Wolf at the Door: A Novel of Suspense

by JD Salyers

  When she was still again, she moaned softly out of pure fear. She didn't want to go farther. She didn't want to climb down into this ravine. She just wanted to be home, warm and safe with her husband, and that wish was lost to her forever. No more silly jokes. No more walking by his side through the woods.

  No more Ethan. He was gone, along with Burns and any plans to go happily through their twilight years. She sat very still and started to cry. Her tears were hot on her cheeks.

  She knew she needed to move, but she just couldn't. The weight of her loss and fear was breathtaking now that she had a moment to consider it. For a moment, she wondered why she was even trying. Wouldn't it be better to just rest? To stay right here and just...pray? Sleep?

  Follow Ethan? Be where he'd gone?

  It sounded enticing. She had never considered it before, but it was one solution. Burns was probably dead, like Ethan, and that would be her fault, too.

  Coyotes began to howl in the distance. Their reedy songs filtered through the trees and found her where she sat, perched on the ravine wall. Beside her, Retro shifted nervously and pressed in close. A low growl rumbled up from his chest.

  He thought she was worth saving. Worth protecting.

  Both dogs did. She remembered last December when both dogs had risked themselves for her. It had been the first good snow, not long after they moved in, and she was still enchanted with the idea of living in such a wonderland of nature. Every branch was covered, and snow sparkled as far as her eyes could see. While she had loved her life in Atlanta with Ethan, she missed the snow. Growing up in Nebraska she had hated it, but time and distance had softened her memories, and on that day she felt a visceral need to walk in it, to kick it and breathe it in and watch her own breath float away on the breeze.

  So she had gone for a walk. She had watched her steaming breath and kicked the snow and felt the crisp, cold air against her skin. That day she decided that she and Ethan had made the right decision when they chose this place. She had been laugh-out-loud happy, until the moment the man stepped out of the woods.

  He was standing just inside the tree line, and if he hadn't moved she would never have known he was there. That thought haunted her later - the fact that she could have waltzed right by, within three feet of him, and never have known.

  But he had moved, and then several things happened at once. She had screeched and stumbled back, catching only a glimpse of his stubbled face with hard dark eyes and his black clothes. The barrel of his rifle stood out in sharp relief against the background of white snow. Before she could land on her butt, both Burns and Retro lunged forward, knocking the man's legs from under him and dropping him to the ground. Retro's paws were on the man's chest when she realized what was happening and squeaked their names.

  They had come to her immediately. She had helped the man up and apologized through his cursing. When he stopped, she invited him in to meet Ethan and warm up with a cup of coffee, and that's how they'd first met Pop.

  But it had always impressed her, the way Burns and Retro both had willingly ran toward the man with the rifle, all for her and without a thought for their own safety. Part of it was training, yes, but she had given no commands that day. They simply knew to protect her, and that's what they did. Even Pop, after he was warm and dry again, had commended them as good dogs and offered them a venison jerky treat.

  That day, Ethan had finally been satisfied that she would be safe if he left her there alone for some reason. And he'd been right, until today.

  She wondered if he felt better about his suicidal decision, knowing that the dogs were here for her. Or Pop, even, who had asked her multiple times to call him if she needed anything. Maybe Ethan had, for whatever reason, had thought she would be OK.

  All of this danced around the real question - why? Why had he taken his own life like this? What could have happened to jar him so badly? Quinn and Ethan were practically inseparable - there was no room for secrets between them.

  More importantly at the moment was another why - why was Abel Welch after her? If he was simply a drunk, he would have given up and gone home. If he wanted to rob her, he would have done it by now, or stolen into the house while she was out in the barn. There was no need to chase her outside if what he wanted was free for the taking. She had been busy in the barn, so she would never have known he'd gone inside. So why was he after her, in particular? As far as she could tell, she had never met him before today.

  Retro whined and licked her hand, but kept his ears perked toward the coyotes and their mournful howls. She could feel the tension in his body. Then he put his big soft head against her cheek. Get up. We have to move. We have to go. She reached out one stiffening arm and hugged him. “OK, buddy. OK, we're going.”

  That was somewhat easier said than done. She'd been sitting still long enough that the cold and wet had seeped into her clothes, just as exhaustion had seeped into her muscles and despair had seeped into her mind. When she finally struggled up from the ground, using both hands on Retro's neck for balance, she thought that every bone in her body might snap.

  She wanted to go home, but home would get her killed right now. So would sitting here in the woods. Winter was coming to an end, which meant food was scarce for the predators out here. She was food, and every one of those coyotes knew it. They might avoid her under normal circumstances, but they were in survival mode.

  It was another hundred yards to the bottom of the slope, and then she had to cut to her left and traverse another slope to the bank of the river. After that, she needed to fight her way downstream to the neighbor’s place, where she could find help.

  What if they weren't home? Well, she doubted that was the case - who would have three kids out in weather like this in the middle of the night? The neighbors seemed a little wild, but she had no reason to think that they were bad parents. Also, tomorrow was a school day. Someone would be home.

  She turned to fully face the ravine and the slope beyond. Wind funneled up from the river and smacked her in the face.

  She sucked in a breath of freezing air that hurt her chest, and her teeth started to chatter. Her layered clothes weren't doing much to protect her.

  Retro's ears perked up. He glanced over his shoulder, back the way they had come.

  Was Abel coming? Had he figured out quickly that she was gone? Had he figured out that she came this way? It wouldn't be hard - her tracks were stark in the back yard's snow covering. In spite of how she felt, she wasn't actually all that far from the house. She needed to put some distance between him and herself.

  So she tucked away her heartbreak and confusion and set to work doing just that. She pushed everything else out of her mind, and started slowly making her way toward the bottom.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It took Abel Welch twenty full minutes to conclude that Quinn Galloway wasn't home.

  It made no sense - where the hell had she gone?

  He sat in the recliner and sighed at how nice and comfortable it was, he found the phone and yanked it out of its base, and he discovered the boxes of photos on the dining room table. He picked those up and carried them back to the living room. On the way, he kicked something metal that made a soft tink against his boot. Kneeling down, he felt around on the hardwood until has hand closed around the item - a flashlight. He picked it up and stuck it in his pocket.

  Then he went to the recliner and turned on the lamp, except that it didn't come on. He frowned at it, then just shrugged and got out the flashlight, figuring the bulb was blown. After looking through the photos - they were damned boring, if you asked him - he tossed them all into the fireplace. The small blaze that ate them turned green and blue and red for a moment. Pretty. Prettier than the pictures, anyway.

  Well, except for one. It was a picture of Quinn on a beach somewhere. She was a lot younger, but she still just looked like a younger version of the lady who had nailed him with the crowbar. Same light freckles, same long blondish hair, same compact figure. No kids - he could t
ell. She didn't have that softness around her middle that mothers did. He decided to keep that one.

  He held the picture in one hand and the flashlight in the other while he checked the fridge for anything good. Nothing decent to drink - who had no kids but still kept milk? - no sandwich fixings, either. He opened a plastic bowl and saw that it was roast beef. It looked good, but he didn't have time to eat it right now. Maybe later, after he'd corralled Quinn and brought her back here.

  Then, picture still clutched in his hand, he stood in the center of the big room and looked around. There was the kitchen on one end, the living room on the other. The kitchen would be bright during the day, with enough windows to let in sun and, more importantly, to get a pretty clear view of the surrounding property. He didn't think anybody could sneak up on the house without their presence being noticed in a hurry.

  The living room had lots of windows, too. One was right by the recliner. A man could see all the comings and goings from here, easy. Every car, every four-wheeler. Ethan Galloway must have been a nosy cuss. He knew it had to be Ethan's chair, because it was too deep for Quinn's short legs. Her feet wouldn't even touch the ground when she sat in it. He moved on to the bedroom.

  He flicked the light switch, but nothing happened. He frowned and flicked it a few more times before he gave up. The snow must have knocked out a power line somewhere. Now that he thought about it, the fridge light hadn't come on, either. No matter - he wasn't looking for anything in particular, except for Quinn.

  The big bedroom had a king-sized bed in it, a couple of dressers, and a long curved mirror on some kind of wooden stand. His momma had one of those once, a gift from her own momma before the TB killed her. If he remembered right, it had gotten broken in the fire that took their house and two of his little sisters when he was ten. He turned the flashlight away, mad that he'd thought about it right now.

  The bed was made, and in here the curtains were drawn over the windows. Over in the corner, in a space that seemed too small for it, sat a black metal box with gold lettering on it. It was taller than him and twice as wide. He grinned, knowing exactly what that was - the gun safe. Everybody who could afford it had one in these parts, and he'd seen plenty just like this one. He wondered where the key was, then figured he would make Quinn tell him later.

  His eyes dropped a little, toward the dark strip of floor that marked the space under the bed. She was little, she could be hiding under there.

  He dropped to his knees and shone the light underneath. The action made him dizzy, and he realized that he was jonesing for another drink. Well, it would have to wait - the Galloways were evidently teetotalers, and he needed to find Quinn before he went back to Rick and Patty's on a beer run.

  Well, it was just Patty's now, wasn't it?

  His brain was starting to feel muddy, though, and he wondered if he should take the time to eat that stew after all. Maybe it would steady him.

  He turned away from the bedroom doorway and stopped. Shined the light. Grinned. Because the answer to Quinn's whereabouts was right here in front of him.

  The back door had a little window in it, the kind that wasn't big enough for anything but a quick look-see if somebody knocked. Quinn had hung a small blue curtain over it, one of those slinky kind that you could sort of see through. He wouldn't even have noticed, except that the curtain wasn't hanging right. It was caught in the door, like somebody had slammed it closed before the curtain could swing back out of the way. And he figured that's exactly what had happened. She'd slipped away, sometime before he came inside.

  He opened the back door and stuck the flashlight out through the crack - just in case she was waiting there with that damned crowbar. When nothing moved, he stepped out and looked a little closer.

  When he saw Quinn's footprints, headed for the dog pens, he chuckled and closed the door again. She was either out there in those pens, waiting for him to leave, or she was gone into the woods. In that direction, he knew for a fact that she had miles of hard traveling. It would get her to town, but not before she froze to death or got eaten by coyotes. Either way, he wasn't too worried.

  When he came back to the living room, his eyes went to that recliner again. For a second he imagined Quinn and Ethan sat in the big chair together, her on his lap while they...did what? What did rich people do? Talk about their money? Make vacation plans? He didn't know, and he didn't much care. He took the picture in his mind and replaced Ethan with himself. Quinn would sit in his lap now, and they would definitely get a TV set. One of those giant ones that hung on the wall over the fireplace. Yeah.

  This was the life he was supposed to have. This house, this wife, this chair. That truck in the driveway. Life had stolen it all over the years, but now...

  Well, now was Abel’s chance to get it back. It was his, after all, or it should have been. Everything came full circle, didn't it?

  Chapter Fourteen

  By the time Quinn was halfway to the bottom of the ravine, all she could hear was her own stumbling footsteps crashing through the forest and her own heartbeat thrumming in her ears. Her throat was raw with cold, her hands were numb and her feet were getting there quick, and her eyes blurred with tears every few steps, so that she had to stop and wipe at them.

  Even without the benefit of a thermometer, she had no trouble figuring out that the temperature had dropped substantially. She was trying to remember what the radio weather guy had said this morning when she stumbled a little too fast down a particularly steep slope and tripped over a fallen log that lay hidden under the snow.

  A short, sharp scream tore out of her throat before she clamped her lips shut. Her hands reached out instinctively, but not fast enough. She landed on her side, popping her temple against something hard under the snow. A rock? Another log? She didn't know, and she didn't care.

  Retro came to her and snuffled her ear. She swatted him away and pushed up to a sitting position, worried that Abel was closer than she thought, that he'd heard the scream and was stomping in her direction even now. It took forced even breathing and counting to ten backwards and forwards before she remembered that none of those fears could be true. She would be able to see Abel or at least hear him, if he was moving in the woods behind her. If she couldn't make him out, the odds were good that her scream was swallowed by the pillowy snow and would never reach his ears.

  “OK,” she whispered, panting. “OK, Retro. Good doggo. Good boy.”

  Retro's tail waved a little, but his attention wasn't on her anymore. He was looking out across the ravine to the opposite upslope. She froze where she sat, wondering what he sensed but not seeing anything.

  Of course, the moon was still missing from its place in the sky, so there wasn't much to see beyond a dull gray-scale landscape, only broken by black tree trunks against the featureless ground.

  Sitting here, she knew, was going to get her killed. Either Abel would catch up - she didn't believe for a minute that he wouldn't follow those footprints - or she would succumb to the cold. As far as the coyotes...well, she kept an eye open for trees to climb, just in case. Right now, they were almost welcome, compared to facing off with the drunken bastard behind her. She was just standing up, using a skinny frozen tree for support, when she paused, thinking she heard something.

  Abel stiffened beside her.

  She listened closer, holding her breath and letting her mouth fall open a little.

  There it was - a faint hum, riding the wind. She thought it might just be a plane overhead, except that Retro was paying too much attention. He didn't care about planes, so this was something else.

  But what? An ATV? It could be. She pictured Ethan's, a red and green monster, crouched in the barn. She pictured the key, hanging just inside the barn door on a rusty nail that had probably been there since Carter was president. She had said that to Ethan once, and ever since they had called it the Carter nail. She wondered if Abel had somehow found it, and if he was coming after her right now.

  That was impossible. Their A
TV was four-wheel drive, but there was no way it could make it through these trees. Just the fallen timber would wreck the thing before Abel got twenty feet from the tree line.

  But what if he thought she was on the road? He might - she could have cut through the yard and then made a sharp right. That would have put her in the clear at least.

  Now that she thought about it, she wondered why she hadn't done that. Why instinct had driven her into the woods, instead of down the road. She might have been at the neighbors' house by now if she had done that.

  Of course, if Abel was riding around on Ethan's ATV, she might be dead by now, too. Something had put her here instead of there, and she decided to trust it, whatever it was. The woods were harder to navigate, but she would just keep going. Better exhausted than caught in a madman's headlights on an old dirt road, unarmed and out of options.

  But this didn't sound much like an ATV, either, and the more she listened, the more she thought it might just be...a car? Who would have a car out at this time of night in these conditions? It was suicide, especially on these roads.

  A flash of brightness lit up the treetops just to her left, making her gasp. It was a car. Those were headlights. Someone was on the road. She started running that way, wanting to yell, knowing that no one in a car would be able to hear her.

  So she ran. The engine revved louder - it was climbing the mountain, headed toward her house. She hoped it was the man named Rick, looking for his buddy Abel. Or maybe Rick and Patty had gotten into a fight, and now he was leaving.

  And then, after the sound filled the forest around her, it began to fade. There were no more flashes of light, no more revving engines. It was gone almost as quickly as it had come. She stood very still, listening, to make sure it hadn't stopped at her house. Then she turned away and kept going. Her frantic run had sapped much needed strength and lengthened the distance to the river.