Just Enough Light (21 page)

The one saving grace was Dana’s presence. Because nights had also become a time for quiet conversations and getting to know the thoughts, dreams, and aspirations that had helped shape a complex, remarkable, and compassionate woman. Being warmed and humored by stories of her childhood. Learning facets of a life Kellen could only imagine. And simply just having her there.

“What seems to be the problem?” she asked.

Four people started to answer all at once before a single voice took over. The voice belonged to Jake, a just-turned-eighteen SAR volunteer who was first up every time a call for help went out. He’d been trying to impress her for some time and Kellen knew he’d been hoping to stick with the team on a full-time basis after the New Year.

“Sorry, Kel, but I’m starting to think it’s hopeless. I just can’t see any pattern on the climbing wall. Even if I’m working a simple route—the blue, the red, the yellow. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times I try. I just can’t get it.”

“All right. Are you saying you want to give up?”

Jake’s chin came up. “No. That’s not what I want.”

“Good answer.” Kellen walked to the equipment cubicles and pulled out her harness, then buckled up and tightened without saying a word before walking back to the group. She noticed Dana and Annie had entered the gym but were staying well back, watching but not wanting to interrupt a training session.

“Pick a pitch, Jake.”

Jake looked at her in apparent confusion. “You’re going to climb with me?”

“No. I’m going to climb. You’re going to be my eyes. Gabe will take the ropes.” Without another word, she took out a piece of bright red fabric and pressed the material over her eyes before tying it into a knot.

“You’re going to climb blind?”

“Remember what I said, Jake. You’re going to be my eyes. What pitch, Jake? Pick one, take my hand, and guide me there.”

Jake guided her until she was in front of a pitch, facing the wall. Stretching and taking a deep breath, Kellen put her arms out in front of her. “Talk to me, Jake. I can’t do anything without you.”

“L—left hand. Fingerhold at ten o’clock.”

Kellen found the hold and slipped her fingers in. “On belay?”

“Belay on,” Gabe responded as Jake called out the next hold.

“Right hand. One o’clock.”

“Climbing.” She found the hold, adjusted her weight, and waited for his next instruction.

“Left leg. Stretch about an inch and you’ll find the hold.”

He talked her through a dozen or so more holds while she skimmed her hands over each hold, feeling them, testing the surface, adjusting her grip, and continuing to climb while Gabe silently worked the rope. Finally, she stopped, signaled Gabe to bring her down, and removed the blindfold.

“Tell me what the lesson is, Jake.”

“Lesson?”

“Yes, there’s a lesson in everything. You just have to find it.” She blew out a breath and pushed sweat-dampened hair behind her ears. “I couldn’t have climbed the wall without you, Jake,” she said softly.

“I saw the pattern,” he said in a hushed voice.

“You certainly did.” She gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze and smiled when Gabe slapped him on the back. “Take twenty. When you come back, you get the blindfold. I want you to listen and feel. Don’t overthink.”

Once the team had dispersed, Kellen walked over to where Dana and Annie had been watching.

“That was amazing,” Dana said.

“He’s a good kid. He just needs to trust himself more, but he’ll get there. In the meantime, I’ve added him to the team until Tim gets back. His mom’s working two jobs and they can use the money.” She paused and looked over to where Jake was standing with Gabe, deliriously happy with a wide grin still on his face. “What about you? I know Annie always refuses, but are you ever going to give the wall a try?”

Dana quickly shook her head. “No, thanks, I like my feet on the ground.”

Kellen laughed. “So do I. It’s just that sometimes the ground I’m on is at ninety degrees to the ground you’re on.” She noticed Annie’s smile seemed strained. As she looked back and forth between the two women, her own smile slowly faded. “All right, who’s going to tell me what’s wrong?”

“Why don’t we go to my office,” Annie said. “We need to talk.”

*

No good conversation ever started with the statement
We need to talk
, Dana thought. Not unexpectedly, Kellen’s entire demeanor instantly changed. Her smile disappeared, her posture stiffened, and she walked without the loose-limbed grace Dana usually found so sexy.

Once they got to Annie’s office, Kellen took a spot by the window, facing the mountains with a faintly wistful expression that indicated she wanted to be out there, on the jagged peaks above the tree line where it almost seemed possible to touch the sky. Or simply be anywhere but here.

“My father called,” Annie began softly.

Kellen’s back tensed, the only indication she gave that she was listening.

“You were right about Cody’s mother. She never named a father on the girl’s birth certificate, and there was no evidence to be found to indicate who her father might have been. Her mother was a groupie and ran away from home at sixteen to follow different bands around the country. That’s where her addiction began. But it also means Cody’s father could be any musician from any number of different bands.”

The moment stretched, long and thin to the point of breaking, but Kellen gave no further indication she was listening. Dana felt Annie look her way and sent her a slight nod.

“Ren’s situation is not quite as clear,” Annie said as she continued. “Her mother died about two years after she ran away. The circumstances were considered suspicious at the time and there was speculation Ren’s father might have had something to do with it. But the authorities could never make a case.”

“Where is her father now?” Kellen asked.

“In jail—has been for the past eleven months—convicted of drug trafficking, assault, and kidnapping. He’s a mean bastard, but being in jail precludes him from being directly responsible for the killings. It’s always possible he hired someone else to do it, but it’s considered unlikely. If it was Ren’s father behind all of this—a hired hit—there would have been no reason to kill people outside our group. That brings us to your parents.”

Ordinarily, Kellen could keep her expression blank. If Dana had learned anything about her, it was that her years on the street had taught Kellen to reveal nothing. It meant she could keep her eyes cool, her breathing steady.

But beneath the skin, it was a different story. She had never mastered indifference. She’d never learned to stop feeling. Never learned to stop hurting. Or to stop bleeding. It was part of what made her who she was, a complex woman doing her best to move beyond her past and live a life that would give her meaning. And as she finally turned around to face Dana and Annie, her eyes were awash with pain and her face was an emotional wasteland.

“My father’s people have been able to ascertain your parents can’t be held directly responsible. They were both at showings in different parts of the country at the time at least two of the killings happened. But as with Ren’s father, it doesn’t preclude your parents from hiring someone to carry out their wishes. They can certainly afford it.”

Kellen closed her eyes. “To what end? My father beat and raped me. My mother’s reaction on discovering what he’d done was to take me to a city I’d never been before and simply discard me. She never even looked back. They never came after me, never tried to look for me or find me.”

Dana hated the heartbreaking pain in her voice. “We can’t tell you why, Kellen. There’s no possible answer that would begin to make sense of what your father did. What both your parents did.”

“I know that,” Kellen said, her voice dead quiet. “I stopped looking for logic years ago and I guess it doesn’t really matter. He wanted me. I’d seen it in his eyes too many times when I’d been forced to pose for him and his friends. But it doesn’t explain a need to find me now, after all these years. Or eliminate me, let alone kill those other people.”

“You’re right, but what you need to know is that eighteen months ago, a small law firm in Connecticut contacted your parents. It seems your paternal grandmother left you a small trust that kicked in on your thirtieth birthday.”

“A trust fund?”

Annie nodded. “It was for two-and-a-half million dollars. You need to understand, it’s not about the money. According to my father, your parents are quite wealthy in their own right. But the trust fund started people asking questions about a daughter who disappeared—ran away from home, according to the story—shortly after she turned twelve. And the law firm advised your parents that they’d hired a private investigator to try to find you.”

If possible, Kellen paled even more. “Jesus. They’ve been looking for me for eighteen months?”

“Kellen, it’ll be all right. I promise. Yes, it’s possible your parents will try to find you before the lawyer’s investigator does. They’re not going to want you telling people what happened to you. What your father did. But it won’t just be your word,” Annie said. “My father’s lawyers have filed to get copies of the medical records from when you were hospitalized in Chicago.”

Dana’s concern increased as she watched Kellen’s eyes shadow. “Kellen, you need to see you’re not alone this time. We’re here for you and we won’t let anything happen to you. Please believe me.”

Kellen slowly shook her head as if she was trying to clear it and struggled to take a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I need to get some air. And I have to talk to the girls. Would you mind if we finished this later?”

*

Kellen thought of the deep sympathy she was certain she’d seen in both Annie’s and Dana’s expressions. Sympathy and what looked to be a heartfelt wish to share her pain and take it away.

She wrestled with conflicting emotions. And then she began to run. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. With good reason. Every time she thought she was distancing herself from her past, she felt it clawing back at her. Only this time, the instinct that had enabled her to survive on the street was back in full force. Telling her to run.

She stopped only once on her way to her cabin. Just long enough to speak to Cody and Ren and issue terse instructions. She then ran the rest of the way, struggling to breathe against the rising panic in her chest.

It took her less than five minutes. She grabbed a couple of sleeping bags and pillows, made a thermos of coffee, and grabbed a bag of food and a bowl for Bogart. Turning in a slow circle, she looked at everything she’d gathered to make the cabin a home. She closed her eyes briefly, aware of a pain deep in her chest as she committed the images to memory. Then she walked to the front closet, took down her backpack, and walked out the door.

Cody and Ren stared at her wide-eyed, but they didn’t say anything as they helped her pack what little they were taking into the Jeep. Quietly, they got into the backseat, leaving the front passenger seat for Bogart. Kellen could see tears in their eyes. But neither one said anything as she put the Jeep in gear and drove away.

They would need to talk. They would need to have a chosen family meeting and make decisions. But she was too emotionally vulnerable right now. She would first need to put some distance between them and the one place people would eventually look for her. The place that had been her home for the last ten years.

After some time on the road, she reached for the radio, scanned until some music filled the Jeep. It would help on what would be a long and tiresome drive. And much better than the twenty-four-hour talk show where people called in to rant about politics and life in general. With care, she reached for the thermos and started to pour herself some coffee, barely taking her eyes off the road. Murmured thanks when Ren took the thermos from her and finished filling her travel mug.

She drove with her left hand, sipping coffee and listening to the radio until her eyes burned and her throat ached from holding back the scream that wanted release. But she kept her eyes on the road—both ahead and behind them—and drove long into the evening.

*

Dana stared at the Mickey Mouse clock on the wall in Annie’s office, slowly counting off the minutes since Kellen had left the room to get some air. It was taking too long and she couldn’t shake the feeling things were about to get worse. Much worse.

“Kellen made that clock for me,” Annie said. “She and Cody put it together as a project and then Ren painted it. They gave it to me for my fortieth birthday. Something about Mickey making the passage of time seem like fun.”

“Somehow, that sounds like something the three of them would do.” Dana tried to laugh but couldn’t get the sound past the knot that had formed in her throat.

She was worried about Kellen. She was worried about how she was coping and hated seeing the situation tear her apart. She also hated not being able to do anything to help.

The longer she thought about it, the more she felt her heart rate accelerate. And then, just as her anxiety threatened to bubble over, she realized the truth. “Oh God, Annie. I think she’s going to run.”

“Please, no. Don’t say that. Don’t even think it.” Annie jumped to her feet. “She wouldn’t. She promised my father—”

In a heartbeat, heedless of the cold and the fresh snow that had started to fall, Dana and Annie ran out of the office building, not bothering to even grab coats, as they headed for Kellen’s cabin.

The first ominous sign was the lack of life at the cabin Cody and Ren shared. By then, Dana could already see that Kellen’s Jeep was missing from its usual spot beside the last cabin. But nothing was clearer than the instant she stepped into the cabin and looked around.

It was neat the way Kellen liked it to be. But there was no sign of life. The coffeemaker sat empty, waiting to be used, and Bogart wasn’t there to greet her. As she turned, she saw the front closet door had been left partially open, and she saw the backpack was no longer in its familiar place on the top shelf.

With a sinking heart, she knew what it meant.

Kellen was gone.

*

It was nearly midnight before Kellen next pulled off the highway. After getting gas and letting Bogart run a bit, she noticed the coffee shop was still open, a bright oasis in the endless darkness. She mulled it over, then woke the girls up and pointed. “Fresh brew?”