They pulled into the gravel drive that led to the farmhouse, and she stopped just before reaching the front porch. It was far enough. She got out. “Honestly, Cade,” she called to him, “this is nice of you, but I’m sure it’s okay.”
He jumped down from his tired Dodge and grabbed a toolbox from the bed. “I’ll have a look.”
Jack uttered a couple of serious woofs.
Cade opened the hood again and looked around. She stood opposite him and looked, too. He held out a hand. The dog barked again. “Give me the key and I’ll start ’er up. I’m going to want to listen for noises.” He scowled at Jack. “If I can hear over that damned dog. Do something to shut him up.” She ignored his rude demand and started to give him her keys, but a quiet warning bell in her head made her pause.
To distract him, she asked, “Is that something?” She pointed at what she knew was only a grimy spot on the air filter cover and quickly slipped her keys into her pocket while he leaned in to look.
“No, it’s okay.”
“Hey, what about that?” She tapped a dent that she knew had been on the radiator for years.
“Nope, I don’t think so.”
“I didn’t expect to see you again,” she said, to keep the conversation and the distraction going.
It seemed to work. He bent to grab a socket wrench from the tools at his feet. “Yeah, well, some pretty rough things were said the last time we talked.”
“Yes, they were.” That was an understatement. “I was never called a ‘slut’ before.”
He didn’t lift his gaze from the engine, but his face turned blotchy red. “I admit that was kind of rude, but it wasn’t my fault. I never had anyone tell me such a terrible lie before.”
She gripped the edges of the fender, feeling less comfortable with this situation with every passing minute. “Cade, I wasn’t lying. You saw the story with your own eyes.”
“Story! Fairytale is more like it. Why should I trust some woman’s old diary? What makes it the authority about how I came into the world?” So far he’d only held the wrench but hadn’t done anything with it. In fact, he hadn’t done anything at all to the pickup.
“Did you ask your—your parents about it?”
“Yes, I did.” He straightened and now used the tool as a prop to emphasize his words. He pointed the butt end at her. “And they told me it’s a lie, too. They said they weren’t surprised to learn it had come from you.”
She took one step back. This was just getting worse. “Is that why you stopped me on the road and dragged me here? So you could confront me about that day?”
“No.” He lowered the tool and his voice.
“And I asked you earlier—what are you even doing out here? Did you follow me?”
He looked at her across the windshield washer tank. “Julianne, when you get your head out of the clouds and realize that Tucker is no better than you ever thought he was, you’ll want to come back. And we’ll live here.”
The shivery feeling was back—the pale hair on her arms stood on end, and it felt as her if eyebrows nearly scraped her hairline. “You can’t be serious. We’re brother and sister!”
“That’s bullshit! I don’t believe that for a minute. I know you think you want to live in town and run the dime store. But you belong on the land. It’s what you grew up with, and in your heart, that’s what you really want. I worked with you long enough, I saw how hard you struggled to make a go of this place. You love it here. I do, too. And I still love you.”
She stared at him. This was wrong, so desperately wrong, and her sense of peril grew. “Have you been pulling out the For Sale sign?” It was a blunt question, maybe not a smart one.
“No, I-I wouldn’t do that. If visitors come around when I’m here, I make myself scarce. And I always park behind that big thatch of creosote down the road, not in the back.”
“You’re—are you living here?”
“Not exactly. More like before. Sometimes I come over and stay a few days in my old cabin when things get too tense at home. I like to keep an eye on this place.”
The muscles in her shoulders began to cramp with tension. “I locked that door. I locked all of them.”
“I have a key to the cabin. I didn’t think you’d mind.”
She frowned. “I certainly do mind! Cade, you’re trespassing. This isn’t your personal getaway. I’m trying to sell it.”
He straightened up, all testy and put-upon. “Who do you think keeps things tidy around here, anyway? If I didn’t cut the grass and keep the weeds down, this property would look abandoned.”
“You’re doing that? I thought my real estate agent had arranged to have it done.”
He pulled on the hood and let it drop into place. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you wouldn’t give me credit.”
“Why on earth would I—” She broke off. There was no point in pursuing this. She had to get out of here. He’d come unhinged or something, and was spoiling for an argument. He must have been here, watching, the whole time she was changing the lights—apparently not one of the jobs he’d taken on. He’d known she was here and when she’d left. She thought about that oil filter. Most of its black paint has been scuffed off, but Mopar was the brand name of parts made for Chryslers and Dodges. She glanced at his Dodge truck parked behind her. He’d arranged her little road mishap somehow. He must have. And when he’d pulled out onto the road, it was at the point where creosote bushes grew tall.
Her throat was so tight with fear it felt as if someone had dug their thumbs into it. But she was determined not to show it. “All right, I’m going home.”
“This is your home, Julianne.” He grabbed her forearm in a fierce grip and began to drag her toward the house. “Yours and mine. We belong here.” His eyes were angry, but blank, too, and that frightened her even more.
“Let go of me!” she snapped, trying to pull away. But she couldn’t break loose, and the porch stairs were getting closer. If she wasn’t able to get away, he’d drag her into the house and then do God knew what.
“Always in charge,” he complained. “Always a firecracker, ordering me around. Not this time.” With the two of them pulling in opposite directions, Julianne’s forearm, the rope in their tug-of-war, wrenched painfully.
In her mind, an old memory jerked awake, letting her see a way out of this. A fragment of a 2:00 a.m. self-defense infomercial she’d watched one of those sleepless nights after Wes died . . . how to stop a playground bully . . .
“Cade, stop!” she shouted, a short, loud command that made him pause and turn toward her. She made a fist and rolled her arm up toward her shoulder; then she stepped forward and dug the fingers of her other hand into his palm. The maneuver loosened his grip. She was able to grab his thumb and give a hard outward twist to his entire arm, pulling him off his feet. He wasn’t merely on his knees, he was down on the patchy, yellowed grass, holding his own forearm and groaning. That gave her just enough time to scramble around to the driver’s side and jump back into the truck. She rolled up the windows and locked the doors, all while fumbling with her key chain to find the pickup key. Her heart thundered in her head.
The dog barked at full volume, so loudly that she could think of nothing else but Go! Go! Go! She thrust the key into the ignition and gave it a vicious turn. Slamming the gear shift into reverse, she looked up and saw Cade getting to his feet, cradling his arm. The fleeting realization that she had torqued his recently broken limb gave her a twinge of guilt, although only a twinge. She also knew that might have given her a better chance of getting away from a man who’d apparently lost his reason.
But his pickup was still parked behind her. She couldn’t back out and going forward would only lead her deeper into the property. In an instant that seemed like an hour, she made the decision to cut left across the front yard, mowing down shrubbery and her mother’s unruly cape jasmine. Cutting a sharp circle, she retook the drive and sped out to the road, leaving rooster tails of gravel in her wake.
>
Jack resumed his guard post at the back window, watching clouds of caliche while she flew back to Gila Rock as if a rabid pack of mythical chupacabras were bearing down on them. The sun had finally been overtaken by the dark clouds boiling up on the western horizon, and the smell of coming rain seeped in through the vents.
“Oh God, oh God,” she intoned. Her hand trembled when she jammed it through her hair, trying to push it out of her face. She clung to the steering wheel, hoping to still her tremors.
She thought of that dead-eyed look she’d seen on Cade. She thought she knew him. Mild, eager-to-please Cade. She’d never detected even a hint of the man she had just escaped from. Mitchell had seen through his facade immediately. She hadn’t, and she’d hadn’t believed him.
She’d have to get all the locks changed at the farm. He could still stay there for the time being if he was so inclined, since she hadn’t gotten her key away from him.
Call the sheriff—again.
She dug her cell phone out of her purse and began issuing directions to its voice assistant to make calls.
The first wave of rain hit the windshield and she wondered, how many enemies did she really have?
Mitchell faced Larry Tomlinson in the dugout with a leaden sense of doom. “Look, Tucker, all I know is that a woman named”—the school district assistant consulted his notes—“Juliet Emerson called the district office and told us about your record. I talked to her myself. She said we probably would want to know, and she was right.”
As bad as this was, the feeling of betrayal was so much worse. And what could he say, that it was all a mistake, a lie, the satisfaction of an old grudge?
Tomlinson took off his cap to reveal a gleaming, bald dome of a head edged with a graying brown fringe of hair. The kids were out on the diamond where Mitchell had left them, doing ball drops. “I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt, so I did an offender search at the Texas criminal justice website. You were on the list. To double-check, I even called their office in Huntsville. They confirmed what I learned—manslaughter, time served at the state prison in Amarillo. You’re a convicted felon, Tucker, and we don’t permit convicted felons to work around youngsters. But I imagine you know that, which is why you failed to disclose your past on the application. Maybe I should thank you. Our system screwed up when it let you slip through. We’ll put the IT guys on it and that won’t happen again.”
So happy to help, Mitchell thought sourly. He tried to swallow the knot that had formed in his chest. The last time he’d felt this lousy was the first day a cell door had slammed behind him. Even though he’d paid that debt and was free, he was still serving a sentence.
And Julianne had turned him in. He’d known she was angry with him for not going with her to the farm, but he’d never expected this. Stress was wearing her down, and he understood why. Still, he hadn’t thought she’d be so mad that she’d throw him to the wolves.
“I understand,” he muttered, humiliation flooding him. He’d realized that he might be found out, but not this way. “I just—I used to be good at this.” He waved in the general direction of the field. On the breeze, the players’ voices floated to them, along with the solid thwuck of a baseball landing in a leather glove.
“And it’s plain that you still are. But you can’t do it here, mister. Not with kids. I’ll take your locker key and your ID.”
Mitchell gave him the key to the equipment shed, then pulled off the lanyard that bore his photo ID. “What are you going to tell them?” he asked, nodding toward the players he’d nursed along all summer.
Tomlinson looked at the field for a moment. “I’ll tell them that you were called away on a family emergency. It’s a lie, but in this case I think it serves better than the truth.”
Mitchell nodded. “Thanks for that. And I’m sorry for everything. I just wanted to help them play baseball. A couple of them have some real promise.”
“Right. Good luck, then.” The district assistant dismissed him, obviously hanging around to see him walk to his car and drive away.
So he obliged him and headed to the Skylark, with plans to pick up a bottle of whiskey on the way back to the Satellite. The rest of the world could go to hell. The fine, sunny day wasn’t so fine after all.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
When Julianne got back to the apartment, she double-checked everything—the locks, the alarm, the cameras, and the Remington. She trembled to the marrow of her bones, and she couldn’t seem to stop. That forced her to take extra care with the rifle. A weapon in shaking hands could be very bad. This time when she called the sheriff’s office, they listened to what she had to say about Cade. She had solid information and a serious complaint: attempted kidnapping, and breaking and entering. She had tried to call Mitchell four or five times, but all she got was his voice mail. She’d left messages but still hadn’t heard back from him. Jack followed her every step of the way, to the point that she nearly tripped over him a couple of times. Finally, she fed him, just to keep him busy for a minute. For her, dinner held no interest. Instead, she took a shower, shutting Jack and her rifle in the bathroom with her. At least if he barked she’d know something might be happening. God, she was sick of living this way.
Inches from pacing the length of the apartment like a trapped animal, she decided on a glass of wine for herself and settled in front of the TV to ponder her cable options.
The Hunger Games. That sounded appropriate. She’d seen it before, but she wanted to watch a movie about a strong woman overcoming an impossible situation. Yet only a few minutes in—just as Katniss and Gale stepped through the deactivated electric fence—she heard knocking at the back door downstairs and hit Pause.
Jumping up from the sofa, she crept to the window to see whether there was a car parked outside that she recognized. But her view wasn’t the best from here, and she knew a vehicle could be in the blind spot she couldn’t see. The knock sounded again, harder this time. She hadn’t set up the security system on her laptop, so she couldn’t even look at the camera images. Stupid, stupid—
Now it was pounding. “Julianne, open up!”
Mitchell! And he sounded furious.
With her hand on the stair rail, she glanced at the rifle but thought better of taking it with her. After all, she knew him.
“Julianne! I know you’re in there.”
“I’m coming, I’m coming!” she called. She disarmed the back door alarm and opened it. “What’s—”
He pushed his way in and shut the door behind him. A sizzle of fear ran through her. He’d brought with him an unopened whiskey bottle he gripped by the neck. “Thanks for getting me fired again. Are you happy, now?”
“Fired—from where?”
He scowled at her and with his face still bruised, the effect was alarming. She took a step back.
“From the coaching job, like you don’t know. I told you about that job because I thought I could trust you and that you weren’t a snitch. This afternoon some fat-assed school district assistant came to the field and said you called them.” Despair melded with his angry expression. “How much more do you want from me, Julianne? How much?”
She felt her jaw drop. The only other time she had seen him this mad was when she’d told him she was getting married. “Snitch! I didn’t call anyone. I’ve never said a thing about it, ever.”
They faced each other with no more than a forearm’s length between them, both pulled as tight as fence wire.
“I . . . you . . . ,” Julianne sputtered. She leaned in closer and shouted, “I was nearly kidnapped today! I was too busy trying to get away from Cade Lindgren to call anyone about you! I wouldn’t do that, anyway.”
“Kidnapped!”
“Didn’t you listen to the messages I left on your voice mail?”
He groped in his pocket for his phone. “No, I had the phone turned off.”
“It doesn’t work very well that way!” This horrible day made her short-tempered and sarcastic. But then, so had his insul
ting accusation.
Dusk closed in, dimming the office where they stood with long shadows and pale-gray light. She motioned him over to the desk chairs, not in the mood to invite him upstairs for any reason. “Sorry, my hospitality has expired,” she snapped, panting. Nodding at his bottle, she added, “Do you want a drink?”
“In a minute. I want to know about Lindgren.”
So she told him what had happened that afternoon, about Cade’s weird behavior and her tough-girl getaway.
“Shit. I guess I should have gone with you.” He rubbed his chin and jaw, and his beard stubble made a scraping sound. “This is no good, Juli. We can’t fight the whole world.”
“You believe that I didn’t make that call?”
He waited a beat before answering. “Yeah. But who did, then? No one else knew I had that job.”
“I guess someone did, maybe someone with a grievance who saw you on that field in Alpine and put two and two together.”
He looked up suddenly. “Cherry. I’ll bet it was Cherry Claxton. She’s still trying to cozy up to me, even though I’ve told her to lay off. And I think she’s the one who got someone to try and force us off the highway. I thought I saw that Yukon at the Captain Gas the other day. Buddy Lee Crawford was there buying gas.”
“So she wants to get rid of us both?”
“I think you’re her target and she doesn’t care who gets caught in the crossfire. So she called the school district about me, hoping that I’d blame you and break things off.”
They fell silent for a long moment; then he rolled his chair next to hers and took her hand. “I love you and I want to keep you safe, but it’s getting to be a lot worse than I expected. Even I’m not sure who all is involved.”
After You Were Gone Page 21
