Page 54 of Bitter Falls

As quickly as she came, she’s gone out the office door and slamming it behind her. I put my head in my hands and squeeze in frustration. My headache’s getting worse. I need to figure out what the hell game Vera is really playing here. She’s a clever kid, but she’s also dangerous.

Some painkillers and a cold shower slap some energy back into my bloodstream. It does wake me up, though it doesn’t do much for the aches. I make more coffee, and I’m drinking it when I realize that I don’t know where Vee has gone. Or Lanny, for that matter. I knock on Lanny’s closed door.

“Yeah?” she calls. “I’m not dressed!”

“Is Vee in there with you?” I ask.

“No. She’s in the living room!”

Vee isn’t in the living room. She also isn’t in the rest of the house. I search it methodically, room by room, closets included. Anything large enough for her to hide inside.

When I check the security system, it’s disabled. I quickly reset it.Fuck.I know I covered the panel when I keyed in the code, how the hell did she...

And then I realize. I’d automatically put the SUV’s keys on the hanging rack by the door...and there’s a remote control for the system on the key chain. All she had to do was press the button. And in the shower, I missed the telltale beep.

When Lanny opens her door I check her room, but there’s no sign of Vee there either. She’s gone.

And she took her duffel bag with her. She’s not coming back.

“What did you say to her, Sam?” That’s Lanny, glaring at me. “Did you make her leave?”

“I said she could stay. I didn’t make her go anywhere.”

“But you must have said something!”

Maybe it was my fault. I pushed her, and she went off like a Roman candle. Which, I realize now, would be consistent for someone with her particular combination of aggressiveness and trauma. I got close to something that scared her or was painful to her. Either way, her instinct was to run.

“We have to go find her,” Lanny says. I stop her as she heads for the door, and set the alarm back when she keys it in. I change the code while I’m at it. “Sam!”

“No,” I say. “Not until your mom is back. You’re not going anywhere.”

“We have to—”

“Lanny! We’re not going anywhere. That’s enough.” We don’t havetimefor Vera Crockett and her maybe-made-up stories.

I don’t expect Lanny to defy me. That’s a failure of imagination on my part, because she glares at me and throws the front door wide open. The alarm starts blaring. I quickly key it off, but by then Lanny’s running down the hill. And she’s fast.

Dammit, kid...

I shut and lock the door and run after her, but she darts into the tree line, and I lose her within the next couple of minutes. If she doesn’t want to be found, I’m not going to find her like this. So I stop, pull out my phone, and call up the tracking app.

She’s disabled it on her new phone already.Dammit.

Not enough coffee in the world for this day.

“Lanny!” I shout. “Comeon. Don’t do this. Not today.”

I know she’s heard me. But there’s no answer. I turn and head back toward the house. As I do, I see something in the trees on the other side. A glint from glass. Could be a camera lens, and my first thought is that the reporters are back, anddammit, not now.

But then I realize there’s a man sitting almost motionless in the shadows. He’s a young man with a ragged beard in high-quality, dirty camouflage. Probably one of the Belldene clan.

The fact that he’s looking through a rifle scope at me is what I realize next, and I don’t think. I just spin and flatten myself behind the thickest available tree.

And I see Lanny coming out of the underbrush toward me. She’s got a red scratch on her cheek, and a dry leaf caught in her hair, and I let out a wordless yell and tackle her to the leaf litter because ifshe gets shot because of me...

But there’s no shot.

Lanny yelps and beats at me with her fists until I roll away; I fishtail around and crawl to where I can get a look at the nest where the man aiming at me is.

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