Melinda Di Lorenzo - Undercover Refuge

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Alessandra Rivers watched, stupefied, as the man in the truck sped up, then kept going. She spun slowly to stare at the back end as it rumbled away.

Is he seriously just going to leave ?

She stood still, certain he was going to turn around. He had to, didn’t he? Even if chivalry was out of fashion—and really, Alessandra wasn’t all that interested in being a damsel in distress, anyway—there was still some human decency to speak of, wasn’t there? What kind of person left someone visibly stranded on the side of the road like that?

And she was 100 percent sure he’d seen her. Even his mirrored sunglasses and his curved brim hat couldn’t hide the fact that his gaze had slid over her.

But the truck didn’t show any sign of coming back. No approaching engine. No renewed cloud of dust. And now Alessandra could feel a thick ball forming in her throat. Dread and worry. And threatening tears.

She drew in a breath and closed her eyes, trying to ward it all off. It was a hard sell.

She’d been lost on the back roads of Whispering Woods for a good fifteen minutes before even spotting the rusted-out hunk of junk and the stranger who’d just abandoned her. At first, she’d been so glad to see him that she actually forgot to react. By the time she’d stuck her arm out the window, he was gone. And she’d tried—hard—to catch up. But her Prius wasn’t much good on anything that wasn’t smooth, and every few feet she seemed to hit a deep pothole that inevitably made the car bounce, her heart pound and her teeth knock together. It didn’t help at all that the guy in the truck seemed to be on some crazy mission to take as many weird turns as possible. Alessandra had been relieved when he turned up the dirt path with the no-exit sign at the front.

But the relief was short-lived. It went straight down into the ditch along with the front end of her stupid little car. And hope followed it. Or maybe not followed it. Maybe the hope disappeared up the road along with Mr. Blue Truck.

With a frustrated exhale, Alessandra turned back toward her vehicle. She had a sudden overwhelming urge to kick the door. Multiple times. It was an unusual sensation, and not just because it was such an aggressive thing to want to do. Alessandra prided herself on having a very even temper. On channeling inner calmness and on projecting an outer peace. She wasn’t much into relaxing candles, meditation or yoga. Those had been her mom’s things. But when life went wrong, a few deep breaths and a reminder than she had a million things to be grateful for was usually enough. And even when that didn’t work, she always had her own inner strength to draw on.

Except today, she thought. And maybe every moment of the last two weeks.

Or to be more exact, the last thirteen days. Not that Alessandra was particularly superstitious, but that did seem a little coincidentally unlucky.

Thirteen days ago, she’d found the letter in an old box of her mom’s stuff. Tucked in between a box of incense, a bundle of sage and a pile of tarot cards. She’d only opened it because she’d recognized her father’s handwriting on the outside of the envelope, and she’d known exactly what it was. A love note.

Throughout her childhood, her father had left them scattered in secret places for her mother to find. Her mother had requested that the notes be buried with her, lovingly explaining to Alessandra that they were far too private to leave out in the world.

But when Alessandra had found this one, she’d felt no guilt at opening it. Not an ounce. She saw things like that as kismet. Meant to be. And really, she’d just been hoping to hear her dad’s voice in her head. Her mother had only been gone for two years, but he’d passed fifteen years earlier, and sometimes it was hard to remember him.

As Alessandra had unsealed the envelope, she’d been excited. But a first glance had changed the excitement. She’d been unsettled. Then surprised. And finally, stunned beyond all reason.

The paper was like a patchwork quilt. A hundred tiny pieces, torn up, then painstakingly taped together.

For a minute, she’d just stared at it without reading it, wondering why it had been destroyed, then considering the amount of effort required to reassemble it. When at last she did read it, squinting through the Scotch tape at the faded ink to make out the words, her breath had stuck in her throat. The content was a shock.

Dear Mary,

I can’t imagine what my death did.

I’d undo it if I could.

Do you remember our honeymoon?

I’ll live there. Always

Love you forever,

Randall

As she recalled the words again, a renewed trickle of fear made Alessandra shiver, and anxiety sent her heart rate spiking.

She questioned once more if the note held any underlying meaning. A secret message of some kind. It seemed like such an odd thing to write, then destroy. Had father done it himself because he never intended her mother to see the letter? Or had her mother been the one to do it? And if so...why?

From the moment Alessandra read the letter, things had only gone downhill. There was a police report that resulted in a friend’s supposedly accidental death. Then a fire at the surf shop Alessandra called home. And finally, an unexpected invitation to meet with an old family friend. Jesse Garibaldi. Who’d informed her that he now called the small tourist town of Whispering Woods home. The very place her dad referred to in his letter. Where her parents had spent the weeks after their private ceremony, and where they’d joked that Alessandra had been conceived. What were that chances that it was a coincidence?

She shivered yet again, a chill running through her in spite of the sun overhead.

“Don’t think about any of that,” she ordered aloud to herself. “Focus on getting out of this moment, then think about the rest.”

But it was a little hard to maintain a cheerful outlook with her car hanging half in a ditch. She couldn’t even tell herself that it was half out , and somehow put a good spin on it. Especially when she was unable to call for help. The first thing she’d done when she realized she was lost was to go for cell phone. But at the exact moment she pulled it from her purse, she’d hit a bump. The phone went flying. As she’d tried to grab it, she’d knocked over her coffee. And of course, the coffee spilled directly onto the phone. By the time Alessandra pulled off the road—which she should’ve done in the first place—the phone was nothing but a dismal black screen of death. And it still showed no sign of magically self-repairing.

Okay. Deep breath. Then make a list. What are the positives?

For a second, she couldn’t think of a single one.

“Well,” she finally said. “I’m not dead. So there’s that.”

But the thought was a little too dark to be truly humorous.

Alessandra looked down at her car again. She vaguely recalled things about ropes and pulleys and levers from high school science. But she had a feeling that trying to hoist a car out of a ditch was slightly more complicated than moving a paper airplane with a drinking straw and elastic band. A bit of a different scale.

“Okay, then,” she muttered. “I guess the only thing to do is to walk until I find some help.”

Wincing at the generally sorry state of her car, she climbed back into the ditch and leaned through the driver’s side door to grab her oversize patchwork bag from the front seat. She eyed her suitcase in the back seat, but decided to leave it. There was no way of knowing exactly how long she’d have to walk, and she didn’t want to weigh herself down too badly.