Safe Haven

“Is that another storage device?” she asked.

He smiled gently—sadly. “It’s a ring.”

The air escaped her lungs in a loud whoosh, but before she could react, he lifted the lid.

Quietly and slowly, Fawn started breathing again. Okay, no huge solitaire diamond, nothing like that. What he pulled from the case was a beautiful gold ring encrusted completely by heart-shaped pink-red stones. He raised her right hand and slid the ring onto the little finger. It fit perfectly.

“Rubies?” she whispered.

“Vietnamese.” He cupped both his hands around hers for a short second, then hesitated, watching her. He chewed on his lower lip again, then scooted his chair back and stood to pace across the floor. “How old are you, Princess?” He swiped at beads of sweat on his shiny scalp, watching her the way a horse would watch a strange object in the road.

Her stomach suddenly felt icky. “You know I’m twenty-three. I told you I didn’t care much about—”

“Know what I think? I think I’m old enough to be your dad.”

She tried hard not to react. Don’t let on. Don’t stutter. You’re past that now. “I thought you said you were thirty-five.” Her voice sounded smooth even to her own ears. In control. “That would mean you were…what…twelve when I was born?” She forced the corners of her lips upward.

He stalked across the room and back, once again rubbing his scalp. “You know what? I’ve got a daughter who’s fifteen.” He stopped and looked at her. “Haven’t seen her in five years, but every time I see a kid around her age, I think about her.” He gestured toward Fawn’s hand. “I got my girl a ring just like that.”

Fawn watched him without moving, barely daring to blink.

“Why is it I think more and more about my daughter when I look at you lately?”

She leaned back in the sofa and crossed her legs, keeping her spine perfectly straight. “You saw my driver’s license.”

“I’ve seen enough fake ID cards in my lifetime to fill the public library in Las Vegas. You know what, Fawn? Even though I don’t see my kid, if I knew a big fat guy my age was shacking up with her, I’d shoot the loser right in the face. Why isn’t your dad chasing me down?”

She couldn’t prevent the scowl, or the gut response. “What dad?” The words bit into the air, making Bruce blink.

He wiped at the sweat again. “Are you even legal?”

“Of course I’m legal.” She was old enough to drive. That was legal.

He reached down and fingered several strands of the blond hair that curved past her shoulders. “What year did you say you were born?” His voice strained tightly in his throat.

Get back in the act. Quick! She forced a husky laugh. “Bruce, don’t be silly. Of course I’m flattered…I think. But I can’t help it if I remind you of your daughter. Do I act like some little sixteen-year-old?” Please believe me, Bruce. I can’t go back to the Keno job. And I sure can’t go back to the street.

“Not when you’re awake, except when you bite your nails.”

She held up her perfectly groomed hands. She’d had a manicure just yesterday. “A woman needs her little vices. You should be glad mine are so innocuous.” That was the right word, wasn’t it? Bruce wasn’t exactly an English professor, and tossing in an intelligent-sounding word now and then helped keep him guessing.

He continued to stare at her, as if he couldn’t quite remember the true color of her eyes behind the brown contact lenses—lenses that, according to the advertisement, made her look friendlier and more approachable. More exotic as well.

Or maybe he was trying to make a decision about something. Fawn held her breath for a long moment, until the sound of a horn blast reached through the sliding glass door that opened onto the lanai.

Bruce glanced toward the door, then at his watch. “I want you to run another errand for me, Princess.”

She pouted again. “So I really am your errand girl?”

“Let’s just pretend that you are for now, okay?” He reached down and patted her cheek. “I think you can handle playing a role.”

She watched him for a moment, fighting back a horrible fear that skittered through her stomach like a line of swarming termites. With as much cool as she could project, she reached for her purse on the counter. “Tell me what you need, oh master.”

She endured his gaze. She would not beg.

“Did you withdraw the cash limit?” he asked.

“Only from one card. I don’t know why you suddenly want all this—”

“Use the other card and withdraw that limit, too, but don’t do it downstairs. I want you to take a taxi to an address I’m going to write down for you.”

She didn’t argue. How could she? He was trying to get rid of her. “You’ll be here when I get back?” she asked, voice soft, conciliatory.

“I’m not leaving you, Princess, but I have some work to do, and I’ve got to be alone to do it.”

Karah Lee Fletcher yawned for the third time in less than five minutes as her eyes glazed and she struggled to maintain her attention on the highway ahead of her. She was too close to her destination to give in to sleep now, or to the slight nausea she’d battled ever since eating that greasy hamburger in Springfield.

She was going to have to start eating healthier. And she needed to get more sleep. Working with sick people all the time left her open to just about every virus in Missouri, and when she didn’t take care of herself, her immune system let her know about it.

The center line of the road blurred, and Karah Lee jerked the steering wheel to the right. “Come on, focus,” she muttered to her ten-year-old Ford Taurus sedan, as if the car were the culprit weaving back and forth inside the boundary of her lane. “It isn’t that late, and we’re almost there. Only a few more miles.”

Actually, it would be closer to ten miles before she reached Hideaway, and darkness had descended over Missouri some time ago. She glanced at the glowing numbers on the dash. Nine-thirty. Okay, not that long ago, but she’d worked last night. Big difference.

She felt another yawn coming on, and reluctantly closed the vents that allowed the sweet Ozark air to drift through the car. Time for the big guns.

She switched on the air conditioner full force and took a few deep breaths, aiming all four vents toward her. Ah, yes, that chased away most of the nausea and blew off some of the fog that hovered in her brain. The improvement wouldn’t last long, judging by her experience of the past hour. Highway 76 west of Branson had very little traffic to keep her occupied, and it made her wonder: Did someone know something she didn’t? Or could she be lost?

She pulled over to the side of the road and checked the directions Ardis Dunaway had given her. Follow the Highway 76 signs and ignore the strangeness of the new roads that had been added in the past few months. This place had changed a lot, but she still knew how to follow directions.

The stars congregated in the darkness of the country sky, but the moon was nowhere in evidence. The trees on either side of her seemed to swallow any excess light. Another attack of the yawns beset Karah Lee as the night invaded the car with increasing heaviness…and her eyelids drooped ever closer to catastrophe….

She jerked upright. “Time to get serious.” Karah Lee hated talking to herself. To her, it meant that, after thirty-four years, the loneliness of single life had finally affected her mind. People who talked to themselves became so addicted to it that they did so in public. Death knell for a social life. So she wouldn’t get into the habit of it, but if she fell asleep now and ran off the road and killed herself, that, too, would end future prospects.

She reached for the radio knob, then thought better of it. The blare of noise would only cheapen the experience of driving into this magical land that had made such an impact on her when she was a teenager—when the roads had been so much narrower than they were now.

Finally, she cast a quick glance into the back seat, where her huge black cat, Monster, lay snoozing in his pet taxi, strapped safely in place with the seat belt. “You know, you could learn to carry your weight in this family, and at least rattle your cage a little, give me one of those good deep snarls when I start to nod off. Your life is dependent for the next few moments on my ability to keep my wits, and they’re threatening to scatter out across the Ozarks like leaves in a tornado.”

She heard a grumpy cat-mutter and nodded. “That’s better. I probably should have put you up here in the front with me, but I thought I’d be nice and let you sleep through this trip. It’s stupid to drive when I’ve barely had eight full hours of sleep in the past three days.”

The husky-hoarse sound of her own voice in the confined space of the car would probably keep her awake for a few moments. “How many patients have I seen in the past three years who’d fallen asleep at the wheel? I don’t feel like becoming another statistic.”

Just last week a father of three was fatally injured on I–70 during rush hour when he veered over onto the shoulder, then apparently overcorrected and slammed into a car in the next lane. His friends said later he’d gone thirty-six hours without sleep. Countless accidents were caused by irresponsible drivers who…

Her head nodded forward. She took a deep breath, slowed her speed, flexed her hands. She should have given herself more time, should’ve asked for an extra day to get here, but no, good ol’ tough Karah Lee could do anything. She’d been accused by co-workers of having the stamina, pain tolerance and size of a redwood tree. At times, she was proud of the comparison. Other times, it made her feel lonelier. Few people took the time to venture past the facade of indomitable redhead and get to know the real Karah Lee Fletcher.

Monster, given to Karah Lee by a colleague recently engaged to a cat hater, wasn’t exactly what she had in mind as a lifelong companion. In fact, they barely knew each other, and the relationship wasn’t improving with time. When she complained about him at work, however, the staff teased that Monster sounded a lot like his new owner.

She was not amused.