by Nicole Helm
He scanned Main Street again. The chance of his target coming back was probably slim, but the chance of seeing him walking around, shopping at the general store or driving down the street? Well, it was possible.
Even in the middle of the day, things were pretty quiet in this small town. Every once in a while someone would walk by, go in and out of the businesses. Sometimes people drove by. Some stopped. Some didn’t.
Holden would watch them all without them knowing. A skill he’d developed once, many years ago, picking pockets.
A rusty old truck rumbled to a stop in front of the post office, blocking his view. Holden frowned and tossed the cigarette in the trash can. Pretending to take a casual stroll, he moved across the street and then down the sidewalk as the driver got out of the truck and walked to the post office door. She wore an oversize coat, jeans streaked with dirt and a ratty-looking stocking cap over messy braided pigtails.
For half a second, he thought she might be a child, but she’d been driving. Besides, she was too tall and her face wasn’t really childlike. Youngish. Early twenties, probably. She stepped inside, and Holden angled himself so he could watch her through the windowed door. She didn’t stop and chat with the woman behind the counter like the rest of the patrons had done since he’d been watching.
He inched closer, keeping her in view, but he stopped short when he saw what she was doing.
She was pulling a few envelopes out of the exact mailbox he’d been watching. Number 10. He counted once, twice, then three times to make sure it was in fact the mailbox that supposedly nobody owned. The mailbox someone had ordered high-powered, black-market ammo to be delivered to.
Holden eyed the woman. Could she have been the overdressed person who’d gotten the ammo earlier in the week? He’d assumed it was a man, but...
Before she closed the door to the box, she looked back over her shoulder and locked eyes with him, as if she’d felt him watching.
Damn.
Holden smiled lazily. Looking away would bring more suspicion than being a creep. He hoped.
The woman looked back at her mailbox. Her coat collar and pigtails obscured her face, but he figured his best course of action was to stay here and then hit on her. She might remember his face, she might be weirded out, but hopefully she wouldn’t think much of it beyond that.
Especially if she was his target.
After a few more moments, she walked out of the post office. She kept her eyes straight ahead on her truck and didn’t give him a second glance.
“Hi there,” he offered.
She didn’t respond. Didn’t look at him. She just walked by, going straight for her truck.
Hmm.
“I thought small-town folks were supposed to be friendly,” he called after her.
She gave him one cold look, then slid into the driver’s seat of her truck. When she drove away, Holden noted her license plate number, the direction she was going and the size of her tires, then backtracked to go find his car.
Chapter Two
Willa Zimmerman didn’t like the creeping sensation that she was being followed. She didn’t see anyone on the old, cracking county highway behind her, but she’d been taught to never, ever ignore her instincts.
The man was following her.
She glanced at the pile of envelopes in her passenger seat. Messages from her parents were rarely a good thing. But she wouldn’t be able to determine how bad things were until she was in the safety of her own home.
“You’d think they could just leave me out of it, Stanley,” Willa muttered at the snoozing sheepdog in the back seat. He didn’t even lift his head to pretend to humor her. “Goats are better listeners,” she muttered, turning onto the long, winding gravel road that would lead her home.
She checked her rearview mirror again. Still no sign of the man, but she knew he was there.
She also knew he wouldn’t get past a certain point. At least not in one piece. Which was a slim comfort when all she wanted was to be left alone to see to her farm.
She glanced at the letters again. No doubt there’d be a warning included. What Willa didn’t know yet was the urgency or level of the warning. Part of her wanted to ignore the letters, ignore the man, ignore who and what her parents were and just...live this perfect life she’d built.
But no life was perfect without a little imperfect payment.
She bumped along the gravel road as her house came into view. Even with a threat in the ether, the sight of her house and barns and menagerie of animals made her smile. Maybe she couldn’t have a normal life, but the abnormal one she’d built for herself was her idea of paradise.
Mostly.
She parked the truck at the end of the gravel lane and hopped out. Since she hadn’t seen her follower, she likely had about five to ten minutes before he got a little surprise she’d have to tend to.
She opened the back door of the truck and urged Stanley out. He sighed heavily and took his sweet time jumping out and onto the ground below. Then he huffed out a breath as if offended he’d had to move.
“You’re the one who wanted to go with,” she told him as he lazily made his way for the house, where he’d no doubt find a place on the porch to sit and sleep some more.
The noises of goats, pigs, sheep and chickens filled the air as she shoved the letters into the oversize pocket of her ancient coat. The letter would be written in code, because her parents were nothing if not dramatic.
She really didn’t want to face it. Maybe that wasn’t fair, but as she moved toward the house, three more dogs coming to greet her with happy yips and jumps, she considered, not for the first time, ignoring her parents completely.
If she cut them off, couldn’t she prevent their drama from touching her life?
Like always, a wave of guilt followed that thought. Then a pang of longing. Even though her parents weren’t the farming type, when they weren’t off on “vacation,” she usually saw them once a week for dinner.
It was her only true human interaction. As much as she loved her animals, and her farm, a woman could only hold so many one-sided conversations with a goat before she started missing human companionship.
Willa shook her head. This was her life, and there was no use wishing it could be different. She took a seat on the porch stairs, and two cats immediately slunk out from under the porch to wind around her legs.
She opened the envelope then absently scratched Angela’s soft head.
Dearest Willa,
We’re enjoying our trip and hope things are safe and sound at home. Give Yellow a big hug for us.
Love,
Mom and Dad
Yellow. Well, it was better than Red, Willa supposed. What would she do with all her animals if her parents ever gave her a code red? She had doubts she’d even be able to follow through.
Her parents would not like that.
The alarm sounded, and Willa sighed, squinting off into the distance. It would have to be taken care of, and quickly.
What she wouldn’t give for a normal life.
* * *
HOLDEN STUDIED THE area around him as he drove. Farm, farm, farm. Flat waving grain or green fields dotted with cattle. It was a nice day, with puffy white clouds wafting in the bright blue sky. He had his windows rolled down and couldn’t deny that it was...nice. Relaxing. A pretty drive on a pretty day.
He slowed at every turnoff. Mostly they were gravel roads, no names, but a mailbox and gate at the end of each. Some gates were closed, some open. Sometimes he saw farm machinery out in a field, or a house far off from the road, but sometimes the fields seemed completely devoid of humans’ presence.
He couldn’t decide if it was delightful or downright creepy. He’d grown up in South Dakota but had always lived in Sioux Falls—not exactly a bustling metropolis. But a city. Sure, the occasional trip to the Badlands and its eeri
e, isolated landscape had given him a taste for wide-open spaces. But it felt right there to look out and see something that appeared untouched by human hands.
Here it felt... Well, Holden couldn’t quite put his finger on the words for what it felt like.
As he drove slowly, he studied each gravel lane for signs of a vehicle being driven down it recently—puffs of dust or fresh tracks in the little strip of grayish mud between road and gravel.
The first time he found both, he turned down the gravel without hesitation. He hadn’t seen another soul on the drive out of Evening, or to Evening. Or anywhere.
The gravel road wound around, curving this way and that, following a creek, avoiding a large, seemingly out-of-place rock cropping. Holden kept his speed slow, pretending he was enjoying a leisurely country drive on a pretty day.
He kept his windows rolled down, listening for anything, eyes sharp and assessing the situation even as he let a fake, easy smile play on his face.
A prickle of unease went across the back of his neck, and Holden slowed to a complete stop. Something was off. And weird. The road didn’t seem to lead anywhere.
He turned off the engine and scanned the area. He listened. There was a slight breeze and the smell of clover and cow pies in the air. It should have been off-putting, but something about it was so bucolic he found himself smiling.
It was the most silence that hadn’t bothered him in...ever.
Then he heard a rooster crow. Followed by the echoing baa of sheep? A few seconds later, a moo followed.
What kind of living hell had he fallen into?
He shook himself out of the odd mood, the odd reverie of peace, and turned the ignition so the engine of the car purred to life. He’d follow the road the rest of the way. He wasn’t ignoring that gut feeling that something was off. He was just considering the possibility his gut feeling was born of being weirded out by picturesque American heartland.
The gravel road wound around another thicket of trees, and Holden could see the hint of a house or a barn between the trees. He slowed his car to an absolute crawl, keeping his eyes on the building through the trees.
The woman could have led him into a trap. Alternatively, she could be a complete and utter innocent bystander. But there was something about all this that had his instincts humming.
As he came around the corner, before he could fully get an idea if the building was a house or a barn, his car made a shuddering noise and the entire vehicle jerked, which caused him to yank the wheel, since he was gripping it hard and hadn’t put his seat belt back on.
Somehow that small yank had the whole car tipping toward the slight hill to the left. If he tipped any farther, the whole car would flip, and then...
Holden had a split second of inner swearing before the whole world went dark.
He had no idea how much time passed before he found himself blinking his eyes open. His vision was blurry, but the world around him was definitely dark. And...enclosed. He wasn’t on the ground. Or in his car. He was lying on something...not soft, exactly, but not hard.
He blinked a few more times then tried to sit up, but as he tried to move his arm to leverage himself into a sitting position, he couldn’t. At least not far.
Something clanged next to him, like a chain rattling against metal. He turned his head through the pounding pain in his temple to look at his arm. Around his wrist was a handcuff, connected to a long chain that was attached to the other handcuff, which was fasted around the metal frame of a rusty old bed.
Terror spurted through him for one debilitating second, but he forced himself to breathe. Think. He’d been in a few tough spots before. He’d gotten out of those. He wasn’t dead, so he could get out of this one.
If he could figure out what on earth had happened.
He looked around him. He appeared to be in some kind of...barn. Very old, if the cracks between boards that made up the roof were anything to go by. The sides appeared to be made up of stones with more aging, warped boards stacked on top.
There seemed to be some light outside, but it was dim. It allowed him to make out his surroundings in shadow, making him think he must have been unconscious for a few hours at best.
And somehow he’d been moved into some horror-movie barn and chained to a rusty old bed with an uncomfortable mattress. He looked down at his feet. They were chained to the bed frame as well. And in between his legs were two glowing eyes.
Holden tried to scramble out of the way, but of course he was chained by every limb to this creaky bed frame.
A door squeaked open, the screech of metal on metal making Holden wince. The animal between his legs began to paw at his knee.
“Oh, you’re awake,” the woman said. “I suppose that’s a good thing.” It was the woman from the post office. She looked perfectly calm, as if this was normal. She was still wearing the same outfit she’d worn at the post office, and she studied him with serious green eyes.
“I’m chained to a bed,” he said, just in case she’d somehow stumbled upon him and didn’t understand the situation.
“Mm.” She tilted her head to the side, studying the bed below him. “Such as it is anyway.”
“You chained me to a bed.”
“Yes,” she agreed, as if that wasn’t insanity. “Seemed the safest option. Oh, Kelly. Don’t be a pain.” She walked over and picked up the creature between his legs. A cat. A very large, very fat cat.
She gently put the cat on the floor of the barn then turned to him. “So. Who are you?”
He glanced from the woman to the cat, who was sitting next to the woman’s feet, creepy cat eyes squarely on him. “Who am I? You chained me to a bed in some dilapidated barn in the middle of nowhere.”
She looked around the barn as if seeing it for the first time. “I admit it’s a bit rough around the edges, but dilapidated is harsh, don’t you think?”
“I...” Holden was left utterly speechless, a sensation he couldn’t remember ever having.
He studied this woman. It was hard to believe she was some kind of ghost assassin, what with the farmer overalls and the fresh-faced beauty. Holden knew looks could be deceiving but still, her gaze was frank, wary, but not...cruel.
But regardless of who or what she was, she was obviously unbalanced. What with him being chained to a bed and all.
He closed his eyes for a moment. He had to get his wits about him. This jumbled, speechless feeling was a side effect of being knocked out, surely. Once he could get his mind in working order, he’d find a way to escape this.
She hadn’t killed him, after all. He opened his eyes and frowned at her. As far as he knew, she hadn’t even hurt him. She’d just...what exactly? Dragged him into a creaky old barn and chained him up?
“You probably need something to drink,” the woman observed. She walked over to a little cabinet and grabbed what appeared to be a tin cup, like people used when camping. He couldn’t move enough to see her as she walked farther into the barn, but he heard the groan and then whoosh of water running through a pipe.
When she returned to his field of vision, she had the cup in her hand and was studying the chains on his hands. She made a considering noise, then did something that allowed the chain to move more liberally against the metal frame. He was still chained to it, but he could lift his arm.
She handed him the cup. “You should probably drink all this. I don’t know that it’ll help the whole head-wound thing, but you don’t want to get dehydrated.”
His brain clearly still wasn’t working because all he could do was stare at her. Baffled. Utterly and completely baffled. “You dragged me into your creepy horror-show barn and chained me to a bed.”
“You seem to be having a really hard time with that, but yes. That is what happened. Are you having, like...short-term memory loss?”
“Are you having a break with reality?”
She blinked and managed to somehow look offended. “No. But when some man follows me home from town and then tries to drive onto my property, I think I have a right to defend myself.”
“I didn’t do anything to you.”
“You followed me. Like a stalker.”
“So call the police.”
Her expression changed. He couldn’t read the change or what it meant, but it was almost like she’d clicked some new armor into place. “This’ll do. Now. Drink the water.”
She shoved the cup into his hand. He probably could have grabbed her arm. With the extra movement of the chains, he could probably debilitate her.
But all he could seem to do was curl his fingers around the cup she handed him.
Chapter Three
The man took the cup, but then he just lay there as if he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. Willa had bandaged up his head wound and the other cuts and scratches on him from his car accident while he’d been unconscious, but clearly he wasn’t quite one hundred percent.
“You probably need to sit up to drink,” she decided when he simply held on to the cup.
“How?”
She knew it was silly to feel sorry for someone clearly here to do her some harm, but she couldn’t help it. He was injured and confused, and she had chained him to a bed in an old barn she mostly used for storage.
“I’ll help you.” She went around to the back of his head and grabbed his shoulders, pushing him up. She perched herself on the edge of the bed, letting his back lean against hers in an upright position so he could drink his water.
His back was warm, and she could feel the movements of his muscles as he lifted the cup to his mouth. It was such a stark reminder of how isolated her life was. How devoid of any real human contact when her parents weren’t home. Because she felt some odd relief inside herself to be touching another human being.
Get it together, Willa.
“Do you feel dizzy?” she asked, staring hard at the stone foundation of the barn’s walls.