Free Deadfall by Sue Henry

day.”

7
    M onday night was long, wakeful, and completely quiet, with no further incident. Alex woke in the wee hours to find Jessie’s side of the bed empty, and he was half aware that she had spent more time trying to find a comfortable position than sleeping. The air was chilly as he climbed out of bed and went to the door of the outer room.
    “Can’t sleep, Jess?” he asked the shadow that occupied the end of the sofa nearest the stove, from which he could smell the sweet scent of burning pitch and hear logs crackling as they came to life. She was sitting in the dark, facing the dog lot, once again wrapped in the afghan.
    She turned her face toward him, and in the glow of the flames that shone through the glass of the stove door he glimpsed her weary smile.
    “I’m okay, but I can’t just quit trying to figure out who could be doing this. Sorry. I tried to be quiet.”
    “You were. I didn’t hear you—just knew you weren’t there and woke up.”
    “Get cold?”
    “Nope, just lonesome.”
    He crossed the room and sat down close to her, inside the afghan that she held open for him. They watched the flickering fire in silence for a few minutes, until the wood blazed, increasing the glow.
    “I had a bad dream,” she confessed shortly.
    “What was it?”
    “I was running the race, the other side of McGrath. You know—where all the willow and snow machine tracks make the trail really hard to follow, and you can lose it if you’re not careful? I couldn’t seem to find it—kept going and going, and winding up back where I started. I knew I was lost. There weren’t any markers, and there was no one to tell me where the trail was. Then there was someone, but they were following me and I couldn’t see them. I knew it was someone who wanted to hurt my dogs, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t get away. They kept coming closer, and—I could hear their phone ringing…. Then, all of a sudden there was a giant hole in the trail and I was falling into it—the whole team pulling us right in, they wouldn’t stop—like they couldn’t hear me yelling at them—and the phone kept ringing—and I woke up. Not very hard to figure out, huh?”
    She was very still. He put his arm around her and could feel the tension in her body.
    “It’s okay, Jess. I’m here…right here.”
    She sat up straight and rigid for a second or two, before leaning back against him. “I hate this . Really, really hate this .”
    “I know. So do I.”
    “I’m so tired, Alex. Seems like every bone in my body aches and my mind won’t stop. It feels like a bird that flies into the house and keeps frantically hitting the windows, trying to get out.”
     
    A lex and Jessie fed the dogs together the next morning and checked their condition.
    “They need exercise,” she said sadly, pouring warm food into the last bowl. “I should be running some of them with the four-wheeler until it snows.”
    “Don’t even think about it. They’re fine,” he told her bluntly. “A few days without a run won’t hurt them.”
    “Is it only going to be a few days?”
    “I certainly hope so.”
    She stopped to pet a female that approached, wagging her tail in anticipation.
    “Hey, Sadie. You just want a little sugar, don’t you? She’s going to have another litter.”
    “Great. She has good pups. How many of hers did you take along on the race last year?”
    “Four, and I’m thinking of adding the Darryls this year, if they work well at wheel.”
    As they were bringing the feed buckets to the cabin for cleaning, Linda Caswell pulled up, the back seat of her Blazer full of grocery bags. She grinned at Jessie’s questioning lift of an eyebrow.
    “If cooking makes you feel better—we’ll cook. It’s a little early, but I thought, if you’d help, I’d get the fruitcake done ahead of time this year. We can test it at Thanksgiving.”
    They carried sacks of food into the cabin and Linda began to sort the supplies into piles on the table.