Free Diner Impossible (A Rose Strickland Mystery) by Terri L. Austin Page A

and carry her home with me. Away from this place, from the pressures of her life. I grabbed her phone off the nightstand and thrust it at her. “Put my number in your contacts. And give me yours.”
    She sighed, ever so dramatically, but did as I asked. I tapped her cell number into my own.
    “Please take care of yourself, Molly. Call me if you need anything.”
    She made a gun with her thumb and finger, pointing it at me. “Will do, Rose Strickland.”
    I hopped up off the bed and was about to leave the room when from the corner of my eye, I saw a figure sprinting through the side yard. I crossed to the window and glanced down.
    “Why’s your brother running into the woods?” I assumed it was her brother. A dark-haired kid glanced back at the house before darting into the trees.
    “He likes to hang out in the barn, smoke pot.”
    I glanced back at her. “Mind if I go talk to him?”
    “You’d better not. Annabelle might catch you. She gets her tits in a knot over that barn.”
    “Why?”
    “You’d have to ask her. My dad keeps threatening to tear it down. He’s allergic to hay, despite the fact that he never goes out there and there hasn’t been a horse inside of it for a million years. But that’s the only thing Annabelle stands up for. That stupid, freaking barn.”
    I walked to the door and before I could leave, her voice halted my steps. “Hey. Thanks.”
    I looked back. “You bet.”

    I managed to sneak down the stairs without getting caught and after a few minutes of harried searching, found a back door. Like Mason, I ran through the yard, past the hibernating rose bushes and the koi pond to the woods beyond. Water dripped from the  bare branches and landed on my head and shoulders in cold plinks. The trees were tall and dense, gray-green lichen glowing against their rain-darkened bark, but soon I was through them and in the field where the barn lived.
    I jogged toward it, glancing over my shoulder at the house. It was almost completely obscured from sight. No wonder the kid loved to sneak off. Although with a house that large, he could probably find a good hiding place closer to home.
    The barn doors were closed, so with both hands I tugged one open wide enough to let me slip inside. Dust floated through the murky room and it took a second for my eyes to adjust. I fought against a sneeze, but in the end, I gave in. Twice.
    Sitting on an old sawhorse, a boy wearing baggy jeans, a dark hoody, and a sneer watched me. His face was pale and although tall, he was scrawny.
    “Who the hell are you?” He flipped open a steel, serrated jackknife, then snapped it closed. I tried not to show any fear at the sight of that knife, but as he kept playing with it, I became edgier, my senses on high alert.
    The musky, sweet smell of pot was strong. And as I moved toward him, my wet shoes picked up a thick coat of sawdust covering the wood floor. “Rose Strickland.”
    “Nobody gave you permission to come in here.” He jutted his chin in the air, all adolescent posturing and arrogance. “I could call the police right now. My dad’s the chief.”
    The one window emitting light was grimy and high up in the loft. But I could still make out the defiance on his young face. He hadn’t even sprouted much facial hair, yet he’d already been to rehab multiple times.
    “Yeah, I know who your dad is. But your mom invited me, so put a cork in it, kid.” Fists clenched, I turned my back on him and wandered around. Old farming implements hung on the wall. The metal had rusted with age and wear, while the handles on the hoes looked like a palmful of splinters waiting to happen. Metal barrels lined the back wall, raised off the floor by wooden platforms. An ancient, dented utility locker stood next to them.
    “She didn’t say you could come into the barn,” he said. Snap. Click. The sound of that knife was getting on my nerves.
    “Well, if you don’t tell her I was here, I won’t tattle that you’ve been toking