by Dale Mayer
He held a finger to his lips and disappeared in front of her.
“Pierce is about to confirm who’s in the barn,” she said. “And, if Jed sets Pete’s house on fire, he’ll burn up Billy. That’ll just be another shitstorm.”
“Don’t go back inside that house,” her father repeated.
She hung up the phone, pocketed it and slipped back through the trees, around to the barn, watching Pierce creep up close. The barn had double doors on this side, and a single door and window on the back. She never understood why barns didn’t come with multiple windows so you had better access and better light, but apparently they didn’t. At least not during the time that this one was built.
As she watched, Pierce sneaked up to the double doors and waited. There wasn’t a sound. She wanted to tell him to stop, not to even bother, that they could wait Bobby out. Then they could just watch and keep track as Bobby tried to leave. But Pierce didn’t appear to be the waiting kind of guy because, even as she watched, he disappeared inside the barn.
Pierce studied the interior of the barn. He was as low to the ground as he could get, tucked alongside the wall and hunkered under a saddle stand with a big old leather saddle on top. He listened with his eyes closed and his ears wide open, and he could hear feet shifting impatiently on the left at the back. Whether he’d been seen or not, he didn’t know. The barn was too dark at the moment, and he hadn’t been here long enough to have the lay of the land. Chances were good Bobby knew the interior better than Pierce did.
As he waited, the back door opened, and somebody stumbled inside. “Bobby, you there?”
Bobby whispered, “Yeah. What took you so long?”
“A roadblock was out there for me. Had to walk the last part.”
“A roadblock? The sheriff? No way, man. That’s what we pay him for.”
“Well, we didn’t pay him enough because there’s at least one truck if not two or three.”
“Could have just been somebody broke down,” Bobby said.
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I got the torch.”
“We didn’t have to have a torch. We needed gasoline. We could take it from her car but we might need that as a getaway vehicle.”
“That’s what Billy was supposed to get. Where is he?”
“No idea,” Bobby said, his voice hard but fretting. “Last I saw he was getting gas from the truck, but I never saw him again.”
“Goddamn fucking shit,” Jed roared. “It’s gotta be that asshole.”
“Yeah, I think you’re right,” he said. “But I don’t want to torch the house until I know if my brother is in there.”
“We’re torching the house,” Jed said. “If your brother is in there, goddammit, he better get his ass out fast.”
“I don’t know if he’s alive or not,” Bobby said. “But I’m not killing him if he’s unconscious or if he’s tied up and can’t leave.”
“We’ll run out of options pretty damn soon,” Jed said. “And I’m not waiting around for the roadblock assholes to get here.”
“What do you want to do?” Bobby asked.
“I want to go in. We’ll start the fire between the barn and the house and do a quick run-through of the house. If Billy is there, we’ll get him out. But nobody else gets to leave. We’ll shoot them if they try.”
Chapter 12
She watched as Pierce slipped back out the door and crept along the high grass to the back. She could only imagine what he was doing because she certainly couldn’t see. Then he came back around to the front and in a move that surprised her, he closed both front double doors and threw a board across them. She raced down to meet him. “You locked the men in?”
He nodded. “Their plan is to burn the place down.” He held up his phone. “I recorded it all.”
“Oh, wow, that’s incredible.”
“Not really,” he said. “In normal circumstances, the sheriff would arrest these guys for attempted arson, not to mention trespassing, breaking and entering, and any number of other nasty things. In this case, we’ve got calls out to the other counties’ sheriffs close by. One is on his way. One contacted your sheriff, and he said he’s got a madman running loose, being me I presume, and that’s the way it goes,” he said with a half shoulder shrug. “Fort Collins has a police department, and they’ve been alerted to the problems. Give me a minute, and I’ll send this recording to them.” He sat down with his back against the barn door and started to text.
She squatted beside him, and, just as she lowered herself down, a bullet came flying from inside the barn door right where her head had been. “Shit,” she said and hit the ground flat. That had been close, too damn close.
“We can expect them to keep that up too,” he said. “Let’s get a safe distance away.”
They made their way back to the trees, where they could watch both ends of the barn.
“They’ll try to come out through the window,” he said, “but it’s pretty high and small, or they will open the front doors by shooting their way out.”
“And then what?”
“I’d love to set a trap for them,” he said, running his hand through his hair as he studied the barn. “Or I can just make it so they can’t get out. That sounds like a better idea to me.” And he took off across the yard toward his truck. There he started it up and drove down to the end of the lane, where Jed had dropped off his beloved truck for his previous visit, before he got shot in his gun hand.
She watched, wondering how he would start it, when all of a sudden it came trembling toward the barn. She shook her head, wondering at the madness of this night as Pierce pulled Jed’s truck up sideways and parked right in front of the double doors so that he had to crawl out the passenger side in order to get out. She watched as the back door rattled, and bullets shot through it. The window was shot out, and broken glass shattered everywhere.
“Don’t do that,” Jed roared. “We’ll get cut on the way out.”
“I ain’t getting out that way anyway,” Bobby said. “That window ain’t big enough for me.”
She wanted to laugh, but it was such a bizarre night she didn’t dare. She stayed hunkered low, keeping watch. Bullets flew out in all directions, as if one of them stood in the center of the room and just started shooting, hoping to hit somebody on the outside.
When the shots slowed down, Pierce called out. “You’re firing into Jed’s truck. It’s parked at the double doors.”
“What the hell?” Jed exploded. “You leave my truck alone.”
“Not my fault if you shoot it,” Pierce said. “When you run out of ammo, let me know, and I’ll open the door for you.”
Immediately a barrage of gunfire headed in the direction of his voice. But Pierce was no longer there. She shook her head and sat down to wait. Pierce was right; at some point they would run out of ammo.
But she knew these men. They came prepared for bear. They could also burn down the barn and her car with it. And just then she realized Pierce had thought of the same thing. Because without a word, he went racing behind her, flat out to the back.
She stood up. “What the hell …”
But he didn’t answer.
The next thing she knew, he slowly drove the tractor toward her. She frowned as he built a massive firebreak around the barn so that, if they did light the barn on fire, it would collapse in on itself and not spread to any other buildings around it.
She looked up at the trees. A couple branches could catch fire but not many. She had no idea how much value was in that barn itself, but it was a hell of a lot better to lose that than to lose the house.
As soon as Jed and Bobby heard the tractor outside, she figured they’d start shooting again. Pierce stopped when he got close to the barn, his firebreak a good six to eight feet away, and studied the barn for a long moment. He didn’t trust them, and she didn’t blame him.
He got off the tractor and picked up a piece of sheet metal lying on the ground. He propped that up beside him in the tractor
cab, then with a hand on the top, he slowly completed the round of firebreak closer to the barn, with that sheet metal hopefully protecting him from any bullets coming through the barn. Then he went to his truck, rummaged in the back and came up with a handsaw. Next thing she knew, he shimmied up the tree overhanging the barn, cutting down branches. Obviously he took the fire pretty damn seriously. But she grinned, loving his chutzpah.
When he joined her, huffing slightly, a bead of sweat on his forehead, she whispered, “You’re a handy man to have around.”
He leaned over and kissed her hard and fast. “Sweetheart, you have no idea.”
She chuckled at that. “Does that line actually get you somewhere with women?” she asked, trying to ignore the kiss. She’d been right when she had told her father that Pierce was a good man to have around in time of need. She figured he was one of the good guys, period.
A hell of a lot of banked fire was in that kiss. And damn she wanted to taste his lips again.
“Since we’ll need a new sheriff,” she said in a conversational tone of voice, “you looking for a job?”
He looked at her in horror. “You wouldn’t saddle me with that, would you?”
She raised her eyebrows. “It’s an office of respect. It’s men upholding the law.” She motioned toward the barn. “Personally I think you’d be great.”
“The position isn’t open anyway,” he said amiably. “So I don’t have to worry about it.”
“Maybe not,” she said, “but you should. Apply, at least.”
“Again, no open job, remember?”
“I also believe in the law,” she said, “so I have to believe this sheriff will get his ass booted out somehow or another, and there will be an open position.”
“What about you?” he asked. “Do you want the job?”
She shook her head. “Nope. I’m happy as support staff. It’s not that I can’t do the job, but I don’t have the attitude you do. At the office, as it stands now, I’m the most aggressive one there, and that’s damn sad. Since I met you though, I realize you’re very much like my father, so I’m a good person to back you up. But I’m not necessarily the right person to lead.”
He studied her for a long moment and smiled. “I’ll take your lead any day.”
She groaned and shook her head. “Stop the sexual innuendoes.”
“Why?” he said. “I was just getting started.”
“Wow,” she said. “How did this come out of the blue?”
“Hasn’t been out of the blue,” he said with a smirk. “I know solid gold when I see it.”
She stared at him in surprise. “Me?”
It was his turn to stop and look at her. “Absolutely you. Surprised?”
She nodded.
“You shouldn’t be,” he said briskly wondering why she would be. “You can tell an awful lot about a person in a scenario like this. Look at all the characters involved, and who is it who stands up straight on the side of right?”
“Just you and me and Dad and Roger and Stew from what I can see,” she said.
“Exactly. You’re solid gold. You were there earlier, pushing back at Jed when he was trying to hurt those kids. You came here to help me because I was trying to help Pete,” he said. “You stuck around because you knew it was the right thing to do. Solid gold. The fact that you’re also a looker and have a personality that balances nicely with mine only helps.”
“That is not a relationship.”
He twisted, looked at her and grinned. “No. But we could try.”
“Try what? A relationship?” she asked drily. “You flash into town, and next you’ll be flashing out of town.”
“No. Probably not. I might not be able to do all those renos for Pete, but I can sure get a handle on most of them. If I need tradesmen, we’ll take a look at that cost then,” he said. “Hell, I might even know enough guys to help out myself. And most of them would be happy to help a fellow vet.”
“Then you know the right kind of men,” she said sadly. “It seems like all I’ve been surrounded by is these guys.” She motioned at the barn. “Or the two deputies I work with and the sheriff.”
“Definitely time for housecleaning,” he said. Just then he caught sight of Salem. “Don’t say or do anything now, but Salem is coming up between us.”
She looked at him in shock. “I forgot about her.”
“I haven’t. She was with me every step of the way back from Jed’s, and then I told her to stay in the trees. I did not want Jed to get a chance to shoot her.”
“Or burn her alive,” Hedi said sadly. “He’s just that kind of guy.”
“I think I told her that too,” he said with a chuckle. He looked down and held out his hand. Salem walked into it. He spent a moment gently stroking her forehead and the back of her neck. She was gentle and loving, and it angered him at a deep level to see how she’d been treated.
Hedi watched the two of them. “She really likes you, doesn’t she?”
“I haven’t starved her. I haven’t made her do something against her nature. And I treat her with respect and love. What’s not to like?” Hedi looked at him for a long moment, and he wondered what she was thinking.
“It’s just that easy, isn’t it?” she asked. “Jed did treat her badly. He never once treated her with respect or love. Just like he never treated his wife and kids with respect or love.”
“Vicky was a prisoner, an abused one at that,” he said shortly. “A man has got no business beating up on a woman. You guys can’t fight back the same. You don’t have the meanness we have, and you don’t have the strength. And, if you’re in a marriage, you’re there because you want to be, at least at first because there’s respect, there’s love, and because there’s a commitment,” he added gently.
“Too bad it doesn’t work out that way most times,” she said gently.
“Ever been married?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “I came close a time or two, but, in one case, a local job fell through for him, and I realized I didn’t love him enough to leave here.” She gave Pierce a crooked grin. “Unfortunately it took me a little too long to figure that out.”
“Better late than never,” he said. “Imagine if you had gotten married and had two kids, then realized how unhappy you were?”
“I was also very young, two months short of my eighteenth birthday. And I just wasn’t ready.”
“That is young,” he said. “And the other incident?”
“Somebody I thought would be the one.” An evident note of bitterness filled her voice. “But apparently a half dozen other girls thought the same thing.”
“Ouch,” he said. “Yeah, that’s the other kind of relationship. I don’t do those.”
“What do you mean, you don’t do those?”
“Multiple partners,” he said. “When I commit, I commit fully. And I demand commitment on both sides. Life is full of diversions. You choose what you’ll focus on and go after what you truly want. Otherwise you can expend your energy on too many things, and you get nowhere quickly.”
“Sure, but a marriage isn’t exactly a goal that you have to work toward.”
“I think it is,” he said. “Relationships are goals. Every single day you get up, and you work on your relationships to make them the best damn relationships you can have.” He stared up at the night sky. “I don’t understand how people can just fall into a relationship and stay there, even though it’s no good.”
“You have a very unique view on life,” she said slowly. “But I like it.” In fact, it gave her great insight into who he was.
“Yeah, probably from being in the military, going through rehab, recovering from injuries, all that good stuff,” he said.
“I can’t see anything wrong with your viewpoint,” she said. “It seems like honesty, integrity, morality, ethics, they’re all something that’s becoming old-fashioned and falling out of favor.”
“No. You just had a tainted view for the last few years because the peopl
e you work with suck,” he said, startling a laugh from her.
“I hear you there,” she said, “but I’m really glad you don’t suck.”
“See? That’s what I mean. We click.”
“Clicking is not a relationship,” she reiterated, but he was getting to her, intriguing her at the same time he was mystifying her. One of the most interesting men to come into her world.
“No, but it’s a good basis for one,” he said.
Just then a bullet was fired in their direction. They both hunkered lower, and Salem started to growl. Pierce placed a hand on her shoulder. “Easy, girl.” He studied the darkness. “Did that come from inside the barn?”
“I’m not sure it did,” she said. “They might have kicked out part of the back wall and snuck around on us.”
“It’s all too possible,” he said almost philosophically.
Salem growled again deep in the back of her throat.
“She really doesn’t like these guys, does she?” asked Pierce. “But we can’t watch four sides at once.”
“I know,” she said. “But I really don’t want to see them get out before our backup arrives.”
“I’m not sure where the backup is,” he said. “Chances are it’ll be a little far away yet.”
“Dad and Roger are out there, keeping an eye out. But we should have others coming too,” she said. “We put out the call at least an hour ago.”
“Maybe.”
Just then more shots were fired in their direction. Salem growled yet again. Pierce put a hand on her fur to calm her down.
“She doesn’t like gunfire, does she?” Hedi asked Pierce.
“No. When she was attacked with Pete, insurgents had opened fire. I’m sure she associates that gunfire with what happened to her life and to Pete.”
Hedi gasped. “That’s terrible.”
“Unfortunately it’s all too common. Dogs are almost human in many ways.”
The gunfire increased, a heavy barrage that kept their heads lowered.