Wild Card (North Ridge #1)

Sobbing.

"Please don't leave me," he cries out to her. "Please don't leave me Vernalee. I love you. I love you, I love you. This isn't the end. This is only the beginning. God, please, this is supposed to be the beginning."

My breath hitches in my throat, not from the smoke, but from the noose around my heart.

My poor father. My poor Rachel.

"Vernalee," he cries out, kissing her palm as his tears spill down. "You can't go. You can't go. This was supposed to be our second chance."

I look back up at Rachel. She's covering her face in her hands, my grandpa now beside her, putting his arm around her. I meet Fox's eyes and his are watering too.

He gives me a tense smile. "Keep breathing, Shane. You're going to be okay."

But even as he says that, I see him frown at me.

Then my eyes start to roll back in my head as pain, exquisite pain, starts to tear through my body.

I cough and gulp for air, my heart beat slowing and slowing until I think it's covered in quicksand, and then Fox is yelling for someone, sounding panicked now.

I take in a breath but I don't think it does any good.

Everything goes black.

My world goes quiet.

And cold.





22





Rachel





I remember when I was nine years old and my parents first told me that we were moving from our suburb outside of Edmonton down to a tiny town in the mountains of British Columbia.

They told me over dinner and like usual, I didn’t react. The most I would do was nod my head and silently agree, no matter what it was. At that time, my father wasn’t sexually abusing me. That started when I was about twelve. But I was still frightened to death of him, probably egged on by the fact that my mother was too.

He would often pull me aside when my mother wasn’t looking or listening and tell me wonderful things only to knock me down at the end. He would do this repeatedly and I would believe it because I didn’t know any better. He was my father. He was my protector and provider, my ruler, my world. What he said was gold. It was the last word and the only word.

The day he told me we were moving, that he’d gotten a new important position at the RCMP station in North Ridge, was the day I first felt hope.

I thought, maybe, maybe if we went to North Ridge, that life would get better. I thought maybe he would love his job and be happy and if he was happy, he would be nicer to me. I thought maybe my mother would smile more. I thought a lot of things.

The drive down to North Ridge took two days and a lot of driving and I knew better than to ask for any restroom breaks or to take pictures of the elk on the side of the road and we kept going and all I could think about was pulling into town (at the moment I think I had a picture of a Swiss alpine village in my head) and having my life really begin again. New friends, new school, new parents, a new life.

North Ridge was my second chance.

And I remember it still felt like that, even as we moved into our new house. It even had a white picket fence, just like the movies, and the house itself was painted a brilliant blue with red trim.

That day I truly believed that everything was going to be better.

My parents were all smiles.

They even looked in love.

That night I went to bed and my father came in.

He normally didn’t tuck me in at night and I guess I should have thought it was odd but I thought maybe this was the new dad, the one that cares.

“Rachel,” he said to me, sitting on the edge of the bed.

I nodded because I still wasn’t brave enough to speak.

“I hope you like your new town. I think we might fit in here just fine. You’ll have new friends and new teachers and it will be like starting fresh, don’t you think?” I kept on nodding, smiling even a little. He cleared his throat and his piercing eyes swung to me. “Just remember one thing. It’s a fresh start but it’s our only fresh start. I’m in charge of this town now and people will respect me. They will. You’ll see. I’ll have all the power and the privilege a little place like this will give me. So don’t you dare screw anything up for me.”

I blinked at him, scared at the tone of his voice.

“If you’re going to be my daughter, you have to do as you’re told. You have to work hard and keep your head down. You don’t need friends, you don’t need distractions, you don’t need anyone but your mother and your father. You need to stay out of my way. You need to not exist, you understand what I’m saying?”

My father didn’t want me as a distraction.

But I became a distraction anyway.

I tried so hard to not exist.

And I failed.

Until I met Shane.

When I sat next to him in class, my world changed.

Slowly, very slowly, day by day, Shane pulled me out of my shell. He was the only person in the world I could truly be myself with, even when I didn’t know who I was. He helped me discover everything I could be.

He taught me how to exist.

I owe him the world.

I owe him my life.

And now I’m sitting in the North Ridge hospital waiting room and waiting for the news about him and about my mother.

The fire burned the worker’s cottage to the ground.

Even a whole team of firefighters and a spattering of rain did nothing to stop it from happening. The only thing they were able to save was the stable, though the ponderosa pines are just charred skeletons.

I knew that when Shane ran back into the house, that I might not ever see him again.

I can’t describe the terror that gripped me, a dark, malevolent fist gripping me from the inside out. The fact that I might lose both of them.

They were both rushed to the hospital. At first it seemed like Shane was doing okay. While Hank was crying over my mother, pleading for her not to leave him, Shane was looking up at me. Fox had revived him.

But then his eyes rolled back in his head and he was gone.

Just like that.

One team was trying to revive my mother, the other was trying to revive him.

And if Dick wasn’t holding onto me, I’m sure I would have had to be revived as well.

Now, I’m waiting.

Waiting for good news, any news.

My mind wants to run away on me, it wants to focus on the dark, and I have to fight it tooth and nail to keep it out of the shadows. I can’t think about those horrors, so I do my best to stay calm, to keep everything at the surface.

I’m not alone. Everyone else is here: Hank, Dick, Fox, Maverick, Delilah, even her mother Jeanine. We’re all waiting in this damn room, our breath held in our throats, trying so hard to not fall apart.

Finally, a doctor appears with a nurse beside him. He looks grim.

It’s at that moment I realize that everything is lost.

One of them is gone.

Maybe both.

We all get to our feet, though I’m hanging onto Hank as I do so and he’s hanging onto me.

The doctor clears his throat and looks at the two of us. “Hank Nelson. Rachel Waters.”

I make a breathless sound, like all life is draining out of me.

“I have good news.”

I stare at him. Still, I can’t breathe.