Free Haven by Kay Hooper Page A

woke at dawn, as she’d expected to, and once again built a fire and cooked herself a meal. She cleaned up after herself and packed up her things, leaving the campsite nearly as pristine as she’d found it, with only a ring of rocks surrounding warm ashes to mark the spot where she had paused to rest.
    Despite the narrow, twisting trail that was for long stretches often more imaginary than real, and the rocky terrain, she moved at a comfortably brisk pace. The bet with her friends this year included a nice little payoff for the winner: a good dinner that was
not
pizza every night for a semester.
    She wanted to win.
    Carol liked being alone, and liked hiking alone. Unlike some ofher friends and fellow hikers, she never listened to her MP3 player while hiking; she liked listening to the sounds of nature all around her. Besides, she was no idiot; if you were listening to music, you could hardly hear any warning signs of danger.
    And there were always warning signs. Or sounds.
    It was probably a good hour or more after she’d left her campsite behind when it dawned on Carol that what was nagging at her and had been for a while now was the
lack
of sound. The forest was too quiet, and a nameless unease stirred in her. She stopped walking, listening intently, but heard nothing. Not even birds.
    She looked around, turning in a slow circle so she could see all around her. There was nothing out of place. Nothing unusual that she could see.
    And yet…
    The hair on the back of her neck was standing out, and she felt herself growing gradually chilled despite the almost oppressive heat of the still, summer air.
    All her instincts were screaming at her that there was something wrong here, something dangerous. Yet her senses told her nothing except that it was unnaturally quiet.
    Trying to think quickly and clearly, Carol went over the map in her head and realized that she was probably as close to the main—and undoubtedly more populated—trail north of her location as she was to the trail back at Baron Hollow. She could make it within a few hours, she thought, well before dark. If she hurried.
    So—push on, then.
    Carol remained where she was long enough to shrug out of the backpack and get her pepper spray and gun out. She slipped into thestraps of the backpack once again, settling it comfortably to distribute the weight, then did a quick but thorough check of her .22 Smith & Wesson revolver and clipped the holster to her belt. The pepper spray she carried looped around her wrist.
    The precautions should have made her feel safer.
    They didn’t.
    The forest was still too quiet, way too quiet, and she felt too chilled for the summer air.
    But she walked on, more quickly now. So quickly, in fact, that within only a few minutes she had to stop to catch her breath. At first, that was all she heard—her own panting breathing.
    And then a twig snapped.
    Somewhere close.
    EMMA STOPPED JESSIE in the reception area as her sister was apparently on her way out on Monday morning. “Look, should I take it personally that you’ve spent as little time as you possibly could here at the house so far?”
    “I told you I’d mostly be wandering around town.” Keeping her voice low so as not to frighten any of the guests, Jessie said, “Besides, it’s not you; believe me. Right now, if I look past you into the living room, I can see a Prohibition-era woman standing near the fireplace, smoking. Using one of those old long cigarette holders. Jeweled. Did you know, by the way, that this house was the equivalent of a small-town speakeasy back in the day?”
    Emma blinked. “There’s a mention in family archive records that an ancestor of ours was famous for his ability to get good whiskeyeven when it was outlawed. He claimed he just had a good cellar from before, when it was legal, but his neighbors didn’t believe it.”
    “Probably because they helped transport it.”
    “Jobs were hard to come by in those days,” Emma noted. “I imagine