Chapter 6 - Shadows by the Kiln
Sunday night brought a front off the panhandle—thick, bruised clouds that smelled of ozone and damp cedar, rolling low over the scrub oaks.
Aaron had set up three new motion-activated floodlights around the perimeter of my woodshop. After what happened on Easter, neither of us took chances. We locked the heavy barn doors with hardened-steel padlocks, checked the latches on the horse stalls, and kept the 12-gauge behind the kitchen door.
Around two in the morning, the barn alarm chimed.
It wasn't the loud siren—we had configured it to send a soft, pulsing alert to the bedroom console to avoid terrifying Callie.
I was awake the second the screen glowed blue.
"Motion at the kiln bay," Aaron whispered, already pulling on his work boots. He reached behind the door, chambering a shell into the shotgun with a sharp, metallic *clack*.
"Wait," I said, throwing on my denim jacket and grabbing the high-powered spotlight from the nightstand. "Let me check the monitor first."
The black-and-white feed showed the back corner of the workshop where I kept stacks of seasoned black walnut and white oak drying under a tin lean-to. In the grainy infrared light, two figures were moving clumsily.
They weren't children. They were adult men, wearing dark hoodies and work gloves, carrying heavy five-gallon jerrycans.
"Gasoline," I gasped, the blood roaring in my ears. "They're trying to torch the lumber."
"Stay in the house with Callie," Aaron commanded, his eyes dark with a protective rage I had rarely seen in him.
"Like hell I will," I hissed. "You take the front doors; I'm cutting through the tractor shed to flank the perimeter."
We moved out into the pitch-black night. The Oklahoma wind was howling through the windbreak trees, masking the sound of our footsteps on the gravel.
As I rounded the corner of the tractor shed, the smell hit me—not the sweet smell of damp earth, but the noxious, biting reek of raw diesel fuel.
I raised the spotlight and flipped the heavy toggle switch.
A beam of a million candlepower pierced the darkness, pinning the two figures against the stacked timber.
"Drop it!" Aaron bellowed from fifty feet away, leveling the shotgun from behind the corner of the barn. "Drop the cans or you won't walk off this property!"
The two men froze like deer in headlights.
The taller one dropped his plastic jug, diesel sloshing across his boots. Underneath his pulled-down baseball cap, I recognized the rat-like features immediately: Toby Vance, Rhonda’s brother-in-law on her husband's side, a petty crook who ran an illegal scrap yard outside Crescent. Beside him was his cousin, Wayne.
"Whoa, Aaron! Easy with that piece!" Toby stammered, raising his gloved hands, his eyes blinded by my spotlight. "We're just... we got turned around lookin' for an alternator Toby dropped off last week!"
"At two in the morning with ten gallons of fuel behind my kiln?" I snapped, stepping forward, keeping the blinding beam square on his face. "Shut up, Toby."
"Crystal, listen—"
"Aaron, keep him covered," I said coldly, pulling out my cellphone with my left hand and dialing 911. "I’m calling Sheriff Miller. We have you on high-definition infrared cameras dousing twenty thousand dollars' worth of dry timber with accelerant. That's attempted arson, criminal trespass, and felony property damage."
Toby’s face turned gray. "Crystal, don't do this! Rhonda told us you took sixty grand out of Arlin's accounts that belonged to the family! She said you were holding stolen property in this barn!"
"Rhonda lied to you," Aaron said, taking three slow, deliberate steps forward, the shotgun held steady at low-ready. "And now you're going to spend the next five to ten years in a state penitentiary for listening to her."
Sirens were already howling in the distance, echoing off the low hills. In a county this small, when an emergency call comes from the Eubanks property after the week we’d had, the response was immediate.
May you like
Toby looked at the road, then at Aaron’s steady hands, and sank to his knees in the red dirt. "God almighty... she told us there weren't no cameras."
"There are cameras everywhere now, Toby," I said, watching the flashing red and blue lights paint the tops of our oak trees as the sheriff’s cruisers crossed the cattle guard. "Welcome to the new homestead."
