The glow was gone…there was no eerie light, no crackling flames…but the thin smell of smoke lingered. She could taste it on her tongue.
Could it be from inside the house?
Then why was the dog looking out the window?
She reached for the phone, intent upon calling Nate Santana, who lived above the garage, then remembered he was gone for the week, the first vacation he’d taken in years. “Damn.” She clenched her teeth. There was no one else she felt she could call about a possible emergency at midnight. Not even her brothers, who still, after three years, thought she was slightly off-kilter.
Every muscle tense, she hurried across the hardwood floor to the dormer that poked over the roof on the other side of the room. She cautiously peered through the window that gave a view over the front of the house, across the gravel lot to the barns, kennels and sheds. Squinting through the wash of eerie light from the security lamps, she saw nothing disturbed, nothing that warranted the dog being nervous.
Maybe Khan heard an owl or a bat.
Or sensed a deer or raccoon wandering across the back fields.
And you, you’re just edgy, reacting to the bad dream and weird phone call…
But it didn’t explain the slight hint of smoke still lingering in the air. “Come on,” she said to the dog. “Let’s investigate.” She headed down the steps without snapping on any lights and Khan flew past her, nearly knocking her over, his claws clicking noisily on the stairs as he led the way to the front door. Once in the small foyer he stood, nose to the door, muscles taut.
By now she wasn’t buying his act.
She stood on her tiptoes and peered through the small windows cut into the oak panels of the door. Outside the night was still, the wind having died quickly. Her truck was parked where she’d left it in front of the garage, the doors to the sheds and barns were closed, the parking lot empty. The windows in Nate’s apartment over the garage were dark.
See? Nothing more than your imagination working overtime again.
She tried to relax, but the knot of tension between her shoulder blades didn’t loosen. Her headache raged on—unfazed by the pain relievers she’d downed.
Shannon walked into the kitchen and looked through the larger window with its view of the parking lot and small paddocks, which she used as training grounds for the search and rescue dogs she worked with. The dogs in the kennels weren’t barking, no sound issuing from the barn where the horses Nate trained were stabled. No one was lurking in the shadows.
Khan, unmoving, whined near the door. “False alarm,” she told him and silently chided herself for being such a coward.
When had that happened? When had her sense of adventure dissolved? She, who had grown up with all those older brothers, who had never shown any fear and insisted upon doing everything they did, who had never been frightened of anything. When had she turned into a scaredy-cat?
Shannon had grown up around these parts. She’d been a tomboy. As a child, she’d been nearly fearless. She’d learned to ride a two-wheeler bicycle before her fourth birthday, and by the time she was eighteen, she’d driven her oldest brother’s Harley—south down Highway 101—along the entire length of the rugged California coastline. She’d ridden horses bareback as a child, even entered barrel-racing competitions at a local rodeo. At fifteen, behind her parents’ back she and two friends had hitchhiked to an outdoor concert at Red Rocks Amphitheatre outside of Denver. Later, she’d survived an accident where she’d been at the wheel of Robert’s new Mustang convertible. The car ended up in a deep ditch, nose and engine first, and had been totaled; she’d managed to get out of it with a broken collarbone, a sprained wrist, two black eyes and a battered ego. She suspected that to this day, Robert had never forgiven her.
It was no wonder that when she’d fallen in love, she’d fallen fast, hard, and hadn’t believed for a second that anything but wonderful things would come of it.
“Idiot,” she muttered under her breath when she thought of Brendan Giles, her first love. How foolish and head over heels she’d been, crushed when it had ended…
To dispel her dark thoughts, she opened the refrigerator and rummaged behind a six-pack of Diet Pepsi to find a chilled bottle of water. Snagging the water, she closed the refrigerator, once again plunging the kitchen into darkness. Resting her hips against the counter, she pressed the cold plastic bottle against her forehead as sweat continued to run down her back.
Air-conditioning. That’s what she needed. Air-conditioning and a way to keep idiots from calling her in the middle of the night.
Khan finally gave up his vigil, trotting by her and scratching at the back door. His hackles were no longer raised and he glanced over his shoulder at her, eyes pleading, as if he couldn’t wait to go out and lift his leg on the first available shrub.
“Sure, why not?” she muttered. “Knock yourself out.” Still holding the bottle to her head, she unlatched the back door. “Just don’t make a habit of this. It is the middle of the night.” Khan rocketed outside and she followed, hoping for some relief from the heat. Maybe a breeze would kick up.
No such luck.
The night was hot and still.
Breathless.
Shannon took one step onto the porch when her gaze caught something out of place, a piece of white paper tacked to one of the posts supporting the overhang from the roof. Goose bumps chased a quick path up her spine even though the paper might be nothing. Someone leaving a note.
At night? Why not just call…?
Her blood chilled. Maybe whoever had left the piece of paper had phoned.
She stepped backwards and leaned inside the kitchen, slapping at the wall until she hit the light switch and the porch was suddenly awash with incandescence from the two overhead lightbulbs.