Sudden Second Chance

by Carol Ericson

  “Oh, for God’s sake. I don’t remember—some corporation.”

  “Why are you lying? The LRS Corporation sold you that cabin—LRS, as in Lawrence Richard Strathmore, as in Jordan Young’s father-in-law. Only, Young had control of the corporation when he sold the cabin to you. Why’d he sell it to you? Why’d he give you such a sweet deal?”

  Serena backed up to the register, her arms across her chest. “What do you want from me?”

  “Let’s start with the truth. What was Young using that cabin for and why’d he want to get rid of it?”

  He lunged over the bar and grabbed her arm. “And what’s this tattoo on your wrist? Does that LC stand for the Lords of Chaos?”

  She jerked away from him. “You want answers? Talk to Jordan Young.”

  “Is there a problem?” A restaurant employee wearing a shirt and tie approached them with his phone out. “Do I need to call the police?”

  Duke released Serena and pulled out his badge. “I just have a few questions for Ms. Hopewell.”

  “It’s all right, Randy.” Serena flicked her fingers.

  When the manager walked away, Duke asked, “Where can I find Young?”

  “I’m not sure.” Serena rubbed the tattoo on her wrist. “But he was in here the same time your friend was here when she was asking me questions about the cabin, sat right next to her. Maybe even did something to her phone.”

  Duke’s blood ran cold. “What?”

  “She went to the ladies’, left her phone on the bar, and it looked like Jordan picked it up.”

  “Did they leave together?” Duke’s heart was thundering in his chest.

  “No, but...”

  “But what?” Duke’s hands fisted on the bar. “I’m sure the FBI can find something on you, Serena, from your years running with the Lords of Chaos.”

  Her jaw hardened. “But she left and then he left not long after they were having a hushed conversation—like he didn’t want me to hear what they were saying.”

  “And did you hear anything they were saying?”

  “I heard him mention the Ravens.”

  “The Ravens? What’s that?”

  “That’s the name of my cabin—you know, the one you broke into before someone blew up your car.”

  * * *

  BETH DROPPED TO the nearest chair, her crutch falling to the ground. “My mother was murdered? Here?”

  “I’m afraid so, Beth.” Jordan pulled a gun from his pocket and aimed it at her.

  “The picture.” Beth put a hand to her temple where her pulse throbbed. “The woman with the strawberry blond hair... Was that her?”

  “I knew you’d found those pictures. I knew you and Agent Harper were out here, and I thought I could stop you by shooting out the gas tank on his car, but I was too late.” He smoothed the pad of his thumb over his eyebrow. “I knew she’d led you to those pictures. How else could you have found them?”

  Beth folded her hands in her lap, trying to hold it all together even though she felt amazingly relaxed—maybe because she’d reached the moment of truth.

  “You don’t seem surprised or skeptical that a dead woman could’ve led someone to a bunch of pictures.”

  He sat on the arm of the chair across from her. “That’s because your mother was Quileute and so are you.”

  Scarlett reaching out to her and bringing her along in her dream quest made sense now, but with that hair color, her mother probably wasn’t full-blooded Quileute.

  Beth trapped her hands between her knees. Jordan Young most likely murdered her mother for reasons she didn’t know yet, but she wasn’t ready to go there with him. He still might let her go.

  “Why did you take me here? Why are you telling me all this?”

  “You want to know your identity, don’t you?” He spread his hands. “That’s why you concocted the story that you were here for the Timberline Trio, although you thought you were Heather Brice for a while, didn’t you? I would’ve been content if you had continued along that path. Why didn’t you?”

  “Duke—Agent Harper—requested DNA from the Brices and ran a cross-check with mine.” She plucked her useless phone from her pocket. “I’ve called him, you know. I told him I was on my way here.”

  “That would be hard to do with a phone without a battery.” He dipped into his front pocket and held up a battery pinched between his thumb and forefinger.

  Beth’s stomach rolled. “Are you going to tell me about my mother? Her name? Why she was murdered?”

  “Your mother.” He stroked his chin. “Angie was lovely, delicate, so much more refined than Lorna, even though my wife was the one with the money.”

  “Your wife died. You said she drowned.” Beth clenched her bottom lip between her teeth to keep it from trembling. Had he killed his wife, too?

  “That was later.” He ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. “When Angie got pregnant, I realized it was my wife’s fault we couldn’t have a baby.”

  The knots in Beth’s gut tightened, almost cutting off her breath.

  Jordan Young was her father.

  His blue eyes, the precise shade of her own, lit up. “That’s right, Beth. I’m your father.”

  She gripped the arms of the chair and vaulted out of it, but her legs wouldn’t support her and she stumbled backward, falling onto the chair’s cushion.

  “Why? Why did you kill her? Because she got pregnant and had your child?”

  His brows collided over his nose. “If she had gone away quietly, like she did at first, it wouldn’t have been a problem. But she decided to come back. I was married to a very wealthy woman and had a father-in-law who thought the world of me. How do you think he would’ve felt after discovering I’d gotten some Indian pregnant?”

  Beth flinched. “But I must’ve been two years old. She’d kept the secret that long.”

  “You weren’t two at the time. Your adoptive parents changed your age and birth certificate to mask your true identity. You were a baby, barely one year old. Angie left when you were first born, but then she returned. She shouldn’t have come back, Beth.”

  “You murdered my mother to keep her quiet? To get rid of a messy problem?”

  “It was more of an accident, to tell you the truth. She knew I was never going to leave Lorna, and she knew I wanted her to keep quiet.” He clucked his tongue. “Your mother wasn’t as sweet and innocent as she appeared. You have the pictures to prove that. She tried to extort money out of me.”

  “Maybe she just wanted child support for me.”

  “Whatever you want to call it. She also found the pictures of the other women—silly bitch to think she was the only one.”

  Beth’s nose stung. How could she be related to this monster? Duke had been right. It would’ve been better to stay in the dark.

  “Did you shoot at me? Set the bear traps? Beat Rebecca?”

  “Bill was more than happy to help with Rebecca. I was just trying to scare you away, but you wouldn’t go away—just like your mother. As soon as I heard Beth St. Regis of Cold Case Chronicles was in town, I knew there was a problem.”

  “Y...you knew who I was all this time?”

  “Of course. When I offered you up to the market, I insisted on having some say in where you went.”

  “So, I have you to thank for my cold, unfeeling parents.”

  He shrugged. “What do you expect from a couple who would take a child off the black market? But I was your father, Beth. I followed your career with great pride—until you came here.”

  A movement beyond Jordan’s shoulder caught her eye. Something had flickered at the window of the back door.

  “What led you here?” Jordan glanced at the fireplace. “Did she speak to you from beyond? I knew she had the gift, not as strong as Scarlett E
aston’s, but I always feared it.”

  Was that Duke at the back door? She coughed. “It started with the Pacific Chorus frog. It was a toy I’d had from my earliest years. I finally tracked it down to Timberline because of the Wyatt Carson story on TV. And it was the visions and nightmares I’d always had of a lush forest filled with terror.”

  A glimmer of light flashed from the laundry room for a second and Beth held her breath as Jordan cocked his head.

  She rushed on. “Why would I feel such fear? Was I here in the cabin at one point?”

  “You were here when I murdered her.”

  Beth bent over at the waist, bitter bile rising in her throat. “You killed her in front of her child?”

  “It wasn’t planned. It was an accident. She just wouldn’t shut up about what I owed her and how she was going to get it out of me.” He waved the gun in her face and for the first time she really believed he’d kill her.

  “I’m not like my mother. I don’t want anything out of you. I was going to leave Timberline anyway. I’ll never come back here.”

  “We’re alike, you and I.” He wagged a finger at her. “I could see that when I watched your show. A hard charger. I admire that, Beth.”

  “I am like you. I understand why you did what you did. You were only protecting your position.”

  “I murdered Lorna, too, you know.”

  Beth covered her ears. “I don’t want to know what you did. I don’t care.”

  “I saved you that day, Beth. As I stabbed your mother and rivers of blood soaked your body, I saved you.”

  Beth choked and covered her mouth.

  “But I don’t think I can save you this time. If you’d just stopped digging. If you hadn’t gone to Scarlett. If you hadn’t asked Rebecca for help. If you hadn’t been part Quileute and your mother’s daughter.”

  “Where is she? What did you do with my mother’s body after you stabbed her to death?”

  Jordan rose from the arm of the chair and placed his hand against the wall above the mantel. “I left her here.”

  Beth cried out and staggered to her feet. “You bastard!”

  The gun dangled at his side and she lunged for it.

  Jordan raised his arm, but she was close to him and bumped his forearm.

  “Drop it, Young.” Duke burst into the living room, his weapon trained on Jordan.

  Jordan grabbed her around the waist, gripping the gun in the other hand.

  A shot rang out and Beth screamed over the ringing in her ears.

  Jordan slumped against her, his blood pumping out of the wound in his chest, covering her body.

  She’d returned to where she began.

  Epilogue

  Safe in the crook of Duke’s arm, Beth watched the demolition crew enter the Ravens, followed by a hazmat team from the FBI and Deputy Unger.

  “You don’t need to be here, Beth.”

  “I do. My mother led me back here and I owe it to her to witness her release.”

  He rubbed her back. “He didn’t admit to anything involving Gary Binder, did he?”

  “No, everything else was him and Bill Raney.”

  “The sheriff’s department has already arrested Raney for assault and attempted murder. They’re going to try to determine how much he knew about Young’s activities.”

  “Serena, too?”

  “She’s left town.”

  “I guess there’s your answer.”

  “Maybe, or she’s protecting herself against questions about the biker gang, the Lords of Chaos, she used to run with.”

  “Rebecca’s doing better. I visited her this morning. Her fiancé is going to take her to Hawaii on a sort of a convalescence-slash-vacation in a week.”

  “You talked to Scarlett?”

  “She’s still in San Francisco and is heading for New York after.” Beth rested her head against Duke’s shoulder. “She wasn’t too surprised when she found out about my mother’s heritage.”

  “She didn’t know Angie?”

  “Her grandmother had known my grandmother, but they didn’t live on the reservation and Angie was a free spirit. When she came back to the rez twenty-five years ago, pregnant, she’d talked about a rich fiancé who was going to take her around the world.”

  “And she never left Timberline.” Duke shook his head. “Did Jordan talk much about the black market he used to...place you?”

  “No. Do you think it’s related to the disappearance of the Timberline Trio?”

  “I do, and I think they’re both related to the Lords of Chaos. I was at least able to give the Bureau a thorough report of the gang’s activities in this area.”

  “Where to next for you?”

  “Wherever you are.” He kissed the side of her head.

  “I’m sure the FBI is going to have a thing or two to say about that.”

  “After I tag along with you to LA, I think I’m headed back to Chicago, but not before we make some serious plans.”

  “I like the sound of that.” She fluffed his hair back from his face.

  “Are you going to do a segment on finding your mother? It definitely qualifies as a cold case, and the ratings would be sky-high.”

  She tightened her hold on his arm as the door of the cabin swung wide. “I don’t care about the ratings, Duke. Some things are not for the public’s consumption.”

  The hazmat crew navigated the porch steps, wheeling a gurney with a black bag on top of it.

  Beth sucked in a breath and Duke pushed off the stone planter and helped Beth to her feet.

  As the gurney made its way down the path, a surge of people, Quileute in their native ceremonial dress, gathered on either side of the procession.

  A low chant rose and puffs of incense scented the air around them.

  One of the elders approached Beth and bowed her head. “You have family now, Beth St. Regis, a whole nation behind you.”

  With tears in her eyes, Beth nodded and touched the old woman’s silver hair.

  When law enforcement, the emergency vehicles and the procession of Quileute had cleared out, Duke took her in his arms. “I’m sorry, Beth, for all of it.”

  “I’m glad I found out. Now I can get to know my mother for the person she was. All the doubts and fears are gone.”

  He stroked her hair. “It’s time to rewrite the past for both of us now. I want to create what we both missed out on—a family. If that’s just us or ten kids or one, it doesn’t matter. Are you ready for that, Beth?”

  She curled her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek against the steady beat of his heart. “I’m ready for all of it, and as long as you’re by my side, I know I’m home. Duke Harper, you’re the man of my dreams.”

  * * * * *

  Carol Ericson’s miniseries

  TARGET: TIMBERLINE

  continues next month with

  ARMY RANGER REDEMPTION.

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  Hostage Negotiation

  by Lena Diaz

  Chapter One

  The campfire crackled and cast eerie light and shadows on its young audience, their faces rapt with attention, eyes big and round as the storyteller wove his tale. Sitting on the opposite side of the fire a few feet away from the children, Mystic Glades Chief of Police Zack Scott and his friend, Collier County Detective Cole Larson, waited for the story to be over so they could escort their young charges back into town.

  Just fifty yards away, beneath an alligator-shaped sign on an archway, was the entrance to the eccentric, quirky town of Mystic Glades. Hidden deep in the Florida Everglades, several miles from the section of I-75 known as Alligator Alley, the town was home to a couple hundred residents. Downtown consisted of one long dirt and gravel street with wooden clapboard one- and two-story businesses lining both sides. And in front of the buildings was a wide, wooden boardwalk.

  The whole setup screamed “Spaghetti Western,” an image that was enhanced by the fact that many residents wore firearms either holstered in plain sight or hidden in their pockets—a dangerous tradition that Zack was determined to change. But so far he wasn’t getting much traction, the argument being that the residents needed their guns because the snakes and alligators outnumbered them a hundred to one.