Читать книгу Hideaway - Hannah Alexander - Страница 14

“Well, that was stupid. You okay?” The deep voice cracked through sudden darkness as footsteps drew closer.

Cheyenne stopped breathing. Had she stumbled into illegal drug activity? The smell of a dirty litter box…meth lab?

“Stay back! I’ve got a gun.” She reached into the right pocket of her jacket and pulled out the tiny pistol. He didn’t have to know what it contained.

The footsteps stopped. “A gun! Who are you?” The voice came again, deep, but hoarse with the defining echo of adolescence.

Her heart thumped a dance against her ribs as she fought panic. “I don’t think that’s the question right now, since you’re the one trespassing.” Her voice sounded shaky in her own ears.

She crouched, feeling along the wooden floorboards with her hands. Could she pull the trigger on a teenager? “What are you doing in this house?” She should have run when she’d had the chance. Why had she hesitated? Stupid, stupid!

No reply. No movement. Only loud breathing that sounded more terror-stricken than her own. He could be a meth addict who was tweaking—desperate for another fix, and willing to go through anyone to find it. She’d had a few of those as patients in the ER.

Her fingers came into contact with the flashlight. She grabbed it and straightened, switched on the light and aimed the beam upward so it would diffuse throughout the room—less threatening, she hoped, if he truly was tweaking. She saw his silhouette and held the pistol high, so he would be sure to see it.

Straight dark brows rose over wide-open eyes. The young man whose shoulders nearly filled the doorway wore a black sweatshirt and dark-blue jeans that looked new. His work boots that were stained with mud.

This was crazy. He could be a killer. Why had she come out here at night?

If she didn’t continue the bluff, he could reach her in three strides. If she tried to run, she risked being shot in the back if he had a gun. She needed to gently ease out the front door, get to the car and test the capacity of the car’s acceleration.

“That a…real gun?” he asked, voice hoarse with obvious tension.

“You want a demonstration?” She tried to instill a threatening tone to her voice. It sounded phony to her.

He held his hands out to his sides, shaking his head. “No, I don’t need anything like that. How’d you know I was here?”

“I’ll ask the questions! Tell me who you are and what you’re doing in this house.” She was pushing it, she knew, but so far she had him fooled. How she would manage to get him out, she didn’t know.

He glanced out the front window, as if searching for her car—or maybe looking for his buddies? Who was Willy?

Somehow, the kid didn’t seem like a tweaker. In fact, he didn’t seem dangerous at all, and he had obvious respect for the teensy weapon in her hand. Good. It needed to stay that way. “Answer me!”

His attention refocused on the pistol. “I’m Gavin Farmer, and I live across the lake at the boys’ ranch. I’m not doing anything bad over here, honest. I’m sorry, I thought nobody lived here.” His gaze swept past her, out the window again. “You’re alone?”

“I’m never alone.” She fingered the small pistol of pepper mace. “And I plan to live here for a while. As I said, you’re trespassing.” It had been a long time since she’d knocked a man to his knees, but she still knew the moves, even for a big, tough kid. Still, something about him didn’t seem tough.

“They said this place wouldn’t ever sell, that it was tied up in some dead woman’s estate,” the kid said. “Austin Barlow send you here?”

“No.”

“The sheriff, then. He send you?”

“Do I look like a deputy?” she asked.

“I don’t know many deputies.” There was some familiar emotion in his voice, in his movement. It wasn’t anger so much as resentment. Despair, even.

“I’m not under arrest, then?” he asked.

She studied the shadows of his face for a moment. “Why would you think you were under arrest?”

“Well, for one thing, you’re still holding that gun.”

“I think I’ll hold it a little longer, if you don’t mind. Are you cooking meth in this house?”

His eyes widened. “Meth! You mean drugs? No way!”

Her instincts said he was telling the truth, though she didn’t know how far she could trust her instincts these days. She lowered the mace slightly, and heard him release a quiet sigh.

“Ardis Dunaway sent me here,” she said.

“Don’t know him.”

“Obviously not,” Cheyenne said dryly. “You climbed through the bathroom window?”

He nodded. “It wasn’t latched.”

“Just because a door isn’t locked doesn’t mean you have a right to trespass on someone else’s property. Who’s Austin Barlow?”

He lowered his hands to his sides. “The mayor of Hideaway, population a thousand plus some change.”

“Who’s Willy?”

“Another ranch boy like me.”

Okay, things were beginning to make a little more sense. Not a lot, but some.

“So what are you doing here?” Cheyenne asked. “And why would the mayor call the sheriff on you?”

“Because he doesn’t like my hair and he doesn’t like my nickname, and he likes to blame the ranch boys for everything that goes wrong around here.”

“In that case, don’t you think it’s time you got back to the ranch?” she asked.

“You going to tell Dane about this?”

“I don’t even know Dane.” She waited for him to make for the door, but he just stood there in the middle of the living room. Something about this kid intrigued her—and he was definitely stalling for some reason. Were the police actually looking for him? “You never told me what you were doing in my house.”

“Thought you said it was Ardis Dunaway’s house.”

He had a good memory for names. “It is, and I’m going to sleep here tonight, so if you don’t mind—”

“No electricity.”

“Good. I like to camp out.”

“You won’t like the ghosts.”

“Right.” Ghosts?

“And you’ll have to use the old outhouse, because without electricity there’s no water.”

“That’ll be my problem, won’t it? Go home.”

Still he hesitated.

Her internal tension meter kicked back up a notch. Why wouldn’t he leave?

He glanced at the pistol she still held in her hand. “That a twenty-five caliber?”

“No.”

He nodded and gazed around the room.

“Is there something else you need to tell me?” she asked.

“This place has cockroaches.”

Lovely. “Do you plan to do something about that?”

“No, but ol’ Bertie Meyer says all you have to do is throw a few hedge apples under the house and the bugs’ll leave.”

“Who’s Bertie Meyer?”

“Your nearest neighbor. She and Red are eighty-something and going strong.”

“What’s a hedge apple?”

He frowned at her. “You sure you want to stay here? You got a lot to learn about farm life.”

“I didn’t say I was a farmer.”

“You’re moving in here? All alone? You just came out here to live all by yourself?”

She glared at him. Her hand automatically tightened around the pistol. What was his game?

“All I’m saying is, don’t you need some help carrying your things in?”

“No.”

Without turning her back to him, she reached for the front door and shoved it open wide. She hadn’t completed the task when she heard the slap of shoe leather on concrete behind her on the porch. The long spring on the screen door twanged as it opened.

“Blaze, I guess you know you’re dead.”

Cheyenne pivoted with her flashlight and her pistol as a hulking, short-haired Santa Claus in denim filled the doorway like a mafioso hit man.

He looked at the gun, then looked past Cheyenne toward the kid and lunged forward.

“No!” the kid shouted. “No, don’t shoot! He’s—”

Her scream and the contents of her pistol blasted at the same time as she scrambled away from him. The man fell backward onto the porch with a cry of agony. Cheyenne caught the rebound effect of the spray in her face. It burned like fire, blinding her.

“Dane! No!” The kid shoved past Cheyenne. “You shot him? I can’t believe you shot him!”