Instinctively she touched a hand to Stephen’s head, gently pushing a tuft of thick golden hair off his brow. The boy sighed again and flipped to his side in his Kansas City Royals sleeping bag.
Left alone with the stars and her worries, Dana again thought about the man named Bren. Bren. An unusual name for an unusual man. Definitely not a standard Kansas-type name. But then, she’d known from the start that Bren wasn’t from Kansas. Touching the pocket of her jeans, she remembered she had his card tucked inside. She’d kept it there, close, instead of putting it in the bottomless pit of her shoulder bag.
He’d said he’d help her. She’d been taught not to ask for help. It was going to be a long, lonely night. Or so she thought.
A creaking noise off in the distance grass made Dana’s head come up. A prickling of fear, like needles hitting the center of her spine, warned her that someone was nearby. She listened, her breath stopping, her eyes trying to penetrate the darkness, one hand on Stephen and the other one on the shotgun lying next to her left thigh.
Then everything shifted and moved. The night came to life as a brilliant light glistened near the farmhouse. A minute later an acrid smell drifted out over the prairie.
Fire. Someone was trying to burn what remained of her house!
Grabbing the shotgun, Dana pulled up out of the tent like a madwoman. “Hey, you—”
Her words were cut off by the shots that rang out into the night. Only, Dana hadn’t fired her gun yet.
Rolling back inside the tent, she hushed the now-wide-awake Stephen. “Stay down and stay quiet. Somebody’s trying to shoot us!”
Stephen buried himself inside his sleeping bag, his breath coming in great, scared huffs as his body rocked against the ground in a nervous fidget. “Dana?”
“I’m right here, sport. Just do what you’re doing. Stay hidden and don’t move.”
She watched as the fire grew stronger, leaping and dancing like a laughing demon toward the front of the house. Aiming her gun at anything, hoping to scare the intruders away, she pulled the trigger and waited for the old shotgun’s kick to bruise her shoulder. The lone shot exploded into the night. Dana sucked in the smell of gunpowder with each deep, frantic breath she took.
Then she took one long breath and shouted, “Get off my land!”
Silence from the intruder, hissing from the hungry fire.
Dana tried to raise up again, and another bullet whizzed by, this one coming from a closer angle. Stephen’s muffled cry only added to her own solid fear.
“What do you want?” Dana shouted to the wind.
A harsh laugh echoed through the night, but Dana got no answers to her question. Since Dana already had a sick inkling of who she was dealing with, the silence made her more mad than scared, even though deep down inside she knew she should be afraid.
“Leave us alone,” she called. “Can’t you just leave us alone!”
Dana heard laughter, then footfalls, as if someone were running away. Then only the hissing of the fire as it snaked up the porch railings.
A sick feeling shot through Dana’s stomach, making her want to retch. All sorts of horrible images ran through her mind. These people were mad! This wasn’t just kids out for kicks, and this certainly wasn’t a faith-abiding church like the one she’d always known. Caryn had threatened Stephen earlier and now Dana supposed she had sent her thugs to act on that threat. She had to find out if the other woman was doing this, and she had to keep Stephen safe.
“If it’s the land, you can have it,” she whispered, wishing she hadn’t been so direct yesterday with the crazed woman. But she had to wonder if there wasn’t something more here. Why would Caryn taunt her with threats against Stephen? She’d purposely pulled him out of school to avoid such teasing and taunts. These people didn’t even know Stephen.
Oh, God. Oh, God. Help us, please. She clutched Stephen close, soothing his keening cries with a murmured whisper. “It’s okay. I won’t let anyone hurt you.” She thought about calling for help on her cell phone, but realized it would take the volunteer firemen at least fifteen minutes to get here.
When she was sure it was safe, Dana pulled her brother’s covers off his head. “I’ve got to put out the fire, Stevie. Can you stay here?”
“No.”
Afraid to leave him alone, but even more afraid to take him out in the open, she wrapped an arm around him. “We’re going to crawl through the grass to the house.”
“Okay,” he said, this new challenge temporarily calming his earlier fears.
“We need to stop that fire from spreading,” she explained. She saw his eyes in the moonlight, saw the fear mirrored there inside him. “Stevie, you have to be brave. We’re going to get away from here and go to the sheriff.”
“Okay,” came the feeble reply. “I’ll be brave. Stephen can be brave.”
“Okay,” Dana echoed, the shotgun clutched close. “Stay low and stay right beside me,” she said as she inched her way out of the tent, belly-crawl fashion. The going was slow, and the fire was fast. The wind picked up, causing Dana to urge Stephen on beside her. Determined, she struggled to her feet, pulling Stephen up with her to run the last few yards. By the time they made it to the house, the whole remainder of the front porch was on fire. If she could only find the water hose.
They made it to the side of the house where a long spigot ran from the well to underneath the porch steps. Dana always kept a hose connected there to wash mud and dirt from their work boots.
Out of breath, her nerves tingling with fear and worry, she slid up the wall, still clutching her brother, spitting away the grass and dirt they’d gathered on the way. Behind them, the fire hissed and curled, its wrath causing beams to pop and aged frames to cave in like kindling.
“It’s all right, sport,” she said on a windy breath. “All I have to do is turn the water on and we can wash down most of the porch. Maybe we can save it.”
She stood, looking around to make sure the intruders were gone. Then she groped for the long thick noose of the hose, searching in the dark for the fat coil of rubber. Her hands reached out to emptiness. They’d disconnected the hose. It was nowhere in sight.
Above them, the fire rose up, triumphant in its snap-happy victory. The sound of bursting glass shattered the night, and Dana watched as the blue lace curtains of her parents’ bedroom curled and crumbled, too dainty, too delicate, to survive the heat of the angry, leaping flames.
Chapter Three
“So you’re telling me that you can’t do anything to help me?”
Dana looked at the robust face of Sheriff Horace Radford and wondered why she’d even bothered to drive over the speed limit, straight to his house about five miles up the road, and pull him out of what looked like a sound sleep. The man didn’t seem to care one way or the other about all the happenings out on her land.
Remembering how he’d only shrugged and told her how sorry he was about Otto when she’d talked to him yesterday after the tornado, she wished the man hadn’t been reelected. She certainly hadn’t voted for him. Oh, he’d promised her a full investigation, but having a tornado drop down on his town’s doorstep had given him a pretty good excuse to sit on his hands. But having her house deliberately burned to the ground meant Dana didn’t have the same luxury.
“It’s all gone, Sheriff,” she said now, her voice still and resigned. “And I found this note underneath my windshield wipers.”
She read aloud the cryptic note. “‘You have something that belongs to us. Until we find it, watch out for your brother.’” The note had ended