Hideaway

A coyote cried in the distance. Cheyenne shivered.

The wooden gate swung back on its metal hinges with a screech of complaint. She wouldn’t close it again tonight. Why bother? There wasn’t any livestock on this acreage. Judging by the thick growth of trees, there wouldn’t be much room for cattle.

She got back into the car. Now to find the house and settle in for a night without electricity. She pressed on the accelerator. The car surged forward, hesitating, jerking, as if it echoed her own thoughts. The road grew rougher, rockier, forcing her to slow to a crawl.

The shadow of an animal darted across the far reaches of the headlight beams. It stopped to gaze toward the car for just a moment, its eyes glowing red, then disappeared into the deep foliage. A dog? Another raccoon?

Or maybe the darkness of her dreams was coming to life at last. She wouldn’t be surprised.

She completed a curve in the road, and her headlights reflected against the pale sides of a building—her home for the next couple of months. She stopped and stared at the house in the headlight beams. The paint was dingy gray, dried and peeling. It looked as if no one had lived here in ten years.

Dead weeds covered the yard and wooden porch. So this was what Ardis had meant when she said the house needed “a woman’s touch.” All the sensible women Cheyenne knew would hire a dozer to level the place.

She pulled up to the edge of the yard, where the fence had collapsed, and turned off the engine as she scanned the place with distaste. Sixty-five acres with a solid, two bedroom house. Now that she thought about it, Ardis hadn’t said anything about a bathroom or a kitchen, or even a living room. What else had she failed to mention?

Cheyenne pulled a flashlight out of the glove compartment. This place surely couldn’t be so depressing in the light of day.

The frogs, which had momentarily stopped their singing at Cheyenne’s arrival, took up their chorus again as she crept across the yard and up the chipped concrete steps of the front porch. The door unlocked easily. She pushed it open. The rusty hinges caught and held. She pushed harder, and it gave way with a loud creak.

A scuttling sound came from somewhere inside. That would be mice, or perhaps rats? Maybe squirrels.

Nothing to be afraid of. She aimed her flashlight beam through the room and saw a floral sofa in blue and white. Stepping across the threshold, she caught the faint scent of a dirty kitty litter box. Yuck.

Cheyenne shuddered as she edged into the center of the fifteen-by-fifteen room and saw cobwebs hanging in multiple layers from the ceiling, barely discernible in the dimness. Cheyenne had always prided herself in her bravery in the face of barking dogs, invading mice, and even her own hostile brother-in-law. She could handle a few spiderwebs.

She walked through the door at the far right corner of the living room to the kitchen, complete with a sink, stove and refrigerator. Modern faucets gleamed. At least this section of the house was in better repair than Ardis had remembered.

Cheyenne inspected the cabinets on her way to the west side of the kitchen, then entered an open doorway beside the refrigerator to find a small bedroom. The beam of her light picked out the wrinkled folds of a burlap bag in the far southwestern corner. She pushed open the door to her right, saw the sink, claw-foot tub, commode. She nodded with satisfaction. It wasn’t until she saw the curtains over the sink billow inward with the breeze that she realized the window was open.

The floorboards creaked loudly underfoot as she stepped to the window. The pane slid down easily, but there was no latch. “Great,” she muttered. No telling how long it had been that way.

As she turned away, she thought she caught a flash of light from the corner of her vision. She frowned and returned to the window. In the backyard, barely outlined by the quarter moon, was a small shed. Past that about a hundred and fifty feet was the barn Ardis had told her about. No light.

Maybe what she’d seen had been distant headlights from a nearby, unseen road.

A small chest of drawers had been placed against the door that Cheyenne presumed led to the other, larger bedroom, but she didn’t feel like heaving the chest out of the way tonight. She retraced her steps to the living room and was about to push open the closed door adjacent to the entryway when she heard a muffled thump from the back of the house.

She froze in place.

She heard another creak of floorboards—from the bathroom. She stopped and stared at the threshold ahead of her, then swallowed. Her hands trembled, making the flashlight beam flicker against the far wall as she fought for control over her imagination.

No mouse had made that sound. She hadn’t imagined it.

She aimed the light at the kitchen doorway.

“Willy, that you?” came a deep male voice, accompanied by the sound of footsteps, the scritch of shoes on old linoleum. “I told you to get to bed. If Dane knows you came over here, he’s gonna kill me for sure.” A large man stepped through the doorway. “Get that flashlight off before someone sees it.”

Cheyenne caught her breath and stumbled backward.

His clothes were dark, and his skin so black he would have merged into shadow except for a huge smile, with teeth all over the place. He squinted in the light. Dreadlocks sproinged from his head in every direction.

“Quit teasing me, Willy. How’d you get in here? I don’t want to get you in…trouble…too.” He took a step forward. The teeth disappeared. “Willy?”

Cheyenne shuffled backward, collided with the half-open door, dropped her light with a clatter of plastic on wood.

Chapter Eight

“Well, that was stupid. You okay?” The deep voice cracked through sudden darkness as footsteps drew closer.

Cheyenne stopped breathing. Had she stumbled into illegal drug activity? The smell of a dirty litter box…meth lab?

“Stay back! I’ve got a gun.” She reached into the right pocket of her jacket and pulled out the tiny pistol. He didn’t have to know what it contained.

The footsteps stopped. “A gun! Who are you?” The voice came again, deep, but hoarse with the defining echo of adolescence.

Her heart thumped a dance against her ribs as she fought panic. “I don’t think that’s the question right now, since you’re the one trespassing.” Her voice sounded shaky in her own ears.

She crouched, feeling along the wooden floorboards with her hands. Could she pull the trigger on a teenager? “What are you doing in this house?” She should have run when she’d had the chance. Why had she hesitated? Stupid, stupid!

No reply. No movement. Only loud breathing that sounded more terror-stricken than her own. He could be a meth addict who was tweaking—desperate for another fix, and willing to go through anyone to find it. She’d had a few of those as patients in the ER.

Her fingers came into contact with the flashlight. She grabbed it and straightened, switched on the light and aimed the beam upward so it would diffuse throughout the room—less threatening, she hoped, if he truly was tweaking. She saw his silhouette and held the pistol high, so he would be sure to see it.

Straight dark brows rose over wide-open eyes. The young man whose shoulders nearly filled the doorway wore a black sweatshirt and dark-blue jeans that looked new. His work boots that were stained with mud.

This was crazy. He could be a killer. Why had she come out here at night?

If she didn’t continue the bluff, he could reach her in three strides. If she tried to run, she risked being shot in the back if he had a gun. She needed to gently ease out the front door, get to the car and test the capacity of the car’s acceleration.

“That a…real gun?” he asked, voice hoarse with obvious tension.

“You want a demonstration?” She tried to instill a threatening tone to her voice. It sounded phony to her.

He held his hands out to his sides, shaking his head. “No, I don’t need anything like that. How’d you know I was here?”

“I’ll ask the questions! Tell me who you are and what you’re doing in this house.” She was pushing it, she knew, but so far she had him fooled. How she would manage to get him out, she didn’t know.

He glanced out the front window, as if searching for her car—or maybe looking for his buddies? Who was Willy?

Somehow, the kid didn’t seem like a tweaker. In fact, he didn’t seem dangerous at all, and he had obvious respect for the teensy weapon in her hand. Good. It needed to stay that way. “Answer me!”

His attention refocused on the pistol. “I’m Gavin Farmer, and I live across the lake at the boys’ ranch. I’m not doing anything bad over here, honest. I’m sorry, I thought nobody lived here.” His gaze swept past her, out the window again. “You’re alone?”

“I’m never alone.” She fingered the small pistol of pepper mace. “And I plan to live here for a while. As I said, you’re trespassing.” It had been a long time since she’d knocked a man to his knees, but she still knew the moves, even for a big, tough kid. Still, something about him didn’t seem tough.

“They said this place wouldn’t ever sell, that it was tied up in some dead woman’s estate,” the kid said. “Austin Barlow send you here?”

“No.”

“The sheriff, then. He send you?”

“Do I look like a deputy?” she asked.

“I don’t know many deputies.” There was some familiar emotion in his voice, in his movement. It wasn’t anger so much as resentment. Despair, even.

“I’m not under arrest, then?” he asked.

She studied the shadows of his face for a moment. “Why would you think you were under arrest?”

“Well, for one thing, you’re still holding that gun.”

“I think I’ll hold it a little longer, if you don’t mind. Are you cooking meth in this house?”

His eyes widened. “Meth! You mean drugs? No way!”

Her instincts said he was telling the truth, though she didn’t know how far she could trust her instincts these days. She lowered the mace slightly, and heard him release a quiet sigh.

“Ardis Dunaway sent me here,” she said.

“Don’t know him.”

“Obviously not,” Cheyenne said dryly. “You climbed through the bathroom window?”

He nodded. “It wasn’t latched.”

“Just because a door isn’t locked doesn’t mean you have a right to trespass on someone else’s property. Who’s Austin Barlow?”

He lowered his hands to his sides. “The mayor of Hideaway, population a thousand plus some change.”

“Who’s Willy?”

“Another ranch boy like me.”

Okay, things were beginning to make a little more sense. Not a lot, but some.

“So what are you doing here?” Cheyenne asked. “And why would the mayor call the sheriff on you?”

“Because he doesn’t like my hair and he doesn’t like my nickname, and he likes to blame the ranch boys for everything that goes wrong around here.”

“In that case, don’t you think it’s time you got back to the ranch?” she asked.

“You going to tell Dane about this?”

“I don’t even know Dane.” She waited for him to make for the door, but he just stood there in the middle of the living room. Something about this kid intrigued her—and he was definitely stalling for some reason. Were the police actually looking for him? “You never told me what you were doing in my house.”

“Thought you said it was Ardis Dunaway’s house.”

He had a good memory for names. “It is, and I’m going to sleep here tonight, so if you don’t mind—”

“No electricity.”

“Good. I like to camp out.”

“You won’t like the ghosts.”

“Right.” Ghosts?

“And you’ll have to use the old outhouse, because without electricity there’s no water.”

“That’ll be my problem, won’t it? Go home.”

Still he hesitated.

Her internal tension meter kicked back up a notch. Why wouldn’t he leave?

He glanced at the pistol she still held in her hand. “That a twenty-five caliber?”

“No.”

He nodded and gazed around the room.

“Is there something else you need to tell me?” she asked.

“This place has cockroaches.”

Lovely. “Do you plan to do something about that?”

“No, but ol’ Bertie Meyer says all you have to do is throw a few hedge apples under the house and the bugs’ll leave.”

“Who’s Bertie Meyer?”

“Your nearest neighbor. She and Red are eighty-something and going strong.”

“What’s a hedge apple?”

He frowned at her. “You sure you want to stay here? You got a lot to learn about farm life.”

“I didn’t say I was a farmer.”

“You’re moving in here? All alone? You just came out here to live all by yourself?”

She glared at him. Her hand automatically tightened around the pistol. What was his game?

“All I’m saying is, don’t you need some help carrying your things in?”

“No.”

Without turning her back to him, she reached for the front door and shoved it open wide. She hadn’t completed the task when she heard the slap of shoe leather on concrete behind her on the porch. The long spring on the screen door twanged as it opened.

“Blaze, I guess you know you’re dead.”

Cheyenne pivoted with her flashlight and her pistol as a hulking, short-haired Santa Claus in denim filled the doorway like a mafioso hit man.

He looked at the gun, then looked past Cheyenne toward the kid and lunged forward.

“No!” the kid shouted. “No, don’t shoot! He’s—”

Her scream and the contents of her pistol blasted at the same time as she scrambled away from him. The man fell backward onto the porch with a cry of agony. Cheyenne caught the rebound effect of the spray in her face. It burned like fire, blinding her.

“Dane! No!” The kid shoved past Cheyenne. “You shot him? I can’t believe you shot him!”

Chapter Nine

“I didn’t shoot him, I sprayed him.”

“This is Dane!” Blaze’s voice barely reached through the curtain of fire that scorched Dane’s face and eyes. “This is the director of the ranch, how could you do that?”

“I’m sorry, we can—”

“He wasn’t hurting anybody, he was just coming to find me and take me home. Dane, it’s okay, we’re going to get you help. Just hold on!”

Dane groaned a response, writhing in agony on the concrete.

“Help me get him to water,” the woman said. “Quickly! It’s pepper mace. If we can get to water, we can dilute the pain. Where’s the nearest—”

“Get away, I’ll take care of him myself! You just get back.” Gentle hands urged Dane to his feet. “Come on, let’s get you to the lake, it’s just down the hill. I can’t believe that crazy woman did this to you.”

“I’m sorry,” the woman said again. “I didn’t know—”

“I said get back, just leave him alone! Haven’t you done enough? It’s okay, Dane, we’re going to take care of it right now,” came the tender voice Blaze used with injured or frightened animals. “Just walk with me. No, not you, lady. You just stay right here and keep that gun in its holster.”

“I need the water too, if you don’t mind,” the woman snapped. “I caught the spray in my face. It isn’t as if I do this kind of thing every day. I didn’t know it attacked everything in a five-foot—ouch!”

“Watch that hole,” Blaze said.

“Thanks.”

The cloud of pain stalked Dane as he allowed himself to be guided across the yard. His groans persisted as if as if he had no control over his voice. When they finally reached the lake, Blaze told him to kneel, then splashed the frigid water into his face.

The relief was sweeter than anything Dane had ever felt in his life. He bent forward and plunged his whole head beneath the lake’s surface, held his breath until his lungs threatened to burst, then emerged only long enough to inhale, then plunge again.

Several moments later, after the burn began to subside, he realized Blaze had gone silent. The only sound he heard was splashing.

“Blaze?”

The splashing stopped. “He left,” came the mellow feminine voice of his attacker. “Are you okay?”

“Much better. You?”

“I’m fine, but you took the brunt of it.” She didn’t sound like a mad mace sprayer. She sounded like a reasonable human being.

He dashed the water from his hair and beard with his hands and glanced up at her shadow in the darkness. “Wow. I can’t believe the difference a lakeful of water can make.”

“It’s pretty dramatic.” She switched on her flashlight, illuminating her drenched face, hair, red flannel jacket. “Come on, let’s get to the house before we freeze. Your ranch hand already excused himself.”

“You mean he went back to the ranch?”

“No, up to the house, I think. I wasn’t paying much attention at the time.”

“I can’t believe he just took off like that. It isn’t like him.” Dane pulled out his own flashlight and joined her.

“You must have been underwater when he said he was leaving. He’s pretty upset with me.”

“He has a lot to learn about women.”

“Oh, really.” There was an edgy pause as they walked side by side up the steep slope of the yard, shoes crackling the overgrown grass. “I take it you’ve been maced before.”

Ah, yes, that mellow voice sharpened nicely. In spite of his recent shock, he felt his lips twitch with a smile that was probably unwise at the moment. “What I meant was that he needs to understand that any woman in her right mind would have done the same thing, accosted by two strange men out in the middle of nowhere.”

There was another pause as she glanced sideways at him, as if to determine his sincerity. “Good save.”

“Thank you.” The smile would not behave. He knew it was a reaction to the relief he’d just experienced, but he’d learned long ago to look for the humor in any situation. He could enjoy a slapstick comedy routine on occasion—and this was definitely that. “I apologize for frightening you, and when I hunt Blaze down, I’ll beat an apology out of him, too.”

Too late, he realized how that must sound. He felt her disquieted gaze. “Figure of speech,” he said. “I don’t beat my boys.”

“You called him Blaze?”

“It’s his nickname, and believe me, it isn’t a slur. He chose the name himself.” He glanced at her. She had an expressive face that revealed her continued concern. Dark eyes that seemed warm, intelligent. She was only three or four inches shorter than his six-foot frame, with straight black hair, now heavy with lake water, that fell in layers across her neck and forehead.

She took the porch steps with athletic grace, then turned to him. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about this.”

He stepped into the beam of her flashlight. “I know it’s a little late for the amenities, but I’m Dane Gideon. I run the boys’ ranch across the lake.”

“So I gathered from Gavin. I’m Cheyenne Allison. A friend of mine inherited this place, and I’m on…I’ll be staying here for a while. Does Gavin have a habit of wandering away from the ranch in the middle of the night?”

“On occasion. He’s accustomed to more solitude than he gets with us. I’d like to keep him at the ranch more consistently, but I’ve decided to use my own discretion about discipline with this kid, instead of going strictly by the rules. Until now, Blaze hasn’t let me down.” He opened the screen door and held it for her.

She hesitated, thoughtful eyes focusing intently on him.

Right. She was less confident about the situation than she appeared. “Actually, I don’t need to go inside,” he said. “I just need to collect Blaze and take him home. I’m not sure what it is about this place that draws him, except that it’s peaceful here. Its previous inhabitants were very kind people, and they took good care of the house.” Why was he chattering all of a sudden? Perhaps it was the superastute gaze of those dark eyes.

“Come on in,” she said at last, stepping over the threshold. “Gavin doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to go back to the ranch. Do you know anything about Austin Barlow calling the sheriff about him?”

As she passed, Dane caught a faint scent of vanilla. “I don’t think Austin would do that. He has no reason to.”

Blaze wasn’t in the living room.

“Maybe he bolted again,” she said.

“He wouldn’t,” Dane replied. What was Blaze up to? He glanced around the room. “Obviously you don’t have electricity yet. Did you just get here?”

She nodded, looking around the barely furnished room—complete with cobwebs—with an expression of dismay.

“You know, there’s a cozy bed-and-breakfast about a mile from here, on the lakeshore,” Dane said. “I’d be glad to call Shatzi and see if there’s a room available for the remainder of the night.” He would negotiate a good price for her—it was the least he could do after terrorizing her tonight. “There’s usually a vacancy this time of year. That way you could have a nice hot breakfast before you come back out here to finish unloading your car and put everything in order.” He was talking too much again.

She gave him an enigmatic smile. “Thanks, but I’ll be fine. The owner will have the power turned on first thing in the morning—she just didn’t expect me to arrive so early.” She raised her voice. “Gavin, are you in here?”

They heard a thump and a mutter of unintelligible words through the door at the western end of the room.

Dane opened the door and stepped through. “Blaze? We need to go home now, son.” He aimed the beam of his light around the plain, paneled bedroom, which contained a twin-size bed and small dresser in the southwest corner. There was a brown mess of stains in the center of the bare mattress. Something stank.

A grunt drew his light to the closet, where a denim-covered derriere presented itself to them. “Blaze.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, you want to let me in on the little mystery?” Dane asked. He felt the victim of tonight’s onslaught step up behind him. He turned to her. “I’m sorry about all this, really. Crazy as it seems, Blaze usually has a reason for behaving the way he…does. Blaze, we see your photogenic side, now would you show us your face and try hard to explain why you’re hiding in a closet in a stranger’s house?”

“Not hiding,” Blaze muttered. “Seeking. Come here, little darling.”

Dane could almost feel Cheyenne Allison’s alarm. She must think he ran a ranch filled with lunatics.

“Aha!” Blaze said. “There you are, you little fighter. Come here, let me take you to some milk. I bet you’re starved half to death. Where’s the rest of your family?”

Dane cleared his throat. “Blaze.”

“Ah, gotcha!” Blaze backed out of the closet, cuddling four mewling balls of golden kitten fluff beneath his chin. “Finally found them. You know the cat that was executed Saturday? I’m pretty sure these are her babies.”

Cheyenne caught her breath. “Somebody executed a cat?”

“We have a repeat offender who likes to vandalize the community every so often, “Dane explained. “Blaze, how did you—”

“I was hoping I could do this without getting in trouble.” Blaze nuzzled one of the kittens, then wrinkled his nose. “Phew, you stink. Didn’t Mama teach you how to use the kitty litter?”

“Blaze.”

“Okay, okay, but you’re not going to write me up over this, are you?”

“I’m not sure I—”

“I heard them crying the first time I came over here a couple weeks ago.” Blaze untangled one kitten from two of his dreadlocks and squatted to place them all on the floor. “I couldn’t tell what the sound was, and before I could find out, Cook caught me and made me go home, then ratted me out to you.”

“But of course you had to come back and investigate,” Dane said.

“Not for a few days, and that was when I saw Mrs. Potts’s cat coming in through the window. I only did it then because—”

“I know, you were afraid there was some animal trapped in here.” Dane strolled over to the bed and studied the stains. “Apparently, she gave birth to them in the bed.” He glanced at Cheyenne. “Sorry. It’s a mess.”

“I’ll sleep on the sofa tonight.”