Dark Memories (The DARK Files Book 1) (7 page)

Laura patted Bea’s shoulder. “That’s a sad story. If it’s any consolation, it looks like he’ll have a hit with
Death at the Diner
.”

“How could he not, with Doris up there?” She waved a hand at the stage, then gazed at Cole with interest. “What sort of work do you do?”

Laura could hardly wait for his answer.

“I’m a travel writer.” His gaze was contemplative. Laura tried and failed to picture an authorial pipe dangling from his mouth. “I pen those articles in the travel section of the Sunday paper about the latest vacation hot spot.”

Bea’s smile widened. “Stan must hope you’ll write an article about Hart’s Inn Resort.”

“You never know.” He gave her a boyish grin.

“Are you ready to go?” he said to Laura. His warm hand against her lower back urged her to movement.

When they hit the cool night topped with a dome of stars, he dropped his hand and walked at her side.

So much for distance. Sitting beside him in the darkened theater had heightened her consciousness of him to the point that now she felt bereft at the loss of his touch. And he made her laugh. Like old times.

Double whammy.

LAURA’S FURROWED BROW probably meant suspicion and worry at what he planned to do. Cole had caught a glimpse of her amazement at his cover story. Good. Let her stew a moment.

He was stewing too, itching to touch her again. Walking in the dark was too reminiscent of stolen kisses and a stolen weekend.

They left the theater barn behind and crossed the empty parking lot. When they came abreast of the three-story clapboard inn, Laura spoke, her amused gaze heating him another degree. “Travel writer?”

He shrugged. “It’s a good cover. But Hart will wait a long time for any article of mine. The armpits of the world I usually visit end up in classified reports, not the travel section of a newspaper.”

She cocked her head, looking as if she wanted to ask more, but kept her silence.

“What was that about the chowder?”

She laughed, a lighthearted peal that belied her deep fears. “Bea thinks I’m thin. She’s trying to fatten me up.”

“You look good. Not skinny.” Ripe curves and a golden tan, Midas’s daughter all grown up. He could picture every millimeter of that creamy skin. The memory heated his blood and pissed him off for remembering.

“Thanks.” She smiled at him as they approached her cabin.

All it took was to be near her, and his cool resolve flew away like dust beneath his spinning wheels. Clearing up most of the past didn’t chill the slow burn inside him.
He had questions that needed answers. Answers about her choices back then. Answers that might drive away the demon voice of his old man.
You’ll never amount to nothing, boy. You’re just like me. No-account.

He gave himself a mental shake. He was no good at understanding their so-called relationship, but he had to try. “Look, Laura, I’ve been thinking.”

She turned from unlocking her door. “Always a dangerous thing.”

Dangerous, maybe. He’d see if it was fatal. “Ten years is a long time to hold a grudge. But I can’t let go of this ache in my gut until the past is totally settled.”

She gaped at him, her eyes as big as pie plates. Even in the dim outdoor lighting, he could see her face go chalky. “What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean? Why were you so quick to believe Valesko’s lies?”

Color seeped back, and crimson daubed her cheekbones. How did he spook her so?

“I’d heard … rumors about you and another girl. I saw you together outside the college. People said she was your next conquest. I think her name was Mona.”

He scrubbed a hand across his chin. “Mona was Valesko’s ex-girlfriend. I helped her get away from him after he beat her up for the third time. That was all.”

She gave him a rueful smile. “Of course you would help someone that way. I’m sorry I didn’t ask you about her.”

“Then later you never even asked about me. It was like we’d never been together. Like I’d never existed. I was in the Marines, but I had word from some of the guys. When you came back from Europe, you didn’t try to find me. Then you didn’t return to Penn. You went off to some new college out west.”

Laura shivered and hugged herself. She stood rigid, transmuted into unyielding metal.

Her silence struck flint to the low flame inside him. “I used to feel we connected, that you knew
me
, not just the bum everyone else saw. Was I wrong? Were you just a rich girl slumming?”

Her chin shot up. She stood toe-to-toe with him, glaring at him. “You have no idea what I went through. Yes, we connected. I felt you were the other half of me. My world was turned upside down when I believed you’d tossed me away like a rusted motorcycle part. I had to put the pain behind me and find a new world.”

The harsh belief he’d held all these years curled at the edges, ignited new questions. But finding the right words to ask her taxed him more than negotiations in Spanish or Pashto.

“During that damn weekend, we had plans to be together, dreams of a future. You were going to transfer to Georgetown. Finally I had attainable dreams. Education, job, and then kids. You knew how I felt about a family. How the hell could you mow down those dreams?”

Grief and sadness shadowed her face. She looked at him with overflowing eyes. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, so you felt you had to leave and join the service.”

“Don’t be sorry for me in that respect.” Giving in to impulse, he hugged her to him. “No regrets here about joining up. My interests in politics and history paid off. Without the Marines, I wouldn’t be a government officer today.”

“Then you’re fortunate. As for the rest, fate and our immaturity conspired against us back then. Let’s leave the answer at that.”

He shook his head. “It’s not enough.”

She wrenched from his embrace and moved to the door. Her mouth and shoulders firmed. “It’s all I have to offer.”

The tears brimming over glistened in the arc cast by the outside light. His gut instinct nagged him that she was still holding something back. If it wasn’t their biker-and-princess differences, what could it be?

Damn. He was an idiot.
Her tears were due to the shock of revisiting old wounds. Add to that her recent visit to hell. Witnessing a murder, nearly becoming the next victim. Going underground and living in fear. Then today’s brake failure. Another near miss.

He’d pushed her as far as he should today. But he would eventually find out what she’d left unsaid. “Let’s go inside.” He tucked her behind him and finished unlocking the door for her. “You’re a target out here.”

“For mosquitoes, definitely.” She swatted one on her arm. Her voice was thick with emotion, but not humor. “What on earth are you doing?”

He saw she was staring at the small Glock he’d drawn from his ankle holster. “I’m going in to check out the cabin. Stay out here until I call you.”

Pushing the door in slowly, he slipped into the darkened cabin and skirted the great room. He gagged at the alien odor.

Gas.

The chemical odorant the gas company added to the odorless gas was a precaution he was damned thankful for. The lousy heater was still leaking.
If there was a hit man inside, he was dead to the world. Or dead period.

After a quick tour of the rest of the cabin, he slipped the 9mm into its holster. No killer, sleeping or otherwise.

He located the heater and quickly shut off the valve. Fixing it might not be the answer. Not worn threads, but a human hand had loosened it. He’d notify the others to surveil the cabin full-time.

Shoving open windows to help clear the air, he called for Laura to enter. She was frightened enough for tonight without his laying the latest on her. “But don’t turn on the light just yet. Even a small spark would be enough to blow us clear to New Hampshire.”

She stepped into the kitchen and stood by the table, shivering. No longer angry, she looked small and fragile and grief stricken. “I’ll see Stan tomorrow about getting that fixed.”

Cole edged to the door, gazing out at the shadows beneath the trees. He braced his palms on the door frame.

Laura watched him. Sooner or later she’d have to tell him.
How much did he know already?
“Turnabout is fair play. Did you ever go back to Potomac to learn the truth? Did you look for me later?”

His back stiffened, and he turned slowly. “I went back one more time after basic. For my dad’s funeral. He drove with a snoot full one too many times and plowed his car into a highway abutment.” His eyes were as bleak and bitter cold as winter.

She started to go to him, to put her arms around his big shoulders. He’d been all alone, far away, and no one comforted him then. Or since, she supposed. But she was too vulnerable to him as it was.

So she clutched the kitchen chair and stayed where she was. “Cole, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

Hands fisted at his sides, he stared past her into the dark corners of the room. “I was celebrating the end of basic training with my first pass. A bunch of us guys just got back from a local bar after tossing down more than a few beers. When the cops phoned the base to give me the sorry-for-your-loss speech, I was drunk. Like him.”

Her heart aching for him, Laura pushed the chair aside and crossed to him. His rigid shoulders didn’t invite cuddling, but she pried open his hand, lacing her fingers with his larger ones. She longed to press her other hand to his whisker-roughened cheek, to trace the groove that had deepened with his emotion. But she didn’t. “You couldn’t have known. And you had a right to celebrate.”

“A right to celebrate.” He shook his head, then eased his hand away and opened the door. “I knew then I didn’t want to end up like him. I haven’t touched alcohol since.”

Alcoholism ran in families, so his was a wise decision. Compassion and admiration for him were the last emotions she expected to feel tonight.
“Always a clear head, then, cowboy?”

He barked a laugh. As she’d hoped, her light comment had lifted his dark mood a notch. “Not always, but at least my head’s not pickled.”

Hell, in the long run, I did leave him.
When he said that earlier, she wondered about the bitterness coloring his words. Now she understood. “Instead you’ve taken a long guilt trip. It wasn’t your fault, you know. The drink would’ve killed him one way or another even if you’d been there.”

“I know.”

“Do you? Do you really?”

“Hell, woman. You know me too well. His liver was a sieve. Doctors said he didn’t have long to live anyway.”

“So let the guilt and regrets go.”

“And you?”

His gaze and pointed question kicked her in the chest. Somehow the topic had changed. He’d turned her probing back on her. But she wasn’t ready to delve into their mutual past again so soon. She merely shook her head and shrugged.

With that, he left the cottage and melted into the night.

She closed — and locked — the door and checked the gas valve again in the dark. Tight. Of course he’d made it secure.

She turned on lights in the bedroom and bath and got ready for bed. As she washed her face, she felt the day’s tension and weariness deep in her bones. She barely had the strength to brush her teeth.

A pounding on the door jarred her awake from dozing on her feet.

The monster clawed at her. Trapped. Cole had left her, and she didn’t know how to contact him. But would a hit man knock at the door? She nearly giggled at the notion.
Dousing the bathroom light, she squinted at the kitchen door. Through the glass, she saw a familiar profile.

Cole.

With a small duffel over his shoulder. An overnight bag.

She didn’t know whether to be relieved or angry or terrified. But her first thought up on the mountain had been correct.

No escape.

***

Gasping for breath, Laura surged to a sitting position. She shivered. Sweat beaded her brow and chest.

Three a.m.
The dial of her bedside clock cast the only light in the small bedroom. Outside, trees blocked the moonlight from the window. A sleepy chirp was the only disturbance in the night. She lifted the damp hair sticking to her neck.

The old nightmare.

She rubbed her eyes to rid her vision of the terrifying kaleidoscope — the spinning car, the screech of metal against metal, the rag doll that wasn’t a rag doll. The blood.

Oh, God. A thunderstorm of memories crashed around her. She fought to control the anguish that churned like an egg-beater in her stomach.

Breathe. Count of four in … four out. Four in. Four out.

The techniques she’d learned from counseling were holding her together now, just barely. Breath control, visualization. She knew what to do, whatever the cause of panic.

After the attempt on her life, knives and tiny claws and crimson darkness had monopolized the prime-time nightmare slot, and then tapered off. Tonight by popular demand the old rerun returned.

In the dark she fumbled her way out of the clammy sheets. She was calmer now, but her parched throat needed water.
She pressed her sweat-damp forehead against the closed door. The feel of the solid wood recalled her to the present.

Her dead son’s father lay out there asleep on her sofa.

Drat the man. He was the cause of the dream’s return. The cause of all her anguish. Tears leaked from her squeezed eyelids. How could she have any left?

Following the roller-coaster ride that had totaled her car, the day had continued its downhill slide. A wary Cole in military mode stayed close, a wolf on lookout. They cleared up past misunderstandings, but his not knowing the rest was a guillotine hanging over her head. If he kept badgering her, eventually she’d have to tell him.

At least part of the story.

Her emotions were too raw, and she feared breaching the dam if she explained now. She didn’t owe him all of it.
No, that was her private, lonely hell.

His reentry into her life had dumped her into a new level of the Inferno. The man was much more than the boy, a man to make her long for impossible dreams. Every minute with him burned that into her soul. He still knew her too well for her to dissemble for long. How long could she last?