Page 27 of Guarded Secrets
One brief conversation with Jen and Keeley’d learned more about Owen than she’d ever known.
She worked her tables, chatted with customers, delivered orders, all the while mulling over the knowledge Owen had a house he’d never mentioned, and that he was remodeling.
Actually, there was no reason he should’ve told her, but it seemed important somehow. Also, his grandparents had lived in Sisters. She thought he’d been new in town when he’d bought Easy Money a couple years back, but grandparents meant family connections. She wondered if he’d visited as a boy.
Keeley didn’t want to attribute the evening dragging to Owen’s absence. Add in her dad’s disease, and she was feeling a little down. A rarity for her.
When the last customer left a half hour before closing, Jen texted Owen, who replied they could close early.
Jen sent Dion and Josie home, then she and Keeley finished the closing routine. They walked out together, Jen locking the door behind them. Owen’s Bronco was parked at the base of the stairs, indicating he’d returned sometime during the evening.
Jen’s car was near the door while Keeley had parked at the back of the lot where a row of pine trees grew along a fence. It’d been the only area available when she’d arrived.
Lights were strung from tree to tree to illuminate the parking spaces. Jen started up her little Mazda and backed up, lowering the passenger window. Keeley fished around in her purse, searching for her keys and phone, chiding herself for not having them in her hand before leaving the bar.
“You good?” Jen peered through the window. Keeley knew Jen was meeting up with her boyfriend so Keeley waved her away.
“Yeah, I’m fine. See you tomorrow.”
Jen drove off and Keeley continued across the parking lot, her hand still feeling around in her purse.
An indistinct sound brought her to a stop. She cocked her head and listened. A breeze whispered through the pines and it felt like the darkness from the moonless sky was closing in around her.
She shook off a feeling of unease. Until the sound repeated.
A footstep from near the back fence, then what sounded like something brushing against a tree trunk. It could be a raccoon or a skunk. Wild animals made their way into town all the time. But she didn’t think it was a raccoon or a skunk. It sounded like someone moving against the rough bark of a tree.
She felt her phone and she let out a relieved breath. Now her keys. She opened her purse wider and used the flashlight on herphone to search. They weren’t there. Her stomach sank. She’d probably left them in her locker.
When she’d come into the bar, she’d been chatting with Jen and not really paying attention, and rather than putting them in her bag she might’ve let them drop to the bottom of the locker.
Ugh. She’d have to bother Owen and ask him to unlock the door to Easy Money so she could check her locker.
The sound of a car passing on Main Street made a quiet whooshing sound. Footsteps sounded again, coming from behind her. She spun around thinking it might be Owen.
No one was there. Her gaze darted to the shadows around the trees, trying to locate the source of the sound, a difficulty with her heart pounding in her ears.
She’d reached her car, but without her keys she wasn’t going anywhere. She turned back to the bar and again heard furtive steps that stopped when she did.
Sisters was a safe place. People didn’t get accosted in parking lots. Though that was exactly what had had happened to Delaney in this very same parking lot shortly after Walker had returned to town.
She tapped the screen on her phone, putting it to her ear, slowly scanning her surroundings as she stepped back toward the building. The call was picked up on the first ring.
“Keeley, where are you?” Simply hearing Owen’s voice helped settle her.
“In the parking lot. It’s probably nothing, but I heard a noise and it scared me and I can’t find my keys.” She realized she was talking to a blank screen. He’d hung up on her.
She stared at her phone. What the heck?
A startled yelp escaped from her mouth when a form materialized from behind the tree she’d parked under. She barely registered the door of the upstairs apartment crashing like it had been flung against the wall, her attention zeroed in on the young man edging toward her.
“Gimme your purse.”
Keeley jerked back. “What?”
“Your purse. Gimme your purse.” Wearing dark jeans and a black hoodie with a beanie pulled low over his eyes, he was shorter than her and rail thin.
He was young, no more than a teenager. He made a jabbing motion and she gasped when light gleamed dully off a short-bladed knife gripped in his right hand.
