SHATTERED by Alice Sharpe Page A

so I’m not sure if it had a Nevada plate. And before you ask, I never saw the man’s face. I didn’t really see anything except his legs disappearing into the house.”
    “What was he wearing?”
    “I don’t know. Wait. Black boots. A long coat.”
    “What did you do then?”
    “Put my stuff back in the trunk in case Dad came out here and found me and then just hung out with Skipjack, waiting for the other guy to leave. I wasn’t really anxious to see Dad, so I kind of hoped he’d just go away with the guy if I gave him time. For all I knew, his plans had changed and Dad had invited the man to the ranch.”
    “And then?”
    She started to speak, then paused, her eyes moist again. It was hard to get the words out.
    “Take your time,” Nate said softly, his voice tender in a way that further undid her. Tears threatened to roll down her cheeks and she sucked them back.
    “I fell asleep,” she said.
    “What?”
    She took a deep breath. “I just fell asleep. It had been a horrible forty-eight hours leading up to that point. I’d closed the door to the stall and it was relatively warm and there was fresh straw.... Dad must have done that earlier. The horse kind of snuffled around and I closed my eyes. The next thing I knew, Skipjack was blowing hot air on my face and it was darker inside the barn. I got up and peeked outside. The weather had really deteriorated since I’d last looked. A couple of hours or more must have passed.... The silver car was gone and Dad’s truck was still where he’d parked it. I didn’t know if Dad had left with the other guy or not, but I knew I needed to check.”
    “Why did you need to check all of a sudden?” Nate asked. “You’d been content to stay hidden up to that point.”
    “I had a dream,” she said, amazed with herself for sharing this. “In my dream someone...well, someone I feel responsible for was drowning and I couldn’t help. I was frozen in place. Powerless. When I woke up, I admitted to myself that I needed Dad’s help, and if he was still here, I had to go ask for it.” She didn’t tack on the word again, but it played in her mind.
    “Why would he have refused to help you?” Nate asked gently.
    She equivocated just a little. “You have to understand that we parted on a really sour note last fall. We both said things— Well, it’s too late for regrets, but I still have them. Lately, we’d been talking by phone and he just started to get odder and odder.”
    “Like how?”
    She took a deep breath. “He talked about Pearl Harbor a lot. He was way too young to have ever been in World War II and I know he’s never been to Hawaii, so I didn’t get what he was going on about. Maybe he wanted to move. I don’t know. Then he started going on about Washington. I explained I had moved from there to Virginia, but he passed that off as though I hadn’t even spoken. He was impatient and scattered—I mean, he was all over the map. Talking about the newspaper articles written after the shooting and the mayor of Shatterhorn and how you and he and that other guy had been called patriots for what you did. I really began to think the shootings had unhinged him.”
    “I know what you mean,” Nate said softly. “His emails were getting bizarre.”
    “Exactly. He was obsessed with reading about terrorist groups and civilian militia movements and a whole bunch of other stuff. Like I said, I know he’d been hounding everybody. Then he went off on a group called People’s Liberation. He was sure they were behind some incident—”
    “The shooting in Hawaii last December,” Nate interjected. “Maybe that’s why he was talking about Pearl Harbor. The victims were off-duty sailors.”
    “Then you know about this group’s involvement?”
    “I’ve read things. Some believe their claims, some don’t. The Hawaiian shooter was an out-of-work malcontent who had been rejected by the navy. No one ever heard about any motive he might have had. But what did Mike