After You Were Gone

by Alexis Harrington

  Mitchell strode out of Lupe’s and headed for the Buick, his head buzzing. He couldn’t talk to anyone right now, not even Julianne.

  He turned west and headed out to the open range.

  Three nights later Mitchell stood over the bathroom sink at the Satellite Motel and peered through a clear spot on the steamy mirror. The shower had made him feel half human again, and now he was trying for 100 percent by shaving.

  After leaving James, he’d driven all the way to Brackettville for no good reason, other than to keep from strangling someone with his bare hands. He’d tried to visit Alamo Village, the movie set that was constructed for the movie The Alamo with John Wayne. In its better days it had been used as backdrop in the filming of a couple of hundred other westerns. But the place had closed in 2010 after the owners died, and only grazing cattle now shared the acreage with the crumbling buildings.

  While Mitchell was out on the highway, he seriously entertained the idea to just keep driving. But the thought of Julianne pulled at him and wouldn’t let him go. So he drove four hours back to Gila Rock. There was nothing like a five-hundred-mile road trip to vent the steam from a boiling kettle. He was still pissed off about Darcy, but on the bright side at least he knew he hadn’t taken Wesley Emerson’s life. He’d probably been the only innocent man in the state’s custody who sincerely believed he was guilty.

  Now he paused, dripping shave cream and water on the counter while he examined his dinged-up face. The swelling had improved, but his eyes were beginning that interesting color-change from dark purple to green and yellow. People still gave him a double-take in public if he went without his sunglasses, although he probably didn’t scare kids and dogs anymore. And Darcy’s big, ugly Masonic ring had done considerable damage. His brother had found that ring—he said—in one of those old cars he’d dragged home, but Mitchell wouldn’t be surprised if he’d stolen it. He tried to maneuver the disposable razor around the healing gouge on his left cheek. It was still too tender to tolerate much fussing.

  He made a disgusted sound and tossed the razor on the counter, then wiped his face with one of the thin hand towels the maid had left. The injuries would heal in time. On the other hand, any feeling he might have had for Darcy was dead and gone, brother or not.

  Whether James had told the cops about Wesley’s true killer, Mitchell didn’t know. But he was going to find out. The information had to come from James—he was the only other witness.

  He put on a clean shirt, then sat on the bed and grabbed his cell phone from the nightstand. Before things had gotten tense at Lupe’s, he and James had exchanged numbers. He scrolled through his few contacts. Cherry had put her number on the list herself that night he’d met her for a drink. He’d never used it and didn’t plan to. And the number for the Tucker estate was still there. Then he saw Julianne’s name, and his fingers on the phone tightened.

  She said she didn’t need him or anyone else. He’d supposed she was just whistling past the graveyard, but now he thought maybe it was true. She’d gotten so used to making her own way, alone . . .

  No, he rejected that notion. He didn’t believe she wanted to take on the world by herself. And as soon as all these critical details were nailed down, like Darcy’s guilt and getting his own name cleared, there would be no reason for either of them to leave Gila Rock. They had some making up to do. He couldn’t bear the idea of living without her any longer. But those details—

  Just as his gaze landed on James’s cell number, his own phone began buzzing in his grip. Well, what a coincidence—

  “Yeah, James, what’s up? Did you get moved out of Rancho DeLuxe?”

  “Mitch, I’ve got to talk to you right away!” He was almost yelling, Mitchell supposed, to be heard over the roar of that highway noise behind him. But he also sounded winded, as if he was just one step ahead of a bone-chomping monster from a Stephen King novel.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I’ll meet you at the high school parking lot in ten minutes. You gotta be there!” The call ended with three beeps that signaled a disconnect.

  An electric sizzle of foreboding shot up his spine and spread to his heart and limbs. Who was in danger? James? Him? Again he wondered whether he was being lured to a trap—he couldn’t help it, given the series of events that had occurred since he’d come back to town. Despite that, he lurched to his feet and headed out the door to the Buick.

  Moths bumped around him and the exterior lights along the walkway as he ran to the parking lot. There were only a couple of cars besides his own, and the neon VACANCY sign buzzed off and on, off and on, in front of the motel office window.

  It was hot and stuffy inside the car, and it still reeked of old cat litter. But the tired engine turned over after a couple of preliminary coughs and a soft fart of blue smoke. On the dark road, more night-flying insects whizzed past his headlights, and his mind hummed with a dozen possible scenarios. He didn’t know whether any of them were close to correct. He felt certain of one thing, though.

  Something bad was going to happen.

  Julianne had fallen into a fitful doze with Jack beside her. She was jolted from her sleep by the sound of shattering plate glass. Instantly alert, the dog began barking. She pulled on a T-shirt over her short pajamas and hurried down the stairs. Behind her, Jack’s wet nose bumped her calves as she went.

  Horrified, she saw flames climbing the edges of the window and catching on merchandise near the front. Cellophane-wrapped cocktail napkins burned exceptionally well, she noticed in a disjointed, irrational thought. Blue tendrils of fire crept across the old floor, turning yellow, then white as they gained energy and heat. The fire alarm, part of her security package, sounded and added to the din and confusion as smoke began to fill the space. The smell of gasoline was strong, and the memory of the barn fire all those years ago came back to her with vivid clarity.

  She grabbed a decorative throw that was draped over a white wicker display chair, hoping to beat out the flames, but smoke choked and blinded her. She felt as if she were trying to breathe in hot powder. Flames were gobbling up merchandise like a monster furnace with an insatiable appetite.

  Only one coherent thought came to her: that feud would kill her this time. She dropped to her knees and tried to crawl toward the door, completely disoriented and light-headed. The dog barked somewhere, maybe even trying to guide her to safety, but she couldn’t tell which direction the sound came from. The old building was as dry as straw and catching fast. Heat blasted her, and she thought she smelled burning hair as it flew around her head in the fire’s wind.

  Which way to go? Which way? Between Jack’s barking, the shrieking smoke alarm, and the fast-moving fire, she tried to keep her head and her bearings, but she was losing both. Would she die the same way Wes had? Terrified, coughing, and lost, she thought she might, no matter how strong her will to survive. Her pulse pounded in her head. Her fright, as consuming as the flames, was so powerful the ghastly scene around her seemed to fade in and out of her sight. She tried to hold her breath, but it was impossible.

  Bright, dimmer. Bright, dimmer. Sometimes red, sometimes blue.

  She glanced down and for an instant recognized the new hardwood flooring near her shattered window. She scrambled around on hands and knees, broken glass cutting both, but for the moment she couldn’t feel it. She saw the blood, but it didn’t matter. Getting out, that was what mattered.

  Jack was still barking, but he sounded farther away now.

  “Julianne!”

  She knew that voice. It belonged to her other half, the source of her joy and the one who shared her heartache. Was that real, or did she imagine it? She wasn’t sure.

  The whole world seemed to be burning. And it was screaming, a faraway, urgent sound. It flashed blue and red—Maybe that was the fire department. Maybe.

  The smell of it, like gasoline, like burning hair, awful toxic smells . . .

  “Juli! Where are you?”

  “Here!” she called, her t
hroat dry and hot. She didn’t know if the voice was real, but she had to answer. “I’m here!”

  Out of nowhere, strong arms pulled her away from the fire and dragged her past broken glass and floating scarves of flame to the sidewalk. She took a deeper breath, coughed, and breathed again. What a relief it was to pull clean air into her lungs. And although chaos filled the street with sirens and the loud, scratchy chatter of radio voices, she knew she wouldn’t burn to death. Some spots on her arms and legs stung, but in the terror of the moment, they seemed minor.

  A fire truck came roaring down the street, sirens screeching and lights throbbing. Looking up, she saw Mitchell, his face a portrait of fear. His face—it was just like that night—his face was smudged black, and his shirt was singed. Beside him she saw his brother James. That couldn’t be right. Maybe she was already dead.

  Mitchell held her in his arms and anxiously pushed her hair away from her face.

  “Julianne! Oh God, are you okay? Are you?”

  “I-I think so,” she croaked. “Mitchell?”

  “It’s me. You’re safe.”

  “Jack—where’s Jack?”

  “Let him through,” Mitchell said over his shoulder, and she felt a wet tongue on her face. “Here—he’s here.”

  She reached out a feeble hand, and the dog slipped his head under it. “There’s my boy.” She looked up again. “James—what are you doing here?”

  “Saving your life,” he said simply.

  Firefighters connected the hose and opened the hydrant on the corner. An ambulance pulled up across the street, and EMTs surrounded Julianne. An oxygen mask was clapped on her face. When someone threw a blanket over her shoulders, she remembered that she was barefoot and dressed only in short pajamas.

  Mitchell didn’t want to let her go.

  “Please stand back, sir,” one of the EMTs directed. “We’ll take care of her.”

  He was jostled out of the way, and he watched while the medics looked after her. She looked so small and vulnerable there with the plastic mask strapped over her nose and her clothing scorched. His heart thumped heavily in his ribcage and seemed to climb into his throat. God, she had to be all right. She had to.

  Nearby, James talked to the officers who’d arrived in patrol cars. They were close enough for Mitchell to hear them.

  “—and so your brother Darcy planned this?” Sheriff Dale Gunter asked.

  “Yeah, he started boiling when my brother Mitch told him about Earl’s old girlfriend. Then after your boys showed up the other night about the broken window, he almost went berserk.” James looked at Mitchell. “He was determined to get the last word, no matter how or what that amounted to. Earlier this evening, I saw him make a firebomb out of an old wine bottle, so as soon as he left, I chased down Mitch. I knew we had to do something. We weren’t fast enough to stop him, but I’m glad we got here in time to save Julianne. Darcy can’t have gotten far. This just happened a few minutes ago.” There was some discussion about which junker he might be driving tonight, but James was pretty sure it was the Escort with multicolored quarter panels.

  Mitchell joined the conversation, adding, “Buddy Lee Crawford might be mixed up in all this, too. I think I saw him driving a dark-silver Yukon, the same one that tried to run us off the road near Marfa. He’s friendly with Cherry.”

  “Lots of guys are ‘friendly’ with Cherry,” Gunter replied drily, taking it all down. It was the first bit of energy Mitchell has seen him display that didn’t involve harassing him.

  “Hey,” he added, “what’s happening with Cade Lindgren? He tried to kidnap Julianne, you know.”

  “Yeah, we’re working on that,” the sheriff said. “He won’t get far. We’ve got an APB going for him. Right now I really want to know where Darcy Tucker is.”

  Darcy was just nuts, mean and nuts, Mitchell thought. Why had he started this thing again, long after it was over? What was his complaint? He’d seen guys in prison just like him—aimless men, filled with hate, guilty of crimes like domestic abuse or drug dealing. They were as unpredictable as nitroglycerine: friendly one minute; vicious, snapping, wild dogs the next. He’d never understood that kind of man. But he knew enough to stay as far away from them as possible. The experts called them sociopaths.

  “There’s something else, something important you need to know about the Emerson barn fire that . . . ,” James began, but Mitchell’s attention shifted.

  He looked back toward Julianne and saw that they had her in the back of the ambulance, and he walked over to see what was up. Under the glare of the lights in the truck, her face was smudged black, and some of the ends of her blonde hair looked as if they might have been singed. But she was sitting up just inside the truck, so that was a good sign, he thought.

  “Are you going to take her to the hospital?” he asked.

  A female EMT with her hair twisted into a bun said, “I don’t think so. She doesn’t want to go, anyway. She has a couple of small second-degree burns, but we patched her up. Except for being a little shaken up, she seems to be in pretty good shape, thanks to whoever pulled her out. If they hadn’t been so quick, we might have had a different story here.”

  “Mitchell,” Juli called. She held out her hand.

  The EMT motioned him forward.

  He grabbed her hand and wrapped it in his. “Hey, honey. You scared the daylights out of me.”

  “You stayed here—I’m so glad you stayed here.” Her voice muffled by the oxygen mask, she sounded so much like a frightened girl, his heart wrenched. He felt a serious twinge of guilt for his thoughts about leaving town without her. She had no one in the world except that twenty-seven-year-old juvenile delinquent, Lindgren, and he was worse than having no one. “I was scared, too. What happened?”

  “Darcy made a firebomb and threw it into your front window.”

  “God . . . why? What did I ever do to him?” she asked, steaming up the oxygen mask. “What did I do to make him want to kill me?”

  That was the gist of it, boiled down to its basic black heart, he realized. Darcy wanted to kill people. Mitchell had no idea why, but the realization stunned him, despite what he thought he knew about his brother. He’d killed Wes Emerson, and now he was trying to kill Julianne. If he wasn’t stopped, he’d get both of them, or someone else. “I think Darcy’s true colors are finally on full display. He’s always been a mean bastard, even as a kid. His excuses for his actions are never any good. This time, he’ll have to explain himself to the law. Anyway, James figured out what he was doing and came to find me.”

  James trotted up to the ambulance. “They found Darcy. He was with a woman.”

  “A woman—who?”

  “Cherry Claxton.”

  “Perfect,” Mitchell replied, shaking his head. “Just perfect. Well, maybe they’ll both do some time if she’s an accessory.”

  He turned to his brother and pulled him aside.

  Mitchell gave him a slow smile. “I owe you one for tonight.”

  James gave him an embarrassed glance. “Naw. I think this is a little payback for everything you did. We would have gone into foster homes after Mom left if not for you.”

  Mitchell gazed at the fire burning up Julianne’s building. “Sometimes I wonder if I did the right thing. Everyone might have been better off if we’d gotten away sooner.”

  James shrugged. “Who’s to say? Anyway, I told Gunter about the barn fire. I’ll have to go to the office with them.”

  “All right. Thanks, James.” Mitchell turned back to Julianne.

  “Where am I going to stay?” she asked. “I can’t sleep here tonight and there’s no furniture in the house at the farm.”

  “You’re coming with me,” he said.

  “I don’t have my clothes. I don’t have my purse, or my shoes.” She was beginning to sound like a fretful child, and she had every good reason.

  Mitchell took her in his arms, so damned grateful to be able to do that. And grateful for James, who’d had the conscience and
presence of mind to speak up after all these years, and to come find him tonight. “Don’t worry, the Satellite Motel isn’t fussy. And tomorrow, we’ll sort out all of this. I’ll bring you back into town, and you can pick up what you need.”

  “They’ll let me bring the dog, won’t they? I’m not going if I can’t.”

  “They’ll let us bring him.”

  After more questions from the fire officials and the sheriff’s department, Mitchell and Julianne were allowed to leave. This part of the street had been closed to spectators and traffic, but people gathered on the fringes, watching. He left his car where he’d parked it, and they took off in her truck with him driving.

  Julianne twisted in the seat to get a last glimpse of Bickham’s and wondered whether she’d ever do business from there again. She thought of all the backbreaking work she’d put into reviving the store, and all the times someone had tried to take it away from her. It had looked so nice when it was finished, with the redecorating and her careful planning. But it hadn’t lasted more than four months. Now it was a heap of smoking embers, water-soaked, ruined. All the tears she’d choked back so many times began flowing in earnest.

  “Juli, what’s wrong?” Mitchell asked, a shadow of panic in his voice. He pulled over to a curb and put his arm around her shoulders. “Honey, are you all right? Are you hurt?”

  “No, but look at what those people did to my little store.” She sobbed. She’d never felt so alone in her life or that she had so many enemies. “Why, Mitchell?” she asked. “Why do they hate me?”

  He clutched her to him in a fierce embrace and pressed her forehead against the crook of his neck. He smelled of smoke, just like that other night so long ago, but now it didn’t bother her in the same way.

  He breathed a shaky sigh. “They don’t hate you. They hate me.”

  Julianne came out of the bathroom in the motel room, a towel turbaned around her wet hair, feeling scrubbed and clean. Jack lifted his head briefly from the floor, glanced at her, and went back to sleep. She envied him—it was almost 2:30 a.m., but she was wide awake.