“Do you have the large tubs of this?” she said gesturing with the small cardboard box.
“You already have a baby? My name’s Chad,” he said standing upright and smiling, both hands going into the rear pockets of his wrinkled kaki’s.
Abriella’s voice raised up in a scolding tone bringing both the store manager and Kelton hustling over, “I have a horse, Chad. He has a skin condition on his ankles called ‘scratches’ caused by being wet a lot due to all the dew on the grass this time of year. And if I have to buy your stupid itsy bitsy tubes, I’ll need a case.”
Kelton smiled as the manger knocked over some hydrogen peroxide bottles on a low shelf stepping around Chad to hand her a plastic tub about the size of a softball.
“Here you go, Ma’am.”
The manager grabbed the boys ear, who omitted an “ow,” and led him toward the break room.
Abriella called after him, “This is horse country, Chad!”
She then turned toward Kelton, “What a dumbass.”
Kelton’s mouth wrinkled up slightly and his head cocked to the side before he relaxed and said simply, “Got what you need?”
He held an armful of assorted junk food and dog treats.
In a few minutes they’d checked out, him paying for her one item with all of his, and were on their way. She drove west on Second Street before cutting over to Main Street again using nothing but right hand turns.
“That building back there, across from the bank,” Kelton began.
“The old apartment building? It’s occupancy permit has been revoked. You can’t live there.”
He shook his head, “I saw a classmate of yours leaving there with this older guy that just gave off a bad vibe. I’ve been trying to find her, to check to see if she’s okay. But I haven’t been able to find her again.”
One more right at the light by Full Cry Market and they were zipping down Full Cry Road toward her parent’s farm. Abriella unconsciously slowed the car as she came to terms with his focus on someone else.
“Maybe you’re mistaken about her being a classmate. Or it was her dad or something.”
He nodded solemnly looking out the window, “Yeah, maybe you’re right.”
The car’s speed picked up again, Abriella passing a light truck who’d either slowed for the rainy conditions, or mistook the old cruiser for one still on police duty. But once she turned left onto Hounds Tooth Road, there was no further traffic. She parked between her mom’s Bronco and the horse trailer. The house was dark.
Kelton’s hands spread on the seat beside him to grip at the vinyl covering and help him sit up, “Aren’t your parents at home?”
She put the shifter in park and turned off the key, “What difference does it make? You’re coming in for some laundry soap and bleach, and then off to the hay bales.”
He seemed uncertain, trying to stare through the house windows blocked by overgrown bushes before turning back toward her.
“I’m sure they’ll be home soon. That’s my mom’s car. They probably just took my dad’s truck to dinner or something,” she fibbed.
“Okay,” he relented.
“So perhaps we should put Azrael in the barn now? Plenty of room for him with the grain? He does shed,” she shrugged.
Again, he pondered, with his blank face making it seem he’d gone far away. But he relented with a nod, “Yeah, that will probably be best if your parents are coming home soon and I’ll be back down there to spend the night anyway.”
He through the Kong toy into the yard, and Azrael took off at a dead run toward its landing spot. She walked beside him while he carried his pack in one hand and the drug store bag with another. He sat everything down in the aisle way and she opened the first stall on the left for him. When she did so, the little barn was filled with bleats and one big roaring whinny.
“Hush, guys. I’m really not that late,” she scolded.
Kelton called out, “Azrael, kennel!”
Azrael approached holding the dripping Kong tightly in his mouth, and sat before them with his eyes shifting between them.
Kelton made a guttural sound deep in his throat, “Kennel!” He pointed with his hand toward the open stall door for emphasis.
Azrael dropped his head without relinquishing the Kong and sulked inside.
“Ah, he’s pouty,” she declared.
“He hasn’t heard that command in quite a while. The poor guy will just have to get over it. He’s stuck with me,” Kelton replied. “Does Indy ever get like that?”
“Yes, and I love how his personality comes through once you get to know him. I’m really going to miss him when the time comes.”
Kelton’s eyebrows knitted, “What do you mean?”
She shrugged, “Horses live a long time. It can be thirty years if you take care of them. I’m not saying they can still be ridden you understand, but they can be around. He’s only fourteen. My parents won’t be able to send him to college with me, and probably can’t afford to feed him while I’m away anyway.
I live in the moment mostly, but I’m kind of aware of being on borrowed time. Sometimes I catch myself trying not to be so attached because I know its finite. But I can’t help it. I love him with everything, and I cringe because I know one day it’s going to really hurt. Part of growing up I guess.
How do you deal with it?”
Kelton’s eyes were a little misty, “I love with everything I have. He’s my entire world. And for his breed, twelve would be a super old dog. Like get a letter from the president old.”
They both fed their respective animals, and made sure everyone had water. He removed the harness and gave Azrael a quick brushing while Abriella applied her ointment to some scabby areas low on Indy’s pasterns. Kelton opted to leave his pack propped up against the stall door after fishing out the two small plastic bottles rather than carry it back and forth to the house.
“You sure your parents are going to be okay with me here? I mean, maybe I should just stay down here.”
“Come on, things will be fine,” she said as she took his left arm in both hands and led him at a quick walk across the backyard and through the kitchen door.
Kelton tried to decide how it came to be he was sitting on the floor of a den with his back against a couch, a throw quilt over him, and the red hair of a sixteen-year-old girl laying on his chest illuminated by the soft glow of the television screen. Rain pounded on the window, easily overwhelming the soft volume. At his side was a ceramic bowl still half full of popcorn, and a couple of glasses containing nothing but melting ice cubes and the slightest remaining traces of Coca Cola. He decided that the idea of imminently arriving parents had lulled him into a false since of security; had let him be lured into the room with harmless snacks and catching a show. Then chemistry just slowly took over.
They had started out sitting at their respective ends of the couch. Neither of them felt awkward, so it didn’t take long to get relaxed. As they wound down, they got more comfortable and laid on the floor. Every time they adjusted or shifted, they seemed to get a little closer. And after an hour of a dumb romantic comedy movie he couldn’t hear over the rain, her head was on his chest and he stroked her temple with his hand. Somewhere along the way, things had become out of bounds and he liked it.
She leaned her head back to look up at him and he kissed her with a slow approach to give her ample time to turn away. Her mouth opened and answered him with enthusiasm, and he knew he was already, despite years of discipline and firm self-control, pass that primal point of no turning back. He rationalized it. Sixteen was old enough in many world cultures; old enough in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. She was totally willing and committed. No lightning bolt would strike him dead to stop his roaming hands. Nor did her hands interfere with his as he felt her breast and rising nipple through her shirt.
It wasn’t a lightning bolt that intervened, but headlights. He saw it in his peripheral as he pulled back to lovingly gaze upon her. She also sat up to stare throug
h the panes, once she understood what had taken his attention away.
“Your parents?” he asked and looked about the room for a clock to know the time. It was getting late enough that his presence would be awkward to explain. Especially on a school night.
She shook her head.
They both knelt at the window, only their eyes peering over the sill. The car didn’t approach the house, but pulled over on the shoulder at the top of the drive. Its headlights went out. Kelton and Abriella continued to try and pierce the rain and darkness, seeing nothing. Then lightening flashed, and they could see the vehicle’s silhouette and knew it was still there.
Sergeant Barker lay down across the small couch in his office, his boots hanging over the armrest. While he wasn’t big on bringing his work home, that didn’t mean he had to go home. He wasn’t divorced for nothing. Actually he was divorced for a lot of reasons, and acknowledged that her list of beefs held legitimacy. He was a cop, and had gotten comfortable over the years with being a cop. Most cops didn’t have many friends that weren’t also cops. But he was the sergeant, which meant he had no cop friends either.
He ordered in pizza, sharing some with Officer Temple in the control room as an excuse to glance at the incident logs without being obvious. Tuesday night was a short staff night. He’d showered and shaved in their patrol locker-room that evening. Normally he only went in there after lifting some weights at lunch. The navy fatigues he’d dressed into hadn’t been worn since a department wide exercise last year.
Something was going down. He wished he knew what. The two horsemen had been attacked. They’d busted their man out of hospital custody. They’d buried a car that Johnbull had seen parked near the school just before the riding coach was assaulted. The chief still hadn’t asked a single question. McFife was also AWOL again as far as he could tell listening to the radio without going into the control room and making a fuss about it.
The only thing he knew for sure was these thugs weren’t local. There were too many of them and they were too bold for him not to have stumbled across them before now if they were. This meant they had come here for a reason. Had that reason been accomplished before one of their own was in the hospital? That had to be an unforeseen circumstance, one in which they’d made arrangements to be able to bury a car. Being able to pull that off spoke to a level of infrastructure and resources indicative of bigger plans. When whatever it was went down, everyone would know it.
If that proved to be tonight, he needed to be rested for a powerful response. He needed to be on the upcoming scene within moments. His ears strained at every crackle of static on the radio like a sprinter listening for the starting gun. But if things didn’t happen tonight, he’d go see Justin Harper over at Westburg City Hall in the morning. He would go see the chief, too. Why was Barker waiting for his chief to come to him, when he could just as easily manage up? What was the old man so scared of to be avoiding him? It was time to surprise him, and see what popped out in the conversation.
The day had been long. Jim Barker tried to force himself to sleep, but was instead mentally and physically coiled in readiness.
CHAPTER—24
Kelton and Abriella stared at the car for several minutes, turning off the flickering TV to make it easier to see out into the blackness of the Harper farm. A long flickering flash of lightning danced between the heavy black clouds, and they finally had their first good look at the vehicle.
“It looks like your ride,” declared Kelton.
Abriella nodded, “It’s a police cruiser. Maybe it’s my paranoid dad’s way of protecting me. If he wants to sit out there in the storm when he’s nothing else to do, it doesn’t affect us in here.”
Kelton began to ask her about her parents again, and where they were. But he was certain she hadn’t forgotten about them, and he saw nothing in it for him to rub her nose in the now apparent fib she’d made earlier. She interrupted the thought.
“You know; you smell like baking soda up close.”
He shrugged, “You caught me. It’s cheap and…”
She grabbed his hand and led him up the stairs whispering over her shoulder, “You need a shower.”
They reached the top of the landing, and all the games and pretenses were done and over with. Kelton pulled back on her arm to spin her around, and kissed her. Not a soft sleepy kiss like in front of the television. A hot aroused kiss, confident there would be no inhibitions. They pulled each other to the floor, the few strides to enter her bedroom too many in face of the burning urgency. She answered his pulling at her shirt with pulling at his, and gasped as he suckled at her nipples.
Her phone chimed. It was a loud ring which startled both of them, as she had turned the volume to maximum to not miss any calls while around droning fans in the barn. To Kelton, it was an ill-timed request, that could easily be ignored. But to Abriella, it was her Best Friend Forever’s unique ring tone so she knew instantly who it was without seeing the screen. A friend well aware of tonight’s agenda. A friend who normally texted. She pushed him off as she hastily sat up to hunt for her phone in the tangled fabric of partially discarded clothes.
“What’s wrong?” greeted Abriella after swiping the green button.
“There’s men with guns here at the house! They pulled up and then surrounded it. And it’s not the cops!”
It was Vicky’s voice, clear and annunciated despite the urgency and panic. The volume allowed him to hear everything in the quiet house.
“Have you called 911?” asked Abriella, just as she saw hazy blue lights come to life at the top of her driveway through the foyer window. The car u-turned and raced off like a shot.
“Elizabeth has. But there’s like six of them and I don’t know what they want. The backdoor’s splintering. I’ve got to hide…”
Kelton heard the phone go dead in Abriella’s hands, and watched in a second of reluctance as she started to dress.
“Come on,” she urged and he trotted down the stairs after her while trying to pull his shirt back over his head.
They burst through the kitchen, the rattle of the screen door’s aluminum frame against the brick facade smothered in the pounding rain. Kelton leaped over the narrow brick patio toward the barn as Abriella ran toward her car.
“Where you going?” she cried after him.
“My gun’s in my pack. Get it started!”
“Command, Unit 2 responding,” overhead Sergeant James Barker on his patrol radio as he leaned on the push bar of the steel door leading to the parking lot from the patrol ready room. His cruiser was unlocked, and he hit the garage door opener button on the sun visor as he sat down on the vinyl bench seat. But instead of a garage door, it slid open a chain-link fence gate with barbed wire on top which separated the police department’s back parking lot from the general public.
Barker managed to get his seat belt fastened despite the bump of going over the gutter at speed and turned his cruiser with one arm to east bound on Main Street. The car fishtailed as he hit the gas before settling into his lane. In rapid succession, he hit the garage door button a second time to close up and followed that by turning on his flashing lights. He’d covered a couple hundred yards before realizing his headlights, which automatically came on in the newer patrol cars, were off and it was the street lamps providing enough illumination for him to get underway. Main Street was deserted at this hour, all the shops and little apartments dark in the middle of the workweek, but he flipped on the klaxon without a second thought. The world would know Sergeant James Barker was responding. Leaving one hand on the wheel, he reached down and popped his side arm’s retaining snap on his holster.
As he spun the wheel in front of Full Cry Market, he felt the car’s rear end swing out from underneath him on the wet asphalt as a wave of rainwater crested over the side of the cruiser. He popped it from ‘drive’ down to ‘second’, hearing the RPM’s soar and floored the car anyway to power out of the skid. The rear tires spun for a second on the slick pavement, and then bit to l
aunch him forward. An upshift later, the RPM’s settled and the speedometer needle rapidly rose to the right again.
The radio announced with Johny Temple’s voice, “Unit 2, Command. Be advised the house is the middle one on the north side of the hockey field. Last report was a half dozen men with long arms and two vehicles. We’ve lost contact with the callers. My judgement is it’s a legitimate call, not a prank. I’m trying to raise Sheriff and State Police assets to assist.”
“Control, this is Sierra 1,” yelled Barker on his radio to be heard over his siren. “Send the ambulances and firetrucks out, too.”
Temple came back, “Sergeant, the caller didn’t mention anyone hurt or things burning. Are you sure we want to…”
Barker pressed his microphone button in rapid succession to broadcast nothing, mangling the control center’s transmission. When the control center released its talk button and the airwaves cleared, Barker snarled into his radio, “Not yet. But there will be. Send everyone you can get. Lawmen, firemen, paramedics. Everyone!”
The car’s suspension shook and his head nearly hit the overhead despite his seatbelt as he hit a pothole in the dark. He didn’t know it, but a hubcap let go and rolled into a bumper block by the main building’s entrance; he wouldn’t have cared if he did. Involuntarily he slowed, not as familiar with the school’s side and back streets as the main entrance. There wasn’t much in the way of street lamps to help find his way and the rain made things harder to see. As he circumvented the left side of the main building, a few sets of parking lights were apparent up ahead. It was eleven at night, on a school night, at a prep school. Those wouldn’t be students. He steered their way.
As he approached, he saw there were two vehicles: a sport utility vehicle in front of a sedan. Three men stood by the rear car, resting the butts modern rifles on their hips. An adolescent female, judging by the small frame and long hair, kicked and writhed between two of them. Barker mashed the accelerator just as muzzle flashes danced in the darkness before him.
By Dog Alone: A Kelton Jager Adventure Book 2 Page 22
