“Yes, Blaze. It’s dark,” she said.
Oh, the snark in his little brat’s voice.Later.“I slept for more than a few hours. How long has it been?”
“Well, we’re in Ohio, so it was a while.”
He grabbed his phone, checking the GPS app. If she’d betrayed him and set course for somewhere else— “And we’re still on I-80?”
Panic rattled in her voice. “Why, were we supposed to turn? The GPS didn’t say anything. I thought I-80 ran straight through until we turned onto the Blues Highway west of the Quad Cities.”
“It does,” Blaze said, settling back in his seat, tamping down the tremors that she’d driven to a police station and accused him of kidnapping her. “We’re still on the right track.”
“So, everything’s okay?”
“Yes, kitten,” he said, calming his breathing and feeling the car seat underneath his butt. “Everything’s fine.”
5
HOME
SARAH
Dawn bloomed into roses on the horizon, and Sarah curved the steering wheel to turn onto the gravel driveway to her house.
Cornstalks higher than the roof of the car trundled backward as she drove slowly, lest the gravel spray and ding the car’s glossy paint. The tires crunched on pea-sized rocks even though she was going barely ten miles an hour.
The corner leading to her house was just up ahead, and fear skidded over her nerves for a moment.
Benny and those other jerks might have returned and burned down her house. She couldn’t bear to imagine the flames and smoke and Muffintop locked inside, the blazing heat and destruction eating the kitchen table and the couch and the braided rag rug and encroaching on her cat.
If those horrible people had returned, they surely would have gone hunting for Charlie. He was such a trusting, gentle horse, and he probably would’ve walked over to them and their guns.
When she turned the corner, she would know.
As Sarah turned the steering wheel again, she reached across the car’s console for Blaze’s hand, and his strong fingers gripped hers even though he was asleep.
The car followed the road around the cornfield’s corner toward her house—
—which stood unharmed in the early morning hours, the windows reflecting the rosy light of dawn.
The terror coiling Sarah’s shoulders released, and her shoulders dropped with relief. She parked the car near the kitchen door and pushed the ignition button to turn it off.
Blaze mumbled from where he had been dozing, “You okay?”
“I’m fine. We’re home.”
Blaze straightened in his seat and rubbed his eyes with his other hand, tightening his fingers around hers. “Yes.”
Remi, the white and fluffy livestock guardian dog the size of a sheep, warily stalked around the corner of the house and glared at the car, his front paws planted wide.
She stepped out of the car. “Remi! Come here, boy!”
At the sound of her voice, excitement wiggled through Remi, and he bounded over to her, wagging his tail so hard that his back half danced. He rubbed himself over her legs and sniffed her shoes, dragging the cool morning air over her ankles.
She laughed. “Good morning, Remi. I’m glad to see you, too, boy. Who’s my good boy? Who’s the best puppers in the world?” she asked the dog bouncing at her feet. “How are the chickens? Did anything happen I should know about?”
Blaze emerged from the other side of the car and stretched, raising his fists toward the sky. He glanced over and said, “Let me go into the house first.”
Sarah dug her fingers into Remi’s thick fur, scratching his back until one of his hind legs reached up to help her. “I’m surprised you didn’t have me park in the cornfield so you could sneak in.”
