by Christa Wick
From the supply room, I grabbed a padded envelope and deposited my security badge, car keys and company phone inside. In black marker, I wrote Reed's name on the outside. Exiting the building, I stopped at security and handed the envelope to Max.
Too numb to cry, I managed a smile. "I'm sorry I missed seeing Clara Saturday."
"She asked about you." His face lit up at the mention of his wife. "Docs say a few more weeks and she'll be back to cooking up a storm like she always did on Sundays. You've got a standing invitation, beautiful."
A little less numb than I thought, I took a deep breath before responding. "I'd like that."
I jerked my thumb at the front doors and offered the last smile Max would ever get from me. "Few errands to run."
With that, I quietly left the employ of Stark International.
Half a city block from the office building, I stepped into a mobile phone store and purchased a prepaid phone. I used it to call a cab. By the time the driver dropped me at the doorstep of my company townhouse, I had an evening flight to the Martin County, North Carolina, airport booked.
Like my office, nothing in the townhouse belonged to me. The furniture had been there when I arrived, as had the linens, dishes and cookware. I had added nothing personal. My life of the last four months fit into three suitcases and a carry-on.
At the airport, I stopped by the business kiosk. Securing another padded envelope, I dropped my house keys inside then added postage and Reed's name, the office address below it. Heading toward security, I felt another switch flip.
Game over.
********************
I spent the night in a cheap motel near the airport, an equally cheap rental car parked outside the room. As hard as walking away from Stark International had been, I had a tougher day ahead of me and wanted to start fresh in the morning.
More than six years had passed since I last stepped foot in Keeling. I had left at the beginning of my twentieth year after scraping enough money, grants and loans together to graduate from the county community college. My reason for hanging around had vanished with my mother's death shortly after I graduated high school. The horse farm that had been in the family for three generations passed to my stepfather, a small life estate in the guesthouse the only provision my mother had made for me in her will.
Stunned, I had lived in the guesthouse those two years and watched the horses slowly disappear, bought by new owners as I struggled to make my tuition payments. Leaving with my associate's degree, I had promised myself I would never return.
Easiest to break -- those promises we make to ourselves. Quitting Stark and his company, I couldn't think of any other place to regroup. When the airline's booking agent asked my destination, the answer had been automatic. Once uttered, I was embarrassed to change it. So, a little past ten thirty the following morning, I pulled to a stop in front of the house I had grown up in.
The trees that canopied the drive had hidden the lawn from view. Stepping from the small Mazda, I surveyed the landscape to find that more than a season had passed without anyone taking care of the grounds.
I stepped onto the porch, heart pounding in my chest. Dust covered the wooden boards, spiderwebs filled the corners and the paint beneath my shoes had cracked and peeled. Raising the brass knocker on the front door, a dreadful realization went through my head.
If the main house looked this bad, in what condition would I find the guesthouse?
The door jerked opened before I could release the knocker. My fingers twisted and I bit back a pained cry as I met the bleary gaze of my stepfather. It took a few seconds for him to recognize me. I knew the instant it happened because he snorted. Looking past my shoulder, he eyed the rental and offered another snort.
"I need the keys to the guesthouse, Evan."
His attention returned to me. He studied my clothes, his expression disappointed as he looked for jewelry or a watch. He wanted to know how much he could squeeze me for. Between the plain clothes I had intentionally selected for this meeting and bottom of the barrel car rental, his prospects weren't looking too good and he knew it.
The door slammed in my face.
I waited, seething on the inside while keeping a placid expression aimed at the door. If he didn't return with the keys, I would have to visit the county clerk's office and get a copy of the will. Then I would have to sweet talk the clerk into helping me figure out which form I needed to file to force Evan to let me onto the property. Better to wait a few minutes or even hours for his foul morning mood to pass than to hastily start a legal process that would have him digging in.
Surprisingly, the door opened ten minutes after it closed. He held a set of keys in one hand, the other hand palm up and thrust in my face. "Gonna need the first month's electricity in advance."
Opening my purse, I pulled out my wallet.
"Three hundred should--"
"You're not getting that much." I removed a hundred in twenties and offered it to him. "I'll have the utility out here to put in a separate box before the week is up."
He spit at the ground, a thick glob of phlegm landing a few inches from my low-heeled pumps. Taking the money, he handed me the keys. What should have provoked at least some small measure of relief brought a sense of unease as a sour grin puckered Evan's mouth and he spit again.
"Welcome home, little girl."
"Home" was as inaccurate as "little girl." The farm had stopped being my home years before I moved away from Keeling, all because of the man standing in front of me.
Ignoring the slow crawl of disgust down my spine, I offered a flat smile and returned to the car. Navigating the potholes dotting the dirt lane that ran through the property from the main house, past the stables to the guesthouse, I figured at least three years had elapsed since the last time Evan had graded the lane.
Pulling in view of my old/new home, all but the worst of my fears materialized.
Bushes that had been no higher than my knees when I left six-plus years before towered above my head, their thick branches and foliage likely the only reason the windows on the old place remained intact. If only the same could be said for the roof over the garage. A heavy branch from an untrimmed pine tree had punched a hole in the roof. If the door between the garage and the house had been opened after my departure, I likely would have a family of raccoons inside, squirrels and possum at the very least.
I walked the perimeter, both to examine the rest of the exterior and to find a sizable branch I could wield as a club in case I did find wildlife inside. My heart sank a little lower on the backside. The windows were whole, but part of the roof sagged above the corner bedroom. Thankfully, it was the second bedroom and I had left it empty.
Branch in hand, I returned to the front, removed a newly purchased flashlight from my trunk and opened the door. The flashlight threw the thinnest of beams into the dark living room. Heart running wild in my chest, I moved through the space to reach the curtains on the double wide windows. I pulled the drawstring, releasing a little sunshine and six years' worth of dust into the atmosphere.
Turning, I examined the furniture, relieved to find the sheets I had placed over the couch and side chairs in place and undisturbed -- a good sign no critters had made their way in from the garage. I moved from the front room into the kitchen. The rod and curtains fell into the empty sink when I tried to open them. I made a mental note to add a screwdriver and an electric drill to my shopping list as I walked toward the door that opened onto the garage.
I didn't want to open the door, but I wanted electricity and the breaker was in the garage. Lord only knew what waited in that space.
Feral things waited.
Stopping, I laughed at my sudden cowardice.
Feral things -- really? I had been in a limo that had a bomb explode alongside it. I had been in Collin Stark's arms and I had just told the meanest damn bastard in the entire county he couldn't extort three hundred dollars from me. How afraid could I be over a momma raccoon?
I
turned the inside lock, grabbed the handle and threw the door open, bracing for an inward rush of vermin. When nothing came at me, I knocked the branch back and forth in the doorway, letting it bounce off the frame a few times to wake any creatures.
Satisfied with the continued silence, I crossed the garage and flipped the breaker switch then double-timed it back into the kitchen and relocked the door. I turned on the ceiling light, the bulb's filament popping. Thankfully, I had come prepared for such an event, having stopped on the drive in to pick up basics like lightbulbs, matches, candles, and toilet paper, among a few other items.
Reaching the refrigerator, I plugged it in, set the temperature and closed the doors that had been blocked open. Back in the living room, I tried the ceiling light, another set of filaments popping. I decided to retrieve the box of bulbs from the car and change them before venturing into the rest of the house. If I needed to beat a hasty retreat from the bathroom or bedrooms, shrieking like the girl I was, I didn't want to trip over the furniture in the shadowy living room.
I replaced the lights as I went, living room and kitchen first, then the hallway, then the bathroom, where I propped my branch against the door from the inside and took my first pee in my old/new home. I flushed with trepidation, the toilet gasping and gurgling as it refilled. The pipes were the same when I turned the bathroom sink on to wash my hands. Rust-filled water spurted against the porcelain for a good thirty seconds before it was clear enough to put my hands under the faucet.
Finding the water cold as ice, I reminded myself to check the electric water heater in the utility closet after I looked at the two bedrooms. It hadn't had time to heat the water since I flipped the breaker switch, but I needed to make sure it was safe to keep running. Mice could have chewed through the cord or any number of other things could have happened in six years.
The master bedroom had weathered my absence in the same fashion as the front of the house -- dusty, with no working lightbulb, but otherwise intact. My nose told me something was wrong with the spare bedroom the instant I opened the door. With the smell of mold assaulting me, I cast the flashlight up at the ceiling. A water stain covered a third of the area. Moving the beam down the wall, my heart shriveled in my chest.
I had left the room completely empty six years ago. With a life estate left to me under my mother's will, no one else had a right to use the space. Yet "someone" had brought in boxes and trunks. The writing on the labels belonged to a dead hand -- my mother's.
Reading the descriptions, I could guess at the contents. "SJ Oak/Cit" had to be pictures and other mementos from my father's years at Oakridge Military Academy and at college in South Carolina.
Its weight pushed down a water-warped box marked "Wedding." My mother had married Evan in the Caribbean, just the two of them while I stayed with my maternal grandmother. Whatever pictures they had taken, the volume wouldn't fill a box, meaning the decaying contents were more memories of my father left to rot.
I didn't care about the box at the bottom of the pile, the one marked "Mia Kindergarten." But other boxes sent the tears that had threatened at the corner of my eyes streaming down my cheeks -- the wedding dress my mother had worn when she walked down the aisle to join hands with my father, family bibles and genealogy records from both sides, photos of the stables over the year, albums filled with generations of pictures.
All of it likely ruined.
Half my tears were pissed. Evan had refused when I asked to remove the items from the main house and put them in plastic bags inside plastic bins with other deterrents to the elements or any creature big or small that might damage them. He had refused because he wanted a chance to value each item. Not that he had said as much, but I could see, my flashlight picking out the labels my mother had written so long ago that here, in this damaged room, were all the things too "valueless" for him to sell.
Leaving the burnt out light unchanged, I backed quietly from the room and shut the door.
Chapter Eight
Collin
"Out." Walking into Trent Kane's office, I jerked my thumb at the man sitting in the visitor chair. Neither a client nor tactical team leader, whatever business he had with Kane could wait. I watched him slowly gather his papers and inch past me, my temper threatening to boil over at the sloth-like pace. When I slammed the door behind him, the man jumped.
I turned to Kane, the growl lodged in my throat barely kept in check. "You've had twenty-four hours to find her."
His cheeks colored. He was pissed, no doubt, at being tasked with my little "playmate" after four months of Reed Henley and a four-man security team keeping tabs on Mia. Those five were equally clueless as to her location, all of them vying for the top spot on my shit list.
I didn't care that Mia had left the Merritt Island facility during a shift change between the two units, leaving on foot through the main entrance on a supposed nearby errand and not in the company car with its locator chip. They had lost four hours because the team didn't realize Mia was missing until six p.m. and called Reed to see if she was working late. Another twenty minutes passed while Reed scoured the building and checked with security, only to receive the envelope indicating Mia had checked out permanently.
They could have intercepted her during those four hours. Instead, they arrived at her townhouse to find that she had already cleared out her clothes. One unit stayed on watch in case she returned, while Reed and the second team began checking the airports, taxi companies, and the bus and train stations.
Kane touched the screen on his laptop, his bottom jaw grinding side to side. "Reed got another envelope from Mia in the evening mail, stamped from the Orlando airport."
"And?" I shoved my hand in my pocket, my finger seeking out the ring hidden inside. Up until yesterday, I had worn it on a chain around my neck. Finding my hand constantly drifting to the chain after the call that Mia had gone AWOL, I moved the ring to my pocket. Kane already wanted to throw me in a padded cell as far as she was concerned. He didn't need to see me toying with the damn ring every five minutes.
"TSA isn't cooperating, neither are the airlines."
"Shuttles...cabbies...one of them--"
Kane shook his head. "It looks like she might have caught an unregistered cab."
My chest tightened at the possibility. Even on the relatively prosperous peninsula that was Merritt Island, unregistered cabs could be dangerous for passengers, especially women. Mia would have entered the cab upset and thus vulnerable, I knew that much from Reed's review of the office security cameras. She had started her flight away from the building and me after entering the reception area and catching news coverage of me and Kessa, the woman who had replaced her as my secretary.
Only as my secretary. I had taken no one to bed in Mia's absence, played with no one, waiting, perhaps, for Mia to find another lover first.
"Keep looking," I barked, turning to leave. My hand on the door handle, I stopped and looked back. "You checked the airports around Keeling, right? If that was her destination, it would be a hell of a lot easier to get someone at a little county airport to talk."
Kane's cheeks colored for the second time and I knew the possibility hadn't yet occurred to him. Without answering, he started typing on his keyboard, hit enter then reached for his phone.
Before he could punch in the first airport's number, I interrupted him. "Do I need to take over?"
His brows narrowed and his mouth turned into a thin white line as he stared me down. "Do you think you can?"
Blinking first, I turned from the room. We both knew he was right. I couldn't keep my hand off the ring in my pocket long enough to marshall an effective search for the woman I loved. I had lost her twice and, this time, I might not get her back.
Chapter Nine
Mia
I made the hardware store my first stop. Overall, the house had stood up to six years of neglect except for the two trouble spots on the roof. I would start with some heavy tarps over the spare room while I arranged for quotes from a
few roofers. I also needed a breathing mask before I returned to the spare room, and something to treat the mold on the walls before I repainted them, as well as a few tools.
I hadn't intended to walk out of the store smiling -- with a job!
Nothing permanent, three months maximum because the store was going out of business. There was both office work and clerking to do as things wound down. Knowing Keeling like I did, I would be hard pressed to find anyone hiring outside of Walmart within the city limits. I already anticipated having to look for a regular job in Greenville while I tried to build a consulting business online. The job in the hardware store seemed perfect while I got my bearings -- some cash coming in, a discount on everything I would need to fix up the guesthouse and no long-term commitment.
I hit Walmart after the hardware store for groceries, more cleaning supplies, dishes, towels, bedding that didn't smell six years old and a very inexpensive laptop and printer. I cringed at the dent I made in my savings account. It didn't matter that I had four months' of too much pay from Stark or that the job at the hardware store would keep me in groceries and utilities while it lasted -- I still needed to find a used vehicle and the business would need additional software, a website, maybe some advertising.
Head spinning at how much I had to do and half my torso stuck in the trunk of the rental as I stored my Walmart purchases, I heard someone call my name.
"It is you, isn't it?"
I couldn't quite place the male voice with its local accent. I maneuvered my way out of the trunk without denting my skull and looked up to find a long, lanky figure dressed in the uniform of a county deputy. Hazel eyes, dirty blond hair trimmed close to the sides, a generous mouth, a few years older than me if I had to guess -- the man was totally unfamiliar.
I tried to keep my glance at his name tag as discreet as possible.
