Hannah Alexander - A Killing Frost

He realized he’d stopped breathing. He started again. “Don’t kid me.”

She took a step closer to him. “You wanted honesty?”

“That’s what I wanted.”

“Then you got it.”

“Then I don’t understand why-”

“Now is not the time to get into it. Aren’t we looking for Doriann?”

“You and I both know that even if she is following the river, she won’t have gotten this far.”

“We need to keep going, anyway. The sooner we find her, the sooner we can get her warm and safe. Let’s go.”

“Wait.”

“Tyrell, don’t-”

“The fog.” He pointed to the river, where whirls of mist floated in tufts across the lake. “You were right about the patches of water. It’s moving. That means-”

“It means we might have been granted a reprieve from the freeze. The crops may be safe.”

“It’s possible.”

“Monty will be relieved.”

Tyrell resumed the trek along the river’s edge. They still hadn’t accomplished their most important goal tonight.

Whispers awakened Doriann. She opened her eyes to feel the warmth of Humphrey pressed against her belly and the hardness of the cave floor against her right side. Her fingers tingled because the dog lay across her arm.

Where had the whispers come from? Had she had a bad dream?

But the voices continued. She blinked in the darkness, then froze. He’d found her?

She craned her neck, trying to see out of the mouth of the little cave. No light except for one patch of starlight through the treetops. But the stars seemed to blink on and off, on and off as she watched. Airplane?

No, the moonlight showed her the swaying branch of a tree.

Moving. Wind.

Humphrey whined and sat up, then grunted when he bumped his head against the cave ceiling.

The whispers weren’t coming from human voices, but from the leaves in the trees, rustling in the wind.

Doriann rolled onto her stomach and inched her way forward until she could stick her head out of the cave and look around. She realized she wasn’t frozen to death.

Though Humphrey no longer huddled close, she didn’t feel as cold as she had. Could the weather be changing? The best she could tell, this wind was from the south.

Granddad and Uncle Tyrell would be so relieved!

She shook her right arm to get some feeling back into it, scooting closer to the edge of the cave mouth. She listened. Definitely. Not much, but it was there. She felt it on her face, heard it in the trees, smelled smoke from somewhere, which meant that smell needed to be carried by the wind.

She climbed from the cave and sat for a minute, dangling her legs over the ledge. “Thanks, God.”

A girl never realized how much she could appreciate warm clothes and a warm home when she didn’t have either.

She remembered a verse Aunt Renee read to them just the other day about the trees singing. That’s what Doriann believed was happening here. The trees sang with the warm wind. This forest was singing because the frost was being melted away, saving the leaves and shoots and shrubs and blooms.

Doriann wanted to sing with them!

A cold, wet nose touched her cheek, and she giggled softly. Humphrey responded by licking her chin and thumping the sides of the cave with his tail.

And then he jumped down from the rocky outcropping of the cave and turned to look at her, whining.

“What is it, Humphrey?” she whispered.

His throat made a squeaky sound, as though he were fretful about something, then he took off at a trot down the dry creek bed.

Doriann started to call him back, but then she heard something else over the wind: the voice of a man.

The day’s terror returned through her whole body with a jolt. Humphrey bayed ahead of her, and the man’s voice came again from behind. Far behind.

Clancy was afraid of Humphrey. Doriann had seen that in the barn. He would stay away from the dog if he could.

Humphrey howled again-a hound on the hunt. The man fell silent. Good. This would be the protection she needed from that goon. And Humphrey was going toward the river-the way Doriann needed to go. He might even lead her all the way home.

She scrambled down from the rock ledge and followed Humphrey by the light of the moon.

The blanket of fog across the water continued to swirl in eerie shapes as the clear, star-studded sky hovered above. Tyrell was hungry after scrambling around in the forest and along the riverbank for hours. Why hadn’t he packed some food?

He’d heard no complaint from Jama. In fact, for the past mile or so, he’d heard little of anything except a brief comment now and then about a possible tricky step over the rocks.

“We can see the lights of River Dance from here,” he said as they reached a bend in the river.

Jama stopped and turned, close enough for him to feel the warm mist of her breath against his skin.

“I think we’re about halfway back to the area where we saw Doriann’s tracks.” Jama unzipped her coat. “I wonder how far she made it.”

Her flashlight dimmed, and she shook it. “When the store opens in the morning, I want to buy a flashlight like yours. This thing’s been giving me fits all night.”

He pulled more batteries from his pack and gave them to her, then watched her, holding his beam on her hands as she worked. He loved those hands, the compassionate care he had seen them convey to those who needed a healing touch. Like her, they were strong, gentle and sure.

He’d been unable to stop thinking about her flight after Amy’s death. “Why Utah?”

She looked up at him, squinting in the light, then shrugged and returned her attention to the battery. “Amy and I drove through there on our way to the Grand Canyon. It was so wide-open and wild. We stopped at a few of the trailheads and talked about returning someday. But someday never came.”

“So you went there to feel close to Amy?”

Jama shoved the spent, rechargeable battery into her pocket. “Lead the way.”

He did. “You didn’t answer my question.”

Silence.

Time to drop that topic. “Where would you be if you didn’t have the obligation of your loan here in River Dance?” he asked. Something told him she wouldn’t be anywhere near here.

“I haven’t thought about it.” She sounded relieved for the subject change, and perhaps just a little apprehensive that he might lead the conversation back.

“Just off the top of your head,” he said. “Where would you be?”

There was silence again, but this time he could tell she was running the question through her mind.

“I don’t think it’s healthy to dream about what might have been.”

“Is there a place you’d like to go after your two-year debt is paid in River Dance?”

“Maybe to Hideaway. It’s a place down in southern Missouri. I hear they’re looking for doctors.”

Tyrell felt a sharp pang of disappointment, but he knew he’d asked for it. What had he expected? That she would suddenly proclaim her undying devotion to him, tell him she wanted to be wherever he was?

“Do you know someone there?” he asked.

“Charla Dunlap, the lady who sold her land to the town for the River Dance clinic, was originally from there. She returned, after all these years, to work at a boys’ ranch. It sounds like a neat place, isolated from the rest of the world, where a boat is the fastest transportation to the neighboring towns.”

“River Dance is pretty isolated.”

There was a soft whisper of laughter. “I’m not isolated here. I’m surrounded.”

“You want to hide away?”

“I just told you I liked the idea of the place.” Jama sounded irritated. “Don’t keep trying to psychoanalyze me.”