She couldn’t keep living this way. She couldn’t keep biding her time taking care of horses that weren’t hers on a ranch that wasn’t hers with a man who... She swallowed more water along with the regret. A man who wasn’t hers. She couldn’t keep hiding. She couldn’t let the fear win. “Where are we?”
“About a quarter mile from the Preston farm. Paul Preston. He died a while back. After I filled Trapper in, he looked into a few things. Found this place. Thought it was worth checking out.”
“How much did you tell Trapper?” No wonder the old coot had been so solicitous and concerned back in the stable. He’d probably been waiting days for her to snap or fall apart.
“I told Trapper what he needed to know. Are you feeling better? Are you ready to push further and see where this goes?”
Was she? Jane’s gaze skittered back to the highway, then in the other direction. She could hear the past sounds of her feet crunching in the leaves and twigs and debris littering the ground as she’d run from the shed, run toward the only direction she could find. This highway. This road. Which meant...
She walked past Leo and Ollie, keeping close to the trees as she headed down the side of the road. The traffic was as sporadic as it had been that night, with only an occasional passing car. It made sense. Earlier Leo had told her this was one of those out-of-the-way roads that while it got you to the heart of Roaring Springs eventually, only those who lived on the far outskirts of the town knew about it or even used it.
“There were lights that night.” She didn’t have to turn to know Leo was right behind her. He had her back. Just as he had from the moment he’d first found her in his barn. And that knowledge pushed the last tendrils of fear aside. “The night I got away.” Her voice sounded hollow, detached. “Down that way. Far in the distance, but I could see them.” She shivered. She could feel them.
“What kind of lights?”
“Red. Blue. Spinning.” Blinding. Just thinking about them made her head hurt. She pressed her fingers against her temple as if doing so would help her remember more.
“Police.”
“Yes.” The fear was back, a hot bubble pressing into her throat, blocking her air. “They scared me. Drove me the other way.” She turned and pointed across the highway. “There was a truck. White I think? A young man was driving. He, I think he tried to help me but I just kept running.”
“Maybe he reported seeing you to the police.”
She shook her head. “Maybe.” For some reason she hoped not.
“That’s something we can look into. Do you want to get back into the truck and drive on or do you want to walk?”
“I don’t know where—” She turned along with Leo and found the narrow road beneath the undergrowth leading deep into the trees. Deep into the darkness.
Big enough for a truck to pass through.
Small enough to contain her fear.
“I’m right here, Jane.” He brushed gentle fingers down her arm, as if afraid of startling her out of a trance. “Whatever you decide—”
“I know.” She held out her hand and blinked back tears of relief when he didn’t hesitate. The sensation of his fingers sliding between hers, clasping her hand securely in his as Ollie came around to her other side, comforted her beyond measure. “I know you are. Let’s go.”
He didn’t say another word. He simply squeezed her hand.
Together, they stepped onto the road.
Chapter 7
“You sure this isn’t a set from some old creepy horror movie?”
Jane’s voice carried more than a hint of the frustration Leo was feeling. Only when he realized this place did nothing to trigger her memory did he realize how much hope he’d been holding that it would.
The dilapidated, weatherworn cabin situated in the back corner of the property could very well have been used as the perfect setting for an ax-wielding murderer bent on ridding the world of pesky, hypersexualized fictional teenagers. Trees and shrubs and weeds had overgrown to the point of dangerous, with thick roots popping up out of the ground and waist-high debris overtaking the property. Whatever natural paths had once existed had been obliterated by the years of neglect.
“Whoever owns it now certainly could rent it out as one.” Leo tried to keep his tone light. They needed to make some progress, if not regarding who Jane was, then at the very least who might have left her tied up in the shed and why.
“Should we go inside?” She was already on the rickety front porch, clearly having answered her own question.
“Up to you.”
Ollie whined and dropped to the ground to rest his chin on his paws.
“I don’t think Ollie’s particularly anxious to do so.” Leo bent down to give the dog a good scrub on the top of his head. “You stand guard, okay, boy?”
The German shepherd heaved a sigh and turned his face into the sun. Leo followed Jane, who pressed her hand flat against the door and pushed it open.
The hinges creaked so loudly, they may as well have been a burglar alarm. The skittering and scampering inside conjured images of all kinds of rodents, and they both covered their mouths and noses with their hands to stop from breathing in the stench coating the interior. Leo’s eyes watered as he walked across the filthy kitchen to push open one of the windows.
The midafternoon sun could barely find its way through the grimy glass, but the sliver of light he managed to find removed some of the shadows from the large space that held both the kitchen and sitting room. Rusted springs had escaped the fabric-encased sofa. One of the legs of the wooden coffee table had been gnawed off by something with a set of teeth Leo wouldn’t want to encounter. What was left of a shattered mirror and its frame hung crooked above the brick fireplace that contained more ashes than a crematorium. Warped doors stood on either side of the fireplace, but only one had a shiny new knob and lock glowing against the sudden invasion of sun.
“How long has this Preston fellow been dead?” Jane pushed her foot through an old stack of magazines that dropped apart at the barest touch.
“Five years from what Trapper said.”
“Smells like it,” she muttered.
“You haven’t been here before, have you?” Given her reaction to the highway, he had a pretty good idea of what her reaction would have been had she recognized anything.
“No.” She uncovered her mouth, picked up the poker by the fireplace and bent down to dig through the ashes. “Nothing is familiar. Maybe with the shed it’ll be different.”
“Might need an industrial Weedwacker to get there.” Leo turned the knob on the bedroom to their right, and cringed at the sight inside. “Clearly this place will not be featured in Good Housekeeping.”
“Do you have a flashlight or something?”
“Back in the truck.” One of the few apps he actually missed using on his cell phone, but he’d gotten used to not having it at all these past few months. “Let’s try this.” He found a box of long matches on the mantel, struck one, and then crouched beside her as she reached into the pile of ash and removed what was left of a plastic card. “Looks like a driver’s license. There’s the state seal.” He angled the flame closer. “Careful. Don’t want to light your hair on fire.”
“Would give me an excuse to cut it off,” she muttered.
“Don’t you dare.”
Her head snapped around and she looked at him, eyes wide. “Okay.” She smiled, one of those all-knowing female smiles he’d bet had frustrated men for a millennia, before she returned her attention to the ID.
Leo felt his cheeks warm. Why’d he have to say that out loud? But he wasn’t wrong. The very idea of hacking off that gorgeous red hair of hers was unacceptable. Not that he had any say in the matter. But he’d lost track of the minutes—or was it hours—he’d found himself daydreaming about what it would be like to feel that hair sliding between his fingers. Of diving h
is fingers deep as he held her to him, as he kissed her. Made love to her...
“Leo? Did you hear me?”
“Nope.” And he wasn’t going to apologize for it. How could he when hot fantasies about Jane were as close as he was ever going to allow himself to get? “What?”
“I can’t make out the name, can you? L-E-V—” She squinted and shook her head. “Maybe outside.”
“We could do with some fresh air, that’s for sure.” Leo glanced over his shoulder to where the kitchen table was piled high with food-encrusted plates and buzzing with flies and other insects. “Dirty dishes mean someone’s been here recently. Let’s just check one more thing before we head out.”
“Tell me you have a decontamination shower back at the ranch,” Jane joked as she set the poker down.
“If only.” Leo guided her to the side after determining the second door wasn’t going to budge. “I always wanted to do this.”
“Do what?”
Leo held out his arms and braced himself as he kicked hard against the brass lock and door frame. The wood splintered and broke apart. Then the door shot open. “Okay, that was kind of awesome.”
“It kind of was.” She started in ahead of him, but he stopped her with both his hands and a look. “What?”
“There’s a lock on that door for a reason. Let me go in first.”
“Why?” Her brow arched in a way he had come to recognize when she was challenging him.
“Because I’m a man and I have—”
“A penis?” She blinked so quickly her lashes looked like tiny butterflies.
“I cannot believe you just said that.” But he laughed. Harder than he had in a long time. And when she joined him, his heart lightened considerably. If he’d ever heard a more wondrous sound, he couldn’t recall. “Point taken. Compromise. We’ll go in together.”
“My hero.” She sighed at him before they stepped inside. And froze. “Oh, boy.”
“Yeah.” All humor drained out of Leo as he looked at the half-dozen waist-high lab tables displaying remnants of what looked like chemistry supplies. A yellow powder coated the edge of one table. The windows had been spray-painted black, and the floor was splashed with what looked like bleach. “Someone was using this as a drug lab.” He took hold of Jane’s arm when she started to go in farther. “Let’s not.”
“But what if—”
“What if this is a crime scene?” Leo cut her off. “Actually, there’s no what-if about it. It is a crime scene.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
“We should go back to the ranch and call the sheriff.”
For the first time, Jane seemed to consider the option, but any hope that her situation would resolve sooner than later evaporated when she shook her head. “No. Not yet. I want to know more myself before we bring the police in.”
“Jane—”
“What am I going to tell them? Nothing. Because, other than waking up here, I don’t have any memory of what happened before. They’ll only ask questions I can’t answer. I want to be able to answer at least some before we call them.”
Leo’s head ached from clenching his jaw. “All right. But this can’t go on much—”
“Maybe we can still get some information out of this.” She held up the ID. “Maybe someone knows who this is? And if we can find him, maybe he knows what happened to me.”
“You really think removing potential evidence is the right way to go?”
“I think it’s either move forward with this or stop looking. Worst case, someone else reports this and they find our prints. We can answer questions then if we have to.”
“Listen to you, Miss CSI.” But Leo was already backing out of the room and bringing her with him. He detoured to the fireplace and used his shirt to wipe the handle of the poker handle, then did the same with the doorknob on the second bedroom.
Fresh air had never smelled so good. “Hey, Ollie. Chase anything good while we were in there?” He bent down to scrub his hands into the dog’s fur. Ollie turned his nose and tried to get away. “Yeah, I know. We stink. Proving you were most definitely the wisest among us.”
“I think the last name is McEwan?” Jane held the ID up to the sun at different angles to get a better read. “Does that sound familiar?”
“No, but then, I’ve only been back here a few months. Is that the shed?” He pointed across what looked like an apocalyptic weed field. She looked in the direction he indicated and nodded.
“Yeah. That’s about how this place looked once I got out.”
“Okay, then.” He walked beyond the main cabin, looking for a break in the weeds. “Here. This should do.” Along the back edge of a fence was a narrow path. “I’d see if maybe one of those tractors over there work, but who knows what kind of attention we might bring.”
“Nothing like a walk through the weeds to win a girl’s heart.” She offered a stiff smile. “The next time you have errands—” she gave him the deadly air quotes “—feel free to refrain from issuing an invitation.”
“Noted.”
They weren’t very far into the trash-strewn weed patch when she spoke. “Someone would have to know about this place to have left me here.”
“Maybe we can find out at the county registrar’s office who inherited it.” Leo kept a sharp eye out as Ollie led the way down the path. To him, the width and placement seemed worn out deliberately, as if it had been used multiple times before. “This can’t have been a one-person operation. There were too many tables set up in that room.”
She hurried forward and took hold of his hand as the dead weeds and shrubs seemed to close in. “You’re thinking there’s some kind of drug gang working out of Roaring Springs?”
“As much as I’d like it to be, Roaring Springs isn’t some kind of safe haven from the rest of the world,” Leo said. “There’s demand everywhere. Even when I was up in Alaska, if you had need of something in the pharmaceutical arena, there were people with connections. Not labs like that, of course. At least, not that I knew of.” Some things he was happy to live in ignorance of. “Legal or illegal, prescription or manufactured on-site, if you had the money, you could get it.”
“Would what we found back there make a lot of drugs?”
The path curved, and for a moment Ollie was out of sight. He let out a sharp bark, only one, as if commanding them to hurry up.
“I’d bet yes,” Leo said. “Colorado’s just like any other part of the country. If there are buyers out there, they’ll find a way to manufacture and distribute. Might be another avenue to explore if that ID doesn’t get us anywhere.”
“With a last name of McEwan, someone has to know him. I can’t imagine it’s very common.”
“I imagine not.” But Leo didn’t think rushing out and asking anyone in town if they knew this guy was a good idea. Although...if he was looking for a way to push Jane into going to the police, this could be the excuse he needed. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First the property owner, then the ID guy.”
“No.” Jane cleared her throat and tugged him to a stop. They’d come to the end of the path and there, standing before them, like some big hulking wooden specter, stood the garden shed. “First we deal with this.” She released his hand and moved past him, stopping beside Ollie, who had sat down in front of the door. “Do we need to go inside?”
“You don’t need to, no.” Once again, he’d seen no indication that she was having a flash of memory. In fact, maybe it was better she didn’t go in. “I want to, though. Maybe I’ll see something you didn’t.”
“I wasn’t looking for anything other than a way out.” Jane sank to the ground and curved her arms around Ollie. “The window I broke is over that way.” She pointed to the left. “Although if you want to break the door down again, go for it. I’ll have a better view.”
How he loved a woman with a sense of
humor.
“I’ll take the window this time.” He had enough ego to know when a second chance might turn into a complete embarrassment. “Ollie?”
His dog woofed.
“We’ll be fine,” Jane assured him. “Just...hurry up.”
“Yeah, way ahead of you.” Leo was as ready to be done with this field trip as she was. Climbing in through the small square window through which she’d escaped only days before proved more difficult than he expected. Jane’s slight build and frame had given her an advantage. The few shards of glass in the frame didn’t take kindly to the disturbance, and scraped against his upper arms after he used two wooden crates to boost himself up and through. His booted foot landed solidly on the seat of the old mower, but it was a balancing act to find his way across to the floor. He landed with a louder thump than he expected.
“Leo? Are you okay?”
“Fine.” He could tell by the closeness of her voice she’d come to the door. The ancient table saw had been moved recently, by Jane if memory served correct. He leaned over and ran his finger lightly against the circular blade. He saw slight traces of red on the metal. Jane’s blood. His stomach clenched around the image of her desperately trying to cut herself free. He looked slowly around the small shed, the suffocating stench of old dirt and rusted tools penetrating his nose and mouth. To think this was where she’d woken up. Alone. Restrained. Terrified.
She’d gotten herself free. She hadn’t let the terror win. She’d gotten out. And found him.
He was right the other night in her bedroom. She was a fighter. Seeing this place proved it.
A wave of emotion nearly doubled him over. That she trusted him even an iota after surviving this added another layer of responsibility to his already burdened shoulders. She didn’t deserve this. No one did, but especially not Jane. She deserved to be back home, with the people who loved her, knew her. Would care for her.
“Leo?”
“Yeah?” He barely heard his own voice.
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