Secret Refuge. Dana Mentink

look inside Keeley Stevens’s Jeep.

      Who would be looking inside her aged vehicle? Nothing worth stealing in there.

      The outline on the glass blurred as she washed the imprint away with the hose.

      His face, Tucker’s face, rose from the shadows of memory. Her sister’s murderer. He had long fingers like that.

      “Knock it off, Keeley,” she told herself. It was purely melodrama. She never should have watched that black-and-white mystery movie marathon the night before. The handprint was the work of a teen messing around, no doubt the kids she’d hassled earlier in the week. Or maybe her paranoia had taken root the morning before, when she’d noticed the long-haired man watching her from across the street as she gassed up her car. He was too far away to see clearly. Just a guy enjoying a smoke. Normal. She would not let a teen prank and her own nerves undo her. And no more mystery marathons. Strictly the cooking channel. Maybe she’d learn how to make something with more than three ingredients.

      When the rinsing was complete, she loaded up her Jeep and drove out of town, heater turned on to high to fend off the early-spring chill. It had to be the cold that made her skin prickle, because she would not allow fear to nest in her soul. Once she did, it would lay down roots and conquer her. Keeley would not be conquered. Ever. But still the feeling that started when she saw the long-haired man remained alive in her stomach, somewhere down deep.

      Had Tucker returned?

      I murdered your sister, and now it’s your turn, she imagined him saying.

      “Toughen up, girl,” she muttered to herself. Tucker was no doubt hiding from the cops in some faraway city. He’d murdered LeeAnn nearly two years ago, only two months after his parole agent had allowed for the removal of his tracking bracelet. Ironic, since he’d never been incarcerated for anything other than car theft, not a violent offender. No, not violent, until the day he’d smashed in LeeAnn’s skull and stuffed her body into the trunk of his car, intending to flee.

      And if he had made a successful escape? Would she ever have known what had happened to her sister? But LeeAnn had been able to send one frantic text before he killed her.

       Tucker. Help me.

      Keeley recalled the icy fear that had gripped her body as she’d dialed the police that day. They hadn’t been able to save LeeAnn. Tucker had crashed the car into a pond, escaped custody and gone on the run.

      Nowhere near.

      Tucker was just a bad memory, but what if she did come face-to-face with him one day?

      Keeley ground her teeth. He would be the one to lose.

      * * *

      No good news ever came at three o’clock in the morning. Mick Hudson knew that from his days as a marine in Iraq and his years as a parole officer in Portland. He cracked an eye open, rolled over and snatched up the old phone on the second ring before it could wake his father.

      “Mick?” the voice said.

      “Who wants to know?” His usual hospitable greeting. Whoever had broken the still of the small house tucked deep in the secluded bird sanctuary in the Oregon mountains did not deserve courtesy. Yet.

      “It’s Reggie.” A dry chuckle. “You’ve been in the woods so long you can’t recognize a civilized voice? Retirement hasn’t mellowed you.”

      Mick sat up. Reggie Donaldson had been his supervisor when he was a parole officer, before the murder had torn his life apart. “What’s going on?”

      Reggie sighed. “Ever the one for charming small talk.”

      “You want small talk, you don’t call at three in the morning.”

      There was a long pause. Mick braced himself for the news. Whatever it was, it was going to hurt. “My sources say Tucker Rivendale’s been spotted in Oregon.”

      Mick’s heart jumped up into a higher gear. “When?”

      “Yesterday. I made some calls and the cops are on it, but so far no arrest. Small town. They don’t have the resources. They said they would contact you for info, but I knew you’d rather hear it from me.”

      “Where you figure he was heading?”

      Another long pause. “I could be wrong.”

      “You usually aren’t. Where?”

      Reggie blew out a breath. “If I had to guess, I’d say he’s on his way to Keeley Stevens’s place in Silver Creek.”

      A slow roar started up in Mick’s ears. Tucker Rivendale was the one he’d misjudged, the man he’d vouched for who’d murdered Keeley’s sister, LeeAnn. Mick’s error had cost LeeAnn her life. He flashed for a moment on her wide grin, the way she would greet everyone from postal worker to parole officer with a hug. With her arm around Tucker, they were an adoring couple, or so he’d thought, right up until the moment he’d learned that Tucker had killed her.

      “Mick? You still there?”

      He forced the answer past dry lips. “Yeah.”

      “Just thought you’d want to know. I knew you were going to catch wind of it, so better to hear it from me.”

      Oh, yeah. He wanted to know, all right.

      “You’re not going to do anything risky, are you? I’m headed up there, and it’s better for you to stay away,” Reggie said, betraying the smallest hint of excitement in his voice.

      “You still need to follow the rules if you want to keep your job.”

      Reggie laughed. “Since when did I ever worry about the rules?”

      “I’ll handle it.”

      Reggie paused and Mick could hear the smile. “Cops won’t want you interfering. I’ll call and see if I can grease the wheels for you. Try not to get killed, huh?”

      “Yes, sir.” Mick disconnected. He stood, letting the Oregon spring chill his skin and assimilate with the cold that had settled there permanently when he’d let Tucker Rivendale murder Keeley’s sister.

      * * *

      Keeley pushed the old Jeep a little faster, and the engine complained as it took the mountain slope just before dusk. The morning shoot had gone flawlessly, and her courage was on the mend. Keeley Stevens, world-class avian photographer, at her finest. Now it was time for the night shots of the great horned owl emerging from the nest. One good picture of the powerful, yellow-eyed predator would net her three hundred dollars, which meant gas in the car, food on the table and utilities paid for another month anyway.

      She squeezed the steering wheel as the engine’s growling grew louder. Her sister would have given the vehicle a pep talk about little train engines and such. Keeley took a different tact. “If you leave me stranded on this road and I miss my shot, I’m turning you in for scrap. You’ll be a toaster by morning.”

      Big words. She hardly had the money to replace her crippled toaster, let alone a new vehicle. As it was, she was still driving LeeAnn’s beat-up Jeep, picturing her sister clutching the armrest, urging Keeley to slow down.

       I’m not in a hurry to leave this world, sis.

      Ah, but you did leave it, Lee. And God took you way too early. Her throat thickened. What she wouldn’t give to hear her little sister’s gentle criticisms one more time. You were always too sweet, Lee.

      Too trusting, right up until she was murdered just before her twenty-sixth birthday. Too innocent to see it coming. Naive about a man who said he loved her. Not a mistake Keeley was going to make.

      Cold air whooshed in through the open driver’s-side window along with crisp scent of pine and fir. She thought she heard the whine of a motorbike. Ahead? Behind? She stopped to listen. Nothing. Was it the tiny flicker of a headlamp she’d seen flitting through the dark tree trunks? No, nothing