Brian Rieselman, author of “The Wind-lashed House” is from Wisconsin. His published novels include “Where Darkness Sleeps” and “Dream Girl,” both published in North America by St. Martin’s Press.
*****
“I can’t do this.” She looked at the one known as Tyler, seated beside her. He was so tall and bulked up he barely fit in the small back compartment of the dusty, dented Honda.
Buzz, as Tyler called him, hunched himself massively over the steering wheel, squinting at the whipping sleety rain. The whole Eastern Seaboard was being hammered. She could see the back and a bit of the side of his head. His square blue jaw was set hard and his knuckles were white.
Mid-April, past Midnight. She tried not to shake or tremble.
The rain blew like wild sparks, exploding in the headlights against the velvet blackness of the lonely nighttime roads. They hurtled recklessly over the hills and curves of a squat small town, to a tree-lined country stretch where a house stood half-hidden beside the long gentle rise of a stump-strewn hill.
The rain blew like wild sparks, exploding in the headlights against the velvet blackness of the lonely nighttime roads.
“Sure you can,” said Tyler, handing her a pack of cigs. “Hold this in your jacket pocket, hidden, like you got a weapon pointing through. And keep your mouth shut.”
They lurched up a serpentine gravel driveway. The famed New England Nor’easter pounded down its sloppy cold mix in a near-horizontal blast. There stood the house, a once-white Dutch Colonial of impressive size, but dilapidated, neglected, isolated and alone. Faint yellow light shone in the murky tall windows on the lower floor. Higher up, the gambrel rooftops seemed to sag precariously, like the pitched weathered slopes of an elaborate, decaying old barn.
Buzz Dwight walked ahead. The young woman, taller than they’d expected, with strong shapely long legs in a business-like dark skirt and jacket and good shoes, walked on the wet ground between them. Her honey-color hair was long, youthful and full, simply but elegantly styled. Tyler Gilman was close behind her, watching her intently. The men were both huge brutes, cunning, professional to a point.
“You aren’t Margaret Rockford, understood.” Tyler had a somewhat squeaky voice for such a big guy. “You ain’t Peggy. You ain’t nobody. You’re with us. Got it?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Stop here. We wait.”
Buzz pounded his tattooed fist on the front door. Water rushed over the gravel at their feet, gushing from the downspouts. The bare treetops shivered, loosing sheets of rain. In seconds they were almost soaking wet, cold, recoiling against the wind. At last the porchlight came on. She went up the stairs with Tyler. Some corn shocks lay wilted in a corner of the porch next to a crumpled rotting pumpkin and a sooty wooden rocking chair.
“What do you want?” A youngish woman stood in the narrow doorway, angrily looking them over. “Who are you?”
“Your money, and we ain’t nobody. Shut up if you wanna live.” A handgun went up to almost touch her surprised face.
Inside, the place smelled musty. The heat was on, you could hear and feel the old furnace roaring deep below the floors and threadbare carpets. Radiators hissed and sputtered. The high un-draperied windows rattled in their frames against the wind and streamed with sleet and flowing trails of dirty dust. Some of the tall lower windows at the front had thin ugly curtains and sheers that slightly, almost imperceptibly, puffed outward and then fell back in place again upon chill drafts, in a ghostly gesture like breathing. Paintings of horses and tall ships yellowed in their frames.
She looked at the youngish woman and the woman looked at her. The room was cluttered and homely. Boxes here and there. Just a few sticks of cheap-looking used furniture, a couple lamps.
“You got any food, uh, what’s your name?” Buzz sat down on an overstuffed old livingroom chair and cracked his knuckles. He pointed his gun at an open door leading to a messy and dimly lit kitchen. Tyler sat beside the young woman with honey-color hair, on a lumpy sofa covered in a ratty pink blanket. She kept her hand in her pocket as she’d been told to. They were both wet and cold. “Towels?”
“Darlene,” she said, nodding. She brought out some hastily prepared sandwiches and cans of beer. She was a slim woman with a hard but in some aspects pleasant and pretty face and short brown hair.
“Let’s have your purse, Darlene. Any jewelry? Anything of value around here?” Buzz looked around “Big place. You’re a lousy housekeeper.”
“It’s…not my house.”
“Oh, you’re just visiting?”
She shot him a cold look that wiped the smile off his face. But then she grinned a little and then so did he, as if something kind of strange was going on between them. Something stranger than a home invasion and a robbery, and the ugly plans of ugly desperate men.
She brought her purse and set it before him on a water-ringed mahogany coffee table. “I just have a little cash in my bag. A debit card. Cell phone, but service doesn’t work in this weather.” She handed them each a ratty but clean folded towel. Buzz dried his short black hair and wiped his face and scratched his heavy blue beard stubble.
Tyler drank down his beer and wiped the back of his hand over his slash of a mouth. He was leaning more towards the thickset side than his big friend, his reddish hair thinning, his sneaker-clad feet rather small for his frame. Purple bags puffed beneath his eyes. These guys looked in a funny way like arrogant and aged college football players, from a lowly sort of college, on their way to a broken down middle-age of booze and dope and sleaze. But tonight they were still strong and mean. Dressed not well but with a certain trendy style. They were focused, in their way. Darlene looked at them warily.
Buzz let the purse sit unexamined for now. “What else you got in the kitchen.”
“You’re welcome to look,” said Darlene. She glanced over at the tall woman with the honey-color hair, at the hand hidden in a pocket and something that was meant to look like the point of a gun poking against the fabric. The woman didn’t touch the food or drink set in front of her. “Have anything you like.”
“I’ll follow you in there,” said Buzz, rising to his feet with a pop of his knees. “With this.” He showed Darlene his pistol. Darlene’s eyes again met the other young woman’s gaze. Then she went with Buzz to the kitchen. The kitchen entryway had a solid wooden door on café hinges. It swung back and forth and settled in the closed position.
In the living room, Tyler moved a little closer to her on the sofa. “You done good, Peggy. May I call you Peggy, now that Darlene is out of the room? We’re gonna be here a while.”
“Peggy, I guess…or Margaret.”
“Or Miss Rockford,” he said, exaggerating the vowels and consonants. “Her highness, miss princess. How about I call you that? Just don’t let Darlene hear us using your name.”
“And what if she already recognized me?”
“Then she’ll die sooner than planned.”
“There might have been news reports.”
“No, that would be stupid. Your father knows better than to call the cops. That would mean both you and Darlene die. Fast. Or maybe slow.”
Peggy, as it were, swallowed dryly. The wind whistled high above them, through the rafters, and the house creaked mournfully.
In the kitchen, Buzz and Darlene spoke in low, vehement tones.
“I can see why Sid left his old lady for you.” Buzz leered at her. “He buy this little old love nest for you to fix up? That’ll take some dough.”
“Sid would never send you here. You ain’t even supposed to know about this place. Wait till he gets here. Boy, he’s gonna wish he never met you or started this damn thing.”
“It wasn’t Sid’s idea to send us here. It wasn’t ours either. It was a last ditch thing, only in an emergency, couldn’t be helped, see? Well, the rain surprised us and started to get worse. And the wind. Just listen to it. We never were gonna make it another ten miles to the safe house tonight like we planned.”
“Plans! Sid’s gonna hear from me but good about these plans!”
“You say he’s comin here? Tonight?”
“Did I say that?”
“Don’t get smart. When’s he supposed to get here? Was that actually part of his plan all along? Sneak over here tonight? If he’s coming here then he isn’t back in the city offering moral support to his dear old business partner Miles Rockford, in his time of need.” Buzz laughed darkly. “That was all supposed to be part of his great scheme. Keep the cops out of it. Work on Miles that way. And leave the dirty work to me and Tyler. That’s Sid foryuh.”
“He’ll be here soon and let me tell you smartass, he won’t be happy to see you. And especially her! You’ve got that little heiress sitting in the livingroom with a pistol in her pocket?”
“It ain’t no pistol, nitwit. It’s cigarettes. It’s all to protect you and Sid, don’t you see? A masquerade. She thinks it’s a robbery we’re pulling off here and she’s playing along so we don’t slice her neck. Then we move her to the safehouse.”
Darlene harrumphed theatrically. “And what if she’s wearing a wire.”
Buzz looked up at her with a sick grin. “We checked. Thoroughly.”
“You pig. I want her out of here.”
“Soon as it’s light. I can’t drive in this miserable weather.”
“I never liked you, Buzz. Or Tyler.”
“Don’t hurt my tender feelings, Darlene. I’m already plenty steamed you and Sid made plans behind my back.”
“Take it up with Sid, if you have the nerve.”
Darlene cracked the door slightly and looked out at Tyler and Margaret. Peggy. Her family and even Sid called her that. “She looks nice.”
“Looks like about a billion to me.”
“She’s even more refined than in pictures I saw of her taken at some fancy Swiss boarding school. ‘Course she’s a little older now, outta college already, huh?”
“It’s not like I know her.”
“I never met her, you know. Never wanted to, even if that had somehow been possible. She doesn’t know I exist. Or didn’t till now. I only saw pictures Sid showed me when he told me what the score was gonna be. I wasn’t supposed to get that close to this…part of the trouble…”
Darlene’s voice trailed off and a curious expression came over her face along with a change in the lights of her eyes.
*****
The four of them sat quietly as an hour passed and then another. The TV was on mute. No one really watching. An old Western in soggy color. Beige and faded russet, with pink cactus-studded deserts and a ramshackle saloon. Silent gunshots and silent grimacing death, long slow falls through splintering wood. Every cut in the film eerily shifted the shadows and lights in the drafty room. Buzz dozed off a few times, softly snoring. Tyler would clear his throat and Buzz would jerk awake as if frightened of something in a dream.
“It’s only the wind.” Tyler kept his eyes on Buzz, or stared zombie-like at his cheap and nonworking burner phone, or at the Western muted on TV.
Darlene looked at Peggy for a long time before she spoke.
“How’d you get mixed up with two pukes like these?” she asked quietly.
“Can it, Darlene.” Buzz was wide-awake now.
Peggy looked warily at Tyler.
“I didn’t quite catch your name.” Darlene leaned forward in her chair.
“I said shut up.”
Darlene ignored him. “You know my name, honey. It’s Darlene. Honest. What’s yours?”
She moved some honey-blond strands from her face and met Darlene’s cat-like stare. “You do know my name, don’t you?”
Tyler stood up. “I’m warning you, Darlene.”
“Who says I know it?” Darlene had a grimace of a smile. “Anyway, I know who you ain’t. You ain’t her. You ain’t Margaret Rockford, or Peggy, or some poor little rich girl, some kidnapped heiress.”
“You shut your face!” Tyler cried, gun raised in his fist.
“You stupid fool!” Darlene flicked her head to see Buzz lumber up to his feet. “You too! Don’t try anything with me, you hear? Sid’s comin.”
“You’re in on this, Darlene?” Peggy, as she had been called, asked softly.
“You shouldn’t know about that, Margaret or Peggy or whatever your real name is.” Darlene stalked across the room and back. “But thanks to these morons you found out I’m involved, yeah. Well that’s unfortunate. It’s just too bad. You’re gonna die for knowing that, Peggy. I’ll make damn sure of it.”
“We sure as hell now never shoulda come here. Darlene, you have gone bats.” Tyler’s tone was shaky.
“Have I? I know what I’m talking about. I’ve seen pictures of Margaret Rockford and Sid and her old man, Miles Rockford. Several pictures. Sid and Miles Rockford have been in business together for thirty years so there were a lot of pictures to look at! Sure, he showed me. Baby pictures, school pictures. I know that face. That blonde sitting here ain’t Margaret Rockford!”
Buzz rubbed his chin. “Course it’s her.”
Darlene shook her head. “No it isn’t, dummy!” She came over to “Peggy,” leaned in close. “I won’t ask it again. Who the hell are you? We oughtta know before we cut your throat and scram the hell out of here!”
There was a long silence met with the low and then steadily louder howl of the wild wind. Freezing rain spattered like bee bees thrown up against the outside of the drapery-shrouded front windows.
“Okay, Darlene…I’ll tell you. Under the circumstances, I have no reason to pretend anymore. I’m a security agent hired by Miles Rockford.” She sat up straight in her corner of the sofa and was watched with wide eyes. “A decoy. Oh, I’m telling you the truth. I might as well, right? You might sympathize a little.”
“I don’t think so, but keep talking,” Tyler said in a thick, strained voice.
“Mr. Rockford knew something was up with his business partner. Your friend Sid Keenes. Certain financial irregularities. A long pattern of bad decisions, bad company. Very bad company.” She looked at Buzz, then Tyler. Somehow, she kept her voice steady. “Sid took an unhealthy interest in Peggy Rockford. Her whereabouts. Who she chummed with. Mr. Rockford’s hunch about his business partner was correct.”
“And you think these people are worth dying for?” Darlene was livid, her open hand, red nailed, gesturing between the two hulking and nervous-looking men.
The women’s eyes locked. “Do you?”
*****
They waited for Sid, Darlene armed now just as Buzz and Tyler had been all night. Weapons trained on their captive. Warily eying each other. Waiting. The night dragged on and the wind never let up. Tyler looked at his phone several times and repeated, “Lousy signal. Still no service out here.”
At last they heard the sound of tires on wet gravel. Buzz rushed to the window and pulled a small length of sheer curtain aside to peer out.
“It’s Sid. He’s alone. Get her into the kitchen, I need to talk to Sid.”
“Oh, you’ll do some talking, Buzz,” said Darlene. “And so will I. And so will Sid.”
Tyler pushed “Peggy” roughly into the kitchen and closed the swinging door.
“Sit down.”
He pointed his gun at her. She sat at the table, raising her chin, but blinking nervously. Tyler’s face was pale, like he was damned spooked and unsure what to believe about this woman with honey-color hair. If he wanted to speak to her, to ask her something, he couldn’t quite form the words. It was like his throat was closing up. A look of hate and fear was branded across his face, and a hot murderous flame seemed to smolder in his narrowed, searching eyes.
“You never did say what your name is.” He was breathing hard. “Never mind, for now.”
He listened at the door. He was scared and his hands trembled. So did hers. Sid was in the house now and voices from the next room grew harsh and loud almost immediately. Something made of glass smashed sharply against the living room floor. Darlene cried out. A terrible argument was going on out there in the living room, but here in the kitchen behind a closed door neither of them could quite make out the words being said and shouted. And then screamed.
They both strained so hard to hear that it hurt.
*****
Sid was a bulking heavy man and he’d never looked older or more out shape, despite his expensive suit and black wool coat and white cashmere scarf. His expression was even more grim than usual, his face sheened with sweat. He ran his hairy, ringed fingers over his pomaded silver hair and down the front of his jacket.
“This is too crazy,” he growled. “No way you grabbed the wrong kid! And then you have to bring her here?” Buzz looked shame-faced and Darlene looked for a moment perversely pleased. “It was all perfect and you morons mucked it up completely.”
“It wasn’t me,” said Darlene. She’d tried to explain her side of events again. Sid shut her up with a growl and slightly raised arm, a trembling finger pointed at her head.
“She saw your mug, you idiot. Can connect you with me. We might be really screwed this time.”
“Why’d they have to bring her here?” Darlene was purple with rage. “They weren’t supposed to know about this house. No one was! That’s what you said, Sid!”
Darlene fought back pent-up tears and it made her face into an ugly mask. Sometimes she saw Sid in such an awful light. Maybe she knew him better than she thought she did. Yet too often she saw a side of him that scared her. He’d promised her love and incredible riches, a new life, happiness, and she’d gone along with this terrible scheme of his. After all, she figured she’d done worse things than this. And for far less in return.
And Sid had such class, hadn’t he? She’d thought so. Sid, for all his sliminess, liked to keep his hands clean. He smelled like pine soap, fresh, and Turkish tobacco. He had expensive tastes and he lavished her with gifts, trips, good times. His longtime business partner and best friend Mile Rockford was the one who did all the heavy lifting and financial risk-taking in the candy business.
It had grown into a very big business. Candy canes and lemon drops and enough sugars to rot the teeth of American kiddies for almost two generations. Expansions into South America and Europe, Asia. Miles was the one who worked fourteen hours days and nights, ruined his eyesight, developed ulcers. Sid was the one who stole money, cooked books and dummied up expense accounts, gambled away a fortune, divorced two women and was running out on a third wife. Sid was the one who was in hock, bad, with bad people.
Sid was the one who got mixed up with violent animals like Buzz Dwight and Tyler Gilman.
Miles, so happily married all these years, with a cherished daughter who graduated with honors from a fine college, with medical school on the horizon, had long defended his good childhood buddy, his fellow dreamer. He’d loved Sid Keenes. But it seemed in the past year even Miles was catching on, at last. Finally listening to the whispers of his associates who detested Sid. Sid’s days as a cash-poor flashy con man and world-class cheat looked like they were numbered, and he was desperate.
“We didn’t plan to stop at this house,” Buzz protested. “It was an emergency. The storm was driving us off the road.”
“You’re ten miles from the safe house! I turned off the highway thirty minutes ago and the road wasn’t as bad as you make it out to be.”
“Try it on bald tires instead of a huge luxury SUV!” Buzz was bristling now.
“I never should have shown you and Tyler how to get here.”
Darlene’s jaw dropped. “They was here before? This is supposed be our secret place, Sid! Nobody but nobody was supposed to know.”
“Joke’s on you, Darlene,” Buzz snarled with an evil smile. “We were here all right, Tyler and me. With Sid. Before you ever saw the place!”
She looked at Sid’s grimly pursed lips.
“We set up the whole operation here, Darlene,” Buzz said, face red and angry, growing careless. “Right in this room. Surprise, surprise, he didn’t want you to know. Told us to keep quiet. Told us other stuff, too, like how he was not gonna let Miles out of his sight till we got the ransom money. So now what are we gonna do, Sid?” He towered over Sid. He was fed up and it was emboldening him. Making him volatile.
“Wish I’d never set eyes on this damn place.” Sid wrung his hands and shook his head, wincing. He took a step away, but then returned, closer to them than before, straightening his back. “Now see what I gotta do?” His shrill volume set Buzz back a step. “I better take a look at her, first thing I do. I gotta make some terrible decisions, get my hands dirty. Damn you both. Just be cool, for once!” He headed shakily for the kitchen door.
“Sid!” Darlene reached for him and he brushed her off with a back-glancing swat that stung her hands.
*****
Strange that the kitchen was so dark. The light had been switched off, or gone out. Now the soft golden glow of the living room illuminated the table, the fridge and rust-stained white sink.
A large man half in shadows, with wet red hair that gleamed in places, was seated in a chair, his back to Sid. Sid stepped closer and touched the man’s shoulder. “Tyler?”
Tyler fell sideways to his right, limp, and then down heavily to the floor like a big sack of potatoes. The light caught the shock in his bulging eyes. A large kitchen knife was stuck up to the hilt through his throat. Blood, fresh and livid, was splattered all down the front of his shirt.
A scream caught in Sid’s throat. Like his heart was going to burst out of his chest any second. And then a lovely tall woman with hair the color of honey stepped forward out of a shadow. She had Tyler’s gun pointed at him.
“He’s dead,” Sid rasped. “And you…you ain’t Peggy Rockford.”
She nodded. “Down on the floor, Sid, on your belly. Fast, hands high.” She cocked the gun and in two short moves he went heavily to his knees and then pressed his lips to the gritty linoleum. She took his pistol from his side-holster, wet with sweat. She bound his wrists deftly behind his blubbery back with plastic pack rings she found in the trash can.
The front door opened abruptly, and a cold draft blew through her hair.
She flew through the rooms to the door and saw Buzz and Darlene outside at the bottom of the front steps, running frantically in the shimmering wet darkness toward Buzz’s car.
She aimed and took Buzz down with one fatal shot through the heart. He went face-first into the gravel. Darlene skidded in mud against the Honda’s hood. She raised both arms above her head and screamed. She fell hard to her knees in a black puddle.
*****
It was now near daybreak but the fog kept the place gloomy inside and out. The wind let up finally, and a fine mist looked pretty picking up red and blue lights in its shifting swirls.
The weather had improved enough to return cell phone service to the house.
Sid was cuffed and marched out to a squad car. He remained shamefaced in bitter silence, eyes wide with fear and grief. He turned his head and gave “Peggy” one last backward mournful glance.
The other police officers, after speaking at length with her, went about their crime scene business with varying degrees of professional detachment. That included packing up Buzz and Tyler. It was a slow process. And a few of the officers looked at “Peggy” suspiciously, knowing that was not her name.
After some radio calls, a federal judge signed off on her brief report, establishing her jurisdiction via no less than the FBI, assigned quickly to the yet unpublicized would-be kidnap case. The Bureau had agents on their way to help local police with such matters as community relations and media queries. There would be intense interest in the “officer-involved” shootings of two known underworld bad guys in an obscure rural house.
That story would go out in drips and drabs, managed in a slick public relations strategy already underway as agents boarded a plane in a distant city.
The woman at its center would remain unknown. To the police cleaning up a bloody crime scene, she could only be referred to in secret with a coded number, in the course of what they would invariably call, without further comment, an “ongoing investigation.”
“We notified Miles Rockford and his family and they are all relieved, to say the least,” said the good-looking officer with the dark eyes and Spanish name embroidered on his uniform. “Their daughter is excited to meet you, they say.”
She sipped hot tea at the window and nodded. “Thank you, officer.” Her heartbeat was returning to normal.
Darlene sat with arms behind her back, cuffed on a kitchen chair. Not the one Tyler had bled on. She waited for her turn for conveyance to jail.
Peggy who was not Peggy came over and pulled another chair from the table. She sat down next to Darlene and stretched her legs.
“Can you get me out of here?” Darlene made a convincing expression of pleading out of the taut leather of her face, which looked older now than it had earlier in the evening. Her dark hair was spiky with sweat.
“You’ll do some time, Darlene. But that really isn’t your problem. You have a new one. A bigger one. You threatened to kill me, and I do believe you’d have done it.”
“I…I didn’t mean it…”
“But I mean it when I say I’ll be watching you. I’ll know when you’re released from the place you’re going to. And then, when you get out of prison, that’s when you’ll actually pay a very heavy price. Harder than what the state will ask for.”
Darlene widened her eyes, glassy with unshed tears. “I could kill myself before that,” she whispered.
“But you won’t.” Her own gaze was steady, eyes clear, twinkling as if with facets of polished lapis.
“Don’t you see that I’m a victim, too? Sid put me up to this!”
“Yes, I do see that. It doesn’t matter to me. You better pray for a very lengthy sentence, Darlene. It’s the only time you have left.”
“You…you could have shot me dead outside…with Buzz.”
“No, that would have made things more difficult for me, and for the local police. It wasn’t necessary. This way is cleaner. But don’t think I didn’t consider it. Time to go.”
Gasping and shaking, Darlene stood as the tall blond security agent hoisted her up gently and firmly to her feet. “But I didn’t hurt anyone! What kind of cop are you?”
Some of the other officers came over to check on Darlene’s outburst and to escort her to a waiting squad car.
“No kind,” she answered.
As they walked her away Darlene continued to scream. “You’re a killer! A heartless killer for hire! That’s what you really are!” She went with her uniformed escorts out into the cold darkness. “She threatened me, she did! She’ll kill me!”
The handsome cop with the big dark eyes stayed back when the others went outside. Now he came closer to her, smiling. First name, Rafael. He touched the embroidered name badge so she could see it. Flecks of gold shone in his brown eyes along with her reflection. He lightly cleared his throat, as if braving himself.
“Buy you breakfast?” he asked.
“That’s nice, but I have a flight to catch. How about a ride into Providence?”
“That would be my pleasure. But what will we talk about on the way? I mean, you know my name but I’m not even supposed to know yours.”
“Yes, that’s right. I suppose if I told you…”
“Then you’d have to kill me?” He grinned. He had a nice smile.
“Something like that.” She smiled now, too.
“Okay, I’ll drive you. We can go now, all finished up here. But you’re flying like that, just a coat on your back, no luggage, no bags?”
“They’re at the airport. It’s all set.”
He followed her out to the squad car. Opened the passenger door for her. The long driveway was still crammed with cop vehicles, an ambulance, an unmarked sedan. The humble, evergreen-lined drive was rutted with fresh wet tire tracks. And of course Buzz and Sid’s cars were parked where they’d left them. A tow-truck driver was looking them over. “You have a lot of confidence, don’t you?” asked Rafael.
“I imagine so.” He couldn’t have guessed how really scared she’d been a few hours before, or what it cost her each time she took on a case like this. Or know that she had herself been an abducted child. And perhaps she was and always would be that, in part.
He chuckled softly. “I mean…forgive my asking, but who made you judge, jury and executioner of those guys?”
She buckled her safety belt. Turned her face to his.
“Those guys.”
He nodded and keyed the ignition. She looked at the side mirror, seeing the slightly sagging old wind-lashed Dutch Colonial house receding. Its narrow black windows, having withstood yet another of the countless storms that battered these hills, shone intact, silvering with traces of the faintest morning light.
Then they were off and on their way over graveled curves and shivering puddles tinted with the rose-peach glow of a dark misty dawn.
*****
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