Fan the Flames by Katie Ruggle

the dog. Stomping over to the desk, she grabbed her revolver and headed for the stairs. Her precautions stayed the same as the previous three nights, though—no light on the stairs, checking the shop cameras before opening the steel door, staying in the cover of the trees. Although she wasn’t sure what the trespasser’s endgame was, she couldn’t allow repetition to dull her response. The intruder’s plan could be to make it routine so Rory would start to disregard the alarm, or at least lower her guard while checking the perimeter. She couldn’t allow that to happen.
    It was a nasty night, too. The wind whipped the snow that had fallen that morning into blinding clouds, ruining her visibility and stinging her face. As she walked the west fence line, she peered into the neighboring trees, blinking the flying ice crystals from her eyes.
    Rory had been tempted to wear her night-vision goggles, but it was too easy for someone to temporarily blind her with a flash of light. Although she’d regain her vision in a short time, that might be too late. She’d keep her unenhanced night vision, as poor as it was with the cloudy sky and blowing snow.
    It was also hard to hear anything besides the howling of the wind. Rory didn’t like having her two main senses so impaired. It made her feel exposed and vulnerable. As she approached the gate, Jack loping ahead, the trees on the other side of the fence thinned. A dark form darted across an open space between the shadows of two trees, making her suck in a breath.
    Rory had dropped to a crouch, her Python out and aimed, before she even realized what she’d glimpsed. She strained to see, staring so hard at the spot where she’d last caught the shape that her eyes stung. There was no more movement, though.
    Staying low, her eyes on the trees, she retreated ten feet to one of the several blinds she’d constructed the day before. Although the wooden shield wouldn’t offer cover from gunfire, it would provide some concealment. Something moved next to the first tree. Her heart hammering, she aimed her revolver through an opening in the blind at the shifting dark shape. Her breath escaped in a long, silent exhale of relief when she realized it was just a pine tree branch bowing in the wind.
    Peering through one of the peepholes, she watched the trees for a long time. When she finally accepted that the intruder had either slipped away without her seeing or had frozen to death, she stood, her muscles protesting the movement.
    As she headed toward the gate, Rory tried to move quickly, but her cold-locked joints made her hobble. Sweeping her gaze from left to right and back again, she hurried as best she could to the gates to check the padlock. As she tugged on the steel loop, the material of her glove snagged on something.
    She kept her eyes moving, conscious of her surroundings as she felt in her coat pocket for her flashlight. Cupping her hand over the front to block the light, she pushed the button on the end to turn it on. Allowing just a sliver of light to peek through her fingers, she quickly glanced down at the light before returning her gaze to the area beyond the gate.
    There were two grooves on either side of the steel loop, as if someone had pressed down with a heavy-duty bolt cutter. The lock was still secure, but seeing the evidence that the intruder had tried to get through her gates made her flush with anger and her stomach knot with fear.
    With her attention still focused on the area beyond the gates, Rory hurried into her shop, returning to the gates with three additional chains and locks. After securing all of the extra chains, she gave the surrounding space a final once-over before retracing her steps to her door.
    For the first time in her life, however, her bunker didn’t feel secure. Rory spent the night with her eyes glued to the security camera monitor, hardly allowing herself to blink.
    * * *
    The next morning, she