“You don’t get out of Pearl County enough.” Dylan slid behind the wheel of the Blazer and shut the door. He shoved the key in the ignition and watched the Porsche drive away.
“Did you get a load of those Tony Lamas?” Lewis asked as he got into the passenger seat.
“Couldn’t miss those boots.” Once Lewis shut his door, Dylan put the vehicle into drive and pulled away from the curb. “She won’t last six minutes, let alone six months.”
“Do you want to bet?”
“Even you aren’t that big a sucker, Lewis.” Dylan cranked the wheel and headed out of town. “She’s going to take one look at the old Donnelly place and keep right on driving.”
“Maybe, but I got a ten in my wallet that says she lasts a week.”
Dylan thought of MZBHAVN strolling toward him, all smooth and shiny and expensive. “You’re on, my friend.”
Chapter Two
BLOODTHIRSTY BATS ATTACK UNSUSPECTING WOMAN
Hope Spencer shut the car door behind her, folded her arms beneath her breasts, and leaned her behind against her silver Porsche. White-hot sun beat down from an endless blue sky, immediately baking her bare shoulders and the part in her hair. Not so much as a hint of a breeze touched her face or penetrated the cotton-and-Lycra tank sticking to her skin. The steady buzz of insects joined the whine of a my-man-done-me-wrong country song drifting from the lone house across the gravel road.
Hope’s gaze narrowed and her Ray Bans slid down the bridge of her nose. Number Two Timberline was brown and gray, all right. Brown where the gray paint had peeled away.
The house looked like something out of Psycho and absolutely nothing like the “summer home” she’d been led to expect. True, the “grounds” had been recently mowed. A twenty-foot perimeter around the house and a trail to the beach had been chopped down and cleared of waist-high weeds and wildflowers. From where she stood, the lake appeared a mix of light and dark greens. Sun collided with shadow and bounced off ripples as if bits of tinfoil floated on the surface. An aluminum fishing boat was tied to the sandy shore, rocking with the swell of gentle waves.
Hope pushed up her sunglasses and turned her attention to the rugged Sawtooth Mountains practically in her backyard. The view looked just like the postcards her employer had given her of the area. America the beautiful. Thick, towering pines and granite peaks reached straight up and touched the endless sky. She supposed the scented breeze and all that mountain majesty inspired awe in most people. Like God shedding His grace. Like a religious experience.
Hope trusted religious experiences about as much as she trusted Bigfoot sightings. In her line of work, she knew too much to trust tales of hairy wild men, weeping statues, or strychnine-drinking zealots. She didn’t believe anyone who saw Sasquatch running through the forest or who claimed they’d found the face of Jesus on a tortilla.
Hell, one of her most successful articles, “Lost Ark of the Covenant Found in the Bermuda Triangle,” had developed a huge religious following and spawned two equally successful stories: “Garden of Eden Found in Bermuda Triangle” and “Elvis Found Living in Garden of Eden in Bermuda Triangle.”
Elvis and the triangle were always a big hit with her readers.
But mostly when Hope looked at the immense mountains and wide-open space before her, she just felt small. Insignificant. Alone. The kind of alone she thought she had overcome. The kind that threatened to reach out of the dry mountain air and choke her if she let it. The only thing keeping her from feeling like the last person on the planet was the irritating tweak of steel guitar pouring from the neighbor’s radio.
Hope grabbed her Bally bag from inside the car and headed across the lumpy dirt path to the front door. Caution tempered each step of her Tony Lamas. She’d done her research. Snakes resided in this part of the country. Rattlesnakes.
The realtor had assured her that rattlesnakes stayed in the mountains, which she figured put Number Two Timberline smack-dab in Rattlesnake Central. She wondered if Walter had done this purposefully to get back at her for the trouble she’d caused him and the paper lately.
A fine layer of dust covered the porch, and the old steps creaked a bit beneath her feet, but to her immense relief, the wood felt solid. If she fell through the porch, no one would miss her for three days. Not until her deadline passed would anyone even think to look for her, and maybe not even then.
Neither her CEO and publisher nor her editor, Walter Boucher, was very happy with her at the moment. This “working vacation” had been their idea. She hadn’t produced anything good for months, and they’d strongly urged her to take in some new scenery. Somewhere that would inspire Bigfoot stories and alien articles. And, of course, there was that whole Micky the Magical Leprechaun fiasco. They were still ticked off about that one.
Hope stuck her key into the doorknob, then pushed the door open. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but nothing happened. No knife-wielding psycho dressed up like his mother, no ghosts, no wild animals to freak her out. Nothing. Just the smell of stale air and dust, and the sun behind her spilling into the entry and lighting up the room to her right. Hope found a switch just inside the front door and flipped it on. The chandelier overhead buzzed once, then cast shimmers of light into the remaining shadows.
She shoved her sunglasses into her bag, left the door open just in case, and made her way further inside the house. To her left, the dining room was filled with heavy sideboards and an ornate china hutch. Both could benefit from a dose of lemon oil and Windex. A long table took up most of the space, and an issue of Hunter’s Digest and a block of wood had been shoved under one leg. A fine layer of dust covered everything.
While the dining room gave off the impression of neglected elegance, the living room, to her right resembled a hunting lodge. Overstuffed leather and wood furnishings, a television with rabbit-ear antennae, a bearskin hanging over the rock fireplace. On the hearth stood a stuffed bobcat, teeth and claws bared. The coffee and end tables were constructed of antlers and topped with glass. And on the walls, more antlers, and dozens of impressive animal heads with huge racks were nailed above the wainscoting. Hemingway would have loved it, but Hope thought it looked like an accident waiting for a victim. She could imagine walking through this room at night and impaling herself.
Her bootheels echoed in the empty house as she made her way to the kitchen. Except for the past three years, Hope had always lived with someone. Her parents, college roommates, and then her ex-husband. Now she lived alone, and while she much preferred it, for the first time in a long time, she wished she had a big strapping man walking in front of her, shielding her from the unknown. A man she could curl into and hide behind. A man the size of the sheriff she’d met earlier. Hope was five-seven, and the sheriff had easily been half a foot taller-all broad shoulders, hard muscles, and zero body fat.
She stepped into the kitchen and turned on the light. Gold. The linoleum, the countertops, and the appliances-everything except the wrought-iron pots-and-pans rack hang
ing above the stove. She pulled open the oven door and discovered a dead mouse lying prostrate on the broiler pan. She let go, the door slammed shut, and she again thought of the sheriff and of how sometimes men did have their uses.
Before he’d reached for his sunglasses, Sheriff Taber’s deep green eyes had studied her from a face more suited for the silver screen than the wilderness of Idaho.
He wasn’t pretty-boy handsome. Pretty boys lost their looks in middle age, and there was no way anyone would ever mistake the sheriff for a boy. He was all man, a towering hunk with a smile that could easily turn a no into a yes, make a weak woman stand a bit straighter, stick her chest out a bit farther, and want to flip her hair. Hope didn’t consider herself a weak woman, but even she had to admit that she’d checked her posture several times during the course of their short conversation.
She didn’t know what she’d expected the law enforcement to look like in this part of the world. Maybe like the pencil-thin deputy, or maybe like Andy Griffith. A “gee, shucks” country bumpkin. But behind those green eyes and that easy smile was an obvious intelligence that could never be mistaken for a hayseed.