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“M-my keys.” He fumbled at his side with his good hand and found the truck keys in his jeans’ pocket. “Two miles…out of town. Right on the church road…ten, eleven miles to the old corn crib and north past the Peters place. K-Keifer…knows.”
And then the light in the room faded and darkness enveloped him as he listened to the soft murmur of voices too distant to hear.
CHAPTER THREE
KEIFER KNOWS, Matthews had said as he’d awkwardly tossed Abby his set of keys.
The boy knew what? How to get home? Knew about something that had to be done?
His father had certainly had quite a reaction to the Demerol…first exhibiting drowsiness and dizziness, then signs of respiratory depression. Coupled with his nausea, he’d been one sick puppy.
During her years in nursing Abby had rarely seen that level of response.
And now Abby was facing his son—a boy masking his obvious fear and confusion with a veneer of arrogance—who really, really didn’t think he wanted to go with her, anywhere.
Pale and slender with close-cropped strawberry-blond hair and a dusting of freckles over his upturned nose, she wanted to reassure him with a hug. Fat chance.
The difference between him and the rowdy Reynolds boys—who’d gone home with their mother an hour ago—was night and day. The Reynolds were exuberant, mischievous, with a penchant for noise and trouble. This boy sat glaring silently at her as if she planned to kidnap him and sell him into child slavery.
It wasn’t a surprise, though. Keifer had only seen his dad for a few minutes before the helicopter left, and the man had been ghost-pale and too groggy to make any sense. That alone must have been scary.
“Honey, your dad just had a little reaction to the pain medicine,” Abby said gently. “He needs to have those cuts fixed on his arm, and then he’ll probably be back here tomorrow. If they want to keep him longer, I’ll take you up there to see him, okay?”
Keifer didn’t quite meet her eyes, and his mumbled response might have been a yes or no.
“In the meantime, I told your dad I’d take care of you. I’d been thinking that you could just come home with me, but he gave me directions to his place. Do we need to go there?”
Keifer’s chin jerked up and he gave her a level, challenging stare. “Chores.”
“Like, dogs maybe? Cats?” The boy didn’t answer, but feeding and watering a few pets wouldn’t be hard. She took Ethan’s keys out of the pocket of her lab jacket. “What time of day does he do these chores?”
“All day.”
“You mean, several times a day?” Abby looked up at the clock. “I imagine he took care of everything earlier this morning. We could go out now and get it done, then get back to town for a late supper.”
That earned her a derisive glance, but at least the kid followed her out to her car. He surveyed the vehicle with a dubious expression before hiking a thumb toward a battered pickup with big, big tires and a hydraulic winch mounted on the grill. “You should take Dad’s.”
It looked huge. It probably had a standard transmission. And driving it, she suspected, would be like maneuvering a bulldozer. “My car will be fine. Hop in.”
Keifer slumped in his seat, glued to the door, and folded his arms over his chest. She finally gave up trying to engage him in conversation when she turned off the main highway onto a loose gravel lane through stands of pine and hardwoods.
Heavy gray dust boiled up behind the car during the endless miles to the corn crib Ethan had mentioned…which, she hoped, was that small structure just ahead. Tipping drunkenly into a maple tree, it could have just been an old shed.
A dirt road veered off into the trees a dozen yards past the rickety building, but there were no street signs or mailboxes anywhere. In fact, she hadn’t seen signs of life for the past five miles.
“Okay, sport,” she said after stopping the car. “Is this where we turn?”
Keifer slumped lower in his seat. “Maybe.”
“We’ve come the right way so far?”
He craned his neck to peer out the window and shrugged.
“You’ve never been here?” Surprised, she turned to look at him.
“It was dark when I got here last night,” he said defensively. “And we were going the other direction this morning. I don’t remember from last year.”
Last year? What kind of dad only saw his son once a year? Her opinion of Ethan Matthews dropped. “That’s okay. We’ll figure it out.” She drummed her fingernails on the steering wheel, considering. “What do you think—should we take a chance on this little road?”
“I guess. I just remember it was kinda muddy.”
A description that fit the farm lane quite well from what she could see after they made the turn. Leaning forward to see ahead better, she negotiated the ruts and bumps of the first mile, then breathed a sigh of relief as the road started to climb.
The tumbledown house off to the left might be the Peters place Ethan had mentioned. And ahead…
“Is that it?” She pointed across a shallow valley to fenced pasture. Beyond that lay a collection of buildings nearly hidden by a grove of trees.
Keifer straightened in his seat to see over the dash. “There’s Buddy, Dad’s horse. The cows are prob’ly over the hill. And the goats—”
“The goats?”
“Three. They’re probably in the garden.”
“I’ll bet your dad wants them in there,” Abby said dryly.
“Not really, but he can’t make them stay out,” Keifer announced with relish, his mouth curved in a faint, smug smile. “They can get out of anything, he says. Baxter’s real mean.”
As she drove down the next slope, the mud grew deeper, grabbing at the tires and pulling the vehicle to one side. An ominous stretch of deeply rutted road lay between them and the Matthews place ahead.
She debated briefly, then gunned the motor and held the steering wheel in a death grip as the car shot forward. Halfway there. Three quarters…
The vehicle slowed as it sank deeper and deeper until it mired down with its wheels spinning uselessly and mud flying into the air behind them.
“Shoulda taken the truck,” Keifer observed, darting an I-told-you-so look at her.
“We might still be all right. Don’t worry just yet.” Abby unbuckled her seat belt and opened her door. The car was buried to its frame. “Okay. Now we can worry.”
The bright afternoon sunshine had gradually disappeared behind clouds during the past half hour. Her cell phone reception was mostly just static.
And the only towing service in the area was back at Blackberry Hill, though she’d overheard a disgruntled nurse complain that the owner often quit early and went fishing.
And she was almost sure she’d seen a truck emblazoned with Mel’s Towing ahead of her car as she’d driven out of town.
SOMEWHERE BETWEEN the car and the next dry stretch of road, Keifer lost a tennis shoe in the mud and Abby realized her taupe slacks and loafers were a total loss.
By the time she and the boy trudged up the last hill—which was much farther away than it had appeared from the other side—and reached the Matthewses’ mailbox, thunder echoed through the dark sky and bolts of lightning shook the ground beneath their feet.
“Run, Keifer!” Abby shouted over the rising wind. “I’ve got a key for the house.”
“Dad doesn’t lock it anyway!” he shouted back to her.
Even minus a shoe, he raced up the long driveway and reached the covered porch well before she did.
Soaked and shivering, she joined him at the log house and stared out at the deluge. “Well, this is certainly an adventure,” she said, wishing she dared put a comforting arm around his thin shoulders. “But at least we got here, right?”
He must have sensed her thoughts, because he pointedly moved a few yards away. He looked down at his muddied sock and some of his tough-kid veneer slipped away. “Mom is gonna kill me when she hears about my shoe.”
“Surely that won’t be a big deal. Not when she hears the whole story, right?”
When he didn’t answer, she grinned at him. “Anyway, you’re here with your dad for the summer. I’m sure he’ll get you another pair if we can’t find it.”
“I guess.”
“I suppose we’d better go inside, don’t you think? You can put on some dry clothes, and I’ll call for a tow truck. Then you can tell me about the animals we should feed while we wait for help.”
She followed Keifer to the end of the wrap-a-round porch, where a side door led into the kitchen. It felt strange walking into Ethan Matthews’s house with him away.
Several bloodied towels still lay on the counter by the sink, a macabre reminder of Ethan’s accident earlier in the day. She quickly filled the double sinks with cold water and put the towels in to soak while Keifer changed upstairs.
By the time he returned, she’d mopped up the rest of the evidence of Ethan’s injury and had left a message for the towing service. “I should call the sheriff and let him know about the road hazard, too. I’d hate to have anyone rear-end my car in the dark.”
“No one lives back here but Dad,” Keifer said as he rummaged in the cookie jar on the counter.
Now, there was an eerie thought, with a storm rumbling overhead and the kitchen lights flickering. “No one?”
“The road dead-ends just over the hill, so no one ever comes out this far, Dad says. That’s why I can ride his horse all over and he doesn’t worry.”
“Oh.” Feeling a sudden chill, she rubbed her upper arms. “So he doesn’t have any neighbors?”
“He doesn’t want neighbors.”
Well, that certainly fit her impression of the man. A stubborn recluse, who clearly resented any sort of interference from others—even with a serious injury to contend with. Abby suddenly felt very sorry for Keifer, who faced an entire summer in such isolation. “So…we’re entirely alone, then.”
“Yeah.” Keifer didn’t look too concerned. “Dad likes it because—”
He broke off suddenly as a fierce rumble of thunder shook the house. He hurried to the window. “Holy cow. The animals are loose!”
She went to look out the window, too. Her heart sank. There had to be four or five cows milling just beyond the chain-link-fenced perimeter of the yard.
Her heart sank even further when at least three goats and several muddy sheep wandered by. “Where are they supposed to be?” she said faintly. “And how on earth will we put them back?”
He looked up at her, his cocky bravado now gone and his eyes wide. “I think I know where they belong, but I don’t know how to make them go there.”
So in minutes those animals could be spread to the four winds, and there’d be little hope of finding them. And who knew how many more of them were already gone?
Matthews had been groggy when he’d handed her his keys, but she’d seen the distrust in his eyes and it had rankled ever since. For some reason he’d instantly judged her as incompetent…but who was he to judge?
She sure as heck didn’t want to prove him right.
“Wait a minute, I remember a pasture fence running along the road when we came up here, and lining both sides of the driveway. Wasn’t there a gate down by the mailbox?”
Keifer shrugged.
“If the entire property is fenced, and I can pull the gate shut across the driveway, then the livestock can’t escape. Right?”
“Maybe.” He chewed his lower lip. “But I don’t know anything about the other fences.”
“At least I’d be doing something to help.”
A gust of wind blasted the side of the house and rattled the gutters. A light tap-tap-tapping overhead rose to a deafening roar as hail battered the roof. Torrents of marble-size pellets bounced crazily off the driveway.
The livestock were clearly agitated as they disappeared into the sheltering trees. Where, she hoped, they wouldn’t find another way to leave.
“The moment this lets up I’m running down to close that gate. Stay here in the house. Promise?”
“You kidding? There’s no way I’m going out there.”
She waited until the hail stopped and the rain slowed, then grabbed a yellow slicker from a peg by the door. Outside, she crossed the yard and ran down the long, sloping lane. Slipping and sliding, she careened into a fence post once and then fell to her knees at the bottom of the hill.
With cold, wet fingers she struggled to untwist the wire that held the metal pipe gate securely open. She dragged its heavy weight shut across the rain-slick gravel just as the rain began to pick up again with a vengeance.
“Of course. Why not?” she muttered as she started back to the house, her head bowed against the wind. Nothing had been easy since she moved here, and now she and Keifer were stranded at this isolated place with no way to get back to town.
And then a long, dark shape materialized not twenty feet ahead. Its form blended like watercolor into the early dusk and driving rain, but the piercing yellow eyes were unmistakable.
She took in a sharp breath and stumbled to a stop, the hair at the back of her neck prickling. Her senses sharpened with an elemental awareness of danger. The house was too far away. There was no place to hide. She could never outrun it. The wolf took a step closer…
CHAPTER FOUR
ABBY’S HEART LODGED in her throat and her knees threatened to buckle as she stared at the wolf.
It stared back. Silent. So perfectly still that it seemed more apparition than real, its gray coat melting into the rain.
Primal fear flooded her veins with adrenaline. She took a small step backward. Another.
The wolf lifted its head, its gaze never wavering.
But there was nowhere to run.
Behind her, past the gate, Keifer had told her there were thousands of acres of government land. Even if she could scramble over the wire fence, the wolf could clear it much faster.
And running away would immediately identify her as prey.
Visions of lurid newspaper headlines rushed through her head as she took another step back.
Nursing Professor Killed By Rabid Wolf.
Stupid City Woman Killed While Roaming North Woods Of Wisconsin.
