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  NO TURNING BACK

  Jesse stared directly at Liz and said, “We’d like to show you something. Something in the woods.”

  “Something in the woods,” she repeated.

  “I tried to go to the police today, but that didn’t work, so we thought we’d show it to you.” His hands were in his pockets, then they were fidgeting, then they were shoved back in his pockets.

  “And this something is what you were worried about this morning?” Liz asked Brad.

  Brad nodded and added hurriedly, “But it’s not our fault. We just found it. That’s all.”

  “What is it?” Tawny whispered, picking up the vibes.

  Jesse slid her another look, weighing his answer. Liz would have preferred Tawny not be a part of this, but apparently the boys welcomed her involvement. At least they weren’t telling her to get lost, like boys their age were wont to do if an invader entered their territory. No, the boys accepted Tawny as part of the package.

  “It’s a dead body,” Jesse suddenly admitted, his matter-of-fact delivery snapping Liz’s head around in surprise. In an oddly mature voice, he added, “Looks like somebody shot the guy full of holes and left him down by Hummingbird River . . .”

  Books by Nancy Bush

  CANDY APPLE RED

  ELECTRIC BLUE

  ULTRAVIOLET

  WICKED GAME

  WICKED LIES

  SOMETHING WICKED

  WICKED WAYS

  UNSEEN

  BLIND SPOT

  HUSH

  NOWHERE TO RUN

  NOWHERE TO HIDE

  NOWHERE SAFE

  SINISTER

  I’LL FIND YOU

  YOU CAN’T ESCAPE

  YOU DON’T KNOW ME

  THE KILLING GAME

  DANGEROUS BEHAVIOR

  OMINOUS

  NO TURNING BACK

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  No Turning Back

  NANCY BUSH

  ZEBRA BOOKS

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  NO TURNING BACK

  Books by Nancy Bush

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Prologue

  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

  ZEBRA BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 1997, 2018 by Nancy Bush

  Previously published in April 1997 under the title If You Believe under the pseudonym Nancy Kelly.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  Zebra and the Z logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-1-4201-3863-4

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4201-3864-1

  eISBN-10: 1-4201-3864-2

  Prologue

  Barney Turgate had never been known for his mental skills or his ambition, but that didn’t mean Barney was unsuccessful. Lord, no. Closing in on the big 4-0, old Barn was not only entering another decade, he was finally about to attain the prize he’d diligently sought his entire life: a windfall.

  Not just any windfall, mind you. No penny-ante dream had taken all Barn’s stamina, cajolery, good looks, and limited brainpower. This was it. The top. The apex. The zenith. The ultimate.

  And it was almost within his grasp.

  Tonight, as he waited in the forest, shivering in the early evening chill that made the Northwest’s summers sheer pleasure during the day and brisk to the point of teeth-chattering at night, Barney huddled in his Columbia Sportswear navy anorak with the red, zip-out, fuzzy lining and contemplated his new beginning.

  Ha! It had been a long, long time since he’d felt this good. Inside there was a warm glow, kind of like he’d consumed his first pitcher of beer and was being hit on by one of the cute waitresses at the Elbow Room.

  Old Barn had been a football player in his younger years. Halcyon days. Ego-boosting, cheering crowds. His face all over Woodside High’s yearbook. He’d had the pick of the girls, then. Cheerleaders with bouncing breasts and Crest toothpaste smiles. Pseudo-intellectual-type women who orated politics and did his homework on the sly for a date to Homecoming on the Barn’s arm. Most of them put out without so much as a meow, too. Yep, Barn still had it as he turned the corner to middle age; as a young man, he’d been a regular Romeo.

  But times had changed. Life was a bitch, y’know? Barn had failed at college, failed as a real estate agent, and failed as a husband and father. It had been a long, gradual, limping decline, but even with his limited neuron-firing, Barn had glimpsed the future and it was dark, dark, dark.

  Then, six months ago, everything changed. At first it was just a whisper he’d overheard. A plot too good to be true. And legal! Well, sort of. Barney Turgate might not be a speed demon when it came to mental gymnastics, but he was a bulldog, and when he got hold of an idea he chewed it around in his mind and chewed it and chewed it until it was soft and sweet and palatable. He’d known this one was good before he swallowed.

  A smile quirked the corner of his mouth. He couldn’t wait to crow about it! Ha! Wait ’til them bastards down at the Elbow Room heard about Barn and his newfound fortune. They’d be singin’ a different tune now as they threw back their pints of Bud and choked on a few peanut shells. Ha!

  There were a few gals in Woodside and the surrounding Podunk towns who still thought a slap and tickle in the sack with Barn was worth something. Just wait ’til they got a hold of him now! It got him all stirred up just thinking about it, and he chuckled softly.

  Snap.

  Barney’s neck twisted fast, his reflexes still quick. His eyes searched the surrounding trees and undergrowth, waiting for a shadow to emerge. He was pretty sure that had been a twig breaking beneath someone’s foot. “Who’s there?” he whispered harshly.

  Instead of an answer, a heavy tread hurried his way, footsteps falling in rapid succession. Barn waited without much enthusiasm. It clearly wasn’t the person he’d expected to meet because they would answer him back pronto. This was probably some stupid tree-hugger racing through the dampish wetlands to stop him from felling a rotten old cottonwood. That’s how you had to do it now, y’know. In the dark when no one was looking. Otherwise there were permits and meetings and scenes with screaming idiots who thought even scrub trees were worth saving. Stop the developers! Stop the tree murderers! Ha! They were morons. All of ’em.

  Barney grimaced. Oh, he knew all about it. This very place was just another real estate deal that had gone sour because some assholes didn’t understand how important housing construction was. How was
a guy supposed to make a living?

  The newcomer crashed through the underbrush, spraying Barney with water droplets. “Hey,” Barn bitched, squinting. His brows lifted in surprise. This wasn’t no tree-hugger, he decided, checking out the guy’s light blue denim jeans, black Nikes, and gray, hooded sweatshirt that pretty much obscured his face. Tree-huggers acted like they owned every goddamned plant in the world and were proud of it. This, then, must be the dealmaker after all.

  “Well, it’s about time,” Barn complained. “I’ve been freezin’ my nuts off waitin’ out here!”

  A black handgun magically appeared in the stranger’s tight fist. It jumped from some hidden pocket as if on springs, then pointed straight at the Barn’s softening gut.

  “Hey!” he cried again, disbelief sending an alarm sluggishly to his brain.

  Blat. Blat. Blat. Three shots in rapid succession. Barn staggered, his mouth slack with stupefaction. He saw the gun barrel lift again, a dark circle staring into his eyes.

  Blat.

  Barney Turgate expired in a wheeze and a thunk. His six-foot three-inch frame toppled onto the fir needle–shrouded pathway.

  His assassin didn’t linger. Deed done, the Nikes turned on the path and jogged into the soggy silence of old Barn’s last soured real estate deal.

  Chapter One

  Beneath the waterlogged bough of a Douglas fir, Jesse Hart pursed his lips around a cigarette and pulled hard. Smoke burned his throat. The vision of a dragon mistakenly inhaling his own fiery breath filled Jesse’s creative mind. Defiantly, he dragged down harder on the Camel until the tip glowed scarlet and his lungs filled to their cancerous limit. Exhaling, he couldn’t quite help several soft, choking coughs. Gnashing his teeth, he tried again. By God, he was gonna smoke, and smoke with attitude. Even if it killed him.

  Ten minutes later he ground the smoking butt beneath the heel of his boot. Wet mulch and leaves smoldered and sizzled. He loved the hiss of fire meeting water. He loved rebellion. Sixteen and ornery as a badger, Jesse glowered into the dark woods surrounding him and hoped like hell Brad was going to manage to sneak out of the house without thunking his head on the window again and waking up the whole goddamned neighborhood like last time. What a dumbass!

  Water dripped from drooping leaves, remnants of this latest wash of rain that had pelted down like wild arrows from some wicked water nymph lying in wait in the heavens. Jesse listened. He’d ducked beneath the spreading arms of the huge tree and greeted the wild, furious rainfall with a boyish grin—the kind of smile he refused to let anyone see these days.

  He ran a hand through his hair. Sun-streaked brown strands, straight as a stick, seemed to grow from a center swirl at the back of his head and fall bluntly to somewhere near his chin. He had to part the floppy bangs to see, accomplishing this action by flipping his head long enough to cop a clear view before the slick strands fell in front of his face again.

  Jesse prided himself on being a throwback clone of Kurt Cobain, lead singer for Nirvana and Jesse’s personal hero. In memory of Cobain, a victim of suicide, Jesse wore vintage Nirvana T-shirts and played his music as loud as his father allowed—louder, when he could. The more the room throbbed, the more tribute was paid to the Seattle band that—in Jesse’s biased opinion—still epitomized the misunderstood anguish and heat of his generation. No Pop 40 sterile music of today’s so-called artists for him. His music icons were artists.

  Closing his eyes, Jesse swayed his head to the dripping symphony around him. I’m so happy, ’cause today I found my friends . . . Nirvana lyrics. Cobain had been a master.

  Jesse could admit he was a bit of a bad apple. Since moving from L.A. the year before, he’d been in a series of scrapes ranging from a suspension from school for cursing at a teacher to grand theft auto. Okay, the car thing was just a joke on a buddy of his, but having a cop for a dad really screwed things up. The excuse, “I’m sorry. We were gonna bring it back,” just didn’t cut it when your father had to explain it to the rest of the department (if you could call it that in this godforsaken nowheresville!).

  What a bunch of crap. It wasn’t like Dad was any big deal here, but Woodside’s Finest sure as hell treated him like he was. Apparently Detective Hawthorne Hart’s reputation preceded him: he’d been an ace shot with a police unit associated with the LAPD and even the residents of Woodside, Washington—two hours south of Seattle—knew it.

  Jesse grimaced and spat. Dad hadn’t been the same since the shooting. It shouldn’t have happened. It was unfair, and it totally pissed Jesse off that the damn incident had sent him and his father to exile, far away from his buddies and life in sunny California.

  ’Course if they were still back home, Jesse never would have met Tawny Fielding and that would have been a crime. If there was ever a girl worth knowing, it was Tawny. Not that he could touch her. She was way out of range. But he could say hi in the halls and she always smiled and said hi back. Brad had jabbed him in the ribs and giggled once and Jesse had been forced to snap him in a headlock and yank the numbnuts around.

  The cool thing was, this summer had been something of a breakthrough for him where Tawny was concerned. He’d actually stopped by her house a time or two, and she’d seemed kind of glad to see him. ’Course he’d always been with Brad, but he sensed she was warmer to him than his buddy. Maybe he was crazy. After all, she was a total good girl, and he was aligned with the losers. You couldn’t attend Woodside High and not know where you stood. Jesse had shown up there last fall, looked around, and immediately refused the company of the football asses and computer nerds. Good God, it was hard to find decent friends.

  Tawny . . . She was gorgeous. Damn near perfect. And she was always smiling. That was the first thing he’d noticed about her. Her smile. Jesse might not do a lot of it himself these days, but he could appreciate its simple beauty and honesty and be drawn to a girl whose joy was reflected on her bright face and curved lips.

  Just thinking about her made him hard.

  Jogging footsteps suddenly crashed through the underbrush, sounding like a clumsy ox on speed. “Jeezus, Brad.” Jesse nailed him when his best friend came into view. “Why don’t ya take out a full-page ad?”

  “What’s your problem?” Brad swiped rain from his own lank, near black hair. His cut was identical to Jesse’s, but he was bulkier, with a good-natured freckled face. Brad had to work extra hard to look cool and cop an attitude.

  “Gimme a smoke,” Brad said, shaking water out of his hair like a wild dog.

  “Damn it,” Jesse muttered, but he handed his friend the pack and Brad fumbled for his own lighter.

  While Brad smoked, Jesse ran his tongue around his mouth and didn’t like the way it tasted. Smoking was a bitch any way you looked at it.

  “So, what are we gonna do?” Brad asked “Wanna go scare the Ryerson twins?”

  “Nah.” The Ryerson twins tattled and shrieked and ran around like Donald Duck on acid. Jesse was tired of terrorizing them. Didn’t life have any meaning anymore?

  “You thinkin’ about stealin’ something?” Brad suddenly guessed with a trace of fear and eagerness.

  The truth was Jesse only had Tawny Fielding on his mind these days, but he couldn’t share that with Brad. Brad saw girls as sluts or prudes—period. Up until he met Tawny, Jesse pretty much felt the same way. But he was experiencing something new here. A kind of lust mixed with respect and even awe.

  It was a shitty way to feel.

  “Come on,” he said, impatient with his own thoughts. He pushed hard at branches as he furthered his way down the path into the vacant property along Hummingbird River. A wetlands. Saved by a group of chanting environmentalists who’d linked arms and chained themselves to trees.

  “Where’re we going?” Brad wondered.

  “Who cares?”

  Stumbling over an exposed root, Jesse suddenly fell to his hands. Brad whooped with delight. “Fuckin’ smooth move.”

  Jesse suddenly whipped around and yanked Brad’s leg out
from under him. With an earth-shaking thunk, Brad landed on his butt, his mouth an “O” of surprise. Jesse howled with laughter. Brad swore pungently and jumped him, and the two boys wrestled and thrashed through the underbrush until they were both swearing, panting, and covered with wet leaves, fir needles, and muck.

  “Shit, this is my favorite shirt,” Jesse complained.

  “You shoulda thought of that before you jumped me.”

  “You jumped me, asshole.”

  “That’s ’cause you broke my butt.”

  Jesse half-laughed. Brad grinned in the darkness. And it was then that Jesse saw, in his line of sight, the sole of a shoe. He blinked. The shoe was attached to a leg, and it wasn’t Brad’s.

  A straight shot of adrenaline hit his bloodstream—a total body rush. “Holy shit,” he muttered, leaping to his feet and backing up so fast he slammed into a tree.

  His fear infected Brad, who was up and beside him in an instant. “What? Are you messin’ with me? What the hell do you see?”

  Jesse grabbed his friend so hard even Brad’s duller wits caught on and he closed his mouth with a snap.

  Jesse waited, half-expecting the body on the ground to rise up and arrest them or something. “It’s a guy,” he whispered.

  “Where?” Brad craned his neck.

  “Shhh!” He stabbed a finger in the general direction and Brad visibly started when he saw the shoe and leg. The rest of the body was presumably tucked in the undergrowth.

  Slowly, gathering courage but poised to run for their lives, the two boys parted the wet leaves and scraggly stems of the plants to reveal a middle-aged man. A very dead middle-aged man. The series of huge dark spots across the man’s chest and the hole in his forehead were silent testimony. His eyes were open.

  Jesse shuddered and stepped back. “Somebody wasted him.”