When Hunter becomes Prey

"You mean it?" Angela gasped, with a look of disbelief on her face. "Can you take that much time off?"

"Sure, honey. Things went pretty smoothly when you were sick, and unless we start work on any new products, they really don't need me to keep things running like clockwork on a day-to-day basis. We aren't planning on starting the approval process on any new drugs until October or November. We have plenty of time to sneak off to London and Paris for a month."

"Oh my god," Angela exclaimed with excitement, "When do we start? I'll need a new wardrobe -- I've lost so much weight. And they aren't on the same electrical system there, are they? Will I be able to use my hair dryer? And I'll need to get some books..."

"Hold on, love. You're going too fast for me already." Pete laughed again, his wife's enthusiasm amusing him. "Tomorrow, we'll sit down with our corporate travel agent and get our tickets and set the dates. I'm sure that she'll be able to answer all your questions about what to take. And just consider for a minute before you go out and buy a new wardrobe. You're going to be in Paris, the fashion capital of the world. You might want to bring a few things back with you."

"Oh, Pete! Do you mean that? Do you know how expensive clothes like that are? Especially in Europe?" Angela gushed.

They spoke about their plans for another hour there in the bed. Then they hugged and kissed again.

"I'm not sure that I'll be able to sleep tonight, I'm so excited," Angela said, her eyes bright.

"That's all right," Pete interjected, the mood of the evening making him feel completely content. "I'll sleep enough for the both of us." He began shifting his pillows and blankets back around.

"I have to pee. I'll be right back, sweetie," Angela said, over her shoulder, already jumping out of bed and walking towards the bathroom.

Pete heard the delicate tinkle as she peed into the toilet, followed by the rumble of the toilet paper being rolled off, and finally by the flush of the toilet. A moment later, there was a kind of thump, and then nothing.

"Angela? Angela? Angela, are you alright?" Pete called as he scrambled from the bed, accelerating as he ran for the bathroom.

He found her there, a limp, lifeless body on the floor, the shell of the vibrant woman who had been his wife just five minutes before. He immediately began to perform CPR, taking only enough time to dial 911...

The EMT people who were the first on the scene, tried unsuccessfully for the next hour to revive her. They assured him that as far as they could tell, Angela had died almost instantaneously. No matter how effective his efforts or theirs, there was nothing to be done.

The pathologist agreed.

"The damn cancer treatment. It kills the cancer," he explained to Pete, "but it's also hard on the entire patient. Her heart was subject to too much stress, and it failed." He then shrugged and walked away in that way that doctors learn to do, because they deal with death every day.

Needless to say, Pete didn't get to London or Paris that year. In fact, he dealt with his grief by throwing himself into his work, continuing to build the business, adding new products. He would go home as seldom as possible, working until he would fall exhausted into the bed that he had shared with Angela, and find sweet oblivion, hoping to avoid dreaming of his wife, his love.

~~*~~

Pete sat in his old Bronco 4X4 as Randy drove them up deep into the heart of the Rocky Mountains. The first leg of their journey was on major freeway, but after about an hour, they exited that and started on local county roads. Still, these weren't too bad--at least they were paved. At the last small town, they refilled the 4X4 with gas, including a couple of five-gallon fuel containers, just in case. Then it was off onto even rougher roads.

Fifty miles on county roads, which were gravel and graded a couple of times a years after the rains to smooth out the 'washboard' effect, and they started the final leg of their journey on unimproved dirt roads.

Their final destination was a log hunting cabin deep in the woods that Pete's family had inherited from his great-grandfather, who had homesteaded the land in the late 1800's. It was one of those dream situations for an outdoorsman--a cabin on a small pocket of private land, surrounded on three sides by national forest. Lacking in most of the modern amenities for generations, electrical power had been extended to the cabin only a couple of years prior, which had allowed Pete to add an electrical water pump for the well, a water heater, which in turn saw a new (albeit simple) indoor bathroom replace the old outhouse. Pete had been completely delighted the first time he was able to take a hot shower there.

It was a constant irritation to the local Forestry Service bureaucrats that there were still places like the Pearson land adjacent to the forest that were not under their control, but the issue had gone to court on several occasions, and the government had failed thus far to seize the old landholdings in this part of the west.

Pete was quiet during the drive as he contemplated his new world. Pete's mind had been occupied with other thoughts, thoughts of a darker nature. He had been reflecting on what he'd seen before the trip started, his wife and Randy engaged in activities that Jean had to know would result in a divorce,

You don't kill love in an instant, but Jean had done a good job of letting Pete know that she had never loved him the way he had loved her. It turned out that she was Delilah to his Samson, a Jezebel, and their marriage had been a "long con." Worse, was finding that it wasn't enough for her to divorce him, but to steal his wealth, she was willing to kill him. It shook him to the core, and he was not inclined to let it happen.

That Randy was on this trip at all was because of Jean. She had convinced him that Randy could come along and help with field dressing and carrying out any elk that Pete harvested. It made sense: the area in which he would be hunting was rugged, with narrow trails limited to hiking, steep slopes, and deep dangerous canyons. It was safer for two people to hunt together, and even with two people, if Pete took his cow elk, it might take multiple trips to haul the meat out to the cabin.

Pete's outlook on the 'why' of Randy's presence was changed by overhearing those few sentences between Jean (he could barely think of her as his wife, even now) and the skinny young man driving the 4X4.

~~*~~

That train of thought brought him back to Jean. Who was this person who had succeeded his loving Angela? Whoever she was, she certainly wasn't the woman he'd thought she was at the time.

For the first couple of years after Angela's death, Pete had simply existed. Not to say that there weren't lots of women willing to keep him company. After all, how often would a catch like Pete Pearson be available?

Pete was a widower; during his marriage he never strayed on his wife, and he had loved her until the day she died; and even afterwards, he still loved her memory. Women--single, married or divorced--admired that kind of loyalty in a man. Many of them wished that the men in their lives were as loyal as Pete Pearson, but alas, most couldn't say they were.

He was, by any standard, 'moderately' wealthy. Most folks figured that Pearson Generics was worth at least $50 million, and as the single largest shareholder in the company, Pete was well off. In fact, although not many people knew about it, Pete and his board of directors had actually turned down offers for more than twice that amount. When they did decide to sell the firm, Pete would be a rich man for the rest of his life.

Still in his late forties, Pete, the average guy who didn't draw women's attention in his twenties, got plenty of admiring looks. He had maintained his weight, so while he'd never been the bulked-up muscle-bound sort of fellow in college, as he'd aged, he looked trim and in good condition compared with most of his contemporaries. His hair, which had been a non-descript dirty blond, had some gray creeping in on his temples, which most people described as 'distinguished.' His eyes, blue gray in color, had always been hidden behind the thick-rimmed glasses that he had worn back then--they provided protection from lab accidents, and were, honestly, the cheapest variety of frames offered. After Angela had insisted that he have laser surgery that corrected his vision, and since he didn't work 'hand-on' in a lab anymore, he stopped wearing glasses, except for the non-prescription sunglasses with the polarized lenses he wore when driving or fishing. Now women noticed his 'sexy' eyes.

In short, Pete had become an attractive package to numerous women, regardless of their marriage status. Pete, on the other hand had become quite deft a deflecting the amorous attentions of women, many of whom saw him as a solution to their problems -- ladies who are known in polite parlance as 'gold-diggers'.

Jean was in a different class for a variety of reasons.

Pete and Jean had met at one of the relatively rare parties that Pete attended, one that indeed he could hardly avoid. It was at his next-door neighbor's massive faux log-cabin mansion and was an annual event that occurred when his neighbor arrived for the summer. His well-known neighbor was a wealthy New York financier, with enough money to make Pete look like mere upper-middle-class businessman (which was how Pete thought of himself), rather than a wealthy man in his own right. In truth, though, Pete and his neighbor were on friendly terms, in part because Pete and he shared a passion for the outdoors, and they often went hunting and fishing together.

Nevertheless, this party was one of the social highlights every year and invitations were eagerly sought, and difficult to come by. Only those with some social standing in the community, or who were particular friends, were invited.

Jean arrived at the party with a thirty-something lawyer name Blake Molyneaux. Pete knew Blake as one of the lawyers who represented Pearson Generics in patent law and with the FDA approval process. Blake was a tall, thin and handsome man, with the classic dark hair and dark eyes; but who, as far as Pete was aware, didn't seem to spend a lot of energy pursuing women, preferring to put his energy into his legal practice.

As soon as he saw her, Jean appealed to Pete. Perhaps it was the fact that she reminded him in a way of Angela. She too had dark hair and light blue eyes, like Angela. It wasn't just her looks, though. It was something about the way that she carried herself, a self-assurance, with neither a maidenly demureness, nor the arrogance that some very attractive women project. Just a quiet confidence.

Eventually, as they circulated around the room, Blake and the woman arrived at Pete Pearson.

"Pete! How are you this fine evening?" inquired Blake, with a friendly smile.

"Wonderful, Blake. And you?" Pete replied.

"Ditto. And if I may introduce you; Pete Pearson, this lovely lady is Jean Jackson; Jean, this is Pete Pearson, the CEO and, if I may be honest--the driving force behind Pearson Generics, one of the state's largest non-mining, non-agricultural, manufacturing companies. And, oh yes, a very valued client of my favorite lawyer. Me!" Blake said in a humorous fashion.

They all laughed at his bon mot, and Jean extended her hand to Pete.

"Mr. Pearson, very pleased to meet you. Blake told me about you and your company as we were on our way here. But he didn't tell me that you were so young and distinguished looking! He described you as a chemist, and I half-expected you to be here in a lab coat wearing safety glasses," Jean said with a smile. Pete looked down and noticed that they were still holding each other's hand, and reluctantly released hers. Pete was also taken with her low and melodious voice.

"Please, call me Pete. When anyone calls me 'Mr. Pearson', I look around expecting my dad to be there."

"Okay, Pete, as long as you call me 'Jean'," she said looking into his eyes with a smile that went to his heart.

After the preliminaries were over, Blake, Jean and Pete chit chatted for a while, until Jean excused herself to go to the restroom.

Blake and Pete both watched her as she walked across the room. She was trim, but not skinny, with curves where men liked them. She wasn't overwhelmingly endowed, never-the-less, enough that she had a obvious cleavage. Pete could imagine, with lust, what her ass would look like naked. He started to get stiffer at the thought.

"Well, Blake, you lucky dog--you've hit a home run with this gal," Pete exclaimed.

Blake responded with a chuckle.

"Pete, you couldn't be more wrong. Jean Jackson is one of the senior partner's clients, and since he knew that I would be here tonight, his royal highness commanded that I bring Jean along. And getting into personal relationships with clients is a major no-no.

"She is available, my friend, if you're interested. She's a widow--her husband died a couple of years ago in a car crash--and she is just now trying to get her life going again."

Pete looked seriously at Blake, who continued.

"She is here visiting our lovely burg for a couple of months, and as far as I know, she only knows a handful of local people. Seeing how well you and she are getting along, I would guess that she would probably be delighted if you offered to show her some of the sights and provide her with some companionship. Just my guess, given how the two of you can't keep your eyes off each other."

About that time, Jean returned, and Blake and Pete returned to more innocuous topics.

Pete was not always the fastest man on his feet, but he was taken enough with Jean to ask her if she would care to see some of the local sights and meet some of the local people, and when she said yes, he got her contact information.

You know what they say about women: you chase them until they catch you. That was how it was with Jean. Less than two months after they first met, he asked her to marry him. She said 'yes', and six weeks after that, they were married.

Foolish? Perhaps, but Pete and Jean seemed to be a perfect fit, and honestly, he liked being married. He liked the stability, as well as the comfortability of waking up next to his loved one each morning.

~~~*~~~

Right from the start, Jean and Pete were sympatico. They could finish each other's sentences. If they saw an unusual sight, they had the same response. Pete thought he was the luckiest of men to have found two women during his life were truly soulmates, to use a cliché.

A pleasant surprise for Pete was how adventuresome Jean was in bed. She was willing to do things that Angela would have never dreamed of doing. In fact, Angela wouldn't have even thought of them. Sex with his first wife was pretty 'meat and potatoes'. Still, he'd been happy enough at the time; now Jean's skills had expanded his sexual world. He and Angela had been at one level of sexual knowledge; Jean came into the marriage at a much higher level of sophistication.

Jean, due to her husband's accidental death, also came to their union with her own money. Because of her own financial well-being, she had no problem with the pre-nuptial agreement that the company's board-of-directors had requested that he have. That reassured him that she was not just some sort of gold-digger.

They seemed to share a common outlook, whether it was politics, religion, even their tastes in art and literature. The one place where they differed was Jean's fascination with true crime books. He would tease her by asking, "Are you doing research on how to get rid of me, or something?" She would just laugh and tell him to be careful if she doubled or tripled his life insurance. They both laughed and he told her he'd keep his eye out on the insurance invoices.

Now he had to wonder how much of Jean's opinions were just tailored to make him comfortable and convince him that they were of a similar mindset. Perhaps, in her secret soul she thought his beliefs were rubbish and stupid. Or more likely, he thought, she HAD no real beliefs, other than a selfish desire to dominate the people around her and to steal their wealth for herself.

They had been together for two short years, and he had just turned 50 years old, when Jean's actions ripped the rose-colored glasses from Pete's face. He didn't understand what he could have done wrong that Jean would not just want to split up with him, but also want him dead.

He suspected that the pre-nup might be involved. If he died and they were still married, then Jean would inherit his estate. But why? She already had the settlement from her first husband's estate. Even with the pre-nup, she would get enough from the divorce to be very well off for the rest of her life.

There was something, or someone else at play here that Pete wasn't aware of.

The call that Pete made when he went into town, ostensibly to buy more ammo, was to the private investigator his company used to screen new hires and to prevent commercial espionage. This time, the investigator's task was to set up surveillance on Jean while Pete was hunting, and to give her the deep background check that he had passed on prior to their marriage.

Now it was just a question of waiting until he returned from his hunting trip in the mountains. Pete had also decided to be proactive.

He had overheard his erstwhile wife 'instructing' Randy, but he wasn't sure if she had suggested any particular way that the 'accident' should occur. Pete was on guard, but needed to seem relaxed and unaware of the danger. One precaution he had taken was to bring along one of his pistols, one of the new, small, concealable 9mms. He had it in a holster that fit inside his pocket, where it would be easily accessible, but covered by his sweater and coat.

Pete thought that Randy would need some time to gin up the courage to actually try to kill him, and it would most likely be when they were out in the wilderness, far beyond the cabin. That gave him time, and he believed that if he had time, he could talk Randy out of trying to murder him. One of his reasons was Randy's half-hearted agreement with Jean. Why not just get a divorce, he'd asked. Good question.

After a two-hour drive, they arrived at the cabin. It was early afternoon by then, so they got their gear into the cabin and got ready to go out for the afternoon. Pete turned on the electric water pump that started the well to the cabin.

"Randy? Do you need to go? In a minute the toilet will be ready to use. Easier here than out in the field!"

Randy agreed, "Yeah, I could probably take a dump before we left."

"Good man," Pete said, "More time for hunting before it gets dark!"

Randy smiled and gave him a thumbs up before he turned to use the toilet.

As soon as the door closed behind Randy, Pete picked up Randy's old lever action rifle. Thanking his lucky stars that whatever else you could say about Randy, his rifle was clean and well-oiled. It made very little noise as Pete worked the action back and forth, until all the bullets in the chamber and the tubular magazine were ejected. He picked them all up, and they went into his duffle bag. He carefully replaced the rifle exactly where Randy had left it.

When Randy came back into the room, he didn't even look at his rifle until we had put on our coats and daypacks and were ready to leave the cabin. Then, as we were walking out the door, he just picked up his rifle to carry along.

They walked for a couple of hours with Pete always keeping behind Randy, periodically stopping and taking water breaks, and glassing the surrounding areas with their binocs. They saw some groups of elk in the distance, but none they could reach before sunset. Eventually, they returned to the cabin to bed down for the night.