I saw the hole a fraction of a second too late. My left ankle rolled over with a crackling noise, and I went sprawling. My ankle immediately felt three times bigger, throbbing against the high cuff of my hiking boot, but I had to keep going — keep going.
Tuppence wheeled around as I lurched forward. She froze in her tracks and snarled, her velvety muzzle and lips curling back. A jolt of fear raced through my chest — an irrational terror of my dog. But was it irrational?
Tuppence held her stiff stance, eyes tightened, head lowered. She wasn’t staring at me.
I looked back only long enough to realize Wade stood on the front porch with a rifle raised — aimed. He couldn’t recognize me, could he? Too far away and in shadow. Probably couldn’t even tell I was a woman at this distance.
My feet weren’t waiting around to find out. Cross-country was our only chance. I dove into the poplar stand, scraping between trunks. There was a sharp crack, and a low branch to my right exploded in a poof of splinters.
My coat caught on something, and I yanked it free. I pushed my arms up, crossed like a shield in front of my face, and ran like I’ve never run before. I stumbled and bounced off a trunk, scraping my wrist on the bark. The trees seemed to push me forward like the paddles of a pinball machine. My lungs were screaming.
Tuppence charged through the low weeds, her panting ragged and tongue lolling. She wound between the speckled white trunks, and I followed, stumbling blindly except for the guide of her white tail tip.
Something sharp sliced my forehead. “Ahhh.” I wiped blood out of my eye and staggered onto the dirt road near the Snead mailbox. I squinted up and saw that I’d run into the corner of a No Trespassing sign. I doubled over, wheezing, and tried to stop the blood flow with my sleeve.
Tuppence yipped. She was standing several yards down the road, watching me. She yipped again and took off, trotting toward the open gate to the rancher’s field.
I swallowed, but my throat still burned. Oxygen — I needed oxygen. I glanced back at the Snead driveway and caught movement — Wade. Snippets of his jacket and pumping arms flashed between the trees, and he was coming fast. All I could think was that he was certainly serious about the no trespassing thing — dead serious. I’d been so stupid.
I spun around, and Tuppence woofed as if to say “hurry!” I flew toward her, skidded around the blackberry blind and yanked the truck door open. Tuppence catapulted onto the seat, and so did I. I fired up the engine, popped the handbrake with a lurch, and spun the tires, flinging dirt and grass.
I cringed, let off the gas a little, and the truck rocketed through the open gate and into the road. I leaned on the steering wheel, narrowly avoiding a permanent resting place in the opposite ditch.
A metallic thwang echoed through the truck. I cranked the wheel to straight and stomped on the accelerator.
Wade with his head cocked to the rifle’s sight and a puff of smoke were the last things I saw in the rearview mirror before we fishtailed around the sharp corner and hit gravel.
CHAPTER 16
Tuppence yelped. I slammed on the brakes, and she slid off the seat onto the floor.
A stooped man stood in the middle of the road, and the truck shuddered to a stop, the grill just inches from his chest.
Amos’s face was white with rage. He smacked his open palm on the hood. Our dust cloud caught up with us and engulfed him.
I lifted my shaking hands off the steering wheel, covered my face and whimpered — something unintelligible, I don’t even know what. My breath came in sharp, painful bursts, and my heart pounded in my ears.
The next thing I knew, Amos’d wrenched the passenger door open. “What the—”
I turned to look at him. I wanted to apologize for nearly running him over, but speech just wasn’t happening right now. My mouth hung open. My whole body was suddenly limp.
“Meredith?” Amos took in my bloody face and Tuppence cowering on the floorboard. “Were you at the Snead place?”
I nodded feebly.
“Was that Wade shooting at you?”
I nodded again.
He shoved Tuppence over and leapt into the cab, slamming the door behind him. “Go!” He pointed. “Swing wide around my truck. Behind the house. Now.”
“But—”
“Don’t argue with me, woman. Do it!” Amos gave me a look that got my blood flowing again — fear, fury, determination? Whatever it was, he didn’t want us sticking around for another encounter with Wade.
I eased the truck forward and turned into Amos’s driveway, picking up speed as we approached his pickup and cleared it. I plowed through what passed for his back yard — half-heartedly trimmed weeds — and jerked to a stop next to a concrete slab that led to a set of sliding glass doors. My pickup bounced on its shocks.
I sat there, concentrating on breathing, while I stared at Amos’s dining table and chairs through the glass doors. He’d arranged a single place setting with cup, bowl and silverware. Tidy for a bachelor. Then I wondered if he’d always been a bachelor — maybe he was a widower.
Tuppence whined.
“She’s a good hound.” Amos scratched behind her ears. “Sorry about the shove, my dear.”
My mouth fell open again, for a completely different reason. I was still breathing hard. “Why did you do that?”
“Wade was not only shooting at you. He was chasing you. Right?”
I nodded.
“Anger management problems.” Amos snorted. “Best you get out of sight, not provoke him further.” He eyed me. “You need tending to. Come on.” He opened the door, jumped out and slapped his thigh. “Come, girl. You too. How ‘bout some chow?”
Tuppence followed on Amos’s heels, tail swishing in a happy wag. He pulled open the sliding door, and she trotted straight inside. Amos stood, hand on hip, scowling at me through the windshield. It took a second to realize he was waiting for me to accept his hospitality.
I was still trying to make sense of it all. I opened my door and slid out, landing on my tender ankle with an involuntary cry. I bit my lip and scrunched my eyes shut. I’d forgotten, and the adrenaline was ebbing away, no longer masking the pain.
Amos was beside me in a few short strides. He grabbed my elbow. “Buck up.” He helped me hobble into his dining room, and I dropped into the closest chair.
He moved to the sink, soaked a paper towel, squeezed it tight and tossed it onto the table. “There.”
I leaned over Amos’s bowl of chili and snagged the wet wad. I shook the towel out and applied it to my forehead, scrubbing gently at the clotted blood.
Amos opened a can and spooned glops of a glistening brown substance into another bowl. He set the bowl on the floor, and Tuppence eagerly dove in.
“You’re not feeding my dog chili, are you?”
“Hehehehe.” Amos wiped his hands on his pants. “This Wirt Maple’s dog?”
I almost dropped the paper towel. “Yeah — I mean, she was.”
“Recognized the markings and temperament. Had a pup from the same litter. Smart.”
“Had?”
“Went walkabout. Figure a cougar got her. Take your boot off.” Amos rummaged in the freezer.
I bent to untie my shoelaces, and my forehead throbbed. I groaned quietly. “Do you have a dog now?”
“Nope. Too close to dyin’. Don’t want to croak like Wirt did and leave a good dog fending for itself. It’d be too long before somebody’d notice.”
“Wirt was noticed. That’s how I got Tuppence. Sheriff Marge took care of them both.”
“Huh.” Amos plunked a plastic bag of ice cubes on the table and shoved it toward me. “Think he recognized you?”
“Wade? I don’t know. Probably not, but there’s a chance he’ll connect me to Tuppence, if he saw her, or to my pickup. I’m pretty sure he got a very good look at the back of my truck.”
“Lots of pickups in these parts. But yours is snazzier than most.” Amos moved across the small room and leaned against a china hut
ch. Teacups rattled as he rested a hip on the front ledge and pulled his knee up to let his foot swing free. “Yep. Maybe. Scoot over.” He flapped his hand in the direction he wanted me to shift.
“What?” But I did as he said.
“Keepin’ an eye out.” Amos tipped his head toward the front room and the large window that overlooked his driveway. “Best iffen you’re not visible.”
I pulled out a second chair and propped my left foot on it then balanced the ice bag on my swollen ankle. “Should I be worried?”
“That boy is bad news. Always has been. Drove Spence to distraction.”
I picked at the corner of a laminated placemat depicting Sydney Harbor. “Meaning?”
“Selfish. Pig-headed.”
“I heard some of the same things about Spence and you.”
“Hehehehe.” Amos tapped knobby knuckles on his knee. “We were cranky old coots, but not mean-spirited. In all my years dickering with Spence, he never posted No Trespassing signs. Nope. That was Wade’s doing. The first chance he got once the land was his.”
I shakily fingered the cut on my forehead. No fresh blood. No trespassing. “Is he hiding something up there?”
“Don’t expect he has anything worth hiding. You have a look around?”
I wrinkled my nose sheepishly. “Yeah. I dug crocus bulbs — and left my shovel behind.”
Amos snorted. “Craziest notion Spence ever had. No one wants to pluck little thread things out of every damn flower. Good grief.”
The gears of a large engine ground down, the roar punctuated by the rattle of spewing gravel as a vehicle skidded around the sharp corner. Amos tipped farther back and peered out the front window, then he dropped to the floor in a low squat with his head and neck stretched up like an eager buzzard’s.
“Yep. It’s Wade. Looks like he’s forgotten all about you. Not slowing one bit. Huh.” Amos pushed on his knees and creaked to a standing position. He walked into the front room and craned his neck at the edge of the window to follow Wade’s truck downhill. “Like a bat out of hell.”
I limped into the front room and stood beside him at the window.
“You can leave now.”
I smiled wryly. I can take a hint. “Thanks for your help. I wouldn’t have known what to do.”
Tuppence scrabbled on the kitchen linoleum and yipped.
“Wha—” Amos’s words were cut off by an explosion that shook his house on its foundation.
CHAPTER 17
We both clutched at the nearest solid thing — the windowsill, then Amos shoved me face-first to the floor and crashed down beside me. He flung an arm across the back of my head and cradled his own head with his other arm.
“Window — glass — we gotta get away, in case—” Amos army-crawled on his elbows, dragging the rest of his body toward the kitchen.
I followed, the repercussion of the blast still pounding in my head and through my ears. Everything was fuzzy.
Smaller explosions ripped the air in short, staccato bursts like aftershocks. Amos pulled open the sliding glass door and stepped onto his patio.
“Snead place is on fire,” he hollered. “Flames twenty feet in the air. Can see ‘em through the trees.” He stuck his head back inside and pointed at a phone on the kitchen wall, its kinked cord drooping almost to the floor. “Call the fire department.”
I dialed Sheriff Marge — because I have her number memorized and because she’s faster at mobilizing forces than the 911 operators holed up in their bunker one county over. Sheriff Marge knows her resources, paid and otherwise — who to ask for what and when.
“Be right there,” Sheriff Marge replied after I explained in breathless spurts. “Tell Amos not to do anything stupid — in other words, stay on his own property. That’s an order.” Sheriff Marge hung up.
Tuppence pressed against my legs, shaking, and I stooped to hug her.
“You felt it first, didn’t you, old girl?” I held her head in my hands and looked into her eyes.
Her tongue shot out and caught me on the nose.
“Alright. It’ll be alright.”
“I’m going up for a closer look,” Amos shouted.
“No, you’re not,” I yelled back and quickly hobbled to the open door. “Sheriff Marge says you’re to stay put.”
“That woman,” Amos muttered.
“You have to deal with this woman too.” I pointed to my chest. “There’s nothing you can do up there — no fire hydrants, no hose long enough.”
“The pump house—”
“From the look of things, the pump house is either engulfed, or it’ll be way too hot to approach. I saw what was inside that shack, and it’ll blow too if it hasn’t already.” I shook my head and linked my arm through his.
Amos wiped a hand across his brow, and his shoulders drooped as he leaned into me. “Gone. My good friend.”
“Spence?”
“What was left of him.” Amos gestured vaguely toward the orange inferno.
I shivered as I realized I wasn’t cold. Enough warmth roiled off the massive fire to make my face feel flushed even though it must’ve been below freezing. Maybe it was my nerves.
Tuppence whined from the doorway. Amos sank onto the stoop and placed a large hand on her head. She tucked her muzzle under his chin, and he held her close.
We watched the fire rage in silence. The explosions seemed to be over, and it crackled like a giant campfire. Every few minutes, a loud pop released a shower of sparks as something particularly combustible succumbed to the advancing flames. Low clouds crept across the dark sky, blinking out the stars in their path and joining the murky smoke billowing ever higher.
Rain? Rain would be very helpful right now.
A siren wail pricked my ears. It sped closer — on the highway — then stalled at the base of Four Forks Road as the fire engine began the steep climb. The siren stopped abruptly as though the driver realized he wouldn’t encounter any more traffic, and was replaced by the sound of the big lumbering engine chugging steadily onward.
White and red lights flashed through the night in swooping arcs, strobing against tree trunks and around Amos’s house. The truck came to a stop at the entrance to the Snead driveway. With the weight of the truck and the rutted condition of the narrow access road, they probably couldn’t go farther.
Amos stood, grabbed my boot from the kitchen floor and handed it to me. “Come on.”
Tuppence and I followed him around the end of the cabin to his wrecked truck. Tuppence jumped into the pickup’s bed, then Amos gave me a hand up. I sat on the wheel well, and Amos perched on the truck’s side next to me. It was like sitting in a private box at the theater, the best view of the most spectacular fire of the year, maybe of the decade — it was certainly the biggest blaze I’d ever seen.
I loosened the laces all the way down my boot and gingerly wedged my foot back into it. While tight, the support felt reassuring. Tuppence hunkered between my knees, also mesmerized by the scene.
A second fire truck climbed Beane Bluff, then a deputy sheriff’s cruiser, then Sheriff Marge’s Explorer, then another deputy, then a parade of private vehicles, pickups mostly — probably volunteer firefighters.
The ambulance arrived last, idled for a few minutes, then turned around and headed back downhill.
Every once in a while, I could make out a small human form between the trees, silhouetted against the fire, but there didn’t seem to be a sense of urgency. The firefighters were probably as helpless as we were to put out the flames.
A vehicle pulled away from the pack and slowly wound downhill. The headlights paused at Amos’s driveway and turned toward us — Sheriff Marge’s Explorer.
She killed the engine, and her door slammed. Amos jumped up and offered his hand. After a couple practice attempts, a loud grunt and a straining heave on Amos’s part, Sheriff Marge landed in the pickup bed.
I scooted over and gave her my warm spot on the wheel well.
“Total loss,” Sheriff M
arge wheezed. “Too far gone when we arrived, and not enough water to fight it with. Guys’re using what’s in the tanker to keep the fire from spreading.” She lifted her Stratton hat and swiped a sleeve across her forehead. “They’ll let it burn itself out. Take all night at least.” She peered at me over her reading glasses. “Must be some kind of fuel involved. Too hot to be just a structure fire. Want to tell me what you were doing up there and what you saw?”
Amos leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Tell her everything.” He nodded significantly, and I knew he meant Wade’s vigorous defense of the no trespassing stipulation.
“I was being nosy,” I started.
“Neighborly,” Amos corrected.
I wrinkled my nose. “Maybe somewhere in the middle.”
Between the intermittent starlight and the fire’s glow, Sheriff Marge’s and Amos’s faces were partially visible but inscrutable. I mirrored Amos’s pose and cupped my chin in my hand and talked.
Nosy and stupid were the operative words on my part, but they paled in comparison to the multiplicity of flammable liquids, mysterious wire through the window, aggressive shooting and rapid departure on Wade’s part. As I listened to my voice — eerily distant and bland — recount the afternoon’s and evening’s activities, I couldn’t help but wonder what was going on.
CHAPTER 18
An hour later, Sheriff Marge scooted off the tailgate. “Alright. I’m sure I’ll need to talk to you again later. But for now, go home. Put your ankle up. And you—” she aimed a stern finger at Amos, “—stay put. Let me know if you see Wade come back.” She stalked to the Explorer and climbed in.
Amos and I watched her back slowly out of the driveway and roll down Four Forks Road. The orange glow from the Snead place was smaller, as from smoldering embers — the size embers that could be seen a few hundred yards away. My sense of scale and distance was out of whack in the dark and unfamiliar territory.
“You up to driving?” Amos asked.
Sight Shot (Imogene Museum Mystery #3) Page 12