God, was he thinking of rings? He dragged one hand around the collar of his coat.
He wasn’t going to say anything. That would be stupid. He would wait. He had time. The cattle were fed and watered. The horses and goats were in their stalls for the night. The hens and their damned rooster were battened down. Wolly was...
Wolly was staring out into the night, hackles raised and lips drawn back over shining teeth.
Josh’s fingers twitched. Slowly, he released the belt loop around his knife and let the sturdy wooden handle fill his palm. He had left the rifle in the house. Maybe Adelyn...No, she wouldn’t know how to use it. She’d seemed taken aback by the workings of the shower massager.
Could be one of the usual valley critters, nosing around, but Wolly had a good bark for all those. This was something else. Josh faded back from the revealing brightness of the stable light.
He wasn’t letting anything—or anyone—near Adelyn.
Giving Wolly the stay signal and a hard stare, Josh crept toward the trees, staying out of the reach of the lights.
The quiet of a winter night in the wilds of Oregon had a particular tone, like the silence after a bell was rung, clean and clear. Tonight, a jangled tension—and not just his own—raised the hair on the back of his neck. Something was off.
When everything had been going so right. The coincidence seemed suspicious.
Despite his steady grip, the knife was cold in his hand. And still it wasn’t as cold as the blood in his veins. He had never killed a man, but whoever had bound and burned Adelyn might very well be the first.
The pine needles bent silently under his boots as he threaded between the blackjacks. The moon had not yet risen but the starlight on the remains of the snow gave the scene a ghostly, night-vision cast.
Strangely, he caught the first glimpse out of the corner of his bad eye, but he didn’t have time to wonder about that. He was expecting a man, so when the shape scuttled low, waist-high, and broad, he was almost relieved. A grumpy bear wouldn’t be so hard to run off.