Rocky Road

by Josi S. Kilpack

  Lori began to sob, and even though Sadie couldn’t see her, she imagined Lori sitting on the ground, arms pulling her knees to her chest as she rocked back and forth. “She told me everything, and she loved every second of it. Then she just shrugged and said, ‘Not that it matters anymore.’ She turned her back on me like none of it was even worth feeling sorry about. I looked at the house you’d traded us in for, the life you’d started after leaving me and the kids behind, and I ran after her. She bolted for the front door, and that’s when ... ”

  “When what?” Dr. Hendricks asked, urgency in his voice. “What happened?”

  “She looked back at me, and she must have tripped,” Lori said, her voice softer now so that Sadie had to lean around the rock slightly in order to hear her. “She fell and hit her head on this metal table. I ... I didn’t know what ... It wasn’t my fault.” There was fear in her voice.

  “What happened after she hit her head, Lori? This is important. What happened?”

  “She started shaking, like she was having convulsions, and then she just stopped.”

  “How long did it take for her to stop shaking?”

  Sadie was surprised by the analytical question, but then again, he was a doctor.

  “I don’t know. Not very long.”

  Dr. Hendricks’s voice was tender when he spoke again. “It wasn’t your fault. She hit her head and died instantly. Probably didn’t feel a thing.”

  “But if I hadn’t been chasing her, then—”

  “She’d treated you like garbage, and she treated me like garbage, and she made a mess out of my life that is going to take a really long time to put back together. It is not your fault she’s dead—in fact, I should be thanking you.”

  Sadie frowned—she didn’t like that sentiment one bit. As horrible a person as she may have been, Anita Hendricks’s death should not be viewed as a blessing. But maybe Dr. Hendricks was trying to pacify Lori or talk her down from the emotional ledge she was poised on.

  “Now put down the gun so we can really talk about this.”

  Gun?

  Chapter 38

  A firearm changed everything—Lori had come up here armed?

  Lori’s voice was shaking. “You can’t come back, Trent. It would have been easier for everyone if you’d just died out here. We’ve all mourned you already, and if you come back, you’ll just bring chaos with you.” There was a finality in her tone, a kind of acceptance of what she saw as the only option.

  Holy cow! Sadie felt the outline of the Taser in her pocket. Could she really use it? On Lori? She hated to even think about it, but she carefully slid the device out of her pocket. She turned it on and was startled at the slight vibration it now made in her hand.

  Needing a better view of what was happening on the other side of the rock, Sadie crouched down and moved slowly toward the edge, her back against the rock as she moved quietly and held the Taser as far away from herself as she could—she could only imagine what would happen if she accidentally tased herself right now. When she was still hidden, but close enough to get a view, she turned around and peered into the campsite. Another rock blocked her view of Dr. Hendricks, but she could see Lori standing on one side of the table rock, with her back to Sadie. Her hair looked unnaturally bright in the light of the campfire, and her feet were planted with her arms out straight, her hands holding a small handgun that was pointed directly at Dr. Hendricks.

  “Lori,” Dr. Hendricks pleaded.

  “Just stop it. I can’t see my kids hurt by this anymore. They think you’re dead, and if they find out you left them all this time, it will mess them up even more.”

  “You’re not doing this for the kids,” Dr. Hendricks accused. “You’re doing this because you’re angry, and unlike what happened with Anita, this will be a cold-blooded murder. You can’t live with that.”

  “I can’t live with you in our lives again! I can’t see you and talk to you and pretend I don’t hate everything about you, everything you’ve done. I can’t do that for one more day, especially now that I know who you really are. Now that I know the lies you’ve told me. What else have you lied to me about, Trent? What’s real and what isn’t?”

  Her voice was getting louder, and her emotion was changing quickly to anger, pure and simple. Sadie was running out of time to intercede. She could feel Lori’s rage building in the air, as thick as the smoke coming from the fire.

  “I’m not here to kill you. I’m here to make sure you never come back. You already left, so make it stick. Don’t come back.”

  Sadie was somewhat relieved, but not completely. There was still a gun pointed at Dr. Hendricks. Lori was still emotionally compromised, and she’d still been at Anita’s house the night before. Maybe it was an accident like she said, but maybe it wasn’t.

  “Lori, I have to come back. I have to make things right with the foundation and everything Anita’s done. I know you’re upset, but—”

  “You’re not listening to me!” Lori shouted. “You can’t ever make this right with the kids, and that’s all I care about. Get out of here! Go away and don’t come back!”

  The time to act had come. Sadie stood up, her leg muscles screaming from the prolonged crouch. She took a breath and moved out from behind the rock. Lori’s back was to her, but Dr. Hendricks quickly glanced at her. His beard hid any change in his expression, and his gaze quickly flicked back to Lori. “Uh, where are the kids, Lori?”

  Sadie knew he was trying to distract her from Sadie’s approach, and she applauded his quick thinking. When Lori answered, Sadie took a step, hoping Lori’s words would cover any sound Sadie might make. “They’re with your parents—who also think you’re dead. Did you ever think about what that felt like for all of us? And what it feels like now to know that you chose to stay away? You chose to make us all feel awful.”

  “I told you, Anita had been stealing all this—”

  “I don’t care what Anita did! I care what you did!”

  Sadie took another step.

  “People know I’m here. Even if I did disappear again, someone would find me. The kids would know, and then they’d learn that you’re the reason I had to stay away. You can’t do that to the kids!”

  “As if you care about the kids!” Sadie took another step, keeping to the shadows. But the closer she got to Lori, the fewer shadows there were to hide in. She still held the Taser out in front of her, but to use it she’d have to get close to Lori, and she wasn’t sure she could do that without being detected. If she could get within four or five feet, she could do a roundhouse and kick Lori’s legs out from under her. Dr. Hendricks would be on his own in getting out of the way should the gun go off, but if Sadie could make a surprise attack, there was a good chance any shot Lori pulled off would go awry. Once Lori was down, Sadie and Dr. Hendricks could hold her until the police showed up. She could use the Taser if she had to, but she hoped she’d be able to avoid it. “You’ve let them believe you were dead for two months, Trent.” Sadie took another step.

  Sadie was about ten feet behind Lori now. She remained crouched over, trying to keep out of Lori’s peripheral vision. Her quads were burning like the St. George summer sun. “We’ve been mourning and going over regrets and holding you up on this pedestal, and all this time you were here. Letting us believe those things.”

  “I was suicidal when I left, Lori. I was going to kill myself, and then I couldn’t bring myself to do it—because of you and the kids.”

  Sadie took another step, but this time Lori heard her and turned around. Sadie squatted to the ground, dropped the Taser, and placed her hands in the dirt. She swung her leg forward and brought it back to her body in a long, consistent arc. Her foot caught Lori right where she planned, between her ankle and her calf. Lori screamed before falling to the dirt with a thud.

  Sadie expected Dr. Hendricks to jump forward and restrain Lori. Instead, he shot past them, heading for the trail. Sadie looked in his direction and then back toward a disoriented Lori, who was tr
ying to get to her feet. The gun was a few feet away from her, and Sadie lunged for it at the same time Lori did. They reached it simultaneously, and Lori screamed again, elbowing Sadie hard in the chest as she tried to get Sadie’s hand off the barrel. Sadie twisted the gun in an attempt to wrench it out of Lori’s hand, but Lori was stronger and her stakes were higher. She hit Sadie again, but this time Sadie lifted her elbow quick enough to snap Lori in the jaw. She kneed Lori in the side and finally got her feet underneath her and wrenched the gun away at an angle she knew would make Lori let go. Lori screamed again and then looked up at Sadie with a stunned expression. Sadie could barely catch her breath as she stumbled away from Lori, who remained on the ground.

  “Why are you helping him?” Lori rolled to her side and grabbed a rock to help her stand. Sadie kept her eyes trained on Lori’s face as the rage drained from it, leaving an exhausted single mother of two, who was emotionally broken and mentally used up by everything that had happened in the last few days. Part of Sadie wanted to reassure Lori that everything would be okay and sympathize with the pain she was facing, but another part told her to run. When this was over, perhaps she would have a chance to explain herself and tell Lori that she understood why Lori felt the way she did, why her vision was skewed and her heart was aching so much she couldn’t see straight.

  But Sadie couldn’t say those things right now. Lori wouldn’t hear them. Sadie couldn’t help her. She glanced at the Taser on the ground about five feet from Lori, but didn’t dare go for it because it would take her closer to Lori and she wasn’t sure she could wrestle her a second time.

  “I’m so sorry,” Sadie said as she took another step backward, holding the gun by the barrel in order to avoid touching the trigger. “You don’t deserve everything that’s happened to you, but I can’t fix it.” She then turned and did exactly what her instincts told her to—run as fast as she could.

  She was halfway down the hill when the sound of loud voices brought her up short. A bright light shined in her face, blinding her. She put a hand up to shield her eyes, and she finally understood the words that were being shouted at her.

  “Drop the weapon! Drop it now, or I’ll shoot!”

  Chapter 39

  The hours between the moment Sadie found herself lying face down in the dirt and when she was told she could return to the hotel felt like days. Upon reaching her hotel in St. George, Sadie went into the bathroom and stripped off her clothes. She stepped under the water that she hoped would wash away all the ugliness of the last few hours. She winced at the sting of the water on the minor cuts on her hands and face and the head injury that hadn’t yet healed.

  Her brain was still reeling from the events of the evening, like a snow globe that was no longer being shaken but whose pieces of “snow” had not quite settled, either. She’d been able to speak with Officer Nielson on the phone. He’d been very gracious, and he regretted that things had become so intense. He said he’d had no idea when he asked for her help that he was asking for so much. She wondered if he’d really read her profile at all. For her part, Sadie would have been surprised if it hadn’t ended this way.

  The warm water relaxed her so much that it wasn’t until Caro knocked on the hotel room door asking if she were all right that Sadie reoriented herself to where she was and finished her shower.

  “You don’t need to hover,” Sadie said a few minutes later as Caro stood just behind her watching her comb her hair.

  “You’re sure you’re okay?”

  Sadie met Caro’s eyes in the mirror and smiled. “I’m sure.”

  “I should have gone with you,” Caro said. Was that the reason for her pained expression?

  “If you hadn’t called Officer Nielson, he’d have never been able to get the Rangers up there so quickly,” Sadie assured her. “I don’t know how I’d have gotten off that mountain if you hadn’t done your part.” By the time Sadie had arrived at the cabin clearing with her hands in cuffs behind her back and her mouth full of dirt, there were two SUVs and a truck there, Dr. Hendricks was being questioned, and Officer Nielson was on the phone with the ranger who was heading up the operation. It had wrapped up so quickly—that must be why she still felt unsettled.

  “Do you mind if we pray before we go to bed?” Caro asked as Sadie pulled down the covers on her bed. “I prayed you’d be okay when I headed back to town, and then when I called Officer Nielson I prayed like crazy that he would know what to do. It seems like we should offer thanks for those prayers being answered.”

  “Absolutely,” Sadie said. “Thanks are definitely in order.” She also hoped that a prayer might help settle her thoughts.

  They knelt beside their beds, and Caro offered a sweet prayer of gratitude. Sadie had never heard her pray like this, and she was struck by the humility of it. “ ... and help us to know of anything else yet undone and feel thy holy comfort and grace as we sleep this night. Amen.”

  They got into their beds, but Sadie kept thinking about the end of Caro’s prayer. “Caro,” she said after a full minute had passed.

  Sadie could hear Caro sit up in the darkness. “Do you need something?”

  “Why did you ask in your prayer for us to know of anything else that is still undone?”

  Caro was quiet for a few seconds. “I’m sure it’s just that I haven’t dealt with this as often as you have.”

  “Something feels undone to you?”

  “More like I just ... feel unsettled. It’s normal to feel this way, though, right? I mean when something so awful happens, something so unlike anything a person is used to, it’s perfectly understandable that it would weigh on a person’s mind, right?”

  “Right,” Sadie said, but she couldn’t help but wonder if the unsettled feeling that Caro had was similar to her own unsettled feeling. What if what they were feeling weren’t simply a result of the high emotions of the situation? What if it were more?

  Though she was emotionally and physically exhausted, Sadie stared at the ceiling and tried to follow the threads of her thoughts and feelings to discover what, exactly, was causing such uneasiness.

  “He ran right past me,” she said out loud after what must have been several minutes. Caro’s soft breathing had already given away the fact that she’d fallen asleep, so Sadie didn’t expect an answer. She thought back to that moment when she disarmed Lori. Sadie was on the ground, and she fully expected Dr. Hendricks to help her hold Lori down—but instead he ran past her, leaving her there to fight for her own life after she’d just saved his.

  Was that all? she asked her heart. She followed the feeling like a thread once again, and this time it took her to Jacob Waters. When she’d spoken to him at the office, he’d said he was talking to Anita at the church because he’d received the tax reports. Reports that Dr. Hendricks had received in previous years. Yet Dr. Hendricks had said he wasn’t a business man, that doctors weren’t known for their business sense. Why would the tax reports come to him if he didn’t review them? Were they one more thing he simply signed without reading? He said that Anita took care of everything for the foundation—everything—so why would the tax documents come to him?

  Sadie felt her heart rate increasing while she lay on the bed staring at the ceiling. Both trains of thought—Dr. Hendricks running past her in the mountains and Dr. Waters seeing mistakes that Dr. Hendricks apparently had not seen—fused together in Sadie’s mind into a conclusion she didn’t know exactly what to do with. Without Anita here to defend herself, would anyone consider any version of the story other than the version Dr. Hendricks told?

  Chapter 40

  The lights in the lobby of the Pine Valley Motel were some of the only lights on in the tiny town at three a.m. Sadie had chugged not one but two Mountain Dews and was in serious need of a restroom.

  “I hope they leave the door unlocked,” Caro said. She’d opted for coffee over soda, but she hadn’t given Sadie a lecture on her choice of caffeine, which Sadie appreciated.

  “Me, too,” Sadie said
. There were no other restrooms open, and she hadn’t ever liked the idea of using shrubs and bushes. Sadie pulled up to the front the motel, and they let themselves out of the car. They hadn’t passed any other traffic since a few miles before the Pine Valley turnoff—the entire town seemed to be asleep. Sadie pulled on the front door and let out a breath of relief when it opened. She was only seconds away from embarrassing herself as she hurried toward the lobby restroom. When she returned to the lobby a minute later, she noticed that the night clerk wasn’t at the desk. There was a sign on the counter that asked guests to ring a bell for service. The clerk must sleep at night. Sadie didn’t ring the bell.

  Caro was already sitting at the computer. “I found the history folder,” Caro said, clicking the mouse. “And we should be able to look at daily histories ... Yep, here they are. I’ll open that first Wednesday.”

  Sadie leaned forward and forgot to breathe as she looked over the links listed under the first Wednesday following Dr. Hendricks’s disappearance.

  www.grandcaymanrentals.com

  www.caymannationalbank.login/com

  www.hotmail.com

  “Grand Cayman?” Caro read, sounding confused. “Maybe someone else was using this computer before he got on here.”

  “Maybe not,” Sadie said. Her thoughts were swirling. “Isn’t Grand Cayman one of the hotbeds for private banking and offshore trusts?”

  “I don’t know,” Caro said, clicking on the link to Cayman National Bank. It took them to the login page.

  “Click on that rental link,” Sadie said, feeling increasingly anxious. That link took them to a rental house in Grand Cayman—a beautiful beach bungalow. What did that mean?

  As they went through the entries for every Wednesday since Dr. Hendricks’s disappearance, finding a pattern was easy. Every single week, he accessed the Grand Cayman banking site, as well as other sites focused on things such as moving money, hiding assets, processes for federal investigations of fraud, and precedent cases of nonprofit owners facing persecution. He had accessed Facebook, too, and the website for the local paper, and two weeks before, he’d gone to delta.com. Sadie was sure he’d accessed that because the URL was listed among numerous articles about moving money. Other websites were accessed, likely from guests at the motel, but the ones listed between 8:00 and 10:00 a.m. every Wednesday were similar to each other. The more she read, the heavier it all felt. Dr. Hendricks hadn’t been sitting at a campsite recovering from depression. Something else was going on here.