A thousand things flashed through her head. Panic and fear fought for control, but before she could move, a strange and marvelous calm dropped over her like a shield. Everything she’d learned in her self-defense classes funneled down to a tight focus.
Never get in a car with an attacker.
Go limp.
Shout. Make a scene. Be noticed.
Find the sweet spot and strike. Surprise can be your best friend.
She stood and took one step away from the bench to give herself room to maneuver. She instantly assessed the distance between his gun hand and her, and without really even thinking, she rocked back on her left heel and kicked with her right. Gut level, but the impact sent the gun flying.
She went down, too, but was on her feet before he could recover his breath. She didn’t stick around to see if he picked up the gun. She ran as fast as her legs would carry her toward a group of strangers approaching on the sidewalk. “Gun,” she cried, pointing behind her. “That man has a gun. He’s trying to kidnap me.”
She wasn’t sure exactly what happened next, but one of the people in the crowd—a man in civilian dress—separated himself from the others and drew a weapon. Several shots were fired. Women screamed. Someone knocked Jenna to the ground. She covered her head and pulled her body into a ball to provide the smallest target possible, but within seconds it was over.
The only person injured took a bullet to the chest and died before the EMTs could arrive. His name was Adam Ostergren. A politician from Minnesota, who made the bad decision to pick up his gun when told not to and pointed it at an armed undercover cop with sniper training.
“GOOD GRIEF. I leave for three lousy days and all hell breaks loose.”
Shane’s eyes flew open at the sound of the familiar voice. “Coop.” Shane had been dressed and waiting for what felt like hours for Jenna to return from the police station. Apparently the magic elixir in his IV, which was no longer attached to his arm, he noticed, had knocked him out again. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be on your honeymoon.”
His tall blond friend walked straight to the bed and gave him the once-over. “You look like crap, man. Good thing it’s not your mug the audience wants to see or our show would be screwed.”
His famous smile turned downward and his hand shook a little when he reached out to place it on Shane’s shoulder. “Seriously, Reynard, this sucks. When Jenna called my wife—God, I love saying that,” he added with a grin. “My wife started throwing things in the bag and ordering me around. Sheesch. I think we were on the road in like five minutes.”
“Why? I’m fine. Little conk on the head. The doctor said I’d probably have some extrabad headaches for a few weeks, but no long-term effects.”
Cooper squeezed his shoulder supportively and stared into his eyes for a few seconds. About five seconds too long. That’s when Shane knew something was wrong. Seriously wrong.
He brushed aside Coop’s hand and swung his feet over the side of the bed to sit upright. “What’s going on? Tell me.”
“Um…Libby’s with Jenna at the police station and they thought you’d be getting anxious to leave and wondering what happened to her so here I am.”
Shane pointed to his shoes, sitting by the wheelchair an orderly had brought in anticipation of Shane’s exit. That had been—he looked at the clock on the wall—three hours earlier. “Something happened. Is she okay? Adam came back. He found her. But she was with the police. She should have been safe.”
Coop raked his fingers through his hair and let out a groan. “She’s fine. Honestly. I saw her. They were finishing up some paperwork, then Libby’s taking her home. Jenna sent me here to talk to you because she knew you’d be worried.” He frowned. “She said she called the hospital and left a message with the nurse. Didn’t they tell you?”
Shane squeezed the bridge of his nose waiting for the pounding in his head to lessen. The doctor had also told him to take things easy and avoid stressful situations. Shane had joked that the man obviously had never produced a television show before.
“Yes. I don’t remember exactly…something about my brother being spotted. Did they arrest him?”
“Um…he’s dead, Shane. I’m sorry to have to tell you that, but he pointed a gun at a cop and they took him out. No one can figure out why he was there. He would have been home free if he’d split, like everyone thought he did. They didn’t have any real evidence against him, but he must have snapped. He came back for Jenna and she refused to play the victim.”
Shane closed his eyes. He didn’t need a great imagination to picture how the drama unfolded. Poor Jenna. Under attack again. But this time she fought back. His chest swelled with pride, but another emotion pressed down on him, making it hard to breathe.
“Jenna thought I should be the one to tell you. She feels responsible, even though none of this was her fault. Lib calls it survivor guilt.”
Shane understood what that felt like all too well.
“Are you okay, man? Should I call the nurse?”
“No. I’m fine. Just give me a minute.”
Coop pulled up a padded chair and sat. “I know this has to be a shock, buddy. I’m sorry.”
Shane shrugged. “Adam and I haven’t spoken in years. He was a complete jerk most of the time we were growing up. Self-absorbed and demanding. But Jenna made me remember that it wasn’t all bad.”
They sat in silence a few minutes, then Shane sighed and scratched the bandage at his temple. If he thought about what was coming, he’d be tempted to crawl back in bed and pull the blanket over his head. A funeral. Sorting out his brother’s estate. “Has the press found out?”
Coop nodded. “There were a couple of local affiliates at the police station. That’s another reason Jenna isn’t here. She figured they’d make the connection soon enough without her leading them to you.”
“Where’s my laptop? I should compose some kind of statement.”
Coop’s sigh was so weighty and full of opinion Shane had no choice but to ask, “What?”
Coop kicked Shane’s shoes closer to the bed. “Here’s what’s going to happen and if you give me any crap, I’ll sic my wife on you. I’m taking you to Sentinel Pass. You and Jenna will disappear for a few days until that goose egg on your head goes down. Your whack-job brother can hang in the morgue until you’re ready to deal with all that. The rest of us will keep the press at bay.”
When Shane tried to stand up, the room started to spin and the remains of the breakfast Kat had served him surged upward. He blindly crammed his bare feet into the sandals, fighting the dizziness that sent yellow and black spots across his vision. He almost smiled because the sensation reminded him of the Mystery Spot.
Once he was on his feet he looked at Cooper and said, “Sorry, pal. That was plan A. And it made sense when Jenna and I were…when we had a future. But we don’t. Therefore, you’ll take me to the nearest hotel. There’s one downtown, right? Where my brother stayed. It’ll do. I figure a day or two at the outside then I can head home. I have a show to produce and time is running out.”
Coop looked like a disappointed child told he couldn’t go to Disneyland. “But you and Jenna—Libby and I thought—She sounded so happy before—God, I hate it when my scriptwriter gives me unfinished sentences,” he said, making a face. “Will you at least tell me why you’re running away? Libby’s going to want an answer.”
Shane took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Tell her I’m doing this for Jenna’s sake. Jenna deserves a complete life, not the kind she’d have with me.” He shuffled unsteadily to the wheelchair. “I think she’s suffered enough at the hands of the Ostergren brothers, don’t you?”
“The who?”
Shane shook his head and smiled. As his pal had intended. Cooper knew exactly what Shane meant.
“I know it’s a lot to ask, Coop, but I’d appreciate it if you and Libby would do your best to convince Jenna to let me slip away without some highly charged emotional confrontation.
Tell her my doctor ordered complete rest or something.”
Before Cooper could say anything, the nurse arrived with some papers for Shane to sign. Minutes later they were waiting for the elevator, making small talk about possible side effects and what Shane should look for in case he developed a bleed in his head.
The distraction was welcome. It took his attention away from the ache in his heart. His brother was dead, but in a perverse way that Adam would have loved, he’d succeeded in ruining any hope Shane had for a normal, happy life.
In the end, Adam won.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SHANE LOOKED OUT THE window of the tiny plane that was taking him to Denver to catch a jet for home. The view was on the wrong side of the plane. He couldn’t see the mountains he’d come to love.
Less than two full weeks had passed since he first arrived in this most unlikely of paradises, but his heart had been heavy saying goodbye to Coop and Libby today because he knew he’d never return. Even if the pilot was picked up and the show went into production, he’d hire the limited amount of site work that had to be done. He’d stay on as producer, but new writers and a director would take over.
Coop wouldn’t like that, but he’d understand. He’d been there with Shane the past four days, helping him tie up all the loose ends surrounding his brother’s death. Fortunately, Shane had been saved having to plan or participate in a funeral because Christina, his stepmother, showed up on Thursday to claim the body.
“The Vampire Queen of St. Paul,” Coop had called her.
She blew in on a cloud of Chanel, threatening a wrongful death suit against the Pennington County Sheriff’s Department and trying to stir up some support for her cause. She found none. There were too many witnesses. And after a conversation with the Brookings District Attorney who implied that he now had enough evidence to prove that Adam raped Jenna in college thanks to the DNA sample that matched the tissue collected from under Jenna’s fingernails at the time of the rape, she shut up and went home, taking Adam’s body with her.
Shane had spent most of his time holed up in the hotel room, which wasn’t as spacious and memorable as the one he’d shared with Jenna. But he figured that was just as well since he was in mourning—for Jenna, not for his brother.
Late one night, with the help of a bottle of Gray Goose, he’d come to the conclusion that he’d lost his brother years earlier. He’d even written an imaginary dialogue of what he should have said to Adam following their mother’s funeral.
“Mom told me I was born by emergency C-section twenty minutes after you because the umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck, like a noose. A part of me has always believed that you somehow did that. In the womb. I don’t know how, but even then you wanted it all.”
Adam would have laughed or shrugged. He hadn’t cared what anyone thought. Possibly, their father’s opinion counted for something, but maybe that was because Dad could give Adam the connections he wanted in politics. Shane would never know. He’d probably never understand what drove his brother, who was brilliant in a way. After all, he’d lived a completely amoral life yet still won the respect of many. No doubt that admiration had to do with the image of power he projected. And in the end that feeling of omnipotence, of being above the law, was what had gotten him killed.
Coop didn’t agree with Shane’s theory. He believed that Adam came back for Jenna because he was fixated on writing the ending his way.
“The guy hated loose ends. You saw the file his assistant sent,” Coop had argued. “He’d kept tabs on Jenna ever since college.”
From what the detective investigating the shooting had told them, the police believed that Cooper’s arrival in Sentinel Pass was what prompted Adam to hire a kid off his alma mater’s Web site to make trouble for Jenna. “The fact that Mr. Lindstrom was getting involved with Ms. Murphy’s best friend probably set off some kind of alarm bells in your brother’s head,” the cop had said during a briefing the day before. “The shrink we consulted said your brother probably hoped the distraction would keep Jenna too busy to notice any of Cooper’s friends who might show up.”
“Like Shane,” Coop put in. “What I don’t get is how he knew Shane would even remember her. I mean, the rape happened a long time ago and Shane and Jenna weren’t exactly an item in college, right?”
The cop didn’t have an answer for that, so Shane had supplied his own personal theory. “Adam was pretty intuitive where I was concerned. He must have guessed that I was attracted to her because he went out of his way to make sure I saw him flirting with her. Why that escalated to rape, I have no idea. But I guarantee that neither of us ever forgot that night. By making trouble for Jenna, he was probably just covering all bases.”
After the detective left, Shane and Cooper had a serious face-to-face about what was happening with the show. Shane had tried to reassure his friend that the show was on track. “Believe it or not, everything that’s happened—right down to the attempt on Jenna’s life—fits in the script. Instead of my brother as the bad guy, though, I’m using your mother’s crazed bookie. And, naturally, it’s you and Libby who get forced off the road, and Libby who winds up in the hospital.”
Coop’s look of horror hadn’t been an act.
“Trust me, Coop. This is good stuff. High drama and great conflict because it drives home the fact that you’re a detriment to this woman’s life. Thanks to you, her town hates her and a madman has tried to kill her. Obviously, your only option is to leave.”
Coop hadn’t liked that scenario one bit, but in the end, Shane managed to convince him that a true hero would put the safety and welfare of the woman he loves above his own needs and desires. And after writing the scene in script form, Shane was able to put his laptop aside and compose a letter to Jenna. Longhand.
He tried to pour every ounce of regret he felt for all the damage he and his brother had inflicted on her life. He also confessed how deeply he felt about her and that he would love her for the rest of his life, which was why he needed to leave now, without seeing her again.
You deserve so much more than I can give you. But no one will ever love you as much as I do. Please believe that I only want the very best for you.
Love always, Shane.
The letter, which he’d asked Cooper to deliver—along with Jenna’s turquoise hair clip that he’d been carrying in his pocket since that first day at the Mystery Spot—was the last of his loose ends in the Black Hills. Now he was free to go home and make a success of this show—his final way of making things up to Jenna.
As the plane began to climb, it banked west. He leaned his head against the glass, trying to spot some familiar landmarks. The fire lookout on Harney Peak. The big blue reservoir that was Jenna’s retreat. He tried to picture her sitting there, pen and paper in hand. He imagined she’d be sad at first, but eventually she’d find Mr. Right—maybe Libby’s brother—and have a couple of kids.
And he’d be back in la-la land, doing his thing. He honestly couldn’t wait to breathe a little smog. Maybe it would kill him—sooner rather than later.
“I GOT MY PERIOD,” Jenna cried. Her cheeks were on fire from blurting out such a personal revelation in front of the entire Wine, Women and Words book club, but she was too upset to care.
The group had convened right after church to accommodate Kat’s schedule. Her sons, Tag and Jordie, looking all spit-shined and cute, were out front in Libby’s yard, tossing a ball around with Coop, who was trying to learn how to do “Dad things.”
“Why couldn’t what happened to you happen to me?” she asked Libby, who quite possibly was already starting to show a little baby bump.
“Did you use protection every time?” her ever-practical friend asked.
Jenna nodded. “And I’m on the pill, too.”
Libby’s mouth dropped open. “Then what you’re really asking for is an immaculate conception. I’ve heard of it happening, but it’s pretty rare.”
Jenna smiled despite her tears. “I know I’m not
making any sense. I really shouldn’t be complaining. Mom’s happy and healthy. There’s money in the bank. And, did I tell you what happened Friday night? We were just getting ready to close the Mystery Spot and these trucks pulled up with huge spotlights, a couple of giant roller machines and enough blacktop to do the entire parking lot. With stripes and official handicap parking spaces and everything.”
“Shane?” Kat asked.
“Of course. But when I called the next morning to thank him, the desk clerk at the Alex Johnson said Shane had checked out.” She tossed up her hands in frustration. “He sends me this beautiful, almost poetic ‘Dear Jenna’ letter, but he doesn’t have the cajones to face me one last time before leaving for California.”
“What a jerk,” Char muttered, punching her fist into her palm. Her hair—still sporting light green highlights—was sticking up in places, making her look as if she’d just rolled out of bed. Which she probably had. “I’d like to toss him off the top of Bear Butte.”
“But he seemed so sweet and genuine,” Kat cried. Her simple denim sundress made her look about sixteen. “Am I the only one who got sucked in by his swoo? Well, aside from Jenna, of course. I was just collateral damage compared to her.”
Libby pounded the floor with the talking stick. “This isn’t helping, people. I called this emergency meeting of the book club to come up with a strategy to pull Jenna out of the black hole she’s let herself slide into. I’m not going to sit by and watch her slowly turn into her mother, who apparently is having too much fun in California to come home and be with her daughter in her time of need.”
Jenna rolled her eyes. “Mom stayed in L.A. because I begged her to. She’s found an agent and is already getting calls for some bit parts. Possibly even a commercial. I’m not about to do what my dad did and sabotage Mom’s big chance. She knows nothing about what happened between Shane and me—the good or the bad. And I plan to keep it that way,” she added sternly.
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