Chapter 10

CHAPTER TEN

“ G et up and get moving. We’ve got somewhere to go,” Aaron informed her on Sunday morning.

Please, don’t let him be taking me to church , she groused internally. She was in no mood for that.

They stopped at a little bakery and had quiche and cheese-smothered chicken breasts, all of which was delicious. Then they headed toward the other side of town. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.” Aaron drove and Maisey watched out the window. There were new little businesses cropping up everywhere, and she was so happy about that. They’d had little to nothing over the years in the way of amenities, and it was a pleasure to finally have a bit of variety.

But, to her surprise, they pulled up in front of the big sporting goods store. Not basketball, football, baseball, and soccer. Oh, no. It was mostly hunting and fishing supplies. And a lot of guns. All things Maisey really didn’t like. “What are we doing here?”

“You’ll see.” He swung around the front of the car, opened her door, and took her hand to help her out. They wandered toward the building, and Maisey looked around. It was a Sunday morning in the Bible belt, and yet the parking lot was full. People around there liked their hunting and fishing, that was for sure.

They had clothing too, and she wondered if he’d brought her there to buy a new coat. Maybe to replace the one he thought was so ugly? No. He kept walking, her hand in his, and she wondered where they were going. After weaving through a few displays and aisles, they stepped into a large open area filled with glass cases, and Maisey understood. “Oh, wow.”

“Yeah. Start looking and let me know when you see a knife that looks like the one you’ve seen.”

It was a bit overwhelming. There were so many! There were even some that were styled for women, and that was a surprise, although she wasn’t sure why. Half the kids in town, boys and girls alike, wore camo most of the time. They’d had a wedding just a year or two before where the bride wore white with a hunter orange sash and the groom wore camo pants and an orange safety vest with a camo tie. For the life of her she couldn’t figure out what the attraction was, but folks around there loved the stuff.

She remembered what Morgan said, so she started trying to figure out which ones were hunting knives. Most of what she was seeing was smaller, but as she walked, the knives got bigger and bigger until she was standing in front of a case with some good-sized blades in it. Maisey closed her eyes and tried to concentrate, attempting to remember what it had looked like. She knew the handle looked dark. As she let her eyes wander through the cases, she heard a voice. “Hey, little lady. Can I help you with anything?”

She wanted to punch him. Little lady? But she should’ve expected it. Those kinds of places attracted pseudo-alpha males who needed to diminish women to feel powerful. She’d seen it all her life. But hell―she could use his nonsense to her advantage. “Yes, please. I need a fairly large knife for hunting.”

“Hunting? Whatcha gonna hunt with a knife?”

Maisey didn’t know how to answer that. “I don’t really know. My husband wants one for his birthday, but I don’t know what to buy.”

“What kind of hunting does he do?”

“Deer. Turkeys. Wild boar.”

“Oh, well now, them suckers is mean,” the man said, a funny look in his eyes.

“Yeah, well, he’s not afraid of anything. He’s a deputy,” Maisey threw out. Where the hell is Aaron anyway? she wondered. She hadn’t seen him since she walked up to the display cases.

“Ah. A deputy. I see. So I think you need to be lookin’ over here in this case.” He stepped down about five feet and Maisey followed. “Those right there are pretty nice,” he said as he pointed down through the glass.

Sure enough, there were some good-sized knives down there, and Maisey stared at them. It would be best if she closed her eyes, but she didn’t think she should do that with the eager beaver standing on the other side of the cases, so she tried to think. What had it looked like? And then she saw it.

A Bowie knife. “Can I see that one, please?”

“Aww, honey, you’ve got good taste. These are around three hunnert and fitty dollars,” he said as he lifted it from its spot on the shelf in the case and laid it gently on the display case’s glass top.

Maisey touched it gingerly. “Is that a lot?”

“For a knife? Yeah. Not too many people can afford them. I mean, we got cheaper ones, but these right here, these are the best.” Maisey stared at it. Yes. It could very easily have been the knife she saw in the… visions? What should she call them? She’d never tried to define them before, but it was becoming obvious she should. The blade was gleaming stainless, the handle was black, and it had brass rivets. “So it’s full tang, the bolster’s tapered, and…” Maisey had no idea what he was talking about, but the longer she stared at it, the surer she was that it was this knife. Then she picked it up.

It seemed to almost crackle with electricity in her palms, and the sensation was anything but pleasant. For some reason, she got the impression that Victoria was trying to tell her that she was getting it right. It took her a second to pull herself together enough to ask, “Do you keep a record of who buys these?”

“No, ma’am. We don’t. We ain’t sold a lot of them, but we sold enough that I wouldn’t be able to tell you who bought one.”

“Okay. Thank you. I’ll go find my husband. I want him to see it and tell me if that’s what he wants for his birthday.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll be here ‘til five o’clock.”

Everything inside Maisey was telling her to run away from the case. Where had Aaron gone? She wandered aimlessly through the store, looking here and there. She finally spotted him and, no surprise, he was looking at grills. “Here you are.”

“Yeah. I really want one of these.” He pointed to a huge black box on legs.

“What is that thing?”

“It’s a smoker. Just think of all the barbecue and stuff I could make in this! Smoking sausage! Wouldn’t that be awesome?” She hadn’t seen him that excited in a long time.

“I need you to come look at this knife.”

“What knife? Did you find one?”

“Yeah. It’s a Bowie knife. That’s what Morgan said he thought it probably was, and I think so too. And it’s really, really expensive. I mean, for a knife.”

“How expensive are we talking here? As much as a gun?”

“He said about three hundred and fifty dollars.”

Aaron nodded, his eyebrows peaked. “Yeah, not too many people around here can afford a knife like that.”

They made their way back to the case, and she pointed out the knife to Aaron. “That one right there.”

“Wow. That’s really nice.”

“Yeah. I don’t know anything about knives, but it’s really pretty.”

“I’ll say. For that price, it should be.”

Aaron let the man who worked there show him the knife, and Maisey knew he was making a mental note of what kind it was. Then he’d go home, look it up on the internet, and print out a picture of it. That would go in the file, and they’d have it for reference.

They stopped at a country cookin’ place on the way home and had a good lunch. Bailey’s parents would be bringing Murielle home in a few hours, and her little family would be complete once more. There was no happier time for her than when the three of them were together.