Speak of the Devil

by Shari Shattuck

  But that was a double-edged sword. Telling someone of her premonitions of imminent danger might seem too great a responsibility to take on, but it had proven to be an even greater—and more tragic—responsibility when she had ignored it. Still unsure of how to begin, or what to say, Greer crossed to where Susan was now standing with one hand shading her sunglass-covered eyes from the direct morning sun.

  “Susan? Hi, Greer Sands. Wow, thanks for doing this. I’m sure everyone will be so grateful.”

  “Hello, Greer. Nice to see you.” Susan shook hands with her customary firm, confident grip, and Greer had to consciously block the vision of blackness in Susan’s chest.

  “Listen, uh,” Greer began, “could you spare a moment to talk?”

  The only indication that she found this a surprising request was that Susan’s head tilted slightly to one side and there was a half-second hesitation before she answered in her brisk, businesslike tone, “Of course. Shall we go in and get some coffee?”

  They went together past the line in the cafeteria and directly into the kitchen, where Greer poured some of the freshly brewed coffee into a plastic mug for Susan. “The cream is out there,” she said.

  “Don’t need it,” Susan said curtly, taking a cautious sip and visibly squelching an expression of distaste. “What can I do for you?” she asked, every pore exuding efficient readiness and attention.

  “I’m not sure,” Greer said. “I think first I should explain that, as crazy as it sounds, I get premonitions.”

  Susan’s eye glazed only for a second before she recovered her outward poise and she said factually, “You’re psychic.”

  “Yes. I know that’s hard to believe, and I don’t blame you for doubting me. But for instance, I’ve known the location and even the dates of some of these fires.”

  Real interest sparked in Susan’s black, almond eyes. “Really?” she said with feeling and leaned forward, just a little, wrapping both her hands around the cup. “Do you know who is setting them?” She was whispering, and Greer found herself answering in a like tone.

  “No. I mean, I’ve been getting indications, but that’s not what I want to talk to you—”

  “What kind of indications?” Susan looked eager, and it occurred to Greer that with her practical, problem-solving mind, she might think that she could solve the puzzle that had so far eluded Greer, and catch the bastard who had destroyed her housing project.

  Greer wondered if she could. “Well, I’ve seen a key—that’s been the main image. Also there’s been an owl and indications of death and danger—”

  “A key?” Susan interrupted. “Does that mean anything to you?”

  “No, I’m sorry to say that it doesn’t. I mean, I have a couple of ideas, but I’m still working on it.”

  “Really?” Susan said again, and her eyes looked thoughtfully away as she took another sip of the coffee without seeming to taste it this time. Greer could almost see the wheels of her brain working.

  “Does it mean anything to you?” Greer asked, suddenly inspired at the notion. The Hughses had obviously been a target of one of the fires; maybe it was related to them.

  But Susan was shaking her head. “Not that I can think of right off. Have you asked many other people?”

  Greer had to laugh. “No. Well, I did tell the detective on the case. There’s some history there, but I know he’d still much rather think I’m just delusional. Once again, I really can’t blame him.” Susan was still staring thoughtfully at a spot on the stainless steel counter; she reached out a lacquered nail and scratched distractedly at it. Greer took a deep breath. “Listen, Susan, the reason I’m telling you this is that, I, well, I’ve gotten a sense about you as well.”

  Susan’s eyes shot up to Greer as her sculpted brows came down in concern. “Me?” she asked, surprised. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that I sense something dark around you, inside of you actually, and it’s probably nothing, but if it is an indication of something going on inside of you that shouldn’t be, I would hate myself for not telling you and giving you the chance to have it checked out.”

  Susan was staring with open surprise at Greer now, and Greer braced herself for the onslaught of indignant outrage at her presumption, but Susan’s attention was still with her, focused on the information, as though she were assessing not just the possibility but the source of the data. Finally she said, “Something inside of me? Do you mean an illness?”

  Greer let out a frustrated sound. “I don’t know. All I know is that I saw something dark, in the vicinity of your chest, that shouldn’t be there. Usually when I see darkness or blackness, it means danger, something is not right. Normally I see it striking or looming on the outside of a person, which would signify some endangering event, but this time . . . I’m just not sure. It’s probably nothing, like I said, but I thought you should know. Please don’t take my very shaky observation as proof. I’ve been wrong in my interpretations, many times.”

  “I see,” Susan said thoughtfully and slowly. She opened her mouth as if to ask another question, but she was cut off by Leah’s sudden appearance behind her.

  “There you are!” Leah called out to Greer. “I’ve been looking for you.” She crossed to Greer quickly and barely seemed to notice Susan or her intensity. “I heard on the radio that Cherry Canyon is threatened. That’s where Mindy’s ranch is.”

  “And Jenny’s horse,” Greer added, alarmed.

  “Yes. And then I went to the coffee shop, but Jenny never opened. I’ve been trying to call her cell phone, but it doesn’t even ring, goes straight to message. Reading and Mindy are not responding either. And Jenny’s not at her house. I drove by there; her car is gone.”

  Greer’s stomach felt like it had been set on agitate. It flip-flopped and churned its contents into a frothy, tangled wad. “Oh no, do you think she’s gone up there?”

  Leah narrowed her eyes and shook her head slightly before she said knowingly, “What do you think? It’s Jenny,” and Greer understood that she meant Jenny, fearless Jenny, would consider no other option.

  Susan had caught up with the conversation. “The road up into the canyons is blocked; state patrols are up there. She can’t get in.”

  Both Greer and Leah looked at her while they considered this; then Greer thought about her last ride with Jenny and the route they had taken down to the creek bed trail, the route along the fire road. “She knows an alternate route,” Greer said, and the thought of the black wings hovering over Jenny’s image sent an electric shock through her nervous system. “Oh my God, we’ve got to stop her!”

  Leah’s face went white. “What? Shouldn’t we just call someone?”

  But Susan had straightened up, discarded her coffee with a slosh onto the counter, and grabbed Greer’s arm. “You stay here and keep trying to reach her,” she told Leah, whipping a card from her pocket and handing it to her. “Call us if you hear anything.”

  “But there’s only very spotty cell service in the canyons,” Leah objected.

  “Then leave a message and we’ll check it when we get back down the hill. We’ll call the state troopers on our way, but they’ve probably got their hands full.” Dismissing Leah, she pulled at Greer and nailed her right in the eyes as she said, “Let’s go get her.”

  Greer remembered the account of Susan’s ramming her Range Rover into the side of the burning trailer and pulling out the unconscious guard. It took her only a moment to assess that this was a woman of action, with the gumption to do what they needed to do to help Jenny, if she was truly in mortal danger.

  Slowly, then with increasing decisiveness, Greer nodded her head. “Yes, let’s go get her,” she echoed.

  When Jenny drove right up to the entrance of the barn, the place had the smell of desertion about it. Looking down the aisle she could see that about half of the stalls were empty, a couple of the doors left swinging open, and Jenny could venture a guess as to how many were gone: eight, the size of Mindy’s horse trailer. So sh
e had left and taken as many as she could.

  The remaining horses paced their small enclosures outside the barn or moved nervously back and forth from there to their stalls inside. Each of them was streaked with yellow; at first Jenny’s jacked-up brain thought it might be some kind of flame retardant, but she realized that it was numbers. Someone had spray painted a phone number on the flank of each horse. So, they had been intending to come back and release them if the fire came too near. But Jenny knew that no one would be allowed to come back up the main road. Even as she got out of the car, Jenny could hear the twitchy neighing of the trapped animals as they scented the increasing smoke in the air.

  Twelve horses. She had no idea what to do. Even if she could get halters and lead ropes on all of them, they would never follow her calmly down the hill. At the first opportunity or sudden movement, they would bolt. She stood for a moment and considered the situation, understanding why Mindy had chosen to leave the horses she couldn’t take in their stalls instead of releasing them. There was still a good chance that the fire would turn, and the horses on their own might be trapped by the fire, or injure themselves by panicking.

  Still frantically debating a course of action, Jenny started down the aisle, calling out to King to bring him in from his outside pen, but as she drew level with his stall, a chill train of stupidity ran up a frozen metal track on her spine. He was gone. Mindy had taken him with the others.

  “Shit,” she swore under her breath, but in the same moment, she turned and saw the doe-eyed mare that occupied the stall next to King’s. Softening her tone, she reached out a hand and stroked the mare’s head with a firm touch, trying to calm the skittish horse. “It’s okay, Buttermilk. I’m going to get you out of here.” Deciding to act made Jenny feel infinitely better. She reached for the halter and lead outside Buttermilk’s stall and went in. After a small chase, she managed to corner the nervous mare and slip on the halter. Then, keeping a strong pressure on the lead, she led her out, fastened her quickly in the cross ties and ran to the tack room.

  As she saddled the mare, she glanced repeatedly over her shoulder toward the open end of the barn. The smoke seemed to be climbing, slate gray and bulbous, from much closer now. The view from the front of the ranch was across the road to a lower ridge of hill, and beyond that was a second, more imposing range of mountainous landscape, and it looked to Jenny like the base of the fire had reached the far side of that higher ridge, and the wind was blowing hard toward her.

  She was slipping the bridle on when something at the edge of her vision arrested her attention: a movement halfway up the near ridge, just across the road, maybe a football field’s length away. She paused and squinted in the hazy brightness. Her common sense was telling her it must be an animal, a deer or a coyote, but her brain was saying, “Coyotes don’t wear plaid.”

  It was a man, making his way through the brush; he seemed to have something in both hands. His right arm was rising and falling in great swaths, and Jenny realized that he must be cutting a path. In his other hand he was carrying something more substantial. It looked like a tank. Could it be a firefighter? Her brain gave her the same answer: “Firefighters don’t wear plaid either.”

  Careful to keep her car between her and the figure, Jenny crept up to the vehicle and opened the barn-side door. She rummaged in the pocket behind the front seat and came up with a pair of binoculars that Lewis had given her for her last birthday. Bracing her arms against the side of the car window, she focused on the figure.

  It took only a second to identify him as Reading. Muttering to herself about what that psycho could be up to, she honed in on what he was doing. He had obviously been forging a path with a machete, which he had now shoved back through his belt. He was fumbling with whatever the other apparatus was that he had been carrying. She could see now that it was a tank of some kind attached to a long tubing, and with a shock of alarm, Jenny saw flame burst from the end of the tubing.

  “Oh God, oh no,” she breathed. “It’s a flame thrower. He’s starting the fires.” She was speaking out loud, trying to make sense of this. “Oh Christ, Joshua was right, it is him. Okay, okay, think. It’s okay. I’ve got to get out of here. But . . . Jesus!” she exclaimed as she saw the brush in front of Reading leap into flame. He started to scramble away, cutting sideways across the ridge, setting the hill behind him alight as he went.

  There seemed to be only one choice now. Indifferent to whether Reading saw her or not, Jenny ran down the length of the barn, opening the stall doors as she went. Most of the horses were reluctant to leave and paced or reared in fear as she tried to shoo them out into the open. “Hiyah!” she shouted. “Go! Get out!” In seven minutes, all the horses but one were stamping in a group near the ring. The last horse, a huge three-year-old stallion only recently saddle broken, was facing off with Jenny in his stall, nostrils flaring. She moved hesitantly to one side, trying to suggest he choose going through the open door instead of her own body. Instead, he turned his tail and threw a kick, which Jenny only just avoided by jumping backward.

  She hit against something solid, but the something gave and then caught her as she started to fall. She twisted violently and looked up into a face so completely smeared with black that, for one disoriented minute, Jenny thought the man was wearing combat makeup. But even before she had regained her balance, she realized that it was Reading, and he was staring at her with frighteningly angry eyes.

  “What,” he said slowly, his voice chillingly level, “the fuck are you doing here?”

  She couldn’t speak. She backed away into the corner of the stall, wrapping her hands protectively around her swollen abdomen.

  Reading’s eyes stayed on her as though they’d been glued there. “Are you insane?” he asked.

  “Probably,” Jenny answered, her voice coming out in a squeak. Behind Reading, the hill was spewing flame and ash. Blackened as he was by the soot, he looked like a denizen of hell.

  “Please,” Jenny said, “let me go. I never did anything to hurt you. I won’t tell anyone it was you, I promise.”

  Reading’s angry mouth tightened and he took two steps closer to her. An un-pregnant Jenny would have fought him to unconsciousness, but now she curled inward, trying to protect her stomach and her unborn child. “Please,” she repeated.

  He grabbed roughly at her arm and yanked her forward, hard. “Come on,” he said. “You’ve wasted too much time; we’ve got to get out of here.”

  Baffled, Jenny peered up at him, her eyes stinging from the new drifts of smoke from the nearby hills. “Wha-what?” she asked.

  “I set the fires nearby to try to create a firebreak. I keep a hundred feet around the house and the barn cleared all the time, but this fire is a mother, and I don’t know if it will be enough, so I’m stealing its fuel before it gets to us.”

  Still pulling Jenny, he watched the fire he had set burn down to the road. “We’re not going that way: The fire is moving toward our route out.” He pointed with the hand that wasn’t fixed on Jenny’s arm to the flames licking the top of the ridge near the base of the valley. “We’re cut off from that exit.”

  Jenny’s brain was kicking into gear, but as though the shift were set in fifth and she was starting out from a dead stop, the wheels were having a hell of a time catching up to the rotations. “What about the fire road?” she asked.

  “Same thing, few more minutes. We’ve got to go up, above the fire road. And for that, we need horses.” He glared at her meaningfully again and Jenny ventured a tentative smile.

  “Whoops,” she said. “But if the fires you set will turn it, won’t it be safer to stay here?”

  Reading released her arm and went quickly to get the stallion’s halter from its place near the stall door as he answered her. “It might save the house and the barn, but the buildings can survive searing heat and insufficient oxygen. Can you?”

  “Is that a trick question?” Jenny had never in her entire life felt so incredibly stupid.

  �
��We have two choices, get in the water tank and hope we don’t get poached, or ride like hell. Which do you vote for?”

  Without another word, Jenny ran for the tack room. She was back in thirty seconds with the bridle marked with the stallion’s name. It took both of them to steady the ton of living tension and get him saddled.

  “One more thing,” Reading said, and before Jenny could wonder what it was, he had grasped her by the shoulders and shoved her backward against a hundred-gallon horse trough. It caught her in the backs of her knees and she went in with a splash, going completely under. She surfaced again and stood, sputtering and dripping after Reading pulled her out and plunged himself in. “That’s to keep you and the baby cool, and sparks from catching your clothes on fire,” he told her.

  Then Reading mounted and offered a hand to Jenny, but she shook her head, pointing to where Buttermilk was dancing frantically in her cross ties.

  “I’ll ride her.”

  Reading leaned down, holding the impatient stallion back with nothing but sheer force on the leather reins. “Are you that good?” he asked.

  All of her survival savvy surged forward, swelling Jenny with a familiar raw courage. She sensed the same refusal to fail, to lie down and accept weakness, that had kept her alive and sane against all odds in a life marked by brutality and poverty, and it seemed now as though every unthinkable trial had all been a preparation for this moment. Fixing him with shining eyes and a knowing smile, she said clearly, “Watch me.”