Dangerous Refuge

by Elizabeth Lowell

  No dog, thank God.

  A motorcycle with worn, all-terrain tires was parked under a lean-to in back.

  That would take him up a ranch road, no problem.

  He touched the engine. Cold as the wind. In the moonlight, scattered empty beer cans and caffeinated energy drinks gleamed like jewels. He had to be careful not to kick one every other step.

  He continued working his way slowly, carefully around the small house, keeping to each bit of cover nature offered. When he had made most of the circuit, he hunkered down in the shadow of a thick pine and watched the house.

  Still nothing happening, nothing moving but the wind.

  Tanner eased up onto the worn porch as quietly as he could. He could hear the TV but not what was playing. No refrigerator door slammed. No toilet flushed. No lights were on anywhere else in the house. He debated for a few seconds whether to knock or call out. Rua might have done some petty crime, but there was no sign in his rap sheet that he dealt drugs from the house, or was the kind of habitual offender who would shoot or rabbit at the first knock on the door.

  Still, Tanner waited. Something about this just wasn’t right. A primitive part of his brain, the part left over from times when animals hunted men for food, screamed at him that he was being watched by a predator. It was the sort of message he would be a fool to ignore. It had saved Brothers’s life when they were on patrol as rookies. Saved his own, too.

  He listened to the fitful murmur of the television, louder during the ads, muttering during the program. It sounded like sports of some kind, cheering and booing and crowd noise. It wasn’t the full-throated roar of a football or hockey stadium. Maybe a boxing match.

  Quietly, he eased up to the side of the porch for a better look into the house—and to avoid setting off the motion sensor, which was an unpredictable light at a time he needed darkness. Blending into the shadows, he waited for some sign of life other than the electronic variety.

  He would wait until he lost that nagging feeling of something being off. He had been on enough stakeouts to know that impatience could be a deadly mistake.

  Tanner wanted the other guy to make it.

  Nineteen

  Fourteen minutes. No. Fifteen and a half.

  Sixteen.

  Shaye looked away from her glowing watch face. She told herself she should keep waiting, but her hand kept closing around the door handle. She kept thinking about all the ugly things that could be happening to Tanner.

  Two or three minutes to walk up there, she thought for the tenth time. At most a few minutes to find out if Rua is home. Maybe five minutes to get him talking. Then two minutes to walk back.

  Unless something went wrong.

  Like Lorne, lying faceup.

  She told herself again to wait, everything was fine, she was letting her imagination run away with her mind. She even tried to believe it.

  Seventeen minutes.

  Twenty minutes.

  Shaye opened the car door and got out as quietly as she could. She told herself she was just going to check and make sure everything was all right. If it wasn’t, she would call the local 911 and do whatever she could until people with badges arrived.

  Trees shivered and rushed around her, wind making sounds like distant conversations and whispered warnings. Pale-barked aspen gleamed like bone in the moonlight.

  Nothing moved but the wind and her.

  The wind was a lot more confident than she was. Every noise she made sounded like a cannon shot to her.

  Damn it, Tanner. Where are you?

  Wind died into the kind of silence that quivered with dark possibilities. Moonlight on the granite peaks gleamed like remembered snow. A look over her shoulder assured her that no one was coming up behind her on the gravel lane.

  Carefully, she circled the house as quietly as she could, but didn’t see one of the beer cans in time to avoid kicking it. The racket it made sounded huge in the empty night.

  Nobody called out.

  Nobody came to a door or window to check out the noise.

  Part of Shaye’s mind yammered at her to go back and wait in the car like Tanner had told her to. The other part of her, the part that had vowed never to let her desires come in second to a man’s again, kept her going. She was an adult who could make her own decisions.

  Warily she eyed the front of the house again.

  Nothing moved.

  Okay. If Rua is there, I just need to make a phone call because my cell ran out of juice and my car quit. If I look nervous, so what? What woman wouldn’t when she’s stranded on a dark road and has to approach a strange house to ask for help?

  At least I have on shoes I can run in.

  Not bothering to be quiet, she climbed the steps and went to the front door. It was slightly ajar. Nothing moved in the narrow strip of light coming through the doorway but the restless flicker of the TV.

  Now would be a good time to call the cops, she thought.

  Without it meaning to, her shoulder brushed against the door. It opened wider in silent invitation. It didn’t creak like she half expected it to, just waited silently for her to make up her mind.

  A sudden rush of wind startled her and pushed the door farther open. The motion sensor light at one corner of the porch came on with an irritated buzz and died seconds later with a crackle.

  The room beyond the doorway looked so ordinary she felt like a fool for being jumpy. The biting smell of stale beer flowed out as the wind retreated. There was an underlay of gym odor in the air, probably explained by the crumpled workout clothes and stray socks scattered at one end of the room. The television was happily chattering to no one.

  Maybe the owner had gotten bored with the ads and gone back to the kitchen for another beer. The erratic lights and shadows cast by the television were distracting—imitations of life in an empty room.

  She thought about calling out, but her mouth was too dry. So she tiptoed inside the room. No matter how hard she listened, there was no sound but her breathing, her rapid heartbeat, and the television selling vitamins to dirty socks. Weights, some empty food containers, and the big LCD screen rested on a cinder-block shelf.

  The TV lights shifted from vitamins to sweating, beefy men. Across the bottom of the screen a scrolling line displayed the logo of MMA and the dates of future matches. One of the men had a shaved head and wore eye-watering colors on his shorts and shoes. Feints and tentative poking exploded into brutal clutches. If there were any rules, or anyone to enforce them, it wasn’t reflected on the screen.

  Off to one side of the TV, the worn set of dumbbells and cracked vinyl bench reflected the light from the television in sickly shades of blue.

  When Shaye stepped all the way inside, she saw another source of light, almost as blue and restless as the TV, yet different. The light moved slowly, almost hypnotically, but there was no sound coming from it.

  Tanner, where the hell are you?

  She crept closer to the second source of light, somewhere in a room off a bare hallway. The television covered any of the small sounds she made.

  The room that was the source of the flickering light was at the end of the hall. Two other doors gaped open, advertising a bathroom and another darkened room. The hall itself was barren, its pine floor scratched and scuffed. The empty room before the end of the hall looked like the floor was the same.

  She was walking toward the odd blue light at the end of the hall when she decided to check out the room that had no light at all. She would feel better knowing that there was nothing at her back but the yammering TV.

  Tentatively she entered the unlit room.

  If Tanner isn’t here, I’m going back to the car.

  What good does that do? He could be hurt, needing help, and there I’ll be shivering in the car like a kid afraid of the dark.

  The thought of Tanner needing her, and her too much of a coward to help, pushed Shaye’s reluctant feet forward. She went in a few steps, feeling her way. The black shine of a window across the roo
m was her only light. Despite her care, she kicked something on the floor. The sound it made seemed like an avalanche echoing in the silence.

  She froze, waiting for her heart to settle, and felt carefully in front of her. The back of her wrist brushed over a wastebasket. She let out a long breath and gathered up her nerves. When her heartbeat finally slowed, she could hear more than the hard bang of her pulse.

  That was the only reason she noticed the small sounds coming from somewhere behind her. Footsteps.

  In the hall.

  Coming toward her.

  Shaye’s heart hammered inside her chest and tried to jump up her throat and strangle her. Even as she was berating herself for being stupid stupid stupid, she knew that the only exit left to her was the window across the room. She started toward it, tripped over the wastebasket, and barely managed to stay upright.

  The window was just ahead. Beyond it, the safety of the forest was only twenty feet away.

  Screw stealth.

  She lunged for the window.

  At the same instant that she registered a whisper of movement behind her, a hand clamped over her mouth and a man’s muscular strength banded her arms against her waist. She was yanked back against him with dizzying speed.

  And she was helpless as a child.

  Twenty

  Sweetie, you don’t obey orders worth a damn.” The words were softly spoken and colder than the wind.

  Tanner. Thank God.

  As his hand lifted from her mouth, anger replaced fear in a rush of heat. She spun to face him.

  “My name isn’t sweetie and you were gone more than twenty minutes,” she managed to whisper, though her heart felt like it was running a marathon behind her ribs. “Did you have to scare me?”

  “You’re lucky I didn’t coldcock you. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “My car quit and my cell phone is out of juice,” she shot back in a low tone.

  He made a strangled sound and shook his head. “Unbelievable.”

  “Am I the only one having a hard time yelling in whispers?”

  Tanner didn’t know whether to laugh or bang his forehead against hers. “Go back to the car.”

  “You scared the hell out of me,” she said between breaths. Her mouth tasted like a hangover laced with bile.

  “Good. Go back to the car,” he said again.

  “Is anyone else here? Why is the TV on? Why are we whispering?”

  “Not quite. I don’t know. It beats yelling until I figure out what’s going on. Then I’m going to be so loud you’ll get a headache.”

  “Wouldn’t it help to turn on the lights?” Shaye asked, ignoring the threat.

  “Doubt it. Go back to the car.”

  “If no one’s here—”

  “I don’t have time for this,” he said curtly. “Just stay out of the way and don’t touch anything you can leave fingerprints on.”

  Wanting to argue some more, quivering from too much adrenaline, Shaye followed Tanner down the hallway and into the room at the end.

  The source of the eerie blue light was a big aquarium. The water was faintly cloudy. Fish that looked like bloated Japanese drawings hung in the water and gulped at her with goggle eyes. A trickle of moisture hung on the outside of the tank, transparent beads trailing down, glowing like a cat’s eyes in the odd light.

  “Over here,” Tanner said. “I found him like this.”

  Shaye’s emergency training overcame her nerves. “Is he alive? Does he need help?”

  “No.”

  She glanced past Tanner’s feet. Rua—if that was who it was—was a heavyset man, more muscle than fat, arms thick in the black T-shirt emblazoned with the logo FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE.

  At least, that was what Shaye thought it had said when it was intact. Some of the lettering had been ruined.

  “Bullet holes?” she asked, not quite believing.

  “Yeah. He lost his last fight but good.”

  She swallowed. “Is it Rua?”

  “The driver’s license showed a buzz cut, but the rest looks pretty much the same. I’m assuming it’s Rua until I find out otherwise.”

  Rua’s shaved head looked gray blue in the aquarium light. His eyes were open, still shiny with moisture.

  Carefully she bent down and touched the dead man’s neck. The skin was resilient, slightly cool to her touch, but nothing close to cold. “He hasn’t been dead long,” she said.

  Tanner watched her with new respect. She’d been so frightened her cheeks were bone pale, but her hand didn’t shake as she checked a corpse for life.

  I shouldn’t be surprised. She ran scavengers off Lorne’s body, waited for the deputy, and gave a coherent report.

  She’s too damn brave for my peace of mind—sneaking into the house, hoping to find me, and not knowing what shape I was in or who else might be here.

  Tanner couldn’t help thinking how badly it could have gone if the killer had still been in the house. It made him want to yell at Shaye.

  Later, he promised himself. When we’re a long way from here.

  That was the most important thing—not being found at a murder scene he had no intention of reporting.

  “I didn’t hear anything,” she said.

  “Neither did I. It must have happened about half an hour before we got here. He’s still warm, considering the temperature of the room. And the floor underneath his right hand is still damp.”

  “Someone other than you was mad at Rua,” she said.

  “I’m not even mad at him,” Tanner said, low and hard. “I just wanted some answers.”

  “And then maybe you’d get mad?”

  “Depends on the answers.”

  Rua’s eyes stared up, seeing something a lot more distant than the ceiling.

  “Let’s go,” Tanner said. “I’d like to search him and the house. Coins likely are here somewhere. No landline, so a cell phone might tell us who he’s been talking to. But we’ve been here too long as it is.”

  “Did you call the police? Don’t we have to wait for them?”

  “If I was working this case, I’m the first guy I’d lock up, no matter what I said.”

  “But you didn’t do anything.”

  Tanner smiled grimly. “B and E followed by a corpse? Yeah, sure. Nothing at all. Like Lorne.”

  “But if we don’t tell the police, isn’t that a crime?”

  “Only if we were here. Did you touch anything?”

  Shaye felt like reality had shifted and she was stumbling around trying to stay on her feet. “I . . . not with my fingertips.”

  “How about the front door?”

  “The wind opened it for me. I didn’t see anything I wanted to touch except that window, and you yanked me back before I reached it.”

  Mentally Tanner retraced his route, and the one Shaye had taken. He knew he hadn’t touched anything. He’d have to hope she hadn’t. There wasn’t time to wipe down every possible surface.

  Not that he was real worried about it. The lab techs—if they were called in at all—were usually six to eight weeks behind in their work. Unless there was something important about the death, it would be written off as a drug deal gone south, a B and E and an unlucky homeowner, or a falling-out among marginal thugs. A red case, with no one to snitch on the murderer.

  It would take a chain of similar deaths before anyone official would be interested enough to demand a full, expensive effort to find the murderer.

  But Tanner didn’t want to be caught because some D.A. wanted a reelection cause.

  “Are you sure about the fingerprints? If they’re around, and someone cares enough to spend a lot of taxpayer money, your prints will be found.”

  “Which is why we should stay here until the cops come,” she said.

  The innocence of a civilian who has never been on the wrong side of the law, he thought wryly.

  “Look,” he said. “You and I have no alibi except each other. I’m from out of town. My uncle might have been killed
by Rua. It wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to find out I had Rua’s address.”

  “But—”

  Tanner kept talking. “The first thing the cops here will do is check with Sheriff Conrad. He won’t be interested in a complex story that leaves me innocent. He’ll be much more interested in a simple story that has me locked up. And in the meantime, whoever actually did this is still running around.”

  She sighed. “Maybe Rua had bad friends. Maybe he was selling drugs.”

  “Place smells like sweat, not drugs. His death is connected to Lorne’s gold, and maybe to Lorne himself. Wishing it was different will get us in trouble. Move it, honey. I don’t want to meet any neighbors.”

  “You’re sure about this?” Shaye asked as he led her away from the aquarium’s glow.

  “I’m sure that we won’t get any answers on the inside of a jail cell.”

  She looked at the fish tank. The water drops outside the tank still glowed, but there weren’t as many. “What about the water on the outside of the fish tank? It’s drying up, so it’s not a leak. Something splashed.”

  “Yeah, I saw that,” Tanner said. “The bottom was disturbed, too. But I don’t have time for a fast search, much less a thorough one.”

  Shaye looked over her shoulder as he hustled her from the room. The fish were staring up at their own watery ceiling, as motionless and silent as the corpse a few feet away.

  Twenty-one

  Finally.

  The watcher had almost given up on Tanner and Shaye leaving.

  Guess they decided not to call the cops.

  In some ways, that was too bad. It might have made things easier, because everyone’s favorite suspect would have been Tanner. In other ways, it was just as well. Everything was back on track. Better than back. There was nothing to tie Rua’s murder into anything else.

  Two down, none to go.

  Unless Tanner becomes a problem. He sure connected the dots fast.

  Be a shame if Shaye gets in the way, but shit happens.

  I’ll worry about that later. Right now my pistol has an appointment with the deepest part of the lake.