Hiding Place

by Meghan Holloway

  “You can do it today?”

  “Yeah, if the film isn’t ruined. Developing the negatives just takes about thirty minutes. It’s longer for printing. I’ll have to expose, develop, fix, wash, and then dry each print.” At my blank look, he said, “It might take me a few hours, but I can get it done for you today.”

  “What’s your rate?”

  His face screwed up in thought. “Two large supremes from Earth and Stone Pizza here in town?”

  I almost chuckled. “Deal.”

  “My name’s Russell, by the way.”

  I almost told the kid I did not give a flying fuck what his name was, but I tightened my jaw around that response and introduced myself.

  His darkroom was set up in the narrow hall bathroom in his small apartment. I sat in the living room four hours later shuffling the neatly typed threats as I waited for him to finish. His place was cluttered, but the couch I sat on was clean and the beer he offered me was ice cold.

  “This is some sick shit, man,” Russell said as he appeared in the hallway. He glanced at the pizza boxes sitting on the coffee table atop piles of books. “I can’t eat anything right now.” He handed me the stack of prints. “This is what I could salvage. I need a drink.”

  I placed the notes back in the envelope and flipped through the photographs. It took me several photos before I understood why he could not stomach food at the moment.

  The first scenes were innocuous, but upon closer inspection, I recognized what Winona had captured on film. Over a decade had passed since the photos were taken. The landscape had changed and grown, but when I looked closely at the trees in the shot, I spotted the camera traps.

  The dead horse in the next photo was a grim sight. She was an old nag, and the bullet hole in her forehead made my fists clenched. With the next photo, I realized the horse had been used as bait to lure the four dead wolves. One of the wolves was white, and my stomach turned at the striking pale fur stained with blood.

  There were other animals, the photos taken at different times as evidence by the change of seasons in the pictures. Poaching was a grisly, brutal business, and the photos highlighted that. I had no idea how Winona got the photos. Most were taken from a distance, the features of the people in the frame indistinguishable. Save for one.

  “Jesus,” I breathed, taking in the photo of Grant Larson holding a dead bald eagle up by the wings. Even taken from a distance, his face slightly out of focus, he was recognizable.

  The next prints were photographs of handwritten entries in ledgers. It looked like an inventory of hunts, including names, dates, price, and kills. The last photo in the stack raised the hair on the back of my neck. It appeared to be taken immediately after the photos of the entries in the ledgers. A desk and papers were a blur in the bottom half of the print. And in the edge of the frame stood the shadowed figure of a man in a darkened doorway.

  Fury gripped me. Hector, if something happens to me…

  I glanced up as the kid slumped into the chair across from me.

  “Is this in Yellowstone?” he asked.

  “Just outside the park.”

  “They’re luring those animals outside of a protected area.” Anguish and anger were threaded through his voice. “What can we do?”

  I studied the kid. I guessed him to be no older than early twenties, not much older than Emma would be now. “Can you enhance these photos? I want all the information off of the ledgers.”

  “I’ll work on it tonight. Can we take this to the police?” he asked.

  “I am the police, kid, but we need the feds for this.” I glanced back through the prints. “I want you to keep the negatives safe for me.”

  He nodded. “I can do that.” He drained his beer and held his hand out for the photographs. He pulled one out of the stack and held it up for me to see. It was the print of Larson holding the dead bald eagle. “My sister is a reporter at the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.”

  I smiled. Nothing was quite so vicious as the court of public opinion. “Send it to her.” I pulled out my phone and scrolled through my contacts list. “And give her this phone number. It’s an inside source.”

  “You want to wait while I enhance these?” he asked when I stood. He handed over the other prints, and I tucked them into the envelope.

  “No, I’ll be back for them tomorrow.” I held my hand out to him. “Thank you.”

  He shook my hand, and his grip was firm and strong. “Sure, man.”

  My thoughts churned as I drove the eighty-five miles back to Raven’s Gap. Anger left an acid burn in the back of my throat, and my jaw was clenched tight against the knowledge that my wife had been afraid, threatened, and felt like she had no one to turn to.

  When the lane branched off of the highway, I did not think. I cranked the wheel to the right and made the turn with a squeal of tires.

  There was a single guard at the gate, and, for an instant, I considered not even stopping. He stepped into the center of the lane, though, and I hesitated before letting my foot off the accelerator.

  He came around the side of the truck as I pulled to a stop and rolled my window down. His eyes widened when he saw my face, and I knew he recognized me.

  “Tell Larson I’m here to see him.”

  twenty-nine

  GRANT

  “He’s here.”

  I looked up from the computer. “What?”

  “Everett just called it in on the radio. He’s at the front gate. Is this guy an idiot, or is he just insane?”

  I was hedging my bets on the latter. “Tell Everett to let him through.”

  “I can get Antonio on the roof with his rifle. We’ll scrap his vehicle.”

  I stood. “Not yet,” I said. “I want to hear what he has to say. Tell your boys to stand down.”

  I moved through the house and waited on the front porch. He came down the lane quickly, and for a brief instant, as I met his gaze through the windshield as he approached the circular drive in front of my house, I thought he might not even hit the brakes. He did, at the last minute, and came to a grinding halt at the edge of the drive with his front tires braced against the rock edging.

  This was not a man who could ever be a politician. He did not know when to smile and charm, he did not know how to finesse. The man went at things like a battering ram.

  I strode down the front steps. “Hector. What brings you to the Broken Arrow?”

  He exited his truck and approached me. Nothing hinted at his mood aside from the ticking in his jaw. I did not see his fist coming.

  Pain exploded in my jaw, and I was sprawled over the stone steps leading down from my porch before I even realized I had fallen. It took several minutes for the ringing in my head to quiet to a dull throb.

  I pushed myself into a seated position and had to hang my head a moment as white spots spun around the edges of my vision. I lifted a hand to my face and moved my jaw carefully. I swore as pain scored through me, and I could feel that several of my teeth were loosened.

  Noise finally penetrated the fog that enveloped me. Groans reached me, and I slowly managed to lift my head. Three of John Smith’s men were on the ground. One was unconscious, another clutched his ribs, and the third cradled his arm against his chest. Three more of John’s men held Hector face down in the dirt. John knelt over him, his knee driven into Hector’s back between his shoulders.

  Even John was winded. “You should have let me have Antonio take him out.”

  “Is that what you did to Winona, motherfucker?” Hector was breathing heavily, but even pinned down, there was nothing subdued about the malice in his voice. “Did you take her out?”

  I stared at him, head swimming. I knew Winona would be my downfall. And the moment I walked in on her taking pictures of the ledgers, I had known the threats were not enough.

  I never had to use anything more than words and power to intimidate someone before, but Winona was not just anyone. I slammed her face down on my
desk, pressing her cheek against the numbers, dates, and names she had snapped photographs of.

  “You’re in a precarious position here, my dear,” I whispered against her ear, pressing my weight into her back. I heard the camera crack under her chest. I swept her hair back from her face and gave in to the urge to press my nose to that tender spot behind her ear where her skin met her hair. I inhaled deeply, and she smelled as sweet as I imagined she would. Like horse and woman. I felt a tremor move through her. “I want you to think very carefully and reconsider whatever you are thinking of doing with whatever you think you know. And while you’re doing that, I want you to think about your parents. About your friends. About your brother. About your husband and daughter.” She flinched with each person I named.

  When I lifted my weight off of her and stepped back, she staggered upright and scrambled around the desk. She was trembling, but there was fire in her eyes when she turned back to me.

  “My husband will kill you.”

  “Your husband doesn’t give a shit about you,” I reminded her.

  Her entire face moved with that blow. It was far more powerful than anything physical I could have dealt her.

  “What did you do to her?” Hector shouted now. His face was red, a vein throbbing in his temple. “What did you do to them?”

  I pushed myself to my feet and stumbled. When one of John’s men moved to help me, I shook his hand off. I thought he might have broken my jaw, but I managed to force the words out. “I didn’t know you cared so much. Little late, don’t you think?”

  He lunged toward me, and I staggered back a step before I could check the reaction. The four men on top of him scrambled to hold him down.

  “I’ll fucking tear you to pieces,” he whispered, gaze angled straight into mine even with his face shoved into the dirt.

  Winona had been right. There was murder in his eyes.

  “Boss?” John asked. Sweat beaded his forehead.

  “You know what to do,” I said, forcing the words out around the beat of pain in my jaw. “And make it hurt before you end it.”

  thirty

  FAYE

  The knock on the front door jerked me awake, and I automatically moved to sit up. My body shrieked in protest. I fell back against the couch cushions with a groan.

  The old woman hurried down the hall from her bedroom. She was still belting her robe as she moved to the chair where Sam slept. She woke him with a hand on his shoulder, and then she turned to me.

  “Hide in the back bedroom while I get the door,” she said, voice hushed. “What is this man’s name?”

  “Hector,” I said. “Hector Lewis.”

  I pushed myself off the couch and caught Sam’s hand as we retreated down the hall to the bedroom at the far end. I closed the door until there was only a sliver of space remaining and leaned against the wall, listening.

  The quiet murmur of the old woman’s voice reached me, but the low timbre of the response was unfamiliar. A sluice of icy fear went through me, and I twisted the handle of the door to close it silently. I turned the lock, wincing at the snick of sound as it tumbled into place.

  It was a flimsy lock. The door would be easy to kick in.

  I did not know who was in the house, but it was not Hector. I was not certain how Kevin’s men found me so quickly, but I was not going to wait around to ask.

  Early morning light spilled into the bedroom. I moved to the window and flipped the latches. The sill groaned as I pushed the lower half of the window up, and I darted a quick glance over my shoulder. A sudden slant of light gleam under the seam of the bedroom door as the light in the hallway was flicked on.

  I turned to Sam and realized he held the massive cat draped over his arm not bound in a cast.

  “Leave him here,” I whispered. “We can’t take him with us.”

  The stress of the last days was taking a toll on him, and his face took on a mulish expression.

  “He is not our cat.” The measured thump of the old woman’s cane announced her approach down the hall. “Now, Sam.”

  The urgency in my voice brooked no argument, and he placed the cat on the bed and swiftly moved to my side. I helped him climb out of the window. The drop to the ground was only a couple of feet, and he managed it easily. I followed him out. When my feet landed in the carefully tended flowerbed beneath the window, I caught his hand.

  “Quickly now,” I whispered.

  We stuck close to the side of the house as we crept around the corner. I hesitated when the front yard came into view. The vehicle I stole yesterday from the man who helped us escape was parked in the old woman’s driveway.

  “Hector sent me.”

  I whirled around and stumbled back from the man who approached. I pushed Sam behind me.

  He held up his hands and took several measured steps away from us. “I’m not here to hurt you, Faye. Or to take you or Sam back to him. I helped you get away yesterday, remember?” He kept his voice soft and low, as if he were speaking to a wild animal.

  I did recognize him. He wore another pairing of crisp khakis and polo, and he did not look any worse for wear after his encounter with Kevin’s men. But I did not know him, and I did not know if I could trust him, even though he knew Hector’s name.

  “Hector called me,” he said. “Hastings paid him a visit yesterday, and he’s being followed. He didn’t want to risk leading anyone to you, so he called me.” He watched me carefully and slowly lowered his hands. “I’m Maggie’s son. I think you know her from the diner. She told me you make the best huckleberry pancakes, and she cannot figure out what makes them so light and fluffy.”

  I sagged and placed a hand against the side of the house to steady myself. I sucked in a shuddering breath. “I’m glad you found your car. We needed to get away from there.” I would not apologize for stealing it in the first place, or for leaving him to fend for himself against half a dozen men.

  “Is this man not who he says he is?”

  I turned and found the old woman approaching us, her weight leaning on her cane, a wicked-looking kitchen knife clutched in hand.

  “He is,” I assured her. “The man I thought would come sent—” I glanced at him.

  “William,” he supplied.

  “Sent William instead.”

  “Let me help you back inside,” he said, stepping around me and offering his elbow to the woman.

  She handed him the knife as politely as if she were handing him a cookie and then accepted his arm. Sam wrapped his arm around my waist as we followed them up the front steps into the house. The behemoth of a cat twined around his ankles as soon as we stepped inside.

  As William moved into the kitchen, the old woman turned to me. “Will the two of you be alright?”

  I was not certain how to answer that question. Kevin’s arrival meant our safe, quiet existence in Raven’s Gap was over. There would be no going back to the inn I loved in the little town I had begun to call home. I knew this was a possibility and tried to prepare for it. But the sense of loss and despair was keen and sharp.

  She must have seen all of that on my face, because she reached up and cupped my cheek, her skin as soft and worn as crumpled tissue paper.

  We had not exchanged names. She had not asked for my story. She simply bandaged our wounds and gave us a safe place to hide.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  She patted my cheek gently and then rested her hand on Sam’s shoulder. “We women have to stick together.”

  Sam knelt and rubbed his fingers under the cat’s chin. Dark circles bruised the skin under Sam’s eyes, and he leaned against me as we followed William to his car. I sat in the backseat with Sam lying across the seat with his head in my lap. I glanced back as William pulled out of the driveway and lifted a hand in farewell to the woman. She returned the gesture before she retreated inside.

  I leaned my head back against the seat rest and closed my eyes. I did not realize I had fallen asleep
until William said quietly, “Duck down now.”

  I glanced out the window and saw we were approaching the turnoff for the Broken Arrow. Sam was asleep, his face lax and peaceful, and I shifted him carefully in order to lie down on the seat beside him. I stayed that way even after we passed the turnoff for Grant Larson’s ranch.

  I felt when the car left the state road, for the ride became rougher, rocking me back and forth. When William parked, I gingerly pressed myself upright and was startled to realize where we were.

  “I don’t think we should be here,” I said.

  “Hector arranged this,” he said. “But I can take you somewhere else.”

  I stared at the cabin. “No,” I said finally. “There’s nowhere else to go.” I needed to rest and think of how to get what I needed from the inn without being seen.

  “Wait here,” William said.

  He glanced around as he climbed the front steps of the cabin and then knocked on the door. He waited for a long moment before knocking again. After stepping to the side to peer around the corner of the cabin, he tried the door. It swung open, and he disappeared inside.

  Jack Decker needed to learn to lock his door.

  William reappeared a few minutes later. He opened the car door and extended a hand toward me. “Let’s get you inside.”

  It would not be the first time the man returned home to find us within. I let William assist me out of the car and then moved aside as he leaned into the backseat to lift Sam into his arms.

  I followed William inside, steps slow and measured. I had to grip the porch railing to make it up the steps, and I paused in the doorway, leaning against the threshold for support. I hated this feeling of weakness and helplessness.

  “Do you need help?” William asked when he reappeared in the hallway.

  “Yes,” I said, even as I hated it.

  He carried me into the living room and deposited me in the recliner. I watched him warily as he moved back to the porch. He grabbed the single rocker and brought it inside. He took a seat across from me, and I held his gaze as he studied me and waited him out.