Lover Beware

lantern, turned the knob, and light spread through the room.
    The assailant was almost as tall as Rider, and brawny across the shoulders. Something about the small shape of his head compared to the width of his shoulders, his hair cut close around his skull, was familiar. Jane was sure she knew who he was, although she’d only seen him a handful of times. Earl Sooner, one of a small number of beneficiaries who were resident in and around Tayler’s Creek. He owned a small acreage on the other side of town, although most of his block was covered in gorse and bush. According to local gossip, the only productive use Earl had ever put his piece of land to was reputed to be an illegal one, although he had never actually been busted for growing cannabis.
    The fighting surged toward her again, and she scrambled back until the wall stopped her. Locked together, the two men hit the doorframe, making the whole house shudder, then reeled back into the bedroom. With a quick twist, Rider flipped Sooner onto his stomach on the floor, then went down on top of him, his knee wedged in the small of Sooner’s back, forearm pressed up tight under Sooner’s neck, arching his head back at an acute angle. Sooner’s face went red, then purple, his eyes bulging. Spittle frothed from his mouth as he fought the hold, then abruptly his eyelids drooped and he went slack in Rider’s grip.
    Rider’s gaze found hers. Blood was trickling from a cut on his cheekbone, and he had a swelling over one eye, but otherwise he appeared to be unharmed. “Have you got rope?”
    “I’ve got plenty, but it’s in the barn.”
    “Get it. I’ll make sure he doesn’t wake up anytime soon.”
    Jane didn’t hang around to ask just what Rider had done to knock Sooner out, or what measures he’d take if Sooner came back around. Jess was crouched at the bottom of the stairs, and shadowed Jane to the kitchen, whining for assurance, keeping so close, Jane kept tripping over her.
    Jane dropped a consoling pat on her head. “Me, too, girl.”
    She collected a second torch from the pantry, because the last one was outside on the lawn somewhere, and she was almost certain she’d left it turned on, so the batteries would be flat.
    The trip to the barn was unnerving. The dawn was gray and murky, the wind still strong enough that it sounded like surf pounding through the trees, and the rain drove in ghostly sheets across the yard, instantly soaking her as she crossed the open area of lawn in front of the house.
    It wasn’t until she stepped onto the graveled area in front of the barn that she remembered that her feet were bare, but the sharp stones hardly registered as she picked her way across to the barn, set the torch down, and heaved at the crossbar that anchored the door closed. When she finally got the bar clear and wrenched one of the doors wide, the barn yawned, cavernously dark and creepy. Inside, the sound of the wind and rain was amplified, because acoustically, the barn resembled nothing so much as a steel drum.
    Jess stuck to her like glue as she navigated the piles of hay, rubbing at her legs and shivering as Jane uncoiled a length of light rope from a nail on the wall. For good measure, she grabbed a coil of baling twine as well. This much rope was overkill, but what the heck? Sooner was dangerous. It was better that he was half suffocated by rope than that he got free.
    By the time she made it back to the kitchen, her clothes were plastered to her skin and her hair trailed wetly over her cheeks and dripped down her spine. She slammed the kitchen door against the wind, the cessation of noise almost eerily abrupt. Jess shook herself, sending a flurry of droplets across the floor, while Jane selected a sharp knife from the knife block for slicing the rope. Gripping the torch more firmly, she climbed the stairs. Her pace slowed as she approached her bedroom door, apprehension knotting her belly, because it occurred to her that while she was in the barn, Sooner might have come around. Her heart thumped hard in her chest at the thought of Rider hurt or incapacitated. As a precautionary measure, she held the knife at her side so that it wouldn’t be immediately obvious, although the knife would be close to useless when stacked up against a gun.
    When she paused at the open door, for a moment the tableau of Rider holding the unconscious Sooner in a neck lock on the floor was abruptly disorienting. She hadn’t known what to expect, but the whole time