Page 33 of Shame the Devil
“Didn’t put your hand on her ass or anything?” Harlan said.
“Maybe a little bit,” Owen said. “Hey. She’s tiny. I had to hold hersomewhere.”
Harlan was the one sighing now. “One more day. Just don’t, OK? I like Jennifer. She worries. She tries to act cool about it, but she’s terrified something bad’s going to happen to Dyma.”
“Maybe she should be terrified something’s going to happen tome,”Owen said. “Because I about died there. That girl’s a killer.” He swung his feet off the bed and stood up. “And if you want Jennifer to keep liking you for your personality? You’d better think how you’re going to explain lying to her for two days. What does she think you do?”
“I may have mentioned farm equipment.”
Owen heaved another gusty sigh. “Yeah. That’s not going to cut it.”
* * *
Dyma saton the edge of the bed the next morning and yawned. “Explain this to me again? This makes no sense. Also, are we going home tonight, or tomorrow? I’m confused.”
Jennifer kept on with her packing. “We’re going with the flow. You’re just grumpy because I woke you up early.”
“Well,yeah,”Dyma said. “At five-thirty in themorning.I was up late, but don’t worry, Owen got me home by curfew, Your Honor. I thought the snow coaches left at nine.”
“You can rent one, it turns out,” Jennifer said. “And since there are four of us, I guess that was reasonable.” Though it wasn’t, not really. Kris hadn’t let her make any of the arrangements, but a quick search on the lobby wi-fi yesterday afternoon with her last bit of energy had showed her that there was exactly one possibility for a flight out of Bozeman going in the general direction of North Dakota, and it left for Minneapolis at 10 A.M. Was there such a thing as a high-speed snow coach? She’d asked Kris at dinner about the logistics, and he’d said, “Don’t worry about it. We’ll make it.”
“Honestly,” she’d said, “you should let me check over the arrangements. It’s my job.”
“Nope. It was simple. And don’t worry, I’ll get you back home by Monday, too.”
“That’s pretty mysterious,” she’d told him.
“Oh, yeah,” Owen had said, taking a bite of lasagna. “Or it’s the home-town crowd, North Dakota, and some extra time on a plane. One or the other. The things I do for you, bro.”
It wasn’t mysterious on the snow coach. It was just loud in the tracked vehicle, and it was early. It was also still dark, which meant no animals to watch for, and Kris wasn’t talking. Which was probably why Jennifer fell asleep.
She was dreaming about driving a bulldozer. She was supposed to operate it, but it was too noisy, and there were too many levers. She had to do her job, but nobody had taught her how. She was pulling on a stick and pressing buttons, and somebody was trying to give her instructions that she didn’t understand. She was going to get fired if she didn’t do this right, but she couldn’t figure it out.
She swam back up to consciousness, because somebody was saying something. Oh. Kris, saying her name. She opened her eyes, realized that her head was on his shoulder and his arm was around her, and sat up fast. “What?” she asked, wiping her mouth. She’d better not have drooled on him. “What happened?”
“We’re here,” Kris said.
“What? Where?” This wasn’t Mammoth Hot Springs, where they’d transfer to a wheeled van for the long drive to Bozeman. This was … She blinked. Somewhere else. A town.
“West Yellowstone,” Kris said. “We’re changing to an SUV for the drive to the airport.”
She looked at her watch. The trip had only taken an hour and a half. She forced her fuzzy brain into action and said, when Kris was holding her hand to help her out of the high vehicle, “Oh. Does that work? The … uh, connections? They only fly to Salt Lake City out of here.”
“No worries,” he said. “It works.”
He looked nervous. She hadn’t realized hecouldlook nervous. He was so laid-back, he was practically a professional at it. That was probably good for selling farm equipment, though. He’d be spending his days chatting about crops or weather or whatever with farmers, who probably didn’t appreciate high-pressure sales tactics.
He wasn’t looking laid-back now. She stopped where she was, in the snow and the freezing cold, halfway to the other vehicle, which was, for some reason, a black Suburban with blacked-out rear windows of the type you’d expect to see in a presidential motorcade. The Suburban was being loaded by a driver wearing a black outfit complete with chauffeur’s cap, with some help from Owen. That was fairly bizarre. What was the demand for uniformed chauffeurs in West Yellowstone, Montana? The guy must bereallyinto his job. She said, “Wait.”
Kris stopped. Still looking tense, like he was sure she was going to say something bad.
She said, “First, it’s your birthday. It’syourday, and I just want to say—you’re choosing to do this, and that choice is coming from a place of strength. You’re doing it because you’re a good person, and you don’t want to let people down, and that’s admirable. I’m saying that, because I think you may need to hear it. And—oh.” She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a small paper bag. “Happy birthday.”
He unfastened the tape holding the bag closed and pulled out the flat little package, and then he smiled. It wasn’t the charming smile. It was more real than that. “Whiskey stones,” he said.
“With wolves on them,” she said. “You put them in the freezer and use them to keep your whiskey cold without diluting it, since you don’t like it with water.” She hesitated, then went ahead and said, “I saw them in the gift shop, and I thought they might remind you that you saved somebody’s life, and that she’s grateful. You weren’t just fast. You were brave, too, and you were … loyal, I’d say, to put yourself on the line for somebody you don’t even know. Brave and strong and loyal. Isn’t that how you said the Mountain Shoshone saw the wolf?”
She felt stupid and exposed as soon as she’d said it. Too much to say, except that she’d thought about him last night. About that boy whose father had beaten him, whose father was still telling him he wasn’t enough, whose mother had left. She didn’t want him to go into this thing today, whatever it was, still feeling like he wasn’t enough. Not on his birthday.
