Goldilocks Read Free

Paul nodded firmly, turning the luxury car into the graveled parking lot.”
    “Don’t tell me this i s it. No 7-11, No Wal-Mart, No…” Hannah grabbed her father’s arm in disbelief, her head whipping around in the direction that they’d just come. “This isn’t it…right?” she searched his face for a hint of humor, but found none, his brows knitted as he peered out the window again.
    “Only one way to find out,” Paul shrugged, grabbing the map he ’d stuffed into the console before leaving D.C.
    Hannah watched as he climbed from the car and stretched away the aches the last leg of their drive had created. He didn’t seem at all fazed by the fact that they’d left civilization somewhere back in the last hundred miles of roadway they’d traveled. He’d said mountains, not wilderness. Her eyes swept the length of buildings again, alarmed to see that the few people out and about had all stopped to stare at them, one little boy pointing at the car.
    “Dad! Wait!” Hannah called as she shoved her iPod and tablet underneath the pillow she had sitting on the backseat.
    “Well come on then slow poke,” he joked, watching as she climbed slowly from the car, her hands immediately thrown up to shield her eyes from the bright sun.
    “More like welcome to ghost t own,” Hannah muttered, turning her back so that she was facing the entrance to the one stop shop.
    “You said you would try,” Paul reminded her, his arm wrapping around her shoulder as they met at the front of the car.
    “I’m trying ,” Hannah shook her head, allowing herself to be ushered across the dusty lot towards the store.
    A cowbell jangled overhead the second the steel framed glass door swung open, giving her pause as she peered into the wide open space before them. Had it not been for her dad’s hand on the small of her back pushing her forward she might have turned around and went straight back to wait in the car.
    Hannah had never been one of those high maintenance girls that bought everything she owned from a fancy store at the mall. She didn’t even wear makeup and certainly wasn’t snobby, but she had also never been anywhere other than a city, and never in a store like this.
    Old hard wood floor boards lined the warehouse sized space, creaking w ith every step they took towards the lone cash register centered on the front wall. Industrial sized steel shelving ran row after row from front to back and side to side, the signs hanging above them labeling everything the billboard out front offered and more.
    “Are you seeing this?” Hannah elbowed her father in the sid e, her eyes locking with a woman over in the clothing section, who’d stopped what she was doing to stare at them.
    “You must be the new mine inspector?” A voice boomed from behind them, and they both turned to see a short stocky man approaching them, a wide smile on his face.
    “How’d you know?” Paul extended his hand in greeting, introducing himself and Hannah.
    The man introduced himself as Sam, looking them both over before continuing past them towards the register.
    “Not too many fancy cars, like the one you’re driving, around these parts. Only four paved roads in the county and you can see why. You wouldn’t make it halfway around the loop in that thing.”
    “Only four paved roads?” Hannah echoed him, her question sounding as fore ign as the concept of such a thing.
    “I’m sorry, the loop?” Paul questioned, stepping up to the counter as Sam went around to th e other side to pull a map off the wall.
    “We have more than four roads,” Sam told Hannah. “But most of them are old mine trails, dirt packed and impassible in anything less than a 4x4, which is why…”
    “You rent them here,” Paul nodded in understanding, his brow furrowing again like it did when he was deep in thought. “I guess not many people come through here as unprepared as we are. I took the job on a short notice, and didn’t have time to really do my research