AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I try not to sound hurt but I am absolute horse shit at hiding my emotions. Augustine clears his throat. I can feel his body tense up next to me in the bed.
“She died,” he says. “And I don’t want to talk about it.”
Right.And that’s just the way things are going to be, right? Hmph.
“Okay,”I answer and roll over, pretending to fall asleep.
* * *
ChapterEleven
Augustine
Nothing like a good fuck to knock me out. Wind howling outside only makes it easier for me to fall asleep. I love sleeping through a snowstorm. I roll over and put my arm around the woman in my bed. Thenewwoman in my bed. When I throw my arm around her, she feels a lot hairier than I remember. I press my nose into her neck and she smells exactly like my dog Creed.
Hold on. I wake up and sit straight up in bed to find Creed and Flurry sleeping where Trinity fell asleep the night before. Where the fuck is she? I don’t need evidence to know she’s gone and done something crazy. Five minutes with the woman and I can tell I’ll be after her my entire life. Jumping out of bed, I see signs of what the fuck Trinity has been up to. She left the bedroom door open, letting the dogs in, but I don’t know how she got past them.
“TRINITY!” I call through the house in case she’s downstairs. Nothing. Plus, it’s cold. Too cold… I’m suspicious. I throw on a St. Louis Blues hoodie and a pair of gray sweatpants. The dogs hop off the bed and bound downstairs, hoping for breakfast instead of giving a crap about my problems. Creed lets out an excitable bark as I follow the dogs downstairs.
By the time I get downstairs, I know she’s gone. She left a lot behind, but she took supplies from my kitchen, a hunting knife, an ax, a long lighter, the tent I had hanging by my door, and some of my winter clothes. It might be early in the winter, but I don’t know if she has enough to survive… wherever the fuck she went.
I grab my gun under the couch in my living room and throw two shells in my pocket in case I need to use the sawed-off on anyone or anything out there. Fucking hell, Trinity…
The dogs won’t leave me alone until I feed them, so I throw down some of the elk liver I cooked up the night before and search the perimeter of my property for signs of Trinity while the dogs chow down on their breakfast. During hunting season, I get all the meat I need for the year, so I’m no stranger to the landscape and the wildlife around here.
Despite the items she took with her, there’s no way that Trinity chose camping instead of hitch-hiking to the nearest major city. Hmph. I don’t know if I’m more scared of Trinity running into a polar bear or another man. Alaska ain’t the kindest place to unattached women.
Why the fuck did she leave? I thought everything went well last night. Maybe it was the last thing I said to her. I don’t fucking know. I don’t have time to think about it. If Trinity is out there in the cold, I won’t have much time to find her. The woman hardly knew how cold Alaska was when she got here. I doubt she can survive out there. Fuck.
I don’t care if she’s a loud-mouthed brat… She’s mine, and I’m not going to lose her. When I don’t find any signs of Trinity around the house and when I call Jim, the nearest house, and find out she never walked past, I suspect Trinity chose to do things the hard way, which means I’ll need the dogs to find her.
I let them finish breakfast as I impatiently make myself a cup of coffee to pass the time. I finish it all in a couple gulps and take the dogs out with the one thing I find that belongs to Trinity in my bedroom that’s most coated in her scent.Her thong.I press it to my nose before I let the dogs have a sniff. The dogs get riled up once they catch Trinity’s scent and they’re ready to take off towards the northwest part of my land.
I could call Jim to help me look, but how damn far can Trinity get on her own with limited supplies?
Following the dogs through the trees, we walk for thirty minutes and there still is no sign of Trinity. It’s like the woman vanished. I don’t see any footsteps or signs of a campsite. There is no fucking way she walked so many miles in the dark, right? Maybe I shouldn’t put anything past Trinity. That woman is a goddamn handful and I knew it the second she walked through my door.
After several hours searching through the woods, I realize it’s no good. She’s either hiding or she’s set up camp somewhere much further than where she should be. The dogs are barely any help. It’s a good thing the sun stays up so late in the summer. Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop the temperature from dropping.
The sun sets between ten and ten-thirty at night towards the end of August. Around nine-thirty, when I worry I’ll need to make a plan to go back, I hear a loud shriek that can only be one person.Trinity.It’s not likely there’s another woman doing something as fucking stupid as running off into the Alaskan wilderness in the woods behind my house.;
I whistle for Creed and Flurry to follow the noise. They take off and I start running behind them. We’re still far away from the house. I’ll still have the trouble of getting her ass home.
“TRINITY!”
She screams even louder and as I get closer to the noise, I hear another sound that sends a shiver down my spine. A rutting moose. Fuck. The dogs are barking like crazy, their barks sound almost like howls and the rutting noise gets louder. As I run towards the sound, I try loading up the shotgun. When I get close enough to see Trinity, the dogs are between here and there’s a large male moose.
I don’t even think before I level the gun at the moose. I shoot and the moose rears up on its hind legs.
“DON’T RUN!” I yell at Trinity. She doesn’t listen. She takes off running and the moose makes the loud rutting noise again, kicking its hind legs back and clearly planning to maul Trinity’s disobedient ass. I have seconds to react, so I level the gun again, trying to calm the adrenaline pumping through me.You have to make this, Augustine.
I fire again. Trinity yells and covers her ears before dropping to the ground. The moose turns around and runs in the opposite direction, leaving a trail of blood in the snow.Fuck.I have to go get that thing and tag it. I think I hit the lungs, which means I have about thirty or forty minutes before the moose bleeds out. Its death will be painless, but I don’t want the creature’s death to be for nothing.
First, I have to check on Trinity. The dogs rush over to her, sniffing her as she lies on the ground with her hands over her head and her backpack of supplies strewn everywhere around her. I was right to think this woman was trouble.
“Trinity.”
“Don’t shoot!”
