CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER ONE
“THIS IS IT!”
Dorie slammed on her brakes, bringing her work-weary Ford Ranger to a shuddering halt in the weeds bordering the two-lane North Carolina Route 23. “The place actually exists!”
A shaft of sunlight had managed to spear through the gloom of gray clouds, illuminating an arrow and the words The Crooked Spruce crudely painted on a roadside plaque. Another few minutes and dusk would have settled, making it likely Dorie would have missed the sign altogether.
She turned her wheel sharply to the right, grinding her front tires on the road’s gravel approach. “You’d better be here, Clancy! I didn’t drive all this way to find out I’ve been on a wild-goose chase.”
The sign nailed to a wooden post could have been constructed twenty years ago or only yesterday. The road looked as if it hadn’t been regularly navigated since...well, in a long time.
Dorie tossed aside the penciled map the clerk at the convenience store had scribbled for her twenty minutes and twelve miles ago. He hadn’t been much help, telling her he had seen the name Crooked Spruce on a small sign on a rural highway.
“No kidding, it’s a small sign,” she mumbled, starting the ascent up the mountain. When she’d asked the clerk if he’d ever been curious enough to investigate the place, he’d scratched his chin and told her to come back and tell him when she found out what it was.
Armed with this scant information, Dorie drove under the canopy of tall trees whose bare limbs waited for the first leafy buds of spring. She shivered in the skeletal shadows of branches dripping with the icy remnants of a late-afternoon shower. She’d left the balminess of a sixty-three degree day in Winston Beach, North Carolina, at noon—more than six hours ago. Here in the mountainous region of the same state, she’d had to stop and put on her parka to ward off a twenty degree dip in temperature.
Her pickup’s engine labored on the steep climb up the mountainside. And with each rounding of narrow curves, Dorie’s heart beat faster. For the half mile she’d driven so far, she’d noticed rugged pathways cut into the forest, some still patchy with snow. Perhaps cabins existed in the woods, but she hadn’t seen any sign of human life. No wonder. Who would be out on this blustery March day?
After a few minutes, another signpost loomed ahead of her. This one, obviously new and professionally constructed, arched across a substantial wooden entryway and identified her destination with two bent, short-needled trees burnt into either side of the words The Crooked Spruce Outpost.
“Clancy Donovan, it’s just like you to hide away in some backwoods place where the only living creatures who see you have four legs.” She aimed her truck into a clearing. “But you can’t hide from me now, and you’d better still have my money.”
About a hundred yards ahead, Dorie discovered a peaked-roof, two-story log building about the dimensions of a double-wide trailer. And this remote pocket of civilization included a population of at least one.
Dorie narrowed her eyes at the man perched near the top of an eight-foot ladder. Could that be Clancy? A quick appraisal of the man’s wide shoulders under his plaid wool mackinaw and his crop of thick coppery hair sticking out from a baseball cap convinced her that he wasn’t. What little hair hippie-throwback Clancy had was gray and usually tied in a leather strap at his nape.
She searched in her purse until she wrapped her hand around the container of mace she’d bought for this trip. Not that she believed she’d need it. She could handle Clancy. But the guy on the ladder was another story. Besides, a woman traveling alone should always be prepared for emergencies.
Dorie shifted the Ranger into Park a couple dozen feet from the structure. The man must have been oblivious to the not-so-stealthy approach of her eight-year-old truck since he didn’t interrupt his work to check out her arrival. Flecks of brown paint fluttered to the ground as he scraped a putty knife under the eaves of the building’s large screened porch.
She turned off the engine, and the truck made its customary hundred-thousand-mile wheeze, a cross between a cough and a hiccup, and Dorie held her breath. No way the man could ignore that sound.
He turned suddenly, dropped the putty knife to the tray attached to the ladder and pulled foam-covered earbuds from his ears. He peered into the window of her truck. Dorie’s gaze connected with his dark eyes, the color indistinct in the shadow of the building’s overhang. Could be deep brown or charcoal. She wondered why it mattered. He wasn’t Clancy. From the relaxed way he balanced his substantial height on the ladder, he had to be at least thirty years younger than the stoop-shouldered man she’d come to find. Gripping the mace, she exited the car and stood by the driver’s door.
“Hey, there,” the man said, his voice exhibiting neither malice nor welcome. “We’re not open yet. Not for another month.”
“Fine with me,” Dorie said. “I’m not here to take advantage of your services....” She glanced into the porch and noticed assorted outdoor furniture stacked up, apparently not in use at this time. “Whatever those services may be,” she added.
The earbuds dangling over his shoulders, he stepped down from the ladder and flicked a button on an MP3 player attached to the top flap of his jacket pocket. “Okay, then what can I help you with? You take a wrong turn?”
The sad irony of his question almost made her laugh out loud, though this guy couldn’t know the downward spiral the past six months of her life had taken.
“I’m looking for someone,” she said. “A man.”
His mouth quirked up in a little grin. “Like I said, we don’t open for more than four weeks. You might have more luck finding one then.”
She released a breath of frustration. “You don’t understand. I was told a particular man might be here. I’ve driven a long way to find him. His last name is Donovan.”
He walked toward her. A slight limp in his right leg contrasted with the fluid movement of the rest of his body. He held out his hand. “Well, then, you’re in luck, after all. I’m Donovan.”
She stared at his hand as she backed away from him. “No, you’re not Donovan.”
He dropped his hand to his side and pierced her with a sharp gaze, with eyes that she now realized were dark brown, like the color of a pinecone. His look was half puzzlement, half irritation. “I’m sorry, but you’re not likely to win this argument,” he said. “I do know my own name.”
She wasn’t handling this well. She was nervous, tired and, of all the outcomes she’d gone over in her mind during the drive from the Outer Banks, the possibility of finding two men with the same name in the same place wasn’t one of them. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m looking for Clancy Donovan. Do you know him?”
“Clancy, eh? You’re close. I’m Bret Donovan.”
He was about to speak again as a shout came from the side of the building. “I heard a car. Who...?”
Holding a scrub brush, Clancy Donovan
