Take Me Back (Paradise, Idaho Book 4)

by Rosalind James

  “I told you,” Cole said, “nobody’s going to come after her. Or me, either. Everybody torrents.”

  “I don’t care who else does it. Everybody else in the whole wide world can do it. Except you. If I find it again, the phone’s gone, and so is the computer.”

  “Hoo-ah, Sarge,” Cole muttered.

  Jim felt Mac tensing under his hand. He gave her shoulder a squeeze and said, “Yep. I’m all that. Everything you’re thinking. But I’m also the guy who’ll take that phone and toss it without giving it a second thought if that’s what I’ve got to do to finally stop this. Twenty-four hours, and your computer and phone had better be wiped of anything you haven’t paid for. I’ll check.”

  Cole shot him a sidelong look, muttered, “Fine,” and left the room, and Jim sighed and scratched the back of his head.

  “That went well,” he told Mac.

  She headed back over to the table and grabbed her backpack. “Why does he have to be such a jerk?”

  “Because he’s fifteen. It’s a rule. Give it another three or four years, and you’ll be rolling your eyes at me yourself like somebody flipped a switch. Let me tell you, I can wait for that.” He took the pack from her and hefted it over one shoulder. “Let’s go home, partner.”

  FACING THE GHOSTS

  As a closure party, Hallie thought, it hadn’t been much. One drink with Anthea in the blessed cool of Señor Fred’s, during which she tried hard not to notice that she was home for the first time in five years or to think about the reason, and Anthea obligingly talked about other things, and then back to Anthea’s.

  Another place she hadn’t been for five years. No matter the obstacles, though, some relationships were forever, and they weren’t always romantic ones.

  “Thanks, hon,” Anthea said when her husband came inside with a platter of barbecued meat and set it on the kitchen table. “Too hot to turn the oven on.”

  “Here’s my question,” Hallie said, snitching a slice of jicama from the salad bowl. “What’s the deal with barbecuing? Why does it seem like a good idea to stand over a burning fire in ninety degrees?”

  “Shh,” Anthea said. “Ben hasn’t figured that out yet.”

  “Men love fire,” Ben said. “It’s in the DNA.” A math professor at the university, he wasn’t exactly good-looking, with his solid build and his glasses. But he had laughing eyes that still got a little goofy when he looked at his wife. Anthea had some gene that had flat-out missed Hallie. The “find a good man and keep him” gene. Not to mention the “stay in the hometown” gene.

  “I like fire!” Tyson, their four-year-old, piped up. “I’m going to be a fireman when I grow up.”

  “Firefighter,” Anthea corrected automatically.

  “Fire man,” Tyson said stoutly. “Because I’m a boy. Or I’m going to be DeeDee’s dog.”

  “Umm . . .” Hallie said. “DeeDee” was Deirdre, Anthea and Ben’s seven-year-old, who was sitting beside Hallie.

  “I told you, Ty,” Deirdre said with a sigh. “You can’t be my dog. Boys can’t be dogs.”

  “Yes they can,” Tyson said. “If they’re boy dogs.”

  “It’s the Twilight Zone,” Hallie said. “I’m back in town for four hours, and I’m in the Twilight Zone.”

  It had been a joke. But when they’d finished the dishes and she’d refused another offer to stay and was driving out to the Ridge, it was hard not to feel like it was true. Anthea was Hallie’s best friend, but on nights like tonight, the gulf between them loomed like an unbridgeable chasm. Anthea was going to bed with her husband after putting her kids to bed, and Hallie was going . . . here.

  At seven thirty, with the sky turning pink over Paradise Mountain to the east and the light soft and low, she drove to the end of the road and up the long blacktopped driveway toward the two soaring stories of wood and stone. The security lights outside came on as she approached, but all of the house’s giant windows were as dark and blank as missing teeth in a skeleton’s smile.

  Hallie sat in the car, turned the key, and swallowed. Home. The house where she’d spent her childhood. The one her mother had left when Hallie had been fourteen. And after that? It had been three more years of having to leave her mom in town and spend weekends and summers two miles out of town, in this cold, barren house. Just her and her dad. Without her mother’s presence it had been a lonely spot, a place where Hallie had always come up short. She’d spent most of her time in her downstairs bedroom, with her TV and her computer and her books. Hiding. And that was before that last horrible summer, when her mother had moved to Arizona, and there had been no escape.

  So why was she back here?

  Because this was where the ghosts were, and she was tired of running from her ghosts. Because if she were going to that meeting tomorrow with Bob Jenkins and whoever the “others” were, she had to be ready for it. She had to face this, and it was too easy to lean on Anthea. When she’d made it through to the other side, she’d be stronger, better able to face whatever came next. She knew that for sure.

  She shoved the car door open, popped the trunk, and hauled out her little suitcase. One night.

  It was almost over before it started, the moment she opened the front door with the key Bob had given her, together with the news that he’d had the burglar alarm reset by the company, and the number to call for the new code. Hallie slapped the hallway light on, shrieked, jumped back, tripped over her suitcase, and fell on her butt.

  The bear was new.

  She crawled to her feet, hastily punched the numbers into the burglar alarm, picked up her suitcase, and muttered, “That goes. First thing.”

  She rolled the suitcase over the hardwood floor, then on second thought, turned to the lunging, snarling beast and said, “Sorry, buddy. You got the raw end of the deal.”

  She turned on the hallway light and hefted the little suitcase down the stairs. The air smelled stale and somehow metallic, and she tried not to think of it as the smell of death, wishing with every cowardly cell in her body that she’d accepted Anthea’s offer to come out here with her. She wasn’t going to be feeble and call now, though. Instead, she turned down the hall to her old bedroom and lifted the suitcase onto the quilted spread.

  It looked just as it had five years ago. As it had fifteen years ago, for that matter, when the decorator had redone it. Pale-blue, flowered bedspread, darker blue curtains, white walls, beige carpeting, a mirror, and a framed picture of flowers on the wall, all chosen by a decorator. Bland as a hotel room, as if its occupant hadn’t dared to impose her personality in even the smallest way. Which was about right.

  “OK,” Hallie said aloud. “OK.” She opened a couple windows to air out the room, then unzipped her suitcase, removed her bag of toiletries, headed into the bathroom across the hall, and pulled out her toothbrush and toothpaste, grimacing at the wild-haired apparition in the mirror.

  Geez. Things hadn’t gotten any better despite her hasty repairs in Señor Fred’s ladies’ room.

  This situation definitely called for alcohol. Her uncle Dale had told her that her dad had died in his den. That was where the drinks were, too.

  Face the ghosts, she told herself. And went to do it.

  WELCOME HOME

  Hallie stepped out of the light and into the darkness of her father’s den, flipped the light switch, and froze.

  There was some kind of gray dust on every surface. Table. Bar. Leather couch and chairs. The coffee table was pushed forward on one side, canted wildly in a way her father would never have allowed, the rug beneath it crumpled. But that wasn’t the worst. That would be the white shape drawn onto the coffee table. An outline of a thick torso, its left arm flung out across the pine table, the shape of the right arm ending where it would have hung off the edge.

  And the head. An oval of white, bisected by the diagonal iron band that extended across the table’s wooden surface. And a thick black rivet just to one side of center of the head’s outline, up near the top.

  “He
fell and hit his head,” her uncle Dale had said. Hallie hadn’t expected to see the evidence of it, to be able to imagine it so vividly. It was as if he were still there. Still lying dead. The metallic smell was stronger, too. Copper. Blood.

  She wrenched her gaze away from the table and glanced wildly around the room. What was the gray dust? It was everywhere, like the house was an archaeological site covered by the sands of time. She felt the faint grittiness under her fingers, looked down, and snatched her hand away as if the doorknob had been red-hot, wiping her fingers hastily on her abused skirt, and swallowing back the sickness.

  Fingerprints. It was fingerprint dust, and the smears and marks in the gray were prints. Her dad’s—and maybe other people’s. But it had been an accident, Dale had said. Her father had tripped and fallen.

  She was retreating without even realizing it, backing up, then turning and nearly running down the hall. Into her bedroom, noticing with horror for the first time the gray dust on that knob, too. She fumbled in her purse for her phone, then gave it up and snatched the whole bag, took the stairs up at a run, hit the light switch for the living room, and saw more gray dust.

  It covered the whole house. Every room. Everywhere.

  Panic. She was shaking, gasping, heading outside, whimpering as her hand landed on the gray smears covering the doorknob of the front door, then hurried down the driveway to a boulder set in a curve of the road. The flat rock where she’d sat on so many evenings as a teenager, looking over the hills and longing to be gone. Especially during that last long, hot summer after graduation, after Jim, after everything, when she’d longed for escape and feared it would never come.

  But it had. It had.

  She sat on the gray stone, tucked her heels into the narrow ledge, rocked back and forth, and told herself, Breathe. How many times had she reminded herself today? The drive. The ticket. The funeral chapel. The casket. And now this. The worst.

  Phone. Call somebody.

  Who did she call, though? What did she say? “Help?” “Rescue me from the devil dust?”

  In the end, she called Anthea.

  “So—yeah,” she told her friend. “It’s like CSI down there. Only no cute detectives. Just me, a whole lot of gray smears, and a . . .” She swallowed. “Chalk outline.”

  “Any blood?” Anthea asked practically.

  “I didn’t . . .” Hallie put a hand to her head. “Yeah. I think so.” Oh, God. Blood. The dark stain on one corner of the table. His head had been smashed in. That had to be it.

  Henry on the table, facedown. Dead.

  The staring glass eyes of the dead moose above the dead man. The hunter and the hunted. Making her think of Henry’s body in the casket, as butchered as the moose had been. Because there’d been an autopsy.

  The panic and nausea rose again at the thought, and she forced both of them back and focused on her friend’s voice.

  “OK, that’s gross,” Anthea was saying. “But other than that, it’s just dust and chalk. Windex and paper towels, right? Any rubber gloves out there? Then you don’t even have to touch anything until you’ve wiped it clean. I’ll come over and help you. It’s not like your father’s the one who left the dust there. It was the sheriff’s department, not Henry. Well, nothing but the blood. It’s just the investigation.” Which all sounded completely reasonable, completely rational.

  “But wait,” Hallie said. “Why wouldn’t they have cleaned it up? The cops? Who leaves this kind of mess for the . . . the next of kin? That can’t be normal. And why didn’t Bob tell me?”

  “I don’t know,” Anthea said slowly. “I don’t do criminal. I never thought about it. I don’t know what they do. Bob may not have known, either.”

  “I’m finding out.” Suddenly, Hallie wasn’t shaken and horrified. She was mad. “Right now.”

  “I’m getting dressed,” Anthea said. “Be out to help you clean it in twenty minutes.”

  “No,” Hallie decided.

  Anthea’s sigh came over the line. “There’s such a thing as being too independent, you know? I mean, good for you that you’re coping, but what are friends for?”

  “I just . . . I can’t explain. But it’s mine to deal with. I have to. My house. My ghosts.”

  “Not alone.”

  “Yeah,” Hallie said. “Alone. I have to go. Thanks for talking.”

  It was almost dark now, but being out here in the dark didn’t scare her. The air was fresh and cool, the crickets chirped as they always had, and a few pale stars had begun to wink through the darkening sky. A sliver of moon gleamed over Paradise Mountain, a silver-white fingernail. Hallie sat in the darkness, a breath of wind ruffling the hem of her skirt, and scrolled and tapped her phone, finally pressing the screen and hearing the ringing start.

  “Sheriff’s department,” a woman’s voice said.

  “Yes,” Hallie said. “I’d like to speak to the person in charge of the investigation into Henry Cavanaugh’s death.”

  “That’d be Jim Lawson,” the woman said. “He’s not on duty tonight, though. Can I take a message?”

  “No,” Hallie said slowly. “No message. Thanks.” She hung up, thought a minute, then dialed again.

  “Hey,” Anthea said on the other end. “Change your mind? Want me to come out? Or better yet—forget it for now and come on back here. Princess Elsa’s waiting for you on that top bunk. We’ll take care of it tomorrow, in the daylight. Much better.”

  Hallie didn’t answer any of that. “Can I have Jim’s number?”

  Silence on the other end, then finally, “Why?”

  “He investigated my dad’s death.” Hallie’s hand was shaking, and she shoved it under her leg and told herself furiously, Deal. “He left the house like this. For me to see. On purpose.”

  “I’m sure he didn’t,” Anthea said. “He wouldn’t.”

  “He did.”

  “Then there’s a reason.”

  “Look.” Hallie closed her eyes, then opened them, because it didn’t do any good. The pictures in her memory weren’t anything she wanted to see. “I know he’s your brother. I’ve never tested your loyalty, have I? I’ve always known where it would be, and I know why.”

  “What? Of course I’m loyal to him. He’s my twin. I know you’re weird about him, but I can’t give you his number, not without checking with him first. Don’t ask me.”

  Hallie had to swallow again. Her deepest secrets, her darkest shame, remained her own, still and always, because there was nobody to share them with. Because Anthea wouldn’t want to know. An invisible barrier that had stood between them for years despite their friendship, and still stood today.

  He’s my twin.

  “Right,” Hallie said. “I’ll call him tomorrow.”

  “Come over,” Anthea said. “You know I love you. Come over and let me help.”

  “No. Thanks, but no. I’ll do it myself. See you tomorrow.”

  “Right. Tomorrow.” Anthea hesitated as if she wanted to say more, then added, “But if you change your mind—”

  “I won’t change my mind.” Hallie was already climbing off the rock. “Bye.” She shoved the phone back into her purse and headed back up through the dark, the security lights winking on again as she approached. She went inside, forcing herself to grab the doorknob normally, went into the kitchen, and pulled out Windex, a roll of paper towels, and a pair of yellow rubber gloves.

  She didn’t do the whole thing. She couldn’t. Not in the dark, with the ghosts hovering. But she did some of it, starting with wiping down the taps and edges on the shower and sink in the upstairs guest bathroom. Nothing but gray dust there, not even a fingerprint, because her father wouldn’t have gone into either place.

  Henry’s ghost wasn’t there. Or in the living room, either, which she tackled next. Henry hadn’t liked that room, with its formal furnishings and soaring spaces. “Like a funeral parlor,” he’d always said. Oddly enough, it was the one place that didn’t feel like a funeral parlor now, where she didn’t feel h
is presence so acutely.

  She braved her bedroom once more for her suitcase and her toothbrush, ran upstairs with them as if her father’s spirit really were after her, and finally took a shower in that pristine “guest” bath that probably hadn’t seen a guest for fifteen years. No hair dryer up here, and she couldn’t bring herself to care, not tonight. She’d be a mess tomorrow, and so what? She’d been a mess today already. She changed into a pair of yellow shortie pj’s, grabbed a blanket and pillow from the linen closet, lay down on the white couch with a paperback that was as close as she’d come to romance in quite some time, and thought, You’re doing it. One night. The worst is over.

  And then she thought, Hallie Jane Cavanaugh. Welcome home.

  Jim didn’t see the text from Anthea until he got home.

  Hallie’s upset. Call me.

  After ten. Too late to call Anthea back tonight. His relief felt a whole lot like cowardice, but he’d see his sister in the morning anyway. Time enough to find out what it was all about then.

  He’d see Hallie, too. Not that his presence would help with the “upset.” Even if it were about her dad’s death. Especially if it were about her dad’s death. He wasn’t exactly going to be commiserating.

  He wandered into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and stared inside the same way Cole had a few days earlier, and for the same reason. Because when guys didn’t have anything better to do, they stared into the fridge, like there might be a TV on in there.

  He contemplated a beer, then abandoned the idea and swung the door shut. He’d had one already tonight, and he had a feeling that “one more” was going to turn into, “Mac’s not home, so why the hell not?” And there was no cure for loneliness or frustration at the bottom of a bottle. He ought to know.

  He pulled his T-shirt over his head and dropped it into the washing machine on the way to the bedroom, unsnapping his jeans en route. He stripped down the rest of the way, tossed the rest of his dirty clothes into the hamper, stepped into the shower and started soaping up, and thought about how stupid he’d been.