Take Me Back (Paradise, Idaho Book 4)

by Rosalind James

  “If that’s true,” she said, “why were you so hard on me?”

  “I’ll tell you why. Because I’m in love with you, and I want you, and you don’t want me as bad, not enough to sacrifice for it. It hurts, so I tried to hurt you instead, and all it did was make me feel worse.”

  “You don’t know me, though,” she said miserably. “You don’t know about when I didn’t have guts. I haven’t told you about it, even though I’ve wanted to. I thought, it’s over. It doesn’t matter. It’s so long ago. But it just keeps . . . hanging there.”

  The seconds passed, and he stared at her, and she had to look away.

  “Hallie,” he finally said. “Tell me what you’re talking about. Tell me now.”

  She took a breath, and she said it. “I got pregnant. That night. And I had an abortion. My dad said I had to, and I did it.”

  LETTING GO

  She had to tell him. After all those things he’d said about her, about how she was strong, even though she knew she hadn’t been strong enough . . . the secret was there, the thing that only her mother had known.

  Her mother. And her father.

  “Tell me,” Jim said again. His face was hard, but now, she knew why. Because that was what he did with the tough things. He stuffed them down deep and covered them up.

  “After we were caught,” she said. She was walking again, and he was walking with her. “After that night. I didn’t tell you, but my dad made them run a whole rape kit on me, and I thought that was the worst. Lying there in that cubicle in the ER . . . I thought it was the lowest I could feel. And then I found out that it wasn’t. He took me to his doctor, even before I missed a period. The day I saw you in the grocery store . . . that was where I’d been. My dad told the doctor to check me over and do all the tests. To make sure I didn’t have a . . . disease.” She closed her eyes against the shame of it. “He came into the room to hear what the doctor said. While I was still lying there under the paper, not dressed. He was there when the doctor said I was pregnant.”

  She remembered what he’d said, too.

  “Get rid of it,” Henry had said instantly, before Hallie had even taken it in.

  “It can’t be done yet,” Dr. Ivey said. Hallie had never liked him. Big, serious, and remote, he’d scared her as a child. And now, with her insides still feeling the unfamiliar touch of cold metal, he terrified her. “Not for two more weeks, until the embryo’s more developed.”

  Embryo, Hallie thought.

  “Good,” her father said. “That works. Get rid of it before school starts.”

  Dr. Ivey said, “I don’t do this procedure.”

  Henry’s only response to that was an impatient gesture. “You know how, right?”

  “Technically. But I don’t have the best equipment to make it comfortable for her.” Her father started to say something, probably, Who the hell cares if she’s comfortable, but Dr. Ivey didn’t let him. He said firmly, “I don’t do this procedure. You’ll need to take her to the clinic in Spokane. My girl will give you the referral.”

  Hallie said, “Wait.”

  Her father said, “You don’t talk. You get yourself dressed and get off that table and get in the car.”

  “But—” she said.

  “You don’t talk.” He was standing over her, his lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl. “You get your ass in the car. I don’t want to hear from you. I don’t want to look at you. You disgust me.”

  It was too much remembering. Too much pain. She started to run again, only because she couldn’t stand still. She told Jim, who was keeping pace with her, “He wouldn’t talk to me. Anytime I tried, he said, ‘If you want to go to college, you’ll do what I say. If you want to be on the street, you do what you want. Your choice.’ And I . . .” She closed her eyes against the memory. “I chose.”

  “You were seventeen,” Jim said.

  She nodded jerkily. “And who knows what the right thing was anyway. It isn’t that I thought it was wrong in itself. Just like Maya. That’s not it.” It was so hard to explain. Or it was impossible. “Maybe it was better after all, even though it didn’t feel that way. I’d love to think I’d have been able to carry the baby and give it up for adoption, have chosen some couple that was made to have kids and couldn’t. That I would have had that kind of strength. But I never put myself to the test, so I don’t know. And I would have been a terrible mother. That wasn’t an option. At least I knew that. I was so scared, and so stupid, and so . . . young.”

  “What about your mom?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t tell her, not until later. She was living in Arizona by then, you know. So busy with her new life. That’s what I told myself, but really, that was cowardice again. Selfishness, because I didn’t want to face it, didn’t want to have a choice. I’d look at this University of Washington postcard, you know? It was my dream. And I’d think, I can’t lose my dream. I can’t. So I went along with my dad. That felt like a . . . like a dream, too. Like maybe it wouldn’t happen after all. Like maybe it would all go away.” She smiled, even though there was no smile at all in her heart. “They call it ‘magical thinking.’ Very common in adolescents. You think if you wish hard enough, it’ll go away, or it won’t have happened, or it’ll magically just get . . . fixed. But it doesn’t.”

  “So you didn’t have anybody with you.”

  “My dad. In the waiting room. He said that when you did things you were ashamed of, you paid for them alone. That was the price, he said. It was a very simple procedure, they said, but it hurt, and I was cold. I cried. I was so scared. So sad. When it was happening . . .”

  She was crying now. She tried not to remember this. It was so very long ago. Fourteen years. Half a lifetime. “When it was happening, it was real. And I wanted to say, ‘Wait. Stop. Wait.’ But it was too late. There was this tube, and it was . . . gone.”

  “Hallie.” They’d reached the school parking lot, and she slowed. He had his arm around her, was pulling her close, his other hand going to her hair, smoothing it again and again. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry.”

  She shook her head violently against his chest, and then she gave into the tears. She cried for her lost chances, and for his. For all the things life had taken from both of them. He held her and murmured something she could barely hear, and his arms and his chest were rock-solid comfort.

  Finally, she stood back. She knew she was a mess and that anybody driving by could see them, but she couldn’t care. Her chest ached, her throat hurt, her eyes were puffy, and her nose was running. She was empty. “I’m sorry,” she said, not looking at him. “Sorry to tell you this way. Sorry I didn’t tell you before.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” he said. “Guess we’re both sorry.”

  She wiped her face on her sleeve and knew it was disgusting, and he didn’t seem to notice. After a minute, she said, her voice still husky with tears, “You know, if I were talking to a student, to a friend’s daughter, to any girl in my situation, I’d never judge her. There’s no good answer, and I know it. There may be women who think, ‘Oh, yay, today I get my abortion,’ but I doubt there are many. I think it’s always a horrible choice to have to make, no matter what, and when you’re seventeen?” She sighed. “I don’t know.”

  “It feels different when it’s you,” he said, and she nodded, because it did. It felt terrible. It always had.

  “You could think, instead,” he said, “that it was my fault. I know that’s what I’m thinking. You don’t have sex if you don’t have a condom. There is one right answer for that, and that’s the one.”

  She shrugged tiredly and said, “Girls have a responsibility, too.”

  “I had the responsibility for that. I let you down. And I’m sorry.”

  She looked at him, and he looked straight back at her, so solid and so strong, and she had to swallow. “I’m sorry, too,” she said. “I’m so sorry. About my dad. About everything. It was all one big mess, wasn’t it?”

  “It was. But it s
tarted with me.”

  “No. It started with us.”

  He sighed, and she did, too. They stood there a minute longer, and then she said, “Anyway. It’s over. It’s a long time ago, and it’s over.”

  “No, it’s not. Because it still hurts your heart.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because it’s hurting mine.”

  He had his arm around her again, and she let him hold her. And somehow, sharing it with him had helped. Some of the dragging sadness she’d carried for so long gave a flap of its wings, then flew away into the quiet, frosty morning like a giant black moth. And she opened her aching heart and let it go.

  STEP IT UP

  On Monday evening, the killer sat and drummed angry fingers on the desk, thinking it through.

  Jim and Hallie had to be getting it on. Why else would he be so concerned with her welfare, so eager to help her out? Men didn’t do that unless they were getting something out of it.

  Or, more likely, if they were hoping to. Once Jim had had her, once he’d overcome her resistance—surely he’d lose interest. It had to be partly about getting revenge against her father, anyway. Hallie Cavanaugh wasn’t the face that launched a thousand ships. She’d been a mousy, timid little girl, and she’d turned into an overly curvy, redheaded teacher who cared too much that everybody liked her. Soft in all ways. A pleaser. An easy mark. Not a woman that a man like Jim Lawson, with those kinds of hard edges, would go to the mat for.

  The GPS devices should have worked, but they hadn’t. Jim clearly hadn’t discovered his, since he was still driving around with it. Hallie’s, though, had been stationary in her garage since Saturday. It was stupid of both of them not to put two and two together and realize what the point of tracking Hallie would be. But then, whoever said cops were smart? Jim had barely graduated from high school. Giving out speeding tickets didn’t make anybody a rocket scientist.

  But Hallie would be on her guard now. Which also meant she’d be nervous. More nervous.

  Time to step it up.

  The plan wasn’t hard to figure out. It would take a few days to put into place, but that was fine. There were still three months to go. Hallie would be anticipating receiving her first big payment, her thirty thousand dollars for staying three months, which was up on Thanksgiving. She’d be feeling safe. Feeling smug. Spending the money in her head already. If you pulled that rug out from under her feet now? She’d be that much more rocked. The price of her inheritance would be too high.

  Especially if things got physical. She was a mouse. What did mice do when they saw danger? They ran.

  Danger, that was all. Not injury. Nothing to feel guilty about. Just giving her a good nudge. And carrying out Henry’s wishes. The more the killer had thought about that, the more likely it had seemed. Henry had wanted to humiliate her, to show her she couldn’t win.

  She had insurance, too. It wouldn’t even cost her.

  It was clear and cold all week, the temperature hovering near zero, as the plan took shape. A thin layer of snow still covered the ground in patches from the storm a couple weeks earlier, with the next storm not due until Friday morning. Perfect conditions.

  Thanksgiving dawned gray, with a heaviness in the air that spoke of snow to come. Wind would be perfect. Snow wouldn’t. The killer sweated the day, and did everything possible not to show it. Thanksgiving dinner had never seemed longer or more tedious. Chat-chat-chatter as you plowed through a plate of food with no appetite for any of it. The excruciating delay while dishes were done and dessert was served, and then, finally, waiting to see if the two crushed Ambien tablets could really go undetected in sweetened whipped cream.

  A long half hour, then, for the result the killer had been waiting for. The yawn, the exclamation.

  “I’m so tired, I can barely keep my eyes open. Too much Thanksgiving. I’m going to bed.”

  “Go on. It’s been a long day.” Which was true.

  It was only six o’clock. Two tablets on somebody who almost never took them? The Internet had been clear on that. Those would last all night.

  The hours until one o’clock dragged by, but they did pass. The killer crept to a bedroom and checked for activity, but heard only deep, rhythmic breathing. A shove at a shoulder, a whispered name, and . . . nothing. No movement. No reaction. Out like a light.

  Into the back of the storage closet, then, pulling out the three paper bags that held supplies purchased at the Goodwill store in Union City two days earlier, a safe thirty miles from Paradise. Two heavy sweatshirts, oversized cargo pants, a shabby parka, a baseball cap to shade the face from those cameras. Two pairs of extra socks, and the best part. The shoes. Two sizes too big, which would make it hard to walk even with the extra padding, but the shoes were necessary, just in case. And the gloves, which would come later.

  The final item. The most important one. The battered backpack that was already filled with the key supplies for tonight’s adventure. Also purchased in Union City, and nothing unusual about any of it.

  It was hard to breathe evenly, to stay cool with the adrenaline running high, but it was all planned. All rehearsed.

  Simple. Logical. Perfect.

  A quiet exit from the sleeping house and into the car that had been left by the curb instead of the garage, on an excuse that had sounded nothing but plausible. Hard snow by morning. Drifts, maybe, and not being able to get out of the driveway without shoveling. Who wanted that on the Friday after Thanksgiving?

  The drive wasn’t long, but it was long enough to run through the elements of the plan one last time before the killer was parking around the bend from the target, then climbing out of the car, stashing the keys carefully in a cargo pocket for quick recovery, shouldering the backpack, putting up the hood of the parka over the baseball cap, and heading up the street to the driveway.

  The walk up the hill in darkness, because a flashlight was too risky. Clouds covering moon and stars, and the wind was picking up now. Snow by morning for sure, but that was all right. Snow would mean covered-up footprints, which was too bad, but those were the breaks. You had to be flexible. Wind, though? Wind was nothing short of wonderful.

  Cautiously now. Quietly. Creeping the final thirty feet to the house, along the side of the garage, shrugging the backpack off. And then the preparations. Quick, but not hasty. Rehearsed. All going to plan.

  Until it went wrong.

  THROUGH THE TUNNEL

  When Cletus began to bark, Hallie swore, rolled over, and shoved her pillow over her head.

  “Shut up,” she moaned as the deep-throated barks continued from the other side of the house. From outside, clearly. Coyotes getting too close and being warned off. “All right,” she muttered when Cletus didn’t shut up. “We get it. You’re the baddest dog in the west.”

  Ugh. She’d eaten too much at Vicki’s this afternoon, and now, she had heartburn. Probably because it had been easier to stuff her face than to look at Jim. She still felt raw, like she was missing a layer of skin. He’d been so caring, so—loving—on Monday, and it had torn her to bits, even as it had healed her. Both things couldn’t be true, but they were. And they’d had to say everything they’d said standing on the blacktop outside the gym of the middle school, unable to hold each other again, even as she’d ached to have his arms around her.

  They’d left it with nothing settled. No time for it, and no opportunity. And since then—it wasn’t the kind of thing you could talk about on the phone. Thanksgiving, she’d thought, but Thanksgiving hadn’t turned out to be the answer at all. Too many eyes. Too many unanswered questions.

  What was she willing to do? What was he? Those kinds of questions took time and talking and walking and thinking to sort out. They took evenings of lying together, arms and legs tangled up together, hands stroking over backs, soft confessions and wishes and dreams you could only express in darkness. Words offered tentatively, received tenderly, held safely in cupped hands and loving hearts.

  At least she imagined that w
as how it would work.

  And all that—it was everything she and Jim couldn’t have. Not now. And afterward? She’d be in Seattle, or—

  Or she’d be taking the biggest risk of her life, without those confessions and those evenings in the dark to give her strength, to make her believe.

  She’d always thought she couldn’t live in Paradise again. But really, maybe she’d just been thinking that she couldn’t stand to be the person she’d been in Paradise. But living in the same place—did that mean you had to be the same person?

  No. Surely not. If Jim had changed—maybe she had, too. That had been the whole point of accepting this challenge, because that’s what it had been. That was why she’d done it.

  Maybe I just want to live here on my terms, she’d said that first night. Maybe I want to say that there’s another way to live, right here with his . . . ghost watching. Maybe I want to win.

  But then there was Mac, whose watchful gaze had been on Hallie and her dad all afternoon. Hallie got it; of course she did. It still didn’t feel good, though. Or hopeful. She had a long way to go with Mac.

  She pulled herself up against the pillows to ease the heartburn and thought about it some more, and Cletus kept barking.

  Finally, she’d heard enough. Thought enough, too. She needed to call Cletus into the house and shut his dog door so he stayed in, however much she didn’t want to get out of her warm, cozy bed and go down into the cold. And then she needed to set all of this aside and go to sleep. She sighed, sat up, turned on the bedside light, and was reaching for her slippers when Cletus came bounding into the room.