25 Years

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  It was something Tina knew from the bottom of her heart. If Jolene didn’t survive this, Tina wasn’t going to survive, either. They were best friends, not meant to live in this world one without the other.

  That knowledge had been present the day they’d first met. It had been the glue that kept them together through the separation years in their teens and brought them back together for college. It had been the strength that had seen her through Thad and Thad Jr.’s deaths.

  It wasn’t debatable.

  TOM HUNTER DIDN’T LIKE unanswered questions. He didn’t like disappearances without explanations. And he didn’t like hearing Tina Randolph cry. Tears didn’t usually bother him. He’d heard enough of them during his marriage to make him pretty much immune.

  He got quite a few of them on the job, too. From teenagers who’d been caught speeding, doing drugs, being out after curfew, teenagers who knew there was going to be hell to pay. And from the families of accident victims.

  But nothing compared to the wrenching of his gut as he held one very strong woman in his arms and heard her let go of an anguish that was too big for her to bear.

  Because he didn’t know what else to do, didn’t feel there was any other choice, he held her close. Something about his life was changing in that instant. Something he didn’t particularly want to have changed. Still, he was as powerless to stop this event as he was to find Tina’s best friend. He was missing something but had no idea what.

  He stroked her short, honey hair. Rubbed his hand lightly over the sweatshirt covering her back. He bore all her weight. And thought over the meager clues he had to help her.

  Two small plastic bags. One he’d turned in to the lab late last night with a tiny unidentifiable piece of plastic. And the other one was in his pocket. He swore silently. How the hell did a man pull a miracle out of a tiny unidentifiable piece of plastic and a—

  “It’s ironic, you know,” Tina said, her voice muted against his chest. “Jo and I have been acting like scaredy-cats the whole time we’ve been up here, getting spooked by things that never bothered us before. We were berating ourselves for being scared and letting it interfere with our lives—and then this happens.”

  Tom’s cop instincts were screaming. But he couldn’t turn down the noise enough to know what they were telling him.

  “What kind of things spooked you?” he asked Tina, all the while searching his mind for the clue he felt was there.

  She talked about squirrels, Steve’s knock on the door… “And the other day, when we got back from the hills, there’d been someone at the cabin. Jo noticed that a towel had been moved from the pump outside the back door. It didn’t take us long to get over that one, though,” she said. “Jolene figured out Steve had been there and—”

  “Wait!” He pushed Tina away so abruptly he barely had time to catch her shoulders before she fell.

  “What?”

  “You heard rustling in the leaves, sounds that didn’t blend in like the rustling you’ve been hearing all your lives….”

  “We decided we’re just wimps now,” Tina explained, her head against him. “We’ve grown up and discovered that we’re not invincible,” she was saying.

  “And someone was at the cabin….”

  “Yes. Steve.”

  “He told me this morning that he hadn’t been to the cabin since the afternoon you two came in from the hills and found him waiting there.”

  “Tom?” She stared up at him, her fingers clawing into his back. “You think someone’s got her?”

  And just like that, it all fell into place. “O’Reilly!” Tom blurted. “He could’ve been up in the hills, watching you.”

  “But we just talked to him. You were even in his house….”

  Adrenaline flowed through Tom. “What you said, about the pump…”

  “What?”

  “O’Reilly’s a stickler for order. Everything in its place. There wasn’t so much as a dish out of order. The washrag was hanging neatly on the pump by the sink, perfectly folded. I asked if I could wash my hands, and he was meticulous about refolding it when I was through.”

  “I’m not sure I’m following you,” Tina said, her voice uneven.

  “Like I said, I know he’s obsessive about order, down to the smallest thing, like his washrag. But I realize now that something was off.”

  “What?”

  “There’s a well beside O’Reilly’s cabin—it serves his pump. Its cover is made of sawed-off two-by-fours covered with roofing shingle, and it sits snugly in a four-by-six cement hole in the ground.”

  “And?” Tina asked. Her eyes, rimmed by lashes still wet from her tears, were studying him intently.

  “It was askew today. I’ve been visiting Benton O’Reilly since I took office three years ago. I’ve never seen that cover anything but snug.”

  Taking another step back, Tina frowned, her eyes dark with concentration. “So there’s something about his well. I’m not following you.”

  Tom’s mind was racing. If it was tissue in his pocket, if Jolene Chambers had been this close to O’Reilly’s place, he had to get back there. There was no way anyone would get this close without the old man’s knowing about it. Which would mean he’d lied….

  He had to call for backup.

  “There’s a six-by-six-foot cement crawl space between the cover and the well itself,” he told Tina.

  “Six by six…” Tina’s shoulders straightened. “Big enough for a person…”

  Or a body.

  Pulling the radio out of his pocket, Tom issued a string of orders.

  “I KNEW YOU’D be back, Sheriff.”

  Benton O’Reilly sat on the front porch of his log cabin, protected by the mountain into which his home was built and by a series of log supports between him and anyone who could be out there in the woods, pointing a gun in his direction. He was rocking in a double-size chair he’d carved himself. Across his lap lay a rifle that Tom would bet was loaded and cocked. He’d underestimated the old man.

  The well cover had been moved again. It was securely in place.

  Tom stopped half a dozen yards away, a signal to those behind him to spread out through the woods around the cabin. Steve Chambers, several of his deputies and Tina Randolph were out there, unseen. With his eye on that rifle, he kicked himself for allowing Tina to come up the hill with them. Not that she’d have stayed behind, no matter what he said.

  Keep back like I told you, he willed, mentally measuring the distance between O’Reilly and the well.

  “I’m going to have to kill you now,” O’Reilly said without emotion. “And I’m sorry about that because I like you, Sheriff.”

  “I like you, too, O’Reilly.”

  The old man nodded, one hand on the barrel of his rifle, the other on the trigger. “I know.”

  There wasn’t any stress to calm, anger to pacify or panic to assuage—no obvious way to disarm the situation. O’Reilly lived in his own world, under his own law, and Tom had entered that world.

  He could let the old man take him. His men would get to the well, save Jolene Chambers. Or her body.

  “You have the woman.” O’Reilly didn’t seem averse to conversation—more time for Tom’s men to get into position.

  “I saved her from a misery worse than death.”

  He’d killed her. God, please don’t let Tina be in hearing range.

  Tom caught a glimpse of beige moving up the mountain over the roof of the cabin. “Why?”

  “She’s my angel,” O’Reilly said as though stating the obvious. “For twenty-five years she’s been showering these hills with her angel dust.”

  Tom slowed his breath, focusing on his subject. Benton O’Reilly was far more deranged than he’d supposed. Was there a way to work that in his favor? Could he get everyone out of there without any more bloodshed?

  “You’ve been watching her for twenty-five years?” he asked.

  “About that,” O’Reilly said, a distant smile on his face as he slowly
rocked.

  “But you never spoke to her.”

  “Didn’t need to. She and her friend spread their joy all by themselves.”

  “So what changed?”

  “She lost her joy.” The rocker stopped abruptly. “Your world is a doomed place, Sheriff. The pollutants, the population, the noise—it’s bringing the earth closer and closer to hell and destruction. Eventually it sucks all beauty out of everyone who lives in it.”

  The man stood, his mountain home at his back, positioning himself carefully beside a log support column. Slowly, raising his rifle deliberately, he aimed it straight at Tom’s chest. A quick vision of his ex-wife came to mind. She’d feared this moment during their entire marriage. At least she was free of him now and would be spared.

  “You won’t get away with this,” he said, though not for any reason other than that he was still alive and could say it. His men were in place. They’d get to the well—or to O’Reilly.

  He’d been prepared to die since signing on with the sheriff’s department at eighteen, but he hadn’t expected it to happen.

  “A hundred people know where I am. They’ll come for you.”

  O’Reilly scowled. “They won’t find me.” He sounded certain of that.

  Tom took a step forward. “Are you willing to take that chance?” he asked. “If you shoot me, and they do find you, you’ll be in prison for the rest of your life. You can’t do that to yourself, Benton. Being locked up would be a hell worse than death for you. Nothing is worth that.”

  The man tightened his grip on the rifle. “They won’t find me,” he repeated.

  Tom took another step forward. “Give it up, Benton. I’m going to get the woman, one way or the other.”

  “Won’t do you no good.”

  She was dead then.

  Tom stood still, his mind whirling. Was he willing to die to recover a body?

  O’Reilly could be bluffing. What if the woman in that well was alive?

  Even if she wasn’t, he couldn’t walk away and let a murderer go free.

  He moved forward again. One more step. Holding his breath against the possibility of a loud crack in his ears, searing pain in his chest. Better him than Steve Chambers, who was on the periphery of the woods, waiting.

  “Let’s make a deal,” he said, having completed the step and finding himself still alive. “I can ensure that you’re taken care of.”

  “No deals.”

  “What then, Benton? What can I do to save my life?”

  The man didn’t want to kill him or he’d already have done so. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t.

  “That’s the damnable thing, Sheriff,” he said, the rifle moving slightly as if to punctuate his words. “There’s nothing. I’m going to shoot you. And anyone else who gets close to this cabin. No one can get behind me. I don’t care if there are ten or a hundred of ’em, I’ll take them down, one by one.”

  “What if they storm the porch?” Tom asked, lifting his right foot only enough to push it slightly forward.

  “They’ll blow up.”

  Tom froze. Glancing down, he noticed the small ridge in the sand surrounding the porch. It hadn’t been there two hours before. The old man had his place wired.

  I’ll be damned.

  Tina Randolph was out there in the woods. Her short blond hair would be lifted by the slight breeze. Her sweatshirt would be bundled beneath her ribs where she had her arms wrapped around herself. He would’ve liked to ask her out.

  “You’ll blow up your mountain.”

  Another step closer, longer, faster, staring at the barrel of the rifle. It jerked and Tom’s heart skipped. But there was no blast. No burning in his flesh. Not yet.

  Only a couple of yards away now, he started breathing again.

  “Nope. Individual detonators, like land mines. They’re set to blow to the south.”

  His direction.

  O’Reilly bent down to the scope. And the tip of the rifle pushed outward, just over to Tom’s side of the lethal ridge in the dirt.

  Without thought, he crouched, darted, grabbed for the barrel. A woman screamed. He heard the deafening crack of a fired bullet. A sharp push against his arm. Another shot.

  Benton O’Reilly fell to the ground.

  And Tom was still standing.

  CHAPTER TEN

  TINA HADN’T MEANT to scream. Hadn’t realized the inhuman sound came from her until it was all over and her throat was burning and raw. Seeing the blood staining the upper sleeve of Tom’s beige work shirt, she ran forward from the edge of the clearing just as Benton O’Reilly fell to the ground. He’d been shot by a deputy who’d come into the clearing right behind Tom during the single second Tina’s scream had distracted O’Reilly’s attention from killing Tom Hunter.

  The plan had been in place all along. Hunter was going to sacrifice himself to allow a second man behind him—in the one corner of the yard they’d have the shot at O’Reilly—to take out the old man. In the end, Tina couldn’t stand to see it happen.

  “The well!” Tom hollered, as Tina reached the yard. She turned and ran with the rest to the six-by-six-foot lid. Steve ran up beside her, sliding an arm around her waist as they watched a deputy lift the lid.

  “I see something!” The deputy’s voice was lost as he disappeared into the hole, with Tom right behind him.

  Steve was shaking. Tears streaming down her face, Tina held onto him, willing them both to remain standing no matter what they saw.

  “She’s alive!” The shout came up from the darkened hole long minutes later.

  Tina was seeing stars as she felt Steve falter beside her and stumbled, too. “She’s going to be okay,” she said through the darkness. She regained her balance and her eyes once again focused on the hole at their feet.

  There’d been no sound from Jolene yet.

  “She’s alive,” Steve said with strength in spite of the shakiness of his voice. “Anything else we can deal with.”

  He was right. And still, as they heard the murmuring from below, watched as the law officials’ shirts moved in and out of view, Steve’s words conjured up horrible pictures in Tina’s mind.

  Would she be naked? Bleeding? Bones twisted and broken? Raped?

  Would her spirit be able to recover?

  Please let her be okay, Tina prayed. They’d get her through this. No matter what he’d done to her.

  “We’re bringing her up.” Tina couldn’t tell a thing from Tom’s voice. She knelt with Steve, ready to help pull Jolene up from her grave.

  The tennis shoes appeared first, still on her feet. Tina grabbed one while Steve took the other. A deputy slid his arms around the jeans that appeared next, taking hold of Jolene’s calf. She wasn’t moving.

  Her thighs were lifted up. Steve was there, beneath her hips, supporting his wife’s weight gently as they raised her upper body in the sweatshirt she’d been wearing yesterday, through the hole. Tina began to cry again at the first glimpse of Jolene’s beautiful long hair, now dirty and mussed.

  And then they saw her face. Smudged. Pale. But unbruised. Her eyes fluttered open briefly. She blinked, squinted at Steve, at Tina, before her lids drifted slowly shut.

  “I knew you’d come.” Her whisper was hoarse.

  But it was Jolene.

  She’d come back to them.

  AN HOUR AND A HALF after they’d pulled her up from the ground, Jolene started to feel like herself again. An emergency medical team had checked her over—blood pressure normal, heart rate strong, pupils dilating properly. No signs of dehydration.

  “He didn’t hurt me,” she told the female officer across the table from her. She’d insisted she was well enough to go straight to the police station, compelled to get this over with so she could go home.

  Home.

  The cabin. Boulder. Roanoke. It didn’t matter. Steve mattered. And Tina. She’d had a lot of time to ponder life during her time with O’Reilly. Two days, they’d told her. It felt like seven.

  “Y
our arms are bruised,” the woman said, pen poised over her report.

  So were her legs and ankles, but no one had seen those yet.

  “I’d just finished, uh, filling the cup and I was fastening the button on my jeans when he grabbed me, covering my mouth.” She took a moment to catch her breath. “I fought him, but he dragged me over the next hill. He tied me up. Carried me up the mountain and lowered me into the well. For the next two days, he just kept coming down there, sitting on a little stool, staring at me.”

  She couldn’t help the shudder that passed through her. Steve’s warm hand on her back moved, rubbing gently. Tina squeezed her hand. Her friend had been holding it since they first sat down. Jolene didn’t ever want her to let go. That time alone in the hole, mostly in complete darkness, unable to differentiate between night and day, she’d known she had to survive. She and Tina were a pair. That wasn’t how it was supposed to end. Not until they were both old and gray. Not until they’d supported each other through every stage of life.

  “He fed you regularly?” the officer asked. Jolene had already told her story; the woman was just going over the report, verifying facts, though with O’Reilly dead, Jolene didn’t know what difference any of this made.

  “I lost track of time pretty early on.” Jolene repeated what she’d told Tom Hunter earlier, before the sheriff had disappeared to have the wound on his upper arm tended to.

  She hoped he came back. She hadn’t had a chance to thank him yet.

  “I just know I never went hungry. But if I never see another peanut butter and jelly sandwich in my life, it’ll be too soon.”

  He’d given her water, too. Lukewarm. He’d held the glass rather than untying her. He wasn’t good at it. Kept tipping it too fast. The water had dripped off her chin and down to her chest, dampening her sweatshirt every time.

  He’d had her pee in a pot. He’d pulled down her pants, waited for her to finish and then pulled them back up. Panic rose to the surface again at the thought and she concentrated on Steve’s touch, Tina’s hand. She was safe. Honored. Respected.

  O’Reilly was dead. Tina had seen him on the ground. That was enough. It was over.