Dana Mentink - Endless Night

Something in the stilted tone made her uneasy. “Okay, but first tell me the name of your supervising officer and your badge number.”

There was a long moment of silence. “You are the one being questioned here.”

“Not until you give me the information.”

The tone of the voice changed. “Look, honey. We know where you live and the make and model of your car. We even know where your father lives. All we want is that thumb drive. You hand that over and you get your life back.”

Her stomach spasmed. “Don’t threaten me,” she snapped.

“We’ll get to you. It’s a matter of time. You’d better keep your mouth shut.”

She hung up, head spinning. Reynolds’s men knew she was here. Had they paid someone at the lodge to search her room? Or sent one of their own men? She thought of Byron Lloyd.

Her knees began to tremble with a sudden violence. Before she sank to the floor, Roman caught her and helped her to a chair. She sat there clinging to his hand, terror threatening to sweep her away.

He knelt next to her, eyes searching, and gently stroked her hand.

“What is it?” he whispered. “What is wrong, Jackie?”

She clutched his fingers, trying to will his strength into her body. It was too much. She’d gotten herself into a place she could not get out of. They would find her. She shivered. They already had. “I don’t know what to do.”

He frowned. “About what?” He leaned closer. “Tell me, Jackie. Let me help you.”

His face shone with concern. If she could just lean on him, trust him as she had for so many years. Her father’s words came back to her. Roman killed your brother. Don’t ever forget that. Though she wanted more than anything to lay her burden on his wide shoulders, she could not. Not with Roman. Allowing him into her life again would reopen wounds that were still ragged with agony. With a painful effort, she pulled her hand out of his grasp. “Nothing. A delayed reaction to all this. I’m okay.”

“You don’t look okay.”

She forced herself to breath normally, to still the shaking of her hands. “Really, I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not. If you don’t want to share your problem with me, I guess I can understand that.” His eyes clouded. “I know that all ended a long time ago, but maybe you’d better confide in someone who can help you.” He gestured around the room. “This looks like more than you can handle on your own.”

Her whirl of emotion exploded into a fiery rage. “Don’t tell me what I can or can’t do. I’ve handled it all, including laying my brother to rest. And where were you, Roman? You were nowhere. Did you call? Write? Did you even think about how I was handling things without my brother and my father, sick with grief?” She found herself sobbing.

Roman looked as if he’d been punched. “I’m sorry. I wanted to talk to you, but I couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t hurt you more. I wrote, but I never mailed the letters.”

“You just didn’t want to face up to what you did.”

He shook his head. “I’ve had to face up to that every day, every minute of my life.” He started toward the door and continued, his voice almost a whisper. “Just so you know, I visit the spot where you scattered Danny’s ashes all the time. And I was there that day, at the funeral, watching from the bluff.”

She almost didn’t hear his last words. “I think I died that day, too.”

“I…I didn’t know. You should have come to me at the funeral.”

His eyes glittered. “Come to you? Would you have wanted the person who killed your brother there? Would your father?”

She couldn’t answer.

He sighed. “That’s what I thought. I’ve got to go now.”

After he’d left she tried to still the trembling that swept through her. He’d been there, on that terrible day, enduring the grief and shouldering his own deep sense of guilt. She had never known that he’d shared the blackest moment of her life.

The idea was too much, too dark.

Desperately she tried to direct her mind to something else.

With shaking hands, she nudged the computer to life, praying a new message from Asia hadn’t arrived when the intruder was in the cabin. It seemed an eternity before the inbox swam into view. No new messages.

The relief took her breath away. She pulled up a search engine and input Adventure Roads Magazine.

“Let’s see if you’re telling the truth, Mr. Lloyd.” The Web site was slick and colorful. Part of her felt disappointed. She’d been half expecting to find there was no such magazine, but here it was in bold, splashy color. An online archive made it easy to search all prior issues.

This time when the search was finished, Jackie felt not disappointment, but sick dread. There wasn’t one single article by anyone named Byron Lloyd.

Roman had a hard time keeping his mind on his work as he checked over the plane.

Jackie was terrified of someone, perhaps the same someone who had broken into her room. He fought a strong desire to return to check on her, call her, drop everything and find her that very moment.

Jackie felt like he’d abandoned her, killed her brother and left her to handle the grief alone. He slammed the toolbox shut. The past couldn’t be changed, but what about the present situation? Who was after her? And why? Even the thrum of the plane’s engines when he fired them to life a half hour later did not calm his thoughts. He noted the increasing cloud cover. Possible blizzard approaching.

It would be devastating for Skip and the snow-sculpture competition. With each competitor forking over several hundred dollars to participate, Skip would get to keep a nice chunk of the entry fee to cover costs. He’d also make a hefty bit of change selling food—if the weather didn’t interfere. Roman hoped the blizzard held off. Skip seemed stressed and distracted lately. He didn’t need anything else on his plate. Skip was like a father to him. He couldn’t bear to see him so pained. Roman’s own father was only a distant memory, a man who’d left when he was just a kid.

He was surprised to see Jackie with Skip as they approached the cleared landing strip.

He opened the passenger-side door for her. “You going along?”

She nodded, her face screened by a curtain of coppery hair and showing no signs of her earlier outburst. “I’ve got to do some business at the bank.”

He wondered, but didn’t question as they flew toward the airport. “Skip and I have to get the supplies loaded, then I can drive us into town. Okay by you, Skip?”

The man looked up from a piece of paper he’d been perusing. “What?”

Roman repeated the plan.

“Sure, sure. That’s fine.” He returned his attention to the paper.

Jackie turned. “Everything okay, Skip? You seem worried about something.”

Skip started. “Who me? Nah. Just all the fuss about Winterfest. I’m fine.”

Jackie faced front again but Roman saw her looking at Skip in the side mirror. She too felt there was something not quite right. Roman tried to keep his mind fixed firmly on the approaching airport, though the scent of Jackie’s newly washed hair triggered a cascade of memories. He remembered how it had looked at the funeral; smooth, twisted into a coil of fire that glimmered in the sunlight.

Not now, Roman. Not ever.

They landed and jogged through the frigid air into the loading area. Crates of fresh vegetables, flour and sugar and frozen meats were ready and waiting. Skip arranged for signatures, and Roman waved to Al as the heavyset man climbed onto a forklift. After he finished the paperwork, Skip climbed up a ladder to a landing ten feet above them, and began sorting the crates into efficient stacks.

Roman turned to Jackie to tell her there was coffee in the terminal but found her busily scanning a message board that flashed the incoming and outgoing flights. Her face was drawn in a look of such concentration, he started over to see exactly what had caught her interest so completely. He’d made it only a few steps when a cry made him turn.