The Last Chance Cafe

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Yes,” Hallie agreed.

  Jessie studied her closely. “Something is terribly wrong, isn’t it?”

  A painful lump rose in Hallie’s throat. “Yes,” she said, in a raspy whisper, “but I can’t tell you what it is, so please, don’t ask.”

  “Fair enough,” Jessie said, surprising Hallie with her ready acquiescence. “Do you need money?”

  Hallie bit her lower lip, thinking of her own substantial bank accounts, languishing in Phoenix, of her car and her clothes and her credit cards. All of those things were as inaccessible as if they’d been on another planet. “Yes,” she said. “But I’m not sure when—or if—I’ll be able to pay you back, so please don’t offer.”

  “When are you planning to leave?”

  Hallie glanced toward the stairs to make sure the twins weren’t there, eavesdropping. “Tomorrow,” she said.

  “Ah,” Jessie said.

  Hallie, rolling now, couldn’t seem to put on the brakes. “I need to use your Jeep, Jessie,” she blurted out. “I’ll leave it somewhere safe, I promise, as soon as we’re far enough away, and send you an e-mail, telling you where it is.”

  “Okay,” Jessie replied, to Hallie’s utter surprise.

  “That’s it? Just ‘okay,’ and no questions asked?”

  “That’s it,” Jessie said. “I have good instincts about people, Hallie. I know you’re not a criminal. You must be in very big trouble, though, and I’d like to help you if you’d let me. For your sake and the girls’.”

  Tears sprang to Hallie’s eyes. There were still good people in the world, Jessie was proof of that, people who believed in others, and were willing to trust them even when trusting was a stretch. Knowing that made everything a little easier. “Just let me use the Jeep,” she said. “That’s all I really need.”

  Jessie got up from her stool in front of the loom, walked to a far wall, moved aside a picture of two little boys, one fair-haired, one dark. Hallie had seen the photo a number of times, but never registered, until then, that the subjects were Chance and Jase.

  A small safe was revealed, and Jessie turned the knob without hesitation, or any visible effort to keep Hallie from seeing the combination. She removed a fat envelope, plucked out a handful of bills, put the envelope back, closed the safe, replaced the picture.

  “Here,” Jessie said, approaching Hallie and holding out the money.

  Hallie knew, without touching the crisp currency, still lying in Jessie’s palm, that there were several thousand dollars there. Unless she could tap her own funds, and it didn’t look as if that would be an option in the very near future, thanks to the official strings Joel had surely tied to everything, she would never be able to repay her friend. She took a step back.

  “Take it,” Jessie urged. “I’ve done well, Hallie. It won’t be a hardship for me.”

  Hallie sighed. Accepted the cash reluctantly. “Thank you,” she said.

  “Maybe you should drive me to the airport tomorrow,” Jessie mused. “That way, you’d have the Jeep. You could just keep going.”

  It was settled, then. She was really leaving. Hallie nodded, temporarily unable to speak.

  “Are you going to say good-bye to Chance?”

  Hallie swallowed, shook her head. “I can’t,” she whispered, and headed for the stairs. It was the beginning of a long evening.

  A skiff of snow had fallen during the night, leaving everything covered with a cloak of velvety white, studded with diamond chips. Hallie could see her breath as she hurried toward the barn, carrying Chance’s rifle in one hand lest she encounter the mountain lion. Jessie’s horses were waiting patiently, as if they were aware that she was new at equine relations, and allowances must be made. She greeted each of the animals by name, pausing to stroke their long faces, their necks, their sides. She hated leaving them, hated the thought that she would never see them again.

  She refilled their feed pans, checked to make sure the automatic waterers in each stall were working, and broke open a new bale of grass.

  Jessie’s plane was leaving at one that afternoon, and Hallie had packed her things and the girls’ before going to bed. Everything was ready, and in place—except her heart. She’d be leaving big chunks of that behind, scattered over the countryside like the fallout from a meteor.

  She was dumping the last of the manure into the large metal bin behind the barn when Chance’s truck rolled in, leaving broad tracks in the snow. A flash of betrayal ached in her chest—had Jessie told him what was going on?

  But Chance seemed to suspect nothing. He glanced approvingly at the rifle, leaning against a stack of bales, as he got out of the rig and came toward her. “It’s nice to know you listen to some of what I say,” he told her. “Any sign of the cat?”

  She shook her head. “No, thank God. I think I’m just feeling a little—well—exposed. Now that I know how to use a gun, it seemed sensible to carry it to and from the barn.”

  Chance nodded. There were shadows in his eyes, and he needed to shave, but other than that, he looked damnably attractive. He took the rifle out of her hand and started toward the house, and she kept pace.

  “What brings you here?” she asked, trying to give the question a light touch.

  He glanced at her, probably seeing more than she cared to reveal. “Doc’s in kind of a snit because Jessie won’t let him take her to the airport today. I came by to see if she wanted me to drive her.”

  “I’m doing that,” Hallie said quietly.

  “Ah,” Chance said. “You don’t have to work?”

  “Not this morning,” she answered, hoping Chance wouldn’t stop by the café and find out that Bear was expecting her to cover the breakfast shift. That would surely clue him in, and Hallie wanted to be far away before anybody realized that she was gone for good.

  Inside, she pulled off her coat, hung it up, went to the sink to wash her hands. She felt Chance’s gaze move from her barn boots, over her jeans and long-john shirt, to her face and then her hair, which was escaping the plastic clasp she’d used to restrain it. She smiled sadly as she snapped a paper towel off the roll. “Stay for breakfast?” she asked. It was selfish of her, she knew, but she needed this last, brief time with Chance. Soon, memories would be all she had of him.

  “I’d like that,” he replied, drawing back a chair.

  Within minutes, Kiera and Kiley were pounding down the steps, in their footed pajamas, crowing, “It snowed! It snowed!”

  Hallie laughed and rounded them up for a breakfast of hot cereal, orange juice, and scrambled eggs, and there were tears in her eyes when she met Chance’s gaze, across the table. God, it was going to be hard to walk away.

  Jessie wandered in from the living room, where her loom stood in a pool of wintry light pouring in through the bay windows, probably attracted by the smell of food and the sound of familiar voices. She glanced at Chance, then, more searchingly, at Hallie, who shook her head ever so slightly. No, was the unspoken message. I haven’t told him.

  “Morning, Chance,” Jessie said cheerily, barely missing a step.

  “Morning,” Chance replied, rising a little, sitting down again only when Jessie had taken a seat at the table.

  Hallie was content to do the cooking. That way, if nothing else, she could keep her back to them while she worked at the stove, and do her crying in relative privacy.

  Everything went fairly well until after they’d dropped Jessie off at the airport in Reno, along with her bags and the large portfolio containing sketches of future designs. That was when the twins noticed that their own suitcase was in the back of the Jeep, along with a few cardboard boxes, tightly taped. “Are we going on a trip, too?” Kiera asked innocently.

  Kiley’s expression was thunderous. “We’re running away,” she deduced. “Again.”

  “Are we, Mommy?” Kiera asked. “We’re leaving the horses, and all our friends, and the Last Chance Café?”

  Hallie wanted to weep, but she’d done enough of that while she was maki
ng breakfast. Chance had noticed her red eyes, but when he’d tried to broach the subject, she’d shaken her head, and he’d given it up.

  “Mommy?” Kiera prompted.

  Hallie negotiated the airport exit, turned in the opposite direction of Primrose Creek when she pulled onto the highway. There was one thing she had to do before they took to the road; reclaim Lou’s cashbox from its hiding place. She would need it for proof when she went to the FBI, and for a bargaining chip if Joel caught up with her first.

  “Yes,” she said. “We’re going somewhere new.”

  “Where?” Kiley asked, still petulant.

  Hallie blinked a few times, squinted at the green highway signs overhead. “I don’t know,” she said, in all honesty. “Just away.”

  Kiera began to cry. “I didn’t get to say good-bye to anybody!”

  Hallie winced, lifted her chin a notch, gripped the steering wheel tightly. “I know,” she replied, “and I’m sorry. It has to be this way.”

  “Why?” Kiley wailed. “I miss Jessie. I miss Chance and Madge and Evie—and who will take care of the kittens, if we’re gone?”

  Kiera’s grief reached a new and piercing pitch. “Please, Mommy,” she pleaded. “Let’s go home!”

  Once, Hallie thought, Arizona had been home. Now, it was Primrose Creek, the place and the people, and giving all that up was almost more than she could bear. Only the very real threat to her childrens’ lives and her own prevented her from turning around and heading for the high country again. Heading for Chance.

  “We can’t,” she said gently, and kept driving. The twins began to sob, wretchedly, and Hallie cried too, and for many of the same reasons. Leaving Phoenix had been shattering, especially under the circumstances, but this was far worse.

  13

  T he sun was already going down on the little town in northeastern California by the time Hallie backtracked to the place where she’d hidden Lou’s cashbox, and she bit her lower lip as she drove through the open gate, wishing she’d stashed it in a locker at a bus station instead, or even rented one of those mini storage units. Mercifully, Kiera and Kiley, partly assuaged by a late lunch of Big Macs and French fries, were asleep in the backseat of the Jeep. She drove up the hill, between rows of shadowy headstones dusted with snow, her heart wedged into the back of her throat. Suppose someone—a caretaker, or a stray mourner, for instance—had found the box? Without it, she would have no proof against Joel and the others, and no bargaining chip, either.

  She shivered, tried to rein in her imagination and, for the most part, failed.

  It was unlikely that Joel or anybody else had followed her here. If by some miracle he had guessed where she might hide something that important, and already found the box, he wouldn’t stand around in the cold, waiting for her to show up and retrieve it. Joel was smart, methodical. He would have destroyed the evidence first thing.

  And then he would come after her, to make sure she never told the story.

  She drew Jessie’s Jeep to a stop beside a tall monument; she’d chosen this particular grave for a personal reason—was it really only days earlier?—and the fact that it was rather elaborate, and therefore, easy for her to find again, was a bonus. The grave was also relatively isolated, and not often visited. It had a lonely look, especially as darkness gathered, standing there in the stark cylindrical glow of her headlights.

  “Mommy?” It was Kiera, sleepy, confused. “Is this a . . . a graveyard?”

  The girls had been asleep during the first visit, blessedly so.

  “What are we doing here?” Kiley wanted to know.

  Hallie had no choice but to brazen things out, see it through. “I’ll explain it all later,” she said, getting out of the Jeep, leaving the lights on and the engine running. “Right now, you’re just going to have to trust me, okay?”

  “Okay,” Kiera said.

  “Okay,” Kiley added, with a lot less conviction.

  Hallie picked her way over the rough ground to the grave site. The name O’Rourke was etched deeply into the foot of the stone. Here, her father was buried, the man she had never known, the man who had abandoned her and her mother, evidently without looking back. She couldn’t remember receiving a single birthday or Christmas card from the man, and she knew for a fact there had never been any child support payments. Until her mother married Lou, finances had been nip-and-tuck.

  She resisted a childish urge to give the headstone a good kick. For one thing, she might hurt her foot.

  After wading through a storm of complicated emotions, she got down on one knee and began removing the small pile of rocks with which she’d covered the half-buried box. Mingled relief and regret skittered through her when she felt the metal lid, pried the chest from its hiding place.

  She was still kneeling there, afraid to open the lid, when she heard the sound of a familiar engine, saw the sweep of headlights rounding the bend. She got shakily to her feet, clutching the box, and stumbled toward the Jeep. Silly, really. She didn’t have a prayer of getting away, not now.

  Chance’s truck stopped beside the Jeep, and he jumped out, leaving the motor running and the lights on, just the way she had.

  “What the hell—?” he demanded.

  Hallie froze. She wasn’t afraid of Chance, never that, but she would have done almost anything to prevent this confrontation. She would have no choice but to tell him what was going on, and after that, he would be in as much danger as she and the girls already were.

  “You followed me!” she managed to sputter.

  He stopped a foot in front of her, pushed his hat to the back of his head, wrenched it forward again, in a gesture of pure frustration. “You’re damned right I followed you,” was the terse reply.

  “Jessie told you,” Hallie lamented.

  “Chance!” Kiera called, from the Jeep.

  “Chance!” Kiley echoed plaintively.

  The two of them sounded like shipwreck survivors, clinging to an ice floe and calling for rescue. No doubt they thought their mother had lost her mind, and Chance was probably of the same opinion.

  “Jessie didn’t tell me anything,” Chance said. Then he waggled a finger at her. “Stay right there,” he ordered. “Don’t move a muscle.” With that, he turned, went to the Jeep, opened the door to speak to the kids. “Everything’s fine,” Hallie heard him say. “We’re going home. All of us.”

  Hallie wanted to scream with frustration, wanted just as much to go wherever Chance chose to take her. Maybe she had lost her mind. People caved under a lot less pressure than she’d been experiencing, since the incident at Lou’s house, when she’d seen a side of her ex-husband she could never have imagined was there. She just stood there, in the gleam of Chance’s truck lights, holding the box against her bosom as if it were some precious relic, and not the symbol of her own ruin.

  Chance settled the girls down with a few more quiet words, then came back to Hallie. “We can do this two ways,” he said reasonably. “You can resist, and I’ll throw you over my shoulder and take you back to Primrose Creek in my truck, then come back and pick up Jessie’s rig tomorrow. Or you can drive yourself back, with me following. What’s it going to be?”

  Hallie raked her lower lip with her front teeth. “That’s some choice,” she muttered.

  “Take it or leave it,” Chance replied. He wasn’t going to give an inch.

  “How did you know?” Hallie asked. He took her by the elbow, but gently, and steered her toward the Jeep, where the girls were waiting, their faces pressed against the same rear side window. “If Jessie didn’t say anything, how did you know?”

  “I stopped by the Last Chance Café for an early lunch, and Bear was in a state because you hadn’t come in to wait tables. Then Doc wandered in, complaining that Jessie had let you take her to the airport when he wanted to do it, and I guessed the rest. I caught up with you just after you dropped Jessie off, and followed when you turned away from Primrose Creek instead of toward it.”

  “Why?” she
wanted to know. Needed to know. They were standing beside the Jeep now, but the doors and windows were all closed, and she was sure the girls couldn’t hear their conversation. “Why didn’t you just let me go?”

  He considered the question for a long time, his expression grim, there in that cold, sad, lonely place. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “It never occurred to me that I could.”

  “Now what?”

  “Now we go back home. We calm the kids down, and you get a good night’s sleep. Then we sit down, you and I, and we talk—really talk—until I’m clear on what the hell is going on with you.”

  Hallie shoved a hand through her hair, which was coming loose from its clip, and sighed. “Suppose I don’t want to talk?” she challenged, but weakly. She was tired, so tired, of running away, of lying, of looking over her shoulder.

  “Then I guess we’ll just sit there and stare at each other until you get over it,” he answered. “Now, are you okay to drive, or do you and the girls want to ride with me? The Jeep will be okay here until tomorrow.”

  Hallie was too frazzled to make decisions, even small ones.

  Chance’s smile was slight, and a little bitter. “Let’s go,” he said. Then he opened the back of the Jeep and removed the suitcase and the well-taped cardboard box, setting them in the back of his truck. Resigned, and strangely grateful, Hallie collected her daughters and, cashbox in hand, followed Chance.

  He shut off the Jeep, locked it up, and pocketed the keys as he returned to his own rig, where Hallie and the twins were already buckled in, waiting. The girls, though wide awake, were vibrantly silent. Hallie felt like a reject from the Jerry Springer Show; some mother she was, dragging her kids to a graveyard, probably scarring their psyches forever.

  Apparently, Kiera and Kiley felt safe, however, for they were soon asleep in the backseat of Chance’s truck. Hallie hunkered low on the passenger side, the box on her lap, both hands guarding it.

  Chance didn’t ask questions, though Hallie knew it took a lot of restraint on his part. The reckoning would come, though, once they were back at Primrose Creek.