Sunrise Crossing

by Jodi Thomas

  After a while, she began to realize that her villa behind her mother and stepfather’s estate was her own private cage. They’d told her they wanted to protect her. Then she was too successful to go anywhere alone. Even when she occasionally flew to an art show by herself, they took her to the airport and picked her up. They always hired a driver and assistant to meet her at baggage check and not leave her until she’d passed security on her way back.

  Tori was pulled out of her thoughts suddenly. She darted behind a tree as a car passed. Even if she had to be cautious when she walked at night near town, she felt so free here in Crossroads. It felt as if not only her body but her mind was free of being constantly observed.

  As she froze, listening for the car to slowly disappear at the bend in the road, she realized that the lies she told herself formed the worst prison of all. She’d made herself believe that her mother and stepfather would look out for her and her interests. That it was better to be alone than to be a misfit. She’d convinced herself that they were somehow shielding her from harm by keeping the world away.

  The night settled into silence and she began moving toward Yancy’s barn. She might be into her twenties, but there were gaps in her. Holes. She’d studied painting but she’d forgotten to study life.

  When she slipped into the barn, Yancy was walking from the house. Silently she disappeared behind the worktable.

  “I saw my coat duck in here,” Yancy said, laughing as the door creaked. “I know you’re here, Rabbit.”

  She popped up. “I wanted to surprise you.”

  Walking near, he kissed her on the head. “You always do. You take my breath away. The fact that you show up here always surprises me.”

  She put her arms around him and would have kissed him, but he pulled away. “We’ve work to do, Rabbit. Don’t go getting me distracted.”

  “You don’t want to kiss me?”

  He touched his forehead to hers. “I do. More than you know, but I think we should save the best until last.”

  Acting disappointed for a moment before winking at him, she teased, “I don’t mind waiting, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be thinking about your lips on mine.”

  “Me, too,” he admitted.

  Tori knew he probably wanted to know more about her, but he’d been true to his word and hadn’t asked. “Yancy, I haven’t dated much.”

  Yancy looked up from his toolbox. “This is a date? No one told me.”

  She giggled. “It is.”

  “Great.” He winked at her. “To tell you the truth, I haven’t dated enough to recognize one. Before I went to prison, no one wanted to date a kid living on the streets, and then once I was behind bars the pickings were slim. A nurse in her forties at the infirmary did grin at me once, but every other tooth was missing in her smile.”

  “I can’t believe the ladies in Crossroads don’t hunt you down. After all, you’re rich. You own the gypsy house. You’re handsome in a shaggy kind of way.” She messed up his already unruly dark hair.

  He didn’t argue. “I am rich, but my house is haunted, they say.”

  “Really?”

  Yancy crossed his heart with the screwdriver in his hand. “Really. I got so many dead relatives floating around upstairs I may have to have the Baptist preacher do an exorcism.”

  “Don’t you mean a priest?”

  “No. I asked him. He said if he cast out all the ghosts in this county he’d lose half his congregation.”

  They began to work, talking about ghosts and things that go bump in the night. She didn’t care if ghosts roamed the place or not. When she was with Yancy she felt alive.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  GABE STOOD IN the trees and stared at the old house where he’d grown up. He could see Yancy Grey working in the barn. The same man he’d seen last night through a sliver of light. The man he’d talked to briefly just before sunset.

  Yancy had told him all the Stanleys who’d owned the old house were gone. He couldn’t have known that the man he was looking at had once been a Stanley.

  “Yancy Grey,” Gabe whispered in the darkness. Impossible. Yancy was part of Gabe’s old name: Galen Yancy Stanley. Very few people knew that. Jewel Ann, his first love, and his mother. They had both claimed to love the name Yancy. His dad had hated the middle name. Said it sounded like a cowboy name.

  Somehow, Yancy Grey had to be connected to Gabe. He tried to put the pieces together, only the path to the truth didn’t seem to make sense.

  But the man he met in the barn had his middle name, Gabe kept silently whispering in his thoughts. What were the odds? Yancy couldn’t be a part of his family; they were all dead. The few aunts he’d had were long past childbearing when he’d left town, and, because of the old feud, none would have married a Grey anyway. It had to be just a coincidence. A Stanley man’s middle name and Grey for a last name. Not likely, but possible, Gabe decided.

  If Jewel Ann had lived and gone on to marry, she might have named her son Yancy, but why would his last name be Grey? Jewel Ann was already a Grey. She wouldn’t have married her kin.

  The answer circled through his mind, telling Gabe that the impossible was real.

  * * *

  THE PROOF HAD stood right in front of him. Not a vision of what might have been or a nightmare of what would never be, but a real, flesh-and-blood man. A man who bore Gabe’s middle name and Jewel Ann’s last name. If she’d got pregnant the night they’d run away, Yancy Grey was about the right age.

  The puzzle fit together and he saw the picture it painted in his mind.

  Only that would mean something good had come from the worst night of his life. Gabe had trouble wrapping his head around that.

  If she’d lived? If he had a son? He would have known.

  All these years, he thought Jewel Ann dead or that she’d blocked him from her mind. He’d never tried to find her, because he thought she’d never want to be reminded of what had happened. The love he’d shared was forever blackened in blood.

  All the men who had beaten him had left him for dead that night in the ditch. The last time he saw Jewel Ann’s father, he was lifting her head by her hair. She’d finally stopped screaming and had passed out, but she was still tied to the hood of the car they’d eloped in. Tied like an animal that had been staked and killed. She still had blood smeared across her bare breasts. His blood.

  Her old man had shaken her head back and forth as he jerked her hair. He’d slapped her, trying to wake her, until blood dripped from her nose and mouth. She was limp as a broken doll but still he slapped her, hard, as if angry that she was missing the beating. Gabe had heard him tell her he planned to take her home and beat her every day for shaming the family. He’d laughed as he finished the bottle in his hand while other men cut her free and wrapped her in a blanket.

  Gabe remembered thinking that she was already dead. Hoping she was, because sweet young Jewel Ann would never be able to stand the pain, the shame. He’d told himself he would have come back if he’d had any hope she was alive. But he never came. He’d let hope die that night.

  Only somehow, Yancy Grey was there at the old house. If he had been born and carried their names, she must have lived long enough to give birth to him. Maybe she’d raised him. Maybe she was even still alive.

  Gabe kept saying Yancy’s name over and over in his mind. The Greys wouldn’t have welcomed a bastard grandchild, especially not one conceived with a member of the Stanley clan. Or maybe she’d run when she’d found out she was pregnant. There were places that would have taken her in. She would have realized she was pregnant about the time Gabe’s dad had died.

  Gabe remembered his mother as a mouse of a woman who was always afraid, but never unkind. If Jewel Ann’s parents had kicked her out, his mother would have taken her in after Gabe’s dad had died. She would have cared about a c
hild her only son had fathered.

  Emotions had been dead in Gabe for so long, he was having trouble dealing with them now; they hit his heart in one tidal wave after another. All the years of being in the army and thinking he had no one back in the States to return to. No one to care about him. No one he cared about. All the years of drifting, of not allowing himself to think about what might have been if he hadn’t stopped his car on that lonely road. He should have known better than to stop. Her father was a mean old drunk and his father used to laugh while he beat Gabe. His mother never stepped in to help Gabe, but maybe she’d helped Jewel Ann. Why had he stopped that night? Why had Gabe thought they would listen or that they’d understand love? He should have known better. He should have kept driving, raced away. At least then they would have had a chance.

  Gabe hated the men for what they’d done, but he hated himself even more. He’d stopped the car when he should have run, and he’d been running ever since. The guilt felt like bullets to his heart.

  Standing still at the tree line, he watched as the small woman he’d seen the night before darted into the barn. She wore a man’s jacket and a funny stocking cap that made her look like an elf. She looked like she’d walked the darkness before, like she was comfortable in the night the same way he was.

  Gabe leaned against the tree and listened.

  The night carried their voices, but he couldn’t make out words. They were working on something on the table. Laughing and talking. Once, she stood in the light and looked out. She couldn’t have seen him, but again, he recognized her as the famous artist whose picture had been plastered on the front page of the Detroit papers. There was no doubt she was the woman he’d been sent to find.

  When the night aged, Gabe ventured a little closer to the house. Not for a better look at her, but to see the man called Yancy one more time.

  His son! The man in the workshop might be his son!

  Gabe couldn’t turn away. He watched as they went back to the barn to carry more carved wood to the house, circling again and again like ants preparing for winter.

  Finally, as the construction lights glowed in the house, Gabe moved almost to the porch, watching them put a staircase railing together. As they worked, Gabe noticed again that they were flirting with each other, as well. Touching often. Leaning close to whisper as if they weren’t alone.

  Theirs was the gentle game Gabe had never allowed himself to play after Jewel Ann. He’d had a few women over the years, but they’d known that love was no part of what they did.

  Gabe knew he should turn away. This moment did not belong to him. Nothing, not the house nor the man inside, belonged to him. He was just a stranger passing through—a man hired to do a job, a modern-day bounty hunter. Yancy probably wouldn’t want to know his father was still alive. Gabe was not a father Yancy could be proud of.

  The young couple moved to the fireplace, and the woman laughed and clapped her hands with delight as Yancy lit the logs that were stacked there. Like two kids on their first campout, they roasted marshmallows and huddled close to each other. Yancy laid his arm over her shoulders—protecting her, warming her, treasuring her.

  Gabe turned away. As he walked back to the motel, he tried to tell himself this was all a big mistake. Maybe it was just a coincidence that the young man’s name was Yancy. Maybe he’d just bought the house for back taxes.

  At dawn, he checked out of the motel, drove to Lubbock and traded his truck for an old van. He could never change the past, and his son would never know about him, but maybe Gabe could make one thing right for Yancy: he could make sure no one found the girl whom Yancy was obviously crazy about. Dumping the truck was the first step. Changing himself would be the next. He needed to step out of the darkness and into town, and he needed to do so without making anyone suspicious.

  Victoria Vilanie just got her own personal guardian angel.

  Gabe was determined that whether Yancy was his son or not, he would get his chance to love.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Sepia Tuesday

  PARKER SPENT THE next morning working in her office as if it were an ordinary day, but the colors of her brilliant workplace seemed faded, like an old photograph. As she sat in a staff meeting, she ran through the lists she’d made in her mind.

  The meeting at the hotel in the Galleria had been written on her calendar for a month: it was a casual lunch, a planning session for an artist who valued himself far more than the world seemed to. He blamed everyone but himself for his work not doing as well as expected. Not enough advertising. Poor placement in the gallery. Bad lighting.

  This was not a meeting Parker minded missing.

  She’d even tried to change the time once because it was too far from her art gallery. Last week she’d tried to cancel it because she was going into the hospital for tests and wasn’t sure she’d be out in time, but she hadn’t been able to get in contact with the artist and his lawyer kept putting her on hold.

  So, now she had somewhere she had to go alone and she knew no one would try to contact her for at least an hour. By then, she’d be out of Dallas.

  As she left the meeting and walked back to her office, she made sure she’d canceled her appointments for the afternoon.

  Her secretary, Minnie, walked beside her, nodding that she’d called each one as Parker recited the list. She’d told Minnie she wanted to catch an earlier flight and asked her to cover all meetings that came up for the next few weeks.

  Minnie was so excited to be taking charge, she didn’t question why Parker seemed in such a hurry to leave.

  “I’ll cover here,” Minnie said. “I know you want to explore new galleries. That is the reason you’re such a success, Miss Lacey. You venture out, all alone on these scouting trips.”

  Parker smiled. “I’m tempted to skip out on this last meeting.”

  Minnie almost giggled. “Do it. I’ll cover for you with the artist and his lawyer. I’ll call and reschedule whether they like it or not.”

  Parker Lacey hadn’t missed an appointment in years. She’d already planned to miss the meeting, but she’d never tell Minnie. No one could know that she was using the noon meeting to slip away. “Great idea, but I’ll try to make it.”

  * * *

  IF THE BEEFY guy saw her leave, he would think it was simply for a meeting. He’d never know about the two outfits she’d packed in her huge Coach purse. She also carried a briefcase, no longer filled with papers.

  Minnie stopped as they reached Parker’s office door. “If I don’t see you before you leave, have a safe flight and stay in touch.”

  “I will.” Parker smiled and closed the door, her mind already full of what she’d do when she got to her farmhouse.

  From the first she’d wanted the house near Crossroads to be her own little secret hideaway in case she ever needed it. Now she was going there to help a friend, and no one would know where she was or that she was with Victoria Vilanie.

  Parker wondered if it were really just the invasive press that had made Tori want to disappear. Was it something more, like blackmail, a violent ex-boyfriend or death threats? Parker wondered why she’d helped Tori in the first place. This was the first time in her life she’d really helped someone—become personally involved, instead of just making a donation or something. She wasn’t the type to listen to anyone’s problems, much less blindly help a woman she’d met in person only once.

  But Tori’s cry for help had sounded like the opening to a great mystery novel and Parker loved mysteries. For once in her life she wanted to be in one, if only as a bit character. She wanted to help. Deep down she knew it was also something more. Tori had reached her. Parker wasn’t sure how she knew it, but she believed without a doubt that the artist’s sanity, and maybe her very life, depended on her escaping. For once Parker could not stand on the sidelines. She had to help.

&nbs
p; It was 11:20 a.m. Time to put her plan into action.

  Parker slung her purse over one shoulder, picked up her briefcase and cane. Confidently she walked past the main desk, ignoring the pain in her knee and the ache in her back. “Is my car here? I don’t want to be late for the meeting.”

  “Yes, Miss Lacey,” the company guard named Floyd said. “Your driver will get you through the traffic and delivered in plenty of time.”

  Parker smiled and handed Floyd her briefcase loaded down with toiletries, cash she always kept on hand for shopping emergencies and the phone she’d bought.

  Floyd walked out with her, as always. “You have a good meeting at the Galleria, Miss Lacey.”

  A touch of guilt prickled her skin. Minnie and Floyd were loyal employees, but Parker could not share this secret. The guard was retired police and might feel the need to report if he had information concerning a missing person. If Minnie had been in on any details, she’d already be talking about it.

  * * *

  AS SHE CLIMBED into the car, she thought she saw two men in suits bolt for their car to follow. Good luck following us on the crisscrossing highways, she thought. They might eventually trail her, but they’d be a few minutes behind. That was all she needed.

  Whoever these men in suits were, they must want Victoria desperately to waste time watching her. Parker had to be a long shot. She wasn’t Tori’s friend, or she hadn’t been until that night at LAX. Either Tori had very few friends or someone was spending a great deal of money on every slim lead.

  She frowned, knowing that she’d talked too much when they’d interviewed her that night. She should have said nothing. Then they might not be following her.

  Parker didn’t want to think of another possibility. Floyd had called out where she was going. The suits might be closer than she thought. Floyd had also been the one to let them in the night the suits came to talk to her. He’d said they were FBI, but she hadn’t made the call; Floyd had.