Hannah Alexander - Safe Haven

More people came up behind her as she limped downstairs. They reached the ground floor and stepped through the emergency exit out into the night, where three men in uniform stood watching them closely.

She yawned and rubbed her eyes.

They didn’t stop her. Nobody called out as she joined the rest of the growing crowd in the glow of the outside lights.

As the first fire engine raced into the parking lot behind the building, Fawn crept closer to the edge of the crowd, then slipped out into the night. She hadn’t needed her shoes, after all.

The telephone beside Karah Lee’s bed rang long before the alarm clock did on Thursday morning. Without opening her eyes, she reached for the receiver. Her left hand knocked it from the cradle and she barely caught it before it could hit the hardwood floor. This wasn’t going to be a good day.

“Hello.” She sounded like a frog.

“Hi, this is Taylor Jackson doing damage control,” came the baritone-gilded voice.

She cleared her throat and pried her eyes open. Good grief, it was practically still dark outside. “Damage control?”

“You had a wreck last night, remember? At least you’re awake and talking.”

She tried to sit up in bed, but the movement made her head pound, and she lay back against the lilac-scented pillow. “Don’t you ever have downtime?”

“Not lately. I’ve seen some bad reactions after an impact like last night’s. I didn’t want to take any chances.”

Her nausea was almost gone, but her head hurt where she’d bumped it, and her shoulder ached where the seat belt had grabbed her. Even worse, she cringed with humiliation every time she thought about her nauseating display in front of—and on—the poor guy.

“Well. Okay.” She glanced toward Monster through the semidarkness, and saw his huge outline, belly up, legs in the air, paws clinging through the holes in the top of the pet taxi. It was the way he usually slept—except he usually avoided the pet taxi.

“How are you feeling this morning?” Taylor prompted.

“I’m doing fine, no blurred vision, and I feel a lot better.”

“Usually after an impact like the one you sustained, the victim feels worse the next day.”

She gave a quiet sigh. Nothing better than a skeptic paramedic—unless it was a cat that snored. “Okay, but when you factor in the bulldozer running me over, I’m doing pretty good.”

No reply.

“You know, considering.” He obviously had been born without a sense of humor, or the gift of gab. “Look, Taylor, I’ll be fine.”

“The tow truck picked up your car.” He had a very attractive voice. “The mechanics will be checking it out today. I gave them the number of the Lakeside in case they need to get in touch with you.”

“You’re kidding. You did all that?”

“The guy’s shop is just three blocks from the square.” Yes, that was definitely a nice voice, maybe a little impatient because she wasn’t admitting to her misery. Maybe he was wondering why he’d even gone to the trouble to help her in the first place.

She was touched in spite of his curtness. After all, she was definitely a noncompliant patient. She wouldn’t have been nearly so forbearing in his place.

“Well. Thanks again, Taylor. And really, don’t worry about me. I’ll be checking in at the clinic about eight-thirty this morning.”

“Oh.” He sounded surprised. “You will?”

“Of course.” To work. She had specifically not mentioned that fact to him last night, because she knew how quickly word traveled in the medical community, in spite of the new Federal regulations about patient confidentiality. She did not want her stupid behavior last night to precede her. “Thanks a lot for calling, Taylor.” Her head continued to throb. She needed aspirin, and fast. “Goodbye.”

There was a pause, and then, “Goodbye.” It almost sounded like a question, as if he still wasn’t convinced she was okay.

She moaned and allowed the receiver to fall back into its cradle, hoping she wouldn’t have to face him again until the stain faded from his uniform. Unfortunately, one did not easily forget a six-foot-tall woman with red hair.

Her stomach rumbled, harmonizing with Monster’s early-morning growl of welcome, and she dragged herself from the comfortable bed to open the pet-taxi door. She had assured the elderly proprietress of the Lakeside Bed-and-Breakfast that her furry ball-and-chain had the intelligence to use the ever-present litter box, and that he didn’t scratch furniture because he’d been neutered in a former cat-life.

Monster rushed to the kitty-litter box in the bathroom while Karah Lee followed him and dug aspirin from her overnight case. Checking her appearance in the mirror, she groaned aloud. Her forehead was mottled red and blue and the skin was broken. She might possibly pull enough bangs down over it to conceal the bruise from the clinic staff, but it would take a better actress than she was to conceal the fact that her head was throbbing so hard it nearly crossed her eyes.

But she would be there, no matter what.

Fawn Morrison opened her eyes to dim, green-shaded light and the sound of tires on blacktop only a few yards from where she lay. She unwound herself from the tight-little-ball position in which she always slept, and brushed aside a pine branch that scratched at her cheek with the puff of every breeze. Her stomach cramped. Her feet hurt from the cuts and bruises she’d gotten from her barefoot run through the hazard-pocked darkness last night. Her ankle ached.

From the jumbled-together restaurants up the hill on Highway 76, she caught a whiff of frying bacon, and it reminded her how hungry she was in spite of her stomachache. It also reminded her where she was, and why.

Last night, she’d raced away from the crowd as fast as she could run, tripping over curbs in the dark, stumbling into bushes she couldn’t see and, finally, scrambling down a steep, muddy embankment to this place. Unable to go farther, and hurting too much to care if she got caught, she’d curled up and cried.

Again this morning, the tears blurred her vision. Bruce was murdered! The police thought she was the murderer, and Harv knew what she looked like. He couldn’t afford to let a murder witness live. And if she was right about that flash drive storage device in her purse, Harv would be after it. She couldn’t afford to let him—or the police—get to her.

She couldn’t let anybody find her—which meant she couldn’t let anyone recognize her.

Another car swept past, and Fawn eased herself farther down the muddy, tree-lined bank to a tiny creek that trickled over some rocks in the shadows. It didn’t smell like a sewer, so she stooped down and splashed some of the chilly water on her face. She couldn’t believe this hidden place was so close to congested Highway 76.

Her head ached, and her eyes felt swollen from crying. For the past couple of years she’d been sure she’d never cry again. She thought she’d seen everything—and done everything. But just as Great-Grandma used to say, life had a way of changing. Why couldn’t things just settle for once? Why couldn’t people learn to be nice?

Fawn missed Bruce. He’d been good to her—as good as he’d known how to be. He wasn’t one of those fine, law-abiding citizens or anything. He had a business, and it wasn’t banking. But she’d also seen him give money to the soup kitchen down the street from the mall in Las Vegas, and he was a big tipper. He was good to a lot of people. So much better than her stepfather had ever been to her…considering Bruce didn’t know how old she really was…considering he’d never forced her to do anything she didn’t pretend to want to do.