I crouched and swept up the rifle. I handloaded another round, tucking three more rounds between my fingers.
“Frank,” I said, putting the firmness of a command in my words even though my voice was a croak. I pointed to the treeline behind the Airstream. “Go.”
He bolted for the safety of the woods. The report of a bullet was followed by a yelp. Frank went down, and my heart stopped for an instant. The poodle scrambled to his feet, a swath of red streaming over his white hair, and kept running. Dirt kicked up in front of him with another bark of a bullet. Fury as hot and wild as the flames at my back filled me, and I shouldered the rifle as I stepped into the open.
The man was at the edge of the trees immediately to my right. He aimed again at my dog, but before he could fire, I drilled him with my own bullet. There was a reason big game hunters favored the .45-70. The man’s head disappeared when the round found its mark.
I spun, loading the rifle as I strode to the side of the engulfed Airstream, and lit up the fifth birdhouse full of dynamite. The blast punched me back a step. I turned and ran for the woods where Frank disappeared. Pain flared hot and sharp across my left arm.
I broke into the cover of the trees and paused to catch my breath, bending double as a wracking, smoke-laden cough scorched through my lungs. When I straightened, Frank was by my side.
I leaned my rifle against a tree and dropped to my knees beside him. He shivered against me as I carefully ran my hands over him. The wound was black in the low light, angled across the back of his neck. It bled freely, but it was a shallow graze. I wrapped my arms around him and rested my chin on his head as I turned back to peer through the trees.
The Airstream was engulfed, the fire roaring and cracking as it ate through my home. Shadows moved against the firelight, but none appeared to follow us. They were in retreat. Debris was still drifting to earth from the explosions. Sirens wailed in the distance.
I straightened and picked up the rifle. “Let’s go,” I said softly to Frank. I had no desire to linger and watch my world burn.
ten
FAYE
I lurched awake. The sound came again once my breathing and heart slowed, and I realized it was what startled me from the depths of a nightmare.
The deep, percussive sound was not thunder. It was a more abrupt, violent blow of sound. I rolled over and closed my eyes, but it came again. I lay still, ears pricked. I did not have to wait too long to hear the fourth and fifth shockwave of sound. Those were explosions.
I rolled out of bed and moved through our private rooms, punching in the security code to turn the alarm system off before I left our apartment and wandered through the inn. It was dark. A glance at the glowing clock on the microwave in the kitchen showed the time to be four in the morning.
In the den, I went straight to the wall of glass that faced northeast toward town. I searched the darkness but saw no glow of light indicating a fire anywhere.
I heard a shuffle of footfall behind me and then Evelyn’s voice. “You heard it, too.”
I turned from the windows to see her crossing to the southwestern side of the room to search the darkness that lay beyond the river. “Do you see anything?”
“Nothing,” she said after a moment.
But then the sudden, sharp wail of sirens pierced the night, and she joined me at the windows facing town. The sounds faded, indicating they were headed out of town toward Gardiner, the only direction one could go from this last stop in the road.
“This town is nowhere near as peaceful as I thought it would be,” Evelyn said, voice wry.
I had to chuckle at that. “It was pretty quiet until you arrived,” I told her teasingly.
I expected her to laugh, but we stood in silence together at the window for long moments.
“Sometimes I think I draw it to me,” she whispered suddenly.
My stomach clenched at my thoughtlessness as I turned to her. Her eyes were unseeing as she stared out the window, face pale, the moonlight bathing her pale hair in a shimmer of silver.
“I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”
She waved away my apology. “You were joking.”
I had been, but now I was kicking myself at the look on her face. “What happened was not your fault,” I said, voice gentle. “What happened to those women, what happened to you. That falls squarely on his shoulders. Don’t take it on. That is not your burden to bear.” The words were familiar, an echo from the past, and I shivered to say them now.
Her eyes were haunted and hunted, but she nodded. “Sometimes it’s hard to remember that in the dark.”
That was why we reached for the light in the darkness. “Come into the kitchen,” I invited. “I’ll make you breakfast.”
I was better with food than I was with people. I had lingered too long in the silence over the last years, when I always had a tendency toward shyness. Donning a mask of professional friendliness for guests was one thing. It left me exhausted, but it was my job, and based on my repeat visitors, it was one I did well. But being a friend was a role I had not filled in years now.
I was born with the proverbial silver spoon in my mouth. Everything I ever wanted was handed to me. My childhood was the typical “poor rich girl” story. My parents were happy to spoil me but completely uninterested in raising me. That task was left to nannies when I was young. There had been no cruelty, no abuse, but the loneliness was crushing, and the emotional toll of being raised by adults who were paid to do so was crippling.
By the time I was sent to boarding school at twelve, I had no clue how to talk to girls my own age, let alone any knowledge of how to be their friend. And friendship with teenage girls was no casual feat. There were tests and sly challenges and thorny nuances I did not understand.
Boarding school was where I first learned what cruelty was. It was where I first realized someone could smile into my face even as they slipped an emotional knife between my ribs. It was where I realized I did not have to be alone to be lonely. It was where I first felt the high of cocaine and the sudden rush of confidence and composure that came with it.
It was also where I met Mary. Her father was a groundskeeper at the boarding school, her mother a cook. Mary attended the school on a scholarship. Teenage girls were cruel, petty creatures. The rules of their carefully orchestrated society dictated that Mary was an individual to be looked down upon and shunned. But Mary had other ideas, and she was notorious for her ideas. It was impossible not to be drawn to her. She was like the sun. Too bright to be looked at, but everyone revolved around her anyway.
We did not become friends until I was sixteen. She burned bright and hot, and while I admired her, I never dared to draw too close. My parents forgot to send for me that Christmas, and I had nowhere to go for the holiday break. The prospect of staying in the dormitories alone was bleak, but Mary’s parents invited me into their home. For the first time in my life, I found myself enfolded in a family in all its chaos and loudness and open displays of affection. It was beautiful and painful all at once, and I cried when I unwrapped the matching set of mittens, scarf, and hat Mary’s mother had swiftly knit for me. Mary crawled across the scattered wrapping paper and hugged me as I struggled with my emotions.
Of course I fell in love with her.
Mary’s mother was the one who taught me how to make pancakes and shared with me the secret ingredients: seltzer substituted for milk and a few tablespoons of mayonnaise added to the batter.
I combined the ingredients now as the griddle heated. Evelyn stood at the sink washing huckleberries. It was dark outside the window, the early morning quiet companionable. It made me remember the mornings Mary and I spent in the bakery in the hours before opening. Though unlike Evelyn, Mary had always been humming or singing or telling a story.
The Institute of Culinary Education was Mary’s idea. We sat down together in the months before we were to finish our last term at boarding school and made a list of what we could
do together. She was wonderful with people and had a keen mind for business, and I discovered at her mother’s side that I loved being in the kitchen. Bakery made the top of our list.
My parents readily paid for me to attend, happy to toss money my way. It was, I realized, the only way they knew how to show me they cared. While Mary worked on a business and marketing degree, I excelled in the institute’s pastry and baking arts program. When I finished, my father gave me the building on the Lower East Side as a gift, and my mother hired her favorite interior designer to remodel the first floor into a bakery.
I handled the baking; Mary took care of the rest. Within a year of opening, The Sweet Spot was being featured in magazines, blogs, newspapers, and was labeled as one of the must-visit food destinations in New York City. Part of it was my name linked to the bakery, but we also ran the best bakery in Manhattan, let alone the entire city.
I was born into privilege, but wealth and recognition were new to Mary. She reveled in it, and each night, she sought out the hottest clubs and parties. I did a bump of cocaine to ease my tension over the crowds and the noise, and braced with that high, I followed her.
Looking back, I could not imagine being that painfully young and unaware of the world ever again. But at the time, it was our own Bacchanalia, and the laughter and highs—drug induced or not—we shared in those years were something I could still smile about, though now it was bittersweet. I had more fun with Mary in those years than I ever had.
Until the night I looked across the club. There was a gap in the writhing bodies glistening in the strobe lights. The pulse of the music was heavy and driving, and with the aid of the coke still singing in my system, it felt exciting and primal. I knew who he was. The highest level of society was a small set. He did not look away when I met his gaze, and I was caught in his stare as he placed his drink on the bar and cut through the crowd toward where Mary and I sat.
Someone bumped into him, but he never wavered from his path. When a girl danced in front of him, he grasped her shoulders and moved her aside. The entire time, I was snared by his eyes. At the time, I thought the heat of his gaze was the sexiest thing I had ever seen. Now, if someone stared at me with that amount of intensity, I would recognize him for what he was: a predator.
As he walked through the club, my breath caught in my throat. I did not have a sense of self-preservation at that point, but I remembered that moment with startling clarity. I stared at him and thought, This is it. This man changes everything.
And he did.
I poured the batter onto the griddle and dropped a smattering of berries in each one. I went through the motions of making pancakes. This was easy, soothing. It was why I decided to purchase the inn when I saw it was for sale. A wrong turn led Sam and me to Raven’s Gap, but once I reached the end of the road, remote and cut off from the rest of the world, I knew this place was perfect. It was as far from New York City as I could get in terms of culture and noise.
I poured batter, added berries, and flipped the pancakes until we both had a fluffy stack. When I turned from the griddle, I found Evelyn had made coffee and warmed some of the homemade huckleberry syrup I kept in the refrigerator.
We were sitting down at the small table in the corner of the kitchen when the screams split the quiet. I started violently, sloshing hot coffee over my hand, transported for an instant into the past.
The scream came again, galvanizing me and yanking me back to the present. My plate clattered to the table. Evelyn was already limping down the hallway toward my apartment, and I darted past her. I ran to Sam’s room and found him twisting in his bed, the covers tangled around him as he writhed in the grip of a nightmare.
I put a knee on the mattress and a hand on his shoulder. “Sam.” My voice was firm and loud. It had been years now since he was plagued by nightmares, but in the first two years, he awakened me regularly with haunting whimpers. He never screamed, though. The sound raised the hair on the nape of my neck. “You’re safe. It’s just a dream.” He went rigid under my hand the instant he finally roused from sleep. “It’s me, honey. It’s okay.”
Evelyn turned the lamp on behind me. Sam sagged, and then he lunged up from the tangle of sheets and wrapped his arms around my neck. Caught off balance, I braced a hand on the bed to keep from toppling over. “It’s okay. It wasn’t real. You’re fine. I’m here.”
He buried his damp face against my throat, arms tight around me. He trembled against me as I rubbed his back, and I wondered how I was supposed to comfort a child when I had no idea what frightened him. I twisted to sit on the bed, pulling him with me until he was sprawled across my lap.
I held him tightly, and the shudders wracking him gradually lessened. When he took a deep breath and his hold on me loosened, I asked, “Do you think you can go back to sleep?”
He shook his head, his forehead rolling against my collarbone.
“Your mom and I were about to have pancakes,” Evelyn said. “Want to join us?”
He pulled back from me and scrubbed his cheeks with his palms. He smiled at her shyly and nodded.
In the kitchen, I warmed the pancakes as Evelyn heated our coffee and poured Sam a glass of milk. My mind churned. Sam had not been sleeping well for several months now, but a nightmare had never made him cry out in such a way. I did not think the timing was coincidental.
I needed to find out what happened at Grant Larson’s ranch.
eleven
GRANT
“What part of make it look like an accident did you not understand?” My voice held a sharp bite that startled Iago, and the wild horse danced away from me.
“You didn’t tell me he was a one-man army,” John Smith said as he approached the pen.
“What’s the damage?”
“He blew Rogers’s head off. Not to mention the injuries from the IEDs. What fucking civilian has access to dynamite?”
“I meant,” I said between clenched teeth, “can this be traced back to me?”
John smirked. “Relax, Senator. We cleaned up and were gone before the police and fire department arrived.”
“And Hector Lewis is still alive.”
“He won’t be for long,” he assured me.
“I expect you to make this right.”
His smile was not a pleasant expression. “Don’t I always?”
“And I want no mistakes with the woman and the boy.”
He mimicked doffing his hat to me before he turned and strode away.
Rage made my hands tremble, and I took slow, deep breaths to calm the fury. But there was something else there, beneath the anger at the blitheness and disrespect.
I had felt it so infrequently in my life, it took me a moment to recognize the emotion as fear. I could count on one hand the number of times I had been afraid. The last instances of fear both revolved around Winona.
The first occurred several months after she started working for me.
I heard the commotion before I saw it. One of the voices that was contributing to the yelling and swearing had me breaking into a jog as I rounded the corner of the barn.
I reached the corral in time to see Winona yank the bullwhip out of the new hire’s hand and swing it. The tail caught the man across the cheek, leaving a knife-like wound across his face that immediately welled with blood.
The sudden silence was thick with tension.
“You fucking crazy squaw,” the man breathed. When he lunged for her, she hit him across the face again with the whip. Before he could reach her, three of the other ranch hands had him face down in the dirt.
“What is going on here?” I snapped.
Winona whirled toward me, and I almost stepped back since the whip was still clenched in her hand. “It’s pretty clear what was going on here. And if this is the kind of treatment you allow your horses to receive, I quit.” She tossed the whip at my feet and moved slowly across the corral to the quivering, sweating horse at the far end.
She
could not quit. The very thought of never seeing her again almost cut my knees out from under me. I fired the newly hired hand on the spot. She never knew I had my men take him out behind the north barn and flay the flesh from his back with the very whip he used on the horse and she marked his face with.
I convinced her to stay by allowing her to set up her own training program, not for the horses but for my own trainers. It was a genius move on my part. She was brilliant and gentle with horses, and as soon as she began teaching the other trainers her methods, I saw results across the board.
The second time I felt that gut-clench of fear was when I knew she discovered the truth and I realized I would have to kill her to keep her quiet.
twelve
HECTOR
The footsteps on the front porch were quiet and stealthy. The evening light spilled in a bright pool through the windows of the cabin. The location was remote, several miles back from the highway, and only a handful of people knew about the old hunting lodge from bygone decades.
As soon as I heard the cry of the magpies, I locked Frank in the bedroom, inserted a loaded magazine into the CZ, and pulled the slide to chamber a round as I crept across the room. The ragged hooked rug muffled my footsteps, and I pressed back against the wall adjacent to the door.
The porch creaked and groaned underfoot, and then I heard a voice call softly, “Hector? Are you here?”
I set the CZ aside and jerked open the door. “What the hell are you doing here?”
She gave a start of surprise, leaned her shotgun against the porch railing, and then flew into my arms. I grunted at the impact and almost staggered back a step.
“Goddamn, Hec,” Maggie whispered, “goddamn.” Her voice cracked.
HIDING PLACE by Meghan Holloway Page 6
