Primal Instinct

“But you don’t want to go back to work for them.”

“My life is here. My responsibilities are here.” More mustard was slapped on the other piece of bread.

“Well now, you know I can handle everything around here if you needed to go off somewhere. This place isn’t so big that one person can’t hold down the fort for a while. You did it for long enough before I came along.”

“I know you can handle it, Vince. I’m not sure what I would’ve done without you for the past year.” She smiled gently at him.

The older man blushed and looked away. Nothing thrilled Vince less than talking about feelings, Adrienne knew.

“Vince, I know you had trouble with the law in your past, but I’ve known from the beginning that you were someone I could trust. Whatever happened in the past isn’t important to me. You’ve been a godsend.” She handed him a sandwich.

“Well, you know that goes both ways.” Vince took a big bite of his sandwich and chewed thoughtfully. “Why do I get the feeling all of this conversation has to do with those FBI agents?”

Adrienne sighed. “It looks like I’m going to need you to keep things afloat for me here for a little bit.”

“While you go help the FBI.”

“Yeah.”

“What exactly do you, or did you do, for them?”

Adrienne pushed her sandwich around on her plate. How was she supposed to explain this? “I guess I was kind of a profiler for them.”

Vince grunted in agreement the way he often did. He didn’t look at all surprised. “I figured it was something like that, given your...” He waved his hand in circles above his head.

Adrienne was shocked. She had no idea Vince was aware of her gift. They had never talked about it. “You knew?”

“Not at first. As a matter of fact, when you initially hired me, I thought you were a little reckless. What woman hires someone completely unknown, then invites him a few weeks later to move into the house with her?”

“Vince, you were sleeping out in the barn!”

“I know, I know. Don’t get me wrong. I am grateful for your invite. But I could’ve been dangerous.” Vince shook his head.

“I knew you weren’t.”

Vince grunted in agreement again. “Then I saw over the next few months how patient you were with almost everybody. Even some of the brattiest or angriest kids who came out here to work. You were always kind and gentle, when I wanted to throw some of them out on their ears.”

Vince put down his sandwich and looked Adrienne right in the eye. “Then that blond guy showed up last July. He seemed polite and charming. All the college girls were sighing over him and his good looks. You came out of the house, glanced at him for five seconds, and asked him to leave and never come back.”

Adrienne remembered very clearly the appearance of the young man, probably twenty or twenty-one years old. Like Vince said, he had blond hair, blue eyes— all-American good looks. Seemed amiable and charismatic, at least on the outside.

But the thoughts in his mind were utterly sinister. A malevolence that only Adrienne could pick up on had permeated the air around the young man. The things he thought of doing to the female students who had worked at Adrienne’s ranch—to Adrienne herself, once he had seen her—made Adrienne’s stomach churn. She had immediately made him leave, much to the girls’ dismay, telling him there were no more internships available.

Then had promptly gone back inside and vomited the entire contents of her stomach.

The next day Adrienne had gone into town to check with the sheriff’s office to see if there were any warrants out for the man or any reported attacks on women in the area. There were none. Adrienne decided to leave it alone—after all, she had no idea if he would ever act on any of those evil instincts floating around in his brain. Perhaps not. But either way she did not want him around her ranch or the young people she had working there. Thankfully they never saw him again.

Adrienne looked at Vince. “Yeah. I remember him.”

“I don’t know why you sent him away. I don’t know why you made him—a good, clean-cut-looking kid—leave when you had hired some of the roughest-looking tattooed hoodlums multiple times. Hell, I’d seen you make jobs for people when we didn’t need another soul.”

“He just wasn’t a good fit for our ranch.”

“It’s your ranch, and you can certainly hire or not hire anyone you see fit. But you not even giving that kid a chance—that kind of caught my attention.”

Vince stood and walked his plate over to the sink, then continued. “I watched you after that when you were around people—especially new folk. It took a while, but I realized you have a sort of insight into people that most don’t have.”

Adrienne sat in silence as Vince rinsed his plate off, then turned to look at her. “It’s probably more than just an insight if the FBI wants your help.”

“A little. Especially when it comes to anyone who has some sort of sinister intent. I can kind of hear their thoughts.” Adrienne was worried that she may be freaking Vince out, but he seemed to take it all in stride.

“Hmm. And you helped the FBI before?”

“Yes.”

“You must have been pretty young.”

“Barely eighteen.”

Vince’s eyes narrowed at that. “Hmm. And working with them wasn’t a pleasant experience?”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

Vince nodded. “But you’re going back to work for them?”

Adrienne looked away; she didn’t want Vince to know he was the reason she was returning to work for the FBI. “Yeah.”

“Even though you don’t want to.” It wasn’t a question.

“Pretty much.”

“And you told them you’re not interested in helping?”

“I tried.”

“But they didn’t listen?”

“Evidently they need my help in a pretty big way. ‘No’ wasn’t a possibility for an answer.”

“Seems to me, living in this free country of ours, no is always a possibility in a situation like this.”

Adrienne finished her sandwich and brought her plate to the sink so she wouldn’t have to look at Vince. “Well, let’s just say they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

There was silence for long moments, and Adrienne made the mistake of looking over at the older man.

“If I told you,” Vince began with a grimace, “I had missed my last few meetings with my parole officer after I left prison, and that there’s a warrant out for my arrest, would this be new information to you?”

Adrienne looked back down at the plate she was washing. “I already told you, Vince. I don’t care what happened in the past. I just know I can trust you now,” she sidestepped.