Safe Haven

by Hannah Alexander

  She reached for the radio knob, then thought better of it. The blare of noise would only cheapen the experience of driving into this magical land that had made such an impact on her when she was a teenager—when the roads had been so much narrower than they were now.

  Finally, she cast a quick glance into the back seat, where her huge black cat, Monster, lay snoozing in his pet taxi, strapped safely in place with the seat belt. “You know, you could learn to carry your weight in this family, and at least rattle your cage a little, give me one of those good deep snarls when I start to nod off. Your life is dependent for the next few moments on my ability to keep my wits, and they’re threatening to scatter out across the Ozarks like leaves in a tornado.”

  She heard a grumpy cat-mutter and nodded. “That’s better. I probably should have put you up here in the front with me, but I thought I’d be nice and let you sleep through this trip. It’s stupid to drive when I’ve barely had eight full hours of sleep in the past three days.”

  The husky-hoarse sound of her own voice in the confined space of the car would probably keep her awake for a few moments. “How many patients have I seen in the past three years who’d fallen asleep at the wheel? I don’t feel like becoming another statistic.”

  Just last week a father of three was fatally injured on I–70 during rush hour when he veered over onto the shoulder, then apparently overcorrected and slammed into a car in the next lane. His friends said later he’d gone thirty-six hours without sleep. Countless accidents were caused by irresponsible drivers who…

  Her head nodded forward. She took a deep breath, slowed her speed, flexed her hands. She should have given herself more time, should’ve asked for an extra day to get here, but no, good ol’ tough Karah Lee could do anything. She’d been accused by co-workers of having the stamina, pain tolerance and size of a redwood tree. At times, she was proud of the comparison. Other times, it made her feel lonelier. Few people took the time to venture past the facade of indomitable redhead and get to know the real Karah Lee Fletcher.

  Monster, given to Karah Lee by a colleague recently engaged to a cat hater, wasn’t exactly what she had in mind as a lifelong companion. In fact, they barely knew each other, and the relationship wasn’t improving with time. When she complained about him at work, however, the staff teased that Monster sounded a lot like his new owner.

  She was not amused.

  The road blurred. She could not keep her eyes open. She desperately needed sleep.

  Maybe if she just pulled over to the side of the road for a short nap…but experience had taught her that if she allowed herself to close her eyes for a few moments, it would take a loud beeper in her ear to bring her out of it before morning. Just a few more miles, and—

  A shadow separated itself from the darkness of the trees, followed by another shadow and another, into the glow of her headlights, barely twenty feet from her front bumper. She slammed on the brakes and swerved as three deer darted back and forth over the road in confusion. The tires of Karah Lee’s car skidded into the brush at the edge of the shoulder, and she couldn’t prevent the slide, couldn’t veer from the tree that came at her with sickening swiftness.

  The impact thrust her forward, but her seat belt grabbed and held. The crash stunned her. She sat in horrified aftershock.

  Monster yowled and scratched at the pet taxi with frantic cries, but Karah Lee sat frozen. Suddenly, she realized that she did not have the stamina, or the pain tolerance, of a redwood.

  She fainted.

  Chapter Two

  Fawn stepped from the elevator on the seventh floor, heart still pounding, hands shaking harder than they had been when she left. She reached into her money-stuffed purse for the key card. Would he be here?

  It wasn’t as if she’d never been dumped before. It had happened twice in the past few months, but each time it had been harder to return to other kinds of work. And here she was in Branson, Missouri. She didn’t even know these streets, and she had a strange feeling she wouldn’t be able to do as much business here, even if she could force herself to do that business again.

  But what else could she do?

  The card slid into the silent-lock mechanism, and to her relief the door opened at the slightest pressure of her hand. Hearing Bruce’s voice, she broke out with a sweat of relief. He was still here.

  “Vincent didn’t have the guts to come and talk to me himself,” she heard him say from the other room, “so he sent you.”

  She stopped in the doorway and frowned as she caught sight of a tall, dark-haired man in an expensive-looking dark gray suit. His back was to her, and Bruce stood facing her, the shadow of his big body outlined in the neon lights that flashed into the room through the lanai windows. He didn’t even glance toward her when she entered.

  “He doesn’t like associating with traitors” came the visitor’s voice, which was rougher than Bruce’s deep bass.

  Fawn grabbed the door to keep it from shutting and disturbing the men. Bruce wasn’t finished with his business. She’d come back too soon. She was about to turn around and leave without saying anything, when Bruce spoke again.

  “I’d only be a traitor if I allowed my clients to pour their money down the drain with bad deals.”

  “It doesn’t have to be a bad deal,” Gray Suit grumbled. “You tell your clients to leave their money where it is for six more months, and you can guarantee seventy percent return on their investment. They won’t want to pass that up.”

  “Vincent can’t guarantee that, Harv, and you know it. How many dupes are you going to find to buy a worthless space of air over Hideaway? The condominium isn’t even built yet.”

  “Construction’s already begun.”

  Fawn saw the anger spill over Bruce’s face. “How can that be?”

  Harv gave a low grunt of laughter. “You’re not the only man who can be bought. I’ve got good information that says you’re carrying a vital report around in your pocket. You don’t have any business with that inspection report, and Vincent wants it back.”

  “It’s not on me,” Bruce said.

  Out in the hallway behind Fawn came the sound of the penthouse elevator doors opening and dishes rattling, probably a meal on a room-service cart. Harv half turned at the sound, until Fawn could see the outline of his long, heavy-boned face, with thick jawline and overgrown, black eyebrows. He looked really edgy, and the fingers of his right hand tensed, muscles flexing beneath his suit.

  Bruce caught Fawn’s gaze, frowning hard at her and jerking his head toward the door in an unmistakable command for her to leave. “Harv, this whole mess is going to come down on Vincent’s head, and I don’t want to be here when it happens. I’m not getting blamed for his stupid decision.”

  Harv returned his attention to Bruce. “Then what are you doing here? You didn’t fly all the way here just to give Vincent the brush-off. You could’ve done that on the phone.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “You’ve got contacts here.” Suspicion laced the man’s voice.

  “I wanted to see some of the shows, check out the—”

  “I know what kinds of shows you like, and they aren’t these country-music comedy shows.”

  “Vincent sent you here to do his dirty work, didn’t he?” Bruce asked. “He doesn’t care about a bunch of strangers in Hideaway as long as he can make his money and get out before tragedy strikes. Don’t you care that lives could be at stake?”

  “Since when did you care about other people?”

  As if against his will, Bruce’s gaze gave an imperceptible flick toward Fawn, then he looked back at Harv.

  Harv’s shoulders stiffened. He started to turn, reaching beneath his suit jacket.

  “No!” Bruce shouted. “Princess!”

  A deadly-looking pistol with silencer seemed embedded in Harv’s hand as he drew it from his pocket. He aimed at Fawn and squeezed the trigger as she ducked at Bruce’s command.

  The doorpost beside her splintered. “Bruce!”
>
  “Run, Princess!” Bruce shouted, charging the man. “Get out now! Hurry!” He was still six feet from his target when the man swung back, aimed, squeezed the trigger.

  Fawn shoved the door wide behind her, barreling past a bellman with a room-service cart. The cart and dishes went flying with a clatter across the hallway.

  “Get out of the way!” she screamed. “He’s a killer! Run!” She raced to the elevator, jabbed the button, then realized she could be trapped. She ran to the stairwell and plunged downward, expecting to feel a bullet in her back any second. She heard another clatter of dishes, heard a man cry out above her just as the stairwell door closed—the bellman?

  Her feet barely touched the steps as she raced down them. When she reached the third-floor landing, she stumbled and twisted her ankle. Gasping with pain, she didn’t slow her stride. At the second-floor landing, she paused long enough to look up and listen.

  She didn’t hear the sound of pursuit. She kicked off the strappy, high-heeled sandals and looped them over her purse. Where was he? What was happening up there? Bruce! What happened to you?

  She wanted to turn and race back up those stairs. She needed to get help, fast. Bruce could be up there bleeding to death.

  Did Harv shoot the bellman, too? Where was the man? Harv could have taken the elevator down—he could be waiting for her when she stepped through the door on the ground floor.

  But that would be crazy. Too many witnesses.

  Instead of continuing down the stairs to the first floor, she rushed to the second-floor entrance. But as soon as she placed her hand on the knob to open the door, she let it go and drew back. What if Harv was on the other side of that door?

  “Stop it!” she whispered to herself. She had to get to safety—reach the lobby and cry out for help, find the security guards and have them call for an ambulance. She cracked the door open and peered into the hallway. All she saw was a serving tray of empty dishes on the floor at the far end of the hallway. She glanced back over her shoulder toward the stairwell, then stepped into the hallway. She took the main elevator to the lobby. No way Harv could get her there.

  The moment her bare feet sank into the plush wine-and-gold carpet of the lobby, she saw him. The man named Harv in the expensive-looking gray suit stood talking with two uniformed guards. He gestured toward the stairwell door, looking the part of a frightened man. One of the security guards drew his gun.

  Fawn gasped.

  Harv glanced her way and sighted her. “There!” he shouted. “That’s the killer. Don’t let her get away!”

  She plunged into the midst of a group of elderly ladies.

  “Stop that woman! She’s a killer!” someone called across the lobby.

  A couple of women screamed as Fawn stumbled to the exit and shoved open the door.

  She ducked past another crowd of oblivious people, keeping the colorfully dressed theatergoers between herself and the guards as she slipped into the shadows at the edge of the property. Wishing desperately for a pair of sneakers, she slung the strap of her purse over her head and plunged into the darkness, barefoot and sure she would be shot in the back any second.

  Taylor Jackson sped along the tree-shrouded road as fast as he dared, and watched for moving shapes in the beams of his headlights. He dreaded what he might find, and he hoped backup was on its way.

  How many times had he warned tourists to avoid driving this stretch of road at night? And how many runs like this had he made in the year he’d been working this area? The local communities needed to buy space on radios and hometown papers daily, alerting the world that humans did not own the roads in the Ozarks, especially at night. The deer, opossums, raccoons and coyotes did.

  Sometimes he thought the four-footed variety of animals obeyed the rules of the Mark Twain National Forest better than the two-footed ones.

  The only times he ever prayed were on runs like this, when he didn’t know what he would find, how many victims would be involved, how much damage there would be. He especially hated finding children hurt. Highway 76 twisted through the hills with such diabolical suddenness it caught travelers unaware, making them think it was veering right, then veering left instead, in hairpin curves that seemed to make no sense.

  Meanwhile, oncoming cars accidentally bright-lighted one another with vicious intensity. On summer days, when traffic was heavy and they got a slow driver bottle-necking thirty sightseers in a hurry to see Hideaway in a couple of hours, people got injured, even killed. Hideaway Road had earned a bad reputation in the past few months, since tourists had discovered its beauty.

  But on a weeknight he knew he could probably blame a deer.

  The glow of two flashlights hovered ahead of him in the darkness, and he cut his speed. Sure enough, fresh deer scat on the road told the story. He was relieved to find no big hairy bodies lying beside the pavement. As far as he could tell, not even any blood. Now, if only the humans had been so lucky.

  He saw the bright red Ford Taurus sedan kissing a maple tree in the darkness. As he maneuvered his vehicle across the road to illuminate the wreck site with his headlights, Taylor saw Mary and Jim, who lived down the road, leaning over someone in the driver’s seat. The door was open. Good. The damage might not be as severe as he had first feared. Also, he saw no passengers other than the driver.

  He pulled in behind the car, left his emergency lights flashing on the dash and got out. As he ran to the car, the guttural scream of a nightmare screeched through the air, and he caught his breath at the animal sound. He’d never heard a deer cry like that before…and then he realized it was coming from inside the car.

  As he approached the others, Jim and Mary stepped back, and the sound accosted him more directly. For a brief moment he hesitated, unwillingly reminded of the horror movie he’d watched years ago about a human possessed by a demon.

  But the woman in the front seat behind the steering wheel did not look grotesque in any way. She looked sane, though slightly dazed. She groaned, and Taylor realized the screech did not come from her but from the back seat. He rushed forward, peered past the driver’s seat, and caught the double gleam of terrified eyes, two black paws stuck through the wire mesh of a pet taxi. It was the biggest black cat he had ever seen—and the loudest he had ever heard.

  “Would you shut up?” The deep, irritable tone of the driver mingled with the cries of the cat.

  Taylor stepped back slightly from the car and bent low enough to get a good look at the victim. She had wildly curly red hair and an unhappy expression in a very pale face. In the residual glow from his headlights he saw a streak of blood outlining the left side of her face.

  “I didn’t mean you,” she said. “It’s Monster.” Her voice was husky and authoritative, though slightly hoarse.

  “Ma’am, it’s okay, we’ll take care of you. Just remain still until I can ascertain the extent of the damage.”

  “No need. I’ll be okay. I just need to get out and stretch my legs a little.” She closed her eyes and groaned again, lifting a shaking hand to her forehead.

  Taylor raised his voice to be heard over the screeches of the cat. “Ma’am, I’d like to check you over first.” He turned to Jim. “Would you go get my medical case out of the truck? I want to get her vitals and—”

  “My vitals are fine.” The victim’s voice deepened. “I just want some fresh air.” She reached down to unfasten her seat belt and fumbled with the release.

  “Here, let me help you with that.” Taylor leaned forward, but before he could assist her, she made her escape from the belt and turned to look into the pet taxi.

  He got a close-up view of a long, graceful neck above shoulders that were surprisingly broad and muscular for a woman. She wore cutoff jeans and a faded blue T-shirt, and her arms and legs were untanned, well-shaped.

  “It’s okay, Monster, you’re safe.” Her husky voice was suddenly melodious and soothing. “Cut the noise a minute, will you?”

  To Taylor’s amazement, the racket lowered to
the growl of a stressed-out tiger.

  The woman turned back and looked up at Taylor. “Sorry about that. Is there a vet around the village anywhere? I’d like to get him looked at.”

  “Don’t you think we should concentrate on you first?” Taylor asked as Jim approached with the kit of medical supplies.

  “I told you, I’m fine.” She reached up and grasped the side of the door frame, then swung her feet to the ground. Her face and lips were pale except for the streak of blood that matched the color of her car.

  Taylor placed one hand gently on her shoulder as he reached for the bag Jim held out for him. “Ma’am, please humor me and remain seated for a moment. You don’t look fine. I’m a paramedic, and I’d like to make sure about you first. I need to ask you a few questions.”

  She blinked up at him, then frowned and looked pointedly at the gun hanging at his hip. “Since when do paramedics have to carry guns and wear ranger uniforms?”

  “When they’re also law-enforcement rangers. We’re short staffed.”

  She took a deep, audible breath and leaned against the steering wheel, meeting his gaze squarely. “My name is Karah Lee Fletcher, I’m on Hideaway Road in Missouri, and the date is Wednesday, June 11. Those were the questions you wanted to ask me, right?”

  “Done this before, have you?”

  “You might say that.” A hint of humor flashed across her expression and disappeared almost before he caught it.

  “I can see you’ve hit your head—did you experience any loss of consciousness?” Taylor continued to look into those eyes. They were more golden than amber brown. She had a high forehead and cheekbones, and a strong, firm chin line.

  She glanced away briefly at his question, and he noticed her hesitation. “Ma’am?”