A Little Night Muse(35)

                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.