Chapter 2
Susan wondered if she was over reacting, being paranoid for no reason, but as she drove she continued glancing in the mirror. Fabio was a big, chiseled featured man, almost good looking, and may have been just a friendly traveller, but something sparked inside of her when he had come up behind her earlier. His friendly demeanor seemed a thin veil over something very creepy. His smile had a predatory overtone to it.
She didn't want to think about him anymore. She sighed and settled back in her seat, feeling the wind grab her hair. She passed a field of grazing cattle, an old farm house tucked at the edge of the distant trees.
Her father used to take this route when driving the family to the beach for the weekend. It seemed the old farm house and the cattle had been there forever. It was a picture that never change, and one she hoped never would. It was such a serene setting, and the big house just seemed to have gotten more charming with time. As she turned her eyes back to the road a spark in the mirror caught her eye. As she came to a bend from a long straight road behind her, she saw a car top the distant hill in the mirror. It was too far away to see what it was or its color, but she knew who it was. Mr. Creepy was following here the way a wolf would follow a scent.
_ _ _ _
Brad was reminiscing as he lifted the rough log into place on the fence post. He was thinking about how he tried to help his dad build this rustic looking wood fence when he was a child. He smiled as he remembered how patient the old man was with him when he would try to help, but mostly get in the way. Now, at 38 years old, it seemed a very long time ago to Brad. The deep brown wood of the fence was etched with years, gray and white streaks left by the salt air of time, baked deep by many summer suns.
Brad kept the property up, as his father would if he was still alive. Even though he had lived a life much different that his fathers, the strong values of his father were well entrenched in him.
'A much different life', Brad thought as he looked at the two horse watching him with alert twitching ears.
"What are you looking at?" he said to the horses. In unison they started walking slowly towards him. "No - no, you apple hogs, I'm fixing a fence, not giving you treats."
He smiled as the bay snorted and bobbed her head. He loved this place. He loved the quiet and the beauty of it. Eight months ago he had caught a bullet on a Special Ops assignment. As he was being medi-vac'd he knew his days in Special Forces were over.
'It isn't too bad', he thought. The pain only bothered him when the weather was cold and damp, but he endured it and did what he had to do. He never talked about it or what he had been doing all those years away from home. He couldn't. Officially, he never got shot and he was never in that country or any other country in which he was doing Special Ops. The Operation never took place. None of them took place.
Where he lived and what he did now was in extreme contrast to the last 20 years of his life. His lean face now sported a short beard, and his shoulder length hair hung from the back of the bandanna that he used as a sweat band.
He had come home - to the land where he grew up, to the land his father had left him, to peace and quiet after a life of clandestine war. In appearance, he blended into the generally hippie persona of the Santa Cruz mountains. He had a gentle demeanor about him and an easy smile that people were drawn to. Even his his oldest friends knew little about his military background, taking as fact his claim to have been an communications expert, never suspecting that inside this peaceful man was an elite specialist in the darkest recesses of combat.
_ _ _ _
As Susan rounded the bend in the forest and lost sight of the car behind her, she came down a small hill and saw a pick-up truck off the side of the road next to an open field. A tall, rangy looking man with his head wrapped in a bandanna appeared to be repairing a fence. He looked like a hippie to her, but was dressed like a cowboy. He wore Levi's with a utility belt strapped to his waist, , mud caked cowboy boots, sweat stained blue work shirt, sleeves rolled up, revealing muscular forearms.
"Shit." Susan mumbled. "I need a cop, not a hippie." She started braking as she came down the hill and pulled over next to the truck. She jumped out of the car and ran over to the hippie/cowboy, who had turned from his job and watched her with a silent, neutral expression as she came up to him.
"Yes, ma'am." he said as a question.
"I'm sorry to bother you, but there's a man following me."
Brad looked up the road curiously. "People follow each other down this road all the time. Are you all right?"
"No-no-no." She said with a tone of frustration and desperation, "I understand that. This is different. This guy is stalking me. He's driving a green Auston-Healey and will be coming over that hill any second, and going fast, because he's trying to catch me."
"Do you know him?" Brad asked.
Just then the scream of a high performance engine pierced the still air as the Auston-Healey flew over the hill and started down the hill.
"Hmm -" Brad grunted as he looked at the car racing down the road.
"Okay, ma'am, I'll take care of this quick and easy, but if I'm going to follow your intuition, you're going to have to trust my male intuition and go along with what I'm going to do." His eyes glanced to the road as he spoke to her, " and we have no time to discuss it."
Just as the driver of the Healey came close enough for the driver to see them clearly, Brad took her in his arms and kissed her. What the driver couldn't see was Susan's eyes pop open in surprise, her body tense for the moment it took her to realize what Brad was doing. She relaxed and put her arms around him. There was a slight squeal of tires as the car braked and cruised passed them. Brad raised to his full height and looked over Susan's head as the car slowly went by. He smiled thinly at the passing driver, but his eyes met the other man's with a spark of cold steel. A split second of male assessment passed between them before the driver gunned the Healey, racing through the gears as he sped down the road.
Everything happened so quickly that Susan was left with a bewilderment of emotions. Fear, upon hearing the sports car coming. surprise when the tall man had taken her in his arms and pressed her to his hard body, kissing her so gently, as if he really meant it - as if they were long separated lovers reuniting. He looked back down at her still in his arms and smiled as the car sped away. "We should probably stop meeting like this." He said as his smile widened, his eyes softened.
"Well -", she responded softly. "I - I - uh." Her mind was blank of words. She suddenly felt embarrassed - not by her desperate plea for help, but by her reaction to being held and kissed so tenderly in such a tense situation. Susan was momentarily flustered, and she never got flustered. It was unprofessional, and professional is what she had been for years. She suddenly realized, that not only did he still hold her in his arms, but hers were wrapped tightly around his back. Her heart was pounding, and she wasn't sure why. Was it being chased by Mr. Creepy? Being literally save? Was it because of how she was saved - with a kiss.
She became aware of the silence - the scream of the Healey long faded into the breeze but she still had her arms around Brad, his was still around her, without thought, resting within the gaze of his eyes. She pulled her eyes from his and released her grip on him. As he released her he rubbed her shoulder fondly then dropped his hand. It was a touch of affection, a motion of caring, the feel of reaffirmation that everything is all right. She felt a warmth inside as her heart started pounding again, a flush of rose on her cheeks.
If this was a normal day, and Susan was as she usually is, she would have thanked him for his assistance in a courteous, yet distant manner, gotten in the Honda and left. But this was anything but a normal day, and Susan was not at all who she usually would be. She wasn't really sure who she was today. What she did know is that she wanted to be somebody different than she had been for the last decade. She didn't want to be molded by policy and politics. She wanted to be - - Susan, and she had no idea who that was.
All content - poems, posts & images - are ©2010 by John Evans. No permission is given to post, share, copy, print, e-mail, reproduce, distribute or link to. All Rights Reserved. Please contact John Evans at JohnEvansPoet.Com for licensing inquiries.
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