I stopped at the same mini-mart as before, and when I plopped the cash down on the counter the old man looked at me and said, “So, you didn’t die? I was worried about ya.”
He remembered me. Just wonderful. I’d found the one place on the planet that had an eighty-year-old man with sharp eyesight and a photographic memory.
I patted my jacket. “As far as I can tell, I’m still alive and kicking.”
He chuckled. “I talked with Betty.” His bushy brows raised to his receding hairline.
Betty? Who the hell was Betty? I blinked at him several times.
“Betty. The owner of the inn?” He coughed a few times into his wrinkled hand. “I told her to be on the lookout for you. She said she never saw you.”
Oh. “Um, yeah, I didn’t make it that far. I found another place a little closer.” Seriously dude, just take my damn money. I didn’t have time for this chit-chat. “Decided it wasn’t worth the risk.” I flashed him a polite, yet hurry-the-hell-up grin.
“Aw, too bad. Betty is one helluva woman. She woulda taken good care of you. She always takes care of me, if you know what I mean.” He waggled his bushy brows. Ew. No, I really didn’t want to know what he meant.
Finally, after what felt like forever, he rang me up for the gas and my few items. Getting irritated, I politely thanked him and headed out the door trying not to run. As I rushed toward my vehicle, though, my foot slipped on a patch of ice and my bag of food went flying as my rear hit the snow-covered asphalt. Stunned, I stared at the contents spilling all over the ground for a second.
Cursing, I collected my belongings and tried to lift myself off the ground only to slide back down again.
Suddenly, an arm clad in flannel with a fingerless glove on the hand appeared, reaching down for me. I didn’t have to look at the face to know who it was. For three days, I watched those hands form beautiful words with every gesture. Not to mention, those hands had been all over my body that morning and brought me the most immense pleasure that I’d ever had. Swallowing hard, I reached out and grabbed hold of the hand, knowing I’d see him when I lifted my gaze.
My chin tilted up and I looked into Tanner’s mesmerizing, green eyes, expecting to see anger, rage, disappointment—all the emotions I deserved from him. But all I saw was concern.
The door chimed behind me and I turned my gaze to see the old man inching out onto the sidewalk. “You okay, hun? I saw you tumble.” He leaned into his walking stick and his wary gaze shot to Tanner, then me, then back to Tanner. “This man isn’t bothering you, is he?”
“No, sir, he just helped me up.”
Again, the man shot another glance to Tanner, eyes narrowed in scrutiny. His bushy brow furrowed as his wrinkled mouth pursed. Finally, the old man just nodded reluctantly, then went back into the building.
I turned my gaze back to Tanner. “I told you not to follow me,” I said.
He just shrugged and cocked his head to the side. The wind whipped around us, and he just stared at me, gently brushing a strand of hair out of my face. Tanner could communicate so much with just one simple look. And the next look he gave me filled me with dread. A deep, dark, sadness overtook his features, as if he were about to tell me something I didn’t want to hear.
“We need you to come with us,” his sister's voice came up behind me. Whipping my head around, I saw her inching toward me.
No, they were gonna turn me in. I’d be sent back to my prison with Angelo. My husband probably convinced the officers and reporters same as he’d convinced the doctors when I tried to pin him on abuse the first time I’d wound up in the hospital—that I was mentally unstable.
“We can help you,” Tyler said.
Same words the nurses had told me so long ago. They didn’t believe for a minute that I’d fallen down the stairs. They took me to the side and asked me all kinds of questions. Said they could help. They pulled Angelo away from me, the cops came in, then took my statement.
Angelo had a concrete alibi. Of course. It was my word against his. The police dropped the charges. Nobody had ever believed me. I was merely a poor, crazy woman after my husband’s money.
I inched backward. “I can’t go back to him.” Panic seized my chest, and I found it difficult to breathe.
“Hun, I promise you that we’re not gonna make you go back to him.” Tyler placed a hand on my shoulder. How could I believe her? I jerked my body away.
Frowning, she turned to Tanner with questioning eyes, he nodded, then she looked back to me. “Your friends with Hope Martin, right?”
My breath stilled in my chest. “Y…yes.” How did they know that?
“I hate to tell you this,” her face fell, as if she was truly sorry, “but Hope is dead.”
I stared out the window of Tanner’s truck as the snow-covered countryside flew past me. I had no more tears left to cry, only an awful numbness that filled me. I kept praying that I’d wake up from this awful nightmare. This couldn’t be real. Hope couldn’t be dead.
We’d wasted several precious minutes in that convenience store parking lot while Tyler and Tanner tried to make me understand. It took Tyler pulling the news article up on her phone to finally get it through my thick skull. I didn’t know how she’d figured out that Hope and I were friends, but I was grieving too much to care. Eventually, they convinced me to go back with them, for my own safety. We couldn’t be sure what Angelo got out of Hope before they killed her.
Looking to my left, I glanced at Tanner, who had the wheel of his truck. Slow and steady, we rolled along as he kept a watchful eye on his sister driving my little Chevy back up the treacherous mountain road.
The little car skidded slightly in front of us and I clenched up and gasped. Tyler seemed to know exactly how to handle it, surprisingly, and she got the little car back on course.
With his left hand on the wheel, he signed something to me with his right. I had no idea what he said, but by the body language I inferred he was trying to tell me everything would be okay. But nothing about this was okay. My best friend who had helped me was now dead. It was all my fault for dragging her into this, and now I was putting Tanner and his sister in danger as well.
Finally, after some time, we drove past the tiny cabin I’d called home for the past couple days, then took the bend around the corner and came up on the front side of Tanner’s property. The tiny Chevy was left by the road, unable to make it over the snow-covered driveway up to Tanner’s cabin.
Tanner’s diesel engine rumbled as we waited for Tyler to come join us in the cab of his enormous truck. She climbed in the back door of the king cab, sighing heavily. “Girl, I’m impressed that you made it down the hill in that little car. That took some balls.” She placed a hand on my shoulder, giving it a squeeze.
Tanner put the truck back in drive and we jostled and bumped as we rolled over his snow-packed driveway. Finally, he pulled to a stop next to the Jeep and killed the engine. Then he turned, looking over his shoulder at his sister, and signed something.
She nodded, signing back to him, and handed him my keys as he got out of the vehicle, saying nothing else.
I looked back to Tyler.
“He’s gonna pull the tractor out of the workshop and plow a path so we can hide your car in there,” she explained for my benefit, pointing to a small detached unit to the left of his property. “It’s not a good idea to leave it out on the road where it can be seen.” She squeezed my shoulder again, her eyes full of so much kindness now, an odd turn from where we were just a few hours ago. “Come on, let’s go inside and warm up.” She bobbed her head toward the house.