by Brenda Novak
Maggie had no idea, but if she had stayed in Saratoga instead of coming up here for this retreat—being so mysterious about it—she’d never have seen him.
She noticed a red bump on her neck.
A mosquito had bitten her.
She returned to the main room. Ellen was setting the table while Luke took a call out on the deck. She mouthed Sam just as Luke came inside, his phone in one hand. “Looks like Hugh Parker is back in Austin, getting ready to move to Seattle to make a fresh start.”
“Has anyone talked to him yet?” Ellen asked.
“Sam talked to Hugh’s brother,” Luke said. “He wants to talk to Hugh himself.”
Maggie set out cloth napkins. “Sam’s looking for him now?”
“Yes.”
That seemed to reassure even Ellen.
The minestrone soup was as good as it smelled. Dinner talk shifted to other topics. Was it too early in the season for loons on the lake? Might they see a bear or a moose? What was the fishing like up here? Innocuous topics that had nothing to do with Hugh Parker or Maggie’s reasons for being here in the first place.
“I’ve decided to go back to Austin in the morning,” she said finally, as they cleared the table. “My urge to take a retreat has diminished. This place is beautiful, but I can’t stay here by myself now. It’ll never work.”
“Maggie…” Ellen sighed. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. It feels good. Right.” She smiled, setting the bowls in the sink. There was no dishwasher. “In a way, being here has served its purpose. I have a new perspective on what happened eight years ago. I’ll have to think about that more. It’s still very fresh.”
“Think all you want,” Ellen said softly.
Maggie laughed. “I’m good at thinking.”
Ellen suggested she and Maggie share the bedroom with the two twin beds. Luke would stay in the master bedroom with the queen-size bed.
“I’m sorry,” Maggie whispered as she squirted dishwashing liquid into the sink. There was no dishwasher. Ellen carried the dishes from the table while Luke lit a fire in the fireplace. “If I weren’t here, you and Luke—”
“It would be the same sleeping arrangement if you weren’t here, Maggie.”
That she very much doubted, but she didn’t argue. “Ah. Of course.”
Chapter 7
Ellen watched ducks—she had no idea what kind of ducks—gathering in a small cove to the right of the dock. Maggie had awakened early and had breakfast ready to go when Ellen had crawled out of bed, yawning as she’d entered the kitchen. Maggie had always been the early riser. They’d brought breakfast outside. Toast, scrambled eggs, juice and coffee.
No sign of Luke yet.
“I was up for the sunrise,” Maggie said as she looked out at the lake, glistening in the morning sun. “It was incredible. I’ll come back here another time. I emailed my friends and told them I’m leaving. They understand.”
It was a bit cool outside, but it would be warming into a gorgeous day. Ellen felt a pang of regret for her sister’s change of plans. Whether or not Maggie had misinterpreted the intentions of the man she’d seen yesterday, the scare had made staying here alone impossible. Her retreat had lost its charm.
“I came here because of what happened to us eight years ago,” Maggie said. “I love the idea of a retreat, but I’d never had gotten around to figuring one out if not for wanting to deal with the past. I’ve never really put it behind me. It’s silly, I know.”
“It’s not silly, Maggie.”
“Why should I still be affected by something that happened when I was a teenager? I survived. I wasn’t injured. The man who kidnapped us can’t possibly come back to hurt us.” Maggie spoke as if she were reciting a mantra to herself. She smiled faintly. “What’s to be bothered about?”
“Have you talked to anyone about this?”
“You mean a therapist?” She shook her head. “Not since right after the incident. I don’t have post-traumatic stress disorder. I have some lingering effects that crop up every now and then. It can be hard when everyone assumes I’m over it. Maybe I should be.”
“It’s not a question of should.”
“While I was hiding yesterday, I realized that what I’ve been experiencing isn’t that bad in comparison to coping with a real-and-present danger.” A note of defiance had crept into Maggie’s voice. “Being here dredged it all up again. Can you feel it, Ellen? Has being here affected you?”
“Maybe. I don’t know for sure. I was so worried about you.”
“I’m sorry. I was an idiot.”
“You were not an idiot. Maggie, please. If I were here by myself and saw some strange guy, I’d have freaked out, too. Past trauma or no past trauma. I do remember what happened to us,” Ellen added. “I think about it sometimes. What did happen. What could have happened.”
“Do you think Dad and Mom do?”
“I know they do, but we don’t talk about it. They let me bring it up if I want to but they don’t bring it up themselves. Maggie, they’d talk about it with you if you think that would help. Maybe burying your feelings and telling yourself you shouldn’t have them exacerbates the situation.”
“You’re saying I’m trying to be like sensible Elinor Dashwood when I’m more like Marianne—”
“The ‘sensibility’ sister in Sense and Sensibility.” Ellen smiled. “I do remember. A balance between logic and emotion is great, but this is real life in our times, not a Jane Austen novel.”
“I don’t know,” Luke said, coming out onto the porch. “Can’t you see me dancing at a Regency ball?
Maggie burst out laughing. “Well, why not?”
Luke grinned. “I’d have to ditch the Texas accent, boots and hat.”
“That would be mandatory, yes.”
He sat at their table, helping himself to a slice of toast, cold by now. “I wonder what I’d look like in a waistcoat and one of those top hats the Regency guys wear.”
“I think we should do a Jane Austen adaptation for modern Texas,” Ellen said with a smile.
“That would be fun,” Maggie said, her mood visibly improving. “I should get moving. I want to give myself plenty of time to get to the airport. I don’t want to miss my flight.”
“Ellen can go with you,” Luke said.
Maggie shook her head. “There’s no point in her paying a fee to change her flight when I’ll be perfectly fine on my own.”
“All right,” Luke said. “I’ll have Sam meet you in Austin.”
“At the airport, you mean?”
“Correct.”
Maggie turned to her sister. “Is he always like this?”
“Always,” Ellen said. “You can argue. It just won’t make any difference.”
Luke shrugged. “Until someone lays eyes on Hugh Parker, that’s right, it won’t make any difference to argue. Ellen, I can pay your change fee—”
“Thanks for your concern, Luke,” Maggie said, interrupting him. “I want to do this on my own. I don’t need my sister at my side. Nothing happened yesterday. I just don’t want to stay here by myself. I have the same amount of work to do that I had when I left Austin, and I need to get back home, regroup and come up with a new plan to revise my introduction. See? I’m fine.”
“We need to be sure Hugh Parker isn’t stalking you to get back at Ellen.” Luke’s voice was calm and professional, but it was clear he wasn’t trying to persuade Maggie. He was informing her of what he was going to do. “Once you’re in Texas, Maggie, you’re back on my patch, as the Brits would say.”
She opened her mouth, then shut it again and waved a hand. “You do what you have to do.”
He gave her a small smile. “I’m glad I have your permission.”
“I’ll think of Sam meeting me as a peace-of-mind precaution,” Maggie said. “Peace of your mind.”
Luke said nothing. Maggie got up from the table and walked down to the dock.
“That went well,” Ellen said, sighing at Luke.
>
“I thought so.” He frowned at his toast. “Cold toast isn’t my favorite.”
She wasn’t letting him change the subject that fast. “I’m surprised you don’t want to fly back with Maggie yourself. You’re not even checking to see if there’s a seat available on her flight.”
“That’s right.”
His tone was deliberately casual, Ellen thought. She watched him finish his toast—cold or not—as he watched Maggie stand at the end of the dock, looking out at the lake. She stayed for a few seconds, then about-faced and walked back toward the cabin.
“You’re up to something, Luke,” Ellen said. “I can tell.”
He shrugged. “The prosecutor at work.”
More like the woman who knew him—who’d slept with him—guessing he had solid reasons for not taking Maggie to the airport and boarding her flight with her. Whatever he was up to, Ellen doubted he’d be touring Saratoga Springs or taking a scenic drive in the Adirondacks.
Maggie mounted the steps to the deck. “I’ll pack. I never really unpacked, so it will only take a few minutes.”
She went inside. Ellen understood her sister needed space. As originally planned, her cabin retreat would have given her space—to work on her dissertation, take a break from the pressures of her academic life and confront her past. She’d left the trauma of their experience in the Adirondacks too long untended. As she’d tried to explain last night, their ordeal—our incident, she’d called it—would jump out at her when she least expected it. She had come to realize she’d been avoiding known triggers, even when doing so caused problems for her career, her life.
But Ellen knew her sister was strong enough to make the right decisions for herself.
Maybe Maggie hadn’t been wrong to push aside the past for as long she had. Maybe her timing was right for her, and any sooner wouldn’t have worked.
“Why did you book a later flight in the first place?” Luke asked.
Ellen frowned. “Later?”
“You’re leaving on Sunday. Why not go straight home?”
“I arranged to meet friends from law school in Albany.”
“New York’s capital. Bet there are a lot of lawyers there.”
“There are lawyers everywhere,” Ellen said with a small laugh.
“We do need lawyers. Are you going to stay a prosecutor?”
His question caught her by surprise. “I never say never, but I don’t have any intention of doing anything else.”
“A legalistic answer.”
“No, it’s not.”
“You got all the Galway argumentative genes and Maggie got none.”
“She doesn’t argue. She just puts her foot down and does what she does.”
“So I’ve noticed.” His expression softened. “I’m sorry she got scared yesterday.”
“Yes, so am I, and you’re not done here. What are you looking for?”
“Last night while you two were discussing old times, I was listening to a loon on the lake and acquiring a map of the lakeshore.”
“You want to check out the other cabins and houses,” Ellen said. “Find out who our mystery man is.”
“I’m a tourist. I have no jurisdiction in the state of New York. Neither do you.”
As if she needed to be told. She looked out at the sparkling lake. “You really heard a loon last night?”
“Had to be a loon.”
“Is that a smart remark?”
“Cute, Ellen,” he said. “I don’t know that much about loons, but what I heard wasn’t an owl.”
“Loons have a distinctive call,” she said.
“When you and Maggie were here—”
“It was winter. We didn’t hear any loons.” Ellen pushed back her chair and stood up. “What are you going to do now?”
“Make fresh toast while you see Maggie off.”
Meaning he wasn’t telling her what he was doing with his map of the lakeshore. Ellen didn’t care. She wasn’t going anywhere. She’d get it out of him, but even if she didn’t, she could guess. He wanted to see if he could find Maggie’s man from yesterday.
Chapter 8
After Maggie left, Luke filled a water bottle at the kitchen sink. “I figure we can share,” he said, nodding to the back door. “Let’s go.”
They went in the opposite direction from yesterday, taking an offshoot of the narrow rock-pitted dirt road onto an even narrower rock-pitted dirt road. It wasn’t readily visible but it was on Luke’s map. One by one, Ellen knew, he would check the lakeside cabins and full-time residences. He’d told her he didn’t need her with him, but he wasn’t leaving her alone at Maggie’s borrowed cabin—and she wasn’t going back to Saratoga or on to Albany until she was satisfied he was on his way, too.
It wasn’t just anyone stalking Maggie. It was Hugh Parker, and it was Ellen’s fault.
She knew it in her gut.
She stumbled twice on rocks in the road, but Luke caught her each time. He didn’t stumble. But Luke Jackson never stumbled, did he? That was why he was a Texas Ranger and a rising star in that elite law enforcement agency.
“Do you ever trip on your own shoelaces?” she asked him as they came to a cabin half the size of Maggie’s cabin.
“My boots don’t have shoelaces.”
“It’s a metaphor.”
“I’m not much on metaphors. Just say what you mean.”
“I mean—” Ellen stopped herself. What did she mean? “Never mind. I’m still upset about Maggie, and I know it’s my fault her retreat got ruined.”
“She left because she wanted to leave not because she had to. She could have found a way to stay.”
“Like what, get a big dog?”
“Where there’s a will there’s a way.” He glanced at her, his eyes lost in the shadows under the rim of his hat. “That’s a saying not a metaphor, isn’t it?”
Ellen didn’t rise to his bait. Where there’s a will there’s a way, he’d told her last week, after she’d insisted their relationship would never work no matter how much they enjoyed each other’s company. Kicking back together after a long day at work, having a couple of beers and a few laughs, watching a movie. Making love. All fun, but not enough for a lasting relationship.
The cabin was shut up tight, shades pulled, no sign anyone had been there since it had been locked up for the winter. Luke stayed close to her when they resumed course down the narrow road.
She touched his elbow. “Luke…”
“I see it.”
A tiny run-down cabin was perched on a hillside, surrounded by dense woods. It was more of a shack, really. It wasn’t typical of the other places on the lake. Ragged towels hung on a rough-hewn rail. They were wet, dripping onto the worn floorboards of a partially rotted landing. Proof someone was there, or had been recently.
A dusty white cowboy hat sat on a small bench on the landing.
Ellen took in a breath. “Luke…what are the odds? It feels like a taunt to me.”
“Does to me, too.”
“It’s him,” she said, her voice just above a whisper. “It’s Hugh Parker. Sneaking around and spying on my sister—deliberately terrifying her—is how he operates. It’s how he thinks. He’s manipulative and clever, and he hates my guts.”
“Revenge never makes sense to me. If you’re in the position to exact revenge, you’re usually in a position to walk away and get on with your life.”
“It wasn’t enough for Hugh to skate past a prison sentence of his own. He wants to make those who suspected him and put his brother in prison suffer.”
“You,” Luke said.
She nodded, not arguing. “He doesn’t see his role or his brother’s role in the outcomes they experienced.”
Luke put one foot on the bottom step, the sodden towels dripping next to him. “Good morning,” he called into the cabin, laying on his Texas drawl. “Anyone home?”
There was no answer. Ellen noted that the main door to the tiny cabin was open. It was a beautiful morning, and with
the thick woods all around it, the cabin would be cool inside and wouldn’t get much natural light. If she were staying there, she’d use any excuse to keep the door open.
“I see you have a hat like mine,” Luke said, his voice conversational, friendly. “Fellow Texan?”
Again no answer.
Ellen noticed a simple brochure stuck in the screen door, as if it were a flyer for a local pizza place. But it wasn’t. She clutched Luke’s forearm. “That’s the brochure for Maggie’s talk.”
She started to go up onto the landing, but he put an arm out in front of her, holding her back. “Leave it,” he said. “We have enough to get the locals up here.”
“Where is Parker now? Luke, if he tries to intercept Maggie—”
“He’ll run into a world of problems.”
“You put someone on her?”
“I did,” he said without apology.
Ellen took in a sharp breath. “Good.”
“If Parker tries to intercept Maggie in Austin, it won’t go well for him there, either,” Luke said.
Her uncle would nail Hugh Parker if he tried anything. Ellen stared at the brochure. “He’s trying to lure us inside.”
“Looks that way.”
“Why?” She paused, thinking. “He could have this place rigged to explode.”
Luke glanced at her. “You do have a way of thinking, Ellen.”
“We should go back to Maggie’s cabin and wait for the locals. It’s what you would want if you had a couple of New Yorkers on your turf.”
“Damn straight.”
Ellen heard a cry that sounded as if it came from behind the cabin. Then a moan.
“Is someone there?” A man’s voice, plaintive, desperate. “Help…help me…please.”
Luke turned to her. “Stay close.”
***
Luke drew his gun as he and Ellen followed a narrow path along the side of the cabin. She had assumed he was armed and had notified local authorities of his presence in their jurisdiction, but she hadn’t asked.
The backyard to the small cabin was no more than three yards deep, mostly dirt covered in pine needles, with tufts of weedy grass and dense evergreens growing close.