LITMIR.BIZ

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space from feeling like a closet.

      She stepped to the kitchen area. Matching yellow tieback café curtains hung in the windows over the kitchen sink in the corner, and over the Dutch door that led to the backyard.

      Sighing, she took in the ambience. Snug and sweet. It was a happy place; she felt it in the empty spaces within her.

      Opaline pointed to a tight spiral wrought-iron staircase that disappeared into the ceiling. “You’ll need to climb up to see the loft. The stairs are beyond me, I’m afraid.”

      Hope led the way, Jesse on her heels. The stairs rang with their steps. At the top, Hope looked around. “Oh, wow.”

      Jesse’s fingernail poked her butt. “If you’d move, I could see, too.”

      Hope took the last stair and moved aside. This floor had the same footprint as the house below, so it was a large room, with small windows at either end. But it was the skylights on either side of the sloping ceiling straddling the painted brick chimney that caught her eye. “Jess, if I put the head of my bed against the chimney, I could see the stars through those skylights at night!”

      “It’s like a little Hobbit house!” Jesse walked to the door at the far end of the room. “Come see this.”

      Hope walked over and stuck her head into an old-fashioned bath, complete with a deep claw-foot tub and faux Tiffany lights over the washbasin sink.

      She and Jesse looked at each other and squealed. Hope grabbed her cousin’s arms and waltzed her carefully across the bathroom floor, singing, “I feel lucky. I feel lucky. I feel—”

      “It’s perfect, sweetie. But if you keep caterwauling, Mrs. Settle is going to think you’re into that rock and roll stuff.”

      Hope giggled for the first time in... I’ve never giggled. “Jess, that song is country, not rock and roll.”

      Jess grinned. “Let’s hope Opaline knows the difference. Now, get down there and offer a deposit before she rents this baby out from under you!”

      This place would be way more than an out-of-work bank manager could afford, if not for her mother’s estate. Hope hadn’t touched the money, but not needing it was only part of the reason. Every time she’d thought about spending it, her mother’s voice haunted from the grave: you’re spending my hard-earned money on that? Surely I didn’t scrimp and do without so you could squander...

      This time, Hope wasn’t listening. The money would give her time to get her feet back under her, and find a new career. A new life.

      Thank you, Mother.

      She took one last look at her new bedroom before she walked down the spiral stairs. Her old life may be gone, but her new life yawned like a black hole, but she now knew where it would take place.

      In a world where nothing was familiar, inexplicably, this cottage somehow fit.

      “Home,” she whispered to the room. The word felt right on her lips.

CHAPTER FOUR

      BEAR UNLOCKED THE padlock on his rickety barn, still chewing his energy bar breakfast. He’d rather have had eggs, but money came from work, not from cooking. He left the door open to get a cross breeze, flipped on the big overhead lights and walked the narrow corridor formed by crates and various flotsam he’d moved aside to create a work area in the center. He bent over and gave in to an explosive sneeze.

      Maybe someday there’d be time to clean the place, too. But he wasn’t being paid to do that, either, so it was going to have to wait.

      Bear had saved his soldier pay, invested it and let it to grow while he was in prison. He liked the golden rolling hills he’d seen from behind the razor wire–crowned fence at the California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo. So when he got out, he scouted around until he’d found this place; a remote tumbledown cabin and barn, outside Widow’s Grove. It didn’t look like anything. Hell, it wasn’t anything. Yet.

      He flipped on his pole lights, strode into the open area in the center of the spotless concrete floor and sank to his knees beside his latest job, a 1989 Harley-Davidson Electra Glide Classic. On the tank, orange-tipped gold flames rose through the black paint—some of the best ghost flames he’d ever done. He’d laid the last clear coat two days ago, and returned the tank to the bike last night. Two coats of wax this morning, and it’d be ready for pickup this afternoon, right on schedule.

      This was what brought in money. He’d opened The Gaudy Widow Custom Paint Shop six months ago. Turned out, Widow’s Grove sat in the heart of some of California’s best motorcycle roads, as well as being a stop on the custom car circuit. He had all the business he could handle.

      He smoothed a finger over the edge of the tank. “Pretty damned sweet, if I do say so myself.” Pushing himself to his feet, he walked to the back of the barn to open the big door there, then put on a pot of coffee.

      A half hour later, he was in the loft, trying to locate a custom-welded metal easel to hold his next job, when he heard a scuffle and a kid’s awestruck voice.

      “Oh, wow.”

      He strode to the ladder, and had to grab it to steady himself. A brown-skinned kid was on his knees in front of the Harley. He didn’t look much like the kid from Bear’s waking nightmare, but that didn’t stop his mind from running through the stop-action film anyway: a boy around the same age, in a traditional long shirt and long linen pants, a round kapol on his black hair. But it was the eyes, huge and black with panic that chased Bear through his dreams.

      Bear used to like kids. Before.

      The one downstairs reached his fingers to the tank.

      “Don’t you touch that!” Bear’s voice was too loud and splintered with pain.

      The kid jerked his hand back as if the ghost flames had burned him.

      A young woman with black spiky hair stepped from the box corridor and looked up at Bear, mouth open.

      He glared down at them. “Do. Not. Move.”

      The warning wasn’t needed. The two stood, shocked to stillness.

      He turned and started down the ladder, anger building with every step. Last week some kids had broken in and stolen a case of spray paint. Where were these kids coming from? Why couldn’t they just leave him be?

      At the bottom of the ladder, he turned, and hands fisted, stalked to them. “Goddamn kids. You come to rip me off, too?”

      Eyes huge, the kid just stared.

      “Hey!” The woman, too young to be the kid’s mother, stepped between them. “Back off, dude. He’s not hurting anything.”

      He had to give it to her, she had balls. She turned her back and took the kid’s hands. He shook her off, raised his chin and hung his thumbs in the belt loops of his baggy jeans, a kid’s version of chilly.

      “I had a break-in last week. I thought—”

      She spun. “Bet you get a lot of repeat customers by scaring the crap out of people.”

      Damn lights make it cook in here. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his purple bandanna, folded it lengthwise and tied it around his forehead. “What do you want?”

      The woman stepped from between him and the kid, but not far. “My brother needs to talk to you.”

      * * *

      A NANOSECOND OF pure terror crossed the kid’s face. “Um. I didn’t steal your paint.” His eyes darted. Probably scouting the nearest escape route. “But I used it.” The rest of his breath huffed out. “For tagging.”

      Bear frowned down at the kid, knowing it made him look even scarier. “Where?”

      “The Bekins warehouse.” His voice shook, but he stood his

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