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and customers staying out of the area after business hours. Well, Deirdre didn’t avoid anywhere, but then she wasn’t most people.
    The inside of the building was chilly, the air conditioning already cranked up to full blast. The receptionist recognized her and waved Deirdre inside. The next door worked on a card system. Members swiped their plastic membership cards through a slot to get into the main part of the gym, leaving the receptionist out front to deal with new members and riff raff alike. Once through the gym doors, Deirdre went to the ladies’ locker room.
    Deirdre opened her bag and started to change into her shorts when her cell phone rang. She didn’t want to look at the display, dreading that Farmer might have given up calling her at home and had started monopolizing her cell phone. He proved to be ingenious when it came to getting her phone numbers and rarely called her office, the only public number.
    The digital chime demanded her attention so she risked it. Thankfully, the number belonged to Tech. Relief washed over her.
    “Talk.” She looked around the locker room and found it empty.
    “I’ve been checking into Farmer. So far rumor has more than the hard facts. I did a search like you asked and came up with little but his stats as an officer and general family information. I called a friend on the force for more info, a friend, I might add, who works nights and had just gone to bed.”
    “Is there a point coming?” She paced along the smooth concrete floor with green metal lockers running on each side from floor to ceiling. It caused a weird echo whenever she spoke. She wasn’t crazy about the locker room because it always smelled of chlorine, either from the nearby pool or a recent mopping.
    “Patience. Anyway, Detective Farmer has been asking around about you. Apparently you’ve been something of an obsession of his for the last few weeks.”
    That much she figured. Farmer must’ve grown tired of butting heads with her and had tried another approach. There was no way of knowing what he intended to do with his information. The least would be knocking Deirdre down a few pegs and possibly ending some of the privileges the force gave her.
    “This is what I pay you for?”
    “There’s more. He’s been making trips out to the mountains. People noticed that he was hard to find, showing up late and taking hours to report to a scene. Even the mileage on his issued car has been way over. Their boss did a check of his computer and found a map of...some damn place in the middle of nowhere. Let’s see. I wrote the name of the place down.” The sound of papers rustling followed.
    “Madison, somewhere along the mountain side before Walnut. A deserted, privately-owned section of land where a large stone structure once stood.”
    “I don’t know about all that. All I have is in Madison. How’d you know?”
    “Call it a hunch. Keep digging. Don’t forget Lora Shope.”
    Deirdre ended the call. There were no records of what happened at Stone House. She checked into it personally, trying to find any list of other survivors. As far as she could tell, she was the only one, although there was no documentation of her either. Everything was difficult to track since no member had ever learned another’s true legal name. Farmer had to have gone excavating. She wasn’t sure what was left in that old place but the bastard had found something damning. Surely everything had been burned along with the structure.
    I hope everything burned.
    She picked up her bag and headed out of the locker room, realizing that she would have to skip her exercise routine today. She had to go and see what was left to haunt her in those old mountains. Her secrets could be out and that thought grew more unsettling with every moment. If Ryan Farmer knew, how many others were just a hike away from her past? Something bad might still live in those mountains and they might find it and the life she left behind.
    Her past might reach