Safe Haven

by Hannah Alexander

  Cheyenne’s eyebrows drew together as she continued to stare into her coffee, as if maybe she could see her sister’s face there. “A living nightmare. They brought her to me in the E.R.” She glanced up at Karah Lee. “I worked E.R. at Missouri Regional in Columbia at the time. I did everything to bring her back. Nothing worked. I was the one who pronounced her.”

  Karah Lee felt the shock of Chey’s words all the way through her body. What did someone reply to a revelation like that? That truly would have been a living nightmare.

  “A month later, I wasn’t coping, and my director asked me to take medical leave.” Cheyenne remained dry-eyed, but at an obvious cost. She swallowed hard, and her chin lifted a fraction of an inch. “That was when I came here to Hideaway for the first time. It didn’t take me long to realize this was where I belonged.”

  “Your sister was your best friend? She must have been a wonderful person.”

  “My sister was the epitome of a Christian at a time when I resented the whole concept of Christianity. In the end, her example made a powerful impact on me, but not until after her death.”

  Karah Lee could identify with the resentment. Somehow, this didn’t seem like the time for her to comment on it, however. “I know what it’s like to lose someone,” she said instead. “My mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a couple of weeks after I completed my freshman year at the University of Columbia. She died two years later.”

  “Oh, Karah Lee, please tell me that wasn’t when your father left her.”

  “He’d left her a year before the diagnosis. Mom refused to let me tell him about it. Since my sister, Shona, had gone to work for Dad’s office as soon as she graduated from college, Mom didn’t let me tell her, either. We just kind of fought it together, the two of us, for the next two years.”

  “And you never told the rest of your family?”

  “Mom didn’t want to. She was pretty independent.”

  “I wouldn’t’ve guessed,” Cheyenne said dryly.

  “Anyway, even though my sister found every excuse she could think of not to visit much for the next year—Mom was never one to keep her opinions to herself about the divorce—Shona blamed me for keeping my mother’s illness from her once the news was leaked to the rest of the family by my aunt.”

  Cheyenne studied Karah Lee silently for a moment over the rim of her coffee cup. “You carried an emotional load like that all by yourself and you were barely twenty? Did you have to quit school to take care of her?”

  “She didn’t want me to, but I had taken a paramedics course, so I was able to work with the ambulance service when Mom went into remission. When the cancer returned, I quit my job and stayed home to take care of her. Really, I couldn’t have told Shona about it, anyway, because she’d have gone squealing to Dad, and he would have kicked up a fuss about my lost education. He did, anyway, when he found out.”

  Cheyenne leaned forward, elbows on the desk. “But then you finished school, and residency.”

  “I worked with the ambulance service during summer breaks and on weekends to support myself and pay for some of my education.”

  “And now you’re here. Sounds to me as if things worked out in the end, because you took care of the most important things first.”

  Karah Lee felt uncomfortable about Chey’s obvious admiration.

  Cheyenne put her cup down. “Okay, I’ll stop meddling. It would be nice to see you back in touch with your family, but I think you’re the kind of person who can take care of that without my involvement.”

  “It isn’t always death that takes people from you,” Karah Lee said. “After all these years, I figure it’d be easier to just collect a good set of friends so my family and I won’t have to intrude in one another’s lives.”

  Cheyenne nodded, obviously still troubled but just as obviously unwilling to intrude further. “I just hope you make those friends right here in Hideaway. As you can see, we need you.”

  Chapter Nine

  Karah Lee tidied up after her final patient of the morning and glanced at the clock in the hallway. Rats. It was already twelve forty-five. They’d had so many walk-ins this morning they’d had no hope of going out to grab a bite of lunch. The doughnuts had not lasted, and now they had fifteen minutes before their first afternoon patient was scheduled to arrive.

  Once again, she slumped into her favorite chair in Cheyenne’s office.

  Cheyenne came in directly after her. “Lady, you’ll be good for business if it doesn’t kill us all.” She sank into her own chair with a sigh.

  “Knock-knock,” Blaze said, stepping through the open doorway with a box that emitted the fragrant aroma of roast beef and vegetables.

  “I thought you went to lunch an hour ago,” Cheyenne told him.

  “I did. This is for you, and Dane said to give you his love.”

  “Dane?” Karah Lee asked. Then she remembered. He was the town mayor, who was apparently seeing Cheyenne.

  “The town mayor.” Cheyenne straightened and reached for three bottles of water from the shelf behind her. “And Blaze’s foster father.”

  “The love of Cheyenne’s life.” Blaze gave Chey an audacious grin and kissed the air as he opened the box, which held three white cardboard containers, complete with plastic forks and napkins. “He’s late for another meeting. He said to say a prayer for him. We need another paramedic.”

  “I thought Taylor Jackson was a paramedic,” Karah Lee said.

  “The ranger?” Cheyenne reached for one of the containers and handed it to Karah Lee, then took one for herself. “Yes, but I think he’s pulling double duty, and he can’t be on call 24/7.”

  “Oh, right,” Karah Lee said dryly. “Only doctors are expected to keep that kind of schedule. Where’d this food come from?”

  “Our cook sent it from the ranch,” Blaze said. “I took the boat across for lunch, and I told Cook the rest of you might starve, so he fixed you something. I’ll take one of these to Jill.” He picked up the remaining container and plasticware and left the room.

  Karah Lee inhaled the intoxicating scent of the food and opened her container to find pot roast with gravy, salad and a square of corn bread. She picked up a fork and tucked into her food.

  There was a short silence, and Karah Lee looked up to see Cheyenne with her head bowed, eyelids lowered.

  Oh, yeah. Some people still asked a blessing on their food. Like Mom used to do. Like Karah Lee used to do, before she realized it was just a habit from childhood.

  Cheyenne looked up and opened her container.

  “I’m a paramedic, remember,” Karah Lee said.

  Cheyenne buttered her corn bread. “You mean you’ve kept up your certification all these years?”

  “Like I said, I worked my way through school. And I tried not to take out too many student loans. I’m single, no family involvement. I could pick up a few shifts a month until they find someone permanently.”

  “But you’ll be on call as a physician part of the time,” Cheyenne warned. “That would keep you pretty busy.”

  “It isn’t as if I’m looking for another job, but I wouldn’t mind helping out.”

  Cheyenne smiled and took a bite of pot roast.

  “Dane sounds like a good guy,” Karah Lee said.

  “He is. The boys at the ranch love him.”

  “You guys getting married?”

  Cheyenne’s smile brightened further. “How did you guess?”

  “When’s the wedding?”

  “We’re thinking about September, during the Hideaway Festival, but don’t tell anyone. We don’t have all the details figured out yet.” She filled her fork with more tender beef.

  “Okay, I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

  “Are you sure you want to be on call, and lose some of your spare time?”

  “As a paramedic? Sure.”

  “Then be my guest. Dane will be ecstatic if he can have coverage until they find someone permanent. You’ll report to Ranger Jackson.”

/>   Karah Lee swallowed. “Taylor?”

  “Yep. I’ll call Dane on his cell phone and let him know.”

  Fawn stopped dead in her tracks at the western end of the Tanger Outlet Mall as she stared at her own image on an old Springfield Daily newspaper, dated last Thursday, taped in the lower left corner of storefront plate glass. Large letters asked Have You Seen This Woman?

  She wanted to turn and run, but that would only draw attention. Instead, she read the description of herself—brown eyes, blond hair, about five feet seven inches, a hundred and twenty pounds. Last seen…

  Okay, except for the shape of her face, she didn’t look like the woman in the picture. Without the contacts, her eyes were blue, and of course the hair was different. Without the heels she was two and a half inches shorter—and happier about it.

  With round, wire-framed glasses over her eyes and a ball cap securely pulled down over her short, dark hair, she glanced around the parking lot and studied the group of elderly folks who were just now being deposited onto the sidewalk from a charter bus.

  If there was some way she could hop one of those buses as it left town…maybe that would be her best chance. Problem was, most of the people she’d seen coming out of those buses were at least fifty years older than her. It’d be hard to fake that for long.

  She picked up a schedule someone had dropped when stepping off the bus. There were a lot of buses in and out of this place.

  This might be just what she needed, but not yet. Obviously, no one recognized her—and most of the tourists who had been here last Thursday wouldn’t still be here. She could do this. As long as she relaxed and didn’t give herself away, or give anyone reason to be suspicious, no one would dream that she was this supposed “escaped killer.”

  She just couldn’t call attention to herself.

  An hour before official quitting time on Monday, Taylor was catching up on the ever-present paperwork at the ranger station, reading a memo he’d received this morning about clues the Branson police had found in their continued search for the killer, and drinking a second cup of strong black coffee to stay awake. He needed rest. He didn’t get a lot of emergency calls for a first-responder paramedic here in Hideaway, but last night had been one of those rare times when he’d received two in succession. He had treated the patients until the county ambulance service could reach them.

  Something had to give before he gave out.

  He glanced again at the memo from Branson. It amused him. The morning after the murder, two people had reported seeing a woman who fit the description of the murder suspect. One salesclerk had claimed that the woman had entered a kitchen-supply store wearing a white uniform liberally smudged with mud. Her hair was wet, and she was barefoot. According to the clerk, the woman had purchased scissors and food coloring.

  According to the police report, a blue dress matching the description of the woman’s attire the night of the murders had been recovered from a local theater-hotel complex—in the linen room, where worker uniforms were stored. Those uniforms were white.

  Follow-ups had so far led them to several different locations in town.

  Taylor grinned to himself. That was shorthand for wild-goose chase. He had nearly finished his coffee and completed his paperwork, when the familiar sound of tires crunching gravel interrupted the peaceful birdsong through the front screen door. He glanced out to see two cars pulling into the graveled circle driveway in front of the station. Taylor recognized the county sheriff’s big cowboy hat, and even bigger belly, as the sheriff and his long-legged, blond-haired deputy accompanied a man in plainclothes along the path from the driveway.

  Taylor had the door open when they reached it. “Hi, Greg. Tom.” He shook hands with the sheriff and deputy.

  As always, Greg’s beefy hand was as uncommonly gentle as Tom’s was overfirm.

  “Hey, Taylor.” Greg nodded toward the stranger. “This here’s our guy from the state, Lieutenant Doug Milfred, come to ask you a few questions about those car thieves and take some items for fingerprinting.”

  Taylor sized the guy up as he shook hands. He looked young, neat, compact, with wire-framed glasses. All business. Since Taylor’s fingerprints were already on file, he didn’t have to suffer that humiliation, but the whole situation was embarrassing enough, especially with that tiny, knowing smirk on Tom’s face.

  The lieutenant needed a description of the vehicle, of the driver and passenger, distinguishing characteristics, the license number of the car.

  “I’ve got all that,” Taylor said. He’d taken copious notes. “But I thought they already apprehended the guys and returned the car. I was prepared to be called as a witness in their trial.”

  The lieutenant shook his head, leaning forward. “The guys got out on bail, then disappeared.”

  “Okay, but—”

  “The sheriff up at Jasper County called this morning,” Greg said. “They had some heavy rains up that way this past weekend, and when the floodwaters went down this morning, they found two guys dead along a creek bank. They aren’t sure yet, but they think these guys might match the descriptions of your thieves. One had a tattoo of an eye on his upper arm.”

  “Dead?”

  “Shot. Execution style,” Tom said.

  “We don’t know that for sure,” the lieutenant warned.

  “Not yet, but I bet it’s the real thing.” Tom’s left foot tapped the floor with nervous energy—the guy never sat still. “You know what I think? I think they were errand boys for some organized-crime ring, and they had to be wasted or they’d talk.”

  Taylor bit his lower lip and turned back to Lieutenant Milfred. Tom watched far too much television, surfed the Web constantly and had too much time on his hands.

  Milfred picked up the stack of notes Taylor had given him. “May I take these with me?”

  “Of course, they’re yours.” Taylor gestured toward his Jeep. “I haven’t touched the tools since I used them to help the men change their tire.”

  “I’ll need those tools for fingerprints.”

  “Of course.” Taylor led the way out to his Jeep and opened the back so Milfred could retrieve the tools, then answered a few more questions before the lieutenant left.

  Greg and Tom were still in the station when Taylor returned. “You guys want some coffee?”

  Tom looked at his watch. “None for me. I’m off duty in twenty minutes, and I’ve got a date tonight with a Web site. I still think there’s an organized-crime ring in this area.”

  “I know somebody who needs to get a lid on his imagination,” Greg muttered.

  Tom’s left foot once more tapped the floor. “If you ask me, Taylor needs to learn how to use his imagination a little. I mean, come on, Taylor—didn’t you even think to call in about them before you fixed their flat for them and sent them on their way?”

  “Lighten up,” Greg said. “You saw where that car was stranded on the road. Either of us would’ve done the same thing. Taylor just wanted to get the guys off the side of the road before somebody rounded the curve and rammed them. Besides, they got the guys, and everybody’s living happily ever after.”

  “Those car thieves aren’t,” Tom said. “Did you hear they were probably working as contract labor for the Beaufont Corporation?”

  “Don’t go spreading those rumors,” Greg warned. “We don’t know that for sure yet.”

  “Okay,” Tom said. “But doesn’t it strike you as a little weird that they never hired any locals for that project? Just guys from outside?”

  Greg shook his head and stood. “You need to start writing fiction in your spare time, work off some of that imaginary genius.”

  “Don’t you mean imaginative genius?” Tom asked.

  Greg winked at Taylor as he opened the door and stepped out onto the small concrete front porch. “Nope. See you, Taylor. Get some sleep tonight, why don’t you. Dane says they’ve for sure got another paramedic in town to take call.”

  “You mean that isn’t just a rumo
r?”

  “Nope. You know that new doc they’ve got at the clinic?”

  “I heard they had one, but I haven’t met him.”

  Tom’s crack of laughter reverberated through the small station. “Taylor Jackson, you’re the biggest ostrich I ever met. The new doctor isn’t even a man, she’s a woman. You need to start getting out more. Talk to people.” Tom pressed past Taylor and followed his boss out the door. “I tell you, if you’d met this new doc, you’d remember her. She’s as tall as me, with red hair.”

  “She’s prettier than you,” Greg said.

  Tom shrugged. “She’s staying at the Lakeside. The woman weighs in at two-twenty. Talk about a Goliath.”

  “Oh, would you stop it?” Greg called over his shoulder. “Come on, let’s get out of here. No way that woman weighs any two-twenty.”

  “Hey, I know what she weighs, I’m telling you,” Tom insisted. “I studied one of those sites online that tell you how to guess a person’s weight. You should try surfing the Internet sometime. You’re missing out on a lot. Such as, did you know there’s an earthquake predicted to hit the general vicinity of Blue Eye?”

  “When?” Taylor asked.

  “When the contestants sprout wings at the pig races in September!” Greg called, laughing as he climbed into the cruiser.

  “You didn’t say what the doctor’s name was,” Taylor called after them.

  “Fletcher.” Tom opened the passenger door. “Carrie, or Carla, or something like that.”

  “Karah Lee,” Taylor said, suddenly wondering at his own obtuseness. “Her name is Karah Lee Fletcher.” Of course! Taylor, you really are an idiot. She practically told you that first night, with all her hints about knowing medicine, and then the next morning, telling you she was going to the clinic.

  Tom paused before getting into the car. He glanced over the roof at Greg, who had also paused. “Well, what do you know? He knows the lady’s name. Maybe there’s hope for the guy.”