Page 65 of Burning Secrets

Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me…”

The verse stirred inside her. Darkness.

Hiding.

Hiding.

She stood up, walked over to where Crew had set his sleeping bag. Wooden planks. They’d squeaked and rattled.

Which meant they might be able to be moved.

Different length boards, some of them four feet, some two, others six. One of the four-foot lengths creaked.

She stomped on it, and the opposite end moved, maybe two inches. It could be pried up. Except, with what? She no longer had her Pulaski.

But the cot had metal connecting pieces. She examined it. A metal bracket held two sections together.

She brought her foot down on the joint. The cot cracked, and another kick broke the wood from the metal. A little wrangling, and the metal piece tore off—about four inches tall, thin screws protruding from it.

Dispatching the screws, she returned to the board. Worked the metal into the crack at the loose end and started to work the board. The wood squealed on the nails, an angry old man. But it budged.

And then she worked the bracket underneath and pried it up. It broke from the other nails, and she heaved it up, again and again.

It detached from the joist.

And below it, darkness. A hiding place.

At least enough to keep them thinking she’d escaped.

She pried up the next board, a two-footer, and worked herself into the space, onto the bare ground.

The cabin sat on four cinder blocks, weeds growing up around the foundation, the earth under the cabin cool and dark. Some debris had worked its way under over the years: brittle sticks, withered pine cones, and garbage, some fabric, wadded paper. Broken glass.

If she waited long enough, maybe the compound would fall into enough shadow for her to get away.

This could work.

She climbed back out and grimaced at the cot. Nothing she could do about that, but she moved the table and chairs over the loose boards, then climbed back into the hole, dragging the bigger board over the space, then the smaller.

She crawled away from the opening, to the edge of the foundation, and hunkered down behind the weeds, parting them enough to see the yard, or at least a portion of it.

Dogs, in cages—she’d heard them barking earlier—now ate food delivered by a couple men. The ATVs and other cars sat parked in the garage, and a few armed men roamed the camp. Beside her cabin was a larger Quonset building to one side and, from her memory, a wooden building to the other. Maybe storage.

You are my portion, Lord; I have promised to obey your words.

The only power fear had over her was to keep her from trusting God. From believing in truth. From knowing that God still held her.

Tell me what to do, Lord.

And for some reason, Psalm 37 rose in her head.The wicked will perish: Though the Lord’s enemies are like the flowers of the field, they will be consumed, they will go up in smoke.

Smoke.

That’s what she needed. A diversion.

From across the yard, movement, and she spotted the man Crew called Jer emerge from the mess hall.

A big man. Sloppy, bearded, wearing a baseball cap and a flannel shirt, jeans and boots. Carried a bowie on his belt.

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