Knowing her words could never convey the horror she felt at being kicked out of her home. She tried to explain as much to Hudson and was surprised when his hand drifted to the stack of files on the table between them. Without answering her, he punched in a new search term. Julie Haeussler.
The most recent email from Julie was a confirmation to meet with Lester. At Sulphur Caldron.
Gracie's pulse quickened, her hands began to shake. Glare from the overhead fluorescent lights hurt her eyes and the only word that rang through her head repeatedly was, No, no, no, no! She pushed against Hudson, desperate to get him out of her way.
The air seemed stale and lifeless as she sucked in great gulps of oxygen—it was getting harder and harder to breathe. She needed out! Surprised by her sudden aggression, Hudson stumbled out of the booth and she bolted for the door.
Cold night air hit her in the face with the sting of a slap. It should have calmed her, should have forced the locked breath out of her lungs. Tears stung her cheeks as the icy air washed over her and she paced, back and forth, in front of the restaurant.
Hudson's hands, strong as steel, dug into her shoulders and spun her around to face him.
She forced out one word, shaking her head hard from side to side to force herself to believe in it. “No.”
Pulling her into his arms, Hudson held her tight, rocking her as he had done at the brink of the lower falls. Shushing her, holding her head to his chest, he tried to soothe her. She wrapped her arms around him, grateful for his strength, but she could not, would not, accept what her brain was screaming at her heart.
Hudson took hold of her face and lifted it, pressing his forehead against hers. “Listen to me, Gracie. I need you to focus right now. I need you to hear me.”
His words kept coming, patient, insistent but calm, waiting for her to find the ground beneath her feet again. Unable to speak, she nodded her head.
“We're going to go back in there, eat breakfast and relax. Then you're going to tell me everything you can about Julie.” When she pushed away from him, he held her tighter, refusing to let go. “You can do this, Gracie. I know you love her. Start with that. Tell me why.”
He gave her another five minutes to pull herself together, only easing her back to the door when her body shook more from cold than from the emotional turmoil that boiled just below the surface.
They pushed through the door as the waitress finished filling their coffee cups for the umpteenth time. One look at Gracie and her eyes flared. Picking up a menu from the table, her red hair flashing in the harsh fluorescent light, she whacked Hudson on the arm with it. “What did you do to her?”
Surprised a woman she didn't even know was coming to her defense, and taking in the look of shock on Hudson's face, Gracie laughed and let the waitress hit him one more time before catching the menu. “It's okay, really. He's trying to help me through a bad few days.”
“Are you sure, honey?”
Gracie nodded, and laughed again.
“Well, you tell me if he steps out of line,” she smiled at Gracie and reached out to rub her arm. Any other time, Gracie would have flinched away from the touch. She surprised them both by hugging the waitress.
After giving Hudson the stink eye, the waitress went back to the kitchen. Gracie laughed again and said, “I really like her.”
Hudson rubbed the arm that had taken the beating. “You would.”
Settling back into the booth, Gracie forced the words out of her mouth before she could chicken out. “Julie was the first person to treat me like a human being. Most people, as soon as they hear the words 'paranoid schizophrenia' tack on the stereotypes, and either treat us like pariahs or something to be pitied, kept at arm's length. Julie wasn't like that. She didn't see the movie archetype or try to pin me down to some textbook personality type. She saw a frightened woman looking for a way to hold on. Not just that, she helped me find a way. She gave me the tools to make a life for myself, a way to function and be happy. She gave me a home.”
Putting his arm around her, Hudson held her close and made some guesses that hit right on the mark. “She turned you on to writing, got you the job in Canyon.”
Gracie nodded and wiped her nose, “It started out as a way to get the voices out of my head, onto paper. It gave me some control over them, helped me maneuver them into a creative gateway, so to speak.”
“I read your first book.” Hudson let the words fall out as if he were sitting in a confessional, waiting for the penance of 'Hail Mary's' and 'Our Father's' that would follow. “That was more than voices, more than imagination. You exorcised a few demons.”
Shocked, Gracie stared at him as if he'd just sprouted a second head. “How could you know that? Nobody knows that, not even Julie.”
Using his free hand as if he were afraid to let her go, afraid she'd smack him and walk out, he slid a folder out of the stack on the table, letting it rest in front of her. With a trembling hand, afraid of what she would find but unable to stop herself, she opened to folder. Page after page, she saw her life, hidden behind sealed files that gave away nothing, yet everything.
Sympathy, understanding, filled his voice, but his eyes were distant. “Hiding things away, burying them, will only allow them to grow. Fester. It doesn't take away the truth—it just masks it. You can't heal if you hide from it. It will follow you; haunt you, until that's all that's left.”
29
With Kristi dead, and still no sign of the wayward Gracie, Julie repurposed the zucchini loaf to explain away her late night visit and walked to the other end of the loop. Every light in the motorhome was on, casting a warm glow on the snow around it. The dogs sat on the dashboard, watching for anything that moved in the night. As she approached, they went crazy, yapping and climbing over the furniture.
A knock at the door was answered only by the raucous, high-pitched barks of the dogs. Her frustration grew by the minute. She beat on the door again, sending the dogs into even greater fits of anxiety. If Gracie was in there, there was either something wrong, or she was ignoring her. Past the point of patience, Julie tried the door and found it unlocked. Pulling it open, she waited for the curtain climbers to bound down the steps before she swung around the door and climbed in.
As she lifted her foot off the last step, Fred latched onto the cuff of her pants, pinching the tender Achilles tendon in his sharp little teeth. Turning, she kicked the small dog and sent in rolling and yelping across the small yard before slamming the door behind her.
The house rocked beneath her as she stormed to the back of the coach. Both the bedroom and the bathroom stood empty. Clothes, discarded in the floor instead of put in their proper place, sent warning bells ringing through her head. In the kitchen, Julie searched for any clue as to where Gracie might have gone.
It didn't make sense, the girl was afraid of her own shadow. She would never leave at night like this. For a moment, Julie toyed with the idea that Gracie had gone to Mammoth to confess to the rangers. She cast the idea aside as soon as it formed.
Being trapped at Ranger HQ would have been akin to Gracie standing naked in a room full of cockroaches. It would have locked her up tight and left her a drooling fool on automatic pilot, just as she had been after her interview with Ranger Mathews. Gracie wasn't capable of that kind of strength.
She walked the length of the house, all the way forward to the cockpit and turned, hoping to find some clue to point her in the right direction. When her eyes fell on the doggie bowls with their big blue paw prints, overflowing with food and filled to the brim with water, her frustration boiled over into rage.
“How dare you!” she screamed. Utterly furious, she threw the loaf of bread the length of the coach. It smashed into a picture of the Canyon Crew, sending glass shrapnel and squished zucchini bread through the kitchen. She spun and began pacing the front room.
Everyone was against her. Ruining everything. She'd always taken care of them, protected them, and this was how they repaid her? Someone would
pay for this.
Outside, those furry little mutts were barking their stupid little heads off. Gracie spoiled them rotten. She let them do whatever they wanted, scheduled her life around theirs. The barks ceased as she opened the door. Eyes, golden and glowing with captured and reflected light, watched her as she stood on the top step.
Growls, sounding ominous in the darkness, seemed to come from something bigger than the little bodies she knew were out there. She took another step down and called to them. “Fred, Ginger?”
She could see them on the other side of the picnic tables, hunched down close to the ground, their butts to the fence. Stepping down to the ground, she moved forward and whistled. “Fred, Ginger, come here you little maggots.”
Stepping around the corner of the picnic table, she watched as the dogs push themselves back against the fence, trying to get a little more distance between her and them. Julie lunged forward, making a grab for Ginger as the dogs scattered. Catching Ginger by the back leg, the woman fell forward, going down on to all fours while still trying to hold on to the squirming creature.
Ginger twisted around, putting more pressure on her fragile leg, and squealed, snapping, digging her teeth into the woman's hand. Fred came out of nowhere, snapping at her face, scratching her cheek. Forced to let go of the little bitch to protect her eyes, she saw the dogs bolt from the yard, through the open door of the motorhome and disappear.
Denied an outlet, frothing with rage, the killer stormed in after them, screaming and tearing, trying to find the hateful little rats. She searched every room, pulling blankets and pillows off the couch and bed, dumping the hamper and tossing storage totes. There were only so many places to hide in a motorhome, but there was not a single orange furball to be found.
Rattling and wheezing like an overworked asthmatic, the heater in Gracie's motorhome filled the silence. Even if the little bastards that bit her had been making noise, she wouldn't hear them over the clatter.
At the foot of the bed was a narrow space, filled like a Chinese puzzle box with everything from a crockpot to a vacuum. Believing that the dogs had wiggled their way into some small nook in that crammed space, she pulled everything out, tossed it to the bed, floor and into the hall. Not a single hair was to be found. There were only so many places to hide in a motorhome, even for ankle biters like these.
Kicking debris from her rampage out of the way, she made rounds of all the windows, watching for Gracie. Her rage had cooled. Dampened to embers that simmered just beneath the surface. After everything she had done for Gracie, finding her gone was a slap in the face.
Gracie had no car, Kari was dead, Kristi was dead, and Julie was waiting in her house. Walking in the woods at night alone was off the table. The only explanation she could come up with was even more disturbing. Gracie had at least one friend that Julie didn't know about.
“Where are you, little girl?”
Bite marks, from Fred trying to protect his little bitch, flared as her fingers brushed the wounds. She flexed the battered hand Ginger had gotten a hold of and blood freshened. The wounds weren't deep enough to need stitches, but they could stand to be cleaned and bandaged. She picked at the cuts in her face until fresh blood colored her fingertips.
Despite the full food dish and water bowl, Gracie would never leave the little bastards for long. Never. She'd come back. When she did, they would have a little chat about her recent behavior. The secrets she'd been keeping.
30
For the first leg of the ride back to Canyon, Hudson was silent. The muscles in his jaw clenched and flexed in the light of the dash as he struggled with whatever load weighed on his mind. Unaccustomed to forcing conversation or invading the thoughts of others, Gracie held her tongue. Something about Hudson compelled her to pry, but she bit it back and said nothing.
Earlier today, his glare through the window had felt like it could burn. In his look, she'd seen hate, contempt, and a desire to wrap his hands around her throat. Since then, he had saved her life and offered her the comfort of his arms. More than that, he'd treated her more like a friend than some crazy chick who should be held at arm's length, if at all.
Few others over the years had stepped inside her protective shell. None had ever made her feel such a strong urge to hear their thoughts, to find out what they were thinking. Yet every time she opened her mouth to ask, the emotional chainmail she'd been wearing for so long dropped into place and she choked back the words.
As if he'd been watching her just as closely, he said, “If you don't say what's on your mind, I'm gonna have to pull over and push you into a snow bank.”
“I was just thinking the same about you,” she laughed. “Except, you are a big fella so I'd probably still be the one that ends up in the snow bank.”
In the green glow from the dashboard, the corner of Hudson's mouth lifted in a bittersweet grin. Instead of answering, he pulled up to the stop sign at Madison Junction and turned right, away from Canyon. He took the next right into Madison and parked overlooking the convergence.
Despite the cold, Gracie rolled down her window, listening to the calming rush of the Gibbon and Firehole Rivers as they gave birth to the Madison. Just a short distance away, the memorial to the 1870 Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition stood; a squat monolith in the waning moonlight.
Hudson turned in his seat so he could face her. “Kari was killed tonight.”
His words were a slap in the face that brought the sting of tears, a punch to the solar plexus that knocked the wind out of her. For a moment, all she could do was shake her head, denying his sudden revelation even though she knew it was true. For reasons she couldn't explain, even to herself, she trusted him.
Everything she had been through in the past forty-eight hours had overloaded her circuits. She loved Kari and her heart ached for her, but the assault she expected didn't come. Her emotional stores had been depleted. Unable to look at him, she kept her eyes on the white crests of the river, dancing like diamonds in the moonlight. “The explosion?”
“I think it was meant to destroy the evidence. The same person who killed Lester and my partner is responsible for this. I'm sure of it.” They both knew he meant Julie, but she was grateful he hadn't said it. Her emotional stores may have been drained dry, but that wound, that betrayal, was the last shattering piece of the life she'd built. She wasn't ready to face it.
“I need to ask you about something,” he said as he reached up and wiped his thumb across her cheekbones, drying tears. “What happened to your sister?”
T-boned for the hundredth time in two days, she could only shake her head. There was no emotion this time, no tears. She didn't have a clue what he was talking about. “I was an only child, Hudson, I don't have any sisters.”
Confusion played across his eyes, darkening them. “When you were six, there's a police report that said you found your sister's body. It said you were put into foster care that night, stayed there until the investigation was over. It looks like it was the first of many trips into the system.”
“Well, yeah, I spent a lot of time in foster care, but it was for…other things. I think I'd know if I had a sister. Especially if I'd found her body.”
“Would you?”
She winced at the silent nod toward her bad wiring. He got the look and realized what he said, “I'm sorry, Gracie. I didn't mean it like that. I'm just saying it was a long time ago, if your mom tried to put it behind her, tried to get rid of the pain by pretending your sister didn't exist, you would have been conditioned to believe it, too.”
Gracie turned away and he grabbed her arm, pulling her over to him. “Kids are incredibly resilient, but you were fragile, Gracie. I don't know what happened in that house over the years, and I'm not going to pry, but if it was as bad as I think, it's possible.” He wrapped her in his arms, a warm, safe place.
It was hard not to believe what he said. She leaned away as that realization brought with it the evidence of her gullibility. To feel safe, to feel protected. Those
were the desires that drove her. It always had. Her mother, of all people, would have known that better than anyone would. She would also have been the first person to use it to manipulate Gracie.
She hated the view of that side of her personality, but it didn't make it not true. Trying to pull away, she hissed, “Damn you.”
“I don't want to hurt you, Gracie,” he pulled her back to him. “I'd give anything to be able to make you believe that. But wouldn't you rather know the truth?”
“Quota for pain and humiliation filled for the year, thank you very much.” Her laughter was bitter. “Why now, why add to it?”
“You have no reason to feel ashamed, Gracie. Someone hurt you, badly. They used you, left you scarred. That's not your shame to carry, it's theirs.”
She pushed away and moved to the other side of the truck, as close to the door as she could get. “There's no gray, no blurring of the lines. People either tell you to get over it and move on, or try to play psychiatrist. News flash,” she liked Hudson and hated the venom in her voice, but couldn't stop it, “I put my demons to rest a long time ago. I don't need help and I sure as hell don't need pity. Not from someone that killed his wife.”
Stunned, Hudson sat back; the pain in his eyes broke her heart. Gracie wanted to apologize, wanted to see his smile again, hear him laugh. But there were just some lines a person shouldn't cross—ever. She might have jumped all over the line, but he stepped over it first.
Expecting him to yell, apologize, push, or at least say something, anything, she was disconcerted when he started the truck. Trying to hold her ground, she stole glances at him from the corner of her eye.
He sat rock still for a minute, not putting the truck in gear, not speaking. At last, he said, “I want to protect you, Gracie. I want to take care of you. I think Julie feels the same way. I think it's what's been driving her. She killed Lester because he was going to break up the family, killed Mike because he was too close. Kari talked to Mike the night he died. Maybe she told him something, maybe she didn't, but Julie couldn't risk it.”
Canyon Echoes Page 15