batch of barn cats. I’ll find her a good home before I go. You don’t have to worry about her.” The cat had had some badly infected thorns in her hind leg, which she’d taken care of already.
“You know why they call them barn cats, right? Because they’re supposed to stay in the barn.” He shook his head with a look that said he thought she was hopeless. “Whatever you do, don’t name her.”
She would leave that honor to whoever was going to take the cat. “I’ve managed to resist.”
He looked skeptical.
“Say hi to Molly for me. I’ll stop in to see her, I promise.”
She walked him to the door, where he hesitated for a second before giving her a quick hug. She hugged him back then watched him walk to his brand-new Chevy truck, glanced up at the clouds that were rushing in to block out the moon. She hoped he’d get home before the storm hit.
The cat meowed behind her, but didn’t step a foot outside. She didn’t seem to want to get too far from the bowl of milk in the kitchen. Grace passed by her then closed the door and went around turning off the lights, alone at last in the old house that brought back way too many memories.
“Focus on the good,” she told the cat, but meant the words for herself.
She picked up a box of Twinkie snacks from the counter, something she’d grabbed at the last gas station she’d stopped at on her way here. “Straight to the hips,” she said to the cat as she opened the box.
She had the Twinkie halfway to her mouth when another clap in the distance stopped her. This time, she recognized the sound.
The gunshot came from the vicinity of the mesquite grove behind the fields.
Maybe she had a lost hiker on her land, or a birdwatcher—it had happened before. Then another shot came quickly, and another. Nine altogether.
Bam. Bam. Bam. Pause. Bam. Pause. Bam. Pause Bam. Pause. Bam. Bam. Bam.
Morse code or coincidence? If it was Morse code, the pattern spelled SOS.
Getting in trouble was easy around here, what with the snakes and the heat and other hazards of the land. And with the storm coming… Nobody should get stuck out there in that kind of weather. She set the Twinkie back in the box and put a bowl over it upside down on the counter so it wouldn’t tempt the cat. Comfort food would have to wait. She’d need both hands for driving in the dark.
She hurried back to the front door and stepped into her boots, made sure she had her cell phone in her pocket and grabbed the industrial-strength flashlight from the peg. On second thought, she grabbed her grandfather’s old hunting rifle, as well, along with a handful of bullets, then rushed to her car as the first raindrops splashed to the ground.
The paved road that led to town snaked in the opposite direction from where she was headed. She took the dirt road to the fields, beyond which lay sparse woods and brush and grassland—God’s best country.
Darkness surrounded her, nothing visible beyond the path the headlights illuminated as the pickup rattled over the uneven ground. She wasn’t scared, not on her grandfather’s land. Her land. She knew every acre of it, had driven over it, ridden over it.
The road soon turned into an overgrown trail, bushes scratching against the side of the pickup. She pushed through and came to an open area, rattled over the dry clumps of grass. She slowed for two dry creek beds, then took the bumpy ride across them. It hadn’t rained in forever. According to Dylan, just the week before, they’d had a pretty bad dust storm.
When she reached the spot she thought the shots had come from, she drove around in expanding circles, then continued on foot when the pickup could no longer handle the terrain. The flashlight found a pair of armadillos out on a date, but no humans. She loaded the rifle and squeezed a shot into the air.
A full year had passed since the last time she’d pulled a trigger. Tension settled into her shoulders, pulling her muscles tight.
The shot reverberated in the silence of the night. Then another shot answered. Her heart rate picked up as she ran that way. Her palms were sweating. The trembling came. Then the flashbacks—of other dark nights, other shots, blood and pain, people dying. She kept on running.
After a few hundred feet or so, she could see a pinpoint of light in the distance, a flashlight that led her to a barely conscious man.
For a terrifying second, she was still on a battlefield, her mind unable to distinguish between past and present. Then the gruesome images slowly faded and she came back to reality, to the man lying on the ground in front of her.
“Are you okay?”
In his early thirties, he wore black cargo pants covered in blood, a black T-shirt and military-issue boots. She would have taken him for a border agent, but he didn’t wear their insignia.
Not a local, either. She’d known most everyone around these parts at one point. He was about her age, so if he’d grown up here, they would have gone to the small school together in Hullett. She would have recognized him, despite the smudges of blood that covered his features.
Probably not one of Dylan’s businessmen, unless he was their trainer. The stuff on his belt was all professional grade and then some. Question was, what was he doing here all alone, so far from the ravine? She took his gun and tucked it into her waistband behind her back, out of his reach. Probably an unnecessary precaution. He didn’t look ready to reach for anything.
“What happened? What’s your name?”
His eyes fluttered open, then closed again. He was only semiconscious, but he kept his hands pressed tight against a wound on his thigh. Smart man—he was focusing his energies where it most counted. She held the flashlight closer.
Gunshot wound. The bullet had gone in the back and came out the front. Definitely not a self-inflicted, accidental injury.
Keeping her rifle close at hand, she slipped off his belt and made a quick tourniquet. Then she ran back to her pickup, grabbed a half-empty water bottle that was still warm from the day’s heat. It’d do in a pinch. She shook him so he’d revive enough to drink. He needed to replenish his fluids.
He needed an IV, but he wouldn’t get that here.
When she had done all she could, she dialed 911. She didn’t get through, of course—no reception. Cell phone coverage was spotty out here on a good day. With the storm moving in, the bars on her display were flatlining.
“Help.” The single word slipped in a rasp whisper from the man’s lips.
And when she looked up, his eyes were open again. She couldn’t see their color in the dark, only that they were disoriented. “I’m trying.”
He was a big man but, like her brother, she’d served in the United States Army and had gotten the best possible training. She bent and worked the guy’s arm over her shoulder, supported his body weight as she struggled forward and dragged him toward the truck.
The rain had been picking up steadily, turning into a downpour. Her feet slipped in the mud, but she wouldn’t allow herself to stop, wouldn’t allow him to slide to the ground. If he did, she might not be able to pick him up again.
She
