Someday (Sawtooth Mountains Stories Book 2)

by Susan Fanetti

  A brisk breeze blew up, rolling around her with a wintery chill. She shivered and ducked back inside the building as she pressed ‘send’ on the text.

  She got a text right back. Plz call now

  With a little spike of worry, she did, and jumped in as soon as the call connected. “Hey. Where are you? Are you okay?”

  A woman’s voice replied. On Logan’s phone. “Honor? Honor Babinot?”

  Honor knew the voice but couldn’t place it. “Yes. Who is this?”

  “Honor, it’s Geri Kalinski.”

  Officer Geri Kalinski. Of the Boise Police Department. She’d taken the call when Tyler had been at her door, and had walked her through the discouraging ordeal of being the victim in that case. Honor’s heart stopped dead in her chest. “Geri, what’s wrong? What happened? Where’s Logan?”

  “There’s been … there’s been an attack. Logan Cahill is being transported to St. Luke’s.”

  The hospital? “What happened? Is he okay?”

  “We need to locate his next of kin. Where are you?”

  “I’m at the McClure Building. I had a meeting. Why do you need next of kin? Geri, is he okay?”

  “What’s your relationship with him? His truck is parked in your spot in your building’s garage.”

  “He’s my”—what was the word for what they were?—“boyfriend. Geri, please! Is he okay?”

  “He was stabbed, Honor. Multiple times. When the bus took him he was alive, but he didn’t look good. We’re going to need to talk to you, and we need to get in touch with his family. Can you get to the hospital?”

  Logan had been stabbed. At her house. Honor stumbled to a seat and collapsed into it. “This is Tyler. Tyler did this!”

  “We’ll take your statement. Can you get to the hospital? And it would make things easier if you had contact info for his family.”

  “Morgan Cahill is his father. The family owns the Twisted C Ranch in Jasper Ridge. It should all be in the contacts for his phone. Wait—how are you using his phone?”

  “I … used his thumbprint. Before the bus took him off.”

  Something about that image sent Honor’s worry skyrocketing. She closed her eyes and tried to breathe her heart into a stable rhythm. “Oh God.”

  “I’ll meet you at the hospital, Honor. I can send a unit to pick you up, if you need it.”

  She did not want to go to the hospital in the back of a police cruiser. “I’ll get there.” A sob crawled up from her terrified heart. “This was Tyler. It has to be Tyler. It’s my fault.”

  “I’ll get your statement at the hospital. Hold tight, Honor.”

  The call ended, Honor used her app to call for a ride.

  Then she scrolled her contacts and found Morgan’s number. She didn’t want the news to come first from a stranger, and a cop at that. Her hands shaking, she called Logan’s father.

  There was only one reason Logan had been hurt in her garage. Because it was her fault. She was still trapped in a circle of death and destruction, and while she stood there unscathed, people she loved were hurt.

  *****

  Three stab wounds in the back, one in the chest. Collapsed lung, lacerated liver and right kidney. The surgeon had told them his prognosis was good; they’d repaired the damage they could, and the rest had an excellent chance to heal fully. He was lucky, the surgeon had told them, that such a violent attack hadn’t done irreparable damage.

  But Honor stood at Logan’s bedside, with Morgan, Heath, Gabe, and Emma, and looked down at his pale, unconscious, inert body, at the tube down his throat, giving him breath, and the tube in his arm, giving him blood, and could see only his hurt.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, to Logan and to his family. “I’m so sorry.”

  Morgan’s rough, weathered hand covered hers on the bedrail. “Hush now, sweetheart. This ain’t your doing.”

  But it was.

  *****

  Heath came into the waiting room, holding two paper cups of hospital coffee. He sat beside Honor and handed one of them to her. “The cops done with you and in with Logan again?”

  “Yeah.”

  Two detectives had sat with her, again. This time, they’d wanted to talk about her past issues with people stalking her or just plain hunting her. Because Tyler and Judith weren’t even the first. As they were winding up, the lead detective had said, as if he were making a joke, You’re a magnet for crazies, ain’t you, ma’am?

  Yeah, she was, but none had ever managed to hurt her. It was the people around her who took her damage. Obsessed with Honor, Tyler had almost killed Logan. Obsessed with Honor, Judith Jones had murdered Debbie. Angry at Honor, Emilio Castro had sent his gang to beat her and put her neighbor in the hospital instead.

  For a new twist, the deal she’d just negotiated with the Feds to get Natalie Thomas cleared of felony charges implicated the OVers and might well gut that gang. That would probably put a bullseye on her back yet again, if they ever connected the dots. The Feds had promised to keep the dots as far from each other as possible, for her sake and for Natalie’s. Honor hoped with all she had they could do it. Because it would be Natalie who got hurt, she had no doubt.

  And Judith? Despite the horror she’d wrought, Honor felt guilt for her death, too. She was a young girl who’d lived a terrible, traumatic life. Psychological evaluations had identified an array of issues, most prominently PTSD. Honor had tried to do right by her, to find her a good placement at a shelter that specialized in victims of abuse, and to stay in contact with her, but she’d also tried hard to stay on the beam of professional dispassion. To maintain distance.

  And she hadn’t really liked the girl. She’d seen Judith as needy, and missed that she was in need. Maybe if …

  There were too many ifs to sort.

  She sipped her coffee but didn’t taste it.

  “They’re taking their time with Logan,” Heath muttered. “And it does nothing but make stress for him. He doesn’t remember anything.”

  “They’re not going to let it drop so easy. He was stabbed in the chest, too. He was conscious enough to call for help. He saw who did it, and if they can help him remember, they’ll push as much as they can. These detectives are decent, though. They’ll stop if he says he needs to.”

  The attack had happened almost a week ago. Logan had regained consciousness shortly after the surgery anesthesia had worn off, but he’d been on a ventilator for four days. His doctors—and his family—had insisted that the detectives give him one whole day off the vent before the detectives interviewed him.

  He was strong, and recovering more quickly than the doctors had expected, but he had a lot of healing ahead of him. He was probably exhausted after all this time with cops, going over an attack he didn’t remember.

  “I’m giving them five more minutes, and then I’ll make them stop. However I have to.” He took a swig of his coffee and grimaced.

  “It’s Tyler,” she said. “There’s nobody else.”

  “He’s got an alibi, Honor.”

  She shook her head. “That alibi is crap. His brother’s covering for him. I know it’s him.” There was security camera footage, and Officer Kalinski had let Honor see it. In all her years as a defense attorney, all her experience studying the files of violent cases, gory crime scenes, horrific deaths, even what Judith had done, nothing had ever upset her the way those twenty seconds of black-and-white images had torn her apart.

  So fast. It had happened so fast. Logan had been walking to his truck with his familiar, slightly cocky amble. A dark figure had come up fast behind him, just as the lights flashed when he fobbed the door lock, and Logan had dropped to the ground. The figure crouched, raised his joined hands and slammed them down, and then stood, spun around, and strode quickly away.

  Dark hoodie, with the hood pulled low. Dark pants, dark shoes, dark gloves. No capture of his face.

  Logan had lain there, one shoulder propped awkwardly against his front tire, and fumbled for his phone. He’d passed
out with the phone glowing brightly at his side. The emergency call had connected, thank God, but he’d never spoken to the dispatcher. She’d located him with his phone.

  Honor knew it was Tyler who’d done this. The height and shape on the footage was right, and there was no one else it could be. She didn’t care that his brother had said they were at his house, watching television and sharing a pizza. She didn’t care that the pizza had been ordered online with Tyler’s credit card. All those supposed facts could be falsified into a fairy tale. The truth was that Tyler had tried to kill Logan, and had nearly done it.

  Her hands shook, and she set the coffee aside so she could curl forward and try to get her heart to slow down. All week, since she’d gotten the call from Geri Kalinski, her heart beat erratically and far too fast.

  Heath rubbed his hand over her back. “You got to let yourself up for air on this, Honor. Nobody puts it on you but you. Even if it was Tyler, it’s not your fault. And maybe it was a random attack.”

  She didn’t believe that for a second, and she wasn’t sure it was better. At least if it was Tyler, he was known, and there was history. If they could nullify his alibi, then he could get real time for attempted murder. She wanted to help, to find a way around that alibi, but the cops wouldn’t let her see the file. Not even Geri would go that far.

  Heath patted her back. “Looks like they’re done.”

  She unfolded and saw the detectives walk down the corridor toward the elevators. Torn between wanting to be with Logan and afraid to face him after that grilling by detectives who no doubt had asked him questions about her and her history with people around her getting hurt, Honor turned to his brother. “Do you want to go in on your own first?”

  Heath shook his head. “He’d rather see your pretty face right now than my sour mug. I’m gonna call home and check on Gabe and Matthew.” He hooked his arm over her shoulder and gave her a quick squeeze. “He loves you, Honor. And honest to God, I didn’t think he ever would love a woman. You’re good for him, and you’re good for us. Whether it’s this Tyler jackoff or some random psycho, what happened is not your fault.”

  “Then why do people keep getting hurt around me?”

  He kissed her cheek, but he didn’t answer her question.

  Because the only answer was that it was her fault.

  *****

  The head of the bed was angled high enough that Logan was sitting up, and the middle was raised to bend his knees—a position that eased the load on his sore midsection. His head was tipped back over the top of his pillow, and his eyes were closed. The tubes of the canula in his nose bisected his face. The hospital gowns around all the tubes and wires irritated him, so he was bare-chested. Except for the heart monitor leads. And the bandages.

  His rodeo medallion sat in a plastic bag in a cubby with the rest of the things he’d had with him; they’d cut the age-softened leather thong when they’d taken it off him in the ER. That bare space at his throat, where the medallion belonged, was the nakedest thing about him.

  He still had the flat pallor of serious illness, and she was fairly sure that he’d gone noticeably greyer. No, she was fully sure of it—the beard on his chin was almost wholly white now.

  Though he agitated constantly to be allowed to go home, there was a tube in his chest, moderating the air in his damaged lung, and he’d barely managed to stand for three minutes. That pallor told more truth than he did about his health.

  He’d almost died. He’d needed six pints of blood and four hours of surgery. Four days on a ventilator. Four stab wounds. Three organs damaged. When Honor’s mind got caught in the calculus of his mortality, anxiety ransacked her body.

  When the door closed, Logan’s eyes opened, and he smiled. “Hey, counselor. Did you get the third degree again?” His voice was soft and rough, coming through a throat still abraded by the ventilator tube.

  She brushed the hair from his forehead—he was sweating a little—and kissed him there. “More of the same. How did they treat you? Was it okay?”

  “They want me to remember. I want to remember. But it’s just blank space. I remember locking up your apartment. Then nothing until I was here.” He cleared his throat softly, wincing, and Honor filled his plastic cup with water and held the straw to his mouth. “Thanks, darlin’,” he said, taking the cup from her. “Not quite such an invalid as that.”

  “I’m sorry.” She wasn’t talking about the cup. And he knew it.

  He took a few deep sips from the straw and set the cup on the over-bed table. Taking her hand, he brought it to his mouth. “You have to stop, Honor. Don’t carry this.” He kissed her hand and then held it at his cheek. Again she noticed how much greyer he was.

  “How can I not? Debbie’s dead. You almost died. In the space of four months, two people I care about got caught in my trouble.” She sighed. “Maybe it’s a good thing my career is in the toilet. Maybe that will keep the people I love safe.”

  Logan looked at her for a long time, his assessing gaze probing deeper than her skin. She needed to shut up and not dump her worries on his ailing shoulders. This was not the time to lean on him.

  “I got a few things to say about that. First, didn’t you just get Natalie clear of a federal case?”

  “Misdemeanor possession. One year probation.” And information on Evan Hall’s contact with the OVers. Nothing they could trace back to Natalie without someone making that connection explicit, and nothing the Feds meant to use right away. Enough of a charge, and enough distance, to deflect suspicion that she’d ratted them out. Last week, waiting for Logan to pick her up after that meeting, Honor had been feeling pretty smug for working the deal.

  “So your career’s not in the toilet.” He grinned, and it added color to his handsome face. “It’s just pulled off at a rest area.”

  She laughed despite herself. “Toilet adjacent, you mean.”

  “Sure. But over by the picnic tables. You know, where it’s kinda pretty and the traffic noise ain’t too bad.” He kissed her hand again. “The other thing I gotta say is, maybe it’s not a bad thing, if you have to do something different.”

  “What do you mean?” She pulled her hand from his, but he caught it and held it before she was out of his reach.

  “Easy, counselor. What I mean is, you’re blaming yourself, but you’re a victim here. If it was Tyler who came at me, that’s worse, in my mind. I’m worried for you. This summer, you were held at gunpoint by a crazy little girl. This Tyler asshole’s been stalking you at least that long, and maybe he meant the knife for you. Maybe he’d’ve killed you.” He took a long, careful breath; he was clearly exhausted, and his voice was failing, but he wasn’t done. After another drink of water, he went on. “You got three locks on your door, an alarm, and a private floor with the most complicated elevator I ever heard of. All that because you’re afraid.”

  “I’m not. I’m careful.” She’d told him about the attack that had hurt her neighbor.

  “You are both. And you should be. People keep trying to hurt you. That scares the shit out of me, Honor. Maybe what you do is too dangerous.”

  Honor wanted to tell him he was wrong, and that even if he was right, she wouldn’t run scared. She wanted to challenge him for trying to take away the one thing she was good at, trying to make her dependent on him. But he was hurt and weary, and that was her fault, because she’d put him in danger. Just being in her life had gotten him stabbed.

  “I don’t want to talk about this right now.”

  Another clear sign of how badly he’d been injured was how quickly he dropped the argument. “Okay, darlin’.” He smiled and closed his eyes. “I need to sleep for a minute. Don’t go far.”

  Squeezing his hand, she reached her foot back and hooked the leg of a chair to draw it forward. “I’ll be right here.”

  With a sigh, he dropped right off to sleep.

  Honor sat and watched him, fussing with the pearls around her neck. Her grandmother’s pearls. Léonie Marceau Babinot had been
a spy, fighting Nazis in the best way a woman of that era could. She’d faced discovery every day, and discovery would have meant torture and death. The least Honor could do was face the dangers of a job thousands of people had.

  But people she cared about kept getting hurt. This man she loved had been hurt.

  Logan was right. Her work was too dangerous.

  Was he right?

  If he was, that meant she truly had nothing. Nothing but him.

  *****

  The November evening was winter-cold, and the sky felt low, like they might get another dusting of snow. Already the teeth of the mountains were white-capped, and the resorts on the other side had their slopes running at full capacity. Emma and Wes had taken their kids to Sun Valley for the weekend—their sense that they could take a break and leave the ranch was maybe the best indication yet that things were getting back to normal on the Twisted C, that Logan was getting strong again and the violence was behind them.

  Or maybe Honor had the best indication in her hand right now.

  Alone on the enormous flagstone terrace that lined two sides of the big house, she shrugged deeper into her coat and stared at her phone, still glowing bright after the call from Detective Thorne.

  She should have felt relief for what he’d told her. It was safe to go back to Boise, to return to the apartment she loved, to try to rebuild her practice, her career. A career she’d worked hard for, a career she was brilliant at, a career she loved.

  But Logan was here, and no matter how many ways he tried to convince her it didn’t matter, the distance between Boise and Jasper Ridge mattered. She worked six and seven days a week, when things were going as they should in her work. He was a hands-on manager of this ranch—and more to the point, he loved it here. Not once ever had he suggested that he could move to Boise. What he said was that she could commute from Jasper Ridge. A hundred miles each way. He’d even, only half joking, suggested that they could look into buying a helicopter.