Hiding Place

by Meghan Holloway

  I reached for the clip on my seatbelt, and the pain went from a constant flair to a bolt that made me cry out and made my vision darken. I struggled to breathe as I grappled with the seatbelt clip. It was jammed.

  My headlights were still on. The windshield was gone. Dirt and debris, tree limbs and twisted metal filled my vision. I pushed my hands against the roof of my car to try to alleviate the pressure on my head, but I could not lift myself. A sob caught in my throat, and when I sucked in a painful, shuddering breath, I smelled it. Acrid. Sharp. Something was burning.

  Terror sliced through me just as a sound reached me, a scrabble of footsteps sliding down the embankment. Relief swept over me. “Help!” My voice was a croak, and I coughed as a curl of smoke caught in the back of my throat. “We’re here!”

  Someone was there. Rocks rolled, and I heard dirt fall on the upturned undercarriage of my car. Footsteps approached along with a narrow beam of light, and I twisted my head to catch sight of a pair of boots stop beside the car.

  The glass in my window was shattered, and I stretched out a hand toward the feet. “Please. Please, help.”

  Something was wrong. The boots stood still for long minutes, and the smell of smoke grew stronger. No hand caught mine, no voice offered reassurance. There was just stillness and quiet.

  And then the boots turned and disappeared from sight.

  For an instant, I thought whomever it was had moved to help Sam. But then the sound of rocks rolling and dirt falling came to me again.

  “Please,” I whispered. And then I screamed it. “Help! Please!”

  Coughing choked off my desperate cries. The air was hazy with smoke, and horror sliced through me when I heard the crackle of flames.

  I scrabbled to feel for my keychain and almost wept when I found my keys still lodged in the ignition. My fingers did not want to work, and there was no strength in my arm when I tugged at the keys. It took several tries before I was able to yank it free from my ignition.

  The tool on my keychain was dual purpose. On one end, there was a point to hammer against glass to break a window. The rest of the tool was designed to slice a seatbelt. I could not turn my head, so I groped blindly for where the seatbelt bit into my hip. The blade on the cutter was sharp, and it slipped through the polyester webbing with ease.

  The tension released so quickly across my hips and chest that I did not have time to brace, and my shoulder slammed into the roof of the SUV. Consciousness wavered. I groaned in pain, twisted at an awkward angle, still caught upside down with the steering wheel biting into my thighs.

  “Sam?” I wheezed as the smoke turned the air to a gray haze. I could not see the flames, but I could hear them. I felt heat begin to creep up my legs. “I’m coming, baby. Hold on.”

  I stretched, turning my upper body as much as I could so both shoulders were pressed into the roof. Glass bit into my palms as I reached back and caught hold of the window frame. I pulled and bit back a scream of pain as I dragged my weight, shifting and twisting until my upper body was free from the wreckage. I could not contain a sob as I caught sight of the flames licking the sky at the accordioned front end of the Explorer.

  Rocks bit into my back and scored across my skin as I pushed and tugged and finally shoved myself free from the twisted wreck of my vehicle.

  I did not even pause to take stock of my injuries or to try to catch my breath. I groaned when I caught sight of Sam. There was blood on his face, and he hung limply against the binding of his seatbelt, thin arms lax against the roof. His seatbelt was jammed as well. I wrapped an arm around his chest and fumbled to get the seatbelt cutter in place. My fingers trembled and were slick with blood. I lost my grip on the cutter, and it clattered against the ceiling as it fell.

  I lunged into the vehicle, ignoring the bite of glass and the cut of warped metal. Flames ate at the dash, and I could feel the heat on my face. The tool was just out of reach, my fingers slipping over the end without gaining purchase. I pushed farther inside and felt my flesh tear.

  I snagged the tool and scrabbled backward. The blade cut neatly through Sam’s seatbelt, and I caught him in my arms as he fell. I knew the risk of spinal injuries, but I could not take the time to be careful and gentle. My eyes streamed, my lungs staggered against the push of the smoke, and the blistering heat beat at my back.

  I dragged his limp, light weight out of the SUV and tried to lift him into my arms. My legs refused to work, and I staggered as I gained my feet and fell. The fire was a roar now, cracking and popping, and the smell bit at the back of my throat. I clutched Sam to me with one arm and crawled away from the flames.

  I felt the change in the air, the pressure in my ears, the flair of heat. I had only a second to curl my body around Sam’s, and then the explosion rent the air and rolled over us like a crushing wave.

  Sam was the first thing I saw when I finally managed to claw my way to consciousness. His face was lax, and blood had dried in the delicate curve of his ear and across his face where it had dripped from his nose.

  I dragged myself closer to him, and my hand shook as I reached for him. “Sam?” I whispered, and it felt as if my voice had to crawl over broken glass before it escaped my throat.

  His face remained still, and I closed my eyes as I pressed my fingers to his throat. A sob caught in my chest when I felt the faint flutter of a pulse under my fingertips. I clasped his limp hand and pressed it to my cheek. “We’re going to be okay,” I told him.

  I groaned as I pushed myself upright. My vision swam, and I hung my head until the world stopped rotating around me. Pain radiated through my body, so fiercely and sharply it took me long minutes of breathing deeply before the urge to vomit passed. The epicenters were my right ankle and knee, my chest, and my head. My hands and arms bore numerous cuts, but only one still bled heavily. I rolled carefully onto my left knee and struggled to my feet.

  My SUV was still burning. The fire dancing wildly over the warped and blackened ruins of my vehicle. The smell burned my eyes and the back of my throat, and the heat did nothing to quell my shivering. The flames were the only source of light in the depth of night. I heard no sirens in the distance.

  I took a step, putting weight on my right foot, and my leg collapsed beneath me. I hit the ground hard and cried out, darkness dancing along the edges of my vision. Rocks bit into my cheek where the side of my face was pressed into the ground. Sam’s feet were in my field of vision. He remained limp and still, and the laces on one of his shoes were untied.

  I clenched my teeth and forced myself to standing, remaining upright through sheer willpower as I limped around my burning car. I gave it a wide berth, but it was my torch in the dark. I peered upward into the night at the wake of devastation my vehicle had left as it plummeted down the mountainside.

  What little distance up the incline I could see in the flickering firelight looked as if the land had been scraped raw. Snapped trees, metal and glass debris, gouged earth. The incline was not perfectly vertical, but it was steep enough that when I grit my teeth and tried to scramble up the slope, I only made it a few feet before falling and sliding.

  I was breathing hard, lightheaded with pain, and a tremor rattled through my limbs. In the dark, I did not know how far we had fallen, how far the climb up to the road was. The memory of the man standing just out of reach, observing but not helping, before turning around and walking away came back to me. I did not know what waited for us above.

  I crawled to Sam. Pain flared through my ribcage as I lifted him in my arms. I staggered under his weight, and his head lolled against my shoulder. It felt as if fire burned through muscle and against the bones in my ankle and knee as I took a step. I tightened my grip on Sam, even as my arms shook to hold him, and refused to fall.

  I was disoriented in the dark and from the woozy spinning of my head. Nausea churned in my stomach, and I knew I could add a concussion to the list of my injuries. But we were alive, both of us, and I had to get us out of he
re if I wanted to keep it that way.

  I moved away from the fire still quenching its thirst with ragged cracks and spark-spitting flairs. The orange glow of the fire faded quickly behind me, and I glanced back when our shadow disappeared into darkness. I stood at the edge of the light for a moment, taking in the horror of the crumbled, scorched wreckage of my vehicle. Then I turned and stumbled into the darkness.

  Away from the blinding illumination of the fire, I could see the stars when I glanced up at the sky. The stars spun above me as I tilted my head back, searching the sky. I stumbled and clutched Sam tighter to me. I found the ladle on the Big Dipper and followed its guidance to Polaris.

  Gardiner was to the southwest. I just needed to make it a few miles. I turned my back to the North Star and kept it over my right shoulder as I struggled over the rough terrain in the dark. I moved at a shuffle’s pace, blindly groping through each foot placed in front of the other. I could not afford to fall.

  The night was alive around me. A wolf called for her pack in the distance, and a moment later, she received a mournfully welcoming response. When we moved here, the silence after New York City seemed oppressive. It had taken me months to realize there was just as much traffic here, just not of the human variety. Most of the time, it frightened me. The sounds that pierced the night were wild and untamed and not entirely peaceful. But tonight, there was a comfort in the disquiet. It made me feel less alone.

  I lost track of time, focused on putting one foot in front of the other. Breathe in, breathe out. Shut out the pain. Left foot, right foot. Breathe. Hold tight to Sam. Don’t stop. Everything else faded away.

  My right leg was dragging and I was struggling to breathe when the first fingers of dawn lightened the black of night to morning gray. I almost walked into the side of the cabin before I realized it was there.

  I sagged, and it took every ounce of strength I had to round the corner of the cabin and climb the front steps. There was no vehicle in sight in front of the cabin, and no lights burning within, but the front porch was sound underfoot.

  “Hello?” I called, and my voice was a hoarse whisper. As soon as I stopped moving, I felt the strength go out of my limbs, and I gently deposited Sam in the single rocking chair on the porch before I dropped him. I braced a hand against the roughhewn doorframe to steady myself and knocked. There was no response, and I sagged forward, my forehead resting against the smoothly polished wood.

  I tested the doorknob only out of habit and staggered when it turned easily underhand. The door swung open, and I peered into the dark interior. “Is anyone there?” I fumbled along the wall for a switch, and light spilled over the interior of the cabin.

  The cabin was spartan, but clearly lived in. I could see the kitchen and living room from the threshold, both clean but almost barren. A coffee mug and a clay pipe sat on a small table beside a threadbare recliner. The two pieces were the only furniture in the room. I ventured within, limping down the narrow hallway.

  “Hello?”

  The cabin was still. The hallway led to a bedroom on one side, a bathroom on the other. The bedroom contained only a neatly made bed and an unadorned dresser. The bathroom was clean, a hand towel folded precisely on the vanity. I did not see a phone anywhere.

  I had to brace myself with one hand against the wall as I retreated. On the porch, it took me several attempts before I could lift Sam into my arms. Black spots danced at the edges of my vision as I carried him into the cabin and nudged the door closed behind us. As we entered the hallway, Sam’s dangling feet clipped the edge of the wall. Knocked off balance, I stumbled and went down, twisting so I took the brunt of the fall.

  Pain exploded through me, white and hot and sharp, and everything went dark.

  I was not certain how much time had passed when I finally managed to drag my eyes open again. It took me long moments to recall where I was and what had happened. I barely had the strength to push myself upright, and even that simple motion forced a sob from me.

  I dragged Sam into the bedroom but could not manage to lift him onto the bed. I curled up beside him and rested my palm over his heart, and then I was pulled under once again.

  The slam of a car door outside wrenched me to awareness. Grappling with consciousness, I held onto it tenuously, pushed myself to a seated position, and rolled the cuff of my jeans back to retrieve the Beretta Pico from the holster around my right ankle. It was another thing I learned once I arrived in Montana. The people who thought New Yorkers were unfriendly and rude had never met a territorial Montanan. And we were trespassing.

  I used the bed to struggle to my feet, and waited deep in the shadows of the hall as I heard footfalls on the front porch. When I searched the cabin earlier, I saw nothing that identified the owner. No photographs or bills lying about. But I knew to whom the cabin belonged the moment he walked through the door.

  I stood in the shadows, watching, leaning against the wall for support. He hung his head and rubbed the back of his neck as he toed off his boots and left them neatly aligned by the front door. Exhaustion was written into every line of his body as he crossed into the kitchen.

  The light from the refrigerator edged the harsh angles of his face in an unforgiving glow. His father was white, but he had inherited his Native American mother’s high cheekbones, swarthy complexion, and dark hair and eyes.

  Those dark eyes flared when he spotted me as he straightened and turned, and the exhaustion disappeared in an instant. I knew him by sight and name, though I had never interacted with him the handful of times I saw him around town. He had certainly never come to the inn for pancakes.

  The disappearance of his sister and niece happened years before I arrived in town, but it was something that was still whispered about regularly. Those whispers also spoke of how likely it was Hector Lewis had killed his own wife and daughter and hidden their bodies. I did not know whether that was true or not, but it was no secret in town how much Jack Decker hated his brother-in-law.

  My fingers flexed on the grip of the Beretta, but I kept it at my side, pointed at the floor. Jack had always struck me as an angry, bitter man. I did not know how he would react to our invasion of his home.

  “I don’t want any trouble,” I said.

  “Then what do you want?” he asked. “This is the second time this week I’ve come home and found someone in my house uninvited.”

  I started to tell him his door had been unlocked, but I thought better of it. I was off balance and uncertain and so tired. I just wanted to lie down and close my eyes. It was difficult to remain upright, let alone maintain my grip on the pistol.

  “I just need…” I swallowed. “I need help.”

  He said nothing for a long moment, and he studied me as closely as I studied him before he finally spoke. “Larson thinks you and your boy are dead.” I put a hand against the wall to steady myself as I leveled the pistol at him. He held up his own hands. “Before you shoot, I had nothing to do with you going off that mountain road.”

  Disbelief scored through me, and the irony of whose cabin I sought shelter in almost made me laugh. “You work for the senator.”

  “Not as part of his security team. I’m just his pilot.” He leaned back against the counter and sighed. “You can take a load off, kid. You’re safe here.”

  My wrist shook under the weight of holding up the gun, and I slowly let it drop until my arm hung at my side. I let the doorframe take the brunt of the effort to keep myself upright.

  “You haven’t seen a doctor, have you?” he asked. “You’re bleeding.”

  I glanced down at my arms. I felt so detached from my body at the moment that I felt genuine surprise at the sight of blood rolling down the inside of my forearm.

  “What shape is your boy in?” Jack asked.

  “How do I know I can trust you?” My voice sounded far away to my own ears.

  “You don’t. But I’m guessing since you ended up here, you don’t have any other options.”


  “You were the first cabin I came to,” I said, but I could not deny his assumption was correct.

  I must have closed my eyes for a split second, because suddenly he was in front of me, and his hand on my elbow halted my downward slide toward the floor. He eased the Beretta from my clenched fingers.

  “Sam won’t wake up,” I whispered.

  “We’ll get him help,” he said, and I thought there was a thread of gentleness in his voice. It surprised me. Everything about him struck me as hard and severe.

  “We can’t go to a hospital. Too dangerous.”

  “Even Larson is not foolish enough to try something in a hospital.”

  I clutched his sleeve. “Not Larson.” I could not force myself to say his name. He had connections everywhere, and he bought loyalty as easily as he purchased a new suit. “He can’t find us.”

  “No one is going to find you.”

  “He’ll kill us.” I could no longer feel my legs, and the dark hallway tilted as he lifted me in his arms.

  “That’s not going to happen. No one is going to hurt you or your boy.”

  The promise in his voice coaxed me into relinquishing my tenuous grip on consciousness.

  nineteen

  HECTOR

  I left my truck parked at the police department. My return had not gone unnoticed, and I had no doubt Larson would hear of it soon, if he had not already. This was not a fight I wanted to bring to Maggie’s doorstep. Exhaustion dogged my steps right alongside Frank as I hiked through the woods to her house. Once I downloaded the photographs I took and printed off copies, I would check in to a hotel.

  Her car was already parked in the carport, and a light was on in the kitchen. I let myself in, surprised when neither of the dogs greeted me. “Maggie?”

  “In the kitchen,” she called.

  I paused in the doorway, and fury sliced through me, hot and sharp. “What the fuck are you doing here?”