The Perfect Outsider

by Loreth Anne White

  “It’s Brad’s turn next.” June’s tone brooked no argument. Molly scowled and stomped out of the kitchen.

  June slumped onto a stool at the kitchen counter, heart pounding.

  Maybe Jesse really is a mole.

  The memory of his kiss filled her mind. She thought of the compassion she’d seen in his eyes and sensed in his touch. He felt like a good man. Or was she being completely blinded by her physical attraction to him? Was seducing her a part of his game?

  June scrubbed her hands over her face, wondering when this job had gotten so damn complicated. She wished Hawk Bledsoe would return. She wanted him to nail Samuel and for this whole thing to be over, because she was wearing dangerously thin.

  Chapter 6

  It was morning, early. The rain had stopped and the sun was painting the world that beautiful gold that comes when the angle of the sun is still low. June put on a pot of coffee, feeling exhausted. She’d taken one of the beds in the nursery where Lacy and the twins were sleeping, but she’d lain wide-awake listening to the others breathe, thinking how different the rhythm of a child’s breathing was from an adult’s, how close this mother and her babies had come to losing their lives.

  Were they alive now because of Jesse?

  June had also mulled over what Davis had told her when he’d returned to the cave house later in the night. Instead of going back to guard the canyon entrance as June had instructed, Davis had taken it upon himself to follow the posse of henchmen deeper into the woods as they’d beat the bush and panned hunting lights through the trees.

  “I definitely heard them say the word mole,” he’d told June.

  “But it wasn’t clear that this mole was inside our safe house?” she’d asked.

  “No. At first I assumed they meant the mole was in the safe house, and I figured immediately that the mole was Jesse, but as I followed them farther it became blatantly clear that they’re no friends of our stranger—they were hunting him. I heard one say Samuel wanted him dead or alive.”

  “They referred to him by name?” June said.

  “No—they don’t know who he is.”

  So he isn’t working for Samuel.

  Adrenaline trilled through June.

  “One of them said the stranger shot Jason Barnes. And, June, I heard them say Barnes died from his wound earlier today.”

  Jesse had killed him. June cursed softly. Samuel was not going to let this slide. This whole town was going to blow. “Did you recognize the guys in the posse?” she said quietly.

  “Rufus Kittridge was leading the group.”

  “The mayor? Are you serious?”

  “Lumpy Smithers was there, too. And Monica Pearl. I saw both their faces when they were momentarily illuminated by the hunting spots, but I didn’t get a good look at the others.” Davis shook his head as if in disbelief. “Who’d have thought Monica Pearl was one of Samuel’s enforcers. She’s so…sweet.”

  And pretty, thought June. That was the danger of Samuel Grayson and his cult. The more clean, friendly, benign the facade—the more sinister what lurked beneath.

  “Just before I left them, I heard Mayor Kittridge yelling at Lumpy that he should’ve gotten a better look at the stranger’s face. Lumpy argued it was dark, raining and that Jason was badly injured. Rufus hit back that Samuel maintained Lumpy should have gone after the Matthews woman and her kids instead of trying to save Jason. I swear, June, they were wire-tense, really going at each other. Lumpy sounded real choked about Jason dying.”

  Davis had also returned with a small, muddy pacifier that he’d found while following the men.

  “Maybe it belongs to Dr. Black’s baby?” he said.

  Dr. Rafe Black’s infant son had been kidnapped last month and so far there’d been no leads, no ransom notes, nothing—Rafe was devastated. June made a mental note to go search the area around where the pacifier had been found. Rafe Black was a good man, and he was not a Devotee.

  * * *

  Once the coffee was ready, June poured a mug and set it on a tray along with a toasted bagel for Jesse. Outside the bedroom door she waited while Sonya unlocked it.

  “Morning,” he said as the door opened. “I take it we weren’t invaded last night. Too bad. The enemy might have sprung me.”

  “They didn’t find the tunnel,” she said as she set the tray on the table. He’d just showered—his hair was damp. He was wearing jeans, his engraved belt and a button-down denim shirt over a white T-shirt—he looked all Wyoming cowboy, and it was a look that really did it for June.

  “I’m sorry about last night,” he said quietly.

  She glanced at him and knew instantly he was talking about the kiss. Her pulse quickened and her mouth felt dry. All she could think about suddenly was how she’d wanted to kiss him back. Instead, she looked away and fiddled unnecessarily with the napkin on the tray. “It’s me who should be apologizing,” she said quietly. “For locking you up. But I had to be sure that you weren’t the mole who’d brought the henchmen so close last night.”

  She looked up at him and her heart kicked. He exuded a new kind of energy this morning. Sleep had restored him. And his eyes crackled with an intensity of focus that made her feel hot inside.

  “Either way, you are the reason they came looking, Jesse,” she said. “When Davis returned he told me the men were armed and actively hunting you. But it seems no one saw your face the other night and they don’t know who you are.”

  A quiet electricity seemed to ripple through his body. “I’m not sure whether I should be pleased or disappointed,” he said.

  “It appears you killed one of them, Jesse. A man named Jason Barnes died of a gunshot wound to the neck.”

  Silence filled the room.

  “Jesus,” he said softly.

  “Samuel is after your blood.” She inhaled deeply. “Obviously you don’t work for him. I’m really sorry I locked you up. I—I’ve never done anything like this in my life. It’s just—things got desperate.”

  His gaze went to the door.

  “It’s not locked. You’re free to go.”

  His attention shifted back to her, eyes intense. He stood slowly and took a step toward her. June’s knees felt weak.

  “Don’t go into Cold Plains, Jesse, please—they’ll kill you.”

  “You said they hadn’t seen my face.”

  “You can’t just show up in a town like Cold Plains with stitches on your head and no belongings. They’ll instantly peg you for the man they were hunting.”

  “June, I—”

  “Please, it could endanger us all.”

  He studied her intently. “Show me around the house,” he said, something dark entering his voice.

  A whisper of trepidation feathered over her. “You don’t want your breakfast?”

  “Not in here. But after a tour of the house I’d love a cup of coffee, if you’ll share one with me.”

  She smiled. “You make it sound like a date.”

  His eyes held hers for several beats. “June, I am sorry—about the kiss.”

  “I’m not,” she said very quietly, her cheeks warming.

  But even as she said the words, she realized the stupidity of them—she was physically attracted to, and quite possibly falling for, a man she didn’t know at all. He could have loved ones waiting for him to return, worrying about him. There might be no room in his life for someone like her.

  June turned and walked to the door, telling herself she didn’t want there to be room for her, anyway—she had a life mission. Falling for a stranger who might wake up and realize he belonged to someone else would break her heart. It was ridiculous even to be thinking like this.

  She opened the door and strode briskly down the passage. “Kitchen and main living area are this way,” she said coolly.

  * * *

  Jesse entered the living space behind June. A fire burned in a big stone hearth, next to which sat a gaunt, hook-nosed, middle-aged man with wary eyes. He was drinking from a pottery mug. E
ager was curled at his feet. The man nodded at Jesse. Eager’s tale gave a small thump.

  “Morning,” the man said.

  “This is Davis,” June said. “He’s the one who followed the hunting party last night.”

  Davis got up, and Jesse stepped forward to shake his hand. Davis had a firm, wiry grasp. Jesse put him in his fifties, and his eyes were not friendly.

  “Those guys want your head, mate, whoever you are,” he said to Jesse.

  Jesse snorted. “Thanks for bringing back the information. Got me out of the bedroom.”

  Davis, however, wasn’t going to let Jesse off that easy.

  “No one knows we have a safe house out in this valley,” he said coolly. “Those henchmen were not looking for a secret crevasse or a tunnel or a cave house. They were looking for you—you brought them out onto the west flank. We’re just lucky they didn’t stumble onto the tunnel. Because if they find it—people are going to die.”

  “I’m sorry.” Jesse didn’t know what else to say, and he judged it imprudent to point out that henchmen had already, apparently, been on the west flank searching for Lacy Matthews and her daughters.

  Davis reached for his gun. “I’m going to relieve Tiffany, who’s out there with a radio right now, watching. But we’re not militia. We’re not trained for this. We’re just ordinary folk who want to get safely the hell out of Cold Plains now.”

  “We’ll have you all moved out of here within the next few days,” June told Davis. “That hunting posse didn’t find any sign of Jesse. I don’t think they’re going to come back this way in a hurry.”

  Davis grunted and left.

  “Do you believe that, June?” Jesse said, watching Davis go.

  “That they won’t be back for a while?” She sighed deeply. “I hope they won’t. Because Davis is right. We’re not equipped for this.

  “This is the kitchen.” June stepped into a beam of sunlight streaming down from skylights above and sun flamed like fire on her hair, stalling Jesse’s thoughts entirely. And in that instant he wondered if he’d ever come across a more enigmatic or beautiful woman. He liked everything about her—her grace of movement, her strength. Her surety of vision. Her courage. He loved the way she looked. And when she turned to face him in the kitchen—dear God—those clear, summer-sky eyes.

  His chest clutched and desire welled sharp and sudden in him, along with a raw urge to make her smile. He wanted to hear her laugh, see the light dance in those eyes. Bottom line, Jesse had an urge to protect her, to help her with this burden she’d undertaken.

  Was that the kind of person he was? Or was it his lust speaking?

  “Everything in here is run off solar power,” she said.

  Jesse turned to study the kitchen—the wood cabinetry was high-end, the countertops granite. The windows at the far end of the room were tinted and large and looked out onto a valley of low scrub and pockets of trees. Light fittings were crafted from wrought iron or bone—shades made from what looked like hide. In fact, everything about the place seemed rustic high-end, artistic and wilderness-inspired.

  “What is this place?” he said. “It’s incredible.”

  “It was built into the caves by a manic-depressive architect who decided to go survivalist and live off the grid, but in style. There are more rooms this way,” she said, holding out her arm.

  June led him down another stone passageway into a room that had been equipped as a nursery.

  Lacy and her twins were sitting on one of the beds. Lacy had a book in her hands and was reading her girls a story. She glanced up sharply as they entered. The twins seemed to sense tension in their mother and instinctively cuddled closer.

  Jesse stilled in the doorway, struck by the vignette. The children were brunettes, like their mother, and identical. And he knew one thing about himself with abrupt certainty: if someone tried to kill this young mother and her children again—he’d shoot the bastard dead.

  What did that say about him?

  “Hello,” he said to the girls, his voice coming out too deep. “My name is—” He glanced at June. “They call me Jesse.”

  “You’re the bad man,” said one of the twins

  “I…don’t think so.”

  The kids stared at him.

  Jesse suddenly felt hot, and a dark cesspool of guilt swirled inside him. With it came twinges of rage, remorse, hurt. A cool sense of betrayal.

  He shook himself, wanting to bury the uncomfortable sensations but knowing on some level they were parts of his memory coming closer to the surface of his consciousness, like tiny agitating bubbles in a pot of water ready to break into a boil and release steam. And it scared him to think what lurked down there.

  June touched his arm, jolting him back to the present.

  “The other rooms are this way.”

  “It’s a big place,” he said as she showed him a series of bedrooms, bathrooms and a games room complete with billiard table.

  She nodded. “When the architect died, he left everything to his sister, who lives in the town over. She didn’t know what to do with the place. It’s not legal, no building permits, and there is no road access. Then her sister-in-law, Hannah Mendes, needed a safe house. It was the perfect solution. We heard about Hannah from Mia Finn during her deprogramming sessions. That’s where I came in. Hannah is in her seventies, works at the Cold Plains water-bottling warehouse, and she identifies vulnerable cultees and gets them out. They come here, then go into an exit-counseling program.” June showed him into a hallway that led to what appeared to be the front door.

  Jesse noted a gun rack mounted near the door. A shotgun rested on the wood slats. Beside the rack was a cabinet that held ammunition. The key to the cabinet was in the lock. He saw there were boxes of both shells and slugs in the cabinet.

  His gaze shifted down to June’s hips, to the Glock in her holster.

  She opened a heavy oak door and he followed her out onto a stone patio covered partially by a rock overhang. The morning sun was warming the valley and the vegetation smelled like summer. A sense of familiarity washed over him, and he was gripped by a powerful notion that he belonged outdoors, that he slept often under the stars. That he needed to roam the mountains. On the back of that thought rode the dark, cold feelings of guilt again. Jesse began to itch with irritability, impatient to get deeper inside his head, find the answers.

  “This is Hidden Valley,” June said. She was standing next to him, and he could smell her shampoo again. Eager was at her feet, sunlight glinting off his black fur. Jesse walked to the end of the patio where a small creek burbled, the sun warm on his shoulders. It was a calm place, a healing place, he thought.

  “How did this architect bring in the building materials for the house?” he said.

  “Chopper. He had a pilot friend. He also had wealth.”

  Jesse whistled softly. “It’s a perfect place to hide.” He turned to June. “You said you move people from here into exit-counseling. How do the safe-house occupants get out of the valley from here?”

  “We have to hike out that way, to the next town.” She nodded to the mountains. “It’s a fair trek, takes several hours. I’ve learned exit-counseling myself, so I start that right away. There’s a town called Little Gulch on the other side of that mountain. EXIT has stationed a psychologist there who handles counseling and helps with transitions.”

  Jesse put his hand to his temple and felt the line of stitches. His head was beginning to hurt.

  “You okay?”

  “I… The idea of needing to get someone into deprogramming feels familiar somehow.”

  He saw a flicker of nervousness in her eyes. “Maybe you came here trying to get someone out, Jesse. Could you have been thinking of faking your way in with a false Devotee tattoo?”

  He frowned, the image of a slight, dark-haired woman curling into his mind again. He felt himself fiddling with his ring finger and a wave of nausea hit him.

  “I have no idea,” he said quietly. The woman in his mind
began to scream again. And this time he saw flames. He felt the heat of fire, heard it crackling, consuming, swallowing her. His mouth felt dry. He wanted June to shut up.

  * * *

  June saw a haunted look creeping into Jesse’s eyes and the despair in his features made her chest tighten. She couldn’t help it—she reached out, placed her hand on his arm.

  “Hey,” she said. “It’s going to be okay. It’ll come back to you.”

  “Maybe I don’t want it to,” he whispered. “Maybe I am some kind of bad guy, June. Maybe I’ve done something terrible.”

  And again that little whisper of doubt curled through her.

  “Jesse—”

  But before the next word could come out of her mouth, screaming came from the bushes.

  They both spun around to see Brad crashing out from the brush, his eyes wide with fear. Eager began to bark excitedly as Brad ran toward the patio yelling. “Help! Molly’s in trouble!”

  Adrenaline punched through June. The henchmen—they must be here!

  She rushed indoors, grabbed the shotgun from the rack and hurriedly unlocked the cabinet, reaching for a box of shells.

  Brad reached the patio and bent over, bracing his hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath. “Bears!” he said. “Molly’s trapped by a mother bear and her cubs.”

  June froze, gun in hand. “Bears?”

  Brad stood up. His face glistened with sweat. “They have Molly cornered at that end of the valley.” He pointed toward the mountains.

  “She said she was going to pick some berries. I followed her—I wanted to see where the berries were. But there’s a big bear and her cubs stalking her.”

  June began to load the gun. Jesse placed his hand on her arm, stopping her.

  She shot him a glance.

  His eyes were narrowed. “Give it to me,” he said, grabbing the gun from her with force.

  Shock licked through June. “No, Jesse! What the—”

  He turned away from her and went back inside. She rushed after him, anger spearing into her.

  “What do you think you’re doing? Give that back to me—Molly’s in trouble.”

  He reached into the cabinet and took out a box of slugs. He reloaded the gun.