Escape to Morning

by Susan May Warren

  Already done that, thank you.

  It felt like sheer divine providence that he would meet the person who had found Simon. He’d prefer to do an end run around Fadden—he hadn’t exactly earned any warm fuzzy responses from the local law since he started nosing around town.

  He had followed her into town, to Nancy’s Nook, which was thankfully still open. He’d watched as she watered and fed her dog; then he helped dry off the animal and tuck Missy into the berth in her truck. She seemed single-minded in her care of the animal …something that struck a soft place in his chest. Or perhaps it was the affinity he had for responsible people. The army had taught him that.

  Nancy had taken the main floor of an old bungalow and refurbished it into a bakery and café. Her limited menu was scrawled on a chalkboard on the wall opposite the door. In a display case sat a lonely brownie that might find a home in his stomach later tonight.

  They were the only patrons in the restaurant—Nancy had informed them that she was closing shop within the hour. Will had wrangled the last remaining bowl of chili for the woman and a Reuben sandwich for himself out of her. And a basket of onion rings.

  Will heard the floor creak in the kitchen behind the two-way swinging door, and a slight chill whistled in from under the log front door. He walked over to the far end of the room where, in a stone fireplace, a meager blaze sputtered, gasping for life. He moved the ash-covered logs around with a poker, added another log. He replaced the poker and grabbed a napkin from another table and wiped his hands.

  The woman said nothing, still cocooned in fatigue—or thought?—as she twirled her fork.

  “So, I never did get your name,” Will said, returning to the table and squelching the urge to take the fork out of her hand. Tension laced the gesture, and he felt the errant and weird urge to help her unwind. He’d been on the dark end of body recovery a few times and knew that only time erased those images, if at all.

  She leaned back, put the fork on the table, readjusted the table setting. “Dannette. Lundeen.”

  “Dannette. That’s pretty. Do you go by Dani, because you know, you seem like a Dani. Are you new in town?”

  She opened her mouth a bit, as if trying to form a response. Then, “No, I … ah … well, I’m kind of visiting.”

  Oh? He raised one eyebrow. Good. That made it easier to pass himself off as a nice guy from down the street. “My name is Will Masterson.”

  “Nice to meet you, Will,” Dani said, then grinned. “Sorta.”

  “At least you’re honest,” he said. “Where are you from?” He leaned back, stretching his legs. A faux lantern affixed to the wall shed a pool of orange light over the wooden table.

  “Iowa. And you? No, let me guess.” She wore the slightest etching of a smile. “Home on the range?”

  He chuckled. “Bull’s-eye. Actually I’m from South Dakota.”

  “Land of the free,” Dani said.

  “And home of the brave,” he finished. She giggled, and it sounded sweet. “Actually, I haven’t lived there for a while. But I still call it home. Cotter, South Dakota. Population 7,000 if you count the cattle.”

  A bigger smile, and it found places inside he’d thought cold and dead. Whoa, boy. This dinner date was about information, not extracurricular activities. Not only did Dani not look the type, but he hadn’t been the type either for quite a while now, if he remembered correctly. Even if he’d had opportunity to find a few warm and willing friends in Moose Bend, he had given over that side of his life to Jesus to forgive and start anew. But he wasn’t exactly sure how to go about being friends with a woman without an … agenda. Maybe it felt like this. Friendly banter. Dinner out. Sharing easy secrets.

  Perhaps it was even supposed to feel … soothing. Like a balm on raw and wounded places.

  Although he’d died to Wild Will, he still had to make sure the old Will didn’t sneak up and lasso the one that wanted to be God’s man. “So Dani Lundeen from Iowa, what brings you to Moose Bend, Minnesota?”

  “I run an SAR K-9 training program in Iowa. I came up about a month ago to prepare one of the locals for her final SAR K-9 certification exam. She’s the one who found Mrs. Hanson.” A blush touched her cheeks.

  He smiled, aware that it made her look … innocent. He liked innocent. “You look like you need a vacation.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “Actually, I’m waiting for my friend Sarah. She’s meeting me for an early season canoe trip into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW).”

  “Two women alone in the woods? Aren’t you afraid of bears?” He meant it as a joke, and wow, she even giggled. He hadn’t expected to enjoy it quite so much.

  “We’re pretty capable, thanks. Besides, our friend Andee is going with us.”

  He frowned.

  She laughed. “Andee is a girl. She works SAR in Alaska and is a helicopter pilot as well as a mountain climber. Sarah’s a paramedic in New York City. We haven’t seen each other since last October, and we have this tradition.” She picked up the fork again. “The three of us take a vacation before Andee heads into the bush for the summer. It’s our version of girls’ night out.”

  “Sounds dangerous.” He hadn’t meant to say it quite as softly as it came out, and it sounded … worried. Oh no. He smiled, hoping she didn’t notice.

  “Naw. We’re all SAR trained and spend lots of time on our own. We cave and kayak and hike—”

  “What happened to shopping? I thought that was a girl’s favorite pastime.”

  She actually glared at him. Well, sorta. He could hardly call it a glare when she smirked at the end. “We shop. For dehydrated food, proper footwear, the latest in Gore-Tex rainwear and climbing equipment.”

  He laughed, wondering why that felt so easy. Someone like Lew’s ever-present ghost should slap him upside the head. What happened to coaxing information from her about the dead person she’d found—who was probably his partner? He winced at his own callousness and felt profoundly grateful when Nancy came out with a bowl of chili, a sandwich, and a basket of seasoned onion rings.

  “Anything else?” Nancy, a backwoods type of gal herself, with no hint of makeup on her fifty-something face, had her blonde hair tied back in a long braid and wore moccasins under her prairie skirt.

  “How about the brownie there in the case?” Will nodded toward the goodie. Maybe he’d split it with Dani.

  He pulled the sandwich closer, noticed that Dani had scooted up to the table, and had her hands folded. “Are you … um, going to pray?”

  She smiled, and it looked honest and vulnerable. “Yes, do you mind?”

  Did he mind? He almost felt like singing, although he couldn’t put a finger on why. “Nope,” he managed.

  Dani offered a short, sweet prayer and had dug into her chili long before he recovered. He knew two things. His instincts about her had been correct; she wouldn’t go for any sort of late-night shenanigans. And he was the biggest jerk on the planet for wanting to charm her only for her information, especially when she seemed to be moving past that grisly moment.

  He ate in silence, subdued by his scumball stench.

  “You okay, cowboy?” Dani peered at him over her cup of chai.

  “Yeah,” he said, and then, despite his regrets, he added, “I was just thinking about that poor chum out there in the woods. The guy you found.”

  Yes, he was a class-A jerk, because his segue worked.

  She put down her cup, and a shadow crossed her face. “Yeah. It was pretty awful. I’ve seen dead bodies before, but this one … well, when they took the bag off his head, he’d been beaten pretty badly. They tentatively identified him by a tattoo on his hand—they think he was from a cult somewhere north of here.”

  Will felt ill. He put down his sandwich. Swallowed hard. Yep. Simon had a tattoo—had gotten it when he joined Hayata as a sign of allegiance.

  “You okay? Maybe I shouldn’t be talking about this over dinner.” She gave a burst of self-deprecating laughter. “List
en to me. I shouldn’t be talking about it at all. But I guess since you’re a cop, I’m okay, right?”

  A cop? He managed not to let his mouth gape open, but he didn’t need to broadcast his surprise.

  Nancy did it for him. She put the brownie on the table, looked at the two of them, and snorted. “Cop? Hardly. Will is our local news-hound. He writes the police beat for the Moose Bend Journal.”

  Dani looked like she’d been slapped. “A reporter?” she said on a whisper-thin voice. She gave him a look that made him want to crawl under the table.

  Then she got up and simply walked out. The door banged shut behind her.

  Will narrowed his eyes, flinching as if he’d been shot. A fitting sort of epitaph to his desire to find a friend in Dannette—Dani—Lundeen from Iowa.

  Chapter 4

  COULD SHE BE any more stupid, gullible, and act any more desperate? Dannette screeched her pickup to a halt in front of the Lighthouse Motel. She leaned her head against the steering wheel, hearing again the waitress’s words. A news-hound.

  Figures.

  She had an uncanny ability to attract people who wanted to dig around in her life and find the dark holes.

  And she’d let him call her Dani. Yuck. It suited her? She must not have been fully lucid when she let him chop off half her name. She was so not a Dani. Cute. Sweet. Swooning at the feet of the nearest good-looking guy who had a nice smile and a charming swagger.

  Swallowing her desire to turn around and floor it south, she climbed out of the truck and went around the back to free Missy. The two-story motel, equipped with rent-by-the-month rooms facing Lake Superior, was a sorry excuse for a lighthouse, but at least the landlord allowed dogs. Then again, Dannette felt like a sorry excuse for an SAR searcher. She’d broken a cardinal rule of SAR work: Don’t talk to the press. At least not until the police gave clearance.

  She didn’t want to see Fadden’s face in the morning … maybe she should pack up and head home to Iowa, just like he’d suggested.

  Only what would Sarah say when she arrived in Moose Bend and found nothing but the skid tracks from Dannette’s quick exit? Dannette knew she’d been doing her hermit routine for the past six months, and Sarah had been more than pointed in her assertion that they were getting together before Andee’s trip north. Dannette had little doubt Sarah would track her down to Iowa or Kentucky and finally wheedle out the conversation that had been simmering since they’d been involved in the kidnapping and recovery of Lacey Montgomery’s daughter, Emily.

  It isn’t about Ashley. She’d told herself that for three days while they fought to save Emily’s life. The entire episode hit way too close to Dannette’s heart, and both her friends knew it. Hence the space. And the impending showdown with Sarah.

  Besides, after today’s near tragedy with Mrs. Hanson, it was clear that Moose Bend needed Kelly and Kirby’s certification as soon as they could arrange the test, and Dannette had to stick around to administer it.

  Dannette climbed the steps to her room and opened the door. The room smelled starchy and fresh, and sleep beckoned from the made-up bed. Off-season in Moose Bend had its benefits, and the first was the low monthly rate of this prime lakeside getaway. And it helped that Kelly’s mother owned the place.

  Dannette unlaced her muddy boots and toed them off, then shut the door and locked it behind her. Missy went straight for her cushion and curled up, closing her eyes before Dannette shut the bathroom door. She started the shower and got in before it had even reached full heat.

  Ten minutes later, she lay warm and only slightly damp in her old Tasmanian Devil nightshirt and wool socks, channel surfing from her double bed. Hunger still gnawed at the outside reaches of her stomach, but she ignored it. Better hungry than in stomach-curdling company.

  Obviously she hadn’t totally run Cowpoke Masterson out of her head. And if she was honest, he wasn’t completely disgusting. Not with his deceptively sweet smile. The way he helped her rub down Missy and settle her in the pickup had charmed his way too far into the soft spaces of her heart. She could hear the cowboy in his words, a soft Western twang that spoke of broad skies, lazy days, slow laughter, and sardonic humor.

  But he’d all but lied to her.

  Tricked her.

  So he’d never actually admitted to being a cop … he hadn’t jumped to correct her, had he?

  She scrolled through the television channels without really seeing, her chest burning. Jerk. Just when she was starting to enjoy his company. Or rather wanted to enjoy his company. She hadn’t had a real, I’m-interested smile from someone of the opposite gender for so long she’d forgotten what it felt like.

  No, it hadn’t been a real smile. Reality, Dannette. Her throat thickened. A reporter. She should have seen the ink on his fingers, recognized the predatory look on his face, alerted to the sound of sniffing as he leaned on the table and stared at her with those pretty, deceitful brown eyes.

  She’d had her share of run-ins with reporters, thank you, and had no desire to get close to anyone who dug out secrets and splattered them across the front page of her hometown rag. Or wherever.

  She blamed exhaustion for not seeing through his charm. No man with that much natural rough-edged charisma would ever give her so much as a two-second glance. His type, the ones with ego and eyes that could make a girl forget her name, weren’t attracted to the plain Jane, unruly hair Dannette types.

  They wanted makeup. Beauty. An easy smile that didn’t look too long at the interior. They wanted a Dani. Her defenses should have pricked the moment he made that shopping jab. She should have smelled the suaveness radiating off him.

  He saw her only as the inside track to a hot story.

  She sighed as despair deflated her anger. She shouldn’t blame Will. Maybe God was simply intervening. The Almighty knew her history with men. The two that preceded Reporter Will had been SAR types who lived for adventure and put adrenaline before romance. Sorta like she did. A gal with a career traipsing around the world risking her neck to rescue others had no business cultivating or even wishing for strong arms and a willing ear to come home to.

  Any such hero would need to know her back-story, and frankly, she wasn’t giving that up. Not without a crowbar to her heart.

  She flicked to a rerun of a detective show and soon grew bored, her mind returning rebelliously to Will Masterson. She sunk into her pillow; her eyes grew gritty.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.” He was leaning against his truck, hands in his leather jacket, a grin denting the dark goatee. “I didn’t know you were so sensitive about reporters.”

  Dannette whistled to her dog, but Missy seemed strangely absent. That fact niggled in the back of her brain, but she ignored it. The sky had turned a sickly green. “We should get inside.”

  He didn’t seem to hear her. His liquid eyes—dark and magnetic—reached out to her. “Why did you run away from me?”

  She opened her mouth, and suddenly Will Masterson morphed into a small blonde woman, slightly built, lines around her mouth. Her gentle hazel eyes held on to Dannette with a power that seemed otherworldly. A tear hung on her lash. “Why did you run away?” she said softly. Behind her, the sky darkened, a flicker of light, then thunder, low and rippling under Dannette’s skin.

  “I dunno,” Dannette whispered, but the words stuck like paste in her mouth.

  The woman crouched. Opened her arms. Smiled.

  The ground rippled, cracked. Dannette watched in horror as it opened a gully between herself and the woman. Still, the woman stayed in her crouched position, unaffected by the storm that now whipped her green house-dress and apron around her waist, her hair over her face. “Dannette?” she said, cocking her head.

  “Mommy!” Was that her voice?

  Dannette startled awake. The woman vanished, and the final scenes of the detective show slashed into her mind. Her heart pounded, and she summoned deep breaths.

  Just a dream.

  Dannette looked at Missy. In the w
an, eerie light, she saw the dog’s head raised, her eyes tender as she stared at her mistress. “C’mere,” Dannette said softly and heard emotion in her plea.

  Missy trotted over and hesitated before she jumped on the bed and joined Dannette.

  Dannette turned off the television and scooted down. She rubbed her hand through Missy’s fur and tousled her ear, comforted by Missy’s warmth, her sweet eyes on her.

  “I dunno,” she repeated, then closed her eyes and tried to push the memories back to the dark corners where they belonged.

  Fadima sat between the two men, squashed in the front of the pickup, like a prisoner. She hadn’t been this close to a man ever, even her brother, and it felt invasive, even through her spring jacket. Their odor—a mixture of sweat, cigarette smoke, and greasy food—rose and filled the cab, curdling the airplane food that sat like a boulder in her stomach. She clutched her backpack on her lap and tried to remember her father’s words.

  “You are the bride of Bakym.”

  Bride. That word meant so many things in her culture. How ironic that for the first time it would also mean freedom. She had been prepared for the tradition of arranged marriage and the fact that her father had pledged her years ago to the local Hayata leader, Bakym. She’d even managed to resign herself to the knowledge that Bakym saw her only as an alliance, a means of securing for himself a higher position in the larger Hayata organization. Hayata meant life, but only since her mother had been killed had Fadima realized that her father had plans to give her and her brother real life outside the Hayataring of power. Plans that, should Hayata discover them, would lead straight to their executions.