The Cabin

by Carla Neggers

  Rachel had tried to get her to have more faith in herself. "If you want to be a Texas Ranger, Alice, go for it," she'd say. "Apply for a position in the Department of Public Safety, get the training you need. You won't be one if you just keep dreaming about it."

  "But what if I fail?" Alice remembered asking. "What if it doesn't work out? Then I won't have that dream anymore."

  "Then you'll find a new dream."

  Australia…

  She broke into a halfrun, her eyes tearing with the cold. She was losing strength. Soon she wouldn't be able to lift her legs high enough to manage the deep snow. Then what? She didn't want to die out here. She almost wished she were back in prison.

  She came to a hemlock with low-hanging branches and ducked under them, thinking this would be a good place to rest. What would happen if she sank into the soft snow, leaned against the rough trunk and just went to sleep? You'll wake up with grandma in heaven…

  Or maybe she'd wake up in the fires of hell.

  She needed time to make amends for her mistakes. And Rachel…I can't die with her murder unsolved. But blackmailing Beau was about money and Australia, not justice, not avenging Rachel's death. And this scheme she'd fallen into with Destin. It had nothing to do with putting Beau McGarrity into prison for cold-blooded murder.

  She burst onto the other side of the hemlock, and the woods opened up, giving way to a rock ledge and the open expanse of Blackwater Lake. She almost cried. Her legs gave way, trembling and weak from pushing through the snow, and she sank to her knees. She'd be okay now. The teahouse, Susanna's cabin, other cabins, the inn, a marina and campsites were all on the lake. She'd come to something.

  Alice slowly got back onto her feet and leaned against a boulder as tall as she was. She looked out at the lake, the black sky shining with stars now. She could distinguish the outlines of an island just offshore and tried to orient herself, remembering the geological survey map at the inn. She was still on the upper reaches of Blackwater Lake. The jagged shoreline, the rocks and hills and trees—the sheer distance involved—obstructed any view of lights to the south, the more populated end of the lake.

  She pushed back a crawling sense of panic at not seeing any lights. She felt very alone in a very big wilderness.

  The lake made a deep moaning sound, and her heart raced, even as she told herself it was just the ice. She stood motionless, calling upon the techniques she'd learned in prison to stem what she now recognized as an oncoming panic attack. She thought of Texas, walking across open land with her grandma and breathing the warm spring air, smelling the wildflowers.

  The mountains and dark seemed to close in on her, stealing her breath, but she didn't gulp for air—she'd learned not to hyperventilate. Instead, she stayed with that peaceful image. In her mind, the bluebonnets were real, and all her dreams were ahead of her, not laying in shards at her feet.

  "Honey, you can do anything if you put your mind to it."

  Her grandma had believed in her. And all Alice had wanted, even then as a little girl walking in a field, was to be a Texas Ranger and do good for people. There were women Rangers. Fine ones.

  Australia. She reminded herself that was her new dream. It was what she wanted now. She'd tried to do good for people, and it hadn't worked out.

  She should find Destin, drop him off in Boston and forget she'd ever gone down this road of trying to get her money the easy way. Get a job. Save.

  "So, please, God," she whispered, "please don't let me die out here."

  She hoped God wasn't as unforgiving as Jack Galway. She'd known he'd never look the other way when she messed up the crime scene and came up with her phony witness. Jack didn't know about the change purse, but he suspected she hadn't told him everything about her and Rachel McGarrity. He didn't believe it was sheer incompetence that had driven her to contaminate the crime scene, trample on evidence. But when she plea-bargained, playing on everyone else's desire to put a police corruption case behind them, she hadn't left him much room to maneuver.

  At least he didn't think she was so stupid as to not follow basic police procedure when coming onto a murder scene. That was something.

  But she'd never become a Texas Ranger now, that was for darn sure.

  She eased around the boulder, coming to a steep embankment. If she got to the bottom without breaking a leg, it looked as if the going would be easier, and there was a point that jutted out into the lake where she might get a better fix on which direction she should go. She needed to get out of the elements. She'd read about people digging snow caves and surviving that way. She had no idea how she'd even start.

  She grabbed hold of a thin sapling, anchoring herself, and edged sideways down the hill, then let go and half scrambled, half tumbled the rest of the way, dropping to her butt for the last few feet.

  When she came to a stop, she sat there in the snow, her feet pressed up against thick lake ice. She was breathing hard, fighting tears. She was hungry. A nice, hot bowl of Jim Haviland's clam chowder would do her fine. She'd even eat the clams.

  A light came on further along the shore, about twenty-five yards from her. A flashlight. It bobbed toward her, and Alice got unsteadily to her feet. She sniffled. "Destin?"

  She doubted whoever it was could hear her. Destin wasn't the sort to be prepared with something as practical as a flashlight—or to wait for her out in the cold. Maybe it was a winter camper, someone who'd heard her thrashing around. The Johnsons had mentioned that people camped in the Adirondacks year-round.

  Alice watched the light moving toward her, unable to make out the dark silhouette of the figure behind it. She could see the snow bright under the arc of light, tree trunks, a stretch of ice and jutting rock, and squinted as the light found her, settled on her. The figure stopped, raising the light to her face, shining it in her eyes. She shielded them, but made out the man's face and immediately thought hypothermia must have set in. "Beau? Is that you?"

  "Hello, Alice." His voice was cold, steady. "You've had a tough time out here."

  "I sure have. I'm glad to see you—"

  "You were supposed to meet Destin Wright."

  She tried to lick her lips, but her tongue felt dry. "Have you seen him?"

  McGarrity shifted the harsh light off her face. He was properly dressed for the frigid temperatures in a highend parka, the hood up, and wind-resistant gloves and pants. He didn't look cold at all. "I caught up with him after he broke into Susanna Galway's cabin."

  "I sent him after the tape—"

  "Alice." Beau's voice was ice. "I have the tape."

  The tape was in her suitcase in her car, parked at the rich people's house through the woods. Except Beau had it. "You found my car?"

  "Mr. Wright said you two had planned to meet at the teahouse. It made sense you'd leave your car at the main house."

  "I got lost."

  "Yes, I know." He took a step toward her, his demeanor still calm, but with a menacing undertone that kept her sitting in the snow, unable to move. "Your friend didn't know anything about a tape."

  "He wouldn't know he could tell you—"

  "Alice, if you haven't seen him since you got lost, how did the tape end up in your bag?"

  She cleared her throat, wishing she could think faster. Even warm, she wasn't a fast thinker. "I lied to him."

  "No, Alice. You lied to me."

  Her entire body convulsed into uncontrollable shivering, and she staggered to her feet, her teeth chattering, her hands shaking. She'd lied to Beau McGarrity. He knew it. He'd shot his wife in the back, and now he'd kill her. She was dead. She'd never see Texas again. She'd never make it to Australia.

  And Destin. He was a self-absorbed jerk, and he'd had no idea what he was up against in Beau McGarrity. Alice hadn't warned him.

  She didn't want to think about Destin.

  She crossed her arms tightly over her chest, but she didn't think she'd ever get warm again.

  Beau McGarrity had a gun pointed at her in the hand not holding the f
lashlight. Destin's Heckler & Koch. It was an expensive gun. He'd showed it to her the other night in the motel in New Hampshire. He was very proud of it, but he barely knew how to hold the thing.

  He should have brought it with him when he broke into Susanna's cabin, just so he could have it on him when he'd run into Beau. Instead, he must have left it in his pack, and Beau had found it when he'd searched Alice's car.

  "You're a former police officer, Alice," Beau said, almost amused. "You should know not to leave a weapon in an unoccupied vehicle."

  "It's Destin's—I don't have a gun."

  Not that it mattered. Her brain felt dull and mushy, and she knew she was putting together the pieces of the mess she was in slowly, some floating away before her mind could quite grasp them and put them in place. Rachel Tucker McGarrity, interior designer, a woman with fine manners, a lover of fine things…her friend…dead… murdered…gone forever…

  "I should have left well enough alone with Destin." Alice spoke absently, hunching her shoulders as her teeth chattered. Her eyelids were heavy. She desperately wanted to sleep. "I'm very cold."

  "The teahouse is just up this way."

  At least he wouldn't shoot her out here on the ice and snow. He'd take her inside the teahouse, and shoot her there.

  He stood back and motioned with his flashlight, the H&K held steady. "After you, Officer Parker."

  * * *

  He left her in the teahouse.

  Alice didn't know where he was. She was alone, huddled into a corner of the crumbling, gazebolike structure on the lake front. He had thrust a sleeping bag at her and told her to climb inside, and she'd thought he meant to smother her. Or maybe he hoped the down feather lining would muffle his gunshot. But once she was inside, Beau handed her a bottle of water and told her to keep it in the sleeping bag with her or it would freeze.

  "You'll survive until morning," he told her. "If you don't, you don't—but you will."

  "Why won't I crawl out of here and get help?"

  "Because you don't have the strength. Because you're desperate. And because you might run into me."

  "Destin—"

  "He's no help to you. It was a mistake on your part ever to think he would be." He'd stared at her behind that flashlight, so still she thought he might have turned to ice. "I know why my wife was interested in Susanna Galway. I understand the connection now."

  "Jesus," Alice breathed, "you don't care about the tape. That's not why you're here. You don't want it to get out to the public, but it's Rachel's interest in Susanna—"

  "Sleep well." His tone was without inflection, and he started out, stopping at the gazebo door and looking back at her, the flashlight pointed at the floor. "You should have told me the truth. Instead, you tried to double-cross me."

  "We can still do a deal."

  "Maybe."

  And he'd left her like that. She took a few sips of water and shoved the bottle to the bottom of her sleeping bag, and now she was hunkered down deep. She'd sealed off any gaps where the cold air could seep in. She could feel her breath hot against the slick fabric. Freeze or suffocate. What a choice. She thought of the idiots who climbed Mt. Everest. What did the women do when they had to pee in the middle of the night?

  Even if she didn't run into Beau, she'd die of exposure if she left the teahouse. She had no flashlight, no compass, no provisions. She already knew she had no sense of direction in these woods. And her socks were wet. She wouldn't get far in wet socks.

  Her only hope was to stay alive until morning and try to work out some kind of deal with Beau.

  I loved my wife, Officer Parker. I loved her very much.

  She couldn't remember when Beau had said that. Tonight? The night of Rachel's death?

  It's your fault she's dead. Yours and Susanna Gal-way's. You're the ones responsible.

  Had he ever said that? Alice shut her eyes, her cheeks and lips burning from the wind and the cold. If Beau had said that, she should have told Jack Galway.

  Maybe Beau hadn't said it. Maybe this was one of her prison dreams, and she'd wake up on her cot in her cell, sweating and hyperventilating.

  She'd never had much luck in life.

  She rolled onto her side, trying to get comfortable on the rotting, loose floorboards. She imagined Iris Dunning as a young woman, her chestnut hair flowing, shining in the moonlight as she made passionate love to a rich, married man out here on a hot summer night.

  Eighteen

  Sam Temple sat at the oak table drinking coffee and eyeing Susanna, who was showered, dressed and accustomed to being in the company of Texas Rangers and therefore not intimidated. Sam, however, had already made it abundantly clear that he was not happy with her. It was morning and a storm was brewing. Clouds had moved in from the west, and the wind was picking up. Susanna pictured them all trapped in the cabin for days on end in a major blizzard. She couldn't imagine Sam building jigsaw puzzles and playing Scrabble.

  Jack was in the shower. Maggie and Ellen were in their room taking turns reading Pride and Prejudice. They'd rebounded well after yesterday. Gran was on the couch in front of the fire, pensive, uninterested in working the castle puzzle.

  "My life would be easier if you'd just come on back to Texas," Sam said.

  Susanna leaned back in her chair. "And just how would your life be easier?"

  "Well, I wouldn't be up here in the frozen north freezing my ass off."

  "That's a stretch, Sam. It was your choice to come up here. I had nothing to do with it."

  He shook his head. He was chiseled, dark and very handsome. "You have everything to do with why I'm here. Beau McGarrity turned up in your neighborhood when he told his cleaning woman he was going hunting. I don't like that."

  "He's after Alice Parker, not me."

  "That's what we regard in my line of work as a leap of logic. There are two detectives back in Boston keeping an eye out for McGarrity, and Jack and I will be talking to the local and state police up here. Mr. McGarrity has some explaining to do."

  "You need an articulable reason for picking him up—"

  "I know what I need. We have good reason to believe he broke into Alice's apartment and your grandmother's house."

  "But it wouldn't matter," Susanna said. "You'd pick him up for having a beer at Jim's Place."

  "It's provocative conduct."

  "You don't like it."

  He almost managed a smile. "That's right, Mrs. Galway. I don't like it. And if McGarrity's after Alice Parker, she has a right to protection, as well."

  "Courtesy, service, protection."

  He winked. "That's our motto."

  Susanna stared out the window at the white and gray landscape. "Sam, I'm sorry. If I'd known Beau McGarrity had hunted me down before his wife was killed—"

  "You didn't. I'll give you that one. If we'd known about his visit after his wife's murder, we might have pressed him more, we might have pressed Alice more— but she copped to the witness tampering right off, so who the hell knows?" He shifted in his chair, and if he felt out of place in an Adirondack cabin, he'd never show it. "Never mind McGarrity and Alice Parker. My life'd be easier, period, if you came home. Jack hasn't been in a good mood since you took off to Boston."

  "Give me a break, Sam. I was sleeping with Jack when you were in the ninth grade."

  His black eyes flashed with amusement. "Sleeping with Jack that tough, is it?"

  She gave him a steady look, refusing to let any color creep into her cheeks. "That's not what I meant."

  "He loves you, Susanna."

  "And I love him." She looked at her hands and absently touched her wedding ring, fighting back tears she hoped Sam wouldn't see. "There are times in a long relationship when that's not enough."

  "What else do you need? Clean socks?"

  Jack entered the kitchen from the bedroom, where he and Susanna had spent the night together, making love silently, passionately. She could feel herself responding to him all over again, physically, emotionally, as she took
in everything that had attracted her to him right from the beginning. His dark eyes, his half smiles, his taut body. His strength and no-nonsense style, and his humor, his tolerance. She remembered how gentle he'd been with Maggie and Ellen as tots, how haunted he'd been by his first murder investigation.

  This time together, she knew, was restoring the physical and emotional bond between them—and messing up her head all over again. Which, of course, wouldn't be the way he or Sam looked at it. They'd say she was coming to her senses. Maybe they had a point.

  "What're you two up to?" Jack asked.

  "We're discussing laundry," Sam said. "Clean socks. I'd hate to hang out my shorts in this weather. Granny Dunning says she can smell snow in the air."

  "You'll see," Gran said from the couch. She hadn't made any comments to Sam about Texas, but she'd given his holstered .357 SIG Sauer a wary look.

  "Gran's a legend in these parts," Susanna told him.

  He grinned. "I don't doubt it."

  Jack didn't even try to follow their back-and-forth conversation. He was all business. He grabbed his jacket. "Sam, I'll check in with the local police and let them know you're in town. I also want to talk with the people at the Blackwater Inn. Unofficially.You'll hang in here?"

  "No problem."

  Susanna's reaction was automatic, instinctive, vis-ceral—it bypassed all her rational thought processes. She shot to her feet, frustration rising in her throat as she tightened her hands into fists and started for her husband. "You mean you want him to be our protection."

  Jack shrugged, but she could see the heat in his eyes. "It's either Sam or me."

  "Forget it. We'll pack up and head back to Boston. Gran, the girls and me. We can be on our way in an hour."

  Sam muttered, "Jesus, Susanna," over the rim of his coffee mug.

  Jack clenched his teeth. "What will you do when Alice Parker and Destin Wright show up in your rearview mirror? Or Beau McGarrity? He shot his wife in the back. What do you think he'll do to you?"

  "I have a cell phone. I'll call you and tell you where they are. Then you and Sam can swoop in to the rescue."