One Last Breath

by Lisa Jackson

  “But this woman.” Liam held up the screen on his phone. “Who is she?”

  “I don’t give out the names of my staff or my customers to anyone.” Connie was quickly losing patience, a tic near the corner of her eye visible despite her glasses.

  “You own this place?”

  “That’s right. And there are privacy laws that I’m not going to break, so I think we’re done here.” She handed him his bill. “You can pay at the register.” Then she turned and marched off, heading toward the counter and the kitchen beyond. No doubt to contact her employee—the woman in the photo on his phone—and warn her off.

  He would have to move fast.

  He’d overplayed his hand.

  No surprise there, he thought as he scraped back his chair, tossed enough cash on the table to cover his meal and a healthy tip, then made his way out of the cozy little diner with its dark secrets.

  At his SUV, he took off his jacket and tossed it into the back seat, then climbed behind the wheel where the interior was warming as the sun had peeked through the clouds, summer appearing after a cool morning.

  He wasn’t cut out for espionage, or chasing down women who had spurned him, even if he’d made the mistake of marrying this particular one.

  Switching on the ignition, he heard the big engine of his Tahoe roar to life. For a split second he considered leaving this little town, driving back to the mainland and picking up the life he’d left to take off on this last-ditch effort to find his wife.

  She was alive.

  He knew it.

  The picture didn’t lie.

  And the coffee shop’s owner’s attitude only fueled his suspicions that he was zeroing in on Rory. She couldn’t be far. There wasn’t anywhere to run.

  Except the open sea.

  If her MO hadn’t changed over the years, and she found out from good old Connie that he was here, in Point Roberts, searching for her, Rory’s first instinct would be to run. If so, she’d have to take a boat, plane, bus, or car. And he was betting on the car. It would be the easiest and quickest way to bolt. A private vehicle would be able to take her somewhere even more remote than Point Roberts and wouldn’t require tickets or schedules.

  Gravel crunched beneath his tires as he drove out of the lot, away from a wreck of a vehicle that seemed destined to die behind the kitchen of the Point Bob Buzz. One last look over his shoulder confirmed what he already suspected. He caught a glimpse through the window of Connie with a cell phone in her hand.

  Would Rory return to pick up her final check?

  Liam doubted it. If it turned out to be truly Rory in the picture, and she knew he was here, she’d run. He’d learned by experience: it was what she did.

  Frustrated, he pulled into the parking lot of a minimart, yanked his cell phone from his pocket, and punched in the numbers of the private investigator who had brought him this far. Jacoby answered on the second ring and Liam, the engine of his Tahoe idling, said, “I need information on the employees of the Point Bob Buzz.”

  “You struck out?”

  “She wasn’t there.”

  “Christ, Bastian. Don’t tell me you just bullied your way inside and she bolted.”

  “Something like that.”

  “What did I tell you? You need to dance the dance.”

  “I just need the information. Fast.”

  “Figured.” Was there a touch of a smirk in the heavyset man’s voice? “I figured you just might blow it. That’s the problem with you rich folks. Impatience. No finesse.”

  “So, what have you got?” Liam asked curtly.

  With a snort that could have meant anything, Jacoby got down to business. “Three women currently work in the Point Bob Buzz,” he said. “Connie Fellows, the owner.”

  “We’ve met. Not her.”

  “Joanna Travers, from Vancouver. But she’s not your girl. It’s the third one,” he said, obviously enjoying the suspense. “Heather Johnson. I just got a copy of her driver’s license. I’ll send it along. She’s the one.”

  “You have an address for her?”

  “On the license. Unless she’s moved: 107 Looking Glass Lane.”

  Repeating the address, he was already plugging the information into his GPS, waiting for the route to appear on the map of Point Roberts that showed his position on its screen.

  He felt a sizzle of adrenaline flowing through his blood at the thought that finally, after five years, he’d see her again. Then, maybe, he could get some answers and get the hell on with his life.

  The route appeared and he rammed his truck into gear and checked his mirrors as Jacoby said, “There is one other thing.”

  “Yeah?” He pulled into a side street and waited at a stop sign. “What’s that?”

  “She doesn’t live alone.”

  “No?”

  A husband. Or boyfriend. Another complication. He should have figured.

  “She’s got a kid, Liam. A daughter.”

  * * *

  “Slow down, slow down,” The Magician said from the other end of the wireless connection. “I can’t understand you. You’re talking too damned fast.”

  “But I have to tell you—” Heather started to argue.

  “I’m serious. Okay? Just take a deep breath and start over. From the beginning.” Uncle Kent was serious, and though Heather’s heart was still jackhammering in panic, she did as she was told, drawing deeply of the fresh air, forcing a wave of calmness to wash over her.

  The Magician continued, “All I got out of it was that you think Liam’s in Point Roberts and you’re worried about Charlotte.”

  Heather nodded, though he couldn’t see her. She watched a robin hop through the grass of the backyard, searching for worms, while her heart seemed to be exploding in her chest.

  “I saw him. Liam. At the Buzz this morning,” she said after taking another prescribed deep breath. “I’m pretty sure of it and . . . yes, Charlotte isn’t herself.” She went on to describe the events of the morning, how she’d been certain Liam had found her, how she’d hidden out in the restroom before barreling to the preschool, gathering up her sick child, and landing back home.

  “You’re certain that it was Liam?”

  “Yes . . . yes . . .” she insisted, then bit at a fingernail, her temporary sense of equanimity oozing away. “Look, I’m not a hundred percent sure. But . . . it sure looked like him through the screen and it sounded like him and—”

  “So you only saw him on a screen?”

  “While I was taking his order, but it was him.”

  There was hesitation.

  She barreled on. “I know this is kind of crazy, y’know, after all this time and . . . but . . . wait.” She heard a ding indicating that a text was coming in. The message was from Connie. “Hold on a sec,” she said into the phone, then switched to the text screen. “Oh, no,” she whispered as she saw that Connie had sent two pictures. One was of a black SUV with Oregon plates, parked close to Connie’s uncle’s wreck of a truck, and another was of Liam, sitting at a table in the dining room of the Buzz.

  No, no, no!

  Her worst fears had come true.

  “Heather?” The Magician said when the silence had stretched.

  “I-I’m here,” she said shakily, her brain on overdrive, her fears mounting. “The text. It was pictures. Of Liam.”

  “What?”

  “He’s here.” Oh, God, oh, God. “He’s here, Kent. In Point Roberts.” The panic that she’d tried to keep a rein on had burst free.

  “You’re sure?”

  Another ping of the phone and she clicked to read the message, again from Connie. As she scanned the quick note, she said, “It’s definitely Liam and he was at the Buzz. Asking about me. Look, Kent, I’ve got to get out of here.” Her mind was already scrambling, wondering how she would leave with the O’Briens still out of town, not due back for another day. She’d promised she would watch over the place and Mr. Bones, the black cat currently sliding through the leafy branches of the
shrubbery planted near the fence line.

  “Let me think,” he said. “Just because he’s at the Buzz doesn’t mean—”

  “What’s to think about? Didn’t you hear what I said? He’s here. Looking for me. He already knows my place of work, so he probably knows my name and where I live and Charlotte . . . oh, Lord, what about Charlotte?”

  Her baby. The reason she ran in the first place. Someone at that wedding had been out to kill her and Liam and the baby and... “I’m coming to Maude’s,” she said. “Are you there? I mean, not still on the connection, but are you at Maude’s house?” Maude Sutter was The Magician’s girlfriend and had been for as long as Heather could remember. She lived in Vancouver, a few miles north in Canada, and was the reason that Heather had ended up here in the first place. It was through Maude’s connections that Heather had found this home and her job at the Buzz.

  “Yes, I’m here.”

  “I’ll be there in . . . an hour or two, depending on how long it takes to close things up here, traffic and the border crossing.” She was already mentally sweeping these few rooms, making a mental list of everything she would need to get out of town and leave little indication that she, or at least Rory Bastian, had ever set foot here.

  “Okay. We’ll strategize then.”

  “We’d better do more than that,” she said and clicked off.

  She fought down the welling panic that threatened to paralyze her. Liam probably knew her name? What about her address? That he had a daughter? Her heart squeezed. How had he found her? How? Had he been looking all this time? What about the police?

  “Stop it!” she cried and sprang out of her chair, nearly toppling over the remains of her iced tea as she hit the table. Picking up the glass, she spun around to see Charlotte standing in the open doorway, her favorite blanket dangling from her fingers, her one-eyed stuffed bunny with the lopping ears tucked under her arm.

  “What’s wrong, Mama?” she asked, four-year-old eyes worried, dark smudges beneath them.

  “Uh. Nothing. I, er, I was talking to Uncle Kent. We’re going to visit him and Aunt Maude.”

  “We are?”

  “Yep. Right now. We just have to feed Mr. Bones and make sure he has plenty of water.”

  “He drinks from the fountain.”

  “I know. But we’ll fill his dish anyway.”

  The O’Briens had one of those feeders that was a dish attached to a dispenser that could hold a week’s worth of food. The water dish was similar, so Mr. Bones would be good for at least a week and he did hang out at the fountain, mainly in hopes of pouncing on an unsuspecting bird.

  “Come on,” Heather said briskly. “Let’s pack up. You can help.”

  “After we feed Mr. Bones?”

  “Exactly,” Heather said cheerily, though she was frantic. At least Charlotte was awake and, it seemed, not as listless as she had been.

  “So, once we take care of the kitty, let’s pack up, okay?” Heather leaned down to be able to look her daughter in the eye. “It’s a game. The faster, the better. Grab all your favorite toys, and blanket. Ready?” Charlotte was staring at her intently with eyes so like her father’s that Heather’s heart twisted. “Okay. One, two, three . . . go!”

  * * *

  107 Looking Glass.

  Liam parked across the street of the small house with its paned windows and flower boxes, a river-rock chimney beginning to crumble near the top of the smokestack, the door painted a bright red. The tidy little home was off the street, tucked between larger homes and a hedge, in this part of town that wasn’t far from the waterfront.

  An older model car was parked near the front door.

  He drew a breath. Couldn’t believe he was here. Couldn’t believe he might see Rory again. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Not really. And he wasn’t certain he wanted to examine his feelings too deeply, dig into his own psyche, pull out his emotions and lay them out on the ground to be trampled down.

  You just need to get this over with. Put it behind you.

  He was mad at Rory. Seething and infuriated about what had happened at the wedding. Somehow she was involved. Not completely. He’d never believed that. But somehow . . . someway. Coincidences like her disappearance and the shoot-out at the wedding didn’t happen independently. He’d said as much to Derek, who’d shrugged and answered, “Hey, her family’s fucked up. A bunch of criminals.”

  “Her stepfamily,” Liam had reminded him.

  “Her mother’s as screwed up as the rest of them. Psychic ability, my ass. How come she didn’t see that attack if she’s so in tune with the universe?”

  Darlene, Rory’s mother, had tearfully come to the hospital, clinging to Liam’s arm before and after surgery. Vivian had screamed at her, “Let go of my brother and get out.” Stella and Derek had been dealing with his father’s injuries and hadn’t paid too much attention to Darlene, who’d begun keening in some indistinguishable tongue at one point, which had at first infuriated Vivian and then had struck her as funny. She’d doubled over in fits of hilarity, choking in air, she was laughing so hard. Stella had come in and looked as if she was going to give her a hard slap to bring her back, but Liam had yelled at her to leave her alone.

  The wailing had slowly stopped and Darlene had come out of her trance to blink at Liam a few times, saying, “Aurora’s safe now. I don’t know where she is. We’re not supposed to. But she’s safe and she sends her love.”

  “Bullshit!” Vivian exploded, jumping forward, so Liam yelled at her and Stella grabbed her arm, yanking her back.

  Darlene left a few moments later, but Vivian sicced the police on her, saying she knew where her daughter was. Apparently that wasn’t true because Darlene passed every lie detector test, as did Everett Stemple, who swore he had nothing to do with the attack. Even Harold Stemple took the test. In fact he had insisted on it, to make sure somebody didn’t “try to falsely pin another crime on him.”

  Jacoby suspected that Darlene did not know where her daughter was all these years. That wasn’t the way he’d found Rory, though he’d been less than forthcoming about what his methods were. “You don’t want to know, and I don’t want you to know, in case people want to ask too many questions, you understand?” he’d finally told Liam.

  Liam had nodded. He understood that too much scrutiny might bring up something no one wanted: a complaint about Jacoby’s methodology. A question about why Liam hadn’t immediately told the police. The hammer of the law down upon Rory’s head before Liam had time to get at the truth.

  And so now, here he was. In front of the place where she lived. Where she’d taken refuge. The sanctuary to which she’d escaped. The notion that she’d somehow found a better life, left him standing at the altar because she’d hooked up with someone who had offered her more, had been way off base. The waitress job at the Buzz was a fair indication that she wasn’t exactly rolling in riches, and now this neat but tiny home.

  Maybe it wasn’t about money. Maybe she just found happiness elsewhere. Perhaps with someone else.

  That idea still rankled but he reminded himself that she ran because she knew about the attack. Hadn’t there been blood in the hotel room where she’d dressed in her wedding dress, the very lace-and-silk gown that had also been stained in splotchy dark stains?

  The blood had been analyzed and hadn’t been Rory’s. The reports had proved the blood to be from a male. An unknown male. Probably the assailant who had opened fire on the ceremony, a murdering bastard who was still at large.

  Her accomplice?

  No. It still didn’t make any sense that she was complicit in the murder. If she’d wanted out of the marriage, he’d have divorced her. There was no need for the violence of the attack, the sheer terror rained upon the group of guests. There had to be another motive, one he didn’t understand, but one, he suspected, she understood. Somehow she’d been tipped off to the attack and had run. So who was behind it? How did she know the assailant? Why, why, why?

  He rubbed h
is leg where the bullet had entered. He still bore a scar, of course, and felt pain at times where the muscle had torn and the bone had shattered. A series of surgeries involving pins and bone grafts had given him the ability to walk, but it had taken nearly a year for his strength and endurance to return. He’d been lucky the bullet to his gut hadn’t hit his spine. It had passed through, nicking his intestines, but had done far less damage than anyone expected. A miracle, his mother had pronounced in tears. Everyone told him how lucky he was.

  He didn’t feel lucky.

  He’d hate to count how many hours of physical therapy, miles on a stationary bike, and steps on a treadmill he’d logged while recovering. With each effort, while sweating bullets and fighting through the lingering pain, Liam had silently vowed to find Rory and bring her to justice. One way or another he was going to clear up the mystery of the attack on the wedding party.

  Of course Bethany had been at his side throughout. He’d woken up to her worried face in the hospital. Her eyes had filled with tears when he’d focused on her. “Thank God,” she’d whispered, and grabbed his hand, then turned to avoid letting him see the tears drizzle down her cheek. When she’d faced him again, she was all brave smiles, and gave him words of encouragement. “Don’t scare me like that,” she’d scolded as she’d leaned down to kiss him. Then the doctor had come into the room and she’d been ushered out of the ICU only to return later in the afternoon. She’d resented everyone else surrounding him, especially Darlene, and she missed the scene between Darlene and Vivian, but she was his most steadfast companion. Slowly, day by day, as he’d recovered and been released to a private hospital in Portland, then a rehabilitation center and finally to his condominium, she’d been rock steady. Liam had recently asked about the boyfriend who had been her plus-one at the wedding, to which she’d just shrugged. “He was just a date,” she said.

  Liam had been standing at the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked over the Willamette River. As he leaned on his crutches, he could see Bethany’s ghostlike reflection in the glass and her wistful smile. “You’re still married to her, you know,” she’d said, never speaking Rory’s name.