by Deb Donahue
He was able to get to his feet again, but the pain now slowed him and he traveled blind, stumbling, turning haphazardly, no longer sure where he was or who he was fleeing from, just running, running, running. Away from the pain, away from the shooting and shouting, away from the possibility of his brother’s body lying dead and broken somewhere in these very woods.
Chapter 13
Miranda was sure she would get little sleep that night and it did indeed seem to take hours before the adrenaline wore off enough to allow her to doze. Her dreams when she did fall asleep prevented any rest at all, causing her to toss and turn.
She was a child again, playing with Grandma’s music box. She had set up her dolls around the window seat in the bay windows of the dining room. Sun slanted in, warming the miniature tea cups and plates, highlighting the dust motes that seemed to dance in time to the childish, tinny tune.
“Let me call you Sweetheart, I’m in love with you.” Miranda sang along, her childish voice out of tune but not caring one bit. “Let me hear you whisper that you love me too.”
There was more to the song. She could hear Grandma singing it softly in the kitchen where she was washing dishes. But all the music box played was the chorus over and over. “Keep the love-light glowing in your eyes so true.”
Before she could run to ask about the rest of the words, a black and white car pulled up outside. White tail fins and sparkling chrome reflected the sunlight across the walls of the dining room. Miranda leaned forward to look out. Back in the city, police cars were black and white, but this car was much nicer, and there were no lights on top. A man got out just as her Daddy stepped forward to greet them.
“Miranda!” Grandma had stopped singing and now stood in the doorway between the kitchen and dining room. In her hand she held a porcelain cat. The top of the tail had been broken off.
“Did you do this?” Grandma asked reproachfully. The perfume she always wore seemed to fill the room and made Miranda’s stomach queasy. The sun began to fade like heavy drapes drawn closed.
The music box had stopped and in the silence following Grandma’s question, the only sound left was a drone of angry voices from outside as the men began to argue.
Suddenly little Miranda was no longer standing in the dining room, but alone in the damp musty dark, the men’s words now far, far away. Instead of perfume all she could smell was decay and rot. Frightened, she searched for a way out, reaching blindly with her hands. She touched something that leaned toward her. She screamed and jumped back as a white-boned skeleton wearing only a ragged, torn sleeve from a green jacket fell at her feet.
Miranda awoke with a gasp. Her stomach, taught with tension, still felt queasy. Remnants of her dream lingered like ghosts. She could smell the White Shoulders perfume and almost hear the drawn out last notes of the music box: “Let… me… c…”
She held her breath, listening. No, it had been her imagination. All she could hear, all that was real, was the familiar creaking of the old house and somewhere in the distance, the sound of howling.
Rufus barked, running to the back door and then returning to look at her expectantly. The howling came from outside, near the barn. It had to be Butch.
Miranda went to the windows and knelt on the window seat, shuddering as she remembered the tea party from her dream that had turned into a nightmare. Pulling aside the curtain, she saw the first rays of dawn streaking the sky, giving the morning a sickly yellow haze. The light was enough to see Butch run out of the barn doors and stop to howl again. The sound was followed by a series of high-pitched yaps that sounded distressed, almost as if the animal were in pain.
What on earth? Miranda pulled on jeans, threw a sweater on over her nightgown, and grabbed her gun and flashlight. Rufus danced around her the whole time, urging her to hurry. By the time she got outside, Butch had stopped howling and was no longer in site, but as she moved toward the barn, he appeared in the doorway. Seeing her and Rufus approach, the dog ran forward, barking again.
Miranda stopped, regretting her hasty decision to investigate. What if the dog attacked her or Rufus? Her Jack Russell was foolish enough to think he was a match for any dog of any size. If the two got into a brawl—
She needn’t have worried, however, because when the German Shepherd saw they had stopped, he stopped too, dropping to his haunches about ten feet away and whining at them in the most imploring way.
“What is it, boy?” Miranda asked him. “What’s wrong?”
He barked again, jumping to his feet and turning in circles. He looked toward the barn then back at her. He ran a few strides back toward the barn then paused, looking over his shoulder and whining again. When Miranda stepped forward, he continued running, looking back every once in a while to make sure Miranda was still following.
She stopped when she reached the half open door though Rufus and Butch both rushed in. The morning light had grown marginally brighter outside, but was not strong enough to add much illumination to the interior or the massive building. Hay bales and the loft floor overhead created deep pockets of inky darkness.
“Luke?” Miranda called, her voice cracked and high pitched. She cleared her throat and called louder, “Mr. Gregorio?”
Somewhere above her, Butch barked and Jo heard a dragging sound, but no one answered her. Rufus had returned to her side, looking up to wonder what her next move would be.
Using her flashlight to follow a path through the rusty farm implements, Miranda crept forward, breath shallow and heart beating. When she reached the ladder leading to the loft, she sighed with relief. The huge window up above allowed the morning light to shine in with a gray, dusty glow. Butch had apparently mounted the hale bale stack to the loft area. She could hear him above, whining now.
“Luke?” she called again, louder and more confident this time. She tilted the beam of the flashlight up the ladder. “Are you up there?”
After a long pause, he called, “I’m all right.” His pained tone and Butch’s urgent barking contradicted his words.
“I’m coming up.” She said the words without thinking, pausing halfway up the ladder to wonder at her forwardness. Just a few hours ago she had been holding a gun on this man. Now here she was rushing into what could easily be a trap. How did she know this wasn’t some trick to get past her guard?
These thoughts did not keep her from continuing to ascend, however. And when she reached the top, she didn’t bother to draw her gun. Aiming only her flashlight, she moved toward the sound of Butch’s urgent whining.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Back here. In the corner. I must have passed out.”
His weak voice came from behind a high stack of loose straw. As Miranda rounded the obstacle, she saw how he had set up a comfortable little niche for himself. The back end of the loft, under the one tall window, had apparently been where the quarters had been set up for the hired hands in the days when the farm was a bustling place. Three tier bunk beds had been set up on adjacent walls, with a built in table between them in the corner. The chairs were gone, but he had placed a propane lantern on the table top and pulled up an upended barrel to sit on.
Luckily the dawn had progressed enough to provide sufficient light through the huge window to see clearly. This was the window where she had been sure she saw someone watching. Now she knew she’d been right and felt strangely relieved to know she hadn’t been imagining it.
Luke was partially hidden by all the straw he had piled up on one of the lower bunks to serve as a bed. He sat spread out on a sleeping bag set on the makeshift mattress, his back against the wood wall. The contents of a first aid kit had been spilled open on his lap. He had unwound a roll of gauze and wrapped it around his left shoulder. The red blood seeping through the makeshift bandage made it clear he had applied it some time ago but the wound had soaked through. He was clumsily trying to change the bloody compress.
“Oh my God.” Miranda knelt next to him and took the bloody gauze from him.
; “It’s fine,” Luke assured her, but his breathlessness was not at all reassuring. “Bullet when through and through. Small caliber. It didn’t hit anything vital.” He lifted his arm to show her his mobility, but winced at the movement.
“Let it be,” Miranda said. “Just because it’s not life threatening doesn’t mean it isn’t serious. Here, let’s get your shirt off to take a look at it.”
She helped him get his injured arm out of the sleeve. The bullet hole in the back of his shoulder was small and the blood was already beginning to clot, but when he leaned back against the wall she got a good look at the exit wound at the front. The open hole looked ugly with torn, blackened edges. Blood oozed sluggishly from the torn muscle. Miranda gasped.
“S’not so bad.” Luke’s voice sounded slow and slurred. “The back door always looks worse’n the entrance.” He tried to laugh but it turned into a cough instead.
“Here, hold this.” She pressed a square of gauze to the back of his shoulder and guided his hand to hold it tightly in place. Miranda searched the first aid kit for disinfectant and pulled more gauze off another roll. “Here, lean forward. On me.” She held herself steady as he put his weight on her, his head on her shoulder. He smelled like blood and sweat and earth and underneath it all a lingering scent of soap.
“This is going to hurt,” she said, right before she poured peroxide on the wound. With a great intake of breath, Luke fainted, dropping limp against her, his arm falling to his side. His weight heavy against her, Miranda taped the makeshift bandage over the wound and leaned him gently back against the wall. Moving quickly so she could get the painful part over with while he was still unconscious, she proceeded to disinfect and bandage the exit wound as well.
By the time she had finished, he started to recover. His head lolled to the side and he opened his eyes. His bare chest was well tanned and lean, lightly dusted with sandy hair between his pecs. The tight abs suggested that he worked out, though she suspected his physique was the result of hard work rather than hours spent in the gym.
“Sorry about that,” she told him. “We’re not quite done, though. I need to bind these off and immobilize your arm.”
“Do—” He waved one hand vaguely. “Do what you have to.”
She finished the job off by winding gauze around his shoulder and under his arm to help keep it all in place. The only thing she could find to use as a makeshift sling was an Ace athletic wrap, winding it around his torso and over his shoulder to help keep the arm in place.
“There,” she said finally. “All tied up like a Christmas present.” Looking at his masculine chest, she blushed, suddenly thinking he might misunderstand what she meant. “A poorly wrapped present,” she added. She kept her eyes down, using the last drops of peroxide to clean the blood off her hands.
“You—” Luke pointed a finger at her, then dropped it weakly. “Your shirt.”
Miranda looked down. The front of her white sweater was now stained with red where Luke had leaned against her.
“It’s okay. It’s old.” She took the sweater off but the blood had also soaked through to the flannel nightgown underneath.
“Here.” Pulling the backpack closer, Luke started digging through it one handed. He pulled out a sweatshirt and handed it to her.
Miranda took it but held it uncertainly in both hands. Now that the urgency had lessened, the whole situation seemed awkward and inappropriate. On the other hand, she felt exposed in her nightgown and cold. Goose bumps prickled her skin. The wet blood only added to the chill. She took the sweatshirt he offered and walked back behind the stack of straw to change. As she did, she started talking, looking over her shoulder every once in a while as if he might sneak up on her.
“At first I thought the barking was part of my dream,” she chattered inanely. “I’ve been having the strangest dreams, music and voices and smells that seem to linger even after I wake up. It’s crazy. I know it’s just my mind playing tricks on me because of—” She stopped, realizing she had almost told him about her nyctophobia. She never told anyone about that.
“And then I worried Butch might attack us when we got closer. After all, he doesn’t know us, does he? He’s very protective of you. But smart. He knew—he seemed to know, that we were only here to help.” Luke’s sweatshirt hung down to her knees, but the fleece was soft and warm against her skin.
She came back around the straw to find Luke still leaning lethargically against the wall, face pale, eyes closed. She thought maybe he’d fainted again, or fallen asleep. Butch had calmed and had hopped up on the bunk to lay at Luke’s side, head in his master’s lap and watching the man’s face with ears pricked forward.
She needed to call an ambulance. Hadn’t Luke mentioned having a phone or a radio or something? She started looking around for it quietly. A small camp store had been set up not far from the bed. He’d been careful to clear the straw away from the area, and had found two cement blocks to support the stove so it wasn’t sitting directly on the wide-plank wooden floor. A grocery sack of supplies sat nearby.
Drawing a blank there, she moved quietly back to where Luke slept. Leaning over him, she tried to pick up the backpack without disturbing him. Just as the bag lifted, though, Luke grew alert. He grabbed her arm with fingers that were surprisingly strong for someone who had recently been shot.
“What are you doing?” His words were accusatory and chilling. His green eyes like ice.
“I’m just— I was looking for your phone. I’ve put you together as best I can, but you need a doctor.”
“No doctor.” He pulled the backpack from her fingers, catching Miranda off balance. She rocked on her feet to keep from falling across his legs. “I’m fine.”
Now she was getting annoyed. “Fine or not, we need to contact the sheriff so he can get after whoever shot you. Did you get a good look at him?” Then, when Luke looked at her like she was speaking Martian, she added, “I assume it was a poacher? You found him? Do you think he had anything to do with the body I found?” She squatted next to him to keep him at eye level.
“A poacher?” His eyes had darkened, but seemed just as distant as before. “Yes, that’s who it was. We can’t call. No need. I’ll… ” He faltered, at a loss for words.
Suddenly, she knew he’d been lying to her. He seemed to realize her awareness just as it happened and caught her arm again, this time in a vice-like grip that made her cry out with pain.
Holding her trapped, he pulled her toward him, never taking his eyes from her face. Strands of brown hair clung to the sweat beads on his forehead. The nearness of him made her pulse race and her breath catch. Miranda began to shake, but that only seemed to make his gaze grow harder.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said gruffly. “Listen.” He shook her, then winced in pain.
Miranda took advantage of his weakness to pull away. She stood up and stepped back, shaken both from fear and from the thrill that had run through her when he’d pulled her so close.
“Stop, please,” he cried, and the look on his face actually kept her in place. “You’ve got to listen to me. There’s a reason I’m here. I can explain.”
“You can lie to me again, you mean?”
Both dogs had grown agitated while they struggled, Rufus yapping and Butch pawing at Luke’s arm and whining a high pitched, worried sound. Now they both sat silent, side by side, their eyes traveling from Luke to Miranda and back again. It was like they were watching a tennis match that their lives depended on.
“Well, go on,” Miranda said when Luke didn’t say anything. “What story have you got for me now?”
“The truth.” He spoke in a somber and steady voice. “I’ll tell you the truth this time. I’m not a ranger. I’m a veterinarian.” He waved to the medical supplies he had pulled out of his backpack.
Now that he called attention to them, Miranda realized there were items that went far beyond the standard burn and scrape supplies usually found in first aid kits: syringes, surgical implements
, small vials filled with liquid. “I’m here looking for my brother.” His voice broke on the last word. Using his right hand, he dug into the backpack and handed her a photograph.
Luke’s green eyes stared back at her, in duplicate. Two young men grinned identical expressions of high humor. Two tousled shocks of brown hair. One wore a t-shirt with the picture of the Tasmanian devil on it. The other wore the very same sweatshirt Miranda had on at that moment.
Chapter 14
“We’re identical twins, as you can see,” Luke continued when Miranda said nothing. “That’s why I have to hide out here. If they see me, they’ll know who I am. Why I’m here. The only way I can find out the truth is by laying low.”
“I don’t understand. Are you saying your brother is missing? Why hide at all? Why not just talk to the sheriff and have him help you look?”
Luke hesitated. How much could he tell her? She could be Hunter’s partner in crime for all he knew. Why else would she be here, living in the same house Luke had seen Hunter and his hired hand hanging around for weeks?
Looking at her beautiful blue eyes, it seemed ridiculous to think she could be a criminal. Instead of suspecting her, Luke wanted to reach up and remove the strand of loose hay that had tangled in her brown hair. Still, it was better to be cautious.
“When I went on to college, my brother—” He broke off and started again. “Let’s just say he enjoyed life, okay? He didn’t believe in taking it too seriously and thought there was plenty of time to grow up. Recently he traveled across the country, stopping here and there to make enough money to move on to his next adventure. His last job was here, a hired hand on Harlan Hunter’s farm. He disappeared six months ago, about a month after he arrived here.”