Under Threat

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Acknowledgments

Chapter One

“So did you ride after school? How is that horse of yours?” Dad asks me.

We’re eating dinner, which I made—chicken with feta cheese and green peas on linguine.
Learning to cook was one of my New Year’s resolutions. “He’s doing well,” I say.
“Walking and trotting without a limp. I’m taking it slow with him though. Letting
that tendon heal.”

“Well, it was just as well you decided to retire from jumping when you did,” Mom
says. She points at her dinner plate with her fork. “Franny, this is delish.”

“Don’t know where she got it from, but our girl can cook,” Dad says approvingly.
“This recipe is definitely a keeper.”

“Good. Glad you like it.” I’m not surprised he does—the dish is way too salty, which
is exactly what his blood pressure doesn’t need. I’d forgotten how high in sodium
feta is. “I wouldn’t have had time to show this year anyway,” I say, twirling my
fork on the pasta. “Even if Buddy wasn’t lame. The amount of homework I have is insane.”

“Not to mention your love life,” Dad says, rolling his eyes. “Every time I see you,
you’re texting your girlfriend.” He’s grinning though. He adores Leah. He and Mom
both do.

“What bothers me,” Dad says, “is that your horse got to retire before I did. I mean,
I’m pushing seventy.”

“Sixty-seven,” I correct him quickly. He’s ten years older than mom, and she was
forty when I was born, so they are kind of old for parents. But
seventy
? That’s well
into grandparent age.

“And Buddy is still in his teens.”

“Almost twenty,” I say. “Which is getting on for a horse.”

Dad ignores me. “And he has a sore ankle. I had a stroke! Shouldn’t that trump a
sore ankle?”

“Sore
fetlock
,” I say, even though I know he’s well aware that horses don’t have
ankles. “And you didn’t have a stroke, Dad. You had a transient ischemic attack.
Which isn’t a real stroke. Just a warning.” What I don’t say is that a third of people
who have a TIA go on to have a stroke within a year. He’s well aware of that too.

“Who’s the doctor here?” he says.

And then the phone rings. I start to get up, even though Leah doesn’t usually use
the landline, but Dad waves a hand at me. “Let the machine get it. Neither of us
is on call.”

I sit back down, twirl a fork full of linguine and chew slowly. Definitely too much
salt. Not good, considering the only reason I took over the cooking was to stop the
family reliance on takeout and make sure Dad ate healthier meals.

The phone rings and rings. Let it be Leah, I think, let it be Leah. I picture her
face—her blue-green eyes, her silky brown hair, the deep dimples that appear when
she smiles, the way she covers her mouth with her hand when she laughs.

I was just with her, but I miss her already.

Leah’s family owns the farm where I keep Buddy now. Gibson’s Farm—or Buddy’s Retirement
Home, as Dad
calls it. I was heartbroken when Buddy developed a limp right at the
start of last show season, but if he’d stayed sound, and we’d kept jumping and competing,
I’d probably never have met Leah Gibson. So that’s kind of a crazy thought. We’ve
only been together for a few months, but I’ve never felt like this about any other
girl.

No matter how much time I spend with Leah, it’s not nearly enough. Even when I’m
with her, I sometimes feel this ache, like I can’t get close enough, can’t hold her
tight enough, can’t kiss her long enough. I’ve had other girlfriends, but I’ve never
felt like this before.

It’s crazy and, to be honest, a little scary.

Just two hours ago, we were sitting on a bale of hay outside the tack room, cleaning
the school horse bridles and listening to the horses munch their oats. Leah’s brother,
Jake, was teaching a
private lesson in the arena, and I could hear his voice—“Extended
trot doesn’t mean go faster, Brandy! I want to see longer strides, not speed! Contain
that energy!” It was like listening to the soundtrack of my childhood. Leah turned
to me and said, “I love the sound of horses eating.”

I love you, I thought. I love you.

We hadn’t said those words yet, but I thought them the whole time I was with her—and
most of the time I wasn’t with her too.

The machine beeps and picks up. “You’ve reached the home of Heather, Hugh and Franny
Green. Leave a message and one of us will get back to you.”

I stop chewing for a second, listening, in case it’s for me. But it’s a man’s voice,
deep and oddly muffled. “Baby killers,” he says. “You’re going to burn in hell for
what you do.”
Click.

My heart flip-flops in my chest, and my cheeks flare hot.

Mom sighs. “So much for changing the number and having it unlisted,” she says. “How
long did it take for them to get the new one?”

Dad runs his hands over his bald head. “Not nearly long enough.”

The phone starts to ring again.

“Unplug it, would you, Franny?” Mom says. Her voice is calm, as always. She’s the
most level-headed, unflappable person I’ve ever met.

“We’ll have to change the number again,” Dad says.

“We should just get rid of the landline,” I say. Hardly anyone uses it anyway, mainly
because we’ve changed the number so many times that no one can keep track of it.
Except, apparently, the anti-abortion psychos. I stand up and walk toward the phone,
and I’m just
about to yank the cord from the phone jack when the next message starts.

It’s the same voice. “Hello again, baby killers,” he says. “I just left a little
surprise for you in the mailbox.”
Click.

I freeze.

“Don’t unplug it,” Dad says. “Pass me the phone. I’m calling the police.”

My heart is beating fast and my hand is slippery with sweat as I hand him the phone.
“It’ll be okay,” Mom says. “We’ve been here before, right?”

I nod. Last time we had a bomb threat, someone actually left a package on the front
steps and we had to evacuate the house. The bomb squad came and everything, but it
turned out to be just a cardboard box full of phone books and cans of hairspray.

That was over a year ago, but I still have nightmares about it.

Dad is talking to Detective Bowerbank, AKA Rich—balding,
beer-bellied and solid
as a rock. Over the last few years, we’ve seen so much of him that he’s become kind
of a family friend.

I pull my cell out of my pocket. Mom grabs my arm. “Wait.”

“Can’t I call Leah?”

“Turn off your cell,” she says. “Remember?”

Bomb threat protocol: don’t touch the light switches, turn off your cell phone.
I
swallow and shut down my phone.

Mom tucks a wiry curl behind her ear. Her hair is a mass of tightly coiled silver
springs. Like hundreds of tiny Slinkys. “Just to be on the safe side,” she says.
“I’m sure it’ll turn out to be nothing.”

Dad hangs up the phone. “He says to sit tight and they’ll have someone here within
a few minutes.”

“Shouldn’t we get out?” I ask.

“He doesn’t want us opening the doors until they’ve made sure it’s safe for us to
do so.”

I imagine a sniper hiding behind a tree. Picture wires trailing from the mailbox
to the door hinge. My breathing is fast and shallow, and I have to remind myself
to push aside the scary images.
Don’t make this worse than it is, Franny.
I count
silently to ten, trying to slow my breathing.

But I can’t stop my thoughts. What if it’s starting all over again?

Chapter Two

Half an hour later, I’m sitting with my parents in the living room, and the cops
have taken away an envelope of white powder to be analyzed.

“Almost certainly not anthrax,” Rich Bowerbank tells us. “Obviously, we can’t take
any chances, but I can tell you that out of many hundreds of
similar threats to abortion
clinics, none have contained actual anthrax.”

“This isn’t a clinic though,” Mom says. “It’s our house.”

She is sitting on the couch beside me, her face calm, her back as straight as a dancer’s.
All that yoga. I straighten my own spine and lift my chin in an effort to look less
like a curled-up ball of fear. “Which means someone knows where we live,” I say.
My voice is shaky. I clear my throat. “Do you think it’s the same person as last
time?”

He shakes his head. “Highly unlikely. I’ll double-check, but I’m pretty sure he’s
still getting three meals a day at taxpayers’ expense.”

“He’s still in jail?” I ask.

Rich nods. “Could be linked, I suppose. We’ll look at every possibility.” He leans
toward me. “You know how seriously we take this, right?”

I nod. I do know. And Rich is a good guy. He investigated the threats at the hospital
and the fake bomb at our house, and he’s the one who helped bring in the guy responsible
for it all. He’s got daughters—twin girls, a year behind me at school—and I know
he cares about our safety. And he gets it too: unlike a lot of people, he understands
why my parents don’t give up, even after my dad’s not-quite-a-stroke.

The crazy thing is, my dad was actually just about to retire before this all started
up the last time. He had high blood pressure and some other health stuff going on,
and he thought less stress might be a good thing. But then all three of the doctors
who did abortions at the hospital—my parents and Jennifer Lee—started getting death
threats, and someone threw a brick through Jennifer Lee’s dining-room window with
a
note attached:
NEXT TIME IT’LL BE A BULLET
.

Jennifer has a paraplegic husband and two little kids. She decided she couldn’t risk
it. Now she delivers babies, does some routine surgeries—but no more abortions.

So if my dad had retired too, it’d only be my mom left. And it’s not just the hospital
clinic here in town either. Both of them also do clinic hours each month in several
smaller rural hospitals, because otherwise abortion wouldn’t be available there.
Sure, if you can afford to travel, you can go to a city to get an abortion. But if
you’re poor and live out in the sticks and don’t have a car, or you have a houseful
of kids to look after, or you’re a sixteen-year-old whose parents don’t have your
back, you’re screwed.

And since abortion is legal and the anti-choice people haven’t had much
luck getting
that changed, they’re going after the doctors. Trying to stop abortions by making
doctors too scared to do them.

My parents don’t like being bullied. I think all the threats have just made them
even more committed to their work.