Power of the Raven

Lori was unpredictable, but she had heart. As he looked at her, he felt the tug in his gut—and lower.

“Give me the flashlight, then stay close behind me,” he said, forcing his thoughts back on to safer channels. “I want to take a look around, but I don’t want you out of my sight again.”

“The police are on their way,” she said.

“Good. Just give me some room. I want to figure out what he was up to out here,” he said, walking back to the house.

Using the flashlight, and careful not to obliterate any footprints, he studied the gouges on the window.

Next, he aimed the flashlight beam toward the ground and quickly located the screwdriver. Hoping there was still a chance of recovering the man’s fingerprints, he left it on the ground and backed away.

“He tried to pry that window open,” he said, pointing. “What’s on the other side?”

“My bedroom,” she whispered in a shaky voice.

Chapter Four

A tired-looking police officer, Sergeant Elroy Chavez, responded to the call ten minutes later. Gene filled him in.

“You didn’t touch anything, right?” Sergeant Chavez asked.

“No. I figured you’d want to check for prints, but I should warn you, the guy was wearing gloves,” Gene said.

“You sure it was a man?” Chavez pressed.

Gene nodded. “I saw his shape and the way he ran.”

“It’s got to be Bud Harrington,” Lori said, looking at both men and trying hard to appear calm. Inside, she felt as if she were unraveling a little at a time. “The creep’s playing with my head, hoping to make me too scared to even go home.”

She and Gene stayed well back as the sergeant collected whatever evidence he could find and took a few photos. “This is all I can do here right now.” Sergeant Chavez looked at her, then added, “I’d advise you to stay somewhere else for a few days, or find someone to keep watch. The few officers we have available are working double shifts and dealing with a lot of extra calls. On top of that, our detectives are up to their necks investigating an organized gang of identity thieves working our area. We’re overworked at every level, so response times are really slow. You’re just lucky the guy didn’t wait until you’d gone to sleep.”

She swallowed hard. “I’ll get an alarm.”

“If it’s personal, that might just make him angrier, and still not be enough in the long run,” Sergeant Chavez said. “We’ll have extra patrols in the area tonight, but you really should consider making arrangements to stay elsewhere, at least for a while.”

“This wasn’t the work of a pro. If it had been, he wouldn’t have left one of his tools behind and risk having it somehow traced back to him,” Gene said, thinking out loud. “Taken at face value, what happened tonight makes no sense. A burglar would have waited until no one was home, or Ms. Baker was asleep. At the very least, it would have made a lot more sense to wait until after I’d left.”

“Maybe he didn’t know you were still here, but either way, none of that lessens the threat. Give some serious consideration to what I suggested,” he said, looking back at Lori.

As Sergeant Chavez walked away, Lori’s heart was hammering and her mouth was dry. Fear pounded through her with each beat of her heart. She had absolutely no idea what to do now.

“Would you like me to stick around for a few more hours?”

“Do you think he’ll come back tonight to try and finish what he started?” Her voice rose and her throat tightened.

“Normally, I’d say no, but this guy doesn’t act in a way that makes sense to me. That makes him unpredictable.”

“I won’t be getting much sleep tonight,” she said softly.

“So you’re not going to take the officer’s advice and move out for a while?”

“Move where? How can I possibly justify staying at a friend’s, knowing I could be leading danger right to their doorstep? I could go to a motel, but I’ll be endangering others there, as well.” She took a shaky breath. “But it’s more than that. Allowing fear to dictate what you do is never a good thing. You lose a piece of yourself when you do that. Can you understand?”

He nodded. “I hear you.”

As they stood by his truck, she glanced at his rifle, hung on a rack and locked in place in the cab. “How about letting me rent that from you for a few days?”

“It’s got a powerful kick. Do you think you can handle it?” He unlocked the rack and took it down. “It’s a Winchester .30-30. It’s accurate up to a couple hundred yards. Have you ever handled one before?”

“No, but how hard can it be? Point the barrel and pull the trigger. Just show me how to put bullets in it.”

He shook his head. “No, forget that. If you’ve never used one, you won’t be able to handle it, especially if you’re frightened. You’re more likely to have it taken away and used against you. Maybe someday I can bring you to my ranch and show you how to shoot, but without any training you’re far more likely to hurt yourself or a neighbor. Bullets travel far and have a way of hitting unintended targets. That’s why rifles, by and large, are too dangerous in urban areas.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” she said. “I need to think of something else.”

As she looked at him she had to bite back a sigh. She would have loved hiring him as a guard. Gene was tall, his shoulders broad, his chest muscular. Having a man like him beside her would have practically guaranteed the safety of everything but her heart.

Nothing about Gene was ordinary. His skin was the color of warm caramel, but it was his dark eyes that attracted her the most. Despite his strength, they mirrored only gentleness.

Trying to focus on something safer, she pointed to the braided leather bridle that hung on a hook in the back of the pickup’s cab. “That’s beautiful.”

“That belongs to Grit, my brother Paul’s horse. Our foster father left the animal to him. Grit’s a handful, and Paul’s as stubborn as they come, so those two have a minor war going on now. In all fairness, Grit doesn’t make life easy for anyone. I left the bridle too close to his stall, so he bit through it. I had to have a section replaced.”

“It sounds like he’s going to take careful handling.”

“Grit has problems,” he said, nodding. “So far, I’m the only one who can ride him. Grit’s an old rodeo horse that was about to be sold to a slaughterhouse when my foster father found him. Hosteen Silver never had a problem with Grit, but the horse wouldn’t accept any other rider, not without a showdown.”

“You’re good with horses, I take it?”

“For the most part, yeah,” he said without any false modesty. “Horses, like people, have different temperaments. Each one requires individual attention. Grit enjoys hassling my brothers and me,” he said. “It’s like a game for him.”

“I love animals. I don’t know where my life’s going to eventually lead me, but I’m sure of one thing. Animals are going to be part of the picture.” She wanted the conversation to continue forever. She liked hearing him talk and didn’t want him to go.

As they stood by his truck, Lori noticed Gene’s own reluctance to say good-night. Looking into his eyes, she realized that he was worried about her. The knowledge sent a pleasant rush of warmth through her.

“It’s really getting late. You better call it a day. I’ll be fine,” she said at last. “Sergeant Chavez promised extra patrols in the area.”

“Stay away from the windows and keep my phone number handy. I’m just a call and probably fifteen minutes away.”

Lori went back inside and made sure the door was locked and bolted. Still scared, she went into the kitchen, and taking an armful of pots and pans, stacked them near the windows and the doors. If anyone tried to break in, the pans would fall and make a dreadful racket. That would buy her time to run, or hide and call the police.

Lastly, she took her large butcher knife out of the silverware drawer. She’d be sleeping with that, her flashlight and the cell phone beside her pillow tonight.

As she went into the bedroom, her thoughts drifted back to Gene. Would it have killed her to invite him to spend the night? A man like that would not only have kept the intruder away, he would have made each hour an adventure to remember.

Yet even as the thought formed, she laughed. Casual intimacy just wasn’t her style. Her heart’s needs required more than a few hours of passion. For her, it would have to be all or nothing.

Her mother and father had gone from the perfect marriage to divorce—from love to hate. The shock of learning they were splitting up, and the painful aftermath, had left its scars. She’d never settle for the kind of love that came with requirements, boundaries or time limits.