I inhaled sharply.
Is that possible?
In a flash, memories pushed up from our past. I saw Callie with her beautiful, violet doe eyes, looking at me the way she always did, with her wide smile and warm touch. I remembered the way she’d always stuck by my side, helping me, devoted to me, putting me first. Always.
Don’t all best friends do that?
I thought back to the times we’d been alone. We’d slept together in the tent. We thought of ourselves as kind of European, ‘cause we’d link arms and walk together on dark summer nights. Callie had read about that, that girls in Europe hold hands and walk arm in arm. It’s perfectly normal for them, she’d said.
Then I remembered the sleepovers where we’d cuddle together to keep warm. I often woke to find her spooned against me. It had never felt wrong or bad or disturbing. Because it had just been Callie. My sweet Callie.
I’d never questioned her love, never thought of it as more than just a great friend who was unusually affectionate with everyone. Sky. Me. Her dog. She was a loving girl.
Then I remembered the look in her eyes when I told her Sky and I were going steady.
I clutched the diary to my heart and felt the tears pour down my cheeks, drip around my jaw, and plop onto my tank top. I’d always known she was a little jealous of me and Sky, but I thought it was because she knew we’d have less time to hang out as friends. I never guessed…
Callie. My best friend. Closer to me than anyone in the world, except Sky and Quinn.
Callie, the one I poured my secrets to.
I gasped, remembering the day I told her about my first time with her brother. She’d paled, looked horrified for a moment, but had quickly recovered. I thought she’d been disappointed in me at first, thought I was a slut or something. But it hadn’t been that. She’d wanted my first time to be with her.
I could only imagine how much it had hurt her, how she had ached to tell me the truth. And I wondered how many times I might have interrupted her when she’d been about to confess. Had she tried?
Why hadn’t I noticed?
The answer was obvious. I’d been a brat, a self-absorbed teenager. I wasn’t too different from most of the girls whose entire lives revolved around their next date, getting the latest flavor of lip gloss, or trying to figure out whether washing my hair with an egg or avocado would make it shinier. I had loved singing, had basked in the limelight when I starred in the school musicals, and had always taken my best friend for granted. She’s always been there for me, in the orchestra pit or in the crew.
How could I have been so damn blind?
I picked up the diary and read on.
…After they kissed, her mood ring slipped off her finger and down into the dirt. I picked it up, and kept it. I know it’s wrong, but I’m just so mad. Maybe that’s as close as I’ll ever get to her. Her warm ring on my finger. Geez.
I think I’ll run away.
July 23rd. I’m so pissed off. They sat on the dock last night and held hands. I feel like a fifth wheel. Now who am I gonna hang out with? And what about the big summer bash this weekend?
July 27th. They made me go with them to the party. She wore a yellow frilly dress. God, she looked so beautiful. Mum bought me a long orange jumper, it was kinda cool and swirly, a hippie style that I love.
She knows how upset I’ve been that she’s been ditching me to hang out with Sky. So she made me dance with her and Sky all night. Just like the old times. We danced for hours, the three of us holding hands.
She’d been right. I knew I’d ignored her that week, and I felt so guilty about it. I could see the hurt in her eyes every time I went for a boat ride with Sky, but hadn’t asked her to come with us. So the one fairly unselfish part of me thought to bring her to the bash with us, and to include her in everything we could. Except, of course, in our private moments. It had been a great night of dancing under the stars on the wooden platform set up in the town park. I remembered the magic of it all. The deep sparkle from Sky’s eyes. The sweetness of Callie beside us. Just like it had always been, but...different.
I finished my coffee and turned back to the diary.
July 28. I can’t stay mad at them. They’re really cute together. I love my brother, and I love her. I guess true love means letting go, right? Letting her be happy? I want to be a good person. I do. I’m trying hard.
I guess if she has to have a boy, then Sky’s the best pick. Least I’ll still see her everyday. I would gag if any of the other guys from school touched her.
But now I’m sure. I’m not meant to be happy. Sky loves her. She loves him. And I love them both. Not in the same way, of course. That would be just yuk.
Maybe I’ll move to Australia. I might find a koala bear who’ll love me.
August 10th. I’m not writing in this diary any more. My thoughts are so stupid. I’m so stupid.
And if W. finds it, I’m dead. I’ll hide it where no one will ever find it. It’s like that symbolism stuff we learned about in English. Yeah. The diary will be hidden, just like I’ll go on hiding what a freak I am, for the rest of my screwed up life.
I held the diary to my chest again, feeling Callie’s pain. She’d been tortured with her love for me.
The girl-girl part didn’t bother me. I’d been friends with a few lesbian couples in New York City when I’d tried to make it as a singer. Tried and failed. But they’d been wonderful friends, part of my social crowd that cooked together and went to shows, and drank wine late into the night. I hadn’t really thought much about the fact that they weren’t hetero. To me, if it’s love, then it’s fine. There’s not enough real love in this world, anyhow.
I wondered, though, if Callie still had feelings for me. A sinking part of me said she did. We still talked on the phone every day. She still had no friends but me. And she’d never even dated.
Oh, Callie. I’m so sorry. So sorry I never knew you for who you really were. Sorry I was such a self-absorbed bitch as a teenager. And maybe even now.
The porch door squeaked open and feet scuffed along the steps onto the pine needle-covered dirt.
Quinn.
I stuffed the diary in my bag and turned with a smile to greet him.
What I didn’t expect was a big, blond man with a sheet wrapped around him heading my way.
Chapter 29
He walked slowly around my chair with the bed sheet tied around his middle like half a toga. I turned to face him, my heart beating wildly. He looked so much like the boy I’d loved, yet the pain in his eyes spoke of years of trauma.
Instead of sitting next to me in the chair, he dropped to one knee before me and touched my hand as if I were an angel who’d materialized out of the river’s mist. “Marcella? Is it really you?”
Dumbstruck, I just stared and blinked.
His face flooded with love. “I knew I’d find you.”
“Find me?” I stuttered and glanced back at the cabin. “Sky. Uh. We kind of found you last night. Remember?”
Pangs of love rolled over his face. My stomach dropped to my feet. God. He still loves me.
He ignored me. “I’ve waited for this moment for so long. Thinking of you is what kept me going in that prison camp. And in the desert, when I escaped. And in the woods this week.” He took my other hand and scooted closer.
My heart melted. “Sky.” We locked eyes, and I reached out to run the back of my hand over his scarred cheek. “I’m so glad you’re safe. Callie will go nuts when she sees you. She’s been worried for so many years.”
His eyes clouded, and he squeezed my hands hard. “Doc Trebangle told me what you said on the phone when you called him the other night. We have to find her. Those bastards will kill her.” He lowered his gaze to the ground.
I lifted his chin and spoke to him as if to a child. “That’s why we’re here.”
He looked toward the cabin, then back at me. “We?”
I softened my voice. “Yes. My husband Quinn and I came up to try to find Callie aft
er they took her. They killed Willow, Sky. They trashed my house and tied my mother to a chair, looking for the memory stick. They…”
His face registered a wide array of emotions. “Quinn?” He looked toward the cabin. “You’re married?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
He shook his head as if to rid himself of the thought. “Willow’s dead?”
I touched his shoulder. “I’m so sorry.” I knew there had been no love lost between him and his older sister. But still…
His lips tightened. “She was a miserable soul.”
“I know. She still hated Callie and me, Sky. Every single day of her life.”
He nodded. “I know. But when you know why, you’ll understand her a little better.”
“I do know why she hated us! She once found me and Callie in a situation that looked bad, but it was really innocent, and—”
He shook his shaggy head. “No. You don’t understand.”
My mind whirled with too many thoughts. Willow hated us for some other reason than that day she found us trying on each other’s blouses? She’d screamed at us, calling us “filthy perverts,” and had only refrained from telling their mother because Callie threatened to squeal about the day we saw her with her pants off, pinned against the back of the garage wall with Ryan. She’d had her legs around his waist, and he’d grunted like a wild boar, slamming her rhythmically against the wall.
We’d thought nothing of our own behavior; we always got changed around each other. But Callie’s arms had been around me from behind, and she’d been tickling me. We’d just been kidding around; it was only in fun.
A sudden awareness crept into my brain.
I should have known. I should have seen it. Damn, I’d been blind.
I pointed to the chair beside me. “Here. Please sit. There’s so much to say, but you need help, too, and we have to get your wounds tended. And we’ve gotta get looking for Callie, and…”
He stood and readjusted the sheet that had started to untie and slip down. Carefully, he settled himself in the chair. Although his eyes had cried out, “NO!” when I’d told him about Quinn, he’d pulled himself together in such short order that I wondered if he’d always known I would have been married by now.
He took my hand again, holding it in his roughened grip. Gentle, but firm. After a moment, he sighed and nodded toward his hip. “I’ve endured far worse. It’s no big deal.” A helicopter whirred in the distance. He looked at the sky, leaned closer, and stared intently into my face. “Let’s do this fast.” His voice had grown deeper and richer over the years, with a whiskey rasp to it that was unfamiliar. “There’s so much to tell you. So much I need to know. And not much time.”
“I know.” I searched his eyes for answers.
“It’ll take days to tell you all of it. Willow. The army. The situation my pals got into. The emeralds. The prison. The way I found Young Living and how they virtually saved my life…”
“The essential oil company?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I ran into Dr. Gary Young in the Amazon, when I was on the run. He took me in, taught me about the oils, and I sort of tagged along on his travels after that, helping him find plants that showed promise for healing and such. Our journey led us to a real unexpected find, and we had to keep it really quiet. But MedicuRX found out about Outsourcers, and they…” His voice trailed off and his jaw tightened.
I leaned over and touched his arm. “What did they do?”
“They killed three of us in that fire. We stayed behind to shred the records so they wouldn’t be able to trace the patients. We knew they’d systematically kill every one of them to suppress the proof, if they got the chance. I got it all on the memory stick, but before we could get out, they started the fire.”
I noticed a raw patch on his forearm that I hadn’t seen last night. A burn. “But you escaped?”
He nodded. “Two doctors and a nurse didn’t get out, but when I realized the fire had killed them already, I stumbled away and disappeared into the woods. I went to my friend’s place. Asked him to mail the stuff to Callie.”
“Reese Trebangle?”
He swiveled toward me. “How did you know?”
“Dr. Trebangle talked about him, and I saw his trophies at the trailer. But the doctor acted funny about his son. Like he was really disappointed in him.”
“Christ, he was. He told me when I saw him. I couldn’t believe it.”
“Believe what?”
“Reese was paid off by MedicuRX . He sold us out, was feeding them information all along.”
“Then why did he mail your package?”
“Reese didn’t. He was about to turn it over to the MedicuRX guys when his father heard him making arrangements to hand it over to them. He kicked Reese out, basically disowned him, and mailed the package himself.”
“Whoa. Reese was a snitch?”
“More than that. He probably gave them Callie’s address from the box and called her that night so she’d hold onto the package until they got there. And he told the drug company we had decided to clear out of the Black Snake Run facility, and that some of us would be there the next day, cleaning up the records. They wanted those records, Marcella. Badly.”
A thought occurred to me. “Was Dr. Trebangle part of the research group?”
“A major part. He was the last holdout, though. Refused to move. Kept his head down. Pretended to be retired for years, although he’d sneak up there at night and work his magic.” He smiled. “The man is a genius.”
“We made them go. They flew to Florida. I hope those bastards don’t hunt them down.”
Sky’s face fell. He got up and leaned against a tree, facing the Sacandaga. “Man. I hope not. But they’re safer out of state than here. And now they’ve got my little sister. I still can’t believe it.”
As if he’d held in the tears since I dumped him all those years ago, since he’d suffered the atrocities of war, since he’d been MIA, been imprisoned, and so much more… and as if this vast container of man simply burst, he hung his big head with shoulders shaking. No sound came from him, but I knew he was crying. Without thinking, I got up and went to him. I threw my arms around his neck and hugged him, consoling him with every ounce of motherly love I could summon. I ran my hands through his hair, kissed his hand, patted his back.
His arms crept around my neck, and he raised his green eyes to mine. The tears still flowed, but his features remained passive. He pulled me closer.
“It’s okay, Sky. We’ll find her. We’ll put our heads together and figure this out. I’ve got so much to tell you. About the crystal, about Beau, about—”
“God, I’ve missed you.” His warm lips found mine, and he crushed me to him.
Stunned, I didn’t move at first. Raw emotions coursed through me, electric tingles that ran from my head to my heart to my most female parts. I pulled back, gently pushing his shoulders away. “Sky, no.”
That’s when I saw Quinn standing inside the porch door.
Chapter 30
I stumbled backwards, grabbing the trunk of a nearby balsam tree to avoid falling on my butt. “Quinn! Look, Sky’s awake.”
Quinn opened the door, stepped outside, and crossed his arms. “So I see.”
Beau pushed past him and wandered over to the bushes to pee.
Sky’s face froze when he saw Quinn. He dropped into the chair with a faint wave of his hand, as if to apologize for overstepping his bounds.
I hurried to Quinn’s side and tried to slip my arm through his. I could barely squeeze my hand between his elbow and his side. “Honey. Please.”
For a moment he wouldn’t look at me, he just glared at the back of Sky’s head.
I tried again. “He didn’t mean it. He’s just been through too much, Quinn. He’s been so alone, so long on the run. Estranged from his friends and family…I just told him Willow was dead. And when he saw me, he felt like he was…home. I know he didn’t mean it.” I stroked his shoulder in rapid soft flutters. “Ple
ase, honey. Please.”
He loosened his jaw, allowing his lower lip to fall into a more natural position. Eyes closed, he slid one arm around my waist. “Just tell me how you felt about it, Marcella.” His eyes opened and caught mine. “Did it feel like home to you?”
I backed away and took both of his hands in mine, speaking slowly and carefully. “No, baby. Home is where you are.” I rose on my tiptoes to softly kiss the side of his mouth. “Sky and I were together when I was just a kid, you know that. I’m all grown up now, and this woman only has eyes for you.”
The expression of relief on his face choked me up. I pulled him down to me and hugged him tight.
Had he really been afraid I might want to leave him and go with Sky? If so, I had some serious making up to do. I needed to bolster his confidence, to work hard on that. I loved him with all my heart and would never, ever leave him. Not even for Sky.
Beau had already discovered Sky and started to lap him clean.
“Come on, honey. Let me introduce you to him.” I drew him slowly toward Sky, who sat in the chair with his head in one hand. He hung his free arm around Beau’s neck and scratched the big dog’s head. Beau’s eyes half-closed with pleasure and his bushy tail wagged rapidly. I cleared my throat to get Sky’s attention. He looked up with sad eyes, ping-ponging his glance back and forth between Quinn and me.
Quinn stood stock still, his hands curled at his sides.
“Sky. This is my husband, Quinn Hollister. We’ve been married for eight years, and we run an antique shop together up on Cratsley Hill Road.” I don’t know why I felt the need to tell him how long we’d been married or what we did for a living. But somehow I think I needed to make it sound official, very official. “Honey, this is Sky Lissoneau.”
Sky put one hand on the sheet at his waist and stood up. He extended his right hand to Quinn, who hesitated a split second, then gripped it.
Quinn shook it slowly and deliberately, his eyes locked on Sky’s face. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Sky. Glad to see you’re alive.”
Tall Pines Mysteries: A Mystery/Suspense Boxed Set Page 38