Hannah Alexander - Hideaway

Two weeks ago Cook had found Blaze inside the vacant house across the lake. The kid had sworn to Cook that he’d heard crying sounds inside. He had no explanation about what he was doing there in the first place, however. At this ranch, three strikes and the ranch hand was out the door. Blaze had been warned once already.

Kicking Blaze off the ranch was not something Dane wanted to do.

Cheyenne swerved to miss a jagged chunk of rock and hit yet another pothole the size of the Grand Canyon, the latest in a series on this road of Ozark gravel. Her head pounded from the tightness that had crept through all the muscles of her body on her drive from Columbia.

It was a four-hour trip, but she felt as if she had driven halfway across the world, from the bustle of Missouri’s premier university town to the backwaters of the borderland between Missouri and Arkansas—this part of the Ozarks was a whole ’nother country.

“I’m crazy,” she whispered.

Maybe so, but if she stayed in Columbia, she could lose her mind for sure.

Dense forest closed around the road on both sides, blocking out the moonlight. The darkness mocked her. She took a deep breath and tightened her grip on the steering wheel.

In the weeks since Susan’s death, Cheyenne had tried desperately to sidestep emotion. She’d been aware of a deadly canyon somewhere inside her mind, where she stumbled at vulnerable times. Then she felt devoured by the pain.

She knew better than to go there tonight.

Right now she was wishing she’d known better than to come here tonight, especially since there’d be no electricity until tomorrow. But this afternoon, pacing through the beautiful prison walls of memory in her apartment, she could take no more. Better a sleepless night in an old house in the wilderness than another sleepless night surrounded by images of the depth of her loss. And in the morning, perhaps the beauty of the countryside in April would keep her mind away from the dark canyon.

But morning was still hours away. Tree frogs shouted “cree-cree-cree” from the thickets alongside the road, so loud they nearly drowned out the sound of the car’s engine. Now the forest huddled in clumps, the tallest trees converging over the top of the road.

The eeriness of the night intensified Cheyenne’s sense of isolation.

A gate loomed ahead, shiny aluminum panels fastened with a rusty chain and padlock. Ardis had described it perfectly.

Cheyenne turned onto the grassy track and stopped at the gate. She pulled the key chain from the bottom of her purse and opened the door.

The interior light flashed on. Something rustled in the brush barely three feet from her. She slammed the door and locked it.

A raccoon shuffled across the road in the beam of headlights.

Cheyenne slumped against the steering wheel. “It’s okay,” she whispered to herself. “This is still just Missouri. No wolves, no grizzlies, no anacondas.” The biggest danger to humans in this area of the world was other humans. And she hadn’t seen another human being in the past thirty minutes.

Everything would be okay.

“Blaze?” Dane called from the doorway of the milking room. The barn was empty. Dane saw Starface out in the lot, heard the rustle of another animal somewhere in the darkness. Probably Gordy.

They had purchased two sows last week, both heavy with piglets, due to come any day. The flashlight revealed the door to their abode securely fastened.

Stepping to the fence, Dane leaned his elbows against the top rail. “Are you out here, Blaze?”

No answer. He turned off the light for a moment.

A break in the trees revealed a reflection of moonlight against the surface of the lake. There was a soft, rhythmic splash, followed by a silent ripple in the glow of the moon.

Without turning on the flashlight, Dane strolled down to the private dock. The small canoe was gone. He sighed and stepped onto the wooden planks. Time to intervene before something happened that he and Blaze would both regret.

A coyote cried in the distance. Cheyenne shivered.

The wooden gate swung back on its metal hinges with a screech of complaint. She wouldn’t close it again tonight. Why bother? There wasn’t any livestock on this acreage. Judging by the thick growth of trees, there wouldn’t be much room for cattle.

She got back into the car. Now to find the house and settle in for a night without electricity. She pressed on the accelerator. The car surged forward, hesitating, jerking, as if it echoed her own thoughts. The road grew rougher, rockier, forcing her to slow to a crawl.

The shadow of an animal darted across the far reaches of the headlight beams. It stopped to gaze toward the car for just a moment, its eyes glowing red, then disappeared into the deep foliage. A dog? Another raccoon?

Or maybe the darkness of her dreams was coming to life at last. She wouldn’t be surprised.

She completed a curve in the road, and her headlights reflected against the pale sides of a building—her home for the next couple of months. She stopped and stared at the house in the headlight beams. The paint was dingy gray, dried and peeling. It looked as if no one had lived here in ten years.

Dead weeds covered the yard and wooden porch. So this was what Ardis had meant when she said the house needed “a woman’s touch.” All the sensible women Cheyenne knew would hire a dozer to level the place.

She pulled up to the edge of the yard, where the fence had collapsed, and turned off the engine as she scanned the place with distaste. Sixty-five acres with a solid, two bedroom house. Now that she thought about it, Ardis hadn’t said anything about a bathroom or a kitchen, or even a living room. What else had she failed to mention?

Cheyenne pulled a flashlight out of the glove compartment. This place surely couldn’t be so depressing in the light of day.

The frogs, which had momentarily stopped their singing at Cheyenne’s arrival, took up their chorus again as she crept across the yard and up the chipped concrete steps of the front porch. The door unlocked easily. She pushed it open. The rusty hinges caught and held. She pushed harder, and it gave way with a loud creak.

A scuttling sound came from somewhere inside. That would be mice, or perhaps rats? Maybe squirrels.

Nothing to be afraid of. She aimed her flashlight beam through the room and saw a floral sofa in blue and white. Stepping across the threshold, she caught the faint scent of a dirty kitty litter box. Yuck.

Cheyenne shuddered as she edged into the center of the fifteen-by-fifteen room and saw cobwebs hanging in multiple layers from the ceiling, barely discernible in the dimness. Cheyenne had always prided herself in her bravery in the face of barking dogs, invading mice, and even her own hostile brother-in-law. She could handle a few spiderwebs.

She walked through the door at the far right corner of the living room to the kitchen, complete with a sink, stove and refrigerator. Modern faucets gleamed. At least this section of the house was in better repair than Ardis had remembered.

Cheyenne inspected the cabinets on her way to the west side of the kitchen, then entered an open doorway beside the refrigerator to find a small bedroom. The beam of her light picked out the wrinkled folds of a burlap bag in the far southwestern corner. She pushed open the door to her right, saw the sink, claw-foot tub, commode. She nodded with satisfaction. It wasn’t until she saw the curtains over the sink billow inward with the breeze that she realized the window was open.

The floorboards creaked loudly underfoot as she stepped to the window. The pane slid down easily, but there was no latch. “Great,” she muttered. No telling how long it had been that way.

As she turned away, she thought she caught a flash of light from the corner of her vision. She frowned and returned to the window. In the backyard, barely outlined by the quarter moon, was a small shed. Past that about a hundred and fifty feet was the barn Ardis had told her about. No light.