Page 72 of The Daring Times of Fern Adair
He should be here. It had been hours.
Unless something had happened. Unless he’d been shot. Arrested. The police had been headed there after all. And wouldn’t that be justified? Cal wasn’t innocent. He wasn’t a good man.
But he wasn’t an entirely bad man either.
Fern closed her eyes. They were dry and hot, and sleep tugged at her again. If Cal didn’t come, she would have to walk into town alone at dawn. She was a mess. She could buy some new clothes, though, and then a bus ticket to Chicago.
Or she could go back to Young Acres.
Fern’s soul shrunk at the mere thought of that. But it cowered at the thought of boarding a bus for Chicago by herself. She’d do it, though. She’d go, and she’d try, and she’d imagine what Cal might say every time she doubted herself.
The sound of an engine woke her. She was lying on the barn floor, her hands tucked under her cheek. She sat up, suddenly panicked. What time was it? The sky had turned a dusky gray while she’d slept. Headlights lit the front of the barn where the doors had been left rolled half open. A man stepped in, his fedora and trench coat silhouetted by the car’s headlamps.
“Fern?”
A strangled cry filled her throat as she scrambled to her feet. Warmth and relief—and pure wonder—numbed her legs as Cal met her halfway to the doors. He caught Fern in his arms, and she clung to him.
“You’re okay,” she gasped.
“I’m okay.” Lips touched her forehead, and his breaths combed over her scalp. Too soon, he held her away from him by the shoulders. Fern could tell he was inspecting her for injuries.
“I’m fine.”
“The kid?”
“With a neighbor.”
The headlamps brightened the barn enough for Fern to see his face now that her vision had stopped spinning. A gash bloodied his cheek.
“We have to go,” he said, and with her hand in his, they ran to the car. He opened the driver’s side door, and she slid inside, across the bench seat.
As Cal pulled out onto the road, Fern looked behind them.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I skimmed out of Tom’s place before the police came and hid my wheels in another field behind a hay truck. I’ve been waiting for things to calm down before coming to meet you.”
“Where is everyone else?”
All she cared about was Cal, but she still wanted to know.
He didn’t answer right away. A yearning started to grow inside her that something had happened to Rodney. She hated herself for wishing that on Cal, but his brother was evil.
“They got Tink right off the bat,” he said. “But we pushed the Jacky Boys back into the fields. They scatteredfast.”
“How did they know to come to the farmhouse last night?”
Tom had told them about the planned gin pickup, but he couldn’t have had time or opportunity to also warn his Jacky contact about Rodney’s unexpected presence there.
“Rod’s gonna want to know the same thing,” Cal replied.
It sounded as though they had a traitor in their midst.
Fern stared out the window as he drove in silence, the only sound that of his tires on the pavement. He kept his speed low, probably not wanting to draw attention to himself in case a police car passed by. He turned onto another route, though she didn’t know where they were going. She felt lost.
“Hey.” Cal’s hand covered hers where she’d laid it flat on the bench seat between them. His fingers closed around hers, and he gave her a small tug toward him. Fern slid over, and when he draped his arm around her shoulders and tucked her in close to his side, she melted into his warmth. She let go of everything that was coiled and tense and agonized inside her, and leaned her head against him.
His mouth nuzzled the top of her head. “That was you with the horn, wasn’t it?”
She closed her eyes, savoring his affection. “I saw them coming through the field. I had to warn you.”
