Heartwood

by Catherine Lane

  “Maggie took her.”

  Nikka stopped dead. “Maggie Chalon? The woman who used to work here?”

  “Yes,” Vivienne said behind the closed door.

  How could she have been so stupid? She should have known Maggie was behind all this the second Beth wasn’t where she was supposed to be.

  She raced down the stairs.

  Several people were crowded around a blonde girl with a tattoo.

  What is she doing here? A question for another day. Nikka rushed out the front door and blinked hard. What the hell?

  Beth Walker, all alone, wove her way through the parked cars in the driveway. Her steps were unsteady, but determined as she headed to the far side of the driveway.

  “Stop!” Nikka called out as she dashed to her.

  At the call, Beth picked up her pace.

  Now Nikka saw where she was going. A beat-up Saab was trying, unsuccessfully, to back out of the gridlock in the driveway.

  “Ms. Walker.” Nikka grabbed her arm as much to steady her as to take possession of her. “They’re expecting you inside. Please come with me.”

  “I will not.” Beth’s voice was hoarse; her body shook with a slight tremor.

  The front door of the house opened. Alison popped her head out for a second, took in the situation, and then pulled back sharply.

  “Let her go!” A voice rang out.

  Nikka recognized it instantly.

  Maggie Chalon burst out of the Saab, clearly breaking the restraining order. Was she going through with her plan to kidnap Beth Walker? Under all of their noses? Surely, she couldn’t be that stupid.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Nikka said.

  “I was right!” Maggie rushed over and got right in Nikka’s face. “They lock her inside the bedroom, and they make her take drugs she doesn’t want.”

  “Shit.” Nikka shook her head even though she had direct evidence that both claims were one hundred percent true.

  “Come on. I know you wanted to help when you came to see me the other day. Here’s your chance.” Maggie glanced over to the front door. “We don’t have much time.”

  As if on cue, Lea, followed by Alison, Lynne Davis, and a dozen reporters, poured out of the house. Lea threw out both arms, preventing them from descending into the driveway. “Nikka,” she said calmly, “Ms. Walker should come in for her photographs now.”

  Everyone focused on Beth, who was trying to pull herself out of Nikka’s grasp.

  Raising her free hand in the air, Nikka acknowledged Lea and the others on the stoop. “She’s a little confused. She’s coming.” If she could convince the author to return to the press conference, she could come out the hero of this situation and embrace all sorts of opportunities.

  Maggie was on her in an instant. “That’s the wrong choice. They’re bad people. Criminal, even.”

  “We can leave. There’s a road over there.” Beth shakily pointed a finger across the driveway. “Beyond that white car.”

  Nikka’s Outback sat with its nose to what barely looked like a dirt path.

  “Yes, but it’s in terrible shape.”

  “I made it through once,” Beth said.

  “And you’ve got four-wheel drive, right? Let’s go!” Maggie yanked on Nikka’s blouse and inclined her head to the Subaru.

  “Whoa! I’m not going anywhere.” Nikka waved to the house and Lea. “Ms. Walker, please just come back inside. We can sort out whatever is bothering you.”

  “Not while Lea and Vivienne are there. Never again.”

  Nikka met Beth’s gaze head-on. Panic, pain, and sheer determination shone from the older woman’s eyes, but not an ounce of confusion or dementia. “I…I…” She tried to say can’t, but the word simply wouldn’t come out. Beth wasn’t crazy, and whatever was going on here wasn’t as simple as she had thought. The clues had been laid out for her. She just hadn’t wanted to see them.

  Breaking from Beth’s stare, she looked back over to Lea, who was still holding back the reporters, while that tattoo girl was edging around the group. Lea’s raised eyebrows and pursed lips said it all. What are you doing? Get that woman over here.

  Nikka bit her lip. If she did that, she would move into an office right around from Lea’s once they were back at work. Was she really going to throw a shiny future away on a knee-jerk reaction and an old woman’s plea?

  Everything around her seemed to freeze as if waiting for the answer. The people on the stoop, Lea, and Beth had fallen quiet; even the birds had stopped chirping. She had no answer.

  “Nikka.” Lea’s voice cut through the silence like a knife. “We’re a team.”

  And that was all it took. The same words she had said to Vivienne in the hallway upstairs, spoken in the same calculated and controlling tone.

  She had been played. Not completely, she had a part in it too. She wanted what Lea offered almost more than anything, but not at the risk of losing her ethics, her decency, herself. The outside world came rushing back: the chatter from the people on the stoop, Lea calling out for her to come back, and the sound of birds in the trees.

  “Please.” Beth’s soft plea pushed her over the edge.

  Nikka reached into her suit pocket. The Outback’s lights flashed yellow, and the door locks popped up.

  “Yes!” Maggie slid her arm under Beth’s elbow, led her to the passenger side, and carefully deposited her on the backseat.

  On the stoop, Lea shouted into a walkie-talkie, probably for security.

  Nikka only had a few minutes before the guards came pounding down the driveway and things got really crazy.

  “Get in. Get in!” Maggie called from within the car. “They’re coming!”

  With a sinking heart, Nikka dropped into the driver’s seat. Her finger hovered next to the engine start/stop button for one last moment. Man, start or stop. Could her choice be any clearer?

  The thumping of heavy boots struck the driveway. There would be no way she could ever come back from this moment.

  Nikka hit the button. The car’s engine roared to life just as the passenger door was yanked open. Nikka swiveled in her seat. Was she too late?

  It wasn’t the guard. The tattoo girl jumped in beside Beth, breathing heavily from a sprint across the drive. “Hey. You’re not leaving without me. We had a deal.” She yanked the seat belt down and buckled in all in one motion. “Go, go, go! Boss lady is right behind me.”

  Nikka gunned the engine and left behind in shambles everything she had worked for her entire life.

  How on earth was she going to break this to her father?

  Maggie let out a deep breath and pressed her palm to her heart. They were okay now.

  Barely.

  The road was in worse shape than she remembered from her lunch-time bike rides. The car bounced around as if they were on a thrill ride, and Nikka gripped the steering wheel ferociously, cringing whenever a branch scraped against the car.

  Beth whimpered from the backseat.

  Maggie had been so focused on the forward progress down the road, she hadn’t turned to see how Beth was doing.

  Beth sat facing Josie with her eyes screwed shut. After a beat, she opened them, stared, wide-eyed, at the girl in front of her, and then shook her head several times.

  “Beth,” Maggie said, “you okay?”

  Ignoring her, Beth raised a hand to touch Josie’s cheek. “Are you…? You can’t be…” She looked at the girl as if she had seen a ghost.

  “Do you know her?” Maggie asked Josie.

  “No,” Josie said. “But she knew my grandmother.”

  Beth cupped Josie’s face with both hands. “Dawn…”

  Maggie pressed a finger to her temple. Did Beth actually think the reincarnation or the ghost of a woman dead for over fifty years was sitting in the backseat with her? Shit, maybe their problems were just starting after all.

  “You’re not Dawn, are you?” Beth said, pulling their foreheads together. “You look so much like her.”

  Be
fore either Josie or Maggie could answer, the car lurched onto the main road and skidded to a stop.

  “Which way?” Nikka’s voice was so thin, Maggie almost didn’t recognize it.

  “I don’t know.” Maggie turned back and peered through the windshield to the paved road.

  Nikka groaned deeply.

  “I mean, I haven’t… I didn’t get this far in the plan.”

  “Well, I sure don’t know what the hell I’m doing.” Nikka glared at her.

  “We need to go somewhere safe.” The voice of reason came from the backseat. “Where no one will look for us.” Maggie marveled how sure of herself Josie sounded. “And then we can figure it all out.”

  Ignoring her, Nikka spun the steering wheel to the left, toward the town. “No. We should go to the police. If we get there before Lea, maybe we can—”

  “No police.” Beth’s shrill voice filled the car.

  Both Maggie and Nikka pivoted toward the backseat.

  Beth had grabbed Josie’s hand so hard her knuckles whitened. Her jaw was set.

  “Look, Ms. Walker,” Nikka said. “If they really were locking you in and drugging you, you need to file charges as soon as possible. The longer you—”

  “I won’t do anything until I’m free and clear.”

  “Of what?” Nikka asked.

  “Of those pills. The Oxycodone, the Percocet.”

  “It’s a mistake to wait. You should—”

  “No. I’m almost there. I’ve been throwing most of them out the window.” A slight tremor ran through Beth. “Next time I meet the world, I don’t want to be beholden to nothing or nobody. Let me finish this.”

  “She’s detoxing?” Nikka turned to Maggie.

  “Apparently.”

  “By herself?”

  Maggie nodded. “I guess so.”

  Nikka dropped her head against her headrest. “This is crazy.”

  Beth was struggling, her fingers pulling at a cloth napkin tied into a knot.

  “Here, let me.” Josie took it from her and opened it to reveal pills of all colors and shapes.

  “I just need a half of a pill. No, make it a quarter.”

  “For Christ’s sake, we should take her to a hospital!” Nikka said.

  “Let’s give her a chance to do this her way.” Josie handed Beth the napkin to let her choose.

  With shaking fingers, she took a small one and pushed it into her mouth. “No hospital. I’ve been through the worst part already. You saw me then. I’m much better than I was.”

  “I had a friend who weaned herself off like this,” Josie added. “She’s doing great now.”

  Maggie resisted the urge to grab the wheel and spin it to the right herself. If this scheme was going to work, they needed Nikka to climb on board with them. Her jaw was as set as Beth’s, her teeth clenched in what looked like a vise lock, and the blood had rushed from her hands she was gripping the wheel so tightly. It didn’t look good.

  “I was right before. Trust me I’m right now.” She pushed Nikka as far as she thought she could.

  Exhaling deeply, Nikka spun the steering wheel to the right. “Fine. So where does this way take us?”

  “Make this right and then your first right again up into the mountains.”

  Nikka’s wheels grabbed the asphalt of the main road as she followed Maggie’s instructions, and they were back to smooth sailing—at least as far as the driving was concerned. “What’s there?”

  “A cabin about an hour from here. It’s safe and empty. Perfect for her…and us until we can figure out what to do next.”

  “I’m not sure about this. But I don’t feel good that I waited so long to help. Karma’s a bitch, right?” Nikka hit the gas, and the car surged forward.

  They rode in silence for fewer than ten minutes before passing a tree with a faded slash, markings from some cataclysmic event long ago. Beth turned to stare at it until she couldn’t see it anymore and then buried her head on Josie’s shoulder.

  Maggie met Nikka’s questioning stare.

  She shrugged in response.

  A half hour later, the Subaru was chugging up the mountain. Redwoods had given way to sugar and knobcone pines, and even on this summer day, the air this high up had a chill to it. Maggie flipped down the visor and opened the mirror.

  Beth was sound asleep on Josie’s shoulder, with Josie’s head resting on top of hers. The perfect contrast of young and old, blonde and silver. They both looked so innocent in sleep. Without the drool pooling on Beth’s lips, it could’ve been a Rockwell painting.

  “Look,” Maggie said softly as to not wake them up.

  Nikka angled the rearview mirror and took a quick peek at the pair.

  “How old do you think she is? She looks— Oh God, if she’s under eighteen, this just got a whole lot worse.”

  “I saw her driver’s license. There were no blue or red boxes, so she is probably over twenty-one.”

  “Thank goodness.”

  “Unless it’s a fake.” Nikka gasped, so Maggie quickly added, “Don’t worry. It probably isn’t.”

  “I should just drop you off and head back to the police station in town anyway.”

  “Beth isn’t going to like it.”

  “Well, Beth isn’t the one having criminal charges filed against her as we speak. And you… Breaking a restraining order can also be really serious.”

  “Let’s just get up there and then figure it out. The four of us.”

  “Really? How can you stand to be without a plan?”

  “And how can you be boxed in by one all the time?”

  They fell silent. Just like in the walk-in cooler. When their life philosophies collided, their conversation had screeched to a halt. Maggie stole a quick glance.

  Nikka didn’t look mad, though. Actually, she was even prettier than she had been in the cooler. The heated conversation had brought a glow to her cheeks, and sometime during the morning, her blouse had untucked from her pants. The corporate vibe was long gone. The whole adventure had given her a slightly disheveled appearance, which softened her edges. Spontaneous and rash was a good look for her. All Maggie had to do was convince Nikka of that.

  And Nikka was right in her own way too. They would need a plan sooner than later.

  The silence lasted until Maggie pointed to a driveway carved into the road on their left. “Turn there.”

  Nikka brought the car to a stop in front of a log cabin tucked into a clearing surrounded by pines and firs.

  “Whose place is this?”

  “My family’s. We’ve owned it for ages. My great-grandfather invested in all sorts of property around the Springs. This one he kept so his descendants would always have a place to come.”

  “Just a little place in the woods to bring the people they abduct?”

  “Funny.” Maggie grinned and glanced at Nikka so they could share the joke.

  A hint of a smile darted across Nikka’s face before she tapped the LED screen beyond the steering wheel. “I’m out of gas. I can’t go back until I get more.”

  Josie stirred in the backseat and repositioned Beth from her shoulder. “Man, she’s heavy for a little thing. Can we get her inside?”

  “Yeah, there’s a bedroom in the back,” Maggie said. “We can put her there for now.”

  After jumping from the car, Maggie walked the length of the front porch and pulled the hide-a-key from a chink in one of the logs at the end.

  Nikka dumped her briefcase on the front porch and helped Josie ease Beth out of the backseat. She woke enough to walk but was still groggy, so each of them slid an arm around her to help her inside.

  They half-carried Beth past the stone fireplace, nearly bumping into one of the worn couches. Maggie hastily pushed an abandoned game of Monopoly on the floor out of the way.

  “You know, this is how a lot of horror stories start.” Josie stumbled beneath Beth’s weight. “A bunch of women alone in a cabin in the woods. You know, the lesbians are always the first to go.” />
  “I’m afraid in this horror film, we were dead before we got here.” Nikka’s tone was back to being grim.

  “Bring her right back here.” Maggie led the way to a small bedroom off the hall. Once inside, they pulled Beth onto the bed. She fell back asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.

  “Wow, you’re right. She’s surprisingly heavy.” Nikka shook her arms that had supported Beth down the hall.

  “I told you so.” Josie dragged out the words, sounding a lot like a teenager, but when she sat down by Beth’s side to ease her shoes off, her actions were more like a mother’s. “I’ll stay with her. I don’t want her to wake up and not know where she is.”

  Alone with Nikka in the living room, Maggie was at loose ends. For the first time since Lauren had woken her up that morning, she didn’t know what to do. She had a big hand in rescuing Beth, picked up a proven asset in Josie, and even managed to drag Nikka along—surprise, surprise. She should be basking in the glory, but the ribbons of worry that spooled off Nikka reached out to wind around her too.

  “You want a soda or something?” Maggie attempted to break the tension. “This place is always stocked. That’s one of the rules if you use it.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Nikka rubbed her temple and then added, “Thanks.”

  In the kitchen, Maggie pulled out her cell phone and, with a battery that was about to die, spent her last connected minutes trying to make Nikka feel better. She walked back into the living room with two sodas.

  Nikka also had her nose buried in her phone. As she tapped and swiped across the screen, her brow furrowed.

  “Everything okay?”

  “No.” Nikka bit her lip. “I was sure there’d be a million texts or calls from Lea. But there’s nothing.”

  “So, that’s good news, right?” Maggie held out both a Coke and a Diet Coke.

  Surprisingly, Nikka took the sugary Coke.

  “I’m not sure.” Worry crept into her voice. “There’s no way that Lea’s going to let this drop. She’s up to something, and she’s not tipping her hand to tell us what.” Nikka dropped the Coke to the table and started swiping her finger across the screen again. “I should go back. I’ll call the auto club.”