by Lisa Harris
She trudged through the woods behind James, focusing on his feet to keep her on the path.
One thing was certain now, one thing she hadn’t been so certain of before. She didn’t want to die.
Nothing like having a bullet graze your head to remind you of the innate desire to live.
Father…
James had lifted logical prayers. All she could manage was a mantra of Father, help and please, please…
He heard her. He knew.
It was late afternoon, hours after they’d first climbed the cliff to the cave, when they stumbled out of the woods and onto a narrow paved road.
James turned to her. “You okay? You’ve been awfully quiet.”
“Concentrating.” On not falling down. On putting one foot in front of the other.
“How’s the head?”
Pounding. Throbbing. “Fine.”
The slight narrowing of his eyes showed he wasn’t convinced.
But that didn’t matter. “You can’t call the police.”
“You need medical attention.”
“I need Neosporin and a bandage. And an aspirin.”
“Tylenol. Aspirin’s a blood thinner.”
Good point. If she’d eaten today, if she hadn’t been mountain climbing on an empty stomach, if she hadn’t been shot, she’d have thought of that.
He turned his attention to his phone.
“Please, James. Please don’t call the police until I’m safely away from you. I need to rest. I need a bed, not a jail cell.”
“Don’t have service anyway.” He lowered the phone and started walking along the edge of the asphalt. “Someone’ll come along.”
She fell in step beside him. “How far are we from the Jeep?”
“Miles.”
Miles. She’d never make it.
She started to wonder if she’d be better off if she were arrested. At least the police would take her to a hospital, and a doctor might make her stay, and she’d be given a nice, warm bed and a good meal and a potent painkiller. If she could just sleep, then she could think straight. Then she could figure out what to do next.
Of course, in that scenario, the “next” would be jail.
They’d walked ten or fifteen minutes when the distant sound of an engine broke through her muddled thoughts.
Before she had a chance to react, James pulled her off the road and behind a tree. “I’ll get a ride to my Jeep and come back for you. Stay here.”
She lowered to the ground, happy to comply.
James walked back to the road. She couldn’t see him from here, but she heard the engine approach, then slow down.
“You all right?” a male voice called.
“My friend and I were hiking when she took a bad fall. Any chance you could give us a ride to my car?”
What was he doing? Why bring her into this when he’d just told her to hide?
“I can call someone for you.” The driver’s voice dripped with suspicion.
“My name’s James Sullivan. I live right next to the campground on Highway 23. I’m just gonna grab my ID.” After a pause, she heard, “Here you go. Feel free to take a picture and send it to someone you trust. I mean you no harm, just need to get my friend to safety.”
“Where’s the car?” the stranger asked.
“A couple miles from here.” Then James shouted, “Ellen?”
Ellen. Cassidy’s middle name. Good memory.
She stepped out from behind the tree and walked toward the silver sedan. It had Massachusetts plates. Not a local. Not someone who’d recognize either one of them. Of course, he could’ve seen her photo. It’d been plastered all over the state. But it was an old photo and looked nothing like the new Cassidy.
There was a man behind the wheel, another in the passenger seat. Both dressed for a day outdoors.
The driver gazed at her through the windshield, then said, “Okay. Get in.”
James helped Cassidy into the backseat. The air conditioner must’ve been working overtime, because the air was chilly against her sweaty skin.
James settled beside her and scooted close.
The driver hit the gas while the passenger, eyeing the sweatshirt she was still gripping, asked, “What’d you do?”
She was trying to formulate an answer when James said, “She took a nasty fall and gashed her scalp. I left all our stuff and carried her out. Any chance you guys have some water?”
The passenger handed back a cold bottle, and James palmed it open and handed it to her.
She gulped greedily, forced herself to stop, and handed it to James. He took a reasonable sip.
“Where’d you go?” the driver asked.
While directing the driver to his Jeep, James chatted with the guys in front as if he and Cassidy had enjoyed a relatively peaceful hike punctuated by a terrible accident.
Just a few minutes later, the sedan turned onto the narrow logging road where they’d begun this journey. “Didn’t even know this road was here,” the driver said.
“Helps to be a local. If it’s too rough, we can walk it from here.”
The driver slowed, but the passenger said, “Better drive ’em all the way up. She doesn’t look like she can walk.”
Cassidy considered opening her eyes—when had she closed them?—to argue but realized the guy was probably right. Even if she could walk it, she definitely didn’t want to.
“Jeep’s there.”
The sedan braked, and Cassidy opened her eyes. Oh, yeah. James had hidden it from the road.
The driver turned back. “Why’d you hide it?”
“Teenagers come up here to drink. Didn’t want to invite vandalism.”
The guy squinted as if he weren’t sure.
James opened his car door and slid out. A minute later, her door opened, and he helped her stand. She waited while James shook the driver’s hand through the window. “There’s a turnaround just ahead on the right. You’ll see it.”
While the sedan inched forward, James swept Cassidy into his arms.
She wanted to protest that she could walk, but she couldn’t seem to make her voice work.
He carried her to the Jeep, then set her down gently and clicked it unlocked.
After yanking off the tarp, he settled her in the seat and put her seatbelt on her, though she could’ve done that herself if only she could’ve gotten her eyes to stay open.
The Jeep bounced back to the dirt road, then turned onto the state highway.
Next thing she knew, the car slowed and turned. She forced her eyes open and saw James’s house ahead.
He opened the garage door, drove inside, and then helped her into the house, where he settled her at the kitchen table and got two glasses of water. “Drink.”
She did, letting the cold liquid soothe her aching throat.
He opened a box of crackers, took out a handful, and set the box in front of her. “Munch on those while I get us something more substantial.”
The first bite of the tiny orange square and she was sure she’d never tasted anything so good. It’d been less than twenty-four hours since she’d eaten but, between the physical exertion and the injury, it might as well have been a week.
Next, he handed her a bowl of yogurt with some berries in it and a piece of cheese. “We don’t want to overdo and make ourselves sick.”
She started with the cheese—provolone, she thought—then dug into the blueberry yogurt. It tasted delicious with the raspberries he’d added.
She ate every bite, then sat back and let the food settle in her stomach.
“You okay?”
She nodded.
He crouched in front of her and gazed at her face. “You sure? You’re pale as death, and you haven’t spoken in… a while.”
Hadn’t she? She started to say something, but her voice rasped out. She cleared her throat and tried again. “I’m okay.”
He sat back on his heels. “You scared me there for a minute.”
“I was feeling a littl
e…” Sick? Dizzy? Tired? All of the above. “I needed food.”
“Yeah.” He gazed at the sweatshirt she’d dropped on his table. “That was a lot to take, between the loss of blood, the fatigue, the hunger.”
“I’m okay now.” She already felt better. Not a hundred percent, but better.
He squeezed her knee. “Sit tight.” He left the room and came back a minute later with a plastic shoebox that looked vaguely familiar.
He set it beside her, and she realized it was the same box that Mrs. Sullivan had stored first-aid supplies in years before.
With a wet paper towel in one hand, he met her eyes. “I’m going to clean it, okay?”
“Can you do that without touching it?”
His smile was slight. “I’ll be gentle.”
She braced for pain. It wasn’t as bad as she’d expected, though. James dabbed at the wound, then added antibiotic ointment. “I think, since the bleeding has stopped, you don’t need stitches. Or… staples, I guess. That’s what they do for head wounds, right?”
Staples? “I’m not letting anybody put staples in my head.”
“I don’t think they would anyway. The gash is too wide. But it’s not bleeding anymore.”
James pressed a bandage over the wound, which pulled uncomfortably against her hair. “How do you feel?”
“Better.”
“How about the head? Does it hurt?”
“Not too bad. It’s not throbbing like it was before.”
He opened a cabinet and returned to the table with two tablets. “Tylenol.”
“Thanks.” She downed them.
Seated beside her, he leaned forward, one arm on the round table. “Can you tell me what happened out there? If you saw anyone or…?”
She closed her eyes, thought back. “We were in the passageway, right? And I…I turned around, went feet-first.” James said nothing while she tried to put it all together. But… “I don’t remember anything after backing away from you toward the opening except thinking how grateful I was that you were with me. I felt…safe.”
She opened her eyes to find his gaze on her. She wasn’t sure what she read in that expression. More than curiosity, more than concern. She was afraid to name it, afraid the name would raise her hopes higher than they should be.
“What happened next?”
Again, she closed her eyes. She couldn’t think with him so close, looking at her like that. “The next thing I knew, you were there. You were making me crawl away. And then we were running down the hill.”
“You didn’t see anybody?”
He was so close when she next opened her eyes. “No.”
He wrapped her hands in his and squeezed. “Thank God…” He swallowed, bobbing his Adam’s apple.
“I know.” The bullet had been centimeters from ending her life. She didn’t know what James felt for her now, but even if it was only friendship, she was grateful he wouldn’t have to bury her. James didn’t need to lose another person he cared about.
The thought that she might have lost him… She didn’t even want to consider it.
She pushed back her chair. “Mind if I use the restroom, get cleaned up?”
He cleared his throat and dropped her hands. “I’ll go upstairs and do the same. When you’re ready, I’ll drive you back to your cabin.”
“Not calling the police?”
“After you’re safely away, I’ll tell Vince everything.”
“Vince is… who?”
“Detective working the case, and my friend.”
James was friends with the cop who was searching for her, who thought she was a murderer? How did that work?
She hobbled into the downstairs bathroom. What she really needed was a shower, but she’d do that when she got back to the cabin. For now, she washed her hands and splashed some water on her face.
She’d lifted the bandage and was trying to get a look at the wound in the mirror when the doorbell rang.
James’s footsteps rumbled down the stairs. He knocked once on the bathroom door. “Stay there. I’ll see who it is.”
Probably nobody to be afraid of, but her heart hammered anyway.
“Hey, man. What brings you by?” James’s voice was faint through the walls and wood that separated them.
“Is she here?” The voice was muffled, the words clear.
Adrenaline whooshed through her veins. Who was it?
“She who?” James said.
Footsteps pounded on the hardwood.
“Sure, come on in.” James’s voice was laced with sarcasm.
Cassidy rushed to the window and raised the sash. Her hands trembled as she worked to lift the screen on the decades-old window. Finally, she got it up. She stuck her head out, half expecting to see cops surrounding the property, guns drawn. But the backyard was empty.
She hoisted herself onto the sill and out the window, dropped between the rhododendron bushes that lined the back of the house, and ran across the grass.
Where should she go?
The campground. She had no other choice. She bolted through the woods, pulling out her phone on the way and thanking God she hadn’t stored it in the backpack. She opened the Lyft app and ordered a ride, praying the driver wouldn’t recognize her.
She hid in the woods between the campground and the trailhead and waited until her ride was close. Mercifully, just a few minutes later, she jogged to meet the little Volkswagen with the Lyft placard in the window and slid into the backseat.
“How you doing?” the young driver asked.
“Too much sun.” She angled her back to the window and closed her eyes as if she couldn’t keep them open another minute, hoping the guy wouldn’t notice the bandage on her head.
If only she had her sunglasses, her baseball cap. They were in her backpack.
She had the feeling the driver would be asked about this ride, so she couldn’t go straight back to the rental. As desperately as she needed to rest, she settled in for the long drive to Plymouth, the first town that had come to mind when she’d ordered the Lyft. When she was dropped at the supermarket, she’d order an Uber to take her to her rental. She just needed to throw off the police long enough for her to collect her things and disappear. Again.
Chapter Twenty-Five
While Vince searched the house. James deleted Cassidy’s phone number from his contacts and recent calls. Someone at the station would be able to retrieve that information, but hopefully by then she’d have dumped her phone.
He shoved her sweatshirt deep in his kitchen trash, then slipped her glass and bowl into the dishwasher.
He sat and sipped his water as if his insides weren’t balled up like a fist.
He wasn’t sure what to hope for.
He’d convinced himself on their long trek down the mountain that the best course of action would be to call the police, report the shooting, and tell them everything they’d learned. But now, as one of his best friends stomped through his house, gun drawn, James wondered if Cassidy had been right. It seemed Vince and the rest of the Coventry PD were so sure she was guilty that they might not listen to reason. When James had opened the door, Vince’s face, contorted in rage, had shocked him. He’d never seen his friend wearing that expression before. If Vince had that much fury built up, James worried what he would do if he found Cassidy.
With a gun in his hand.
On the second floor, a door slammed. Vince’s footsteps pounded on the stairs as he descended. A moment later, he banged on a door. “Open up, Cassidy.”
Please, let her be gone. Because the angrier Vince got, the more James was convinced she wouldn’t get fair treatment.
Vince ran out the front door.
James followed and saw his friend at the tree line on his phone. At least he’d holstered the gun. As James approached, he picked up the words “suspect escaped on foot.” Then Vince turned and glared at James. “I’ll learn what I can. Be ready.”
He ended the call. “Where did she go?”
James wouldn’t deny she’d been there. He wasn’t prepared to lie to the police, or to his friend. Fortunately, he could honestly say, “I don’t know.”
Vince’s overlarge ears turned red, and James fought the urge to step back. “To the house. Now.”
If he’d hoped for special treatment because of their friendship, he’d have been disappointed. Vince gripped his upper arm like he thought James would bolt, but James yanked away. “I don’t need your help.”
“You’re gonna need that and a whole lot more if you don’t start talking.”
Inside, James started for his kitchen, but Vince grabbed him again. “To the bathroom. I want it open.”
James glared down at the hand on his arm. “If you’ll just let me get a tool.”
Vince let him go, and James went to the kitchen, Vince watching as if he might snatch a cleaver and attack.
As if they hadn’t been friends for a decade.
He tamped down the anger, snatched a harmless knife, and lifted it for Vince to see. “Stand back or I’ll butter you to death.”
Vince said nothing, just followed James to the bathroom door, where he used the utensil to turn the simple lock, then stepped back. “Help yourself, friend.”
Vince shouldered past him into the small room. Water on the vanity, the hand towel askew.
The window wide open.
Vince turned and glowered. “Start talking.”
James swiveled and headed for the living room, where he settled in the La-Z-Boy Dad had bought nearly two decades before. Dad had watched countless games from this chair, pounding on the arm when he got angry, cheering when things went well. He’d fallen asleep there almost every night after dinner. The chair still reminded James of his father, and he settled into it and tried to be comforted by the familiarity.
He could almost see his mother on the sofa, catty-corner to him. She used to sit on the end, a cross-stitch project on her lap, only half paying attention to whatever Dad had chosen on TV. Sports, movies, sit-coms—Mom never seemed to care as she followed pretty patterns one stitch at a time.
What would his parents think of him now? They’d blamed Cassidy for Hallie’s death. They’d been wrong—as had Vince and the rest of the town of Coventry. But they’d been certain in their wrongness. They’d see James’s alliance with Cassidy as a betrayal.