frogs, which had momentarily stopped their singing at Cheyenne’s arrival, took up their chorus again as she crept across the yard and up the chipped concrete steps of the front porch. The door unlocked easily. She pushed it open. The rusty hinges caught and held. She pushed harder, and it gave way with a loud creak.
A scuttling sound came from somewhere inside. That would be mice, or perhaps rats? Maybe squirrels.
Nothing to be afraid of. She aimed her flashlight beam through the room and saw a floral sofa in blue and white. Stepping across the threshold, she caught the faint scent of a dirty kitty litter box. Yuck.
Cheyenne shuddered as she edged into the center of the fifteen-by-fifteen room and saw cobwebs hanging in multiple layers from the ceiling, barely discernible in the dimness. Cheyenne had always prided herself in her bravery in the face of barking dogs, invading mice, and even her own hostile brother-in-law. She could handle a few spiderwebs.
She walked through the door at the far right corner of the living room to the kitchen, complete with a sink, stove and refrigerator. Modern faucets gleamed. At least this section of the house was in better repair than Ardis had remembered.
Cheyenne inspected the cabinets on her way to the west side of the kitchen, then entered an open doorway beside the refrigerator to find a small bedroom. The beam of her light picked out the wrinkled folds of a burlap bag in the far southwestern corner. She pushed open the door to her right, saw the sink, claw-foot tub, commode. She nodded with satisfaction. It wasn’t until she saw the curtains over the sink billow inward with the breeze that she realized the window was open.
The floorboards creaked loudly underfoot as she stepped to the window. The pane slid down easily, but there was no latch. “Great,” she muttered. No telling how long it had been that way.
As she turned away, she thought she caught a flash of light from the corner of her vision. She frowned and returned to the window. In the backyard, barely outlined by the quarter moon, was a small shed. Past that about a hundred and fifty feet was the barn Ardis had told her about. No light.
Maybe what she’d seen had been distant headlights from a nearby, unseen road.
A small chest of drawers had been placed against the door that Cheyenne presumed led to the other, larger bedroom, but she didn’t feel like heaving the chest out of the way tonight. She retraced her steps to the living room and was about to push open the closed door adjacent to the entryway when she heard a muffled thump from the back of the house.
She froze in place.
She heard another creak of floorboards—from the bathroom. She stopped and stared at the threshold ahead of her, then swallowed. Her hands trembled, making the flashlight beam flicker against the far wall as she fought for control over her imagination.
No mouse had made that sound. She hadn’t imagined it.
She aimed the light at the kitchen doorway.
“Willy, that you?” came a deep male voice, accompanied by the sound of footsteps, the scritch of shoes on old linoleum. “I told you to get to bed. If Dane knows you came over here, he’s gonna kill me for sure.” A large man stepped through the doorway. “Get that flashlight off before someone sees it.”
Cheyenne caught her breath and stumbled backward.
His clothes were dark, and his skin so black he would have merged into shadow except for a huge smile, with teeth all over the place. He squinted in the light. Dreadlocks sproinged from his head in every direction.
“Quit teasing me, Willy. How’d you get in here? I don’t want to get you in…trouble…too.” He took a step forward. The teeth disappeared. “Willy?”
Cheyenne shuffled backward, collided with the half-open door, dropped her light with a clatter of plastic on wood.
Chapter Eight
“Well, that was stupid. You okay?” The deep voice cracked through sudden darkness as footsteps drew closer.
Cheyenne stopped breathing. Had she stumbled into illegal drug activity? The smell of a dirty litter box…meth lab?
“Stay back! I’ve got a gun.” She reached into the right pocket of her jacket and pulled out the tiny pistol. He didn’t have to know what it contained.
The footsteps stopped. “A gun! Who are you?” The voice came again, deep, but hoarse with the defining echo of adolescence.
Her heart thumped a dance against her ribs as she fought panic. “I don’t think that’s the question right now, since you’re the one trespassing.” Her voice sounded shaky in her own ears.
She crouched, feeling along the wooden floorboards with her hands. Could she pull the trigger on a teenager? “What are you doing in this house?” She should have run when she’d had the chance. Why had she hesitated? Stupid, stupid!
No reply. No movement. Only loud breathing that sounded more terror-stricken than her own. He could be a meth addict who was tweaking—desperate for another fix, and willing to go through anyone to find it. She’d had a few of those as patients in the ER.
Her fingers came into contact with the flashlight. She grabbed it and straightened, switched on the light and aimed the beam upward so it would diffuse throughout the room—less threatening, she hoped, if he truly was tweaking. She saw his silhouette and held the pistol high, so he would be sure to see it.
Straight dark brows rose over wide-open eyes. The young man whose shoulders nearly filled the doorway wore a black sweatshirt and dark-blue jeans that looked new. His work boots that were stained with mud.
This was crazy. He could be a killer. Why had she come out here at night?
If she didn’t continue the bluff, he could reach her in three strides. If she tried to run, she risked being shot in the back if he had a gun. She needed to gently ease out the front door, get to the car and test the capacity of the car’s acceleration.
“That a…real gun?” he asked, voice hoarse with obvious tension.
“You want a demonstration?” She tried to instill a threatening tone to her voice. It sounded phony to her.
He held his hands out to his sides, shaking his head. “No, I don’t need anything like that. How’d you know I was here?”
“I’ll ask the questions! Tell me who you are and what you’re doing in this house.” She was pushing it, she knew, but so far she had him fooled. How she would manage to get him out, she didn’t know.
He glanced out the front window, as if searching for her car—or maybe looking for his buddies? Who was Willy?
Somehow, the kid didn’t seem like a tweaker. In fact, he didn’t seem dangerous at all, and he had obvious respect for the teensy weapon in her hand. Good. It needed to stay that way. “Answer me!”
His attention refocused on the pistol. “I’m Gavin Farmer, and I live across the lake at the boys’ ranch. I’m not doing anything bad over here, honest. I’m sorry, I thought nobody lived here.” His gaze swept past her, out the window again. “You’re alone?”
“I’m never alone.” She fingered the small pistol of pepper mace. “And I plan to live here for a while. As I said, you’re trespassing.” It had been a long time since she’d knocked a man to his knees, but she still knew the moves, even for a big, tough kid. Still, something about him didn’t seem tough.
“They said this place wouldn’t ever sell, that it was tied up in some dead woman’s estate,” the kid said. “Austin Barlow send you here?”
“No.”
“The sheriff, then. He send you?”
“Do I look like a deputy?” she asked.
“I don’t know many deputies.” There was some familiar emotion in his voice, in his movement. It wasn’t anger so much as resentment. Despair, even.