The Last Chance Cafe

by Linda Lael Miller

  Hallie retreated from him, rubbing her aching wrist with her free hand. “You’re crazy!” she retorted. “My God, Joel, what happened to you? When— how— did you turn into this . . . this monster?”

  His grin was eerie, and he was holding his revolver on her. The same gun he’d used to shoot Chance.

  Chance. Her heart seized with the anguish of knowing that Chance was either dead or dying, alone on a country road, and all because of her. She put a hand to her mouth to hold back a sob.

  “Maybe I was always a monster,” Joel taunted. “Does it bother you, Hallie, to think you slept with me, bore my children, all the while never knowing who or what I was?”

  “You need help,” she said, and was surprised at the calm and reasonable tone she used. “Stop this, now. Don’t let it go any further. Think of Kiera and Kiley, if you won’t do it for yourself.”

  He spat into the snow. “Tell me where the disk is,” he said. His face softened then, momentarily, and somehow that was even more frightening than his anger and scorn had been. “Not that I’m going to let you live, either way,” he added, in a sort of mad, chanting meter. “I still have the kids, at least. I’m going to pick them up, when I’ve finished with you, and take them away from here. They’ll forget you, in time, and this place, too.”

  “Joel,” Hallie whispered, putting out both hands, palms forward, in a plea for reason. “Listen to yourself. You’ve committed murder. You’re planning more. Do you really think a killer can be a fit parent—even if that killer is you?”

  Joel wavered for the first time since the whole horror had begun, the revolver dangling from his right hand while he considered. “The disk,” he reiterated. “Where is the damn disk?”

  “I gave everything to the sheriff,” Hallie said, in an even tone that surprised her, considering that she was shaking inside. “It’s over, Joel. Give yourself up. Don’t you see that you’re going to be on the run from the law for the rest of your life if you don’t? And that means your daughters will be hunted as well, if you take them with you. What if you’re caught, and they’re stranded in some foreign country? Don’t do this to them, Joel. It’s time to stop.”

  “Words,” Joel replied, with another scary little smile. “You always were so good with words. The thing is, I’m going to make it all up to them. Keep them safe. They’ll live in a big house, with servants, and have ponies and anything else they want.”

  “What about a sane father, Joel? What about normal lives? Will they have those things?” She knew she should back off, think about escaping into the trees somehow, getting back to Chance, but she couldn’t seem to stop these hopeless attempts to reach Joel on some level of rationality.

  He dragged the sleeve of his ruined overcoat across his mouth, like a man who has just taken a great draught of some powerful, evil potion. She saw the very fires of hell leaping in his eyes. Dear God, if he killed her, and snatched her babies from Katie, they would grow up with the devil himself for a father. They would be living with a madman.

  She couldn’t let that happen, no matter what she had to do to prevent it. And that included dying.

  She took a step toward him. “Listen to me, Joel,” she said. “I’ll do anything you want me to do. I’ll get the evidence back, somehow, and you can destroy it.”

  “Where was it? We looked everywhere.”

  She swallowed hard. Told him about the key, the plastic Virgin Mary in Lou’s storage shed. All the while, she was thinking of Chance, and of her children. Of the Strattons, too, and their girls. Chance was dying, or maybe already dead, and the others were in grave danger. If harm came to anyone else because of her, she wouldn’t be able to live with the knowledge, even if she somehow, miraculously, survived this night of horror.

  If it hadn’t been for her children, her precious daughters, she wasn’t sure she would even have wanted to live, not after what had happened to Chance. Had she been alone in the world, she’d surely have chosen to follow him into whatever hereafter awaited them.

  “The FBI has the stuff, Joel,” she reasoned. “Please—can’t you see it’s over? They’ll be here soon—the police, the feds, all of them.”

  “In for a penny,” Joel said, singsong, “in for a pound.” He ran his eyes over the length of her. “I’m going to shoot you now,” he went on, sounding for all the world like a childhood bully outlining the rules of some sick game. “But not through the heart. I’ll start with your ankles, then move on to your knees, then, finally, blow your belly open. Then, if you’re still conscious, I’ll shoot off your fingers, one at a time.”

  Was this how it had been for Lou? Had Joel—or whoever had done his dirty work—tormented him with fear before emptying five shots into his chest?

  “Don’t,” was all she could say, and the word came out as a terrified croak.

  Joel raised the pistol, aimed. Hallie closed her eyes tightly and lunged to one side after waiting as long as she dared. There was a sound in the woods; Hallie was sure the cougar was back. She heard the bullet splash into the creek, heard a loud report, a burbling cry of agonized indignation.

  Lying on the ground, only a foot or so from the corpse, she opened her eyes and saw Joel on his knees, his back to her now, the snow turning crimson around him. Beyond him was Chance, a dead man walking, unsteady on his feet, his face bloodless, rifle in hand.

  Joel lifted his gaze to heaven, then fell forward into the stained snow, still gripping his belly, surprised and affronted by death.

  Hallie scrambled to Chance, full of joy, because he was alive and he’d saved her life, and of sorrow, because matters had come to this. Chance, despite his heroics, was badly injured. Joel was gone, and so were Lou and Charlie, and this poor remnant of a man lying on the ground, with his throat torn out and his features obliterated by blood.

  Chance sagged against her. “I . . . think I need . . . an ambulance.”

  She supported him by standing under his right arm, using her body like a crutch. “Yes,” she said simply, and somehow, moving over a bridge of dark stars, she managed to get him, and herself, back to the truck, which was still running when they reached it, after a long hike, the driver’s side door hanging wide open, just as she’d left it.

  Hallie shuddered, remembering all that had happened in this place, and maneuvered Chance into the seat she’d occupied earlier. He slumped, his clothes awash in blood, and closed his eyes.

  Hallie got behind the wheel, closed the door with a slam, and headed for the main road into town, honking the horn intermittently as she made her painstaking way over buried roads, in case someone nearby should hear, and be able to help. She simply guessed where the ditches were. By sheer determination, luck and stubbornness, she got as far as Doc Whitman’s house, and laid on the horn until he came out, coatless and rushed.

  “What the hell?” he demanded, looking past Hallie to see Chance on the other side of the truck, quite literally floating between two worlds.

  “He’s been shot,” Hallie said. “He needs a doctor—a hospital—but we won’t be able to make it that far, not in this weather.”

  Doc was already opening the passenger door, catching Chance in strong, wiry arms when he fell from the high seat. “Help me get him inside!” he said, and Hallie rushed to obey.

  They laid Chance on a steel examining table in Doc’s office and Hallie covered him with every blanket she could find while Hal Whitman used his two-way radio to summon help from Reno. A helicopter was dispatched immediately.

  While they waited, Doc did his best to stop the bleeding and keep Chance breathing. He monitored his heartbeat steadily, with a stethoscope, ready to perform CPR if that was necessary. Hallie simply held Chance’s bloody hand and wept.

  The helicopter arrived in a surprisingly short time, despite the darkness and the snow, and landed noisily in Doc’s small parking lot. The sound and the lights brought out half the town of Primrose Creek, and Jase arrived simultaneously.

  “What the hell happened?” he demanded, grabbi
ng Hallie by both shoulders and all but lifting her off the ground.

  “Take it easy,” Doc said sternly. “She’s on our side.”

  Jase gave her a little shake, all the same. “Talk!” he snapped.

  The flying EMTs burst in then, with a gurney, hoisted Chance onto it, hooked up an IV, and wheeled him out, all in the space of a few seconds. Hallie tried to break free and follow, but Jase held her fast.

  “You can’t go with them,” he said. “There isn’t room in the ’copter. Now, tell me what happened.”

  Hallie began to cry. “I need to be sick,” she said, as all of it flooded back, all the blood, all the fear and the gore and the spectacular, hopeless horror.

  “Better let her loose,” Doc warned.

  She reached the sink just in time, retched violently, over and over again. When the spate was over, Doc handed her a glass of water to rinse her mouth, and draped her gently in one of the blankets they’d used to cover Chance.

  “Give her a few minutes,” Doc said to Jase, shepherding her out of the exam room and into the main part of his house. He settled her in a large, comfortable recliner in the living room, which smelled of leather and pipe tobacco.

  While Hallie shivered in Doc’s favorite chair, despite the way he’d bundled her up, Jase sat nearby, turning his hat round and round in his fingers, waiting impatiently to grill her. Doc brought her a double shot of brandy and ordered her to drink it slowly.

  She drank.

  Jase and the doctor waited.

  “My children,” Hallie said finally.

  “They’re fine,” Jase assured her. “Katie gave them supper and put them to bed hours ago.”

  She let out a long sigh of relief. “Thank God,” she whispered.

  Jase, obviously thinking of Chance, simply waited.

  She began to talk, relaying the grim story in halting words, sparing no detail. She described their confrontation with Joel on the road, Chance’s shooting, her abduction, the ravaged body sprawled beside the creek. Jase listened with no expression, and no interruptions, until she’d finished.

  “Sweet God,” he said then, and reached for the radio on his belt.

  “I want to see my children,” Hallie said, “and then Chance. I have to go to Chance.”

  Doc spoke gently. “You can’t let those little girls see you like this, all shaken up and covered in blood, and the hospital staff won’t let you near Chance. He’ll be in surgery for hours, and then, God willing, the recovery room, for another long stretch.”

  Hallie closed her eyes, sick again, and too dizzy to stand. This, she thought, with a sort of crazy detachment, must be what shock is like. She knew she was too weak to fight her way to Chance’s side, and the last thing she wanted was to give her babies any more trauma by showing up in such a state, and dragging them out of bed. They would have enough to deal with, when they learned the nearly unendurable truth about their father, and everything that had gone on.

  “What . . . what can I do?”

  “You can sleep,” Doc said. “I’ll get you some clothes, start a shower running. This couch makes out into a bed. In the morning, when you’ve gotten some starch back, you’ll be able to function.”

  “I’m going to have a lot of questions for you,” Jase warned her, “and so will the feds, I’m sure, so don’t get any ideas about taking those kids and running off again, all right?”

  He was treating her as though she were one of the criminals, but she didn’t have the energy to fight anymore. She’d used the last measure, getting Chance to Doc’s place. She could go no further. Besides, she knew Jase was afraid for Chance.

  “I’ll be around,” she said.

  Evidently satisfied, Jase stood up and, after exchanging a few low-volume but heated words in the hallway, with Doc, he left.

  Hallie sleepwalked through her shower, put on the flannel pajamas Doc gave her, and collapsed on the hide-a-bed, which had been folded out and piled high with blankets while she was washing away Chance’s blood. She saw the crimson spiral, whirling and whirling around the drain, long after her mind had shut down all but its deepest functions and faculties.

  Doc shook her awake, and she came up gasping, like a swimmer gone too long without air, plunging through the surface of consciousness into the light. She blinked, and the doctor’s voice led her the rest of the way into the waking world. “Brought you some coffee,” he said. “I didn’t know if you took cream or sugar, so it’s just black.”

  She stared at him, trying to read the craggy lines of his face, searching for secrets. “Chance?” she whispered rawly. “My children?”

  “Your children are fine,” he told her gently, steadying her grasp on the mug of hot coffee by laying his hands over hers. “I called Jessie, and she’ll be here as soon as she can catch a flight.”

  She took a shaky sip, though she felt the caffeine spurt, with that small mouthful, into every aching, bruised muscle, resurrecting all the pain of the night before, indeed, all the unconscious suffering and sorrow, joy and celebration, handed down from one generation to the next, from before the beginning, to pulse in her own cells.

  “What about Chance?”

  He thought before answering. “Chance is alive,” he said, after a long time. “Like I said, Jessie is on her way. As next of kin, she—”

  “Oh, my God,” Hallie gasped, and then her words fell over one another, coming so rapidly that she couldn’t stand them upright. “Chance can’t be dying. He can’t. He’s so strong. He walked through the woods, found me, saved me from Joel—”

  Doc closed his patient blue eyes for a long moment. He’d set her coffee aside, and now his hands were resting on her shoulders, much the way Chance’s had done. She couldn’t bear it.

  “It’s been touch and go ever since Chance got out of surgery,” he said. “He’s flatlined a couple of times. They’ve managed to bring him back so far, but—”

  Hallie slapped both hands over her mouth, to keep in a scream as shrill as that of any cat, prowling any jungle or forest, in any time or dimension.

  “Get yourself dressed now,” urged the doctor. “Jase will take us to Reno, to the hospital.”

  Hallie threw back the covers and bounded out of bed before she remembered that she was wearing borrowed pajamas, and that her own clothes were ruined. She looked down at them with an expression of surprised dismay that must have said it all.

  “I’ve put out some things for you,” Doc said gently, with an attempt at a smile. “Jessie keeps a few things here. Ought to fit okay.”

  She nodded, numb again, and hurried into the bathroom. Sure enough, Doc had laid out jeans, a blue sweater, neatly folded, and even socks and a pair of boots. No bra, no panties. Hallie barely noticed. She took a scalding hot shower, in a vain effort to drive the chill from her bones, and dressed hastily. When she’d toweled her hair dry and combed it with her fingers, barely noticing her own fierce shiner, where Joel had struck her with his elbow, she emerged in a billow of steam, to find Doc and Jase seated in the living room. Doc seemed worn out, like an old washcloth gone thin in the middle, and Jase looked somber and official.

  “I thought you might want to stop by our place and say hello to Kiera and Kiley,” the sheriff said, “so I came by a little early.”

  Hallie’s heart leaped at the prospect of seeing her daughters, enfolding them in her arms, holding them tightly, tightly, until their images were impressed into the very fabric of her soul. “Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes.”

  They all trooped out, Jase leading the way, Hallie following, and Doc behind her. Jase’s SUV, which bore the Sheriff’s Department’s star-shaped logo on both doors, was up to navigating the storm-ravaged roads, and then some. Within a few minutes, they were at Katie and Jase’s house, and Hallie was dashing up the front walk to her daughters, who waited, shivering and grinning, on the porch.

  “Look, Mommy!” Kiera cried, pointing to a gap where her right front tooth had been. “I lost a tooth! And the tooth fairy left a whole dolla
r on my pillow!”

  Hallie laughed, and cried, and knelt right there on that frosty porch, hugging her babies, kissing them, drawing in their powdery scents. Celebrating the simple fact of their existence, in a world where even that could be so fleeting.

  Small fingers touched the angry bruise covering Hallie’s right eye. “What happened to your face, Mommy?” Kiera asked.

  “I had an accident,” Hallie said gently.

  “I bet I lose a tooth soon, too,” Kiley said, put out at coming in second, even in the tooth fairy event. “And I bet I get a hundred dollars!”

  “I wouldn’t hold my breath,” Hallie advised, after giving the little girl a squeeze, and stood, sensing Jase and Doc behind her, on the step. She turned and gently shooed her daughters into the house.

  Katie was in the kitchen, up to her elbows in blueberry pancake batter. She’d fried bacon, too, and started a panful of scrambled eggs. Seeing Hallie, she stopped her work and hugged her tightly.

  “Thank God, you’re all right,” Katie said, and warmth spread through Hallie.

  Hallie returned the hug, then stepped back. There were dark circles under Katie’s eyes, and her skin was a waxen color. “What about you, Katie?” Hallie asked softly. “Are you all right?”

  Tears came, but Katie smiled, and nodded her head. “I’m okay. It’s Chance—”

  “I know,” Hallie said. “I know.”

  Somehow, she managed to eat part of a pancake, part of an egg, part of a slice of bacon, although she would have sworn by all that was holy that she couldn’t force down so much as a bite. During the meal, she watched Katie and Jase interact with each other and their own young daughters, amid all the chaos of that Morning After.

  It seemed to her that they were like bumper cars at a carnival, Jase and Katie, bouncing off whenever they encountered each other, although each of them managed to engage without a problem when talking to their children.