by Jax Hunter
It was after midnight when Nic checked into the motel, leaving Julie in the car. He asked for a back room, away from the highway, with the excuse that he needed to get some sleep. Not exactly a lie. His eyes burned and the adrenaline rush from his foray into lawlessness had evaporated, leaving him spent.
The room only had one bed, but it didn’t take much cajoling to convince Julie to sleep under the covers while he slept on top of them. Neither one felt like crashing on the floor. Before she’d get into bed though, she insisted on reading the suicide note.
“My father didn’t write this.” Julie was emphatic, tossing the letter onto the bed.
“How do you know?”
“Because, whoever wrote this, misspelled grief. Look.” Julie snatched up the wayward paper and moved onto the bed so he could see. “My father was the spelling nazi, Nic.”
“Maybe he was upset. It’s a suicide note, Julie.”
“Nope.” Julie shook her head. “No way. It wasn’t in him to misspell a word. Especially one like grief. My father did not write this note.”
Julie’s whimpers woke him well before light. She was crying in her sleep. So much for not feeling it. Nic gathered her close, pulling her head to his shoulder. She quieted, but not for long.
When he woke a half hour later, Julie sat, knees pulled up to her chest, head in her hands.
“He told me, Nic. He told me.”
“What?” His eyes felt heavy, his throat parched.
Julie turned on the bed. “He told me. The night I came home.” She reached down, shaking Nic’s shoulder. “Wake up!”
“All right.” Nic raked his fingers through his hair and propped up on his elbow. Was it too much to ask for a decent night’s sleep? Apparently so. “What are you trying to tell me?”
Julie bounded off the bed. “My father. The night I came home. He said he had something for me to see.” She stopped speaking and started pacing. “Something for me to work on.”
“And that means what?”
“It’s what I do.” Julie gestured impatiently. “For a living.”
“What?” Nic was lost and it wasn’t just being awakened from a dead sleep.
Julie sighed and flopped on the bed. “I’m an investigator. For the station. That’s what I do for a living. Maybe my dad left me something.” Julie grabbed his hand, tugging. “We need to go back to the house. C’mon.”
It took a good ten minutes before Nic could convince Julie that they couldn’t possibly go back to the house now. It would be light in an hour. It was too dangerous. What were they looking for, anyway? Julie could argue ‘til she was blue in the face. No way was he letting her out of this room in the daylight. If they had to go back to the house—she insisted they did—then she’d have to wait until tonight.
“Can I go back to sleep now?”
“Sure.” Julie shrugged, her voice taut.
She definitely wasn’t happy with either his decision or his request to go back to sleep. Too damn bad. It wasn’t long, though, before he felt her climb back under the covers.
Nic and Julie spent the day in the motel room, making notes from the previous evening. With Julie’s permission, Nic found a copy place and faxed both their observations and the suicide note to Cruz, followed by a call.
Cruz didn’t have anything new, but expressed interest in Julie’s theory that her father hadn’t written the note. He wasn’t entirely comfortable with them going back to the house later tonight. His warnings set Nic’s nerves on edge.
Nic wasn’t the only one on edge. Julie spent most of the day stalking the small room, chaffing at the inactivity.
“If you don’t sit down, I may strangle you.” Even to him, it sounded like a growl.
Julie stopped, frowned at him, and pointedly returning to her incessant movement. She might as well have stuck her tongue out.
“Fine.” Nic launched off the bed and scooped up his coat. “I’ll be back.”
“Scotch, rocks,” Nic told the man behind the bar, who smiled with understanding and plunked two ice cubes into a glass.
“Lady troubles?”
Nic didn’t even look up. He blew out his breath in the affirmative and reached for the glass, swirling the amber liquid over the ice. The room was nearly empty, but somehow the smoky atmosphere seemed to hang over, presumably from the night before.
“You’re not from around here.” The bartender said, swiping a damp rag along the bar.
“Nope.”
“On vacation?”
Nic silenced further inquiry with a look. The man shrugged, mumbled “suit yourself” and moved to the other end of the bar. Nic downed the first drink, nodded for a refill and sauntered over to the pool table as the bartender welcomed a few regulars that had arrived. As he racked the balls, the door opened again and Nic ventured a glance in that direction, half expecting Julie to have tracked him down to pester him more. What he saw was even more disconcerting.
“Hey, Jerry.” The uniformed man touched his hat in greeting to the bartender. “Everything quiet, huh?”
“As usual.”
Nic lowered his head, leaning down to line up the cue ball. Invisible. Be invisible. If he left now, he’d look guilty.
“Nice break,” the deputy said to Nic, as he strolled around the room, stopping to check for change in the pay phone.
“Thanks.” Keep walking, pal. Nic found a shot that would allow him to turn his back on the deputy, blowing out a strangled sigh when the intruder moved toward the door.
“Keep it clean, Jerry,” he said on his way out.
The patrons at a nearby table shook their heads and smiled. Jerry flipped the man off and continued his duties. Nic patiently cleared the table, threw back his drink and left.
He expected the third degree when he walked into the room. Instead, Julie put on her coat.
“I’m hungry. Let’s pick up a burger or something on the way.” No third degree, but the little woman was definitely ticked about something.
“Whatever.” Nic didn’t even take off his coat, just turned and went back outside.
“You need me to drive?”
“No.”
They parked the car on a different street, in a different direction this time. Julie hardly spoke two words on the way.
“What’s the plan?” Nic asked as they walked.
“Dad had a place where he hid Mom’s presents. I’ll check there to see if he left anything for me. I guess we could check my bedroom and maybe his desk, too.”
This time, the hair on the back of Nic’s neck twitched at every turn. Julie must have felt it too because she whispered. He continually urged her to hurry, each time with the same hushed response from her. What seemed like an eternity was only fifteen minutes. They backed out of the house empty handed.
Relief washed over Nic as they walked back to the car. It was short-lived. The car coming toward them had a light bar. Without thinking, he slipped his arm around Julie and pulled her to him.
“Cops,” he whispered against her ear before his lips sought hers. He didn’t have to make it look real. She kissed him back, ferociously.
His mind and body instantly flew from their immediate situation, and the reason for the kiss, to the image and feel of her body against his in the shower. Cursing his own betrayal, he reined himself in, peeking to see the car pass on by.
When the cruiser was far enough away, he forcefully pulled away and continued walking.
Nic checked and re-checked the rear-view mirror as they drove out of town. Nothing.
“We’re not going back there, Julie.”
“No kidding.” Julie exhaled with a chuckle. “That was way too close for comfort.”
They were both giddy with relief.
“Nice adrenaline rush, though, wasn’t it?” she added.
“I can think of better.” Nic smiled.
“And the kiss was a nice touch. It was acting, though. Right?”
Yeah, right, acting.
“Absolutely.” His voice held more deter
mination than he felt.
“Good.”
“That’s funny coming from the girl that crawled into the shower with me.”
He didn’t really say that, did he? Dang. He snuck a glance in her direction. She turned away, but not before he saw what he was afraid he’d see. Tears.
Damn it. She’d been so strong. In the last twenty-four hours she’d learned the graphic details of her family’s death, managed to get into the house twice and never once cried. And one careless comment from him…
She hadn’t been herself when she’d come to the shower to be with him. And, even in those first days, she had been hesitant to meet his gaze afterwards. And now, he’d thrown it in her face.
Damn it all.
She was trying so hard to not let him hear, trying so hard to be inconspicuous when she wiped the tears away.
“I didn’t...”
Julie interrupted with a raised hand. She took a deep breath. “I’m not a slut.” Her voice broke.
“I didn’t think you were.”
“How could you not?” Now she looked over at him, tears streaming down her face.
Hazard or no hazard, Nic eased the car to the shoulder of the highway. He would have pulled her to him but she resisted, tugging stiffly away.
“Please don’t.”
“Look at me, then.”
Eventually she turned to face him.
“Julie, when that happened you were scared and vulnerable. It wasn’t unusual for you to do what you did. You are just now beginning to remember who you are, what makes you you. Believe me. I didn’t think you were a slut.”
Julie nodded, turned to face forward and, again, wiped her eyes. Nic put the car into gear and pulled back onto the highway.
Snow began to fall again as they pulled into the motel parking lot.
In the morning, Nic had to scrape snow and ice from the windshield. Julie threw their bags in the car.
“Where to?” Nic asked.
“The cabin.”
“What cabin?”
“Uncle Jess and my dad owned a cabin a couple hours from here. They used it for their hunting trips, though I suspect far more drinking and card playing were done there than hunting.”
“And we’re going there because...?”
“Because I had a secret place there. It’s the only other place I can think of that my dad would have hidden information for me.”
“Okay. Which way?”
The roads sucked so it took longer than two hours, even to get to the turnoff to the cabin. It wasn’t snowing as hard as it had been when they left the motel; there was a good four inches of new snow on the ground. But back here in the boonies, where plows never ventured, there hadn’t been enough traffic to get rid of the snow that had fallen over the last months.
“It’s up this road about three quarters of a mile.” Julie slipped on her coat.
Nic shifted into four-wheel drive and braced for the adventure up to the cabin. Get up speed. Don’t let off the gas. Keep up the momentum. Don’t rely on four-wheel drive to stop.
Nic cursed. Julie held on tight. The road, if you could call it that, was a maze of turns and ups and downs. They’d gone a half mile or so when their journey came to an abrupt halt. The car wedged in a drift.
The car was definitely stuck, four-wheel drive and all. If there was a shovel at this cabin, then Nic could likely get it unstuck. That is, if there really was a cabin down this so-called road.
Julie insisted it was just around the next bend. It’d better be. Neither of them had boots high enough for the depth of snow they’d have to walk through. Snowshoes would have been nice. It would be dark soon and walking was their only option.
The cabin wasn’t around the first curve, but luckily was the second. Nic had taken his parka off and tied it at his waist. Neither spoke as they crunched their way through the deep snow. What would have normally taken five minutes to walk, took twenty and both Nic and Julie were breathing hard when they finally made it to the door.
“The key should be above the door, on the ledge.” Julie pointed and Nic reached.
It was.
“Yes!” Her voice was triumphant even though she still stood panting, her hands on her knees.
Nic slid the key into the lock and the door creaked open a few inches. He leaned into the doorway, peering inside.
“Lemme have the flashlight.” He reached back as he pushed the door open. He heard the crack and even heard his own scream before the pain registered. But, when it did come, Nic knew little else.
He lay in the snow on the porch, sucked in his breath, holding in another scream. Blood soaked through his shirt, flowing down his arm and side, pooling on the porch.
What the hell happened? Julie, sat a few feet away—he must have knocked her over.
It was obvious from the terror on her face that, finally, the nightmare memories had emerged, complete with the horrors attached. But he needed her to be here now, right now.
“Julie! I need your help,” he hissed, trying to snap her out of her trance. “Julie! Now! Help me!”
Chapter Eight
