Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 99960 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99960 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
Whatever he saw in my eyes made him bend his head to press a soft, sweet kiss to my mouth. Soon it turned into more, our tongues touching, licking. With an agitated sigh against my mouth, Jared pulled back.
“I know.” I smoothed a soothing hand over his chest. “We need to get to work.”
“I wish we could stay here all day.”
“I know,” I promised him. “Me too. But we need to adult now. In a different way to how we just adulted on the kitchen table.”
Laughing, he let me go with one last squeeze of my hip. “Let’s get to it.”
Since we’d already lingered too long this morning, we shoveled down our breakfast and I left Jared in the mudroom to go feed and water the chickens.
I knew almost immediately something was wrong because the chickens and I had become best buddies over the last few weeks. I knew their habits well, in particular, a hen I now called Ginger. She was my bird soul mate. She and her best buddy, Babs, adored me and would come running as soon as they heard the mudroom door open. I’d chat away and they’d preen as I cooed compliments at them. They were more interested in following me as I walked around the henhouse than even the food and water I brought them. They’d sit and watch me for hours whenever I decided to sketch in the backyard.
This morning, however, there was no running. No clucking with excitement. In fact, now that I thought about it … the rooster, Cogburn, hadn’t made a sound this morning either.
“Jared!” I called, panic suffusing his name as I hurried toward the henhouse. The sight of two hens lying motionless inside the run had me screaming, “Jared!”
As I opened the main door to the henhouse, I heard Jared shouting my name in return, his footsteps pounding toward me. “Fuck.” I heard him curse, having clearly seen the chickens.
The sight that greeted me inside the house made me burst into tears.
They were all motionless, lying among one another. Stiff and unmoving. Ginger, Babs, Cogburn, all of them.
I reeled backward and turned, smacking into Jared. While he checked out the house, I stumbled away, unable to stop the tears streaming down my face.
Jared straightened. His face was pale and taut with anger. Whatever he was feeling, however, he put on hold. Bridging the distance between us, he pulled me into his arms and I clung to him, sobbing.
“I’m sorry, baby,” he whispered, his own voice cracking with emotion.
“W-what … w-hat h-h-happened?” I stuttered through my tears.
“I don’t know.” His arms tightened around me. “I don’t know.”
The two police constables were pissing me off.
After Jared called the vet out, she examined the birds and said she’d need to do a postmortem on one to be sure, but they displayed symptoms of cyanide poisoning. We found traces of food in their troughs that we hadn’t put there.
“You think the food was poisoned?”
Jared had nodded grimly. “We’ll bag it up, get it tested.”
That had made me cry all over again because who would want to hurt my chickens? The image of them lying dead together in the henhouse haunted me and I kept having to bite back tears. I was a farmer’s wife, for goodness’ sake. Shouldn’t I be better at dealing with this? I wasn’t, though.
My chest ached.
And right now, it also burned with fiery anger at the blasé way the cops were treating the situation.
“I mean, it’s possible someone just left out some food that’s bad for them, right?” The younger of the two police officers shrugged, looking so bored I wanted to slap the expression off his face.
“No, it’s not,” Jared snapped, clearly sick of their attitude too.
“Well …” The older constable sighed heavily. “I don’t really know what we can do here. This doesn’t seem like a crime but an accident.”
“Aye.” The other broke a smile. “And it seems only fair since I can’t count the times I’ve had chicken poisoning.”
He did not just say that.
“Hey!” I took a step toward the young officer. “Show some respect. Those chickens were important to us. To me. And someone killed them. Do you honestly think it’s a coincidence that all our chickens were poisoned within a week or so of one of our ewes having her throat slashed?”
The younger officer blanched as he glanced guiltily at the older police officer. The older PC cleared his throat in embarrassment. “Uh, well, we weren’t aware of that.”
Jared threw up his hands in agitation. “Fucking great. Absolutely useless.”
“There’s no need to be rude.”
I quirked an eyebrow. “Says the police officer who laughed at the mass execution of farm animals.”
“I think you’re being a bit melodramatic. Typical American.” He snort-huffed.
“Don’t”—Jared took a menacing step toward him—“talk to my wife like that.”
“And don’t try to intimidate a police officer.” The older man glared angrily at my husband.