Wolf at the Door: A Novel of Suspense

by JD Salyers

  Her husband, who was still probably laying where she left him. She wondered if he was completely covered with snow now. She thought about him being cold, and the idea of it nearly brought her to tears again.

  Thinking about it brought her head up, as it dawned on her that that was why Abel had killed the lineman. The guy must have seen Ethan's body and figured out what was going on. He would have said something, for sure, and Abel couldn't just let him leave after that.

  She got to her feet and checked the area again. Nothing was different, but the scene seemed even more ominous now that she knew - Abel was capable of killing purely innocent people. But why? She and Ethan had known their share of drunks before, and some of them had been deadbeats, living off others like Abel. None of them had ever killed people, though. Why was he doing it? What did he have to gain?

  Surely he didn't believe he could just kill them and live in their home forever, like he owned the place. Somebody would eventually ask questions. She and Ethan tended to keep to themselves, but they had still made a few friends. Cap, for one, and his sister Mary. They came over on occasion. Was Abel going to kill them, too? Or the UPS guy who came about once a week when Ethan ordered something from Amazon?

  None of this made any sense.

  Then again, while none of the drunks they knew had killed anybody, they constantly made bad decisions and had a penchant for being overly optimistic. Maybe Abel did think he could just live here. Maybe he couldn't think so far ahead as to realize that it wasn't going to work.

  The thought of him hurting anyone else dug at her. Not that she thought anyone would be out here tonight, but like the lineman, she couldn't know for sure. It was going to be up to her to stop Abel before he killed again.

  The barn was a good five hundred yards from her, and there was plenty of open space in the field. She would have to depend on pure luck and speed to get her there without Abel glancing up at the wrong time and seeing her. Also, she was going to feel a gun trained on her heart the whole way, whether it actually was or not. Best to prepare her mind to ignore it now, before she got to the middle of the field and froze in fear.

  She wasn't sure how she knew that, but she did. She wasn't the kind of woman who trained for this kind of thing, or even thought it could ever happen to her. There was nothing in her background, as far as she knew, that would help her here. And yet, she was operating on pure instinct, keeping her mind in check and not overthinking any of this. She could see it play out, see the pitfalls. She knew exactly which parts of her plan made her vulnerable and which parts required extra finesse.

  She was going to have to trust her gut, and her gut seemed to know exactly what it was doing.

  Just as she was about to step out into the open edge of the field, Retro lowered his head and growled. It wasn't loud - if she hadn't been so hyper aware right now, she might have missed it. She froze, her hand still on a clump of brush, about it push it aside.

  She scanned the area as best she could, but didn't see anything different. No movement near the house, no change in the light. She glanced at Retro, and saw that he was looking away from the house, toward the road. She backed up a little and crouched beside him, ready to wait a minute.

  When she finally realized what was going on, she sucked in her breath and held it.

  It wasn't something moving that alarmed Retro. It was a sound. A sound she knew.

  Cap was coming. The Gator was grinding up the mountain on the gravel road. She'd heard the sound of his engine enough to know it was him.

  No. No, this wasn't the way. She had to stop this from happening.

  There was only one way to do that. She paused for a second, took a deep breath, told Retro to stay, and broke through the trees, sprinting for the barn.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Cap wasn't sure, at first, if the Gator would make the climb. Even with the gravel the road didn't offer much in the way of traction, and more than once he had to back up and get a run at one slope or another. It was a little bit harrowing. More than once, he wondered if Mary was right about him wasting his time. More than once, he thought he wasn't going to make it.

  When he got to the road that led to Ethan's cabin, he was surprised to see tired tracks. Somebody had come down off the mountain tonight. Cap didn't think it was Ethan or Quinn - both of their vehicles sported wider tires than these tracks indicated. This looked like a small car, or maybe stock dealer tires on a pickup. Cap couldn't think of anyone who could have made them.

  He had stopped once to cover his face with a knit mask, trying to protect it from the wind. Even so, his hands and face were numb with cold, and his toes were starting to feel it through his heavy boots and thick socks. No matter. He hunched in and kept going, wrestling the Gator back into the road about every fifty yards or so.

  The first sign of lights took him by surprise - usually the electric up here was the first to go. He had heard Ethan complain about it a hundred times, and he always laughed because he knew it was true. His own electric usually went out not long after, so he knew the drill. Maybe it had gone out - it was possible that the electric company had been here. That would explain the tire tracks, at least.

  Now Cap thought that he really was wasting his time. If the electric company had been and gone, they would have called the police if anything was wrong, and they most likely wouldn't have left.

  The Gator slid sideways, toward the drop-off, and interrupted his thoughts. He had to fight to get the machine stopped, and once he did he wasn't sure he could get it going again. Hell, he wasn't sure he wanted to - this was suicidal. At this rate, he was the one who would need help by the end of the night.

  The thought made him chuckle to himself. Who would come out into this mess to help an old man? Everybody was most likely busy out toward town, towing the inevitable wrecks that always happened in weather like this. A tow truck would take hours to get here. If he was able, he'd have to walk to Ethan's for any kind of rescue.

  He was glad that Mary hadn't come with him - for a minute there, he'd thought she was going to offer. The last thing he needed was an extra person to worry about. Himself, Ethan and Quinn were plenty, thank you very much.

  Quinn, especially was an odd one. He knew from watching that she wasn't the kind of woman who was comfortable on a farm, and yet she had followed Ethan here willingly enough. Most women wouldn't do that. Then again, most women didn't look at their man the way she looked at Ethan. Like he was her axis or something. Like she couldn't live without him.

  Not many marriages like that.

  His own hadn't been like that, for a fact. He and Mercy June had been married less than two years before she died with the baby, and she'd spent every minute of those years complaining. She didn't like the mud. She didn't like the way he left her alone to go hunting. She didn't like church - her church at home had padded pews. She didn't even like the house he built for her. It was too dark, too narrow, too small. By the end, he agreed with her on that last part. Too small for the two of them, at least.

  But then later, she was gone, and he regretted all the bickering. He regretted not paying more attention. If he had let her go back to the city, closer to her parents, would she be alive now? They certainly thought so. Barlow and Corliss Williams still hated his guts, after all these years. So much that they refused to come to Mercy's funeral and put a full page ad in all the local papers that accused him of killing her.

  Which he hadn't. At the rate things were going, they might have killed each other, though. He chuckled at that. He was far enough away from the sadness now that he could feel lighter about it. Water under the bridge, he supposed. He'd made his peace.

  After Mercy died, the house was a mess for a while. What with that and the ad in the paper, he took to staying inside. Even though folks he knew assured him that it was just the grief of distraught parents, he saw the way some of the younger kids looked at him. He took to avoiding town unless he had to go there, he stayed on the farm and worked on making it self-sufficient.
He was getting pretty good at it, too, until his sister Mary called. She was sick, and she needed him.

  That as it turned out, was enough. After all that time, Cap realized that being needed was what kept him going.

  Now, maybe Ethan and Quinn needed him. Probably not, but then again, who wouldn't be touched that someone cared enough to come and check things out? Check on them? They would be gracious and sweet and invite him in to get warm, at the very least. Maybe Quinn would have a pie made.

  He grinned under the icy mask, remembering the first time he'd met her. It had been just before Christmas, and she had their little cabin all dressed out with cedar wreaths and pretty lights on the tiny tree. She had just figured out how to make a pie crust, and she was as proud of that apple pie as any new mother. He'd been tickled at how tickled she was, and Ethan had stood by, beaming a little, while he tasted it.

  It had been good pie. He told her so, and he thought she would bust wide open at the praise of an old man.

  Kids. He liked to think his own would have been good people, like Ethan and Quinn. Since he didn't have any of his own, though, he'd adopted them instead.

  The rear end of the Gator skidded out from under his butt, toward the ditch. He righted it without too much trouble. “Pay attention, old man, 'fore you end up in the creek down there.”

  When he saw the first twinkle of lights that told him he was close to the Galloway place, he slowed a little and started to feel somewhat foolish again. They were surely safe and sound. Ethan knew how to handle himself and protect his home. Cap knew for a fact that Ethan would do everything in his power to take good care of Quinn. Maybe he should turn around now and go on home. Let Mary laugh at his dumb ass, drink some coffee and go to bed where he could get warm.

  But the thought of pie was a tease and the thought of heat was a promise, so he kept going. He would warm up and then go on home, hopefully without the gnawing feeling that something was wrong.

  He spotted the utility truck, with its doors wide open, about the same time he heard the gunshot.

  Chapter Twenty

  Quinn spotted Abel about the same time he spotted her. She ducked behind the cedars, tried to stop there, and fell on her ass. What had caused her to...? Ethan's blood. It was all over the ground here, freezing. Just about the time she fell, one of the cedar's trunks splintered above her. If she had been standing she'd be dead. How in the hell was he such a good shot? He was a drunk, for crying out loud.

  The thought brought her up short. He was a drunk, wasn't he? Now that she thought about it, she wasn't sure. He'd been drunk earlier in the night, when she had first encountered him, but that didn't necessarily mean he was a drunk. Another thing - the neighbors and their parties. It seemed to her that everyone who stayed with them tended to like the booze, but that wasn't definitive proof, either, was it?

  She wished desperately that she knew what he wanted. Was it money? They didn't keep much in the house. Like the rest of America, they relied on debit cards and money transfers. Did he want to rape her?

  Ew, gross. That thought gave her a shudder. It was possible, but she would kill him with her bare hands if he tried it.

  Maybe he thought they had valuables in the house, but then why hadn't he just taken them and gone away?

  She tossed the speculations aside and studied the path between her trees and the barn. It was a good hundred yards across wide open field, and now the moon was starting to brighten. Abel was standing at the top of the porch steps, watching for her. She could barely make out Ethan's body at the bottom, a shadow more than a solid person.

  The last thing she wanted to do was make herself a sitting duck, but Cap was coming. He was going to walk right into this mess, completely unaware of Abel. He could be dead before he knew what was happening.

  She was studying the field between her and the barn, looking for potential problems, when she caught movement from her right.

  Abel saw it too. She noted the flash of light on black metal as he swung the rifle that way. When she looked, her heart sank.

  Retro was heading her way, running across the snowy field so fast that it looked like he was flying.

  She saw Abel raise the rifle, saw him take aim. She didn't see his hand move, but she saw him lower the rifle and look at it with his head cocked.

  Something had gone wrong. Maybe the gun had jammed. Thank God.

  Retro almost knocked her over before he could get stopped. He tried so hard to miss her that he slipped in the blood, too, and fell sideways, skimming across the ground and smacking his big dumb head against the cedar trunk next to hers. He yelped a little, but she wasn't sure if it was a yelp of surprise or pain.

  But he got up and shook himself, then came to her. She wasn't supposed to love on him when he disobeyed, but she reached down and scratched his ears anyway. She was glad to see him alive. He panted up at her but then returned his attention to the house and started to growl.

  Abel was still fiddling with the gun. She didn't know what had happened, but she sent a silent prayer of thanks skyward. For the first time since this nightmare had started, she felt like God had given her a bit of a break. Retro was still alive.

  She searched the other direction, toward the road, but saw no sign of Cap. Had he stopped somewhere? She strained to listen for the Gator's engine and heard nothing but the wind and Retro's breathing. She knew she'd heard it, though, and if she could hear it, Abel could too. He would figure out what was wrong with the gun, fix it, and go investigate.

  Unless she distracted him. She didn't want to leave the safety of the trees, but it might be the only way to keep Cap safe. He was too old to be running through the woods, too old to die cold and alone by the side of the road. She would never forgive herself if something happened to him. With a curse, she turned back to Abel. She needed to distract him.

  More than anything, she hated that he had the upper hand here. She should be able to walk back into her house, take a shower, and go to bed in peace. But she couldn't. Instead, she was soaked and freezing in the snowy dark, possibly about to die or cause the death of someone she cared about.

  Or both. There was no skirting around the fact that Abel was one trigger-happy son of a bitch.

  If she was smart she would just run. Plunge into the trees behind her, travel through the woods until she got the Cap, wherever he was now, and leave all of this behind.

  But she didn't want to leave Ethan and she didn't want to leave her home. “No turning back now, Quinn,” she muttered to herself. Then, with her heart in her throat, she stepped out from behind the tree and started walking toward the house.

  A million thoughts filled her head, but over all of it was pure raw fear, screaming for her to turn back.

  She couldn't. Not with Cap's life in the balance.

  She saw Abel glance up from the rifle and bend down again. Then he did a double take, which might have been funny under different circumstances. He straightened and watched her come.

  Her mind raced, trying to figure out what she was going to do when she got to the house. She doubted she could match him in hand to hand fighting, and her weapons were so limited that it was laughable. But above it all, one thought kept thrumming through her head - this was her home, and her husband, and this man named Abel was trespassing.

  She was within twenty feet of him, about to speak, when she heard the one thing she didn't want to hear: pounding paw beats, coming up behind her fast. Retro. Before she even completed the thought, Retro was past her, going at a dead run. She saw him flash by, saw Abel shift his attention. His expression - she was close enough to see it now - changed from malicious triumph to surprise and then fear. His arm came up, but Retro was already on him, sinking strong teeth into Abel’s coat sleeve.

  Quinn heard Abel cry out, heard him grunting with effort. She saw Retro climb on top of the man and heard his teeth snapping as he worked to get his jaws around something more substantial than fabric. She called his name, barely hearing her own voice.

 
; She started to run. One wrong move and Abel would kill Retro, either by snapping his neck or -.

  Retro yowled, heaved, and rolled away. He lay still.

  Just like that, she saw the last of her family slip away. She felt her heart break. She didn't stop running. She ran faster. When she got to where Retro lay in the darkening snow, she fell to her knees and buried her face in his fur. “Retro!” The name slipped out. She shook him. She grabbed his big head with both hands and turned his face to hers.

  His eyes focused on her and then the recognition faded. He was dying. His ribs, when she slid her hands along them, barely rose and fell, and there were hitches in the rhythm as he struggled to live.

  “Retro, baby,” she moaned. “Please, Retro, I need you, buddy.”

  He whined at her, but he couldn't lift his head.

  Nearby, closer to the porch, Abel fought his way up out of the snow. When he was standing, he brushed off his coat. “Damned dog,” he muttered.

  Then he knelt again and started feeling around.

  He'd lost the rifle in the snow.

  She wanted to die, too. Within sight of her, she could see the bodies of her dog, her husband and a stranger. No wait - she peered at the steps. Two strangers. She didn't know who it was, and she couldn't bring herself to care. Laying Retro's head gently down, she stood up and walked away, toward the woods.

  Abel had given up on finding the rifle, apparently. He stood up, tuned and lunged at her. She rolled away, onto her back and scrambled backward, out of his reach. He landed hard on his shoulder. She heard him grunt. He got up and clambered after her, but now she was out of reach. She saw him try to stand, pushing up on his hands, but then he hissed and fell again. “Mother -,” he snapped.

  He had hurt himself. Good.

  She stood up and walked away, toward the woods.