Free Alexis and the Lake Tahoe Tumult by Erica Rodgers

mugs of coffee when they heard it—a muffled cough from somewhere outside and a faint rattle.
    “Is someone outside?” asked Karen. “I thought I heard a cough.”
    “Shh!” said Jake. He was frozen in the middle of the room, his head bent toward the sound. “It’s not the cough I’m worried about. It’s the can of spray paint!”
    He dropped both cups of coffee and bolted out the back door. Karen and Alexis stared at each other for a minute before following. They ran to the back steps just in time to see Jake disappear around the corner of the building.
    “Be careful, Jake!” Karen called. There wasn’t a path through the snow here, so Alexis and Karen waited under the eave.
    “He won’t catch them,” said Karen. “He never does.”
    They stood in silence for a minute. Then for two. Then almost five had gone by, and they hadn’t heard anything. Karen took off through the snow calling after Jake. Alexis followed again, tripping through the feet of loose powder. They rounded the corner, and Alexis saw the paint. The messy, red letters stood out against the snow like spaghetti sauce spilled on a new, white shirt.
    G ET O UT W HILE You C AN .
    The last letter trailed off at the end, as if the painter had been caught before finishing.
    “Jake?” Karen called again. Still there was no answer. The women left the first barn and circled around so they were near the outside edge of the parking lot. As they rounded another corner, Karen stopped so suddenly that Alexis ran into her.
    “Jake! Oh no!”
    Karen stumbled through the snow and knelt on the ground. Alexis came up behind Karen and gasped. Jake was lying in the snow, unconscious. At first Alexis thought the dark red all over his face was paint. Had the mysterious painter sprayed Jake in the face so he could get away? Then it hit her.
    It wasn’t paint. It was blood.
    “Jake! Jake!” Karen said. She was wiping blood away from his mouth and nose. Jake opened his eyes. He sat up and looked frantically around.
    “Did you see him? Did you see the car?”
    “What? No,” said Karen. “You were alone when we got here. Out cold. What happened?”
    “I saw the guy painting the barn and tried to catch him. He must have waited for me around this corner, because when I rounded it, his fist was there waiting. I never saw a thing—just his black coat.”
    Alexis left Karen’s side and walked toward the parking lot. A series of footprints led her through the parking lot to the other side where tire tracks showed where the person’s car must have been parked. Near the parking spot, two things caught her eye—the can of spray paint was on the ground, and something red glinted on the bark of a nearby tree. Alexis took a step closer and saw a large handprint in red paint.
    It was too big to be a woman’s hand. And a woman had probably not hit Jake hard enough to knock him out and mess up his face like that. So if “Chloe” didn’t paint the barn, who did? Were the two connected? Or were there many different people out to mess with Karen and Jake and ruin their reserve?
    Alexis made her way back to Karen, who was helping Jake up the front steps and into the office. Inside, Bailey was helping Misty Marks clean up the broken coffee mugs. Alexis noticed that the puddle of liquid was no longer steaming.
    “What happened, Karen?” asked Misty. “We heard you yell. Oh Jake! What happened to your face?”
    As Karen told her sister the story, Alexis went to the small kitchen and filled a bag with ice from the freezer. When she got back to the couch, she handed it to Jake, who had just hung up the phone.
    “Thanks, kid,” he said. Jake laid his head on the back of the couch and balanced the bag of ice on his throbbing nose and cheek. “The police said it will take them quite awhile to get here—with the weather, they have a lot of accidents they have to get to first.”
    “Oh no, Jake! What about the benefit? You can’t get on stage with your face looking like