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Protected

By Vannetta Chapman

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Chapter One

Erin Jacobs recognized the note of desperation in the woman’s voice.
Desperation like she’d heard in past calls.
Desperation like she’d seen etched on her sister’s face.
Desperation like she’d experienced, echoing through her own nightmares.

Switching her cell phone to her left hand, she stole a peek at the clock beside her bed—twelve minutes after four in the morning. Since opening her ARK animal shelter, she averaged three middle-of-the-night calls a month.

Canine rescues. Gator rescues. Even one equine rescue. None of them had turned out well.
Darkness seemed to frustrate all her attempts of bringing any animal safe and whole back to the ARK.

With a sigh she held the phone away from her and squinted at the screen. Confirming the caller ID read ANONYMOUS, she fell back against her pillow.

“I need you to repeat what you just said.” She struggled to sound more awake than she felt.
At first silence filled the other end of the line, but then she heard the hoot of an owl—a great horned owl if she wasn’t mistaken. Even through the line she could make out its five-syllable call, sounding strangely like “Who’s awake, me too.” The owl reminded Erin of her childhood, of that terrible night, and instantly, all vestiges of sleep were gone.

Heart tripping, she sat up in bed, pushing away the old patchwork quilt. “Hello?”
“I said I need you to come now. This is Erin?” The woman’s soft, ragged voice drifted through the line. She’d either been crying or was suffering from acute allergy problems. In Livingston, Texas, on September 18 it could easily be the latter.

“Yes, I’m Erin Jacobs. Who is this?”
“You save . . .” The rest of her sentence fell away into the unfinished hours of the morning.
“I rescue everything, Miss. But most things can wait until daylight. Tell me what you have and an address, and I’ll be out at first light.”

“This can’t wait.” The woman’s plea took on an urgency Erin had heard few times before, when someone called about an animal that had only hours or minutes left to live.

She snapped on the lamp beside her bed and reached for her jeans. Some folks panicked when a litter came in the middle of the night. More than once she’d arrived too late. In abusive households, the woman would sometimes smother the animals before her husband could find them, claiming it was kinder than what he would do.

“I can come now if it’s a true emergency. Tell me your location.”
“Promise you’ll be alone.”
Erin hesitated as she pulled on her right boot. “Say again.”
“Just you. No one else.” The woman’s voice quivered, nearly broke. “Give me your word.”
“Tell me what you have and where you are, Miss. I’ll come and get whatever it is. You need to stay calm. I’ll bring it here to the ARK and find it a good home.”
“I know you will. That’s why I called you. An Ark, Moses, it has to mean something . . .” Her words melted into the sobs she’d obviously been holding back.

Erin pulled a sweater over her nightshirt, unwilling to put the phone down for even a minute, afraid to break the connection. Grabbing her keys off the front entry table she hurried out toward her Chevy.
“I’m in my truck now. What side of town are you on?”

The woman hesitated and drew in a deep, shaky breath. “Go south on Highway 59, then enter the forest.”

A shiver danced down Erin’s spine as she realized the woman was giving her directions from the ARK to her location. Few people had ever actually been to her animal rescue facility. She was located on the remote outskirts of Livingston.

Doc England’s warning rang in her ears. “Do not go alone in the middle of the night, Erin. Always call someone first.”

But there wasn’t time to call anyone else, and if she broke the connection now—

“I’m not far from there. I’ll be at Shepherd in fifteen minutes.”
“And you’re alone?” Desperation filled the woman’s voice again, causing it to rise above a whisper.
When would she have had time to pick up someone? Erin fought the urge to lash out at the woman, focused instead on the rescue.

“I’m alone like you asked. Talk to me, Miss. Tell me what I’m going to be dealing with when I reach your location.”
“You’ll know what to do. You’re good at taking care of little fellas.” Her next words were barely a whisper in the night. “He’s not yet two months, not until this weekend . . .”

Alarm bells rang in Erin’s head, but the woman sounded calmer now, although she still offered no further directions.

“I’m almost to the forest.” Erin increased her speed.
“There’s one more thing.” The woman hesitated, stumbling over her words. “Promise me you will keep him.”
“I can’t adopt every—”
“Erin, this is different.”

Again the familiarity. Erin wanted to question her about it. Before she could, the woman rushed on, the words pouring from her like water from a long dammed-up stream.
“I wouldn’t ask this if I didn’t have to, don’t you realize that? If there were any other way. But there’s not, and if you don’t hurry . . . we’ll be too late.”

The plural pronoun clinched the deal for Erin. Most people tossed her their responsibilities as they drove by and never glanced back. Everything indicated this woman was taking some responsibility and possibly risk as well.

“Give me the directions,” she said quietly.
“When you enter the forest, take the third road to the right. A mile down you’ll see a logging trail. Turn right again. A bit down the trail is a hunter’s cabin. Go around to the back porch.” She paused in her directions, stumbling on a sob. “Hurry.”

Something about the woman’s voice suddenly struck a memory nerve in Erin’s mind. She searched for it but failed to find the association. Gripping the cell phone tightly, she nudged the old truck to the speed limit.

She struggled over which question to ask first, but then an eerie silence filled the line. She glanced at her display. The words there caused her stomach to spasm—CALL ENDED.

Pulling over to the side of the road, she punched the number two and held it.
Doc picked up on the second ring.
“What’s wrong, Erin?”
“I’m on an emergency rescue.” Her breathing slowed and evened as she repeated the directions to him. By the time she’d summarized the situation, her hands were no longer shaking.
“Where are you now?”
“About to turn into the forest.”
“Wait for me. I’m twenty minutes out—”

Erin pulled her truck back onto the road, her stubbornness returning as quickly as her panic had fled.
“Bad idea. There’s an animal in a critical situation, and it’s my job to go out there and rescue it. That’s what the people of Livingston depend on me to do. It’s certainly what this woman is depending on me to do. You should have heard her voice, Doc. She sounded practically hysterical. I’m sure you’d agree with me, if. . .” Erin suddenly realized her mentor and best friend wasn’t arguing with her.

“Doc? Are you there?”
Pressing the phone more closely to her ear, she heard a soft beeping. Glancing down at the display, she saw SEARCHING FOR SERVICE. Somewhere under the canopy of the trees, her phone had dropped the connection.

#

Confident she’d done the sensible thing by calling Doc, she pressed on through the forest. He would be no more than twenty minutes behind her, fifteen if she knew Doc’s driving habits.

Still, the forest stirred Erin’s emotions about things she’d rather not confront this night. That combined with the woman’s desperation and Doc’s warning set her nerves on edge. The wheel became slick with the sweat from her palms. As Erin turned onto the logging road, she did something she hadn’t done in quite a while—she prayed.

Prayed for the safety of whatever lay waiting for her.
Prayed for wisdom that this time, this night, she’d be successful.
Prayed for the woman, whose name she didn’t even know.

And lastly, she prayed Doc would find her—and quickly.

She might have felt like a hypocrite doing so, but Nina’s quiet assurance and soft words settled into the old truck. “The Lord is near when you need him, Hon. He doesn’t hold your absence against you. He misses you, same as any parent misses a child.”

Erin rubbed her eyes, pushing back the tears. Now was not the time to have an emotional moment over her dead foster mother. Must be the forest unsettling her. Peering through her windshield, she suppressed a shudder. Tonight the tree canopy pressed down, deepening the darkness and blocking out all starlight.

She loved hiking through this area by day, even camping in it, but driving down an unknown logging trail in the dead of night? No thanks. She slowed as a rut in the road caused the axle in her truck to groan. Repairs would only further strain her budget.

There was little to fear here, and the sensible part of her brain knew it. The tall pines towered to beautiful heights by day, but in the solitary beam of her headlights they seemed to crowd her truck, practically hiding the road in places. She gripped the steering wheel, determined to fight for her space if necessary.

The fact that the state penitentiary was situated forty miles to the northwest crossed her mind. He was less than an hour away. She wrestled the thought into the box she kept locked in her mind, refusing to confront the memory.

Drawing a deep breath, she reminded herself she was comfortable in the midst of the forest. The walks here with Nina and Jules had first created in her a love for nature and animals.
No, it wasn’t the vegetation making her uneasy. What had the woman said? If you don’t hurry, we’ll be too late.

She had no desire to confront a controlling spouse who didn’t want to give up some pup, especially in this isolated setting. Memories of him tugged again at the corner of her consciousness, but she pushed them safely away as the hunter’s cabin came into view.

She slowed a good fifty feet from the front door. Where was the woman’s car? No one had driven out past her. A few yards beyond the cabin, the road plainly hit a dead end.

Erin stepped out of the truck, careful to leave her lights trained on the front of the small wooden structure. There was no sign of movement at the two front windows or the door. Other than her headlights, the cabin lay in complete darkness.

Taking a deep breath, Erin’s senses were nearly overwhelmed with the forest smells—loblolly pine and water oak. Even the sweet odor of a magnolia carried across the warm summer night. She reached behind her seat and grabbed her emergency pack.
I’ll check the back porch and leave.

As soon as she stepped away from the truck, the night enfolded her. She resisted the urge to turn on the forty-thousand candle power light she carried. It would steal her night vision and make her a clear target if anyone meant her harm.

Waiting, her eyes finally adjusted.

At first she could make out the limbs of the pine tree closest to her, then the outline of a stack of wood next to a chopping block, and finally the trail which led around to the back of the cabin.
She shouldered her pack and picked her way down the path and around to the back porch. Years of pine needles carpeted the trail, muffling the sound of her approach.

Though her footsteps made no noise, her heart beat like a drum, pounding its rhythm more loudly and more quickly with each step she took toward the cabin’s porch.
This, too, lay in darkness, except for one small light in the southeast corner.

Erin wondered if it could be a heat lamp the woman had set up. Of course, it could also be a trap. By this point every horror film she’d seen as a teenager played merrily in her head. She pushed the images away and crept closer to the porch.

Placing her foot on the bottom step, a sudden shadow and flurry of wings caused her to gasp and fall back to the ground. The free-tailed bat swooped off into the darkness.

Erin uttered her second prayer for the night—this one for longevity—as she envisioned herself dead of a heart attack at the ripe old age of twenty-two.

Turning back toward the porch she noted the layer of dirt covering the wooden floor. She could see the neglect even in the near darkness, along with a single set of footprints—small ones about her size. Deer-feed sacks, a pair of work gloves, and a bucket someone had turned upside down to sit on were scattered across the porch.

Her eyes barely registered those things though. The old washtub had claimed all of her attention. With the light positioned over it, plainly what she had been sent to rescue waited there.

Erin hesitated.
Nothing moved inside the cabin.

Leaves rustled around her as a slight breeze stirred the night air. An owl called out again, reminding her of the phone call, of the woman, and of her promise.

Then she heard it—a slight mewling from the washtub.
From the second the sound registered, she never had a choice.
She snapped on her light and walked back toward the porch.
Her work boots echoed as she climbed the three steps.

The stench of dust and something rotting overpowered the forest smells as she covered the remaining distance—bolder now, intent on her mission.
She didn’t stop until her fingers grasped the sides of the washtub.

Erin peered into the bucket. First she saw the blanket—tattered and old, but surprisingly clean. The camo design nearly hid what lay inside.

Erin stared down, blinking, trying to comprehend.

Peering up at her quietly, expectantly—blue eyes.
Peeking out of a camo-colored cap—blond, curly hair.
Finally, struggling free from the confines of the blanket—two small hands.

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