Mean Streak

“Exactly!” he said with heat. “That’s what I asked her. It’s not my thing, so why should I always have to tag along?”

“To cheer her on?”

“I’ve done that. Every frigging marathon. For hours I jostle for space at the finish line, waiting for the ten seconds it takes her to run past me and receive my applause for her outstanding achievement. I refused to do it again. But this is a special race for her, so she got her feelings hurt, and… Why the hell am I talking to you about my marital woes, when I’d rather be doing this?” He slid his hand between her thighs. “Isn’t this a better plan?”

She sighed and squirmed against his hand. “A much better plan.”

He rolled on a condom and settled between her thighs, which felt entirely different from Emory’s. That was, from how he remembered Emory’s open thighs feeling. It had been so long since they’d had sex, his memory of it had grown dim.

He was unsure who had cooled first, her or him. Was he cheating because marital sex had become so infrequent and unexciting, or had it become infrequent and unexciting because Emory intuited that he was finding fun in another woman’s bed?

Not that he was accepting all the blame for his unfaithfulness. Oh no. A large portion of it lay with Emory. Every day, she was up and out before dawn, never home before dark. She worked endless hours at the clinic, then took calls at all hours of the night from frantic parents asking her what to do about their kid’s runny nose, or fever, or diarrhea.

Her free time was devoted to training for her damn marathons. She ran. All. The. Time.

She’d been a runner when they met. Initially he had admired her athleticism, stamina, and self-discipline. As well as, of course, her trim form and shapely legs. For a couple of years they’d run together. But then she’d gone fanatic on him.

Fine. He had let her indulge in her hobby, while he’d indulged in his, and right now his was clenching her soft thighs against his pumping hips. He gave one last push and came. He wasn’t sure Alice did, but she was better than Emory at faking it.

Chapter 5

Almost immediately upon waking, Emory realized that she was alone.

She sat up. The cabin was empty.

Throughout the night he had kept vigil. Each time she’d stirred, he’d left the recliner and had come to the bedside, asking if she was all right, did she need anything, was she feeling sick again?

She’d had no more nausea, so at about two o’clock she’d taken a few sips of Coke. It had stayed down. Two hours later, she’d switched to water. He’d urged her to, telling her what she already knew: that dehydration was a concern. She’d run hard, slept all day without taking fluids, then had vomited what little she’d drunk.

Now, according to her wristwatch, it was just after nine o’clock, Sunday morning. She’d slept for five hours without waking or without his waking her, and now he was gone.

Moving tentatively because of the residual dizziness, she got up and went into the bathroom, taking her running tights with her and pulling them on after using the toilet.

When she returned to the bed, she tested her other clothes. Her shirt, jacket, and bra were still damp and cold. She dragged one of the dining chairs nearer to the fireplace and draped the garments over it to speed up the drying process.

Now what?

She took another canned Coke from the refrigerator. It actually tasted good. She used a swallow to wash down two more analgesic tablets because the headache, like the dizziness, had hung on. It wasn’t as blinding as before, but it was definitely still there and impossible to ignore.

She pushed aside a muslin curtain and was disheartened to see nothing except cottony fog beyond the windowpanes. She opened the door and called out a hello, but the fog absorbed her voice. She took a few steps forward and when she’d covered about a yard, the planks dropped off to a step six inches below, and that to another. Beyond the lowest step was a large, flat rock embedded in the soil.

She couldn’t possibly feel her way like this for fifteen miles without either dropping off a cliff or becoming hopelessly lost in the mountain wilderness. Retracing her steps back through the door and into the cabin, she took a thorough look around.

There was a wall hook adjacent to the door. The set of ignition keys that she’d noticed hanging on the hook last night weren’t there now. Even if she were able to find his pickup in the fog, she wouldn’t be able to start it. And if by some miracle she could figure out how to hot-wire it, she wouldn’t know in which direction to go. She’d probably drive herself right over an edge and down a mountainside.

Which meant that her solution to getting back to civilization must be found inside the cabin.

She started her search in the most logical place, the bureau from which he’d taken the shirt she was wearing. She found socks, underwear, T-shirts, flannels. One drawer contained nothing except folded blue jeans.

The closet had a rickety door made of what looked like barn wood. In their earlier life, the planks had been painted a dull red. It was no larger than a telephone booth, with a single rod from which hung jackets and coats and a pair of coveralls like a hunter would wear.

Lined up on the floor were several pairs of boots of varying kinds, from scuffed hiking boots similar to those he’d had on yesterday to a pair of fleece-lined rubber lace-ups. She moved them aside to search for a hidey-hole underneath the floorboards, but there was none.

The shelf above the rod held folded blankets, bulky sweaters, and a shoe box in which were several pairs of gloves. She aligned her fingers to the palm side of one. The glove outsized her hand by an intimidating degree.

She replaced everything and slammed the closet door in agitation. Dammit, he had guns stored somewhere.

She discovered the locker underneath the bed.