by Ellen Parker
Snow and wind beat against her face before she left the porch steps.
Instead of breaking off their interest in the shop when the house door banged shut, the collies increased their digging efforts at the shed door. What has got their attention?
Taffy interrupted her pawing and twisted around Laura a minute later. “What’s wrong, girl? Did I lock a critter inside?”
The bolt that had been pegged through its loop an hour before hung loose. The latch was mounted too high for dogs or raccoons to disturb. A gust of wind bounced it against the wood and metal post. A shiver of fear joined the chill from the snowstorm.
“Stay!” Laura yelled at the dogs before sliding the door open to shoulder width. She stepped into the dim workshop and felt one of the collies swish past, ignoring her command.
She smelled a change from this morning when she’d been here to get the tarp. Then the space held a familiar odor of dust, oil, and grease. Now a different scent begged for her attention. She halted three steps in to turn on her flashlight.
Smoke! She swept the light beam and her gaze along the length of the workbench. A dark tendril rose from a pile of rags. She sprinted toward the fire extinguisher. Her first jerk against the clamp yielded nothing. A second determined pull and it released, forcing her back half a step. Her flashlight dropped, rolled under the workbench, and shined on the side of a box.
Laura let information bits from safety posters swirl in her mind like so many puzzle pieces and prayed they’d assemble into sense before it became too late. Her fingers trembled reaching for the pin. She pulled it out and turned the nozzle away from her body. Squeeze. The extinguisher kicked and forced her to retreat another step. She managed to steady her nerves a little and pulled the trigger again. She stepped forward this time, remembered to aim toward the rags instead of the smoke, and cursed moments later when the chemical sputtered to an end.
She ran out of the building into smoke- and chemical-free air. Too dark. One dog, then the other, whimpered within arm’s length. She tipped her face to where the dusk to dawn light should be shining. A fast fading dull orange sphere hung like an out of place moon. We lost electricity.
Moments later, Laura steadied the palm-sized glowing rectangle of her phone against her coat and tapped three numbers before pulling the only light in her world up to her face. “I need to report a fire. In the shed. Crystal Springs. Robert’s Ridge Road. Number eight-two-two.”
“Please repeat the address.”
She turned her back to the wind and managed a reply. Several more exchanges with the emergency services operator followed before the calm voice stated the Crystal Springs volunteers had been notified and were en route.
“Are you in a safe place?”
Laura gripped her phone tighter. “Outside. I’m outside, away from the shed.”
“Can you get into another building? At a safe distance?”
“I think so.” She pivoted and struggled to breathe when the wind slammed against her chest. “We lost power. I’ve never seen so much dark.”
• • •
“Not storing this lamp away with the Christmas decorations turned out to be a good thing.”
“Yeah.” Brad speared a chunk of carrot out of his shallow bowl of Yankee pot roast. The lamp sat on a sturdy table several inches away from any cloth or paper. The flame glowed within a clear glass chimney. Three adults ate supper around the small, steady light. It licked air as controlled and tame as a fire could get. Still he glanced at it every few seconds and fought off a tingle at the edge of his scars.
“Been a while since a storm like this.” Robert Asher halved a cube of beef.
“I should check on Laura.” Brad shifted his attention to the window where wind and snow battled for supremacy.
“She’s a grown woman, capable of asking for help if she needs it.”
“Laura’s a city girl.” He made an awkward exchange of his fork for the butter dish and thought of his prosthesis upstairs, stored on a padded bench.
“And this is the twenty-first century.”
“If you say so.” He’d learned in childhood that pressing a point when his mother used her current tone of voice gained nothing. His mother, both sisters, plus every farm wife he counted as an acquaintance demonstrated a pioneer spirit more than the helpless female stereotype of old movies.
“Wouldn’t hurt to call after supper.” Robert offered a buffer between mother and son.
“Good.” The phone startled Brad and he glimpsed his dad flinch at the unexpected noise.
“Ashers,” Mary answered and Brad listened eagerly to her side of the conversation.
“Yes, I hear you fine. The tree farm. Just got the call. Yes, I’ll tell them.”
“What was that about?”
“A fire at the tree farm.”
Brad and Robert pushed up to get their boots and jackets in the utility room before she added in the next breath. “One of the sheds.”
Is Laura safe? What was she doing out of the house in this near blizzard? Which shed? The questions swirled faster than the snow outside the truck as Brad silently urged his dad to drive the half-mile a little faster.
“Flashlights?” Robert asked as he guided the truck around a curve straight into the brunt of the wind.
Brad checked his jacket pockets and opened the glove box. “Total of three.”
“Good.” Robert turned into the drive and halted at the far corner of the garage. “I’ll take the biggest one and go direct traffic. I expect someone will try to turn the ditch into a parking space.”
Brad handed over the light and reached for the door. He figured his dad would pick that job. Four years of guiding Air Force planes into parking spaces stayed with the man.
Laura met them in the gap between house and garage. The edges of a robe flapped below the hem of her oversize thick plaid jacket. A few wisps of hair escaped from a plain knit hat and she raised her hand to sweep them off her face.
Brad figured she’d never been more beautiful.
“It’s the workshop. Can you help with the dogs?” She shouted above a gust of wind.
“Where are you putting them?” Brad swept his light around and spotted one of the collies approaching. As one of their favorite visitors, he didn’t anticipate a problem until he started to transfer the flashlight. He stifled a curse at his empty sleeve and placed the slender case into his mouth.
Laura circled her own light and stepped ahead of him. “Garage.”
He nodded to her back. A moment later, he reached for a dog and missed the collar deep in her fur. An attempt to use a soothing word to the animal sounded more like a human growl. I’m useless. Three attempts and one embarrassing fall to his knees in fresh snow later, he managed to grasp Taffy’s collar and hang on while bringing the panicked animal to the side of the garage.
For a long moment, he stared at the plain knob on the barrier. Why didn’t I put my arm on after my shower? He glanced between the panting dog and the door. The first siren cut through the wind. Very soon they would have vehicles, lights, and men moving around the farmyard in trained volunteer controlled confusion.
Laura stumbled toward him with Cocoa twisting at the end of her arm. “Hurry.”
He pulled Taffy against him, then pushed her after Cocoa into the dark garage. A moment later, he rested his back against the door and felt it shudder as a collie jumped against it.
The jarring set the nerves in his injured shoulder into confusion. His scars flamed under his clothing. One moment he stood in a Wisconsin snowstorm and the next his skin took him back to Afghanistan.
I’m alive. He opened his mouth to scream with pain.
“Easy, Captain. Chopper’s on the way.”
An explosion shook the ground where he lay.
“Move. Shelter.” His yell cam
e out a whisper.
“Don’t move, Captain. You’re hurt bad and that’s my last IV set in your arm.”
“Getting dark.” Quiet blackness draped over him.
“Over there.” Laura’s voice drifted across the wind and brought him halfway around the world.
He opened his eyes in time to watch her sprint toward the pumper, waving for the driver’s attention.
Cold reality finished waking him at his next breath. He started to be useful, found a stray piece of lumber in the snow, and braced the door. He muttered something between a prayer and a wish for the ordinary spring latch to hold before hurrying to the driveway.
The first volunteers in full gear entered the shed carrying large canister extinguishers. Brad took a cue from his dad directing traffic at the driveway entrance and motioned the next pickup with rotating green dash light to a parking spot.
“Workshop,” he yelled the single word and pointed with his light to the familiar shed. Beams of red, amber, and green light flashed around the buildings, reflecting off the windows and making the area look like a Christmas display gone wrong.
Brad intercepted Laura as she jogged toward the sheriff’s department patrol car.
She leaned into the window before it was fully lowered. Her body language ignored him, her attention on the unfolding emergency.
His scars rippled from the only phrase he overheard between wind gusts.
“It’s arson.”
Chapter Fifteen
“I’m not leaving.” Laura tossed the words over her shoulder an instant before the bedroom door slammed hard enough to shake the walls.
“Does she mean the farmhouse tonight or Crystal Springs?” Brad’s question to Daryl seeped through the walls.
She pulled in a deep breath and closed her eyes. They didn’t understand. Either one of them. Daryl cloaked his invitation to spend the remaining hours of the night in town in words like security and company.
For her it stood for retreat, a prelude to defeat. She needed to stay at the farm, continue the process of opening her business, and deny the cowardly bully behind the threats any satisfaction. Her tormenter had to be male, without the courage to show his face or air his opinions directly. Tonight’s fire added monetary loss to the emotional bruises from the recent phone calls and dead cat.
Without wasted motion she exchanged her robe and pajamas for jeans and a sweatshirt. She found clean socks before tying her sneakers then glanced in the mirror. Her hair hung unevenly, portions retaining the odd twists and curves from too long under the knit hat. She snatched up a brush and a pair of elastic bands before stepping toward the door.
“I’ll call her after sunrise.” Brad’s voice reached her the moment she entered the hall.
“How considerate of you,” she blurted to their backs as they stood side by side facing the dining room window.
Daryl spoke as they both turned faces toward her. “We were talking business.”
“I wouldn’t expect less.” She reached up and managed to drag the brush through a few inches of hair before it stalled against a mass of snarls. Both men continued to inspect her as if untangling hair were her biggest problem at the moment.
Her uncle had arrived among the throng of emergency vehicles and volunteers. He’d acknowledged her presence with a brief greeting and then said exactly nothing to her until the final truck left the fire scene. Then he trailed her into the house with Brad following his boss like an obedient puppy. “The excitement is over. Why don’t you both go home?”
“You shouldn’t stay alone, Laura.” Brad shrugged and his empty jacket sleeve swayed.
She returned her gaze and response to Daryl. “Why is he here? He should have gone home with his father.”
“I invited him. He’s useful.”
“Not tonight. This morning,” she corrected as the cuckoo bird announced one o’clock.
Daryl made a generic hand motion to Brad.
“I’ll be in the basement. Starting the wood stove.”
She closed her eyes when Brad shut the door at the far end of the kitchen and listened to the muffled sounds as he moved down the stairs. “I don’t need a babysitter.”
“Your enemy has escalated from phone calls and oblique threats to property damage.” Daryl turned on an additional electric candle. “Are you aware of what comes next on that scale?”
“Would you feel better if I kept a tire iron within reach all night? My phone still has half a charge.” She shivered at the idea of either of these men under her roof tonight. She stared at her uncle a heartbeat past polite. She could handle alone. How to convince a pair of self-appointed protectors?
“I could bring the dogs inside. To the back porch,” she amended as his eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. “I sneaked an animal into the house years ago. I think Sharon’s reaction was strong enough to turn heads all the way in town.”
“They would drive you deaf.”
“Doubtful.” Did either of these men suspect how often she’d noted Brad’s position tonight? She’d moved among the volunteers, fire chief, and sheriff’s deputy answering questions and doing her best to not interfere. Brad stayed on the edge of the lighted area and showed more interest in the far end of the workshop than the damaged portion.
License plate theft, calls, a dead cat, and a fire. When she overlaid a mental chart with people aware of her movements in those same days she didn’t like the result. Am I entertaining the enemy?
She jumped half an inch when metal clanged against metal under her feet.
“It’s stopped snowing.” Daryl gestured to the window where battery powered lights on portable barricades confirmed his statement. “The snowplow will make a pass within an hour. You’re vulnerable.”
She pressed her lips and sorted through the right words to broach the topic sending the parade of chills up her spine. “I don’t trust him.”
“Because?”
“Coincidence. Don’t you teach it as a myth?” She grasped the portion her uncle might understand. That hollow betrayal triggered by the scene between Brad and the unknown woman lay beyond explanation.
“My employee is not your enemy.”
“And you know this because?” She stabbed the air between them with her hairbrush.
“Several words on the calls don’t fit his speech pattern. And arson … did you notice his face before he left?”
I watched his back. To be sure he went.
She moved her mouth to begin a response when bright lights in the kitchen and the whoosh of the furnace coming back to life distracted both of them.
“Power’s on,” Daryl recovered his voice.
“I noticed.” Laura stared out the window as the dusk to dawn light glowed to life. She tugged the hairbrush and tested new phrases to get Brad out of her house.
• • •
Brad inspected the short black stove three steps away. In the beam of a single flashlight set on the shelf it appeared a neutral thing, no more of a threat than a lawnmower or power tool. I can do this. I must do this.
He opened the firebox and reached into the supply of old newspaper. This should be the easy part. A loose paper tent, a few pieces of dry kindling, and two short logs went inside the maw of the cast iron stove in smooth succession.
His scars ached with fear as he removed a log starter from an overhead hook. He closed his eyes and let a pulse of phantom pain engulf his missing left arm. Pulling determination out of the cool, still basement air he squatted to poke the lighter into the crumpled paper. On his second attempt to thumb the igniter it spit out a yellow flame. He stared without breathing until the paper caught and began to lick the underside of the kindling.
“Done.” Brad exhaled after the firebox clanged shut. Instinct urged him to grab the light and flee upstairs. He swallowed back a portion of
his terror, and checked the damper instead.
An instant after he returned the log lighter to its hook, the hiss and sigh of the fire vanished in the return of the furnace and water pump. Relief washed his body. The current fire could burn down to ash. He’d not need to glimpse the demon in a box while adding fuel.
“Everything’s good downstairs,” he announced stepping into the kitchen a few minutes later.
“Have Daryl take you home on his way.” Laura opened the oven and withdrew a casserole neglected during other events of the evening.
“You shouldn’t stay alone.” Brad took a moment to admire her efficient movements.
Daryl spoke without turning from the dining room window. “She’s not going to.”
Brad’s stomach twisted under her glare. He didn’t expect her to be happy. A storm, fire, and electrical outage all within a few hours stressed all but the comatose. What he didn’t expect was the predominance of hatred in her eyes. “Is it something I said?”
“Leave me alone.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He straightened and tossed off a bad salute.
“Later, children. We’ve no time for foolishness.”
Brad gave a nervous laugh, stepped past Laura, and joined his boss in the next room.
“She’s put both of us on her black list.” Daryl led him deeper into the house, to the far side of the seldom-used formal living room. “I’ve been thinking about the rest of today.”
“The sheriff is bringing out an arson specialist after sunrise.” Brad shrugged out of his jacket and laid it over the back of a wing chair.
“You need to spend the day at Rolling Hills.”
He nodded without understanding. On Monday, he’d brought his real estate agency paperwork up to date, and he’d not received as much as a call of inquiry in the days since. “Will I be doing a records search?”
“Direct observation. How’s the view to S&T Travel?”
“Decent. We share an alley.” The file room with the non-computerized records had the best angle on their rear entrance. One of those San Francisco chocolate bars to the clerk should buy a couple hours of solitude. “What am I looking for?”
