Close Range Christmas by Nicole Helm (ebook reader for laptop TXT) 📗

“It’ll take longer than that. You know it will. Those horses will freeze. You’re going to have to pull them out. It’ll take time.”

“Give me three minutes. Just three.”

Jamison paused. He took the bucket handed to him. “Your leg?”

“It’ll hold up,” Dev insisted. He had to save at least some of the horses. They were as innocent in all this as his family was.

Jamison looked down at the bucket he was holding. “All right. This should douse you. You take more than those three minutes...” He trailed off.

“I promise. Dump it on me.”

Dev braced himself for the cold, but there was no fully bracing for the icy cold seeping through his coat. Immediately his teeth began to chatter.

“Three minutes,” Jamison repeated.

“Three minutes,” Dev agreed. He crouched low, kept his wet sleeve over his mouth, and then moved. The flames had definitely come from the outside, so while the inside was full of smoke, there were only a few places the flames had broken through.

It would only take a few more places of breakage to have the whole place engulfed what with all the straw and hay as tinder. Dev didn’t spend any time deliberating. He moved through from one side to the other, opening stall doors.

Like Jamison had predicted, the horses only bucked and neighed in fear of the smoke and flames. It would take more than the three minutes—so Dev set out to do the most he could in what time he had.

He managed to get three out by covering their eyes with rags and leading them with a heavy hand. But after the third, Jamison grabbed him before he could go back in.

“I’ve got four more to go,” he rasped. “I’ll go in on the other side. It’ll be quick.”

“Take Du—”

But Dev broke Jamison’s grasp and ran. He couldn’t wait for backup or a lookout. He had dwindling time to get his horses safe. He ran to the back of the stables, which was closer to the remainder of the horses. Fire engulfed the frame of the door, but with his wet sleeve covering his arm, he slid the bar out of the way and shoved the door far enough open that he could get the horses out. Then Dev ran inside, keeping low, keeping his mouth covered.

His eyes stung, his throat burned, but he worked to get the four horses out. The last one was the hardest, Sarah’s stubborn mare of course being the most difficult.

Dev was about to admit defeat so he didn’t die of smoke inhalation, but the horse finally moved forward and then ran off into the dark night.

Dev stumbled to his knees outside the stable, gulping in the fresh air. His throat felt raw, like it had been burned itself. His leg ached in all the normal places but with a piercing pain he hadn’t felt in a while. But the horses were safe, even if they were now running all over creation.

Dev looked up to the the man who stood there waiting for him. It wasn’t Duke or one of his brothers. Or at least, one of his full brothers.

“Merry Christmas, brother.”

Dev shivered inside his wet coat as he sat back on the snow. He breathed heavily—cold and hot at the same time. Pain in his leg, in his eyes, in his throat. But this was what he’d wanted. A one-on-one. Face-to-face with the man who’d clearly made him a target even if he’d used his brothers too as smoke and mirror distractions. “I’ve been waiting for you, Anth.”

Dev couldn’t make out much of his features in only the light from the blaze of the fire. The orange glow made him look like some kind of demon from a children’s fairy tale.

“Have you now? Seems like you’ve been conspiring with the brothers who’ve done so much wrong. Betrayed you and yours over and over again. It doesn’t seem like my notes got through to you at all.” He held up something in the flickering light, but Dev didn’t know what it was.

But something exploded in the distance, a light flashing past the rise. The Knight house maybe, or their stables. Dev couldn’t be sure. But he saw as his brothers and sisters-in-law began to run for it.

“That should keep them busy,” Anth said cheerfully.

But what Dev hoped to God Anth didn’t see was that while a majority of the figures had run off toward the other explosion, it wasn’t all of them. Unless they were obscured by the dark, only seven ran for the explosion. That meant at least two were either still on the other side of the barn or running for the house.

Anth laughed as the stables began to moan and creak under the weight of the flames. “You think you know what I want, Dev. But you don’t have a clue.”

Chapter Seventeen

The contractions were no longer slowing down. Grandma Pauline held her hand while Sarah lay down on the couch and tried not to panic. She couldn’t panic about labor when there was a fire and a madman out there.

“Breathe,” Grandma Pauline ordered.

Sarah tried to listen, tried to focus on the Christmas lights twinkling around them, instead of her own body. But her thoughts kept whirling around. All the ways this was the worst timing ever, and how was she going to make it?

“I was stupid and selfish,” she muttered. If she’d told Dev or anyone about her contractions she might be on her way to the hospital, with Dev at her side, rather than worried about him out there fighting fires and trying to save their horses.

“You are young and maybe a little foolish, but neither stupid nor selfish,” Grandma said matter-of-factly. “My mother had me in this very house. We both lived to tell the tale. If there wasn’t a fire and someone out there likely threatening us, you’d be on your way to the hospital. As it is, we’ve got a fire truck and an ambulance on the