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“How did you guess?”

  “Not hard, once you learn to read the signs. You know, like trying to get your ranch hands in trouble.”

  “Speaking of reading, has yours progressed lately?” Dane asked.

  Blaze tossed another pebble, shaking his head. “We’re learning about the minerals and stuff in science right now. I can look at a rock across the room and tell the teacher all about its composition, but that don’t work. He wants me to write it down.”

  Dane selected one of the pebbles Blaze had accumulated for tossing, held it up to the sunlight. “This one’s calcite.”

  Blaze picked up two others. “This here’s dolomite, and this one’s chert.”

  Dane nodded.

  “You show me a globe of the world, and I’ll tell you pretty much every country.”

  “Then why are you flunking geography?”

  Blaze tossed another pebble and didn’t reply.

  “I know a retired teacher over in Cape Fair who worked with children with learning disabilities.”

  Silence again.

  “I’d like you to meet with him,” Dane said.

  “You don’t think my dad tried all that, over and over again?”

  Dane leaned back against the railing, frustrated.

  Blaze shook his head. “It’s like my brain puts up this invisible armor every time I try.”

  “Then we need to find a way past that armor.”

  “So the mayor thinks I blazed the boat and killed the cat?”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “You changed it first. We were talking about the fire, remember? About how the mayor thinks I did it. I think he called me the black kid with the stupid mop-head hairdo.”

  Dane winced. There was nothing wrong with Blaze’s hearing. “I think you made a poor choice for a nickname.”

  “You know what’s weird? Ramsay Barlow and I are buddies at school. I guess his daddy don’t like it.”

  “You let me handle his daddy.”

  Cheyenne wrote a final check, signed it, then slid it into the envelope addressed to the local rescue mission. It was her pet project—and the reason she still lived on the third floor of an apartment building without an elevator, still drove a four-year-old Lumina sedan.

  All her bills were paid up for the next three months. The mission would be supplied with food. She had ample money in her debit card account.

  Everything would be okay.

  Then why did she feel so frightened?

  She picked up the telephone and hit speed dial. She got a recording.

  “Hello, Mom and Dad? It’s Chey. I just wanted to let you know I won’t be at my apartment for a few weeks.” Could she do this? Just take off? “I’ll call you later with a contact number, in case you need me for anything. I love you.”

  As she hung up, she saw that her hand was shaking.

  Maybe she did need this time off.

  The nightmares had haunted her sleep for so long, she had trouble closing her eyes at night. She seldom even slept here anymore, preferring the cramped quarters of the call room, with the overhead speakers blaring every so often, just to remind her she wasn’t alone.

  Strange that this apartment triggered the dreams more often than the actual place where Susan had died. But Susan’s signature was stamped all over this place—her special, decorative touches, her color schemes with those just right shades, the deep violet-blue of tanzanite, alexandrite, rose quartz. Susan’s favorite colors. And Susan had stenciled the wisteria around Cheyenne’s living room doorway.

  Cheyenne pulled a suitcase from the closet in the spare bedroom. Ardis was right. It was time to escape the memories before they took over completely.

  Chapter Seven

  On Sunday night Dane Gideon wandered through the upstairs hallway of his sprawling house. He overheard Tyler and Jinx arguing about synonyms versus antonyms through the closed door of the bedroom they shared at the end of the hallway. Tyler had a test tomorrow, and Jinx was helping him study.

  Dane knocked softly. “Keep it down in there, guys. Willy and Jason have to get up early to milk.”

  He heard a boyish chuckle, then silence. Good, the atmosphere around here was calming a little. The boys had been upset all weekend about the vandalism Friday night, and especially about the fact that some of the townsfolk showed signs of blaming Blaze for the whole thing.

  Dane saw light coming from beneath the door of the room Willy and Blaze shared. He knocked. No answer. He opened and peered inside. Willy lay sacked out on the top bunk with all his clothes on. Blaze’s bed was as pristine as when he’d made it this morning.

  Dane switched off the light and closed the door, then went downstairs to check the kitchen.

  Empty.

  He peered out the window toward the barn. No lights glowed, but that didn’t mean much. Blaze could be sitting there in the dark, talking to a cow or a chicken. The kid had an interesting emotional link with the animals. It was as if humans had let him down, and now he preferred the company of other species.

  Dane sometimes felt the same way. Not that he ever resorted to talking to the cows except when it pertained to their milk production. He would never sit in the barn and spill his guts to Gordy.

  Blaze was different. The chaos that often seemed to reign in this house—with so many male teenagers clamoring for attention—obviously stressed the kid at times. Up until his father’s death, Gavin Farmer had lived quietly, assisting his dad in the veterinary practice, avoiding extracurricular activities at school. Dane knew he craved solitude.

  Switching on the outside floods, Dane picked up a flashlight from the end of the cabinet. If Blaze was in the barn, fine, but he tended to wander from the property. Once, Dane had found him on the island in the middle of the lake, fishing from the cliffs with Red Meyer, an eighty-five-year-old neighbor across the lake who was like a grandfather to the boys. Another time he’d been out on the highway, trying to rescue a dog that had been hit by a car.

  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 a
longside 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.

  Maybe what she’d seen had been distant headlights from a nearby, unseen road.

  A small chest of drawers had been placed against the door that Cheyenne presumed led to the other, larger bedroom, but she didn’t feel like heaving the chest out of the way tonight. She retraced her steps to the living room and was about to push open the closed door adjacent to the entryway when she heard a muffled thump from the back of the house.

  She froze in place.

  She heard another creak of floorboards—from the bathroom. She stopped and stared at the threshold ahead of her, then swallowed. Her hands trembled, making the flashlight beam flicker against the far wall as she fought for control over her imagination.

  No mouse had made that sound. She hadn’t imagined it.

  She aimed the light at the kitchen doorway.

  “Willy, that you?” came a deep male voice, accompanied by the sound of footsteps, the scritch of shoes on old linoleum. “I told you to get to bed. If Dane knows you came over here, he’s gonna kill me for sure.” A large man stepped through the doorway. “Get that flashlight off before someone sees it.”

  Cheyenne caught her breath and stumbled backward.

  His clothes were dark, and his skin so black he would have merged into shadow except for a huge smile, with teeth all over the place. He squinted in the light. Dreadlocks sproinged from his head in every direction.

  “Quit teasing me, Willy. How’d you get in here? I don’t want to get you in…trouble…too.” He took a step forward. The teeth disappeared. “Willy?”

  Cheyenne shuffled backward, collided with the half-open door, dropped her light with a clatter of plastic on wood.

  Chapter Eight

  “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 d
efining 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.