Morgan James - Promise McNeal 02 - Quiet Killing
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Authors: Morgan James
Tags: #Mystery: Thriller - Arson - North Carolina
| Morgan James - Promise McNeal 02 - Quiet Killing | |
| Number II of Promise McNeal | |
| Morgan James | |
| CreateSpace (2012) | |
| Tags: | Mystery: Thriller - Arson - North Carolina |
A second and third fire leads Promise to a mysterious, abandoned little girl. But why would the child start fires? Who killed the contractor? And what does a book about the legendary moonshine outlaw, Lewis Redmond, have to do with the contractor’s murder and her great-grandfather? Before Promise connects the clues, the child disappears into a late March snow, and Promise, Daniel, and Susan race against freezing temperatures to rescue her and uncover a secret worthy of murder.
Also by Morgan James
Quiet The Dead
Quiet Killing
Copyright © 2012 Morgan James
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 147505792X
ISBN 13: 9781475057928
eBook ISBN: 978-1-62111-706-3
The Darkest Hour is Just Before Dawn
The sun is slowly sinkin’
The day is almost gone
Still darkness falls around us
And we must journey on.
The darkest hour is just before dawn
The narrow way leads home
Lay down your soul at Jesus’ feet
The darkest hour is just before dawn.
Like a shepherd out on the mountain
A watchin’ the sheep down below
He’s coming back to claim us
Will you be ready to go?
The darkest hour is just before dawn
The narrow way leads home
Lay down your soul at Jesus’ feet
The darkest hour is just before dawn.
Lyrics, Ralph Stanley and the Clinch
Mountain Boys
Contents
“Wake up, girl. There’s fire on the mountain.”
January McNeal’s plea was a hard whisper on the cold night air. If he had spoken louder the voice would give proof of a lingering Irish lilt, and the soreness of his mouth from the beating delivered by the High Sheriff’s deputy. But he didn’t speak louder. Not yet. He watched the midnight darkness beyond the jail window and held the swelling sound deep in his throat with enough force to bend the bars separating him from his home, wife, and child. By that force, that power, he willed his whispered words to travel time and distance until they fell into the ears of the sleeping Reba. “Git the baby and make for the cave. Hit’s fire you smell. And hit’s coming for you.”
The wind turned, blowing a puff of burning pines into his face and he coughed on the bitter taste. Tears wet the stubble on his unshaven cheeks, stinging cuts left by the deputy’s fists. He pressed his body against the iron bars and stretched his right arm into freedom’s air; then with long fingers extended upward, his voice
erupted, loud enough to wake the sleeping drunk sharing his cell.
He commanded into the wind, “And the righteous shall know God, and be delivered from their enemies. Rise up, Oh Israel, and be delivered!” Lightning bull-whipped across the night sky, a cluster of devil claws convulsing along the top of the mountain, illuminating the fire as it marched up the slope, headed for his cabin. Thunder and his animal scream exploded behind the lightning, roiling and shaking the very ground where he stood.
“All right,” I heard myself say to the empty bedroom, as I fought up from the dream. Had I heard thunder? I listened. An incessant, whooping, ear-piercing bark repeated from just beyond the bedroom window. “Whose dog?” I said aloud, and hit the floor with an angry thud. When I opened the shutters and stared into the predawn blackness of the back yard, I didn’t see a barking dog. What I saw was my hay barn burning like the fires of hell, orange and black flames licking skyward, and my goats, Minnie and Pearl, huddled together at the far right of their small pasture.
There was no time to wonder whose dog was barking, and no time to call for help. I felt sure by the time the volunteer fire department navigated the eleven miles of two-lane, twisting, switchback, mountain roads, my hay barn would be left in cinders. I grabbed my dirty jeans and flannel shirt from the clothes hamper and put them on over my nightgown, then ran for my duck boots by the back door. As I stumbled down the porch steps and stood on the gravel walk from the house to the pasture, the cold March air and
pumping adrenaline shocked me fully awake. I knew I needed a plan to contain the fire before it spread to the larger goat barn, and my house. How many feet of garden hose did I have? Would my well have enough water to do any good? And where the hell is that damn barking dog? I felt my heart pounding in my chest and blood singing in my ears. A plan? What plan did I have for a fire in the middle of the night?
Just do something
, my brain was screaming,
just do something
.
Ignoring the barking, now sounding inches away from me, I rooted around in the azalea beds by the house, came up with the garden hose, turned on the spigot, and pulled the long grey plastic coil with all my strength out toward the orange and black blaze. The hose length stopped just short of the fence. I opened the nozzle all the way out and raised the hose high into the air to maximize the flow. Water carried only as far as the side of the barn. I couldn’t even wet the roof, or the remainder of the structure. Off to my right, my beautiful, frightened goat girls stomped around and circled each other. I called out to them, telling them to stay where they were; they were going to be okay. With all my being, I prayed I spoke the truth.
Tears blurred my vision and I had to wipe my eyes with my left hand, while holding the hose with my right. For all my efforts, the fire curled tight and fierce up into the darkened sky. And still, the barking continued like a hammer striking raw metal at my back. As I pulled the hose one more time to stretch it to the limit, I sensed movement off to my left. Fletcher Enloe, my neighbor and tireless commentator that city folks,
like me, don’t belong in the mountains, emerged from the pine thicket separating our houses. A canvas, pork-pie fishing hat squeezed low over his thick gray hair, and his wiry body listed from the weight of a dark roll slung over his shoulder.
“Gol-damit,” he carped, “might know you’d be nar prepared for anything excepting making coffee.” He jerked the garden hose out of my hand with such force that I staggered to keep upright. “Cut off the spigot so I can add this here piece of pipe to yourn.” Uncharacteristically, I didn’t argue with the irascible old man. You could say Fletcher and I have a love-hate relationship. I believe he loves to hate me.
Once Fletcher connected his hose to mine, he climbed over my goat fence like a man of thirty, instead of one somewhere on the down side of seventy, and began soaking the hay barn roof. “Git a hoe and turn up that dry grass into dirt tween the barn and your girls, case this fire means to run along the ground.”
I grabbed a hoe left leaning against the house and made my way into the pasture to dig a break separating the fire from the goats. Fletcher has at least twenty years on me. Nevertheless, I did not scale the fence. I let myself into the pasture by the farm gate. As I turned to drop the chain back into the latch, I saw the shadow of a crouching, barking dog under the porch steps. No time to worry about a dog. My job was to dig a firebreak. I struck the hoe into hard dirt for all I was worth, and had about six feet of earth turned up when I heard the siren. Loose gravel scattered as the volunteer fire truck sped down the drive. The dog stopped barking.