Free Tumbleweed by Heather Huffman Page A

this evening and no one has heard from him since. The sheriff will be out in the morning to get an official statement, but in the meantime, you might want to stay close to home. We'll let you know if we find out anything else.”
    “Oh. Okay. Thank you.” It wasn't a response that would qualify me as a brilliant conversationalist, but I was terrified. I closed the door and just stood there staring at it, trembling a little and wishing the knot in my stomach would unclench. After seeing the way Hobbes treated that animal today, part of me felt guilty for not calling the police sooner. Knowing there was a crazy man out there who was ticked at me for running my mouth made me wish I hadn't gotten as involved as I did.
    More than that, I was really wishing that I had some type of phone in the cabin right now. I'd never really bothered with it, figuring not having a phone in the house was a neat way to hide from my siblings and their helpful advice. Heck, on that front, it had worked pretty well. I'd managed to leave Mom a message about not making it up for Thanksgiving and had quite successfully ducked any calls since. Now it was kind of a toss-up whether a tongue lashing would be worse than Hobbes finding me here alone with nophone. And there was absolutely no way I was crossing the yard in the dark to go to Ethan's.
    “Mom?” For the second time today, I heard fear and uncertainty in my son's voice.
    “Hey baby,” I stood up tall and turned to face him, a smile plastered to my face.
    “Is that man going to hurt us?”
    “No baby. He's just trying to scare everyone. He's nothing but a bully. Bullies don't like it when people stand up to them is all. It'll be okay.”
    “If you say so.” He eyed me warily, unconvinced.
    “I do say so.” I tousled his hair. “Now go to bed.”
    “Do you really think we can get that horse David told us about?”
    “Yep, I think so.” I nodded. “Now go.”
    Aaron scurried off, eager to get away from me before I had a chance to change my mind about the horse. Once he was tucked safely into his bed with Rover at his feet, I made sure his one small window was locked and closed the door to his room. Then I set about looking for some sort of weapon to defend myself with should we get a late night visitor.
    We didn't have a gun, so that was out. Aaron wasn't in to sports, so there was no Louisville Slugger around to defend us. I chewed my lip, and my eyes darted about the room before landing on the old broadsword resting on my mantle. It was a monstrosity that an old boyfriend had convinced me to buy back in my pre-Jeff days. It continually reminded me what an idiot I'd been in the name of getting a boy's attention, but Aaron thought it was the coolest thing he had ever seen, so the stupid thing remained proudly displayed on my mantle.
    It was that or a butter knife, so I carefully pulled the sword from its sheath. It was heavy. And big. And shiny. I felt better with it in my hands. Try to get past this, Hobbes.
    I wanted to pour myself a glass of wine, but thought better of it. Instead I settled in on the couch with a pile of work I'd brought home with me yesterday. I'm not known for my great attention span,so it didn't take long for me to become bored. Then sleepy. Next thing I knew, I had no idea what time it was as I was jolted awake by a low rumble emanating from Blue.
    I knew what that rumble meant, and my heart flew to my throat. I eased myself off the couch and crept towards the front door just as it creaked open. A shadowy figure edged into the room. Instinct took over and I launched myself at the intruder, using momentum to pin him to the wall with my entire left side while holding the tip of the sword to his neck with my right hand.
    “Holy….” Ethan swore softly under his breath.
    “Oh, it's you,” I allowed the tip of the sword to drop but didn't move away. My breath was coming in great heaves now as the adrenaline flowed out of my body, replaced by the crisp, clean,