by Merry Farmer
“Sean doesn’t want any help. He’s in shock. If Carrie….” She swallowed before going on. “But you know Carrie. She’s a fighter. She might make it still.”
Danny left it to Stacey to tell the news to the rest of the people filling the pavilion. He reached his lab and tossed his herb box on the desk beside the fat wilderness survival book with a clatter. He threw off his parka and sank into his chair, burying his face in his hands. Endless winter without Grace, her best friend on the verge of death, and now a lie that could save or damn them all. If only he knew where Kutrosky was.
The hamsters in their cages hopped and scurried around, as agitated as he felt. He knew that agitation all too well—trapped and helpless in an unfamiliar place, wondering when death would come. He had more sympathy for them than half of the people around him, people who continued on in the blissful ignorance of colony-building, unaware how close to the edge they all were, thanks to a missing psychopath.
A soft knock sounded at the entrance to his space. “Um…Danny?”
Danny lifted his head and opened his eyes to find Gil shuffling in the entryway, Jasper in one arm, wax tablet in the other hand.
He let out an irritated sigh. “What, Gil? I don’t feel like company.”
Gil tilted his head and glanced sideways, nodding like that was nothing new. He adjusted Jasper in his arms. “It’s about these calculations?” he said, turning a solid statement into a question as usual.
Danny sighed and twisted to face him.
Gil took it as his cue to go on. “The days have been getting longer for a while, but I thought you should know that the barometric pressure just rose? But not the way it does on Earth, as far as I can tell. I don’t have the right equipment. I have been able to observe some sort of activity in the upper atmosphere that I can’t measure but that I think is significant.”
“Bottom line?” Danny asked. He could imagine Grace smacking his arm for being so curt with Gil. The image tied his gut in knots. Where was she when he needed her?
“The bottom line is that the seasons are changing,” Gil announced with a smile. That smile faltered. “Which, of course, means the river will probably flood. And our fields will turn to mud. But everyone will be able to travel again. Um…everyone. Kinn, Kutrosky.”
The smoke. Someone was already traveling. Adrenaline hit him like a fist. Whoever it was, they were sending a message: come and get me.
“Thanks.” He nodded once, turning to his desk and opening the survival book. He pretended to look through it, searching for information about flooding until Gil shuffled away. As soon as silence filled in behind him, Danny sat back, gripping the arms of his chair until his knuckles went white. How soon could he settle things in his camp and gather supplies for a journey? What would he need out there in the snow?
The whisper of a memory, of sitting with Grace in his original laboratory, working through problems, settled over him. Her fire-red hair shining in the summer sun. The freckles brought out by the sunshine on her cheeks and nose, across her shoulders. The soft curves of her body beneath her dress. He missed her like he missed his soul.
His thoughts shifted back to Carrie, replaying the carnage he had had a part in. Helpless guilt washed over him. She probably would die. Even if she made it through the delivery itself, he’d had no way to sterilize his hands when he pulled her baby out. Infection would take her even if the initial hemorrhaging didn’t.
What if that had been Grace? He wasn’t naïve enough to think that Kinn would leave her alone over there on his side of the river. He’d wanted her from the start and now he had her. Grace was probably growing round with that bastard’s child while he sat here, alone and impotent, doing nothing to right the wrong he’d caused. She could be dying right now as Kinn’s child ripped her body apart.
The thought propelled him out of his chair. He spun to his desk, throwing open the lid of his herb box and pulling his worn backpack off a shelf. He couldn’t sit still, licking his bitter wounds, for another second. If there was any possibility, no matter how remote, that Kutrosky was wrong in some way about the beacon and Vengeance, if there was so much as a whisper of hope that death wouldn’t come from the skies and destroy the world they were making, the world Grace dreamed of, then he had to know. Someone was already out there calling to him. He had to find out who was moving and why.
He had to find Grace.
Other Works by Merry Farmer:
The Noble Hearts
The Loyal Heart
The Faithful Heart
The Courageous Heart
Montana Romance
Our Little Secrets
Fool for Love
Sarah Sunshine (novella)
In Your Arms
The Indomitable Eve (novella)
Seeks For Her (novella)
Somebody to Love
Grace’s Moon
Saving Grace
Fallen From Grace
O’er the Silent Waters (coming fall 2014)
Through the Depths of Night (coming fall 2014)
