The Last Family

21

Later Laura tried to sleep. Having the protective ring around the outside and Wolf in the house should have made her feel perfectly safe, but it didn’t. She wasn’t just afraid Martin Fletcher would get them if he put his mind to it-she was dead certain he would. Her instinct said run and hide. But Martin would find them, and he might find them when they were alone. Besides, how long could they hide from a man like that, who was driven by hate and a thirst for revenge? It was far better to wait here and pray Thorne was as good as Paul had always said he was. She stood and checked in the closet for her gun and found it in an old purse where it had been for five years. Paul had given it to her fourteen or fifteen years earlier. For protection. She was relieved that it was loaded. She didn’t know what had happened to the box of bullets he had given her. She had fired the weapon once. One shot at a can. Paul had fired the other four rounds. Then he had cleaned it, and she had never picked it up again except to transfer it from one closet to another each time they moved.

Martin Fletcher was a terrifying man. She remembered the first time she had met him at a DEA function. Something about him had felt wrong. The way he had kissed her hand when Paul had introduced her to Martin. Something lecherous in the smile-a flatness in his eyes. He had stared at her all evening, and the stare had put ice in her blood. She tensed as she remembered the meeting in the DEA parking lot in Arlington two weeks or so after that party. She had been sitting in her car near the front door at DEA headquarters reading a novel. It had been a beautiful day, and the car window had been down. She had felt a hand on her face, initially thought it was Paul, but she had been startled to find Martin Fletcher leaning against the side of the vehicle smiling in at her. Leering.

“You want to take up where we left off the other night? I presume you’ve been thinking about me. What I could give you?”

“You presume completely wrong,” she had snapped.

He had reached in and gripped her upper leg where the shorts were cuffed. He had pushed his fingers up her leg and into the crease in her panties. She had recoiled but was belted into her seat. “Laura, let me tell you something. I would give this little pussy the fucking of its life, and you’d have to keep bringing it back for more. In fact, you’d leave that faggot you’re married to and follow me around on your hands and knees.”

She hadn’t been able to budge his hand no matter how she tried. She’d tried to slap him, but he’d caught her hand in midswing and kissed it, pressing his wet tongue between her fingers. Then he had turned and laughed-a laugh she would never forget. It had taken her ten minutes to stop crying.

She had never mentioned the incident to Paul because she feared the consequences to him. Paul wasn’t a physical person, and this Martin Fletcher was. A few months later Martin had been arrested, tried, and sentenced to federal prison.

Martin Fletcher had said at the trial that he had been framed by Paul and his team. He was even more dangerous than she had imagined. Eight innocent people. Children and wives. The thought of waking up looking into those cold, dead eyes honestly terrified her. Just the idea of violence made her ill. How could she fight him? He was a monster.

She climbed out of bed, put on an old cotton button-down that had been Paul’s. The tail covered her almost to the knees. She rolled up the sleeves and went downstairs, with Wolf close at her heels. She had a lot of work to do to get ready for the German show. She had assured the gallery twenty large paintings, and only sixteen were completed. She would have to work on four at one time to meet the deadline.

Lily had insisted on bringing potential clients into the studio to visit and see the work in progress, but Laura had refused, saying the visits would intrude on her concentration. That was before she had federal agents in the trees, ears taking in every conversation in the house, Paul off the mountain, and the constant fear of Martin Fletcher running free. She turned on the studio lights and studied the three paintings that were hanging on the work-in-progress wall. She was amazed at how much better they seemed to be. Maybe the pressure would work to her advantage, she thought to herself. Wolf dropped to the floor by the table, then seemed to remember something, got up, and went ambling down the hall toward the kitchen. The sounds of his lapping at his bowl of water filtered down the hall.

Laura sat on her stool and began mixing a flesh tone on the pallet. She was planning to work on the canvas on which she had sketched a woman standing at the edge of a cliff, wrapped mummylike in barbed wire. The skin between the strands was protruding in fleshy pink bands. She began painting in the skin between the strands of wire. It was a self-portrait.

As she painted, she tried to lose herself in memories so she could dredge up intense moments from her past. That was easy. She simply tried to remember the last full day and night she had spent with Paul.

John Ramsey Miller

The Last Family