The Perfect Outsider (6 page)

The man in the photograph with June was tall, athletic build, sandy-blond hair in a buzz cut. His features were angular, his gray eyes sharp. He had his arm around June’s shoulders—possessive, protective, yet somehow intimate and loving. Jesse examined the photo more closely. The boy, maybe three years old, looked like the man’s son—same eye shape, same color. But the boy’s hair was more strawberry blond than sandy.

Jesse’s attention shifted to June and her red hair.

She was smiling, her eyes bright, her cheeks pink. Jesse imagined the air must have been cold that day.

She really was beautiful, in a way that he liked—tall, slender, yet possessing a strength and confidence that showed in her athletic body, in her intense gaze, in the way she held her head. Not cutesy-pretty, but sexy as all hell to him. Her hair in this photo was loose and hung in thick, soft waves around her shoulders. He liked redheads.

Jesse swore. How did he know what he liked in a woman?

How could he remember some things about himself without having a full sense of his own identity or where he came from or where he was going? He plunked the photo down and swiveled around, suddenly desperate to get out of here.

He strode over to the door, rattled the handle.

A young female voice sounded from the other side. “Touch that freaking door again and I’ll shoot a hole right through it and you!”

It sounded like that kid Molly. She’d probably do it, too.

He spun around and stared at the bed with its functional bedding, the plain rug on the floor, the dog basket near the fire. Given the photo on the dresser, the red hairs in the bathroom, he figured this must be June’s bedroom, yet it didn’t feel lived-in. Maybe she was just minimalist.

He strode over to the wardrobe standing against the far wall and yanked open the doors. There was a full-length mirror inside. Jesse stared at himself—his bare chest, the scars on his torso and arm. He leaned closer and examined the thin scar across his chin, then he rubbed his jaw. He needed a shave. A good haircut, too.

He angled his body and lowered the gray sweatpants down his hip to examine the small
D
tattoo in the mirror. The skin around it was still pink.

June’s soft, sexy voice curled through his mind:
You’re a Devotee, Jesse, carrying concealed, a member of the Cold Plains cult…henchman…did you shoot at them, hurt the mother and her children?

A wave of sickening guilt washed over him.

He glanced up into his own eyes.

Are you hiding from yourself, Jesse? Running from something you don’t want to remember?

He flicked the wardrobe door shut and slumped onto the bed, dropping his face into his hands, feeling dizzy, strange.

Did he even want his memory to return?

Was he bad? Had he hurt those twins and their mother?

Was it his fault they were missing?

He honestly didn’t know.

* * *

Using her GPS, June had tracked back to where she and Eager had found the .40 Beretta.

She now stood in the spot. The light in this dense part of the forest remained dim and mist still fingered through the trees, but the rain had finally abated. It wouldn’t be long, though, before the next—and bigger—storm front rolled in. She needed to find Lacy before it did.

June had brought a sealed plastic bag with her. In it was the red shoe and some other belongings she’d taken earlier from Lacy’s home. She removed the bag from her backpack now and began to open it. Eager watched attentively. But June stilled when she heard the noise of a twig breaking and then a rustle in leaves. Eager’s ears went alert.

June’s pulse quickened. She could hear water plopping onto leaves and trickling through cracks in rock. A wind soughed through the treetops, and the trunks of two trees creaked and groaned as bark rubbed together. A squirrel chirped a high-pitched warning at something.

It could have been wildlife breaking the twig, thought June. Or it could be henchmen come to look for their missing comrade. Anxiety torqued through her. She had to work faster.

She held the bag open and let Eager sniff the articles inside.

“This, Eager, find
this,
” she said softly.

He nuzzled the articles then started snuffling the ground, living up to his name, eager to find, eager to please. He alerted on something almost instantly, his body wiggling as he pawed at moss.

June crouched down, saw spent shell casings. Her chest tightened. These were 9 mm, not from the .40 Beretta—which meant they hadn’t been fired from Jesse’s gun,
if
it was truly his. She was beginning to doubt everything now.

She photographed and bagged the casings, this time in paper bags she’d brought from the safe house. If there were fingerprints or DNA on these casings, plastic would compromise the evidence. She put the bags in her pack and began to work Eager up the mountain, through the trees, toward the base of the cliff from where the wind was coming. Eager indicated again, this time on a log about the thickness of an arm.

Around the log June found broken leaves, scuffed loam, crushed ferns. Using a stick, she rolled the log over. On its underside was something dark, sticky, looked like blood. Beside it, another shell casing glinted in the loam—a .40 caliber. This one could have come from the Beretta. And there was more blood on the underside of the leaves.

Had Jesse shot and injured Lacy here? She didn’t even want to contemplate the little twins being hurt. She inhaled deeply, trying to temper her adrenaline.

“Good boy, Eager,” she whispered, ruffling the fur on his chest. She took hold of his collar and she said, “Do you want to find more? Are you
ready?
Are you ready, boy?
Search!
”

She let him go and he was off like a rocket again. June ran after him, feeling the weight of her backpack, her hiking boots like lead on her feet—she was more tired than she’d realized. Her pager went off again. She stopped, catching her breath as she quickly checked it.

Bo Fargo, yet again.

Had he been to the ranch yet? Seen her truck? Questioned Hannah? But before she could think further, June saw something change in Eager’s posture—a slight pop of his head in a new direction, fresh tension in his body, his tail wagging loosely. He was onto human scent, and he was making a beeline for a tangle of thick vegetation along the base of the cliff wall.

He started barking excitedly.

June caught up to him and grabbed his collar. “Lacy?” she whispered into the bushes.

A harsh whisper sounded from inside the brush. “
June?
Is that you!”

Eager started to bark louder.

“Good boy, Eager! Where’s Lacy? Show me!”

Panting with excitement, he wiggled his muscular body through the tight brush. June followed. Twigs pulled at her hair, dislodging her peaked hood as she pushed through.

And there they were, Lacy and the twins, huddled together in a small cave hidden by the scrub.

“June! Oh, thank God, it is you!” Lacy threw her arms around June and began to sob with relief as Eager wiggled about them, tail thumping in pride. The twins—Abby and Bekka—sat dead-silent, watching wide-eyed.

“Thank you for coming,” Lacy whispered, finally pulling herself away, wiping her eyes with shaking hands. Her face was as pale as a ghost’s, her eyes dark holes, her hair and clothes bedraggled. Her little bundle of gear rested next to her children.

June moved quickly toward the kids.

“Are you guys okay?” she said, noting that at least their shelter was dry, and they’d had some food, judging by the granola wrappers and a juice bottle on the dirt next to them. June took the Dorothy slipper out of her pack.

“Look what I brought, girls. One of your Dorothy shoes. And I know where the other one is, too.” June smiled shakily, her own eyes pricking with moisture as she offered the shoe to Abby. “I can get the other one for you, then we can click the heels together and you’ll all be in a safe and warm place, okay?”

The child stared with huge brown eyes. Then suddenly she lunged forward, her little arms wrapping as tightly as a limpet around June’s neck.

Tears flowed down June’s cheeks, emotion racking through her body. She hugged the child as tightly as she dared, closing her eyes, thanking the universe that this time, she hadn’t lost a child, but saved two.

It made losing her own little Aiden just a bit more bearable. It gave his short life just a little more value—because of him, because of what had happened to Matt, June was here right now, in this cave, helping this mother and her children. And she knew what she was doing was right.

June pulled back, wiping her face with the back of her hand. She needed to stay strong. She needed to get this little family all the way back through the dark tunnel and into the safe house. Before anyone else arrived.

“What happened, Lacy? Why didn’t you show up at the meeting place? Are you
sure
you’re all okay?”

“We’re just cold, tired, scared. We had some granola bars and juice.” She stared to cry again. “I always carry juice and stuff for the twins.”

Placing her hand on Lacy’s shoulder, June said, “That’s what mothers do. It’s okay, Lacy. I’m going to get you all somewhere safe, but you need to tell me everything that happened so I know what we’re dealing with.”

“I—I tried to go to the big black rock sentinel where Hannah said you’d come meet us. We were a bit early, and as we were coming up the trail, we heard voices. I ducked down, told the twins to stay put, and I crept forward. I saw two henchmen through the branches, patrolling the area. They had rifles and handguns.”

“They were waiting at the rock sentinel?”

Lacy nodded.

Anxiety punched through June. “How did they know about the rock?”

“I don’t know!”

“It’s okay, Lacy. I’m not blaming you…I just need to know.”

It could mean we have a mole, or that Hannah’s security has been compromised.

“And you’re sure they were henchmen?” said June

“
Yes!
I’ve seen them before, going into Samuel’s underground room at the community center. They both used to work for Charlie Rhodes, before he was shot. The one’s name is Jason Barnes—he’s good friends with a girl named Monica Pearl—and the other guy they call Lumpy because of how beaten up he’s gotten in the past.”

June thought of Jesse and his scars.

“And what happened when you saw them?”

Lacy moistened her lips. “We started to sneak away, deeper into the forest. After a while I didn’t know where we were. Then it got dark. We hid in the forest for the night, and in the morning we started moving again, but I realized we’d gotten turned around somehow and were lost. That’s when the rain started. I wasn’t sure what to do. I thought maybe the whole safe house and everything had been compromised, and I knew we’d be in trouble if I tried to find our way back to the village.” Tears ran afresh down her cheeks. “I was so scared for my babies.”

June comforted her. The twins were holding on to Eager. He was doing his job as a good Labrador: Loving people. Licking their faces. Lacy reached out to touch him, and June noticed that her usually perfectly manicured nails were chipped and broken. Her hair, always so impeccably styled, was in disarray. She looked so vulnerable, and in that moment June hated Samuel and his followers with such raw passion it frightened her.

“Then last night,” Lacy was saying, “while we were looking for somewhere dry and warm to hide, they must’ve heard us, and they started running toward us in the dark. I picked up the twins—that’s when we dropped the other shoe—and I tried to run, carrying them. But I fell, and by the time I got up, one of them, another man, was coming from the opposite direction.” Her jaw tightened and her eyes glittered. “He…he tried to tell me to stop, asked me where I thought I was going in the dark.” She sucked in a huge breath.

“I didn’t even give him a chance. I wasn’t going to let them take my babies. I picked up a huge log and, I swear, superhuman strength filled my body as I swung that sucker right at his face. I screamed at him that no henchman of Samuel’s was going to hurt me or my children. He went down like a rock, but then I heard the other two coming up behind him. The henchman on the ground went for his sidearm, but I just picked up my twins and ran for our lives. I could hear him shooting at us as we went.”

“So there were
three
men?”

She nodded.

“And no one came after you once you’d hit one of them with a log?”

“No. I—I guess maybe they stopped to help the hurt guy.”

“What did he look like, the guy you hit?”

“I—” She exhaled heavily. “I don’t really know. I was in a panic. It was dark. But he was big, tall. Denim jacket.”

“Dark or fair, can you remember?”

“Dark hair, definitely dark.”

June bit her lip. “Would you recognize him, do you think, if you saw him again?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. But I hope I never see him again. I hope he’s dead.”

“Lacy, we need to move quickly, before Samuel’s men come back.” June picked Bekka up as she spoke. The child was petite, light as a feather, and June’s heart ached as memories of her own child swelled inside her. She sucked air in deeply. She had to keep sharp focus if she was to get these two precious little bundles and their mother out of trouble and into the safe house.

Lacy gathered up Abby.

“Let’s click heels to go someplace safe, shall we?” said June to the twins.

Abby smiled and nodded, and Bekka chuckled. It warmed June’s heart and it steeled her resolve.

With Bekka on June’s hip and Lacy carrying Abby, they edged cautiously out the cave and through the undergrowth. Eager panted happily, taking up the rear. June checked her GPS bearings, and figured they could hug a route along the cliff base and cut back across the forest to where they could access the tunnel.

* * *

They reached the cave house by noon. An hour later, the twins had been fed, bathed and were sound asleep in the room that functioned as a nursery. There was a bed in the nursery that Lacy would use, too. But she was still wound up on adrenaline and was now sitting with June and Sonya and Tiffany at the big wooden table in the kitchen, a large mug of herbal tea cradled in her hands.