by Dana Marton
“I think I’m going to fly back to LA early,” she told Chuck. “There isn’t much for me to do here.”
“How early?”
“Tomorrow, if I can get on a flight.”
Hurt flashed across his face. “Rose loves you,” he said after a moment. “We all do.”
“I know.” She filled her lungs and looked away. “It’s still hard being back in this place.”
When she glanced at him, he was nodding, nothing but warmth and kindness in him. “Maybe you’ll come back again, and next time you’ll stay longer.”
She didn’t want to promise. She didn’t even fully understand what had gotten to her this badly, enough so once again she felt the overwhelming urge to run. Maybe the little voice in her head was right, and she was overreacting. But she didn’t seem to be able to stop herself.
In LA, she was a strong and confident woman. Yet by coming back here, she’d lost her footing. She felt as if she’d been smacked right back into the past. She felt as if all her fears and insecurities and pain had hung around Taylorville, preserved, waiting for her return. The urge to flee was just as strong as it had been a decade ago.
“Kaylee will want to see you before you go,” Chuck said.
“I want to see her too. We can hang out for a while before I go into the city.”
Chuck gave her a hug, holding on for an extra second or two, which made Jess’s throat tighten and her eyes go blurry.
“I should get back to the house,” she said when they pulled apart. But when she reached her car, and Chuck had walked off to talk to the workers, Jess didn’t get in. Instead, she found herself walking down the path to the old cabin.
She wasn’t sure what pulled her. A need for closure? And why not? Closure was a good thing, wasn’t it?
If seeing the place would give her some small measure of peace over the past, she would take it. Because she wasn’t sure if she’d ever come back home again. This might be her last chance to feel whatever she needed to feel here.
Surprise was the first emotion when the cabin finally came into view, confusion a close second.
Charred stone walls pointed at the sky. No roof, no door. A long-ago fire had eaten all that had been made of wood.
When did this happen?
She stared. Then a small noise had her whirling around. Her limbs froze. Her heart pounded. Her breath caught in her chest.
He was too close. As if he’d appeared out of nowhere.
No, Jess wanted to say, but her throat wouldn’t work.
Chapter Eight
“JUST ME,” DEREK called to Jess, because he’d caught that flash of fear in her eyes when she’d turned. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you. Didn’t know you’d be here. I saw you earlier with Chuck.”
She watched him with open dismay. She clearly didn’t want to be here with him.
“Did Chuck tell you he’s been made president of the Taylorville Versquatchers?” he asked to lighten the mood. “Just in time. I hear there’s trouble brewing.”
Questions replaced the dismay in her eyes.
“Some are nature preservationists, but quite a few of them are hunters,” he said. “The preservationists accused the hunters of secretly planning to shoot a squatch if they come up on one in the woods.”
A startled sound escaped her. “There are factions in the Taylorville Sasquatch Club?”
He waited for a smile. It didn’t come.
He hated the tension in her shoulders, and the wary expression on her face. She used to have an insta-smile every time she saw him. He’d missed that too much, dammit.
He walked up to her.
The winter woods were silent, save a couple of crows calling back and forth in the distance. Winter sunlight glinted off bare branches. Snow covered the ground, but only an inch or two, a couple of days’ worth of old, hardened rime.
Jess turned back to the decimated cabin. “What happened here?”
The cabin looked like the carcass of a great mythical beast, the fallen and broken beams the beast’s enormous bare ribs. The ruin is a carcass, Derek thought. The carcass of our past.
“Your father set the place on fire.”
Her breath caught as she glanced at him. “When?”
“Maybe a year after you left. I was overseas. Dad told me.”
The stricken look on Jess’s face broke his damn heart. He wanted to take her into his arms more than he’d wanted anything in a long time, but he didn’t. “You shouldn’t be here.” He paused for a second. “It’s incredibly brave, but . . .”
She shook her head in quick, violent jerks. “I’m glad I saw this.” She turned from him and went back to staring at the ruins. “It means he cared.”
He gentled his voice. “Of course he cared.”
“My mother doesn’t,” she said under her breath.
“She does.”
“She blames me. Always did. For being in the woods.” A bitter laugh escaped Jess, but she quickly bit it back. “Yet she doesn’t blame you.”
“I wish she would.”
Jess said nothing.
“Do you?” Derek shifted his weight onto his good leg as he asked the question he’d been wanting to ask for the past decade. “Do you blame me, Jess?”
Her gaze dropped to examine her boots. Her shoulders were stiff. She held herself in rigid control, as if she would fall to pieces if someone touched her.
“I blame myself,” he confessed.
She still remained silent.
No absolution, then.
He didn’t deserve any, in any case. But knowing that didn’t make the ache in his chest feel any better.
He wanted to talk to her about leaving town, but this wasn’t the time. So, instead, he said, “Can I walk you back to your car?”
She still wouldn’t look at him.
“If I can’t, I’m going to follow you at a distance. I hate the idea of you walking through the woods alone.”
“Being with you didn’t make a difference back then, did it?” Her voice was sharp enough to slice into him and make him bleed. She looked up at last.
“I can never tell you how sorry I am about that.”
Again her gaze slid away from his as she passed by him, her long-legged stride quickly eating up the path. He followed after her.
When they were at her car, he said, “Maybe your mom blames you so that she doesn’t have to blame herself. Maybe she can’t live with the thought that you would have been safe if she had only watched you better.”
He didn’t wait for a response. He limped toward the back of the clearing where his own car waited. Guilt was a living, breathing thing. Guilt could tie you tighter than ropes, and he should know. He had extensive experience with both.
He’d been the captive of a madman, along with Jess, for three days that had felt like an eternity. Then, this past year, he’d been a POW in Afghanistan, the prisoner of insurgents, for six torturous months. Yet it had been the three days with Jess that had broken him in ways the insurgents could never accomplish.
Derek stopped by his pickup. He watched Jess get into her little black rental car and begin pulling out.
She stopped when she reached him and rolled down the Honda’s window. “I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“Good.” Exactly what he’d wanted. Except, now he suddenly hated the idea.
She drove away without making eye contact again. The woods looked darker, suddenly, as if she’d taken the sunshine with her. His lungs worked harder, as if she’d taken the air too. She sure as hell had taken his peace of mind once again.
For several seconds, Derek watched the bend in the dirt road where Jess’s car had disappeared. Then he stepped into the pickup’s cab and pulled a plastic bag out of his pocket.
The bag held three small bones he’d found on the riverbank. They weren’t deer or squirrel. Most of the time now he could tell; he’d studied enough pictures on the Internet. He wasn’t sure about these three. These he would show to the vet, an old friend of his,
Jared Sabin.
Derek had already marked the location where he found the bones, and had marked the date too, right on the bag with a permanent marker. Now he opened the glove compartment, retrieved the plastic container he kept in there, and carefully stashed the new little bag with the others. He had about a dozen that needed Jared’s expertise.
What Derek wanted to know was—were any of the bones human?
The possibility had him sitting there, gripping the steering wheel, his mind going back to a little camper deep in the woods that had changed everything both for him and Jess.
Three days of hell. Then, finally, the man had left again. Once again, he promised to be back.
But that time, Derek had escaped his ropes. His wrists were bleeding, skin and flesh hanging. He could see the white glint of bone, but he didn’t care about that or the pain.
“Jess!” He shook her gently. “Wake up, Jess.”
They were in a dilapidated camper. He could see his breath in the air. The propane heater had run out of fuel that morning. Maybe that was why the masked man had left.
Damn the bastard to hell, he’d taken his knife with him.
Jess was one giant bruise, tied to a metal ring in the floor by her foot. Derek’s fingers were too damaged from trying to unknot his own ropes to be able to untie the tight knot that held her. And the camper was bare, stripped, save the old chunk of beige rug tossed on the floor. Nothing to convert into a weapon or a tool.
Jess lay on the rug, covered in dirt and her blood, and other bodily fluids.
“Jess!”
How long before the bastard came back? He might be walking into the clearing right this second.
Frantic, Derek tore at Jess’s rope, ignoring his bleeding fingertips. But the rope didn’t give.
He moved away from Jess and ran his hands over the corners, the walls, around the black-painted windows. There. He ripped off the piece of flashing without hesitation. Thank God. The strip of metal had a jagged edge.
Derek used that edge to saw through Jess’s rope fiber by fiber. He worked for what seemed like hours. He was trying to listen for the bastard, but the blood was rushing too loudly in Derek’s ears, and Jess began moaning.
“It’s me, Jess. It’s just me. I’m getting you out of here.”
Then the rope gave and she was free. Derek kicked the door open. Not on the first try, though. Not even on the second. He was weak. The kidnapper had given them food and water only twice in the past three days. Derek had received more than Jess. Because, the man said, Jess was going to die anyway. Derek, on the other hand, had to live to bear witness.
To hell with that.
Derek half dragged, half carried Jess from the camper, then into the woods. She struggled. She didn’t recognize him. She begged in hoarse, unintelligible moans that broke his heart.
Then she stopped struggling as shivers racked her body.
He was dressed, but she was naked.
He had to set her down in the snow—there was nowhere else. He yanked off his thick wool sweater and pulled it over her head, over her arms. She cried. She didn’t understand that he wasn’t touching her to hurt her.
He picked her up again and carried her.
The man caught up with them by the river, on a steep bank, as Derek tried to find a way to cross. Derek had to set Jess down again. She was more with it now. Saw the man. The sheer terror in her eyes was unbearable.
Derek knew that he would either kill the man right now, right here, or die trying.
For once, the man didn’t have his rifle, but he did have his knife in hand. They circled, just a dozen feet from where Jess sobbed and keened. Then Derek did a rugby tackle with the last of his strength.
The man went over, into the river. Derek didn’t, catching himself on the bank. He watched the bastard’s waterlogged coat and boots pull him under. Derek hauled himself up, out of the water, then just lay there in the snow and watched and watched in the twilight, but the man never surfaced.
He’d never been found either.
Presumed drowned.
Dead.
Chapter Nine
Saturday
JESS SAT ON the low kitchen roof with Pam under the night sky, freezing her butt off even bundled in her red flannel comforter, two six-packs of strawberry wine coolers between them. “Who even drinks wine coolers anymore?”
Pam grinned, wrapped in a crochet blanket. “For old time’s sake.” Then she said, “OK, between friends. Since you live in Hollywood and all. Have you ever slept with anyone famous? I swear to God, I’m not going to tell the tabloids, not even for a million dollars.”
Jess rolled her eyes.
“Chris Hemsworth?” Pam’s tone held a ridiculous amount of hope and eagerness. Then, when Jess didn’t respond, Pam asked, “Jamie Dornan?”
“You do know that Chris is married with three children, right? Jamie is married too. He has two little girls.”
Pam wrinkled her nose. “Buzzkiller.” Then her eyes lit up again. “Ryan Reynolds? Maybe in between marriages?”
“No.”
Pam sighed. “You’re such a disappointment.”
“Welcome to the club,” Jess muttered, and the next second, Pam was leaping over the wine coolers to hug her.
“I didn’t mean that. I didn’t. I swear.”
Then they almost slipped off the roof, so they settled back down.
Jess groaned. “Could have broken something and ended up next to my mother.”
Pam quirked an eyebrow. “Why did you think I brought the wine coolers? You fall off, full body cast, you’ll have to stay. We couldn’t go gallivanting, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make. I’ll sit by your hospital bed, and we’ll chat. Given a day or two, I’m pretty sure I could make you confess to a celebrity affair.”
“I meant you could have fallen and broken something. Not me.” And at Pam’s questioning look, Jess added, “I know how to fall.”
Then, on a crazy impulse, she threw herself off the roof, because she’d wanted to throw herself off a roof since she’d gotten here.
She could have landed on her feet like a cat, but because it was more impressive, she hit the ground in a body roll. She ended in a crouch, one hand braced on the ground, and grinned up at Pam, who had a hand pressed to her chest.
“You are so totally nuts.” The horror on Pam’s face slowly morphed into laughter. “I don’t know if we can be friends again. I’m always the crazy one in every relationship. I wouldn’t know how to act any other way.”
Jess sprang to her feet, stepped up on the porch railing, pulled herself up to the roof with only minimal effort, and plopped down on the same spot where she’d been sitting earlier. She wrapped herself into the comforter once again.
“So that’s what you do?” Pam looked gratifyingly impressed. “And I do other people’s taxes.” Her lips puckered as if she’d tasted something sour. “That’s hardly fair, especially when you count in that you also get to sleep with celebrities.” She tilted her head. “Right? Because you can tell me. I’m your best friend.”
An eyeroll accompanied Jess’s grin.
“Fine,” Pam huffed. “Let’s leave the celebrity mistress thing for after we’ve finished the wine coolers.”
She drank from her bottle, then put it between her knees. “So you want to talk about your new boyfriend first, or running into Derek?”
“Neither.”
“I’d like to remind you that you stayed away for ten years and completely ignored your best friend, so you’re already on thin ice here.” She flashed Jess a look that she probably otherwise reserved for clients who cheated on their taxes. It said, I’m very disappointed and Don’t ever do that again. “By the way, Derek is single. No wife, no girlfriend. See? This is what friends do. They volunteer information. I didn’t even make you pump me for that.”
Jess took a sip from her bottle. “I’m messed up on Derek. I can’t separate him from what happened.”
Sounded stupid now that sh
e’d said it.
Pam didn’t point that out. Instead, she watched Jess for a couple of seconds, then nodded, kind of like, All right, let’s work with what we have. “That’s a shame. Because he’s a great guy. He’s a local celebrity now. Everybody reads his thrillers.”
“I’ve seen his books, but I can’t make myself pick one up. I don’t want to do anything that brings back any memories.”
“And Derek brings back memories.” Again, Pam paused to think that over. “He can’t help that,” she said when she finished. “But neither can you help how he makes you feel.”
“I just want to avoid him as much as possible.”
“You’re leaving tomorrow, so that won’t be too hard.” She groaned. “Have I mentioned yet how much I hate the idea of you leaving tomorrow?”
“Only a hundred times or so.”
Jess had told her about the change of plans as they’d been climbing out onto the roof.
Pam tapped her toes on a cedar shingle as she carefully considered her next words, but then finally she came out with them. “Do you blame Derek? I mean, for what happened back then.”
Jess dropped her forehead on her pulled-up knees and stayed like that for several seconds before looking up again. “I kind of used to. And I know it’s stupid.”
Pam didn’t say anything. She gave Jess supportive silence, and the soft sympathy in her eyes, which was exactly what Jess needed.
“I know we were both victims.” Jess rubbed her thumbs over her knees. “But he didn’t suffer like I suffered. He was just the audience.”
“He got you out of there.” Nothing but kindness in Pam’s tone.
“I know. He saved my life. But then sometimes I think, why couldn’t he have escaped his ropes sooner? And I know that’s stupid too. I do.” Jess gave a self-loathing groan. “It’s some mental hang-up, but I can’t shake it off.”
“Nothing you feel is stupid.” Pam’s tone turned fierce. “After what happened to you, you’re entitled to feel whatever you damn well want to feel.”
Jess smiled her appreciation for the unwavering, unquestioning support. She wrapped herself in Pam’s friendship. She was going to miss Pam.
The first time she’d left, she’d run from something terrible and had cut off all thoughts of home, so she hadn’t been homesick. But this time . . . this time, leaving was going to hurt.
