Chapter 14
Frank heard the door to the guest room he had stayed in slam shut and lock.
He glanced at the low wall and saw Timothy and Manning at the guest room door.
Frank grabbed Florence and hurried her to the far end of the living room, where the brothers couldn’t see them. Their hearts were pounding like crazy.
“Timothy and Manning are upstairs. I don’t believe using the guns will be the way to go. We might not hit the brother closest to the wall, but we could easily miss at the angle we would have to shoot from.”
“I agree,” Florence said. “We have only one option for dealing with the brothers.”
They both quickly yanked off their clothes, kissed and hugged, just in case they didn’t make it out alive, and shifted.
They headed toward the stairs. If they ran up the stairs, they would make noise and alert the brothers, which was the reason they couldn’t ascend them with guns readied for a better shot also.
The stairs were ten feet high. As cougars, they could easily leap that distance to the top of the stairs.
Frank was thinking he could jump onto the wall, which was three feet high, making the leap a total of thirteen feet.
He would be closer to the one brother then and could pounce on him before he fired a shot at them.
One of the brothers shot at the lock on the guest room door. They had to stop the men before they reached Rory and Lacy. Frank was sure they would kill Rory and try to take Lacy with them. Ex-boyfriend stalkers could be unpredictable. They might just kill Lacy too.
The one man shot at the door lock again, and when that didn’t work, he kicked the door in.
Frank took a running leap at the upper-floor wall, praying he would land on it correctly and not miss it or overjump it.
He landed on the very top with precision like a young cougar.
He still had it in him. He growled in his fiercest manner.
Cougars silently hunted, but when aggravated or agitated, they would cry out, growl, or shriek.
He couldn’t help himself. He was madder than hell.
The brother closest to him whipped around. Everything happened so quickly after that. Florence leaped onto the wall next to Frank, and both pounced on the one brother that they could reach at the same time.
After the guest room door splintered, out came two cougars snarling and screeching, biting and clawing at the other brother. Florence and Frank might be older cougars, but they still had the fight in them, the adrenaline rushing through their veins, making them feel like much younger big cats.
Both brothers were trying to shoot the cougars, the bullets hitting the walls and ceiling. Lacy got hold of one of the brothers’ wrists and bit hard, crushing the bones. He immediately dropped the gun.
Florence bit the other brother’s right hand, having the same effect. Frank went for the brother’s throat to end this now. If he didn’t, they would have to hold them hostage until Dan could take them into custody, but the result would be the same. They would terminate them as dangerous as they were.
The one brother fell limply to the floor, and the other one did the same thing as Rory bit him in the throat.
Once the brothers were dead, the cougars were heaving with exhaustion, bloodied, but none had been shot. Frank only wished they could notify the sheriff’s office.
He nuzzled Florence, and she licked his face and leaned against him. Lacy sat down next to Rory and rubbed her face against his. Then he and she went into the guest room where they had left their clothes. They shifted, washed up, and dressed.
Likewise, Frank and Florence ran down the stairs to shift, clean up, and dress.
“Are you all right, Lacy?” Rory asked.
“Yes. Relieved, horrified, but glad it’s over with. We can’t leave them in the house. The only thing we can do is shove them out the window into the snow and retrieve the bodies when the snow melts.”
Lacy couldn’t believe her grandfather and Florence could fight that well as older cougars.
She was proud of them, but wanted to check on them after she and Rory got rid of the bodies.
She couldn’t believe how she didn’t know which brother was Timothy and which was Manning.
They were identical in every way. The only thing that might have distinguished them was their scent, but only if they wore different colognes, aftershaves, or shampoos. But they smelled just the same.
She didn’t want Florence or her grandfather to help get rid of the bodies so she went to the window in the guest room she and Rory weren’t using and opened it. “We need to dump them here.”
“Right.” Rory helped her move one of the bodies through the room, lifted him to the windowsill, and shoved him out. He fell into the snow and sank several feet.
When they went back to retrieve the other body, Frank and Florence were trying to move him. “We’ve got this,” Rory said.
Lacy was glad that he didn’t want them to help. She could see them putting their backs out of whack.
Then she and Rory carried the last body into the bedroom and tossed him out where he landed in the snow and, due to the softness, sank a couple of feet. The snow was still coming down and they would soon be buried completely, which worked for them.
“How did they get in?” Frank asked.
“They were in our guest room.” Rory headed out of the other guest room and pulled the door open to their room.
Lacy expected the window to be broken, but it wasn’t.
She went over to the window and pulled it up.
It wasn’t locked. “When could they have unlocked it? Oh, damn, there’s the trellis on top of the snow and next to the window.
They moved it to the window and used it to navigate over the snow.
But again all the windows were locked, weren’t they? ”
“They were,” Florence said.
“But earlier they broke into the house and knocked the Christmas tree down a second time.” Frank peered out the window at the trellis. “They could have gone upstairs and unlocked the window so they could return later without breaking it and alerting us.”
“We had already smelled their scent in the guest room so we weren’t alerted that they had been there again,” Lacy said.
“Right. I’m just glad they didn’t come through the window when we were sleeping,” Rory said.
“No, they waited until after we were downstairs, probably until the light was off in the upstairs part of the house, indicating we had moved to the lower floor,” Frank said.
At least Lacy was glad they were safe now from the threat.
The next morning, Florence woke to her phone’s ringtone and picked up her phone from the bedside table. They had phone service!
Dan was calling.
“Hello, we finally have phone service! The brothers are dead.”
“At the house?” Dan asked.
“In the mountain of snow out back,” she said.
“The blizzard has stopped, snow has stopped. We’re clearing the roads, and we’ll be at your place before long. Is everyone safe?”
“We are. No one was injured in the fight.”
“Okay, we’ll retrieve the bodies when we’re able. Tell Rory we’re clearing the road to the ranch also. I guess now you don’t need any more protection,” Dan said.
“No, we’re good. I’ll be opening the coffee shop as soon as the roads are cleared.”
“All right. See you later.”
Frank was sitting up in bed. “Was that Dan?”
“Yeah, it sure was. The blizzard has stopped. I thought there was an eerie quietness.”
“Yeah, we’ve been listening to that howling wind for so long, I didn’t realize it had ceased.” Frank climbed out of bed.
A knock on the door made them both jump a little. They smiled at each other. “Yes?” Florence called out.
“We’ve got cell service,” Rory said. “Hal just called. The roads are still impassible, so he told me to stay here until they’re cleared. I told him we got rid of the threat.”
Florence and Frank had finished dressing, went to the door, and opened it. “Dan called and told us they’re clearing the roads now, but that it will be a while before they reach the ranch,” Florence said.
“Yeah, we figured that. The guys are using a couple of snow machines to clean up the parking area and the drive onto the ranch.”
“I bet they’re missing you.” Lacy began making bacon and eggs.
Frank got the coffee, and Florence served orange juice to everyone. “How are you feeling, Rory?”
“Better already, just knowing the snow will be cleared away.”
Then they heard snowplows, whooped and hollered, left their untouched breakfast on the dining room table, and looked out the front windows.
Two snowplows were moving snow off the main road. One reached Florence’s driveway and began shoveling it.
“Yes!” Florence said. “I have a snowblower. Once the snowplow is gone, we can use it to clear the area next to the garage door, and then we’ll clean off your truck.”
“See? They’re already ready for us to leave,” Rory joked.
Everyone laughed.
“It will be a while before they clear the road all the way to the ranch,” Florence said. “And we love having your company. This has been a real treat for us.”
“I agree,” Lacy said. “Except for Rory getting claustrophobic, it’s been delightful.”
Rory smiled and kissed Lacy. “For sure.”
Then they all sat down to eat breakfast before donning their winter clothes and heading outside with ice and snow scrapers, the snowblower, and snow shovels.
Florence and Frank were using snow brushes to push the heavy snow off Rory’s pickup while Rory was using the snowblower to clear a path on either side of the truck and in front of it where the snowplow couldn’t go.
Then he was working on the walkway to the front door and the front porch.
Lacy scraped away the snow and ice on the windshield.
Dan, Stryker, Travis, Ricky, and Chase arrived to retrieve the brothers’ bodies.
“What are you going to do with them?” Florence asked.
“How were they killed?” Dan asked.
“Cougar attack,” Rory said.