Troubled Waters

by Susan May Warren

  He cast a look through the window and saw Sierra grinning, handing Jess a cookie.

  Ian turned, descended the stairs, and headed to his truck, the night closing around him as he walked outside the glow of the porch.

  He was just shutting the door when he heard his name called out from the porch. Turning, he spied Sierra running out to him. She held a plastic container.

  He liked this picture—Sierra running toward him.

  “The sugar cookies weren’t just for Sam and Pete,” she said as she held out the container.

  He offered a smile, something quick, forcing it past the stab in his chest. “Thank you.”

  “No, Ian. Thank you. For staying.” Her face turned solemn. “You were a good friend tonight.” She reached out, touched his arm. Squeezed.

  He stood there, nodding dumbly as she turned and ran back to the house.

  A good friend. Never had words felt so brutal.

  He set the cookies on the bench seat of the truck and slid inside.

  The PEAK Rescue compound had once belonged to the parcel he’d purchased from Ruthie King’s family, and it only took Ian moments to turn into the drive of his log home. Although the house sat dark and lonely, light waxed out from the open door of the horse barn.

  A pickup and trailer backed up to the fencing of the bullpen.

  Ian parked nearby and got out. “Kade?”

  He could hear the foreman whistling in the darkness, the buzz of an electric prod and the whinny of a horse carry across the field.

  Kade wasn’t really trying to round up Rooster at this time of night?

  Ian came over to the fencing. Floodlights from the barn cast out into the field and yes, just on the rise, he could make out his 1,200-pound bull, snorting and angry as Kade herded him toward the chute he’d set up.

  Ian said nothing as he watched his foreman work the bull. Kade was so easy on a horse it seemed like he might be a part of the animal. He wore a pair of chaps over jeans, a denim shirt, gloves, and a Stetson over his brown hair. Ian had made the right decision when he’d discovered the kid—not a kid anymore—working the oil fields of Dawson and offered him a job running his ranch.

  If anything, Ian had good instincts for finding talent. Like Sierra, who’d been such an amazing assistant he’d let it distract him from what he really wanted.

  Kade came into the light and waved to Ian. Shouted at the bull, who now ran toward the trailer.

  Ian came through the gate so he could close it when the bull trotted in.

  Kade chased the bull in, and Ian slammed the gate shut, secured it.

  “Mr. Shaw, I didn’t expect you back. Everything okay?” Kade pulled his mount around.

  “Yep. I thought you were still in Dawson.” He climbed into the cab of the truck and pulled the rig forward to clear a path for Kade.

  Kade came through, dismounted, and led his horse into the barn. “I meant to be here yesterday, but I had to route down to Helena, then across to Missoula due to the fire in the park. I need to have Rooster to the Triple M by tomorrow.” He took off his gloves. “Are you sure you want to sell him? He’s still got a number of good breeding years in him.”

  Ian nodded, didn’t elaborate. “How much did you get for him?”

  “Four hundred twenty.”

  That left Ian about $9.5 million short of his own personal Rebuild Dawson goal.

  Ian walked to the head of the trailer, looked in at Rooster.

  The big boy’s dark eyes blinked at him, stoic. Unmoved by his fate.

  Probably Ian should have such a response. He drew in a breath and held out his hand to Kade. “Thanks, Kade. You’ve worked hard here. You should know . . . I’m thinking of selling.”

  Kade nodded as he pulled off his Stetson. Shifted in the dirt. “I was hoping to talk to you about that. I think I’m headed back to Dawson.”

  “For good.”

  “Mmmhmm,” Kade said.

  Ian offered a grin. “It’s the girl, isn’t it?”

  Kade looked away, and a smile slid up one side of his face. “It’s the girl.”

  Ian clamped him on the shoulder. “Don’t be a stranger.” He headed back to his truck while Kade stabled his horse.

  By the time Kade pulled out, Ian had dragged in his suitcase, toed off his shoes, retrieved a bottled water from the fridge, and stood in his stocking feet, staring out his massive picture window at the horizon. Pinpricks of starlight dotted the dark scope of the sky. To the east, an eerie orange lined the jagged black mountain scape. And in the distance to the north, the faintest ribbon of undulating green and lavender.

  The northern lights, drifting from the polar ice fields.

  A wild, majestic land that had called to him, back when he longed to start over, fueled by his father’s dreams and not a little residual grief.

  He’d come here searching for family. A legacy. A home.

  He’d managed to build—then lose—it all. Esme. Sierra. PEAK.

  Yes, it was time to concede to the flames of his failure and head back to Texas.

  4

  IAN SHAW WAS LEAVING HER.

  Okay, maybe that toed over the edge into overreacting, but still . . .

  It felt that way.

  Sierra lay in bed in her tiny second-story bedroom that she rented from Jess Tagg, the darkness peeling back as dawn peeked through her blinds, striping the floor. She stared at the ceiling, his words pooling inside her like poison.

  “I’m thinking that I should just leave.”

  She could still hear his sigh, see the truth in his eyes.

  He’d given up.

  He only confirmed it with his next words. “I’m never going to find her, and if I stick around here, not being in charge of the PEAK team is going to turn me inside out.”

  She understood helpless. Every time the team left on a callout with her tethered behind, she fought the fear that someone wouldn’t return home.

  The PEAK team felt like her home now, the way Ian and Esme had once been.

  “I need to walk away, Sierra. Not look back. Start over.”

  Not look back. At the wreckage of his dreams. At her, and how she’d caused that wreckage.

  She could fix this.

  Please.

  She got up and tied her robe over her pajamas. She grabbed her phone, creaked open her door, and headed downstairs.

  The crisp morning fragrance of roasted java curled through the old three-story house, mixing with the smell of new paint, recently sanded flooring, and not a little elbow grease. Jess had purchased the 1907 house for a dollar from the city and spent the past eighteen months slowly turning it from dilapidated and condemned to something she, Jess, and Willow called home. From stripping the wood floors down to the original beautiful oak grain, to restaining the woodwork, to repairing the two bathrooms, overhauling the kitchen, and finally repairing and repainting the three small upstairs bedrooms, Jess poured herself into the transformation.

  As if she might be transforming herself, also. She talked so little of her past, however, that Sierra hadn’t a clue what Jess might be really fighting to restore.

  She was, however, thankful for Jess’s vision, the place she now called home.

  Willow had moved into the pink room, while Sierra took the lemon yellow room.

  Jess had the master, with the balcony that overlooked the front lawn. She’d decked it out with a lounge chair perfect for reading.

  Standing at the kitchen counter, Jess stared at the drip coffeemaker. She was dressed in a pair of leggings, running shoes, and a tank, her hair pulled back in a neat blonde ponytail. Sweat trickled down her back.

  “You’ve already been out running?” Sierra said as she took a mug from the cupboard.

  A beat of silence, then, “He shows up out of nowhere, drives through an inferno, his hair practically on fire, to save me, and then all but ignores me. I thought for sure he’d say something about why he returned after we got back to PEAK, but . . . nothing. Just sat there eating cookies
. And then he took off with Gage and Ty and . . . for all I know, he’s already left town again.”

  Oh. Of course they were talking about Pete. Poor Jess had looked like she’d been run over by a train for weeks after he’d left.

  The girl had a bad case of the what-ifs, a condition Sierra knew too well. “I doubt that—if you’d seen the way he took off after you . . .” Sierra joined her at the counter. “I still can’t figure out why you started dating Ty. I thought you and Pete had something going last summer—”

  “We did.” Jess reached out, grabbed the pot, and filled her mug. Offered to pour Sierra’s.

  Sierra held out her mug.

  “It was my fault he left,” Jess said.

  Sierra frowned. “He got offered a great job with the Red Cross—”

  “No. He came here, and I saw it in his eyes. He was asking for a reason to turn it down. From me.”

  “And you couldn’t give him one?” Oh Jess.

  She sighed. “I should have told you all, years ago.” Jess turned a hip against the counter and blew on the coffee. “But I didn’t want you to think of me differently.”

  Sierra just stared at her.

  Jess looked up, pain in her eyes. “I’ve been keeping a secret from you.”

  Me too. But Sierra just swallowed. “Everyone is entitled to a few secrets, right?”

  “I used to think so. But . . . that’s the problem. Secrets are always found out, and when they are, people get hurt.”

  Sierra took a sip of coffee, let the heat brace her up, the caffeine find her bones.

  “I’m not who I say I am.”

  Sierra didn’t know what to say. She just stood there as Jess walked over to the table, pulled out a chair, and slid onto it.

  “My name is Selene Jessica Taggert.” She raised an eyebrow like that should ring a bell.

  And suddenly . . . “Wait. Ian used to attend the Taggert Annual Gala every year—a fundraiser in Houston that raised support for chronically ill children.”

  “Yes. That was run by an acquaintance of mine, Vanessa White. It was one of the many charities we helped fund. My father’s way of hiding his crimes—divert attention.”

  “Your father?”

  “Damien Taggert. Of Taggert Investments, his charter company.”

  “Ian had a few investments with Taggert until . . . oh my . . .”

  Jess smiled sadly. “Yeah. That’s my father, the man who created the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, who bilked hundreds of thousands of people out of their entire life savings, created fake retirement accounts, started shell companies that defrauded Hollywood superstars and athletes alike—you should have seen the proposed guest list to my wedding . . .”

  Then, she winced, looked away, as if her own words were too much to bear.

  “Your wedding?”

  Jess took another sip of coffee. “I was engaged to Felipe St. Augustine, a really nice guy who didn’t deserve to have his name destroyed by my family.”

  Sierra found a chair. So, this might be a bigger secret than hers.

  “When my father was arrested, the attorney general also brought charges against me and my brother. See, we had both interned at the New York office, and they claimed that we knew about my father’s fraudulent practices.”

  Sierra waited for it, and when Jess looked up, she had to swallow.

  “We did. It’s a long story, but in order to keep my brother and me out of jail, I testified against my father.” She was looking out the window. “I betrayed him, and he got 150 years in prison.”

  Sierra drew in a breath.

  “I haven’t seen him since. The day he was sentenced, I walked out of the courtroom, got on a subway, took it to the farthest stop, got out, bought a car with cash, and drove away.”

  “And ended up here?”

  “Sort of. Ty and I knew each other from the days when my family would ski out here, and later, in college. I called him, and he fixed me up with Chet.” She made a wry face. “I actually have a medical degree, had finished my first year as an intern, was accepted to the residency program at Mt. Sinai in New York, so getting my EMT license was easy.”

  “So, Ty knows who you are.”

  “And Chet. But no one else . . . and I wanted to keep it that way. Reporters want to hear my side of the story, and frankly, I can’t go through that again. More, there are people whose lives were destroyed because of my family. We got death threats every day.”

  “Are you in danger?”

  “I don’t know. Probably not, but . . . I just wanted to start over, you know? Shake off the past, see if I could make it on my own, be a new person.”

  “Overhaul a dollar house, be known as Jess Tagg—”

  “Yeah. Not Selene Taggert, the daughter of the biggest thief in history, a co-conspirator and the woman who betrayed her family to save herself.” Jess pulled up one leg onto the chair, wrapped her arm around it. “And my secret didn’t matter until Pete came along. Maybe it would have been fine if he wasn’t such a . . .”

  “Charmer?” Sierra smiled.

  “Hero. The guy is always making the papers.”

  Oh. “Only because local reporter Tallie Kennedy has a major crush on him. In fact, that’s why I thought you two broke up—because he’d gone out with Tallie.”

  “Yeah, that bothered me, but . . . no. He tried to drag me into the limelight with him, and I just . . . I just can’t let my previous life destroy this one, you know?”

  Sierra nodded. Because she’d do anything to keep her mistakes from destroying her future. But she couldn’t leave, couldn’t start over.

  She had nowhere to run, nothing but PEAK to call her own.

  Maybe she simply wasn’t as strong or courageous as Jess.

  “Why not tell him?” Sierra asked.

  “I wanted to—I know I should. I panicked and ran away. Ty was there, and he . . .”

  “I thought that was weird, but . . . I thought maybe you liked Ty.” She raised an eyebrow.

  “No! I know I made it look that way, but I just needed to distance myself from Pete. It wasn’t Ty’s idea, although he was a champ to protect me while I tried to figure out what I wanted. We’re just friends. In fact, he urged me to tell Pete about my other life. And I was going to—and then Pete left for his new job, and . . . I should have told him before he left. I didn’t want to hold him back, I guess.” She winced. “No, that’s not right.” She looked up at Sierra. “I was afraid he wouldn’t want me after I told him what I’d done.”

  Sierra nodded, Jess’s words skimming too close, finding the tender places. She knew a little about being rejected after harboring secrets. Ian hadn’t exactly been forgiving after she’d told him she’d known Esme was going to run away with Dante.

  “So, now that he’s back, you’re going to tell him, right?”

  Jess nodded. “Yes. I mean, that’s what I was hoping for when I was trying to outrun the fire, but then . . .” She looked up. “What if it’s all in my head? Pete’s a hero—of course he’d drive through a fire to save me. And yeah, when we kissed—”

  “Wait. I know Pete made a move on you, but you never told me you kissed.”

  Jess bit her lip, the secret showing in her eyes. She nodded. “On a mountain, about a year ago. Remember when Sam was lost?”

  “With me.” The voice came from behind them, near the coffeepot. Willow, wearing an oversized Mercy Falls sweatshirt and pajama pants, had come in the door. “You kissed Pete while you were looking for us?” She poured herself a cup of coffee and grinned at Jess. “And we’re only finding out about it now?”

  “It was the last thing on my mind, what with Sam nearly dying and you almost getting mauled by a grizzly, hello.”

  Willow came over to the table. “So, tell us now. You kissed Pete? And?”

  Jess looked away, but a smile played on her lips. She reached up then and ran her hand along her cheek.

  “Oh my. That good?”

  Jess took in a breath. “Epic, of course
. Because it’s Pete, and everything about Pete is epic.”

  “Including his ability to break hearts.” Sierra stared at her. “He kissed you, then left town?”

  “It wasn’t quite that way. I think I broke his heart first,” Jess said.

  “Or not. This is Pete we’re talking about.” Willow got up, went to the fridge, and opened it. “According to Sam, he was seeing a girl on his Red Cross team.”

  Jess stilled, and Sierra wanted to throttle her sister. But Willow always did speak first, think second.

  Willow grabbed a yogurt container, went to retrieve a spoon. “I think he’s back because Sam called him about their mom.”

  Jess turned then. “Oh no, please don’t tell me Maren has cancer again.”

  Willow was opening the yogurt and looked up, eyes wide. “No. She’s . . . well, she’s dating Chet King. And Sam is completely freaking out about it.” She licked the top of the yogurt. “I told him to leave them alone. Everyone should have a happy ending, right?”

  She tossed the top into the garbage, stirred the yogurt.

  Jess looked at Sierra, shrugged.

  Willow came over, pulled out a chair. “Why are you two up so early on a Saturday?”

  “I have to make a call,” Sierra said.

  Because everyone should have a happy ending. Even if it didn’t include her.

  She got up and headed outside to the front porch, not caring that she was still in her bathrobe. The scent of the coming fall laden the cool September air as she sat down on the porch.

  Dialed.

  Listened.

  Voicemail picked up on the third ring. “This is Shae—leave a message.”

  Sierra debated, then said softly, “Time’s up, Esme. Come home, or I’m telling Ian.”

  He just needed to breathe. One lousy breath, something fresh and crisp and clean—

  Help!

  The word formed like a fist in his chest, punching through him to reach for the surface, through the choking layers of black, the dust, the smell of ash and creosote and dirt.

  “Help!”

  Pete sat up in the darkness, gulping in breath, his body slick with sweat, his heart slamming against his rib cage. Blades of light cut into the room from around the shades, wan light that pressed away the shadows.