Stranded (3 page)

“Thank heavens she found you,” Jessica said. “You should see a doctor about your leg.”

“I will. Right now, it’s enough just to be sitting here.” He ran a hand across his hairy chin and added, “I need a shave and my own clothes. Duke lent me these.”

“They sound like incredibly kind people. But, Alex, why didn’t you phone me?”

“They don’t have a phone,” he said. “No television, no internet, no electricity. They’re the back-to-nature type. I did call my parents on the way, though.”

“But not me.”

Did that bother her? Was she thinking that in the months before he disappeared he’d often not reported in as often as he should because it always seemed to come with an argument or apathy, either one of them hard to take? “I didn’t want you to find out about me over a phone,” he said gently. “I wanted to see you. I wanted to look in your eyes, to know if it mattered to you that I was alive.”

“Of course it matters to me,” she said, brow furling. “What a terrible thing to say.”

“You know what I mean, Jess.”

She nodded as she bit her lip and took a deep breath.

“Still,” he continued, gesturing at the wall phone. “I’m kind of surprised that thing isn’t ringing off the hook. Mom has had time to tell all the relatives by now.”

“I have it switched to message only,” she said. “I had to. It felt like every call was a possible ambush. I had to be able to deal with people on my own terms, at least once I was inside this house.” She met his gaze and smoothed back her hair. “I’m sorry, Alex, that must sound selfish to you.”

“No,” he said gently, patting the chair again as she finished folding the laundry. “No, it sounds like survival, that’s all.”

She sat down next to him, their knees all but touching. He ached to fold her in his arms. He wanted to tell her that he’d been thinking of little else but her for weeks and weeks and that he wanted them to be together, to make things work. But she was distant and jittery and he wasn’t brave enough to admit his feelings and have them dashed in his face.

For that matter, dare he trust his feelings? The past several days had been a roller coaster of a ride, exhausting on all levels. Being back was strange and wonderful and truth be known, scary as hell.

He caught her studying his face and wished he’d taken Duke Booker up on his offer for a shave and a haircut so he’d look a little more like he had before.

“There are things you need to know,” she said.

He braced himself. Here it came. She’d moved on.

She shook her head as she added, “Maybe you should call Nate and get him to tell you.”

“Nate?” What did his best friend have to do with her?

“He’s been so concerned about you,” she said.

“I can imagine,” Alex murmured, trying to imagine what it must have been like for Nate to keep waiting for a plane that never arrived. They’d met in the army, had both ended up with careers in law enforcement, Nate as a deputy in Arizona and Alex a police detective in Blunt Falls. Now they were fishing buddies when the opportunity allowed.

“What does Nate need to tell me that you can’t?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Okay, I’ll try to explain. Before people start asking you questions, you’ve got to know a few things. There are a lot of people, Nate included, who don’t think your plane crash was an accident.”

He frowned. “What?”

“Right around the time your plane disappeared, Nate was almost killed. That’s why he couldn’t join the search to try to find you. Worse than all that, though, is that Mike Donovan was murdered.”

“Mike is dead?”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

Mike wasn’t a close pal, like Nate, but Alex had cared for him all the same. Head spinning, he murmured, “Nate thinks all three of us were targeted by the same person?”

“Yes, a man in Shatterhorn who sang your accolades after the mall incident. Everyone refers to him simply as The Shatterhorn Killer and not by name, a tribute to those he killed or caused to die. Anyway, he’s dead now, thanks to an unidentified driver Nate saw purposefully run him down with a car. This same man was also behind the shooting at the Shatterhorn mall and apparently, him and others like him have been responsible for all sorts of mayhem occurring on national holidays around the country. Remember that incident in Hawaii last Pearl Harbor Day where some angry kid shot and killed those off-duty soldiers on the beach? Things like that. Everyday events shattered by violence. And everyone is certain something is going to happen this Memorial Day, too.”

Alex stared at her a moment, trying to make sense of all this. “But you said the guy was run over.”

“There are apparently others. Even if this man wasn’t in Blunt Falls when your plane was sabotaged, he could have hired someone to help him do it.”

Alex simply couldn’t wrap his head around any of it. The lonely austerity of the mountains suddenly seemed like the epicenter of civilization and this place a jungle. “Why would anyone do this?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s complicated, Alex. Something about creating terror for people engaged in normal, ordinary situations so they won’t support any kind of weapon control. It’s domestic terrorism but with a spin. They call themselves patriots and they recruit malcontent kids to do the dirty work. It’s been in the news lately, but I’ve been a little distracted.... Nate can tell you more and I know the FBI and FAA are going to want to talk to you, too.”

Welcome home,
he thought. Here all this time he’d assumed he’d been in an everyday kind of plane crash, no intrigue, no drama, just rotten luck and maybe a bad gasket or something. And now he was hearing someone may have tried to murder him.

The fact was the day of the crash was something of a blur. He hadn’t felt very good; he’d thought he was getting Jessica’s flu. He’d been tired and thirsty and out of it, and then the plunging oil pressure, so sudden and dramatic and final.

Could that have been caused by someone tampering with his plane? But he’d had the required maintenance performed on the plane—in fact, he was a stickler for that. He’d also conducted a preflight check. He could vaguely remember doing it although like everything else about that day, the recollection was hazy.

“We don’t know for sure that your crash was premeditated, but it’s awfully coincidental,” Jessica said, and he wasn’t positive but it sounded to him as though she was trying to ease some of his shock.

“Yeah,” he said. He took a deep breath before trying to shy away from all of this for a moment. “How about you?” he asked. “How have you been? Did anyone try to harm you?”

“No, I’ve been fine,” she said, and then shook her head. “That’s not true. I’ve been a wreck.”

“In some odd way, I’m glad to hear it,” he admitted. He took a deep breath. “I’ve had all sorts of time to regret what I said that last morning. I shouldn’t have even suggested you were lying to me about having the flu.”

“I wasn’t making it up, you know. I really did feel sick.”

“I know. I think I had a touch of it, too. It’s just that we’d been going our own ways so often that it was beginning to feel like we’d never hook back up.”

“I know,” she said.

“You began to say something earlier,” he added. “Something like, there being something worse than me being dead. You stopped yourself. What were you going to say? What would have been worse than me being dead?”

She blinked a few times and he could almost see the wheels turning in her head. “I don’t remember where I was going with that,” she said at last.

Their gazes met and she looked away. She may not have been lying about having a virus but she was lying now, he was sure of it. He wanted to demand she explain, but he couldn’t bring himself to further distance her. The warmth they’d shared in her classroom had evaporated as soon as they hit the house. How ironic would it be to survive what he’d survived just to lose everything that really mattered?

But had he really thought he could waltz back in here and erase the past year or two of tension between them with a few kisses and an apology?

“We can try again,” he said very softly, searching her face.

“Try again? What do you mean?” she asked.

“Having a baby. I know you said before that you were finished hoping but I’ve been thinking about that, too. The doctor might have been wrong. We could consult another specialist.”

“Please, Alex,” she said, staring into his eyes. “This is all too much. An hour ago I thought I’d never see you again. There are things we need to discuss.” She smiled and added, “That’s a real understatement.”

There was a sudden knock on the front door and they both turned their heads and stared into the living room as though expecting an invasion.

“I think our time before the blitz is about up,” he said as the doorbell chimed. He could hear voices coming from outside and more knocks seemed to rattle the windows. “Continue with what you were saying,” he urged.

“Not now, not like this,” she said with a shake of her head. She pushed a few strands of hair away from her face and smiled. “Later, okay? I’ll go stick these clothes in the bedroom. Will you answer the door?”

“Might as well get it over with,” he said as he got to his feet. But for a second he stood there watching Jessica hurry into the kitchen with the basket on her hip. He knew she would take the back stairs up to their bedroom.

What he didn’t know was what she was trying to tell him.

Chapter Two

Jessica’s laptop sat on her desk. With barely a pause, she set the laundry basket aside and opened the computer. Within a few seconds, she was at her Facebook page where she spent several minutes deleting a post she’d made almost two months earlier and which she hoped and prayed Alex would never know existed.

What she’d written had seemed reasonable at the time, like turning over every rock, but now in light of what she knew, it seemed the very essence of double-crossing on her part.

She deleted all pertinent comments from friends and family and closed the laptop, able to really take a breath for the first time in an hour. Then she moved to the window and pulled aside the drape. From this vantage point, she could see all the media trucks parked outside. Several neighbors had wandered over, apparently curious about what was going on. Alex, a lone, weathered-looking figure, stood on the front lawn facing the crowd, his back to Jessica. After months of solitude, what must this day be like for him?

She hurried down the stairs, pausing to take a deep breath before going outside. They’d been a team once upon a time, like right after their marriage when no life-altering disappointments had pushed them apart. Could they be a team again?

Well, one thing was for sure. There was far too much at stake not to at least try. It was time to join Alex.

She stood to the side as he skirted questions, explaining how he’d survived and how he’d finally been able to get home. But reporters asking him about his plane and what went wrong got vague answers and he flatly refused to comment on the possibility of sabotage. He said it was too soon to talk like that, he needed more information.

Jessica was proud of the way he handled himself but not surprised. He could be a very articulate and commanding man when he wanted to be. Those qualities had drawn her to him in the first place and as she listened to him now, she once again wondered how they had grown so far apart.

When he saw her standing near, he extended his arm to welcome her to stand beside him and she did. Flashbulbs popped at the reunited, happy couple and she smiled as best she could.

Much later that night, she woke up in the middle of a dream whose details vanished upon opening her eyes. She reached across the sheets as she had done so many times before, knowing this time, finally, she would find Alex. When her fingers met nothing but rumpled sheets and blanket, she sat up and switched on the light.

For one blinding moment, she thought she’d dreamed Alex coming home. No, there on the chair was the corduroy shirt he’d borrowed from Duke Booker.

She got out of bed and shrugged on her robe, then went looking for him. The house was dark and silent and though she switched on enough lights to see where she was going, she couldn’t find him anywhere. The garage still held his truck, which had been sitting in the same spot since she’d reclaimed it from the airport parking lot a few days after he vanished. That left only one place she could think of.

She didn’t turn on the outside light. Closing the glass patio door behind her, she called his name into the dark and he responded at once. “Over here,” he said, his voice coming from way back in the yard where it was deeply shadowed despite the moon overhead. However, she’d spent the past several restless weeks wandering around the garden at all times of the day and night and had no trouble finding her way.

Moonlight shone off the white roses that had just started to bloom. Some of the lilacs were still in flower, as well, and they added a deep, rich perfume to the night air.

Even though it was late May, temperatures dropped at night in Blunt Falls, and Jessica shivered in her thin robe. She used his voice as a guide until her vision adjusted to the dark, and then she could see him sitting on the rock wall that surrounded the pond where every spring, mallards raised their families.

“What are you doing out here at 3:00 a.m.?” she asked, but she knew. All evening she’d watched him pace the living room, turning away from his image on the television news, perusing the bookcase without touching a book, staring out the windows like a trapped animal. He’d taken a long walk after a supper he barely touched and, though he hadn’t asked her not to come, she could tell he wanted to be alone. She’d determined to come clean with him right after the news conference, but his remote demeanor had kept her lips sealed.

She knew all the revelations she’d had to tell him in such a hurry weighed heavily on his mind, especially when he hadn’t been able to reach Nate. But what else could she do? He had to know what had happened in his absence and it wasn’t as if the rest of the world would give him a chance to recover from his ordeal before telling him all the gory details. After switching the phone back on, their evening had consisted of one call after the other until they finally turned it off again.

She’d gone to bed before him, worn-out from the day and exhausted trying to figure out where they went from here. He’d changed so much over the years and the horrible thing was that she wasn’t sure exactly when it had happened. It was easy to blame their problems on not being able to have a child, but plenty of marriages thrived through much worse.

She knew things had gone downhill after the mall shooting in Shatterhorn where he and Nate had been involved in trying to stop a teenage gunman. He’d come home shaken to the core but he wouldn’t talk to her about it. She’d seen the pictures in the newspaper, though—the broken glass, the blood spatters, the candlelight vigils.... No one came away from something like that without scars. But it had hurt her that he couldn’t trust her with his feelings. Impatient with him, she’d allowed him to retreat even further into his work and his world.

But maybe it was even before that, even before the fertility doctors had told them to set their sights on something besides a big family unless they were open to adoption. Alex had refused to even entertain the thought of adoption and that had cut her as deep as her body’s inability to conceive a child.

With nothing to say to one another and with each nursing their own disappointments, it had been easier to let go than hold on. There had been times while he was missing that she felt almost at peace with things and that now shamed her down to her toes.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he said softly.

She sat down on the rocks beside him, brushing aside the tulips and the forsythia. “It’s hard being back, isn’t it?”

He laughed under his breath. “It’s all I wanted for months, to escape the snow and the outdoors and quiet—things I now miss in some ways.” He put his hand over hers. “But don’t think I’d rather be there than here. You know that, right?”

“Right,” she said softly.

“We’ll work things out,” he said as if he’d been thinking about the same things she’d been thinking about.

“I hope we can,” she said.

There was a moment of silence as they both folded their hands in their own laps and stared into the night. “You’ve really kept the yard up nice,” he finally said.

“You can see it in the dark?” she teased.

“Almost. It seems to glow. But really, I noticed it earlier today. I’ve never seen anything like it. How did you manage it all by yourself?

“I didn’t,” she admitted. “Do you remember Billy Summers?”

“The kid who does odd jobs at the airfield? What about him?”

“After you...didn’t come home...he showed up on the doorstep. I hadn’t seen him since he graduated from high school and that has to be at least three years ago now. He’d heard about your plane disappearing and he wanted to know if he could help me. I refused at first, but he kept coming back and offering. I started giving him odd jobs. He proved to be very reliable, especially when it came to the yard.”

“I would never have guessed that of Billy Summers.”

“I know. He was a surprise. I told him about how I always bought flowers for the veterans’ graves on Memorial Day and he offered to plant some if I would tell him how. He brought me some little index cards and I wrote the directions down for him in simple words. I saw him checking the instructions all the time, but I don’t really think they were necessary. He seems to have a way with plants. Anyway, we owe the flowers to Billy.”

“And we’ll be able to skip the last-minute dash to the big-box store to order flowers for Memorial Day,” Alex said.

She nodded and bit her lip. She’d been about to tell Alex that all last week she’d planned to honor his memory and years of service, as well. He didn’t need to hear that. “Alex, I have something to tell you,” she said.

“Your tone of voice worries me.”

“It’s nothing bad. It’s about that ‘virus’ I was fighting in February.” She took another deep breath. “Do you remember that big fight we had in January?”

“Yeah,” he said, “I do. I can’t remember what it was about, though.”

“It doesn’t matter now,” she said, but she could have enlightened him. He’d been working extra shifts, coming home late and grumpy. Talk about water under the bridge. “What’s important is how we made up the next day,” she added.

She could feel him staring at her. Was he remembering that night? They’d made love with a vengeance, downstairs in front of a blazing fire and slept there all night. “I’ve been trying to tell you this since you got home,” she said. “I was wrong about the cause of my nausea. Brace yourself. I’m about four months pregnant.”

She could see the whites of his eyes widen. “Say that again,” he whispered.

“We’re going to have a baby,” she said, wishing she had waited until morning to tell him so she could see the expression on his face.

“I can’t believe this,” he said, springing to his feet. “Four months? Are you okay, shouldn’t you be lying down or something?”

“No. The doctor said if it’s going to stick, it’s going to stick.”

“You shouldn’t be working every day, should you?” he asked, and she could hear the panic in his voice. She understood how he felt, how amazing this must seem to him. It was the same to her, the difference being that she’d had months to get used to the idea, she’d spoken to the doctor, she knew what was going on.

“Summer vacation is coming and then the baby is due in October and with you home, I won’t go back to work right away. Really, Alex, everything is fine. What I wanted to explain is that I found out about it a week or two after you disappeared. And that’s why I got on Facebook. See—”

He interrupted her by pulling her to her feet and crushing her in his arms. “This is absolutely wonderful! I can hardly believe it. I promise you I’ll do everything I can to make you happy. I love you.”

She closed her eyes and held on to him. In a way, it was like he’d finally come home.

* * *

A
FTER
LAYING
AWAKE
for what seemed like hours, Alex got up quietly the next morning. He’d been rising with the sun and it felt unnatural to lie there when he could see daylight filtering through the curtains.

Besides, there was a lot on his mind.

Mentally he made a list. Call Nate. Make sure he still had a job on the Blunt Falls police force. Get checked out by the doctor.

He looked down at Jessica’s slumbering face and added the most important thing of all: win back his wife before his baby was born.

She was so beautiful with her hair spilling over her pillow like a billowing russet-colored cloud, her lashes sweeping her cheeks, her peachy lips soft and yielding. No wonder she glowed. She was having a baby, his baby, after eight years of trying. He knew what it meant to her, he knew what it meant to him. And the urge to protect her at all costs surged through his body.

He had to pull himself together. Just as he’d planned for and worked toward walking out of the mountains every single day of his exile, he now had to put that behind him and work at moving forward in his marriage, in his job, in his life. What’s done was done. He couldn’t erase the past, but he could learn from it.

His reflection in the mirror wasn’t particularly inspiring. The healed gashes across his cheek and forehead caused by the Cessna’s broken windshield hadn’t healed perfectly. But inside he knew he was stronger and more focused than he’d ever been and it was time to put all that energy to work.

The first thing he did was call Nate in Arizona. Again. The phone switched immediately to message and he wasn’t sure if there was any point in leaving one. Nate had a habit of disappearing into the wild with his horse and a dog or two for days on end, fishing and camping, no phone, no interruptions.

On the other hand, Alex knew his best friend would appreciate knowing he was back from the dead, so he left a message. Then he went downstairs to start a pot of coffee for Jessica, something he’d dreamed about doing over and over again, only this time it was for real. He found the bag of coffee beans where they’d always been, but they were labeled as decaf, he supposed in deference to her pregnancy. Still, the freshly ground beans smelled like heaven on earth and even the familiar perking sounds were like music. He didn’t like to drink the stuff, but he used to make her a cup and carry it upstairs to her bed every morning when they were first married. He wasn’t sure when that had stopped.

For himself, he dared hope he might find one of his favorite drinks in the back of the fridge where he left it months ago. Unless Jessica had thrown it out, of course. He opened the refrigerator quickly, wondering how long it would be before things like electricity would stop amazing him, dug behind a giant jar of pickles and came up with an icy bottle of Vita-Drink.

Happy days. It tasted great.

A light rapping on the glass kitchen door finally got through to him. Only friends and family came around the back like this and he braced himself for another homecoming as he went to see who it was.

He opened the door when he saw his partner on the police force, Detective Dylan Hobart. At the sight of Alex, Dylan’s rugged face split into a giant grin. He wasn’t wearing his usual jeans and T-shirt covered with an old military-looking vest adorned with patches and badges he’d earned as a former marine. Instead he wore a tight T-shirt and a leather jacket that fit him like a glove. He might be approaching forty-five, but he wasn’t going without a struggle.