ringing off the hook. Mom has had time to tell all the relatives by now.”
“I have it switched to message only,” she said. “I had to. It felt like every call was a possible ambush. I had to be able to deal with people on my own terms, at least once I was inside this house.” She met his gaze and smoothed back her hair. “I’m sorry, Alex, that must sound selfish to you.”
“No,” he said gently, patting the chair again as she finished folding the laundry. “No, it sounds like survival, that’s all.”
She sat down next to him, their knees all but touching. He ached to fold her in his arms. He wanted to tell her that he’d been thinking of little else but her for weeks and weeks and that he wanted them to be together, to make things work. But she was distant and jittery and he wasn’t brave enough to admit his feelings and have them dashed in his face.
For that matter, dare he trust his feelings? The past several days had been a roller coaster of a ride, exhausting on all levels. Being back was strange and wonderful and truth be known, scary as hell.
He caught her studying his face and wished he’d taken Duke Booker up on his offer for a shave and a haircut so he’d look a little more like he had before.
“There are things you need to know,” she said.
He braced himself. Here it came. She’d moved on.
She shook her head as she added, “Maybe you should call Nate and get him to tell you.”
“Nate?” What did his best friend have to do with her?
“He’s been so concerned about you,” she said.
“I can imagine,” Alex murmured, trying to imagine what it must have been like for Nate to keep waiting for a plane that never arrived. They’d met in the army, had both ended up with careers in law enforcement, Nate as a deputy in Arizona and Alex a police detective in Blunt Falls. Now they were fishing buddies when the opportunity allowed.
“What does Nate need to tell me that you can’t?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Okay, I’ll try to explain. Before people start asking you questions, you’ve got to know a few things. There are a lot of people, Nate included, who don’t think your plane crash was an accident.”
He frowned. “What?”
“Right around the time your plane disappeared, Nate was almost killed. That’s why he couldn’t join the search to try to find you. Worse than all that, though, is that Mike Donovan was murdered.”
“Mike is dead?”
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
Mike wasn’t a close pal, like Nate, but Alex had cared for him all the same. Head spinning, he murmured, “Nate thinks all three of us were targeted by the same person?”
“Yes, a man in Shatterhorn who sang your accolades after the mall incident. Everyone refers to him simply as The Shatterhorn Killer and not by name, a tribute to those he killed or caused to die. Anyway, he’s dead now, thanks to an unidentified driver Nate saw purposefully run him down with a car. This same man was also behind the shooting at the Shatterhorn mall and apparently, him and others like him have been responsible for all sorts of mayhem occurring on national holidays around the country. Remember that incident in Hawaii last Pearl Harbor Day where some angry kid shot and killed those off-duty soldiers on the beach? Things like that. Everyday events shattered by violence. And everyone is certain something is going to happen this Memorial Day, too.”
Alex stared at her a moment, trying to make sense of all this. “But you said the guy was run over.”
“There are apparently others. Even if this man wasn’t in Blunt Falls when your plane was sabotaged, he could have hired someone to help him do it.”
Alex simply couldn’t wrap his head around any of it. The lonely austerity of the mountains suddenly seemed like the epicenter of civilization and this place a jungle. “Why would anyone do this?” he asked.
“Oh, it’s complicated, Alex. Something about creating terror for people engaged in normal, ordinary situations so they won’t support any kind of weapon control. It’s domestic terrorism but with a spin. They call themselves patriots and they recruit malcontent kids to do the dirty work. It’s been in the news lately, but I’ve been a little distracted.... Nate can tell you more and I know the FBI and FAA are going to want to talk to you, too.”
Welcome home, he thought. Here all this time he’d assumed he’d been in an everyday kind of plane crash, no intrigue, no drama, just rotten luck and maybe a bad gasket or something. And now he was hearing someone may have tried to murder him.
The fact was the day of the crash was something of a blur. He hadn’t felt very good; he’d thought he was getting Jessica’s flu. He’d been tired and thirsty and out of it, and then the plunging oil pressure, so sudden and dramatic and final.
Could that have been caused by someone tampering with his plane? But he’d had the required maintenance performed on the plane—in fact, he was a stickler for that. He’d also conducted a preflight check. He could vaguely remember doing it although like everything else about that day, the recollection was hazy.
“We don’t know for sure that your crash was premeditated, but it’s awfully coincidental,” Jessica said, and he wasn’t positive but it sounded to him as though she was trying to ease some of his shock.
“Yeah,” he said. He took a deep breath before trying to shy away from all of this for a moment. “How about you?” he asked. “How have you been? Did anyone try to harm you?”
“No, I’ve been fine,” she said, and then shook her head. “That’s not true. I’ve been a wreck.”
“In some odd way, I’m glad to hear it,” he admitted. He took a deep breath. “I’ve had all sorts of time to regret what I said that last morning. I shouldn’t have even suggested you were lying to me about having the flu.”
“I wasn’t making it up, you know. I really did feel sick.”
“I know. I think I had a touch of it, too. It’s just that we’d been going our own ways so often that it was beginning to feel like we’d never hook back up.”
“I know,” she said.
“You began to say something earlier,” he added. “Something like, there being something worse than me being dead. You stopped yourself. What were you going to say? What would have been worse than me being dead?”
She blinked a few times and he could almost see the wheels turning in her head. “I don’t remember where I was going with that,” she said at last.
Their gazes met and she looked away. She may not have been lying about having a virus but she was lying now, he was sure of it. He wanted to demand she explain, but he couldn’t bring himself to further distance her. The warmth they’d shared in her classroom had evaporated as soon as they hit the house. How ironic would it be to survive what he’d survived just to lose everything that really mattered?
But had he really thought he could waltz back in here and erase the past year or two of tension between them with a few kisses and an apology?
“We
