Page 56 of Guilty as Sin
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.
