Turn Me Loose (Paradise, Idaho)

by Rosalind James

  She didn’t even bother to answer that. Seize the moment. Worked for her. She was swinging fast around the curves, Travis’s lights hard on her tail.

  “But that thing you haven’t asked me,” he said. “Why hasn’t Stacy called me back yet? That wouldn’t have something to do with you, would it? My last loose end, and here I’d been planning on tying it up tonight. Oh, well. Tomorrow’s another day.”

  The chill was running down her arms, and she forced her voice into calm as she answered. “Stacy’s not going to call you back.”

  “No? We’ll see. Without you there? I think she will. Sounds like she got pretty distraught the other night. She loves me, you see, and she loves you. She just goes around loving everybody, doesn’t she? You might have clued her in on how good an idea that is.”

  “Loving a piece of shit like you?” she said. “Yeah, I might have. Oh, wait. I did.”

  “She might get so distraught,” he went on, “that she’d drive into a tree on the way home from my place. Or just go to sleep and never wake up. Pills and alcohol. Dangerous combination, especially when you don’t know what you’re taking, because somebody’s dropped them in your drink and sent you on home with a Baggie full of more. Stacy’s got a real bad habit. Bad habits can kill you, you know. Make a note.”

  “She doesn’t know anything,” Rochelle managed to say. She’d been berating herself for going to Lake’s, for endangering not just herself but Travis, too. But if she hadn’t done that . . . if this didn’t work . . . Oh, no. Not Stacy.

  “She knows me,” Shane said. “And nobody’s allowed to know me. I’m just a guy hanging around sometimes. No,” he sighed. “I’m afraid I’d already decided that Stacy has to go. She was a loose end, and now you are, too. You’ve slowed me down, but it doesn’t really matter, does it? Tonight, tomorrow. Same difference. Turn in here.”

  A boat launch.

  “Stop at the top of the ramp,” Shane said. He was lifting the gun from her side now, moving it up. To her head.

  How well does it work underwater? He was going to shoot her, then shove the car into the river.

  Like hell he was. Her revolver needed a long, hard pull, and she was betting he didn’t know it. He’d be a semiautomatic guy all the way. Always taking the easy route.

  She didn’t stop. Instead, she gunned the engine, then shifted her foot fast and braked with all her might. And the moment she did it, her hand was swinging around, her finger pressing down on the tiny can of pepper spray she’d bought almost a year ago, when another predator was threatening women in Paradise. Had bought, and then had nearly forgotten.

  Nearly forgotten, but not quite. She emptied the entire can into Shane’s face.

  A whole lot of things happened at once, and they were all bad. Her face was on fire, her eyes had closed, and she couldn’t breathe. The car was lurching forward, then they were flying, and there was a noise like a cannon blast. The pain—more pain—bloomed in her head, spiky, red, and burning hot.

  She couldn’t hear. She couldn’t see. And her head was on fire. The next instant, the car slammed down like it was hitting concrete, jolting her against her seat belt even as she screamed with the pain. Screamed, but she couldn’t hear it, because she was deaf. And she was dying.

  ICE COLD

  Travis was right behind them, turning off into the boat-launch area. His heart was racing, his breath coming hard and fast, and his mind considering scenarios, then rejecting them.

  The cops weren’t here. They were back there somewhere, but they weren’t here.

  That was when he heard the shot. Oh, God. Oh, no. And Rochelle’s car, sailing into the river and smashing down hard. Floating. For now.

  He didn’t think. He was out of the truck, kicking off his running shoes, throwing himself into the water, and swimming hard for the car.

  She’s not dead, he told himself desperately. She can’t be dead. Not Rochelle.

  Five or six yards, that was all. The water was bitterly cold, numbing him, taking his breath. But he was at the driver’s window and grabbing the door handle.

  Locked.

  The moon came out from behind the clouds, and he saw it. A dark spiderweb on the glass. The shot. He punched at the window, kernels of safety glass were falling away, and he could see.

  Rochelle, right there. Wheezing. Gasping. Darkness covering her face. Blood. And beyond her, more gasping and coughing, but he barely noticed it.

  He grabbed her shoulder, and she turned that terrible face toward him.

  “Rochelle,” he shouted. “Punch your seat belt. Punch it.”

  He said it again, but she still wasn’t doing anything. She couldn’t hear, he realized. The gunshot. And she couldn’t see. The blood.

  He pulled himself farther into the car, heaving his entire body over her. Something burned his throat, tried to suck his breath, stung his eyes. He fought the sensation, reached for her side, and fumbled. At last, he felt the button, and he was stabbing at it, then pulling the seat belt back.

  The car was sinking lower. Water was pouring in the side window now, tilting the car toward him. His head went under, but the freezing water washed his eyes and took the sting away. He came up again and saw the angle. His weight, the weight of the water, all of it threatening to tip the car.

  Get her out. He shoved himself back out of the window, pulling her with him. One hand on the window frame to hold him there, the other one reaching in, around her side, yanking hard.

  “Baby.” His teeth were chattering, his entire body shivering. “Move toward me. Come on. Move.”

  She couldn’t hear him, he knew, but she was moving toward him anyway, instinctively, maybe, and he was pulling her.

  She wasn’t coming, though. She was stuck.

  The car tilted again, the moonlight shone more strongly, and he saw it. Shane, grabbing Rochelle’s ankle, pulling her down.

  Travis forgot about holding on to the side of the car. He got both hands under Rochelle’s arms and his stockinged feet against the car door, heaved with everything he had, and she came loose like a cork from a bottle.

  Shane was still grabbing, still flailing, and the car was even lower now, the water rushing in. But Travis didn’t care about the car. He was treading water with his legs and one arm, hanging on to Rochelle with the other hand, being dragged downstream with the current, and it was cold. So cold.

  She went under, came up choking. She was stunned, still. Disoriented. She wasn’t going to make it.

  I’m going to die trying, she’d said. And so was he. Right now, if he had to. Do it, or die trying. He grabbed her with his left arm across her chest, hauled her in tight against him, and focused on the shore.

  Five or six yards. Piece of cake.

  His entire body was shaking with cold now, but he struck out in a diagonal path all the same. Farther to swim, but so much easier than straight across the current, and his strength was ebbing too fast.

  There were lights flashing on shore. Red and blue. Headlights illuminating the water far to the left of him, where the car was. He couldn’t hear anything above the rush of the river, and his progress was so slow. Too slow, and getting slower. He was shutting down.

  No. Move. Swim.

  He’d trained for the Olympics once. He hadn’t made it. He’d trained his heart out and swum his guts out, and he hadn’t made it.

  Swim.

  Rochelle was gasping, choking out a word. “What . . . what . . .”

  Hold still, he thought. I need to swim. He forced his legs to keep moving.

  Die trying.

  The shore was closer now, the lights swinging around, shining on the water next to him. Shouts, and something dark hitting the water. A person, and then another.

  Two more strokes. Three. Four. His foot hit something, but it took a moment for the message to get through his foggy brain.

  Touch bottom. Stand up.

  He got his feet under him, stood, and fell over, somehow managing to keep hold of Rochelle. A figure mate
rialized ahead of him, holding out a strap.

  “Hang on,” a male voice said.

  Travis shook his head, and with the last of his strength, shoved Rochelle at the rescuer. And then he fell again.

  He was shaking worse than ever. He tried to move his arms, and he couldn’t, and the panic filled him.

  Drowning. He was drowning.

  “Stay still,” a voice above him said. “Hold still.”

  He opened his eyes. His entire body was jerking, shuddering, and he was still trying to move his arms, and he still couldn’t.

  Ambulance, he realized fuzzily. His arms and legs were fastened down, he was dry, and there was warmth on his stomach, his groin, his armpits. And he was shaking so hard.

  His mind wanted to skitter down into dark panic. Why? And then the coldest thing yet.

  Rochelle.

  He’d dropped her. He’d said he’d die trying, or he’d thought it. Something. And he’d dropped her.

  “R-Rochelle,” he said.

  Just like that, she was there. Her hand on his chest, her face in his vision. Her hair plastered to her, her body wrapped in blankets like that other time, that time in his truck. Something wrong with her head, though. The whole top of it covered with white. Bandage.

  “Wha . . . what . . .?” he asked. He couldn’t get it out. He couldn’t say it.

  She seemed to understand him, though. “I pepper-sprayed . . . the bastard,” she said, although her voice wasn’t right, either. Not at all. “And he . . . shot me. Luckily . . . he’s a crappy shot. Just gave me a new part.”

  Where was Shane? Travis needed to get out. He was trapped. What if Shane came back?

  “Hold still,” the paramedic said. “You’re losing heat. Hold still.”

  Travis tried to explain that he needed to not be trapped. In case. In case Shane came back.

  Rochelle was saying something else now. “Let me,” she told the paramedic beside her. “Please. Let me warm him up.”

  The straps holding Travis down were coming loose at last, and he was trying to get up, but Rochelle put a hand on his chest and said, “Travis. Baby. Lie down. Wait for me.”

  Her voice was trembling, and she needed him to wait, so he did. She stood up and dropped her own blankets.

  She was naked. He wanted to tell her not to do that, but he couldn’t get the words out. She pulled his blankets back and straddled him, and he wanted to tell her not to do that, either, not in front of that guy. And then she lay down on top of him on the narrow stretcher, her head against his neck, her full breasts pressed into his chest. The blankets were coming over them, and her arms were wrapped around him, and she was talking.

  “Stay with me,” she said. “Let me warm you up. Stay with me.”

  She was asking, so he tried, and she lay over him and held him. He was still shaking hard, but she was holding on anyway.

  A minute later, or forever, and she was talking again, so he tried to listen.

  “Know what I used to think?” she asked him.

  He didn’t answer, because he couldn’t, but she didn’t wait anyway. “I used to think, I’m holding out for a full-grown man. I’m holding out for a hero, and I just might be holding out forever. But you know what happened?”

  “Wh-what?” he managed to say.

  “My hero came along.” Her mouth was at his neck, her breath warming him there, and he felt the vibration of her voice all the way from her chest into his own, like her body and his were the same. “I held out, and there he came, riding into my life like it was meant to be. He came along, and he saved me. He saved me in all kinds of ways.”

  “G-good,” he said, and then he said it again. “Good.”

  “And he’s you,” she said, and she was crying. “Travis . . . he’s you.”

  Gradually, his shakes subsided to trembles, and his mind got clearer, like coming out of a dream. Or a nightmare. Rochelle didn’t move, though, and he didn’t want her to. He had his arms around her, too, now. It was everything he could do just to lift them, but he lifted them anyway.

  “That’s better,” she said when he’d done it. “It’s always better when you hold me.”

  “Yeah.” His brain was still fuzzy, and his entire body was so beat, it was like he’d been hit with a bag of rocks.

  “I need to tell the cops about Lake,” she said, and that took him a long couple of seconds to process. “He wasn’t dead. I need to tell them. He tried to save me, and Shane shot him.”

  “I told them . . . it was . . . his house. I think . . . they went.” He hoped she understood, because it was too much to explain.

  “Oh.” She sighed. “Good.”

  If Lake had tried to save Rochelle, that was good, but Lake was the one who’d put her in danger in the first place. Travis remembered that much.

  “You shouldn’t have gone,” he said.

  “If I hadn’t, Shane would have killed Stacy. He was going to make her OD again. Worse.”

  He didn’t have an answer for that, and he was too tired anyway, so he lay there and didn’t say anything.

  The ambulance was slowing now. Turning, then turning again. A hospital, surely. And Rochelle was talking some more.

  “I knew I’d kill Shane,” she said. “But I knew you’d save me, too. I’m not sure if I killed him, but you sure enough saved me. Although I saved you, too.”

  “Huh?” He didn’t remember that. Should he?

  “I know you’re going to make a crack sometime here about my boobs being life preservers,” she said. “I’m just saving you . . .”

  Her voice broke, and he tightened his arms around her. Holding her tight. Holding her close.

  She took a breath and finished. Tough right up to the end. Strong and loving, fierce and tender. His perfect match. His perfect woman. “I’m just saving you the trouble.”

  THAT PERSON

  Thanksgiving had come and gone, and Travis was in his truck on a Saturday morning in early December, driving to Rochelle’s house once again. Driving carefully, just like that first day with his hydrangea, trying not to tip his cargo over in the bed of the truck.

  It wasn’t hot today, of course. There was that. It had been hot in Brawley, though, when he’d taken Rochelle to his mother’s ten days ago for a second Thanksgiving dinner. After they’d had their first at her parents’, because the near miss had been too close for her folks, and they’d needed Rochelle with them.

  Two daughters nearly lost in the space of a few days . . . it had taxed even their stoicism. Both daughters had been restored, though, thanks to Rochelle. Who never gave in, and never gave up.

  What did you do when you found a woman like that? You held on to her, that was what. You held on to her, and you didn’t let her go.

  Farmers hold on, he’d told her back in that elevator. He wasn’t a farmer, but he’d known one. He’d learned how to hold on from the best. And anytime he needed a reminder, Rochelle’s dad would be there to give it to him.

  He pulled up on the gravel outside her house and hopped down. Snow tonight, they’d said, and it felt like it. But then, it seemed like every momentous event in his and Rochelle’s life had had something to do with water, so that was fair enough.

  His heart was going like a runaway train by the time he headed up her walk. Dell was outside, fastening Charlie’s red leash to his collar, wrapped in a voluminous, extravagantly hooded wool coat. No puffy jackets for Dell.

  “Well, good morning, sunshine,” she said. “What’s that you’ve got in your truck? Kinda out of season, aren’t you?”

  “You could call it a statement,” he said.

  “Hmm.” Her eyes shone bright under the hood. “Can’t wait to hear. But I’m guessing I might have to wait to do that.”

  “You’d be guessing right.”

  He was up on the porch now, ringing the doorbell. Stacy answered it. She’d been back with Rochelle for a few weeks now, and she was doing all right.

  “Hi,” he said. “How’s it going?”

&
nbsp; “Not too bad,” she said. “Studying. Come on in.”

  She’d been coming by his office a couple times a week to work on her Stats homework, even though she didn’t really need it. Her brain was just fine. It was only her confidence that needed a boost. That had been shaken to the core, there was no doubt, but there was nothing like making it through something tough and coming out stronger on the other side to restore your confidence. It might not be her best academic semester ever, but she was making it through.

  It also didn’t hurt to have the people gone who’d been sapping your confidence, and nothing was more gone than dead. Shane had died that night, before the rescuers could get to him, and Lake hadn’t. Lake had survived to tell his story to the sheriff’s office, and Rochelle had told the rest of it.

  It was a fairly interesting story, too. It turned out that Shane’s real partner hadn’t been a doctor at all, but the office manager for a pain clinic up in Spokane. Across state lines, making tracing prescriptions harder, especially when you could divide them up among three doctors and forge all of their signatures. Especially when you were the one ordering the prescription pads.

  Shane had been smart, all right, making sure the distribution of the pills happened far away, keeping the network under the radar. He just hadn’t been as smart as he’d thought he was, with Heather’s pregnancy being one prime example, not to mention having four men witnessing him leave Lake’s house with her on the night she’d disappeared. Once the dam of silence had burst, it had all come out, and thanks to Jim Lawson, Travis and Rochelle had gotten an early rundown on the whole sad story.

  And as for Lake—he was probably going to jail, no hope for that. On probation for a good long time at the very least, despite his cooperation, but Rochelle hadn’t seemed to lose too much sleep over that.

  “He was always going to go to jail,” she’d told Travis’s mom after dinner on that Saturday night after Thanksgiving, when the three of them, plus an uncharacteristically subdued Zora, had been taking a walk around town. “It was just a matter of time. Shortcuts always seem to turn into dead ends, don’t they? But Lake never figured that out. Maybe he’ll know now. I hope so.”