Threat of Danger Page 2

  Jess held out her arms and turned in a slow circle, unconscious of her old scars. Joy filled her, the thrill of a job well done. The hours of training and rehearsal had paid off. She felt as if she was doing what she was meant to do, was in a place where she was meant to be.

  She liked being good at what she did. And a much-needed break waited for her next. Life was good.

  Eliot spoke at her elbow, his tone gruff. “You look like you rolled down Niagara Falls in a barrel.”

  “I have three weeks to fade.”

  Jess chugged her water and tossed the bottle into a cardboard box next to them that already held other garbage. As Eliot stepped back, she kicked off her boots and then tugged off her tight bodysuit completely. She had worked up enough perspiration during the stunt that dragging the latex back up would be a pain.

  “I’ll be back in a sec.” She wanted to watch the footage back with Eliot.

  She wrapped her towel around her shoulders and hurried to the white changing tent in the corner of the roof, taking her costume and boots along. She needed to keep track of the bodysuit or the costume assistant would have a fit. Nobody pissed off Anezka—an incredibly talented, feisty Czech. The petite fiftysomething woman had ways of making a person uncomfortable, ways that people who didn’t know her couldn’t even imagine.

  Jess put a wiggle in her step as she walked away from Eliot. His stifled groan gave her hope. And a couple of very nice tingles.

  They’d been circling each other for two years. They were friends. Both wanted more.

  Eliot was wary because they worked together. Jess didn’t see that as a big deal. They worked in fricking Hollywood. Who was going to judge them?

  She had three weeks off. She planned on spending a significant portion of that time with Eliot—preferably in bed. She stood ready to drop some serious hints while they watched the stunt footage back. Harvey never joined them. The Scotsman loved the stunts, but hated watching himself, only seeing what he could have done better.

  The air in the changing tent was positively balmy, a heater going in every corner. For once, nobody else was in there. Jess hung her costume in its exact spot on the numbered rack, then grabbed her T-shirt from her cubby and tugged it over her head.

  The script for Zombie Zoo lay on top of her folded-up jeans. Finishing one job meant she needed to begin preparing for the next. She’d been reading through the script during her breaks. In the story’s universe, zombies could not cross water, so the heroine spent a lot of time in various lakes and rivers. Bleh.

  Water stunts were the bane of Jess’s existence. Give her a high jump or wire work any day. On her first big job, before she’d joined Eliot’s crew, she’d nearly drowned during a botched stunt for a movie about the disastrous 2004 Malaysian tsunami.

  She filled her lungs. Eliot won’t put his crew in danger. His planning was meticulous. Since an injury had ended his own stunt career, he was obsessed with the safety of the people on his team.

  Jess tugged on her pants and stepped into a pair of comfortable sneakers, then pulled on her knitted black sweater. The watch back was going to be great. Tonight was going to be even better. She was going to ask Eliot to dinner. Then three weeks off together . . .

  Jess was grinning as she picked up the script, folded it, then shoved it into her back pocket. The last thing left in her cubby was her phone, lying on the bottom. One missed text.

  Mom.

  Jess stared at the white-blue screen, her muscles tenser than they’d been a few minutes ago while she’d dangled over the abyss.

  Her adrenaline rush popped like champagne bubbles until her mood went flat, then worse. A dark pressure settled onto her shoulders. The air around her felt thick and tasted bitter. When she’d run off the set, she’d been perspiring from exertion, but now, despite all the heaters, a cold shiver raced across her skin. The movie shoot outside the tent seemed a million miles away.

  Her thumb hesitated over the message icon for a second, then another, and another, before she touched the little yellow folder.

  Her mother had texted: Fell down the steps. Broke my hip. Didn’t want you to hear it from someone else.

  Jess stared at the news. Who would she hear it from?

  She didn’t keep in touch with anyone from Taylorville. The small Vermont town was the place of her birth and the origin of all her nightmares.

  She checked the time stamp. The three short sentences had been sent an hour ago, the message finished and complete. Nothing more would be forthcoming.

  No plea for a visit.

  Her mother knew better.

  If Rose Taylor had asked Jess to go home, Jess would have said what she always said: she was fully booked, busy at work. Yet as her thumbs hovered over the keys, she didn’t type her usual excuses.

  She typed, I’m getting on a plane, instead.

  She hovered over “Send,” then moved to “Backspace,” then “Send” again. As she finally clicked, her tough, martial arts–trained, stunt-hardened body trembled for a moment. Because she’d just committed to doing something she’d sworn never to do again.

  She was going home.

  She was going where the devil lived.

  Chapter Two

  Friday

  JESS’S ONLY PLAN for the visit home was to remain emotionally detached. Thank God she wouldn’t have to deal with Derek, because her mother was more than she could handle.

  Rose Taylor was a lot frailer than Jess remembered, broken and pale as she lay in the hospital bed at the UVM Medical Center. The fine lines around her eyes had deepened into crow’s-feet. She shifted on the bed, her powder-blue nightgown revealing bony shoulders that used to be a lot rounder.

  “Thank you for coming back.”

  Jess wasn’t sure what to say in response, because she wasn’t entirely sure of her motivations.

  Rose lay still, as if afraid any movement might scare Jess away. Her gaze roamed her daughter, returning over and over to Jess’s face. “I can’t believe you came.”

  “That makes two of us.” A wave of guilt rose. Jess held her breath until the wave crested. She had not abandoned her parents! Her parents had abandoned her. Not something she wanted to talk about. Ever.

  She cracked her shoulders, still a little sore from the harness. Two days here. Three at most. Then back to LA and Eliot. The sooner the better.

  “No matter what, I’m glad you’re home.” Her mother’s voice remained tentative.

  Me too, Jess should have said, but she wasn’t glad, and lies were not what they needed. “Are you in pain?”

  The pain was in the present, so a safe topic. The past wasn’t. The past needed to stay in the past. She wouldn’t bring it up. She would definitely not ask about Derek. He’d joined the navy, then somehow became a bestselling thriller author, a minor celebrity. He probably didn’t come home any more often than she did. Good.

  “I’m fine now.” Rose’s tone held forced cheer.

  She wasn’t a complainer. Partially, because she was a tough Vermont woman, and also because she disliked acknowledging difficulties. She was the type who’d much rather ignore problems than solve them.

  “They’re giving me the good drugs,” she added, as if sensing that Jess didn’t believe her.

  “How did you fall?”

  “Lifting a bucket, tripping over a hose I didn’t see.”

  Jess wanted to tell her to cut back, not to work so hard on the farm. Yet it wasn’t as if Jess would stay to take up the slack, as the new generation always had taken over when the previous one grew old—two hundred years of Taylor tradition.

  An awkward silence stretched between them, too many unsaid things hanging in the air like little particles of water, creating a fog that made it difficult for them to truly see each other, even though they sat only three feet apart.

  Rose Taylor sat up a few inches higher against the pillows. “If I knew you were coming, I would have gotten your room ready.”

  “I’ll stay at a hotel.” The words rush
ed out. And Jess thought, I should have said that right away. She didn’t want to raise false expectations. She didn’t want to hurt anyone.

  Too late. Hurt trembled in Rose’s voice. “Couldn’t you stay at the house?”

  Jess rubbed circles over her knees with her thumbs. “You’re not there anyway.”

  “It’s sugaring season.”

  Sugaring. The almighty maple syrup around which everything revolved. The almighty trees. The almighty land.

  Jess used to wish she mattered half as much to her parents. She welcomed the resentment that came flooding back. She could handle indignation better than the sticky muck of guilt.

  “I’m sure Chuck can run the sugaring.”

  Chuck Hernandez had been her father’s right hand for as far back as Jess could remember. Since her father’s death two years ago, Chuck had become the foreman for the whole operation.

  “Chuck is sixty-five.” Rose’s pale-blue eyes turned pleading. “His arthritis is starting to get the better of him. Just be there, in case something comes up. Maybe you could organize the meals for the crews.”

  Jess had helped her mother with the meals before. The workers earned their hot lunches. Lifting and carrying heavy buckets was hard work. And they got cold, spending the day out in the woods.

  Colorful images of a dozen sugaring seasons swirled in Jess’s head, the sweet smells and cheerful sounds, the sheer excitement and joy of the maple harvest. She hadn’t thought about sugaring in a long time. She’d locked away the good memories along with the bad.

  Taylors had “maple syrup running in their veins instead of blood” was the saying around town. Once, long ago, Jess had been proud of that.

  Then she’d run.

  Now she said, “I don’t have to stay at the house to help. I’ll just go over during the day.”

  Her mother wilted against the pillows. “If you think that’s best.”

  Jess hated the acquiescence. She wanted . . . what? A fight? Definitely not. She hoped she was more mature than that.

  She rolled her shoulders. After the New York shoot, she’d been beat physically, but now, back in Vermont, she felt emotionally beat too.

  She felt . . . She didn’t know how to feel, and maybe that was the problem. A wild mix of emotions clamored for her attention: anger, resentment, regret, anxiety, and a reluctant acknowledgment that she’d missed her mother.

  Pain drew lines on Rose’s forehead.

  Yet another new wave of guilt crept in, slowly like the tide, licking Jess’s toes first, then her ankles, then her knees, and soon she was hip-deep. “I’ll stay at the house tonight, and we’ll go from there.”

  As she committed to the cause, a cold shiver ran up her spine. Fear? No. She’d banished fear from her life long ago. She had to, or fear would have consumed her. Restate and reframe.

  She wasn’t scared. She just wished she didn’t have to be here. She wanted to be with Eliot in LA. Eliot was soft-spoken, nonjudgmental, easygoing, kind, and caring—everything she wanted in a man.

  Her phone pinged on her lap. She glanced down, a smile turning up her lips. Eliot. As if he somehow knew she was thinking about him.

  The text message said, Need help? I could come up to Vermont instead of flying home to LA.

  “Boyfriend?” her mother asked from the bed.

  Jess looked up. Once again, her gaze caught on all the gray in her mother’s hair. When had she stopped coloring it? After Dad’s death?

  Their rare phone calls were brief, so they rarely veered into trivialities like hair. They certainly weren’t close enough to discuss boyfriends. But Jess was here. They would have to talk about more than maple syrup.

  She told her mother the truth. “I don’t know yet.” She filled her lungs. “Hopefully, things are going in the boyfriend direction. We have a lot in common. Have the same interests, live in the same world, like a lot of the same things.” Then she added, “His name is Eliot. He wants to come up from New York.”

  A confused blink from the bed. “Were you in New York? I thought you were in California.”

  “We’ve been shooting in New York for the last two weeks.”

  “I’m sorry if I interrupted something important.”

  “I was done.”

  She didn’t realize until after she said the words that they sounded as if she wouldn’t have come if she still had work, as if her mother wasn’t important enough to come and see, no matter what. But Jess didn’t rephrase. She didn’t correct.

  It is what it is.

  “I can help with the medical expenses,” she said instead. There, an olive branch.

  “Medicaid will take care of most of it.” Rose sounded neither offended by the “I was done” comment nor touched by the offer of financial help. “I have a little set by. Sold two acres by the river to Harold Crane.”

  “Principal Crane?”

  God, it’d been a long time since Jess had thought about high school. She didn’t think about Taylorville at all, if she could help herself.

  Crane hadn’t been bad, for a principal. He’d been generous with snow days and stingy with detentions. Most of the kids liked him.

  “Why does he need land? Going into sugaring?” Two acres wouldn’t produce enough sap to earn back what he’d need to invest in equipment.

  “He’s building a cottage.” Rose fidgeted with her blanket. “Wants to fish after he retires.”

  “That won’t be for a while yet.”

  “In June. Retiring early. All those kids wore him down over the years. He’s my age.”

  Jess tried to figure out how old he was. Her mother was . . . sixty.

  “Your friend is more than welcome to come and stay at the house too,” Rose offered. “We’ll find him a room.”

  Separate rooms? Really? I’m twenty-eight. But instead of reminding her mother of that, Jess said, “Because what would Great-Aunt Matilda say?”

  The refrain of her childhood.

  “She was a nun. Don’t make fun of her.”

  A nun who’d died before Jess was born, yet, in her childhood, Jess had heard the What would Great-Aunt Matilda say? question at least once a day.

  Her mother shot her a pleading look. “I’d like to meet this friend of yours, and he’s welcome at the house. Why don’t you invite him?”

  “No.” Again the word rushed out without Jess pausing to think first. She quickly added, “Thanks,” but it was too late, and felt too lame.

  Jess did want to be with Eliot, but she didn’t want Eliot to come up. She needed to keep this place and Eliot separate. She felt as if Eliot would be somehow tainted if he came here.

  Or was she afraid that Eliot would find out that she was tainted?

  Jess pushed the thought away.

  She texted back: I’m fine. I’ll be back in time for Zombie Zoo.

  I’m not worried about the movie, came the response. I’m worried about you. How are things with your mom?

  Eliot knew that Jess hadn’t visited her hometown in years. He must have suspected that there was a story there, but he never pried.

  She sent: As good as can be expected. I’ll call you tonight. I’m at the hospital.

  His response was two letters: OK.

  While Jess had typed, her mother had closed her eyes. She opened them now, half-mast. “Sorry. I’m fading fast. The drugs make me sleepy.”

  “I’ll go and let you rest.”

  Rose didn’t protest.

  In half an hour, Jess was out of the city. Another half an hour later, she was in Taylorville, then past the small town, driving through nothing but farmland. Her family’s hundred acres were on the outskirts.

  The sky had already turned dark, but the light of the moon reflected off freshly fallen snow. Barely any traffic moved on the narrow country road. She could afford to scan the familiar landscape around her. Then she reached the last rise, and suddenly a hundred acres of Taylor land spread before her, her family’s legacy: the farm and the sugar bush—a forest made up predominant
ly of maple trees.

  She couldn’t breathe. She barely registered the white pickup truck that passed her, going in the opposite direction. And because barely registering cars wasn’t a good thing while driving, she pulled her little black Honda rental over onto the shoulder. She needed a minute.

  She gripped the steering wheel as she dragged air into her lungs. As a child, Jess had believed in the Taylor legacy with all her heart, in her family being special, the maple syrup in their veins. She’d been able to see the beauty of the landscape, and feel the magic. She no longer had that ability.

  Instead of awe, now all she felt was a sudden wave of terror. Cold crept up her spine. She choked back a sound that was halfway between bitter laughter and a sob.

  God, how stupid and naive she’d been to think that she’d conquered fear. How had she ever believed that?

  This was where fear lived.

  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 RECOGNIZE any 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.