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She looked up and found Trent in the doorway, adjusting the waistband of his jeans.
“Well, lately I haven’t had a lot of great ones,” she muttered, wondering why he’d returned to the bedroom. “What’re you doing?”
“What does it look like?” Buttoning his jeans in the thin, watery light from the flashlight, he grinned. She tried not to notice how low his faded Levi’s hung on his hips. “I’ve decided we should stick together. We’ll check on the animals, make sure they’ve got heat, then head to the dorms.”
She hated the rush of relief that swept over her. “Sounds like a plan.”
“A bad one,” he said, “but all we’ve got.”
In the living room, by the glowing embers of the fire, they slipped into their snow gear and boots. Trent was still shrugging on his sheepskin coat as he locked the door behind them.
The snowscape was eerie and still. After days of the wind screeching through the hills, the night was deathly quiet, a half-moon glowing bright and casting everything in a silvery glow.
“That’s odd,” Trent said, eyeing the campus. “The generators should be on, but there are no lights.”
He was right: no security lighting in the buildings, no twinkling Christmas lights in the gazebo, no lampposts illuminating the paths.
Their flashlights were the only swaths of illumination visible in the night.
It was too quiet. Too still.
Fear prickled the back of Jules’s neck.
“Cut off the flashlight,” he whispered abruptly, clicking his off. As if he felt the great unlikely quietness, too. “We don’t want to be sitting ducks.”
“Where are the security patrols?” she asked.
“Good question.”
Her heart turned to ice. “I don’t like this.”
He pulled the pistol from the holster inside his jacket. “Neither do I.” He took her hand in his free one, gloved fingers linking with hers, his sidearm pointed ahead.
Wary, Jules kept her eyes on the shadows, the drifting piles of snow, the darkened corners as they trudged past several dark outbuildings, their roofs laden with snow, their windows like a myriad of ghostly reflective eyes.
Jules clung to Trent’s hand as they turned onto the path leading to the stable. Though there was no wind, the temperature was below freezing, the air frigid as she dragged it into her lungs. The frozen air had a burnt odor, as if someone has just doused a campfire.
“Do you smell that?” she said. “Is it just wood smoke?”
“Maybe.” His voice was hard.
The stable was as dark as the other buildings, but the main door was open slightly, hanging ajar. “Hell,” Trent whispered, and waved her to stand behind him as he walked inside, flicking the light switch.
Click.
No flash of lights followed.
“Something was burning in here,” he said under his breath.
The hairs on the back of her arms raised as Trent stepped inside, sweeping the arc of his flashlight over the stalls where horses were stomping nervously and the heavy smell of smoke lingered.
What had gone on in here?
A horse neighed loudly.
“What the hell?” Trent turned the flashlight to the far wall, where a huge black horse was pacing, his coat lathered, his eyes wild.
Trent lowered the light. “Hey, boy, it’s all right. Shhh.” He kept the flashlight directed toward the floor, and Jules followed, the scent of smoke and something else, something metallic …
