Safe Haven

She grabbed the handle before he could. “Look, I’m serious, I’ll be fine.” She regretted the rough tone in her voice, but the guy was a ranger, not a bellman, and he’d already gone out of his way to help her. She refused to take advantage of him. She didn’t need a chaperon to see her inside. She knew small towns—had grown up in one, herself—and word could get out in a hurry that she’d had to be escorted to her room by a law officer.

“Really,” she said more gently. “I’ll be fine, and you probably have work to do. I’m a big girl, I can take care of myself. Thank you for the ride, and I’m sorry about the…the mess I made.”

Without waiting for a reply, she shouldered past him and pushed open the door, carrying her angry cat with her. She’d suffered all the humiliation she planned to endure tonight.

Darkness and silence settled into the linen room like one of the thick quilts Fawn’s great-grandma used to tuck around her when she spent the night. The sounds outside had faded just a few seconds ago—but not before Fawn heard the crackly voice of the policeman’s radio informing him they were surrounding the place.

She pulled off her shoes once again. She couldn’t run well in them, especially with the twisted ankle. She crept through the darkness, feeling her way along the edge of the shelves until she reached the doorway with the narrow line of light edging the bottom. No sound came from beneath that door.

Holding her breath, she reached for the doorknob and started to turn it. The hard metal felt cold in her hand. There was a soft click, and she froze again.

“Check all these rooms,” came a man’s voice, echoed by the sound of brisk footsteps. “Don’t take any chances, she could be armed.”

There came the sound of a latch turning, and Fawn caught her breath. It wasn’t this door. They must be searching the room across the hall. They would come here next.

She plunged her hand into her purse and felt for the book of matches she’d taken from an ashtray in the suite. As the sound of new footsteps reached her, she ripped a match out and struck it hard against the base. It flared, and she held it high to search for any vents or removable grates along the wall or ceiling—she’d seen people escape that way a lot in movies.

The footsteps drew closer. The flame burned her fingers and she dropped the match, stifling a cry of pain. Tucking her purse beneath her arm, she struck another match, then braced herself and touched the flame to the entire book of matches, holding the tip of the cardboard cover.

It flared brightly, startling her. She gasped, bit her tongue.

There was no grate, no vent she could squeeze into. But she might be able to scoot beneath two stacks of towels in the corner, if she curled herself into a tight ball. She shook the flaming matchbook before it could burn her fingers again, just as a door closed across the hall.

“Not in here. Block this—”

The scream of an alarm shot across the room, smacking Fawn with an almost physical force. The ceiling started to rain.

Instinctively, she scuttled toward the stacks of towels where she’d intended to hide, and plunged through a tumble of terry cloth. She heard muffled shouts from the hallway and more footsteps, but the door remained closed.

Her teeth had begun to chatter before she realized she must have been the one to set off the alarm with her matchbook flare. If she hadn’t already been in big trouble, she would be now, for sure. What happened to a sixteen-year-old convicted of murder and attempted arson?

She had to get out of here!

The shriek of the alarm continued to blast her as she worked up the guts to climb from her hiding place and creep back across the room. She opened the door, bracing for a gang of uniformed men to surround her and shove her to the ground.

No one stood outside the door. She peered out, both directions. Nobody. That wouldn’t last long. Tucking her purse under her arm, she turned right and plunged along the brightly lit hallway, hopefully in the direction of the hotel section of the building—and an exit door.

The alarm paused, and a tinny voice came from a speaker overhead. “Attention. Attention. The automatic fire alarm has been activated. Please proceed to the nearest staircase to exit the building. Do not use the elevators.”

If she could find a service elevator, maybe she could get upstairs. That way she could blend in with the crowd of hotel guests who would be making their way to the stairwells.

“Guard those doors!” came a voice from up ahead, just past a corner in the hallway.

Another alarm blast nearly deafened her from a speaker just overhead, followed by the same announcement.

“…can’t block the people from getting out of the building,” came the reply, and the echo of footsteps, and the sound of excited breathing…coming closer…

“Of course we can’t stop them,” came the sharp retort. “Just look for the woman!”

She came to a door and shoved it open, stumbled inside just as the sound of footsteps echoed through the hallway. She hovered in the darkness, afraid to breathe for several seconds, until the men continued along the hallway in the direction she had been going. She waited until the sound dwindled, then scuttled back into the shadows. In the dim light that came through the open door, Fawn could tell this was a prop room, with a black cape and top hat on a table in the front right corner. She saw a chest—or a cart—beside the table. A magician’s cape? A magic show of some kind?

“Did you check that room?” came another man’s voice as footsteps once again echoed in the hallway. “Hurry. Search where you can.”

“But the alarm—”

“Just check the room!”

Fawn skittered toward the cart and dived behind it. She had worked backstage at a theater with a magic act in Las Vegas. These carts were big enough for someone to hide inside…if she could just remember how to unlatch—

“Can’t find the light switch.”

She found the latch and slid the panel sideways, scrambled inside just as the overhead light came on. Under cover of the echo of footsteps, she slid the panel shut behind her, plunging herself into the protective blackness, afraid to breathe.

“Anything?”

“Of course not. I told you she wouldn’t still be here, even if she was here in the first place, which I don’t think—”

“Just cover the exits and make sure she doesn’t slip through.” The voices faded.

Fawn crouched in the dark for a few more seconds, then slowly, with the alarms still sounding all along the hallway, she slipped out of the magician’s cart and skittered to the open door. The corridor was empty. She caught sight of an elevator door a few yards down and sighed with relief. After another quick glance along the hall in both directions, she ran to the elevator doors and pressed the button, hoping this wasn’t one of those places that disabled their elevators during a fire alarm.

Once again came the sound of footsteps. She tensed, ready to run, but the door slid open. She plunged inside as the footsteps grew louder, and tapped the third-floor button desperately. The doors took their time, then slowly closed as the footsteps quickened.

Fawn closed her eyes and slunk into the corner, sure the searchers would catch sight of her before she could escape. They didn’t. The doors clanked shut, and she finally allowed herself to breathe again.

When the elevator deposited her at the third floor, she rushed into the hallway and joined a small crowd of sleepy-eyed, confused-looking people. She limped along beside a man dressed only in a pair of boxer shorts and a hotel terry robe. The woman with him wore a nightgown. As Fawn joined the others on the guest stairwell, she glanced down at her clothes, then reached up to feel her head. The net was still there, and her hair was wet, which would darken its blond color. They would think she was an employee, or someone in her pajamas.

More people came up behind her as she limped downstairs. They reached the ground floor and stepped through the emergency exit out into the night, where three men in uniform stood watching them closely.

She yawned and rubbed her eyes.

They didn’t stop her. Nobody called out as she joined the rest of the growing crowd in the glow of the outside lights.

As the first fire engine raced into the parking lot behind the building, Fawn crept closer to the edge of the crowd, then slipped out into the night. She hadn’t needed her shoes, after all.

Chapter Four

The telephone beside Karah Lee’s bed rang long before the alarm clock did on Thursday morning. Without opening her eyes, she reached for the receiver. Her left hand knocked it from the cradle and she barely caught it before it could hit the hardwood floor. This wasn’t going to be a good day.

“Hello.” She sounded like a frog.

“Hi, this is Taylor Jackson doing damage control,” came the baritone-gilded voice.

She cleared her throat and pried her eyes open. Good grief, it was practically still dark outside. “Damage control?”

“You had a wreck last night, remember? At least you’re awake and talking.”

She tried to sit up in bed, but the movement made her head pound, and she lay back against the lilac-scented pillow. “Don’t you ever have downtime?”