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Ozzie panted and heard only his breath and his pounding heart until his breathing slowed and the forest sounds rose to meet him. The notes were mostly calm and peaceful. Only the singing of distant frogs and crickets that sang their last songs of the Indian summer drowned out the last dying gasps of a trio of coyotes.
He looked to the sky. The full moon still shone its beacon brightly, and guided Ozzie home. As he began his descent to the camp he felt a chill, even though his muscles were flush from battle. A haunting chill as if a change was in the air. As if time was ru
Ozzie stepped up onto the porch, lying down close to Tammy and drifting asleep. For the first time since he had been with Hal, nightmares didn’t chase him. Instead, Ozzie dreamed he was the one atop a mountain, looking over the expansive forest as he commanded the soil to wash away his enemies. To wash away anyone who meant to harm him.
Chapter 21
Rose walked out of the master bathroom and down the hall, stopping just for a moment to linger in the doorway to the girls’ bedroom. It was the first night in six years, since their first child had been born, that she had been separated from either of the girls. John bounded through the kitchen and began climbing the hardwood staircase to the master bedroom.
“You ready?” he asked as he glanced at his watch. “Di
Rose tilted her head to her left shoulder slightly, just enough that her ebony hair flipped off her ear in a flirtatious way. She swept it back behind her ear with her right hand. “Thanks Joh
“Now, now,” John said. “You don’t want to change your mind, do you? Just a little R & R, me and you on the beach of a secluded Bahamas island.”
“Of course not,” she said, and smiled at John as he passed and walked to the bedroom to finish dressing.
The truth was that Rose would have been happy to stay home. The trip was John’s idea, one to which she eagerly agreed, but not because she wanted to be away from the girls. She knew the stresses that John had in his job, the relentless pressure he was under to keep customers, to win customers, to find and keep employees. Even with all the success of WallCloud, John often spoke of the pressure in managing cash flow. Rose didn’t understand the details the way John did, but she wasn’t ignorant of business finance. She knew that the business could be profitable on paper and still have trouble paying its bills at the same time, the result of having to pay money out before receiving payments from customers. When the business was stable and not growing, managing cash flow was pretty easy, John had always said. But the past few months had seen rapid growth.
“We’ll increase revenue by forty percent this year,” John boasted the month before, after wi
Rose sat at the hallway computer for a second while waiting for John. She moved the mouse to deactivate the screen saver and stared at the email John had opened. It was the invitation he had received earlier in the day to the di
John poked his head out of the master bathroom, his fingers ru
“Yes,” Rose said. “Get a load of this.” Rose mimicked a fast-paced voice the way a lawyer closes a commercial on a radio advertisement.
When you attend a 50-Forks di
Rose paused and read the last sentence slowly in her own voice.
You’re eating at your own risk.
“He’s just covering his assets,” John said with a wink, as he elongated the first syllable of “assets.”
“Kinda takes the fun out of it,” Rose quipped. “Sounds pretty scary, actually.”
“Relax, honey. I don’t think Nick Vegas would do anything to risk his reputation,” John said. He pulled the chair out for Rose and took her hand as they walked down the stairs toward the garage.
***
John pulled the Lexus IS 350C around the gravel circular driveway that fronted the antebellum home, and parked after passing two dozen cars and two television vans that had already arrived. He walked around to open the door for Rose, a chivalrous act that Rose had resisted for years before finally relenting to John’s loving gesture. She smiled and took John’s hand as he helped her from the car. They walked, hand-in-hand, up the graded gravel drive and glanced into one of the vans as they passed. Three technicians were busy on high-end computers rendering real-time video of the visitors’ arrival and the chefs’ preparations. A cameraman stood at the base of the steps at the entrance and trained his camera on the two of them as they approached.
Don’t trip! Rose said to herself as a cameraman filmed her climbing the stairs of the front porch.
“You okay there, hon?” John asked.
Rose smiled nervously, but continued looking at the stairs. “Just don’t like these cameras,” she whispered.
John patted her hand to ease her as they arrived on the front porch.
“What kind of house is this?” Rose asked as they stood in the breezeway. John began to answer, but a kindly face at the top of the steps asserted itself.
“Why, this here’s a dogtrot, ma’am,” Wade Ferry said. “Or a possumtrot, if you prefer.” He smiled at John and extended his hand. “Howdy, John.”
“Hi, Wade,” John said, shaking Wade’s hand enthusiastically. “Thanks so much for the invite, really.” John looked to Rose. “Wade, you remember my wife, Rose, don’t you?”
Rose extended her hand and smiled at Wade, knowing him as both a kind man and an investor in John’s company.