Chapter 2
Jeddrick pulled his cruiser up in front of Benji’s cabin. He got out, looking around carefully. The artist had had the door replaced already, and he was pleased to note that the new one was a steel-core door just like he’d suggested. He walked up toward the house after his survey, stepping up onto the porch. The door suddenly flew open, and Benji’s large frame appeared in it. “Hi!” he chirped happily. “Lunch is almost ready!”
“Okay,” Jeddrick drawled, his lips twitching a bit. “So was everything quiet last night? Did you have any trouble?”
The artist shook his head as he stepped back so that Jeddrick could enter his cabin. “No, no trouble,” he said. “I did what you said yesterday – I had a security guy come out here and do a bunch of stuff to the cabin. An alarm system and everything,” he added, nodding at the new panel that had been mounted next to his door. “Although,” he went on glumly, “I hated to have to do it. Makes me feel like I’m a prisoner in my own home.”
“I understand that,” Jeddrick replied as he took off his uniform jacket and hung it neatly on the coat rack by the door, “But this is for the best. You don’t know that those men won’t try to come back, especially since they seemed to have been after your granddad’s paintings specifically. Didn’t you say that they only got two? And that he gave you five? They might try to get their hands on the rest, for whatever reason.”
Benji gave him an impressed look. “You could be right,” he said. “Anyway, why don’t you sit down?” he waved a hand at the large table sitting near the divide between the kitchen and the living room, “And I’ll go check the lasagna. It should be done here pretty soon. What would you like to drink?” he added over his shoulder as he walked toward the kitchen.
“Water would be fine,” Jeddrick replied. He’d have loved a beer, but he was on duty.
“Okay.” He heard the sounds of cupboards being opened, of clinking glass, then the thin sound of water running into the glass. Jeddrick glanced around again, this time not looking for signs of the thieves but just taking in the cabin. It was a homey place, with a big colorful rug on the living room floor, flowers in vases here and there, and some framed paintings on the walls. He got up and wandered over to look at one of them, seeing a familiar lake with early morning mist on it done in watercolors. It was quite good. Squinting at the signature, he was that it was a BH. So this is what Benji painted. The man was talented.
He turned away from the picture as Benji entered the room. “This is yours,” he said, nodding at the picture. “It’s pretty good.”
Benji reddened a little in pleased embarrassment at his praise. “Thanks. I love the Lake; it’s so serene.”
“Yeah,” Jeddrick frowned a bit in thought. “Hey, could I see one of your granddad’s paintings? One of the ones that they didn’t manage to steal?”
“Sure,” Benji said, and went into the next room to fetch one. Jeddrick waited patiently until he returned, holding an unframed canvass carefully in his hands. “Here’s one. This is of his four buddies. Two of them got killed in the War.” He turned the painting so that Jeddrick could get a good look at it.
He studied the painting carefully. It was nothing remarkable; the painting was amateurish at best. The four men looked a bit elongated and out-or-proportion. Granddad hadn’t been the best artist in the world, Jeddrick noted silently. So why would somebody come specifically to steal one or more of these paintings when Benji’s were so much better? He looked at all the faces, but none of them looked familiar. So much for the theory that somebody famous might have known Benji’s grandfather during the War. “So what’s the story behind these paintings?” he asked aloud. “When did he do them? After the War?”
“No, during actually,” Benji told him as the artist tilted the painting so that he himself could look at it. “Two of his friends had already been killed, and Granddad knew that the rest of them might not make it. He wanted to preserve something of them while he could, so when they rolled into Berlin he bought some ugly pictures cheap off this kid who was selling them on a street corner, and he painted over the other pictures with these portraits of his friends and the men in his company.”
“Did he? What about those other pictures? Could they have been worth something?” Jeddrick asked shrewdly.
Benji blinked. “I don’t know,” he began slowly. “Granddad said that they were awful, and that they were signed Werner Van Pietz. I looked that name up, but he wasn’t anybody famous at all. I only found a few mentions of him, in fact, and they all said that he was a cheap knock-off artist living in Berlin at the time. The few pictures of his paintings were pretty terrible. He wasn’t what I’d call talented.”
“So they probably weren’t after the paintings underneath, then,” Jeddrick said with a shrug. “It was just a thought.”
“But a pretty good one,” Benji said admiringly. Then his head came up as a small ding sounded out from the kitchen. “That’s the lasagna timer! I’ll just put this back and we can eat,” he said cheerfully. He turned away toward the door to the other room, and Jeddrick walked over to the table to sit down.
He sipped at the glass of water that Benji had left on the table for him. The artist came bustling back out of the room that Jeddrick presumed to be his studio, and hurried into the kitchen to pull the food out of the oven. He reemerged after a moment, holding a glass pan with a hot pad and carrying a spatula in his free hand. He set the pan on the table in front of Jeddrick. It smelled delicious, and his stomach made approving rumbling noises as Benji bent over(he had to being so tall) and began to use the spatula to slice the lasagna up into squares.
“I just love lasagna,” Benji said happily. “It's one of my favorite things to cook. What about you, Deputy?”
“It smells great,” he replied, “And I’d rather you called me Jeddrick or even Jed rather than Deputy.”
“Okay,” Benji said. “As long as you call me Benji or Ben, and not Mr. Hockness. I keep looking around for my Granddad whenever somebody calls me that; and then I remember that he’s gone,” he added in depression. His face was sad as he heaped Jeddrick’s plate with a large square of the cheesy lasagna.
“I’m sorry about your granddad; I’ll bet he was a great guy,” Jeddrick said sympathetically.
Benji brightened up as he served himself and then sat down. “Oh, he was; he was awesome! He taught me how to paint, and when I started to show some real talent he paid for me to have lessons with an artist who lived near us. He helped raise me,” the young giant explained as he cut into his lasagna with a fork. “My dad was killed in a car accident when I was two. Granddad helped Mom raise me, and he even moved into a house next door to ours so that he could be close by and always there for us. I’m going to miss him so much,” he went on, tears forming in those warm brown eyes.
“Sounds like a nice man. Wish I could say the same for my grandfather,” Jeddrick remarked dryly, taking a bite of the lasagna. It was wonderful; melt-in-your-mouth good. He savored it, chewing slowly. His normal lunch usually consisted of a sandwich that he’d made himself or greasy fast food. This was miles better in comparison. “This is great,” he told Benji sincerely.
The artist beamed at him. “Thanks. I love to cook almost as much as I love to paint. I got both talents from Granddad; he taught me how to cook. He always said that a real man could take care of himself, and that no man’s wife should ever be his domestic slave. That they don’t call them your ‘life’s partner’ for nothing, and that you had to treat them like partners and equals. That always amazed me, coming from the generation that he did. My grandma must have been the happiest lady alive. I don’t really remember; she died of a heart attack when I was only six. Granddad never remarried, and he said in the hospital that he was glad that he got to go and be with her now,” there were tears glimmering in his eyes again as he said this.
“Sounds like a great man. You were lucky to have someone like that,” Jeddrick said.
“Oh, I know. I’m really grateful for everything that Granddad did for me,” Benji said fervently. He paused, then continued slowly: “He was even okay with…me being the way I am,” he said.
Jeddrick’s sandy-blonde brows lifted a little. “The way you are? You mean built like a tank?” he asked teasingly.
Benji laughed ruefully. “No,” he said, glancing down at his own big frame, “Although he was never sure where that come from. He always theorized that it was an unknown Viking ancestor who’d raped a many greats-grandmother during one of their pillaging raids, and whose genes just showed up in me for some reason. Umm…” he trailed off, looking uncomfortable. “I’m…gay….” He finally went on manfully.
Jeddrick blinked. This was something off a surprise, although he supposed that it shouldn’t be. Benji might be built like a Sherman tank, but he had the gentlest face and eyes that he’d ever seen. And what did size matter anyway? He’d seen some guys who’d gotten kicked out of the Army for violating ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ and they’d been big and hard-muscled men who you never would have suspected were gay. It took all kinds. “Oh,” he said aloud in a neutral voice, “I see.”
Benji’s shoulders drooped. “I’m sorry,” he began, looking upset.
“For what?” Jeddrick asked quietly.
“I don’t know…it's just….so many straight guys don’t take it well when I tell them that I’m gay. They either don’t believe me, or they look at me like they expect me to jump on them and hold them down. Just because I’m big and all…I’d never do that. Who wants someone who doesn’t want THEM?”
“Some people do, but it doesn’t matter what sexual orientation they are. They’re just sickos,” Jeddrick said evenly. As for you being gay – that doesn’t bother me at all.”
Benji’s eyes searched his face anxiously. “It doesn’t?”
Jeddrick shook his head. “I should hope not,” he said with a quirk of his lips. “I don’t have a leg to stand on.”
Benji looked puzzled. “What?”
Jeddrick tapped his own chest lightly with one finger. “I’m gay too,” he explained simply.
Benji’s mouth fell open. “You are?!” he gasped, his eyes rather wide.
Jeddrick grinned at his expression. “Yeah, I am. And I gotta say, I’m glad to meet another gay man, since I thought I was the only one around for about a hundred miles or so. I usually have to drive into the city just to meet anybody. It’ll be good to hang around with one of my own kind,” he went on with a smile in his pale-blue eyes.
Benji looked very happy. “Me, too,” he said. “I’m starting to think getting robbed might have been the best thing that’s happened to me in a while.”
Jeddrick drove down the by-now-familiar dirt road toward Benji’s cabin. He’d been coming here every day for almost a week, now. He’d even come on his days off, since he’d promised the artist that he’d show up every day to deter thieves from returning for his grandfather’s paintings. And that hadn’t bothered him; it was nice to get to hang out with another gay man out here in the back end of nowhere. Besides, he really liked Benji. The artist was kind, sweet, funny, happy, and pretty intelligent. Not to mention talented. He’d seen about half of Benji’s paintings by now, and he’d liked every one of them. That fact alone impressed him.
Jeddrick’s lips lifted in a wry smile. He strongly suspected that he was becoming attracted to Benji, if he hadn’t been already. There was just something about him…and the man could cook, too. They did say that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, didn’t they? While he hadn’t made any moves on the artist yet, he was considering doing so sometime in the near future. Maybe asking him out on a date. They could take in a movie (although their choices weren’t great around here, the one movie theater in town only showed one movie at a time) or go to dinner together to give Benji a break from cooking. Of course, he was counting his chickens before they hatched. He had no idea if Benji would say yes. While the artist was friendly and kind, he hadn’t shown any interest in Jeddrick outside of a friend so far. Ah, well, all he could do was ask. If he got shot down, that would be that. All a person could do was try.
A sleek black SUV with tinted windows drove by him on the narrow road, and they almost kissed bumpers. One of the trials of living on the lake, Jeddrick thought as his pale-blue eyes scanned the vehicle. He automatically noted the license plate number, not because he was suspicious but because it was just something that he often did. Although he’d never seen the SUV before, that didn’t mean anything. Guests were arriving at their summer places all the time; this could just be new arrivals at the Lake. He thought nothing of it as he drove on toward Benji’s cabin.
He pulled his cruiser up in front of the cabin, and felt a chill go down his spine when he saw that the door was open. Benji knew better than that – he’d already gotten one lecture from Jeddrick about leaving his door open, even when he was at home. He’d been thoroughly chastened, and hadn’t done it again. Yet the steel-core door was now standing open, with no one in sight on the porch. His hand went to his gun as he got out of his cruiser warily, his eyes scanning the cabin and its surroundings.
At the forest’s edge, he caught a glimpse of a splash of color. It was on the ground, and it was too bright not to be man-made. The hair on Jeddrick’s neck started to stand up, and he pulled his gun even as he moved toward that splash of color quickly. His eyes darted around, but there was no sign of movement anywhere, either in the forest or around the cabin. The chill grew deeper when he saw that the color was on a shirt, and that the owner of said garment was lying face-down in the dirt and not moving. And it was unmistakably Benji; no one else was that big. Jeddrick knelt down beside the artist, fearing the worst. He felt sick as he reached out to touch Benji lightly, calling his name.
But the skin was warm to the touch, and the artist was breathing. Jeddrick felt such relief that his knees threatened to give out on him, but he couldn’t let that affect him. His fingers found a massive lump on the back of Benji’s head, and a small amount of blood came away on his fingers when he felt it carefully. Somebody had whacked Benji on the back of the head hard enough to knock him out, and then had broken into the cabin once more to finish their business.
Jeddrick pulled his radio from his belt and called it in, requesting a medi-vac chopper at the Lake immediately. Dolores promised to send it right away, sounding worried. She’d already wormed every detail about Benji out of him over the past week, and she seemed to think that she’d somehow had a hand in their meeting since she’d sent him out here and not one of the other deputies. That had amused Jeddrick, but he’d let her have her fun. Dolores was a woman with three grown kids who had nothing better to do than to stick her nose in other people’s love lives. She was basically harmless.
He didn’t try to move Benji, although he stuck his fingers up against the side of the artist’s neck to make sure that his pulse was strong. He felt a great up swelling of rage run through him. Whoever had hurt this gentle giant was going to wish that they’d never been born. He’d see to that.
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Jeddrick pulled his cruiser up in front of Benji’s cabin. He got out, looking around carefully. The artist had had the door replaced already, and he was pleased to note that the new one was a steel-core door just like he’d suggested. He walked up toward the house after his survey, stepping up onto the porch. The door suddenly flew open, and Benji’s large frame appeared in it. “Hi!” he chirped happily. “Lunch is almost ready!”
“Okay,” Jeddrick drawled, his lips twitching a bit. “So was everything quiet last night? Did you have any trouble?”
The artist shook his head as he stepped back so that Jeddrick could enter his cabin. “No, no trouble,” he said. “I did what you said yesterday – I had a security guy come out here and do a bunch of stuff to the cabin. An alarm system and everything,” he added, nodding at the new panel that had been mounted next to his door. “Although,” he went on glumly, “I hated to have to do it. Makes me feel like I’m a prisoner in my own home.”
“I understand that,” Jeddrick replied as he took off his uniform jacket and hung it neatly on the coat rack by the door, “But this is for the best. You don’t know that those men won’t try to come back, especially since they seemed to have been after your granddad’s paintings specifically. Didn’t you say that they only got two? And that he gave you five? They might try to get their hands on the rest, for whatever reason.”
Benji gave him an impressed look. “You could be right,” he said. “Anyway, why don’t you sit down?” he waved a hand at the large table sitting near the divide between the kitchen and the living room, “And I’ll go check the lasagna. It should be done here pretty soon. What would you like to drink?” he added over his shoulder as he walked toward the kitchen.
“Water would be fine,” Jeddrick replied. He’d have loved a beer, but he was on duty.
“Okay.” He heard the sounds of cupboards being opened, of clinking glass, then the thin sound of water running into the glass. Jeddrick glanced around again, this time not looking for signs of the thieves but just taking in the cabin. It was a homey place, with a big colorful rug on the living room floor, flowers in vases here and there, and some framed paintings on the walls. He got up and wandered over to look at one of them, seeing a familiar lake with early morning mist on it done in watercolors. It was quite good. Squinting at the signature, he was that it was a BH. So this is what Benji painted. The man was talented.
He turned away from the picture as Benji entered the room. “This is yours,” he said, nodding at the picture. “It’s pretty good.”
Benji reddened a little in pleased embarrassment at his praise. “Thanks. I love the Lake; it’s so serene.”
“Yeah,” Jeddrick frowned a bit in thought. “Hey, could I see one of your granddad’s paintings? One of the ones that they didn’t manage to steal?”
“Sure,” Benji said, and went into the next room to fetch one. Jeddrick waited patiently until he returned, holding an unframed canvass carefully in his hands. “Here’s one. This is of his four buddies. Two of them got killed in the War.” He turned the painting so that Jeddrick could get a good look at it.
He studied the painting carefully. It was nothing remarkable; the painting was amateurish at best. The four men looked a bit elongated and out-or-proportion. Granddad hadn’t been the best artist in the world, Jeddrick noted silently. So why would somebody come specifically to steal one or more of these paintings when Benji’s were so much better? He looked at all the faces, but none of them looked familiar. So much for the theory that somebody famous might have known Benji’s grandfather during the War. “So what’s the story behind these paintings?” he asked aloud. “When did he do them? After the War?”
“No, during actually,” Benji told him as the artist tilted the painting so that he himself could look at it. “Two of his friends had already been killed, and Granddad knew that the rest of them might not make it. He wanted to preserve something of them while he could, so when they rolled into Berlin he bought some ugly pictures cheap off this kid who was selling them on a street corner, and he painted over the other pictures with these portraits of his friends and the men in his company.”
“Did he? What about those other pictures? Could they have been worth something?” Jeddrick asked shrewdly.
Benji blinked. “I don’t know,” he began slowly. “Granddad said that they were awful, and that they were signed Werner Van Pietz. I looked that name up, but he wasn’t anybody famous at all. I only found a few mentions of him, in fact, and they all said that he was a cheap knock-off artist living in Berlin at the time. The few pictures of his paintings were pretty terrible. He wasn’t what I’d call talented.”
“So they probably weren’t after the paintings underneath, then,” Jeddrick said with a shrug. “It was just a thought.”
“But a pretty good one,” Benji said admiringly. Then his head came up as a small ding sounded out from the kitchen. “That’s the lasagna timer! I’ll just put this back and we can eat,” he said cheerfully. He turned away toward the door to the other room, and Jeddrick walked over to the table to sit down.
He sipped at the glass of water that Benji had left on the table for him. The artist came bustling back out of the room that Jeddrick presumed to be his studio, and hurried into the kitchen to pull the food out of the oven. He reemerged after a moment, holding a glass pan with a hot pad and carrying a spatula in his free hand. He set the pan on the table in front of Jeddrick. It smelled delicious, and his stomach made approving rumbling noises as Benji bent over(he had to being so tall) and began to use the spatula to slice the lasagna up into squares.
“I just love lasagna,” Benji said happily. “It's one of my favorite things to cook. What about you, Deputy?”
“It smells great,” he replied, “And I’d rather you called me Jeddrick or even Jed rather than Deputy.”
“Okay,” Benji said. “As long as you call me Benji or Ben, and not Mr. Hockness. I keep looking around for my Granddad whenever somebody calls me that; and then I remember that he’s gone,” he added in depression. His face was sad as he heaped Jeddrick’s plate with a large square of the cheesy lasagna.
“I’m sorry about your granddad; I’ll bet he was a great guy,” Jeddrick said sympathetically.
Benji brightened up as he served himself and then sat down. “Oh, he was; he was awesome! He taught me how to paint, and when I started to show some real talent he paid for me to have lessons with an artist who lived near us. He helped raise me,” the young giant explained as he cut into his lasagna with a fork. “My dad was killed in a car accident when I was two. Granddad helped Mom raise me, and he even moved into a house next door to ours so that he could be close by and always there for us. I’m going to miss him so much,” he went on, tears forming in those warm brown eyes.
“Sounds like a nice man. Wish I could say the same for my grandfather,” Jeddrick remarked dryly, taking a bite of the lasagna. It was wonderful; melt-in-your-mouth good. He savored it, chewing slowly. His normal lunch usually consisted of a sandwich that he’d made himself or greasy fast food. This was miles better in comparison. “This is great,” he told Benji sincerely.
The artist beamed at him. “Thanks. I love to cook almost as much as I love to paint. I got both talents from Granddad; he taught me how to cook. He always said that a real man could take care of himself, and that no man’s wife should ever be his domestic slave. That they don’t call them your ‘life’s partner’ for nothing, and that you had to treat them like partners and equals. That always amazed me, coming from the generation that he did. My grandma must have been the happiest lady alive. I don’t really remember; she died of a heart attack when I was only six. Granddad never remarried, and he said in the hospital that he was glad that he got to go and be with her now,” there were tears glimmering in his eyes again as he said this.
“Sounds like a great man. You were lucky to have someone like that,” Jeddrick said.
“Oh, I know. I’m really grateful for everything that Granddad did for me,” Benji said fervently. He paused, then continued slowly: “He was even okay with…me being the way I am,” he said.
Jeddrick’s sandy-blonde brows lifted a little. “The way you are? You mean built like a tank?” he asked teasingly.
Benji laughed ruefully. “No,” he said, glancing down at his own big frame, “Although he was never sure where that come from. He always theorized that it was an unknown Viking ancestor who’d raped a many greats-grandmother during one of their pillaging raids, and whose genes just showed up in me for some reason. Umm…” he trailed off, looking uncomfortable. “I’m…gay….” He finally went on manfully.
Jeddrick blinked. This was something off a surprise, although he supposed that it shouldn’t be. Benji might be built like a Sherman tank, but he had the gentlest face and eyes that he’d ever seen. And what did size matter anyway? He’d seen some guys who’d gotten kicked out of the Army for violating ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ and they’d been big and hard-muscled men who you never would have suspected were gay. It took all kinds. “Oh,” he said aloud in a neutral voice, “I see.”
Benji’s shoulders drooped. “I’m sorry,” he began, looking upset.
“For what?” Jeddrick asked quietly.
“I don’t know…it's just….so many straight guys don’t take it well when I tell them that I’m gay. They either don’t believe me, or they look at me like they expect me to jump on them and hold them down. Just because I’m big and all…I’d never do that. Who wants someone who doesn’t want THEM?”
“Some people do, but it doesn’t matter what sexual orientation they are. They’re just sickos,” Jeddrick said evenly. As for you being gay – that doesn’t bother me at all.”
Benji’s eyes searched his face anxiously. “It doesn’t?”
Jeddrick shook his head. “I should hope not,” he said with a quirk of his lips. “I don’t have a leg to stand on.”
Benji looked puzzled. “What?”
Jeddrick tapped his own chest lightly with one finger. “I’m gay too,” he explained simply.
Benji’s mouth fell open. “You are?!” he gasped, his eyes rather wide.
Jeddrick grinned at his expression. “Yeah, I am. And I gotta say, I’m glad to meet another gay man, since I thought I was the only one around for about a hundred miles or so. I usually have to drive into the city just to meet anybody. It’ll be good to hang around with one of my own kind,” he went on with a smile in his pale-blue eyes.
Benji looked very happy. “Me, too,” he said. “I’m starting to think getting robbed might have been the best thing that’s happened to me in a while.”
Jeddrick drove down the by-now-familiar dirt road toward Benji’s cabin. He’d been coming here every day for almost a week, now. He’d even come on his days off, since he’d promised the artist that he’d show up every day to deter thieves from returning for his grandfather’s paintings. And that hadn’t bothered him; it was nice to get to hang out with another gay man out here in the back end of nowhere. Besides, he really liked Benji. The artist was kind, sweet, funny, happy, and pretty intelligent. Not to mention talented. He’d seen about half of Benji’s paintings by now, and he’d liked every one of them. That fact alone impressed him.
Jeddrick’s lips lifted in a wry smile. He strongly suspected that he was becoming attracted to Benji, if he hadn’t been already. There was just something about him…and the man could cook, too. They did say that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, didn’t they? While he hadn’t made any moves on the artist yet, he was considering doing so sometime in the near future. Maybe asking him out on a date. They could take in a movie (although their choices weren’t great around here, the one movie theater in town only showed one movie at a time) or go to dinner together to give Benji a break from cooking. Of course, he was counting his chickens before they hatched. He had no idea if Benji would say yes. While the artist was friendly and kind, he hadn’t shown any interest in Jeddrick outside of a friend so far. Ah, well, all he could do was ask. If he got shot down, that would be that. All a person could do was try.
A sleek black SUV with tinted windows drove by him on the narrow road, and they almost kissed bumpers. One of the trials of living on the lake, Jeddrick thought as his pale-blue eyes scanned the vehicle. He automatically noted the license plate number, not because he was suspicious but because it was just something that he often did. Although he’d never seen the SUV before, that didn’t mean anything. Guests were arriving at their summer places all the time; this could just be new arrivals at the Lake. He thought nothing of it as he drove on toward Benji’s cabin.
He pulled his cruiser up in front of the cabin, and felt a chill go down his spine when he saw that the door was open. Benji knew better than that – he’d already gotten one lecture from Jeddrick about leaving his door open, even when he was at home. He’d been thoroughly chastened, and hadn’t done it again. Yet the steel-core door was now standing open, with no one in sight on the porch. His hand went to his gun as he got out of his cruiser warily, his eyes scanning the cabin and its surroundings.
At the forest’s edge, he caught a glimpse of a splash of color. It was on the ground, and it was too bright not to be man-made. The hair on Jeddrick’s neck started to stand up, and he pulled his gun even as he moved toward that splash of color quickly. His eyes darted around, but there was no sign of movement anywhere, either in the forest or around the cabin. The chill grew deeper when he saw that the color was on a shirt, and that the owner of said garment was lying face-down in the dirt and not moving. And it was unmistakably Benji; no one else was that big. Jeddrick knelt down beside the artist, fearing the worst. He felt sick as he reached out to touch Benji lightly, calling his name.
But the skin was warm to the touch, and the artist was breathing. Jeddrick felt such relief that his knees threatened to give out on him, but he couldn’t let that affect him. His fingers found a massive lump on the back of Benji’s head, and a small amount of blood came away on his fingers when he felt it carefully. Somebody had whacked Benji on the back of the head hard enough to knock him out, and then had broken into the cabin once more to finish their business.
Jeddrick pulled his radio from his belt and called it in, requesting a medi-vac chopper at the Lake immediately. Dolores promised to send it right away, sounding worried. She’d already wormed every detail about Benji out of him over the past week, and she seemed to think that she’d somehow had a hand in their meeting since she’d sent him out here and not one of the other deputies. That had amused Jeddrick, but he’d let her have her fun. Dolores was a woman with three grown kids who had nothing better to do than to stick her nose in other people’s love lives. She was basically harmless.
He didn’t try to move Benji, although he stuck his fingers up against the side of the artist’s neck to make sure that his pulse was strong. He felt a great up swelling of rage run through him. Whoever had hurt this gentle giant was going to wish that they’d never been born. He’d see to that.
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