by Julie Miller
“It’s a dead end,” Lily said bitterly.
He set aside the phone. “No, not a dead end, just a twisty road. We’ll figure something out. Come on, let me wash your face and get some antiseptic and a bandage on that open cut. No, don’t argue with me.” He pulled her up by clasping her arm, grabbed his toiletries kit from his duffel and gently pushed her ahead of him into the bathroom.
She sat on the edge of the tub as he bathed her face in warm water, dabbed on the ointment and covered the open wound with a bandage. The occasional whimpers that escaped her lips made him furious. How dare that jerk touch her.
“Am I pretty again?” she asked as she stood, a little playfulness creeping back into her voice.
He put his hands on her shoulders and studied her face. “Not yet, but you will be.”
“Hold me,” she said softly.
He drew her closer and put his arms around her. She fit perfectly, as he knew from experience, and though he swore to himself he would not react to her closeness or the way she clung to him, he could feel his body stirring.
“I’m so scared,” she whispered against his neck.
He drew back to look at her face, but his gaze landed on her mouth, and mindful of her injuries, he leaned forward and gently touched her lips with his.
They’d kissed a few times several months earlier. To him, her lips had been everything delicious and tasty in the world. Honey and scotch, summer nights, a good dinner. He’d wanted to bed her with a vengeance and had worked on seducing her for weeks, but one torrid fifteen minutes had led to her bolting away from him for good.
So what? There were more women in the world than men and he’d known his share. Frankly, he seemed to have a knack for finding women who wanted what he wanted—a satisfying romp in the hay, no heartstrings engaged. His father had been married seven times. Seven times! Women came and went, the trick was not to block the door.
And then came Lily.
Tricky, complicated, troubled, on the run, dangerous.
She pulled away from him and studied his face. “Thank you for rescuing me from the closet.”
“You’re welcome.” He touched her good cheek. Her skin was so soft.
She nodded briskly and disengaged herself from his embrace. He longed to keep his fingers linked behind her back, longed to hold her in his arms all night. He knew she was distracted and sick with worry and so was he... Oh, give it up, his brain scolded, and he withdrew his hands.
“We need to talk to those survivalists ourselves,” he said as they returned to the room. He looked away from the bed, which suddenly seemed to take up almost all the floor space. She sat down in the chair in front of the table and shook her head. “I know. It’s wild land up there, people are scattered and many are suspicious of outsiders. I guess we start by finding White Cliff.”
“Yeah,” he said. His voice sounded too loud.
“I’m going to go back over everything in the files. We must have missed something,” she said.
“Now?”
“Right now.”
He shook his head. “It’s late, Lily. You need sleep. There’s always tomorrow...”
“You go ahead,” she said, her attention on the papers she held in her hands. “I’m not sleepy yet.”
Maybe she didn’t want to crawl into bed with him. Maybe that was too risky for her. He stripped off his clothes and got under the covers, noting as he did all this that she didn’t look at him once. Man, as soon as Charlie was safe, he had to somehow get to her.
He knew he couldn’t sleep even though she’d switched off most of the lamps. A few minutes later when he glanced at her, he found her sitting in the sole pool of light, head bent over the table, a solitary figure obsessed and afraid. He sat up and reached out to touch her shoulder and she pulled away. He laid his head back on the pillow to consider what his next move should be. Against all odds, he fell asleep instead.
* * *
THE WORDS BEGAN to blur in Lily’s eyes. There was just so much unrelated stuff. Copies of papers detailing Jeremy’s courtroom victories, memos to office staff including several to Valentine Richards, who apparently worked for Jeremy just as he claimed, which didn’t preclude a personal relationship. Still, maybe lightning struck twice tonight. Maybe he’d told the truth about Valentine and the danger of police involvement, too.
And so what if they’d had an affair? She should have known it wouldn’t matter. Going to his house thinking the knowledge of his infidelity would give her leverage seemed terribly naive in retrospect. And Chance had warned her but she hadn’t had any other options so she’d refused to listen.
Where was her boy? How did she keep breathing not knowing if he was in danger? Keep focused... She found receipts from the dry cleaner’s and the bakery and the shoe store. There were photographs as well: a large boat, the day’s catch from some fishing trip, buildings she didn’t recognize, women wearing suggestive clothing...
Oh, what was the point of all of this?
She got up and paced. Chance’s breathing was steady and deep—he was down for the count. The thought of sitting here for seven more hours while Charlie was in trouble made her shiver inside.
And then she knew that she couldn’t wait, not another minute. Working quickly but quietly, she gathered all of the papers and stuffed them back in their envelope. She sat down to write Chance a note explaining why she had to leave and why it was better if she went alone.
It wasn’t fair to keep dragging him into the minefield her life had become. She knew what he wanted from her—a quick, easy fling that would be over for him the moment it became real for her.
But it was more than that. She was asking him to climb out on a limb with her because she had no intention of returning Charlie to Jeremy. She would be on the run forever and Chance was a guy with roots so deep they touched the center of the earth which was, for him, his three brothers, his father and a ranch that had been in the family’s hands for over a hundred years.
Now that she’d made up her mind to go off on her own, it was clear she should never have allowed him to accompany her even this far. She reread her note. It all sounded like a lot of half-baked excuses.
She looked back into the room before closing the door, half hoping Chance would stir, that he’d sit up, that he’d see her, but his breathing remained steady, his body still. She whispered goodbye under her breath and closed the door behind her. She drove away without looking back, certain she was doing the logical, reasonable, all-around best thing for everyone. It had to be right because it felt so terrible...
* * *
CHANCE WOKE UP, yawned, then sat up abruptly.
There was no sign of Lily.
“Damn,” he swore under his breath. Why in the world had he chosen now to turn into Rip Van Winkle?
He got out of bed and dressed in a hurry, looking around as he pulled on his boots. Not only was Lily not in the room, there was no sign she ever had been. She’d taken everything with her.
“Damn,” he said again. He tucked his gun out of sight under his shirt and opened the outside door. Morning light seemed to shine straight down on the empty spot where he’d parked her car the night before.
For a second he tried to tell himself she’d gone out to bring back breakfast, but he knew it wasn’t true. There was a total feeling of abandonment. She was gone.
Back inside, he searched every horizontal surface for a note that might explain why she’d run out on him...again. He finally spied a wadded-up piece of paper in the garbage can and sat down as he smoothed open the paper.
After reading the first sentence, he swore under his breath and stood. A minute after that, he picked up his duffel bag and locked the room behind him.
* * *
IT TOOK HIM six hours to hitchhike the two hundred miles home and that was because he was
eventually lucky enough to catch a ride with a guy who lived in Falls Bluff. Once in town, he walked to the feed store where he knew Patty Reed, the pigtailed girl who worked behind the counter, would lend him her truck so he could drive himself home.
However, she did more than that. She actually insisted on getting someone to cover for her and driving him herself. Chance knew this had little to do with his own charisma; Patty was hot for Chance’s younger brother, Pike. However, a ride was a ride.
They arrived at the ranch house to find his father and his new stepmother, Grace, still off in Oregon. Gerard and Pike were unloading bales of hay into the feed barn using a combination of brute strength and a forklift to get the job done. Kinsey had not yet returned from New Orleans, though Gerard had pinned many of her rough sketches to the walls in the barn because he liked looking at them. Horses peered over a fence; a looming tree sat alone on a hilltop. A herd of deer grazed in a field at twilight. There was even one of the ghost town that existed on ranch property, and though it had been the site of tragedy for Gerard, it was situated front and center. Maybe it was his way of domesticating the pain, of reclaiming good memories as well as bad.
Gerard told Chance that Kinsey had made this switch from portraiture to scenery and still life because she’d finally found a real family to belong to: theirs, and a real home in which to plant roots. Seeing as she and Gerard were going to be married next summer, it made perfect sense.
Gerard, busy driving the forklift, looked up as Chance walked into the barn followed by Patty who immediately veered over toward Pike and leaned fetchingly nearby. Chance supposed his scholarly-looking brother made an attractive picture to a kid barely out of high school. Lots of girls thought glasses made a guy look smart. It didn’t hurt that in Pike’s case, he could back up the advertising with an agile brain.
“You leave with one girl and come back with another,” Gerard said as he turned off the noisy machine.
“I just caught a ride with Patty. She’s here to ogle Pike.”
They both looked over at the truck. Pike seemed to be ignoring the girl.
“He’s preoccupied right now,” Gerard said. “His mom in LA called this morning. There’s some issue with his stepsister.”
“You know,” Chance said, “every once in a while, I kind of wish we all had the same mother instead of different ones, but then I think she might have been like Pike’s and I’m okay with things the way they are.”
“No kidding,” Gerard said. “Where’s Lily? What happened? She’s not really in jail, is she?”
“Not yet,” Chance said and gave Gerard an abbreviated explanation of the past twenty-four hours.
“Charlie is missing? Again? Lily must be worried sick. Even that louse of a husband has to be concerned.”
“I don’t know. He seems to know more than he’s telling. Lily said he acted as though he knew exactly who had the boy. The word white was mentioned in the note. We thought it was a name at first but it’s also a survivalist camp or something up in the panhandle. It might be that someone from there took Charlie or it could be a complete red herring.”
“You let her go off alone to a survivalist’s enclave?”
“Enclave?”
“Yeah. White Cliff isn’t just a camp, it’s an unincorporated community. There are lots of places like it across the country. This one is dominated by a guy named Robert Brighton. He and the others call themselves true patriots, devoted to knowing how to defend and take care of themselves in the event of a military or natural catastrophe.”
“I’d never heard of it before yesterday. How do you know so much?”
Gerard shrugged. “Remember Gary Stills from high school?”
“Sure.”
“He got disgusted with rising taxes and government involvement in their ranch a few years back and took his wife and kid and moved up that way. I heard from him a year or so ago. He ranted on about getting ready for Armageddon so I read up on it.”
“Hell, it’s hard to imagine Lily in that kind of situation,” Chance said, wondering how in the world she expected to uncover anything on her own. “And it’s hard to believe those people would kidnap a little boy and subject themselves to police involvement. They don’t sound like the type.”
“As long as you don’t cross them. Anyway, you said Lily’s husband refuses to involve the police so they have little to worry about.”
“Yeah, and how exactly did they know he’d react that way? It seems totally out of character for him. If all he’s interested in is free press and sympathetic votes, why doesn’t he jump on this chance to get his son’s plight on every news channel in the country?”
“All good questions,” Gerard said. “When are you joining Lily?”
Chance took off his hat and pulled it on again. “I’m not.”
Gerard stared at him, his brilliant blue eyes thoughtful.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Chance protested. “She left me high and dry. I don’t even know for sure she went to White Cliff. She might have found another lead after I went to bed.”
“Why did she go alone?”
“She said something about not wanting to involve me. If that’s the way she wants it, then fine.”
“I guess it’s out of your hands,” Gerard said. “It’s her son, right? Well,” he added as he turned the forklift back on, “I’d better get back to work. Pike is waiting on me.”
Chance took a deep breath. “I’ll go help him. After a day with Lily, picking up bales of hay will be child’s play.”
By nightfall, he’d worked until his muscles ached. Unfortunately, they weren’t the only parts of him that hurt. He went outside the main ranch house where he’d decided to spend the night. If that was the phone number Charlie knew, then it was best there be somebody here to answer it. He sat on the bench, breathing in the cold autumn air. Forty-eight hours before, Lily had driven back into his life.
A vehicle pulled into the parking area and he stood abruptly. Had she had second thoughts? Seconds later, the headlights dimmed, the door opened. And then he recognized Pike’s lean frame walk toward him as the interior light peeking through the open door sparkled against his glasses. As usual, the dogs provided an escort.
Swallowing disappointment, he sat back down on the bench. “How’s it going?” Pike asked as he leaned against the railing.
“Okay. Gerard said you heard from Mona. She all right?”
“My mother is never all right, you know that,” Pike said. “The woman isn’t alive unless she’s neck deep in drama. Her boyfriend seems to have cheated on her.”
“Gerard also mentioned Tess.”
“Yeah. Apparently when she heard about what her father had done, she stormed off. She’s only eighteen, you know, and LA can be a rough place when you’re alone.”
“I met her the summer before last when you flew her here for a visit. She’s a smart kid.”
“I guess,” Pike said.
“Yeah. Well, I know you’re worried about her,”. Even in the half-light, he could see the strain on Pike’s face.
“Yeah.” He took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “But you know how I feel. Maybe you’re inexperienced when it comes to worrying about a little sister, but you’re positively preoccupied with Lily.”
“No, I’m not,” Chance said.
Pike’s eyebrows inched up his forehead.
“No, really,” Chance insisted. “She’s made it clear she thinks I’m a bumbling oaf. I could save that woman’s life once a day from now until hell froze over, and she’d still second-guess everything I did or said.”
“That doesn’t sound like you,” Pike said.
“What do you mean?”
“Since when do you let anyone scare you away?”
“You know Lily. She’s a lot easier to look at th
an to deal with.”
“Maybe. I just keep thinking about Charlie.”
As if on cue, the phone rang. Chance hurried inside and picked up on the second ring. “Yes,” he said, tense with anticipation.
But the call was from one of his father’s friends. Chance disconnected and went back outside where the sound of the nearby river rushing over rocks mimicked his hammering heart. Why was he so disappointed that the call hadn’t been from someone in trouble? Was he a ghoul?
No, he decided. But sitting here on the ranch waiting to hear if Charlie was okay, not knowing what was going on...it was eating him up inside.
“I’m going to bed,” he announced.
“Sounds like a good idea,” Pike said, and getting to his feet, ambled back to the truck. Chance locked the door and climbed the stairs.
After four hours of lying on his back and staring at the moonlit ceiling, he swore under his breath. He sat up and walked downstairs, stared at the silent phone, then grabbed his tablet computer and went back on the internet where he eventually found a reference to White Cliff that called the proposed community a fortress. Sounded formidable. It couldn’t be that hard to find, could it?
Well, it was wild country and a lot bigger than it appeared on a map. You could drive down endless unpaved forest roads if you didn’t know which to take...
There was only one person Chance could think of who might be able to help. But why would Jeremy Block offer any information? He wouldn’t. Chance needed a bargaining tool. Did they have anything in common? No, nothing, except maybe Lily.
Lily. It always came back to her.
He put down the tablet and walked outside. For a minute, he let his mind wander the ranch. The fields, the big old hanging tree, the ghost town, the generations of people who had lived and worked, ranched and mined, fished the rivers and hunted for food, built homes, given birth and gasped their last breath right on this land. Sounds of the river filled the night. A horse whinnied nearby. The ponderous full moon stared down at him. Wind rustled the boughs overhead. The ranch was peaceful on this autumn night, demanding nothing. Come first light, another busy day of ranching would commence. The list of things to do stretched on for eternity. This was his life, his home.