Undercover Refuge

In-in-out. In-in-out.

Deep in.

Out-out-in. Out-out-in.

It was almost enough to distract her. Or it might’ve been, if the man called Atkinson hadn’t chosen to cut through her moment with a throat-clear. At the sound, Alessandra’s eyes flew open, and her head swiveled toward her reluctant tour guide. He was staring straight ahead, his hands tight on the steering wheel.

“So which is it?” he said, his abruptly gruff tone making her blink.

“Which is what?” she replied.

“Al, or Alessandra?” He sounded annoyed by his own question.

Alessandra frowned. “What?”

“Your name. Which do you prefer?”

“No. I mean. I know what you’re asking, but—” She cut herself off and shook her head. “Never mind. A lot of people call me Al.”

“Like Jesse.”

“Yes.”

He went silent again. Brooding again.

The moments ticked by, the air thickening with some unnameable tension.

Alessandra breathed out and started to close her eyes once more. But her companion spoke again, his tone just as irritated as it had been a minute earlier.

“Think I’ll just stick with calling you Red,” he told her.

“Fine by me,” she replied curtly.

She tried again to shut her eyes, but then narrowed them at him instead.

“What about you?” she asked.

“What about me?”

“What do you prefer to be called? Mr. Sunglasses or Surly Stranger?”

“I’m not surly,” he said.

“You are,” she argued. “But that wasn’t an answer to my question.”

“It’s Rush.”

“What’s a rush?”

He tipped his head in her direction for the briefest second, and she could swear his lips were twitching with amusement. “My name.”

Her face warmed. “Oh. That’s...”

“Unusual,” he filled in.

“Yes.”

She noticed that his hands had relaxed a little.

“My dad named me,” he explained. “He said my mom was always in a hurry. Couldn’t even wait until she got to the hospital to have me. I was born in a convenience store parking lot.”

Alessandra surprised herself by laughing. “That can’t possibly be true.”

“I’m afraid it is.” His tone was rueful now, rather than resentful. “Probably the source of my surliness.”

“I thought you weren’t surly.”

“Yeah, well...maybe just today. It hasn’t exactly been ideal for me.”

“Me neither. Falling into a hole then being pawned off on a stranger wasn’t exactly on my to-do list for the day.”

He paused, one thumb moving restlessly on the wheel. “What was on your list?”

The question was casual, and the paranoid part of Alessandra’s brain asked if it might be a little too offhand.

Relax, she said to herself. It’s just small talk.

She let out a silent exhale. “Well. I guess I assumed that Jesse would show me the town. Maybe take me for a bite to eat so we could catch up.”

His thumb stopped its movement, and his hands squeezed tighter. “You’re old friends?”

Alessandra frowned. She was starting to think his fingers were his tell.

“Our parents were,” she said. “What about you? How long have you known Jesse?”

The fingers held their knuckle-whitening position. “Just a few weeks. I was looking for work, and a mutual acquaintance referred me.”

“So you’re in property development, too?”

“Hardly.” His hands relaxed, just marginally.

“What do you do, then?” Alessandra asked.

Tight fingers. “Anything your friend asks me to, apparently.”

The words had an undeniably ominous ring to them, and Alessandra couldn’t suppress a shiver. What instructions had Jesse left him with? And just how far would he take “anything”?

She swallowed nervously and tried to push down the need to open the door and jump out. “Sorry.”

Rush turned his head her way, and she sensed some heavy scrutiny behind those mirrored sunglasses of his.

“Sorry?” he repeated.

“I’m sure you’ve got better things to do,” she replied. “So if you want to just leave me at the cabin or whatever, I get it.”

“And risk getting fired?” He said it lightly, but his hands gave him away—they were so tense that it looked painful.

She forced a laugh. “I’m sure Jesse wouldn’t fire you for not wanting babysit me.”

“Oh, yeah? When was the last time you told him he couldn’t have what he wanted?”

Alessandra couldn’t help but notice that the question reflected her own earlier thoughts on Jesse. But she didn’t comment on her wholehearted agreement.

“Honestly,” she said instead, “if I’d known he was going to be too busy to have me here, I wouldn’t have come.”

As soon as the words were out, she realized they weren’t true. Her reason for accepting Jesse’s invitation had nothing to do with the man himself, and everything to do with her need for answers about her father’s note. Nothing would’ve kept her away. It occurred to her—a little belatedly—that Rush might be able to give her a clue. Or at the very least, help her decide whether or not Jesse, the note and her father’s death really were connected. The way she was starting to dread they might be.

She tried to think of a way to steer the conversation in a direction that would flow naturally in the direction she’d need it to take. But for some reason, she couldn’t think of a subtle segue into, Hey. Does your boss’s business include anything shady? You know...like the untimely death of an old friend and a creepy, postmortem note that led me here? Thankfully, though, she didn’t have to. Rush kind of the led things there himself.

“So you were saying that your parents and Jesse’s parents were friends?” he said, picking up the previous thread with that the same too-casual tone.

She nodded; there was nothing to hide about their shared pasts. “Our dads were, anyway. Before they each died.”

Rush’s jaw ticked, and a quick look at his hands told Alessandra that the topic was far from comfortable for him. It made her curious, and for an odd second, knowing why seemed more important than anything else.

“My dad was killed in an accident,” she added, carefully gauging his reaction. “Jesse’s was killed in a police incident a little while before that. Less than a month apart, actually.”

Now Rush’s profile was as rigid as his grip. “Sorry to hear.”

“It was a long time ago now. But it was definitely a hard time in both our lives.”

“It made you close?”

The question sounded almost like an accusation, and Alessandra frowned, but shook her head and answered honestly anyway. “No. I was only eleven—almost twelve—at the time. Jesse was fifteen or sixteen. So not a ton of common ground.”

Rush persisted. “Still. A loss like that could create a bond in spite of an age gap.”

“I guess it could. But I had my mom, and we leaned on each other a lot. And Jesse...” She trailed off, thinking about it.

What had happened to him after his dad died? Alessandra had fuzzy memories of the senior Garibaldi’s funeral. She knew Jesse had been there. She recalled specifically that he was a pallbearer, and that he’d given a brief eulogy. And after that, she couldn’t remember much of anything. It seemed funny, now, that she hadn’t really put much thought into what he’d gotten up to. Her own father’s passing had happened so quickly after, and her plate had been full of her own problems. The only thing she really had a clear memory of was a phone conversation she’d overheard about a year after the fact. Right that second, she could actually recall it quite vividly. She’d walked into the kitchen to grab an apple from the bowl on the counter. Her mom, dressed in her typical flowing skirt and embroidered blouse, had been standing with her back to Alessandra.

“I don’t know,” her mom said into the phone. “Jesse always seemed like a good kid. But my client was utterly sure that she saw him.”

There was a pause while the person on the other end said something Alessandra couldn’t hear.

Then her mom shook her head. “No. She saw an old photo of the kids and us on my desk. I think she commented by accident.”

Another pause. Another headshake.

“No,” her mom said. “A court stenographer.”

At that moment, Alessandra had accidentally dropped her apple to the floor, and her mom had turned, then quickly diverted the phone conversation to a new topic. At the time, it had piqued Alessandra’s interest only mildly. She’d had other things going on. A new, cute boy at school who she and her best friend both liked. A dismal grade in PE. And all the other general drama of being thirteen.

Maybe you should’ve paid a little more attention.

“Hey, Red? You still with me?” Rush prodded, and Alessandra realized she’d been sitting in silence for a little too long.

“I’m here,” she replied quickly.

“You didn’t finish your sentence,” he told her. “Jesse what?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “With his dad gone, it couldn’t have been easy. I think he was in a bit of trouble of some kind.”

“Trouble.” It was a flat statement rather than a question, and it was followed by silence, which made Alessandra turn her head sharply toward him.

Is it just me, she thought, or did this conversation get a little more intense than the average bit of small talk?

She waited for him to say something else. Maybe another question that would confirm her thought. But he was quiet, his eyes focused out the windshield. His jaw was still, his firm-looking lips pressed together. He didn’t even seem to notice the prolonged look she was giving him.

Her eyes drifted to his hands. They were moving in a pulsing squeeze. Rush was tense—brooding and surly again—no doubt about it.

Alessandra worried at her lower lip with her teeth. What was it that made him like that, over and over? As she stared at his fingers, she realized she’d been subconsciously leaning toward that idea that it was something to do with her. Maybe it didn’t make a lot of sense. They didn’t know each other in the slightest. But he’d seemed extra strained when asking about her nickname. And again when she’d suggested just leaving her at the cabin and told him what she’d thought her plans might be. And a third time when talking about her father’s death.

Alessandra had no clue why the details of her life would bother Rush Atkinson. But the evidence seemed to be pointing that way.

But not a second ago, she reminded herself.

His last bit of tension was definitely centered on the idea that Jesse had been in trouble fifteen years earlier.

Why? Then her mind suddenly seized on a different explanation for his repeated little tell, and she wondered why she hadn’t seen it before. It’s not me. It’s Jesse.

Jesse’s nickname for her. What Jesse was going to do with her while she was in town. And Jesse’s father’s death.

It was Rush’s boss that made him so tense. But why? What did it mean? And was it in any way helpful to Alessandra’s own search for answers?

She opened her mouth—though she wasn’t sure exactly what she was going to say because no way could she just come out and ask—but snapped it shut quickly as Rush pulled off the main road and onto a gravel one. It wasn’t the change in scenery that gave her pause. After all, she was expecting to be taken to a cabin, and had assumed it wouldn’t be right along the street that led into Whispering Woods. What did make her stare was that fact that she recognized the scenery. The trees overhead that arched into each other. The wide patches of oddly white rocks on either side of the gravel. And of course, the cabin itself, which flashed into view between the trees.

It was small and made of natural cedar. It sat up on the hills, nestled against the rock, and Alessandra knew for a fact that the veranda in the front was bigger than the building itself, and that there were exactly forty-seven stairs leading up to it. Just like she knew—even though she supposed a lot had probably changed in three decades—that the windows had once held cream-colored curtains, flecked with tiny bluebells, and that the double bed inside had once had a matching duvet. She recalled it perfectly. Because her parents had an entire collage of photos dedicated to the place. It was their honeymoon spot. The same one mentioned in the torn-up, patched-together note.

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