Red - Jack Ketchum [10]
When she’d fastened the weeds to her side with her belt again she paused and stared out to sea. The sea was calm today. Turns and gulls wheeled through the sky beneath long thin streaks of cirrus clouds. The woman seemed to relish the same easy breeze which stirred the grass around him.
He pulled on the scotch and waited.
In a while she turned and walked up the pebbled shoreline to a narrow strip of sand. This, he thought, might be trouble. The sand extended for at least half a mile before falling back to pebble again and there was very little cover. If he needed to follow further he’d be doing it mostly in the open. But he was lucky. She walked only a few yards and then started up toward the rockface. He scanned it through the slope and saw her destination.
A cave. The woman was headed for a goddamn cave.
He wondered if there were more like her inside.
What the hell, he thought, let’s wait and see.
He made himself comfortable. Took a strip of jerky from his pack. Washed it down with some Cutty. When the jerky was gone he lit a Winston and then another and another.
More Cutty. More jerky.
He was not by nature a very patient man unless he was hunting. But he was hunting here in a way, wasn’t he? And he had plenty of jerky and plenty of cigarettes and could make do with what was left of the whiskey.
He judged it was going be a while.
~ * ~
It was.
Dusk was falling when through the lens of the Leupold he saw the wisps of smoke from inside the cave wave and wrap around the drifting strips of moss. Saw the faint flickering glow from within.
In all that time she had not emerged again.
Another man might have been disappointed. Chris wasn’t. Not at all. A little chilly but not disappointed.
That no one else had appeared was a good thing.
Plus he’d given it some thought and had taken the cave’s measure.
Steep rough granite surrounded the narrow entrance. A small grassy cliff maybe ten feet directly above. There were other deep indentations in the stone on either side all along the shoreline — worn away by the centuries-old pull and push of wind — but only the single cave as far as he could see.
His guess was that she was tucked in cozy for the night.
He policed his butts and shouldered the Remington. Time to head on home.
It was almost dinner time.
FIVE
The house was northern white cedar, rot-resistant and durable. It was pre-fab but certainly didn’t look it. The foundation was fieldstone. The stairs and porch were solid granite. Cleek was proud of his house. He’d built it with the money his old man had left him shortly after he and Belle were married and he‘d picked up his father’s law practice. Two floors, three baths, three bedrooms. They hadn’t expected Darlin’ but that was okay, Peg didn’t mind bunking with her little sister at all. Peg was a good girl.
He pulled up in front of it and the dogs were barking in the barn behind him as soon as he got out of the car. Brian was shooting hoops in the driveway beneath the flood lights. He missed one. Rebounded. Dribbled.
“How’s the average?”
He shrugged. “Seven for ten. Pretty consistent.”
He wondered if the boy was fibbing to him. Decided it didn’t matter much one way or the other. Chris wasn’t about to make his son prove it to him.
“Good. That’s good.”
“You get anything?”
“Do I look like I got anything?”
“Mom’s baking us a ham.”
“I’ve got something I need you all to do for me before dinner.”
“Okay.”
“Wait out here.”
“Sure, dad.”
~ * ~
“I should turn down the ham,” Belle said.
“Fine, you do that.”
She turned the oven down from two fifty to two hundred. The ham was bone-in, glazed with a brown sugar, mustard, lime and ginger sauce. It needed to be basted every twenty minutes. She didn’t want it to burn.
“Come on,