up the steps. Her heart leaped and she jumped for the door, before whoever was out there could pound on the door and wake Carol. “Who is it?” she demanded, leaning close to the door and cupping her hands around her mouth to contain the noise.
“Mike.”
Quickly she unlocked the door and let him in. His face was stark, and his clothes were slightly askew as if he’d put them on in a hurry.
She held up a finger, went to Carol’s bedroom door and closed it so the noise wouldn’t disturb her. “What happened?” Something had, obviously, something bad.
“Someone broke into the Livingstons’ house a couple of hours ago. Jim shot and killed him.”
“Oh my God.” Shock didn’t hold her still. Carol obviously couldn’t go, which meant she had to. Because Mike looked as if he needed it, she quickly made him a cup of the instant coffee—which he gratefully took—then she went up the stairs to wake Olivia.
“There’s been an emergency and I’m going with Mike,” she quietly told the sleepy girl. “Get dressed and come downstairs so you can hear your gran if she needs something. You can grab a nap on my pallet if you want.”
“Okay.” Olivia yawned and stumbled out of bed. Sela hurried back downstairs. Mike was standing with his back to the fire, warming that side of him while he sipped the hot coffee.
“Were the Livingstons hurt?” she asked as she pulled on her shoes and a coat.
“No, but they’re pretty shook up.”
“Who was it?”
“Man named Phil Millard, Milford, something like that. From Nashville. He had a driver’s license on him.”
Nashville was over two hundred miles away; as alarming as the break-in was, just as alarming was that the intruder had traveled that far to the valley, rather than moving straight south down the interstate. Why come here? What had been the lure? They’d never know now, but it was worrisome.
Olivia came down the stairs, still yawning, with a jacket over her pajamas. Sela said, “I don’t know when I’ll be back. I gave her a pain pill about three hours ago, so she’ll sleep for a while yet.”
“Okay.” Olivia was slipping through Carol’s bedroom door as Sela and Mike went out the front. She was glad that Olivia was still too groggy to ask questions, because she herself had more questions than answers and she didn’t want to alarm the others when she couldn’t tell them anything beyond the bare bones that Mike had told her.
The predawn air was cold, and their breath fogged in the air; she and Mike walked fast, lighting their way with flashlights. “Jim took Mary Alice next door and woke his neighbor, who went to get the community patrol,” Mike said. “I guess one of us could make it to Sevierville and see if anyone is at the sheriff’s department.”
“If there was, I doubt they’d come out.” It had been weeks since they’d seen a county patrol car, and before that only rarely.
“We should probably take the body in . . .” Mike’s voice trailed off as he realized how futile that would be. There was nothing the sheriff’s department could do that they themselves couldn’t do right here. There was literally no working law enforcement, no way to investigate anything. They couldn’t even notify his family, if he had any.
“We’ll keep his ID, take a picture, write down what happened, and bury him here,” Sela said, feeling helpless. There was nothing else they could do, except say a prayer for the man.
Mike nodded, and she had the abrupt, discomforting realization that he was taking her opinion as a directive, as if he’d assumed without question that she’d be taking over Carol’s role. He hadn’t been there yesterday when Carol had told her she’d have to handle things now, and she was staggered that he’d so easily come to that conclusion. Evidently the people around her had more faith in her than she had in herself.
That was something worth thinking about—later. Right now there was a serious situation that had to be dealt with.
There were a lot of flashlights bobbing around the Livingston house and the neighbor’s house, with some hunting lanterns providing additional illumination. A lot of people milled around in the yards, the street; probably almost everyone who lived anywhere in the neighborhood was out there, as well as several members of the community patrol.
“Might as well get it over with,” Sela murmured to Mike, gathered her nerve, and entered the Livingston house. There were more people