The Cabin (43 page)

“Over here,” Davey said from their table.

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361

The Ranger turned, and when he saw Iris, he smiled.

“Evening, ma’am.”

She beamed, and Jim wondered if old Iris Dunning

had herself a crush on a handsome, black-eyed Texas

Ranger.

Davey was getting impatient. “What’s this about my

truck?”

“It turned up.”

“No kidding. Where?”

Sam Temple didn’t answer. Instead he shifted back

to Jim. “I’m not here on official business. My captain

wouldn’t authorize me to fly up here just to notify some-

one about a stolen vehicle. Besides,” he added in that

slow, deep Texas drawl, “I don’t know as the Somerville

police and the Massachusetts State Police want to see

me back in their state anytime soon. The police in New

York even less so, since I never got around to introduc-

ing myself before all hell broke loose up on Blackwa-

ter Lake.”

“You feel bad about that?” Jim asked.

The black eyes flashed. “No, sir, not a whole lot.”

“My
truck,
” Davey said, growing impatient. “Where

the hell is it?”

Sam Temple swiveled around to him and grinned.

“San Francisco.”

Alice Parker took an evening flight out of San Fran-

cisco. She had a new name, a new birth certificate and

a new passport, courtesy of her prison contacts. She

liked the name Audrey Melbourne a lot, but she knew

the authorities were expecting Audrey to bolt for Aus-

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Carla Neggers

tralia and would be on guard. She’d decided on Sidney

Rutherford. It sounded dignified, and it reminded her of

Rachel. And of Iris Dunning.

She had a new look to go with her new name—sort

of Old Money Philadelphia with a splash of south Texas.

She’d cut her hair real short and dyed it white-blond, and

she’d gotten rid of all her jewelry. She just wore the most

expensive watch she could afford, which she’d bought

from a sidewalk vendor in San Francisco. It was prob-

ably a knock-off, but she didn’t care. It felt like quality.

Her new identity was the only flat-out dishonest part

about her trip, that and being wanted for questioning by

the authorities in Texas, Massachusetts and New York.

And her plan to slip into Australia and never, ever leave.

For the first couple of hours, she kept waiting for the

captain to walk back to her and tell her she had a phony

passport. She hoped he’d just throw her off the plane.

She’d rather plunge into the Pacific Ocean than go back

to prison. She wouldn’t mind having to testify against

Beau McGarrity, but they already had him.

Damn, she thought, they did. They had him.

No one came for her, and she stared out the window,

seeing only her own reflection. She thought she looked

all right. She’d been a police officer and a prison inmate.

She’d tramped through a blizzard with a mean, crazy

son of a bitch with a gun at her back. She’d helped catch

him, and then she’d driven off in a stolen truck—how

she’d made it as far as San Francisco, she didn’t know.

Lucky, maybe, for once. She’d found a seasonal camp

with a covered Jeep parked outside and exchanged its

New Jersey tags with the Massachusetts tags on the

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363

truck. She remembered how her frostbitten fingers had

bled, but she hadn’t felt it. Not even the warmth of the

blood oozing out over her hand.

She’d damn near lost a couple of fingers and toes.

Thawing out had nearly killed her. She’d never look at

frozen chicken parts the same way.

When she got to San Francisco, she got herself a job

at a twenty-four-hour diner in a not-so-great part of the

city. She’d worked like a dog these past six weeks, slap-

ping plates of eggs and chipped mugs of coffee in front

of bleary-eyed customers and smiling so they’d tip her

well. She lived in a cheap, dirty room in a squat, ugly

building filled with very nasty people.

It would have been a lot easier if she and Destin had

managed to shake loose a hundred grand from Susanna

Galway, but that wasn’t meant to be. Alice regretted

ever making him think it was. She knew she’d regret it

to her dying day, no matter how many times she changed

her name.

She was making a fresh start, but she would do what

Iris had tried so hard to get her to do those first few

weeks in Boston, as simple—and as difficult—as that

was. And that was not to lie about who she was.

Except for her name, which was a practical matter.

Rachel had lied to Beau about who she was, and he’d

shot her in the back and tried to frame Alice for her mur-

der—but that wasn’t Rachel’s fault. He’d had no busi-

ness shooting her, thinking she and Alice were plotting

to kill him for his money. Mean, crazy bastard. And get-

ting all obsessed about Susanna and wondering if she

was part of the plot to kill him, trying to put a fast one

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over on him. Alice couldn’t recall ever thinking she was

the center of everyone’s world like that.

But she knew she had much to atone for.

Before she got on her flight, she’d mailed Iris the

framed picture of her and Jared Herrington out on

Blackwater Lake so long ago. Alice had found it in

Davey Ahearn’s truck. She hadn’t included a note. She

couldn’t think of what to say.

She drifted off to sleep, and hours and hours later,

when the lights came back on in the cabin and the flight

attendants started moving around and people popped

up their shades, Alice looked out her window. She saw

the bridge and the Sidney Opera House, and she started

to cry.

She had another chance. One last chance.

��

Twenty-Four

The huge, old trees in Old Granary had sprouted fat,

red buds. The grass was turning green, and yesterday

Susanna had walked along Commonwealth Avenue to

see the famous magnolias and their pink blossoms.

She’d just finished meeting with two clients, a

young couple who wanted to get their finances in

order before they had children. As they got ready to

leave, the woman asked her husband to go on ahead—

then told Susanna she was already pregnant, but he

didn’t know.

“I know we need another year, at least,” she’d said.

Susanna had smiled. “Another year for what?”

“To get our finances in order.”

“But you’re pregnant now,” Susanna had said. And

she assured the young woman that they could make ad-

justments in their financial plan. Things change. You

start over. Life didn’t always go precisely according to

one-year, five-year, ten-year plans. In fact, it seldom did.

Did she want the baby? Oh, yes. What about her hus-

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band? He’d be thrilled. And the woman saw it herself—

there was no problem.

She could see them talking out on the sidewalk in

front of the old graveyard, and she would bet a good

chunk of change that the husband already knew about

the baby. This was the part of her work she loved best,

she realized. The people, their hopes and dreams.

She still had many of her original clients from San

Antonio—and if she went back, most of her Boston cli-

ents would stay with her.

When
she went back, she thought.

She hadn’t seen Jack in two weeks. It was like an

eternity.

He’d been in constant touch with Maggie and Ellen.

He wanted to make sure they received proper, thorough

post-traumatic care. He was being a good father to them.

This time, she was the one who went emotionally re-

mote on him. She’d felt herself pulling away for rea-

sons she didn’t fully comprehend. He didn’t push, and

she didn’t know what that meant. She loved him—he

loved her.

But she didn’t know if they could put what they’d had

back together, before Beau McGarrity, before Alice Par-

ker and Destin Wright and nearly losing Maggie and Ellen

on Blackwater Lake. Before learning about Gran and

Jared Herrington, and Jared’s older son, and his grand-

daughter, shot to death by her husband in south Texas

when he learned she’d lied to him about who she was, be-

lieved she was tarnished, out to use him, even kill him.

The money and not telling Jack about Beau McGar-

rity straight off didn’t seem to matter so much.

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367

McGarrity hadn’t come into her kitchen that day just

to talk her into believing in his innocence, intervening

with her husband. He’d come to assure himself she

wasn’t helping his wife write a book and hadn’t been a

part of her and Alice’s supposed plot to kill him. He’d

come because he knew Rachel was Susanna’s cousin.

She watched the couple head up Tremont Street, arm

in arm, smiling at each other, and thought of herself and

Jack twenty years ago when they were students. How

could they go back to where they’d been?

The doorman called up, rousing Susanna from her

morose thoughts. He had a delivery. Good, she thought.

A distraction. She ran out into the hall and met a local

florist, a young woman, coming out of the elevator with

a huge, white box tied with a pale pink ribbon. Susanna

stopped her at once. “You must have the wrong person.”

The florist looked at her over the box. “You’re not

Susanna Galway?”

“No, I am—”

“Then these are for you. Where should I put them?”

Stunned, Susanna mumbled that she’d take them.

The florist retreated into the elevator.

Susanna returned to her office and laid the box on the

antique table in front of her leather couch. She ran

through the list of possibilities as she untied the ribbon.

A grateful client? Her parents? It wasn’t her birthday,

and she hadn’t done anything worth celebrating, except

survive a murderer—and that was a while ago. Not long

enough ago to forget. Never that.

Maybe the flowers were for Maggie and Ellen. They

were starting to hear from colleges now.

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Carla Neggers

She lifted the lid on the box, and inside were a dozen

long-stemmed pink roses. Each one was perfect. There

was a small card. Her hands shook as she tore it open.

“To my darling wife…your loving husband, Jack.”

Her heart jumped. Then she shook her head. This was

not possible. Jack didn’t use words like “darling” and

“loving.” He’d say “darlin’” in an exaggerated Texas

drawl when he was being sarcastic or deliberately sexy,

getting under her skin.

Gran and the girls must have talked him into sending

flowers. Or goaded him into it. And called in the order

themselves and told the florist how to sign the card.

Oh, but they were beautiful roses. Susanna touched

their soft petals, then read the card again, feeling her en-

tire body sigh.
Your loving husband, Jack…

“Look at you,” he said from her doorway, as if she’d

conjured him. “And I thought you weren’t sentimental.

I’ll have to send you roses more often.”

“Jack!”

She swept across the room and jumped into his arms,

kissing him as he caught her around the middle. He

held her close, letting his hands slide over her hips. He

laughed softly. “If I’d known you could be had for a

dozen pink rose, I wouldn’t have bothered with the rest

of it.”

She draped her arms over his shoulders. “The rest

of what?”

“One thing at a time.” He set her down and walked

over to her desk, eyeing her computer. “Do you trust me

to shut down this baby? Or might I lose a million dollars?”

She couldn’t answer. Her throat was too tight, every

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369

nerve ending in her body on high alert. He started press-

ing buttons, and finally she ran over and slipped be-

tween him and her keyboard. “I’ll do it.”

He grinned. “I thought you might.” He ran a finger

along the back of her neck as she worked, curved it

around to her throat. “There’s been a plot against you.

Nothing you can do but roll with it.”

She hit buttons, shutting down her computer, then her

printer. “I love you, Jack.”

“I know.”

“I always have. I never doubted my love for you—”

He placed his hands on her waist and turned her to

him. “Susanna, I know.”

She licked her lips, feeling slightly dizzy. “I never

took your love for granted.”

“You didn’t? You should, because it’s yours, for-

ever.” But he smiled, kissing her lightly. “None of this

will help you now. Events are already in motion.”

“What events?”

He released her and walked around her desk, back

to the flower box. “I take it you haven’t checked all

your bank balances today? Or should I say
our
bank

balances?”

“Jack—Jack, I’m not moving another muscle until

you tell me what’s going on.”