HIDING PLACE by Meghan Holloway

by Meghan Holloway

  He spoke first. “Hastings is Sam’s father?”

  I had expected a question of this ilk and debated how to answer it. I had no reason to lie about this. “Yes.”

  “I take it you don’t have full custody.”

  I smiled. It tasted bitter on my lips. “If only it were that simple.”

  “Did Hastings’s wife know about you?” he asked. When my gaze lifted to his, I saw no condemnation in his face, simply curiosity.

  “No,” I said finally. “No one knew. At least, not outside of Kevin and some of the men he contracts from private military companies.” I let out a humorless chuckle and winced at the lance of pain. “He always was good at hiding things.” I swallowed at the memory of the bruises so deliberately dealt where no one would see them.

  “Hector thinks your boy saw something the night he was at Larson’s ranch that put a target on your back.”

  I darted a glance down the hallway when I thought I heard the creak of a floorboard, but the corridor was empty. “He told me. But I don’t know what Sam saw, and I won’t put him in further danger.” I turned my gaze back to him. “And Larson knows who I am now. That’s why Hastings is here.”

  “And who are you?”

  “For right now, I’m Faye Anders,” I said, and he smiled.

  He stood and held out his hand, helping me from the depths of the recliner to my feet. “Get some rest, Faye.”

  I shuffled down the hall to Jack’s bedroom and climbed into bed beside Sam. I let out a breath as I lay flat and the sharp pinch of discomfort eased in my ribs. I felt bruised all over.

  I reached across the bed and placed my hand on Sam. His back rose and fell with his breath, and he did not stir at my touch. I slipped into sleep quickly and deeply.

  It seemed as if I had only just closed my eyes when the low, urgent murmur of voices roused me. I struggled to fully surface from slumber, but I kept slipping back into the dark until a touch on my shoulder startled me awake.

  “Something has happened to Hector,” William said quietly. “You’ll be safe here, but I have to go.” He tucked his car key under my hand. “If you need it, my car is out front.”

  He was gone before I could respond, and before I could grasp consciousness, I faded again.

  I crept down the hallway, and the silence breathed around me. The hallway seemed to stretch forever, contracting and expanding around me as if echoing the breath of silence. I placed my hand against the wall to steady myself.

  I glanced at the framed photograph hung on the wall immediately to my left. The glass in the frame was shattered, fractures spread in a corona from where a fist had been driven into our smiling faces. Behind the seams of glass, Sam, Mary, and I had been captured one day at Central Park. We were on a blanket in the grass dappled in sunlight. I was lying on my stomach on the blanket, and the timer on the camera I set up caught me mid-laugh as Sam leapt on my back. Sam’s head was thrown back with those infectious toddler giggles. Mary sat leaning on a hip, smiling at the pair of us.

  As I stared at the photograph, Mary’s head turned and she looked straight into my eyes. Her smile was still there for a moment, and then it faded and her lips moved with a single word.

  “Run.”

  I lurched backward, gaze darting to the end of the hallway. It remained empty, but the light at the end of the dark corridor beckoned. The end of the hallway was a precipice, and it seemed as if I looked down on her sprawled body from a great height. She lay twisted, hips canted at an angle, her top knee drawn up, her shoulders flat to the ground and arms outflung. She looked as if she had fallen from a cliff and lay broken and bleeding on a canyon floor.

  But the blood was in the wrong place. It was smeared across her face, not pooling below her head. And slowly, painfully, her face turned toward me, though the rest of her body remained deathly still.

  She looked across the room and met my gaze. I stood frozen. Her smile was not there, and the blood on her mouth painted her teeth like smudged lipstick when her lips moved. They formed a single word.

  “Run.”

  I jerked awake, heart lodged in my throat.

  It was dark. The cabin was silent. I breathed slowly until my heart returned to its normal pace.

  I stretched my hand out across the mattress and encountered cool sheets. Fear pierced me, and I shoved myself upright too quickly. I ignored the stab of pain in my side as I leaned over to turn on the lamp on the bedside table.

  The bed beside me was empty. Sam was gone.

  thirty-one

  HECTOR

  The hot pulse of pain drummed through me. The blows came from all directions. I curled in on myself on the arena floor, unable to avoid the pulverizing blows from Kamikaze’s hooves.

  The roar of the Sunday crowd was strangely quiet, and I could not hear Winona screaming my name. I could always pick her voice out of the crowd. Everything slid away in that tunnel of silence when we burst from the shoot, except for her voice. But I could not hear it, no matter how I strained to catch it.

  The blows stopped suddenly. The bullfighters—the only clownish thing about them was the face paint—must have driven Kamikaze away. I was supposed to get up and run, but I could not even open my eyes and lift my head.

  Where was Winona?

  “Get rid of him,” a voice said through the pounding in my skull.

  The paramedics. They needed to call medical. Parts of me were broken inside. I could feel the shards grating against one another as I struggled to breathe.

  “I’ll do it,” another voice said, and this one I recognized. He adored his older sister, and when Winona introduced me to the family, he had been just a teenager. He hated me on sight. But since Winona and Emma disappeared, his hatred had festered into something entirely more dangerous.

  I recognized obsession. I understood it. I knew he would try to kill me one day. He had simply been biding his time until he thought he could do it and get away with it.

  And today was that day.

  I realized with a start I was not ground into the dirt on the arena floor by a rank bull.

  “I don’t care how messy you are, just don’t forget to clean up after yourself,” the first man said.

  “When I’m finished with him,” Jack said, “there won’t be enough left for the crows. I need access to the north barn.”

  “Probably going to scalp him,” another voice murmured. “Dirty Injun.”

  The words were followed by the sound of a blow and a yelp.

  “Keep your insults behind my back unless you want me to rearrange your face,” Jack snapped. “Toss him in the back of the Gator. I’m not dragging him all the way there.”

  Rough hands grabbed me, and I could not keep a cry of agony contained. Then all went dark.

  “Maggie,” a voice said, low and urgent. I started. Maggie could not be here. “I need you to record this conversation. Right now.” I faded, drifting on waves of pain, before I heard, “—calling the police—north barn—ambulance.”

  I lost track of the one-sided conversation until I heard Jack’s voice close by. “You crazy bastard. What were you thinking?”

  “Winona,” I whispered.

  Sirens wailed in the distance, a battering ram against the pounding in my head.

  “The cavalry,” a voice said nearby. I struggled to place it. “About fucking time.”

  I lost time between those words and the shouting that hit me like a sudden blow. I could not make sense of the cacophony until one voice said, “Jesus, what is this place?”

  “—think we need to call in Fish and Wildlife—”

  “—assaulted the senator—”

  “—under arrest—”

  “—sir, can you—”

  The words swirled around me. It was like being caught in a whirlpool, and I could not keep my head from going under.

  I groaned at the white flair of light that bit at my eyelids and tried to lift a hand to shield my eyes. The
movement was snared as metal bit into my wrist.

  “Just relax,” a voice said softly. “You’re in the hospital, Hector.”

  I tried to blink my eyes, but they only opened in slits. It felt as if there were a jackhammer on a rampage in my head. A knife of pain was lodged in my side and in my back. The rest of my body hurt so fiercely I could not distinguish one ache from another.

  “Are you in pain?” Maggie. It was Maggie’s low voice spoken near my ear. “Don’t try to speak. Squeeze my fingers.”

  My hand clenched around hers before I could control the motion.

  In a few moments, I heard another voice, one I did not know, and then there was cool relief from the pain that swept through my veins.

  “You stupid idiot,” Maggie whispered, and then the darkness sucked me under.

  Waking was a painful experience accompanied by the alarming surge of nausea.

  “Sick,” I managed to gasp, and hands were immediately there to roll me to my side and thrust a bucket beneath my face.

  Vomiting was even more painful than waking. When my stomach was empty, I let my head hang off the side of the bed. A cool, damp cloth bathed my face, and then I was eased back into the bed.

  “Let me get him something for the nausea,” a nurse said softly.

  I could not find the strength to open my eyes. My throat was raw, but I was afraid that if I asked for water even that would come up with the heaving in my stomach. I shifted restlessly, sucking in a breath at the discomfort. Metal clanged as the handcuff tethering my wrist to the bedrail wrenched my arm when I tried to move.

  “Can you please take this ridiculous thing off of him?” Maggie’s voice snapped like the crack of a whip.

  “I can’t do that,” an unfamiliar voice said. “He’s still under arrest.”

  “You haven’t charged him,” another voice said, and I realized William was in the room.

  “Only because Senator Larson is in surgery having his jaw wired shut. We need to speak with him first.”

  “This is bullshit,” Maggie said. “Can’t you see he—?”

  “Maggie,” I whispered.

  Her hand clasped mine immediately, and I felt the ghost of her other palm against my swollen face. “I’m here, Hector.”

  “Frank?”

  “He’s at my house. He’s fine,” she assured me.

  The squeak of rubber-soled shoes alerted me to the nurse’s return to the room. “I have some Zofran,” she said. “That should have you feeling better in no time.”

  I tried to cling to Maggie’s hand, but the darkness swept over me once again.

  “Grade three concussion, broken nose, punctured lung, broken ribs, lacerated kidney.” I listened as the doctor listed off the litany of my injuries. “You’re lucky to be alive, Mr. Lewis.”

  At the moment, I did not feel lucky. I felt like I had been through a meat grinder.

  “We’ve told the sheriff’s department that we will be keeping you for several days for observation.” The doctor must have seen the look of protest on my face, because he nodded toward the cuff chaining me to the bed. “You don’t have much of a choice right now.”

  I did not have the energy to argue.

  “Just focus on resting right now,” the doctor said. “And I think you should consider pressing charges yourself.”

  As the doctor left the room, William strode in with Edwards, the ranger from the Yellowstone Law Enforcement Services Branch.

  “Jesus, Hector,” Edwards said. “I told you to give me a little time, not blaze in on your own.”

  “Can you nail the bastard?” I asked, voice scraping along my throat.

  Edwards’s smile was edged. “Oh yeah. Someone called 9-1-1 anonymously to report that you attacked the senator. Whoever it was led us right to his processing barn, where you were being held. Police called Fish and Wildlife when they saw the grizzlies.” He pulled out his phone, clicked on the screen, and extended it toward me. The handcuff clinked against the railing and hampered my reach for it. He stepped forward and placed it in my hand. “This doesn’t help his case either.”

  His phone was open to a news story released this morning in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle about a photograph that surfaced of the senator proudly displaying a dead bald eagle. There were millions of hits already on the article and thousands of comments.

  If it would not have hurt so much, I would have chuckled. The kid had come through for me.

  “There are more photos like this,” I said to Edwards. “I have names and dates. My wife began documenting this operation years ago.”

  I gave him the name and address of the kid in Bozeman who was working on the photographs. When he left, I glanced at the deputy from the sheriff’s department.

  William followed my gaze. “Can you give us a moment?” he asked.

  The deputy looked reluctant, but he moved out into the hallway.

  I lowered my voice. “Where’s Jack?”

  “Detained with the rest of Larson’s men for questioning.” He glanced toward the door. “I don’t think anyone realizes he was the anonymous caller.”

  “Faye and her son?” I whispered.

  “Safe,” he said, voice just as low. “They’re at Jack’s.”

  I closed my eyes.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “About like I did when I was trampled by a bull,” I said.

  “What the fuck were you thinking?” he asked. “His men would have killed you, and you would’ve been staked out as bait on his next hunt.”

  I leaned my head back against the pillow. “My head hurts too badly to have this discussion.”

  He snorted and fell silent for a moment. “Don’t think that excuse is going to work for very long with my mother.”

  Blacks can still be lynched. How would your friend look with a rope around her neck? I forced my eyes open and met his gaze. “If I go to jail, I need you to stay in town and make sure none of this blows back on her.”

  “I think with the story that just broke, you’re not going to go to jail.”

  “Please,” I said.

  His gaze sharpened on my face. “Something you want to tell me, Hec?”

  The last photo from the camera in the safety deposit box flashed across my mind, the desk and papers a blur in the bottom half of the print. In the edge of the frame, the shadowed figure of a man in a darkened doorway.

  Hector, if something happens to me…

  Something had happened to her, and the knowledge ate at me.

  How often had she lain awake at night consumed with fear for the people she loved? How many risks had she taken to try to preserve the ecosystem she loved so much? How badly had he hurt her after she took that last photograph?

  “Hector?” William asked, voice quiet.

  “Nothing to tell,” I said. This was mine to bear.

  thirty-two

  FAYE

  “Sam?” I struggled to keep the panic from my voice as I searched the cabin. He was nowhere to be found inside. I staggered outside. “Sam!”

  The moonlight was a heavy blue, and the night shadows were deep. The woods were clustered close around Jack Decker’s cabin. Nothing but silence answered my frantic call.

  He was gone, and I knew there was only one place he would go. Home, to the inn. I remembered the creak of a floorboard underfoot earlier and knew he had heard William’s words.

  I hurried back inside and into the bedroom. I pulled out drawers in the bureau, searching through them, and felt along the tall shelf overhead in the closet. If Jack kept my Beretta Pico I had on me after the accident, he had hidden it too well for me to find.

  In the bathroom, it appeared Jack was in the process of mounting a towel rod on the wall. A screwdriver was left on the counter. I picked it up and slipped it into the waistband of my leggings in case I needed to pop a lock at the inn. I found the key to William’s car under the pillow on the bed.

  In the car, my
hands shook so badly it took me three tries to insert the key into the ignition. Kevin would have the inn watched. If he had already spotted Sam, he would be long gone, and I would never see him again.

  I kept a tight lid on my panic as I drove toward Raven’s Gap. The clock on the dashboard said it was just past midnight. When I reached town, I pulled off and parked around the side of Ed’s Garage, the mechanic shop owned by Jack’s father. I avoided the sidewalks and lit pathways and instead cut through alleys and backyards.

  A dog barked nearby, his alert at my presence echoing through the night. I froze in the shadows between houses and waited for lights to flick, but all remained dark and quiet. I crept on, moving into the narrow stretch of woods. The shadows felt sinister and grasping, and I fought the urge to run toward the dim glow of streetlights I could see through the reaching fingers of the trees.

  When I did reach the edge of the trees, I stopped and ducked into deeper shadows. I had a clear vantage point of the inn and the street. The street was empty. There were no strange cars parked along the edge. The semicircular drive in front of the inn was lined with cars, but I recognized them as the guests’ vehicles. I could see no one and nothing that indicated the inn was being watched.

  Even so, I cut back through the trees until I was out of sight from the road and circled behind the houses across the street all the way to the dead end of the cul de sac. There were no houses on this side of the street, and I crept carefully down the embankment to the river’s edge.

  The route led me straight to the back of the inn, and again I hesitated, hidden in the shadow of the trees, watching. The lawn was exposed. For anyone observing, my movements toward the inn would not go unnoticed. It was a risk I had to take.