At 2 AM, Mona heard the harsh beep of the gate alarm. She rose and went to the front window. Spenser and Marlowe stood beside her. The moonlight showed everything in muted silvers and grays, even the Jeep Cherokee coming toward the house with its lights out.
It came closer, not speeding but coming steady and quiet. She saw a rifle barrel sticking out of the passenger window. Mona went to the bedroom and changed into jeans, then layered a brown t-shirt and a dark green hoodie. She slipped on Merrell hiking boots, and went through the house as she called 911 on her cell phone to report the intruders.
The back door in the electronics room was close, and as the front door burst inward, Mona flipped her cell to vibrate so it wouldn’t ring and whispered to the dogs, “Come with me. Don’t bark.”
The muffled sounds of booted feet told her they were coming fast, so there wouldn’t be time to save anything. She hurried through the room and out the back door, picking up her pace to put some distance between herself and the back door.
When a man stepped out of the back door, Mona ducked behind a truck-sized boulder and pulled the dogs to her. The man wore night-vision goggles, she realized. That really scared her. In this bright moonlight it would be as if she was in full daylight. Mona led the dogs deeper into the shadow of the mesa and realized she couldn’t take the trail to the top because the man would spot her.
She led Spenser and Marlowe into the taller brush in the bottom of the flat valley between her mesa and the next one, and she moved at a fast crouching walk so her head was lower than the brush.
A hundred yards further, Mona stopped to check her back trail and caught the first faint smell. Smoke. The glow grew in the sky and told her everything. The fire’s light was so bright that Mona saw the backlit figure of a man coming through the brush, his head turned toward the ground and the night vision goggles protruding like two short stalks from his eyes. Mona knew he followed her tracks in the sand.
Mona led the dogs faster and farther into the brush while she pulled the cell from her pocket and hid the light under her hoodie to dial Sam Kinney’s number. In the distance, she heard sirens and knew a Deputy and the Terlingua Fire and EMS people were on their way.
Sam answered on the third ring, “Mona?”
“Sam, I’m in trouble.” She told him quickly and in whispers, afraid the man hunting for her would hear.
Sam said, “We stayed in Terlingua last night, we’re close and we’re coming.”
“I can’t circle around him or I would go back and wait for the Deputy and the firemen to arrive. Not much cover here. He’s getting closer, and I’m afraid to talk on the phone anymore.”
“I’m calling the Sheriff’s office and will have them patch me into the deputy. I’ll direct him to you. Hang tight.”
Lopez stopped for a moment and flipped up his night vision goggles as he listened for any sound of the woman. There wasn’t much time to find this Mona Ingram before the law got here. The man with him was almost through burning and destroying everything in the house and barn, then he would beat it out of this place in the Jeep, leaving Lopez to take the Ingram woman’s vehicle when he finished breaking a few bones in her.
He thought about leaving, but remembered Holland’s threat. Beating this woman to a pulp was all that was going to work. He flipped down the goggles and immediately caught sight of the woman behind a thin greasewood bush. “I’ve got you,” he muttered, and ran towards her.
Pulling a foot-long piece of pipe from his belt, Lopez raised it high.
Two white, growling demons hit him so hard his feet came off the ground. One tore at the arm with the pipe while the other’s huge jaws clamped on his upper thigh and shook it like a terrier shakes a rat.
Lopez screamed. He reached for his pistol, but the beast on his leg flashed forward and had his hand in its mouth, crunching and driving canines completely through the hand. He screamed and bent his head forward, grabbing the dog’s floppy ear in his mouth and biting down so hard he tasted blood.
Marlowe yelped and released the man’s hand. Lopez kicked hard at the Dane and knocked it back several feet, then screamed in pain as he grasped his pistol with the mangled hand and fired into the dog.
Marlowe staggered and fell to the ground just as Mona swung a dried mesquite limb the size of her forearm into the man’s face. The night vision goggles broke apart and flew off his head. Mona swung again and the iron-hard branch plonked into the man’s temple, laying him out.
A Brewster County Deputy ran towards her, “Mona!”
“Here!” She touched Spenser and pointed at the Deputy, “He’s a friend.” She walked to Marlowe and knelt beside the big dog, stroking his side and head. “My brave, brave boy. It’s okay, lie still.” Spenser came to her side and nuzzled Marlowe’s neck and face. He whimpered. The blaze had grown so large it cast an unsteady, wavering yellow light across the entire flat. Mona saw how much blood already pooled on the ground.
The Deputy, Buddy MacFarlen, cuffed the unconscious man, then nodded at Marlowe and said, “Is he alive?”
“Yes, but it’s a chest wound. I don’t know if…” as she looked at the deputy, a tear ran down her cheek.
Buddy touched her shoulder. “I’m getting EMS over here to work on him. Hang on.”
He called on his handie talkie. The EMS people, all three of them, were also the only firefighters, and one of them said, “We’re still fighting the fire.”
Mona looked at Buddy and he read her face. He keyed his mike, “Let it burn. This is more important. Hurry.”
They arrived in less than a minute and went to work on Marlowe. One of them used his cel
l and called the veterinarian in Alpine to walk them through initial procedures.
Sam and Miguel arrived while they worked on the big dog. Miguel sat on the ground by Marlowe’s head and petted him, talking low in Spanish to the dog. Sam watched everything, staying silent, but with his hand on Mona’s shoulder.