Lone Star Book Blog Tour: A Firm Place to Stand by Lori Altebaumer (Excerpt)

A FIRM PLACE TO STAND

Excerpt One, Part One

CHAPTER ONE

Journalists traveled light—especially the unemployed ones running from a tsunami of poor choices. Of course, she wasn’t exactly running since she had nowhere else to go.

And now no way to get there.

She watched the flames perform interpretive dance over her 1967 Ford Falcon against the backdrop of the night sky. The interpretation wasn’t encouraging.

Her eyes darted to the silhouette of her material possessions now piled in the dark just beyond the edge of the road.

Two medium sized cardboard boxes labeled Fresh Peanuts, an overstuffed Army Surplus duffel bag, and a backpack. She looked like a Hurricane refugee—which wasn’t far from how she felt. But when you’re the hurricane, it’s hard to escape the destruction.

Somewhat telling that at age twenty-six everything Maribel owned had fit into the back of a car.

Pressing a hand against her stomach, she exhaled, but couldn’t rid herself of the uneasy premonition things might go from bad to worse at any moment. She stared over her shoulder into the dark. Even if something—or someone—were there, she’d never see them. The itchy feeling she was never alone crept up her spine.

She staunched the flow of rising unease. A job at a simple country camp should give her the chance to get her head emptied of the shadows haunting her.

No one knew she was here.

Shaking the feeling off, she looked at the car and flinched.

For a reason she refused to acknowledge, she’d never bothered to paint the car, leaving it exactly as it had been given to her. Unfortunately, the coat of faded gray primer gave off a deathly sick glow in the flames licking against its exterior. She glanced at the scorched “Life Is Good” t-shirt in her hand—a birthday present from her aunt. She’d used it to swat at the engine inferno before the lack of success and singeing arm hairs made her give up and shift her efforts to rescuing her possessions that weren’t yet smoking.

Annoyed the shirt wasn’t more useful for fire suppression or proclaiming the truth, she tossed it into the overgrown grass lining the side of the sticky-hot asphalt. One less thing to unpack from her duffel bag when she got to the Pool of Siloam Camp. Not that she planned to unpack. She’d labeled this job temporary.

Her Falcon sat there, calmly letting the fire devour its little body without a fight. But who was she to pass judgment?

Pulling her cell phone from her back pocket, she checked again to confirm it hadn’t miraculously acquired a signal since the last time she checked. The battery level blinked a fading five percent. Not encouraging.

The dead of night and a deserted road through the thick cedar backwoods of central Texas was the exact point on the map a woman didn’t want to be stranded. Alone. With no cell service.

Nothing new in the life of Maribel Montgomery.

A firm believer Thou Shall Not Litter should have been the Eleventh Commandment, she blew out a frustrated breath and retrieved the shirt.

Nothing but stars and a thin sliver of moon pierced the dark above. By her estimations, she was at least seven miles from the camp outside Turnaround, Texas. Doable on foot, unless she factored in the black of an almost moonless night, snakes, wild hogs, coyotes, and other predatory animals, not the least of which might be of the human species. And did she mention snakes?