Finding Stefanie (5 page)

Something that made the world remember Lincoln Cash as more than an actor with a fast car and a James Bond smile.

Of course, he also needed a gig that would keep Alyssa in one of the best rehabilitation homes in the country. Preferably something that didn’t require his jumping from moving vehicles.

Headlights from across the highway strobed in his eyes, and he blinked away the surge of panic that his vision would cut out.

“I’ll find you, Lewis.”

The voices had returned, stalking him as he’d packed up his home in Hollywood. In a previous life, he would have spent the free time after a film shoot hooking up with one of the extras who’d been eyeing him, jetting with her down to Saint Martin.

Even that had lost its luster after his last weekend fling had turned into a full-blown tabloid scandal, complete with threats, property damage, and a restraining order.

No, his best option right now was to find someplace quiet and hide.

He took the turn off the interstate toward Phillips.

On the seat next to him he saw his cell phone reception begin to drop off. Dex had given him time to escape, especially after Lincoln agreed to head to Montana. However, he hadn’t exactly told Dex why, which meant that any day, Dex might track him down with a hot new script.

Lincoln tightened his hand on the steering wheel. Dex didn’t need to know the truth yet. After all, he could get better, couldn’t he?

He
would
get better. And return at the top of his game, like bull rider Rafe Noble had after the car wreck that had nearly killed him.

“Your exacerbations may last up to three months and then vanish completely,” his doctor had said in his most optimistic voice during Lincoln’s last appointment. “And until the disease progresses, we won’t know exactly how your particular symptoms will manifest.”

Translation: “We won’t know how much your life will change until it already has.”

Lincoln had stared at the doctor, wanting to ask a million questions, horrified at the one uppermost on his mind.
Was it genetic? If he had children, would he pass it down to them?

Not that he had any prospects at the moment. But he’d be a liar if he didn’t admit that his thoughts now and again tracked back to meeting Rafe’s twin sister, Stefanie, last summer.

Maybe it was the fact that she’d never seen one of his movies or even heard of him, for that matter. Maybe it was the fact that he was a friend of her brother, a man he’d come to admire. Or maybe it was simply her smile and dark, intelligent eyes, her long black hair down over her neck.

Most of all, being around Stefanie for those two hours, Lincoln hadn’t felt like a guy trying to keep up with his headlines. He just felt like . . . a guy.

A guy who liked a girl.

Meeting Stefanie had also made him notice that he had no one permanent with whom to share his ten-thousand-square-foot California home, no one on whom he might test new ideas or reveal buried dreams. No one to unload his fears on.

He had plenty of fears now.

But now, of course, it might be too late. His diagnosis might change everything. And like the doctor said, they wouldn’t know anything until he didn’t get better.

What if he didn’t get better?

He had to get better.

Even if his backup plan worked, even if he did turn the Big K Ranch—formerly John Kincaid’s place—into a film showcase, Lincoln still had to contend with the truth. Peel away the shine of his persona, and he wasn’t sure anyone would like what they found underneath. But maybe it wouldn’t come to that. He’d worked too hard to build a life, an identity.

The recent craze for reality shows helped too. According to his
agreement with the American Film Institute, his film company would sponsor ten filmmakers. Once a year, the filmmakers would show their projects at Lincoln’s festival, the winner bringing home a contract. He hoped that, over time, when critics mentioned his name, it might be in the same breath as Redford and Eastwood and Ron Howard, men who had leveraged their acting careers into behind-the-camera gigs of legendary proportions and into the annals of filmmaking. Maybe he’d even try his hand at directing someday.

As soon as the words
This would be a great place for a film festival
had left Dex’s mouth last summer while they’d been shooting location shots in Montana, the idea had taken root in Lincoln’s brain. And when the chance to buy the ranch fell into his lap, Lincoln took it as a sign.

A fortuitous sign. The fact that he’d purchased the property months ago, before any hint of his disease, told him that Someone might be looking out for him. Might be on his side.

At least that’s what he told himself over and over. What he needed to believe, in fact. Because at this rate, he had only three choices: Ignore God. Blame God. Or need God.

Lincoln wasn’t sure exactly which one to choose, but he had a gut feeling that only one would help him figure out how to live his new life.

The new life he meant to find in Montana.

Before it was too late.

Libby Pike didn’t care what people said behind her back. She knew she wasn’t as pretty as her sister, Missy. Knew she didn’t have the
curly blonde hair, the smile that made every cowboy in town head to Lolly’s Diner after work to get a taste of Missy’s homemade pies. But then, she wasn’t after the same life Missy desired. She didn’t want to own a business or bask in the attention of every eligible bachelor—and that wasn’t saying much—of Phillips. She had bigger dreams, overseas dreams. Eternal dreams.

More than anything, Libby Pike wanted to be a missionary. And not just any missionary but the Amy Carmichael, Mother Teresa kind of missionary who comforted the hurting, fed the poor, and poured out her life for the ones the world forgot.

For as long as she could remember, she’d had that dream. Maybe she’d been born with it. And lately, she’d had the opportunity to practice.

She didn’t know what the little girl’s name was, but she had eyes as big as the sky—haunted eyes—and a ragged stuffed cat and a hunger about her that tore at Libby’s heart. She’d first seen the little girl a week ago, standing outside the Laundromat next to the car parts store. She’d been sitting on a bench, looking cold and grimy in a red winter jacket that swallowed her. When Libby walked by, something—maybe the way the little girl didn’t meet her eyes—made her stop.

She’d crouched in front of the girl and said, “My name’s Libby. Are you out here all alone?”

Which was how she’d met Gideon.

The way he’d appeared, practically materialized, right there on the sidewalk, one would think she was trying to steal the kid. After meeting Gideon, she knew what a terrible mistake that would be. He didn’t seem any older than herself, but something in his blue eyes and the scar over his left eye told her that he meant business
when he said, “Back off.” He’d grabbed the little girl by her jacket and pulled her behind him. She stared at Libby from under her scraggly dark blonde hair.

Libby had looked at him and frowned. “She’s cold. And she looks hungry.”

“Who are you, Social Services?” He wore only a sweatshirt and a pair of jeans with a hole in the knee, and she could see that his skin was red, as if he, too, might be cold. With the wind sliding off the hills, it had been in the low forties all week. Not sweatshirt weather. His face was gaunt, sallow, his dark hair long under the hood he’d pulled up.

“No. I just saw her sitting here and thought she might like a cookie.” Libby directed those last words at the little girl, smiling. She thought she saw a flicker of life before the girl lowered her eyes.

“She doesn’t need a cookie,” he said softly, but Libby caught the slightest hitch in his voice. “Thanks anyway.”

It was the thanks that had given him away. The reason she couldn’t simply dismiss him as rude. That and the way he’d glanced down at his sister, as if he suddenly, desperately, wanted to give her a cookie.

“Stay here. I’ll be right back,” Libby said. “I’m just going over to the diner—”

“No—”

Only she didn’t wait, just jogged past him, ran inside the diner, and grabbed two peanut butter cookies from the glass jar on the counter. “Hey!” Missy yelled as Libby grabbed a napkin and wrapped them inside, before dashing back outside.

The boy and his hungry kid sister had vanished.

But the next day, she’d watched for them. And sure enough, they appeared about dinnertime, just as the shadows grew long between the buildings. Libby noticed the way he slunk inside the Laundromat and reappeared five minutes later.

He certainly wasn’t doing his laundry.

But Libby didn’t care. She’d figure out his creepy behavior later. She dashed out of the diner in her waitress uniform and caught them as they rounded the corner. She spotted an old, rusty blue Impala parked in the alley between the Buffalo Saloon and the feed store. “Hey! Hey!”

The little girl turned. Then stopped.

Her brother looked back, and for a second Libby saw anger, or perhaps fear, cross his face.

“Go—”

“I brought you cookies. And . . . bread and some leftover meat loaf.” She wasn’t sure why she’d grabbed all that. But she extended the foil-wrapped package.

The boy stared at it. He glanced at his sister, who held his hand in a white grip, her eyes on the ground. Then he looked at Libby. “I can’t pay right now.”

“Oh, for pete’s sake, do I look like I want to be paid? They’re leftovers. Take them.” She thrust the package at him.

He met her eyes. And despite the hard set of his jaw, the muscle that tightened in his neck, everything that poured out of his eyes bespoke gratefulness. He let go of the little girl’s hand and took the food.

“My name’s Libby,” she said softly.

He glanced past her, looked behind him. Then he said, “I’m Gideon.”

“You’re not from here. Did you just move here?” She ran her hands down her cold arms, shivering slightly.

“You’d better get out of the cold.” He lifted the food. “Thank you.”

She nodded. “If you . . . I mean, sometimes Missy has leftovers. I can leave them out back, if you . . . you know . . . want to—”

“I could use a job.” His tone changed so quickly, from embarrassed to desperate, that Libby’s breath caught. But his earnestness vanished in a moment, replaced by hesitation. “I mean, if you . . .”

“I’ll ask Missy. Come by tomorrow, okay?”

She had known he would. Or rather, as he gave her the barest hint of a smile, she had hoped it with everything inside her.

A week later, she could hardly believe that the guy doing dishes in the back room was the same boy she’d given a package of meat loaf to. Gideon had showed up, exactly as she’d suggested, and asked her sister for a job—any job.

And Libby could have kissed her beautiful sister for giving him a chance. He’d rolled up his sleeves, plunged his arms deep into the hot soapy water, and scrubbed as if his life, and a flock of other lives, depended on him.

She wanted to ask about his parents, but something inside told her no. That to raise the question might resurrect the wall that she was slowly chipping away.

Libby’s persistence, her patience, seemed to be paying off. Gideon even smiled, at least twice, and once after wiping out the sinks, he’d snapped the towel at her. Like he might be trying to make friends.

He had a real nice smile. It lit up his entire face and erased the haunting expression. He had a funny way of flipping his hair back
when it hung over his eyes and a deep quietness about him that made her ache to unlock his secrets.

As her father had always said—and she, unlike Missy, actually listened to his sermons—to be a good friend, one only needed to listen.

There were many ways, however, to listen. Now Libby watched as he loaded a tray of dirty dishes, and she couldn’t help but notice his arms—strong arms, one of which bore a tattoo right above the wrist. He wore a chain around his neck with something dangling from the end. And, although he obviously had let the holes grow closed, she saw the markings of piercings on his left ear and above and below his eyebrow.

He definitely wasn’t from around these parts.

“Can you bus table four?” she asked as he walked past her toward the kitchen. He held the tray of dishes from three tables on his shoulder.

“Yep,” he said, glancing at her.

The sun had already begun to dip into the horizon on the back side of the school past Main Street. Libby loved Phillips in the evening, when the streetlamps would flicker on, bathing the street in pools of light. She loved to listen to the jukebox—she remembered when Lolly ran the place and she’d loaded up her favorite fifties tunes.

At closing, music from the Buffalo Saloon, laughter, and sometimes yelling from the parking lot punctuated the air, chorused by Egger Dugan’s junkyard dogs in the trailer park behind the diner. Why Missy had moved into Lolly’s old trailer, Libby couldn’t fathom. Not that she would judge, but just a few weeks ago someone had broken into the trailer and taken blankets and food from the
fridge. And it wasn’t the first time—a couple of months ago, one of Egger’s dogs ended up dead—poisoned, murdered, according to Egger.

Libby would happily let Missy back into the room they’d shared at the parsonage.