Defiance (The Defending Home Series Book 1) (18 page)

“He sure does have it in for you.”

“That’s what happens when you stand up for what’s right,” Dale said. “The people doing the oppressing tend to put a target on your back and don’t let up until you give in and cry mercy or run off with your tail between your legs. I’m not one to do either.”

Shane got up and threw down his gloves. “Well, have you ever thought that maybe if you gave in just a bit we wouldn’t be in this mess?”

His brother stormed off and disappeared into the house.

Dale fetched a pair of heavy wire cutters and returned to the fence.

Brooke was nearby and came over. “I made an early warning system near the chicken coop,” she told him. “Took some old fishing line I found in the garage and tied it to some empty cans. Then I put a rock in each one. Will make a good racket if anyone tries sneaking around to poison our livestock again.” Her expression changed. “What on earth are you doing?”

“Making some alterations,” he said, as he cut the barbed wire between two of the posts.

She looked at him as though he’d lost his mind. “You angry with Shane?” she asked. “That why you’re ruining the work you two did?”

He snipped the bottom wire and looked over at her. “Uncle Shane’s the one who’s angry. Been carrying it around with him for years. But that’s not why I’m cutting the fence.”

“You wanted it to be perfect?”

“No, it was fine,” Dale said. “I’m opening an avenue of attack the enemy won’t be able to refuse. Some might call it the path of least resistance. See, if we’re outnumbered, some of the bad guys won’t want to go around or under the fence. When they spot an opening, they’ll head right through it.”

Brooke scratched her head. “That seems counterproductive.”

Dale smiled. “Not after you build a large spike pit right at the opening.” He set the cutters down and winked. “Just make sure it’s big enough for more than one man.”

“You expecting some kind of army?” Brooke asked, sounding worried.

But Dale didn’t answer. He didn’t have the heart to lie.

The sun was low in the sky when they decided to call it a day. Dale hadn’t bothered chasing after Shane to reconcile. Thought it best his brother have some time to cool down. They were all under an enormous amount of pressure and people had to be allowed to let off a little steam now and then or they risked exploding.

They all sat in silence at the table after a simple dinner of canned ham and boiled potatoes. Their muscles ached, their fingers were raw with blisters and Dale hoped all this suffering wouldn’t be for naught. Once she was done, Brooke cleared her plate and loaded her MP3 into the docking station on the kitchen counter. A second later, Johnny Cash came on, singing about falling into a ring of fire, and in that instant, Dale no longer felt any pain.

Sandy

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W
hile Dale was at home trying to forget the difficult line he was walking, Sandy was at the sheriff’s office, cleaning her Glock service pistol. When she finished, she slid the pieces back together and set it on her desk with a clank. It was dark outside and her one evening spent working the night shift was about to begin.

Keith walked past her on his way out to his patrol car. “Sandy, someone’s on the shortwave asking for you.”

She looked up, startled. “Me?”

Keith shrugged. “That’s what they said. She’s from the clinic. Wouldn’t tell me who it was or what it was about. But she sounds upset.”

Sandy rose to her feet.

Keith stopped before exiting the patrol area. “The sheriff should be in shortly. He’s just running behind a little.”

Nodding, Sandy gave a half-hearted wave and let herself into the radio room. Sliding into the seat, she grabbed the mic and thumbed the button.

“This is Sandy, go ahead.”

“Sandy, it’s Betty.” It sounded as though she’d been crying.

“Is everything all right?”

“No, after our conversation you got me thinking about my brother, his wife, and Dr. Peterson pronouncing them both dead.”

“Was there something you remembered?” Sandy asked, a mix of excitement and dread tingling up from the tips of her toes.

“I went into the doctor’s office. We usually keep it locked after he died, but I got hold of the key and started searching through his papers.”

“What’d you find?” Sandy asked, waiting with bated breath.

“The Wilcoxes’ death certificates,” Betty said, clearly now in tears. “Seems that Joe and Doris didn’t die from the flu. They were murdered. Shot twice in the chest. But I can see where Dr. Peterson scratched it off and wrote H3N3 instead.”

Sandy’s hand covered her mouth. Why the two causes of death, she wondered. Had he been pressured to make changes and if so was it even in question who had done so? No one else had as clear a means, motive and opportunity.

“Is there another report there for the mayor?” she asked.

She heard Betty shuffling through papers. “Yes, and it’s exactly the same.”

“Okay, now take those papers and put them somewhere safe,” Sandy told her. “Do you hear me?”

“I’m worried my life might be in danger,” Betty said, threads of fear clouding her voice.

“Just do as I say and you’ll be fine. I’m coming over right now to pick them up.”

“All right, but hurry.”

Sandy ended the transmission and began signaling Dale’s frequency, unaware of the man watching her from the doorway.

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A
nn’s voice echoed through the house for Dale four times before he came awake. He’d been dreaming that they were under attack and his Remington 700 wasn’t working. He would work the bolt, loading round after round into the chamber, only to find they wouldn’t fire.

“I’m coming,” he said, getting up, Duke by his side yawning. “Tough day for you too, eh, buddy?”

“Hurry up,” Ann shouted.

Dale felt the first pangs of alarm. It wasn’t like her to yell.

“What’s going on?” he asked as he reached the radio room in the basement. The floor was cold and dusty and he held one of the support beams as he slowly phased back into reality.

Ann held the radio mic out to him. “It was Sandy, but―”

Dale’s brow creased as he took the mic. “But what?” He depressed the button. “Sandy, it’s Dale, do you read me?”

On the other end was static.

“There’s no one there.”

Ann looked frightened.

“Tell me what happened.” His voice grew louder. “Ann.” Part of him wanted to grab her by the shoulders, get her talking.

“I’m not sure,” she stammered. “I was upstairs in the kitchen with Nicole when I heard this infernal box squawking. I came down to see who was there. She said it was Sandy, that she had something really important to tell you, and that’s when I heard static and garbled voices. Snippets of shouting as though two people were fighting for the mic and then...” She paused. “Nothing.”

Dale’s mind had already pushed through the fog and was kicking into overdrive. He charged up the stairs two at a time and straight for the shotgun lying on the floor by his mattress.

The commotion roused the others from their slumbers.

A nervous-looking Shane, Colton, Walter and Brooke filed into the hallway, firing a million questions at once.

“Something’s happened to Sandy,” Dale told them. “She may be in trouble.”

“I’ll go with you,” Shane said without skipping a beat.

Duke was standing by the top of the stairs, ready to sprint to the truck at a moment’s notice.

The others offered to go as well.

“I’m not sure what’s going on,” Dale said. “It might be nothing or it might be serious.”

“Or it might be a trap,” Walter said, ever the voice of reason. “The sheriff may be trying to lure you away from the house. Pick us off one by one.”

Dale nodded. “That’s why I want the rest of you to stay back and protect the property.” He almost said ‘hold the fort,’ a fairly accurate description given the recent defensive upgrades. Instead he pointed at Colton. “How’s your side?”

“A hundred percent,” his nephew lied.

But for what Dale had in mind, eighty would do just fine. “Then you’re coming too.”

“If we’re heading into town,” Shane said, strapping his pistol on, “then we ought to go the long way.”

“He’s right,” Walter cut in. “If there’s an ambush with your name on it, you know they’ll be waiting near by the high school.”

Dale looked his brother in the eye, thanking him without needing to say a word.

•••

Sandy

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S
andy woke up hooded, gagged and tied to a chair. She grunted as she struggled against her restraints, a pair of double-thick zip ties looped around the seat’s wooden arm rests. Waves of pain flowed in and out from a spot at the back of her head where Randy must have hit her with his nightstick. She’d been unarmed at the time, her service pistol still on her desk, since running in to take Betty’s call.

The faint odor of Old Spice wafted through the tiny holes in the sack that covered her head. Randy didn’t wear that brand—fact, he barely wore deodorant at all—so she was sure it wasn’t coming from him. Only one man she knew smelled like that.

“Relax,” Mayor Reid told her, the deep treble of his voice no more than a few feet away. “Sheriff Gaines is going to remove the bag from your head, young lady, but you need to promise us you’ll behave.”

She nodded her understanding. Randy did as he was told and the room suddenly came into clear focus. It was Reid’s old Teletech office, lit by a handful of candles positioned throughout the room. She’d never understood until now why the mayor still used his old office, but now it was starting to make sense. What better way to keep prying eyes at bay?

Sandy felt a breeze brush against her chest and glanced down to see that her shirt was unbuttoned. Randy gave her a guilty smile, like a little boy caught doing something bad.

“I needed to know what it was that got Dale so hot and bothered about you.”

“You’re sick,” she shouted.

“Now, now,” Randy said. “Flattery will get you nowhere. Besides I could have taken what little honor you have left if I’d really wanted to.”

“He was a perfect gentlemen,” Reid assured her. “Well, nearly.”

“If you’re going to kill me the way you killed Joe, Curtis and the others, then go ahead and get it over with.”

“I warned you to back off,” Randy scolded her. “Tried to remind you as nicely as I could that you were luckier than ninety-nine percent of the pathetic people in this town, but you wouldn’t listen. You had a bee in your bonnet and just couldn’t get it out.”

“I’m law enforcement,” she said. “I was doing my job.”

“And so was I,” Randy shot back.

Reid fished a Cuban from the humidor on his desk and lit it, his hooded eyes watching the two of them argue. He seemed to be enjoying it, the way a sociopath enjoyed watching two stray dogs scrap it out in a narrow alleyway.

“Our job was to maintain the rule of law,” Randy went on. “How exactly do you expect to do that by accusing us of murder? We couldn’t have you filling people’s heads with―”

“Lies?” she spat, completing his sentence. “The way you spread dirt about Dale and tried to get me to do your dirty work?”

“Don’t worry, Sandy, others picked up your slack and let me tell you, our recruitment numbers have been soaring. Five new deputies hired today, four yesterday and we expect even more tomorrow.”

“You have no soul,” she said.

“What you don’t get is that I was testing you,” Randy said. “And it turns out Mayor Reid here was right all along. You never did lose your soft spot for Dale, which means you were never really one of us to begin with.”

“You have no idea how happy that makes me,” she said. “And how dare you claim to have the town’s best interests at heart when you killed the very men who were helping to keep it going?”

“Sheer incompetence,” Reid cut in through a cloud of smoke. “Demonstrated it clear as day those first two weeks. ‘FEMA’s coming, FEMA’s coming,’” he mocked. “If I had a glass of water for every time I heard that chestnut we wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with. Joe Wilcox, his loyal deputy Tim and all the others signed their own death warrants the minute the virus rode into town. And make no mistake, that was exactly what happened. It hitched a ride on one of the supply trucks Mayor Curtis Long called in from Tucson. See, the flu wasn’t here yet. The desert had been shielding us from its effects. It was the emptying grocery store shelves and gas pumps they tried to fix which did us in. The flu came on one of those trucks and did to us what it had done everywhere else. That was why they needed to go. But I certainly won’t take responsibility for the mess Sheriff Gaines created.”

Randy sneered. “The sheriff and his wife were the first to go. I was gonna bury them all the next day, except someone had found them and taken them to the clinic. They musta mistaken the blood for the hemorrhaging caused by the flu, but Dr. Peterson knew better, so he and I had a little chat. You see, it ain’t easy killing just one person and expecting to stop there. We’re all connected and sooner or later, someone’s bound to catch wind and spill the beans.”

“You asked before why you weren’t already dead,” Mayor Reid cut in, crushing what remained of his cigar. “And I’m going to tell you since sooner or later you’ll find out on your own anyway. The lieutenant to a powerful drug lord is crossing the border as we speak, heading to Encendido with a small army of men. Not hundreds, but more than enough to finally reclaim the only thing in this town we don’t yet own. When they’re done and Dale and his family are dead, their bodies strung up as a warning to others, that lieutenant will need someone to cater to his every twisted desire. And that, Sandy, is where you come in.”

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D
ale clutched the wheel in a white-knuckled grip, pressing his foot down on the accelerator.

A full moon peered down on them from above as they raced toward the sheriff’s office. They reached the outskirts of town, abandoned houses flickering by on either side. In the seat next to him sat Duke, struggling to maintain his balance as the vehicle lurched around every corner. On the cab floor was his trusty shotgun and in the holster on his belt the Ruger .45. He’d briefly considered taking the Remington hunting rifle along, but knew the scoped weapon would be nearly useless in the dark.