all you want, I’m not letting you that high up a ladder in your condition,” he said, his hands also on his hips. “I’ll stand guard over you if I have to.” Then he looked over his shoulder at the other two women.
“I told her I thought you wouldn’t like that,” the brown-haired one said with a helpless shrug.
He glared at the white-haired woman. “I don’t get into domestic things. That’s your problem, not mine,” she said, pushing her big glasses up on her nose.
And Marcie became homesick. So homesick. It had only been a few weeks that she’d been driving around this area, but she missed all the family squabbles, the tiresome complications. She missed her girlfriends, her job. She longed for her bossy older sister’s interference, her goofy younger brother and whatever current girlfriend was shadowing him. She missed her late husband’s large, fun, passionate family.
She hadn’t made it home for Thanksgiving—she’d been afraid to go for even a day or two, afraid she’d never pry herself out of Erin’s grip a second time. Home was Chico, California, just a few hours away, but no one—not her brother and sister, not Bobby’s family—thought what she was doing a good idea. So, she’d been calling, lying and saying she had tips about Ian and was close to finding him. Every time she called, at least every other day, she said she was getting closer when really, she wasn’t. But she was not ready to quit.
But one problem was looming large—she was just about out of money. She’d been sleeping in her car lately rather than in motels, and it was getting uncomfortable as the temperatures dropped in the mountains. At any moment snow would be falling now that it was early December, or rain could turn to sleet and that little VeeDub could sail off the mountainside like a missile.
She’d just hate to go home with this mission incomplete. More than anything, she wanted to see it through. If she wasn’t successful now, she’d only go home to earn a little money and then do it all again. She just couldn’t give up on him. On herself.
They were all looking at her. She pushed her wildly curly, out of control, bright red hair over one shoulder nervously.
“I…Ah…I could go up there, if you want. I’m not afraid of heights or anything…”
“You don’t have to go up the ladder,” the pregnant blonde said, and her voice had softened considerably. She smiled sweetly.
“I’ll go up the ladder,” the man said. “Or I’ll get someone to go up the goddamn ladder, but it’s not you.”
“Jack! Be polite!”
He cleared his throat. “Don’t worry about the ladder,” he said more calmly. “Anything we can do for you?”
“I…Ah…” She walked toward them. She pulled a picture out of the inside of her down vest and extended it toward the man. “I’m looking for someone. He dropped out of sight just over three years ago, but I know he’s around here somewhere. He seems to be taking mail at Fortuna Post Office general delivery.”
She passed the picture to the man. “Jesus,” he said.
“You know him?” she asked hopefully.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No, I don’t, and that’s strange. The guy’s a marine,” he said, studying the picture of a man in uniform. It was Ian’s official Marine Corps portrait, a handsome man all clean shaven and trussed up in dress blues, hat and medals. “I can’t believe there’s a marine within fifty miles of here I don’t at least know about.”