Deadfall Read Free Page A

closed without warning and his face swam in unshed tears that blurred her vision. How could one be both relieved and disappointed all at once? she wondered fleetingly.
    Astonished, Alex dropped his arm to encircle her shoulders.
    “Jess. Don’t you like them? What’s wrong?”
    Then, without waiting for a response, he swept her up and carried her to the sofa, where he sat down, cradling her on his lap like a child, and tipped up her chin, so he could see her face.
    “No…no.” She smiled, as the tears disappeared. “Nothing’s wrong. Really. I love them. They’re gorgeous. You just caught me off guard, that’s all. Surprised me. What a present!”
    He reached to the arm of the sofa for a kitchen towel she had forgotten there and handed it to her.
    “Oh. Well, of course I never gave anyone diamond earrings before, so how could I have known this was the traditional response? Here, love…wipe your face and put them on. I want to see.”
    She hugged him hard for a moment and complied.
     
    M uch later, when they had eaten, washed the dishes, returned a reluctant Tank to the dog lot, and were half asleep in the big brass bed, under the quilt that glowed with northern lights as bright as those that pulsed across the autumn sky high over the cabin, Alex heard her whisper.
    “Some kind of buttering, trooper. But we’d better be going somewhere tomorrow night where I can wear these!”

2
    I n the very early hours of morning, Jessie found herself suddenly wide awake and staring into the dark, filled with a strange tension.
    A breath of wind whispered through the slightly open bedroom window, inspiring a small susurrus in the folds of the curtain. Then there was the soft, dry rustle of flying birch leaves against the glass, like spirit fingers scrabbling ineffectively to come in.
    She lay without moving, listening hard. Instinctively knowing that no usual sound had raised her consciousness, she searched past those she could identify for something else. The sound was not repeated, though she held her breath till her chest ached with the strain of alert concentration, her body rigid. She could half-remember a sharp noise of some kind, then another—different. All her intuition insisted something was not right.
    The wind eased as if drawing its breath, and deep beneaththe lowering of it came a distant resonance, a moan…no, the pitch was too high…a whimper…of hurt, or distress? Tank barked, suddenly, twice, and was answered by a yelp or two from other locations in the yard. One of the huskies produced a single howl that faded into yips of disturbance.
    Tossing back the covers, Jessie was quickly on her feet, switching on a small bedside lamp, throwing on the clothes she had shed when going to bed.
    “Wha-at?” Alex asked, sleepily raising his face from the pillow to see her yanking a turtleneck sweater over her head. “What is it?”
    Hurriedly, she yanked on socks and jeans.
    “I don’t know. Something’s wrong in the lot. Maybe a moose has them going, but they don’t bark without a reason.”
    He sat up and swung his feet over the side of the bed.
    “Doesn’t sound like a moose. They get crazy for that.”
    “I know. I’ll go see.” She slipped beyond the light into the front room, wending surefooted past dark furniture to her coat and boots by the door.
    “Hold on. Let me get some clothes on and grab the shotgun.”
    By the time he had snatched the gun from its hooks on the wall and, shirttail hanging, arrived at the front door, she was anxiously peering out the window, unable to see anything in the dark but the square shapes of the closest dog boxes, which were a little paler than their surroundings. He shrugged on his coat, crammed his bare feet into boots, plucked one large flashlight from a hook beside the door, and handed her another.
    “Opening this door will automatically turn on the new lights,” he reminded her, tucking the rifle in the crook of his arm. “We could slide out through the