Jodi Thomas - Sunrise Crossing

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

Flight

January 2012

LAX

VICTORIA VILANIE CURLED into a ball, trying to make herself small, trying to disappear. Her black hair spread around her like a cape but couldn’t protect her.

All the sounds in the airport were like drums playing in a jungle full of predators. Carts with clicking wheels rolling on pitted tiles. People shuffling and shouting and complaining. Electronic voices rattling off numbers and destinations. Babies crying. Phones ringing. Winter’s late storm pounding on walls of glass.

Victoria, Tori to her few friends, might not be making a sound, but she was screaming inside.

Tears dripped off her face, and she didn’t bother to wipe them away. The noise closed in around her, making her feel so lonely in the crowd of strangers.

She was twenty-four, and everyone said she was a gifted artist. Money poured in so fast it had become almost meaningless, only a number that brought no joy. But tonight all she wanted was silence, peace, a world where she could hide out.

She scrubbed her eyes on her sleeve and felt a hand touch her shoulder like it were a bird, featherlight, landing there.

Tori turned and recognized a woman she’d seen once before. The tall blonde in her midthirties owned one of the best galleries in Dallas. Who could forget Parker Lacey’s green eyes? She was a woman who had it all and knew how to handle her life. A born general who must manage her life as easily as she managed her business.

“Are you all right, Tori?” Parker asked.

Tori could say nothing but the truth. “I’m living the wrong life.”

Then the strangest thing happened. The lady with green eyes hugged her and Tori knew, for the first time in years, that someone had heard her, really heard her.

CHAPTER TWO

The stone-blue days of winter

February

Dallas, Texas

PARKER LACEY SAT perfectly straight on the side of her hospital bed. Her short, sunny blond hair combed, her makeup in place and her logical mind in control of all emotions, as always.

She’d ignored the pain in her knee, the throbbing in her leg, for months. She ignored it now.

She’d been poked and examined all day, and now all that remained before the curtain fell on her life was for some doctor she barely knew to tell her just how long she had left to live. A month. Six months. If she was lucky, a year?

Her mother had died when Parker was ten. Breast cancer at thirty-one. Her father died eight years later. Lung cancer at thirty-nine. Neither parent had made it to their fortieth birthday.

Longevity simply didn’t run in Parker’s family. She’d known it and worried about dying all her adult life, and at thirty-seven, she realized her number would come up soon. Only she’d been smarter than all her ancestors. She would leave no offspring. There would be no next generation of Laceys. She was the last in her family.

There were also no lovers, or close friends, she thought. Her funeral would be small.

The beep of her cell phone interrupted her morbid thoughts.

“Hello, Parker speaking,” she said.

“I’m in!” came a soft voice. “I followed the map. It was just a few miles from where the bus stopped. The house is perfect, and your housekeeper delivered more groceries than I’ll be able to eat in a year. And, Parker, you were right. This isolated place will be heaven.”

Parker forgot her problems. She could worry about dying later. Right now, she had to help one of her artists. “Tori, are you sure you weren’t followed?”

“Yes. I did it just the way you suggested. Kept my head down. Dressed like a boy. Switched buses twice. One bus driver even told me to ‘Hurry along, kid.’”

“Good. No one will probably connect me with you and no one knows I own a place in Crossroads. Stay there. You’ll be safe. You’ll have time to relax and think.”

“They’ll question you when they realize I’ve vanished,” Tori said. “My stepfather won’t just let me disappear. I’m worth too much money to him.”

Parker laughed, trying to sound reassuring. “Of course, people will ask how well we know one another. I’ll say I’m proud to show your work in my gallery and that we’ve only met a few times at gallery openings.” Both facts were true. “Besides, it’s no crime to vanish, Tori. You are an adult.”

Victoria Vilanie was silent on the other end. She’d told Parker that she’d been on a manic roller coaster for months. The ride had left her fragile, almost shattered. Since she’d been thirteen and been “discovered” by the art community, her stepfather had quit his job and become her handler.

“Tori,” Parker whispered into the phone, “you’re not the tiger in a circus. You’ll be fine. You can stand on your own. There are professionals who will help you handle your career without trying to run your life.”

“I know. It’s just a little frightening.”

“It’s all right, Tori. You’re safe. You don’t have to face the reporters. You don’t have to answer any questions.” Parker hesitated. “I’ll come if you need me.”

“I’d like that.”

No one would ever believe that Parker would stick her neck out so far to help a woman she barely knew. Maybe she and Tori had each recognized a fellow loner, or maybe it was just time in her life that she did something different, something kind.

“No matter what happens,” Tori whispered, “I want to thank you. You’ve saved my life. I think if I’d had to go another week, I might have shattered into a million pieces.”

Parker wanted to say that she doubted it was that serious, but she wasn’t sure the little artist wasn’t right. “Stay safe. Don’t tell the couple who take care of the house anything. You’re just visiting, remember? Have them pick up anything you need from town. You’ll find art supplies in the attic room if you want to paint.”

“Found the supplies already, but I think I just want to walk around your land and think about my life. You’re right. It’s time I started taking my life back.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.” Parker had read every mystery she could find since she was eight. If Tori wanted to disappear, Parker should be able to figure out how to make it happen. After all, how hard could it be?

The hospital door opened.

Parker clicked off the disposable phone she’d bought at the airport a few weeks ago when she and Tori talked about how to make Tori vanish.

“Miss Parker?” A young doctor poked his head into her room. He didn’t look old enough to be out of college, much less med school, but this was a teaching hospital, one of the best in the country. “I’m Dr. Brown.”

“It’s Miss Lacey. My first name is Parker,” she said as she pushed the phone beneath her covers. Hiding it as she was hiding the gifted artist.

The kid of a doctor moved into the room. “You any kin to Quanah Parker? We get a few people in here every year descended from the great Comanche chief.”

She knew what the doctor was trying to do. Establish rapport before he gave her the bad news, so she played along. “That depends. How old was he when he died?”

The doctor shrugged. “I’m not much of a history buff, but my folks stopped at every historical roadside marker in Texas and Oklahoma when I was growing up. I think the great warrior was old when he died, real old. Had six wives, I heard, when he passed peacefully in his sleep on his ranch near a town that bears his name.”

“If he lived a long life, I’m probably not kin to him. And to my knowledge, I have no Native American blood and no living relatives.” By the time she’d been old enough to ask, no one around remembered why she was named Parker and she had little interest in exploring a family tree with such short branches.