Not Without You

by Taylor, Janelle

  Jarred shook his head.

  To call the house ramshackle was to elevate its appearance. Through the slapping wipers, she could see a dark, squalid shape with a drooping porch and a disreputable car parked beside a pile of jumbled firewood.

  But there was a light in the back. A sliver of illumination stabbing through a tiny slit between dark curtains.

  Kelsey had already cut her own lights and coasted up the end of the drive blindly until she’d suddenly approached a clearing. Then there was the house. Marlena’s description had been too accurate, and Kelsey had been to enough of Chances previous residences to understand how this was very likely his last home.

  She didn’t know what she was doing. She didn’t know what she hoped to find. But Connor had wanted to talk to her, and she was fairly certain he was her mysterious caller. Whatever that meant, she couldn’t guess. But it was all tied into Chance and Jarred and the airplane crash, and she sensed that drugs were heavily involved as well.

  Not a tidy package.

  Huddling within her coat, Kelsey cut the engine and pocketed her keys. Stepping into the dark night, she listened to the howl of the wind and felt the sting of snow on her face. Fir trees waved ominously. For a moment she almost got back in her car and turned around. Instead, she walked forward, head bent, calling herself every name for this insipid charge for the truth.

  At the door to the house, she hesitated again. A smell reached her nostrils, a strong, god-awful odor.

  Cat urine.

  Jarred’s description. She strained to look through the tiny slit between the curtains.

  And suddenly there was a body beside her in the night. A man. Standing at the corner of the house. A scream rose in her throat.

  “Who the hell are you?” he demanded, scared.

  Shivering, she swallowed. “Connor?”

  He jerked, shocked, ready for flight.

  “It’s Kelsey.”

  A pause. A moment while her name penetrated his brain. Then he moved swiftly toward her, and Kelsey stepped back on the drooping porch, her hip slamming into a railing that damn near gave way. She flailed and Connor grabbed her arms.

  “Kelsey? Kelsey?”

  “Ye-yes,” she chattered.

  He gazed at her through narrowed eyes, then shoved open the front door. “Come inside,” he said, holding open the door to an untidy room that looked godforsaken and smelled even worse. “You need to help me. Chance said you would.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  If there was ever a sorrier place to live, Kelsey couldn’t imagine it. The walls of this once respectable home curved inward, as if swelling from some mysterious edema, and the plaster was chipped, broken, and missing in so many places it looked as if it were some kind of cockeyed design. Still, it wasn’t the house itself that hit Kelsey so hard. It was the sense of hopelessness and desperation and the complete lack of dignity or even morality that permeated her surroundings and lent an air of something she couldn’t quite name that threatened way down in her soul. Bottles and utensils and pans with blackened bottoms and vials and crystals and scattered pills were strewn around the kitchen. In the living room, a couch and a ripped ottoman sat atop a worn gray carpet smeared with mud and dotted with cigarette burns. A bare lightbulb threw out a yellow halo from a floor lamp A moth frantically circled the bulb. The stench was overpowering. Cat urine wasn’t bad enough to describe it. Kelsey’s stomach revolted and she fought back a rising taste of bile. Sweat coalesced on her forehead and upper lip. She was simply sick to her deepest heart.

  “C’mere,” Connor said, waving her into the kitchen. He wore overalls stained with glops of stuff that Kelsey wouldn’t even try to categorize. His hair was longish, untamed, uncut, and uncared for. His beard scraggled into the semblance of a goatee. He reeked of desperation.

  Kelsey swallowed and managed a quick glance around. There was artillery everywhere. Not one or two guns: artillery. Shotguns and rifles stood against the wall like sentinels. A nest of grenades lay ominously next to a back door whose lock rattled in the rising wind.

  “Those loaded?” she asked, indicating the guns with a nod of her head. Stupid question. This wasn’t the kind of place where precautions were valued.

  “Huh? Oh, yeah.”

  The odor was like a blanket, thick and enveloping. She fought back another wave of nausea. She could see that Connor had been busy playing do-it-yourself pharmacist. She didn’t know much about crystal methamphetamine but she had no doubt that was what she was looking at. And she suspected it was just part of the overall illegal and recreational drug inventory Connor possessed.

  Sadness overtook her. This is what Chance had become? This is how far it had spiraled downward? The realization boggled her mind and made her understand his tears and regrets that night before his death. He’d told her how sorry he was. She saw it now. Saw what it meant.

  “Don’t stand over there,” Connor ordered. “Come here!”

  “Connor, I just came to find out about Chance,” she said, refusing to budge from the center of the room.

  He was in the kitchen area, hovering by a plate of crystals. “You know how hard it is to get all this stuff?” he complained, sweeping a hand over the counter. “The ingredients? Hard! And they make it harder all the time. Those fucking bastards, you know.”

  Kelsey inhaled a shaking breath and told herself to keep a cool head. She wanted to panic. It was so frightening in this room. “You were living here with Chance, before the plane accident?”

  “Chance.” His face twisted up and she was certain he was going to cry. “It’s not my fault! It’s those fucking bastards, you know. You know the ones. That suit that showed up here. The fucking bastard you married!” With that, he broke into wailing sobs and clutched his stomach.

  Kelsey stayed absolutely still. “If you mean Jarred, he was in the plane, too.”

  “I know. I know! But Chance wasn’t supposed to be there! Chance wasn’t supposed to be there! Goddamn it. Get over here!”

  His frantic words persuaded Kelsey to stay put Calm. Careful. Cool. Collected. “Connor, I don’t think—”

  He moved toward her snake quick, grabbing her arm, hauling her close. Kelsey instinctively pulled back, stumbled, stood still. Too much weaponry on every wall. Too many drugs. This man wasn’t rational. He was something else. Someone dangerous and unpredictable.

  She should never have come alone. She should have let Jarred meet him. She’d been a fool to think that she could accomplish something more because she’d been Chance’s friend. She needed Jarred’s protection far more than she needed Connor’s trust—and that trust was a joke anyway. The man didn’t know how to trust. All he knew was the power of intoxicants and woe to anyone who stood in his way.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” Connor hissed through stained teeth. “Chance wasn’t supposed to be there! You hear me? He wasn’t supposed to be there!”

  “You’re right. You’re right,” Kelsey agreed, her ears ringing from Connor’s shouting. “He just showed up at the plane. Jarred didn’t expect him.”

  “What was he doing there?” Connor wailed. “I wouldn’t have hurt him. I didn’t mean for it to happen like that.”

  Kelsey’s heart nearly stopped. “Of course you didn’t,” she said, her mind racing. “It was an accident.”

  “He shouldn’t have come here! He was going to the police. Did he tell you that? He was going to the police! And we couldn’t have that. And they would kill us to keep our mouths shut. They’ve said so. So when he walked in here in a suit like the fucking president of the U.S. of A., goddamn it, Chance went crazy. Just crazy. He was scared. We were scared, so we had to do something. Chance had to see him.”

  Kelsey struggled to follow. “Chance went to see Jarred at his office,” she said diffidently.

  Connor shook her so hard her teeth rattled. “Aren’t you listening? He had to! He had to talk to him. Stop him. And Chance knew things—things he wouldn’t even tell me because he knew people. He knew th
ose people at that company—your company. You know,” he muttered, frustrated.

  Kelsey swallowed. “Bryant Industries?”

  “Your suit husband wouldn’t listen to Chance. Chance came back and he broke down. Something had to be done, y’know. Y’know?”

  Kelsey nodded. Chance had come to see her that night. He’d broken down with her, too. She was afraid to say anything to Connor though, afraid to cut off this tide of confession. She was… afraid of him.

  “He said you would help me. He told me you would. If I ever needed it. But damn it…” He swore violently for several seconds, his grip tightening with each sharp curse. Kelsey held her breath. “He didn’t tell me he was going to the plane.” He gulped back a sob. “I knew which plane it was. I knew. But Chance wasn’t supposed to be there!”

  …about five foot ten, thin, dark, unkempt hair, blue jeans… Detective Newcastle’s description floated into her consciousness, too apt to ignore. “You were at the hangar that day,” she breathed softly.

  “It’s that bastard’s fault,” he said with a catch in his voice. “If he hadn’t come here, none of this would’ve happened and Chance would still be alive.”

  Connor wouldn’t have done a professional job. But he could easily sabotage a plane. Thoughts jumped into her brain, bright and blinding with truth. He hadn’t meant to kill Chance.

  But he’d meant to kill Jarred.

  Licking her dry lips, Kelsey said, “Jarred wouldn’t have turned you in.”

  “Bullshit! He would’ve. He was going to. He told Chance he was!”

  “He told him?”

  “At his office! Aren’t you fucking listening?” He shook her so hard that her neck ached from the movement of her head. “At his office! I had to do something. I had to. Had to…” Now he was seriously sobbing, clutching Kelsey as if she were his sole source of support.

  Frantically she sought for some way out. She had to get away. He was too volatile, too emotionally fragile and unstable. Anything could happen. He was a selfprofessed murderer, for God’s sake! Anything could happen!

  The only answer was to run, but Connor’s grip was too intense. Her eyes darted around the room. Guns… grenades… squalor… Helpless, she prayed for some kind of divine inspiration.

  “Can you help me?” he whispered tremulously in her ear. “Can you?”

  “Yes.” Kelsey projected as much confidence as she could into the single word. “Yes. I can help you.”

  Getting a taxi was damn near impossible. The streets were full of cars and slush and cold snow that wisped and blinded and stung. The vehicles moved like molasses in January, clogging the lanes, their headlights blaring sightlessly, windshield wipers flapping. Jarred stood in the front of the hotel and listened in frustration as various bellmen and the main taxi hailer argued and fought with the few taxis that had made their way around the hazards of stopped cars.

  A nightmare.

  “Jarred.”

  He turned around and found Nola beside him, shivering. She pulled out a pack of cigarettes, tried three times to extract one with terribly shaking fingers, then inhaled a quivering sob and simply closed her eyes. Jarred took the pack from her, shook out a cigarette, and handed it to her.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. She withdrew a gold lighter from her pocket and held it out to him. He lit her cigarette without a word. “What else did your father say?” she asked. “Anything?”

  “No.”

  “It’s since your accident. This has happened since your accident.”

  Jarred didn’t respond.

  “He’s coming out with Will and Sarah’s help. I wanted to catch up with you first.”

  Jarred waited. Snow filtered onto Nola’s perfect hairdo and melted in dark spots. She looked so fragile he wanted to bundle her up and take her back inside, but she smoked as if her life depended on it.

  “It’s no secret he’s had other women,” Nola said. “I mean, Will’s a perfect example.”

  Jarred turned away. He didn’t want to hear this now. No, it was no secret his father had been a philanderer, but it was one generally kept in the closet. And right now he would have preferred it to remain that way. All he could think about was Kelsey and this god-awful weather.

  “And now he’s going to be a father,” she added bitterly, her face screwing up into a look of complete despair.

  “So he told you,” Jarred said.

  “She told me,” Nola hissed. “Smug as a Persian cat! Darling, you’ve got to do something! Where is Kelsey? Please don’t tell me you’re having problems again. Not now!”

  “Everything’s fine,” Jarred clipped out.

  “Then get on with it for God’s sake! What are you waiting for? Your brother to inherit everything? I couldn’t bear it. You’re my son. And I married your father. You, and you alone, deserve to inherit. It’s everything you’ve worked for and everything I’ve worked for as well! If you’re working through problems in your marriage, just hurry it up for heaven’s sake. Make a baby. Stop them all from taking it away from us!”

  She gazed up at Jarred. Tears starred her lashes. Cold little bits of ice.

  “Nola,” he murmured, unsettled to hear her desires expressed so blatantly.

  “Nola! I’m your mother,” she gasped, truly shocked.

  “If Will has a baby, and I don’t, he inherits the cash equivalent of what was in my grandfather’s will on the day Hugh died. But the bulk of Bryant Industries is what’s been made since that time and that’s outside Hugh’s stipulation. Most of the assets have been purchased with money netted since Dad and I took over.”

  “Since you took over,” Nola corrected. “Your father was no shepherd.”

  “The point is, at the very least, Will deserves what Hugh brought to the table. It was the seed, not the harvest. If this baby ensures he gets that, great. But let me tell you, even without an heir, I’d make sure Will gets an equivalent share. Dad knows this. I’m surprised you don’t.”

  “I know who deserves what,” she snapped as the door opened and Will and Sarah helped Jonathan navigate the slippery steps. “And Will doesn’t deserve anything!” she added harshly.

  “Taxi!” Jarred called, flagging a yellow cab that had miraculously made its way through the snarled traffic. He tried to put Nola into the cab, but she refused. “Will’s taking us back in his four-wheel drive. It’s right up the street. But I wanted to talk to you. I wanted an understanding between us.”

  “I understand perfectly what you’re saying,” he bit out. “I just don’t agree with it.”

  “Jarred, Sarah’s not the first woman who’s tried to steal a piece of our company. She won’t be the last. Pay attention. It’s what women do.”

  Jarred slid into the cab. Nola ground out her cigarette into the amassing snow and stepped carefully toward Jonathan, Sarah, and Will. Grimly, Jarred watched as Will hurried away from the group, heading in search of the car. Jonathan leaned on his cane, gazing at Jarred’s cab.

  “Wait a sec,” Jarred said to the cabbie.

  “Man, I’ve got people stranded. This is a bitch of a night.”

  “I’ll give you a hundred dollar tip to wait for me,” Jarred said in a voice like steel.

  One swift look to see if Jarred could make good on his word and the cabbie broke into a wide-mouthed grin. “Let ’em freeze to death!”

  So much for being a good Samaritan, Jarred thought ironically as he hurried to his father’s side. “The cab’s taking me home. We’ll drop you off on the way,” he said.

  “Will and I are taking them home,” Sarah said imperatively.

  “Not anymore.”

  With that, Jarred helped his mother and father into the cab, sketched a salute good-bye to Sarah, then hopped in beside his parents. Once more he tried to raise Kelsey on her cell phone; once more he failed.

  “What is it?” Jonathan asked in a frail voice.

  “I’m trying to reach Kelsey.”

  “Where is she?” Nola asked, frowning.

>   Jarred shook his head. They crept through the streets of Seattle. Tire ruts cut to the pavement through the snow, but that didn’t mean cars weren’t slipping and sliding. Seattleites were lousy in this stuff. It was a fact of living in the Northwest. About once a year snow fell. Not the fluffy dry stuff they got in Colorado, but the wet, icy, miserable precipitation that looked so beautiful coming down and then turned the highways into a devilish nightmare.

  Jarred checked the list of numbers he’d programmed into his cell phone and placed another call. “Who’re you phoning now?” Nola wanted to know.

  “The Rowdens,” he answered tersely.

  Connor had a gun in his hand. Held loosely. Waving it about. Sometimes he actually pointed it at Kelsey, but generally that was only to make a point.

  On the chipped range top of the stove, one of the burners was in use. Kelsey could see its angry, hot, red spiral, as a small pan rattled furiously atop it. Nearby and moving throughout the house, the air was thick and strong, as if a heavy fog had crept into the room unannounced. The odor seemed to have a physical presence. Kelsey automatically narrowed her lashes to protect her eyes. She was sweating from heat and fear.

  Connor frowned at the pan. He’d edged away from her momentarily to check on its contents. She’d taken the opportunity to inch backward as soon as he released his grip. Thoughts of escape filled her brain as the smell pervaded her senses. But he read her mind. Quick as lightning, he grabbed her arm, his eyes dark and staring. She stood frozen to the spot.

  “You said you’d help! But you’re movin’ away. Aren’t ya?”

  Kelsey didn’t respond.

  “Aren’t ya?” he screamed at her. “What are you thinking? You thinking I did it on purpose?”The handgun was dark. A deep gray hue that shone ominously in the uncertain light. She could neither see nor think beyond the gun. An ironic inner voice reminded her that she’d charged into this quest to save the day. But even in this detached state she could feel the thundering of her heart. She was scared. She’d blundered into this because she hadn’t really listened to Detective Newcastle’s warnings about drug addicts.