I heard the slam of a car door, then Ozzie’s voice barking my name across the clearing.
The next little while was a blur.
Ozzie came through the door with his weapon drawn and took in the scene in one sweep. In seconds, he’d holstered his gun and was crouched next to us, asking what happened. Through more tears and broken sentences, we explained.
More people followed. Ozzie’s colleagues and his chief. A paramedic who shone a light in Toren’s eyes and winced at the dark bruising appearing on his throat. Then, after waiting for Ozzie to take pictures of his hands, he helped Toren wash the blood off. Another handed me a blanket in deference to the cold and the fact that my sweatshirt was out in the yard, discarded after I tossed Eloise at her friends.
Ozzie ushered us out of the cabin at some point and had us sit on the porch, away from the scene inside. One of the officers came over and pulled me away to take my statement. When I glanced back at Toren, Ozzie had sat down in my place, no doubt getting Toren’s version of events.
The officer with me called my name. I turned to him and apologized, then asked him to repeat his question. For fifteen minutes, I stood there and recanted what I’d witnessed.
Finally, he flipped his notebook closed and told me to hang out over here until Ozzie was done with Toren.
I went to the barn instead and sat with the chickens.
They’d all scampered into their run when the convoy of cars showed up; some of them had come inside.
I found the treat bag and perched on the hay bale inside the roost. Plastic crinkled as I opened the bag, bringing a couple more of the birds inside. I tossed a few treats toward them. Eloise strutted up the ramp, clucking like the queen she was.
“I still want to turn you into fried chicken.” I threw a treat at her feet. “Next time, just do what I want, and I won’t have to treat you like a football.”
She clucked and came forward, then pecked at my shoe. I nudged her away, then chucked another treat at her.
Pulling my legs up, I let my head fall back against the wall. Silent tears tracked down my face. These were more from relief than anything else. I was so very happy to be sitting in the barn with the chickens, even with Eloise pecking at my shoe, and not running for my life through the woods after Deke murdered Toren and decided I was next.
It had been so very close to being a different outcome.
Squawking from the few chickens remaining outside alerted me to someone approaching. A moment later, the door into the barn opened, and Toren walked through. Without a word, he crossed to me, unlatched the screen door on the side of the roost and came inside, sitting down next to me.
Eloise walked up and right into his lap, purring.
I chuckled and rolled my eyes. “Filthy bird.”
A ghost of a smile played with his lips. “She saved my life.”
“Under duress.” I raised a hand and tipped a finger. “I blindfolded her with my hoodie, then threw her at her friends.”
He ran a hand over the chicken’s back. “The indignity.” He clucked his tongue and smiled softly, sadness still marring his expression.
His smile slowly faded, and he was quiet again, staring at Eloise as he slowly stroked her back. I let him be, having learned he would talk when he was ready.
But I wasn’t ready for what he had to say when he finally did speak.
“I thought he was going to win.” Voice low, he kept stroking Eloise’s back. “There was a moment when he had me in a stranglehold, where I felt my body quit on me.”
He stopped petting Eloise and raised his hand to look at the dried blood under his nails and in the creases of his knuckles. “But what was in my head at that moment wasn’t that I didn’t want to die.” He turned to look at me then.
The raw emotion shining in his eyes made my breath catch. All his walls were down.
“It was that I didn’t wantyouto die. All I could think was that if I lost, he’d walk out the door and find you. I couldn’t—” He stopped, looking away. Muscles worked in his jaw. “I couldn’t let that happen. I’d have torn down the gates of heaven and come back from the dead before I’d let him hurt you.”
My hands covered my mouth.Oh my…
“I told you before I wasn’t sure I could let myself love again. Losing Cara broke something in me I didn’t think I could fix.”
When he looked at me this time, the myriad of raw emotions had coalesced into something tender.
“I was wrong, Lana. So very wrong.” He reached up with his good hand and brushed a strand of hair back from my face, his rough fingers impossibly gentle.
