Chapter 8 #2
“I admire all of you so much. I just want you to know that. And I’m not here to put anyone in danger.
I need the expertise of Pipe and his friends, but I honestly think as soon as Ridge Michaels sees that I’m not going to stop, that I now have help in my quest to figure out what’s going on with my friend, that he’ll give her back without much trouble. ”
“Holy crap,” Alaska said, sitting back in her chair with an astonished look on her face.
Henley’s mouth opened and closed, as if she was trying to think of something to say.
Reese simply blinked at her.
It was Ryan who actually spoke first. She had a huge smile on her face as she said, “I knew you’d fit right in the second I saw you. Small-town Refuge gossip doesn’t have anything on you, apparently.”
Cora felt herself blushing. Shoot, she shouldn’t have been quite so gung-ho about making these women understand she wasn’t there to cause trouble.
She always seemed to say the wrong thing at the wrong time.
Social niceties weren’t exactly her thing.
Lara was way better at that than she was, and it was why she usually left the introductions and small talk to her friend.
“I swear I’m not a stalker,” Cora blurted.
“I mean, Pipe jokingly accused me of being one, but I had to know for certain that selling my stuff would be worth hiring him and his friends to kidnap Lara back. And I just did lots of Internet searches. There are tons of articles about the men who started this place. And after all the stuff that happened to you guys, there were even more articles. I didn’t hack into any databases or anything, I wouldn’t even know how to do that. I just used Google to search.”
She turned to Robert and Ryan. “I’m sorry, I didn’t find any information about you guys.
But, Robert, if everything else you make is half as good as your cookies, I might never leave.
I might move into the barn with Melba and sneak over here in the middle of the night to gorge myself.
Maybe I could clean the dishes like some kind of dish fairy and earn my keep.
And, Ryan…” Cora shrugged. “Well…I don’t know you at all. Sorry again.”
“Wait, wait, wait—I feel as if we’re missing a huge chunk of info here,” Henley protested. “Selling your stuff?”
“You hired our guys?” Alaska asked.
“Kidnap your friend back?” Reese threw in.
“I can’t believe you three haven’t heard from your men about Cora and her friend,” Ryan said with a shake of her head.
“And you’re in the know?” Alaska countered.
Ryan sobered. “Her lifelong friend Lara was dating a guy named Ridge Michaels, and is now in Arizona with him. They left abruptly, and they’re not talking to Cora anymore, which has Cora freaked out.
She heard about Pipe being in that auction and researched all she could about him and The Refuge.
As she said, she didn’t win, but Pipe was intrigued enough to track her down, talk to her.
Now here she is, and Pipe and the others are out there talking about their next steps, how to go about figuring out once and for all if Lara’s okay, or if she’s being held against her will. ”
Cora would’ve laughed at the shocked looks on the other women’s faces if she wasn’t so surprised herself.
“It’s the quiet ones you have to watch out for,” Robert said with a chuckle.
“Right? How the hell do you know all that? Pipe, Owl, and Cora have only been here for like twenty minutes!” Henley protested.
“Owl called Stone last night. I was cleaning the lodge and heard them talking in the admin office. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I couldn’t exactly shut my ears off. Stone had the phone on speaker, and you know how he tends to talk rather loudly when he’s on the phone.”
“Right, okay, so our sneakster friend here has the deets, but we don’t. If there’s anything we can do to help, we’re more than willing,” Alaska told Cora.
“You sold your stuff?” Henley asked again, obviously still stuck on that part of her random word vomit from moments ago.
Cora shrugged. “It was just stuff. I had to get money to be able to bid on Pipe.”
“Like, your electronics and other expensive things?” Reese asked.
She bit her lip. “No. All of it. My furniture, TV, dishes and cutlery, pots and pans, linens…all of it.”
Everyone was silent for a long moment.
“Holy shit, seriously?” Henley asked.
“It still wasn’t enough to win though,” Cora said, staring at the table.
“Tell us about your friend,” Alaska said firmly.
This was a topic Cora was more comfortable with.
She told them everything. Not leaving anything out.
How she was a foster kid with no family.
How Lara took her under her wing. How she’d bailed her out more than once when she needed a place to live.
How her parents were nice but distant. How they were disappointed in Lara when she’d become a preschool teacher instead of trying for a better, more prestigious job.
“She’s everything to me,” Cora said, still studying the table as if it was the most interesting thing ever.
“My best friend and my family all rolled into one. When she met Ridge, I was skeptical about how perfect he sounded. I told her to be careful, but Lara’s a romantic.
She’s dreamed about being swept off her feet all her life.
I think she was starting to feel as if she’d missed out.
Like she was too old to find someone to love her the way she wanted to be loved.
So when Ridge showed up and acted like the man she’d always dreamed of, she was overwhelmed and all in pretty much immediately.
“We had a fight about him. Two days later, she didn’t show up for work and wasn’t answering my calls.
She sent an email to the school about taking a leave of absence.
The next thing I knew, I got a text from her saying she’s staying in Arizona for a while.
A text. After over two decades as best friends.
“I tried to call her immediately, but she never picked up. And the few texts I got didn’t sound like her at all.
They were…unemotional. And as I told Pipe, there wasn’t any punctuation in them, and Lara always uses periods and commas and stuff.
She’s always worn her heart on her sleeve, so she also uses lots of emojis and exclamation points and gifs.
But the texts I got were brief. Not one emoji.
The one time Ridge allowed me to see her on a video call, she told me she loved Arizona and wasn’t coming back to DC, ever.
But she also gave me a signal. She’s in trouble.
Even if I’m the only one who believes that with all my heart, I know she is. ”
“The guys are going to help though, right?” Reese asked.
Cora shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s what Pipe is doing now. Discussing the situation with them.”
“They’ll help,” Alaska said without a shred of doubt in her voice.
“Have they called their techie friend?” Henley asked.
Everyone looked at her.
“You know, the one who tried to help when Jasna was missing and when Reese was taken?”
“The one who actually didn’t help?” Alaska asked. “I mean, he tried, but it was that mysterious unknown person who thought of using Reese’s tile to track her car. And they also told the guys where to find Jasna.”
“When Owl was talking to Stone, he said something about how he’d already contacted Tex—that’s the techie guy’s name,” she said to Cora, “and he was researching Lara’s boyfriend,” Ryan explained.
“Good. Okay, so I’m guessing you won’t be leaving today. That means we need to figure out where you’ll be staying,” Alaska said matter-of-factly.
“Are there any cabins open?” Henley asked.
Alaska huffed out a breath and shook her head. “No. We don’t have any openings for months. Unless someone cancels, but then I can usually fill that spot pretty easily.”
“She can stay with Gus and me,” Reese offered.
“Didn’t I hear you say you were having morning sickness really bad, and that you get up in the middle of the night to puke?” Henley asked.
Reese blushed. “Yeah, but—”
“She can stay with us,” Henley said firmly.
Alaska laughed. “As if staying with you and your pre-teen is any better.”
“Pipe said I could stay with him,” Cora cut in.
Everyone’s head swiveled to stare at her.
Then Alaska smiled. “Right. Then…that’s that.”
Henley tilted her head. “You’re not what I expected for Pipe.”
Cora did her best not to be offended by that.
“And please don’t take that the wrong way,” she added quickly. “I know it probably sounded bad, it’s just that Pipe is…rough around the edges. And he’s kind of quiet.”
“We aren’t together like that,” Cora said quickly, wanting to clear that up. “He’s just helping me find Lara.”
“Uh-huh, you go on telling yourself that,” Reese said. “I was only staying with Gus while my brother was here healing. And now I’m married, pregnant, and happier than I’ve ever been in my life.”
“We’re embarrassing her,” Alaska said. “Whatever’s between her and Pipe is just that, between the two of them.”
“I like his tattoos,” Cora mumbled, picking at one of her fingernails. “They make him seem tough…untouchable. Even though from what I’ve gotten to know of him so far, that’s not who he is.”
“You’re right, it’s not. He’s a teddy bear,” Henley agreed.
Robert burst out laughing. “No, he’s not,” he said.
This time, everyone turned to look at the cook.
“He’s not,” Robert insisted. “Just the other day, one of the guests was talking shit about a woman he saw in town. You know, doing what a lot of guys do…talking about her tits and how he’d like to ‘tap that.’ Pipe overheard and got all up in his face, told him he was being disrespectful and he needed to pack his shit and leave. Immediately.”
“Oh my God, is that why that guy checked out early?” Alaska asked. “I tried to figure out if something was wrong, but he was all tight-lipped and wouldn’t say much.”