One Last Breath by Lisa Jackson (5)

Chapter 5

Heather was sweating bullets by the time she drove through the border crossing and headed into Vancouver, British Columbia.

With Charlotte strapped into the back seat and a good share of her worldly possessions stuffed into every available space in her small car, she headed directly to Uncle Kent’s condo. Heather knew she’d have to return, to feed the cat if nothing else, and to grab the last of her belongings, but for now she just needed to keep Charlotte safe.

Her daughter was still not her usually ebullient self, but part of her mood could probably be attributed to Heather’s freak-out. She’d made a game of gathering up toys, clothes, electronics, and toiletries, but Charlotte was astute, a kid who saw beyond the surface and no doubt she’d read the tension beneath Heather’s forced smile and recognized panic in her mother’s eyes.

Even now, though quiet for the most part, Charlotte had asked, “What about Mr. Bones? Does Uncle Kent know we’re coming? Why are we leaving so fast?” Heather had made up quick answers. “The cat will be fine. I’ll be back tomorrow,” she had answered. “It’s kind of a surprise. Uncle Kent will be thrilled to see you, honey.” None of the answers had rung true and Charlotte, big-eyed and suspicious, was holding tight to her stuffed rabbit and staring at the back of Heather’s head as if silently willing her mother to spout out the truth.

No way.

Not yet.

Her “Heather Johnson” passport still worked, thank God, at least as far as getting into Canada and back to Point Roberts. Entering the U.S. mainland again hadn’t been an issue until she’d seen Liam in the monitor of her station at the Buzz.

Throat tight, she kept checking her mirrors to see if she was being followed. So far, no black SUV was in sight and traffic was light enough that she could track the vehicles within a hundred yards behind her Honda. Even so, her heart was pounding, her hands sweaty, though she’d cracked the window and the summer day was cool.

As she glanced into the reflective glass, she zeroed in on her red hair. She wished she’d had time to dye it dark again, become a brunette.

Not yet.

Heather maneuvered through the increasingly heavy traffic through the outskirts of Vancouver and tried to distract her daughter with a game of “Who can spy the next red car,” to no avail. At last she pulled into the driveway of the townhouse and watched the cars driving past. No vehicle slowed. No black SUV slid into the open parking spaces on the street, nothing looked out of place. A jogger sped past, wireless earphones visible, ponytail swinging, and an elderly couple, both wearing hats, walked a dog on the sidewalk along the narrow street that headed into the park. Another neighbor was watering the flowers in her front-porch planters that exploded with pink and purple petunias.

Liam, if he’d been in Point Roberts, hadn’t followed her to Vancouver. Still, her pulse raced as she helped Charlotte from her car seat.

“I can do it,” her daughter told her while struggling with the buckles and holding her one-eyed stuffed bunny in a death grip. Heather waited while her daughter asserted her independence, releasing the buckle, climbing out of her car seat and through the sedan’s open door, slipping her free hand into Heather’s as they headed up the steps to the front porch.

Heather leaned on the bell, but the glass door was opened immediately and Maude Sutter stood in the hallway. “Well, holy sh—moley. What in the world’s going on?” She reached for Charlotte but her sharp, blue-eyed gaze was firmly focused on Heather.

“I wish I knew.”

“It’s a game,” Charlotte said sagely. “See how fast we can get here.”

“Well, I hope you didn’t break any speeding laws on the way. Come on in.”

“My things—”

“Kent’s on his way. Let him unpack for you. I’m hoping you’re staying for a while.” In a lingering cloud of expensive perfume mingled with cigarette smoke, she nuzzled Charlotte’s cheek. “Now, you, Charlotte, my love, tell me everything that’s going on, will you?”

Charlotte immediately brightened and began chatting.

“There’s iced tea on the counter in the kitchen, something a little stronger in the cabinet in the den. Whatever you want or need.” Still holding Charlotte, she closed the door behind Heather and led the way along a narrow hall to the back of the house, where the kitchen looked over a small garden. “I’ve got a new birdhouse,” she murmured into the child’s ear. “Let me show you.” Without another word to Heather she took Charlotte through a back door to the yard, where hummingbirds and bumblebees were buzzing over a riot of blooms. After dropping her purse and computer bag onto the table, Heather poured herself a glass of iced tea from the glass pitcher on the table and considered adding a splash of vodka, but decided to save the alcohol for later. She needed a clear head, now more than ever.

How had he found her?

Why had he tracked her down?

What was she going to do?

She stood in the open back door and watched Maude walk her daughter along flagstone paths through the shrubbery, loving the image of a sixtyish woman in a flowing white caftan holding the hand of a little girl in clothes still splotched with preschool finger paint and wrinkled from her nap. Charlotte had never met either one of her biological grandmothers—neither ice-queen, snobby Stella Bastian nor easily influenced Darlene Stemple who thought she was a little psychic and yet had married the unscrupulous Harold Stemple. Rory’s own father, Uncle Kent’s good friend, had died suddenly of a heart attack when Rory was about Charlotte’s age. Rory sensed that Pat Abernathy hadn’t completely walked the straight and narrow, much like The Magician, but overall he’d been a good man. Darlene had been lost after his death, completely undone. Rory could vaguely remember the different men her mother had been attracted to, ones she suspected Uncle Kent had somehow managed to dissuade from pursuing her. But he hadn’t been able to stop Darlene from falling for the handsome and slick Harold Stemple, a man who was little more than a common criminal. A thug who married Darlene and brought his teenage sons, Everett and Aaron, into the household when Rory was thirteen. Aaron, the younger son, hadn’t been so bad. He’d become friends with Rory, and that friendship was why she’d asked him to walk her down the aisle. But Everett was a different case entirely. He’d learned at his father’s knee, apparently, and was aggressive and very aware of his good looks. The Stemple and Abernathy households had barely come together when he began making lewd remarks to Rory, suggesting that she really should let him show her the sexual ropes, inviting her to touch him and even going so far as to not only try to kiss her, but feel her up. Once he’d even slipped into her bedroom and climbed into the single bed that had been pushed up against the wall. Only a knee to his groin and her scream had forced him out of the room. After that, she’d installed a lock on her door, especially when Darlene didn’t take seriously her daughter’s claims of being nearly raped.

“He would never have really done anything,” Darlene said the next morning when she and Rory were alone. “He was just teasing. Giving you a scare.”

“He’s a sexual predator!”

Darlene raised her hands on either side of her head, as if she wanted to cover her ears. “Everett wouldn’t do that.”

“He tried to rape me, Mom!”

“Oh, the drama. Come on. He likes you.”

“I don’t think he does!” she’d cried, tears standing in her eyes. “Rape’s about power, Mom! That’s what it is!”

Darlene had blinked back her own tears. “I know . . . I know. He shouldn’t have come into your room. That’s a violation. But nothing happened, so we’re all okay. And I know things are going to get better. I talked with Laurie yesterday, and she sees great changes in the future. I can already feel them happening.”

Rory had wanted to scream. Laurie was one of her mother’s “psychic” friends.

“Don’t tell Harold,” Darlene added in an undertone. “I’ll talk to Everett.”

“Oh, sure. That’ll do a lot of good.”

Her mother had missed the sarcasm and tried to cuddle her then, but Rory had shaken her off. Together they’d gone to the hardware store, installed a dead bolt on the bedroom door, and Rory had made it her mission to get out of that shabby little house with its secrets and lies the second she turned eighteen. Which she had. Never looking back except to ask her mother to be her matron of honor at Rory and Liam’s second wedding and, with no one else to turn to, she’d chosen Aaron to walk her down the aisle. Her stepfather was in prison and Everett wasn’t invited. Period. Despite Darlene’s desperate pleas that he was part of her family and Rory should get over her negative thoughts.

“Pervert,” she muttered now, draining the last of her tea, biting down on an ice cube just as she heard the front door open and Uncle Kent’s footsteps sounded in the hallway.

The Magician had returned.

* * *

No one was home.

Liam knew it the moment he pulled into the drive, past a larger house to what appeared to be a guest house, probably a garage that had been converted to living quarters.

No vehicle was visible and all the shades were drawn in the little cottage that shared the address of the main house, the only difference being that a B had been attached to the numerical address.

Nonetheless he climbed out of his Tahoe and walked along a short path to the front door, where he rapped firmly.

No answer.

No sign of life.

And yet he felt as if he was being watched.

The hairs at the back of his neck lifted and he turned to find a black cat seated on a fence post near the back of the large home, gold eyes staring at him curiously. “What’re you lookin’ at?” he asked in frustration. The cat didn’t move, aside from the slight twitch of its tail.

He banged again, then headed to the main house, where he leaned on the doorbell, heard the peal of chimes, but no answering footsteps. He wasn’t surprised; the place felt deserted, though a quick look in the mailboxes indicated that either the mail had been stopped or had been recently picked up and the cat . . . either belonged to a neighbor or to the tenants.

If so, they wouldn’t be gone long.

Rubbing the back of his neck and feeling like a burglar, he wandered to the rear of the cottage, to the small backyard with a deck. He tested the slider at the back of the tiny home, but it was locked tight, again the shades drawn.

Her boss had probably tipped her off. Connie, he suspected, was the only person who might have a clue as to where she’d gone. Unless the owners of the larger home, the O’Briens, had been filled in. He expected Rory, aka Heather, would lie low now, at least for a while. She could’ve taken off indefinitely.

But someone would have to know.

She’d have to have a forwarding mailing address, yes?

“Hell,” he muttered. What he needed was the number of her cell phone, assuming she had one. Everyone did these days. Even runaways.

On the edge of the deck he saw one of those walker things, all bright colors of plastic with lights, music, and mirrors to keep a baby entertained. He’d seen one before at his sister’s house and he tried to imagine it now with Rory’s child inside. The kid would be younger than a year to fit the device, fifteen months at the most, not old enough to walk on its own. A baby that young suggested that there was a man in Rory’s life, the father of this kid, and for an insane moment he felt a spurt of jealousy. When he’d first heard about the kid, the fleeting idea that it might be his had crossed his mind, but at the time of the wedding Rory had been reed thin; and even if she had been pregnant, a child of their union would be at least four years old by now, far too old for the walker.

So where was the father, he wondered, then decided it didn’t really matter. The problem at hand was that he was locked out, couldn’t get inside to try to determine where she’d gone.

His option was to attempt a break-in, and he considered it. No one was around. He tried the door again and it didn’t budge, so he circled the house. No windows unlatched. Nope, locked up tight as a drum.

He hadn’t come this far to go home empty-handed, without answers. He’d worked on enough job sites that he knew how to get into any locked building, but, as luck would have it, at that moment a police car cruised past the end of the drive, slowing as the officer swept her gaze over the drive. She didn’t pull in, but inched by after giving Liam the once-over, so he couldn’t risk a break-in. Not with his Tahoe’s license plate visible, as he was parked in front of the cottage. Besides, he didn’t know when the neighbors would return or what kind of security system was in place.

His cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out and saw that Bethany was calling him. He stared at the phone as it buzzed in his palm, but he didn’t press to connect. When it finally stopped ringing, he put it down by his side, frustrated, lost in thought.

After a few moments he decided to call her back. He owed her that much. What the hell was he doing here, chasing ghosts? Beth was his future.

He saw that she’d left him a text: When are you coming home?

Home.

Giving up for the day, he made his way to his SUV, took one final look at the house where he suspected Rory resided, or had until this morning, then he drove off. He was done for the day, though he wasn’t about to give up. It didn’t really matter if Rory had a new man or a child. That was her future. Liam was here to seal off her past. She needed to return to the mainland and grant him the damned divorce as well as come clean to the police so that he could go back to Portland and pick up his new life.

* * *

As The Magician stepped onto the back porch, Heather flung herself into his arms. “You have to help me. Help us,” she whispered as his arms wrapped around her and she fought like hell not to break down completely.

“What’s going on?”

“Unca Kent!” Charlotte’s voice rang out, and as Heather turned in the older man’s arms, she saw her daughter running up the gravel path toward the porch. She started coughing as she neared him, something Heather realized had been happening more often. Charlotte was still paler than usual, but the spark had returned to her eyes and she threw out her arms as she hurried up the steps. The cough worried Rory, but Charlotte was giggling as she neared them. Maybe it was nothing . . . maybe . . .

Kent released Heather and scooped her daughter into his arms. “How’s my girl?” he asked, pressing his nose against her face so that she giggled and wriggled when his white whiskers brushed her cheeks.

“Better, obviously,” Heather said.

At a slower pace, Maude joined them and turned her face to allow Kent to buss her cheek. “Looks like you’re just what the doctor ordered,” she observed.

“Always.” He responded with a deep chuckle and Heather saw that when they looked into each other’s eyes there was affection, yes, but something more, a deeper connection.

Her heart twisted. This is what she’d thought, what she’d hoped she would share with Liam forever. Before she’d met him, she’d had her share of boyfriends, none particularly serious, and they’d always disappointed her. Her high school boyfriend, Josh Langley, had left for college and dumped her after the first weekend. When he’d finally come home to visit his family, he’d made it clear that he was long past high-schoolers or teenagers, or more specifically, Rory Abernathy. There had been a couple of other boys she’d dated before she graduated, but those flirtations had been short-lived and unmemorable and had ended when she hadn’t seen fit to put out. Those boys had reminded her of her stepbrother, Everett, with his belief that if he just talked to her the right way or kissed her gently at first, she would really like sleeping with him.

Her only relationship post-junior college had been Cal, who’d been more into weed than into her, a perpetual “student” who never seemed to attend class. When he wasn’t high, he was decent enough for the most part, but decent wasn’t good enough. Too much dependence on marijuana wasn’t what she wanted for the man in her life, though she hadn’t recognized that fact until after they’d become engaged. She’d tried to break off their engagement several times, but Cal didn’t take the news well. When she found out she was pregnant, she’d been torn, knowing it wasn’t going to work with Cal. She kept the secret to herself and then the whole thing became a moot point after she miscarried. She’d never told him about the baby, she just left Seattle for a while. She ran. When she returned, she ran into Liam Bastian—literally—walking down a Seattle street. Though Liam hailed from Portland, his mother, Stella, happened to be a Seattle native. Seattle was also Uncle Kent’s home base, when he wasn’t with Maude in Vancouver, and later, as Rory grew more anxious about marrying Liam, saying as much to Uncle Kent, she’d been glad The Magician would be nearby in case anything went wrong.

She should never have married him. She’d known it wasn’t going to work. She’d even tried to thwart the relationship in the beginning, knowing her own history with unreliable men. She’d laughed when he told her he loved her. Wouldn’t believe it. It was too crazy! She was no Cinderella to his Prince Charming.

Looking back, she should have stuck by her guns and refused to fall in love with him.

She glanced at her little girl being led into the kitchen with the promise of warm cookies and being able to “glitter paint” on the table. Maude was already spreading newspapers and finding the paint set.

Uncle Kent waved her out to the porch, and she fell gratefully onto the outdoor couch and picked up her tea, now mostly melting ice cubes. The kitchen window slid open noisily.

“Iced tea?” Maude said through the screen to Uncle Kent.

“Got anything stronger, luv?”

“I just might.”

The window snapped shut again.

“Tell me,” Kent said, sitting opposite Heather.

And she did. While Maude brought out a plate of cookies from the local bakery and a tall glass of amber liquid over ice for The Magician, and Charlotte drew unicorns and princesses on plain computer paper, Heather brought Kent up-to-date. She started by telling him about seeing Liam in the screen for the drive-up window at the café, explained about running home and Connie calling to confirm that a man who looked like Liam had been asking about her, and how she’d gathered Charlotte and raced here. She handed Kent her phone, where Connie’s pictures confirmed her story and ended with her worries about Charlotte, as the little girl hadn’t been herself.

“She seems all right now,” he said, casting a look through the open doorway to the chair where Charlotte, on her knees, was leaning over the table and dabbing at her art.

“Maybe it’s a cold developing. She’s been coughing some,” Heather said, hoping it was some minor illness.

“So why do you think Liam would show up now? What’s it been? Five years? Why all of a sudden?”

“Maybe it took that long to hunt me down. I don’t know. Maybe because he’s getting married again and needs a divorce?”

Kent’s eyebrows raised.

“You think I don’t keep track of him?” she asked, feeling a little foolish. “And it’s not what you think. Not that I’m in love with him or anything like that,” she said, wondering if she was lying. “But I have to know if he’s going to come looking. Because of Charlotte.”

“He has a right to know about her.”

This was old territory. “I know you think I should go back and face the music and you’re right, I should. But I can’t. I’d lose my daughter.” She took a swallow of her nearly forgotten iced tea and leaned back on the cushions. “Trust me, I’ve beaten myself up over this, over and over again.”

He drank in silence for a second as Heather heard the quiet conversation between Charlotte and Maude emanating from the kitchen, the sound of traffic from the main street a few blocks away, and the caw of a crow who was perched in an apple tree in the backyard.

“I’ve gone over what would happen to me if I returned. First off, I’d probably be interrogated by the police for, oh, I don’t know . . . days? And probably held in jail, as a flight risk. After that, if they determined I was involved, I might be arrested, and what would happen to Charlotte?”

“Maude and I would step in.”

“You mean, Maude would. You’d be in trouble for helping me escape, if that’s even the right term for it. Aiding and abetting a fugitive from justice. No one will believe we didn’t know about the shooting, even if they think we weren’t directly involved. And I’m guessing you might have more than one outstanding warrant against you.”

He gazed toward the window where Maude had appeared. “It’s complicated.”

She closed her eyes. “Do you know how awful I feel? I . . . I left Liam at the altar where he got shot, his father, too, and poor, poor Aaron.” She felt close to tears again, her eyes burning. Liam had survived, and his wounds, a bullet through the leg and another through his torso, had healed, if what she’d read was to be believed. She didn’t know the extent of the damage, of course, but he was alive and well enough to run a company and squire Bethany Van Horne around.

Geoffrey Bastian had been hit as well, two bullets lodging in his spine, one severing his spinal cord, so that he was confined to a wheelchair. She’d seen pictures of him in some motorized contraption, though he was still a force to be reckoned with, still a figurehead in Bastian-Flavel Construction, though his two sons, Liam and Derek, ran the business on a day-to-day basis.

Some of the guests had been injured. One took a bullet to her arm; one the victim of broken glass in her knees and palms. The third, his sister, Vivian, had been knocked to the ground by another fleeing attendee, breaking her ankle. As Heather understood it, from accounts on the Internet and in newspapers and a snippet on cable news, it was a miracle more people hadn’t been seriously injured.

She’d wondered often enough who had been the intended target. One or more of the Bastians? But Aaron had been the one who’d lost his life. She felt deep sorrow for his life being snuffed out so violently and early. He had been the kinder of her two stepbrothers. No prince, of course, but still. Dead. Long before his time. Because he was at her farce of a wedding. Had Aaron just gotten in the way of the bullets? Or had he been the mark? His father, after all, was a criminal. But . . . why the attack on her? By an assailant with a knife? Who was he? Why hadn’t he been apprehended? He’d threatened her. Known she was pregnant. Was he the man who’d rained bullets on the wedding guests? These were the same questions that haunted her sleep.

“I haven’t even visited Aaron’s grave,” she said, her throat thick.

“He’ll forgive you.” Kent tried to make a joke. It fell flat and he added, “You just have to find a way to forgive yourself.”

She snorted.

“It takes time.” He smiled kindly. “You’ve got it.”

“I suppose.”

“So try not to freak out. It was bound to happen that you’d run into someone from the Bastian family at some point.”

“Maybe.”

“And you’ve been lucky, right? You haven’t seen anyone associated with Liam until now?”

“I guess.”

“You know.”

She let out a sigh as she opened her eyes and stared into the yard with its riot of blooms and stately trees. “Not exactly associated with Liam, maybe. But a couple of times I was half convinced that I saw Everett.”

“What?” Kent’s face tensed. His lips within the neat goatee compressed. “You never said.”

“But then I’m always seeing someone,” she said dismissively. “I wasn’t certain. It was just a glimpse or two.” And it turned my blood to ice.

“In Point Roberts?”

“Yes. The first time, I was coming out of the grocery store, and I thought he passed me on the street. He was driving a pickup of some kind, but he was wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, so I told myself I was jumping at shadows.”

“When was this?”

“A month ago? Maybe six weeks?”

“And the second time?” he asked.

“Maybe a couple of weeks ago. On the docks.” She made a face, lips tense. “I’d taken Charlotte down to look at the boats, and there was this guy on a cabin cruiser. He was leaning down over a coil of rope, I think, again with the hat and sunglasses, and when he saw me looking at him, he turned around quickly and disappeared down a hatch. The sun was out, bright against the water, spangling, y’know, and I just wasn’t sure.”

“Not like you are about spotting Liam today.”

“Exactly. This time, I knew immediately, then Connie confirmed it. The other man, the one on the dock and by the grocery store? I’m pretty sure he was just someone who reminded me of Everett.” At least that’s what she’d told herself. “I haven’t seen him since.”

“So what do you want to do now?”

“I don’t know. Hide out here, I guess. For the night at least. The O’Briens are coming back tomorrow. Once they’re home and can check things out to make sure Liam’s not hanging around, I’ll go back and pack up my things and move, if my car holds out.”

“What’s wrong with your car?”

“It has trouble starting sometimes. It’s okay.”

“Maybe I should take a look at it.”

Heather shrugged. She didn’t want to be more of a burden than she already was.

“Where are you planning to go?” he asked.

“That’s the million-dollar question,” she admitted, her shoulders sagging with the weight of a decision she didn’t want to make. “But away from Point Roberts. I think my time there is done.” Her heart grew heavy when she considered pulling up stakes and taking Charlotte from the only community and friends she’d ever known. No more ABC and Me preschool or Miss Evers, or even Tommy the bully. No longer would she see Connie, or Joanna, or Carlos. Heather drained her glass, looked at The Magician and hoped to God he could pull the proverbial rabbit out of his hat.