Page 8 of Threat of Danger
On this land she’d been kidnapped.
On this land she’d been tortured.
On this land she’d been raped.
Chapter Three
JESS DIDN’T RECOGNIZEany of the dozen pickups that lined the long driveway of her parents’ place. The outbuildings at Taylor’s Sugar House were all lit up, and the place buzzed with activity. The sugar bush had five thousand taps that produced ten gallons of sap per tap—a medium-size operation. They were moving into March, and March to April was their busiest time of the year.
Jess pulled up in front of the hundred-year-old fieldstone farmhouse and got out of her rental car. The swarm of images in her head ranged from warm and fuzzy—sleigh rides, kittens born under the porch, baking Christmas cookies with Zelda in the kitchen—to scenes that could have come straight from a horror movie.
She stood still, one hand on the car door, as she waited for her swirling thoughts and emotions to settle.Three days. A quick visit, then back home to LA and Eliot.
She focused on the trivial, because that was the easiest. The porch light was on, and all the lights downstairs. The shutters were a different color, black instead of green. The front porch had been replaced, but the ancient white Adirondack chairs were the same. The house looked a little smaller, a little older.
Peaceful.
All the activity was happening in the outbuildings. The sugar shack—which, far from being a shack, was a pretty large barn—would have the vats going, the sap cooking. The familiar sweet scent that filled the air threw Jess for another emotional loop, bringing back a fresh wave of memories: all the time she’d spent in that sugar shack with her father, watching the syrup thicken, listening to the stories of how her great-great-grandfather had settled on this land.
She lifted her gaze to her old bedroom window. Same old curtains—innocent white lace. She used to sit in that window with the piles of comic books Derek had lent her, looking out at the sugar bush now and then as she daydreamed about the boy next door.
The very last person I’m going to think about while I’m back here.
Instead, Jess thought about her studio apartment back in LA that overlooked a busy shopping street, a row of palm trees edging the sidewalk. Southern California was as different from Vermont as possible. She couldn’t wait to be back.
She stepped away from the car.I can do this.
She was here only temporarily. Derek was probably halfway around the world doing research for one of his international thrillers. She had no idea where he lived. New York City was her best guess, the publishing capital of the world. Wasn’t that where all the big-name authors lived?
The front door opening cut off her thoughts. Light poured out, and Zelda the housekeeper appeared—grayer, rounder, but with the same warm smile on her face that Jess remembered. Joy flooded Jess’s heart.
“Jess!” Zelda, past seventy, scrambled down the stone steps with a speed that belied her age. She wore a faded red apron over a blue housedress, her thick hair in a bun. Tears filled her eyes.
“Slow down.” Jess hurried toward her. They didn’t need another broken hip.
God, it felt good to be in Zelda’s arms. How could Jess have forgotten this?
Zelda didn’t even pretend she wasn’t crying. “You don’t know how long and hard I’ve been prayin’ to see you, child.”
Jess hugged her back, and for a moment she felt nothing but the purest love, until shame washed in, guilt that when she’d rejected her past, she’d also rejected Zelda with it—Zelda and everyone else.
“You haven’t aged a day.” Jess gave the old woman another squeeze. Her throat tightened as emotions choked her. “Has Chuck asked you to marry him lately?”
Zelda rolled her eyes, laughing. “That fool. Refuses to accept that I’m an old woman. Doesn’t have the brains God gave a sugar mule.”
Zelda had been with the family for as long as Jess could remember. When Jess had been a child, Zelda used to watch her. Zelda helped around the house and with the cooking. She even cooked for the crew during sugaring season.
“I can’t believe you’re still working here.”
“Not workin’.” Zelda gave a watery smile. “Too shaky to do much. Just keepin’ your mother company. People I rented from in town died, and their kids sold the house. Your mother had me move out here. She said it’d be all right if I stayed here in my retirement. I hope you don’t mind. I don’t contribute much these days.”
“Of course you’re staying. This is your home.”
After Jess grabbed her duffel bag from the back seat, Zelda linked arms with her and tugged her toward the house. “Come on, then. How long are you stayin’?”
A couple of days, Jess wanted to say. Except, after the hospital visit with her mother, and after that little episode on the side of the road earlier, she understood now that she might need more time. She needed resolution, and what she’d left behind could not be resolved in a couple of days.
“I don’t know.” She nearly groaned with pain as she let go of the fantasy of endless days on Venice Beach with Eliot. “No more than three weeks. That’s all the break I have between movies.”
