The Return of Caine O'Halloran: Hard Choices

by JoAnn Ross

  She wasn’t hallucinating. She wasn’t losing her mind.

  She brushed her fingertips over his cheek and her fingers tingled. Then she pulled back from him. “No.” Her breath was ragged. “Riley...I have to think about my...Riley.”

  His hands swept down her back, then up again, curving over her shoulders. “I told you. Maisy’s keeping her busy. Believe me, if anyone can keep your niece in hand, it’s her.”

  “No.” She suddenly wriggled out of his hold, nearly scrambling off the counter. If she didn’t move away from him now, she feared she wouldn’t do so at all. “I can’t. I won’t. I’m not like that. I’m not...not Easy A anymore.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You were never easy.”

  She’d tried so hard, for so many years to erase that part of her life. And she’d thought she’d succeeded. Except for those sly dreams that still tormented her sleep when she least expected it. Dreams of a night that had never happened. Not with him. Not with anyone she wanted to remember. They were only a defense against a reality she hated.

  She pushed at her hair, realizing it had come loose from the clip.

  “I...have to clean up. Have to, uh, start getting things back in order.”Order is what she wanted. What she craved.

  Logan shoved his hands in his pockets rather than reach for her when Annie sidled away from him, panic glazing her eyes from mossy to emerald. She looked like some fey creature seeking escape.

  He shouldn’t have kissed her. He knew it. But he sure in hell hadn’t expected a reaction like this. “We will,” he said cautiously. “The hot water on the camp stove is for you.”

  She was visibly trembling. “G-good.” But she didn’t move toward it, and he figured it was just as well, given the state she was in.

  “I’ll move it for you.”

  Her brows drew together. “What?”

  “There’s not enough for a real bath, but you can wash up with it. I’ll pour it in the sink in the bathroom. You can add a little cold water to it so you don’t burn yourself.”

  He watched her watch him as he suited his calm, steady words with action. And her wariness made something inside him hurt.

  “Thank you.” Her words were nearly silent when he’d dumped the boiling water into the sink. The steam from it billowed up, clouding the mirror above it. Then she quietly closed the bathroom door, leaving him standing in the narrow hallway with an oversized pan clenched in his hand.

  He let out a long breath and stared at the smooth-paneled door. The door wasn’t substantial. But he couldn’t hear a single sound from inside. Not the splash of water, not the shifting of a rubber-soled sock or the rustle of too-large clothing designed to hide a slender, female body.

  Too easily, he pictured her standing there in front of the sink, her eyes shadowed and turned inward, her body braced against the shudders that wracked it.

  He knew what it was like to have demons in your mind. He recognized the signs. He’d battled his own—sometimes winning, too often losing.

  But what demons were keeping company with Annie Hess?

  He was beginning to suspect what they were. And the suspicion that somebody, somewhere along the line, had hurt Annie in ways no person deserved made him feel murderous.

  He drew in a long breath. Exhaled in even longer, measured beats. But the feeling didn’t pass.

  It scared the hell out of him.

  Chapter 8

  “What do you know about Annie?”

  Logan was working alongside Sam Vega as they cleared the southern end of the main road of the trees that had fallen across it.

  At the question, Sam straightened and ran his arm across his sweaty brow. He shrugged. “What’s there to know? She keeps to herself and she’s in business with your sister, man.”

  But Logan couldn’t reach Sara, since the phone lines were still down. It was bad enough that he’d hadn’t spoken with her in years. Then to pump her for information about Annie?

  He frowned and swung the ax again, biting into another tree branch. “Turnabout is as bloody backward as it ever was,” he muttered. “Not one single person has a chain saw.” He’d seen a house with a satellite dish, but did anyone have a chain saw? Hell no.

  They couldn’t even use Sam’s truck at this point to drag the trees, because they were caught awkwardly between the fence that strangled the road. Using the truck now would probably pull down the iron fence as well. And God knew nobody could touch the fence that cordoned off the property of the Castillo house.

  The place was a sacred—albeit barren—cow to the Turns.

  He glared at the fence. The trees. The rundown dwelling that sat beyond it on a cliff. “Backward.”

  Sam grinned faintly. “Place is still a couple decades behind the times in some ways. There are folks who like it that way.”

  Logan grimaced and kept chopping. He wasn’t one of them. “You must. You came back.”

  “Not to take a step backward in time or technology.”

  The branch finally groaned, tilting away from the main trunk. He kicked his boot against it, finishing the job, then dragged it away from the fence. Straightening, he tilted his head back, looking up at the sky. Over the course of the afternoon, it had cleared, and was as pristine blue as he ever remembered seeing it during his childhood. “Fickle weather.”

  Sam snorted softly. “Almost as bad as a woman. But in this instance—” he cast his gaze around “—I’m glad for the respite. We don’t have the resources to get through one disaster, much less having another storm on top of it. Help me here. I think we’ve cut enough.” He gestured at the heavy tree trunk.

  Logan added his muscle, and, between the two of them, they managed to drag it—roots protruding up in the air like some maniacal hand out of a horror flick—beyond the iron fence. When they’d cleared the fence, Sam used the winch on his truck to finish the job, dragging the tree clear of the road. Which left only two more trees to go.

  Logan picked up the ax again and approached the next tree. The afternoon air was cold, crisp and smelled of fresh-cut wood. It was a combination completely out of place for Turnabout. If anything, it reminded him of Washington state. About the time of year that Will had been getting hitched.

  He swung the ax, cutting off that particular thought. Beside him, Sam swung also. Wood chips flew as they fell into a rhythm and they steadily hacked their way through the next tree, then started on the last.

  Logan’s back began to ache. They’d both shrugged off their jackets despite the brisk temperature. Sam had long sent his brother Leo off for a saw, but the guy had yet to return. Obviously, Leo had taken to heart the Turns’ typically fluid definition of time.

  “I hate this,” Logan muttered. The last tree was enormous. Had probably stood as a sentinel to the southern end of the island for over a hundred years. “It’d be easier to swim to the mainland and get a chainsaw.” He looked at Sam. “Why’d you come back here?”

  Sam grimaced, leaving the ax-head buried in the wood. “Why did you?”

  “I’m not back.”

  Sam smiled faintly and uncapped the jug of water he’d brought, along with the miserably insufficient axes. The jug was nearly empty. “But you’re here,” he pointed out, slanting a look his way.

  “Stuck here. For now.”

  Sam just shook his head and finished off the water. “That’s what we all say.”

  “There’s nothing on this island for me.” Logan looked around at the landscape. Some of it was wild. Unkempt. With treacherous cliffs and barren ground. And then, a half mile up the road, a person could stand in the checkerboard of Annie and Sara’s fields. They currently looked bedraggled, but even he could
tell they were ordinarily lush with good health.

  “Ask not what the island has for you but what you have for the island.”

  He wished he had a chain saw is what he wished. “You getting philosophical in your old age?”

  Sam grunted, his grin fading. “Watch it. I’ll throw you in the tank. You got something going with Annie? That why you’re asking about her?”

  “No.” The only thing he had going with Annie was a long-ago night that should never have occurred and newly acquired suspicions that would be just one more thing to keep him awake at night.

  “Heard you spent the night at her place.”

  “People around here always were too nosy.”

  “Small towns,” Sam said. “Nothing more interesting to speculate over than what the neighbors are doing behind closed doors.”

  “And you came back to it.”

  Sam tossed the empty jug beyond the fence and it sailed into the back of his truck. “There are worse things.”

  For a long time, Logan had doubted that. Until he began dwelling in the worst the world had to offer. He flexed his back. Then his hands. Grabbed the long handle again and continued chopping.

  The irony of his task didn’t escape him. Once again, he was cleaning up a mess. This one just happened to be caused by the destruction of nature, rather than the destruction of man.

  Just once, he thought, he’d like to make something new.

  “Whoa. Wicked trees.”

  Both men looked up from their task at the young voice.

  Logan absorbed the sight of Annie followed by Riley move slowly toward the tree. Annie had changed into jeans since that morning, but still looked as if she were drowning in layers of knit sweaters. Her niece was similarly dressed. It was almost like having double vision.

  “Hey, Annie,” Sam called out easily. “Don’t think even your talents can save these babies.”

  Annie and Riley stopped on the other side of the last tree wedged between the road and the fence. Even lying on the ground the branches soared over their heads. Her gaze on the tree, Annie set down the bucket she was carrying and slowly settled her palm on a thick, gnarled branch. “What a shame.” She didn’t look Logan’s way.

  He watched her hand. Her thumb stroked gently against the bark.

  “Oh, man. People really carve their initials into trees?” Riley had scrambled into the thick of the branches and was peering at the trunk. “With hearts and everything. That is so corny.”

  Logan deliberately looked away from Annie’s gentle caress of the uprooted tree. Despite Riley’s bored tone, she was avidly studying the etchings that marred the tree trunk. “Some of those carvings are pretty old,” he said. “When corny was in.”

  “Logan’s probably got an initial or two on there,” Sam said. “He was always bringing girls up here to—”

  “Watch the sunsets,” Logan inserted.

  Sam’s lips twitched. “Right.”

  “And I usually ran into you and your flavor of the day when I got here,” Logan reminded the other man, amused at the memory. He’d almost forgotten that there had been some decent times on Turnabout.

  “That’s just gross.”

  “Glad you think so,” Annie smoothly told Riley. “Then I don’t have to worry about you and your new friend from Denver watching any sunsets, do I?”

  Logan caught the look between the two females. “Friend?”

  “Yeah, a friend.” Riley’s voice was defensive.

  “Kenny Hobbes,” Annie said. “His family are guests at Maisy’s. They seemed to have...hit it off.” Her expression was anything but delighted.

  Riley huffed and deliberately pushed aside a branch. “Nobody carved their whole name. There are only initials. Look at this one.”

  Logan waited, wondering if Annie would pursue the issue. But after a moment her shoulders relaxed and she moved over beside Riley, slipping between two branches to see. “HD and CC. The heart around them is really elaborate.” She touched the bulging bark surrounding the carved sentiment. “Look at the way the tree’s healed around it.”

  “I bet this one’s been here longer.” Riley poked at another carving, higher up the trunk. It was far more faded. “Looks like ES and...what is that? Something, then a C.”

  “Probably an L,” Sam said. “Luis Castillo. He was the son of the people who built this old place. Supposedly, the Turnabout curse started because Luis was betrayed by his fiancée, Elena, when she fell in love with a friend of his he’d brought to the island after the First World War.”

  Riley snorted. “A curse? What kind of idiot believes in curses?”

  An island of them, Logan thought. He studied the HD and CC for a moment.

  “Sara believes it,” Annie said. “Maisy believes it. Neither of them are idiots.”

  “They’d be better off if they didn’t believe,” Logan said flatly. “Riley’s right. Superstitious nonsense is what it is.”

  Annie’s eyes—looking as green now as the leaves still clinging to the tree branches surrounding her—looked at him. “Your father says the same thing. But a person does wonder.”

  Being in agreement with Hugo was nothing Logan strove to obtain. “Do you even know what the curse claims? Turns hardly used to talk about it, because they were too freaked it’d mar their lives.” He doubted things on that score had changed much.

  “Sara told me.”

  “She did?” Sam looked surprised.

  “Well...what is it?” Riley looked impatient.

  “It’s garbage,” Logan said.

  Annie’s chin lifted a little. “What are you worried about, Logan? You told me yourself you’re not a Turn and we all know you can’t wait to leave the island again.”

  “Doesn’t matter what my plans are,” Logan countered. “Somebody should either restore Castillo House or tear it down.”

  Annie blinked a little, and looked at her niece.

  Riley just lifted her eyebrows. “I said the same thing when she—” her chin jerked toward her aunt “—said we were coming out here to rescue some of her plants. The place is a dump.”

  “Well, anyway,” Annie said hurried, “Luis Castillo’s fiancée married his friend, Jonathan, who was a stranger to the island. Luis was brokenhearted, and as a result, his mother cast a curse that people born on the island would only find happiness with someone else born on the island, apparently to prevent something like what Elena had done—marrying an outsider.”

  Riley made a face. “Weird.”

  “Actually, what I think is interesting is that since then, supposedly, nothing grows in the ground around Castillo House. Sara says it was the price the Castillo family paid in return for the curse.” Annie glanced beyond Logan to the property surrounding the decaying house. “The trees were the only living things left, but they stood here at the edge of the property next to the fence. That’s why I tried planting near them.”

  “There used to be an iron gate that blocked off the road,” Sam said. “But I finally removed it because it was getting too dangerous for the kids who came out here and played on it. If the gate were still here, the trees would actually have been on the outside of it.”

  “Are those your plants?” Riley pointed at a sparse row along the fence line. The stems were barely strong enough to hold a leaf. “That’s what we are supposed to save?”

  Annie nodded. “There’s no physical reason why plants shouldn’t thrive here. It’s, well, it is weird.”

  “It’s probably some Turn who dumped something toxic around the place to prove their point that the curse existed,” Logan countered. “And the trees are so old, the root systems were too deep to be affected.”

  Her gaze slanted his way, amused. “Skeptic.”

  “Realist.”

  “Well, as it happens, I’ve
had the soil tested and it’s perfectly fine. A little acidic, but not unusually so.”

  “So, why does it matter to you whether or not you can get plants to grow out here?”

  “Oh, I will,” she said, her voice determined. “I can grow plants anywhere. But this space is perfect to expand our fields for Island Botanica. Sara and I need more land to produce more crops to keep up with our mail-order business. The thing that makes our products unique is that everything is derived from plants grown here on Turnabout. We’re totally organic, totally pure. And we don’t want to have to obtain supplies off island.”

  She was serious.

  He looked over his shoulder at the barren expanse surrounding the house that—as far as he was concerned—was pretty much an eyesore. “Is the property even available?” The last member of the Castillo family had left the island when he was a baby. He figured he’d have heard by now—given the grapevine—if a Castillo had ever returned. That would have been major news for Turnabout.

  “Sara’s been looking into it. That’s one of the reasons she’s in San Diego this past week. Doing some title research on the land. The last owner of record was Caroline Castillo, but we haven’t been able to locate her, yet. She left Turnabout nearly forty years ago. We’re not even sure she’s still alive. It’d be easier if we could afford an investigator to do research, but we’re getting there. Slowly,” she added with a wry shrug.

  Logan picked up the ax and moved around to the top of the tree, away from where Annie and Riley stood.

  “Isn’t there some way we could at least save the tree trunk?” Annie’s voice stopped him midswing.

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know. Posterity. These old carvings meant something to people.” She gestured toward the other trees. “Look at all that. It’s not as if you need this one for firewood.”

  “If we don’t get the power restored soon, we might,” Sam said. He looked back at the tree. “Where would we put it?”

  “I don’t know. The community center or something. The town council could decide, right? I’ll keep the trunk in my workshop if nobody else wants it. Think about it, Sam. This tree was probably the oldest living thing on Turnabout.”