Karen Harper - The Hiding Place

The boulder, the size of a wheelbarrow, crashed into the natural sandstone table five feet from her, just missing her purse but smashing the picnic basket and the edge of the table. Fragments flew, but the boulder’s momentum kept it rolling. It disappeared in a cloud of pebbles and grit off the other side of the flat, waist-high structure, where its massive weight ground it to a stop.

She was stunned but still conscious. Sucking in dust, pressed against the solid rock behind her, Tara was drenched in sweat, yet she shivered as if she were freezing. At last, but for her thudding heart and panicked panting, there was silence.

The red sandstone dust shower burned her eyes, making her blink back tears and cough. A sharp shadow of a man thrust itself onto the surface of the remains of the sandstone tabletop. Someone must be peering over the edge of the cliff above. She was grateful he must have come running to see what had happened, but he shouldn’t be climbing the rocks.

“Did you see that?” she shouted, then fell into a coughing fit again. She craned her neck but couldn’t see anyone peering over. She took a few tenuous steps out from the cliff and shaded her eyes to look up into the sun. “Hello! A rock fell and just missed me!”

No answer. No one there and no shadow now. Suddenly, she knew.

She gasped and leaped back against the cliff. Someone had shoved that rock over the edge to hit her, crush her!

Run or stay here? She should not have picked this deserted spot. She was always careful not to take risks, but she hadn’t considered a picnic at Red Rocks to be one. She realized too late that this side of the cliff couldn’t be seen from the road where she’d left her truck.

Tara grabbed her purse and ran. She heard footsteps spitting sand or grit above. An echo? The sounds became more muted, distant. Could her attacker—her would-be killer—be running away? The back side of this behemoth rock was an easier climb than from where she stood.

Tara tore around the side of the cliff toward the road. She spun in a circle but saw no one. If she wanted to get a glimpse of who it was, she’d have to run farther, faster. Had someone followed her here? Followed her from the doctor’s office? She’d seen no one in her rearview mirror. Had someone kept Veronica from coming—or harmed her?

Tara ran farther around the rock structure, then stopped again. Out of breath, a stitch in her side, exposed…What if the person had a gun? No one else had evidently heard or seen what could surely be considered a natural event, an accident. She’d better get to her car, get home. She needed to check on Veronica, and she needed Nick’s help now.

If she asked him for that, he would ask her who wanted to harm her and why. But however much she prided herself in finding answers, right now she had only guesses.

As she neared her truck, grateful to see it looked untouched, she saw a man jogging away toward the amphitheater from the vicinity of the fallen rock. That meant nothing, of course. Someone could have heard the noise and be going to tell a park ranger. People ran here all the time, both in the slanted aisles of the huge acoustic bowl and on the paths in the area. But what if he was the one? He was too far away to recognize.

Tara got in her truck and clicked the door locks closed. Trembling so hard that she couldn’t even get the key in the ignition on the first try, she finally jammed it in. She knew she should report what had happened to the Red Rocks rangers, but she was getting out of here. She had no proof it was an attack, and most certainly not that it was attempted murder. After so much of her life had been made public, she didn’t want her name in the papers again. But she had to admit that locals didn’t even deface these rocks with graffiti, let alone try to harm the natural structure of the place. Nor had she heard of falling rocks here.

As she started away, in her side mirror, Tara saw a mountain biker burst from the rocks near where she had been. But he didn’t follow the road or look in this direction. He was going the other way, fast. There were many biking trails in this area, not to mention thousands of avid bikers on them all the time.

She gripped the wheel and turned onto the highway. Don’t speed, she told herself. You’re all right now. No one is following. Maybe that was just an accident, she rationalized. And someone nearby, who was climbing the cliff and shouldn’t have been, just took off, too. Maybe he’d seen the sign about the fine or jail time. He certainly wouldn’t want to be blamed for a loose boulder almost falling on someone.

Swiping tears from her cheeks as she drove, she headed toward home. But when she caught a glimpse of herself in the rearview mirror, she yanked her sunglasses off, pulled over, parked and burst into sobs. Her hair and face—even her eyes, which she’d instinctively closed in terror when the rock fell—were coated with pale reddish dust. She looked like a ghost tinged with blood, like a nightmare of death itself.

After Nick picked up his truck from his friend and got it serviced in Evergreen, he decided to stop by to check on Clay’s younger brother Rick Whetstone. Luckily the last phone number he had for him connected, and he was still in Evergreen, the next town northwest of Conifer.

Marcie, a woman who described herself as “hanging out here with Ricky,” said he’d be back soon from running errands. She rattled on that he had a really good job catering parties, but they were still in their small apartment above a store near Lake Evergreen. Nick knew the area. It now boasted a new library, soccer fields and an event center, but he’d always referred to the broad part of the valley between Buffalo Park Road and Meadow Drive as “old town.”

Years ago, if Nick had been asked to place a bet on which brother in the Whetstone family would end up in prison, he would have picked Rick, not Clay. A real hell-raiser as a kid, Rick was about twenty-five now. Maybe he’d settled down with Marcie and a decent-paying job. Still, Tara had told him that Rick had blamed her, as well as Alex, for what had happened to his adored brother Clay, so Rick couldn’t have matured too much.

“Tell him I’m going to stop by to say hi,” Nick had told Marcie. “Just wanted to see how he’s doing.”

Evergreen was really spread out these days. Part of the old town was kept up as a historic Western town in fine fashion to attract visitors, and had gift shops and restaurants stretching several blocks on one side of the highway. Most Evergreen residents, however, lived in the northern, newer parts of town in the same valley, or in cliff-clinging homes in various well-to-do, gated gulch communities. As everyone in these parts knew, the Lohans, Tara’s former in-laws, had one of the most spectacular homes in Kerr Gulch, about ten miles from the more isolated Mountain Manor Clinic they funded and pretty much ran, so he heard.

Nick found a parking place near the store where Marcie said they lived. He had always liked this area; it calmed him, despite the traffic and tourists, because across Highway 74, from the row of buildings, ran noisy, rushing Bear Creek, bouncing over rocks. He stopped and got out, taking Beamer with him for a short walk. Man and man’s best friend, they stared at the bursts of foam. The sweet sound of it—damn, what wouldn’t his dust-eating Delta Force buddies he’d left behind give to hear and see this? The water was so strong in places that rocks had been wired back so they wouldn’t tumble in as others had.

He thought about Rick and Clay again. Surely Rick would not get caught up in crazed revenge the way Clay had. Nick hoped what had happened to his brother had put a damper on Rick’s grandiose schemes and volatile temper. And he hoped he wasn’t the one spying on Tara and Claire. What if he tried to snatch Claire the way his brother had or took his anger out on Tara?