Chapter 21

Heidi waited at the front counter of the repair shop. A girl barely out of high school had greeted her and then, per Heidi’s request, disappeared into the back to call for Brad. Vicki had asked Heidi to drop off his lunch on her way to see Mom. But, for Heidi, it was stop number one of three, not two. She was heading back to the asylum first. To explore more—without Emma this time—and see if she could uncover any clues. What she’d find in a run-down, abandoned hospital was yet to be seen. Probably nothing. She wasn’t even sure what she was looking for.

The double doors to the shop opened, only it wasn’t Brad who emerged. Heidi tensed as she met Rhett’s uninterpretable expression. He wiped his hands on a blue cotton rag, his customary battered baseball cap rammed onto his head.

“Brad stepped out for lunch.”

“Oh.” Heidi set the insulated bag on the counter. “That’s what I brought for him.”

Rhett tossed the rag into a bucket by the door and crossed his arms. Waiting. For what?

Heidi offered him an impertinent grin. “Well, then, Dr. Banner, never mind.”

“Who?”

Heidi blinked. Really? He didn’t know? “Better brush up on your comic books, hero.”

She turned on her heel and hiked out of the shop. That type of attempt at banter could only go nowhere good and fast. Opening the door to her car, she slipped in, then shrieked as the door was yanked from her hand when she tried to close it.

Rhett leaned over and peered in. Really. All he needed was green skin.

“The Hulk?” was all he said, phone in hand. She caught a glimpse of a Google page. He’d had to Google it?

She stifled a wry chuckle. Ohhhh, the backwoodsman had a weakness. He wasn’t a comic fan. Heidi was willing to latch on to any chink in the man’s hulking façade.

She put her hands on the steering wheel and stared up at him. She raised an eyebrow, hoping she was leveling him with a look equal to the one he was giving her.

“If the shoe fits,” she shrugged. “Wait. The Hulk doesn’t wear shoes.” She gave him a mock look of empathy and glanced at his steel-toed boots.

Rhett’s expression didn’t change. He scanned her car. The photo album on the passenger seat. The blue note card from her windshield wiper. A paper map of the Pleasant Valley region, the river, and the side roads, because heaven knew GPS was worthless in the great up-north.

“Where’re you going?” he growled.

Heidi tipped her head, refusing to be intimidated. Emma wasn’t in her care.

“That’s for me to know.” She flipped the words at him like a rich man would blithely toss cash into the air. Heidi turned the key in the ignition.

Rhett didn’t move. Didn’t release the door.

Heidi reached for the door handle and gave a little tug. “Um, my door?”

“You’re going to the asylum.” It was a statement.

Heidi paused. “So?”

“I wouldn’t go there alone.” Again, a blink only. No smile, no raised brows, not even a change of inflection in his voice.

Heidi bit back a sigh. Irritation toward Rhett, and also annoyance that he’d somehow read her own internal hesitation. Going to the abandoned asylum alone posed no legitimate threat that she knew of, yet it still creeped her out. Especially after Emma’s declaration when they were there. As if she’d seen a ghost—a ghost that did not exist.

She looked up to respond to Rhett, but he was gone.

Oh. Okay then.

Heidi pulled her door shut and yelped again as the passenger door yanked open and Rhett reached in, picking up the photo album and note card before squeezing his frame onto the seat.

“Excuse me?” Heidi glared at him.

Rhett reached behind him and set the items on the back seat. He shut the door and gave a wave of two fingers. “Let’s go.”

Heidi eyed him incredulously.

“No.” She shook her head. “I’m going alone.”

“No, you’re not.”

Ooooh, he was going to play the alpha-male card? Fine. Heidi killed the engine and removed the key from the ignition. “Then I’m not going.” She was done trying to earn the man’s respect. Trying to loosen him up or figure him out. Now he was downright under-her-skin annoying.

Rhett took the keys from her hand. “Good. I’ll drive.”

He pushed open the car door, and before Heidi could react, her driver’s door was open and he was leaning in. “On second thought,” he said, “we’ll take my truck.”

She had no intention of admitting it, but bouncing along in the passenger seat of Rhett’s beater truck with Rüger the dog pressed against her leg and Archie the mangy cat doing an impressive balancing act on the dashboard was far more comforting than trying to maneuver this rutted road on her own. It had become a familiar jaunt, and since it was sunny out today, sunshine filtered through the leafy treetops. The woods were more inviting than when she’d been here with Emma.

The asylum hadn’t changed—why would it?—yet somehow it seemed different today. Less imposing, and less haunting. Heidi walked ahead of Rhett, who seemed content to let her be, to explore on her own. Rüger pranced beside her, nose to the ground, his one-eyed furry face sniffing at traces of rabbit or squirrel, maybe even deer.

“What do you know about the asylum?” Heidi tossed the question over her shoulder. She stood at the front door that hung on a single hinge and was ajar. She could see in. Filthy linoleum flooring greeted her, along with severely cracked plaster walls, some sections revealing the lath framework behind.

“Not much.” Rhett’s baritone was practically in her ear.

Heidi whirled. “Stop sneaking up on me.”

“I’m not.” He shrugged.

She edged through the doorway into what once had been the foyer. Her eyes swept the room. There was no furniture, nothing really of any interest outside of the fact the place practically oozed untold history and felt like lingering souls floated in the corners.

Heidi shivered.

No. No wandering souls today.

Her footsteps were silent as she crossed to the middle of the old lobby. Rüger had slipped in and was nosing around in the corner. A mouse probably. Rhett stood in the doorway still, hands in his pockets, patiently waiting for her to do whatever it was she’d come here to do.

A narrow staircase with walls on both sides led up to the second floor. A long hallway ran to the right of the stairs, with a few doors on each side of it. Heidi looked farther down the hall and saw yet another door at the far end. This one appeared to open to the backyard of the asylum.

“Weird,” she mumbled. Who would have thought to build a mental hospital deep in the woods, far away from civilization? Why not at the edge of town? Easier access, less—bizarre.

Heidi moved to the bottom of the stairs.

“Careful,” Rhett admonished.

She cast him an exasperated look. “Listen,” she said with a raised brow, “if you’re going to hang out with me, I’m going to need more than just one-word sentences and military commands. Either stay here and leave me be, or come. But if you come, use your big-boy words.”

His face darkened at her words.

Eek. Heidi winced inwardly. She sounded lofty and rude, like Vicki. She hefted a sigh and offered a gentler smile. “I’m sorry. It’s just—I don’t know why you’re here. You don’t even like me.”

Rhett snapped his finger at Rüger. The dog was wandering down the abandoned hall.

Heidi repositioned her foot on the bottom step.

“It’s not that I don’t like you.” Rhett reached down and gave Rüger a reassuring pat on the head. Then he lifted his gray eyes, a bit softer now. “I just don’t trust you.”

“I’m not hurting anyone today.”

“Exactly my point.” Rhett neared her, and she could smell the repair shop on his shirt. Grease and fresh air. “You’re reckless.”

“Ahh.” There it was again. The presupposed insults. Heidi bit back a perturbed sigh.

“You’re cute. Reckless is cute,” Rhett stated blandly. “But it can cause a lot of trouble.” He pushed past her, pounding his foot on the stairs to test their stability.

Did he just say she was cute?

Heidi stared after him, even as he was on the sixth step.

Rhett glanced over his shoulder. “Coming?”

“Yeah.” Now who was speaking in one-word sentences?

The upstairs of the asylum felt spooky. Shafts of light escaped into the hallway from the two open doors in the long line of rooms, and also from the far end where the roof and side had caved in and lay open. Debris littered the hall, piles of leaves and sticks, with mud caked in the corners and thick cobwebs that swayed in the breeze.

Rhett went ahead of her, bouncing on the floorboards, testing the structure to ensure one of them didn’t fall through and plummet to the first floor and break a leg, if not their necks. Heidi peered in the first room to the left. It wasn’t much different from the foyer below. Wood floors instead of linoleum, but the same plastered walls with cracks creating their own road map on the wall. A long window with bars over it. Bars. That was different from downstairs.

“Do you think this is where the patients were housed?” she ventured.

Rüger padded into the room and looked around, his tail wagging, long fur brushing the air.

“Probably,” Rhett replied.

Heidi nodded slowly. “Why is Misty Wayfair connected to the asylum?” She didn’t ask the second part of her question. Why did Emma seem to think Misty resided here?

Rhett continued to pound his foot on the floorboards as he made his way to the next room. He stopped and braced his hand against the wall, his eyes scanning the space before him. “They say Misty Wayfair has been sighted on and off over the years. But most of the claims have been disproven. My uncle thought he saw her back in the seventies when he was hunting around here. Turned out to be a homeless woman.”

That was perhaps the longest stretch of words Rhett Crawford had ever spoken to her.

Heidi nodded. Maybe if she was quiet, he would talk more. She followed Rhett into the room, which was almost identical to the last one. She moved across the floor and grasped the bars at the window, tugging a bit. Funny. The bars were still solid, even though the patients’ screams had long since drifted away.

“They also say Misty Wayfair was attached to someone who once lived here. No one knows who.” Rhett stood next to her, and they stared beyond the bars to the front yard below. Heidi could see the truck, and Archie too, still curled up on the dash.

“No one ever cared to find out?” Heidi asked.

Rhett shrugged. “Why? The woman is dead.”

“But she lived.” Heidi turned a surprised gaze on him. “Why do people dismiss the dead so easily? Once you’ve passed, you’re no longer important?”

Rhett eyed her.

So much for not talking and letting him talk.

“Do you even know who Misty Wayfair was?” she whispered.

Rhett met her stare. “No.”

At least he was honest.

“And you don’t care?”

Rhett was silent for a long moment. Finally he said, “If you care, then I care.”

She was stunned. It didn’t add up. Didn’t make sense.

“But you don’t even like me,” she told him.

“I never said that.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Nope.” He shook his head.

“You act as though you don’t like me.”

He nodded. “That’s fair.”

“What does that mean?”

“Because you hurt Emma.” Rhett’s eyes drilled into hers. Honest. Open. Confident.

“Yes,” Heidi nodded, tearing her gaze away. “I said I was sorry.”

“Then you hurt her again.”

Gosh. He was relentless. But then she’d goaded him into this.

“So . . . about Misty Wayfair,” Heidi said, hoping to distract him.

Rhett’s elbow nudged hers. She met his eyes again.

“The difference between you and Misty Wayfair is that she’s beyond saving. Whatever happened to her, whoever she was. But you’re not.”

An emotion Heidi couldn’t explain awakened in her. The stunning kind that told her someone had, perhaps for the first time, read one of her fears correctly. In this particular case, that she was just like Misty Wayfair. Wandering, alone, misguided, and left to herself as though everyone were afraid to discover the real her. The real person behind the flippant, coy responses, the impulsiveness, and the deep-rooted anxiety buried beneath it all.

Heidi couldn’t acknowledge his comment. It was too personal. Too frightening to let someone in. Someone who just moments before she’d compared to the Incredible Hulk.

A crash from below startled them both. Heidi ripped her eyes from his, and they both started for the door. Rüger let out a series of barks that said danger was near, and then the dog took off ahead of them.

“Rüger!” Rhett’s command echoed through the empty building.

They both hurried toward the stairs, and just as Heidi moved to descend, Rhett put out his arm.

“Hold.” His voice was quieter now. Rüger stood at the bottom of the stairs, the fur on his back standing up, a low growl coming from deep in his throat.

“What is it?” Heidi froze in compliance with Rhett’s command. Happy to let him control the situation. Well, at least she hoped he was in control.

Rüger took a tentative step forward, then launched out of sight. The wall blocked their vision. Rhett took deliberate steps down the stairs, and Heidi felt no shame in cowering behind his solid back. At the bottom, Rüger had disappeared. The foyer was silent.

“What was that crashing sound?” Heidi whispered.

Rhett held up his hand, demanding silence. He listened. Pointed.

Rüger came padding back into the room from the hallway.

Heidi looked down the hall to where he’d come from—the back door stood open, swaying in the wind, slamming against the doorjamb. “How’d that get open?” she asked.

Rhett didn’t answer. Instead, he stepped slowly down the hallway, glanced into the rooms whose doors were open, and checked the closed ones. Arriving at the far end, they came to a door that opened into a back room. Old hooks hung from the walls, most likely where employees once hung their coats and jackets. An empty milk can lay overturned on the floor, but not recently, going by the dirt and leaves packed on top and around it. The windows here were filthy and hard to see through, some of the panes cracked or missing.

Heidi opened her mouth to speak, but Rhett’s hand on her forearm stopped her. He squeezed and pointed with his other hand.

The wall opposite them, in the corner, was crumbling whitewashed plaster. Red letters, fresh, dripped down the broken pieces of plaster and onto the floor, painted in haphazard swaths.

Forgotten in a place of madness. You will be too.