Chapter 10 #2
The barn had gone from spark to the furnaces of hell in the space of five minutes. Why hadn’t he yelled for Griffin or Landon—
But no, he had to follow his dog’s warning bark, open the barn door, and then the entire world lit up.
Because he was an idiot.
And maybe not thinking straight. Keely’s song took all the space in his brain. The haunting, beautiful sound of her voice reached in and stole his breath.
He’d barely had the presence of mind to clap. And hadn’t a clue why he had to leave.
Just found himself outside, following Caspian, all the way to the barn, and who knew what he’d been thinking—
The back draft lit the entire back of the barn, bursting to life from whatever ember had been sizzling.
If he didn’t move fast, they’d lose the livestock, if not their winter fuel supply.
Never mind the firewood—the fire already gnawed at it.
Flames crawled up the far wall, into the haymow, toward the roof.
Smoke gathered at the peak, some three stories up, not as thick there, but the entire building could be called tinder.
He opened the first stall, found a milking cow, grabbed her halter, and pulled her out of the pen.
Voices and shouting. He let the cow go and turned to the next pen.
Griffin ran in and opened a horse stall. As Dawson ran the cow outside, Abe and Landon led out a couple more blindfolded horses.
A few other men herded the goats.
Dawson herded out a pig, turned, and spotted Oliver shouting. And next to him, Keely, her face wrecked.
Yeah, well, him too.
“Woolly!” shouted Oliver, now crying.
The stupid llama.
A couple women stumbled out, carrying chickens, lungs racking. The birds landed, scattered into the night.
The community’s entire livelihood lived in the barn.
He spotted a few men with shovels throwing snow on the outside of the barn. Too little, too late.
Get the llama.
He shoved his mouth into the front of his jacket and plowed back into the barn.
The stalls hung open, with even the sheep being herded out by a few of the teenage boys.
He hugged the wall, heat pouring out of the building, crackling and snapping overhead.
He chanced a look—flames crawled across the rafters, the hay blazing.
Only moments before the roof crashed down.
A loud, shrill sound bit through the chaos—he’d call it llama in distress—and he headed for the animal at the end of the barn.
As he got closer, he noted the open back door—maybe why the entire barn hadn’t gone inferno when he opened the front door, despite the woosh of air.
Woolly Bully circled, frantic in its stall. Dawson reached for the metal latch.
The gate opened, and the llama burst through, slamming the gate on Dawson’s body, his legs.
Pain shattered through his knee. He stumbled, tripping, and slammed into the dirt.
He landed on a body. What—? He turned, and in the light—half in the next stall—Donald lay unconscious, blood pooled around his head. No, no—
Please, just unconscious.
“Donald!” Dawson scrambled to his feet, the flames overhead dropping in small sizzles. “Donald!”
The guy wasn’t so big that Dawson couldn’t carry him, a different day, a different time. But now . . .
C’mon, God. Be on my side.
He rolled Donald over, spotted a terrible gash, then hauled him up under his shoulders and wrestled him out of the stall.
“Help!”
The fire ate his words, his knee buckled, and he fell, Donald half on him.
He struggled out from under him. “C’mon!” Finding his feet, he kept pulling—a fiery drip nearly hit him, sizzled in the dirt—
Don’t. Look. Up.
“Don!” The shout came from behind him, and in a moment, Griffin and another man were there, lifting Donald’s legs, two more on each arm, and Dawson let go to allow them to shuttle him out of the building.
He stumbled after them, out into the frigid night, sweating, coughing, bending over to grab his knee.
His gut clenched, the world shaking around him. He breathed out, hard.
River caught up to them, following the men into the lodge.
Dawson spit on the ground—black—then wiped his face. His hand trembled. He fisted it, stood up.
Around the yard, community members herded the animals into storage garages and even houses, the biting wind turning the world brutally silent, save the fire and the wind.
Shouting erupted, and a small cadre of men—maybe women too—emerged from a storage building. A couple men held a pump between them, running hard in the blizzard toward the lake. Others carried hoses.
Clearly, they had a drill. A plan.
He stood back as the group with the hoses made quick work of setting up the pump, plunging the hoses into the lake, right at the open source where he’d gone in, then attaching the pieces and rolling the hoses out to the barn.
Less than a minute later, water sprayed the barn.
The spectacle stopped him a moment, the splash of the water landing over him, pellets of ice, the mist glistening against the fire, caught in a swirl of blizzard winds, snow peppering the air. Sparks shifted onto the street, the crackle and snap of the flames against the roar of the wind.
The entire village could have burned.
If it weren’t for Caspian . . .
Sweat layered his back, and his knees wanted to buckle again, but he managed to head over to the lodge, grip the railing, haul himself inside.
They’d cleared a table, set Donald on it, and River had him on his side as he coughed hard.
Abe looked over at Dawson, left his spot at the table. “How’d you know?” He advanced, almost angry, and Dawson held up his hands.
“I didn’t—I went outside after Keely’s song, and Caspian freaked out. Went to the barn and opened the door and whoosh! I wouldn’t have seen Donald, except, I got the llama—” Oh sheesh, now he even sounded like an idiot. He put his hands down. “I didn’t know—How is he?”
Dawson pushed past Abe, went to the table. Donald lay on his back, still coughing. River held a bandage to his head, taking it off now and again to examine it. Blood covered his face, his shirt, his hands.
His knuckles were torn. “You were in a fight.”
Donald coughed, nodded. “I went outside to get one of Wren’s kitties.
I thought maybe it would help her feel better.
But then the light . . . went . . . on—” His body racked, and he curled over and spit into a cloth.
Black phlegm. Then he leaned back again, and River pressed her fingers to his neck, checking his pulse.
He breathed in, cleared his throat. Eyed Dawson.
“It’s a battery-operated motion detector.
I went outside—I thought maybe wolves, I don’t know.
I didn’t see any, so I went inside to check, and of course the stupid llama was shrieking. ”
He closed his watering eyes, squeezed, and moisture escaped.
Then he cleared his throat again. “I didn’t see him.
I heard a sound, and turned, and he came at me with a knife.
I hit it away, but he wasn’t giving up easy.
We went around a few times—he finally hit me with a shovel and that’s all I remember. ”
“You probably have a concussion,” River said.
“He set the barn on fire,” Dawson said. “Why?”
Donald wore a sort of horror on his face.
Griffin had something fierce, almost accusatory in his expression.
Oh no. It couldn’t be . . . “What did he look like?”
Donald spit out more black phlegm. “Beard, winter clothes. I don’t know—it was dark.”
Why burn down their barn?
A few of the female community members had returned inside, some of them in the kitchen, a couple of them herding their children back to their rooms.
Oliver sat on the bench by the door, clutching a kitten.
Wait. Where was Keely?
And suddenly, the terror in the woods, the shooter, the snow machine thief rose, and oh, he was an idiot.
He stalked over to Oliver, sank down on the bench, tried to keep his voice easy. “Hey. Have you seen Keely?”
The kid seemed shocked, trembling. Yeah, well him too. “She told me to go inside. She was helping Aurora Benson take Woolly down to their barn.”
Of course she was. “Where’s the Bensons’ barn?”
“Next door to our house—end of the street.”
Dawson got up and headed outside, nearly fell down the front stairs, his stupid knee suddenly stiff and angry.
The fire crew had moved inside the barn, hitting the flames hard with the spray.
Outside, the blizzard seemed to be winning, the howl of the wind and the brutality of the ice causing the shovelers to abandon their efforts to save the outside of the structure, but maybe it had worked, because the fire seemed to be dying out.
The flames inside the barn had also died.
Darkness clouded the street.
He nearly slipped again as he reached the slick street, but found his footing, heart pounding, and crashed slash ran through the deepening layers toward the end.
Lights flickered on as he passed—clearly the same motion-detecting devices.
At the end, luminescence pooled out into the snowy street, the icy particles like flies in the glow.
He picked up his pace, through puddles of gold, the wind moaning in the darkness beyond.
The last house seemed a little bigger than the others, although still a cabin, with a wide front porch and big windows. Behind it, a glow emerged from a small barn, and he pounded through a snow-covered path toward it.
He stomped at the threshold and pulled open the sliding door.
The llama stood, secured to an old open stall by its halter lead. Grunting sounds emanated from the space. “Keely?”
A head popped up. A woman wearing a knitted cap, with long dark hair, frowned at him. “No. She’s back at the lodge. I think.”
He just turned and headed back out to the snow. Because it made terrible, disastrous sense.
Start a fire. Bring out the community.
In the chaos, snatch Keely and vanish with her into the forest.
He picked up his pace, ignoring the burn in his knee. “Keely!” The blizzard ate his voice. Just the faintest light pulsed from the barn.
He’d never find her. Not if Thornwood had grabbed her, dragged her out into the night. Standing in front of the barn, he looked past it, into the forest, then out to the lake, where the crew now hauled in the hoses, just an outline in the darkness.
“Keely!”
The wind gobbled up his voice. “Keely—”
“Here! I’m here!” The voice emerged faint on the wind, but enough, and he turned.
She stood on the porch, thin, bracing herself in the cold, her silly white puffer jacket pulled tight around her, shivering.
His knees nearly buckled again. But he ducked his head against the wind and fought his way up the stairs. She stepped back, like he might be a polar bear charging.
Maybe.
He stopped in front of her, looking down at her. His heart caught, roaring in his ears. It slowed, and he took a breath. Another. “You okay?”
She nodded. “Why?”
Oh, maybe she didn’t need to know—He blew out his breath, shook his head, looked at the barn, back to her.
She tucked her arms close to herself and shivered again. “Can we go inside?”
And in her question, he heard “Could the warmth we found in the cold be ours to keep?”
Yes, maybe.
He met her eyes, his voice shaking. “What was that?”
She stared at him, caught her breath. “What—”
“That song in there. That . . . that . . . love song.”
“It was just a song—”
And maybe it was anger, or panic, or even . . . a painful, deep longing inside, but it all stormed out of him. “Not a chance, Bliss. That wasn’t any pop song. That was . . . that was . . .”
“Real?”
The way she said it, soft and almost a question, shouldn’t have had the power to rock him back, but . . . a boulder lay in his throat, maybe his chest.
He nodded. “Maybe. It could be real, right?” He backed her up to the lodge wall without realizing it and braced a hand over her shoulder.
Wow, she was pretty. In the light of the porch lights, the gold in her eyes shone, sparkled, and he thought he recognized hope in them.
Probably reflecting his own.
Aw. His gaze traced her face. “If I kiss you again, are you going to run away?”
“Where am I going to run?” She reached up and tucked her bare fingers into his jacket lapels. “You have me trapped.”
He smiled then, his heartbeat slowing, the terrible boulder dislodged. “Yes, actually, I do.” And then he kissed her.
Really kissed her. Wrapped a hand around her neck, fitted his mouth against hers, and dove in. She tasted sweet, of those incredible sugar cookies, and maybe a hint of hot cocoa, and she smelled of the lavender soap from her shower. She stepped up to him and molded her arms around his shoulders.
And kissed him back.
He might have made a sound, because he felt the rumble deep inside, raking through him. It only lit to flame the fire he’d been trying to douse all day, especially since hearing her story.
No, he wasn’t remotely interested in just being her friend.
He’d take hero, thank you. Protector. Definitely the guy who kept his promises.
Maybe even her happily ever after, but he pushed that thought away as he wrapped his other arm around her and deepened his kiss.
“What if we stayed here in the wild, where winter blows so fierce?”
Yes. Right now, yes.
He’d worry about what happened after the storm later.
Much later.