by T. F. Walsh
In the next breath the steer stepped forward. He moved in a dignified, four-legged march to the shed door, entered, and joined the group of oldest animals already in the first pen on the right.
Laura rushed across the yard and pulled the lower half of the door closed behind her. She moved down the aisle latching the individual pen gates and counting animals. Fourteen. All present. “Finally. What happened to the concept of animals sensing the weather? The grain and fresh water is inside. Uncooperative males.”
Well, what should she expect? Uncle Daryl held more layers of secrets than she’d suspected. And while it was foolish to expect him to share confidences with her she’d still like clear, rather than cryptic, answers to questions.
Brad managed to use sincere words and tiny acts of kindness to soften her defenses. He repeated them often enough that she’d been lulled into a feeling of safe friendship. Perhaps it was a good thing she’d witnessed his public display of affection on the sidewalk this afternoon.
Then there was Myles. His physical resemblance to Scott put her on guard. But the insurance man spoke as if holding back his honest opinion and stared at her with more interest than she invited.
A few minutes later, the usual sounds of livestock jostling for the last lick of ground grain dominated the shed. Laura set a large bucket under the faucet and turned on the water before claiming a seat on a nearby upside down pail.
“What do you think, Taffy?” She rubbed the dog’s thick coat. “Will two buckets of water be enough? We lose the water system if the electricity goes out. Yes,” she leaned away from collie kisses. “Roger claims they haven’t lost power for more than an hour at a time in recent years. Nervous city girl wants to be prepared.”
Laura finished the chores and slipped out of the narrow gap in the machine storage side of the building into fine, stinging snow. The wind carried finer snow than before she’d gotten the animals into the snug cattle shelter, and more of it. Electric lines from both sides of the dusk-to-dawn light pole swayed above her, contracting in the cold until little slack remained. She tipped her face down, away from the worst of the flying snow and plodded to Roger’s workshop. Visual inspection and a weak shake of both doors assured her the peg and hasp system was in place.
A few moments later, she banged into the calm of the back porch, shed her outside clothes, and descended to the basement. If stubborn steers rated a reserve of drinking water, she deserved a bucket or two of her own to flush the toilet. She pulled two clean five-gallon pails from under the shelves of canned goods. It would be just a short delay to get the emergency supplies in order, and then she’d take a long shower and have a hot meal. Tonight would be a time to pamper herself.
The flickering lights made her hurry her steps.
Chapter Fourteen
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and wiggled his toes. Heated hunting socks aside, waiting in the cold and dark tested his patience. The storm increased around him and he remained huddled under a white poncho at the edge of the tree farm.
Mind games. Think like Jason. If she’s not gone quickly, these toes will test warm Brazilian sand instead of Wisconsin snow.
Ten minutes ago, she’d gone into the house. He’d settled at this vantage point long before that and held silence while she worked with the steer. Cattle up close made him nervous. In his limited experience they were large, messy, and impulsive.
Through his low light monocular he spotted her at the kitchen window. He checked his watch and decided to wait. His lips moved in a silent request. “Go to the bedroom. Take a long hot bath. Turn up the television and ignore anything you hear from outside.”
A full five minutes later, she left the kitchen and vanished into the back of the house. His gaze roamed around the other buildings. One of the dogs walked out from behind the haystack and raised her nose to the wind.
He swallowed back apprehension and replaced it with an image of the doggie treats in his pocket. According to his pet owner friends, the amount of sleeping aid he’d mixed into ground beef would not harm the animals. The meat would distract and the medicine would quiet them temporarily. He only needed ten minutes inside the metal building. Fifteen at the most. Add a few more to jog to his truck and he’d vanish into the storm.
Jason. Need to think of myself as Jason tonight.
He eased to his full height and moved out from behind an overgrown white pine. The wind covered any sound from his footsteps as he advanced to the deep shadow at the end of the workshop. With his back flat against the building he cleared the corner and worked his way toward the sliding door.
A collie emerged from the larger shed and barked twice.
“Nice doggie.” He reached into his pocket and closed a gloved hand around a special, semi-frozen, raw meatball. A moment later, when both dogs eyed him from a few paces away, he tossed them each a treat.
One sniff and the canines plucked the drug-laced meat from fresh snow.
He followed it with a second for each of them before pulling the peg in the latch and pushing against the heavy door.
The moment he slipped inside the workshop he rolled the door closed. No sense in having a dog in here with me. He clicked on his flashlight and scanned the space. Lawn and garden equipment parked close together occupied this end of the building. He worked his way past a cart-mounted sprayer to the workbench. Pale light from high windows supplemented the flashlight in his hand. He skimmed his gaze over pegboards of small power implements on heavy-duty hooks and electrical outlets at the back of the bench.
It took him less than five minutes to rig the accident. A soldering iron plus enough associated materials to imitate a job interrupted formed the core of it. A few rags from an open box proved convenient. The strategic placement of a portable gas can finished the set up. He scraped insulation from a small section of cord, plugged in the soldering iron, and exited.
The dogs followed him around the corner but didn’t bark. When he curved around the evergreen, he glanced back and spotted them huddled together at the edge of the circle of light vomiting into the snow.
Come on. Jason encouraged the engine, goosed the accelerator, and his small truck surged forward through the growing snowdrift. He guided his pickup to the center of the road and passed the buildings at Starr Tree Farm with the headlights off.
• • •
Laura wrapped a clean towel around her freshly washed hair. Her mouth curved into a small smile at the sight of the flashlight resting on the vanity. It sent a supplemental but unnecessary spot of light against the white bathroom wall. So she overreacted. The electric and water systems worked exactly as designed after that one short blink. She could follow her pre-storm plans and go from shower to supper to a movie in the farmhouse collection.
That is, if she could shake thoughts of Brad. His voice, his touch begged a comparison with Scott, but she refused to let the two men into her mind at the same time.
Brad’s kiss—make that plural—had stirred desire and pleasure out of hibernation. Their conversation in the shop following the mustard-tinged kiss appeared sensible at the time. The scene on the back porch last night and the impulsive words in his truck that preceded it made her breath stutter.
She needed to be more cautious. Nothing good would come from sharing with him. It didn’t matter that he worked as a private investigator. A profession’s code of ethics didn’t cancel a personal life. That brief scene on Front Street, in plain sight of the entire Crystal Springs grapevine, proved his kisses and fine words were nothing more than male powered hot air.
“I’ve got to find a balance,” she told the empty house as she pulled on her warmest pajamas and robe. Scott deserved her continued love as well as justice. Moving on with the practical, visible aspects of her life didn’t change the basics. If she needed to wrestle with feelings of betrayal, it should be about her part in the kisses with Brad.
She picked up a wide-toothed comb and began to work it through tangled hair. With every blink she caught an
image of Brad embracing the brunette. Who was she? Did Laura really know anything about his friends? It could be a nurse or physical therapist he pursued. Why did she care?
Betrayal? Jealousy? Laura discarded each label. She wasn’t prone to that sort of thing. As recently as yesterday, after the conversation turned away from dead cats, phone calls, and threats she’d experienced a joy and optimism listening to Kathy and Daryl’s exchanges. A bachelor and a widow made a delightful couple. When I’m not the widow.
She wandered into the dining room, removing tangles with one hand and tracing the rings with one finger of the other. The edge of Scott’s ring represented loss. For a year now she’d been alone, living the lesson that planning and doing went so much easier with a partner. I should be grateful for the years we shared.
The dusk to dawn light illuminated swirling snow. Her footprints from the end of chores appeared as shallow marks, almost drifted smooth.
“What are they doing?” Her gaze followed Taffy and Cocoa moving restlessly in front of the workshop. One collie raised her head as if barking an alarm but through the double paned windows all Laura could hear was a faint swish of wind wrapping around the house. The other dog pawed at the sliding door.
Where had their sensible survival skills gone? They should be in the shed, curled up against each other on one of the broken straw bales.
The longer Laura observed the dogs, the stranger their behavior appeared. After a few moments she gave in to her curiosity and headed for the back porch. She found a pair of boots oversized enough to accept her feet, slippers and all. She shrugged into a barn jacket, grasped her damp hair and twisted it to fit under a knit cap. Phone. Flashlight. She detoured into the kitchen, jerked her smartphone off the charger, and stuffed it into her coat pocket. She dropped a Maglite in beside it and hurried to the door.
Snow and wind beat against her face before she left the porch steps.
Instead of breaking off their interest in the shop when the house door banged shut, the collies increased their digging efforts at the shed door. What has got their attention?
Taffy interrupted her pawing and twisted around Laura a minute later. “What’s wrong, girl? Did I lock a critter inside?”
The bolt that had been pegged through its loop an hour before hung loose. The latch was mounted too high for dogs or raccoons to disturb. A gust of wind bounced it against the wood and metal post. A shiver of fear joined the chill from the snowstorm.
“Stay!” Laura yelled at the dogs before sliding the door open to shoulder width. She stepped into the dim workshop and felt one of the collies swish past, ignoring her command.
She smelled a change from this morning when she’d been here to get the tarp. Then the space held a familiar odor of dust, oil, and grease. Now a different scent begged for her attention. She halted three steps in to turn on her flashlight.
Smoke! She swept the light beam and her gaze along the length of the workbench. A dark tendril rose from a pile of rags. She sprinted toward the fire extinguisher. Her first jerk against the clamp yielded nothing. A second determined pull and it released, forcing her back half a step. Her flashlight dropped, rolled under the workbench, and shined on the side of a box.
Laura let information bits from safety posters swirl in her mind like so many puzzle pieces and prayed they’d assemble into sense before it became too late. Her fingers trembled reaching for the pin. She pulled it out and turned the nozzle away from her body. Squeeze. The extinguisher kicked and forced her to retreat another step. She managed to steady her nerves a little and pulled the trigger again. She stepped forward this time, remembered to aim toward the rags instead of the smoke, and cursed moments later when the chemical sputtered to an end.
She ran out of the building into smoke- and chemical-free air. Too dark. One dog, then the other, whimpered within arm’s length. She tipped her face to where the dusk to dawn light should be shining. A fast fading dull orange sphere hung like an out of place moon. We lost electricity.
Moments later, Laura steadied the palm-sized glowing rectangle of her phone against her coat and tapped three numbers before pulling the only light in her world up to her face. “I need to report a fire. In the shed. Crystal Springs. Robert’s Ridge Road. Number eight-two-two.”
“Please repeat the address.”
She turned her back to the wind and managed a reply. Several more exchanges with the emergency services operator followed before the calm voice stated the Crystal Springs volunteers had been notified and were en route.
“Are you in a safe place?”
Laura gripped her phone tighter. “Outside. I’m outside, away from the shed.”
“Can you get into another building? At a safe distance?”
“I think so.” She pivoted and struggled to breathe when the wind slammed against her chest. “We lost power. I’ve never seen so much dark.”
• • •
“Not storing this lamp away with the Christmas decorations turned out to be a good thing.”
“Yeah.” Brad speared a chunk of carrot out of his shallow bowl of Yankee pot roast. The lamp sat on a sturdy table several inches away from any cloth or paper. The flame glowed within a clear glass chimney. Three adults ate supper around the small, steady light. It licked air as controlled and tame as a fire could get. Still he glanced at it every few seconds and fought off a tingle at the edge of his scars.
“Been a while since a storm like this.” Robert Asher halved a cube of beef.
“I should check on Laura.” Brad shifted his attention to the window where wind and snow battled for supremacy.
“She’s a grown woman, capable of asking for help if she needs it.”
“Laura’s a city girl.” He made an awkward exchange of his fork for the butter dish and thought of his prosthesis upstairs, stored on a padded bench.
“And this is the twenty-first century.”
“If you say so.” He’d learned in childhood that pressing a point when his mother used her current tone of voice gained nothing. His mother, both sisters, plus every farm wife he counted as an acquaintance demonstrated a pioneer spirit more than the helpless female stereotype of old movies.
“Wouldn’t hurt to call after supper.” Robert offered a buffer between mother and son.
“Good.” The phone startled Brad and he glimpsed his dad flinch at the unexpected noise.
“Ashers,” Mary answered and Brad listened eagerly to her side of the conversation.
“Yes, I hear you fine. The tree farm. Just got the call. Yes, I’ll tell them.”
“What was that about?”
“A fire at the tree farm.”
Brad and Robert pushed up to get their boots and jackets in the utility room before she added in the next breath. “One of the sheds.”
Is Laura safe? What was she doing out of the house in this near blizzard? Which shed? The questions swirled faster than the snow outside the truck as Brad silently urged his dad to drive the half-mile a little faster.
“Flashlights?” Robert asked as he guided the truck around a curve straight into the brunt of the wind.
Brad checked his jacket pockets and opened the glove box. “Total of three.”
“Good.” Robert turned into the drive and halted at the far corner of the garage. “I’ll take the biggest one and go direct traffic. I expect someone will try to turn the ditch into a parking space.”
Brad handed over the light and reached for the door. He figured his dad would pick that job. Four years of guiding Air Force planes into parking spaces stayed with the man.
Laura met them in the gap between house and garage. The edges of a robe flapped below the hem of her oversize thick plaid jacket. A few wisps of hair escaped from a plain knit hat and she raised her hand to sweep them off her face.
Brad figured she’d never been more beautiful.
“It’s the workshop. Can you help with the dogs?” She shouted above a gust of wind.
“Where are you putting them?” Brad swept hi
s light around and spotted one of the collies approaching. As one of their favorite visitors, he didn’t anticipate a problem until he started to transfer the flashlight. He stifled a curse at his empty sleeve and placed the slender case into his mouth.
Laura circled her own light and stepped ahead of him. “Garage.”
He nodded to her back. A moment later, he reached for a dog and missed the collar deep in her fur. An attempt to use a soothing word to the animal sounded more like a human growl. I’m useless. Three attempts and one embarrassing fall to his knees in fresh snow later, he managed to grasp Taffy’s collar and hang on while bringing the panicked animal to the side of the garage.
For a long moment, he stared at the plain knob on the barrier. Why didn’t I put my arm on after my shower? He glanced between the panting dog and the door. The first siren cut through the wind. Very soon they would have vehicles, lights, and men moving around the farmyard in trained volunteer controlled confusion.
Laura stumbled toward him with Cocoa twisting at the end of her arm. “Hurry.”
He pulled Taffy against him, then pushed her after Cocoa into the dark garage. A moment later, he rested his back against the door and felt it shudder as a collie jumped against it.
The jarring set the nerves in his injured shoulder into confusion. His scars flamed under his clothing. One moment he stood in a Wisconsin snowstorm and the next his skin took him back to Afghanistan.
I’m alive. He opened his mouth to scream with pain.
“Easy, Captain. Chopper’s on the way.”
An explosion shook the ground where he lay.
“Move. Shelter.” His yell came out a whisper.
“Don’t move, Captain. You’re hurt bad and that’s my last IV set in your arm.”
“Getting dark.” Quiet blackness draped over him.
“Over there.” Laura’s voice drifted across the wind and brought him halfway around the world.