Hacienda Moon (The Path Seekers) by Kasonndra Leigh

old Pontus to death by now. You look shocked. Guess Saul Chelby didn’t tell you about all that when he showed you the place.”
     
    No. No, he didn’t tell me someone died in the house,” Tandie said.
     
    “All of that stuff is probably second nature to you though. Big police psychic and everything,” Minerva said, easing around the counter and moving closer to Tandie.
     
    “Right. I think I can weather that storm now. Thanks for the history lesson.” Tandie folded the brown paper bag with the Stop Leak inside and turned to leave.
     
    Another thunderclap rumbled the store, startling Tandie. She peeked through the small window of the dirty wooden door and checked the rain’s intensity. A figure stood beside the driver side door to her car. Lightning flashed and bathed the street in light, making it easy to see the shadowed figure belonged to a man. And then the street darkened, covering his shadow. A few seconds later, lightning flashed again, showing how empty the street was now.
     
    “Mighty brave thing you doing, sugar. Spending time all by your lonesome in Chelby Rose,” Minerva’s husky voice said.
     
    She already felt anxious about trying to find her way out of the endless circle of back roads; and the woman’s hard stare made her uneasy. “Something wrong?”
     
    “There was a—I saw a man standing near my car,” Tandie said, her eyes wide and sweat beads prickling her underarms. “He was standing there beside the driver’s door.”
     
    Minerva’s voice suddenly fell silent, and Tandie no longer felt her cat eyes boring holes through the back of her head. She turned around. The area behind the cash register was empty. A new country song blared through the speakers of a radio with a bad reception. But she was able to hear a few of the words to Garth Brooks’ song When the Thunder Rolls.
     
    Tandie tapped her keypad, unlocked her doors, trotted to her car in the rain, and kept watching for the shadow people.
     
     
     
    * * *
     
     
     
    Flump! Flump! Flump! The Camaro’s tires chugged along the lane.
     
    Tandie pulled over to the side of the road and eased it to a stop. “Oh shit, you’ve got to be kidding me,” she said aloud, glancing back at where she had just left the store. There were no streetlights and her Blackberry’s signal bar was empty again.
     
    Opening her door she stepped out and examined the car. Both the front and back tire on the driver’s side were flat. She would either have to risk driving on them and experiencing a blowout, or stay put in the car until morning. She had one can of Fix a Flat and absolutely no knowledge of how to change a tire.
     
    Glancing at her surroundings, she patted her chest. That was until she thought about the man from the store, the one who was standing beside her car. The woods around her chimed songs of frogs and crickets, and certain areas in the trees were so dark they appeared to be moving.
     
    “Okay. Now your eyes are playing tricks on you, woman,” she said, her voice carrying over the forest sounds.
     
    A light lit up the trees growing along the sides of the road ahead of her. Either a large truck or a vehicle with a diesel engine was headed her way. “Oh shit,” she said and quickly shuffled back into the car, locking the doors as she tried to calm her racing heart.
     
    Coming closer now, the truck’s lights blinded her. She held her arm over her eyes, blocking the glare. It was a pickup truck, a large one with tires that looked too big for the body, and it slowed down until it stopped. Her heart thudded, making her feel as if her mouth was filled with its beats.
     
    “You all right there?” a man’s voice called out, a familiar one. Oh no.
     
    For the second time in one night, she rolled her window down just a notch and said, “I think so. I’m waiting for someone to come pick me up,” she lied. But she had to tell the person something. It didn’t work. He opened the door to his truck, hopped out, and