hint.”
The pistol emerged from his fingers like a balloon being blown up. It started small and unformed but too quickly expanded until it was huge. Massive and black. With smoke seeping out of the barrel and the barrel glowing red.
Sobbing, Shari started running. She was barefoot and kept stepping on sharp rocks. Still she ran.
Dawn. Just beginning. After rubbing her gritty eyes and pushing her hair away from her face, Shari stared out the window and waited for dream and reality to sort themselves out in her mind.
Yes, there it was, the slightest lightening in the horizon, proof that she’d separated herself from the nightmare. Some part of her insisted she revisit the dream so she could be done with it, while another part of her psyche insisted she didn’t want to go there.
She opted for distance.
Still, much as she could have used a few more hours in which to try to get some rest, she was grateful for the end to the night. Of course if she’d spent all of it having orgasms instead of freaking herself out over something she couldn’t recall, that would have been a different story. Unfortunately, after that one overwhelming explosion, her pussy had been uninterested in going another round. No doubt about it, Ona’s shooting had her off balance. No wonder she’d dreamed whatever it was she’d dreamed.
Okay, there was a second reason for the way the night had played out. The cowboy/contractor she’d met yesterday.
Reminding herself that Ona was snoring on the living room couch, Rachele was two closed doors away, and Maco Durant was at the dam site where he belonged, she turned from the window. The moment she did, however, frozen fingers touched her spine, forcing her to look outside again. She listened for a return of the motorcycle sound Maco and she’d heard yesterday, but only birdcalls reached her. A few were the sharp cries crows were known for while the rest belonged to songbirds. Everything sounded normal and peaceful out there. Angry at herself, she vowed not to let yesterday’s accidental shooting get to her any more than it had. The past was behind her. She’d embrace the future and thus erect effective barriers against any more nightmares. After all, this wasn’t the first time she’d done that.
“And yes, I’ll admit it. I’m not just talking about yesterday,” she muttered as she headed for the bathroom.
Bottom line to all bottom lines, her father’s killer was in prison.
The man who’d been wearing black slacks that horrid day couldn’t reach her.
5
D ust kicked up as the truck carrying the two federal engineers Maco had been talking to departed via a newly laid-down gravel road that led to the ledge overlooking the gradual-sided canyon. Some hundred feet below where Maco and his brother stood lay the wide, sleepy stream that in approximately eighteen months would start to fill the Graves River Dam. Earlier in the week, first he and then Jason had piloted the aircrane as they brought in the massive lengths of corrugated steel they needed to form the cofferdam designed to divert Graves River during dam construction.
“Did you understand everything they said?” Jason asked. “I swear, engineers speak their own language. Pounds per square inch of water pressure was relatively easy to keep up with. After all, we’ve dealt with that enough. But when they got into comparing geotextiles to geomembranes, they lost me. Pretending like I was following along wore me out. Just tell me what to order and how to install it.”
Lifting his Stetson so he could wipe sweat off his forehead, Maco squinted against the sun. He had a headache but wasn’t sure whether the heat or complex conversation was responsible. “I checked out a bit part way through myself. The way I figure it, you and I worry about how much weight our aircrane can handle and how much equipment we’ll need. Let them deal with the specific materials. We know how to follow directions.”
Jason sighed and
The pistol emerged from his fingers like a balloon being blown up. It started small and unformed but too quickly expanded until it was huge. Massive and black. With smoke seeping out of the barrel and the barrel glowing red.
Sobbing, Shari started running. She was barefoot and kept stepping on sharp rocks. Still she ran.
Dawn. Just beginning. After rubbing her gritty eyes and pushing her hair away from her face, Shari stared out the window and waited for dream and reality to sort themselves out in her mind.
Yes, there it was, the slightest lightening in the horizon, proof that she’d separated herself from the nightmare. Some part of her insisted she revisit the dream so she could be done with it, while another part of her psyche insisted she didn’t want to go there.
She opted for distance.
Still, much as she could have used a few more hours in which to try to get some rest, she was grateful for the end to the night. Of course if she’d spent all of it having orgasms instead of freaking herself out over something she couldn’t recall, that would have been a different story. Unfortunately, after that one overwhelming explosion, her pussy had been uninterested in going another round. No doubt about it, Ona’s shooting had her off balance. No wonder she’d dreamed whatever it was she’d dreamed.
Okay, there was a second reason for the way the night had played out. The cowboy/contractor she’d met yesterday.
Reminding herself that Ona was snoring on the living room couch, Rachele was two closed doors away, and Maco Durant was at the dam site where he belonged, she turned from the window. The moment she did, however, frozen fingers touched her spine, forcing her to look outside again. She listened for a return of the motorcycle sound Maco and she’d heard yesterday, but only birdcalls reached her. A few were the sharp cries crows were known for while the rest belonged to songbirds. Everything sounded normal and peaceful out there. Angry at herself, she vowed not to let yesterday’s accidental shooting get to her any more than it had. The past was behind her. She’d embrace the future and thus erect effective barriers against any more nightmares. After all, this wasn’t the first time she’d done that.
“And yes, I’ll admit it. I’m not just talking about yesterday,” she muttered as she headed for the bathroom.
Bottom line to all bottom lines, her father’s killer was in prison.
The man who’d been wearing black slacks that horrid day couldn’t reach her.
5
D ust kicked up as the truck carrying the two federal engineers Maco had been talking to departed via a newly laid-down gravel road that led to the ledge overlooking the gradual-sided canyon. Some hundred feet below where Maco and his brother stood lay the wide, sleepy stream that in approximately eighteen months would start to fill the Graves River Dam. Earlier in the week, first he and then Jason had piloted the aircrane as they brought in the massive lengths of corrugated steel they needed to form the cofferdam designed to divert Graves River during dam construction.
“Did you understand everything they said?” Jason asked. “I swear, engineers speak their own language. Pounds per square inch of water pressure was relatively easy to keep up with. After all, we’ve dealt with that enough. But when they got into comparing geotextiles to geomembranes, they lost me. Pretending like I was following along wore me out. Just tell me what to order and how to install it.”
Lifting his Stetson so he could wipe sweat off his forehead, Maco squinted against the sun. He had a headache but wasn’t sure whether the heat or complex conversation was responsible. “I checked out a bit part way through myself. The way I figure it, you and I worry about how much weight our aircrane can handle and how much equipment we’ll need. Let them deal with the specific materials. We know how to follow directions.”
Jason sighed and
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