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I stood still, feeling all my limbs go numb. He was right. It would be my word against his. “I’ll just bet you have a solid alibi too, right?”
“You know me well, Eli, which is why I wondered how the hell you thought you’d get away with it. I mean, leaving, no note, nothing, and we signed a contract.”
I could argue, but it would do no good. He didn’t think he’d done wrong by me. “Harvey, please, just don’t do this. Noah is a good man. If you want, I’ll go back home with you. It’ll be like it was.”
If I had to suffer for the rest of my life, I’d do it to keep Noah from getting hurt. I knew it at that moment. I’d do anything to keep him safe.
“We’re gonna wait right here for him. You’ll run after, I’m sure, but you’ll be hunted, and then you’ll go to prison, like I wanted in the first place. No high-priced lawyer will get you out of this. Not this time.”
Knowing Harvey, he’d likely done more than what he’d already confessed to, and he loved to brag. So, while holding Spirit’s reins tightly, thinking of doing something that I didn’t want to do, I asked, to stall, “What else? I know there’s more you’ve done to frame me.”
His eyes lit brightly, and his mouth worked into a smile that told me he thought himself pure genius. “Oh, yes, that’s not all. You know that letter you wrote me a couple years back, when you were feeling especially theatrical? I saved that along with your contract. I don’t even know why I saved it, but I did.”
I remembered it well. I was never good with words with Harvey, and he barely let me get a thought out most of the time without cutting me off, so I wrote him one letter. It was about eight months after we’d started living together, and in it, I wrote about how dissatisfied I was with the relationship and things he could do to improve it, and that I’d try harder too. I ended it, however, that if things didn’t change, I’d be forced to hurt him, and I didn’t want to do that.
At the time, I cared about him. He spoke to me that night, and made me think things would change, and they did, for a time. By hurting him, I never meant physically, but I didn’t specify. “I’d never hurt Noah.”
“Doesn’t have my name at the top, Eli. Just says, Sir. Remember when you used to call me that? Now, I suppose your Noah is Sir.”
“What if I charge you right now?” I asked, ignoring his jab at me. “You’d have to shoot me, and then your plan goes to hell. They’ll know someone else did it.”
“Sure. Noah. In self-defense, maybe, but you got a shot off to him too. So, you both tragically die, and your name is forever hated by all these friendly folks that love Noah. I still win.”
That was just like Harvey. He thought of everything, always. Well, there was one more thing I could do, and though I didn’t want to, I knew if Noah was going to live I had to do it.
With Spirit, I took a step toward him. Spirit felt the man’s malicious intent, sensing his hatred and violence, and he got jumpy as hell. I barely held the reins after that one step, but after another, Spirit went crazy.
He reared back, standing on his hind legs and moving the front ones in a circular pattern that effectively blocked Harvey from me. I took that slim shot at getting away, ducking out of the barn as I heard a shot, and I started crying, immediately filled with guilt that I may have just gotten Spirit killed.
With the snow, I’d never be able to hide, as my tracks would show my direction no matter what, so I ran like fury and got to the house, getting into the door and locking it behind me.
I scrambled to get my phone out of my pocket as I started for the bedroom to get one of Noah’s guns, but then I heard it. A truck pulling into the yard. “Noah! No!”
My breath was caught in my throat as all I could picture was Noah getting out of the truck, all smiles to see me, and have our shared lunch together, like every day. Noah, walking up the porch steps to get to the house to make it, and suddenly, a bullet would slam into his back, and the surprise would show on his face as I saw it, maybe for the last time…
My phone falling to the floor, I turned and started back for the front door, slamming it open after scrambling to unlock it. I headed onto the porch in two steps, but then I stopped, shocked to my core as I saw Joel’s truck, and not Noah’s, in the driveway.
“Hold it right there, Mister!”
Joel had a rifle, and he was leaned over the bed of his truck, pointing it right at Harvey. Harvey stopped in his tracks, but he still had the gun in his hand. “Joel, be careful,” I shouted, running down the steps and right over to him and the truck.
“I’m careful as can be, Eli,” he assured me, his finger twitching on the trigger of the rifle.
“Kid,” Harvey called, taking his pistol by the butt into his other hand and holding it up for us to see. “You don’t know about him! He’s gonna hurt Noah and you, too!”
“He ain’t hurting nobody. You’re the one with the gun in your hand, Mister.”
Then, like a miracle, Spirit came flying out of the barn, right toward Harvey. All I heard was Joel cursing, “Oh, shit,” and we watched as Spirit headed right for Harvey but saw too late, he was heading to danger.
Harvey spun around, and in shock, the gun dropped to the ground as Spirit tried to change direction. I set my hand on the barrel of Joel’s gun, unwilling to take Spirit’s life in my hands again, and he let it drop into the bed onto some feed bags as we watched Spirit raise up on his hind legs again, waving his hooves in Harvey’s direction.
Dropped to the ground then scrambling, Harvey got away from Spirit right before the horse could come down right where Harvey’s head would have been. We watched, helpless, as Harvey ran to the other side of the barn, and once we came out of our shock, I grabbed Joel’s gun and went after Harvey.
Like I previously avoided, it was easy to follow him. The tracks in the snow were fresh and hurried. I didn’t rush, however, taking it slowly, not trusting that he didn’t double back or stop somewhere.
Around every tree, I worried he’d jump out and shoot me, but he wouldn’t be the only one. Yeah, I hated guns, but I’d used them to save my life before, and I’d do it again, only it wasn’t my life. It was Noah.
The tracks were erratic, like he was losing it, and I supposed he had. I found a few where the snow had melted, his shoe print slid in the exposed mud and there were signs of his hand and knees there, but he’d gotten back to his feet, trailing drops of mud in his wake.
