Point of No Return (19 page)

Blane pulled a gun from the back of his jeans and pointed it at Kade.

“This has to stop. Kade—listen to me!”

“Two
. . .
”

Alisha couldn’t breathe. “I don’t know. I don’t know! I—”

“Kade!”

But Kade didn’t even look in Blane’s direction, and his gun was steady and pointed at Lewis, who lay unconscious and bleeding on the floor, and Blane was going to shoot Kade, but Kade was going to shoot Lewis, and—

“She went home!” Alisha’s scream cut through everything and silence fell.

Kade slowly lowered his gun.

“Sh-she went home,” Alisha repeated, closing her eyes in dismay as she realized she’d just given up her best friend’s whereabouts to a madman.

“Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Kade said.

“I swear to God, Kade, I’m going to fucking kill you,” Blane threatened. His gun was lowered, too, but his body language screamed anger.

“If I don’t find her soon, she’ll be dead when we do,” Kade said, causing Alisha to jerk her head up in alarm.

“What? Who’s after her? Kade, what’s going on?” Blane’s frustrated questions echoed in the room, but Kade was already turning to go.

“You shouldn’t have let her leave,” Kade said. “You were the only thing keeping her safe.” Then he was gone.

“Goddammit!” Blane exploded.

Alisha could tell he really wanted to go after Kade, but he turned back to her instead. “I’ll call 911,” he said, guiding her hand to the wound in Lewis’s shoulder. “Keep pressure on the wound. And, I’m really sorry about this, but we have to get our stories straight. My brother was never here, understood? It was an intruder, but it was dark and you didn’t get a good look at him. He shot Lewis, but I was at Kathleen’s and heard, so I came over and he took off. Got it?”

Her entire body was racked with tremors, and the relief Alisha had felt when Kade left faded. Blane’s eyes held the same cold implacability she’d seen in Kade’s. She realized she had no choice. She’d have to do what Blane said, say what he told her to say, because the price for not doing so would be one she wasn’t willing to pay.

And Alisha finally saw the resemblance between the two men.

KATHLEEN

C
HAPTER
N
INE

K
athleen, can you get me another?”

I looked up from where I’d been crouched down loading bottles of beer into the fridge below the bar.

“Sure, Pete,” I answered. Standing, I grabbed another frosty mug and filled it from the tap, tipping it to the side so the golden liquid hit the side of the glass rather than the bottom as it filled. The head wasn’t quite as thick and you could get more beer in the glass if you poured it that way. When the white foam had reached the rim and spilled over just slightly, I set the mug in front of Pete. “Here you go.”

“Thanks, sugar,” he said, his worn, suntanned face creasing in a smile. I smiled back.

Pete used to work with my dad, once upon a time. He’d retired from the force a couple of years ago, and now spent his days outdoors, tending his extensive garden, lawn, and flowerbeds. It seemed he had a habit of stopping by the one and only local pub for a beer around midday. If the Cubs were playing, he’d stay and watch the game on one of the televisions in the bar, though I teased him that rooting for the Cubs was bound to end in disappointment.

“I’m a perennial optimist,” he’d reply. “Sooner or later it’s bound to pay off.”

I’d been back home now for almost a month, and in some ways it seemed like I’d never left. Although technically I didn’t need the money since what Kade had left was more than adequate for my needs, I’d wanted a job so I had something to do. Sitting around feeling miserable and sorry for myself wasn’t an option.

Once I’d had time to recover from the shock of Kade’s “parting gift,” I saw the logic in what Blane had said. If it was just me, I wouldn’t have touched a dime of that money. But it wasn’t just me. I had our baby to consider. I had to buy things—things a baby needed—and eventually there’d be braces to pay for, and college, maybe a wedding if the baby was a girl. It would be foolish of me not to use the money, so I set aside my pride and did what I needed to do.

I’d returned to my old job at O’Sullivan’s, an Irish pub where I’d worked when my mom had been sick. The owner, Charlie, was a wizened older man of indeterminate age who had owned the place for as long as I could remember. He’d been glad to see me. I think. It was kind of hard to tell with Charlie, but he’d sort of smiled and then asked when I could start. I’d put on an apron the next day.

The sounds of the pub were familiar and comforting to me as I worked—the televisions broadcasting the baseball game, the clink of dishes and the sizzle of the grill from the back, the low rumble of conversation from the dozen or so patrons in the middle of the afternoon.

I’d been lucky when I’d shown up in town. One of the first people I’d run into when I stopped in the little café on the town square for lunch had been Jan, an old friend from high school.

“Oh my God, is that you, Kathleen?” she’d exclaimed, wrapping me in a hug. A cloud of perfume descended. “Are you back or just visiting?”

When I’d confirmed I was, indeed, back in town, she’d wasted no time in telling me everything going on with her, ordering a cup of coffee, and sitting with me while I ate my chicken salad sandwich and chips.

“So I’m a Realtor now,” she said, after a monologue about how she’d married Brian, a guy I vaguely remembered from high school who now sold insurance. She waved a manicured hand as if it was nothing, but I could tell she was real proud of her new job. “I can help you find a place to stay, if you’re looking to stick around.” Her shiny platinum blonde hair bounced around her shoulders as she spoke.

“I am,” I said, and her eyes had lit up like fireflies.

“Wonderful! I know just the place for you! The owner is a widow who’s moved to Florida in one of those, you know, retirement communities. Anyway, she’s looking to sell her house. It’s out by the old Miller place, remember?”

And I did. Jan had taken me to see it right then and I knew instantly that it was perfect. About three or four miles out of the town proper, it was in the country and the last place on a long gravel road. The nearest neighbors, the Millers, weren’t within shouting distance but were within walking distance.

An older home that had been built in the forties, it was a two-story white house with a deep porch that spanned the front, complete with a swing. In the back, another porch was screened in and overlooked a vast yard dotted with big oak trees. Roses climbed a trellis, their blooms perfuming the air, and it seemed they’d been allowed to grow a bit wild and hadn’t been trimmed back in a while.

The downstairs had a living room, kitchen, bath, and bedroom. Upstairs were another two bedrooms and a bath. The place was even furnished, and though the pieces were older, they looked like they’d been well cared for.

I bought it immediately and closed within ten days. It was amazing how fast things could be done when you paid with cash, and thanks to Jan, I’d been allowed to start staying in the house right away, so I hadn’t even had to spend one night at the old Covered Bridge Motel on the outskirts of town. Jan was so pleased and excited with the sale, I thought her perfectly applied cosmetics might crack with the huge smile she sported whenever I saw her in town.

I hadn’t yet gone back to Indy for the rest of my things, and thought I might just get a company to move the stuff into storage for me. Kade had bought all the furniture when he’d had my apartment redone after the fire, and I wasn’t sure I needed the reminder. My personal things I’d brought with me, so the only real reason for me to return was to visit Alisha.

I needed to call her, I decided as I cleared the empty glasses on the bar left by two customers. I hadn’t talked to her in a couple of weeks, not since I’d told her about the house and reassured her that I was doing okay.

And I was. Mostly.

Rushville was a small town and everyone had known me and my family. People I’d grown up around greeted me with open arms, genuinely glad to see me back. Old Mrs. Johnson had even stopped by my place to bring me a casserole she’d made and welcome me home.

No one asked why I was back or inquired too deeply as to what I’d been up to while I was gone. My family was part of the town’s tragedy—my dad’s death hitting the community hard when it had happened nearly ten years ago now, then everyone had known about my mom’s battle with the cancer that had eventually taken her life. No one had batted an eye when I’d moved away. I think most people understood that I’d needed time and space, but they also knew that there was no place like home, so it hadn’t seemed a bit strange when I’d turned up out of the blue.

“Think we’ll be busy tonight?”

I glanced up at Michelle, the waitress. I’d gone to high school with her, too, but she’d been a couple of years older than me and we hadn’t known each other real well. We’d chatted a bit since I’d returned, since we were often on the same shifts, and I liked her.

Her parents were farmers and Michelle had been a bit of a wild child, the youngest of four. Pregnant at seventeen, she’d married the baby’s daddy, but that hadn’t worked out. He’d up and left them when baby number two was on the way, and she’d been on her own ever since.

Michelle worked hard and had a little place of her own. Her mom often helped out, watching John, who was now ten, and little Maddie, just turned four.

“I hope so,” I said, knowing that slow business meant fewer tips. “There’s a doubleheader Little League game tonight, someone said, so we’ll probably get people once that’s over.”

Rushville was small enough that the ebb and flow of town life affected most everyone. If there was a game, chances were you knew somebody who’d be there. Either because their kid was playing, or they were going to support a friend whose kid was playing.

“Is Carol coming in later, do you know?” Michelle asked, sliding onto a barstool.

“Yeah, I think she’s on at six?” I answered, trying to recall the schedule in my head. “Then it’s just the three of us on the floor until close.” Of course, closing time in Rushville was way earlier than in Indy. Here, if no one was in the bar at eleven thirty or even eleven, we closed. Technically, we closed at midnight, but usually the pub stayed open that late only on the weekends.

Carol was a bit over thirty and new to town, having moved here only six months ago. She was single, didn’t have any kids, and I wasn’t sure what had brought her to Rushville but hadn’t pried. She kept to herself and seemed nice enough.

Michelle and I chatted while it was slow, then things started picking up for the dinner rush. There were two other restaurants in town, but one was the café that only served breakfast and lunch. The other was a chain all-you-can-eat buffet place where a lot of families with kids ate. The result was that though O’Sullivan’s was a pub, people came to eat as well as drink there.

The main cook was a guy named Danny, who had an overabundance of personality and was impossible not to like. He was black and about six feet tall, but skinny as a post. Danny fancied himself an undiscovered singer of some talent, so he was often belting out tunes while he worked the grill. In his early twenties, he said he was saving money to head to California, and that he’d made it to the final rounds of callbacks for one of those talent shows on TV that held auditions all around the country.

I hadn’t told anyone that I was pregnant. First, it wasn’t really anyone’s business, and second, I wasn’t ready to answer questions. Although I was pretty universally liked, there were still a lot of eyebrows that would go up when my “condition” became common knowledge. I didn’t think anyone would be outright mean to me—times were a lot different from twenty years ago—but I wanted more time to settle in. I’d barely grown accustomed to the idea myself. I wasn’t yet ready to spread my future status as a single mom around town.

The usual dinner rush was delayed because, as I’d predicted, everyone went to the game, which meant that business started hopping around nine thirty. Carol, Michelle, and I didn’t have time to spare as we hustled food and drinks. A lot of people liked to sit at the bar to eat, so I was going nonstop. After the initial rush, moms started departing with tired kids in tow. Some of the men stayed put to have another drink or two as they recounted the game. The Colts had a preseason game coming up on the weekend, so conversation also revolved around the team and their chances for the year.

I filled a pitcher of beer and headed to a table of seven guys. Several of them I knew from high school and they were regulars, often stopping by in either twos or threes or sometimes all together, like tonight. They were all buddies, though two were unmarried. The rest were in various stages of early marriage, some with babies on the way or young children.

“Hey, Kathleen, how’re you doing tonight?” one of them asked. His name was Matt and he’d been two years ahead of me in school. He was nice and good-looking, with blue eyes and light brown hair. Matt’s dad was a pig farmer and now that he was getting up there in age, Matt mostly ran the rather affluent family business. In school, he hadn’t paid me a bit of mind, but it seemed he was looking to settle down and he’d been real friendly to me since I’d got back. We’d had several conversations and I enjoyed seeing him come in, which he’d been doing more often lately.

“I’m good, Matt,” I said with a smile. “How was the game tonight?” Matt had a buddy, Steve, who was several years older and had two kids, twin boys, on the team. Matt helped coach. He was a big guy, over six feet, with broad shoulders and lean hips. He had the perfect athletic physique, honed by years of working on a farm.

“It was fun, the kids did great,” he replied, his enthusiasm contagious.

I smiled and turned to go, but he stopped me with a hand on my arm. I turned back, raising my eyebrows. “Did you need something else?” I asked.

Matt’s ears turned a little pink as he tugged me closer, as though he wanted to say something quietly so that the guys he was with wouldn’t hear. They didn’t seem to be paying attention, instead arguing over the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Colts’ offensive line.

“Um, Kathleen,” he said in an undertone. I leaned down a little to hear him. “I was just wondering if you’d want to have dinner with me Saturday, if you’re not working. Or Friday. Or, just, whenever you’re off.”

It was real sweet, how nervous he seemed, which took me by surprise. I hadn’t garnered much attention in high school from boys, but it seemed age and time had turned me into a girl they now noticed. I’d caught a few glances my way during the past few weeks, but Matt was the first to actually ask me out.

Of course, I had no idea what to say. I wasn’t ready to go out on a date with someone, not when I still lay awake nights staring at the ceiling and seeing Kade’s face every time I closed my eyes. And what was the proper protocol for telling anyone I might get serious with that, oh, by the way, I was having another man’s child in a little over seven months?

“Thanks, Matt,” I said finally, “but I
. . .
can’t right now. Ask me again sometime, will you?” I smiled, hoping to soften the rejection, and it seemed to work because the initial disappointment on his face was followed by a grin.

“I sure will,” he said.

I headed back to the bar, breathing a quiet sigh. Things were complicated enough in my life without involving another man in the picture. But I also counted my blessings. Things could be worse, that’s for sure. I had my own place, and didn’t have to worry about money. I was close enough to Indy to still keep in touch with Blane once the baby was born. I was sure Mona and Gerard would want to be involved in the baby’s life, too, as well as his Uncle Blane. At least, I hoped so.