I folded my arms around her and cupped my hand around the back of her head. “It’s alright. Everything’s fine.”
Her fist hit me in the stomach, though there was no force behind the blow. “Everything is not fine,” she snapped. “I’ve been waiting all day to hear if you were found inside your trailer. They have your whole place barricaded off and wouldn’t let me through. And you have blood on your shirt.” She leaned back to peer up at me, and her eyes were bright with tears. “You’re okay? Frank’s okay?”
“We’re a little singed and reek of smoke, but we’re in one piece.”
She sniffed, and that unflappable steel backbone showed itself as she gave a final squeeze and stepped back. “Let me look at your arm.”
She collected her shotgun and followed me inside, placing the old Browning on the rickety table. I opened the bedroom door, and Maggie knelt as Frank rushed out. He was frantic for her attention, still traumatized by the events of the morning.
I cleaned his wound as best I could. Her face turned ashen as she took in the blood on his coat.
“I want you to take him home with you,” I said, and a cough strangled my words.
She looked up at me from where she crouched on the floor, her brow furrowed. “Sit down and let me see your arm.”
I obeyed, easing carefully into the one chair in the near-derelict cabin. She moved to my side and unwound the scrap of cloth I bound around my bicep. Blood had dried the makeshift bandage to the edges of the wound. As she gently tugged at it, I clenched my teeth against the feel of the wound tearing open again.
Maggie sucked in a breath. “This is a bullet wound. On both you and Frank.”
“It is,” I agreed, grimacing as another cough scraped my throat.
“This was not just a fire.”
I sighed and tilted my head back as she carefully worked the makeshift bandage free. “Someone tried to kill me. They set a fire and then shot at me when I tried to escape.” Anger flared again, as hot as the flames had been. “They shot at Frank, too, as he was running for the woods.”
She swore under her breath. “Who was it?” She met my gaze when I remained silent. “People have moved on. It takes effort to hold a grudge that long, and only—”
“Only Jack or Ed are still burning that candle.”
“Ed would shoot you in the face,” she said. “He would never hurt Frank.” Her face was pinched as she took in the ugly furrow the bullet left in my arm. “You need to see a doctor.”
“I’ll be fine. I want you to take Frank and go home, Maggie.”
“I’m not leaving you here. Come with—”
“Please,” I said quietly.
Her gaze searched my face. “What are you not telling me?”
“I think Winona discovered something about Grant Larson. If I had to guess after this morning, I would say I think it may have gotten her killed.” Her eyes widened, and I continued. “I wager he thinks I know what she discovered.”
“You’re coming home with me,” Maggie said. When I opened my mouth to argue, she snapped, “It wasn’t a suggestion. If your stubborn ass is staying here, then so am I.”
Frank leaned against my knees. He was still panting nervously, and he had not even bothered to investigate the squeaking nest in the corner. “You’re not staying here.”
“Then we’re going home. I’ll patch up your arm and Frank’s neck as best I can. I’ll feed you both. You can tell me everything while we hike back to my car.”
Her chin was set, and I knew there was no arguing with her. As we hiked back to where she parked her vehicle, I told her about the thumb drive, the camera traps in the woods along the border of Larson’s property, and the safety deposit box key.
Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw the white wolf keeping pace with us through the woods, but every time I turned my head to try to spot her, she disappeared into the shadows.
We bathed Frank in Maggie’s old clawfoot bathtub, cleaning him of the soot, the smell of smoke, and the blood. Once he had eaten and was settled on Maggie’s couch as she bandaged his neck, I claimed her shower.
Later, when I sat in her bright, fragrant kitchen as she swabbed antibiotic ointment on my arm and bandaged it, she quietly asked, “Why didn’t you come to me this morning? I was worried sick.”
“I went to the cabin to think through what I need to do next. Larson is a powerful man. A dangerous man.”
“What are we going to do?”
I slanted her a look at the use of we. “I don’t want you involved in this.”
“Too late. Winona was my dearest friend. Now you are. What can I do to help?”
I stood and moved down the hall to her guest bedroom, where I left the contents of my pockets on the bedside table before I tossed my clothes in the washing machine. I returned to the kitchen and slid the small key across the table to her. “I need you to find out which bank this key belongs to. I need to know what Winona hid there.”
She turned the key over and studied it. “I’ll start calling banks tomorrow morning.”
“And I don’t want you telling anyone I’m here.” Her brow creased, but I continued before she could argue with me. “This morning, it was a coordinated attack. Larson’s men or not, I don’t want this to come to your doorstep.” She let out a sigh and nodded. “Do you mind if I borrow your cell?”
“Not at all.” When I moved toward the guest bedroom, she called after me, “Supper will be ready in fifteen.”
William answered on the first ring. “Hey, Ma.”
“It’s Hector. Your mother’s fine. I’m just borrowing her phone.”
“I tried to call you earlier today, and your phone went straight to voicemail. Your girl is off the grid, Hec. No passport, no bank account, no line of credit. She’s a ghost.”
It took me a moment to realize of whom he spoke. “You couldn’t find anything at all on Faye Anders?”
He chuckled. “Oh, I found plenty on Faye Anders. Small town librarian in Iowa. A regular volunteer at the local hospital and animal shelter. She was single, no children, and died in a car accident twenty years ago at the age of thirty-three when she was driving home from volunteering at the hospital one night and was hit by a drunk driver.”
“And I’m guessing there is no Sam Anders?”
“Your girl’s son? He doesn’t exist. At least not on paper. It sounds like Raven’s Gap has gotten a lot more interesting since I left.”
“And it just got even more interesting.” I told him of this morning’s events.
He was quiet for a moment when I finished. “Do I need to get Ma out of town?”
It was my turn to chuckle. “You really think you could manage that?”
He let out a breath. “No. Fuck.”
“Tell me what you know about Larson.”
“As a rancher or a politician?” he asked.
“Politician.” I could find out about the ranching angle. The DC connection was beyond me.
“Off the top of my head, I know he was sworn into the Senate in the ’90s. He’s pretty moderate but leans left on agriculture, environmental issues, education, and healthcare. He’s more right wing about guns and Israel. Serves on a number of committees, especially ones related to energy interests, public lands, and national parks. He’s well liked, seen as approachable and honest.”
“Does the man have any secrets?”
“He’s a politician. Of course he does. He’s in someone’s pocket, and he’s a pathological liar.”
“I need to know whose pocket he’s in, and what he’s lying about.”
“Give me a couple of days. And, Hector? I’m counting on you.”
“I know. Someone will have to get through me to get to Maggie.”
“Don’t let them get through you,” he ordered, and hung up.
I startled into wakefulness dreaming I could smell smoke. It was a phantom scent, but it drew me from bed. I moved silently through Maggie�
�s dark house, checking the locks on the windows and the front and back doors. I cracked the door to Maggie’s room to check on her. She was curled up on one side of the bed with Louie, the little Bichon, tucked into the bend of her knees. I retreated.
Everything was secure, but I stood in the kitchen staring out the window over the sink. All was dark and quiet, but I watched the shadows until I felt Frank lean against my legs.
I rested a hand on his head. The mattress in Maggie’s guest bedroom was comfortable, but I did not return to it. I grabbed a comb from the bathroom and moved to the couch. Frank sprawled beside me, content to let me work the fine-toothed implement through his hair as long as I did not get too close to the tender wound on the back of his neck.
I never had a dog as a boy, but desperately wanted one. Once, when I was ten, a stray that was half wild and all bones and mangy fur wandered up to our shack. I shared the fish I caught with him, and he stayed for three days until he disappeared. I searched for hours until I found his broken body by the railroad tracks. I cried harder over that nameless dog than I had over anything else in my life.
When I first brought Bill, Frank’s predecessor, home, I saw him as little more than a tool to aid my search for Winona and Emma. But the brown poodle puppy viewed our relationship differently. When I lost Bill at the age of ten to cancer, I was gutted. I lasted six months after his passing before I went back to Bill’s breeder for another puppy.
I did not know why I was incapable of loving my wife and daughter. Until I brought Bill home, I thought it was simply an emotion I was not equipped to feel. The emotion I felt for my dog, though, surpassed anything I had ever felt for another human. I stopped questioning it. I could not be bothered to sit on the proverbial couch and parse out my feelings.
When all the snarls were combed free from Frank’s hair, I set the comb aside. Maggie’s laptop was sitting on the coffee table in the living room, and I powered it up and retrieved the flash drive from the night stand in the bedroom. I pulled up the spreadsheets Winona had created and studied the one with what appeared to be surnames in one column, date ranges in the next, and coordinates in the third column. If they were surnames, out of the three hundred fifty plus names, only one stood out to me as familiar. Harrington-Moore.
I pulled up the internet browser and searched for Harrington-Moore. Entries for Johnson Harrington-Moore showed up on the screen. I always thought it asinine when a man had three last names. Johnson Harrington-Moore owned one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Harrington-Moore was an American company that developed a number of drugs, vaccines, and biologics. An internet search showed its top drugs and devices were in the areas of cancer, diabetes, and infectious diseases.
The lobbying group for the pharmaceutical industry was legendary. I did a search for the senator and Harrington-Moore and found a number of images of the two men together. At high-end restaurants, at sporting events, at what looked to be an opera or a symphony.
I studied the list. Some of the surnames were too generic to bother searching. Nelson, Carmichael, Jefferson. I skimmed over the long list of names for another that was more unique. Navarro. The name sounded familiar, but when I performed a search on it, too many results came back. Instead, I queried Larson and Navarro together, and the search returned a news article from a few years ago. Grant Larson was mentioned in the article along with Edmond Navarro, president and CEO of the largest natural gas producer in the Appalachian Basin.
I searched both Navarro and Harrington-Moore in coordination with the dates listed on the spreadsheet for each, but the results that came back told me nothing.
The blue-white glare of the computer screen against the background of the dark living room gave me a headache, and light spots flickered across my vision when I closed the laptop. I placed the laptop on the coffee table, and Frank shifted to rest his chin on my knee. I placed my hand on his side and tilted my head against the back of the couch.
Two wealthy, powerful men were on Winona’s list. I would place bets on the other names on her list being just as wealthy and powerful. These were the kinds of connections a man in Larson’s position would have, both as one of the largest land owners in America and as a senator. Had the coordinates not led me to the camera traps in the national park borderlands, I would assume it was a list of campaign donors.
I needed to get eyes on Larson’s operation, and knew of only one way of doing that.
By the time I heard Maggie stirring in the next room, I was almost finished cooking breakfast. When she stumbled into the kitchen, bleary eyed, I slid a freshly poured cup of coffee across the counter to her. She clutched it in her hands and staggered to the table. She buried her face in the mug and did not come up for air until I placed a plate laden with an omelet, hash browns, and toast in front of her.
I sat across from her and ate my share, waiting until she stood and poured a second cup of coffee before speaking to her. “Do you still have Jose’s photography equipment and camping gear?”
“I do. I should have sold it, but I just left it stored in the garage.”
“May I borrow some of it?”
Her brow furrowed. “What are you planning?”
I told her. “I’ll be gone for a few days. Do you mind keeping Frank for me?”
“You know I don’t, but I don’t like this one bit.”
“I’ll be fine. I’m not going to get too close. I just want to see what I’m up against.”
She reached across the table and touched the back of my hand. “It doesn’t have to just be you, Hector.”
I smiled at her and could feel the bitter edge to it. “Who’s going to back me up? What friend am I going to call on other than you?”
Her frustrated silence told me she knew the answer as well as I did. “And I’m useless to you in this. I hate that.”
“You’re not useless. Keep my dog safe and hidden. Keep an eye on his wound. Don’t let on to anyone that you know of what happened. As far as you and anyone else knows at this point, I’ve disappeared.”
She smirked. “You’re just going to let everyone think you’re dead?”
This time when I smiled, there was real humor to it. “And won’t they all be disappointed when they find out the news of my demise is greatly exaggerated.”
thirteen
FAYE
After I dropped Sam off at his friend’s house to spend the night, I came home and went straight to his bedroom. As I searched the room, I told myself that at the age of eight, he did not have any privacy to invade. It staved off my guilt as I looked through his collection of books and sifted through his toys.
I found the notebook he liked to draw in tucked under his pillow. I perched on the edge of the bed and flipped through the pages. The drawings consisted of what I imagined most young boys’ drawings consisted of. Superheroes and cars, monsters and trains. I thought several of the drawings depicted life here at the inn, guests at breakfast in the dining room, the fire pit in use beside the river. The drawings made me smile, until I turned to the most recent pages.
This was what I had been searching for, but as I studied the heavy lines drawn in pencil and crayon, I could not make sense of the scenes. I was looking for pictures with the heavy red marks of blood or of men touching him inappropriately. I imagined that was what a psychiatrist would look for. But I was a baker and an innkeeper, not a shrink, and the pictures he drew of what looked like fat dogs and eyeballs struck me as odd but not disturbing hints of trauma.
I slipped his notebook back under his pillow and retreated to the kitchen. I originally thought to run the inn as a bed and breakfast, but it was too difficult to manage that alone if I had a full guest list. If I had one or two guests, I cooked breakfast, but when the inn was full, I usually set out muffins along with coffee and tea in the mornings, and one day a week, I served pancakes for breakfast.
I never set out to feed the town, but Ed Decker, the local mechanic, showed up one morning to to
w a guest’s vehicle. It was bitterly cold, and I offered him coffee and pancakes. The next week, Ed showed up again on pancake morning, this time with his wife and a dozen people from town. I had been serving breakfast weekly ever since.
On Friday evenings, I set out cookies. I perused my pantry to see what tonight’s cookie would be. I settled on double chocolate mint cookies and within the hour had a tray laden with fragrant cookies ready for the sideboard in the great room.
The fire was low in the massive fireplace, more for ambiance than for heat, though spring here was a fickle creature. The family of four from Kentucky was playing a card game at one of the sitting areas near the windows overlooking the deck. The older couple from Massachusetts were reading by the fire. Two middle aged couples, one set from Florida, the other from California, had drawn a set of chairs together in a loose circle and chatted animatedly.
I donned the facade of friendly innkeeper and stopped to talk with each group for several minutes. I told the older couple about the bookstore in town, though I left out the fact that one of the managers had been a serial killer. The middle-aged couples asked about restaurants in the area, and I gave them a list of suggestions. The family of four was curious about which trails in the national park would be suitable for children.
I breathed slowly through the exchanges, keeping my smile in place and my tone friendly. The casual back and forth conversation with strangers had never come easily to me. I was completely at a loss when it came to small talk. But answering questions and keeping the professional guise of hostess in place made things easier and kept a barrier between us that prohibited the anxiety from crawling up my chest and into my throat.
I was fluent in four languages and never mastered the art of conversation in any of them. But as the innkeeper, no one wanted to know what my favorite music was or what movies I enjoyed or which books I reread the most. No one asked what I thought of the current state of politics or my opinion on the latest headline events. That made speaking with my guests easier. They did not see me as an individual. They saw me in a role that extended to aiding them in enjoying and planning their vacation.
HIDING PLACE by Meghan Holloway Page 7