“I didn’t—I went outside after Keely’s song, and Caspian freaked out. Went to the barn and opened the door andwhoosh! I wouldn’t have seen Donald, except, I got the llama—” Oh sheesh, now he even sounded like an idiot. He put his hands down. “I didn’t know—How is he?”
Dawson pushed past Abe, went to the table. Donald lay on his back, still coughing. River held a bandage to his head, taking it off now and again to examine it. Blood covered his face, his shirt, his hands.
His knuckles were torn. “You were in a fight.”
Donald coughed, nodded. “I went outside to get one of Wren’s kitties. I thought maybe it would help her feel better. But then the light ... went ... on—” His body racked, and he curled over and spit into a cloth. Black phlegm. Then he leaned backagain, and River pressed her fingers to his neck, checking his pulse. He breathed in, cleared his throat. Eyed Dawson. “It’s a battery-operated motion detector. I went outside—I thought maybe wolves, I don’t know. I didn’t see any, so I went inside to check, and of course the stupid llama was shrieking.”
He closed his watering eyes, squeezed, and moisture escaped. Then he cleared his throat again. “I didn’t see him. I heard a sound, and turned, and he came at me with a knife. I hit it away, but he wasn’t giving up easy. We went around a few times—he finally hit me with a shovel and that’s all I remember.”
“You probably have a concussion,” River said.
“He set the barn on fire,” Dawson said. “Why?”
Donald wore a sort of horror on his face.
Griffin had something fierce, almost accusatory in his expression.
Oh no. It couldn’t be... “What did he look like?”
Donald spit out more black phlegm. “Beard, winter clothes. I don’t know—it was dark.”
Why burn down their barn?
A few of the female community members had returned inside, some of them in the kitchen, a couple of them herding their children back to their rooms.
Oliver sat on the bench by the door, clutching a kitten.
Wait. Where wasKeely?
And suddenly, the terror in the woods, the shooter, the snow machine thief rose, and oh, he was anidiot.
He stalked over to Oliver, sank down on the bench, tried to keep his voice easy. “Hey. Have you seen Keely?”
The kid seemed shocked, trembling. Yeah, well him too. “She told me to go inside. She was helping Aurora Benson take Woolly down to their barn.”
Of course she was. “Where’s the Bensons’ barn?”
“Next door to our house—end of the street.”
Dawson got up and headed outside, nearly fell down the front stairs, his stupid knee suddenly stiff and angry. The fire crew had moved inside the barn, hitting the flames hard with the spray. Outside, the blizzard seemed to be winning, the howl of the wind and the brutality of the ice causing the shovelers to abandon their efforts to save the outside of the structure, but maybe it had worked, because the fire seemed to be dying out.
The flames inside the barn had also died.
Darkness clouded the street.
He nearly slipped again as he reached the slick street, but found his footing, heart pounding, and crashed slash ran through the deepening layers toward the end. Lights flickered on as he passed—clearly the same motion-detecting devices. At the end, luminescence pooled out into the snowy street, the icy particles like flies in the glow. He picked up his pace, through puddles of gold, the wind moaning in the darkness beyond.
The last house seemed a little bigger than the others, although still a cabin, with a wide front porch and big windows. Behind it, a glow emerged from a small barn, and he pounded through a snow-covered path toward it.
He stomped at the threshold and pulled open the sliding door.
The llama stood, secured to an old open stall by its halter lead. Grunting sounds emanated from the space. “Keely?”
A head popped up. A woman wearing a knitted cap, with long dark hair, frowned at him. “No. She’s back at the lodge. I think.”
He just turned and headed back out to the snow. Because it made terrible, disastrous sense.
Start a fire. Bring out the community.
