Moonlight Run

Chapter 1
Chirp. Chirp. Chirp.

Cricket. There was a damn cricket in the room. Mara’s arm emerged from the covers and
thrashed around, looking for a weapon. When her hand swept over the nightstand, there was a near-
silent thud and the chirping muted. Her head poked out from under the pillow and she cracked open
an eye, confusion written on her face.
“Crap,” she groaned huskily. She rolled over and looked over the edge of the mattress. Yep.
There it was. Her new phone. The phone she hadn’t changed the presets on yet. “I hate crickets.”
She fished the phone off the floor and shut off the alarm, dropping the phone onto the covers
and retreating to her cocoon. She didn’t stay there for long. On the bed beside her, under the
covers, a small lump moved, creeping closer to her. She let out a shriek when a wet tongue lapped
her bare arm.
“Jericho, damn,” she protested, laughing, as she threw the covers back to reveal the brown and
white ball of bad-hair-day. A stubby tail wagged. “Okay, okay, I’m awake. Happy?”
Jericho stood up on her four short legs and yipped. Laughing again, Mara reached out to
scratch behind a pair of ears that couldn’t decide if they were stand-up or lay-down types, doing a
mixture of both and not always consistently.
“No rest for the wicked, huh, Jeri?”
The dog yipped again.
Mara dragged her hair off her face, one part of her enjoying that she could do that even as the
rest of her shied away from why that was possible now. The hotel room was still just as bad as it
had been when she closed her eyes. It looked like it had been decorated by the Golden Girls’ set
designer. Lots of pale wood, tropical floral prints, and geometric metallic accents.
“We went north, didn’t we?” she asked Jericho. “This is Montana, right?”
Jericho, busy having her belly scratched, had no opinion on that. She did, however, have a
healthy kick in both back legs.
“C’mon, lets get going,” Mara said after a moment. “Hopefully the restaurants here are open
now.”
They hadn’t been last night when they finally rolled into town. Or what passed for a town in
Eastern Montana. It was weird to be in a state named after mountains and see nothing but rolling
plains. But the mountains were west of here. Here was almost South Dakota rather than Montana.
She got out of bed and hurried through her shower and packing up. Jericho was a patient dog but even patient dogs ran out of bladder space. After dressing in her ‘new’ jeans and T-shirt she’d bought at Goodwill...crap, was that just two days ago...and hauling their bags out to the third-hand Bronco, she took Jericho behind the motel and let her do her thing.
A town as small as Handel, Montana didn’t have a McDonald’s or a Burger King. Instead, there was Ed’s Diner and the Blue Star Bar & Grill. Even the Blue Star had been closed when they rolled into town last night. She’d had to wake up the motel owner, Mae Gallagher, according to the sign on the door, to get a room. After Jericho jumped into the passenger seat of the Bronco, Mara climbed in and drove into ‘downtown’ Handel and parked in front of the diner.
“They’re probably not dog-friendly,” she told Jericho. “I’ll roll the windows down. You stay put, okay? It’s September in Montana so you shouldn’t get too hot.”
Jericho watched her intently, ears cocked. Mara leaned over and kissed the top of Jericho’s head, affection burbling in her chest. After months of the little dog not trusting her, it was humbling to have her full attention now.
“I’ll be back.”
She slid out of the Bronco and headed for the diner, feeling like she was walking onto a movie set. The main street of Handel was so typical of a Western town that it didn’t feel real: brick and wooden storefronts standing cheek-by-jowl on both sides, slanted parking filled with pickups and SUVs, even the concrete planters filled with still-blooming petunias. It could have been anywhere from Kansas to Idaho to Arizona.
In the diner, which was deeper than it was wide, she noted that there was a quartet of old cowboys at a table, drinking coffee and bullshitting. And one of the old boys had an old dog lying under his legs, head curled around and lying across one booted foot. So, it was dog friendly. Or maybe they made an exception for that dog.
“Sit anywhere, hon,” the server said. She was a slim, forty-ish woman with a neat blond ponytail, blue jeans and sneakers, and a T-shirt that said Ed’s Diner in big letters on the back and in small letters on the front. Mara picked a booth near the back of the dining room, noting the old-fashioned counter with stools that ran down one wall starting halfway down the wall and the cluster of tables at the front of the diner. All the booths and stools were upholstered in bright red and yellow vinyl and all the chromed aluminum was shiny as if it had just come out of the factory. Even the floor, a classic black-and-white checked linoleum, was bright and clean. There was a laminated menu stuck in the condiment holder on the table. Mara looked it over, not surprised to find a selection that wouldn’t have been out of place in the fifties. Except there were ‘breakfast burritos’ available. Bet no one here would’ve even known what that was in the fifties.
“What can I get you?” the server asked, bringing an empty ceramic mug and the coffee pot with her. “Coffee?”
“Yes, god, please,” Mara groaned. The woman chuckled, pouring hot coffee into the mug.
“You know what you want?”
“I do. I want the three-stack pancakes, bacon, two scrambled eggs, and toast,” Mara said. “And a glass of milk with that.”
“Must be hungry.”
“Dinner was a package of peanuts and a package of Skittles,” Mara said. The woman winced and laughed.
“You’re Mae’s midnight guest, then.”
“Busted.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll get you fixed right up,” the server said. “I’m Mae’s sister-in-law, Jess.”
“Nice to meet you, Jess.”
Mara didn’t volunteer her name. After Jess went to put her order in, she pulled out her phone, glad to see that she had three bars of reception. There had to be a cell tower around here somewhere. Thank God.
She scanned the news feeds from Indianapolis first. Nothing. There hadn’t been any mention for the last two days. Why not? When she went to the Lafayette Courier-Journal, there was nothing, either. That was odd. Finally, in the Fordville Gazette there was a small mention: State Police Arson Investigators Looking for Answers.
Fordville Fire Department Chief Dan Golightly announced today that the Indiana State Police Arson Investigation Division has take the lead into the investigation of the mysterious death of local Fordville resident, Mara Edwards. Edwards’ home was completely destroyed by fire on Monday, as reported by the Gazette Tuesday. Chief Golightly states that the cause of the fire has not yet been determined but that they have ruled out electrical or mechanical causes. Edwards, an insurance claims processor, worked from home as is believed to have been in the residence when the fire began. As of Wednesday evening, her remains have not been located inside the structure. Golightly is confident that the State Police Arson Division will find the answers to the questions, what started the fire and what happened to Mara Edwards.
Mara re-read the short notice again. Her life was reduced to a paragraph and most of that was wrong. She wasn’t an insurance claims processor. She hadn’t done that in ten years. She’d worked as a fact checker for Wabash Valley University Press for the last ten years. And she didn’t work from home. She had an office on the campus, for pity’s sake. Plus, there was the fact that she wasn’t dead. Now she remembered why she didn’t read the Fordville paper anymore. They were idiots.
Jess brought her food to her and she got caught up on the national news while she ate. It was more of the same and it was a wonder it didn’t give her indigestion, reading about it while she ate. It seemed like everything she believed in was under attack by the very government that was supposed to be looking out for its people.
She shut her phone down and put it in the pocket of the hoodie she’d pulled on over her Tee and finished her breakfast in silence. After her second cup of coffee, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a twenty to pay her bill.
While she was calculating in her head to make sure it was enough of a tip, the front door opened with the jangle of a small cow bell. The sound made her smile. But when she looked up, the smile faded quickly. The two men standing just inside the diner weren’t locals. In fact, they looked like extras from central casting for an eighties mafia movie: slicked back dark hair, dark sunglasses, tacky silk shirts, leather bomber jackets, and boxy wool/silk blend pants. They were both just under six feet, slender, and pale-skinned, like they were related. Two booths down, the old dog raised its head and growled loudly, making Mara start. There was something about these two goombas that she didn’t like, either, and the dog’s growl made her more sure of that sentiment.
She got up and headed for the exit, needing to get away from these guys now. As she got closer to them, her nose wrinkled of its own will. They stank. She could smell heavy cologne wafting off both of them but under that there was a very unpleasant scent that reminded her of something. She couldn’t quite place it, though, and her focus now was getting away from the stink as fast as possible.
She had to pass them to get to the door and when she did, their heads swiveled in unison toward her. She couldn’t see their eyes through their dark shades but she didn’t have a doubt that they were fixed on her. She kept her pace deliberate, though, refusing to be frightened of them. Or to let them see she was frightened. Because she was actually scared spitless. Her big breakfast was now a painful rock in her belly.
Outside, she paused to take a deep breath and steady her nerves. What the hell was that? Shaking her head, she aimed for the Bronco. Time to go. Time to put a lot of distance between herself and Handel, Montana.

She never heard them. One second she was pulling the keys to the Bronco out of her pocket and the next there was sharp pain in both arms and she was lifted in the air.
“Hey! Wha—”
Something slammed into her belly, knocking the wind out of her. I’m dying, her mind announced. But, no, she couldn’t be dying. She just couldn’t breathe. Bright white spots covered her vision, blocking out everything. Okay, maybe she was dying.
Suddenly, her lungs re-inflated, the spots receded, and her stomach informed her that it was very angry at its abuse. She heard angry barking. Jericho. Dammit, no.
“Jeri, stay,” she wheezed, unable to muster a yell at the moment. “No, Jeri.”
Another sharp pain, in her cheek and jaw.
“Shut the fuck up,” someone hissed. She turned her head, wincing when that hurt like a hot knife in her head. It was one of the goombas.
They were in the alley between the closed hardware store and a second-hand shop, shaded from the morning sun, and the goombas seemed even more menacing in the shade.
“What’re—”
Another sharp pain in her face. She blinked away the tears that blurred her vision. She’d been hit. She couldn’t understand. In her entire life, no one had ever hit her, not her parents, not her grandparents, no one. She couldn’t believe that she’d been hit. It just wasn’t possible. She didn’t live in a world where people got hit.
There was a thunk and a pneumatic hiss and she realized she was looking at the back of an older Jeep Cherokee with the hatch open. She whimpered, trying to pull her arms free but the goombas had hands like iron clamps. She couldn’t budge them.
“Get her in there before someone notices,” the other goomba said angrily.
“No, please,” she whimpered again. A fist slammed into her stomach and her belly had enough. She bent over and threw up her breakfast, noting with a hint of satisfaction that she’d hit someone’s pants and shoes. Good. Assholes.
“Son of a fuckin’ bitch. Now I’m gonna kill the whore, latent or not,” the one with the ruined pants and shoes announced.
“Don’t be stupid. If we go back without her, the Maitre will kill us both. Just knock the bitch out and let’s go.”
She heaved upright, panic a bright flare in her chest. Before she could jerk free and run, something hard hit her in the head and darkness swallowed her whole.