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Rainey
Rainey walked into the cabin to find it empty. Slater had promised to take the kids on a hike for the morning and she had the whole place to herself. First, she decided to go for a little hike herself, and now, she was going to have a bubble bath and make a big lunch for everyone before the tutor got there for the kids’ afternoon lessons.
“Hi, honey,” she heard a man call from the corner of the cabin’s family room. “I’m home.”
“Steve Angel,” she whispered to herself as if remembering his name. She thought for sure that the officer had said that was his name. “Why are you here? How did you find me?”
“So many questions,” he taunted. “Well, the guy that your new boyfriend left at your house, to throw me off your scent, was mighty talkative. Funny what a few thousand dollars will get you, information wise. And, as for why I’m here, they couldn’t prove that I’m crazy, so they had no choice but to let me go.” He stood from the corner chair. “I haven’t hurt anyone, yet” he said, emphasizing the word, “Yet”.
“What do you mean by that, Jack?” she asked. Her only hope might be to pretend that he was her dead husband, play along with him until she could get some help. The last thing she wanted was her kids showing back up to the house to find out that some crazy person believed that he was their dead father.
“Let’s stop playing games, Rainey,” he insisted. “We both know that I’m not your dead husband. I know it to be true because I watched your husband die. I was there when he took his last breath.” Rainey couldn’t help the sob that escaped her chest.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked.
He pulled up his shirt, showing her the scars from burns that covered most of his upper body. “I look like this on over forty percent of my body, and it’s Jack’s fault.”
“How is that Jack’s fault?” she asked. “He died in that accident.”
“He caused that fucking accident,” Steve shouted at her. She took a step back from him as he started to cross the room toward her, and he pulled a gun from the waistband of his jeans. “Stop,” he ordered. “I can’t have you leaving the party just yet, Rainey. We’re just getting started.”
“What are you going to do to me?” she stuttered her question.
“I’m going to take from Jack what he took from me,” he shouted. Every time he spoke, Steve waved the gun around and she worried that it might go off.
“What did Jack take from you?” she asked.
“My family—my life,” he whispered. “I was the only one out of our whole platoon who lived through the accident. I was in a coma for months and when I finally came to and could identify myself, it was too late. They had already told my wife that I’d was dead, and she moved on. She was remarried and my kids were calling another man, ‘Daddy’.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But I still don’t see how you can blame Jack for any of this.”
He practically shoved the gun in her face, and she bit back her scream. “That accident could have been avoided if your husband would have just followed orders. But like always, Jack thought that he knew best. We got a call over the radio that we were walking into hostile territory. We were advised to stand down, but Jack thought that he knew better. He radioed back that we were in the area and were going to check things out anyway. He promised command that we’d be okay, but we weren’t. Nothing was okay once we got about another mile up that road. That’s when all hell broke loose and everyone but me was killed.”
“That’s not true,” she whispered. She wasn’t told any of this when the government came to tell her that Jack was in an accident and that he didn’t make it. They gave her generalized statements of how sorry they were for her loss and how proud she should be that her husband paid the ultimate price while serving and protecting his country. There was no mention of him going against orders or putting his team in danger that ended up getting them all killed because she would have remembered that.
“Oh, it’s true, honey,” Steve insisted. “I’m betting that good old Uncle Sam left that part out of their condolence speech. It was the same speech my wife got when they told her that I was dead. The Humvee hit an IED, and it basically incinerated everything inside of it. My dog tags were melted from the heat.” He pulled back his shirt to show her the metal fragment that was still embedded in his chest. “This melted right through my gear. The doctors wanted to remove it, but I told them not to. It’s a constant reminder of what was done to me and my brothers. Your husband killed them and did this to me, and now, it’s time for some payback.”
Rainey looked around the cabin, hoping to find something that she could use as a weapon, but Slater was always so careful to clean up his tools and he’d never leave one of his guns out for the kids to find.
Steve’s taunting laughter filled the room. “You won’t find a way out of this, Rainey,” he insisted.
“What are you going to do? Kill me and leave me here for my kids to find?” she asked. “Please don’t do that to them.” The thought of her four kids finding her dead body in the cabin when they came back from their hike, was more than she could bear. Stalling would only bring them home to encounter a crazy man who’d kill them and Slater. Her only option was to convince Steve to take her away from the cabin to do the deed.
“No one thought of my kids in all of this,” he shouted. “They lost their father, and my wife still refuses to tell them that I’m alive. She said that I’m too unstable to be in their lives and that her new husband is all they need. He apparently is giving them the life that I could never give, so I don’t get a say in all of it.”
“I’m sorry that has happened to you, Steve. Please don’t make my children’s last memory of me finding my lifeless body on the floor. They’re innocent in all of this. Do what you want to with me, but please, spare them.” He seemed to consider her plea and she felt as though she was holding her breath, waiting for him to decide her fate.
“Fine,” he spat. “I think that I know of a place we can go to take care of things. Let’s go,” he ordered.
She nodded and followed him to the front door of the cabin, chancing one last look back at the once happy home she had shared with her kids and the man she loved. Would they remember her? Would Slater be a part of their lives once she was gone, or would he be ripped from them the way that their father had been? Jack and the girls had started thinking of Slater as a surrogate father. Heck, they even slipped up and called him, “Dad” a few times over the past couple of months living at the cabin. Rainey just prayed that her sister would come to see that and give him a chance to be a part of their lives after she was gone.
“Move,” Steve shouted, pushing her from behind. He had the barrel of his gun pointed into the small of her back and Rainey didn’t hide the small sob that escaped her parted lips.
“Where will you take me?” she asked. He got her into his old pick-up truck and told her to slide across the bench seat, his gun trained on her the whole time. She didn’t dare disobey him, knowing that if she did, he’d march her right back into that cabin and kill her on the spot.
“I think it only fitting that we go back to where it all began for us, Rainey,” he insisted. “And how fitting that I’ll end your life where you and Jack started building your own together.” He was taking her back home and she hated that was going to be her final resting place. She had loved that place, once. She believed that she was happy there with the kids until she found Slater and he moved them up to his cabin in the woods. That was her new happy place, and she knew that the same held true for her kids. They seemed to thrive up at the cabin and she was secretly hoping that she could convince Slater to make that their new home. All the little things she worried about when he announced that he was moving them to the cabin, flew out the window once she saw the genuine smiles on each of her kids’ faces. They didn’t care about soccer practice or dance class, not when they had the great outdoors to call their playground.
“Don’t worry,” he said, running his hand down the side of her face. She pulled away from him and he chuckled. “I’ll call it in so that no one finds you but the police.”
