“Zach was a teenage mayor before he became the real mayor.” When Amy had heard he’d taken over after her father passed away, she thought it made sense.
“Right.” Sam lifted a low branch for her to walk under, his boots a steady thrum of vibration beside her. “He was worried about his sister that summer because she hadn’t taken it well when their father went to jail. I was trying to help keep an eye on her.”
“That was kind of you.” She hopped over a rotted log.
He made the relationship sound more innocent than what she’d imagined. But he sure didn’t need to run away with the Chances to help Zach watch over his sister. He must have had good reason for wanting to leave town with them.
“I owed Zach. He made school bearable for me as a foster kid. Ensured I had friends and wasn’t just the freak of the week from the local foster group home.”
“I didn’t know.” She’d certainly never viewed him that way. But then again, she was younger than him and hadn’t been aware of him until she’d started attending high school.
“Anyway, I was at their house when Gabby told me she was leaving to meet a friend.” He shook his head, eyes on a distant point ahead, lost in a long-ago moment. “And if they’d had normal parents, she probably wouldn’t have been allowed out of the house at that hour on her own. But her dad was in jail, and their mom was grieving like the guy was dead.”
“I’m convinced there’s no such thing as normal parents.” It had been a common refrain between them at one time. “Except you, now that you’re a father, of course.”
He didn’t crack a smile at the playful jab. A bird flew low over her head, landing on a nearby branch.
“Of course. And I had to be the responsible one then, too.”
“You told Gabriella she couldn’t meet her friend?” sheguessed, watching the blue jay hop from a maple tree into an evergreen.
“No. I followed her.” Something in his voice changed.
“What happened?” Amy slowed her pace as they neared a rushing stream, not wanting to miss anything.
“She stopped the car on the quarry road and got out like she was going to...” He halted at the water’s edge. “I thought at first she might jump off a cliff or something. It was so deserted out there.”
“She didn’t see you?” Amy hugged her arms around herself, warding off a chill despite the warmth of the late afternoon sun.
“I cut the lights of my own car and parked well behind her, then sprinted through the dark toward her.” He seemed lost in the past, his gaze unfocused. For a long moment, he paused. When he continued, his voice was hard. “But some other guy got to her first.”
“A boyfriend?”
“I think that’s what she expected. I found out later she was meeting a guy she’d been talking to online. He must have been stalking her for some time, looking for the right moment to set up a meeting. But this guy was no teenager—he was masked, but I could tell he was older than we were.” Sam’s hands fisted even now. “He had her on the ground and was on top of her before I could even get close to where they were.”
She gasped, connecting the dots to her own trauma that night. “He hurt her?”
“He tried his damnedest.” His eyes cleared, focusing on her. “But I got there before he could do much physical damage. I lunged at him, but he was bigger than me, and he started to get the upper hand until I got my hands on a log about the size of a baseball bat.”
“A weapon,” she half whispered, knowing she couldn’t change the outcome of a story that was long over, but she still found herself breathless from hoping Sam and Gabby got away.
“I hit him so hard I thought I killed him.” He leaned down to scrape his hand along a scraggly cattail growing near the creek bed. The movement released a cloud of fluffy white into the air. “Gabby had run off, and I left the guy to search for her. Another car came along, and I debated calling for help when it stopped, but I couldn’t see well enough, so I hid instead. When Gabby was safely in my car, I went back to where the body should have been, but it was gone.”
“Meaning he got up and went in the other car?”
“Or else a friend came and took the body away.” He shrugged. “I couldn’t be sure, and I was too scared of getting kicked out of my foster family’s house to go to the cops. Besides, Gabby wanted no part of talking to police. She was hysterical.”
Pieces of the past fell into place, slowly making sense.
“So Zach wanted to take his sister away from a cyberstalker who might still be after her. And you needed to get away from the guy, too, or else not be in Heartache when someone discovered him dead.”
“That’s why I left.” He pointed to a flat rock near the stream, and she followed the unspoken suggestion, taking a seat. He dropped down a few inches away, a strong, masculine presence that tripped a whole chain of sensations inside her she had no business feeling.
She hugged her knees to her chest.
“You didn’t breathe a word to anyone, including me, because you couldn’t afford for anyone to link you to the stalker.” His reasons for leaving—and keeping quiet about it—were so different from what she’d imagined. But Sam had possessed a strong sense of right and wrong even as a teen. Of course he’d made the choice to be noble at all costs.
“Gabriella’s mother didn’t even protest when Zach said he was taking her out to the West Coast when he started college. Hell, I’m not sure Mrs. Chance realized Zach hadn’t even graduated high school yet. She just gave him some money and told him good luck.”
