by Brenda Novak
CHudson1973: Both.
He appeared as invested in what was happening between them as she was. But could it be true? He’d be in Dundee for a while. Might as well make himself comfortable. He’d said that himself. So was it a matter of making do, of passing the time?
Luvs Chocolat: I won’t be so busy once I hire someone to work evenings.
CHudson1973: The sooner the better.
Luvs Chocolat: Carter…
CHudson1973: What?
Luvs Chocolat: I don’t think we should become too involved.
CHudson1973: We’re already involved.
No kidding. Liz sighed as she stared at the screen. She’d never been swept away in a whirlwind romance like this one. It was frightening and exhilarating all at once. When she’d gone to the cabin with him Friday, Saturday and Sunday, she’d told herself it was one weekend, no big deal. Deep down, she’d probably known that they’d see each other again. Maybe a few weekends before he left. But the reality was far more consuming. She couldn’t get enough of him. Which made her contemplate inviting him over, after all. Which made her realize that she had to get off the computer at once.
Luvs Chocolat: I’m exhausted. Talk to you tomorrow?
She expected him to tell her good-night, but he didn’t.
CHudson1973: Before you go, have you heard from Dave?
She sat up taller. Luvs Chocolat: You remember Dave’s name?
CHudson1973: I remember that he wants to get together with you.
Luvs Chocolat: I cut off the relationship.
CHudson1973: How’d he take the news?
Luvs Chocolat: He told me he loves me.
There was a long pause.
CHudson1973: That comes as a bit of a surprise. Last I heard he was calling you.
Luvs Chocolat: It was a surprise to me, too.
Chudson1973: How do you feel about him?
Luvs Chocolat: I’m not sure.
CHudson1973: So he’s giving me some competition?
Luvs Chocolat: Was there supposed to be a smiley face after that sentence?
CHudson1973: In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not a smiley-face kind of guy.
Luvs Chocolat: So you’re serious? Having Dave call me bothers you?
CHudson1973: What do you think?
It did. Liz shook her head. Blatantly honest, as usual.
Luvs Chocolat: You don’t have to worry. If he’s smart, he’ll wait until you leave. Win by default, right?
There was an even longer pause.
Luvs Chocolat: Hello?
CHudson1973: I’ll let you go now.
Exactly. That was the problem, wasn’t it? If Dave was really interested in her, all he had to do was bide his time for a few months. Liz would be on the rebound again soon.
But she had known that going in. She could hardly complain about it now.
Luvs Chocolat: Night.
CHudson1973: Keith hasn’t bothered you since he left the shop, has he?
Luvs Chocolat: I haven’t heard from him, why?
CHudson1973: Just checking.
CARTER RAMBLED AROUND the cabin. While sorting out the kitchen and living room and moving boxes around, he’d found a pair of Liz’s panties. He remembered them from the first night they’d made love and chuckled to think that she’d gone home without them. Liz definitely wasn’t the type to walk around without underwear. Yet she’d never mentioned they were missing.
He found that pretty amusing but, combined with what she’d told him online about Dave, that small scrap of fabric had him too distracted to focus on any additional unpacking. What was going on between him and Liz O’Connell was like a runaway train, he decided. It could only end in a major wreck, but he’d be damned if he could control the momentum that was propelling them toward their doom.
He was using her as a distraction, he realized. When he thought of her legs, her skin, her lips, he didn’t think of Laurel. Or the man who’d tortured and raped Laurel before he could get her out of that damn hotel room. Or the package from Johnson that was still sitting on his desk. He could pretend nothing existed beyond Dundee, which had just cataloged another exciting day with the opening of The Chocolaterie.
He certainly wasn’t living in the fast lane, but he liked it here. He liked what he’d done at the shop. It was good, it existed because he’d helped to create it, and it made Liz happy. She’d laughed and smiled all weekend.
He needed more positives—like her—in his life.
Maybe he should go back to building, after all. But he’d have to stay in one place to start a construction business. Even speculative building took time and could result in houses that wouldn’t sell, which might turn into rentals…which would require some level of care and management. Carter supposed he could hire someone else to manage his properties, but owning real estate basically meant he’d be tied to a particular region. And he couldn’t have that. He had to be free, in order to stay ahead of the ghosts that haunted him.
Dundee worked for now. But the ghosts would catch up with him eventually. They always did.
He went to his room and put Liz’s panties in his drawer. Then he broke down the boxes he’d emptied and stacked them outside against the cabin so he could dispose of them in the morning. At last he cared whether or not his place looked lived in. But only so that Liz would feel more comfortable when she came to visit.
He wondered if she’d spend the next weekend with him. Keith had Mica and Christopher only twice a month, which meant she’d have her children with her. That wasn’t promising. He was fine with having them all over. They seemed like good kids. But Liz didn’t act as if she wanted them to get to know him.
He could understand, to a point. But that didn’t make it any easier to carry on a relationship with her.
His cell phone rang. He’d left it in his office when he’d been talking to Liz on the computer earlier, so he headed down the hall, wondering who might be calling him so late.
When he scooped it off the desk and spotted the name on his caller ID, he laughed and punched the talk button.
“Mom, what are you doing up so late?” he asked.
“I’m not up late. It’s four-thirty here,” she said. “I’m up early. The rain woke me an hour ago and I haven’t been able to sleep since.”
He slid into his chair and started playing Hearts on the computer. “So you’re calling me at, what, two-thirty my time?”
“I was going to hang up if you sounded groggy.”
“A solid plan.” Considering he slept so little. “What’s up?”
“I just got back from a road trip.”
“You never mentioned a road trip to me.”
“It was only for a couple of days. I went with Suzanne. She’s the friend I met at the antique store.”
“I remember.”
“Anyway, when I got home last night, there were several messages on my answering machine from a Special Agent Johnson.”
Carter swiveled around to face the package on the corner of his desk. He’d nearly tossed it out. Wished he could do so now. But his innate sense of responsibility had stopped him every time he’d come close.
“Why’d he call you?” he asked, not particularly pleased to hear that Johnson had contacted his mother.
“He said you’re not picking up your cell. He wanted to see if I had some other way of getting hold of you.”
“Like hell.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.
“He knows I’ll pick up for you and that you’ll tell me he’s trying to reach me.”
“You don’t want to talk to him?”
Carter sank lower in his seat, feeling tired for the first time tonight. “No.”
“What does he want?”
Carter was tempted to say nothing. But that package a few feet away called him a liar. It had only God knew what inside. He couldn’t leave it there forever. Yet he couldn’t throw the damn thing out. “Charles Hooper claims he wants to talk.”
; Silence met this response. Finally his mother said, “About what he did to Laurel?”
“No. He knows I’m not interested in that. I already got him for what he did to Laurel.” He wondered if he’d been wrong to push Laurel to testify. Had the anxiety of the trial contributed to the hopelessness that had eventually destroyed her will to live? He’d been so sure he could help her—completely confident that once they were married they’d be able to put the terrible violence that had brought them together behind them. “Johnson thinks there are others.”
“Like Laurel?”
“Worse.”
“Murdered?”
“Yes.”
“My God, what that man did.”
Hearing the break in his mother’s voice, knowing how much she’d loved Laurel, he clamped his jaw shut and waited, giving her a few seconds to rein in her emotions. He didn’t want to deal with her tears. His stomach was already knotted. No matter how much time passed, he couldn’t seem to gain perspective on Laurel’s death. He’d loved her almost from the moment he’d tracked Hooper to the hotel where he’d been keeping her, and she’d risked her life to warn him that Hooper had had a gun. “He’s an evil son of a bitch,” he said.
“So what’s he willing to talk about? To tell you what he did to the others? To lead you to their bodies?”
“That’s what he’s telling Johnson.”
“You don’t believe him?”
“I think he’s trying to yank my chain.”
“In what way?”
“He must’ve heard about Laurel’s suicide. That’s why he’s asking for me. He wants to rub my nose in the fact that she’s gone—that regardless of what I did, what I tried to do, I’m living a life sentence right along with him.”
Another long silence met Carter’s words, and then a sigh. “She was so good,” his mother said. “She couldn’t accept that there were people like Hooper, who could do what he did.”
“And once her eyes were opened, she couldn’t ever forget.”
“It was tragic.”
He said nothing.
“But with Hooper’s cooperation, you might be able to close an unsolved case.”
“That’s true.”
“And bring another family some peace.”
“Just because you get answers doesn’t mean you get peace,” he said.
“It has to be better than hoping against hope that your child is alive somewhere,” she said.
Carter didn’t respond, but he knew it was true. He’d seen it too often when he’d worked for the Bureau. A family suffered until they could reclaim their loved one. They suffered, too, if that loved one was dead. But nothing was worse than not knowing.
“See?” he said.
“What?” she replied.
“Hooper’s not the only one who’s good at mind games.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Johnson,” he said and hung up after a brief good-bye. Johnson knew what he’d been doing when he’d placed that call to Sarah Hudson. Johnson was still dedicated, relentless and relatively untouched. He’d never had the evil he worked with spill into his personal life.
Carter sat in his chair, glaring at the package. What did it contain? Letters from some poor family, pleading with him to help? A sample of the information Hooper could provide?
“Shit,” Carter said and reached over to open it. But there weren’t any letters inside. Not even a note. It contained pictures of three women, three he’d never seen before, with the dates they’d disappeared and the locations from which they’d gone missing written on the back. One of the women was beautiful. One wore a pair of stylish glasses and appeared keenly intelligent. And one didn’t seem to have quite so much to recommend her. She just looked lost.
It was the lost one that got him.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
GORDON GLANCED AT CHLOE’S CARD, which he’d stuck behind his sun visor. Over the past several days he’d gone through all of her journals and keepsakes, but nothing else had struck him as deeply as the message she’d written on that card.
The road became a blur of pavement beneath his tires, and the countryside changed from desert to high wilderness, but he barely noticed. He was too busy thinking, wondering if she’d ever thought about telling him the truth. Knowing her, she must have had a very difficult time keeping such a secret. As the years passed, they’d grown so happy, so close. When Liz had gone to kindergarten, Chloe had started working half days at a candy store and had often talked about owning her own chocolate shop. They were finally in the planning stage when she’d passed away. But regardless of the improvements in their relationship, she had never even hinted about Randy.
She’d kept her mouth shut for her daughter’s sake. He knew that. She’d probably feared he’d behave exactly as he’d done.
He winced at the memory of the hurt on Liz’s face at the tennis court. Her features still reminded him of Randy’s. They always would. But he loved her anyway. That was what he’d learned from all of this. That was the underlying truth he’d had to dig so deep to find. He loved her and he wanted her to be his daughter again, even if it meant dealing with disappointment on a daily basis.
A sign appeared on the side of the road. It was fifty-three miles to Boise, and Dundee was only another hour or so beyond that. He wasn’t far now.
He opened Chloe’s card and, splitting his gaze between it and the road, quickly read her words again. I know our marriage could use some work. But I love you. And because I love you, I can give you this promise—I won’t ever give up.
I won’t give up, either, he vowed in return and slipped the card back under his visor. I’ll make it right with Liz if it takes the rest of my life, Chloe. You have my word on that.
CARTER HAD JUST HUNG UP after making arrangements to fly to New York when his phone rang. He expected it to be his mother, wanting to continue their earlier conversation. Although she wouldn’t come right out and say it, she believed he should talk to Johnson. He believed it, too. Otherwise, he would have been able to throw that package in the trash without even opening it.
But it wasn’t his mother. It was Senator Holbrook’s daughter, Reenie.
“Carter?”
“Yes?” he said in surprise.
“I—I’m glad I caught you.”
The wobble in her voice concerned him. “Is something wrong?”
“It’s Liz.”
Carter’s heart immediately jumped into his throat. “What’s the matter?”
When Reenie sniffed, his grip on the phone tightened, and the memory of a call he’d received two years earlier, telling him Laurel hadn’t shown up for work, came crashing down upon him. “What is it, Reenie?”
“Someone broke into The Chocolaterie last night after Liz went home and trashed the place.”
“What?” His first thought was of Keith storming out of the shop. Had this been his retaliation? “Anyone see who it was this time?”
“Not that we know of. But they wrecked the shelves you built her and tore the sink out again and spray-painted the floor and walls. They even poured water on the chocolate and smashed most of her inventory.”
He squeezed his forehead, trying to absorb the news that this had really happened, in Dundee of all places. “Is she okay?”
“She’s taking it pretty hard.”
Running a hand through his hair, Carter told himself to breathe deeply. Damage to the store he could handle. Damage to—
He cut off his thoughts before they could progress any further. “Are you with her?”
“I’m in the parking lot. I didn’t want her to see me cry, so I stepped outside.” She sniffed again.
“Have you contacted the police?”
“I tried. Officer Orton was suppposed to be on duty, but he isn’t even out of bed yet.”
A lot of good he’d probably turn out to be. “Is he coming?”
“He’ll be here as soon as he can make himself presentable.”
“So did she call you wh
en she found it or—”
“My dad spotted the door propped open on his way to the diner for breakfast and stopped to see what was going on. When he realized what had happened, he called her. He called me and Isaac, too, and I’m glad he did.”
“What’s she doing?”
“She’s just…standing in the middle of it, staring at everything as if she’s seeing all her hopes and dreams shattered on the floor. This place means so much to her.”
Carter cursed under his breath. Whoever had done this would pay. Maybe Hooper had had the last laugh with Laurel. Maybe ugliness and violence had won before. But only because Laurel had quit fighting.
Maybe the vandalism at the shop was on a much smaller scale than the battle he’d fought for Laurel. But it was somehow very important that he win this time around. “I’ll be right there.”
LIZ COULDN’T SEEM TO GRASP the fact that she wouldn’t be able to open for business today. She’d climbed out of bed so eager to arrive at the shop and get started….
And now this. Her eyes scanned the filthy words someone had painted on her wall—Go Home, Bitch. It was right there in front of her and still she couldn’t believe it. Who would do something so mean? Who hated her enough to hurt her so carelessly?
Senator Holbrook turned in a circle and frowned at the wreckage. Isaac had a broom and dustpan and was already trying to clean up. And Reenie began to cry every time Liz met her eyes. Which made it that much more difficult for Liz to hold herself together. Reenie understood that the shop was more than brick and mortar to Liz; Reenie understood how deeply the damage cut.
Fortunately, Liz had dropped Mica and Christopher at their grandmother’s house on the way to work, so Georgia could drive them to school. Liz didn’t think she could deal with their questions or their disappointment. She couldn’t even deal with her own. She felt as she had when her father told her he wasn’t her father: numb. As if the whole thing was unreal and if she only waited long enough someone would say, “Just joking.”
