by Mary Coley
“Chad was already there, hoping I’d gone back to my cabin and looking for Max. Dad was threatening to call the sheriff. Max barged into the cabin right behind me, calling me horrible names. My mom was crying, and Dad was yelling. Chad demanded Max apologize, but he wouldn’t, so Chad told him to leave. Max laughed.”
Sean clenched his fists. Jenna had kept this bottled up inside her for twenty years. Could he have said or done anything differently so she would have trusted him enough to tell him what had happened?
“My sister came in and tried to talk sense into Max. He slapped her, shoved her across the room. She slammed into the fireplace and fell. Max hit Dad, and then threw Mom to the floor when she tried to knock him over the head with a lamp. He grabbed me. Mom and Dad lay on the floor, not moving. Max was crazy, yelling at Chad. He was choking me. Molly wasn’t moving. I tried to get away from him and over to her. I knocked a candle off the table.”
She sobbed again.
“It’s okay, Jenna. You don’t have to go on.” Sean stroked her hair, but she pushed his hand away.
“The tablecloth caught on fire. Max dragged me out to his truck. He shoved me inside and drove off into the country. I pleaded with him to let me go, but he just laughed. He slapped me. A little later, he jerked me out of the truck, took me inside a building, and raped me again. I fainted. When I woke up, Max was gone. I ran.” Jenna covered her face with her hands. Sobs shook her body.
Sean stared into his wife’s eyes. “You’re all right now, honey. You’re safe.”
Mandy crouched on the floor in front of the Jenna. Moby whined.
The cabin door slammed open and Dale burst into the living room. “There’s been an accident at the line shack.” Dale looked shaken, her eyes wide. “Lamar called on the walkie-talkie. They need another pair of hands and…” She saw Jenna on the sofa beside Sean. “I didn’t realize anyone else was here. Sorry to bust in.”
“It’s all right, Dale. This is Jenna—my wife,” Sean said. He wiped the tears from Jenna’s cheek with his finger.
Moby barked one and leaped across the room to Dale. She patted the dog’s head absently. Her face blanched. “They found you. I’m… so glad.” Her voice dropped. “But I have four guests,” she said to Mandy. “I need help. Have to serve dinner, and I don’t know what’s happened up there.”
“Tell me how to get to the line shack. I’ll go and see what they need,” Sean said. He glanced at Jenna. “Will you be okay for a bit here with Mandy?”
“The shack’s twenty minutes from here. The roads are rough, you’ll need the four-wheel drive.” Dale handed the keys to the SUV to him, giving directions as she shuffled outside.
Sean took mental notes. Hours of daylight remained. It shouldn’t be any problem to find them.
“I’ve got to get back to the main house and get things ready for dinner.” Dale stepped off the porch, rubbing her forehead. She swayed as she crossed the grassy lawn.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Sean assured her.
Sean stepped back inside the cabin. Jenna stared beyond him, through the empty doorway.
“Jenna? Maybe we should all go, if you feel up to it. It’s Lamar, and Max,” Sean said. Jenna looked terrified. He reconsidered. “Maybe you don’t want to…”
“I can’t go with you. I’m not ready.” She closed her eyes, stood, and lost her balance.
Sean grabbed her arm and eased her down onto the sofa. “You’re shaking.”
“I think he must have taken me to the line shack. While the cabin and my parents burned. I ran from there. That glass crypt in Chad’s painting was in the line shack.”
Mandy stood. “Oh, Jenna, how horrible. I’ll go with Sean. You stay here. Lock the door and don’t let anyone in. Lamar is on our side. That’ll be three against one,” Mandy said.
“Three against one,” Jenna repeated in a strangled voice.
“Are you sure you’ll be all right?” Sean asked. His wife was so pale. But he wanted to find Max. The man deserved prison for what he’d done. His gun and his handcuffs were in his car.
He and Mandy left the cabin and Jenna locked the door behind them.
He didn’t know what they’d find up at the line shack, but he did know one thing. He’d have to force himself to take Max Hardesty to the police when he’d much rather kill him himself.
~ Chapter 54 ~
Mandy
Mandy and Sean rushed to the main house where Dale’s SUV was parked.
“I don’t think Dale knows what Max did.” She couldn’t get past the loving looks she had witnessed between the couple during her brief stay. “She doesn’t seem afraid of him. They seem normal.”
“You’ve spent the last few days with her. Don’t ask me if she knows her husband was responsible for Mr. and Mrs. Bergen’s deaths, as well as raping my wife.” Sean scowled as he slid behind the wheel.
“Dale met Max after the fire. She was vague about her past. She’s not the only person in the world who didn’t have a perfect childhood.” Mandy thought about Dale’s constant headaches. Could there be a connection to her past? “If she knew about any of this, she’s blocked it out. And if Max killed Mike, he gave no indication last night. No sweat, cool as a cucumber, drinking his beer. But there was something odd.” She remembered the exchange of looks between the husband and wife; they had suspected she was not who she said she was.
They got into the SUV and headed out on the dirt track road through the pasture.
Mandy stared out at the waving grasses, watching for the first fork in the road, where they would turn right and begin to navigate the hills toward the line shack. Hot air hung over the yellowing grassland. Grasshoppers and butterflies flitted among the grass stems.
Her head filled with images of Jenna’s rape and the cabin fire. She tried to put herself in her friend’s place. Could she have kept such a secret for twenty years? She imagined Jenna’s loneliness, and her fear. Had Jenna truly believed she would be held responsible for that fire, for abandoning her sister, and for her parents’ deaths?
Twenty minutes later, Sean turned the SUV to the right at the final fork. It rumbled down the rutted road and took another curve. Mandy spotted the small building between two oak trees. Max’s blue pickup was parked in front of the shack.
They jumped from the vehicle and ran to the door. When Mandy knocked, the unlatched door creaked open. Inside, Lamar and Max sat at a wooden table across the room, their chairs turned to face the door. A walkie-talkie lay between them on the table.
“Hey there, Mandy,” Max sneered. “This must be your friend’s husband.” A smug smile curled his lips.
Lamar didn’t look up. His hands remained in his lap. A beer can sat on the table beside him.
“What’s going on? Dale said there was a problem.” Mandy stepped into the room, but Sean remained in the doorway. The room smelled of beer, dirt, and sweat. Empty beer bottles and dirty plates were stacked on the counter in the small kitchen as if someone had been living here.
“Problem? Yes, there is,” Max said. “You know too much. I have to take care of that.”
Alarm bells rang in her head. She took a step back toward Sean.
“Maybe it’s not what you actually know,” Max continued, “but what you’re getting too close to figuring out.”
Sean’s eyes narrowed. He glared at Max. “You son of a bitch.”
Max startled. “Whoa! Maybe I’m wrong, and you do know! Did Sharon talk about me? After all these years, she’s still talking about how great a lover I was, isn’t she?”
“You don’t know her at all,” Sean replied.
“Maybe you don’t know your wife, after all,” Max snickered.
Lamar tried unsuccessfully to shove his chair back and grimaced. His hands were tied together in his lap, his feet bound at the ankles.
The door behind Mandy and Sean slammed open, knocking Sean to the floor. The man who entered shoved Mandy toward the table, stomped brutally on Sean’s hands and kicked his
head.
“Oh, let me do the honors.” Max laughed. “Chad, this is Amanda Lyons. And that mess on the floor is her friend Sean Wade. He’s married to Sharon, only he knows her as Jenna. This is my brother, Chad.”
The man wore a full beard and his long brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail and tied with a strip of leather. With crazed blue eyes, he checked the room. His look locked on Mandy.
“Hey,” Chad said. He motioned with a gun for Mandy to move into the room to the right, where a double bed had been pushed up against the wall. Mandy cringed. The dark paneled walls, the single shuttered window high on the wall behind the men were familiar. This room was the setting for the picture Chad had painted.
“The sheriff knows I’m looking for Jenna Wade, and he met Sean last night. If we suddenly disappear, he’ll come here,” Mandy stated. She rubbed her clammy hands on her jeans.
“Who says you disappeared?” Max said. “Maybe you gave up. Went back where you came from. Tulsa, was it? Interesting downtown. I was just there earlier this week.” Max balanced the chair on two legs and rubbed his beer belly. “Now, if something were to happen to you during that drive, say, you go off the side of the road on a bridge or hit a culvert, well, sad to say, it happens all the time. Sometimes people survive, sometimes they don’t.”
“Your wife’s waiting for us to come back, and there’s someone else waiting too,” Mandy said. “There’s no way your plan will work.” Her brain tumbled with thoughts. What could they do to turn the tables on Max and Chad? Sean lay still on the floor. She glanced at Lamar, wanting to find hope there, but his eyes were closed. What had Max done to him?
“You think Dale will turncoat on me? She’s listened to Chad blather on his nonsense for twenty years, and she never believed it. Why would she suddenly decide not to trust me now?”
“Chad told her what you did?”
“What I did? Hmmm. Seems like you’ve got your story wrong. What we all wanted to do, and enjoyed it, we did.” Max smiled at Lamar and at his brother.
Mandy felt the blood rush to her face and then just as quickly rush out as Max leered at her.
“Well, no point dilly-dallying. Let’s get to it—and get on down to the ranch house to visit with the guests.”
Max lunged toward her.
~ Chapter 55 ~
Jenna
Jenna Wade peered through the vertical slit between the window shade and the window frame as the evening shadows began to lengthen. The cicadas droned louder, and somewhere, horses whinnied. Outside the window, the hillside was quiet. Inside the cabin, Moby panted.
She paced the room. Being back here was like finding a time warp to the late nineties. Not much had changed. Same old stores, a few more empty, a few more full of antique junk. She’d seen enough as she came into town to convince her nothing important had changed. Her memories were still there, too, along with suffocating loss and fear.
The matter of getting out to the ranch had taken thought. She hadn’t wanted to drive the rental car—it would be too obvious someone else was on the property. In the end, she’d borrowed/stolen a bicycle and pumped her way up the road, stopping frequently, pulling over and hiding in the trees whenever a vehicle neared. It had taken her most of the first day to get to Jandafar. And every mile she’d pedaled had strengthened her resolve. She had to end it now. Twenty years of her life had passed. She’d either find her sister or find out where she was buried. But first, she had to find Chad.
Jandafar hadn’t changed much either. The sign said it was now a bed and breakfast, but it still smelled like horses, grass, and dirt. And the horses probably still whinnied when people drove up. They had not greeted her, because she walked in after leaving the bicycle in the bar ditch down the road from the entry gate.
She remembered the ranch from all those family vacations. She had explored it twenty years ago, sometimes while hiking but mostly on horseback. Galloping through the trees had been thrilling. And she hadn’t minded the hikes with Molly that much. They’d kept her from being bored to death during those summer visits. Molly had carried that book with her and looked up every flower and bird she saw.
Usually, Molly preferred to read a book or walk in the woods. Sharon had looked for other things to do, and she’d focused on Chad.
Vacations were a chance to get away from Boulder and the high school drama queens, even though Sharon often interacted with that crowd. Neither she nor her sister wanted to be one of them. You did what you had to do to survive high school.
Her thoughts had swirled around those memories of high school and vacations at Jandafar as she crept onto the property, crossed the meadow and headed for the ruins of the cabin. She didn’t want to be here. If it hadn’t been for the painting, she wouldn’t have been.
The painting brought it all back, like it had happened yesterday. But she wasn’t sure she had the facts right in her head. Odd parts were missing. She couldn’t recall them and trying to remember made her sick to her stomach. But she’d seen the painting and the artist’s signature and known it was Chad. He’d talked about wanting to be an artist. She’d laughed. That was about as far from a rough-and-tumble bowlegged cowboy as you could get.
Sean wanted her to tell him about her past. But how could you talk about something you didn’t fully remember or even want to remember? What she did remember made her want to be sick and left her feeling ashamed and dirty. She’d run from it rather than face it. She’d run for twenty years, alone. And she hoped her sister had been running in the opposite direction. That hope was better than what could be true: that he’d killed Molly the same night he’d killed her parents.
The painting had changed things. After she saw it, she had this feeling her sister was still alive, but in danger. She couldn’t run this time, couldn’t turn her back, couldn’t live with herself if there was any possibility Molly was alive.
When a vehicle motor roared outside, she peeked beneath the shade. The blue truck parked by the ranch house. There were only two people inside; no second vehicle followed. Jenna let the blind drop over the window and turned to the room. Cheap old red plaid sofa, worn cowhide carpet. Still, it was better than the green shag carpet up in the line shack, carpet so used that the nap looked like a thousand drunken caterpillars. She could still feel it beneath her bare bottom.
The two lamps in the shack had been fitted with forty-watt bulbs, but that was strong enough. Dimness didn’t disguise age and misuse or keep the place from being a torture chamber.
No one in town had recognized Jenna this week, not that they had seen her often as a teenager. She only encountered a few people, and when their gazes met hers, she’d turned away rather than risk seeing a spark of recognition. She’d parked the rental car and gone into the café. The waitress had taken one look at the dark-haired woman with half-moon smears under her eyes, wearing a tank top and sporting a tattoo on her left bicep and asked nothing more than that she pay in cash.
Even Jenna hardly recognized herself in the cabin’s mirror. The cinnamon-brown hair dye had washed all the color out of her face, and gray eye shadow smudged beneath her eyes and on her eyelids had emphasized the exhaustion of the past seventy-two hours. The tattoo was the best she could find of the wash-off variety. And it had done the trick.
She paced the room, certain that Mandy and Sean had walked into a trap. Jenna hoped they wouldn’t be dead when she got there. She shouldn’t have left Mandy that message, but she’d been in such a panic, so afraid to do this alone. She’d wanted backup, and Mandy was a good friend. Mandy had never cared about her secrets, never seemed to need to know anything Jenna wasn’t willing to tell. And the two of them had such shared grief from being orphaned at a young age.
Jenna should never have told Mandy about the painting without explaining. No doubt when Mandy saw the painting, she thought it was Jenna. She didn’t know Jenna had a younger sister who looked a lot like her. People usually overlooked the subtle differences between their appearances.
Sean mig
ht never forgive her—if he was still alive after tonight. Her secret past had eaten at him throughout their marriage, and even more lately. He wanted to have children, but Jenna didn’t want to until she knew for sure about her sister. Maybe now she’d get answers and be able to move on with her life.
She’d done so well for so long at not getting attached, not forming relationships. Wouldn’t you know it was when she’d had a few years of normalcy that everything would blow apart?
Jenna glanced at the window shade. The sun was dropping. If she was going to do this, it had to be at dusk or later. They wouldn’t expect her. Sean and Mandy were still at the line shack. Were they dead or alive?
She grabbed the small drawstring bag she’d kept with her since leaving Tulsa.
This was it.
“Good-bye, Moby.” She flicked the porch light on as she exited through a window on the far south end of the duplex. They would assume she was still there. Dale might have told her husband Jenna was waiting in the duplex. Well, she wasn’t waiting, and she didn’t think Sean and Mandy would return of their own volition.
Jenna slipped down the hillside toward the stable, ducking low so the shadowy underbrush covered her movement. Her tennis shoes made only the slightest sound on the grassy hill.
The flashlight in the bag bumped her hips; she wouldn’t turn it on unless necessary. Dale and the guests would finish dinner, and the men would come out and head back up to the line shack. She had to play her cards right. Timing was everything.
Jenna slipped into the tack room and grabbed a bridle, then ambled through the barn. A horse whinnied. At the stall, the animal made its way to her. The horse nickered, and she petted its velvety nose. “That’s a good horse,” she crooned. She hoped she remembered how to ride. It had been so long. But that wasn’t something you forgot, was it?