Kyron, page 20
He nodded and followed her inside. At that, Kyron walked around and checked the fences. Once all the horses have been moved, there was still all the hay, which would be a pain in the ass to move, but they would need hay today, so he moved several bales and started throwing it into the back of his truck. Then he went back, remembering the pallet of dog food they had just moved as well. Now we have to move it all again. He groaned but started lifting and tossing. By the time the cop came to find Kyron, all the cop did was nod to him and took off.
Miranda came over and noted, “We don’t have to move it all right now.”
“No,” he began, “but I also didn’t want to leave too much of it behind in case your neighbor really goes off the rails.”
“I can’t believe there isn’t anything we can do about it,” she muttered.
“I’m afraid he’ll just snap and be even more dangerous,” he muttered.
“Maybe,” she said, taking a long deep breath. “I don’t even know what to do at this point with the old coot and all the problems he’s creating.”
“I’m sorry about all that. And I agree. Anything we did, no matter what, seems to enrage him because he’s an angry asshole to begin with. My gut instinct was to just get out of here, but I wouldn’t leave the animals behind to be slaughtered.”
She gave him misty smile, then gave him a hug. “You did the right thing,” she said and stepped out back and shook her head. “Wow, you got the goat and all the others already?”
“Unless I missed somebody,” he said. “I wanted to move enough hay to get us through a couple days. We can come back tomorrow to get more and the same for the dog food.”
She added, “I have a ton in the house to move too.”
“And that’s a whole different story,” he noted. “It might be way faster if we could get a local moving company or even a couple kids to give you a hand.”
She stopped and stared. “There’s just so much to even pack up,” she noted, the weight of it all suddenly slowing her down.
“Remember though. This time you’re not alone.” He reached out and touched her arm.
Smiling, she reached back and added, “And you’re not either.”
Chapter 12
By the time Kyron and Miranda got the necessities loaded up in his truck, he asked Miranda, “Look. Do you know how to get there by yourself?”
She nodded. “Although I might have trouble finding the driveway,” she noted cautiously. “Why?”
“I’ll take this load up and come back.”
She nodded. “Go ahead, while I start loading up in my truck, and what about Grace?” she asked.
“We’ll take her with us in our last load tonight,” he stated. “So no animals get left behind.” And, with that, he hopped in the vehicle and took off. She had to admit that it was really high-handed, moving everybody at the same time, but he’d taken action when action was needed, and there was an awful lot to respect about that. Then she started loading things into the back of her truck, more dog food, cat food, cat beds, cat cages, carrier cages—the list was endless. The neighbor stepped out, took one look and sneered.
“Moving out, are you? Good,” he spat, “good riddance.”
She was pissed off, but she knew better than to engage a crazy person with a gun. He was dangerous as hell, and she didn’t want anything to do with him. But what she did allow herself the pleasure of was turning around and secretly giving him the finger. Then, with a smile, she headed back into the house and grabbed more stuff. She kept it up for another hour, and, before she realized it, she turned around, and Kyron was back. He smiled as he stepped inside the house and asked, “Hey, how’s it going?”
“It’s going,” she huffed out. “At least I think it is. I don’t know if I’m making any progress. It just seems like an endless job.”
“It is in many ways,” he agreed. “What about the neighbor? Any trouble?”
“Yeah, he came out once and told me good riddance.”
“Good enough,” Kyron said. “Let’s see if we can get more of this stuff loaded, and then we’ll call it a night. I’ll take both dogs in my truck, after we’re all loaded.” And, just as they went to get more, an odd sound came from the back. He looked at her and then broke into a run. She raced behind him.
There was Beth standing at the back door, growling, her hackles up. And, in the backyard, near the house, the neighbor stood there, his rifle in his hand.
“That’s my dog,” he said, with a roar. “You goddamned thieves. You don’t get to steal my dog.” He raised the gun and fired at Kyron’s feet. Making a running tackle, Kyron grabbed the rifle from his hands, threw it over the fence, then took his fists to him.
Miranda pulled him back. “Easy,” she said, “we can’t kill him.”
Kyron swore, as he stepped back. “Are you sure?” he asked. He picked up the old man in a fireman’s carry, then shoved him over the fence to the other side.
“Now stay the fuck on your side,” he yelled. “We’re doing our best to stay out of your life, so you stay off ours.” The old man groaned, picked himself up, and walked slowly back to his house.
“I don’t like the sounds of that at all.”
“No, I don’t either,” he agreed, “but it’s geared at us, not so much at the animals at least.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better,” she whispered.
“I know. Come on. Let’s finish packing up,” he said.
“We won’t get anywhere near finished,” she noted, feeling stressed.
“No, I know,” he agreed.
She noticed that he was moving slowly and looking stiff and sore. “Are you okay?”
He stopped, took several slow deep breaths, and nodded. “Yeah, I’ll be okay. I’m just really tired.”
“Do you think he’ll be able to press charges against you?”
“Well, that would be interesting,” Kyron noted. “I’ll bring in a lawyer if it comes down to it. He can’t just stand there on your property—or his for that matter—and fire weapons at us. I take offense at that,” he said in a hard voice.
Then he went back and grabbed more dog food. She watched, then started packing paperwork and other things that she might need for the animals. Bringing the rest of it outside and grabbing some clothes, she suddenly thought about food for her and Kyron because absolutely none was at his place. With that in mind, she headed to the kitchen and looked at the spaghetti sauce. “And I made such a great spaghetti sauce for dinner,” she moaned.
“Well, we need food there anyway, so let’s take it. He grabbed a few empty boxes that she had lying around. “Let’s fill these with food. At least enough for the moment. We’ll grab more later.” She nodded, and together they went to town, packing up food from her kitchen.
One of the last things he did was carry out the big covered pot of spaghetti sauce and put it on the floorboard on her truck. They had as much as they could fit for this trip, so he headed back in to get Beth and Grace. He carried Grace out, even though she was struggling in his arms, and, when he laid her down in the back seat, he told Beth to hop up to be with her. The minute she did, Grace immediately calmed down. He smiled. “A blind dog. That’ll be a new one for me.”
“I can’t even imagine,” she replied. “Do we know that for sure?”
“No, we don’t,” he noted, “but, from what I’m seeing, that makes the most sense.”
“We’ll let Doug check it out to be sure, but I don’t even know how he’ll do that. It’s not something I’ve ever dealt with. I haven’t had a chance to even talk to him about it either,” she added.
At that, he stopped and looked at her. “What happened with the kitten?”
“She needs stitches, and they’re keeping her overnight,” she replied, “mostly because everything in my world is such a nightmare.”
“I’m sorry about that,” he said.
“Yeah, you and me both,” she replied. “I have to go to work tomorrow at my regular job too. The water pipe has been fixed and all the water mopped up.”
He winced at that. “Well, at least I’ll be at home to take care of the animals,” he added, “so not to worry about that.”
“No, maybe not,” she agreed, “but my life is a mess right now. It was bad before, but right now, knowing that I’ll be homeless, that won’t make anything in my world happy.”
He stopped, stared at her, and shook his head. “You won’t be homeless. I get that this happened really fast, but we don’t dare stick around here and have things continue to escalate. Let’s deal with this problem regarding safety first, keeping all the animals safe, including us,” he stated, “and the thing is, you’d already decided to sell, and your neighbor is just pushing it forward.”
“I know,” she admitted, “and you’re right. It’s something that needs to happen regardless of him. Though I still can’t believe he’s being such an asshole and that we’re in danger of losing our lives and all the animals.”
Kyron smiled, gently nudged her under the chin, and said, “Come on. Let’s go.” And, with the two vehicles in a convoy, they slowly headed back down the road.
Kyron watched the whole way to make sure that Miranda followed him, and she did, although she seemed to be going a little bit slower, but then she had a full load, and it wasn’t tied down and all that stable. As they got closer to his place, he gave lots of warning for the turn with his signal blinking early and then pulled into his driveway. Remembering the hay and feed in the back, he backed up toward the side of the house, unloaded dog food onto the porch, then moved some hay out for the horses. He had no clue where water was located here and knew that would be a problem they would need to solve right away.
Swearing at that, he went around to the other side of the house, noting a very big water trough, but, with the freezing temperatures, he had no idea how that worked. Happily, a hose stuck through the deck, and, when he tested it, turning it on, to his surprise there was water, so he immediately filled the trough. With that taken care of and a smile on his face because something had actually worked, he unloaded the rest of his truck and then headed over to help with hers. When he got to where she was unloading food, he smiled. “I don’t know about you, but I’m damn tired and looking forward to a hot meal.”
She nodded. “I hear you there.” The fatigue in her voice was extensive.
“You know what we didn’t think about?” he asked quietly.
“What?”
“Bedding.”
She winced. “Well, let’s hope Granddad left something, at least for the night,” she replied quietly. “Other than that, as long as I can get warm, I’ll be fine.”
He nodded. “I’m sure we’ll find something here.” Then finally, with the rest of the food unloaded, they headed in, and he locked up the trucks and made sure everybody outside was safe for the night. “Now I really have work to do on the place,” he muttered.
“What do you mean?” she asked, as she put the spaghetti sauce on the stove and grabbed the big pot she had brought, filled it with water, and put it on to boil for the pasta.
“Well, the horses will need shelter,” he explained. “You have barn cats, but my barn is not in very good shape. Plus we need a place to store feed. Once you start thinking about it, the list just goes on and on.”
She stopped and looked at him worriedly. “I’m sorry. This is adding pressure to what could have been a much more leisurely project for you.”
“Honestly, it’s okay. It’s giving me something to think about and a direction to go.”
“I get that,” she noted quietly, “but it is hard for me to understand that you could just pick up and do what you did.”
“I’m just so grateful that, in that moment, we had a place to bring them.” Then he walked over, looped his arm around her neck, and gave her a gentle hug. “And you did great today.”
She snorted. “I didn’t do great at anything,” she argued. “It’s just been a bloody nightmare for far too long.”
“Not everybody has a neighbor from hell,” he murmured.
“Or cops who don’t give a shit,” she added, with a sigh.
“So one of the problems is that you’re in violation of the city bylaws or something?”
“Of course I am,” she stated. “What am I allowed? Four animals per property?” She shook her head. “Hence the need to try to get things a little more legit and, of course, move outside the city limits.”
“Well, we’ll go back tomorrow and clean out some more stuff,” he reminded her. “Or I can, while you’re at work.”
She closed her eyes and winced at the reminder then nodded. “You think it’s safe here?”
“Yes,” he said, “I do.”
“I actually wondered if we were being followed,” she told him.
He stopped and stared at her. “When?”
“On the road. A couple times I slowed down to see if the vehicle would pass me, but it didn’t. It just slowed down with me.”
“But then with the winter roads,” he suggested, “that makes sense for anybody out there in a way.”
She nodded. “I was thinking of that too, so I don’t really have a conclusive answer.”
“But you’re afraid it was your neighbor?”
“I don’t know.” She stared at Kyron, the nightmare still present in her gaze. “I really don’t want to hear you say that out loud.”
“Hiding it won’t make it any easier,” he noted thoughtfully. “I guess, for the moment, I’ll sleep in the living room.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because I’ll sleep lighter, knowing that there could be something going on later.”
“I hope not,” she said. “I really hope not.”
“Me too, and we can hope for that, but we don’t want to be caught unprepared, especially tonight. We’re exhausted, and our reaction times are slow, and we have a lot of animals that aren’t optimally arranged yet.”
She winced at that. “Exactly,” she admitted quietly. When the pasta was ready, she quickly served up dinner, which they made short work of. Putting down her fork, she looked at him and said, “I really need to crash.”
“And you will.” He nodded. “Let’s take a quick glance upstairs and see what there are for sleeping options.” And, once they’d checked it out better, for living here purposes, they found that the spare bedroom was still made up, although it was probably dusty as hell.
She said, “I don’t care about dust. I’ll survive either way. But, right now, I need to crash anywhere.” And she dropped to the bed, atop all the dust, in all her clothes.
He could also see that she was damn close to tears, and he felt bad for his part in that. He walked out, left her alone, and headed downstairs.
Looking at the boxes of food in the kitchen that they couldn’t put away because the cupboards were already full of things that were probably ancient, he felt his shoulders sag. Then his phone rang, and he looked down to see it was Badger. “Well, your phone number is a sight for sore eyes,” he answered quietly.
“What’s going on up there?” Badger asked. “You sound terrible.”
“It’s quite the story. Do you have a lot of time?”
“Yeah, I do. What the hell is going on?”
And, with that, Kyron got a glass of water and proceeded to tell Badger the whole saga.
“Holy crap,” he replied, “and the city is doing nothing about it?”
“No, they aren’t, and that’s just adding to the problem. For some reason they don’t seem to see Macintyre as a viable threat.”
“But that’s BS.”
“I know.”
“And your brother, the cop, what about him?”
“He’s no better than the rest. In fact, we had quite a dustup on the phone earlier,” he explained. “I highly doubt he’s even thinking about me, and, if he is, it’s not good because I called him out.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Badger replied. “I had no idea we’d be sending you back into a war zone.”
“I’m still just stunned that something like this could be happening right in the city with nobody to back her up,” he moaned quietly.
“So, where are you now?”
“Years ago, I inherited a property here from my grandfather,” he told Badger, “so I basically reopened it today, and we’re hiding out here.”
“What happens if this guy finds you?”
At that, Kyron winced. “He may already have. Miranda was afraid we were being followed as we drove up.”
“Crap,” Badger said. “Do you want me to contact the local authorities?”
“Unless you know somebody you trust and who trusts you and who will believe you when you tell him that this is for real,” he complained, “it won’t do any good. We’ve already had more than our share of trouble, and I think we’re just being labeled as troublemakers.”
“Well, I’d rather see you labeled as troublemaker than dead,” Badger said bluntly.
“And the War Dog’s is doing fine, by the way,” he shared.
“Good, I’m glad to hear that.” There was a note of humor in his voice, as he added, “This isn’t quite the way we expected this mission to go.”
“No, I’m sure you didn’t, but sometimes things are just more of a headache than anything imaginable in this weird wonderful world of ours.”
“And you sound exhausted.”
“Yeah, I need to crash, but I also need to stay awake.”
“And that won’t work,” Badger noted. “Why don’t you crash for a couple hours, and I’ll call you back in about two and make sure you’re awake again. Is it daylight there?”
“It is still for a little bit, yeah.”
“So you’ve probably got a couple hours before anybody’ll make their move.”
“And, even at that, I can’t guarantee it,” he muttered.
“No, but, in the meantime, I’ll see if I can find somebody we know and trust in your town. We did have another case close to there.”
