She was letting her imagination run away with her. But she didn’t have a cell phone since there was no service. And now that she’d seen this isolated setting, showing up here seemed an unnecessary risk. No one even knew where she was.
Planning to leave while she still could, she put the transmission in Reverse, but she had nowhere to go. Joe had arrived and parked behind her, effectively trapping her car. She saw his grille in her rearview mirror just as she was about to back out and had to stomp on the brake.
“Shit!” she breathed, her mind racing as he got out.
He came toward her wearing a dark scowl and paused near her door with his hands on his hips as if he expected her to get out and go inside with him.
Eyes gravitating to his work boots—they looked just like the pair she’d seen on the man who’d followed her to the cabin—her pulse leaped.
What was she going to do?
Peter came out, distracting them both. He exchanged a few words with Joe that culminated in angry voices and plenty of cursing, which got louder, making it easy to hear what they were saying.
“It’s your fault,” Joe responded. “You’re the one who told everyone Alana and I were having an affair.”
“That’s before I knew it could get you—” Peter glanced in her direction and stopped. “Shit, Joe. This is screwed up, man. I don’t want to be dragged into this. I’m the one who told you to stay away from Alana in the first place. What if the cops—”
Claire screamed as Joe slammed a fist down on the hood of her car. “I don’t care. This won’t go away! Let’s take her inside and get it over with. Otherwise, she’ll head back to town and go straight to the sheriff.” Get what over with? Claire had heard enough. She put her car in Drive but there was no more room to go forward than there was to go back. She could only remain in her locked car.
But that was hardly safe. If they really wanted to get to her, all they had to do was break a window.
Joe was already knocking on the glass. Peter had walked across the lawn and was on the passenger side. Their vehicles penned her in front and back, and the two men penned her in on the left and right.
Leaning on the roof of her car with both hands, Peter shook his head as Joe yelled for her to get out.
“No!” she called back. “Let me go!”
“You can’t let her drive away now,” Peter warned. “Man, this was such a mistake! What were you thinking, bringing her up here?”
“Shut up!” Joe knocked harder. “Claire, get out. I’m not going to hurt you, I swear.”
“What is it you want?”
“I have something to show you. It might tell you what happened to your mother.”
Or he was lying, the information he claimed to possess simply an incentive to lure her inside.
“What did you do to her?” she yelled. “Why did you do it?”
“I didn’t do anything! Would you quit freaking out? I’m trying to help you!”
“Then why did you follow me to her studio?”
“That wasn’t me!”
“Did you trash my house?”
“No!”
“How’d you hear about it?”
“You’re kidding, right? There are no secrets in Pineview.”
Except the one she’d been chasing for fifteen years.
“Just get out and come inside with us, and I’ll tell you what I know. That way, maybe we can put a stop to what’s going on.”
She didn’t trust him. She started her car, determined to crash into both vehicles if necessary in order to create enough space to get her Camaro out from between them, but she didn’t have the chance.
Peter picked up a rock and bashed in the passenger’s-side window just as her car jumped forward and struck his bumper. The impact threw her back against the seat, but she reached for the gearshift, planning to reverse and punch the gas again when Peter climbed in through the passenger side and held her hand in place so she couldn’t.
A second later, Joe dragged her from the car.
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25
“At least they took out our stitches while we were at the hospital,” Isaac said.
Claire slid her hand up his naked torso and pressed her lips to the steady beat at his throat. They were in bed at a motel in Kalispell, where they’d been for more than twenty-four hours. Isaac had insisted they not return to Pineview, said he wanted to get some sleep where he knew they’d be safe. He’d even parked his truck in the back, so it couldn’t be seen from the street.
“That’s not much consolation,” she said. “Your house is destroyed. All your furniture, all your clothes. We don’t even know how much of the forest went up.”
“Last I heard they were getting it under control.” He concealed a yawn, but it didn’t come off as indifferent or uncaring. They were both groggy after a week of such intense emotion and so much loss. If Isaac was like her, he was just glad to feel safe for the moment. “It didn’t reach your mother’s studio,” he added, “so it could’ve been worse.”
“It took your house. That’s bad enough.”
“I’m not thrilled about losing everything. I’m even less thrilled about being displaced.” He adjusted the bedding so he could pull her against him. “But we’re alive, right?”
She laughed as he rubbed his cheek with its new beard growth against her neck. “Right.”
He raised his head. “And everything was insured. My camera, my lenses…”
“What about the things money can’t buy?” she asked, threading her fingers through his hair. “All your footage, the DVDs and negatives, your notes—”
“The really important stuff’s in a safe. Provided that safe is as fireproof as I was told when I bought it, I’ll be fine. And I managed to save my computer, which has my latest projects on the hard drive—”
“You saved it at the risk of your life.” She scowled to show her disapproval. “And it still makes me mad. You have no idea how long those few seconds were when you didn’t come out.”
He grinned as he tweaked her chin. “I still don’t know what you thought you were doing trying to get back inside.”
“I wasn’t trying to get inside. It just looked that way.”
One palm cupped her breast as he leaned up on his elbow. “Tell the truth. You were coming back for me.”
She gave him a saucy look. “No, I wanted to save that hippo print you said I could have.”
He pecked her lips. “We’ll get a new one printed.”
“You’re lucky your wallet was in the pocket of the jeans you pulled on,” she mused. “Or you’d be depending on me for everything.” She sort of liked that idea, at least as a temporary arrangement, but she knew he wouldn’t.
“See?” he responded. “There’s a lot to be grateful for.”
She smiled at the way his hair stood up. They’d been sleeping for hours, had made love and then slept some more. She wasn’t even aware of the time, didn’t care how late it was. She was sure everybody in Pineview had heard about the fire, doubted anyone would expect her to be at the salon, including those who had an appointment. But she’d called Leanne and asked her to post a sign, just in case. “You’re really okay with letting the rest go?”
“Like I said, it can all be replaced—except the picture of my mother. With some effort and money, I might be able to get a duplicate, but I doubt I’ll try.”
She smoothed the hair out of his eyes. “You had a picture of her?” Claire wished she’d seen it. Because he had no family, no roots, he was used to flying solo, which made it hard to become an integral part of his life. “That’s not an easy thing to lose.”