At Close Range

From her suite in the main hacienda, Corrie could see the light on in the teacher’s bunkhouse and knew Mack Dorsey was awake as well. He’d looked tired, even exhausted when he’d hurried from the veranda, but somehow she wasn’t surprised to see his silhouette pacing behind the curtains in the wee hours of the morning.

She was sorry he was out there alone. After a terrible incident the year before when a truly evil man kidnapped Dulce and José in an attempt to force Jeannie to turn the ranch over to him, Jeannie and Chance had decided the ranch hands’ sleeping quarters should be much closer to the main hacienda and a new wing had been added. The former staff bunkhouse had been converted to a large, communal-style teachers’ living quarters. But Mack was the only one there now.

Part of her wanted to go offer him some comfort, see if he was in pain, or simply see if he needed some little item he might have forgotten. The other part, the rational side, told her that whatever made him restless was none of her business and she’d be well advised to let him alone.

She turned back to her notebook. He walks alone, late at night. Ghosts trail behind him, calling his name.

She groaned—the same could be said of her. Too many ghosts, too many harsh words, too many people claiming her past.

She tossed her pen aside before turning off her own light, as if shutting him out—both physically and mentally.

The narrow aperture of her curtains let Mack Dorsey’s lit window shine like a full moon with tidal-wave intent. His shadowy form became a sharp focal point. She held her breath, watching him walk back and forth across the curtained lens.

Feeling like a voyeur, Corrie yanked her curtains closed and turned over on her bed so she wouldn’t be able to even imagine she could see his pacing figure. After a few minutes, she swore and sat up in bed. She dragged open the curtains, her eyes automatically seeking the false moon of Mack’s window. Though his silhouette was no longer visible, the light remained on.

Corrie checked the clock on the nightstand. Half past three in the morning.

She sat for several minutes, waiting for the light across the drive to turn off, and when it didn’t, she sighed and swung her legs out of bed. She dragged on the pair of sweatpants she’d worn earlier that day and shoved her bare feet into a pair of boots Dulce had given her, not caring that they were two sizes too big.

She snatched up a bottle of aspirin from her bathroom cabinet, a book from the bulging bookcase on the wall and, not questioning why, a pen and empty notebook from atop her desk. She shoved all these items into the pockets of the elegant duster Leeza gave her two months ago and opened the exterior door to the veranda.

She shuffled across the broad expanse of driveway to the guest quarters and hunched in her duster as if snow lay on the ground, shivering in the cold desert air.

She marched up the stairs of the teachers’ quarters, but, as she raised her fist to the front door, her need to help Mack Dorsey dissolved and so did her resolve. She back stepped, feeling like a fool, hoping he hadn’t heard her determined scuffles across his narrow porch.

He was a grown man, for heaven’s sake; not one of the wounded children that needed tending as if he were a little bird with a broken wing. His cold eyes could lance evil at eighty yards; he wouldn’t need a painkiller for the bruises inflicted by some drunken uncle or father. He wouldn’t need a book—and a soft voice—to lull him to sleep, or a pen to write his experiences down. He would know how to survive until morning.

One of the porch steps creaked beneath her too-large boots as she turned to go. As if the stray sounds were an alarm system, the bunkhouse door flew open and made an enormous clang as the heavy metal hinges collided with the brackets against the side of the house. Light spilled from the teachers’ quarters, incandescence escaping into the night.

Mack Dorsey stood silhouetted in the light, naked to the waist, barefoot, and standing as if he anticipated a grizzly to rush him. His knees were bent, his bare feet spread apart, as if he anticipated a need to move quickly. He held his hands out from his sides as though she might attack him.

“It’s me,” she said. And when his eyes strafed the brightly lit driveway at the main house and jerked back to where she stood, she realized how foolish she sounded. “Corrie. Corrie Stratton.”

He muttered a curse before slowly straightening.

“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to—I was just…”

“It’s okay,” he growled. The light behind him blocked her from reading his face.

“New place,” he said gruffly

That he was in a new place didn’t account for the hours of pacing. “I saw your light on. I thought perhaps you needed something?”

He turned his head toward the main house, eyes zeroing in on the only light visible, then, back to her. “You were up at this hour?”

“Drink of water,” she lied.

“Me, too,” he lied right back at her.

“Oh. Of course. So you don’t need anything?” At best her question sounded lame, at worst it sounded like a come-on. She blushed.

Luckily, he didn’t seem to read meaning into her words. “You and your partners have thought of everything. Except for clothes, I wouldn’t have had to bring a thing.”

And he wasn’t wearing many of those, she thought. “Jeannie gets all the credit,” she said, and hoped he didn’t hear the breathlessness in her voice.

“She deserves it,” he said.

She shivered against the cold. Despite his lack of clothing, he seemed impervious to the deep chill and she wondered if his many wounds, the scars she could only faintly discern in the dimness, blocked the sensation of cold.

“Well…thanks for thinking of me,” he said. His hand ran the length of his torso, a wholly unconscious gesture, but one that robbed her mouth of moisture.

“What?” she asked.

“Thanks for thinking of me.” There was a bitter note in his voice.

She’d thought of little else since she opened the front doors to find him standing there for an interview. But at his words, she felt like a three-year-old being dismissed by a social worker.

“Okay. Sure. As long as everything’s okay,” she said, her voice faltering. “I’ll—I’ll just go back now.” She turned, embarrassed she’d come out there, disturbed at the fact that she had, and that she’d done so armed with a handful of items more suited to welcoming an adolescent than an adult who had obviously survived more than his share of hardship. And then to stare at him like a love-starved teenager. She might be love-starved, but she wasn’t a kid anymore.

However much she might be acting like one.

I’m Corrie Stratton, and if I survived my childhood, I can survive this.

Mack felt like a heel. All she’d done was come to check on him. She’d seen his light on at three-thirty in the morning his first night on the ranch, and had come out into the cold out of simple kindness and concern for him. And he’d greeted her as if she were a terrorist, was curt to the point of rudeness, then capped it off by lying to her and making her feel like she’d intruded.

“Wait. Please…?”

She stopped but didn’t turn around. “Yes?” Given her voice, even that single questioning syllable sounded like a chord straight from paradise.

“Do you have any aspirin?”

She slowly revolved back to face him and dug into her pocket. She withdrew a paperback, a notebook, a pen and, finally, a bottle of aspirin. She handed him the plastic bottle.

“Thanks,” he said, working at the childproof cap. He had to fight himself not to ask about the other items she started to shove back into seemingly rapacious pockets. But he knew instinctively that she’d brought them for him for some reason.

“Here, let me,” she said, bridging the gap between them as she stuffed the last of her things back into her pocket. She held out her hand for the bottle and he gave it up without a struggle, careful not to touch her. He was too aware of her standing so close to him in the night, too aware of his own near nudity, his terrible scars she didn’t so much as look at, and the way the merest hint of a breeze on the cold night air seemed to tease his newly formed skin.

She flipped the aspirin bottle open and held it out at an angle, apparently prepared to shake them into his hand. Her hands trembled so much that only three aspirin fell onto his hand and a few more disappeared onto the ground. He closed his palm around her shaking fingers.