A little before dark, another knock sounded at Jennifer’s door. Her back instantly stiffened at the sound. She tried to control her fears, but every unexpected noise still made her jump. As she crept to the door, a wave of relief washed over her at the sound of Carol’s voice calling out.
Carol stood on the porch with a man that Jennifer didn’t recognize but who seemed somewhat familiar. His dark hair, which, unlike most people’s these days, looked like it had been washed recently, was cut short with no real attempt at a style and framed his square face and prominent forehead. The man wore a well-worn, brown, leather jacket and faded blue jeans and was a good foot taller than Carol, so that even from his spot outside, Jennifer had to tilt her head back to look him in the eye. The man watched Jennifer study him and smiled warmly at her. His eyes were bright and conveyed a sense of confidence that Jennifer hadn’t seen in quite some time. “Come in,” Jennifer invited. “We don’t have much light left, but come in.”
Carol and the man walked into the house, and Carol made introductions. “This is Sean Reider. He’s Craig’s brother, the one I was telling you about earlier.”
“Nice to meet you,” Jennifer said, shaking his hand. She led them into the living room where they all sat down. “What’s up?” she asked, trying her best to sound cheerful and relaxed and hoping they wouldn’t notice her shaking hands.
“Well,” said Carol, “I went to talk to Craig about your situation. Sean was there and we got into a discussion about things. Anyways, to make a long story short, Sean, Craig and I ended up going over to Doug’s house to talk to him, to see if we could put an end to your problems.”
Jennifer gasped involuntarily, quickly clamping a hand over her mouth to cut it off. “How’d it go?” she asked in a hushed voice through her hand.
“I don’t know,” said Carol. “I’m not sure what I expected, but it was just a conversation. Can’t say whether it went good or bad. It just kind of went.”
“Can I say something?” Sean asked, jumping into the conversation.
Jennifer nodded.
“Just so you know, I was in the military for ten years and spent some time as an MP, so I’ve dealt with troublemakers.”
“What’s an MP?” Jennifer asked, interrupting.
“Sorry,” said Sean. “Sometimes I assume everyone’s familiar with military terms. MP stands for Military Police, the military’s law enforcement. But anyway, I don’t know this Doug guy, but sometimes if someone knows that what they’re doing is no longer a secret, they change their behavior. So even if you can’t catch them in the act, by confronting them you stop the behavior. I think under the current circumstances that might be the best we can hope for.”
“Did he say anything when you talked to him?”
Carol shook her head. “Not really. Acted like it was all a surprise to him.”
“Did he deny any of it?”
Sean spoke up. “He said you two were just friends, that you misinterpreted things. Said it was just taken wrong.”
“What about the break-in?”
“He acted surprised. Claimed he didn’t know a thing about it,” said Carol. “Then he got kinda defensive and said there was no possible way for him to be able to police the entire area twenty-four hours a day by himself.”
“I think he acted a little too indignant,” said Sean. “To me, that show’s guilt, but I have no way to prove anything, plus it was the first time I’d met the guy so I don’t have any past references to go off of.
“What do you think I should do?” asked Jennifer. “It’s not just me. I’ve got three kids that I’m worried about too.”
“I think he’s going to stop, or at the very least, cool it for awhile,” said Sean. “He’s a cop, so he knows better. If it was Doug that broke in the other night, maybe he just got carried away and will rein it in. There is the chance that it wasn’t him too. Things were getting really bad in Missoula when I left. In the meantime, keep your doors locked at night, your eyes open, and maybe talk to your kids, at least your oldest, about things. Carol said your son’s fourteen?”
“Yeah, David’s fourteen.”
“You can still come stay with me, if you’d like,” said Carol. “You might feel safer at my place.”
“I appreciate that, Carol,” said Jennifer. “Let me think about it. Emma is having such a hard time right now, and I don’t know how she’d react to another big change. Besides, this is our home. All of our stuff is here, and this is where Kyle will come back to when he returns.”
Carol nodded and smiled. “I understand. I hope somehow we’ve helped. It’s late. We’d better get going.”
Jennifer thanked Carol and Sean and walked them to the door, then locked it securely behind them. She went straight to her bedroom and found her handgun, then checked to make sure it was loaded before tucking it back under the mattress where it would be easy to grab.
CHAPTER 25
Thursday, October 20th
North Central Wyoming
With yesterday’s mishap still fresh in his memory, Kyle braced himself as he started down another hill, making sure his footing was secure and that he had a good grip on the cart. The day before he’d been heading down yet another hill, lost in thought, when he’d stumbled. As he fell, the cart had run up the back of his legs and tripped him, then cracked him in the back of the head before rolling over top of him. He had tried to grab one of the wheels as it rolled by but only succeeded in pinching his fingers between the cart and the tire, then watched helplessly as his cart raced down the hill. Halfway down, it veered towards the median where the handle caught in the dirt, vaulting the cart into the air and scattering its contents everywhere.
Fortunately, the damage to the cart had been limited to a slightly twisted box and the bottom of the handle being ground flat on the highway. Kyle’s injuries hadn’t been serious either, and the loss of time had been minimal, but now he tried to focus on the road more as he traversed one hill after another.
The scale of the map in the atlas he carried had made it seem like Wyoming would be a quick conquest compared to Colorado, and he hadn’t given the difficulty involved in crossing it much thought, especially since he was more focused on the four hundred and fifty miles ahead of him in Montana. His Initial estimate for crossing Wyoming had been that it would be a fourteen-day trek, but he was on day fifteen now and figured he still had a good week to go. Kyle also knew from the map that the elevation was increasing, and after each day’s pulling, the sore muscles in his legs and the tightness in his chest from the thin air reaffirmed that knowledge.
As he looked around, Kyle noticed a threatening wall of purple-gray clouds to the west rolling slowly towards him. The wind had also begun to pick up in the last hour, slowing his progress and peppering him with a sandy grit that found its way under his clothes and into his mouth, and eyes, and ears. After two weeks of Wyoming, he was tired of the conditions and anxious to have the state behind him.
A number of semis had come to rest at the bottom of the hill, and he took shelter from the wind between them while he rested and drank some water, all the while eying the hill that loomed ahead. He put on another shirt as a shield against the cold, then continued on, anxious to cover a few more miles before stopping for the day.
The grade of the hill was steep and seemed to go on for miles, making it one of the hardest he had tackled to date. He lost his footing on the grit-covered road three times, nearly losing control of his cart, but each time, he managed to hold on and avoid catastrophe, finally, two hours after he began its ascent, he conquered the hill.
The ground leveled out at the top and Kyle dropped to his knees, exhausted, legs feeling like Jell-o and his lungs raw from sucking in the cold thin air, which had developed an icy chill as he’d climbed. The wall of clouds he’d seen earlier was much closer and even more ominous than before, promising a change from the mild autumn weather he’d been enjoying over the past few weeks to the first blast of winter. Watching the front move in, Kyle knew his streak of good fortune was about to come to an end, a thought that greatly alarmed him, especially considering how far he still had to travel. As the storm approached, streaks of rain glowed in the mid-afternoon sun just a few miles west of where he sat.