“We’ve got to move,” he said. “We’re okay now. He’s gone. But we’ve got to move fast. We have to get off the lake. We’re sitting ducks out here.”
She found it hard to keep up with his long strides. About a dozen feet from the shoreline she felt her feet slip out from under her. Before she fell, Alec reached one strong arm over and caught her. When they reached the shoreline, he was still holding on to her tightly.
All of this closeness to a man who had hurt her so profoundly was sending her very being into confusion. His touch was melting feelings long dead and cold within her.
“Alec, I have to ask you something. Why did you leave?” she said as they reached the car.
He didn’t turn to her and she wondered if he hadn’t heard her. Perhaps not. Perhaps she only whispered it. She didn’t repeat the question. But would she finally learn why he had walked away from her twenty years before?
TWO
Alec put the keys in the ignition of Meggie’s silver Toyota and the engine came to life. He aimed it up toward the parking lot entrance. They needed to get out of there and he needed to figure out what was going on.
When they reached the street he pulled out his cell phone and made two calls in quick succession. The first was to his new deputy, Stu. “Someone is shooting out at the lake,” he said. “About half a mile north of the fishing shacks. Could be kids.” He knew it wasn’t kids, but he was conscious of keeping his demeanor calm. He didn’t want to show Meggie the rising panic he was beginning to feel. Megan, he corrected himself. “We need to check it out. Pick up any shell casings you can find. I’ll be there as soon as I can…” He described the precise location and urged Stu to hurry. As best as he could remember he described the truck he’d seen leaving. “Dark in color. Late model, small. I wasn’t close enough to get a make on it,” he said.
He glanced over at Megan, and everything in him wanted to protect her this time, not leave her. Not like last time.
His next call was to his trusted friend, retired Special Forces Major Steve Baylor. Steve and his wife Nori owned and managed Trail’s End Resort and Cabins. Alec often called upon Steve’s expertise and Alec could sure use his friend’s levelheaded help right about now. Steve had worked more cases with snipers and ballistics and trajectories in a month than Alec had in his whole career.
“Steve,” he said. “Someone’s shooting out on the lake. I have a woman with me. We both were caught in the cross fire.” For this call, Megan was just “a woman with him.” He couldn’t go into specific details on the phone. Even his closest friend, Steve, didn’t know about Megan, about that part of his life.
Calls complete, he closed his cell phone and put it back in his pocket. He was glad he had insisted on driving. The woman beside him, who hugged her arms around herself, was in no shape to drive. Of course she was more than “just a woman,” she was his Meggie. Even after all these years. He looked back at the road lest he let his gaze rest on her too long or spend too much time remembering and regretting.
Long-ago memories entered unbidden into his thinking as he drove. The girl he had fallen in love with had blond hair, which she wore straight and halfway down her back. Round glasses used to cover half her face. This Megan was thinner, more studious looking than his high school Meggie. His Meggie was pretty. This Megan, who folded her gloved hands on her lap to keep them from shaking, was stunningly beautiful. She still wore his hat. He liked the way it looked on her.
Alec already knew Sophia and Jennifer had died in car accidents. His brother Bryan, even from his home in New Mexico, kept track of everyone from those days. He’d called Alec with the news.
“They look to be too coincidental to me,” Bryan had said. “Don’t they to you?”
They did, indeed.
Megan shifted in her seat. He still couldn’t believe that she was here in Whisper Lake Crossing. This time he would believe what she told him. This time he would listen to his own heart rather than the arguments and reasonings of his family.
He hadn’t hung in there when Megan’s grandmother had died and his own brother was arrested for the murder. But, more importantly, he hadn’t believed Megan.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“My office.”
“Good. That’s good.” She looked down at her hands. “We need to figure this out.” She paused. “I just want you to know that I never would have come if there was any other way. Just so you know.”
She never would have come. Her words cut him to the quick. After his brother was arrested, he had tried to talk to her. He had called but she never answered. She hadn’t even attended the trial. She had disappeared, and he was the only person who knew why she had left town in such a hurry. She had been pregnant, carrying his baby. It was a secret they had kept from everyone.
Their child would be almost twenty years old now. A grown-up person in his or her own right. Through the years he had thought of hiring a private investigator to find his child. He never did. He knew he didn’t deserve to be the child’s father. This was his penance for betraying Megan. He had done the only thing he could do in the ensuing years—he prayed daily for his child. He knew he had no right to ask, but another part of him reminded him that the baby had been his, too.
Megan pulled off his hat and laid it on her lap and sighed. She fingered a few loose threads and looked out the window. He drove past a few businesses, mostly closed up for the winter now. With temperatures hovering at twenty degrees below, few people were about.
Megan looked up, seemed to remember something, leaned forward and opened the glove compartment. She said, “This morning someone gave me this.” She pulled a square white card out of a manila envelope.
He blinked at the large white rectangular card that Meggie held in her hands. The front of it was embossed in cherry blossoms and hearts. He recognized it immediately. It was one of their wedding invitations. She turned it over to show him the back. Written in large block letters were the words, HAPPY ANNIVERSARY NUMBER TWENTY. Their twentieth anniversary would have been on Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day was next week.
He skidded slightly on the slick road. “Who gave you that?” he asked, quickly regaining control of the wheel.
“This morning I went into a coffee shop and someone handed it to me. It had my name on it. Meg Brooks.”
“What coffee shop?”
“The one with the big boat painted along the side.”
He nodded. “The Schooner Café. Who gave that to you?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I walked into the coffee shop and a waitress came over and asked me if I was Meg Brooks. When I said yes, she handed me this envelope. She said that someone had come in a few days ago with an envelope to give me when I showed up. When I looked at her in surprise, she said that everyone who comes to Whisper Lake Crossing eventually stops in there for coffee.”
“Who knew you were coming here?” he asked.
“Nobody knew I was coming here.” She placed the invitation on her lap.
Alec shook his head slowly. What was happening here? “Describe the waitress who gave that to you.”
“She was blonde, big hair, sort of heavy, seemed talkative.”
“That would be Marlene. She owns the Schooner Café.”
He did a quick U-turn on the mostly deserted street.
“Where are we going?” she asked him.
“The Schooner,” he said. “We need to talk to Marlene. We need to figure this out.”
Megan nodded. “That’s a good idea. Something weird is happening. I want to