Kiss Her Goodbye: Thriller/Romance with a shocking twist

by Kirsten Mitchell

  “Why would we not be safe?”

  “He’s just, I don’t know…” she said. “Intense?”

  Leo nodded and continued walking forward. Mia picked up her pace to follow him. He stared at the path ahead of him. They discovered a cave behind some bushes and pushed into it to explore.

  “I’m not one to talk about my client’s psychological condition,” he finally said as he stomped around the cave, getting a better look at every corner. He avoided meeting her eyes.

  “Got it,” Mia replied.

  “But the thing about Nate,” he said, “is that he is working on a lot of, shall we say, issues. Some of these issues give the appearance of him not being entirely stable, but I can assure you he is far more stable than he looks. He has made a lot of progress over the years to get where he is now. Sure, he’s still a little quirky, but aren’t we all?” He turned to look at Mia. “What’s with all the pinecones you’re collecting right now, Mia?”

  She felt the sting of embarrassment spread down her throat. She must look like a fool in front of him right now. She wanted to turn and run away from him. He reached out an arm to her, as though sensing her thunderous mood.

  “It was a joke,” he said.

  “I don’t find it funny at all,” she blurted. “I am not okay right now. I haven’t been for years. I do things that I don’t understand anymore.”

  “Yes,” he said softly, and his arms were suddenly around her. The smell of him close to her made her flutter her eyes closed and drink all of him in. The memories of him as a child flooded to her mind and killed what was left of her sanity.

  She breathed against him and felt his heartbeat tickle at her through her shirt. The moment made her want to smile through her sadness. She opened her eyes to look at him and caught sight of his arm upon her shoulder. He had a word written in script down the forearm.

  She traced a finger down a tattoo that read ‘Family’. She had not seen this tattoo earlier, with his long green flannel sleeves covering it. The tattoo seemed odd, out of place. Leo didn’t seem like a typical family man to her. He’d always struck her as more like the perpetual, immature drifter.

  “When did you get this?” She followed the curly script with her fingertip.

  He looked at the tattoo. He pulled his arms away from her, shoved his sleeve over the tattoo and hardened his face. “It’s a long story.”

  “Are you married?” she said. The sickening fear of that possibility wrenched through her and she wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t as though she wanted to date him, and she had already been married. But to imagine him with another woman, loving her, doing things with her, to her, curdled her blood.

  “As if,” he laughed.

  “Kids?” She didn’t want to show any relief and reached for his sleeve to pull it up again, as though the answer to that question would be etched in the word.

  He didn’t answer and instead cupped her fingers in his hand, to stop her from grabbing his sleeve. She opened her mouth to reply and was interrupted by the sounds of Glenda calling her.

  “Mia!” Glenda screeched from way up the trail with a voice that could exterminate cockroaches in a post-apocalyptic world. “Mia, where the hell are you?”

  “Shit. We should get back,” Leo spoke in a suddenly cold, clinical manner. His footsteps crunched on top of stones in the cave and he brushed aside the lush foliage in the doorway, sending glaring sunlight at them.

  And just like that, she realized that this was a mistake. This whole escapade into the woods. An impulsive, foolish, deliciously ridiculous mistake. What had she even been thinking? That telling Leo her dream of finding Brendan would actually make things any better? It only drenched the situation with another layer of awkwardness that could not be washed off.

  “We’re here,” Mia called back.

  Glenda bush-whacked her way closer to the sound of Mia’s voice. “What the hell?” Her hair was disheveled with a variety of pinecones dangling like Christmas ornaments on a fluffy blood red tree. She pointed her camera at Mia and Leo, going side to side between them. “Where have you been? We just about turned back to go back to town to call for help. Explain to my fans why you are intent on ruining this trip with your BS.”

  “Sorry, we got distracted by deep conversation and wandered off the main trail.” The sting of mortification bloomed across her cheeks as the group and camera watched her.

  Nate showed up behind Glenda, pointing his glossy mangled hiking stick sternly as he whined at Mia, “Goodness jellybeans, I told you to download the maps I emailed you. I knew someone like you would get lost. That’s why I emailed the map in four different formats. To prevent this disaster.”

  “What do you mean someone like her?” Leo said to him.

  Barter appeared behind Nate, hands on hips. She smirked and nodded at Mia and Leo. “I thought you’d wait until at least tonight, Lawson. You’ve surpassed even my super low expectations of you.”

  “We appreciate your concern,” Leo blandly said as he shoved Nate’s hiking stick out of their faces. “But we’ve only been lost for five minutes and we’re back on the trail now. So let’s just forget about this and continue to the hike to camp.”

  “Correction.” Nate studied his watch with obsessive focus. “It’s been nineteen minutes…and forty-nine seconds.”

  “Wow, has it been that long?” Mia said. “It only felt like we were gone for a few minutes.”

  “Fifty-two seconds now.”

  “I agree we’d better get going,” Barter said, then turned to Mia with as much snark as was humanly possible, “If we want to find your ghost son up in the abandoned cabin for the anniversary of his disappearance, that is.”

  Glenda spun her camera to take in a close up of Barter’s face. “You’re a nasty one, aren’t you?” she said to her.

  “When I have to be.” Barter smiled and looked over to Mia’s knapsack that was now bulging with pinecones. She opened her mouth to say something, but before she could Mia zipped up her knapsack. She didn’t want Barter or anyone else questioning her on why they were there. Some questions were best just left unanswered.

  *******

  No one shared any conversation for the first several hours, until they arrived at the first camp settlement, a beige sandy clearing at the base of tall, thin trees around a long-abandoned pit. The air was thick with the croaking melody of frogs and ducks in a nearby lake, swampy with the scent of endless mud, and stinging from a cloud of chomp-happy mosquitoes.

  Mia deposited her bags in the center of the camp and dropped to a cross-legged seated position. She couldn’t wait to kick off her boots, which were biting deep blisters on her heels. Her leg muscles steamed and loosened, grateful for the break she was giving them as she plucked off each boot.

  The glimmer of a sky-blue lake beckoned in the slits between trees. It promised her muscles mind-numbing, blissful recovery in its icy mountain waters. Between the hike and the other physical demands of the day, she was completely spent.

  “I’m so sorry, Mia.” Glenda approached dropped her knapsack next to her. She chucked aside her camera with a careless clatter, clearly tired of filming.

  “For what?”

  “For telling the cop about your dream about Brendan meeting us at the cabin. You know how it is. Me and her just got to talking about things and somehow it slipped out.”

  It wasn’t like Mia was trying to prevent Constable Barter from thinking she was crazy. That ship had long sailed off and was harboring in new, embarrassing shores now.

  “Was that all that you told her?” Mia eye’s wandered to where Leo was, across the camp, shirt removed and chucking stacks of blonde firewood into the soggy black pit. His bronze muscles flexing and gleaming in the afternoon sunlight. The tattoo on his arm writhed the scripted letters with each constriction of his muscles.

  “I swear that’s all I told her,” Glenda said.

  Nate approached the women, waving his stick in their direction. “I’ve been doing some analyzing of
this situation, Mia, and I feel like it’s you who is making my anxiety come back.”

  “Come back?” Glenda said. “I hadn’t noticed it was gone in the first place.”

  “You are too emotional,” he said to the sand at his feet but pointed his stick up at Mia to let her know it was she he was addressing. “You don’t follow direction and you make exceedingly poor decisions. You’re a liability to the rest of us.”

  “Sounds like it’s you who should be a therapist.” Constable Barter came up to camp and threw her bag on top of all the others in the sand pit. “Because you’ve got her all figured out.”

  “Having said that.” Nate twirled the stick in front of Barter’s mouth, as if instructing her to shut up. “We can’t go to Blueflower anymore. We are heading east instead.”

  “What”? Glenda said. “The whole point of coming on this stupid hike is to get to Mia to that cabin in Blueflower.”

  “No swearing on this trip,” Barter reminded Glenda.

  “Stupid is not a swear word.”

  “It’s still impolite,” Nate said. “And I don’t care if she wants to get to Blueflower. My maps and rules have been ignored. You ran off into the forest for hours without permission,” Nate pinched his eyes closed and tilted his trembling head to one side. He seemed on the verge of a convulsion.

  “I agree, I think east is a much better route.” Barter inched her hand into her pocket and drew a chocolate bar slowly enough to make sure everyone saw it, then peeled it open red wrapper and bit into the half-melted gooey flesh inside. She let out a sickening ‘mmm’ before continuing, “Much safer, for sure. Want a bite, captain?” Barter held the dripping brown mess in her fist to Nate who gawked in repulsion.

  Leo lifted his gaze to the quarreling crowd huddled in the sand pit. “What’s going on?” He picked up his shirt from the ground and wiped off his hands on it, then chucked it aside as he approached them.

  “Idiot here wants to bail on the original plan of going to Blueflower and head to some safer, otherwise known as lame, town in the east,” Glenda wailed.

  “Do not call me an idiot.”

  “That right, Nate?” Leo cocked a confused eyebrow. “You changing the course?”

  Nate cringed, seemingly disturbed that Leo was now disappointed in him. He pinched his eyes closed again and dug repetitive loops in the sand with his stick, as though to soothe himself, “I-I-I am the pilot here, Leo. Please don't try to interfere. Constable Barter said you would try to undermine me.”

  “That’s right, man,” Barter said. “You’re the boss here, Nate. Not him. Don’t let anyone take that control away from you. If they don’t like your rules, they are more than welcome to return home on their own.”

  “Come on, man,” Leo smiled, relaxed. He didn’t seem in the least perturbed by Barter’s efforts to thwart him. “I mean, I’m no expert or anything. But, Blueflower can’t be that hard to get to. Maybe we can extend east after that.”

  Mia pulled her knees up to her chest, and imagined the trail ahead, readying herself in advance to make the hike to Blueflower alone.

  “No. Blueflower is a very treacherous hike,” Nate said. “And after what happened with you and Mia getting lost earlier today, Constable Barter told me—I mean, I decided it would be better if we avoid a hard hike like Blueflower and go somewhere easier like the east.”

  “Plus, don’t forget what we talked about earlier,” Barter added with a grin. “Grizzly bears are known to roam around Blueflower.”

  “Yes.” Nate nodded, eyes still pinched closed, as if frightened to even imagine it.

  “Grizzly bears are the worst,” Penelope urged on. “Those bastards will eat you alive, and floss their teeth with your intestines, given half the chance. You don’t want that to happen to you, do you, Nate?”

  “Please don’t say the word bastard,” Nate insisted. “Or intestines.”

  “Oh, puh-lease,” Glenda said. “There are no damn grizzly bears out here.”

  “Damn is a swear word too.” Nate was about ready to blow.

  “Nate,” Leo jumped in. “Let’s just stick to the original plan and the maps. It’s the route we told people back home about, in case we go missing. We don’t want to go off course and cause confusion.”

  “No.” Nate said, “I am standing firm against you and your abuse of power over me.”

  “My what?” Leo asked.

  “Well said,” Barter nodded at him. She reached down and grabbed a beer from the bag Leo had left open. She cracked one open and took a swig. “God,” she said. “Who brought this watered-down piss?”

  “My abuse of power over you?” Leo repeated to Nate, ignoring Barter’s tirade. “You asked me to come and to help you. You remember?”

  “This is all outrageous, Nate,” Glenda said. “Why can’t you just have some sympathy for Mia? She’s a grieving mother, for fuck’s sake.”

  Mia knew Glenda and knew she deliberately threw in that f-word just to rattle what was left of his nerves.

  “You can find sympathy in the dictionary between sucker and syphilis,” Barter said, taking another gulp of the beer, piss water or not.

  “Girl, bye,” Glenda said to her. “You and me are done talking here.”

  Barter snorted and turned her attention to Leo. “You’re Mia’s therapist. The last thing you would want to do on this trip is to take advantage of your client’s vulnerability. Am I right?" She tossed her empty can at the fire pit, where it kicked up orange sparks.

  “Unbelievable,” Leo muttered.

  Nate hung his head with visible shame.

  “Good job taking back the steer, Sir,” Barter patted his back. “We’ll set out tomorrow morning, first thing. Now let’s get these goddamn tents set up and this fire blazing. But excuse me, first, while I take a quick dip in the lake. I’ve got to wash this piss water out of my system and all this nonsense out of my soul.”

  *******

  Saturday, September 16: 8:47 p.m.

  Nate watched Constable Barter slip into the lake as he clutched his hiking stick so hard his knuckles felt numb. He rocked back and forth on his heels and hummed in a desperate attempt to soothe the anxiety that lurched up his throat. When he saw Doc Leo alone, building a tent, Nate slunk up beside him.

  Leo looked at him and said nothing, then slammed a tent post into the earth.

  “Goodness jellybeans, Doc, I have made a terrible mistake,” Nate said. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Wish I could help you,” Leo said. “But sounds like you’re in charge and I respect that.”

  “I didn’t want to go east,” Nate insisted. “She made me say it.”

  “You’ve made your decision,” Leo grunted. “Even though you made a promise to Mia to take her to Blueflower and now you’ve gone back on that promise.”

  But it’s not me, it’s Constable Barter running this show, Nate wanted to say. He looked over at Barter, who lazily back-stroked in the lake while the rest of them slaved and sweated to set up camp before dusk. A long, hard glare seethed from Nate’s eyes. She’d tricked him into thinking he was in control, and he really wasn’t. That was not something a nice person does.

  “I am sorry I defied you,” Nate said to Leo. “I will take meticulous action to make sure our crew goes back on course to Blueflower.”

  “You do what you need to do.” Leo shrugged as he slammed the hammer into the tentpole again.

  Nate changed his grip on his stick so that he held it like a spear and seethed at Barter, who’d rolled out of the lake and gently dabbed her hair dry with a pair of purple yoga pants she’d left on a log. She whistled a happy, boastful tune to herself.

  “Mark my word, Doc,” Nate said. “Things around here are about to change quite conclusively."

  *******

  CHAPTER NINE

  Penelope Barter strolled out of the lake to her where clothes were lying and spotted Nate spying through the trees at her. He watched her, his face hard and glaring. She gave him a friendly wave wit
h both hands and then twisted them around into two thumbs up.

  God, these people were insufferable.

  It had dawned on Barter that coming on this trip to investigate Mia’s file further would probably be one massive headache. And so far, her prediction had been accurate. But she needed to finish what she’d started. Her theory was that Mia was delusional and writing her own death threats, and if she could prove that, her case file could officially be closed and a new case could be opened, shedding new light on to what happened to Brendan. For years, Barter had suspected Mia had something to do with it, and only now, upon finding evidence about the death threats, her suspicions were coming to fruition.

  She threw on her oversized shirt over the sports bra she’d been swimming in, gave Nate one last look, and decided not to head back to camp just yet. There was only so much of their pointless bickering she could handle. Why not take in some of the scenery? She slapped on the sandals she’d brought and strolled around the lake, her feet sinking slowly and easily into the milk-white sand.

  As she rounded about a mile around the lake, she eased up an embankment of smooth stone and patches of rich grass. It led up to a steep trail that was carved along the side of the cliff. Curious to check it out, she climbed up on to it. She’d just take a peek around and head back to camp before dinner. Her stomach clenched at the idea of food and her hand dipped into her yoga pants pocket to draw out another chocolate bar. She peeled it open and slowly munched as she made her way.

  Constable Barter became aware that her pace had picked up to a trot on the stone trail, as anxiety ballooned inside her. She forced herself to breathe and slow down her pace. The stone path had curved up the side of the hill and she had reached the apex, which stood before a thick forest. She rounded to the top, with her back to the forest, and gazed down the cliff at the horizon and water. A luscious purple sun dragged down the gold skies over a brilliant blue lake. The lilt of frogs sang around her. The scent of pine and clean mountain water filled her every molecule. She slid the thick, fragrant chocolate bar to her lips again, drinking in the luscious perfection all around her.