Safe Haven

by Hannah Alexander

  “And the driver thinks the leak was closer to the middle of the bus,” Blaze continued, still following her. “Why’d the Whites take the hit harder than the folks closest to the leak? And do you have to walk so fast?”

  Yes, she did. Taylor was going to get his wish, and she needed to find him quickly. “Could be any number of reasons, Blaze,” she said as she led the way out of the clinic. “If the Whites had other physical problems, like diabetes or heart problems or asthma, the carbon monoxide would most likely have affected them sooner, plus several of the other passengers kept getting out to take pictures. Those who stayed inside the bus to rest and stay cool would have been affected more severely.” That would include Casey.

  Karah Lee saw Taylor’s tall frame and bronze hair as he walked with some of the more spry patients back across the street from the landing zone. She motioned to him. “Taylor, may I speak with you for a moment?”

  He excused himself and joined her on the sidewalk as the others trooped back inside.

  “You wanted to know about Casey?” Karah Lee asked softly, out of earshot of the others.

  “What happened to patient confidentiality?” Taylor asked.

  “Priorities. I think she could be in danger.”

  “She?”

  “Definitely.”

  Taylor’s expression didn’t change, but the ensuing silence screamed his curiosity.

  “Casey is a young woman who is possibly septic, or could become that way,” Karah Lee said.

  The control slipped a little as Taylor’s gray-hazel eyes narrowed. “From what?”

  “Spontaneous abortion.”

  He obviously struggled with this information for a few milliseconds. “Then we need to transport her to Springfield?”

  Karah Lee leaned closer. “Taylor, I know this is highly unusual, but could you keep this to yourself? I couldn’t drag the story out of her, but it seems she’s masquerading as a boy to protect herself. She’s terrified she’ll be found out. Something’s going on there, and I get the feeling she’s in physical danger in more ways than one, or at least she feels that’s the case.”

  “So you want me to take her myself?”

  “I want you to find her and bring her back here to the clinic. I don’t know if she’d be willing to go anywhere—”

  “You lost her?” His shoulders slumped, and he brushed his hand through his hair.

  “I didn’t lose her.” This man could be irritating. “She yanked the IV needle out of her arm and took off while we were with other patients. I told you, something’s got her really spooked. Maybe she’s running away from home, maybe she’s afraid her parents will find out she’s pregnant…or she was.”

  Taylor sighed and rubbed his head, then stepped off the curb and marched toward his truck. “Let me get my hat. Looks like this search will be on foot.”

  “Not necessarily, but you might want to check the buildings on the town square first.”

  “Any idea which way she went?”

  “Probably out the back door, because if she’d gone out the front way, someone would have noticed.”

  He opened the door and reached inside, pulled out his hat and placed it on his head, and looked back at Karah Lee. “Can I at least call for help? Greg and Tom can cruise the perimeter of town while I search the buildings. That way—”

  “I don’t think anyone else should know about this, Taylor, really.”

  “Then I won’t give them details, I’ll just let them know the patient is unstable medically, and if someone finds her, they should bring her back here.”

  Karah Lee felt like a traitor. “Okay, just find her.”

  Dressed in fresh clothes and having to pee so badly she knew she would burst if she didn’t find a spot soon, Fawn reached the edge of Hideaway, with shrubs that thickened into a forest on one side of the road and an overgrown field of weeds on the other.

  This town had a lot of trees, which meant shaded alleys that almost looked like tunnels of green and that hid a girl well when she was trying to keep from being seen by the guys in the sheriff’s cruiser.

  But what now? She was feeling better, but not perfect. Her cramps were almost gone, and she didn’t feel as sick to her stomach, but she’d sure like to lie down someplace safe.

  Before going farther, she dropped her pack and relieved herself behind a couple of big trees. Dr. Karah Lee had told her that the need to urinate was a sign she was being well rehydrated by the IV fluid. That was a good thing, but it wasn’t very comfortable without a bathroom nearby.

  As Fawn hovered deep in the shadows, she heard the sheriff’s car go past on the road again. She knew it was them because she could hear that little ping-ping-ping in the engine that sounded as if they’d gotten bad gasoline.

  They were looking for her. She knew it.

  Had Dr. Karah Lee broken her promise? She’d said she wouldn’t tell anyone unless it was a matter of life and death.

  But then, if the doctor thought Fawn was really sick now—which she wasn’t, not really, not too bad now, anyway—then maybe she thought she was doing the right thing by turning Fawn in.

  Should’ve told her about everything else, maybe. But what if she’d spilled her guts and the doctor had called the Branson police? You just never knew who to trust.

  Instead of walking down the main road that led from town—with tar bubbling from the old surface in black, shiny streaks—Fawn climbed through a rusty barbed-wire fence and cut through the field toward a weathered gray barn that looked as if it had settled itself comfortably beneath the cliffs that oversaw the town. It looked abandoned. Kind of the way Fawn felt.

  As sweat trickled down her face and back, she heard the sound of another approaching car and ducked into the branches of the one lone, stickery-needled cedar tree in the center of the field. She peered out from the secure hiding place in time to see the ranger’s light green Jeep cruising slowly along the road, tar bubbles popping beneath the tires. Ranger Jackson gazed from beneath the brim of his hat across the field, then peered into the trees.

  She waited as he drove slowly out of town, then turned around and drove past her again. When he finally disappeared from sight, she plowed through the overgrown field to the barn lot. She scrambled over the wooden fence and dropped into the corral, looking for the best way to get in. When she tested the huge double doors in the front, they opened with a squeal of hinges. The smell of molded hay seemed to greet her in a cloud.

  The rough wood scratched her hands, and something rustled in the darkness. This place was spooky, but nothing could be spookier right now than the people cruising around searching for her.

  Fawn pulled her new little flashlight from her pack and entered the barn, closing the doors behind her. Her pack was heavy, and she didn’t feel the greatest. For now, she was going to have to make this barn in Hideaway her own hideaway.

  With an earsplitting hiss and the chugging of a diesel engine, the new bus lumbered off with the remainder of the ill-fated passengers Karah Lee had treated and released. She stood on the sidewalk beside Blaze waving at the grateful crowd of mainly elderly tourists, most of whom seemed eager to continue their touring.

  The bus cruised past the Lakeside Bed-and-Breakfast, past the old Methodist church and cemetery and up the hill on the road back to Highway 76. Karah Lee turned and went back inside to a waiting room remarkably empty of patients, thanks to Jill’s rescheduling expertise.

  Jill waved to get her attention through the reception window. “I hope you don’t mind working until eight o’clock tonight,” she said.

  “Not if you don’t.”

  “Good. You’ve got a caller on hold. You can take it in Chey’s office. The woman says she’s your sister.”

  “My sister? Shona?”

  Jill pointed in the direction of the office and picked up a clipboard. “I’ve got Mrs. Carlson in three and Melody Thomas in one. I’ll let you know when I need you.”

  Karah Lee picked up the cordless on Chey’s desk, pushed th
e door shut behind her and plopped into the cushioned seat in front of the desk. She hesitated before answering. The last few conversations she’d had with her sister hadn’t exactly ended well, but maybe this time would be an exception. One could always hope. Maybe Shona wanted to see how she was doing on her new job.

  She pressed the “phone” button. “Shona? Hi. How’s it going?”

  “Not well.”

  Karah Lee suppressed a groan, her hope short-lived. “I’m sorry. Anything I can do?”

  “Yes, you can tell me what you said to Dad the other day, because he’s been a bear this week, and he just happened to mention he received a call from you last week. Big surprise.” The sarcasm could cut through rock.

  “He didn’t tell you what we talked about?”

  “Something about a scholarship you received years ago.”

  “The Sebring Scholarship. He was friends with the committee chairman.”

  “And that would be a problem because?…”

  She obviously didn’t get it.

  “Shona, Dad influenced them. He also threw his weight around for my admission to med school, and my residency.”

  “Sure he did. I wrote those letters. Come on, Karah Lee, what is bugging you? And please don’t tell me you expected some kind of la-la land where all the good little boys and girls study hard to make good grades and get into college.”

  “It happens on occasion.”

  “Not where I come from.” Shona’s voice had taken on a new edge since they’d last talked—and it had already been bad enough. “Oh, that’s right, you used to beg Mom to read you those Pollyanna books.”

  No wonder Karah Lee always went into a depressive state after a conversation with her sister. Had it always been like this? Hadn’t they been friends at one time—between the fights?

  “Okay, look, Shona. Just don’t do it anymore, okay? I told Dad not to do me any more favors, and now I’m telling you. No more letters, no more chummy phone calls. If I can’t make it on my own, without influence from my father, then I deserve to starve.”

  An irritated sigh, then, “Karah Lee, you are such a jerk. Are you going to make Dad pay for his mistakes for the rest of his life?”

  “I’m not trying to make him pay for anything, I just want him to stop interfering in my life.”

  “It’s what parents do. They try to help their kids. Not that you’d know much about that, since all Mom ever did was sap your energy and complain about—”

  “Mom might not have complained so much if she’d had a faithful husband who didn’t start arguments and run out on her at the first sign of trouble.”

  “Mom never argued, Karah Lee, she just shut ’em down cold, like no one’s opinion mattered but hers, and the ‘Gospel According to the Great Katherine May Fletcher.’”

  “Stop it.”

  “And believe me, if Dad had run out on her at the first sign of trouble, neither of us would ever have been born.”

  “How would you know that? Has he been telling you all about his problems with Mom?” What kind of father would do that?

  “He wouldn’t have had to tell me a thing. You could’ve seen it for yourself if you’d just gotten in touch with reality every once—”

  Karah Lee pressed her thumb on the “phone” button and disconnected. Nothing ever changed, and she refused to sink to the level of sibling rivalry that had pocked her family history with ugly memories. She had work to do.

  Of course, she knew what would happen. The phone rang again, seconds later, vibrating in her hand. She let it ring two times before she pressed the button to reconnect. No use making Blaze or Jill answer for her.

  “One more word about Mom and I’m hanging up again,” she said.

  There was a long silence, and then an unfamiliar voice, “Excuse me?”

  Karah Lee spent the next couple of minutes in mortification as she changed a patient’s appointment time. She would deal with Shona later.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Something rustled in the hay nearby, startling Fawn awake on Sunday morning. She sat up in the stream of sunlight from the door of the loft and squinted at the glare, shielding her eyes. Her ears rang and her stomach rolled—she was going to heave any minute. Her head ached. Maybe it was just more side effects from the exhaust leak on the bus. She’d have to wait it out, at least for a couple more days, until the sheriff and the ranger gave up. Right now, she didn’t want to risk trying to leave town.

  Another rustle in the hay, and she turned and peered through the gloom of the barn, forgetting to breathe. A mouse or a rat?

  As she watched, a smooth, black, reptilian head emerged from beneath her empty backpack, followed by a shiny black body, undulating around the left shoulder strap of the pack, over her empty water bottle, toward her small stack of clothing.

  Fawn screamed and fell off the hay onto the hard wooden floor. “No! Get away!”

  The snake froze in place, its tail hovering beside Fawn’s high-tops across the clearing.

  She covered her mouth to prevent another scream as she scrambled to her feet, doing the creeped-out dance. Had to get him out of here, had to get rid of him, couldn’t scream again and shout to the world she was here.

  She’d cleared enough hay away from the right front corner of the loft to have room to lie down, and to spread the stuff from her pack around her, as a kind of shield.

  Some shield! Skin still crawling, Fawn crept through the dim light to the loft wall, where she’d found a broken pitchfork that now had only two prongs. She grabbed the fork, then went into gross-out mode again when spiderwebs touched her fingers. This was a horrible place to hide out!

  She carried the pitchfork back to where the snake had stopped, but the reptile was gone.

  She shuddered. She hated this horrible place! She had to get out of here!

  But where was she going to go?

  Using her weapon as a tool, she shoved the hay bales farther back from the middle of the wooden floor, sneezing at the moldy dust the movements stirred into the air. She didn’t find the snake.

  By the time Fawn finished clearing the filthy floor, the heat in the loft overwhelmed her. She barely had the strength to stand, and so she sat, cross-legged, in the middle of the floor, a sitting guard against any more crawling, creepy Sunday visitors.

  “It’s okay,” she whispered to herself, as if she were talking to her little sister. “It’s only a black snake. They aren’t poisonous.” Were they?

  A sudden loud gong echoed across the town, and Fawn cried out again, stumbling to her feet even as she realized it was the sound of church bells. She waited for her heart rate and breathing to settle once again, still glancing around the barn for the snake.

  Church bells. She’d never heard them in Las Vegas, but years ago, when she’d spent the night with Great-Grandma and went to church on Sunday, she always heard them. The sound gave her a feeling of peace and protection, because at Great-Grandma’s she was always safe. Always loved.

  She stepped closer to the open loft door and sat down in the sunlight, skin still crawling as she thought about what might be watching her from the darkness behind her.

  What was she going to do?

  Karah Lee sat on the back deck of the Lakeside Bed-and-Breakfast on Sunday afternoon, watching the boats come and go from the dock a few hundred feet away. The slightly fishy-mossy smell of the lake mingled with honeysuckle and drifted on the breeze, and she grew drowsy in spite of the high whine of an electric saw and the echo of multiple hammers upstairs. The mechanical noises blended with the bleats of Bertie’s pet goat, Mildred.

  Amazingly, Monster had taken a liking to Mildred. It wasn’t unusual to see him slinking around the little goat corral over by the abundant garden between the main lodge and the first cottage to the west. Spending time in a goat pen didn’t seem like fresh air to Karah Lee, but she’d finally grown accustomed to the odd couple, and Bertie kept Mildred’s place scrupulously clean.

  Hammers commenced once more. Dane
Gideon and his household of boys were working to complete the suite where Karah Lee hoped to sleep tonight. She’d spent the past two nights scrunched up on Cheyenne’s comfortable-but-short sofa, waiting for first-responder calls that never came.

  At first, when Dane and Blaze and the others arrived with their equipment today, she’d felt guilty for making it necessary for them to work on Sunday—Mom had never approved of it. Bertie had reassured Karah Lee, however, quoting some passage of scripture about how a man should get his ox out of the ditch even on the day of rest. Or something like that. Karah Lee wasn’t sure how she felt about being called an ox, but Bertie meant well, and the guys sounded as if they were having fun upstairs, especially when their shouts and laughter drowned out the sounds of work.

  Karah Lee had almost dozed off, when she heard a telephone ring inside. Her eyelids had just shut, when she heard footsteps on the veranda.

  “Karah Lee, you’ve got a call from your sister.”

  That brought Karah Lee upright in her chair. She glanced at Bertie in confusion. “My sister?”

  “You don’t have a sister?”

  “Well, yeah.” But they’d had their annual sibling squabble Friday.

  The veranda was deserted except for Karah Lee, so she took the cordless from Bertie and thanked her.

  “Shona? What’s wrong?”

  There was an impatient sigh. “Does it always have to be an emergency for us to just talk?”

  “No.” Yes. “Sorry.” In order to head off another argument, Karah Lee gave up and let Shona take the lead.

  “You hung up on me Friday.”

  “I know. I’ll try to refrain from doing it again, but it would help if you wouldn’t get all crabby about Mom.”

  “Fine. I’m worried about Dad.”

  “In what way?”

  “He’s still all stirred up about this problem with you, and it hasn’t exactly come at the best time for him.”