One of the two gray and tan ranch dogs came to investigate her hole, sniffed it thoroughly, and trotted off.
Swiping a gloved hand over her forehead, she was glad of her straw cowboy hat’s protection from the late afternoon sun.Although it was almost early summer for the south-central part of Montana, the day was unseasonably warm, and she perspired freely.She took off one leather glove and brushed a hair from her eyes.
Her Wrangler jeans fit well.Because she’d washed them so many times, they were now soft and comfortable.Her worn pointed-toed cockroach killer boots, so called because one could crush a cornered insect with its sharp tip, felt like house slippers.So that it didn’t get in her way, this morning she’d plaited her long hair in a tight braid.Heavy and thick, it hung over her shoulder like a ship’s rope.
Taking a moment to rest, she gazed past the corral that faced the family home in which she’d grown up, a two-story clapboard house.Beyond that, just-seeded alfalfa fields spread out in long rows, loamy and even.Come fall, it would be time to mow, bale, and store the hay for the long cold winter.This ranch was a little bit of heaven.She loved it here.
Getting to her feet, once again Sarah picked up the posthole digger.Gripping its handles, she raised it high above her head and thrust it down as hard as she could into the unforgiving ground.It dug out a quarter-inch of pebbles.She did it again, and again.
When she’d created an inch of loose rocks, she bent with her coffee can.After the indentation was clear, she stood up again.
Her dad, Big Jim, had told her he’d get Willie, the teenaged boy they’d hired for the spring and summer, to do the hard task.He’d admonished her to stay safely inside the house with her rifle.
But as soon as Jim and Willie had left to recapture a wayward bull that escaped into neighboring property, she’d jumped to get tools.She could do it, and she needed to work with her hands, perform chores, repair and improve the ranch.Staying cooped up in the house?No way.She had to keep busy every second of every day, or the terrible invading memories swamped her mind, ruined her sleep.It was still hard to function, to get any sleep at all.Not that she slept much anymore.Rest was a distant memory.
Wielding the heavy posthole digger, she grunted in effort.
So this was what it was like to earn real muscles, muscles that actually had a purpose, as opposed to a gym-trained body, good for little except superficial appearance.For the many years when she’d strutted the catwalks of New York, Paris, and Milan, she’d been forced to work out to the dictates of fitness instructors.To maintain a tight, runway-ready body, she’d dutifully performed four-days-a-week, ninety-minute circuit classes targeting all the different areas of the body: legs, core, arms.To keep thin, for breakfast she allowed herself only warm water with a squeeze of lemon.
As soon as she’d left New York and abandoned her old life, she quit the arduous regimen.It was an incredible relief.Now, she hated lemons.Even their scent made her gag.These days, she wolfed bacon and eggs.
How had she ever given a crap about that puerile world?
A mere six months ago, she’d limped home to her family ranch in Montana, broken and heartsick, a shattered shell.The ache hadn’t abated, sharp like a thistle, pricking her painfully when she least expected it.
And the grief was still as fresh as her alfalfa fields’ newly tilled earth.
No longer was she what the press had loved to call her:Super Sarah.
At the memory, she snorted.She wassuperall right.Super like a super loser.
Supermodel Sarah Lang was no more.During those dozen years while she’d been enmeshed in that world, she’d worked hard at the ideal expected of her.She’d fully embraced the notions that beauty, fashion, andmoneywere all-important.She’d capitalized upon what the press made of her, fed into it, showed them only a glamorous, fabulous existence, globe-trotting to exotic lands, living party-to-party.
During that time, if Sarah had to count how many private celebrities Gulfstream IV’s, Hawker 4000’s and Challenger 600 jets she’d flown on, she’d be hard pressed.After all, when one lived in the elite world of the famous and rich, traveling, carousing, sometimes strung out on drugs, who could count?
That had been her life: her vapid, vain, ridiculous, worthless life.Gawd, she hated thinking about how shallow she’d been.
When her mind turned to the awful event which had brought her full circle and back to her childhood home at the ranch, she shuddered and shied away from the gaping vacuum of horror.No way did she want to recall that gut-wrenching evening.Better to stay in the present.
Abruptly she was reminded of why she’d taken to carrying her old Smith & Wesson 9mm handgun in a holster.Hurriedly, she glanced around.Alone out here on this rural ranch, with only her dad, Big Jim, and teenaged Willie, she was determined to protect herself.The last thing she wanted was to be taken by surprise.
At first, she’d merely deleted the bizarre anonymous emails.They were always signed with an icon of a knife blade, dripping blood.It was upsetting, and she wondered who could be doing that.Then, when they arrived with veiled threats, she became uneasy and blocked the senders, hoping that’d be the end of the weirdo.
Yet, next, she’d had to endure endless cell phone hang-ups, and now finally, a horrible note left on her truck.
Early that morning, in the nearby town of Mountain Wood, a small and homey suburb of the much larger Billings, as she picked up groceries for the week, she’d found the frightening note, placed under her pickup truck’s windshield washer.
With wobbly fingers, she’d extracted the torn bit of paper from beneath her wiper, already knowing she wouldn’t like its contents.
It read:Think you’re safe,superbitch?You’re not.I’m coming for you.
