by Beverly Long
“I need some help,” she said. “Someone broke into my house today.” Tara’s legs felt weak, like she’d done ten flights of stairs. She walked over to the worn, faded office chair and sank down.
“Tara?” Jake prompted. He walked close to her chair. She kept her head down, staring at his black shoes. It was so tempting to ignore what had brought her back to town. All she’d done since Jake Vernelli had arrived in town was attract attention. Why on earth would she give him one more reason to wonder about her?
Because to do anything else would be careless. Stupid really. She needed to deal with what was happening at her house before it dealt with her. She tilted her head up and made eye contact. “When I got home after the picnic, I realized that someone had been in my house. Or maybe—” she swallowed hard “—is still inside? I don’t know.”
Jake’s brown eyes were bright, alert, already processing. “You didn’t see anybody?”
“No.”
“And you didn’t go inside?”
“No.”
“Was your door bashed in?”
“No.”
“Tara?” Jake scratched his head. “Then just how do you know that somebody broke in?”
“My screen door doesn’t latch. When you go through it, it partially closes but it never latches. You have to make an effort to pull the door and then turn it just so, so that it stays latched. The tension is wrong,” she explained.
He didn’t say anything but she could tell by the skeptical look on his face that he wasn’t convinced.
“I always latch my screen door. I check and double-check that, too. When I got home tonight, it was unlatched.”
Jake rubbed his jaw. “Tara, you no doubt left your house in a hurry this morning. You probably didn’t latch it.”
“I didn’t use that door this morning. I used my back door. I know the front door was latched. I know it,” she repeated. “I don’t forget details.” Not when her life might depend on it.
Jake stayed silent. “Okay,” he responded finally. “I’ll go take a look.” He reached for his keys on the desk and took two steps toward the door. He stopped and sighed. “You’re not going to stay here, are you?”
She shook her head.
“I didn’t think so. Just please don’t get out of your vehicle when we get to your house.”
* * *
JAKE STOPPED HIS CAR two hundred feet shy of her driveway. He pulled off onto the side of the gravel road. She pulled in behind him.
He got out and walked back to her van. “I need your house key.”
She pulled it off the ring. “This one unlocks both the door lock and the bolt lock. Front and back doors are keyed the same.”
“Okay. I’ll check it out. You stay here,” he said.
Tara didn’t answer.
“Tara, you will stay in this car, won’t you?” he asked.
She nodded. What choice did she have? Her legs were shaking so much that she doubted they would hold her.
The trees on the property were thick enough to offer cover for her car but sparse enough that she could still see him after he’d walked up the road and made the turn into her driveway. For a big man, he moved quietly. His right arm was raised, bent at the elbow, the barrel of the gun pointed at the sky.
Using his foot, he eased open the still-unlatched screen door. He pushed his foot against the wooden door but nothing happened. She waited for him to try the key but he didn’t. Instead, he backed away from the house and down the steps. Then, his body hugging the foundation, he edged around her small house.
When he disappeared from sight, Tara sucked in a deep breath. One one hundred. Two one hundred. Three one hundred. When she got to twenty, she gave up all pretense of waiting patiently.
She opened her door, cringing when it made a soft squeak. She moved cautiously up the length of driveway and across her small yard, sure she would be shot at any moment.
She was five feet from her front door when it swung open. There was a shadow of a man and Tara caught the glimpse of a gun.
“It’s me,” she squeaked.
It was more of a hiss than a sigh. “I told you to stay in the van.”
“I know. Is everything okay?” she whispered.
“There’s nobody inside. You can come in.”
She walked past him but stopped no more than three feet into the house. The heavy drapes were all closed, making it seem as if the daylight had suddenly disappeared. Jake flipped on the light switches in both the kitchen and the living room. She sank down on the couch.
“Are you all right?” Jake asked, crouching in front of her. “You’re still pretty pale.”
If he were lucky, she wouldn’t vomit on his shoes.
“I checked the bedroom and the bath,” he said. “Everything seems to be in order. The doors were locked, Tara. Both doors, both locks.”
So no one had been in her house. That was the easy explanation. She was crazy.
Except that she wasn’t. Her house felt different. The rug in front of the door seemed slightly out of place. The drawer of the corner desk was almost closed, as if someone had hurriedly brushed a hand toward it but hadn’t taken the time to make sure it was shut tight. Like she would have.
“Do you still think somebody was inside?” Jake asked.
She felt old and brittle and desperately wanted to scream. But she needed to be very careful. The ability to move quickly, without anyone expecting her to do so, was what had saved her once before. If anyone knew she was spooked, she’d lose that element of surprise and that could prove deadly.
Chapter Six
She forced a smile. “I’m sorry I brought you out here on a wild-goose chase.”
Jake shook his head. “No problem. Does anybody besides you have a key?”
Her turn to shake her head.
“No ex-boyfriends?” he asked. For the first time, his gaze wasn’t meeting her eyes. He was staring somewhere above her head.
“I don’t give keys to men that I date.”
“Even Bill Fenton?” He shrugged. “I couldn’t help overhearing the conversation at the picnic.”
Right. He saw and heard too much. That was what made him so dangerous. “Last year, Bill was living with Alice and Henry and he spent a lot of time drinking coffee at Nel’s. He was between jobs and probably bored.”
“You never went out?” he asked.
“One time we went to the Big Dip and got ice cream cones. I think—” she hesitated “—it is possible that he might have exaggerated our relationship. When he left town suddenly, I got the impression from Alice that she thought I might have had something to do with his sudden departure. I didn’t know if Bill inadvertently or purposefully misled her. I hoped it would blow over, and it must have because Alice hasn’t mentioned it lately.”
“So Alice and Henry must have a key?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe they stopped by?”
It was possible but they weren’t expected back until tomorrow. “Maybe,” she agreed.
“Or maybe somebody else stopped by, knocked, realized you weren’t home and then left. But they didn’t realize they needed to latch the screen door.”
“You’re probably right.” There were a thousand reasonable explanations. They could play this game all day.
Jake stared at her. Then he sat down on the chair opposite the couch. He looked very serious. The irony didn’t escape her. They were in the same positions they’d been that first night he’d come to her home. He’d looked very serious that night, too.
“Anything you want to tell me, Tara?” he asked.
Damn. “No. I mean, thank you. I appreciate your help. You must have a hundred things to do. I mean, being new and all. I’m sure you need to get back.”
He shook his head. “No. I got a text from Andy. He’s feeling much better and will finish out the shift. I’m done for the day.”
This was getting worse by the minute. “I imagine you’re pretty tired. Hot day in the sun and all.”
He looked around her kitchen. “I wouldn’t turn down a cup of coffee.”
Act like a normal person. Did she even remember what that was like? “Of course.”
Tara ran the water and filled the pot, making sure she only made enough for one cup for each of them. She fiddled around, putting away the clean dishes that had dried in the rack next to the sink. Then she pulled out the silverware drawer and did the same with the utensils, carefully stacking each fork and spoon. She wiped down an already clean counter.
When the coffee was done brewing, she poured one for herself and a second cup for Jake. Act like a normal person. It was going to become her new mantra. Act normal, people will think you’re normal, and if you’re really lucky you’ll start to believe it yourself. You’ll forget that normal ended fourteen months ago.
“So what did you think of the picnic?” she asked.
“First time I ever saw a tractor with streamers hanging off it,” he said. “I’ve seen them in the field while I was driving down the highway. They’re a lot bigger close up and fancier, too. Heck, I think the one had a fully stocked bar and a couch inside the cab.”
She smiled, remembering how shocked she’d been when she’d first seen the farm equipment. “Maybe not a couch but definitely a small refrigerator, GPS and a soft chair.”
“Sounds like my apartment in Minneapolis without the GPS.”
“Have you always lived in the city?” It surprised her that she wasn’t simply going through the motions of small talk. She wanted to know.
“Yes. Born and raised. Only time I ever left was when I enlisted in the Marines.”
“How old were you?”
“Nineteen. I’d been inspired by Operation Desert Storm. Never got to Iraq, but at one point I ended up in Somalia, where a peacekeeping, rebuilding effort went bad and I almost got my butt kicked.”
She’d interviewed a number of veterans over the years. The things they had seen always amazed her. “Was it horrible?”
“Some of it. But a lot of it was very good. It changed my life.”
“How? Why?” The questions were out of her mouth before she could stop them.
He laughed. “You’re not from the National Enquirer or anything, are you?”
Yikes. She needed to be more careful. “I’m just curious. If you’d rather not say…”
He shook his head. “I got married right out of high school. Wendy and I were both eighteen. She was two months pregnant.”
He had a wife. A child. Maybe more than one. Her reporter’s intuition had rarely failed her so completely. “I didn’t realize you were married.” My gosh, my voice sounds stiff.
“Wendy miscarried at four months. We got divorced a year later.”
Her heart broke for the loss he suffered when he was barely a man himself. “I’m sorry, Jake. The death of a child is probably really hard for a couple to manage.”
“Yeah, well, I was willing to try. I had this crazy idea that marriage was for life. But it was tough. We had jobs but we were making minimum wage, barely making ends meet.”
“What happened?”
“Less than a year later she was pregnant again.” He stood up and walked into the kitchen. He had his back to her.
“You didn’t want the baby?” she asked.
It was several seconds before he turned, facing her once again. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t talk about it much. Wendy and I hadn’t slept together for three months, so I knew the baby wasn’t mine. The father ended up being the manager of the local ten-minute oil-change shop. He was forty, more than twice as old as we were. He had a house, a boat, his ends were meeting.”
He said it calmly, without emotion, but she could tell the hurt had never really gone away. “What did you do?”
“Signed the divorce papers and left. Hell, I didn’t really blame her. I was going nowhere. I didn’t have any education. What was I going to be able to offer her? So I enlisted in the Marines. That’s when I realized I’d skipped college but somehow managed to join the let’s-kick-their-asses fraternity.”
“You make it sound almost fun.”
“War is never fun. But the Marines taught me self-discipline. They taught me respect for authority. They taught me that the difference between life and death, the difference between coming home whole or in a pine box, can be just a couple inches. They taught me how to be a man.”
He wasn’t giving himself enough credit. He’d accepted a man’s responsibilities at the age of eighteen, long before he’d become a marine.
“You came home,” she said, stating the obvious.
“Yeah. Although I still didn’t have a job or an education and my family was a mess. My parents were separated, my younger brother was a suicidal drunk.”
“What happened while you were gone?”
“Sam is just a year younger than me. He’d always been the student of the family. He got an academic scholarship to Northwestern, a pretty swanky private school in Chicago. Great journalism program. He swung an internship at the Chicago Tribune, and all he talked about was working there after graduation.”
Friends from school had gone to work at Mother Tribune, the flagship of the Tribune enterprises. She had visited them just months before she’d run from D.C. Michael would have contacted them, looking for her. Who knew what kind of crazy story he’d told them about why she’d left? He sure as heck wouldn’t have told them the truth.
“While I’d taken a local train, with lots of stops and starts and getting-off points, Sam was on the express, in full pursuit of the American Dream.”
“But something happened to derail him?”
“Yeah. His fiancée got murdered. He found her. Her skull had been bashed in.” Jake’s voice had turned hard and his jaw looked stiff. “Even worse, for a while, he was the prime suspect.”
“Oh, my.” It seemed inadequate, but it was all she could think of to say. Even after all these years the pain was evident in his voice, and she knew that Jake Vernelli had suffered for his brother.
“I’m sorry. It must have been a horrible time.”
“Something like that changes a person. It changes the people who love that person.”
She understood that. Violence had changed her.
“Is that why your parents had trouble?”
“Evidently before I got home, Sam had been spinning out of control for a while. My parents didn’t know what to do. My mom made excuses and my dad thought tough love was the answer. They fought about it constantly. I think they were both just scared that they weren’t going to be able to pull Sam back from the edge. It got so bad that they separated.”
His family had fallen apart. “Not exactly the Welcome Home party you were expecting?”
He shrugged and gave her a half smile. “Not really. But I got my brother sobered up, worked full-time and went to school full-time.”
“You make it sound easy but I’m betting it wasn’t.”
“You spend enough hours burrowed into the ground during a sandstorm and you get your priorities in line.”
“What happened with your parents?”
This time it was a full smile that reached his dark eyes. “They got back together. If it weren’t for them, I’d probably think all marriages were hopeless. But they showed that love can endure.”
“But yet you never got married again?” She was sorry the minute she asked the question. It was too personal and what did it matter anyway. “Never mind,” she said, holding up the palm of her hand.
He shook his head. “It’s okay. Fourteen months of wedded bliss at the age of eighteen didn’t scar me for life. Maybe someday, if I find the right woman, and I know she’s not going to lie to me, then, who knows?” He rinsed his now-empty coffee cup in the sink and placed it on the drying rack. Then he took two steps toward the door before turning suddenly.
“You ever been married?” he asked.
She was scarred—both literally and figuratively. “No.”
“Not even close?�
�
It was the perfect opportunity. She could tell him the truth. But he was a cop. Had worked hard to become one. How could she expect him to look the other direction?
She worked hard on her own smile. “Not even.”
He rapped his knuckles on the wood door frame. “Here’s hoping you have better luck than I did. I’m going to take off. Will you be okay?”
“Absolutely.” She watched him walk through the front door. Then she got up, locked both the door lock and the bolt lock, and then sank into the nearest chair. If I find the right woman and I know she’s not going to lie to me.
She’d done more than just lie to him. Her whole life was a lie. Tara Thompson was real. She just wasn’t really Tara Thompson.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING, Tara drove to town at a more normal speed than she had the previous evening. It was not yet six but already light when she turned into the small parking lot behind the restaurant. As she did every morning, she took a minute to cast a quick look around, making sure that nobody was waiting for her. With her keys in her hand, she walked to the door, quickly unlocked it and pulled it shut behind her.
She lit the grill first and then started the coffee brewing. She walked into the cooler and pulled out flats of eggs. The next trip in, she grabbed the boxes of bacon and sausage that Janet would fry up once she arrived. Within fifteen minutes, she’d mixed up the dough for biscuits. She’d never even had biscuits and gravy until she’d arrived in Minnesota. She and her friends in D.C. had been more the poached-egg-on-toast types.
“Morning.”
Tara jumped, almost knocking a bowl off the counter. She hadn’t heard the back door. “Good morning, Janet. I guess we both survived the picnic. Thanks again for your help.”
“Nice event. Pretty warm, though.”
“Yes. I’m grateful that we don’t have to turn the ovens on today to cook roast beef. They say it may reach a hundred degrees.” She rested her spoon on the butcher-block table. “I’ll let you take over here. I’m going to go flip the sign.”
As she unlocked the door, she smiled as Nicholi came in, folded newspaper under one arm. He made a point to wave to Janet in the kitchen, who gave him a curt nod in return. Tara poured a cup of coffee and set it in front of him. He added one creamer and a half a packet of sugar, just like he did every other morning.
