He switched off his light and went around to another row far from the area Tess had indicated. If this was a ploy to lure him away from Tess, to make sure he was out of the way so someone could not just scare her but hurt her, he wouldn’t allow it.

Moving out of the field onto the side road, he headed back toward her house. Close to her property, he saw why her lights had gone out. A vehicle had hit the pole that carried those wires, and the whole thing was atilt. It was no accident, he’d bet, as there was no vehicle in sight. He’d have to notify gas stations and body shops in the area to watch for dents in fenders or crumpled hoods. Maybe Mike could get paint scrapings off the pole.

He cut across Tess’s backyard, playing his light on the ground before him. Two eyes gleamed at him from the picnic table. He jumped back, transferred the stun gun to his left hand and went for his pistol.

But the thing—a dog—didn’t move. Glassy-eyed. Dead. Mounted. Again, memories of Iraq haunted him. There had always been dead dogs in the streets, but what did this one mean? The scarecrow, now this. Either someone was leaving him clues, or this was meant to scare Tess away.

He shone the light on the dog. The shadows made it look even more frightening. This could be John Hillman’s taxidermy work. But he’d never be so stupid as to leave it here, like a calling card, a come-haul-me-in-for-questioning sign. So who had left it here?

Through the back door, Gabe told Tess to stay inside, then he slumped on the picnic table seat. He called Vic.

Vic was staying in a motel out on Route 23 almost to Chillicothe. Gabe updated him. Vic said Mike had gone to BCI headquarters, but he’d get him back to look at the taxidermy work on the dog. Mike would also check for paint on the telephone pole. He said he’d see him first thing in the morning at the sheriff’s office.

Gabe called Jace and asked him to call body shops in a wide area to ask that they be notified if someone came in with a staved-in or even dented fender. Then Gabe called the emergency line at the power company to get Tess’s power restored.

“Can I come out now?” she called from the back door.

“No, I’ll come in.”

He didn’t want her to see the dog. It was a pit bull, snarling and looking ready to leap, which was how he felt. As soon as he was done with the staff meeting in the morning, he was going to question John Hillman, Dane Thompson, even Sam Jeffers. They’d better have brought that stag back dead or alive to prove they weren’t around Tess’s place during the night. Could all three guys—loners and eccentrics, though the woods was full of them around here—have colluded on abductions over the years? Hillman was divorced, Sam a longtime widower and Dane a bachelor, so there were no mates or children in their lives.

“Oh! Gabe, what’s that?” Tess cried, coming up behind him.

“I told you to stay inside.”

“A stuffed dog! One that looks like it wants to attack. Obviously a warning to me.”

“I called to get your lights back on, but it may not happen until early morning,” he told her, getting up and facing her to put himself between her and the back cornfield. He snared her wrist with one hand to pull her away from staring at that dog. “Tess, please go in your house, grab a couple of things to spend the night at my place. You got any big plastic trash bags in there? Damn, I’m tired of hauling weird stuff around to show people.”

“I saw you showing the scarecrow to Wanda Kurtz and wondered why. Yes, I have a trash bag. But can’t you stay here instead?”

“We’d be sitting ducks in the dark. We’re going to my place. I’ve got an extra room, a spare bed. You’ll be safer there.”

“We’re going through the cornfield? What if that’s his plan?”

“I think he—or they—only wanted to give you a good scare or warning. Just do as I say, okay?”

“All right, but you haven’t confided in me, and not only about Wanda Kurtz. I hear you’ve been to the Hear Ye Commune, but then I guess I didn’t tell you something too. I heard a woman or girl scream at the compound, but I kind of checked it out and got a reasonable explanation—if reason is any part of that place.”

“What are you, my other deputy? Here, take my flashlight, go in the house, get your things now, or I swear, I’ll arrest you for something and put you in the detention cell in town for safekeeping. I checked out Amanda’s possibly being held at the compound. Brice Monson’s weird, but he’s got too many people around to be hiding Amanda, Jill or Sandy there. Now, do what I say!”

Obviously as frustrated with him as he was her, Tess grabbed the flashlight from him, went in, slammed both doors, came out, threw a trash bag at him and banged inside the house again. That all infuriated him too, but for one thing. She was not whimpering in a corner. It was kind of the spunky, younger Teresa again, animated, defiant, a fearless tomboy before trauma had crushed her.

Trying to keep his temper in check—it riled him especially that he wanted to put his hands all over her even when she was defying him—he worked the dog into the bag so he could carry it upright.

Tess came out with a full paper sack and her purse and thrust the flashlight back at him. “See, you’ve turned me into a bag lady,” she said. “Like one you’re taking off the streets because she can’t care for herself. But I wasn’t going through that field with my suitcase.”

“Let’s go. We’ll set a timer and argue for an hour, then hit the rack, or since you’re a bag lady, hit the sack. We’re both exhausted, and I can’t believe you’d even consider staying here alone tonight after this.”

“Let’s see, how to put this...” she said, her tone still sarcastic, as they walked toward the cornfield with him leading. “You can’t teach an old, scared and traumatized dog new tricks, so Tess is going to ruin things if she tries to think on her own to help you out. She was misled at first because you said you wanted her to help, so—”

“I wanted you to remember what happened to you when you were taken twenty years ago, not take over now! Did you lock up the house?”

“Of course. Did you lock yours in your rush?”

“You bet I did. Look, I know you’re upset and scared, but keep quiet right now. There’s another saying that I’ve seen on signs in yards around here for years—Beware of Dog—and I think that’s the message here.”

“From that stuffed, dead dog or from the top-dog sheriff?”

He turned back to face her. “Stop fighting me! Someone wants you to leave town or worse. Or if this dead dog is a message for me, I’m not sure what it means.”

“I was just...just trying to keep my courage up, I think.”

“Stick close, okay? Right behind me.”

As he turned away to head into the field, he heard her sniff back tears. He knew he shouldn’t have been so rough, but she really got to him. Maybe she was right on the edge of hysteria. Actually he knew the feeling. How many times had he beat down a screaming fit of fear when he’d had to dismantle a bomb by hand when the robot just wouldn’t work?

“Yes, I’m staying close,” she told him in a suddenly quiet voice that caught on a half-smothered sob as they headed into the tall, thick corn between their houses.

* * *

Tess drank the hot chocolate he fixed for them in his kitchen. She remembered how it had once looked, but it had all been updated, even to stainless-steel appliances. If she could recall what a kitchen looked like from two decades ago, why couldn’t she recall more important things? She looked around. It was neat, not even dishes in the sink or drain rack. He’d pulled down all the blinds so no one could see in. She felt safe from anything outside now, but sealed in with him, newly alert as they faced each other across the wooden kitchen table.

“I can’t take you to the early-morning meeting at the station with me,” he told her. “But since you’re so involved—and I didn’t mean to shut you out except to keep you safe—I’ll call you right after and tell you what the three of us have decided.”