Chapter Twenty
Mira
“I’m taking a break,” I informed Opal, who sat comfortably on the stepstool in the storage room, taking inventory. “Keep an eye on the front?”
“Yeah, yeah. You got it. See you in fifteen,” she said in a distracted voice.
Her pen tapped loudly against her clipboard, and I knew she was doing math. “It helps me focus,” she had told me one day when I couldn’t stop staring at her pen, blurred with motion.
I had big plans to run down to the gas station and buy a two pack of Twinkies as a reward for surviving the past week.
Never before had I tasted one, but I’d heard good things, and I needed a distraction.
The corner of a piece of paper taped to the door lifted and fluttered in the breeze.
Opal didn’t normally allow flyers on her windows so, out of curiosity, I stopped to read it.
The sound of my heart was deafening as I read the dreaded summary of my past. I gasped as I ripped it off the window and glanced around to see if anyone else had read it.
Clusters of people talked in hushed whispers as they watched me, and my gaze crashed into a telephone pole that held another report. Proof of my mental instability.
Copies were attached to every visible wooden or glass surface on Main Street, like a snowstorm of my indiscretions. Horror sat on my chest and made it hard to breathe. “No, no, no,” I chanted as I ripped page after page down and wadded them up.
“What’s going on here?” Opal asked as she came out of the pie shop. She cast a confused look to the people in her store who stared out of the clear glass, like window pups at a pet store.
“Opal,” I sobbed. Tears burned my eyes and trailed down my cheeks.
My fists were full of the crumpled, damning papers. Opal pulled one off a blue metal mailbox in front of her shop. She scanned it, and her face fell. “You people should be ashamed of yourselves,” she yelled. Quietly, to me, she said, “Mira, go home.”
I panicked. Everyone would see them. He would see them. “But—”
“I’ll clean all of this up. You go on home now, you hear?” She turned to the gathering crowd. “Pie shop’s closed for the rest of the day.”
Opal turned to pull another report off the window of the shop next door. A few of the onlookers began to help her, and I bolted for my truck.
Caleb was on the rig all day. Opal would have them all cleaned up by the time he got off work. He would probably never see them. Oh, who was I kidding? Nobody took a shit in this town without every last person knowing about it.
I slammed my palm against the steering wheel, over and over until it throbbed. Who would do such a thing? Clancy and his deputy were the only ones in town who had access. What could I have possibly done to piss them off so badly that they would ruin my life like this?
I never checked my mail. It was pointless when you had lived off the grid for so long and didn’t get bills.
And to be perfectly honest, it wasn’t like I was in danger of receiving a Christmas card.
But a copy of my report fluttered in the wind, held onto the rusty old mailbox by a thin piece of tape.
I threw my truck into park and jumped out to rip it off, like the faster I did, the less it would be true.
The lid clunked open and a very official looking packet lay folded inside.
After I wrestled it out, I read the return address logo.
Avery and Woods Law Group. The name pulled on the edges of my frayed mind.
I wiped my damp lashes with the back of my hand and tossed it into the passenger seat before I got in my truck.
As I drove through the woods that led home, my gaze was attracted time and time again to the oversized envelope. The only lawyer I knew was Sam Burns.
And the lawyers from the trial.
I slammed on the brakes and stared in fear at the package. My fingers couldn’t work fast enough as I tore through the top and pulled the papers out. Scanning the document, my heart fell to somewhere between the soles of my feet and the rusted out floorboard.
…Angus French……released early……parole……good behavior…
The rest of the letter didn’t matter to me. I was supposed to have three more years of safety, but my stepfather somehow convinced a panel he wasn’t evil anymore and got himself released.
He’d be coming for me.
I scanned the date at the top and cursed myself for not checking my mail more often.
He could be to my house as early as tomorrow if he got lucky with a ride.
Maybe even today. My fingers clenched the paper as I searched the woods.
My forest suddenly became darker, more sinister.
A chill ran up my spine and gooseflesh raised over my arms as I imagined Angus watching me from some unknown hiding place in the shadows.
I couldn’t stay here. The Fletcher house was where he would come first.
The mouse in me said I was going to die just like Angus had told me all those years ago, but the survivor in me was already searching for a hidey hole. I needed to find asylum.
I pulled the truck around and headed for town again, my earlier dilemma forgotten in the wake of unmitigated fear.
I could go to Sheriff Clancy. He was a cop.
He was supposed to, by profession, help people who were in danger, right?
I growled. Clancy hated me. He’d probably assist my stepdad and then dance on my grave.
Sam Burns? He was a lawyer who could get me in touch with people.
Maybe he could get me into some program where they would give me a secret identity and I could hide in some foreign country for the rest of my life.
I thought about my timeline and clenched my teeth together.
Sam Burns didn’t know anything about my case, and I didn’t have time to catch him up.
I had succeeded in convincing exactly zero people to believe me about my stepfather when he’d killed my mom.
I doubted heavily that Sam Burns would be my first.
My truck blew through town before I even fully registered where I intended to go. In quiet desperation, I sought the only safety I’d ever known.
****
Caleb
One week. I had one more week before I’d be working on the big rig and out of this tired little town. I liked my home, but being so close to Mira was suffocating me. I didn’t have it in me to watch her move on.
“Ho!” Brian yelled over the clanking machinery below.
I dragged my thoughts back to the present and set my clipboard down. Sparing a testy glare for my brother, I yelled, “What?”
Brian jerked his head toward the parking lot. “Visitor,” he clipped out before he turned to help haul up another length of pipe.
I had received a visitor exactly one time at work, and that had been the day my mother passed.
I squinted down the stairs but couldn’t see past the gleaming metal of the machinery that ran the rig.
“No personal shit at work, McCreedy,” Mr. Wilson warned around a toothpick that hung precariously out of the corner of his downturned mouth.
“Yep. Two minutes.” I handed him the clipboard and ducked down the stairs that led to the parking lot.
I spotted her green truck first, and my pulse picked up. I was mad at her but couldn’t seem to tell that to my heart. It stuttered at the prospect of seeing her. She fidgeted at the bottom of the stairs, her eyes dashing around with all of the paranoia of a frightened animal.
“Why are you here?” I asked before she had even seen me.
Mira jumped, every muscle in her body seeming to spasm with the start. “Caleb,” she breathed.
I didn’t answer. She’d gutted me, ripped me in two, and now she was here to what? Finish me off? I crossed my arms and waited.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay, I know I’m the last person you want to see right now but I need help, and I don’t know who else to ask.” The words tumbled from her lips like a boulder gaining momentum down the side of a towering mountain.
I grabbed her arm and pulled her toward her truck, away from the noise of the rig.
Something had frightened Mira, and a lump settled in my gut.
She wouldn’t admit to needing my help if it wasn’t something urgent.
Her fear stirred up a really bad feeling and kicked up my animal.
I hadn’t changed in a week, trying to avoid the urge to hunt for her like I always did, but this was about to send me over the edge. “What happened?”
She took a deep, steadying breath, but a sob broke out of her. “He’s out. I got home and found a letter from the lawyers in my mailbox, and now he’s going to come get me. He’s going to kill me!”
Nothing she said made sense. “Who’s going to kill you?”
“My stepdad. Angus French.”
I opened my mouth to speak but an ear-splitting whistle interrupted me. It was Evan, waving with annoyed gestures for me to get back to work. I sighed heavily. “Look, I can’t do this right now. I have three more hours until my shift is done.”
“You don’t believe me,” she said, with the most hurt expression I’d ever seen on another human being. She whirled around and jerked open the door of her truck to escape me.
I caught the door before it opened halfway and gripped the frame until my knuckles hurt from the strain.
“Didn’t say I don’t believe you, Mira. Just that I can’t deal with this until after I get off.
Somebody could get hurt up there if we’re shorthanded.
Pull your truck up closer to the rig. Lock the doors and wait for me.
You see so much as a horned toad move, you flag someone down. ”
Her face was so open. I could see every emotion in her eyes and, dammit, I wanted to hug her tight and reassure her I’d die before I let anything happen to her.
“We’ll talk about this when I’m done.” I turned to leave but the flash of fear in her eyes tore at everything in me and made me stop. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
Mira let out a long, shaky breath and the corner of her mouth turned up in the barest ghost of a smile. “I know.”