Wicked Game

Chapter Five

Renee was about to go after the missing trio herself when Hudson and Becca came in together. Figured. And then Mitch flew in behind them, smelling of cigarettes. She opened her mouth to continue but Tamara spoke first.

“Maybe we should go around the table, tell something we remember about Jessie,” Tamara suggested. Zeke groaned, but she ignored him. “Renee can write her piece and we can all put in a little something. Renee’s right. We’ve all been carrying this around way too long. I’m all about closure. Becca, you go first.”

Becca, taking her chair next to Jarrett, half choked. “I didn’t even know her that well.”

“Didn’t you?” Renee asked.

Evangeline cut her off. “I’ll start. Since you all think Jessie was supposed to be my best friend.”

“Your evil best friend,” The Third reminded her.

“Jessie had a lot of problems,” she said tartly.

The Third snorted. “Aside from the dark-side thing, what kind of problems?”

“Enough,” Zeke said, catching The Third’s eyes. “Let her talk.”

Evangeline linked her fingers more tightly through Zeke’s. “There were problems at home. Big problems that she wouldn’t really talk about, and she…she lived a weird fantasy life, too.”

“It wasn’t that weird,” Renee disagreed.

“She thought all the guys wanted to screw her, okay?” Evangeline’s gaze skated to each of the men at the table. “She was obsessed with it. Flirting and playing up to the guys, teasing them. You all know.”

“That was a long time ago,” Mitch said somewhat uncomfortably.

Evangeline glared at Mitch. “It was all a long time ago, but that’s why we’re here, isn’t it? Anyway, that’s what I remember about Jessie. You can make it all hearts and flowers and gee, poor Jessie if you want to, but the truth of the matter was, Jessie wasn’t very nice.”

Becca gazed thoughtfully at Vangie. She remembered a whisper of a rumor that Zeke had been fascinated with Jessie and had been seeing her behind his best friend Hudson’s back. Becca had dismissed the rumor then, as she did now, as the product of Evangeline’s own obsession with Zeke.

“What do you think, Walker?” The Third needled. “Your girlfriend want all of us?”

“Shut up,” Hudson said, irritated.

“She was Walker’s girl, we all know that.” Zeke was positive.

Tamara twisted one of her bracelets. “High school was so long ago. A lifetime, but I remember thinking that you, Hudson…” She looked into Hudson’s eyes. “You and Jessie were the perfect couple. I’d see you hanging out at the lockers, so into each other.”

“Well…no…we were high school kids, like you said. What did we know about anything?”

She flashed a bit of a smile, touched with nostalgia, and Becca realized that Tamara had gone through the pains of a high school crush on Hudson. Well, join the club. Half the girls in the class had admitted to a “thing” for him, and hadn’t he been voted the boy with whom most girls would want to be stranded on a deserted isle? The same had been true of Jessie. All the boys had wanted her, and she’d played right into it. Only Evangeline had been true to Zeke; the rest of the girls had been hot for Hudson. Renee knew it, too. She’d been at the top of the class academically and a lot of her friends were girls who’d wanted to be close to her, to Hudson’s twin, just so they could get close to him. Renee had been onto them, though, and had never really played along.

“You know what I remember?” Mitch said suddenly. “How Jessie was always saying those things. Those little quotes, or something. Remember? Always had a piece of a song, or something.”

“She always pointed out your faults, one way or another,” Evangeline agreed.

“Glad you weren’t my best friend,” Glenn muttered with a grimace.

“Yeah, what did she do to you?” Mitch asked.

Evangeline tossed her blond bob. “None of you really knew her, so don’t judge me. Jessie was popular. And she kind of liked to make me feel bad, just to make herself feel better. High school, you know…you get older and you realize how godawful it was.”

“They weren’t quotes. They were nursery rhymes,” Glenn said with a nod, as the tumblers clicked.

Mitch nodded eagerly. “That’s right! She was always kind of singing them. Singsonging. She said ’em to us guys. Her little joke or something. One of her favorites was about boys.”

“Oh, God…” Evangeline rolled her eyes.

“I forgot about that,” The Third said with a frown.

“Nursery rhymes?” Renee repeated, clearly skeptical. “I don’t remember that about her.”

“Me neither,” Becca said.

“It was all flirty Jessie bullshit, anyway.” Jarrett looked impatient. “That naughty boy stuff. We just said she came on to every guy at this table.”

Evangeline’s jaw set and her fingers clasped Zeke’s in a death grip.

Hudson exhaled and looked as if he’d rather be anywhere than in this room with his so-called friends. “The way I remember it, a lot of you guys came on to her. Perception. Hard to know who’s scamming who sometimes.”

“Oh, come on, Walker.” The Third was pissed, his face flushed, his eyes bright with challenge. “It had to be killing you, the way she acted. That the reason you had that fight? Because of us?”

“Yeah,” Hudson said with a cynical smile. “It’s all about you, Delacroix.”

“What the fuck was it about, then?”

Hudson grimaced. “I don’t know. She picked the fight with me. I told the cops-McNally-the same thing then. Jessie was edgy and distracted, and she wanted to fight. You all heard most of it. When we went to my place, it was more of the same.”

“She thought there was another girl in your life,” Tamara guessed.

“She was sixteen,” Hudson said. “She thought a lot of things.”

“Maybe there was someone else?” Evangeline suggested.

“McNally thought you might have killed her,” Scott reminded Hudson. He grabbed a bottle of red wine and Becca watched the liquid fill his glass, glinting bloodlike under the hanging lights. “Wasn’t his theory that you killed her after you found out she was sleeping with…someone else?”

“McNally was obsessed, grasping at straws, trying to make a homicide out of a missing persons case, trying to pin it on one of us,” Hudson said, sounding sick to the back teeth of the whole thing. “God knows. Maybe it was a homicide.”

“And you think one of us did it?” Scott gazed at him belligerently.

“No.”

“But he thought you murdered her?” Renee asked her brother. “Now that I really don’t remember.”

“It wasn’t ruled a homicide,” Becca interjected. “They had no body.”

“But McNally had a hard-on about it,” Glenn interjected. “Hell, that guy was a head case.”

“And they’ve got a body now. Whether it’s Jessie’s or not, we’re going back through it again…” The Third said on a sigh.

“Well, I don’t think that’s Jessie. I think she just ran away. She said she was unhappy,” Evangeline reminded them. “And that she had to leave.”

“She said she had to leave?” Becca asked.

“Yeah, like she knew something.” Vangie swept back blond strands from her face. “She was like that, y’know? Like Tamara said. She knew things. She had some kind of ESP or whatever you want to call it. But it was weird. Creepy. When she said she had to leave, I believed her.”

“What exactly did she say?” Renee asked.

“She said ‘I’ve got to get out of here before something bad happens,’ or something like that.”

“You never told us that,” The Third said with mild reproof. “When we were all being grilled.”

“Well, it was something like that,” Evangeline declared, flushing. “She and Hudson weren’t getting along. Maybe that was it.”

All eyes turned to Hudson and he agreed, “Jessie had things on her mind.”

“Like what?” Scott asked.

“I don’t know. There was definitely something driving her.”

Renee looked at her brother and Becca got the sense she was calculating something, like whether to reveal some kind of information or keep it to herself. In the end, she said, “I’ve got some leads to follow. I’m heading to the beach. Maybe we should meet up again in a couple of weeks…”

“Let’s wait on that for a while,” The Third said. He was about to say something more but hesitated as a waiter slid through the door and picked up some of the dirty dishes, then slipped out again. Then he said, “You know McNally’s going to be back, hounding us.”

“No way. He’s gotta be retired by now.” Scott shook his head. “It’ll be someone else.”

“Guys like him never retire. And he can’t be that old. But the point is: so what? He can’t do anything to us now. We just need to all keep cool. McNally, or somebody like him, is going to start asking questions again. Any inconsistency-any-will just make it worse. But, hey…here we are again.” He lifted his glass in a toast and everyone followed suit, albeit slowly, as no one knew where this was going. “We’re friends. We need to see more of each other and put this Jessie Brentwood thing to bed. There’s nothing to worry about.”

“So much for all of us saying something about Jessie,” Tamara said, disgusted.

That much was true. The meeting and Renee’s idea that they should all disclose something personal about Jessie was falling apart. Becca tasted some of the hors d’oeuvres and sipped at a glass of white wine while listening to several different conversations buzzing around her. Scott was bragging up Blue Ocean, his new restaurant at the beach, though, it seemed, Glenn wasn’t as excited about the venture as his partner. Glenn groused that the restaurant in Lincoln City was still a work in progress while Scott waved off his concerns, stating only that the menu had to be adjusted; it was too “sophisticated” for the beach crowd. Mitch complained that he was overworked and Jarrett, a commercial real estate salesman, wasn’t happy with the economy. Underneath all the idle chitchat there was something more, a restless uneasiness, and Becca knew it was Jessie-her memories, her ghost-haunting each of them.

The Third kept up his mantra that they should all keep seeing each other, though they all knew that it wouldn’t happen. Without a class reunion or a funeral, or the discovery of bones in the maze at St. Elizabeth’s, members of their high school clique wouldn’t search each other out.

Tamara worked at keeping up a conversation with a more and more taciturn Hudson. Becca felt Renee’s eyes on her once or twice and wondered if and when she would tell everyone about her brief affair with Hudson after high school. Maybe they already knew, though they sure didn’t act like it.

Zeke moved toward Hudson for some conversation as they all got up from the table, but Becca couldn’t overhear as Mitch engaged her while they walked toward the door.

“Kind of a weird way for all of us to finally get together again,” he said, holding open the door of the private room.

“I guess we’ll know more after the bones are tested.”

“How long have you been a widow?”

“Oh…a while…not that long…” She didn’t want to go into that right now. The last thing she wanted to think about was Ben.

“My divorce from Sherri was finalized two years ago.”

The Third and Jarrett caught up to them and Becca saw the amusement in their eyes at Mitch’s less than sophisticated attempts to get to know her. She was bugged at all of them-and herself, too.

She didn’t want to talk to any of them, well, except for Hudson, but she wasn’t going to linger around and try to catch his attention. If he’d wanted to see her in the past sixteen years, he damned well could have picked up the phone. Which he hadn’t. She made her way through the foyer and pushed her way outside where the air was heavy and moist, the parking lot dim, with even fewer cars than before. As she stepped off the curb, she sank a shoe into a mud puddle.

Perfect.

“Becca!” Renee’s voice caught up with her as she reached her Jetta. She glanced behind her where Renee had disengaged herself from the group and Hudson’s tall, unmistakable form was backlit by one of the large windows of the restaurant.

“I’d like to talk sometime,” Renee said, her briefcase swinging from one hand as she approached.

This was unusual. “About Jessie?” Using her remote, Becca unlocked the car.

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t really know her.” The vision seemed to shimmer in her brain, daring her to tell Renee about it, but Becca kept her mouth firmly shut.

“You knew her as well as most of us. Probably more than her parents did.”

Becca saw Evangeline sliding into the front seat of Zeke’s vintage Mustang. “Fine. You want to meet this weekend?”

“I’m going to the beach tomorrow, for a couple of days,” Renee said, glancing nervously back at the front of the building where Jarrett, The Third, and Mitch had gathered. The Third was already on his cell phone, Mitch was lighting up, and Jarrett looked across the lot, his gaze zeroing in on Becca and Renee. There was something in his intent look that brought goose bumps to her skin, a hardness that she hadn’t remembered from St. Elizabeth’s. “Listen,” Renee was saying, “I didn’t bring it up with all of them, but my husband Tim and I are having some problems…”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. And I’m lying. It’s not just problems. We’re separated, and I’ve been spending quite a bit of time at the coast. Alone. You know, trying to put things in perspective.” She looked away from the men gathered under the portico. “Maybe that’s why I started thinking about Jessie again. Unresolved issues. Anyway, I wanted to talk to you about some ideas I had.”

“Just me, or all of us?”

“Everyone, I guess. I just thought we could kick this off.”

There was something more going on that Becca didn’t understand, but it hardly mattered since she’d already agreed to meet with Renee.

“Why don’t I call you after the weekend?” Renee suggested. “Maybe we can get together. I’ve just got…some theories…kind of odd information…”

“Odd? How?”

Renee glanced back toward the group. Mitch, keys in hand, was walking toward an SUV parked not far from Becca’s Jetta. “I’ll call you,” Renee whispered, then hurried to a black Toyota as Mitch tossed his cigarette into the parking lot and climbed into his Tahoe.

Becca opened her car door and started to slide inside as Hudson, head bent against the rain, headed her way. Hesitating, warring with herself, Becca told herself to let it go. Whatever had happened between them, why he’d never called her again, didn’t matter. It was over. Ancient history.

Screw that, she thought and stepped out of the Jetta again as Mitch tore out of the lot. I want to talk to him.

She realized belatedly that Hudson wasn’t making his way to her, but rather toward a dilapidated truck. Too bad. She stepped over an island of scraggly shrubs separating one part of the parking lot from the other and reached him just as he opened the door to the old pickup. His gaze caught and held hers and he moved her way, whether out of politeness or interest, she couldn’t tell.

Renee drove by, the tires of her Camry spraying water. She barely hesitated at the street, then gunned the accelerator and zipped through the intersection as an amber light turned red.

“She’s gonna kill herself someday,” Hudson said, his gaze following the path Renee’s Toyota had taken. “Sometimes I think she has a death wish.” He glanced back at Becca and she suddenly felt like an idiot, chasing him down and getting soaked in the process.

“So what did you think about that?” Becca asked.

“Felt a little like high school, all over again.”

“Something I could do without,” Becca said.

He made a sound of agreement.

“I guess it was interesting to see everyone again.”

“Interesting…yeah.” Hudson glanced back. Jarrett and The Third were giving each other a “high sign” good-bye before angling off to their cars. “Not all that different, though.”

“No,” she agreed, watching as The Third slid behind the wheel of a BMW with vanity plates that read: III. “Some things never change.”

“Oh, maybe some do.”

She shot him a sideways glance.

“Sometimes we change for the better. At least a little bit.”

“What are you getting at?” she asked.

He seemed to think over his words a long time, then said suddenly, “I was an idiot twenty years ago. I should have called you. I know it. Just wanted you to know it.”

“Oh.” She couldn’t hide her surprise. “Well. Actually, it was sixteen years ago. But who’s counting.”

He smiled. “I was an ass. All caught up in myself and what life had in store for me.” He ran a hand around his neck as the rain started in earnest again, the drizzle giving way to big, thick drops. “If nothing else, at least this whole resurrected mess has given me the chance to tell you that.”

Becca thought about the baby she’d lost and couldn’t find her breath.

Hudson looked down at her, as if trying to discern her thoughts. The tension suddenly tightened between them and for a wild moment Becca thought he was actually going to kiss her.

“Hudson! Wait up!”

Spell broken, they both looked around to see Tamara dodging raindrops and fighting with an umbrella as she made her way toward them.

“I’d better go,” Becca murmured.

“We shouldn’t let so much time go by.” He lifted a hand in good-bye as Tamara arrived and Becca bowed out.

Call me, she thought but couldn’t say the words. She turned away and hurried toward her car, parked now by itself. The parking lot was nearly deserted with only Hudson’s truck, her Jetta, and a couple of other sedans parked near the front doors.

Business at the Blue Note was definitely not booming.

Once inside her Volkswagen, she started the engine. Through the blurry windshield, she watched as Tamara, still fighting with her umbrella, was grinning up at Hudson and shaking her head at her own clumsiness, obviously flirting.

So what?

Hudson took the umbrella from Tamara’s hands and held the door of his truck open for her.

An unwanted and uncalled-for spurt of jealousy sizzled through Becca’s blood.

“Don’t go there,” she warned herself, but couldn’t help but observe Tamara climbing into the cab, her red hair dark and drooping with rain, her smile as wide as a tropical sunrise.

Becca, hating herself for noticing, threw the Jetta into reverse and backed out of her parking slot. Hudson was firing up his old Ford as she drove past. She tried not to glance out of the corner of her eye, tamping down the foolish notion that he was still somehow special. The stark reality was that whatever she’d had with Hudson was over-and most of it had been in Becca’s mind anyway.

The light turned green but Becca didn’t notice, not until a car pulled up behind her and honked. She jumped and stepped hard on the accelerator, putting Blue Note, thoughts of Jessie and Hudson behind her.

Hudson’s night went from bad to worse.

As if the debacle at Blue Note hadn’t been bad enough, he’d had to drive Tamara home and make small talk while she tried to flirt with him. After dropping her off at her apartment, he’d returned home to find his foreman at his back door.

And Grandy Dougherty wasn’t bearing good news.

“Something wrong?” Hudson asked.

“Yeah.”

“Been here long?”

“Nah, just about fifteen minutes or so, enough to check the stock.” The older man stood on Hudson’s back porch, dripping rain from the brim of his baseball cap and looking as forlorn as his dismal tone of voice. It was pitch-black outside and the wind whooshed rain at them sideways, reaching harshly beneath the porch’s protection. Grandy ducked his head against its onslaught. “I’m sorry about this, but I’m gonna haft leave for a while. I got a grandkid in some big trouble, and I gotta take care of her and my son. I just wanted to talk to you in person rather than call, seein’ how this is so sudden and all.”

“It’s all right,” Hudson said, knowing that he would miss the handyman who had a way with livestock. “Why don’t you come in, get out of the rain?” Hudson waved the older man toward the door, but Grandy shook his head.

“Don’t really have time. The wife, she’s waitin’.” He glanced up at Hudson, then looked away. “Ah, hell! My Lissa, she’s the first grandchild, and she’s got herself in some trouble.”

He ran a tired hand over his forehead, adjusting his cap. “She lives up near Bellingham, in Washington, near the border with her dad and younger brother. My wife and I are going up there.”

Hudson nodded. “Okay.”

“You could call Emile Rodriguez, you know. Guy’s got ranchin’ in his blood and Emile, he’s always looking for a little extra work. He could help out if I don’t get back before Boston foals.”

“I’ve helped a mare foal a time or two before,” Hudson said, thinking of his Appaloosa mare. “So has Boston.”

“Yeah, well, then…I’ll get you Emile’s number. Just in case you need a hand or two.” Grandy headed down the two stairs from the back porch and into the inky, miserable night before Hudson could offer any further resistance. Hearing the older man’s truck’s engine cough and catch, Hudson closed the enclosed porch door against the storm, then leaned against its painted frame. The wind rattled the window casings on the old farmhouse. Hudson had made repair after repair to the place over the past ten years that he’d owned the ranch, but there was no escaping the fact that the building was old and full of cracks and its upkeep was a constant battle. He probably should raze the place and start over, but he didn’t have the time or inclination. A part of him loved this old house with its ancient beams, chipped paint, and years of hard work and toil etched into the woodwork.

The ranch had been his parents’ and after their deaths-his father to heart disease, his mother to cancer-the place had come to him and Renee. Renee hadn’t wanted any part of it. To Hudson, who’d spent his years after college buying and selling commercial real estate, the chance to drop out of the rat race for a while and settle into small-town farming and ranching had seemed like a golden opportunity. He’d bought out Renee’s share and he’d been settling into his new life for the last four years. It still felt like the right thing to do. The sometimes back-breaking work was welcome relief from the stress of “deal making” and “contract negotiations.”

As he walked back into the kitchen, he automatically looked around for his Lab mix, but Booker T. was long gone. He’d died the previous autumn and Hudson supposed it was a blessing. The poor animal had been half blind, all but lame, his death expected and, for Booker T., probably long welcomed.

But the old dog’s passing had left a hole in Hudson’s life. Maybe the hole had always been there even in his youth but had grown wider with time, not smaller. Losing the dog hadn’t helped, and losing Jessie…well, that still bothered him. He wondered about the body found up at St. Elizabeth’s. Was it Jessie’s? Did she die at the feet of the Madonna in that overgrown maze? If so, she’d certainly been killed.

“Christ,” he whispered and pushed his hair out of his eyes. Toeing off one shoe with the other, he decided to pour himself a drink, a stiff shot of scotch. Listening to all the talk about Jessie, then coming face-to-face with Becca again had unnerved him. He’d thought he was long over her, but obviously he’d been wrong. He’d thought about her over the years, of course, but had steadfastly pushed her from his mind. Becca, Jessie, and St. Elizabeth’s were memories he’d tried to repress, and he’d generally succeeded.

Then came Renee’s call about the discovery at St. Lizzie’s and it all came rushing back. He’d dropped his high school friends from his life. He didn’t want to know them. He didn’t want to think about them. He didn’t want to think about Jessie. But as Renee related the discovery of the bones he felt a soul-deep dread-never fully buried-rise again. His sister had never fully gotten over what had happened, either, and she’d spent years writing in a journal about the events, making up stories about what could have happened to the missing Jessie Brentwood. Now it was all real.

“A bunch of kids found bones at the base of the Madonna statue inside the maze at St. Elizabeth’s,” she said. “Human bones. A human hand popped up and reached from the grave at them, or so they thought. It’s Jessie, Hudson. Now we know. Now we finally know.”

Hudson held the phone so tightly he saw his own knuckles bleach white as Renee went on to say that she was spear-heading a get-together at Scott and Glenn’s restaurant to talk things over with some of the “old gang.” Hudson heard her as if from a distance as images of Jessie Brentwood, the same ones that he’d carried inside his mind for twenty years, flashed across the screen of his memory.

“I’m going to write about this,” Renee had told him. “I’ve already been on it, actually. This is a hell of a story.”

“Is it?” he’d asked.

“You’ll be there, right?” Renee responded.

“To talk about whether or not the bones are Jessie’s?” He’d had trouble processing.

“And some other stuff. I’ve got a lot invested in this. It’s…a kind of personal quest.”

Hudson had squinted at the phone, but before he could ask her what she meant, she swept on. “Damn it, Hudson, I’m tired of writing drivel for the Star. I think if I have to write one more insipid article about whose house is for sale, who got a traffic ticket, or who’s upset with his neighbor for cutting down a tree, I might puke. This, the story of the body at St. Lizzie’s, is big, and I’m part of it. We all are. I think we’ve finally found Jessie.”

He’d tried to listen more to his sister, but his emotions had gotten the better of him and he thought about Jessie. Sixteen years old. The first woman he’d ever slept with.

“Catch me, Hudson, if you can,” Jessie had sung out as she’d run through the maze of thick laurel. Her footsteps had been light, her breathing shallow, but he’d tracked her down easily as she’d tried to lose him in the intricate pathways. She’d failed, of course, maybe even let him catch up with her. To Jessie, everything, even lying in the thick grass under the stars in the shadow of the church spire and tearing off Hudson’s clothes, had been a game.

Jessie, are you dead? Are those your remains? Did you die beneath the Madonna?

“The bones they found, they’re female? Young?” he asked Renee.

“Nobody’s saying, yet. But who else?”

“It could be anyone-”

“No, Hudson, it couldn’t. It’s Jessie, trust me. And it makes sense, right?”

“Nothing makes sense.”

“I’m just about at the ranch. See you in a minute.” And Renee had come in moments later, saying, “I’ve got a few more calls to make, maybe you can help me…?”

“I’ll call Becca. She knew Jessie. But that’s it. The rest of this is your show.”

That caught her up. “Becca,” she said, but didn’t say what was really on her mind, though it was probably along the same lines she’d spewed when he’d gotten involved with Becca a year or so after high school. “Rebecca Ryan? Are you nuts? Oh, God, Hudson, get real. Are you a sadist or what? Becca’s only one step further away from the loony bin than Jessie was. What is it with you and beautiful, out-of-touch women?”

“Enough,” he’d said, but Renee wasn’t to be stopped.

“You know, brother dear, if you tried, you could do better. Lots better.”

Hudson hadn’t thought so twenty-no, sixteen years ago-and he didn’t think so now. After Renee left he called Tamara for Becca’s number, then Becca herself, inviting her to his sister’s gathering. He’d wanted to see her again. Face her. Face his own feelings…

And the hell of it was, she was just as intriguing and beautiful as before. Maybe more so. Renee was probably right, he thought as he searched inside a cupboard and pulled out a half-full bottle of scotch. He twisted off the cap, found a short glass, and poured in a splash.

No one-not even himself-could separate Becca from what had happened to Jessie. They would just be forever linked. The only two girls from St. Elizabeth’s whom he’d dated and, eventually, slept with.

One had run from him, perhaps met her death.

The other he’d pushed away.

“Oh, hell,” he muttered under his breath as he lifted his glass and took a sip. He caught the pale image of his reflection in the window over the sink and noticed the tense lines evident on his face. He’d hoped his inadequate apology tonight was enough to at least explain his behavior; he didn’t expect it to make up for anything.

Because the truth of the matter was he’d treated Becca thoughtlessly. Worse than that, he’d treated her purposely thoughtlessly. How was that for an oxymoron? He’d wanted her to dislike him. He’d been so attracted to her, even when he was with Jessie, that when he and Becca had actually gotten together, he’d never been able to feel right about it. A part of him had believed Jessie was still alive and watching him. Jessie had accused him of being attracted to Becca. It had been the basis of their last fight, the last time he’d seen her before she disappeared.

Leaning a hip against the counter, twisting off the faucet that seemed to forever drip, he remembered how it had been twenty years earlier in the big room downstairs. Carrying his drink, he walked to the staircase and took the worn steps down to the basement with its low-hanging ceiling and monster of a furnace, then ducked through the doorway to the big rec room where the pool table hidden by its old burgundy faux-leather cover still stood.

In his mind’s eye, he saw Jessie as she had been. Seated atop the table, staring straight at him, she’d slowly and deliberately unbuttoned her shirt, then slid it off her shoulders.

He’d lifted a hand in protest, their anger at each other still simmering. “Wait…”

“Shh!” she warned, a finger to her lips before she leaned forward just a bit, offering him an intimate view of her cleavage, then unhooked her bra, her gorgeous breasts free as she wiggled out of it, her hazel eyes cool with calculation and hot with fury.

“Jess-”

“You’ve got a hard-on for Becca,” she said in that low, sultry voice that turned him on. It was the same accusation that had instigated their fight earlier in the day. A fight that everyone at school knew about, he’d subsequently learned, when the cops later sought him out and asked about its cause.

For a moment it was as if she were in the room with him now. Still sixteen. Still angry. And he hadn’t been able to resist her. She’d pouted and toyed with him, then grabbed him by the shirt and dragged him down on the table with her. Her lips had been hot and moist, her tongue rimming his lips, her fingers eager as they pulled his shirt over his head, then ran feather-light over his muscles.

It had been fast after that. Both of them stripping away each other’s pants and underwear. He’d wrapped his arms around her, kissed her breasts and then, despite all his promises to himself, he’d made love to her with all of the heat of his youth, lost in the warm, the mystery, the sheer feminine thrall of her like he’d been since the first time they’d come together, his knees pushing hard against the felt-covered slate.

Afterward, sweating, gasping, while he lay naked on the hard surface, she’d pulled herself away and dressed quickly.

“You don’t have to go,” he said, levering up on an elbow.

“Yeah…yeah, I do.”

“Jessie-”

“Don’t say it, okay?” she insisted, knowing that he was going to promise that he loved her and for the moment, he did, but that was it…only for the moment. They both knew it. She yanked on her clothes and regarded him with sober eyes while he lay on the burgundy felt table, staring up at the ceiling, lost in his own teen angst.

“I’m going,” she said, pulling her hair through the neck of her shirt and shaking out the long strands.

“You could stay.”

“I don’t think so.” She started across the room.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Maybe.” Her tone was fatalistic.

“Oh, for the love of God, stop that,” he said in a flash of anger. He hated the way she sometimes acted like they were only living for the day, that there would be no tomorrow. “Why do you always do that?”

“Because you don’t care!”

Hudson swore under his breath.

“Don’t lie to yourself,” she said as she reached the bottom of the stairs. “And quit trying to make yourself the good guy. You want out of this…whatever it is we’ve got going.”

Before he could stop himself, Hudson bit out, “You’re the one who wants out.”

She laughed. “Oh, right.”

He was already reaching for his pants.

“What about Becca?” she demanded.

“What about her?”

“You think I don’t know?” she charged, one foot on the stairs, her head twisted to watch him as he struggled with his zipper. “I see things, y’know. I do. And I see the way you look at her.”

“I’m sick of fighting,” he muttered, angry at her. At himself. At the fact that there was more than a grain of truth in her charges.

“Me, too. But…there’s something I need to tell you.”

“Can’t wait.”

“Stop being a bastard. I think I might be…in serious trouble…”

Jessie was silhouetted by the light from the staircase and there was something in her expression that gave him pause. Something darker than their petty argument, something that made her bite her lower lip, as if she were afraid of the next words she might utter. She gazed down at the bottom step, the one his father had replaced, but he knew she wasn’t seeing the new boards or nails holding the stair in place. She was somewhere else. Lost in her own thoughts.

“What?” he asked.

“Trouble. Serious trouble.” She wouldn’t look at him.

Swallowing hard, he prepared himself for the fact that she might be admitting she was pregnant. No matter what she tells you, you have to be a man, Walker. Tough up.

She looked up at him, worry and more-terror?-shadowing her eyes. “Trouble’s coming to find me,” she said almost inaudibly over the rumble of the furnace and the frantic beating of his own heart.

“What kind of trouble?”

“Bad trouble.” She ran a hand nervously through her hair, pushing the golden brown strands from her face. Her fingers trembled slightly. “I don’t know what I was thinking…I…I should have stopped. But I just couldn’t.”

“Stopped what?”

“Searching.”

“Searching for what?” he asked, totally confounded. She wasn’t pregnant? Relief washed over him, but still he was confused. He crossed to her and reached for her hand resting on the banister.

Instead of explaining further, she changed her mood in her quicksilver way. As if by sheer willpower, she straightened up, then winked at him slyly and said, “You’re not over me, no matter what you think. You’re hooked.”

Hudson stared down at her. She was like that. One way one moment, completely changed the next.

“I’m in your blood,” she said.

And then she was gone.

She’d run up the stairs and out the back door, and as he’d followed and reached the porch, he heard the engine of her car turn over. From the porch he watched the glow of her taillights disappear in the rising fog.

Now he trudged back up the stairs, hearing the ancient boards creak under his weight.

He’d never seen her again.

And what had he done after Jessie disappeared that night twenty years ago? Mourned? Grieved? Longed for her return?

Well, maybe he had a little, in the beginning. Then there had been the questions from the cops and the wondering, always the wondering what had happened to the girl he was supposed to have loved.

But in the end he’d sought solace, comfort, and a chance to forget in sex with Becca. Yes, it had been a few years later, but it hadn’t felt right. He’d wanted to drown himself in her, but Jessie’s face, her voice, her ways…had never gone away, not completely.

Had it been his own guilt eating at him? Undoubtedly. But that feeling had been real and raw enough that it had forced him to give up on Becca. Forced him to discover a new life. Forced him to move on.

I see things… That’s what she’d said, what Tamara had echoed tonight at the restaurant. It was as if they, the friends who’d known her, understood that she was different, a bit ethereal.

He drained his glass, left it in the sink, then walked into his living room and threw himself down on the sofa. The blank screen of the television stared at him but his mind was viewing a film of its own making.

Were those Jessie’s bones found in the maze? The only news released through the media was that they belonged to a young female victim. Nobody was saying whether they’d been lying there twenty years or if they were newly deposited. The police were mum, and the story had been eclipsed by more recent local news: a murder apparently from a burglary gone wrong; flooding along lower elevations from a rapidly melting snowpack; a defendant in a criminal trial suddenly hauling off and smacking his own lawyer in the face.

Hudson sighed. He’d been running for years from thoughts of Jessie…and Becca. He’d been running for years from his own feelings. Regardless of what was decided about the bones found at the base of the Madonna statue, maybe it was time to remember, think, even conjecture. Figure out what happened, if anyone could.

It was time to stop running.