Safe Haven

by Hannah Alexander

  As the two men left, Taylor stared after them. Now he remembered Karah Lee telling him she’d been a paramedic. And she’d volunteered to take call? That would be a relief.

  As he went about the office cleaning the coffeepot and shutting down the computer, he thought about Tom’s comments. He glanced at his reflection in the bathroom mirror.

  Never in his life, before coming here, had anyone ever called him an ostrich. He was not an introvert. He’d never exactly been a party animal, but he’d always had friends. Lots of friends. Once upon a time he’d even had a happy family.

  So why did everybody here in Hideaway seem to think of him as some kind of hermit? True, he didn’t get out much, didn’t know a lot of people here yet, but really, he’d been busy. A guy couldn’t have a social life when he found himself working sixteen hours a day.

  Not that he always worked that many hours…

  Okay, he seldom worked sixteen hours a day, but he had to admit that when he did get some time off, he either went hiking by himself, somewhere besides Hideaway, or he drove to Branson to eat or see a show. By himself. He did get lonely, but the ranger staff here was barely a skeleton crew, so he had few colleagues. The others had families.

  Set within a patchwork section of the Mark Twain National Forest, Hideaway was an overlap of his jurisdiction. He always felt as if he was on duty when he was here; therefore, he spent his leisure hours outside his area of responsibility.

  He thought about Karah Lee again. Okay, so he was probably the only person in Hideaway who hadn’t known that the new doc in town was another woman. People around here sometimes got a little too interested in other people’s business.

  He stepped out of the office and locked it behind him.

  No way could Karah Lee Fletcher weigh two hundred and twenty pounds…could she?

  Chapter Ten

  On Friday morning, a week and a half after Karah Lee’s ignominious arrival in Hideaway, she relished the feel of the steering wheel in her hands once again as she drove her newly repaired automobile to the far eastern edge of town—a total of eight blocks from the Lakeside Bed-and-Breakfast, which was on the western edge of town. She already missed Bertie and Edith, but—as she had reminded herself at least three times in the past ten minutes—renting a small house on a monthly basis, until she could afford to buy something nearby, would be a good thing in several ways.

  First of all, it would be good for Bertie and Edith, because Karah Lee had discovered two days after her arrival that, for the tourist crowd, those cottages cost twice as much as she was paying. When she’d attempted to pay more, Bertie had refused.

  “Cheyenne needs you,” Bertie had said as she stirred the gravy at the steam table. “She did so much for Red and me last year when he was sick, treating him for free, buying medicine for him, helping me with the goats when he turned up missing.”

  “She helped you milk goats?” Karah Lee asked.

  “That’s right. And Cheyenne was the one who found Red in the end.” Bertie opened the window over the deck to allow the cool morning breeze into the stuffy dining area. “She’s a good soul, and I aim to help her any way I can. I’d’ve let you have that cottage for free all year, just to help Cheyenne keep good help, if it weren’t for that fancy accountant who keeps our books. He thought we was crazy in the first place for setting our rates so low.”

  A dog wandered out onto the street, and Karah Lee returned her attention to traffic as she pressed the brake. Not that there was much traffic on this residential street. The tourists tended to hang out at the lake and the town square and that sandy beach that stretched eastward along the shore for several hundred feet. Folks said the Beaufont Corporation was crazy for spending so much money on a free beach, but it sure was drawing the people.

  Another good reason for Karah Lee to have a place where she had to cook breakfast for herself was to benefit her waistline. No way could she cook like Bertie Meyer. She could avoid temptation much more easily if she didn’t smell the breakfast aromas drifting through the air every morning.

  So if this was such a good idea, why did she feel so sad at the thought of leaving the Lakeside? She could stroll down the street from the clinic anytime to visit with the ladies. It wasn’t as if this was such a big town. Like Branson, this little village burgeoned to probably ten times its actual population during the summer months. There was even talk of building a music theater.

  Some people got carried away.

  Hideaway’s main residential street curved beneath a lush overhang of maples, oaks and cedars, with enough overgrown shrubbery in the yards to satisfy the most privacy-starved villager, and enough colorful flowers to please the most demanding artistic eye. Karah Lee had already fallen in love with her two-bedroom rental when she walked past it last Saturday afternoon. Of course, she hadn’t been able to check out the interior because it had been occupied by another renter at the time, but she knew it was surrounded by cedars and maple trees, and wasn’t visible from the street. The only drawback was the condominium project, barely a block and a half away from her rental. The noise of construction would be distracting on occasion, especially with that huge crane.

  “Monster, you’re going to love this place,” she said to her back-seat nemesis.

  She received a casual mireer in reply.

  “You’ll see. Just think, a bedroom of your own, and room to roam.”

  After years of sharing rooms and apartments with other students and medical residents, and spending half her nights at the hospital, she was going to love this. As long as the roof didn’t leak and there was a bed to sleep in—it was a furnished house—she’d be satisfied. Rentals here were hard to come by, and it was even more difficult to find one furnished. In spite of the condo project, the location seemed ideal to her.

  Karah Lee rounded a final curve, then stomped on the brake, gasping with shock as all her nice little daydreams shattered. Monster roared his outrage from the pet taxi in the back.

  A big yellow bulldozer backed out from between two cedar trees onto the narrow lane in front of her, bucket raised, scattering red clods of dirt.

  Karah Lee threw the car into Reverse and backed half a block to the nearest street sign. It was Maple Drive. She parked on the side of the road and got out. This was the place. This was the route she had walked Saturday, she knew, because she recognized the flowers around the street sign.

  With Monster protesting loudly, she shut the door and ran up the road to the place where the bulldozer continued to work. The building that had rested within the shaded protection of those trees no longer existed. It had been dozed flat.

  Her rental house was gone.

  Fawn awakened Friday morning with an upset stomach, cramps, and the sound of metal scraping metal somewhere nearby. Her eyes flew open and she gasped.

  Someone was trying to get inside.

  She heard muffled voices outside the window, and sat straight up in bed as her heart double-paced its rhythm through her chest. Had to get out, quick!

  She scrambled from the bed and grabbed up the baggy denims and wild, overlarge Hawaiian shirt she’d worn yesterday. She pulled them on, stepped into her new high-top men’s tennis shoes—which were two sizes too big for her, and which she’d stuffed with socks to aid her attempts to look more like a male. She still wasn’t sure it had the right effect, but now she had no time to change her mind.

  She jerked open the dresser drawer and grabbed her other clothes, stuffed them into her backpack and raced with it to the bathroom, where she’d stored her cosmetics and toiletries in a drawer, including the scissors she’d used to cut her hair and the empty bottle of dark brown color she’d put on it and which was already itching her scalp, and the other bottle of “silver lining” color for old ladies she might use if she got desperate. Last night, thank goodness, she’d taken the rest of her trash out to the Dumpster.

  The voice went away and the scraping stopped as she rushed through the kitchenette and pulled open the refrigerator. She t
ossed sausage sticks, a loaf of bread, lunch meat, cheese and apples into her pack, forced it shut and grabbed her final bottle of water from the counter.

  She tiptoed to the entry door and cautiously peered out. A family of four was climbing into a green car down below in the parking place for this condo. They’d be on their way back to the main office, complaining because they’d been given the wrong key.

  Fawn was just glad she’d bought herself more time by keeping the dead bolt locked.

  Bubblehead at the rental desk would probably be talking on the telephone to her even stupider boyfriend—anybody who loved her had to be bonko. The poor vacationers would try to explain to her that they couldn’t get inside, and she would probably give them a different key to try again, without ever pausing for breath.

  By then, Fawn would be far away, and nobody would guess the truth. She hoped.

  Halfway down the stairs to the second-floor landing, Fawn felt the beginning of another cramp. Her stomach rolled in protest. The backpack slid from her shoulder as she doubled over with a groan. She snorted in air through her nose, breathed out through her mouth, twice, three times, until the cramp eased. She’d have to get some aspirin or something. Soon.

  But first, she had to find another place to stay, or find a bus out of Branson.

  Taylor caught sight of a bright red Ford Taurus sedan parked alongside Maple Drive and a woman with red hair standing on the street corner, apparently shouting at a man sitting on a big yellow bulldozer. All other sound, however, was drowned out by the idling motor of the big machine. A small emblem on the side of the dozer identified it as the property of the Beaufont Corporation. Bad news.

  Pulling up behind Karah Lee’s car, Taylor felt his hands tighten on the steering wheel. He had received a call less than five minutes ago about an altercation between a tourist and a construction worker on the corner of Elm and Maple. Although this was not in his job description, he had come because Greg and Tom were on the other side of the lake and would take too long to come back around by the bridge.

  He got out of the truck, locked it and pocketed his keys. After the incident last week, he couldn’t take chances. He walked past Karah Lee’s car and heard the familiar sound of an angry cat. Monster, no doubt, but he didn’t pause to investigate. Why the woman would drive through town with her cat to have an argument with a dozer operator…it didn’t bear consideration.

  He heard Karah Lee’s distinctive voice from across the street, raised to be heard over the irritating growl of the dozer.

  “You mean to tell me you owned this house?” she demanded, her inflection strong enough to bend steel.

  “Beaufont owns it, I’m telling you, lady,” the guy called down to her from his perch. “I work for them, and I’m just following orders.”

  “Then someone made a big mistake! I paid rent and deposit money. Where am I supposed to stay now?”

  The man caught sight of Taylor crossing the street and looked relieved. Karah Lee followed the direction of the man’s gaze. Her face was flushed, her curly red hair flying in every direction. Her eyebrows were drawn together like storm clouds congregating, and it sounded as if she had every right to be upset.

  “What’s the problem?” Taylor asked.

  “Finally!” the man said from the dozer. “You straighten this out, Ranger. I’ve got work to do.” He reached down as if to put his machine back into gear.

  “You stay right there until we get this settled.” Taylor’s voice boomed through the air, obviously surprising the dozer guy.

  Karah Lee blinked.

  Taylor pulled out his cell phone and dialed the number printed on the Beaufont Corporation logo on the dozer.

  “I was moving today,” Karah Lee said as the telephone rang at the other end. “I was supposed to move here!” Her voice wobbled as she gestured toward a rubble of wood and dirt in the midst of mature cedars and oaks. “Now I don’t have anyplace to stay, and this man tells me I’m trespassing.”

  “What about your place at the Lakeside?” Taylor asked. “Can you go back there?”

  “I moved out, and they’re booked for practically the rest of the summer,” Karah Lee said. “I took off work this morning so I could move, and now look at this!” She jerked her hand toward the destruction once more.

  Someone answered at the other end of the line. Taylor spent the next ten minutes seeking someone who knew what was going on.

  He never found a soul.

  Fawn doubled over twice again with cramps as she walked the mile or so to the local mall, which was connected to a Wal-Mart. At Wal-Mart she bought a bottle of aspirin, swallowed three tablets, then found another bus schedule on the racks of brochures at the front of the mall.

  The place was crowded with people rushing from shop to shop, and the highway out front was thick with cars going in both directions. This place bustled like the Vegas Strip.

  She glanced down at the schedule, then frowned and glanced again at the brochure rack, at a very familiar picture.

  She nearly forgot to breathe. It was her! At least, the old her.

  Still, that wouldn’t have been so bad, except now there was a small poster of a composite photo taped next to the old picture—and it was her…Now!

  She gasped out loud. People glanced toward her. She took a quick step forward, acting as if she was reaching for a brochure near the top, and covered the picture with her body.

  Don’t panic. Don’t let ’em see you react.

  Some screaming, laughing little kids ran past her, and she looked around to see if anyone was watching her. They weren’t. Some doofus in a jackrabbit suit was entertaining the little ones, and while they got all crazy about it, she reached in front of her and yanked the picture down.

  Afraid to check to see if anyone had noticed, she folded it next to her body and casually strolled toward the back of the mall. With every step, she expected someone to stop her, to call for a guard, to scream and yell, “Murderer!”

  But no one did. She glanced over her shoulder, and no one followed. Why hadn’t she changed out of this stupid Hawaiian shirt? The colors would attract a lot more attention than the pea-green pullover in her pack. At least she’d taken the time to flatten her figure with the elastic bandage when she’d pulled her clothes on.

  In a dimly lit corner near the back of the little mall, she found the bathroom door and pushed her way inside.

  A woman at the sink looked at her in the mirror, and her eyes widened. “This is the ladies’ room!” she snapped.

  “Oh. Sorry,” Fawn said gruffly as she turned and rushed back out. Just great. At least she was still being mistaken for a boy and not a killer, but where was she supposed to go to the bathroom?

  She saw the door to the men’s room, but couldn’t bring herself to go inside. Instead, she found an unoccupied corner and, with her back to the crowd, unfolded the picture. It didn’t have the glasses or the hat, and the composite made her look like a woman and not a boy, but the photo looked a whole lot like her reflection in the mirror this morning. She had to get out of Branson fast.

  How had they known about her change in appearance? Had someone seen her and recognized her this week? They couldn’t have, because she’d worn sunglasses or these dorky, round wire frames every time she went out, and she’d never taken her hat off.

  Anyway, it didn’t matter. They knew. Someone must’ve recognized her buying those things the day after her escape. She needed more disguise…more makeup, maybe?

  She studied the bus schedule and realized there was a bus stop right here. She looked around, relieved. There was a ticket counter in the front corner of the mall hallway. She was going to escape Branson, and the next bus left in thirty minutes. One of the routes went to Springfield, the largest city in this part of the state. Another route would take her south, through Harrison and on to Little Rock, Arkansas. Another would take her through Hideaway and over to a place called Bella Vista.

  Hideaway. Something dangerous was going on there, accordi
ng to Bruce. From what she’d overheard of the conversation between him and the killer, that was the whole reason for flying back here from Vegas.

  A small, soundless voice reminded Fawn that Bruce had known about the danger back here, and he had brought her into it, anyway. In the end, that meant he really hadn’t cared any more for her than anyone else ever had. It hadn’t mattered to him that she might be hurt or killed.

  But then, he had tried to make sure she was gone during his meeting with Harv, and he’d made sure she had enough cash to cover her for a few days.

  She knew he was one of those people who never thought bad things could happen to him. He’d probably figured he could talk his way out of trouble once he got here. Not that she knew for sure, because he hadn’t ever let her in on what he was doing.

  All that talk about going to Hideaway to go canoeing or biking, then back to Silver Dollar City before they flew back to Las Vegas…Had that all been a lie?

  Sudden tears stung her eyes, and she closed them. Oh, Bruce. What’s happening?

  She sniffed and straightened. No time for this. She folded the schedule and stuck it into the right rear pocket of her baggy jeans. She glanced toward the crowded mall, and realized that quite a few other tourists wore wildly patterned shirts in lots of different colors. So maybe she wouldn’t draw that much attention, after all.

  Chapter Eleven

  Taylor strolled beside Karah Lee as they crossed the street to her car. The cat’s offended cries had grown silent, and all they could hear was the angry rumble of the backhoe as it tore up concrete, dirt and tree roots. Taylor felt as if he had just witnessed a mugging. He could tell, with a sideways glance at Karah Lee’s profile, that she felt like the muggee.

  “Now what am I going to do?” Karah Lee moaned. “I can’t believe this. I have no place to go. All the cottages and rooms are rented at the Lakeside, and Bertie has a waiting list half a page long. I’ll have to drive all the way back to Branson West or Kimberling City to find a motel room.”