Run Away(92)
“She’d never.”
“I know. But if something about these adoptions was not completely by the book, and if she doesn’t cooperate, well, then it’s on her. All the walls come crashing down.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
“It’s not meant to. It’s meant to convey the severity of the situation. I’m Alison’s best chance to do the right thing—and stay out of legal trouble.”
Stephanie Mars regripped the steering wheel, her hands shaking. “I don’t know what’s best.”
“I don’t want to hurt either one of you.”
“Do you promise you won’t tell anyone about this?”
Elena couldn’t really make that promise. It depended on what Alison Mayflower said. Still, a small deception at this stage was the least of her worries right now. “Yes, I promise.”
The car veered to the right.
“Where is she?” Elena asked.
“My aunt Sally has a summer cabin.” The younger woman actually managed a smile. “It’s where Alison and I first met. They’re friends, Aunt Sally and Alison. So, see, my aunt has a barbecue to open the season every year, and six years ago, Alison and I were both invited. I know she’s older than I am, but, well, you’ve seen her. She’s young in so many ways. We met by the grill in the backyard—she makes the best skirt steak…Alison, I mean—and we started talking and…” She shrugged, smiled, sneaked a glance at Elena. “That was it.”
“Sounds nice,” Elena said.
“You have someone?”
The pang. Always the pang.
“No,” Elena said. Then she added, “I used to, but he died.”
Elena couldn’t say why she told her that. Could be a subconscious ploy to bond. Could be that she just felt it needed to be said.
“His name was Joel.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
“We’re almost there.”
They pulled into the drive. At the end of it, there was a log cabin, the genuine article, not the snap-together look or faux-Cracker-Barrel-type situation. Elena couldn’t help but smile.
“Aunt Sally has good taste.”
“Yeah, she does.”
“Is she here?”
“Sally? No. She’s still in Philly, won’t be up for months. I come here on my own once a week, kinda like a caretaker. No one really knows about the place, and you can see cars coming a mile away, so Alison thought it’d be safe.” She put the car into park and looked at Elena with her big eyes.
“We’re putting our trust in you. Come on.”
As they got out of the car, two words came to mind: “green” and “quiet.” Elena took in a deep breath of seriously fresh air. Nice. Her leg ached. That old wound, her constant companion. Stephanie Mars had told her about her initial chance encounter with Alison at a barbecue here. Fate, destiny, chaos, however two souls get thrown together. Joel loved to tease that he and Elena had the best “meet cute” in history, and while she’d wave him off, maybe Joel was right.
During a raid on a white-supremacist militia compound outside Billings, Montana, Elena had been shot in the “high upper leg”—a nicer way of saying “ass.” The shot didn’t hurt as much as you might think, at least not right away. It was more embarrassing than painful, and Elena, being one of the rare Hispanic women on the job, had felt as though she’d let down herself and her people.
It was at the nearby hospital, while she was recovering, her butt propped up on one of those inflatable tire-like devices so there was no undue pressure on her wound, that Special Agent Joel Marcus first came into her room—and boom, into her life.
“Little did I know,” Joel often joked, “how much I’d enjoy seeing that ass up in the air in the future.”
She half smiled at the memory as Stephanie pushed open the door and called out, “Alison? Honey?”
No answer.
Without conscious thought, Elena started reaching for her piece, but of course, it was back in the car. Stephanie Mars hurried inside the house. Elena came through the door right behind her. Stephanie veered left and moved faster. Elena turned her head in that direction and was about to follow.
But the younger woman had stopped moving. She slowly turned back toward Elena.
The younger woman’s beautiful face broke into a smile, just as Elena felt something cold press against the back of her skull.
Their eyes met—Elena’s sad brown and the young woman’s wild green.
And Elena knew.
She thought of Joel when she heard the click and hoped, in the moment before the gun exploded, that she’d be with him again.
Chapter
Thirty-Two
Ash stood over Elena’s dead body.
She’d landed facedown, head turned to the side at an unnatural angle, eyes open. Blood flowed out of the back of her head, but Ash had already put down a tarp to make cleanup easier. Dee Dee put a hand on his arm and squeezed. He looked up at her and saw that smile. A man knows his great love’s various smiles. That was what they said—the smile when she was happy or the smile when she was genuinely laughing or the smile when she peered into the eyes of the man she loved, all that.