She was messing with his head. He didn’t let anybody do that, but she wasn’t asking permission. He was as sexually frustrated as a man could get, he was narky as hell, he wanted her hand on his chest, and you couldn’t have kept him out of that truck if you’d tried. He pulled on a pair of work gloves, tucked another pair into his jacket pocket for her, and picked up two sheets of plywood. A moment spared to be thankful that she hadn’t decided she could carry those as well, and he tossed the sheets into the bed of the ute and climbed in.
She was quiet on the way down, like she’d said too much. Once at her shop, she collected a copy of the police report from the cop and tossed it into her car. The cop said, “I’ll take off, then,” and she nodded like she wanted to say, I won’t expect much, and then I won’t be disappointed. It was a lot like Jace’s stalker. A brick through a shop window, a loss covered by insurance. A nuisance call.
Once the bloke was pulling away, Lily was all business, pulling on the gloves Jace handed her, then taking the other side of the plywood sheets to pull them out of the bed. The wind was stronger now, trying to take it out of their grasp, but she held the first sheet against the window frame as Jace drove the nail, leaning her weight against the wood to keep it there.
He said, “I should’ve got you a jacket from the house.”
“This will only take a minute,” she said, not looking at him. “Doesn’t matter.”
He drove another nail on the other side of the sheet. “You’re thinking about that bit of paper,” he guessed. Not about you, mate. “About the brick. Same words you got before, but sending it through your shop window sends a different message.”
“Yes.” She stood back and let him finish hammering the plywood into place. “Although the handwriting’s odd.”
He glanced at her. Her hair was whipping in the wind, and he heard the low rumble of thunder, felt the first icy touch of rain on his cheek, and picked up the second sheet of wood. “The handwriting?”
“If I were sending a message like that,” she said, helping him maneuver the plywood over the second half of the window, “I’d write it big. Across the whole paper. Practically stabbing through, the ink bleeding. Aggressive. I’d maximize the impact, go for menace. That neat little writing doesn’t fit with the action. It’s an anomaly, and that’s interesting.”
As she spoke, the street lit up. Briefly, and faintly. Lightning, but all the way to the north, up over the mountain. He drove another nail as he considered what she’d said. “You could be right. Pretty subtle distinction.”
“The subtle distinctions are generally the difference between finding the answer and not.” Another rumble of thunder in the distance, and the spatters of rain picked up.
“Could be,” he said, and thought for the twentieth time since he’d met her, Who are you? “Heaps of psychology in retail, I reckon. Not so much for me. But then, I’ve focused on trying to make bad people dead. Not so subtle.” He picked up the pace on the hammering. “Deluge about to start,” he said over the noise of the rain spattering against the wood, the sidewalk, his back. “Let’s get this done.”
He was halfway there when the rain began for real. He shouted, “Get in the truck,” and of course she didn’t. She waited until he was done, tested the plywood for security while he tossed the hammer back into the toolbox, and only then ran for shelter.
He turned the windscreen wipers to full, pulled out into the street, and watched the night light up as the jagged fork of white struck the mountain. The thunder followed, louder now even in the truck, the clouds burst, and the heavens emptied.
Beside him, Lily was shivering, and she was also pulling her phone out of her purse. He stopped for the light and glanced across at her. She said, “Oh, no,” and there was something new in her voice. Something worse.
“What?” he asked. “Another text?”
She looked across at him, the assurance gone from her face. “It says, How are your animals doing?”
He swore, and she said, as if she were talking to herself, “The window was a diversion. I should have known. I thought when you were following me that I’d been lured somewhere. I should have realized.”
The light changed, and he headed out of town. He wanted to go faster. He couldn’t, not in driving rain that reduced visibility to a couple meters. Beside him, Tobias’s warm body had tensed, reacting to the humans, and now, the dog sat up and whined, low and urgent.
Lily said, “I left my car down there. I should have taken it.”
“Good job you didn’t, or Tobias and I wouldn’t be here to help.” He had to say it loud, or she wouldn’t have heard him. He picked up the pace as much as he dared. Blackness up here except for the silver streaks of the rain in the headlights, another jagged flash lighting up the interior. The drumming of rain on the hood, the bone-jarring boom of a thunderbolt, much closer now.
Past his driveway, on up to hers, and pulling into her drive, seeing the glow of light ahead from inside the house, same as the night before. She said, “Stop,” and he did. At the barnyard.
This time, he didn’t bother telling her to stay inside. She wouldn’t have listened. The moment the ute stopped, she was out, pulling her phone from her purse, switching on its torch, and running for the shed. He paused to grab the Maglite from under his seat, then followed her light, Tobias keeping pace with him.
He found the latch of the gate that had swung shut behind her and ran into the yard. Instantly, the sticky mud began clinging to his shoes, slowing him down, and Tobias was well ahead of him by the time he got into the concrete-floored barn. Lily’s light was bobbing around at the end, near the stalls, but he couldn’t hear anything. The rain on the metal roof was too loud.
He got over to her, sweeping the brighter light from his nine-inch Maglite over the area. Lily was crouched down, her hair plastered to her head and dripping, her top and sweater clinging to her. She was running her hands over two goats who were lying down, curled up together. She looked up at him, shading her eyes, and he switched the light to fall fully on the goats, who stirred and bleated in a complaining way.
“They’re fine,” she said, a world of relief in her voice. “They’re good.”
A peal of thunder nearly rattled the shed, and he thought about metal roofs and rain and lightning strikes and said, “We need to get out of here.”
She said, “Wait. Babies,” and moved to the other side of the shed, opened another stall. “Oh, no,” he heard. “Her babies.”
Another heap of bodies, huddled together. Tiny ones. But when the light fell on them, one of them wriggled, and then the others did.
“No,” he said. “False alarm.” Or more accurately, the kind of threat that was meant to persuade without its maker having to do anything more. The first weapon in the terrorist’s arsenal, even if it only involved threats to farm animals.
The shed shook with the force of another thunderclap, and he grabbed Lily’s arm and said, “Go. Now.”
They ran, and Tobias ran ahead of them. Straight across the barnyard to the gate, where the dog barked, then kept on barking. Jace still had hold of Lily’s arm, was slipping and sliding through the mud with her as the rain pelted their bodies and another lightning flash lit up the yard. Lit up the lithe, muscular shape of Tobias, and a smaller form that dashed across in front of the barnyard and was gone.
“Chickens,” Jace and Lily said together. How are your animals doing? That had been a coyote.
The moment Jace got the gate open, Tobias was through it. Lily fastened it behind her, and Jace took her hand and followed the dog, focusing his light on the ground ahead of them.
The gate to the coop was standing open, he saw through the sheets of silver rain. And there was a new sound now, as they came closer. An intense, alarmed cackling, shrill as screaming.
Lily had bent, was heading into the low door that led into the pen when Jace pulled her back.
“I need to see,” she said, pulling against his grasp. “What’s in there. Something’s got them.”
“Tobias,” Jace commanded. “Go get it.”
The dog didn’t need to hear it twice. He was inside the enclosure, then squeezing his head and front legs into the coop itself. The door to that was open, too. Jace could make out the blackness where there should have been solid wall. The cackling grew even louder, more frantic, and Tobias was backing out again, turning in a half-circle, shaking his head violently back and forth three times, then running for the entrance.
Lily jumped back, and Jace did, too. The light picked up a pale form clamped in Tobias’s jaws, and a bundle of orange feathers beyond. The dog charged through the gate, shook his head again, then flung the thing hard, and it sailed into the darkness. Dead, Jace would swear, and the chicken with it.
“Good dog,” Jace said.
The cackling was still going on inside the coop. Lily said, “There could be more. I need to see. What was that?”
“Couldn’t tell,” Jace said. “But no. If there were more, Tobias would be going back for them.”
“The nesting boxes,” she said, and ran through the rain to open the door at the back of the coop. She shone her light inside, and when Jace got there, he shone his, too.
Chickens running back and forth, cackling in distress. Feathers on the ground, orange and white. And no darting body of a predator.
“Gone,” he said. “They’re still flustered, is all.”
She nodded, and then she was turning the lever to close the coop door, going around to the front again to close the gate to the run.
The storm was fully overhead now, the weather gods putting on a show, lighting up the night. And then the light changed again.
Lily saw it before he did. “House lights.” They’d gone out, and the blackness was complete.
He said, “Truck. Let’s go.” They had to get out of the storm, but it wasn’t going to be in the house, not yet.
She said, “Yes,” and ran with him one more time, a matter of meters to where the truck stood at the bottom of the drive. Jace pulled the tailgate down, told Tobias, “Up,” and the dog went. Lily was already in the cab, and he jumped in, fished his keys out of his pocket, started it up, and hit the headlights.
She said, “Drive straight up onto the lawn. Right up so you’re in front of the living room. Light it up.”
He was already going, and she had her bag in her lap. She didn’t pull out the purse gun, either. It was a larger revolver, probably the one that had been in her thigh holster.
He pulled to a stop where she’d said, the beams on high, shining into the house. The curtains were drawn, but it would help. She had her hand on the door handle, and he grabbed her arm and said, “No.”
She yanked against his hold, but he didn’t let her go. “Yes,” she said. “It’s my house.”
“I’m trained for this,” he said. “You’re not.”
“I’m—” she said, then stopped. He let go of her, reached for the Glock in his ankle holster, and said, “I’ll let you know when it’s clear.”
“No,” she said. “I’ll go with you. You go left, I go right. I’ve got the kitchen, you’re up the stairs. One door up there, to the bathroom. Dressing room’s this side of the bedroom. Entrance is a curtain, but there’s plenty of room to hide in there.”
“Back door?” he asked.
“Side door. Kitchen.” She had her keys out, understanding what he meant. That the lit-up living room meant that anyone in the house would expect them to come in the front. “I’m on your six.”
He was out of the truck as her words registered, Glock in one hand, Maglite in his hand but not switched on. No sense advertising your position. He motioned Tobias with a hand. The dog leaped over the side of the truck and took up a position behind Lily.
It didn’t matter what Lily’s story was. Jace still hated that she was here, and he couldn’t stop her. He moved in, squinting against the pelting rain, stepped to one side when they reached the kitchen door, and waited while she unlocked it. She handed the keys to him, and he realized why. She had no pockets. He stuck the bunch into his own pocket and held up a hand, fingers spread, hoping she’d understand him, and counted down.
Five. Four. Three. Two. One.
He went in fast and low, and sensed her moving to his right. Kitchen, and she had it. He pressed himself against the arched entrance to the living room and checked it out. Enough light from the headlights to make out shapes. Nothing moving. Tobias moved at his side like a ghost, alert but not alarmed, and Jace let out a breath. If someone were down here, the dog would know.
“Clear.” He heard the word, soft and low, from behind him.
“Going up,” he said in the same tone, and didn’t wait to hear if she answered.
Stairway. Fatal funnel. One way up, one spot for a gunman to cover. He went up crouched all the way down. Untrained shooters shot high, their gun hands jerking up in their excitement.
Nothing on the landing. No sound but the racket of rain against windows and roof, the nearly constant rumble and louder explosions of thunder. He was into the bedroom, which held a bed, two nightstands, and not much else. Bathroom next, looking behind the door, throwing aside the shower curtain. And finally, the dressing room.
A lot of clothes. Nobody hiding amongst them. Tobias was sure of it.
“Clear!” Jace shouted down to Lily, turned on the torch, and swept it around again to doublecheck.
“Toss your keys,” she shouted back. “I’ll turn off your headlights.”
He could have argued. He didn’t. He threw the keys down, saw the flash as she switched on the light of her phone, and a minute later, the light glowing through the front window went dark. He got downstairs as the kitchen door slammed closed and the light came closer, and then she was there.
Muddy. Soaking wet. Alive.
She said, “Power failure.”
“Yeah.” He was breathing hard, adrenaline letting itself go, and so was she. She dropped her phone on the couch and set her revolver down next to it.
She looked straight into his eyes. She stepped right into his arms.