Night of the Full Moon
Crunching metal and splintering wood
sent her body surging forward, but her seatbelt held her firmly in place.
It all happened in an instant and then everything
was still.
The car’s engine shut off. There was the
tiny crackling of cooling metal, but all else was silent.
Clara gasped and remained in her seat,
trying to mentally take in what just happened. She glanced at the road,
searching for some sign of the animal but found none.
She hadn’t hit it. She’d swerved in
time.
But at the cost of her car.
“Damn,” she muttered. Her shoulder was
sore from where the seatbelt locked to keep her in place, but besides that, she
had no other injuries. The airbag had failed, but thankfully she hadn’t needed
it.
Hoping for good luck, Clara turned the
key in the ignition to start the engine, but nothing happened. She unbuckled
her belt and got out of the car to assess the damage. The front of the Hyundai was
crumpled against a cracked tree trunk.
“Damn.”
Of all the luck. Guess she would be missing
that TV show.
Clara shook her head, desperately trying
to think of the positives in the situation. She was alive. She wasn’t hurt.
That was the important stuff. She could count her lucky stars that she hadn’t
needed that airbag.
She could replace the car. Eventually.
Her DVR would record her show. Everything was okay. It could have been much,
much worse.
A growl echoed from the dark forest.
Clara froze.
She couldn’t tell which direction the
sound originated. It bounced eerily in the depths of the surrounding woods.
A dog.
Clara recalled the flash of fur and
teeth she’d seen dart across the road. It must have been a dog that darted in
front of her.
Had she clipped it with the car? She
hadn’t felt an impact, but everything happened so fast. Was it injured?
Clara searched the moonlit road, but
with trees on either side of her, she couldn’t see much.
“Dog?” Clara called out, her voice
falling flat in the night’s stillness. Even the crickets and other night noises
had died away. She whistled. “Here, puppy! You okay?”
Another low threatening growl made her
take a step back.
She gasped.
It must be injured. And an injured
animal was dangerous, even if all she wanted to do was help. It had been a shepherd-sized
dog, if not bigger. If it was hurt, it might attack her out of pain and fear.
Another growl, closer this time, sent
her heart hammering.
She would need help with the animal.
There was no way she could deal with this on her own.
She got back into her car and found her
purse with its contents strewn across the floor of the passenger’s seat. She
rummaged through the items, searching blindly in the dark for her cellphone.
When she found it, she let out a relieved sigh.
She went to press 911 but hesitated. How
long would it take to have them send someone? It was 911. Of course, they’d
send someone fast.
But Ethan was at the diner. He was only a
minute or two away.
She found his number in her contacts
list and dialed. She didn’t need to wait for him to answer.
“Changed your mind, Clara?” His deep
voice rumbled through the silence of the car’s interior.
“I need help, Ethan. A dog ran in front
of my car, and I swerved to miss it. I hit a tree on the side of the road.”
“A dog?” The amusement in his voice died
away. “Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m okay. But my car is damaged,
and I hear the dog growling in the woods. I think it’s injured.”
“Stay inside the car, Clara. Where are
you?” A chill swept through her at the abrupt change in his tone. She’d never
heard him sound so serious.
“I’m on Stoyer Street. About a quarter
of a mile to my house. I almost made it home—"
“Stay in the car, do you hear me? Lock
the doors. I’ll be right there.”
He disconnected. Clara stared at the
screen on her phone for a moment. Why would she need to lock herself in the
car? It was a dog. It’s not as if the animal could open the car door, locked or
unlocked.
After several seconds of sitting inside
the vehicle staring at the moonlit road and darkened forest, she hit the button
on her door to lock it. The dog was out there, sure, probably lying out of
sight alongside the road. But that didn’t account for the sensation of eyes peering
at her. Intelligent, malicious eyes. The hair on the back of her arms rose.
Clara took a deep breath and shook her
head to dismiss her thoughts. She was not one to spook easily. She lived in a
small house in the middle of the woods. She’d been living alone there for three
years.
It must be the full moon. People got a
little wacky during a full moon. That might account for her sudden paranoia.
And she’d just gotten into an accident.
Her adrenaline was pumping. Her mind was racing. That might explain the sudden
bout of nerves she experienced.
She counted the minutes until Ethan’s
arrival. While she waited, she busied herself with returning the contents to
her fallen purse, then holding it tight in her lap. When she saw the flashing
lights of his police cruiser, Clara let out a trembling laugh of relief.
He parked directly behind her and in an
instant was out of the cruiser. She slung her purse over her shoulder and opened
her car door to meet him.
Her eyes widened when she saw his gun
drawn.
“Where is it?” He demanded in the same
no-nonsense voice he used on the phone.
“You’re not going to shoot it, are you?”
Clara tilted her head.
“Where is it?” He repeated harshly, his
brows creased over narrowed blue eyes.
“I-I don’t know. Maybe over the side?”
She waved her hand in the direction she’d last seen it dart across the road. “I
may have clipped it. Everything happened so fast.”
“Stay here.” Ethan pulled a flashlight
from his pocket and strode to the opposite side of the road. He shone the flashlight
deep into the woods. For several minutes, he searched up and down the road.
After he finished one side, he searched the other.
Finding nothing, he holstered his weapon
and returned to where she stood by her car.
“What was that about?” Clara folded her
arms over her chest.
“Don’t you read the paper?” Ethan shone
the flashlight over her, checking for any signs of injury from head to foot.
“There’s a rabid dog in the area. It took down two cows on the Tanner farm last
week.”
“Oh,” Clara said. “I didn’t know.”
Ethan reached for Clara’s chin, gently
pushing her head side to side as he shone the flashlight over her skull.
“You sure you’re not hurt?”
“Yes, I’m sure.” But suddenly Clara
found it difficult to breathe as he leaned over her, his hand grazing her cheek
to move to her temple where his fingers slid into her hair. Finding no signs of
injury, he heaved a sigh of relief, his breath fogging the air in front of the
flashlight. The tension around his eyes eased.
“You’re okay.”
“Yeah, I’m okay.” Clara stared into his
face. The stark relief she saw there touched her heart. He’d been worried. He
had raced his police cruiser, lights flashing to reach her.
He’d do that for anyone, she reminded
herself. He was a cop. It was his job.
That didn’t seem to explain the way he
stared into her eyes. Surely, he didn’t look at everyone with the same heat,
the same flash of desire that she saw flickering in those ocean blue depths.
Clara couldn’t concentrate on anything
other than losing herself in his gaze. Her heart thumped wildly, and her breath
quickened. She could easily imagine herself standing on the tips of her toes to
place her lips on his.
What would it feel like to kiss Ethan?
To spend a night in his arms.
She was acutely aware of his hand in her
hair, sliding to cup her cheek. His thumb caressed her skin, sending a tumult
of sparks zinging through her belly.
Her lips parted. To say something? Or to
kiss him? She couldn’t decide.
The decision was taken from her when a vicious growl echoed across the road.
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