Chapter 10: Window

I was brushing my teeth when I saw the shadow on the porch roof.

It was past one in the morning.

The bathroom window looked over the roof, and the shape moved across it, slow, and stopped outside my bedroom window.

I spat, turned off the light, and stood in the dark.

A man was crouched on the shingles with a phone held up to the glass.

I knew the blond hair.

I did not scream.

I went down the back stairs in my bare feet and woke the house by shouting his name.

"Brock!"

Four doors opened.

By the time we reached the yard, the whole farm was awake, and the porch light blazed.

Abel got there first, with a flashlight in one hand and a shovel in the other.

"Come down," he said to the roof, very calmly.

"I'm checking a boundary," Brock said.

"Come down, or I'll bring you down."

"This is private property," Brock said, and then, because he was an idiot, "my fiancée's property, in effect."

"I'm not your fiancée," I said.

"Your ex-fiancée," said Clint, who had come out in his deputy's jacket with his badge on a chain. "Mr. Ellery. Down. Now."

Brock came down the ladder.

He did it badly.

A light came on at the neighbour's farm, and then another, and a pair of headlights turned into the lane.

Half of the Pike Hollow volunteer fire crew lived within a mile, and they were awake.

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