Deep Freeze (11 page)

“And how do you know this?” Jenna was testing the first flashlight she located. Its beam was weak but steady.

“I already called.”

The lights, television, and everything else electrical blinked off for several seconds before coming on again.

“This is getting creepy,” Cassie said.

“I think it’s cool.” Allie was undeterred. “Can Dani come over Mom, pleeeease?”

The phone jangled and Allie snagged it from the receiver before the second ring. “Hello?” she said and waited. “Yeah…just a minute.” She straight-armed the cordless to her mother. “It’s Mr. Settler,” she stage-whispered as Jenna took the phone. “Please, please, please.” Now she was begging, her hands clasped desperately under her chin as if she were praying.

Cassie rolled her eyes and Jenna ignored her youngest’s supplications. “Hello?”

“Hi.” As expected, Travis Settler was on the other end of the call. “I imagine Allie told you the plan.”

“For Dani to come over.”

“Yeah. She’s twisting my arm, but I said I’d have to check with you first.”

“I think they’re working us both, but if you can get her here, it’s fine with me,” Jenna said and heard Allie whoop behind her. “However, I was out about an hour ago. The roads are nearly impassable and my electricity’s been flickering. Also, we don’t have running water, at least not yet, but I’ve got a couple of men working on my pump and I did pick up some bottled water in town. It might be like camping over here.”

“Which Dani will love,” he said, a little bit of pride in his voice as he spoke of his athletic daughter. “But this is definitely your call,” Travis said.

Jenna felt Allie’s eyes boring into her back. “She’s always welcome.”

“Fair enough. Anything I can pick up for you on the way?”

“Thanks, but we’re okay. I was at the store stocking up earlier. We’re set for the next couple of days.”

“Then if you’re sure it’s okay, I’ll be over within the hour.”

“Great. I’ll tell Allie.”

She hung up and found that her daughter was already bounding up the stairs. “Hey, wait, Allie, don’t you want a sandwich?”

“Later!” Allie sang down the stairs.

Cassie announced, “I’m not hungry.”

“Fine. They’ll keep,” Jenna decided and was glad that her youngest daughter was happy. For the moment. Which was more than Jenna could say for Cassie, who had finished her yogurt and dumped the container into the garbage can under the sink, then stood, arms folded under her chest, as she watched the news. “This is sooo lame,” she muttered when the weatherman predicted subfreezing temperatures for the rest of the week.

“We’ll survive.”

“If this is surviving.”

“Just wait until I have you splitting wood and stoking the fire and cooking in the cast iron skillet over the coals if we lose power. We’ll all get to sleep down here in sleeping bags in front of the fireplace.”

“Oh, save me,” Cassie said.

“Think of it. No MTV, or hot showers or hair dryers or electricity for anything. Maybe, if we’re lucky, the cell phones will work.”

“You enjoy making me miserable, don’t you?” her daughter accused.

“Just pointing out that things aren’t so bad.”

“Yeah, right.” Cassie rolled her eyes and headed up the stairs. Jenna poured coffee into a thermos and was about to carry it out to the pump house, when she heard a rap on the back door. Half a second later, Harrison let himself inside. “You must’ve read my mind,” he said as he spied the steaming canister. He called over his shoulder, “Seth! I told you she’d have coffee for us!”

Through the glass of the door, Jenna saw Whitaker wave as he carried tools to his truck.

“So tell me, do I have water?” she asked.

“Not yet. But soon. We started thawing out the pump and Seth fixed a couple of the loose wires. It’ll take a little time. We’ve got a heater running in the pump house and have a drip pan and a hose that’ll siphon the water out of the house, so it doesn’t refreeze in there. While he was working on the pump, I put up some more insulation. It’ll take a few hours, but before the night’s over, everything should work and yes, you will have water again.”

“Hallelujah!”

“You might consider building a more substantial pump house next summer.” He settled into a chair at the table as Jenna poured him a cup of steaming coffee. “Until then, I’ll help you get through the winter.”

“Thanks,” she said, though there was a part of her that objected to his proprietary tone. She ignored it. Right now she needed his help. A few minutes later, Seth appeared at the back door. She offered coffee, but the handyman declined as he stepped into the house and wiped his boots. “Too much caffeine,” was his quick excuse. A quiet man, he glanced at his watch.

“You in a hurry?” Harrison asked.

“Another job.”

“In that case, we’d better shove off.”

“What do I owe you?” Jenna asked the handyman.

“I already paid him.” Harrison was zipping up his coat.

“What? For me? No way.” She was reaching for her purse.

“He did,” Seth said.

“Wait a minute. I can’t accept that. Harrison, really. Thanks for your help today, but I pay my own bills.” She looked him steadily in the eye. “It’s the way I want it.”

Harrison’s face turned red. “Then think of it as a favor. One neighbor to another.”

“That’s the problem. I don’t like to be in debt. To anyone. Favors tend to mount up.” She turned her attention to the handyman. “Business is business. I’ll pay you for your time and any equipment you had to buy.”

Seth shifted from one foot to the other, obviously embarrassed by the awkward scene. “Don’t worry about it.”

“But I do.”

“This is how we do things up here,” Harrison explained. “We take care of each other.”

“Hey, no!” She held up both hands. “Wait a minute. This is not the way I run my life! I can’t let you ‘take care of me.’ No way. Believe it or not, Harrison, I can take care of myself, and that’s the way I like it.”

He was having none of it. “Like it or not, I’m concerned about you and your kids alone up here. I already talked to Seth, here, about helping install a new security system here at the house. And I don’t like the way the main gate is froze open.”

“
What
?” Jenna nearly came unglued. “I think this is my decision.”

“Your old system is shot.”

That much was true. “Then I’ll get a new one. I planned on it. But right now, with the storm, it’ll probably take time.”

“Seth, can you set her up? Didn’t you say you have connections with the local company.”

Whitaker lifted his palms and backed up. “Hey, I don’t want to get into this.”

Jenna appreciated the man’s response. She turned on Brennan. “Look, Harrison, the house
has
an alarm system already. It’s sketchy—doesn’t work all the time, even though I’ve tried to have it fixed. Even so, I try to remember to turn it on, and, if it makes you feel better, I’ll try even harder.”

He smiled disarmingly. Because he’d gotten his way. “It does.”

“Fine!” she snapped, angry. Jesus, who did this guy think he was? “Now that we’ve settled that, you won’t have to worry about me and the girls any longer. Really.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “To tell you the truth, all your concern makes me extremely uncomfortable. I can take care of myself.”

“All right, all right.” He held his hands palms outward as if in surrender. “I’m sorry…I made a mistake.”

Jenna was still seething, but nodded. “Okay. Just so we understand each other.”

“I guess I’m too used to taking command of a situation and giving orders. Military training.”

“I guess.” She tried to rein in her temper. To his credit, the guy was giving his all to help her out. He was just a little heavy-handed.

He winked. “I’ll try not to let it happen again.”

“Good.”

“It’s just that I care, so I tend to worry about you and the girls.”

“I already told you not to,” she said firmly. “We’re not your problem.”

Seth, as if he couldn’t stand the argument another second, ran a hand around his neck. “Look, I’d like to finish up in the pump house, double-check that it’s all working.” Before anyone could object, he walked out the back door, letting a blast of wintry air into the house. The door slammed shut behind him.

Jenna was left staring at Harrison Brennan. “Listen, I’m sorry if I flipped out. I know you’re just trying to help, but I’m really trying to make it on my own. You’re right—sometimes I do have to call in the reserves, and I appreciate everything you did for me.”

“But,” he said, a vein starting to throb in his forehead. “I sense a ‘but’ coming along.”

She shoved an errant hair out of her eyes. “But I can’t have you running my life or paying my bills, or—”

“The guy owed me,” Harrison cut in. The remnants of his smile disappeared completely. He was suddenly stern. All business. Contained fury evident in his rigid stance. The muscles of his jaw worked involuntarily, and she sensed that she’d insulted his manhood. Which was ridiculous.

Men!

“If you want to pay Whitaker yourself, hire him another time,” Harrison said. “But for today, we’re even. All of us. That was the deal I had with him. Let’s keep it neat and tidy. In the future, you can work out anything you want with him or me, but I’ll never take any money from you for helping out.”

“Fair enough,” she said, surrendering. For the moment. She glanced at the counter and the half-made sandwiches her kids had rejected. She motioned to the cutting board. “Soooo…how about a roast beef on sourdough for all your trouble?”

“Deal,” he said, and brightened as she finished placing slices of beef, dill pickles, and onion on the bread. An image of June Cleaver in pearls and a full skirt flitted through her mind, but she pushed it aside. For the moment there was peace in the house, and the promise of running water. Who could ask for anything more?

Half an hour later, Harrison was setting his plate in the sink when he looked out the window. His silvery eyebrows slammed together, his face muscles tightened even more. “Looks like you’ve got company,” he said.

“Oh, right,” Jenna said. “Allie’s having a girlfriend spend the night.”

Harrison’s lips compressed as he watched Travis Settler hop to the snow-crusted ground. A second later, his daughter, Dani, landed beside him.

“I’d better shove off.” He was already slipping his arms into his jacket and making his way to the back door.

“Oh, well, thanks again,” she said, as Harrison slid into his boots and started off to Seth Whitaker’s truck. Jenna saw him nod curtly to Travis just as feet clattered on the stairs and Allie ran pell-mell out the back door. Without a coat.

Jenna snagged her ski jacket from the back of the kitchen chair just as Dani and Allie burst into the room. They were laughing and giggling and racing each other up the stairs. “Can we have nachos?” Allie called over her shoulder, but didn’t wait for a response.

A second later, Travis slid through the open door. “You can tell that they’re all broken up about not going to school tomorrow.”

Jenna grinned. “I used to love it, too.”

“You had snow days in L.A.?”

“No.” She shook her head and laughed. “I grew up just outside of Seattle. I remember getting together with my girlfriends and sending up group prayers for snow.”

“Did it work?”

“Rarely, and never when a major assignment that I’d forgotten was due.” She heard the rumble of a truck’s engine and saw Seth Whitaker’s rig backing up.

“Did I chase away your company?”

“Nah,” she said, but wondered if she were lying. The passenger side of the big rig was visible, and Harrison Brennan was sitting stiffly inside while staring straight ahead. Or was he? He was too far away to tell, but she thought she caught him watching the house from the side-view mirror.
Stop it! You’re imagining things! He’s just a nice neighbor trying to help out.

“Something wrong?” Travis asked, and Jenna was suddenly aware that he was standing near the table and staring at her.

“No…sorry…I guess I’ve been caught up in my problems.”

“Something I can help you with?” He seemed earnest, his blue eyes tinged with worry.

“Sure. How about conjuring up hot sand, aquamarine surf, lots of palm trees…and oh, yeah, don’t forget it should be ninety degrees in the shade.”

“Can I throw in a couple of margaritas?” he asked.

“Only if they’re blended and doubles.”

“Man, your fantasies are pretty damned specific.”

“Why dream if you don’t know what you want?” she tossed back and felt some of the tension leave her shoulders.

“Do you? Know what you want?”

“Mmm.” She nodded. “Most of the time. You?”

“I thought I did…a long time ago.” He lifted a shoulder. “Now I’m not so sure.” He seemed about to say more, but thought better of it, his smile fading and the warmth in his eyes suddenly chased by something cold and secret. “I’d better shove off,” he said. “Dani told me I shouldn’t overstay my welcome. Something about ‘letting her have her space.’ Call me if she’s a problem.”

“She won’t be.”

“Or if you feel stranded out here.” He looked out the window to the rolling acres edged in old-growth timber. “You’re a little isolated.”

“We’ll be fine,” she assured him, though his last words gave her pause. She’d chosen this place precisely for its remote location, but now, watching him walk to his rig, the snow slanting from the sky, the wind blowing wildly down the gorge, she wondered if she’d made a mistake. As he climbed into the cab she resisted the urge to run outside, flag him down, and beg him to stay, to admit that she wasn’t as strong as she appeared, that she liked the thought of another adult, a man, around when the forces of nature were so raw and threatening.

But she didn’t.

Wouldn’t admit that she couldn’t handle things on her own.

She felt a chill and rubbed her arms as he drove down the lane, his tires spinning in the rapidly piling snow, his headlights cutting across the white expanse of drifts.

The phone rang and she reached for the receiver.

“Hello?” she said, but no one answered. “Hello?” She heard the crackle of static, as if there were a bad cell connection, and something muted, something soft and melodic, like a song she should remember. “Hello? If you’re there I can’t hear you,” she said strongly. “Call back.”

She hung up and waited.

But no call came through.

The telephone remained silent and the house, too, seemed unnaturally quiet. The usual sounds—the hum of the refrigerator, the rumble of the furnace, the faint whisper from a television upstairs, were muted by the shriek of the wind that rattled the loose panes in an attic window. The lights quivered once more and Jenna swallowed hard as she realized what she’d heard on the phone. Not only had someone definitely been on the line, but the nearly indistinct melody she’d heard was the theme song from
White Out,
the last film she’d made, the film that had never been released. Though the theme song had become a hit,
White Out
had become a disaster of a project that had destroyed her marriage and killed her sister.

Now, she took a step backward. She caught sight of her ghost-like image in the windowpane and for a second she saw Jill. Beautiful, innocent Jill, whose physical appearance had been so much like Jenna’s they’d sometimes been mistaken for twins. Now dead.

Because of you.

She felt her eyes burn with the memory of thousands of tons of snow cascading in a deadly roar down the mountainside.

You should have died, not your sister.

The recriminations reverberated through her brain, just as they had for years. “Oh, God,” Jenna whispered, stumbling backward against a chair in the nook. The chair screeched against the hardwood floor, and Jenna managed to catch herself, though the strains from
White Out
’s theme song whispered through her mind. Who had called her and why had they played that music?

You’re not sure they did. You really couldn’t hear. It might have been some other song altogether. Or crossed wires. Look at the storm! There could be a glitch in the phone system. You’re imagining things, Jenna.

Quickly she picked up the receiver and read the caller ID message—private number. “Damn.” She dialed *69, hoping to hear the name of the last caller, but the recorded message repeated what caller ID had told her. Whoever had phoned remained anonymous.

Intentionally?

Or because he was hiding?

“You son of a bitch,” she hissed, slamming down the receiver and trembling inside.

She tried to tell herself she was overreacting. That nothing was wrong. That her all-too-vivid imagination was running away with her.

But, of course, she knew she was lying to herself.

Again.

“Get a grip,” she ordered, but knew that tonight, holding on to her frazzled emotions would prove impossible.

She was there, just on the other side of the frigid glass. Not as beautiful as Jenna Hughes, but enough like her that as he stared past the red and blue neon of a sizzling beer sign, he imagined she would do. Her body was about the same size, petite, though her breasts were smaller and her hips not quite rounded the same way. But close enough…for now. She was a blonde, but her hair color was unnatural, darker roots indicating that she’d been born brunette, but her hair was not as dark as Jenna’s black waves. Not that it mattered, he told himself, watching as she bussed her own tables, wiped her hands nervously on her apron, and glanced often to the windows and the raging storm.

As if she knew he was there.

As if she understood that her destiny lay in the dark, frigid night.

He smiled and felt a thrill zing through his bloodstream, an impulse so cold it reminded him of other times…of a faraway youth and an ice-crusted lake, of freezing water washing over his skin, of a shivering girl and dark, deadly water…images of long ago. For the briefest of seconds he closed his eyes and thought not of the past but to the future. His imagination ran with him, called to him, painted vividly erotic images of the woman inside the diner…Faye…yes, Faye Tyler of
Bystander
—that’s who she was, hiding out here under an assumed name…

Beautiful.

Sexy.

Perfect.

Like Jenna.

Her name rang with the clarity of church bells through his mind and he licked his lips, feeling the cold upon his skin as he imagined her. Ached for her.

Jenna.

She was the one.

Like no other.

And tonight, through this other woman, this pale replica, she would be his.