Jenny Cussler's Last Stand Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Praise for Bess McBride and…

  Dedication

  Other Books by Bess McBride

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Thank you for purchasing this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  Jenny Cussler’s Last Stand

  by

  Bess McBride

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Jenny Cussler’s Last Stand

  COPYRIGHT © 2013 by Bess McBride

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: [email protected]

  Cover Art by Tamra Westberry

  The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  PO Box 708

  Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

  Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

  Publishing History

  First Champagne Rose Edition, 2013

  Print ISBN 978-1-61217-651-2

  Digital ISBN 978-1-61217-652-9

  Published in the United States of America

  Praise for Bess McBride and…

  ACROSS THE WINDS OF TIME

  “A beautiful love story that takes us from one era to another...”

  ~Robin, Romancing the Book blog

  “Ms. McBride writes with her usual flair and unique spin on time travel. The reader is genuinely satisfied with the quirks and awkwardness expected with the 100-year age/time difference and varied customs and clothing. The scenes range from comedic to romantic to frantic and back again. The attention to detail when the author describes the Victorian home, the surrounding land, and the scenery in both time periods is phenomenal.”

  ~Laura, You Gotta Read Reviews

  A TRAIN THROUGH TIME

  “Ms. McBride did a wonderful job of transporting me back and forth through time… This is a definite keeper in my library. Don’t pass this one up!”

  ~Diana Coyle, Night Owl Reviews (5 Hearts-Top Pick)

  “Bess McBride brings the past to life… You don’t want to miss Bess McBride’s perfectly titled, completely engaging, attention grabbing work.”

  ~Rebecca Savage, WRDF Reviews (5 Stars)

  “A thoroughly enjoyable experience.”

  ~Whitney, Fallen Angel Reviews (5 Angels)

  A TRAIL OF LOVE

  “Ms. McBride outdid herself... Pick up a copy of this story. I assure you that you won’t be disappointed.”

  ~Diana Coyle, Night Owl Reviews (5 Hearts-Top Pick)

  Dedication

  To the Yakama Nation

  for their generosity in hosting Camp Chaparral

  and their continuing work on behalf of all veterans

  ~

  To Les,

  for your support

  ~

  As always, to my family:

  Cinnamon, Mike, Lily, and new baby Mia

  ~

  And for all my relations

  Other Books by Bess McBride

  Available from The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  A Sigh of Love

  Love of My Heart

  Caribbean Dreams of Love

  A Trail of Love

  On a Warm Sea of Love

  A Penny for Your Thoughts

  Across the Winds of Time

  Chapter One

  “Okay, Robert. You remember what we agreed on, right?” Clint stood and offered his hand to help the elderly man up from his seat.

  “Yeah, I remember. No more smoking, and no going to the casino.” Robert adjusted his nasal oxygen tubes, grasped the proffered hand, and allowed the younger man to haul him from his chair. He picked up his small portable oxygen tank as he shook his head. “Both of ’em are gonna kill me.”

  With a pang of sympathy, Clint surveyed the dejected shoulders of his longstanding client, Robert Prairie Dog.

  “The doctor said your emphysema will only get worse. You haven’t smoked in two months now. You’re doing so well.”

  “I know, I know,” Robert said. He began a slow, painful-looking shuffle toward the office door, his dirty white sneakers only slightly more unkempt than his well-worn blue jeans and wrinkled red-and-green plaid flannel shirt.

  He turned at the door. “So, they’re not gonna press any charges...about the check I wrote at the casino, right?”

  Clint touched the older man’s back lightly, refraining from patting it in a patronizing manner.

  “Not this time, Robert, but it’s your last chance. You need to stay away from the casino. You can’t keep spending all your Social Security money in there. You have to eat.”

  Watery brown eyes met Clint’s. “I don’t want to eat. Don’t care about food. I miss Mary.”

  Clint stopped in the act of opening the door, biting his lip as he looked down at the much shorter man’s long, stringy gray braids. What could he say to that? He missed Mary, too. She’d been a warm, lively ball of energy before she’d fallen victim to cancer the year before. Her husband’s physical and mental decline in her absence broke Clint’s heart.

  “I miss her too, Robert. I miss her too. She sure took good care of you.”

  Robert ducked his head. “Yeah, she did.”

  Clint turned the doorknob and pulled it open.

  “What about your granddaughter, Theresa? Hasn’t she been helping you?” Clint thought a gentle reminder that his client was not completely alone in the world was in order. “She’s coming over four times a week, isn’t she? Doing your laundry? Cooking?”

  Robert eyed him with suspicion.

  “Yeah, she is. She’s not Mary, though.”

  “Be grateful you have family, Robert. Some folks don’t have anyone.”

  “She’s been trying to get my favorite shirt and jeans from me to stick in the washin’ machine.” Robert rubbed the front of his shirt and let out a wheezy chuckle. “But I keep fighting her.” He paused to take some air into his lungs. “I gotta go. She’s waitin’ in the car for me.”

  Clint glanced down at his watch. Five p.m. He knew the pleasant and caring twenty-two-year-old woman would indeed be waiting for her grandfather in the parking lot...as she did every week.

  “All right, then, I’ll let you go. I won’t see you next week because I’ll be up at Camp Chaparral, but I’ll see you the week after.”

  Robert took a step forward and paused. “Going up there, huh? The veterans’ camp?”

  “Yeah, it’s that time again.” Clint grinned. “I can’t believe another year has gone by so fast.”

  “I wish it was still last year,” Robert said as he shuffled out the door and down the hallway, carrying his small oxygen tank on h
is shoulder and looking for all the world like the saddest, most downtrodden Indian Robert had ever seen...and he’d seen some unfortunate Indians in his time.

  Chapter Two

  Jenny ran a last loving sweep of paint down the foamy whiteness of the waterfall before she laid her brush down on the spattered work table, picked up her well-used paper towel, and stepped back to survey the canvas. She wiped her hands methodically as she tilted her head to the right and then to the left, studying the results of her efforts over the past two hours.

  The waterfall was perfect, exquisite, if she did say so herself. One more brush stroke and she might ruin the ethereal effect of the bubbling white water cascading down and around emerald green moss-covered boulders and rocks.

  “Looks good, Jenny.”

  She turned toward the encouraging voice behind her. Her instructor gave her a brief smile through his gray beard and nodded, then ran a hand through his shoulder-length silvering hair as he moved off to pause behind the next student’s easel.

  Jenny preened for a brief moment. It did look good. She wouldn’t call herself a natural talent, but this particular painting was evolving into something extraordinary. Though the class’s assignment had been to copy the landscape painting that rested on an easel in the front of the room, Jenny had added some special touches of her own—a vision of what she might see in the upcoming week as she traveled northwest to a Native American retreat on the slopes of the permanently snow-capped volcanic mountain known as Mount Adams.

  She stared at her picture and once again felt a fluttering in her stomach that really did remind her of butterflies. What would the week hold? Would handsome Native American men with long obsidian hair and bare bronzed chests stroll about the camp in buckskin knee breeches? Would beautiful, ebony-haired women tend to the fires and cook the food? Would she hear the call of the mountain, the sounds of the spirits that would surround her in the remote wilderness accessible only by enrolled tribal members of the Yakama Nation?

  A warming of her cheeks warned her she had best rein in her overly active imagination as she turned embarrassed eyes on her fellow amateur artists. Luckily, no one watched her. They seemed immersed in their work.

  She contemplated the soft purple hues of the mountains in the background of her painting. Would Mount Adams, a crown in the restlessly volcanic Cascade Mountains of Washington State, welcome her—a white European-American woman without an ounce of aboriginal blood, or would it keep itself sacred, revealing its mysteries only to the Native American people who belonged there?

  Jenny dropped her cloth and crossed her arms, pinching the soft flesh of her underarm to bring herself back to earth. She reminded herself yet one more time that the coming week-long retreat was only a seminar for work. She had no idea why she’d begun to fantasize and romanticize the event. Perhaps she’d seen one too many movies featuring handsome Native American actors recently. With a shake of her long auburn hair, Jenny returned her focus to the instructor, who was clapping for attention at the front of the room.

  “All right, folks. Let’s wrap it up. We have the room for only ten more minutes. Clean your brushes in the turpentine, throw your garbage in the container over there, grab your painting—carefully—and go. It’s been fun. Don’t forget to sign up for my next class two weeks from now.”

  With more than enough spare time on her hands, Jenny had already signed up. She would be back from the retreat by then, newly indoctrinated into the wants and needs of Native American veterans and ready to provide better mental health service with increased cultural awareness. That she didn’t have any Native American clients at this time was only a temporary setback to her goals of practicing cultural sensitivity. If and when someone came into her office who had the slightest drop of Native American blood, she would be ready and willing to help, properly trained and in tune with their particular needs.

  She gingerly picked up her painting, still wet from the lavish application of oil paints, and made her way out to her small white sport utility vehicle, precariously balancing the unpainted surface on her arms. She opened the back of her car and laid the painting carefully inside.

  On the drive home, she mentally reviewed the lamentably unfashionable clothing in her closet and wondered what to take on her adventure to the remote mountain she’d seen only in photographs. Blue jeans for cold evenings. Mount Adams was over 12,000 feet, though the camp rested somewhere midway up, long before the summit. Sweaters, a jacket, hiking boots, tennis shoes, flip-flops for the shower. A flannel shirt? She didn’t even know if she owned one. She had some cotton print blouses. Would they do? A swimming suit? Would there be swimming? She tried to recall what her fellow travelers had told her about the camp. By the time she met them at the Veterans Administration Hospital to rendezvous at five in the morning, it would be too late to run back to the apartment and get more clothing. She recalled some mention of a river or lake. She decided against the swimsuit. It was only a week.

  She pulled into her apartment complex and carried her wet painting carefully up the stairs to her second-floor unit. She set the canvas down on the walkway and produced her keys from her handbag. Somehow, she managed to hold the door open, retrieve her painting, and get it inside without bumping into anything. Their instructor had told them the paint would not dry for seven days.

  She maneuvered her way into the tiny kitchen off to the right of the front door and surveyed the limited counter space with dismay. Where could one possibly store a wet canvas for a week? The top of the refrigerator, always out of her line of sight, seemed as good a place as any, and she settled the painting there. It would be dry by the time she got back.

  Jenny set her handbag and keys on the hall table, took a left into the small bedroom, and sank onto the bed with a sigh. She dropped her head onto her pillow and stared at the ceiling fan, more fantasies of her upcoming week weaving in and out of her thoughts. Images of a half-dressed man with waist-length dark hair and black eyes, astride a painted horse, brought a smile to her face.

  A faint ringing in the distance caught her attention, and she jumped up from the bed and went in pursuit of her purse, where her cell phone chirped a happy melody. She rummaged in her handbag and pulled out her phone. When she saw her daughter’s caller identification, she opened the phone and wandered toward the floor-to-ceiling windows of her apartment overlooking a small body of water.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Hi, hon. How are you?” Jenny leaned against the wall and gazed down at the peaceful green lake.

  “I’m okay. I’m about dead on my feet though.”

  “School?” Jenny asked with sympathy.

  “Yeah, I don’t know how many more of these 12-hour shifts I can do...and get to class...and get any homework done.”

  Jenny watched several colorful green-headed mallards paddling along in the lake. Daisy Duck, the lone white duck of the bunch, flapped her wings for a moment, preening for her suitors. One mallard pecked at another to run him off. Jenny shook her head. Daisy was a hussy; there was no doubt about it.

  “Not too much longer now, Becky. Five more months. You can do this.”

  “I know...I just...”

  “What?”

  “Don’t you ever want to say ‘I can’t do this’ even though you know you probably can?” Becky’s soft voice caught at her mother’s heart.

  “All the time, honey. I know exactly what you’re saying. I felt the same way in graduate school. Work, internship, class, papers, a teenage daughter…” Jenny narrowed her eyes to watch the flock of ducks as they swam away to the middle of the small oasis next to her apartment complex. Daisy rose from the water and flapped her wings as if she prepared for flight, and several of the mallards rose with her. A tease in every sense of the word, she settled back into the water and swam away, seemingly unconcerned at the chaos behind her as the mallards once again jockeyed for a favorable position in her entourage.

  “I don’t know how you did it, especially wit
h a child,” Becky said.

  “Mom helped a lot,” Jenny said. “Remember? You spent a lot of time at her house.” She winced. Her mother had passed away of ovarian cancer last year at 58, far too young to leave this world in such a way. Though her mother had gone to hospice for her final care, Jenny had taken family medical leave in her final weeks to spend time with her.

  “Aww, Grandma. Yeah, I remember. We had good times, making cookies and hanging out. I miss her.”

  “Me, too, hon.” Jenny cleared her throat. Daisy and her gang on the lake blurred, and Jenny dashed a hand against her eye.

  “So, are you about ready for your trip?”

  Jenny turned away from the window and returned to the bedroom. She opened her closet door and stared at the untouched suitcase on the floor.

  “You know, as excited as I was about this thing, I haven’t even begun to pack.”

  “Well, why should you, Mom? It’s not really the last minute yet or anything.”

  “Very funny,” Jenny said as she struggled to pull the canvas suitcase out of the narrow closet. She dragged it over to the bed and eyed it with suspicion.

  “Mom? I hear the sounds of exertion. This sounds promising!”

  “This bag is way too big to take to a rustic camp in the mountains.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Jenny stared at the businesslike, oversized suitcase and shrugged.

  “I don’t think they have porters there or anything. I’ll probably have to lug it all over the camp.”

  “Do you have anything else?”

  Jenny returned to the closet and peered into the recesses. “Well, I have this soft-sided duffel bag thing, but it doesn’t look big enough.”