The Last Safe Place

by Ninie Hammon

  But this is a photo they’ve never seen. Nothing other than that is remarkable about the picture—just Grant, probably the summer he died, holding a rock and grinning into the camera. What’s unique is that it is a new image, so it’s like opening a tiny window into the past and there stands Grant. And in that first instant, he’s alive. Like you’ve looked up and he’s standing in the room. Gabriella hasn’t stared at this picture so often that repetition has scrubbed Grant’s soul out of the face.

  In unspoken unison, she and Garrett sink down on the floor together. They sit silent for a while, taking it in.

  “While you were screaming that day, did you hear what Mom said?” Garrett asks.

  “Just to shut up. She yelled at me to shut up.”

  “She yelled a lot more than that.” Garrett’s face fills with so much pain Gabriella is instantly frightened. She knows that whatever is eating away at his heart is about to be unleashed to attack her heart as well.

  Over the years since their older brother died, she and Garrett have come to share an intimacy beyond that special bond only achieved by twins. Each is all the other has. Ships adrift in the sea of their parents’ indifference, the two of them are set apart from the world by their incredible gifts and knit to each other by their common pain. Whatever hurts Garrett will do the same damage to her, too.

  “She screamed that she wished the two of us were dead instead of Grant.”

  When the storm came up that day, their parents had been much higher on the mountain than Grant. They’d dodged into a protected crevice in the rocks and motioned for Grant to run back to the chalet. When he got there, his little brother and little sister were gone and he went looking for them.

  If they hadn’t disobeyed, if they’d done what they were supposed to do and hadn’t gone off to play in the bristlecone pine forest, Grant would still be alive. They have never spoken of that until now.

  But Garrett isn’t finished.

  “She said she tried to get rid of us, that she would have, but she waited too long and when she went in they wouldn’t do it.” Garrett pauses. “At the time, I didn’t know what an abortion was.” He does now. They both do. And now they both also know that if their mother had gotten what she wanted, they would be dead now. And Grant would be alive.

  By that point in the telling, Gabriella was crying, though she didn’t remember when she started to cry or when Pedro had come to her and put his hand gently on her shoulder.

  “Our parents vanished after Grant was killed, were never a part of our lives, mine and Garrett’s.” Her voice was thick and tear-clotted, her throat tight. “They weren’t abusive … just absent. They ignored us. Without ever saying it out loud they let us know in a hundred different ways that they’d ended up with two kids they didn’t want and lost the one they did.”

  The knot of barbed wire in her throat began to shrink.

  “Nothing we ever did mattered.” She let out a sardonic humph sound. “We were prodigies, both of us, and that didn’t mean a thing. Everyone else in our lives was amazed by us, astonished—aunts, uncles, grandparents, teachers … but our parents never cared. My mother and father died on this mountain with Grant. Garrett and I raised ourselves.”

  It was done. She’d said it all. Tacked words onto thoughts and feelings she’d never given voice before. It was both freeing and heartbreaking.

  As soon as she no longer had to keep them in check so she could speak, the tears ramped up into great, heaving sobs that wracked her whole body like small, rhythmic seizures.

  Pedro turned her and took her into his arms and held her tight against his broad chest. He smelled clean—his neck like soap, his chambray shirt like starch. It felt good there in his arms. Safe. It seemed to take a long time to cry herself out. When the tears finally dissolved into something like the hitched breathing of a little kid after a tantrum, she pulled away from him, stepped back, instantly embarrassed. And for a moment, she felt empty and alone without his arms around her.

  She sniffled and reached up to wipe the tears off her cheeks. As soon as her hand touched the scar, she turned it away from him. But Pedro reached out and gently took her chin, turned her face back toward him and wiped the tears off her cheeks with a handkerchief that had appeared in his hand out of nowhere.

  That kind of tenderness from such a strong, rugged man left Gabriella breathless.

  Gratefully, Ty skidded to a stop in the dirt in front of the porch, panting, before the moment could turn really awkward. But he saw the tears.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I would tell you,” Pedro said, his accent thick, “but theen I would have to shoot choo.”

  Gabriella burst out laughing. Incipient hysteria.

  Ty grinned while she laughed, a little confused, but didn’t join in.

  “One of Mom’s brothers could laugh and it’d make other people laugh, too, even if they didn’t know what was funny,” he told Pedro. “I don’t know which one. But it was Uncle Garrett who caught a green snake down at the creek.”

  How did Ty know that?

  The boy sighed, disappointed. “I tried, but couldn’t find it.”

  “Have you seen the trout in that creek?” Pedro asked. “They are easier to catch than a green snake. They taste better, too. Jim keeps his fishing gear in the closet in the mud room. I could show you how to use it.”

  “Really!”

  The boy started up the steps toward the back door.

  “I do not have time to go fishing today,” Pedro said.

  Gabriella watched Ty’s face fall. Smokey was always telling Ty he’d do something with him as soon as he “had time.” Pedro picked up on Ty’s reaction, too.

  “And I do not have my gear with me. I did not come up here today prepared to go fishing. I came to invite your family to a party.”

  “A party—where?” Ty asked.

  “How about I deal with our social calendar and you go inside and wash the creature slime off your hands,” Gabriella said. Ty started up the steps and only paused at her final shot. “And no salamanders-under-the-bed-inshoeboxes, okay? When they die they stink so bad you need a Hazmat suit and a blowtorch to clean the room.”

  “Ty,” Pedro said. Ty turned around.

  “I will teach you how to fish.” Ty smiled, but it was lifeless. Either he didn’t believe Pedro, or the promise sparked unpleasant memories.

  “I think a body surfaced,” she told Pedro when Ty was inside.

  Then she explained that Garrett had rented a houseboat on Lake Tionesta one weekend when they were in college. A water patrol boat came by the first night and an officer told them to be on the lookout—that a man had drowned in the lake earlier in the week and his body had not been recovered. The officer explained that it took time for a dead body to bloat and float to the surface.

  “Then the officer said, ‘he’s due up today.’”

  Pedro wrinkled his nose.

  “The phrase ‘a body surfaced’ became code between Garrett and me to describe when something caused one of the rotting memories in our storehouse of dead bodies to float up into our minds.”

  Pedro looked at her with such compassion she quickly looked away and changed the subject. “About that party …”

  “It is a birthday party at my house, which is in the back of the store. All three of you are invited, and Puppy Dog, of course. The whole town will be there—which is only slightly more people than you can comfortably shove into a Volkswagen bus.”

  She couldn’t go, of course. The whole point of coming here was isolation. Making friends wasn’t part of the game plan. Although the people she’d seen in St. Elmo appeared to be of the Louis L’Amour, Larry McMurtry and Farmer’s Almanac persuasion—not horror fiction fans. But people surprised you sometimes. If even one of the Tony Lama boot, Stetson hat–wearing citizens of St. Elmo had ever seen her picture on a book jacket …

  But she was surprised to discover how badly she wanted to go, how much she wanted to spend time with Pedro. And how
she ached to be in the company of normal people—not wacked-out musicians, money-hungry publicists, or weird groupies.

  “When’s the party?”

  “Next Saturday night, 7:30.”

  Saturday. June 26. A full moon.

  That night, Gabriella woke from a sound sleep as if an alarm had gone off in her head. She lay in the dark, stared out the window at stars the size of hockey pucks on the black satin sky and tried to puzzle it out. A fragment of memory, a detail from the horror she’d shared with Pedro that afternoon now itched in her mind like a mosquito bite.

  When she told him about finding Grant, she’d described how she slid in a puddle, skinned her knee and soaked the leg of her jeans, how she brushed against a tree limb and drenched the left side of her shirt.

  But how could she have been dry?

  There had been a monstrous storm. Grant had been out in the pouring rain looking for her and Garrett when lightning struck him.

  If she and Garrett had been out in the storm, why wasn’t she soaked? And if they hadn’t been out in the storm … where had they been?

  CHAPTER 10

  BERNIE PHELPS’S MIND WAS ALWAYS SPINNING. IT HAD GONE AROUND and around from one thing to the next, bang, bang, bang, his whole life. He knew what nobody else knew about that, though. He knew it was the spinning that kept him upright and moving in the right direction. Like the gyroscopic action of the tires on a bicycle, his whirling mind powered him. If he ever calmed down, stopped rushing, making deals, playing the odds—and the ponies—chasing the babes and corralling his golden-egg-laying goose, he was certain he’d fall over dead like a bike that hits a wall.

  But his mind was spinning now with the force of a tornado—fast even for Bernie. No, make that a hurricane. His mind was spinning so fast it might just lift up out of his head, unhook from his spinal cord and float up into the sky like those stupid balsa wood helicopter toys you could buy on the street corner in New York with the rubber-band launchers that fired them up into the nearest tree.

  And no, he wasn’t high on coke. At least, not right this minute. But as soon as the thought entered his mind, he could feel a yearning itch in his bones and longed to suck a line of power and competence up his nose.

  Oh, he wasn’t an addict. He could stop anytime he wanted to. Anytime. And right now he didn’t need cocaine or ecstasy or meth or any of the growing list of recreational drugs with which he entertained himself. He could get stoned for a week on the words in the email on his computer screen.

  He glanced at his reflection in the mirror on the wall opposite his desk. Then examined it more closely, ran his hand over the top of a head as perfectly round and smooth as a marble. Maybe he’d get a hair transplant. Why not? He’d be able to afford it. With $5 million, he could afford anything.

  No, not $5 million. Four million five hundred thousand. The other half million would go to some member of the Rebecca Nightshade Fan Club.

  Bernie had it all figured out. His whirring mind had sliced and diced it and come up with a plan half an hour after he learned Yesheb Al Tobbanoft had offered to pay $5 million cash to whoever located Gabby. And Bernie had an edge on all the other guys. He wasn’t just one investigator. He was thousands of investigators. Hundreds of thousands. Hundreds of thousands of people in big cities and small towns all across America. Rebecca Nightshade’s fans.

  Al Tobbanoft might have financial resources, but Bernie had human resources. He had access to an army of rabid fanatics who would drop whatever they were doing to beat the bushes for their literary heroine. Rebecca Nightshade had a cult following; her fans were like the Grateful Dead’s Dead Heads and Star Trek Trekkies. Bernie’d even heard that one of them, some wack-job in Tacoma, had used a razor blade to give himself a forked tongue like the Beast. That was hardcore. When Bernie set them loose, all those fanatic fans would turn America upside down and shake it looking for the Beast’s creator. One of them would end up $500,000 richer and Bernie would be set for life.

  And that meant he wouldn’t have to wait to reap the rewards of the marketing campaign he’d designed to launch a merchandising machine associated with The Bride of the Beast to rival The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. He’d been shrewd enough to exclude those rights from her contract with Hampton Books. Zara and The Beast action figure dolls. Replicas of Zara’s black heart necklace and her ruby scorpion broach. Gabriella was set to make a fortune—with his 15 percent off the top, of course, just as soon as the sequel was released. Pure genius!

  But like so many other geniuses, Bernie was underestimated and undervalued. He knew that. It was impossible to miss Al Tobbanoft’s disdain for him. The man would be singing a different tune, though, when he handed Bernie $5 million in exchange for Gabby’s whereabouts.

  Bernie wondered as he had dozens of times before what a filthy rich, drop-dead gorgeous man like Yesheb Al Tobbanoft—probably in the top ten of most eligible bachelors in the world—saw in a scar-faced woman like Gabby. Oh, she’d been pretty once, but now … What was the man’s fascination with her? Bernie didn’t buy that the guy was crazy like Gabby claimed he was, that Al Tobbanoft thought he was the real Beast of Babylon. You didn’t get to be a billionaire oil baron with that many screws loose. No, there was something else, some other reason for the man’s attraction to Gabby, but for the life of him, Bernie couldn’t figure out what it was.

  Well, whatever his motive, it was clear he would stop at absolutely nothing to find Zara/Rebecca Nightshade/Gabriella Carmichael.

  For a moment, Bernie allowed himself to wonder what Al Tobbanoft intended to do with her once he found her. It certainly didn’t seem to Bernie like the man’s obsession had anything to do with the slander and murder charges he’d lodged against her. Those were merely ruses to get her back to Pittsburgh. But once he got her here, or went out and found her somewhere else, what did he plan to do with … or to her?

  Bernie believed that Yesheb had broken into Gabby’s house—sailed right past that pricy home security system Bernie’d sprung for to shut Gabby up when the guy first started to get weird. Like Gabby’d said to the police—she didn’t bite off her own earlobe.

  Which meant Al Tobbanoft did. What did that say about the guy’s marbles? And there was the other nagging issue—what happened to that armed guard and Lassie? Neither of them had shown up yet—more than three weeks after they disappeared.

  Maybe Bernie was mistaken here. Maybe this Al Tobbanoft guy really was the psycho Gabby claimed.

  So what if he was? That wasn’t Bernie’s problem. He had to look after Number One. Right now, Gabby’s legal problems splashed all over the press, coupled with her disappearance, had launched her book sales off the charts. But the public was fickle. Who knew what—

  Bernie had a horrifying thought: What if she never came back? Never did any more book promotions? Never finished the sequel?

  Yes, sir, $4.5 million in the bank was worth a whole herd of books in the bush.

  Then his jaw tightened. She’d slapped him. In his own house after he sheltered her family in the middle of the night. Called him a slimy, bottomfeeding lowlife.

  “If you’re holding your breath waiting for me to feel sorry for you, sweetheart,” he said aloud, “you may now resume your regularly scheduled respirations.”

  He squared his thin shoulders and began to type. It didn’t take long to tell the story, not long at all to seal the fate of Rebecca Nightshade. As the administrator of her Facebook fan page, he was the only one who could make changes to its content. He read what he had written another time through before he hit post.

  Hey there, Rebecca Nightshade fans. Listen up!

  How’d you like to win $500,000? CASH!

  That’s right—half a million bucks. No tricks, no gimmicks. All you have to do is FIND REBECCA NIGHTSHADE.

  She’ll be introducing a NEW book just in time for Christmas. Yes sir, the rumors are true and you heard it right here first. Rebecca Night-shade is working on a sequel to The Bride of the Beast! That’s
why she DISAPPEARED!

  You’ve all been wondering what happened to her. Now, you know. She vanished to give her loyal fans a sneak peek into Apocalypse in Babylon—because that’s what happens in the book—Zara vanishes! I won’t tell you any more than that. You’ll have to read it to find out.

  But you know all you need to know right now—she’s gone and if you can find her, you’ll win $500,000 in cash. And you’ll become a part of her national marketing campaign, too, appear with her on Good Morning America and The Tonight Show, talk to Ellen DeGeneres and Jerry Springer.

  You’ll get all that if you can FIND REBECCA NIGHTSHADE!

  She could be anywhere. She might be the woman who just moved into an apartment down the street from you in Missoula. Maybe she’s in that beach house in Hilton Head where you clean the swimming pool. Or in a brownstone in New York where you deliver the mail.

  She’s out there somewhere. And with a face like Rebecca’s, she should be easy to spot.

  Half a million dollars. Think what you could do with that kind of money—and start LOOKING.

  Message me here if you’ve seen her. Leave a name and phone number where you can be reached. When your sighting is confirmed, we’ll turn over the cash.

  Happy hunting!

  That should do it. Give these people a few days and they’d flush her out. Bernie hit “post” and got up to get himself a cup of coffee. He noticed his reflection in the mirror again, turned his head from side to side, looked at it from different angles. Yeah, a hair transplant. It’d make a new man out of him.

  * * * *

  Gabriella sat on the deck outside her bedroom and watched darkness drain out the hole in the sky created by the rising sun. A chill rippled through her, raised the hairs on the back of her neck and she nestled deeper into the Snuggie she’d found in a closet.

  Theo had snorted in disdain when he saw one advertised on television when they were in a motel room in Amarillo. Said it was a scam, aimed at the same “witless idiots” who actually paid for water in a bottle.