The Hiding Place by Karen Harper

honey, yes, I think Aunt Tara is very pretty, and it’s really rare to having coloring like hers.”
    “But,” the child plunged on, “when she gets upset, she gets pink in the face, too. See?”
    “Yeah, I do see,” Nick said, and quickly gulped his cider.
    Tara could fully understand why Claire was matchmaking, but she’d have to talk to her about that. She hoped Nick wouldn’t think she’d put the girl up to it. But right now, she had more important things to take care of and that included getting Nick off alone to tell him about the bike treads and about what had happened at Red Rocks today.
    “Do you want to watch your princess video?” she asked Claire. “I need to talk to your uncle.”
    “No, I’d rather—Well, yes, oh, okay. Are we all going to a Red Rocks concert this weekend, or do you guys just want to go alone and I can stay at Charlee’s house?”
    “This is a family weekend, my first one home,” Nick put in. “I say all three of us stick together and do something fun tomorrow and Sunday. Go on in now. Want me to set the video up for you?”
    “Oh, no, I know how,” she said as, smug and grinning, she headed inside. She shot them a long look out the picture window before they heard the video come on, much too loud with its Once upon a time beginning.
    “I’m sure you put her up to all that. Very subtle,” Nick said with a chuckle. “I’ll apologize for her crazy—”
    “Nick, I do need to talk to you, but not about that. And I need to show you something,” she added, pointing toward the driveway. “I found what I’m sure are mountain bike tracks, coming down from the tree line.”
    He put his mug on the deck and stood. “In other words, Herr Getz might have come calling? Show me.”
    He followed her down the wooden steps, then stooped to look at the tracks, turning his head up toward the trees, then in the direction the tracks seemed to go.
    “Assuming this distinctive V-and-bar pattern points in the direction he was going, I’d say the biker was heading downhill from the tree line, and pretty fast.”
    “That’s what I thought. I don’t suppose Beamer could track that?”
    “Not unless the biker was dragging his foot all the way. I didn’t see anything like this when we were up on the path or near the cabin yesterday, so this must be somewhat fresh,” he said, standing.
    “There’s an old bag of plaster mix in the back of the garage. Do you think we could mix some up and make a cast of this tread, right here where it’s the clearest?”
    “We can try. You looked upset by more than Claire’s shenanigans when I got home, so I didn’t tell you I’d seen Clay’s brother Rick. He seemed pretty jumpy, but said nothing to implicate himself, even when I served him fair warning about leaving the two of you alone.”
    “Actually, it’s not just this tire tread that’s got me on edge,” she admitted, and wrapped her arms around her waist. “Today at Red Rocks, while I was waiting for Veronica, who never came because she suddenly took sick, I just missed being flattened by a boulder.”
    He stood and took both her shoulders in his big hands. “You—You look all right—more than all right. An accident?”
    “I don’t know. I saw two men at a distance, leaving the scene—one on a mountain bike—but then I got out of there as fast as I could. Yes, it could have been an accident. I honestly don’t think I was followed there.”
    “A couple of glances in a rearview mirror doesn’t mean a thing. Maybe your cell phone call to set things up with Veronica was picked up by someone nearby. The army does that all the time in the Middle East.”
    “Yes, but this is the American live-and-let-live West. I don’t know. I did specify where she and I should meet.”
    “And Rick was supposedly out running errands,” he muttered. “Maybe that’s why he was so shaken when I showed up and said I was staying here. Maybe he’d followed you to Red Rocks and taken his shot at his