I see my breath in the fading day’s light as I wait.
I know she is coming soon. I’ve watched her enough times to know her routine. Every late afternoon, she runs. Rain or shine. She and that dog head west for several miles and then return. On the way back they run by a small rock formation about a hundred yards from her house. It’s where I now hide. The rain and wind have picked up, and far away the thunder sounds, but I keep my ears open for the sound of her feet. I am confident in her habits.
She always follows the bank of the dry creek bed during the return part of her run but leaves it behind as she gets closer to her house and passes by my rocks. Today the creek is no longer dry; it is full of rushing water. When I first started watching her, I could see the dirt bottom of the creek bed and how the water had eaten away at its sides over the decades, digging deeper and deeper into the landscape, creating stunning small cliffs. During the winter I saw its dry bottom coated in snow. Only recently did it fill with the first water since last fall. It’s narrow and not too deep, but its noise interferes as I listen for her.
The dog is an unknown in the equation, the one factor I’m not confident about, but I’ve planned the best I can. It needs to be eliminated first. I’ve worn heavy boots and thick sleeves in preparation. I close my eyes and see myself kick the dog squarely in the face, enough to knock it senseless, and then I swing my hammer at Britta. She’ll be too stunned over the attack on her dog to react.
I have my rifle and pistol, but it is the hammer that is important. She needs to be eliminated the same way her family was.
Then my father’s voice will be silenced in my head.
I need it to end.
Clint had been about to betray me. After the Jorgensen family died, he refused to help me hide their bodies, and he begged me to turn myself in. I explained that it wasn’t my fault; I was driven the same way our father had been. But Clint pushed and pushed, claiming I needed help.
I’d agreed to go to the police in the morning, but I silenced Clint that night. It wasn’t my fault. He left me no choice.
I hear her coming.
She breathes hard, her feet making rhythmic sounds on the hard dirt. All our rain hasn’t softened that hard-packed ground.
My heart speeds up, and I hold my breath, gripping my hammer. I rise to a loaded crouch, ready to spring.
It’s almost over. My peace is at hand.
The dog’s black snout comes into view and I leap forward, planting my right foot and swinging my left with all my might. I’m too slow to hit its face and instead catch it in the ribs. Its body hurtles into the air and then slams into the dirt.
Its sharp yelp pleases me.
I spin toward Britta, expecting her to be stopped dead in her tracks at the sight of her immobile dog, but instead a tall black figure tackles me in the gut, knocking me backward to the ground, and I drop my hammer. I wheeze for breath, but my lungs won’t function. Britta scrambles to sit on my chest as I suffocate. Stars explode in my eyes as a blow knocks my jaw to the side.
This is wrong! It’s all going wrong!
I taste blood, and a high wail erupts from my throat as my lungs get air. Suddenly her weight is gone from my chest and I roll to my side, still struggling for normal breaths. She kicks me twice in the groin and the blinding pain shoots its way to my head and detonates. I curl into a ball, no breath left to scream. I try to close my jaw, and hot fire shoots from its joints into my brain.
My entire nervous system throbs as I lie in the rain.
I hate her. I hate my father. I hate everyone.
Coughs rack my body, nearly making me vomit, and I feel—and hear—my jaw slip back to the proper place in its joints, creating another explosion of pain that vanishes as quickly as it came.
Blessed sensation of nothing. In my jaw, anyway.
I’m still in a ball, waiting for the pounding in my groin to subside. I manage a blurry, wet look around me. Two feet away, my hammer taunts me from the dirt. At this moment, it might as well be a hundred feet away. Britta and her dog are gone.
I’m not giving up.
Time for plan B.