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The Royal Peaks, a small mountain range in the Colorado Rockies, loomed in the distance as Ann pulled down the road to Harmony. King Mountain, the tallest peak in the trio of fourteeners, already had snow from its tree-line to craggy top.
Ann parked in the driveway of the two-story “cabin” where she’d grown up and turned off the truck. She sprinted to the front door, turned the knob and pushed. Her shoulder rammed against it.
No one locked their doors in Harmony—no one had a reason to.
Okay, so Dad locked up before he went wherever he went to get his finger cut off.
A strange sensation spread through her belly, and she almost laughed. At the same time her eyes filled.
Keep it together, Logan.
She went around to the back of the house and checked the rear entry. Locked, too.
Back at the front of the house, she checked under the welcome mat, felt along the top of the door frame, and finally found the key in a fake stone by a pot of dead mums. She unlocked the door and went inside.
Her training taught her to observe, orient, decide, and act. She scanned the living room, adjoining dining area, and kitchen.
The furniture from her youth begged to be updated. Log framed couch and chairs. Log framed beds. Log framed logs. Even the bathroom carried on with the same motif. Thank goodness the toilet wasn’t made of wood. She took care of business and went back into the living room. Her dad would never change a thing her mom had had a hand in, even though she’d been gone for so many years.
In the kitchen, a key with a yellow tag key chain sat on the counter under the family bulletin board. The tag advertised the local storage facility. It must have fallen off one of the push pins. She hung it back up, and it fell again, so she stuck it in the junk drawer at the end of the counter.
She opened the fridge. Empty aside from the obligatory crusted condiment bottles lining the door and an unopened case of Fat Tire. Nice.
The master bedroom was on the first floor with a direct line of sight to any intruders. Her grandpa had designed the house this way so he could protect his family. Grandpa and Dad always had that protector gene, which suited them well in their roles as Castle County Sheriff and the years they served in Harmony. She was supposed to follow in their footsteps, but she wanted bigger, better things. She wanted the hell out of this claustrophobic town.
Ann crossed the living room to the master and flicked on the light. The bed was unmade, but everything else seemed in order. She opened the top dresser drawer. Empty save for a couple pairs of underwear. The other drawers didn’t appear to be missing anything, not that she had a full inventory of her dad’s clothing. She slid the closet open. A collection of empty hangers were interspersed throughout. She rifled through them and noted his favorite cargo pants were missing, as were the shirts he usually wore during his travels.
“Where did you go, Dad?” A shirt clinging to a hanger for dear life dropped to the floor and startled her. Ann chastised herself for being so jumpy.
She went upstairs to search the rest of the house. Nothing was out of place. In fact, it all seemed like a time capsule from fifteen years ago. She wondered if her dad ever went to the upper floor. The place started to feel too small, so she ran outside and took in gulps of fresh mountain air. Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She had a couple voicemails. Damn cell service was shit. She listened to the messages.
The first one was from her therapist hoping she was okay. She said she was there if Ann needed to talk. The second was from Sheriff McMichael.
“Hey, Annie!” He always sounded so cheerful. “Got your message. Damn, kid. Good to hear from ya. Give me a holler, yeah?” He didn’t leave a number. Back inside the house, she dialed him from the land line. The dispatcher said he was out responding to a call.
Ann got her suitcase and the box of her dad’s stuff out of her truck. The box with the finger-snake was double bagged in a gallon-sized plastic bag. She put it in the freezer next to a bottle of spiced rum. Then she sat on the couch to fully investigate the remaining contents.
She flipped open the passport to the identification page—her dad’s toothy grin smiled out at her. Most of the pages had stamps from Egypt, of course. His wallet contained his Colorado State driver’s license, a credit card, a handful of small bills, and a Miles & More frequent flyer membership card from Lufthansa Airlines. A crinkled snapshot of her mom was tucked into an interior pocket with a folded twenty. Her mom had been an Egyptian goddess. Ann inherited a lighter tone of her mom’s skin as well as her dark hair, but had her dad’s blue eyes. The interesting combination usually made people ask her about her origin.
Colorado born and raised.
Ann searched the remaining pockets. She wasn’t surprised to find zero pictures of herself even though she’d sent him one of her graduation from the Denver Police Academy. Her relationship with her dad was almost nonexistent the past few years, and completely nonexistent the past six months when she needed him the most. Numerous voicemails—at least one a day—pleading for him to call her all went unanswered. No calls, no texts, no emails. Nothing. No support in her first use of deadly force. He was MIA.
Ann stuffed his wallet and passport into the left pocket of the jacket and hung it on the coat hook by the front door. She took the angel to the mantle to return it to its proper place and paused.
All the other angels were missing. A layer of dust covered the shelf with ten roughly circular shapes where the wood grain showed through. Angel footprints. She swiped her finger through the grime. Her dad hadn’t dusted in months. She wiped down the shelf and put the figurine in the middle, so lonely without its companions.
Ann sat on the couch, but the quiet of the house was unsettling. To combat the feeling, she headed to the diner for a late lunch. Maybe being around the people of her home town would make things feel better.