118Chapter Fourteen:
He came to with a start, coughing and retching. A generous dusting of ash fell from his shoulders as he rolled to vomit. Blood dripped from his mouth in long, thick ropes. He spit and wiped his face on his sleeve. It reeked of smoke. Everything did.
The world spun around him. He tried to rise, only to topple back to the ground with a sickening jolt. His head pounded, a stabbing pain that wouldn't let up. He couldn't seem to gather his thoughts. He couldn't even focus his vision.
Something was very wrong.
Fire and smoke swirled around him. He coughed until he felt his head would split open. There, ahead of him, he saw something glint in the orange light. A car, perhaps? Shivering and weak, he dragged himself forward.
He was in hell. That was the only explanation that made sense. The flames so hot, the torture so exquisite. Even the car—for a car it was—his only respite, burned his hand as he reached up to open the back door.
Still he managed to wrench it open and crawl inside, using the last of his strength to close the door behind him. He had enough sense to take shelter on the floor and wonder if all the windows were closed before the world went dark around him.
29th May, 1980
The tide was receding when Jo noticed the cat in the sand, a spot of gray on an otherwise spotless coast. Slowly she limped toward the little figure. Her thigh complained as it always did, and as always, she ignored it. Penance, she thought, for the trouble she'd chased.
It was a kitten, she realized, small and bedraggled. Patches of fur were missing, and one of its ears had been chewed down to a nub.
"Shit," she murmured softly, poking the creature gently with a finger.
It let out a faint mew to Jo's surprise.
Carefully, Jo lifted it in her hands and held it to her chest. She limped her way back to the small house buried among the paloverde.
Nothing had really changed since her return to Luther's lonely little hideout by the cliffs. His sandals still waited by the door, clothes hung in the closet, and an empty bottle of tequila gathered dust on the coffee table. It was on this coffee table that Jo placed the cat after wrapping it in an old blanket.
Pouring a bit of milk into a saucer, she started a small fire in the courtyard, then retrieved the cat and held it in her lap, letting the fire dry it and keep it warm. Looking down, she noticed a pair of ochre eyes blinking weakly up at her.
"I know better than to name an animal on the verge of death," Jo told the cat.
It simply closed its eyes and settled deeper in the blanket.
"Show me you're a fighter," she whispered. "Then I'll name you."
Jo intended to leave the cat in front of the fire and take herself to bed, but something kept her tethered there, until sometime early in the morning, when she finally fell asleep. She woke a few hours later to the feeling of a rough tongue on her forehead.
She groaned sleepily and reached up, only to feel the cat press its head into her palm and purr softly. Sitting up, Jo stroked the cat's rough fur, noticing that it had licked the saucer clean sometime during the night.
"I guess I owe you a name."
She lifted the cat and checked its sex with surprisingly little protest.
"Girl, huh?" Jo set the cat down and thought for a moment. "Lulu then. How's that?"
The cat turned away indifferently and began to clean herself. Jo considered that a "yes."
The man with the scar drove down the only paved road in Puerto Lobos. It wasn't home, yet somehow it felt like it. A shopkeeper summoned him from across the street, but he waved dismissively and kept driving.
He stopped in front of a familiar store and went inside to buy milk and eggs and bread with what little cash he had left.
"Ah!" The clerk greeted him with a smile. "It's been a long time since I see you, amigo."
"Mm," the scarred man agreed.
"Ay dios mio, what happened to your face?"
The man didn't respond, picking up the few items on his list and taking them up to the counter.
"You know, nobody expected you to be back. Not after that girl moved into that little place on the beach."
"G-girl?" He spoke in a soft, low voice that seemed to catch in his throat, as if he struggled to form the word.
"La rubia. You sold your place, right?"
"Mm." The scarred man nodded, paid the shopkeeper, and left, supplies in hand.
Time to meet this rubia that thought she could squat on his property.
Lulu the cat was sunning herself on the patio, orange and cream coat finally beginning to grow in, when the truck rumbled noisily to a stop. The door creaked open and the cat darted into the paloverde, slinking in the shadows as she watched the newcomer step down.
"You sure as hell better have a good reason to—"
There she was, la rubia, standing in the doorway with a Colt .45 pointed right at the scarred man. Except as she peered at the man, her face suddenly blanched, and the Colt fell with a thump in the sand.
"Jesus," she whispered, gripping the doorframe as though it were the only thing supporting her. "You're—" she stopped, swaying like a broken reed.
He took a step forward as if to catch her.
"Don't," she said. "Don't. Just stay there, please." For a moment, she looked as though she'd be all right.
Then she collapsed.
Jo rose slowly, her face unusually damp. Had she been crying? A spatula scraped on a pan in the kitchen, filling Jo with cold dread. Who was in her house? Not the scarred visitor, who had obviously just been a dream.
She rose slowly and reached for the nearest weapon—the empty tequila bottle. Creeping around the corner, she peered into the kitchen only to come face to face with the man. He grabbed her by the wrists and walked her gently back to the couch, taking the glass bottle from her.
"D-don't faint again." His voice, struggling to push out the words, removed any doubt Jo may have had.
Luther had risen from the dead.
She threw herself into the man, holding him tightly and sobbing into his shoulder, "I thought you were dead. I thought you were dead."
"N-nearly."
Jo pulled back, just enough to take his face in her hands and examine him. "How did you—? You really were…"
He held a finger to her lips and smiled faintly, nodding toward the kitchen. She fell silent and waited, still lost in shock. He returned with an omelet on a plate, which he pressed into Jo's hands.
"Eat."
"Explain."
"Yes."
Jo stared at Luther as he began to speak haltingly. His dark hair was shorter than she remembered, salted with gray now, his eyes disguised by a pair of wire-frame glasses. Most noticeable, however, was puckered red divot above his jaw, bisected by a scar as long and as thick as Jo's pinky.
His speech was pained and difficult to follow at first, but from what Jo gathered, he'd come to not long after she'd fled in the truck. He'd waited out the fire in the deVille and was found by smokejumpers soon after. They'd taken him to a hospital in Missoula, stabilized him, and then flown him down to a trauma center in Salt Lake City, where he'd been kept in an intensive care unit for several months with part of his skull removed to allow for swelling in the brain.
"My god, you should be dead."
"You're n-not eating."
Jo took a bite of the omelet. It was cold. "So the bullet—"
"W-went through." Luther indicated the exit wound with a finger.
Looking closer, Jo noticed his hair was thinner at the top of his head, barely covering another thick red scar. "And the damage?" she asked incredulously.
"L-language center. S-short-term m-memory. Eyesight." He shrugged.
"But otherwise…?"
"All r-right."
"I shouldn't have left you. I panicked, Luther. I'm so sor—"
Once more, he pressed a finger to her lips. "J-Josie."
She took his hand in hers, lowering it from her mouth. "Are you really all right? You're here?"
"I am."
And for Jo, that really was all right.
The End