Retribution

Clark Ashby poured a cup of coffee into her travel mug and held it with both hands. It was an unusual hour to see each other. Normally she’d have been rushing to the courthouse for work. But this day was different.

“Who was it?” William asked, standing across the kitchen from her.

“Scott.” She waited for him to respond, then looked away.

“Don’t you have a trial?” he said at last, rather clumsily changing the subject.

Clark held him with her gaze. “When the judge told me a Mr. Scott had left a message about you, I had someone else cover for me.”

“How about a run?” William was trying to change the subject again. He gave her a small smile. “It’s perfect weather for the trail.”

She sighed and put the coffee mug on the kitchen counter. “All right. Let’s go.”

Clark hadn’t been a runner until she met William Parker, but she had always had a runner’s body type. Or so she’d learned. For months they had been training for her first marathon, enduring the ten-mile cross-country run that they called the trail. At first, the idea of a marathon had struck her as simply being insane. Clark hadn’t run a mile since her Alpha Chi Omega sorority charity functions at Vandy, and that had been more of a walk. Strolling a few miles for cancer was not a marathon. Twenty-six miles seemed unimaginable.

She was already dressed for the run in her shorts, bright orange T-shirt, and New Balance shoes. He made her wear orange. It was the only protection against another trespassing hunter willing to shoot at anything that moved. But the slim running outfit showed a suntanned, freckled, tight, fit shape. Clark had cut her hair for the heat of the summer into a short, angled bob and wore a baseball cap during the runs. Despite the change of weather, she kept it short. Clark could tell from the way William looked at her that he liked it.

“It’ll take a second.” William bounced up the stairs to the bedroom to change.

Damn. She felt angry, mostly with herself. She assumed and expected too much. William could be distant at the best of times. She’d clearly broached the return of Mr. Scott the wrong way, shutting down any chance of him openly discussing Scott’s return. But, Clark wondered, how could she have done it differently?

“You’re too slow,” she yelled up to him from the bottom of the wide-slat pine stairs. William had built the stairway himself from dark, aged heart-of-pine logs taken from a house close to the riverbank. The old cabin that was scrapped for its parts had stood there, over the river, for well over a hundred years. The logs were seasoned with time and showed black knotholes that curled in the wood as if Van Gogh had painted them on.

“What’s the hurry?” he called back. “You’re not going back to work, are you?”

“No, it’s just getting hot.” The day had warmed up quickly. If the New York Marathon ended up taking place on an unseasonably warm day, Clark would be ready for it. Training during the south Georgia summer had drained her, literally, requiring an infusion of water by the gallon. She carried her bottles everywhere.

Finally William joined her, and they still had a head start on the building heat of the day. Even with the chill of the Canadian clipper that had blown through, the days would warm up quickly. They would be soaked in their sweat in only a matter of minutes. And even though it was daylight, the mountain trail would descend into several forested valleys that were still in near complete darkness. So they began slowly, sticking to the roadway for a few miles as the sunlight would continue to illuminate the forest. By the time they reached the end of the gravel road, they could see the entrance to the trail. She would feel the temperature drop when they turned into the dark, well-canopied trail. It wound down the river for several more miles. The land covered well over three thousand acres and stretched west and south along the Chattahoochee River. As usual, William led, but she stayed right in his draft.

The trail wasn’t easy. The river valley had a small run of hills that paralleled it to the east. An occasional deep ravine cut through the hills, down toward the river, causing the trail to take a sharp cut down and a stair-like climb back up on the other side. It was the perfect training ground to develop the endurance needed in the marathon. The hills would push the heartbeat up, and then a short downhill would let it briefly recover before the strain of another hill pushed it up again.

And lately he would cut her no slack. In the beginning, she knew he was impatient as she strained to even keep up with his slowed-down pace. But she had also begun to run at the courthouse, on the lunch breaks from the trials, and slowly she’d built up her strength and endurance.

The trail cut through the forest following a creek that fed into the main river. Several of the rocks were worn smooth on this section of the path, which had been a part of the main trail of the Creek nation traveling to the west. Once he’d stopped after a rainstorm, picked up a flat, milky white, well-chiseled, triangular-shaped rock, and handed it to her.

“An ax head cut from chert.”

She’d felt an edge that could slice through a sheet of paper.

“It’s probably been sitting there for a thousand years.”

The ground around their feet had been littered with sharp-edged rocks, both big and small. As she focused her eyes, she saw fragmented shapes of clay shards from broken pottery left there from some Indian village hundreds of years ago. Clark picked one up and held it in her hand. A perfectly straight line, with a row of dots and curls, marked what was once the curvature of a small clay pot. The hand that crafted it had been dust for centuries.

Eventually, the runs became a way for them to communicate better with each other, a side benefit, along with the endorphins, that came with marathon training. They had been carrying out this regimen together since early March. All summer, as the miles built up, they had stuck to a rigid training plan. Over the last two months they had built the training pattern up to two workouts a day. Now, in the final weeks, both were in top form. The long Sunday runs involved two laps of the trail, which pushed the mileage well above twenty miles. She was ready for the race.

The New York Marathon was meant to be special. It was her first. He would run it with her and help push through the wall at twenty miles. When she had doubts, he would push her on.

Would have, she corrected herself. For with Scott’s call came the very good chance that William would not be available to run the marathon with her.

“You know if I do what Scott wants,” Parker said, “I can’t tell you anything about it. Not who, or where, or when. Nothing.”

It was almost as if he’d been reading her thoughts.

“Yes.” She knew what it all meant. And she didn’t want him to go. But his insomnia, his restlessness, and his recurring nightmares provided a compelling counterargument. Clearly, William was not cut out for the quiet life, which must have felt like premature retirement to him. If taking on some other military or intelligence mission meant he’d be happier, then it would be hard to convince him to decline it. In truth, Clark had been expecting such a telephone call for some time.

“Can you trust Scott?”

“Probably not.”

“Oh.” She looked away, wondering if she should have ignored the call. She had been the only feasible way of contacting William Parker. His cabin lay far off the beaten path and had no phone, computer, or fax. To call Scott back, in fact, William would have to use her cell phone.

“What exactly did he say to you?”

“Just that he needed to talk to you as soon as possible. It concerned your past.”

William stopped running and turned to face her in the path. “My past?”

She nodded.

“Exactly how did he say it involved my past?”

Clark took a breath, then said what William must have expected—or feared:

“He said it was about Lockerbie.”