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Once more, with a little less speed, Kara melded into the traffic streaming out of the downtown area. Stop and go. Brake lights and headlights even though it was only four in the afternoon, evening closing in quickly this time of year. The newspaper, unfolded on the passenger seat, mocking her with its headlines and picture of the family’s mountain cabin vacations sprawled across the front page of theRegister. Well, if you could call a three-storied house built by a famous architect a hundred years earlier a “cabin.” Her parents had. Ornate and grand, ordered to specific design by her great-great-grandfather, the “cabin” still stood, rotting and rusting, aFOR SALEsign still in place, she assumed, though there were no takers for the rambling old home where an entire family had been slaughtered. The tragedy had earned its own names: the Cold Lake Massacre or The McIntyre Massacre, each one equally chilling to her.
As she slowed for a red light, Kara’s cell rang again and she saw only a local number. No name. No caller ID. “Forget it.”
Since the announcement of Jonas’s imminent release, she’d been besieged by reporters calling her, and she refused to talk to them. Even that irritating Wesley Tate. No, make thatespecially Wesley Tate. He was too clever. Too charming. Too good-looking and too close to the story.
His father, an off-duty cop, had saved Kara from drowning. And he’d died in the process. Again, she felt more than a modicum of guilt. She probably owed his son some of her time, to tell him her side of the story.
But no. Not a good idea. No matter how close Tate was to the story, how emotional it might be to him, he was first and foremost a reporter, a male reporter.
And Kara was definitely in her man-hating mode right now. Because of Brad Jones, whom she’d kicked to the curb just two weeks earlier.
Brad, like the few boyfriends she’d had before him, had proved to be more interested in her because of her brush with infamy than in Kara as a woman. And, of course, there was her inheritance, what was left of it, the portion Auntie Fai hadn’t had a chance to squander.
“Big surprise.” She switched on the radio to chase away any lingering regrets over Brad and heard, of course, Christmas music. Worse yet, the strains of “Silent Night” filled the car.
“. . . yon Virgin, tender and mild—”
“Nope. Don’t think so.” God, where was “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” when you needed it? She clicked off the radio, then drove the next hour in relative silence until she passed theWELCOME TO WHIMSTICKsign, which announced that the population was just over twelve thousand.
Kara skirted the main section of town, easing through side streets and alleys until she finally turned down the quiet street where her home was located. She barely knew any of her neighbors, just the way she wanted it. Three doors down, just below the crest of a small hill, she pulled into her drive. Thankfully there were no news vans or reporters clustered on the snow-covered street. But just wait. That would happen. The second Jonas McIntyre was a free man.
With a touch of her finger to the remote, the garage door started rolling upward and before it was completely open, she drove inside. She hit the button again, closing the garage tight. Less than a minute later she was in the house, turning on lights, adjusting the heat, and being greeted by Rhapsody, her rescue dog who was probably a little terrier, probably some Labrador retriever, and certainly some pit bull, but that was all just a best guess. Until she did a canine DNA test on the dog, Kara would never know. And she wasn’t about to put out money to unlock the secrets of Rhapsody’s muddled lineage. Who cared? All Kara knew was that this shaggy fifty-pound mutt with her wise gold eyes loved Kara as no one else had since she was a child.
“Yeah, you’re a good girl,” she said, ruffling the dog’s ears and smiling as Rhapsody spun in excited, tight circles until she was little more than a caramel-colored blur. “Okay, okay, I get it. You get your treat,” she said, retrieving a bottle of red wine from the bag. “And I get mine. Sit.”
Rhapsody sat, eyes focused on Kara until she was tossed a bacon-flavored biscuit. Leaping, the dog caught the treat on the fly, then trotted to the living room to crunch it on her bed while Kara found a corkscrew in a top drawer and went to work.
By the time Rhapsody returned to stand by the door, Kara was pouring wine into a stemmed glass. Sipping the Merlot, she unlocked the door and stepped outside to watch as Rhapsody flew across the patio, startling a winter bird from its perch on a branch. The dog was her best friend—make that her only friend. Her fault. She never trusted any acquaintance she’d made over the years. Too many people had just wanted to get close to her because they were: a) curious about her past, b) wanted something from her, or c) all of the above. Friends just weren’t worth the trouble. Dogs, especially Rhapsody with her undying affection, were so much better. And boyfriends? Ugh. Forget it.
Snow was falling again, tiny, powdery flakes that promised not to let up as another downy layer was added to the four inches that had already accumulated. Rhapsody galloped from one end of the yard to the other, letting off pent-up energy and cutting a new trail in the white mantle. The snowy lawn was long and narrow, giving the dog enough room to run, but surrounded by a fence and barrier of thick, impenetrable arborvitae, rhododendrons and laurel. Enough privacy that Kara couldn’t see her neighbors, nor could they spy on her. Which was perfect. Now the greenery was covered in snow and reminded Kara of the firs and pines flanking the cabin and that horrid night she ran through the woods, the night of the tragedy that had changed her life for—
“Stop it!” she said so loudly that Rhapsody, nose buried in the snow near the corner of the house, looked up suddenly, her ears cocked, her eyes ready to focus on an intruder. “Sorry,” Kara said to the dog, then, “Come on. Finish up out here. It’s freezing.”
She took another long swallow of wine and felt herself beginning to warm from the inside out while the dog romped and played in the snow, kicking up white clods and shaking the icy powder from her nose. Oh, to be so carefree, Kara thought wistfully as she heard the faraway sound of a jet engine. She looked skyward, trying to peer through the thick clouds. Somewhere high above was a plane full of people going somewhere, skimming through the night sky to destinations unknown. She blinked, snowflakes catching on her lashes.
What she wouldn’t do to fly away.
To forget.
But she’d already tried that. A trip to Europe years ago. Didn’t help. All the tours and exhibits, the castles and art galleries and the throngs of people couldn’t keep her thoughts from turning back to Cold Lake. The Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Notre Dame in Paris, Big Ben and Buckingham Palace in London, the castles on the Rhine, a villa on Lake Como, a room over a bar in Belfast . . . all was now a blur and the pain still resided, the guilt still held fast. And all the moves she’d made, Portland with Aunt Faiza, then a junior college in California, a transfer to Denver, and finally graduating from LSU in Baton Rouge, and still, she hadn’t been able to shake off the memories. New friends, new places, fresh starts. To no avail.
Had she really thought she could outrun the past?
How foolish.
And how ironic that the one job she’d been able to land had been here in Oregon, less than an hour from the shores of Cold Lake and the home where all of the horror had happened. Her life had come full circle, the perfect opportunity to “face the past” and “confront her demons,” as she’d been advised for years, but to what end? She was still a hot mess. Probably would be for life.
And the house she’d grown up in? The one in Portland that she’d inherited, or would inherit in less than two weeks. Currently occupied by Aunt Faiza, who had moved in within a month of the tragedy. She had proclaimed to the court that Kara needed “stability,” “a home she knew,” “a place that would anchor her.” But the old house high in the West Hills was anything but her home, a place she avoided, even going so far as to live with Merritt Margrove and his second wife rather than stay in that huge house overlooking the city, a place that seemed to harbor ghosts of the past. Though the bloody massacre had occurred sixty miles from the hillside home with its incredible views, it had never felt like home to Kara. Not after what had happened. She felt her throat tighten and her eyes burn at the long-ago memories of a happy childhood that had been severed by a maniac in the mountains one Christmas Eve.
“Oh, get over your bad self,” she said aloud, and noticed she’d drained her glass. Time for another. And to end this pity party. After all, who said those memories were so happy, anyway? Her own recollections were clouded, riddled with holes, and all those bits of nostalgia were just that, bits and pieces, maybe even dreams, patched together, but still ragged. Right now, she didn’t want to think about it. “Come on, Rhap,” she called to the dog.
She walked inside and Rhapsody trotted after her, shaking snow and water from her furry coat. “Yeah, go ahead. Clean floors are overrated anyway.” After locking the door, Kara peeled out of her coat and scarf, hanging them by the back door, then unzipped her boots and kicked them to a spot next to her umbrella stand. “Dinner?” she asked, and fed the dog before refilling her glass.
As she headed upstairs to her bedroom, she glanced at her watch. Barely after six. “Good enough,” she said, and changed from jeans and a sweater into her favorite baggy PJs.
She caught sight of herself in the mirror, looking pale and wan, the flannel pajamas at least a size too large, her teeth discolored from the red wine.
“Pathetic,” she told her reflection. Where most twenty-seven-year-olds would just be gearing up for the night, she was shutting herself in. She’d tried the party scene, frequented clubs, met others her age, but since college, she hadn’t had a lot of interest in going out. Probably one of the reasons she and Brad hadn’t made it work. One of many.
