LITMIR.BIZ

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face the fire department paramedics who were just coming through the barn, coming at a rapid jog-trot.

      “In here! He’s in here.”

      She opened the gate and held it as the EMTs—a young man she didn’t know and a woman she knew from church, a heavyset Hispanic girl named Rosie—brushed past her. As she watched them kneel beside the body and immediately check for a pulse, Brooke reached for Daniel and pulled him against her, held him snug against her front, with her arms crisscrossing his chest. She could feel him trembling and realized she was, too.

      Then time seemed to slow, and it seemed a very long time passed while she watched the two EMTs bending over the body of the man she’d once loved, once shared a bed with, still shared a child with…watched them calmly and methodically going about their business, all of them knowing it was pointless but going through with it, anyway. That strange and dreamlike feeling persisted until she heard heavy footsteps and half-turned and took a step back to make room for the sheriff’s deputies who were just arriving, and her heart sank when she saw one of them was Duncan’s partner, Lonnie Doyle.

      Of course, it would be Lonnie. This was going to hit him hard.

      “Dunk? Ah, no—ah, jeez! Ah, hell—”

      Lonnie had barreled past her and gotten close enough to what was lying on the ground being worked on by the EMTs to see who it was, and that whatever the medics were doing, it wasn’t going to be enough. She’d unconsciously braced herself but winced anyway when he jerked to a halt, then whirled on her, his fleshy face red with rage.

      “What the hell did you do? How did this happen? It was that damned cat, wasn’t it? That cat killed him—killed my partner!” His hand was at his waist, gripping the handle of his weapon. “Hell, I’m gonna take care of this right now! Right here!”

      “No—it wasn’t—” Brooke began in a desperate gasp as Daniel uttered a wounded cry and tore himself away from her, hurled himself at the cougar’s cage and spread-eagled himself across the door.

      “It wasn’t Lady’s fault! It was mine. I did something to make her mad. She didn’t mean—”

      “No—it was an accident. Just an accident. That’s all.” Breathless with fear, Brooke planted herself between her son and the man bent on exacting his own version of frontier justice. Though what she hoped to accomplish by doing so, she didn’t know. As tall as she was, every bit as tall as Lonnie, she was no match for the man and knew it. He was bullnecked, broad-shouldered and strong as an ox; even Duncan, half a head taller and in good shape himself, had always said he didn’t have a prayer of beating Lonnie Doyle in a fair fight. Plus, the man was armed. And in a rage.

      “What are you doing, man?” Al Hernandez, the other deputy, jerked at Lonnie’s arm and half spun him around.

      Lonnie shook off Al’s hand. “What I shoulda done years ago. What I told Dunk he shoulda done. Shoulda drowned that cat the day he brought it home. I told him he was crazy. And lookit what’s happened. Now I’m gonna kill that thing. I’m gonna shoot it right here and now!”

      Al touched Lonnie’s arm again. “Come on, man—”

      “Not without a warrant, you’re not.” Brooke spoke loudly and calmly, and both men jerked their heads to look at her the way they might if the cougar itself had spoken. “This animal belongs to me,” she went on, trying to keep her voice from quivering. “She is not an imminent threat to anybody now. You don’t know what happened, or how it happened. You have no cause to shoot her, and if you try, you’ll have to do it through me.”

      She saw Lonnie’s small blue eyes glitter with a dangerous light, saw his jaw jut forward in a way she’d seen it do before, and wondered if she’d gone too far. She felt Daniel creep out from behind her to stand at her side. She felt his arm slip around her waist and wished, for his sake, she could stop shaking. She braced herself as Lonnie took a threatening step toward her.

      But then Rosie came walking up, peeling off her gloves and shaking her head as she joined the two deputies. She spoke to them in a voice too low for Brooke to hear over the pounding in her head, and the two men turned and walked back to where the second EMT was packing up his gear. But not before Lonnie stabbed a finger at Brooke and said in a voice hoarse with fury, “This ain’t over, Brooke. Count on it.”

      Rosie paused, looking uncertain, then came over to Brooke and reached out to lay a hand on her shoulder. “Brooke, Daniel—I’m so sorry. We did everything we could.”

      “I know you did. It’s okay.” Brooke felt her head nodding up and down, like a mechanical toy.

      “Is there anything I can do? You want me to call Pastor Farley?”

      “Yes, thank you. I’d appreciate that,” Brooke murmured, although at that moment she didn’t want to see or talk to anyone. All she wanted was to be alone with her son in her house, where she could fix him hot dogs for dinner and pretend the past thirty minutes or so hadn’t happened. That it had all been a dream—a nightmare. She wanted desperately for it to all be a dream, a mistake, for there to be some sort of magic pill she could take to make it all go away.

      Except she knew that wouldn’t happen. And that the nightmare was just beginning.

      Numbly, she watched the EMTs pack up their gear and make their way back through the barn to their parked vehicle. Al was speaking into the radio on his shoulder, calling for a forensics team, and Lonnie went loping off to the department SUV and returned carrying a roll of yellow plastic tape. Brooke had been the wife of a law enforcement officer for seven years; she knew what it all meant.

      Her ex-husband, Daniel’s father, was dead. This was a crime scene now.

      Al finished talking into his radio and came over to where she and Daniel were standing, Daniel with his arm around her waist, still, his body rigid and straight as a post. Brooke, with her arm protectively around his shoulders, was the only one who’d know he was shaking, too. Al hauled in a breath and took on a cop’s authoritative stance, with his thumbs hooked in his belt and his chest out.

      “I’m gonna have to ask you to go on to the house now, if you wouldn’t mind. We’re gonna need to ask you some questions, but for right now, I need for you to move out of the way so we can do our job here, which is findin’ out exactly what happened. You understand? We’re gonna find out what happened to your husband.”

      My ex-husband! Brooke thought but only nodded.

      Beside her, Daniel was shaking his head violently. “No—uh-uh, I’m not leaving. If we do, you’ll shoot Lady. And it wasn’t her fault, what happened to Dad. I know it wasn’t.”

      The deputy’s stern cop face softened. He gave a little cough and said, “Now, son, nobody’s gonna shoot your cat. I’m not gonna let that happen.”

      Daniel drew himself up and squared his shoulders. “You better promise.” Brooke felt so proud, she almost smiled.

      Al Hernandez did smile. “Yeah, son, I promise. There’ll be an au—” he threw Brooke a look of apology, coughed again and said “—an investigation, and then a judge is gonna decide what to do about your cougar. Until that all happens, nobody’s gonna touch her. Okay?”

      Daniel didn’t reply, and Brooke felt the resistance in his rigid body. The distrust. Though she understood just how he felt, she tightened her hold on his shoulders, and they left the compound together.

      On the way to the house, she remembered the groceries still sitting in the truck. Daniel helped her carry them into the house and put them away, but when she asked him what he wanted for supper, he told her he wasn’t hungry. Again, she knew how he felt but poured him a glass of orange juice, anyway, and as an afterthought, poured one for herself, too.

      She pulled out a chair, and Daniel hitched himself sideways onto another, and they sat facing each other across the kitchen table, not looking directly at each other. Daniel took a cautious sip of his orange juice, then said, “I have homework.”

      Brooke

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