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“My car broke down, and I couldn’t get it to start, and I couldn’t call anybody because there’s no damn service, and so I decided to walk back here to use your phone, but when I started walking I heard some growling, and then I heard things walking in the grass near me, and I shined my phone at them and their eyes glowed! I started screaming and running all the way here, and I swear they were chasing me!”
It took all my strength, but I stifled the urge to laugh when I got another look at Meredith’s panicked expression.
“Probably a chupacabra,” I said as seriously as I could manage without laughing.
She glared at me, not appreciating my joke.
“Honey, you grew up here. When did you go and turn all prissy on me? If you heard anything, it might have been a coyote or two, but you know good and well that they’re more scared of you than you are of them!”
“I wouldn’t be too sure,” she answered, glaring fiercely for a second before tearing up again. “I can’t remember the last time I was this scared...of anything!”
“It’s okay, you’re safe now,” I said. I moved from sitting on the coffee table across from her to right next to her. Taking her into my arms, I continued to soothe her.
She melted into my embrace, leaning her head against my chest. I could feel the rise and fall of her breasts as she settled herself down against me. I leaned my chin on the top of her head and again breathed in her sweet scent. Again I had to remind the reaction in my pants that this was Bry’s little sister.
“You don’t need to be setting off at this time of night anyway, even without chupacabras and old junk heaps.”
“Hey! You will not talk about Beatrix that way!” Meredith said forcefully pushing off me, but I could tell she was trying to lighten the mood after her crying jag.
She took a deep breath and let it out, th
en a sudden shift in her expression settled on her face. She looked embarrassed more than anything, and even that look changed to horror as quickly as it had come on. “Crap, I must have dropped my bag when I started running!”
“Your camera bag? I’m guessing that was pretty important?”
“Yeah, it had everything. My camera, my notes, the entire interview, all the pictures I took!” She covered her face with her hands and leaned forward until her elbows rested on her knees.
“Hey, it won’t be so bad. You just sit tight right here and calm down some more, honey. I’ll go look for your bag. It was a big ol’ black backpack, wasn’t it?”
“You’d do that? Oh Colt, thank you! Everything is in that bag! There’s no article without it!” she sighed, relieved.
I nodded my head and smiled, then patted her knee gently before standing up.
“I’ll just grab the four-wheeler, it shouldn’t take too long. Stay put and I’ll be right back.”
I left Meredith on the couch and bounded down the front steps after flicking on some more of the corner floodlights. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe her coyote story for a minute. On the contrary, those pesky little suckers have been known to come right up to the house. One night, a couple of them had stolen food right off my porch when I’d stepped inside to grab another beer.
But they’re harmless, and if Meredith remembered anything about her home, she’d know that, I thought, a little bewildered about how she could have turned so skittish. The whole time I was overseas, all I could think about was getting back here, coyotes and all.
Maybe there’s a reason she doesn’t want to remember, stupid...you ever think of that? The sudden internal tongue-lashing was pretty odd, and it just about raised the hairs on the back of my neck.
I climbed aboard the wide off-roading vehicle and turned the key, then revved the engine. When its lights flicked on, I jumped a little at the sight of multiple sets of glowing eyes scattering in every direction. It takes a big man to admit when something’s a little unnerving… and that was some scary crap. It wouldn’t take too much imagination for a terrified city girl to wonder if they’d been waiting outside the house for her to come out.
As the vehicle tore across the dirt road, neatly jumping over the dried tire tracks and rocks, I shone my handheld flashlight in the grass along the path. I circled back once I reached her stalled car, knowing that I must have missed it.
Lucky for her, something shiny glinted in the beam of my headlights. I pulled up alongside it, reached down, and plucked her keys out of the dirt. While rising back up, another shiny little dot caught my eye, the reflective logo on her black bag.
“Missing these?” I teased her when I made it back to the house. Meredith was sprawled back against the sofa cushions, but jumped up when I held out her bag and car keys.
“You found them! You’re a lifesaver! I was sure it had been dragged halfway across the state by those mongrels by now!” She took the bag from me and carried it to the table, then began searching inside.
“Naw, those things don’t want it unless you’ve got some food stashed down in the bottom of it. Then they sure would make quick work of ripping it to pieces, though.” I hesitated, not wanting to be the one to say it, then finally asked, “You think your camera survived? The bag was pretty dirty, like maybe it’d rolled when you dropped it.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” Meredith answered, holding up the camera and turning it on. “This bag has taken a bullet, been run over by a rickshaw, fallen in a contaminated river, fallen in an even more contaminated sewer… you name it, we’ve been through a lot together.”
“Sheesh, that’s a lot of danger for a fancy architecture magazine!” I said skeptically. How was it that the woman I’d just helped onto my couch over a little coyote had been through so much other stuff?
“I wasn’t always a ‘house portrait’ lady, as one of the editors called me not too long ago,” she said distantly, still looking in the bag for her notebook. “I got into this after taking a bullet in the arm while on assignment.”
