Chapter 8
This is for the best. This is for the best. This is for the best. Repeating the mantra three more times didn’t make it ring true.
What choice did Cassie have? Stay around much longer, and she feared she would open up to Hudson. Bare her soul. That couldn’t be allowed, no matter how much she trusted him.
Taking slow, deep breaths, she steeled her resolve as they packed up breakfast, made a pair of to-go cups of coffee, and then piled into his truck.
Not twenty-five minutes later, he stopped at the exact spot where they’d met.
“This is you,” he said. The sudden stiffness in his tone was the equivalent of a punch. For a split second, she let herself miss the intimacy they’d shared hours ago. And then she opened the passenger door, grabbed her rifle from the floorboard, and took off toward her encampment.
Tears welled, threatening to fall with each step away from Hudson. This is for the best.
Her camp wasn’t too far off the road. The couple of days and nights she’d spent here had felt like a safe haven.
Now that she knew people were hunting a possibly still-injured mountain lion, searching for its next meal, she was far more freaked out.
Her one-person tent wouldn’t exactly hold up against a lion attack.
Sheer dumb luck was most likely the reason she’d escaped its path so far.
Wasn’t that a metaphor for life? You didn’t walk outside and get hit by a car by coincidence. You didn’t get impaled walking below a construction site by the same measure. And you didn’t have an airplane fall on top of your home by a roll of the dice.
Life was fragile as hell. Once this ordeal was over and she was safe, she intended to start living again.
Really living. No more hiding behind a computer screen to interact with people.
She realized how addicted she’d become to screen time after shutting down her site.
She’d gone cold turkey and had gone through withdrawal.
The need to check her phone or her laptop every few seconds had reminded her just how far gone she’d been.
The desire had waned over time. Time, it turned out, healed some wounds.
Not all, like the saying went. She’d never healed from giving up her son for adoption.
She’d never healed from some of the worst experiences in foster care.
And she knew on instinct that she would never heal from the way she felt about Hudson.
Cassie froze as her campsite came into view.
Someone’s been here. She moved behind a tree trunk in case the person or predator was still around.
It could have been Marcus. He might have come upon her campsite while checking the area for the mountain lion.
He could have messed with her stuff since the tent was on its side and the zipper was open.
Her bigger fear was that she’d been found by Jarek or one of his cronies.
The threats had been clear. If she ever left him, she would be found and punished.
He would go to the ends of the earth to find her.
Panic gripped her that Jarek might have found out about her son.
It would stand to reason that Jarek would then focus on this area.
He had his own airplane and could fly over the area until he spotted something worth checking out.
She looked up, assessing whether or not it would be feasible to see her campsite from the sky.
No. The canopy was too thick for anyone to get a good enough look from above, and even if it wasn’t, there was no way to tell the tent belonged to her.
This area had to be safe from Jarek, right?
A couple of weeks could be enough time to rule out other places, especially if he knew her son’s location. Anyone could draw a map around the kid’s house and then make a big circle.
But she was just guessing and could be totally off base.
The mountain lion couldn’t have unzipped her tent, so that was definitely human intervention.
Marcus made the most sense. He’d left her tent mostly undisturbed.
Winds could have pulled up one of the stakes.
She wasn’t exactly an expert. Camping had never been her thing.
It was a big part of the reason she’d chosen to travel this way.
Jarek would check motels, not campsites.
Though he had to assume she was using a fake name at this point, or that she was tucked away at a friend’s house.
Friend? That was a joke. He’d isolated her from others, which had been easy to do since she didn’t trust people.
From behind, she heard heavy footsteps.
Whirling around, she saw Hudson jogging toward her.
“You have to leave the area,” he said to her.
“I know.” But she was curious as to why he thought that.
“I got a call from Marcus saying there’s someone in town showing a picture of someone who looks like you and saying you’re missing and possibly in danger.”
Wind swept through the leaves overhead as panic spread like a virus. There was no time to worry about the campsite. Flight instincts kicked in. She needed to get as far away from here as she could.
“Let’s go,” Hudson said, ushering her back through the woods toward his vehicle.
They were making a lot of noise. Too much. If Jarek or one of his thugs was in the area, this would be all over. She tightened her hold on the rifle. She would be ready for whatever happened next. No way could she go back to the life she’d been forced to live with Jarek. Absolutely not.
By the time they reached the truck, she was out of breath and her side was cramping.
“We can’t go back to your house,” she said once she was back in the passenger seat and belted in.
“Why not?”
“He might be out here and could follow us.”
“Who is he?”
Cassie exhaled a sharp breath. “He’s the reason I didn’t want to involve you in the first place.”
“You should give me more credit than that,” Hudson said. “I can hold my own with anyone. You can trust that.”
“He’s ruthless and has ties to people who could do a lot of damage.” At this point, she had no choice but to tell Hudson a little. Give him enough information to scare him off.
“I’m still not afraid.”
“You should be, Hudson. I got mixed up with the wrong person, and I’ll most likely pay for that mistake for years to come, if not forever.
But you have a chance to walk away. Right now.
You can drive me out of the area and drop me off.
You don’t have to look back or risk your life for me, and I don’t want you to.
Because it won’t end well, and I couldn’t live with myself if anything happened to you because of me. ”
Hudson focused on the stretch of road in front of them.
“What if I couldn’t live with myself if I walked away from someone who needs my help? What about that, Cassie?”
She issued another sharp sigh. If the shoe were on the other foot, she wouldn’t be able to walk away. Involving him, though, would bring hell to his doorstep. “I’m sorry, Hudson. I truly am. But it would be irresponsible of me to drag you into my mess.”
“You’re not dragging me, Cassie. I’m volunteering. There’s a big difference. If you tell me what we’re up against, I can go into the situation with eyes wide open.”
“Or back out.”
“I’m not going to do that to you.”
Her heart wanted to hear those words. Logic warned her not to trust anyone she’d just met. And yet, Hudson had given her no reason to doubt him. In fact, he’d gone out of his way to make sure she was safe and comfortable.
Could she risk telling him the whole story?
“You can trust me with your secret, Cassie.”
Before she could respond, the crack of a bullet was followed by the truck pulling hard to the right. For a second, he tried to rationalize the bullet as his truck backfiring, but that made no sense given the vehicle was less than a year old.
Cassie let out a yelp as he tugged the wheel back to position and stomped the brake. On second thought, he couldn’t afford to stop. He might destroy his right front rim, but he had to get her out of here.
“Call 9-1-1.” He motioned toward his cell, which was sitting in the cupholder, plugged in to get a charge.
As she picked up the cell, he saw that her hands were shaking. Fair enough. Her worst nightmare looked to be coming true. The person she’d run from had caught up.
Cassie made the call as Hudson studied his rearview mirror, expecting a speeding vehicle to come racing up behind them.
Chicken.
Cassie ended the call. A quick glance over revealed she was as white as a ghost.
“I’m here now,” he soothed. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you. But I have to know what I’m up against in order to mount the right defense. My family can—”
“No family, Hudson. I’ll tell you everything, but you have to promise not to involve any of your family members. It’s bad enough that I’m risking your life to save my own hide, but I can’t be responsible for hurting people you love.”
Fair enough. If the position were reversed, he could see himself making the same demand.
“My brother-in-law is acting sheriff. He needs to know the true threat in town.”
“That’s why we’re leaving,” she said. “He won’t have to know if we draw Jarek and his people away.”
“Okay, then tell me.”
Hudson listened to every word as he navigated down the road on three good wheels. At some point, they would have to stop. Shit. He realized that he was already running on the spare.
Cassie had gotten involved with a pilot who had ties to an organization with long arms. They had political connections, too, which would make it difficult to prosecute.
Having grown up with Beaumont as a parent, Hudson knew all about the privilege of privacy that came with having a big bank account.
Beaumont could probably have gotten away with murder.
Heads would have turned the other way. In all the years of abuse, not one neighbor, townsfolk, or teacher had called CPS.
Hudson didn’t resent them for it, either.
He knew what fear did to a person’s moral obligations.
No one had wanted to go up against Beaumont.
He would have driven their business out of town and punished their families.
“What else do you know about the criminal organization?” he asked. “Does it have an identity?”
“I overheard the name The Dixie Syndicate in the context of, ‘you don’t want to bring The Dixie Syndicate down on our asses.’ And I heard TDS after that, so I assume that’s who Jarek referred to.”
“Does he work exclusively for TDS?”
“As far as I know, yes.”
Hudson figured TDS wouldn’t want any additional heat brought on them. “If you make a public case against Jarek, would they back off using him?”
“I guess it’s possible but stepping out means putting a spotlight on me. He has considerable resources at his disposal to make me go away and the means to hide my body forever.”
“What about Witness Protection?” he asked. “Have you thought about involving them?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because if I go in there, I lose everyone.” She shook her head fiercely. There was more to the story.
“I thought you didn’t have family,” he said.
“Technically, no.”
“Okay,” he said, figuring they’d gone far enough for him to pull over and check the tire.
“What are you doing?” The panic in her voice struck him like a physical blow.
“Checking the tire.”
“Do you have to do that now?”
He pulled the vehicle over to the side of the road.
She’d asked him not to involve his family, which sucked because someone could be out here in less than an hour if he could make the call.
Respecting her wishes would build more trust. Additionally, leading the criminals away from Rescue Ridge would ensure his family’s safety; a win-win, as far as he was concerned.
“We should call for a tow,” he said. “And I can get someone to bring another vehicle. It’ll take time, but we can’t keep driving on this wheel. If the shooter finds us, which isn’t going to be hard to do, we’ll be sitting ducks.”
The fact the gunman hadn’t followed meant the person didn’t want to risk being seen.
Only a coward fired from a tree line. If this was Jarek, he would try to surprise them.
If this was someone who worked for Jarek, they didn’t want to risk getting caught.
By now, Travis would have a description of the person searching for Cassie.
Then again, she already knew Jarek was behind the search.
Her reason for not wanting to go into WITSEC rang false.
She must have family that she didn’t want to talk about.
A grandmother in a nursing home? A grandfather tucked away somewhere?
Whoever it was, Hudson was clear on how much she cared about keeping the person’s identity a secret.
Getting close to the woman sitting next to him meant patiently peeling back the layers, one by one. He’d made progress. Pushing her for more information now would only push her away.
“Okay,” she finally said after what must have been a long internal debate.
He picked up his cell and fired off a text to a trusted tow truck driver to come get his vehicle. They could hitch a ride into town and go from there.
One step at a time.
A response to his text came almost immediately.
“Jeb is on his way,” he said. “I knew him back in school. We were in the same grade and played on the same sports teams. He’s a good guy. Heard he’s married with a couple of kids.”
“He stayed in town after graduation?”
“A lot of folks stick around,” he said.
“What’s that like?” she murmured.
He almost didn’t hear her. Almost.