by Selena Kitt
“Dad, I think I know how to work a phone!” Ivy had protested with much eye-rolling and sighing, but he’d gone on to remind her about the escaped prisoner—his picture had been all over the local news—who had yet to be located. Long gone, Patrick had said, and he was probably right. Who in their right mind would hang around this tiny little town?
A thousand reminders, and of course, she forgot to feed the horses.
It wasn’t her fault, she reasoned as she glared, bleary-eyed, at the clock over the mantle. It was after midnight! The TV was still on, Letterman interviewing someone Ivy didn’t recognize with his unmistakable nod and gap-toothed grin. She blinked in disbelief at the remains of her comfort-food feast strewn on the coffee table in front of the sofa she was sprawled across. It was PMS. That’s what she’d told herself while she mixed up a batch of chocolate chip cookies to go with her mother’s macaroni and cheese. So it was comfort food—but what did she need comfort for?
It wasn’t like she’d been moping around the house for days since Patrick dropped her off at home that night. It was just that she didn’t have a car. Patrick, of course, had been right. It was the alternator. Not that it mattered to her father, who lectured her about the Honda’s low oil level anyway. No, she wasn’t moping or depressed. So she had spent the entire day in her pajamas and had finished off her carb-fest with popcorn and Mountain Dew and a Buffy marathon. That didn’t mean anything.
It had to be PMS.
It was most definitely not Patrick. Thinking about Patrick. Remembering the way he touched her, the way he kissed her, the feel of his hands on her. Oh god. Oh no, definitely not that.
“Horses,” she muttered, shivering in the transition from sleep to awake, looking at the blackness of the night. No moon. Her parents owned half a dozen horses, all of them show-quality, most of them winners at some point or another, and she was going to be accused of starving them to death if she didn’t trudge out to the barn at midnight to feed them.
“Okay, okay.” She gave in to her guilty conscience, which sounded suspiciously like a cross between her father and Patrick, one on each shoulder, lecturing her about the right thing to do. She slipped on a pair of her mother’s gardening Crocs—pink with white fur—and her father’s big Carhartt coat, stopping at the junk drawer to get a flashlight. Her father had, of course, put all new batteries in before they left.
The night was dark and quiet, starless, moonless. It was a little chilly, but no worse than it had been the other night, when she’d been stuck out on Hobbes Road. She remembered the heat of Patrick behind her, entering her, filling her. Oh god, she couldn’t think about that. It made her knees weak and her belly clench. Just thinking about him made her want him. That was no good.
The barn was out back, the path well worn, and she followed the bounce of the flashlight’s circle of light even though she probably could have made it in the dark from memory. How many times had she snuck out of her room, creeping out onto the eaves and down the drainpipe, heading out to the barn to meet Patrick in the loft? A hundred times? A thousand? Her memories of him were warm and melancholy, and she didn’t want to admit it, but she’d missed him. She’d missed him a lot. And since their little reunion over the hood of his cruiser the other night, she couldn’t stop thinking about him.
But he hadn’t called. Of course, she’d told him not to, but still. Didn’t he understand a woman’s logic? Don’t call me meant don’t call me—except when it didn’t. Why couldn’t men ever discern the difference? It wasn’t so difficult. So call him. She shoved the thought away with a scowl, following the path beside the barn now. She’d been ignoring that little voice for days. She couldn’t possibly call him, go crawling back, admit she’d been wrong, that she never should have broken things off. I was just a kid. I was scared. Scared of losing him.
Well, that had worked out well, hadn’t it? She couldn’t lose him if they weren’t together. Go ahead and cut your nose off to spite your face, Ivy! That was her mother’s voice, joining tonight’s chorus in her head. And so she had. Too afraid to risk losing the man she loved that she had to reject him. Like cutting off her own limb. I won’t miss it once it’s gone, she’d reasoned.
How very wrong she’d been.
Ivy hesitated at the barn door, cocking her head and frowning. Something was wrong. Missing? What was it? She traced the flashlight’s circle over the barn door’s edge, down its center, where the wood should have been locking it closed. That’s what was missing. The doors were closed, but the piece of wood that kept them that way was gone.
She used the flashlight to look around, finding it on the ground a few feet away. It wasn’t like her father to forget to lock up the barn, but maybe he’d left it open for her? She reminded herself to lock up when she left and smiled to herself as she reached for the light switch, relishing the thought of admonishing her hyper-vigilant father about leaving the barn door unlocked.
The horses pawed and nickered at the sound of the door and Ivy switched on the light, blinking at the brightness as she made her way over to the trough to fill the feed bags. Her father was very picky about what he fed the horses. They ate in the pasture of course, but they were supplemented with a mix of flax seed, beet pulp, oatmeal and other vitamins and minerals. Ivy filled the bags and went to each stall, strapping them on the horses.
They were all beautiful animals, well cared for, spoiled really. Sometimes Ivy believed her father treated the horses better than he treated most people. But maybe they deserved it. The horses were magnificent, and probably far more friendly and amicable than most of the humans in the world. They just asked to be fed and loved. What else was there really, in the end?
The horse in the first stall had finished his meal, a big black thoroughbred she called Nightmare, although he had a long purebred, thoroughbred name she couldn’t remember. She took a moment to pet him, and the horse nuzzled her shoulder when she took off the feed bag, affectionate and loving. For some reason, this reminded her of Patrick, and that made her feel warm, as if her limbs were filled with thick sweetness, dripping honey. She wished he was here, wished she could turn the clock back, wished she was that teenager again sneaking out to the barn to meet him high up in the loft.
She went down the line, collecting feed bags, loving up and nuzzling each horse, getting her fill of affection for the night. Standing next to each powerful animal was exciting somehow, because there was always a potential for danger with horses. Her father had taught her that from the beginning. And this, too, reminded her of Patrick. How could something make her feel afraid and safe at the same time?
She hung the feed bags up, still thinking about Patrick, when something tickled her nose. She rubbed at it, glancing upward, blinking at the soft rain of hay from the loft. It was just a handful of straw drifting through the air around her, but it made her heart lurch in her chest and the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Her intuition was instant and spot-on, but her reaction far slower.
She squinted up into the shadows of the loft, assuming a rat or squirrel or maybe even a raccoon had found its way up there and had nudged a pile of hay, knocking some loose. She’d have to tell her father. Hay always made her sneeze—she’d had hay fever since she was young—and she rubbed her nose again, willing the itch away as she made her way to the door. She had her hand on the light switch when the urge overtook her, a huge sneeze erupting, scaring the horses in their stalls, and apparently whatever had found its way into the loft too.
Something heavy fell over up there—a rake, a shovel, maybe? But it sounded bigger, heavier than that. And then Ivy heard a sound that made her skin turn to ice. It wasn’t a loud sound, but it was distinct. It was a grunt—a decidedly human grunt. That was no animal up in the loft, she was sure of it. The goose bumps on her arms rose up, and she stood, immobile, breath caught in her throat, the only thought in her head not really a thought at all, but an image—her parents finding her mangled, violated body on the barn floor upon their return.
It w
as that image that got her moving. She flipped the light off, the pounding of her heart so loud in her ears she could barely think, swinging the barn doors quickly closed. She grabbed the piece of wood that locked the door, breaking two of her nails down to the quick as she shoved it down into place, but not feeling it at all as she wrapped her father’s coat around her shoulders and took off running in the dark toward the house.
She realized, halfway down the path, that she’d left the flashlight. It didn’t matter—she had made her way in the dark hundreds of times, although never quite at such a breakneck pace. She could make it to the house in less than thirty seconds, to a phone in under a minute. And then what? I have no car. That realization hit her just before she hit the ground, tripping over something on the path, her breath knocked out of her completely, her chest on fire.
Scrambling to her feet, tripping again, this time in her mother’s clunky, pink garden Crocs, a rock digging hard into the soft spot under her knee, Ivy moaned, refusing to look behind her, to think about the door on the other side of the barn, refusing to wonder if that, too, was open. Instead she kicked off her shoes and ran, holding her aching side as she reached the dewy grass of the front lawn, grabbing the rails of the wraparound farmhouse porch and pulling herself up the front stairs two at a time.
The lights of her family house had never looked so bright or welcoming. Things were just as she’d left them, the TV still on, the remains of her junk food binge strewn about, her mother’s favorite cat, Oscar, the big, orange one who used to live in the barn but worked his way slowly into their house and their hearts, eating leftover popcorn out of the bowl on the coffee table.
Ivy ran for the phone, and instead of dialing 911 like she knew she should, like her father told her, she followed her intuition and hit “1” on speed dial, a function her parents never used, had never figured out, wondering if he’d changed his cell phone number in the two years she’d been away.
“Ivy?” It was him, his voice rich and warm and oh-so-Patrick. “Hey girl. I was hoping you’d call.”
“Help!” She could barely gasp the word. The ache in her side was excruciating, never mind the stabbing pain in her knee, and she noticed for the first time as she gripped the phone that her fingernails were bleeding. “Someone’s in our barn!”
“What? Ivy, are you okay?”
“No!” She screamed it, the panic finally catching up with her. “Someone’s here! Please, Patrick, I need you! Come now!”
“Ivy, listen to me.” He was instantly alert, take-charge, and relief flooded through her. “I’ll dispatch someone out to you, but I’m close, I’m on my way.”
“Don’t leave me!” She clutched the cordless phone as if it was Patrick himself and she could cling to him.
“I’m not going anywhere, baby, I promise.” Just the sound of his voice made her feel better. “Does your father still have a gun in the house?”
“I have no idea.” She couldn’t take her eyes off the kitchen door, every horror movie she’d ever seen playing in her head, expecting some crazy man with an axe to burst through at any moment.
“Okay, find a weapon.”
She scanned the room. “A knife?”
“A baseball bat would be better.”
Ivy snorted, opening kitchen drawers. “Where am I going to find a baseball bat?”
“Something big and heavy you can swing.”
Her eyes lit up as she caught a glint of something in the corner. “A tire iron?”
“Good!” Patrick agreed. “Take that into the bathroom.”
Ivy grabbed the tire iron her father had used the day before last to change the tires on the truck they’d driven to Detroit. “The bathroom?”
“Do it, Ivy,” he commanded, but she was already on her way down the hall. “Hang on.”
She heard him talking as she shut herself in the bathroom, locking the door behind her, something about a ten-fourteen, urgent, requiring backup.
“Patrick, where are you?” She moved away from the door, finding herself in the bathtub. She pulled the curtain, glancing up at the window above the tub. Could a killer fit through there? Or, if he came busting through the door—could she?
“Five minutes, tops. Hang on, I’m coming.”
She closed her eyes, tire iron gripped in one hand, the phone in the other, and whispered, “I’m so scared.”
“It’s going to be okay,” he promised, his voice pained. “I’ll protect you.”
“But you’re not here!” she wailed.
“I’m coming, Ivy. I’ll be there! Now tell me what you saw.”
“I don’t know.” She felt the tears coming, closing her throat, her chest. Swallowing, she tried to talk. “I… I went out to feed the horses…”
“At midnight?” Patrick exclaimed.
“I forgot, okay?” She laughed through her tears, she couldn’t help herself. He was just like her father! “I went out to feed the horses, and there was someone in the barn.”
“Did you see him? Can you describe him?”
“No, I heard him.” She shivered at the memory, the abject fear at the sound of him falling, that distinctly human grunt. “Up in the loft.”
“Are you sure it was a person?” He sounded doubtful now. “It could have been a.., a rat or—”
“It was a person!” she insisted, hissing the words at him. “There’s someone in the barn and he’s coming to kill me!”
“Okay, Ivy,” he soothed. “Listen to me—no matter what happens, I want you to stay in the bathroom. Do not open that door for anyone but me. Say yes if you understand.”
“Yes,” she whispered, the thought of Patrick on the other side of the bathroom door flooding her with relief. “But don’t leave me.”
“I’m pulling into your driveway,” he announced. “I’m going to have to secure the area.”
“Don’t hang up,” she pleaded.
“Ivy, I have to. Stay there. I’ll come for you.”
“No!”
“Listen!” His gruffness jolted her. “Tell me you’re going to stay there. Say yes.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Okay.”
“Wait for me. I’ll come for you.”
The line went dead.
She sobbed, holding the phone to her chest, imagining him out there, gun and flashlight drawn, heading out to the barn, heading straight into danger. It was her worst nightmare come true, the man she loved walking toward his own possible death, while she waited silently, hoping and praying for his safety.
She couldn’t live like that. She couldn’t stand it.
Ivy bolted. She had to go to him.
His cruiser was parked in the driveway, the lights dark, so she ran for the barn. She was still carrying the tire iron and the phone when she reached it. The door was wide open, the lights on, but there was no sign of Patrick. No sign of anyone.
Now what? The horses were spooked, restless in their stalls. Someone had been there. Was still there? She glanced up to the loft. Did she dare?
The ladder required two hands, so she left the phone on the barn floor and tucked the tire iron into the back of her jeans, climbing as quietly as she could to the top, peering over the edge.
“Patrick?” She used a stage-whisper voice, nearly screaming when his head appeared over one of the haystacks.
“I told you to stay in the house!” he snapped.
Another head popped up, this one fair and much smaller. Relief flooded Ivy’s whole body. There was no escaped convict, no crazy serial killer, not even a burglar. Just a little tow-headed twelve-year-old boy.
“Brian?”
Patrick frowned, looking between her and the youngster. “You know him?”
“He slept over at the Forresters the other night when I was babysitting,” she explained, coming toward them. Brian’s gaze skipped from her to the cop. “What are you doing here, sweetie?”
The boy mumbled, “I wanted to see your horses.”
“How did you get here?” Ivy pulled the ti
re iron out of the back of her pants, setting it quietly aside before squatting down next to Patrick in front of the boy.
“I walked.”
Ivy and Patrick exchanged looks. She wasn’t sure where Brian lived, but the Forresters lived on the other side of town. It was a good ten miles.
“Your Mom and Dad are going to be very worried about you,” Ivy said, glancing at the bed he’d made in the corner with an old pillow and blanket. How long had he been up here?
Brian didn’t say anything.
“What happened here, fella?” Patrick asked, pushing aside the boy’s hair to reveal a purple mark on his forehead. “Did someone hit you?”
“He said he fell out of his bunk bed,” Ivy offered. She’d already gone over this with him the other night. Patrick gave her a sharp look over the boy’s head and she stuck her tongue out at him.
“Is that what really happened?” Patrick asked. Brian shrugged one shoulder, glancing up at Ivy. Patrick nudged him with his knee, getting his attention again. “Hey, you can tell me. It’s okay.”
“My stepdad,” the boy confessed, his mumble even more pronounced. “He drinks.”
Patrick nodded knowingly. “Was he drinking when you left home?”
“Yeah.” Brian’s voice was a whisper now and he wouldn’t look at them, drawing circles in the hay dust on the loft floor.
Patrick leaned over and whispered, “Stay with him,” to Ivy before standing up and telling Brian, “Listen, Buddy, I’ll be right back, okay?”
He didn’t look up, just nodding as Patrick headed for the ladder. Ivy tried talking to him while Patrick was gone, but the boy had clammed up completely. When Patrick returned, this time with the backup officers who had responded to his call, Brian was practically catatonic.
“It’s gonna be okay.” Patrick put a hand on the boy’s shoulder, and everyone was surprised when Brian put his arms around his waist, squeezing hard. Ivy met Patrick’s eyes over the boy’s head, feeling her heart swell to bursting in her chest when Patrick hugged the boy back.
