The 45th Parallel Read online

  Table of Contents

  Synopsis

  What Reviewers Say About Lisa Girolami’s Work

  By the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Dedication

  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

  About the Author

  Books Available from Bold Strokes Books

  Synopsis

  Val Montague travels back to her childhood home of Hemlock, Oregon, to handle the estate of her dead mother. All she wants to do is follow her mother’s wishes, liquidate the assets, and leave town.

  Cam Nelson, a high school dropout and town outcast, has struggled to establish a small business and leave behind her “good-for-nothing” reputation.

  When they meet, Val’s rather unpleasant trip becomes much more bearable. Soon, however, peculiar and dangerous events begin to plague her when she begins to suspect her mother didn’t die the way everyone said she did. And soon Val realizes that in this eccentric, woodsy beach town, a chance for romance just might lead to death.

  What Reviewers Say About Lisa Girolami’s Work

  Love on Location is… “An explosive and romantic story set in the world of movies.”—Divadirect.co.uk

  “The women of Run to Me are multi-dimensional and the running metaphor is well placed throughout this tale. Girolami has given us an entertaining story that makes us think—about relationships, about running away, and about what we want to run to in our lives.”—Just About Write

  “[Jane Doe] is one of those quiet books that ends up getting under your skin. The story flowed with the ease of a slow-moving river. All in all a well-written story with an unusual setting, and well worth the read.”—Lambda Literary Foundation

  “Jane Doe is a lovely, easy to read romance that left me with a smile on my face.”—Just About Write

  In The Pleasure Set… “Girolami has done a wonderful job portraying the wealthy dilettantes along with the complex characters of Laney and Sandrine. Her villain is a great combination of brains and ruthlessness. Of course, the sex scenes are fabulous. This novel is a great blend of sex, romance, and mystery, and the cover…is perfect.”—Just About Write

  “The highs and the lows…the soaring and the plummeting that the lovers go through is so dramatically articulated and gloriously interwoven with the tensions and difficulties besetting Los Angeles and its environs. The police scenes, the priceless moments at the refuge, the nearly unbelievable Fathers Day celebrations, the super sexy bedroom activities, plus many more elements made [The Heat of Angels] so bountiful, so top-notch, and so noteworthy. This extraordinary reading experience gets my highest applause and a major thumbs-up!”—Rainbow Book Reviews

  The 45th Parallel

  Brought to you by

  eBooks from Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  http://www.boldstrokesbooks.com

  eBooks are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.

  Please respect the rights of the author and do not file share.

  The 45th Parallel

  © 2015 By Lisa Girolami. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-62639-386-8

  This Electronic Book is published by

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 249

  Valley Falls, New York 12185

  First Edition: May 2015

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

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Credits

  Editor: Shelley Thrasher

  Production Design: Susan Ramundo

  Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])

  By the Author

  Love on Location

  Run to Me

  The Pleasure Set

  Jane Doe

  Fugitives of Love

  Cut to the Chase

  The Heat of Angels

  The 45th Parallel

  Acknowledgments

  To the unnamed real town that inspired this tome, I thank you for your wind-swept history, your sun-dappled stories, and your wonderfully salty citizens.

  Shelley Thrasher, you’re my unsung hero.

  Cindy Cresap, you’re my tenacious conscience.

  Rad, you’re my fearless Alpha.

  My readers, you’re all my treasured motivation.

  Dedication

  For my angel, my supporter, my silly girl, my partner in crime, my rock, my brave and amazing wife, Kari.

  Chapter One

  Sheets of Oregon coastal mist built up on the windshield, mixing the larger blots of vaporized bugs into watery smudges. The wetness obstructed Val Montague’s view until a few swift swipes of her wipers pushed the deposits out of the way.

  She turned the wiper blades off and wished she were anywhere but here.

  Though Val knew this road better than the ones within five miles of her house back in Dallas, an uneasy tightness in her chest bent her forward and she squinted, old-grumpy-woman-like, into the dark night. She couldn’t trust that there wasn’t a new turn in the road or potholes that could quickly and unexpectedly blow out a tire on her mother’s car.

  She’d flown into the Portland airport that night and taken a cab to Legacy Good Samaritan Hospital where, thanks to the understanding security people who’d held on to the keys and watched it for her until she could get there, her mother’s car had been waiting.

  The politely solemn faces of the two security men who handed her the keys reminded her that she didn’t need to go inside the hospital. Her mother wasn’t there anymore.

  It was well past one o’clock in the morning, and prickles of frustration poked her neck like scratchy clothing tags. She didn’t want to be traveling so late, but the only flight she could arrange had connected more times than a teenager on a cell phone. Being the only person on the road also bothered her, and worse than that, she’d get into town in the middle of the night and have to fumble around an old house whose silence would undoubtedly scream loudly in her ears.

  She inhaled deeply and felt more tired than she should. Memories that had occupied her since she’d left on this trip closed in around her like wet woolen blankets intended to warm her but, instead, only weighed her down further. Twenty years was a long time to be gone. She’d spent almost half her life living as far away from this place as she could, but the familiarity of the old road served as an apprehensive preamble to a timeworn book she was reluctant to open again.

  Just as she remembered, the Oregon Highway 101 South was still narrow, with the same faded lines and crumbling, irregular edges. Even through the haze of the night, her headlights corroborated her memories of the long rides between her childhood home and anywhere else. The particulars of this stretch hadn’t changed much in the last two decades. The forest corridor was still as isolated as ever, with the only evidence of life being a deer or two foraging along the side or the approachi
ng or receding pairs of headlights that became very infrequent this late at night.

  The trees were dense on either side of the road though, and if it were daytime, she would see patches of the ocean appearing in the thinner spots to the right. A long-ago disregarded cabin, crusted with Oregon moss, indicated that she was six miles from town. It still sat empty, looking exactly the same, although it seemed now to lean a little farther away from the road, as if it were slowly falling asleep. Or dying.

  After another mile the road curved, still tracking the ocean, and she swiped the wipers once more to clear the dampness from the windshield. She searched for the next familiar marker and found it. The arrow-shaped sign pointing summer tourists to the public-beach parking lot was still there. But it wasn’t summer so the sign sat, neglected and ignored, much like she knew her mother would have felt during the last years of her life.

  From out of the murky fog in front of her, brake lights began as dim red dots and grew larger and brighter. As she caught up to the slow-moving, late-model Buick, the wet reflection of its red taillights on the misty road stretched toward her like arms reaching for help. She tapped the brakes until she was about six car-lengths behind and close enough to see a sticker on the bumper. She leaned forward to read it through the wet windshield. Land your Bow at Dory Cove Restaurant.

  She’d eaten there many times as a child. They had the best plate of fish and chips a kid could ever dig into.

  Val held her distance on the road, aware that the potentially perilous conditions of the dark, drizzly highway called for her to mimic the pace of the Buick.

  It was odd to see a car out this late. When she’d lived here, the road would become desolate after dark. Tourists would already be where they were heading, and the locals would be home for the night. Maybe the Buick had been ahead of her all the way from the airport, but since turning onto Highway 101, she hadn’t seen anyone out on the road. And there weren’t many side roads this car could have turned out from.

  What did it matter, she thought. Just like it didn’t matter that she stay so vigilant, worrying that the road was any different than the thousand times she’d driven down it as a child.

  A few miles ahead would be the turnoff for Venom Lake, the popular spot for the locals who wanted to stay clear of the saltwater-loving tourists, and then just past that, the dim lights of the first buildings that marked the northern point of the small beach town. Hardly two miles in length, Hemlock, Oregon hung onto the ocean’s edge, as if waiting for something more exciting than wind erosion to liven things up.

  Another sign approached and she almost laughed as she remembered it. The green highway sign, with its white, prismatic reflecting letters, read The 45th Parallel. Halfway Between the Equator and the North Pole.

  She shook her head, remembering that she’d once asked her mom what that meant.

  “Well, we’re halfway between the Equator and the North Pole.”

  “Why is that important?” Val had said, not understanding the meaning.

  “It’s a special marker. We live halfway between two remarkable places, so that makes us remarkable.”

  “But why would that make us remarkable?” She’d been only about ten at the time, but she knew enough about how boring life was in Hemlock and wondered how this sign made it any different.

  “Because no one else around here can claim that. You can stand right here and you’re exactly halfway, Val. Hemlock is pretty special because of that.”

  “And that’s why they have the Halfway Festival?”

  Her mother took her to the event every summer. Tourists would crowd the beach, buying halfway hamburgers and 45th sodas that the Chamber of Commerce would hawk while one of the local churches would play music and hold a raffle.

  “Yes, dear. It brings people to Hemlock, which we need. We live on summer tourist dollars. That’s how we make it through the slow winters.”

  That was about the gist of the conversation, but it had never made sense to her. Claiming a place was noteworthy because it happened to lie halfway between two noteworthy places didn’t seem to make Hemlock any more important. In her ten-year-old mind, maybe Hemlock was amazing compared to the rest of the non-45th parallel towns. What did she know? She’d never been anywhere else.

  As she passed the sign, Val now knew that Hemlock certainly was not more amazing than anywhere else. The Chamber of Commerce milked the moniker to draw in tourist dollars. Local businesses sold 45th parallel T-shirts, and if it was still there, a coffee shop was called the 45th Parallel Pantry. Even the sports teams of her tiny local school were called the Forty-Fivers.

  It began to rain, which wasn’t unusual, so she turned the windshield wipers back on.

  Squinting at the view ahead, she followed the Buick past the more darkened trees, and again she sighed. Her emotional internal battle continued. She didn’t want to come back, but she had to. Regret arm-wrestled with grief and the resulting knots tied up her stomach. Her eyes felt as heavy as bowling balls crammed inside her orbital sockets.

  She reached up and rubbed her eyes, but in the second that her hand blocked her view of the road, she saw a flash of red. The Buick suddenly swerved, and its brake lights cut terrifying red slashes through the rainy night.

  A surge of adrenaline shot through her, and she grabbed the steering wheel just as the Buick’s back end bucked upward and the tires skidded frantically on the wet road. In a split second something flew over the Buick’s hood and over the top of the car.

  Val stomped on her brakes and went into her own skid as a huge brown object flew toward her. In the quarter of a second it was airborne, Val could see it was a deer and cringed as it smashed into her front grill and bounced grotesquely onto her hood and into the windshield. She closed her eyes and threw an arm up as she stomped harder on her brakes. The screeching of her wheels against the rain-slick road sounded like a scream as the deer careened off Val’s car, and then, just as quickly, everything went silent.

  “Fuck!” she finally said as she grasped her keys and tried to steady her shaking hand so she could turn off the engine.

  The sudden stillness chilled her. The reptilian preservation portion of her brain let go of its momentary total dominance, and, as her body caught up with the rest of her thoughts, she gasped harshly for air.

  Her hood was as crushed as her windshield, and through the spider web of safety glass, she saw that her car had come to rest just a few feet from the Buick.

  Jumping out, she turned in the direction of the deer but couldn’t see it. A woman got out of her car and stood by the door. She couldn’t have been more than six feet away, and her eyes were as wide as her brake lights.

  Val took a few steps toward her. “Are you all right?”

  “I think so. I’m not sure what happened.”

  “You hit a deer. We hit a deer.”

  The young woman stood there staring at her.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  The woman rubbed her forehead. “Yeah. It just scared the hell out of me.”

  Val turned to inspect her grill, hearing the wet footsteps of the woman as she walked up to her. The damage was pretty extensive. The grill was crushed into the pleated hood, and luminous greenish-yellow fluid poured from the bottom.

  “Antifreeze,” the woman said.

  The car most likely wasn’t drivable. She wouldn’t make it to town without the car overheating and causing more damage than she cared to report to the insurance agency.

  Val’s hands still shook, and she clenched them to persuade blood to begin to flow again. The bushes and trees along the side of the road were motionless. She took a step toward them.

  “Hey.” The word stuttered out of the woman in three syllables. “Where are you going?”

  “To find the deer.”

  “What if it’s still alive? It could charge you. I wouldn’t go looking for it.”

  “I doubt it’ll be in any shape to charge.”

  Val slowly walked around the backside o
f her car. The young woman followed closely behind. It was too dark to see much, but Val suddenly stopped.

  “There.” She pointed as the woman craned her neck. About forty feet down the road, off in the tall grass next to the tree line, the deer lay in a hump. It was a little too far to see if it was breathing, and it made no noise. The only sounds came from the spattering of raindrops on the pavement and murky, black leaves beyond, and the eerie creaking of trees. Standing in the rain, in the dark, creeped her out. She wanted to shake off the shudders that threatened to make her jerk like an ill-treated marionette. Instead she rubbed her hands together again.

  “He’s dead,” the woman said.

  Val stared at the deer, watching for a twitch or some sign of life. The woman was right; it could be dangerous to approach it. But they’d both just hit the poor thing. Slowly, she took a step and the woman blurted out, “It’s off the road.”

  “Geez!” Val jumped.

  “Sorry. But that’s all the rangers and highway patrol care about.”

  Even if the deer were alive, if it hadn’t yet gotten up or started thrashing about, it was probably dead.

  “Shit.” Reaching into her pocket, she said, “I’ve got a cell phone. I’ll call the highway patrol.”

  “No,” the woman said hastily. “I wouldn’t do that.” She hesitated. “It’ll be a long wait. And there’s only one Hemlock officer working at night. He won’t come up past Venom Lake on his shift.”

  Val looked at her for an explanation.

  The woman just shrugged. “Lazy.”

  The rain began to pick up; the cold drops made her shake more.

  “You’re gonna need a tow truck.”

  Resigned, Val nodded. “Yours too?”