Lover Beware 03 - After Midnight

empowerment had happened while she was holding one of the most potent symbols of male power—a gun—in her hands.
    A MISTY HAZE, the peculiar characteristic of cyclones in New Zealand, built up as the day passed. The cloud cover remained heavy, and the breeze began to gust.
    Jane moved from trimming branches near windows, to working on the home alarm system she'd devised. She hauled water up the stepladder and filled the bucket that she'd set on the roof just above the entrance to the kitchen. When it was half full, she climbed back down the ladder, and pulled on the rope attached to the bucket to test it. Water cascaded down, part-way soaking her despite the fact that she took care to step back.

    212
    FIONA BRAND
    She replaced the bucket, balancing it carefully on the edge of the guttering, and refilled it with water. It was a kid's trick, but it was effective.
    She repeated the same booby trap over the front door, and to finish off, she gathered up empty paint tins from the barn and empty cans that were stored in a rubbish bin liner ready to be taken to the recycling station. She punched holes in each can, using a hammer and a nail, then strung them together in two bunches with baling twine, and tied a cluster to each bucket of water. Now when either of the buckets came down, they would not only soak the attacker and, hopefully, hit him on the head or the chest, but the attached cans would tumble down around him, making plenty of noise.
    There wasn't a lot else she could do. If an intruder decided to smash glass and come in one of her windows, then she was sunk. She had Jess for protection, and if she had to, she would use the gun.

Chapter 6
    AT FIVE MINUTES past midnight, the power failed.
    Jane sat up in bed and set down the book she'd been trying to read. The wind was howling, and thin drizzle spattered her windows. Jess's tail thumped on the floor. Jane patted her head as she reached for the phone on her bedside table and discovered that that was dead, too. Either the storm had knocked the lines out, or someone had wrapped their car around a power pole, bringing the lines down.
    Jackknifing out of bed, she dragged on her shorts, pulled a shirt over the soft cotton singlet she'd worn to bed, and padded downstairs, holding the torch she'd left beside the bed. Jess had followed her, and now she flopped down on the kitchen floor, set her head down, and let out a gusty sigh. Reassured by Jess's relaxed mood, Jane rummaged in the hall cupboard and extracted the battery lantern that was stored there, carried it through to the kitchen, and adjusted the knob until the room was filled with a soft glow.
    She tried the phone again. The line was still dead. She paced the kitchen, stared out at the wild night, and was abruptly gripped by a sense of isolation.
    Although she'd spent a lot of time on her own over the 214
    FIONA BRAND
    past few years, she hadn't often been alone. Barring the time he'd spent in hospital, she'd always had Patrick for company.
    Now the house seemed to echo with emptiness, the sense of being cut off from everyone and everything intensified by the loss of the phone.
    A sweep of headlights briefly illuminated the kitchen, throwing the potted plants that lined the window into stark relief and giving a ghostly cast to the room. Above the whine of the wind, she thought she heard tyres crunching on gravel.
    Grabbing the torch, she flicked off the beam, took a hold of Jess's collar, and slipped out the door, bracing herself against the full brunt of the wind where it slammed into the east side of the house, and shivering as she was instantly soaked by the thin drizzle that was being driven in horizontal gusts. Outside, the sound of the wind was eerily amplified, rising to a high-pitched animalistic howl that tightened the skin all along the length of her spine. She wasn't normally this nervy, but then she wasn't in the habit of receiving midnight visitors either.
    As she edged around the corner of the house to see who it was, Jess lunged free of her hold and shot straight down the steps and out to the drive, which meant that whoever the intruder was, he would probably be licked to death before he could get to the house. At the same time, it occurred to Jane that a murderer wouldn't be likely to have his lights on, but with the power and the phone out, she wasn't taking any chances.
    And as isolated as she was, a convoy of murderers could turn up and it wouldn't matter how many lights were blazing; she