Guarded Secrets (Payback Mountain #4)
Chapter One
CHAPTER ONE
Keeley steered through the curve in the mountain road. The low western sky reflected in her side mirrors showed sullen clouds against the faintest lavender remnants of the sunset. Spring had made a tantalizing showing earlier in the month, only to be followed by snow last weekend. And more was predicted by morning. She was plenty tired of winter.
The big curve up ahead led to a straightaway where the road became steep before going through a series of switchbacks, and then another straightaway that went into Sisters, the cutest of all the historic gold mining towns in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California.
Okay, she might be a little biased, but she loved her hometown, and it was, hands down, the best place to raise a family in California. Which she’d been thinking about a lot lately.
Turning thirty had been no big deal, but thirty-two? Definitely a big deal. A disastrous relationship after college had made her wary of trusting anyone with her heart. But she needed to get past that. She wanted a husband and kids, and the mental image of her ovaries shriveling with every passing year wasn’t helping.
With the window cracked open to enjoy the piney mountain air, and the heater cranked because it was cold out there, like a true Swiftie, she sang along with Taylor about unrequited love, steering through the next curve, and then onto the straightaway.
Click, click, click. Uh-oh. Not a good sound .
The rapid metallic clicking continued and she sat up straight, tightening her fingers on the steering wheel. She muted the music and listened intently. Lifting her foot off the accelerator slowed the clicking as the car decelerated. The steering wheel gave a weird shudder and the tire pressure warning light flashed on like the dark omen of doom it was.
“ Oh, good lord.” Nothing obliterated a good mood like car trouble.
Maybe it was nothing. Or if it was something, maybe it wasn’t serious enough that she couldn’t make it home. She’d take it nice and slow and get the tires checked first thing in the morning. The delusional thinking lasted about fifteen seconds before the clicking morphed into a squishy sound that could only mean a flat tire.
Damn it. Weren’t new tires on her summer to-do list? The current set weren’t in bad shape, they still had tread, but they needed replacing. She’d kept up on the maintenance and had checked the tire pressures only a week ago.
Despite comments from a certain cranky bar owner who said she shouldn’t be commuting down the mountain in her “tin can,” Keeley was a responsible car owner.
Owen Hardesty had a way of getting her back up as no one else could, and she’d defended her “tin can.”
With good maintenance, a Honda CRV could run for a couple hundred thousand miles. Thank goodness because hers was nearing the two-hundred-thousand milestone.
Faithfully, she’d followed the monthly maintenance checklist her dad had made for her when she’d first moved away from home. But she had the unhappy feeling the clicking sound meant she’d picked up a nail, and it had punctured a tire.
No amount of maintenance could prevent a nail puncture.
Resigned, she pulled to the side of the road along a stretch that in the spring would be a wide meadow bursting with wildflowers, but currently held the snowy remnants of the storm that had swept through the previous weekend .
Mountain spring was different from calendar spring. It was a time of year that teased with hints of warmth and color, only to dump six inches of slushy snow to remind you that Mother Nature could do whatever the hell she wanted.
The dirt shoulder was wide with plenty of room so she should be safe.
Putting on her hazards, Keeley got out of her car, sighing fatalistically when her cute suede Uggs sank into the mud. The dark seemed to be closing in, the clouds from the west swallowing the stars.
Vehicles sped by, headlights lighting up the road in front of them. Using the light from her cell phone, she found the front tire on the passenger side with rubber pooled like a pancake beneath the rim. “Terrific.”
First things first, she needed to call for roadside service. Back in the car, she tapped the screen of her phone and uttered a low groan. No service. A fact of life living in the mountains: cell service was spotty. But darn, she wished she could call for help.
Leaning back onto the headrest, she closed her eyes and thought the word she never allowed herself to say out loud. Fuck.
Pulling the zipper up on her light cotton jacket—because who wanted to wear their heavy winter coat in April?—she considered her situation. She could deal with this. Her dad had taught her how to change a tire, plus he’d put together a safety kit for her car that included a reflective vest and a battery-powered light.
“ This sucks. But I can do it.” If she said it loud enough, maybe it would be true.
Getting out of the car again, she opened the back and gave another mental curse. She’d forgotten that everything necessary to change the tire, including the spare, was beneath the CRV’s cargo floor, currently buried under crates and boxes of books, papers, and school supplies, all tightly packed around her desk chair and bookcase .
Why had she thought it was a good idea to bring her own desk chair and bookcase to what had been another teacher’s classroom? Thankfully, her genius pal Yousef had mad Tetris skills and had banned her from packing her car herself. He’d done his magic and fit everything together in a way she knew she could never replicate. He’d folded the back seats forward to make more room, and it was needed. Even the front passenger area was jampacked.
No way would she be able to get all that stuff unloaded, change the tire, and then reload and fit it all again. To cap it off, the cotton jacket and jeans she wore had been great for the we’re-sad-you’re-going-away drinks and tacos at the cantina, but the temperature was dropping and she was already cold.
Somewhere in one of the carefully packed boxes was her down coat, plus the fuzzy blanket she’d kept in her classroom for emergencies.
Her home in Sisters was only six miles away, but it might as well have been six hundred. A coyote howled, not quite far enough away for comfort.
Pushing the back door closed, she checked her phone again. A single bar appeared like a beacon of hope. Yes! She texted a quick note to her mom. “Flat tire. Pulled over on highway to Sisters. Calling AAA now.”
Staying glued to the spot because moving could mean losing the signal, she spent a futile ten minutes trying to get the Auto Club app to work while the lonely service bar appeared and disappeared in the corner of her screen. Maybe calling would be better.
She returned to her seat in the car, the window all the way up to keep out the cold, and sorted through the cards in her wallet. Not finding it there, she looked through the pockets of her purse. Finally finding the card, she dialed the roadside assistance number. The chirpy voice answering barely got through “How can I help you?” before the call dropped .
Tears threatened. She was a wimp with tears, but there was no one to see. Spending the night in her car was beginning to look like a real possibility.
Vehicles zipped past, more going up the mountain than coming down as commuters who lived in the mountains sped home to start their weekends. This time on a Friday night, traffic was light. Should she try flagging someone down, see if they’d give her a ride to Sisters? That would break every commonsense safety rule ever drummed into her head.
Maybe she should hike down the road a bit to see if she could get better cell service. Using the flashlight on her phone and keeping to the edge of the snowy meadow so she didn’t get hit by a careless driver, she started walking, her boots making squelching sounds in the mud. She’d hiked all the way down the straightaway without any improvement in reception. Continuing around the curve in the highway where the only place to walk would be the side of the road seemed too dangerous, so she turned around.
Wet was seeping into her boots around her toes. Apparently her Uggs weren’t waterproof. Shivering, discouraged, and seriously unhappy, she retraced her steps.
She was almost back to her car when a vehicle on the highway braked and slowed, then pulled a U-turn.
There was that moment of worry: what if the driver was a predator and a stranded woman alone was too tempting to pass up?
Even as she had the thought, the vehicle stopped behind her CRV, the driver’s door opening at the same moment she recognized the charcoal gray Bronco. She closed her eyes briefly and breathed deep, relief making her lightheaded. She had absolute faith in girl power, but she desperately needed help, and as much as Owen Hardesty didn’t bother to hide his dislike for her, he was here, and he’d never leave her stranded on the side of the road.