The Cabin (41 page)

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Carla Neggers

around Ellen’s shoulders. “Mom,” Ellen breathed,

“you’ll freeze.”

“I’ve been hoofing it up this damn hill.” She tried to

smile. “I’ll be fine.”

“Dad…”

“He’s coming. You know he is.”

She dug in the hip pack, saw that blood from her

scraped wrist and forearm had dripped onto her palm.

Her fingers were too cold, the muscles too weakened,

for her to manage the bungee cord around their waist.

The bastard, she thought. The fucking
bastard.

“Gran packed hot water,” she said calmly. “It should

still be warm…”

She tried to get Maggie to drink a little first, but only

ended up wetting her lips and tongue.

Ellen was sobbing, hanging on to the edges of the

fleece vest. Susanna saw she hadn’t managed the gloves

and dropped down next to her, pulling them onto Ellen’s

frozen hands. But she gasped, crying harder. “Mom,

you’re bleeding!”

“It’s okay, sweetie. I fell. I’m fine.”

“Sam—that man shot him—”

“Sam went with your father. He’s not badly injured.

Ellen, we’re okay, honey. Let’s just get you and Mag-

gie warm. Here, try to drink some water.”

But Ellen wasn’t listening. “Went where? Mom, he

has a
gun.
He’ll shoot Daddy. He’ll kill him. He’ll—”

“Ellen, this is what Dad and Sam do.” Susanna spoke

quietly, as reassuring and as confident as she could be.

But she knew what she was saying was true. “Trust

them. It’ll be all right.”

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345

She sank into the snow, gasping at the shock of cold

on her back, and scooted in close to her daughters, try-

ing to reduce their exposure to the elements. She pulled

them onto her as much as she could. Maggie was limp,

mumbling incoherently, but Susanna kept talking to her,

kept Ellen talking as she held both girls close, trying to

warm them with her own body heat. Their temperatures

had dipped below 98.6 degrees. She could feel it in their

bodies, feel the cold seeping deep into her own body.

She heard a man’s voice, a curse, and then Jack was

there, charging up the ravine toward them.

Susanna found she couldn’t speak. He tore off his

coat and threw it around Maggie and Ellen, and he sank

down against the boulder, pulling them and Susanna

onto him, enveloping him with his warmth.

“He was going to shoot us.” Ellen gulped in air, talk-

ing fast. “Maggie kept talking to him—she stayed calm,

Dad. She didn’t panic. She told him he’d be better off

if he left us out here alive, because we were slowing him

down and you were going to come after him. But if he

didn’t have us, he could negotiate if you caught him.

Then he got out these cords and tied us together—” She

sobbed into her father’s chest, her voice muffled as she

continued. “He gagged me with his scarf, but I got it off,

and I got off one of the cords and—”

She couldn’t go on, and Jack carefully unknotted the

last cord that bound the two girls together and tossed

it aside. Susanna saw he had tears in his eyes, and she

touched his cheek, the tears spilling as he kissed her

fingertips.

��

Twenty-Two

When Susanna finally collapsed onto a chair at her big

oak table, Gran and Sam Temple were arguing over a

monster pot of chili. Sam wanted to dump in tons of hot

peppers. Gran didn’t want any at all.

Susanna knew this scene of normality was for her

benefit and tried to smile through her exhaustion. The

rescue crews had found them not long after Jack had ar-

rived, and she, Maggie and Ellen were all treated and re-

leased at the local hospital. The doctors had wanted to

keep Maggie overnight, but she refused. Neither she nor

Ellen would suffer any permanent damage from their hy-

pothermia and frostbite. But it was a close call. One of

Susanna’s cuts had required a couple of stitches. Her arm

was gooed up and wrapped from wrist to elbow in ban-

dages, and she had pain medication if she needed it.

“Give up, Sam,” she said. “They eat their chili with

saltine crackers up here.”

He looked over at her from the stove, his wooden

spoon poised midair. He was on painkillers, too, and had

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347

helped himself to one of Gran’s walking sticks. “Sal-

tines? No.”

Gran sniffed at Susanna. “What do you mean,

‘they’?” But she turned back to Sam, resuming their ar-

gument. “Davey Ahearn eats crackers with his chili, but

I wouldn’t make any generalizations of northern be-

havior based on what he does. I simply don’t like hot

peppers. There’s nothing anti-Texas about it.”

Sam handed her the wooden spoon and sank against

the counter, his face slightly pale. He was also treated

and released, but he’d driven himself to the hospital in

his rented SUV, with a New York State Trooper riding

shotgun with him. They all spent a long time with the

state and local police. They had Beau McGarrity in their

custody, arrested on a series of charges, including one

count of attempted murder in the first degree for shoot-

ing Sam, two counts of attempted murder in the second

degree for dumping the twins in the ravine and two

counts of kidnapping in the first degree. Jack had done

most of the real talking, and he’d made it clear right from

the start that he’d do what he could to get Beau returned

to Texas for the murder of Rachel Tucker McGarrity.

Alice Parker and Davey Ahearn’s truck still hadn’t

turned up.

“The plumber’s not going to be happy about his

truck,” Sam said.

Gran stirred the bubbling pot of chili. “It’ll turn up.”

Sam shook his head. “I don’t know. Six million acres

of wilderness. A foot of fresh snow. Cold. Ice. Moun-

tains. Lakes, rivers and streams. Campsites. Alice can

go for a long time before anyone finds her.”

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“She won’t stay up here.” Gran set her spoon on the

stove, looking tired but remarkably cheerful. “She wants

to start a new life in Australia.”

Sam shrugged. “She also wanted to be a Texas Ranger.”

“I think she’ll make it to Australia,” Gran said wist-

fully. “I really do.”

“You want her to get away?”

“She thinks she came north for money and revenge

for all she lost, but she didn’t.” Gran nodded, almost to

herself, with conviction. “She came for vindication. She

came for justice. She served as the catalyst that put

Beau McGarrity behind bars.”

Sam stared at her, dumbfounded. “Ma’am, I’m not

going to argue with you about anything but hot peppers,

but you are dead wrong. Alice Parker committed about

two dozen different crimes. Breaking and entering, as-

sault, extortion—”

“Yes, but in the end—”

“In the end, she stole a truck.”

Jack got up from the castle puzzle. He’d been star-

ing at it for twenty minutes. He was wearing a dark

sweater, looking warm but still grim, still digesting, Su-

sanna knew, how close he’d come to losing his family.

Really losing it. He’d been upstairs earlier with the girls,

making sure they were comfortable. Ellen had said she

planned to sleep for a hundred years. Maggie still didn’t

have the energy to talk. And Susanna knew she couldn’t

have made it up three steps before she collapsed. Fatigue

and shock had left her limp and shaky, and the images

of her daughters’ bleeding and frostbitten, of Destin’s

hard, frozen body, tore at her peace of mind.

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349

“Give it up, Sam,” Jack said. “Iris isn’t changing

her mind.”

Sam grunted. “When I’m eighty, I’m going to be just

as opinionated.”

“You’re just as opinionated now,” Gran informed him.

He kissed her on the top of the head and took her by

the shoulders, moving her toward the table. “You,

ma’am, are going to sit down and let Jack and me fin-

ish this chili. I’ll tell you one thing I’m not doing when

I’m eighty—I’m not chasing any desperadoes through

the goddamn frozen wilderness.”

Gran sank onto a chair across from Susanna and

sighed up at him. “I did all right today, didn’t I?”

“Ma’am, you are something else.” Sam got her shawl

off the couch and draped it over her shoulders. “I, on

the other hand, got my ass kicked today.”

“Sam, I’m sorry,” Susanna said. “We nearly got you

killed.”

He looked over at her, and she saw that his eyes were

very serious. “That’s the other way around. I’m the Texas

Ranger who was assigned to keep you warm and safe.”

“Uh-huh,” she said. “You had your badge and your

gun, and you had every reason to think they’d be

enough.”

He winked at her, seeming to understand she was try-

ing to ease his guilt. “I could poke eyes out with that

badge.”

“He shot you, Sam,” Susanna said quietly. “He meant

to kill you. If you hadn’t—”

“It worked out.”

Jack got two beers from the refrigerator, poured one

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in a glass and took it to Iris and kept the other for him-

self. “None for you two,” he told Sam and Susanna.

“You’re on pain medication.”

Susanna shook her head. “No, I’m not. I haven’t

taken any yet.”

“Wait’ll the adrenaline wears off,” Sam said. “You’re

going to hurt like hell.”

“It’ll make me drowsy. I don’t know if I want to

sleep.” And an image flashed in her mind of the frost on

Destin’s eyelids.

Jack brushed a hand gently along her shoulder.

“Beer’s still not a good idea.”

Iris reached across the table and grabbed Susanna’s

hands, scooping them up into hers as if she could read

her granddaughter’s mind and see the terrible images

that were there. “Destin was in charge of his own des-

tiny.” Her green eyes shone with intensity, certainty.

“You didn’t tell him to become so obsessed with money

and himself that he couldn’t see anything or anyone

else. His death isn’t your fault. Or mine.”

“
Yours?
No, Gran—”

She cut Susanna off with a curt shake of the head. “I

should have told you about Jared years ago. You and

Jack might have made his connection to Rachel McGar-

rity sooner. That was a decision I made a long time ago,

before any of you were born. But,” she said, lifting her

beer glass, “I didn’t create Beau McGarrity.”

“He’s a sick, evil bastard,” Susanna said. “To do what

he did today—”

“I felt Jared with us today, out here on the lake.”

Gran’s voice was wistful, and she sank back in her chair

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351

and sighed softly. “He was with Maggie and Ellen. I

know he was.”

“Gran…”

She smiled. “I’m fine, Susanna. I truly am.”

And she was. Susanna could see it. Her grandmother

was fine. They all were, whatever physical and psycho-

logical recovery lay ahead. “The police say Destin’s

death might have been an accident. He could have

slipped or tripped. They think the autopsy will show

he died when he hit his head on the rock ledge. He

wasn’t shot—”

“No way was it an accident,” Sam said. “There was

another set of footprints at the top of the ledge. Beau

pushed the poor bastard.”

Gran sipped her beer. “Sergeant Temple, you do tend

to look at the dark side, don’t you?”

“I’m trained—”

“You’re trained to look at the facts and the evidence,”

she said, smug.

Sam grinned at her. “That’s it. I’m putting hot pep-

pers in the chili.”

But Gran just laughed, and when Sam and Jack

served the bowls of steaming chili, the hot peppers were

in a small dish on the side. Just to be a smartass, Sam

set out a plate of saltine crackers.

Susanna only managed a couple of spoonfuls of chili

before she started to slide under the table. Jack caught

her firmly around the middle and got her to her feet. “To

bed with you,” he said.

But when he started to half carry her, half lead her

to the downstairs bedroom, she shook her head. “I want

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to sleep upstairs with Maggie and Ellen, in case they

need me during the night.”

He didn’t argue, and as they went up the stairs to-

gether, she felt her feet lift off the floor and let herself

sink against his warm chest. He made a bed for her on

the floor between the girls’ twin beds. Old blankets,

throws and quilts from a chest in the hall. Susanna mus-

tered enough energy to grab a pillow from the sofa bed.

She checked on Maggie and Ellen. They were asleep,

their cheeks warm to the touch.

“We almost lost them today,” Susanna whispered.

Jack touched her hair. “We didn’t.”

But it had been so close.

She collapsed onto her makeshift bed, and Jack

brought her the comforter and laid it over her. She could