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  This guy got a little more confident after he got the head wrapped, Widow guessed.

  Widow continued to rip and shred and pull at the duct tape until he finally unraveled her lower half. Then he jerked the rug back and down and got her completely free of it.

  He stopped, looked up and stared.

  The girl in the rug was young, not a kid, but a young woman, somewhere in her mid to late twenties.

  She was white and pale as if she hadn’t seen the sunlight in six months. Which was probably a combination of living in South Dakota and being at death’s door because her skin was more than just pale; it was turning Maya or light blue.

  She was completely naked without the rug.

  Widow looked her up and down, searching for more injuries. He could see that she was so close to death that her skin and knees and body parts didn’t shiver in the cold temperature like they should have—not one bit.

  Her body lacked the natural capacity to care anymore to keep her warm. It must’ve been burning up all the resources it had left just to keep her breathing.

  Widow took a quick glance over her body, once more, in case there was evidence that he might need to see. It was automatic. He hadn’t meant to look her over again. He just wanted to make sure that there was nothing else—nothing that might be helpful for the police to catch whoever did this to her.

  He couldn’t prove it, but he would’ve bet money that she had been raped. She had wounds and bruises that coincided with those on the rape victims that he had seen before.

  Plus, why else would her attacker attack her and pin her down and nearly strangle her to death?

  One quick theory that automatically went through Widow’s brain was that, probably, the attacker hadn’t intended to kill her. He probably attacked her with the bat. It put her down but didn’t knock her out like the guy saw in the movies. So, with no other option, he strangled her until she passed out. Then he raped her.

  That seemed to make complete sense to Widow.

  Why the guy wrapped her up like this and discarded her way out here, still alive, didn’t make much sense. The best Widow could figure was after the deed was done, the guy just figured she was so close to death that she’d probably just die on her own which she would have if Widow hadn’t come along.

  Still, the whole thing was mostly sloppy.

  Just then clouds shifted overhead, and the snowfall thinned, all of it like it was smoothly coordinated by the weather, and the night became a little brighter.

  Widow could see a little better in the dark now. And he saw something that he hadn’t noticed before.

  Down along the woman’s navel and waistline was a double layer of field dressing or hospital dressing, maybe. It was the color of flesh, which was why he hadn’t noticed it before.

  It was wrapped tightly around her stomach. He squinted in the dim light and saw dark bloodstains on the right side of her abdomen. The stains were fairly recent. The blood had retained some color, and there was no smell.

  The dressing had been administered within twenty-four hours.

  Widow stared at it. He didn’t know what to make of it.

  Why would her attacker wrap her up in bandages and then rape her or try to kill her?

  It didn’t make any sense.

  He reached down and brushed across the bandage with his fingertips. He refrained from applying any pressure. He didn’t want to hurt her.

  Tracing along the bandages, he guesstimated at where a wound might be. After several slow attempts to find a sign of anything, he found it.

  The right side of her stomach, inches southwest of her navel, he found a straight, diagonal line of medical staples. Gently, he traced his fingers over them, followed them all the way up and all the way down.

  It was a closed incision. Someone had performed surgery on her recently.

  The incision was professionally done. The staples were spaced out correctly, and the design of the scar would be straight.

  This had been done by a professional surgeon.

  Now Widow was confused because if she’d had major surgery recently, she would’ve been in a hospital bed which meant that her attacker had abducted her from a hospital.

  That would be hard to do. Not impossible. But hard.

  If her attacker had done this to her, why? What was the purpose of opening her up? Why close her back up again if he was just going to kill her?

  If she had been abducted before the surgery and the staples, why place the staples completely straight, wrap her up with so much care and then hit her with a bat and attempt to strangle her?

  Why dump her way out here? Why the rug?

  He didn’t get it.

  Chapter 5

  N O TIME TO DWELL on the why. So, Widow took off his Henley and draped it over the young woman to cover up as much of her naked, pale body as he could. He did so while averting his eyes to the shadows around her curves, trying to avoid seeing more than was gentlemanly or more than was necessary.

  He had to look in order to find any wounds that needed his attention or evidence that might help the cops pinpoint who might’ve been responsible for this. But that was all.

  Luckily, Widow was a tall man, six foot four inches from the bottom of his bare heels to the hairs on his head. And he had been born with long baby gorilla arms that grew into long adult gorilla arms, a fact that didn’t always make him the most aesthetically pleasing man in the world but came in handy right then because it gave his Henley more fabric to cover up the woman.

  The long-sleeved pullover swallowed her up like she was wearing a casual dress that was two sizes too big for her.

  After Widow wrapped her up in the pullover, he doubled her warmth and coverage with his peacoat and a warm winter beanie, both black. He’d purchased them before heading through Wyoming from an outlet mall that was going out of business.

  They were both a bit fashionable, a bit pricey—normally. But because of the poor economy in the local region of Wyoming that he was in, an outlet mall was a thing of luxury. The local population couldn’t support it. The mall closing was bad for the workers, bad for the companies, but good for a passerby on the cheap, good for the woman he’d found nearly dead.

  The cold temperature might’ve helped to preserve her life at first, but now it was slowing her heartbeat and slowing her breathing and slowing her vital organs and functions.

  Once she was wrapped up as tight as she could be wrapped up—and after Widow was out of clothes to spare, his jeans and boots weren’t going to help her—he lifted her up and held her close to him like a groom and bride, or a monster and his victim, depending on a person’s point of view.

  Widow lifted her and carried her up and out of the ditch. They went back down the path he had come and onto the quiet, wintry road.

  Her head kept falling back, hanging off his arm.

  With a quick elbow up, he boosted her head back up and into a more comfortable position. He had to repeat this process often.

  Before they left the scene behind completely, Widow turned and looked one last time. He stared at all of it, the rug, the ditch, the tire tracks left by the car, and the dog. He found not one stitch of her clothing or a wallet or purse or anything.

  He saw no indication of the other one. Maybe it was there in the dark. Maybe not.

  At the icy road, Widow didn’t stop or pause or hesitate or dawdle around. No time to waste. He set one foot in front of the other and headed in the direction of the taillights because one thing he hated was turning back.

  Chapter 6

  T HE SNOW GUSTED in squally and patchy patterns but was still soft and almost quietening. The ground was cold and wet and slick in places, but the road was basically straight after the thirty-minute mark.

  Widow calculated that the last stretch of it had led him uphill and up in elevation which was a godsend in a small way because the farther he hiked and scrambled up in elevation, the more that the wind forced the snowfall to pile up into the ditch. It made his feet close t
o the pavement beneath the snow for a time until finally, he could feel it.

  The ditch turned out to be useful because after it wound around for a period, it looped back closer until it ran parallel to the road, allowing Widow to maintain a better sense of direction. When in doubt, he followed the ditch.

  The ditch wasn’t the only thing that helped guide the way ahead. Widow also had the tire tracks left by the car with the squeaky doors and trunk lid. He walked in the tracks for a long time. He traced them until the snow had melted down or been blown away, not leaving enough for the tracks to stay visible in the dark.

  Eventually, the tire tracks from the car with the timeworn squeaks blended in with tracks from other vehicles. He hadn’t seen any other vehicles, but maybe he had passed merging roads that were entirely undetectable for him in the dark and the gloom.

  Despite the dark and fog and cold, Widow carried her, shirtless and for a long time. And then he carried her longer.

  At first, he tried to count the seconds and minutes in his head, but after he got to seventy minutes, he stopped counting—no point. It was a nice way to distract him from how the peaceful cold weather had turned freezing and harsh and dangerous, and not because the temperatures had dropped anymore. It was only because he was bare-skinned and vulnerable to the elements.

  Counting the seconds and the minutes worked to keep his mind focused on the one simple task of moving on, but when he hit the hour mark, it turned deadly for him to continue. He realized that at minute six-one because the unknowing of how much farther, how much longer he could go, turned against him. It started to suck the motivation from him, and Widow wasn’t the kind of man who gave up.

  So, he regrouped. Rethreaded. Re-strategized in his head about how to proceed. And his brain had shut down the timer.

  The nerve endings in Widow’s skin tingled, and his teeth rattled, and his cheeks chilled and his arms hurt, and his legs ached.

  But he never stopped to put her down, not once.

  The only thing he did was pause periodically to check and see if she was still breathing.

  He watched each time until he saw little plumes of chilled breath puff out from her open mouth.

  Once he stopped and touched her face, running his hand over it to feel her skin and feel her breath.

  Her nose was wet. Her skin was icy. Her cheeks were cold. Her ears were stony.

  To counter the cold, he rubbed one hand across her face in big, fast motions like he was warming up his own hands over a fire. Then he leaned her face back into him and continued on.

  He felt her breathing on him. It chilled his chest, but he was grateful for it.

  The girl’s left hand and arm folded over her breasts. Her right arm hung freely out in front of him. It swung from side to side as he marched up the road.

  Her knees were slung over his other forearm. Her feet and legs hung out of the peacoat and Henley and swayed back and forth, loosely like wind chimes on a still day.

  Widow stopped once because he was worried about her feet getting frostbite. So, he set her down, gently and pulled his boots off, took off his socks, and slid them over her feet. He pulled the ends up all the way to her knees. He rolled them tight at the top to keep them from falling off.

  He put his boots back on and lifted her up and continued on.

  Occasionally, Widow braced her body up using his elbow and his upper body strength, onehanded, so he could reach down with his other hand and rub her feet and toes over his socks. He did this to keep her feet from getting anywhere close to frostbite, which was a concern because the gusts of wind and the prolonged exposure to the cold did make it a possibility.

  In the US Navy, Widow had been trained to hump heavy gear uphill, downhill, over hills, across vast deserts, up mountains, and through heavy snow—all of it heavy gear—all of it vital.

  The SEAL instructors hammered him to always consider every piece of gear to be lifesaving, to be absolutely necessary. Without the gear, he was to consider the mission a failure.

  If he dropped or abandoned any shred of gear, even as small as a toothbrush, from his rucksack, then the instructors considered it mission failure and his life was forfeited.

  Everything they gave him counted.

  Never leave a man behind went farther for SEALs than for any other military unit that he knew of. In his experience, it was never leave a man behind, or his toothbrush.

  Widow learned many tools of the warfare trade in the SEALs. He learned to hold his breath for long periods of time. He learned to free dive down to great depths. No oxygen tank. No fins. No divers down there at the ready to save his life should he fail—no second chances.

  As soon as the Navy saw that he could accomplish a deep free dive, they made it worse. They added things. First, they added a weight belt, loaded with lead plates, making it hard for him to swim up, and easy for him to sink.

  Over time, they added another belt, and then they added weighted gauntlets and more weighted ankle bracelets.

  Finally, Widow could swim with all that weight and to a great depth. Then they doubled it all.

  Widow learned to free dive while hauling heavy equipment down to the bottom of deep training-pools and then back up. And over again. And over again.

  Once he perfected that, they moved him to ocean water.

  Out of all that training that he had endured, none of it helped him as much as one external factor right there at that moment.

  The one external thing that helped him the most carrying the girl to safety was that little dog.

  The whole time Widow carried the girl, that dog was right there, alongside them, the whole way. He never stopped unless Widow paused.

  That little dog was huffing and puffing the whole way.

  Widow told himself that if that dog wasn’t giving up, then neither was he.

  Chapter 7

  C ARRYING THE HUNDRED-TEN-POUND woman for three or four or five miles was exhausting.

  Widow was getting close to collapsing and she was getting closer to death and the dog was getting closer to giving up.

  He could feel it.

  Everything that had been aching was now growing numb every second that Widow carried on. He felt like the tinman running out of oil. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could go.

  Before he gave up, something happened. The dog started barking loud, like there was something up ahead in the mist.

  The animal jolted to attention, full of alertness. It barked a moment longer and then it took off running. Within seconds, the dog disappeared around a bend in the road and into the darkness.

  Widow swallowed and slowed and stopped in his tracks. He stared forward and listened.

  He heard its bark grow weaker and weaker like it was getting farther and farther away. Then it stopped growing weaker and stayed the same level of pitch, the same level of sound, like it had stopped at something and was barking at it.

  Maybe it was barking for Widow to follow.

  He picked up the pace and continued forward. He felt adrenaline returning and energy hitting his limbs once again. A second rush of determination overpowered him and he was walking, standing taller, standing straighter. He marched through the fog and around the bend, into the same darkness as the little dog. He stayed the course, until he came out from under a swallow of trees and stepped into bright, artificial lights.

  He stopped there for a moment, allowing the light to bathe over him like a Black Hawk helicopter coming to pick him up after a deadly mission.

  It was quite the welcoming sight.

  A sight for sore eyes, he thought.

  A steady stream of highway lights posted high up on poles lit up the road ahead as the little country road that he had walked on expanded into a two-lane highway complete with highway signs and a grassy median cut in the center of the road.

  Another fifty yards ahead and the two-lane section of highway T-boned into a four-lane highway that went in two opposite directions. One direction of highway disappeared southwest in
virtually the opposite direction that he had come. The other direction curved north like the trajectory of a curveball.

  Just, beyond the curveball was a two-story building that looked more like a compound than a storefront.

  The establishment must’ve been built from the time of the first regional settlers, with much of it being restored or updated over the years like a historical landmark that the county was proud of. The construction was three-quarters brick, laid with the utmost care, and the rest was solid wood. The roof was high and steep like the attic was meant to be a cone hat.

  Behind it was an old barn, no animals. That was clear because the thing looked to have been boarded up a long time ago.

  Cemented into the ground on a slab was a brick sign. It read: Overly’s Haberdashery & Motor Bar.

  The words Haberdashery and Motor threw Widow for a loop.

  A haberdashery, as far as Widow knew, was an old Western store that doubled as a shop that sold sewing supplies like buttons and zippers and acted as a men’s outfitters.

  The Motor part, he had no idea. He knew the Bar part.

  The old haberdashery had been maintained over the century, kept up, probably by the county, and now it was a bar.

  A stagecoach from the nineteenth century stood out front with no horses attached and no wheels on it. It was mounted up in place by a pair of big cement slabs underneath the front and rear wheel wells. The bottom foundation was a combination of the two slabs and intricate metal bars and wiring bolted into the bottom of the wagon.

  It was a gimmick, like having a furniture store in the middle of nowhere with the world’s largest rocking chair out in front or the tallest footstool.

  Widow wondered if tourists actually came out of their way to take photos with it.

  For sure, it attracted passersby from the highway. People driving from out of the west on their way east probably saw it and made an impulse stop to take photos with the kids. Maybe to take a pic inside and purchase overpriced keepsakes, meant to imitate far cheaper items made nearly two hundred years ago.