Her Small-Town Hero Read online

  Though a pretty good mechanic in his own right, Holt knew he’d need help replacing a damaged pulley used by the serpentine belt that drove the engine. He called his old pal Froggy Priddy, of Froggy’s Gas and Tire, the only mechanic’s garage in town. Thankfully Froggy had little trouble getting his hands on the replacement part. An even greater blessing came when they discovered that they wouldn’t have to completely remove the belt in order to replace the pulley. In less than two hours, they had adjusted the tension on the belt.

  With the engine idling, Froggie crawled beneath the front end to check that all had been aligned properly, while Holt bent over the open engine compartment, tightening bolts and silently thanking God that Cara—he had stopped thinking of her as Cara Jane after their visit with Mrs. Poersel—had not found herself stranded or, worse, in an accident. As if summoned by the mere mention of her name to the Almighty, Cara appeared at Holt’s elbow.

  “It sounds wonderful!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands together. “The racket’s gone!”

  Holt straightened, smiled and nodded, tickled to see her so pleased, but when he opened his mouth to explain the greater ramifications of what he’d discovered, she struck him dumb by hopping up on tiptoe and throwing her arms around him in an exuberant hug.

  “Mmm. Thank you so much!” She dropped back down onto her heels, grinning up at him. “You don’t know how relieved I am. How much did it cost? I’ve put a little money back.”

  “Uh…” He couldn’t remember what he’d been about to say to save his life. “It…needed an adjustment basically.”

  “That’s all? Can I pay you for your labor, at least?”

  “No. Uh-uh. No way.”

  Laughing, she clasped her hands together in the center of her chest before throwing him a kiss with a sweep of her arm. With that she danced away, beaming with gratitude.

  He hadn’t had a chance to tell her about the other issue, but somehow he didn’t mind. So the repair would wind up costing him a couple hundred bucks. That made it a huge bargain, which he’d been quite willing to take on even before she’d stunned him with that affectionate display of gratitude. She’d seemed almost giddily happy since their visit to Mrs. Poersel, and he had no intention of dimming that smile, even if it did sometimes reduce his brain to a quivering mass of jelly.

  Cara had disappeared into one of the waiting units when Froggy slid out from under the car, his lipless grin splitting his bland face ear to ear.

  “Wonder how come I didn’t get a big old hug?” he teased.

  “’Cause you were under the car, nitwit.” Froggy being one of Holt’s best friends, the two traded regular barbs with genuine glee and false disdain.

  Froggy sat up, dusting off his palms, back braced against the bumper. “Just as well. Kelly would break my head.”

  Kelly Priddy, Froggy’s doting wife, clearly did not mind her husband’s, well, froglike appearance, focusing instead on his good heart. She seemed to think all other women did the same, for she was known for her jealous ways, which Holt had always found rather funny. Suddenly, though, he had a better understanding of Kelly’s motivation since he didn’t much like the idea of Cara hugging Froggy as she had just hugged him.

  “Tell you what we ought to do,” Froggy said, getting up off the ground. “We ought to get together, the four of us. Kelly would sure like it, I know.”

  Holt smiled and agreed, liking the idea. Only later, after Froggy had gone, did it occur to Holt that he had no business even thinking of taking Cara over to the Priddy place as if the two of them were an actual couple. Obviously his feelings for Cara had taken a dangerous path. Whatever she was, whatever the truth of her, she was not for him. He had to rein in these feelings, for nothing could come of them.

  Cara had her path to walk, and Holt had his, as ordained by God above. Her path would, Holt suspected, eventually lead her to remarriage and a new father for Ace, but that wouldn’t, couldn’t, be him. His occupation, his calling, precluded marriage, as Holt knew only too well.

  If he didn’t feel quite as convinced of that as he once had, he chose not to acknowledge the fact, perhaps because he sensed that doing so could throw his whole world into a tailspin.

  The first full week of February appeared to have been designed to test Holt’s limits. The trial started on Sunday, right after church. Before that, Cara had seemed delighted with the world, happier and more relaxed than Holt had yet seen her. Afterward, she turned quiet and sadly contemplative, but none of his gentle prods prompted her to talk to him, and that left him feeling hollow and unappreciated. Then on Monday things really went haywire, starting with a sludge line at the drill site that backed up and gushed filth, blowing sixty feet of pipe out of the hole and missing the drill operator by inches.

  The fellow’s personal vehicle did not fare so well; a piece of pipe landed on the tailgate of his truck, crumpling it into a vee. Holt saw this as confirmation from God that drilling was no business for a family man, though fully half his crew, the drill operator included, were married with children.

  After calling his insurance agent, Holt played plumber until he cleared the clog, wading through hip-deep slag to do it. That required hours of effort and left him so nasty he had to go home to his place to clean up before heading over to the motel.

  He arrived later than usual by more than an hour and, to cap his day, found Cara and Ace in Room Five bawling their hearts out.

  The sight of Cara sobbing as she jostled and petted her screaming son crushed Holt. He strode across the room, plucked the boy from her grasp and folded her to him with one arm, asking urgently, “What’s wrong?”

  As Ace sputtered to silence, hiccoughing and gasping, Cara pressed her face to Holt’s chest. “I let him fall!”

  Holt did a quick inspection of the boy, running his gaze over every visible inch. “Where did he hit?”

  Sniffing, Cara reached upward. “His head.”

  Holt patted her shoulder, feeling paternal and a tad superior in the way of those who manage not to get caught up in a moment of hysteria, never mind how his heart had wrung when he’d come upon them. “Well, he’s not bleeding and he’s conscious, so it can’t be too bad.”

  As if to confirm this prognosis, Ace sucked in a shuddering breath, laid his head on Holt’s shoulder and stuck his hand in his mouth, drooling on Holt’s neck.

  “It’s all my fault!” Cara wailed.

  “If I’d been here on time…” Holt began, intending to comfort her, only to lose his train of thought as she clasped her arms around him, butted her face into his chest again and sobbed afresh. Sighing, he caressed the back of her head and let her cry, knowing that all those tears could not really be about a minor childhood accident.

  Finally Holt sat her down in the only chair in the room, crouched at her feet with Ace on his knee and pushed away the strands of hair that had slipped from her ponytail. “Okay. Now what is this really about? Ace is fine, but you’re making yourself sick over something. What’s bothering you?”

  She shook her head, not quite meeting his gaze even as she toyed with the edge of his shirt collar.

  Holt sighed. “Last week, after we saw Mrs. Poersel, you were jubilant. This week, you’re morose. I know something is bothering you, and it started with church yesterday.”

  In a small voice, she said, “I need to ask you something.”

  His heart thunked, but he kept his tone level. “Ask away.”

  Suddenly those soft gray eyes bore into his. “Can God forgive sins that you can’t stop doing?”

  Rocked, Holt shifted his weight, balancing on his bent toes. “God can forgive any sin that is confessed, Cara, but part of confession is turning away. By confessing our sins we acknowledge we are wrong and turn away from those wrong actions.”

  She didn’t seem too happy with that explanation. “But what if you can’t turn away? There are some things you just can’t get out of!”

  “Like what?”

  Lips clamping, she looked toward the do
or. Ace chose that moment to grab on to Holt’s ear and twist it in a bid for his attention. Dredging up every ounce of patience he had left, Holt removed those little fingers with their surprisingly sharp nails from his person. At the same time he addressed Cara.

  “You’re going to have to trust me at some point, Cara.”

  That gray gaze zipped right back to his face. “Like you trust me?”

  Holt felt as if he’d been kicked, and he didn’t like it a bit. His psyche screamed about unfairness and justification. Every suspicion he’d ever had of her came roaring back.

  “Give me a way to trust you, Cara,” he demanded. “Anything.” Questions too long pent up spilled out of him. “Why are your clothes more suited to the tropics than the Pacific Northwest? Why did your lawyer husband leave you destitute? Why were you scared out of your wits to go visit poor old Mrs. Poersel?” Cara turned her head away, silent as a tomb. “Why isn’t your brother helping you?” he roared, growing more irate by the moment. “If you were my sister—”

  “I’m not your sister!” she erupted, shooting up to her feet and sending the chair skittering. “I wish I were! Don’t you think I’d rather be your beloved Charlotte than—” She bit her lip.

  “What?” he urged, pushing up to his full height and shifting Ace to one side. “Than what, Cara?”

  She looked at her son. “Alone,” she said, her cracked voice draining away Holt’s anger with that one word.

  “You and Ace aren’t alone,” Holt vowed.

  Taking Ace from him, she slid her hand over the boy’s pale head. “I might as well be,” she whispered, whirling away. “Maybe it would be better if I was.”

  Knowing his temper had only made matters worse, Holt let her go.

  “You’re brooding,” Charlotte said, her voice losing none of its censorial tone through the telephone.

  Holt didn’t argue the point. He could not get his exchange with Cara that afternoon off his mind. In what sin had she trapped herself, and why did she insist on carrying that burden alone? Didn’t she know how much he wanted to help her, to trust her? Along with regret for losing his temper came indignation.

  She had some nerve, not trusting him, after all he’d done for her.

  In light of her stubbornness, he’d begun to think that he had no choice except to use every means at his disposal to figure her out, which was why he’d made this phone call.

  “Are you done needling me yet?” he asked his too-perceptive sister. “If so, I’d like to speak to your husband.”

  Charlotte huffed and passed the telephone to Tyler. Some forty minutes later, Holt had instructions on how to run a detailed computer background check. He’d been careful not to mention Cara’s name, which had undoubtedly left his brother-in-law with the impression that his concern centered on one of his roughnecks, but Holt didn’t feel nearly as bad about that as he did about needing to find answers for the puzzle that was Cara.

  Still, he dithered, torn between his need to know and his fear of knowing.

  By morning, he’d all but convinced himself not to go through with it. Then, an hour or so before lunch, an overwhelming urge seized him. He left the rig site and drove straight to the motel. As expected, Hap and his cronies played Forty-Two at the table in the front room while Ace napped peacefully in the apartment and Cara tended to her work, leaving Holt free to slip behind the counter, retrieve Cara’s employment file and seat himself in front of the computer in the office.

  Holt didn’t know exactly what he hoped to accomplish, but when Ty had told him how to use a popular satellite imaging site to check out physical addresses, he’d thought about how much relief he’d felt after stopping by Cara’s old address in Duncan. Perhaps checking out Cara’s previous address in Oregon this way would also ease his doubts.

  Thanks to the lightning-fast Internet connection, Holt located the necessary Web site within moments. He typed in the address and sat in amazement as the satellite beamed onto his screen an actual aerial photo of the site. He couldn’t tell too much about it until he figured out how to zoom in, and then his hopes plummeted. Just in case he’d gotten something wrong, he went through the whole process again several times from step one, but no matter what he did that same image kept loading onto the computer screen.

  For some minutes he sat there staring at the used car lot where Cara Jane Wynne had supposedly lived until widowed less than a year earlier. Clearly it had been decades, at best, since any residential structure could have stood at that address.

  Sick at heart, Holt rubbed a hand across his forehead, trying to think of every possible reason why Cara might have found it necessary to use a bogus address. Suddenly he remembered making a photocopy of her driver’s license. Flipping through her folder, he found the photocopy. Would the state of Oregon have issued a license with an incorrect address? Not likely.

  Hands shaking, Holt looked up the Social Security number in her file, then went to the Web site that Ty had recommended. It took several tries for him to get the data that he sought, but when the necessary page finally loaded, he carefully read the information provided, information corresponding to the number that Cara had repeatedly written on her employment forms.

  That number did, indeed, belong to Cara Jane Wynne. Unfortunately the Cara Jane Wynne to whom that number belonged had been born in 1926!

  Holt dropped his head into his hands, close to tears and intending to pray, but his mind seemed frozen to the fact that the woman he knew as Cara Jane Sharp Wynne had assumed a false identity. The most logical explanation seemed to be that she’d assumed the identity of her late aunt. How else would Cara have known Mrs. Poersel? Holt realized that she’d used that knowledge to consolidate her position at the Heavenly Arms, and a tide of all-too-familiar anger swamped him. Before he even knew it, he was on his feet and striding for the door, intent on confrontation.

  Hap, Grover and the others stopped what they were doing to watch him leave, but Holt said not a word. What could he say? That he’d known all along she was a liar? That he could have proven it weeks ago if he’d just had the nerve? That he’d somehow let himself drift in an agony of attraction and doubt?

  He caught her preparing to enter one of the rooms. The smile with which she greeted him cut him to the quick, and that just ratcheted up his temper another notch. Striking a pose, he brought his hands to his hips, one knee cocked.

  “So you lived at a used car lot,” he accused without preamble. He’d intended to use a light, ironic tone but had been unable to prevent a sarcastic edge.

  The color drained from her face, telling him that she hadn’t just pulled that address out of thin air. She’d picked it on purpose. He tried to laugh.

  “Guess there could’ve been a house there once, say forty years ago. But no problem, right, since you were born in 1926!”

  She literally reeled, bouncing off the building at her back. He hadn’t meant to shout. He’d meant to be as cold as steel, but his voice had risen out of control.

  “Why, Cara?” he demanded. “Or is that even your name?”

  She nodded mutely, and that he felt even the slightest relief infuriated him all over again.

  “Where did you get the false ID?” he demanded, wanting her to understand that this went beyond mere lies.

  At least she didn’t deny it. “A-a man my h-husband knew.”

  “You’ve broken the law. You get that, don’t you?”

  “Y-yes,” came her only answer. She glanced up at him then, her gray eyes wide and stark in her pale face.

  Surprisingly, in the face of such woe and despondence, he found it difficult to hold on to his anger, but he couldn’t just let it go. “Is that all you’ve got to say for yourself?”

  Shaking her head, she croaked, “I’ll clear out.”

  She left the housekeeping cart where it stood and stumbled away, hands clasped before her, shoulders hunched. He watched her go, his justifiable anger sliding into extreme frustration.

  “Arrrrgh!”

 
Grasping tufts of hair with both hands, he waited. It was over. He’d proved her a liar, and that was the end of it.

  Yet, the much-hoped-for relief did not materialize. Instead, frustration quickly morphed into dismay and then, suddenly, something very like panic.

  Throwing back his head, he gazed heavenward, reaching out in wordless agony for understanding, enlightenment. When it came, he’d have rejected it if he could have, but truth was truth, and the awful truth was that he did not want her to go, could not let it be over.

  He wanted her to stay. Even more than that, he wanted the truth, he wanted her to stay.

  Bowing his head, he pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and spoke urgently to God in his mind.

  Now what? The lies are out there, and I’m still lost. Help me. Show me what to do. You’ve never failed me yet, Lord. Show me how to let her go. Or how to make her stay.

  Swallowing, he started for her room.

  She threw her clothing on the bed, mostly because in her urgency and terror she couldn’t remember what she’d done with the suitcases. She had to get out of there fast, before she came apart or Holt notified the authorities. She couldn’t take time to cry, to plan, to think. She had to go. Now.

  Of course she’d known that it would come to this. For a little while after her visit with Mrs. Poersel, she’d lived in the happy dream of everything being okay, of her lies going undetected and Holt’s suspicions of her dwindling into forgotten impulse. She’d gone to church on Sunday morning convinced that the worst lay behind her. Then Grover had spoken from the tenth chapter of Romans, sweeping away her relief and hope in the space of a few minutes.

  Not only did the lies and secrets still exist, Cara had seen that they literally held her captive and would eventually destroy her.

  Now they had. Or soon would if she didn’t get out of there.

  Closing an empty dresser drawer, she hurried into the closet and grabbed her son’s things off the shelf, remembering only then that Ace slept in the apartment across the way. Panicked, she tossed his stuff at the bed and rushed toward the door, only to draw up short when it opened and Holt strode into the room.