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I flushed, my skin prickling with unease as I nodded and gave him my best smile regardless of how I was currently feeling. Surely, he didn’t know Kirk, my ex. Kirk was in prison somewhere on the East Coast serving what was supposed to be a fifteen-year prison sentence.
I’d been running from him for seven years regardless of the fact he was locked up.
“The appliances belong to the complex,” I said with a shrug. “Everything else is in my Jeep.” I tossed him the garage door opener and keys belonging to the condo, asking if he’d drop them off at the gate on their way out. He nodded, then smiled as I slipped him a hundred-dollar tip.
Day hopped in the Jeep without even looking back at our condo. I checked his seatbelt, gave him a sloppy kiss on the forehead that made him squirm and swat me away, then shut his door and walked to the driver’s side.
I looked up at the condo with its stained white stucco walls and faded blue trim. I thought about flipping off the connecting unit, which housed a horrid woman in her fifties who hated me, hated Day, and hated the fact she had to share space with anyone other than her six cats.
A weak smile touched my lips. This was the first place I’d rented where I felt like Day and I were truly safe. It was gated with twenty-four-hour security.
But even that hadn’t stopped the ghost from finding out where we were. The Hallston Ranch offer had come just when I needed it to.
I had to run again, and I had no idea when I’d be able to stop running.
“Mom!” Day said from inside the car, waving his hands to snap me out of whatever trance I’d fallen into.
I swallowed back the anxiety threatening to tie my throat in a knot and slid into the driver’s seat, sighing as an invisible weight immediately lifted from my shoulders.
I rolled out of the gated condo community, exhaling deeply and glancing at Day in the rearview mirror. He was leaning over, his seatbelt taut as he peeked in on Hammy, his very creatively named hamster.
“What do you want at Chicken Burger?” I asked, tapping my fingers on the steering wheel, and eyeing the Chic-Fil-A a few blocks away.
“Hm… Nuggets.”
“Lemonade?”
“Yes.” He grinned, which made me smile.
Day was shy, soft-spoken, and adjusted easily to whatever new situation I threw us into. We’d lived all over the country at this point, and he’d never once complained or asked why. He did have a crazy streak, though, so who knows what Mr. Hallston would think of the fact I was bringing my kid onto his property.
“Is your new job stopping bad guys from drilling oil illegally again?” Day quipped from the backseat, shoving a fry through a hole in the “critter carrier” Hammy was traveling in.
“Nope, not this time,” I replied, sipping from the Diet Coke I’d ordered. Dallas was a blur in the background as I headed north on the interstate, the outside temperature gauge on the dashboard reading a stifling 102 degrees. “I’m stopping bad guys from getting away with taking someone’s land away.”
“Why?”
“It sounds like someone has beendredgingillegally, but it’s not the guy who owns the property.”
“What does dredging mean?”
“It means taking water out of a place that’s supposed to have water, like a lake, or creek, or swamp.”
“Well, that’s not very nice.”
“No, it’s not. It’s bad for the whole area, so I’m going up to investigate what exactly happened and why,” I replied, toying with the radio for a moment. “We’re going to be living on a big ranch, you know. That biggest ranch I’ve ever seen.”
“With cowboys?”
“I don’t think so,” I answered, pursing my lips and glancing quickly at the tote bag sitting on the floor on the passenger side, a thick file sticking out of it.
When I got a call from the Hallston Ranch, I thought I was going to faint. After working as an environmental consultant for a major petroleum company for the last two years, the opportunity to get out of the heat and the sprawling metropolis of Dallas, was a dream come true.
I hadn’t admitted to the man I spoke to on the phone, some lawyer for the guy who now owned the ranch, that I’d briefly lived in Hot Springs when I was a kid. My dad drove me past the ranch twice a day to drop me off and pick me up from school, and over the rolling green hills, I could just make out the shadow of a farmhouse nestled in a thicket of trees, its metal roof glinting in the sun.
The property was the subject of many daydreams for the three years we lived in Hot Springs while my dad had a job there. The last time I saw it was the day we moved to Seattle, where we lived until… Well, until Holliday was a year old.
“How long is the road trip?” Day asked from the backseat, pulling a pair of headphones out of his satchel.
