Night Prey

by Sharon Dunn

  She had started to see what a normal life was like when she moved away to college and didn’t have to deal with her father’s craziness every day. Then she had come back home, and the trip to the emergency room had been the final straw that told her things needed to change.

  The emergency room people probably weren’t gossips, but they had seen the damage Richard Murphy had done to himself over the years. That someone else knew the secret had given her the strength to find help for herself, to confront her father and tell him that she couldn’t handle it anymore. Fine if he wanted to keep drinking, but it hurt too much to watch him slowly kill himself. Richard Murphy was never angry or abusive when he drank, he was just sad.

  Keith pulled onto the gravel lane that led to the center. He focused on the road, arms relaxed as he drove. Guilt had risen up in her when he had asked her about her father. Maybe it wasn’t right to limit contact. She had wanted to tell Keith, to explain, but she hadn’t been able to. Sharing this part of herself was still new and never easy. It was even harder with Keith, since her fear of him becoming an alcoholic like her father was what had caused her to turn away from him all those years ago.

  Her eyelids felt heavy. She rested her head against the window. He brushed a hand over her hair with a touch as delicate as butterfly wings. Even though the road was gravel, Keith drove so the car didn’t jostle very much. The fog of sleepiness filled her brain.

  She felt the car come to a stop and heard Keith talking to Cassidy through the open window, but the heaviness of fatigue made her awareness fade in and out.

  Her car door opened.

  “Come on, sleepyhead.”

  Her eyes burst open. His face was inches from hers. Keith smelled like the air after a cleansing rain. They were at her house.

  “Keith, I have work to do.” Her voice lacked commitment.

  “I’ve already taken care of that.” He held an arm out for her. “You’re not going to be much good to anyone anyway until you have had a couple hours sleep.”

  She stepped toward him. He supported her by wrapping an arm around her waist. “You haven’t had any sleep, either. You don’t seem tired. Is that some kind of military trick?”

  His body tensed. “Something like that.”

  More vague answers. They were both keeping secrets.

  He led her down the stone path. When they got to her door, he held up a key. “I got it from Cassidy. She is the only other person that has a key, right?”

  “Some of the volunteers have keys to the center, but not to my house.”

  “You might want to collect those…considering.”

  Jenna shivered, considering that someone had promised to hurt her birds and was capable of breaking in. “All the volunteers are good people.”

  “That might be true, but you don’t know who they know, who has access to their keys.” He unlocked her door and pushed it open.

  She trudged in. Her limbs felt weighted. “Okay, I am just going to take a nap and then I will get up. Can you tell Cassidy to come and get me if we have any calls to go out on? I don’t want her to have to handle those alone.”

  “It’s been taken care of, Jenna.” The warm tone of his words comforted her.

  She turned to look at him. Even in the ragged cotton shirt and the paint-stained jeans, he was good-looking. Not to mention strong and capable. If he said everything was taken care of, she’d believe him. “Thank you.”

  “I’ll lock the door behind me and give the key back to Cassidy.” He gazed at her. A softness entered his eyes. “Okay?” His voice had gotten husky with emotion.

  So much was going unsaid between them.

  The look on his face caused a zing of electricity through her. “Okay.” She fought to keep the rising emotion out of her own voice. Almost immediately an ache entered her heart where a single look from Keith had made her feel alive.

  Jenna opened the door to her bedroom. She could hear Keith walking across the floor and fumbling with the lock as she took off her shoes and lifted her fluffy comforter. She slipped into bed with her clothes still on.

  She liked the idea of renewing a friendship with Keith, but it couldn’t go beyond that. It didn’t matter how nice Keith was. It didn’t matter that even after all these years, they seemed to mesh so easily.

  Jenna adjusted the pillow under her head as the soft comfort of down molded around her. She knew enough from the psychology rule book and her own dating history that she was attracted to men who in one way or another had the same destructive behavior as her father.

  The night he had come to her door twelve years ago, she had wanted to keep her father’s secret from Keith. She had been following the advice of friends to cut him out of her life. And, on some unconscious level, she must have known that Keith would only hurt her like her father had.

  Keith did seem different, but he had a bad track record. She couldn’t take the risk to her heart.

  SIX

  Jenna awoke with a start. Had the noise she heard been a part of her dreams or an actual sound? She slipped from beneath the warmth of the comforter, planted her feet on the carpet and rose out of bed. When she pulled back the curtain, it was still light out. She checked her watch, nearly five o’clock. She had slept a full eight hours. Cassidy would have gone home by now. Jenna stepped into her loafers.

  She felt a sense of urgency she didn’t understand. She needed to check on the birds.

  She grabbed her keys off the counter and headed out the door. Her first stop was the flight barn. The barn was designed to help rehabbed birds practice flying in a safe environment. It was over a hundred yards long with perches scattered around the front of the barn. The flight barn was their newest building, only a year old, courtesy of rancher Peter Hickman’s generous fundraising. Jenna suspected that Peter had chosen to help the center as a way of becoming a part of the community that was slow to accept outsiders, but in any case, his annual fundraiser was an answer to prayer.

  When she pushed on the sliding door to the flight barn, a golden eagle flew by her. The flapping of wings so close always caused her heart to race faster. The golden drifted to the ground at the far end of the barn, the brown feathers catching the light and revealing the gold sheen that was the reason for the eagle’s name. Two other birds, a red-tailed hawk and another golden, walked on the ledges around the windows, occasionally fluttering their wings and doing short, quick flights.

  She loved these birds, but she knew that in a way, her choosing to pour her energy into saving the raptors was a form of rebellion against her father. Her father had loved the less volatile songbirds, the domesticated ones and the wild, injured ones people brought to him to take care of. She’d gone for the fiercer, stronger birds, less prey to the kind of weakness her father had shown.

  All the birds in the flight barn were present and accounted for. Still, something in her felt unsettled. She headed up the hill toward the main building of the center. Maybe her uneasy feelings were just guilt over having slept so long when she should have been working.

  She unlocked the back door of the center and walked over to a white board where they kept a record of activity. All the chores, cage cleaning, feeding and medicine had been checked off. Cassidy had gone out on one call. Her note on the board said “unable to locate the hawk.” A note with Jenna’s name on it was pinned to the wall beside the board. Jenna pressed open the piece of paper.

  Everything went really smoothly today. Your friend stayed and helped take up the slack so you could sleep. He even went out on the call with me. Nice guy. Call Peter Hickman about the upcoming fundraiser. Mrs. Ephron said there is a bear carcass on her property that is attracting a lot of scavenger birds. She wants us to come and take the birds away, like that is part of our job description. Why doesn’t she just get rid of the carcass? You might want to go out there and calm her down. You know how she is.

  Cassidy

  Jenna smiled as she folded the note. Last spring, Mrs. Ephron had repeatedly called them because she was co
nvinced that eagles were carrying her kittens away. But the smile faded as Jenna realized that was the second call in a week they had gotten about bear carcasses and nuisance birds. The first one had been on the property right next to Mrs. Ephron. Maybe the bears were getting into some kind of poison that was killing them. The game warden might want to look at the carcass.

  She put the note in her pocket, grateful for Cassidy’s recap of the day. She knew she could trust the other woman’s report. Cassidy was more than a coworker. She was a good friend. After the drama with her father had happened a year ago, Cassidy was the one that picked up on her distraction despite her efforts at hiding it. Cassidy had taken her to her first Al-Anon meeting.

  Jenna turned away from the white board and looked around the center. All the birds were settled behind their curtains. Cassidy was right. Keith was a nice guy. At least what she had seen of him. She had a feeling though that Keith was like an iceberg. What she saw of him was only the smallest part.

  Jenna double-checked to make sure the lock on the back door was secure before entering the office area. Freddy was resting in his cage. It was still too early in the day for him. Nighttime was his high activity time. The center’s one and only desktop computer was turned off. She phoned the game warden about the bear carcasses and left a message. Then there was just one more stop to make.

  She opened the front door and stepped out into the softening light of the summer evening. Her calves strained as she made her way up the hill to where the ambassador birds were housed.

  She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the padlock on the building was still in place. She filed through her keys and unlocked the door. The building was no more than an uninsulated barn divided into six sections, each stall was set up to house an education bird. In the winter, when it got below zero, the birds were often brought inside to keep them warm, but the current late-summer temperatures shouldn’t be a problem for them.

  The first two stalls on either side were empty. In the third stall, Jenna passed a rough-legged hawk with a wing that had been deformed at birth. She checked on the bald eagle whose beak had been shot off. An engineer at a nearby college had helped create a prosthetic beak so the animal could eat. The opposite stall contained an osprey that was blind in one eye.

  An unusual amount of light seemed to be coming from the final stall where Georgina the turkey vulture resided. Jenna’s heart skipped a beat as her rib cage tightened. She took the final step that allowed for a view of Georgina.

  Her hand jerked to her mouth as her heartbeat sped up. At the back of the stall, someone had sawed a hole, reached in and taken Georgina.

  Jenna sucked in a breath of air and shook her head trying to fight off the encroaching devastation. What good did locks do when the buildings were so flimsy?

  She darted out of the barn and ran around to where the building had been cut into. Poor Georgina. Vultures were not known as the eye candy of the raptor world, but unlike so many of the birds, Georgina liked people. She walked up to volunteers and picked at their shoelaces when they brought her food in. Would she have even struggled when someone came in after her? Jenna ran her fingers along the jagged cut before studying the area around her. If a person crouched and used a hand saw, he wouldn’t have been visible from the rest of the center. This barn was far enough away from the other buildings that during the day when there was a lot activity and people, the culprit wouldn’t have been heard, either. She usually checked on the birds at the end of the day before locking up, but maybe the volunteers hadn’t done that.

  When she stood up, the rock path from her house to the main building was visible down the hill as was much of the center, but not the parking lot. It would have been easier to break into the flight barn, but it was too close to her house. Where had the thief taken Georgina? She glanced up the hill. That would be quite a hike holding a turkey vulture.

  She raced down the hill, back toward her house. By the time she got to the door, she was out of breath. She fumbled with the lock and swung the door open. Jenna grabbed the phone and dialed the sheriff.

  The deputy answered. Jenna explained what had happened.

  The deputy said he would be right out and then asked her what a turkey vulture looked like.

  “I’ll find a picture.” Jenna hung up, skirted to her laptop and opened up her photo file. They took pictures of all the ambassador birds for promotional purposes. She clipped through the photos until she found one of Georgina, turned on her printer and clicked the print command.

  Jenna stood up and placed her hands on her hips. Despair seeped through her. Even though this was a sparsely populated county with low crime, the rest of the world probably wasn’t as bent out of shape about a missing bird as she was. What else could she do? Jump in the car and search the countryside for Georgina? Put up “have you seen my bird” posters? Demand that the sheriff get search warrants for all the surrounding houses? Jenna slipped down into a chair and placed her face in her hands. Who was she kidding? That bird was gone.

  Message received loud and clear. The culprits had made good on their threat. She would quit looking around on the King Ranch. She couldn’t risk more harm coming to the birds in the center. She hung her head. She would just have to let it go.

  “What are you doing?” Keith snapped out when he saw that after all the talk about security, she had left the door wide open.

  She jumped in her chair and whirled, knocking over the stack of papers she had piled on the other chair before she shot to her feet. “What are you shouting at me for, and what are you doing barging in here?”

  “Anyone could have walked in here.” He gestured toward the open door. “What were you thinking?”

  Jenna opened her mouth as if to speak, but instead she shook her head.

  All day since he had left the center, he had thought about her, worried about her. While he baled hay for his grandfather, he wondered if she was okay. He hadn’t intended for his concern to come out in anger. But when he had seen the open door, with the threats still weighing heavily on his mind, his heart had pounded against his rib cage. His first thought was that something had happened to Jenna. His second was that he should have been here to protect her.

  Jenna shook her head. Disbelief clouded her features. She seemed unable to form a response. She crumpled to the floor and picked up the papers she had knocked over. She directed her comment toward the carpet, not looking up at him. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

  “I’m sorry, it’s just when I saw the open door I was afraid something bad had happened to you.” He turned and closed the door.

  “Well, you’re not wrong. Something bad did happen.” She slapped a magazine back on the coffee table. “Someone cut a hole in the barn and took my turkey vulture.” Agitation colored her words.

  “Oh, Jenna.” He rushed to her where she kneeled on the floor. “I’m sorry about the bird.”

  Jenna stared at the ceiling. “What am I supposed to do? This place is hardly high security. Am I supposed to get the volunteers to walk the grounds twenty-four hours a day?” Her voice broke. “Who would take a stupid turkey vulture anyway? They are the ugliest things on earth.”

  Jenna’s eyes were glazed with tears. Keith squeezed her forearm. Her voice had trembled with fear and sadness. This was about more than the loss of the bird. She felt violated, vulnerable.

  Keith swallowed hard to quell the ire he felt for whoever had done this to her. He brushed his hand over her soft hair. He waited until he could speak without showing his anger. “Please consider keeping Jet here. He’s a good watchdog.”

  She pulled back from him, seeming unaware of his request. “This has to have happened because of that threat. I’ll just do like they say and stop looking around on your grandfather’s ranch. You and the sheriff can figure it out.”

  He doubted that would stop the vandalism. These guys were ruthless and determined to hurt her. “Jet can just stay in your house.” That way at least she would be safe. Though she had no
t been threatened directly, the boldness of an intruder coming onto this property in broad daylight made him wonder if the level of violence might escalate. “He’s a quiet guy—he’s only going to bark when there is a good reason to.”

  She gathered more papers off the floor. “I’ll be okay.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better to have the birds a little ruffled rather than have something happen to them?”

  “I appreciate the offer, but it just won’t work.” She slammed a magazine on top of another.

  Keith tried to loosen the tightness through his chest by taking a deep breath. He couldn’t just leave her here alone unprotected. “Maybe we can get the sheriff to patrol by here.”

  “Maybe.” Lost in thought, Jenna traced her collarbone with a narrow finger. “The deputy will be here in a minute.” She blew out a huff of air. “I’m sure this will provide a good laugh for them. Silly Jenna and her kidnapped bird.”

  “I don’t think they will treat it like a joke. Too much has happened. It’s got to be connected. Someone who would go to these extremes has something to hide.” Anger flared anew in his muscles. The only way to end this—the threats and the fear and the trespassing on Gramps’s land—was to catch the people who were doing it.

  “Thanks for your vote of confidence.” She slumped in a chair. “Why were you stopping by here, anyway?”

  “Craig Smith bought a bull from Gramps. I told him I would deliver it.”

  A faint smile lit up Jenna’s heart-shaped face. “This is a little out of the way from Craig Smith’s ranch.”

  Heat rushed to his face over her realizing he’d come here to check on her.

  There was a soft rapping at the door. Keith strode across the carpet and opened it. The deputy stood at attention. His face was flushed as if he had been running. Jenna came up behind Keith.

  The deputy rubbed his Adam’s apple. “I found your bird.” His tone indicated that it wasn’t good news.