The Renegade

by Jennifer Bernard

  “With what?”

  “I’ve been having this recurring dream over the past few months. It’s actually why I came back. It’s a dream about Mom.”

  Gracie’s whimsical face tightened. “About the accident?”

  “No, not that.”

  Their mother, Amanda Rockwell, had died in a car accident about seventeen years ago, when Isabelle was eleven. Their oldest brother, Kai, had been in the car too, and nearly died himself. The aftermath of that crash had echoed through their family in so many ways. Max had spiraled into grief and blamed Kai. After a huge blowout fight, Kai had left, leaving the rest of the siblings on their own. Griffin had stepped in as a kind of surrogate parent. Jake and Izzy had each other, so it was easier on them.

  But Gracie…what had it been like for her, a little girl watching her entire world shatter around her?

  “The dream is exactly the same every time. I’m a little girl and—” Isabelle broke off as Griffin poked his dark head into the room. She noticed a mark on his neck. Griffin, the second oldest, all smoldering good looks and pro athlete physique, had recently fallen in love with an artist named Serena. They weren’t shy about it.

  “Don’t either of you have your phones on? Family meeting. Everyone’s trying to reach you.”

  “You know I don’t believe in those newfangled contraptions,” said Gracie.

  Isabelle startled and checked hers. She’d missed a few calls while she’d been skiing. “Sorry, ringer got turned off. What’s the meeting about?”

  With the lodge closed for renovations—paid for by Lyle Guero’s cash infusion—there seemed to be a family meeting every other day on some issue or another.

  “Finalizing interior design options for the guesthouses and the lounge. We need Gracie for that. Serena has some ideas but she wants Gracie to weigh in too.”

  “Not me?” Isabelle asked, a bit wounded.

  Griffin glanced around her room, which could double as the set for a disaster movie. “Seriously?”

  Isabelle couldn’t help laughing. “Fine. Point taken. I’ll be there, but feel free to start without me.”

  Griffin left, Gracie heading after him. Isabelle snagged her sister’s arm on the way out the door. “Wait one second. I never finished the part about you helping me. Remember how Mom was always writing in her journal?”

  Gracie screwed up her face. “I guess so.” Since she’d been only seven at the time of the accident, her memories of Mom were the most vague.

  “Can you think of where she would have left it? It was probably more than one notebook, but they all looked the same. She liked those Mead composition books.”

  Gracie thought for a moment, then shook her head. “Let me ponder on that. It could be anywhere, I suppose. The lodge has so many nooks and crannies.”

  “And no one knows them better than you. You’ve lived here the longest, even though you’re the youngest.”

  “Well, I don’t remember seeing anything like that. You could ask John Derrick. He’s in charge of the construction crew. Maybe one of the carpenters noticed something.”

  Isabelle nodded, disappointed. “Thanks, I’ll talk to him.”

  “So that’s why you haven’t been sleeping? You’re worried about those journals?”

  “That dream keeps waking me up and then I can’t get back to sleep. I feel like Mom’s trying to tell me something. But I have no idea what. I thought maybe if I could read her journals…”

  Gracie burst out laughing. “Aren’t you supposed to be the skeptical scientist of the family? You sound like me right now.”

  Isabelle laughed ruefully and let go of Gracie’s arm. “I kind of do, don’t I? I guess that’s what sleep deprivation does to me.”

  “Oh, snap.”

  “Go on, they’re waiting for you. See you down there.”

  Gracie vanished like a wisp in the wind, and Isabelle clicked on her phone to check the calls and texts she’d missed. Several from various family members—no doubt about the family meeting. One from the staff at Doctors Without Border, confirming her mailing address—maybe a check was on its way. And one from Diane, one of her friends from high school.

  Really hoping to catch up soon. Want to pick your doctor brain about some stuff.

  Oh great. That was an unexpected consequence of getting her medical degree. Everyone wanted a diagnosis of something, and didn’t seem to understand that it took a real exam to properly accomplish that. Still, she always did her best to point people in the right direction. First, do no harm, after all.

  Next time I head down the mountain I’ll text you, she wrote back. Hopefully that was neutral enough.

  Then she yawned and headed downstairs to see what the more artistically inclined members of her family had decided. Isabelle’s specialties were going fast on skis and operating on trauma patients in rough conditions. Picking paint colors—not so much.

  4

  The dream woke her up again that night. It was the strangest thing—she and her mother were in a meadow, the one where sapphire-petaled lupines bloomed every summer. She was probably about ten, and she wore a smocked dress that Mom had made for her. Even though she’d never said so, Isabelle detested that dress.

  Why would she dream about a dress she hated?

  Her mother was tying something to her ankle. A long string made out of pieces of cloth. She was young in the dream, maybe twenty, which made no sense since she didn’t even have Kai until she was twenty-four. Not that dreams had to make sense, of course. Just like in real life, Mom’s hair was long and light, and she wore a crown of flowers.

  “There you go, my darling pigeon,” she said as she tied the knot tight. “Now you can fly anywhere you want.”

  “But where should I go, Mommy?”

  “Wherever you want, honey.” She tapped a notebook that sat next to her in the grass. A Mead composition book. “Just like me.”

  Isabelle flapped her arms and sure enough, she rose off the ground. The wind caught her and she realized she was a kite and that the pieces of cloth made a kite string anchoring her to her mother. She flew higher and higher, uplifted by the air currents. She looked down and watched her mother laugh with joy, clapping her hands together. The higher she got, the smaller her mother became, until she was just a tiny figure lost in a patch of brown in the forest.

  And then she looked at her ankle and screamed because the kite string was gone and she was never going to see her mother again.

  She sat up in bed, gasping and sweating profusely. The first time she’d had the dream, she’d gone out and bought herself a Mead notebook and written down every detail.

  Every night since then, she’d done the same thing so she could compare details. The scientist in her wanted to document it.

  She quickly wrote down what she remembered. This time, one thing in the dream was different. The cloth that her mother used to make the kite string was black and sparkly, just like the dress Gracie had just claimed.

  Did that have any significance? Or was that particular fabric floating around her consciousness because Gracie had wanted that dress? What did the dream mean? Why wouldn’t it leave her alone?

  After the first ten times she’d had the dream, she’d decided it was telling her to go home. Now she was home, and yet the dream kept coming. Would it finally go away if she managed to find those journals? The Mead notebook appeared in the dream so prominently, with her mother actually pointing at it. Sure seemed important.

  She knew her mother had secrets. Many secrets.

  During their detective phase, she and Jake had discovered that Amanda’s “high school reunion” was actually a night at a hotel in Santa Barbara. Recently, Kai had revealed that their mother had been on her way to meet up with a man the night of the crash. That man had turned out to be Serena’s missing father, who’d died of exposure that same night.

  Since he was deceased, no secrets could be learned from him.

  But maybe the journal would reveal something important, something he
r subconscious was telling her to dig up.

  Damn subconscious. Why couldn’t it leave her alone and let her get a good night’s sleep?

  She rummaged on the nightstand for a melatonin tablet and washed it down with water. Snuggling back under her comforter, she tried a breathing pattern that was supposed to promote sleep. In for four counts, hold the breath for seven, then out for eight counts.

  Her next dream had nothing to do with her mother. In this one, Lyle Guero was naked and she was tracing that long scar that curved around his rib cage and ended at his hipbone. And then her hand was going lower, seeking that hard sleek heat she’d only touched, but never forgotten…

  5

  “Are you going to make me come to the mountains? Seriously, the mountains? You couldn’t have decided to lay low on a beach somewhere with cabana boys that bring bottomless margaritas to you on the regular?”

  Lyle squinted at his laptop, which was showing a Skyped image of his executive assistant, Amira. She was curled up in her bathrobe in her apartment, with a towel turban wrapped around her long dark hair. Since he’d agreed to the board’s demands, technically she didn’t work for him anymore. But she insisted on acting as his backchannel source of information.

  “I told you that you don’t need to come here. I’m not doing any work. There’s nothing for you to assist with.”

  “See, those words don’t even make sense. Lyle Guero and the phrase “not doing any work” just don’t go together. How long have I worked for you?”

  “Since you graduated.”

  “Right. We’ve been through a lot together in that time. You made your first million. You held your first IPO. I got you the front page of Forbes. You made your first billion. I came out. You promoted me to executive assistant.”

  “Do you have a point here?”

  “I do. The point is that if that scumbag Drew Clayton takes your job, I’m out. And while I realize that my needs are not the only thing involved, they are the main thing, at least for me. What’s our strategy?”

  “Right now, lie low and let the lawyers handle it. That’s what the board is asking.”

  She swung her legs off the chair and sprang to her feet. “Forget the lawyers, can’t you just beat him up? You’re a fighter. You’re Lyle fucking Guero. An actual literal fighter. I’ll send you a pair of boxing gloves and you can take care of business.”

  She bounced on her feet and punched the air in a rapid one-two sequence.

  “That’s pretty good. But you’re letting your right drop,” he told her.

  “Really?” She tried it again, better this time. “Shoot. Don’t distract me. Lyle, who does Drew think he is? Why does he want to be CEO?”

  “My guess is he wants that crazy merger I rejected. With Drew, it’s always about the profits. That’s why he was my first investor, because he knew I’d work my ass off and make him tons of money. Guero Enterprises wouldn’t even exist without him.”

  “Maybe, but now Guero Enterprises is all you and everyone knows it. The board would be insane to replace you. They’ve got to be smarter than that.”

  “Then why are you worried?”

  “Because I’m in a dicey position. Do you know how hard it is for a biracial immigrant lesbian to get a job in the business world?”

  “You’re brilliant and kickass, and I’ll give you my personal recommendation.”

  “Which won’t be worth much if you go down in flames. Nope, I’m coming out there. We need to work up a real plan.”

  He didn’t want her to come to Rocky Peak. With her sharp perceptiveness, she’d catch onto the sparks between him and Isabelle in no time. And then who knew what she would do? Amira was a wild card and he didn’t need the complications.

  “Do you want something to do?”

  “Right now you’re paying me to spy and do my nails. Which look great, by the way.” She bent down to show them off for the camera. They were blue, that was about all he could tell. “But I do have a brain and I’m afraid it’s getting rusty.”

  “Fine. Then there’s something you can do for me. Find out what Drew Clayton has in his back pocket. This play he’s making for CEO, something’s weird about it. The board is spooked, but no one’s talking. I need to know what I’m dealing with.”

  “I can try, but no one’s talking to me either. They know I’m loyal to you.”

  “Listen, Amira. I appreciate that, but you might want to rethink your loyalties. I won’t hold it against you. There’s a chance this fight will leave me out in the cold.”

  “You’re already in the cold. I can see snow out your window.”

  He glanced out the window of the guesthouse he’d been assigned. Sure enough, a thick flurry of flakes had turned the outside world into a snow globe. “Beautiful, isn’t it? It never gets old.”

  She snorted. “You can keep your white stuff. I’m a beach girl. I’ll see what I can find out.” Tilting her head, she punched a button on her screen. “You know, there’s something different about you. You look…healthier.”

  “Been doing some skiing.”

  “Hmm. That must be it. Well, I guess your hideaway vacation suits you. Silver lining, yeah? Maybe it’s time to focus on the needs of your heart. Open up a little. Let in the light.”

  He nearly choked on his laughter. “I’ll handle that part myself, thanks.”

  “You do that. I take no responsibility in that area.”

  “Thank God,” he said, with relief.

  “Just remember that any woman would be lucky to be Mrs. Lyle fucking Guero. Straight woman, that is,” she added. “If it needs to be said.”

  “Are we done here?”

  “Almost. Are you going to be at your little mountain hideaway through Christmas? Do you need me to make any reservations to faraway lands?”

  “I’ll let you know about that.”

  After he ended the Skype call, he wandered to the second bedroom of the guesthouse. This was the best and most spacious guesthouse on the property, Nicole had informed him proudly.

  He’d met Nicole through her former fiance, an asshole hedge fund manager who had tried to get some of Guero Enterprises’ business. He’d always liked her, and thought she was much too genuine and kind to be involved with someone like Roger Vance. Now that she was with Kai Rockwell, she seemed so much happier, almost like a different person.

  When she’d shown him into this guesthouse suite, she’d offered a lighthearted warning. “The Rockwells can take some getting used to. If they tease you, that’s a good sign. That means they consider you family. Max can be difficult, so if you aren’t crazy about grumpy old men, just keep your distance.”

  “I’m investing in their lodge, I don’t think I need to worry. I already know they call me Lyle the Pile.”

  Nicole had cringed, her pretty heart-shaped face screwed up in apology. “That’s exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about. You don’t mind that?”

  “Actually, no. Most people get strange around me once they know about my money. A little teasing might be a nice break.”

  “Good.” She’d offered him a little hug. “You’re not the only newcomer around. I’m here and so is Serena, so we can all gang up on the Rockwells if we need to.” With a wink, she’d left him alone.

  The first thing he’d done was hang up his punching bag in the second bedroom. It was the one item he took everywhere he traveled. It acted like a kind of touchstone, reminding him of the misery from which he’d escaped.

  He drew on his boxing gloves and stationed himself in a fighting stance before the bag. A few warm-up punches, then a powerful right jab combo.

  Adrenaline flowed through him. While working his bag, he knew who he was. He was a junkyard dog, feral and starving. He was a survivor who’d do anything it took to stay alive. He was ruthless and single-minded. He was a machine, landing blow after blow in his quest to shine. He was impervious to pain. A soldier who kept marching no matter what. He had no feelings. No softness. No fear, no crying in the night becaus
e he was alone and hungry. No weakness, no chinks in his armor, no fatal flaws.

  Panting and sweating, he bounced from foot to foot. His ability to fight was at the core of his being. It had brought him to the top of the top. But it had all started with his tenth foster family, at the age of fifteen.

  Walking home from his after-school job at a car wash, he’d caught sight of a mugging. A skinny kid getting the crap beat out of him by two older, bulkier guys. Don’t get involved, he told himself. Big mistake. He looked away, ready to walk past. And couldn’t. He flung himself into the fight and just kept swinging until the muggers ran off.

  He helped the kid off the ground, then recognized him as Drew Clayton, one of the rich kids at school.

  He turned to go, figuring that was the end of the interaction. Someone like Drew wouldn’t bother with a foster kid like him.

  But Drew surprised him. He grinned hugely. “Hot damn. How’d you learn to fight like that?”

  Lyle shrugged. Stupid question from someone who knew nothing about life as an orphan.

  “Know who those guys were?”

  “No.”

  “They run an underground fight club. I won too much money from them. They don’t like that.”

  Lyle stared at him. Why did Drew Clayton need to bet on underground fights? He was loaded. Then again, why did rich people do anything? He’d never understand them.

  “Want to help me get revenge?” Drew gave a wicked grin with his half-swollen mouth. “It’ll be worth your while. And a fucking blast.”

  At Lyle’s first fight, he got beaten badly. But Drew made money anyway. So did he—Drew made sure of that. Even the losers made money, just for fighting. Then he took Lyle to a legitimate boxing gym for some training. The owner took Lyle under his wing and taught him what to do with his height and his power.

  He never lost another fight, legal or illegal.