Chapter Thirty
“We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.”
~Kenji Miyazawa
Char and Brian hit the road by 7:00 a.m., rested, breakfasted, and carrying cups of steaming hot coffee to fuel their drive.
A steady rain started falling by the time they reached Redding. She drove directly to the sheriff’s office. Luckily, Davey stood behind the front desk.
“Hey, Char, long time no see. I take it you’re looking for directions to Daniel’s cabin, too?”
“Too? Did you see Angel?”
“Yeah, I had breakfast with her this morning.” Char noticed Brian visibly tense with that news. So, the snarling green bug of jealousy had bitten him. Good. She introduced the men, and they both gripped each other’s hand in an overt display of male bravado. Amused with the male posturing, she stood back a step and watched them take stock of each other.
Davey released the grip first and turned back to her. “Angel probably left town less than an hour ago, perhaps around thirty minutes. I’ll write down the directions. Be warned, however, that the road up to the cabin is treacherous, especially now that the rain’s coming down in earnest. This will turn to sleet and snow at higher elevations. I’m concerned about Angel’s car making it through the last stretch of that road. It was already deeply rutted before this rain.” Davey pulled out a local map and marked off their route.
“Don’t worry about us. I’m driving my jeep and we replaced one of the tires on the way here, or we might have caught up with Angel before she left this morning.”
“If you don’t mind, I’d like you to check in with me on your way back through? I asked Angel to do the same. Maybe we could have lunch together?”
“That’s possible, depends on how things go with Daniel.” Char winked at Davey and noticed tension ripple across Brian’s muscled biceps folded over his chest. The man had it bad for her friend, and his archaic ideas of women’s roles and male dominance didn’t help things.
As soon as they closed the doors on the jeep, Brian peppered her with questions about Davey.
“Does he know Angel well?”
“Pretty well, I guess. He knew Daniel, and they both served in Nam.”
His response sounded like something between a snarl and a grumble. She couldn’t suppress her chuckle. “You’d better watch yourself. I don’t think Angel will respond well to all this he-man jealousy.”
“What are you talking about?” He scowled, then abruptly changed the topic. “Can you drive any faster? I want to reach the road as soon as possible, in case Angel experiences difficulty on the rougher terrain.”
“No back-seat driving allowed in this vehicle.”
“I’m not in the back-seat.” He looked completely perplexed at her statement, and she burst out laughing. “You’re a riot to have around. Back-seat driving is a turn of phrase that means the passenger is not allowed to give orders to the driver.”
“Oh, right. But could you increase your speed?”
* * *
Angel missed the first turn off and had to backtrack. By then the rain poured down in unrelenting sheets. When she finally found the turn-off that would take her to the cabin, muddy water sluiced through the rutted road in torrents. Her car fishtailed dangerously back and forth over the furrowed sludge before spinning in a circle and tipping over the lip into a small ditch.
“Damn it to hell! Why did it have to rain now?” She pushed open the car door and nearly fell out as the pull of gravity tore it away from her hand. The ditch only dropped a few feet, but her car landed at such an angle she feared it might topple over. Her backpack and one of the sacks she’d brought were in the front seat and easy to grab as she slid out into the downpour.
“Well, no choice but to hike the rest of the way. I hope it isn’t too much farther or I’ll drown in this soupy mud! Are you listening, Lord? Could you please part the clouds for an hour at least?” Angel laughed at herself and struggled to reach a high ledge of ground on the opposite side of the road that might provide more solid footing.
About fifteen or twenty minutes after she’d hiked up the steep muddy incline she spotted a thin trail of smoke rising through the trees ahead. “Oh God, please let that be Daniel’s cabin. Anxious to reach her brother, she started running and not soon after lost her footing and slid down onto mounded slush over autumn leaves. It took several moments to regain the lip of the road. As she rounded what she hoped would be the last bend, she saw someone, perhaps three hundred yards ahead, crossing the road to a tarp-covered mound of firewood stacked beside a large sprawling black Oak tree. It must be Daniel. The wind carried away her call on a sharp gust strong enough to toss leaves and debris into the air.
Her pace quickened when she saw a large tawny creature shift over a boulder on the hill above the Oak tree. It disappeared, then in a blinding flash it hurtled through the air landing on Daniel’s back and knocking him down. The wood he carried spilled in disarray as he twisted to battle the cougar that attempted to drag him up the hill.
Angel dropped her packs, grabbed a branch beside the road, and ran screaming at the top of her lungs until it felt as though her heart might explode.
By the time she reached within a hundred feet of the cougar, Daniel no longer seemed capable of fighting. She pushed harder. The cat dropped his prey and spun on her in a low crouch partially straddling Daniel’s body. He hissed and roared baring his fangs, unwilling to leave his catch.
“Get away! Leave!” she screamed, continuing to rush the animal, swinging the branch in front of her. A brief remembrance of something she’d read about never rushing an animal at its feed flashed through her brain, but it didn’t deter her.