Читать книгу Colorado Wildfire - Cassie Miles, Cassie Miles - Страница 12

Chapter Six

When Sam drove past the supermarket on the east edge of Woodridge, she noticed more activity than usual in the parking lot, and she wondered why. Typically, if a blizzard was predicted, everybody rushed to stock up on food and necessities. The fire might be having the same effect, even though gathering more supplies wasn’t a good idea if your house might be burned to rubble.

On the wide main street that went through the center of town, every slanted parking space was taken outside the diner, the coffee shop and the two taverns. This was something she understood. People liked to huddle together and reassure each other when trouble was near.

She wished that she could do the same.

But she couldn’t talk about Wade’s return from the dead or the possible danger from a criminal cartel. Not even Ty knew the whole story; she hadn’t shown him Wade’s gun that had been planted in Morrissey’s car. Besides, Ty wasn’t here. He’d gone with the ambulances. One would deliver the wounded to the hospital in Glenwood Springs. The other would transport Morrissey and Reyes to wherever their bodies would be autopsied.

Sam was alone with her problems.

Somehow, she had to cope.

After a stop at the one traffic light in town, her SUV cruised past the Swain County Courthouse, where the 911 dispatchers were babysitting her daughter. Sam’s bloodshot eyes bored a hole in the two-story building, wishing she could see through the chiseled red stones to where her daughter was drawing or skipping rope in the wide corridors or sitting at a desk and rearranging the clutter.

Before she picked Jenny up, Sam needed to be certain that her house was safe from intruders. Somebody had sneaked inside to steal Wade’s revolver. They might come back, might want to grab her to get to Wade. Worse, they might come after Jenny.

The threat to her daughter enraged her, made her as fierce as a mama grizzly. But it also terrified her. Was she tough enough to keep her child safe? Sam couldn’t take that chance; she needed to get Jenny far from harm’s way.

Luckily, the solution was obvious: her dad was a captain in the Portland, Oregon, police department. Sam had already called him and arranged for Jenny to visit Grandma and Grandpa. The approaching fire provided a good excuse for sending her daughter to safety, while she herself stayed here and helped Wade investigate.

About six miles outside town, she made a left onto a curvy asphalt road that she paid extra to have cleared by the snowplow in the winter. Now, in springtime, the drive was green and pleasant with the new growth of shrubs and leaves sprouting on the trees. Runoff from the snowmelt made a sparkling rivulet in the ditch beside the road.

After her SUV passed the neatly lettered sign that marked Kendall’s Cabin, her nearest neighbors, she drove around a stand of aspen to the two-story log home that she and Wade had built. The peaked roof above the second floor covered a balcony that stretched across the front of the house and provided shelter for the wraparound porch. A huge cedar deck jutted from the south end of the house outside the kitchen. At this time of year, she and Jenny usually ate dinner at the picnic table on the deck, where they could watch the hummingbirds zoom around the hanging feeders filled with red-tinted sugar water.