Chapter One
Jewel leaned against the front window of the bar, the glass cold as ice against her skin. She could see almost nothing through the mosaic of rain beaded on its surface, catching light from the dusty yellow bulb behind her and the white parking lot flood lights and throwing off scattered rainbows. Thunder rumbled so close and intense she felt it vibrating through her feet.
Outside, the air would be heavy with the smell of petrichor and ozone. But within the confines of Amos’s Bar, the air was full of old cigarette smoke and booze. The wind howled and threw another sheet of rain against the window pane like a slap. Jewel scowled into it like she could intimidate the storm into leaving by sheer will.
"You going to be all right driving home in that, Jewel?"
Amos Hayes, the bar’s owner and principal cook of all its greasy and inedible bar food, stepped up beside her to peer over her shoulder at the rain, squinting through the water obscured glass. Amos was in his late forties and a very large man. Not specifically fat, though he was that, but also built like the broad side of a barn. He never just stood near you. He loomed like a mountain. The faint scent of skunk lingered around him, the ghost of the weed he smoked twice daily for his joint problems.
"I'll be fine," Jewel said with a tone that brooked no argument.
"That dirt road up to your place is going to be a river," Amos said. He'd never been the type to pay attention to other people's tones. "Maybe you'd better crash here for the night. There's always room for you in the trailer."
Loud laughter interrupted him, and Jewel glanced back at the last occupied table in the rundown old roadside dive. It was well past closing time, but the three men at the table—all belligerently drunk and, from what Jewel could tell, assholes by nature even without the help of booze—had still not left. Jewel and Amos had cleaned and closed up as loudly and obviously as they could, but the men had not taken the hint.
"I'd rather not," Jewel said with a terse nod of her head toward the men. One of them was wearing BDUs. He'd probably snuck off the nearby base to drink with his buddies. They got a lot of business from the base. Jewel tried to avoid anyone obviously from there for a variety of reasons.
"They'll leave soon enough," Amos promised. "I'm about to go talk to them. Seriously, I can't afford to hire a new bartender if you go and get yourself buried in a mudslide."
They both jumped as something shattered, and the men laughed hysterically like a smashed beer bottle was the most hilarious thing they'd ever seen. Amos sighed.
"I'll go get the broom," he said wearily.
"I'm going home," Jewel replied, pulling her apron off over her head, catching briefly on the ponytail in her long copper-colored hair. She'd been told it was striking, that her dark gray eyes were lovely, that her figure, tall and athletic, was worthy of envy. She'd been told a lot of things. She didn't believe most of them. If she were really as good-looking as various one-night stands had crowed, as smart as her mother had always insisted, as creative as her patronizing high school art teacher had assured her she was, then she'd be doing something better with her life right now than serving booze in a trashy bar.
She was pretty sure that art teacher had been trying to feel her up anyway. So either she was really only average or below in looks and intelligence and whatever else and this was the best she could do, or there was something else wrong with her. It wasn't a cheerful thought.
"Really, Juliet," Amos said, putting a hand on her shoulder to stop her as she turned to hang up her apron. "At least stay until it lets up a little."
"Juliet?"
Jewel froze. She hated that name. Amos and her mother were about the only people who still used it. But the asshole in the BDUs had just said it. She turned slowly to face him, her scowl making it clear it would be better for his health if he didn't continue this line of inquiry.
"Juliet Wilder?" the guy in the BDUs persisted. "I thought you looked familiar!"
"You know this chick?" one of his buddies asked.
"We were in basic together," the guy explained. Jewel didn't recognize him, but then she hadn't made a habit of memorizing all the scrubs in basic, knowing most of them would drop out before it was over. The guy turned back to her. "Remember me? Whittaker?"
Jewel shrugged, her lack of interest apparent. Whittaker seemed stung by her ambivalence.
"Well I remember you," he said, his expression turning nasty. "World-class bitch, no end of disciplinary problems. I heard you made it through basic only to wash out a few months later."
"Great story," Jewel muttered, trying to keep a lid on her temper. "Now how about you all get the hell out of here? In case you haven't noticed, it's an hour past closing and we'd all like to go home."
"What she get kicked out for?" one of Whittaker's buddies asked, ignoring Jewel's request entirely. "Couldn't keep up?"
"Nah, I heard she attacked a superior officer," Whittaker shared almost gleefully. "Just jumped him in the middle of an exercise. The way I hear it, they were involved."
He and the other two men shared a good long laugh about that.
"I would advise you to shut the hell up," Jewel said as calmly as she was able.
"I would really listen to the lady," Amos suggested. "You're not gonna like what happens if you don't."
"Oh, really?" Whittaker asked, standing up unsteadily and shoving his chair away. His buddies followed suit. He leaned into Jewel's face, an inch away, breath stinking of alcohol. "Because I'm not finished. I heard she was involved with her whole damn squadron. Back in basic, you could buy her for a pack of cigarettes. There was a train on her bed every night a mile long."
Whatever he was going to say after that was swallowed along with his teeth. Amos grabbed the other two by their collars like they were children and chucked them both toward the door. Jewel broke Whittaker's nose and a few more teeth just for good measure before she grabbed him by the back of his shirt and dumped him outside with his friends. The other two dragged their unconscious buddy into the car and peeled out of the parking lot at top speed.
"Now that's just irresponsible," Jewel said lightly, wiping the blood on her knuckles onto her apron. "They're going to get themselves hurt driving like that in this weather."
Amos nodded in solemn agreement and they both headed back inside. Jewel hung up her apron and grabbed her keys.
"You're still going to drive home in this?" Amos asked, concerned.
"I want to go home," she replied. "And no offense, Amos, but your trailer smells like weed."
Amos shrugged. "Fair enough. Goodnight, Juliet."
"Good night, Amos."
Jewel stepped out into the rain and hurried to the battered red pickup waiting for her in the corner of the parking lot. Amos's bar was hardly more than a shack at the foot of the mountain, with the dinky little trailer he lived in parked out back, but it was the only place to go in Cold Creek, Washington unless you wanted to drive the two hours into Yakima. Cold Creek was so small it wasn't even listed on most maps. It pretty much existed just to serve the army base. Jewel had been born on that base and grown up in Cold Creek, and she was becoming increasingly resigned to the fact that she was going to live and die there too.
Her truck trundled up the road toward home, listing in the furious winds, her wipers working a mile a minute to try and keep her windshield clear. Jewel wasn't worried. She'd driven up this road in worse—but not much worse, she noted as a crack of lightning split the sky ahead of her.
Home was a cabin a little way up a smallish mountain known locally as Broken Peak on the edge of the Cascade range. Most everyone else lived closer to town, which was precisely why Jewel had chosen to buy a scrap of property as far away as she could reasonably get. She preferred her privacy and the peace of being surrounded by nature. Living in a noisy neighborhood with cars and kids and dogs barking sounded unbelievably exhausting, and that was even before factoring in the concept of dealing with the people. She'd much rather be alone.
About halfway there, the rain, against all odds, actually got worse. Jewel began to reconsider whether she really should have stayed in Amos's trailer for the night. There was no point in turning around though. She was as close to home as to the bar, and driving down the mountain would only be harder to control. The water was rushing down past her wheels like a small river. She'd just have to power through.
Then her truck hit a low spot and stopped moving. Jewel swore, flooring it to try to get loose, and she heard her wheels spinning uselessly in the mud. She was stuck. She gave herself permission to throw a small temper tantrum, kicking the dash and punching the wheel, making the horn bark out a series of short, angry blasts. It had been a long, hard day. When she was all tantrumed out, she grabbed her bag and slid out of the cab, right into the ankle-deep water and mud, briefly mourning her good work shoes.
The rain poured down in buckets, soaking her instantly. She shivered, holding up a hand to block the water from her eyes as she squinted at her wheels, trying to determine how hard it would be to unstick herself. The answer was very hard. She had a couple of blocks of wood in the back of the truck for doing just that, but she wasn't about to do it in this rain. She'd only get stuck again a few more feet down. With a heavy, tired sigh, she turned her truck off, took the keys, and started slogging her way up the road toward home. She'd come back and unstick the truck tomorrow when it was dryer. No one else used this road but logging trucks, and they were smart enough not to try driving through here right after a rain. It'd be fine. Just one more thing.
The pines crowded either side of the road, tall black monoliths indistinguishable in the dark. The mud sucked at her work shoes and made her wish for a good pair of boots. She wasn't exactly dressed for hiking in a tight shirt with the bar's logo on the front and a pair of jeans. The canvas jacket she was wearing on top was doing its best to keep the wet out, but even it could only do so much. Her hair stuck to her face, soaked through, and Jewel wondered what she was doing.
Not just right now, though walking alone up the mountain in the dark during a storm was certainly justification enough for that question. She wondered what she was doing with her life. Was this really the best she could manage? If her parents were alive, she wondered if they'd be disappointed in her. They'd done everything right, raised her well, supported her, and she'd ended up a lonely bartender who started fights with drunken strangers. What was wrong with her? If she were crying, even she couldn't tell in all this rain.
Another flash of lightning split the sky, then weirdly lingered. Jewel frowned, squinting up at the sky as, instead of dissipating, the light grew brighter. Her heart began to race as she realized that was no lightning. Something unbearably bright was coming down out of the sky toward her. She wanted to run but her legs wouldn't move. She was frozen, paralyzed, staring up at this strange, terrible white light. It surrounded her and her skin tingled like frost. She felt her hair lifting off her shoulders, drifting around her face like seaweed. The mud sucked at her feet, trying to drag her down.
She felt one of her nice work shoes slip off, trapped and sinking in the mud. And then she was in the air, rising, her whole body cold and light as a leaf in the wind, spiraling upward while panic rocked her unmoving frame, flailing at her unresponsive limbs. Her heart was alive, screaming in her chest, fear beating black wings against the cage of her ribs like a trapped bird, but her body was dead to her, a prison she rode inside, watching strange light and color slide by the windows of her eyes. Fear clamped its claws around her chest and squeezed until she couldn't breathe, and long before she reached the source of the light, her consciousness sent her to the comforting black cover of sleep.
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