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“Younger men, younger women, they could get there,” he argued.
“The last time that happened, the fools were killed!” Catherine reminded him.
“They were drunk.”
“I’m not going to stand here in this weather and argue with you,” she said with asperity. “I don’t believe someone’s there.”
“It’s not as secure as you want to believe,” he told her. He’d said it before, but Catherine hadn’t wanted to hear it then, and she certainly didn’t want to hear it now.
“What kind of fire? How big?”
“Big enough to see.”
“The house? The cottage?”
Earl slowly shook his head.
“I’m going back inside. Maybe you just imagined it.”
Earl stood stolidly silent. Catherine waited him out, refusing to give in to his theory, even though she believed it.
He turned back to his truck, and Catherine watched him leave.
The terrible part was, she was pretty sure she knew who was out there, who’d caused the fire. But why? What was he doing there? What did he hope to find?
As Earl backed down the drive and then drove away, Catherine stepped to the edge of the gate, craning her neck to try and glimpse the fire. Unless she went back for the key to unlock the gates her view was limited as it was impossible to see anything from inside the Siren Song grounds.
Was he burning something?
Shivering, she turned back toward the house, sinking with her first step deep into the snow above the flagstone path and slipping . . . slipping....
Savvy drove coolly and carefully, fighting the urge to press her foot to the accelerator. The roads were snow covered, but with her four-wheel drive she felt secure. If there was enough buildup across the Coast Range, she would have to put on her chains, but in the city the snow had been patchy, with stretches of bare pavement where the snow melted as fast as it came down.
She was hungry. Again. Even with the worry gnawing at her insides, she needed to eat. Car
efully, she snapped open her glove box and pulled out an energy bar. She had a bottle of water handy and several more behind her seat, but she wasn’t going to drink more than a few swallows at a time. There was the issue of her bladder.
She exhaled, calming her nerves. She’d banished thoughts of Kristina and what had happened to her to a very distant corner of her mind, the only way she could make this drive safely.
Behind her, to the east, the Cascade Range was getting buried in snow, but she was heading west onto the Coast Range, where the highest point was still lower in altitude than most of the peaks in the Cascades. She was nearing the halfway point, but that didn’t mean this was going to be a picnic. In fact . . .
She swept in a harsh breath, her hands involuntarily squeezing the steering wheel, as a contraction took her over, and for a moment she felt suspended in pain.
So hard! Labor? No.
That wasn’t right . . . was it?
She checked her watch. Eight thirty.
No. She was not in labor. Not yet. Not now.
She waited, half convinced her own anxiety had brought on the contraction. Her mind was just beginning to move away from that fear, her attention back on the road, when another wave rolled through her, hard, wrenching, producing sweat, and she found herself holding her breath, waiting desperately for it to pass. Then her brain clicked in, and she quickly started panting like she’d seen in those natural birth videos and every movie where some woman was having a baby.
“God . . .”
It wasn’t true. It wasn’t true.
Her hands were slick with sweat on the wheel. Timing. Life was all about timing, and this . . . this . . . bad timing couldn’t be happening. No . . . way.
