Splitting the Defense Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Amber Lynn

  Copyright © 2017 Amber Lynn

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter One

  On. Off. On. Off. On.

  It didn’t matter what position Toby left the light switch. If electricity ran to the small cabin he’d purchased, which he was told it did, it wasn’t flowing to the switch. All moving the switch did was make an annoying clicking noise.

  “Serves me right for buying sight unseen.”

  No one heard his muttered words. Toby bought the cabin in the middle of nowhere for the isolation it promised. After his latest concussion from a hit during a hockey game, he needed to find somewhere to hide out while he tried to get his brain straight. Even though the hockey season had just wrapped up, his season had been over for more than a month.

  Sometimes the symptoms would last a few days, allowing him to jump right back into the game. The more concussions he sustained, shaking them seemed to get harder. At twenty-nine, Toby didn’t want to give up the game he loved, but part of his reasoning for seeking the solitude the cabin offered was to think about how much more his head could take.

  The pictures he’d seen of the cabin had to have been taken at least a decade before the current state of the building. The cozy getaway he thought he’d bought was nowhere to be seen. He’d gotten a feeling in the pit of his stomach as he made his way up the overgrown path his GPS claimed he needed to travel. The path made it unquestionably clear that it had been a while since anyone had been up to the cabin.

  The feeling got worse when the GPS gave out about halfway to his destination. Toby wasn’t one of those guys who freaked out if his boxy sports utility got a scratch, but he could feel the branches slide across the black paint, making him grit his teeth for most of the mile-long ride up the path. He hadn’t stopped to get a good look at the car when he got out, mainly because he was fearful of what he’d find, but he imagined it looked like a bear had run its claws down the side.

  His attention when he got out of the vehicle was completely on the weathered pine logs that made the cabin. They didn’t exactly offer any votes of confidence, because they weren’t the warm orangish-brown from the pictures. Or maybe they were somewhere beyond the moss that seemed to be holding the place together.

  Toby sighed as he dropped the single duffle bag he’d grabbed from the SUV on the floor. The whole cabin was supposed to match the exterior color per the pictures, but the lack of lighting made it hard to tell if that was the case. After seeing the outside, he wasn’t holding his breath.

  As long as the building didn’t fall down around him and the promised new bed he’d insisted on being included in the price was there waiting for him in the single bedroom, he could live with it. Eventually, he’d need to charge his phone in the car, but he had no plans of using it except for emergencies and the every other week check-ins he promised his mom.

  Lori Matthews worried about Toby enough that he almost felt bad about adding the extra stress of being outside of cell reception. He’d had to compromise on the calling to make sure his mother didn’t decide to follow him to the cabin. He figured since he had to go into town to pick up food anyway, a phone call was easy enough.

  “Okay, let’s see what else a hundred and fifty grand buys.”

  The price tag hadn’t seemed like a lot to Toby – his home back in the city was north of five hundred grand – but he thought it was reasonable for a secluded cabin that boosted an outhouse in fine condition. Knowing that the description he read couldn’t be trusted, he worried exactly what qualified as fine. The outhouse was the least of his worries since the cabin was surrounded by plenty of places in the woods to dig a hole in the ground. Other than the animals around, he wasn’t too concerned about someone watching him use the facilities.

  Toby had never roughed it to that extent, but he wasn’t incapable of a more rustic life. At least he was pretty sure that was the case. It was the middle of summer, which meant worrying about heat wasn’t a big deal and he had plans for food, so it still made sense in his head that a few weeks to a month was doable.

  His first real steps into the house to gauge its interior condition were taken as softly as his six-three, two-hundred-and-twenty-pound body could offer. He wasn’t used to tip-toeing around, but he wanted to make sure a step in the wrong direction didn’t end with his boot going through the floor. Unlike the outside, it didn’t look to be held together by moss, so there was a chance it was rotted through.

  The space inside the door was open. There was no furniture, not a surprise. Just a single door straight in front of him, which hopefully opened to something more than the outside.

  To the right was a makeshift kitchen, with a mossy green fridge and matching stove that looked decades old. Between the two appliances was a large sink sans a faucet since the cabin didn’t have running water.

  Toby had stocked up mostly on nonperishables that would hopefully fit in the single cupboard above the stove. If they didn’t all fit, there was plenty of floor space for the bags until he could figure something else out.

  Curious, he walked over to the fridge to see if there was a chance it would keep the perishable items in the car cold for even a few seconds. Before he got to the door to open it, he noticed a piece of paper on the six inches of counter space available for prepping meals. It was a good thing everything was basically pour in a pot and heat, bec
ause even making a nice salad would be difficult with the tiny space offered.

  It seemed impossible, but the paper looked almost as weathered as the house itself. The white printer paper he was used to seeing was instead a sliver of a tree or something, judging by the yellow color and lack of any straight edges. He figured the black writing was made with charcoal, instead of a pen.

  The condition of the house had clearly made him think anyone who had ever lived there registered on the prehistoric level. Obviously, a fridge and stove, and the fact that the house hadn’t been built until the middle of the twentieth century, made that impossible, but the mood falling over him didn’t make Toby generous as far as the previous owners.

  Picking up the note, he rubbed his fingers on the thick edges of the paper. It felt like heavy cardstock, but Toby wanted to keep imagining the tree thing. It made the idea that he’d somehow travelled into the past more believable.

  There weren’t many words on it, which was good because the handwriting was horrible and barely readable. A few more smudges and Toby would have had no clue what it said.

  Generator north side of the house. Outhouse in back.

  Supposedly, those were the only things Toby needed to know about his new purchase. And he was already aware of the latter, so why it was included in the note was beyond him. There was no signature to know who the note came from, and a quick check of the back of the paper revealed no new epiphanies.

  The news of a generator was a small relief. Not having seen it yet, Toby wasn’t getting his hopes up that it’d be in working condition.

  Tossing the paper back on the counter, he opened the fridge. Knowing there wouldn’t be electricity until he saw to the generator business, he checked to make sure nothing was growing inside. Both fridge and freezer proved to be empty, as did the cupboard.

  For some reason, Toby was surprised by that. He wasn’t sure exactly what he expected to find in what had so far proven to be an otherwise empty cabin, but it seemed like there should be something. A few old jars of something the previous owners canned or a raccoon waiting to greet him were the ideas that immediately jumped to mind.

  Giving up in the kitchen, a mental coin flip led Toby to the single door inside the cabin, which supposedly hid the bedroom. Getting the power turned on could wait until he figured out whether he needed to head straight to town to try to find a bed. He hadn’t driven through what was considered the closest town, but the idea of it having a furniture store with a bed long enough for his tall body didn’t seem likely. He should’ve seen to the sleeping situation himself, but he figured someone local would know the right places to find a bed that didn’t cost thousands of dollars to deliver.

  It took four steps before the pressure hit him, stopping Toby dead in his tracks. He wasn’t one to take pain sitting down, so he always tried to fight it. According to his doctor, he needed to knock that off, but his teeth still ground together as he closed his eyes and tried to push back at the pressure.

  His hand floated up to rub the left side of his head where the pain radiated out. The early signs of queasiness helped Toby know what kind of episode it was going to be. There were generally two kinds. The first one felt kind of like a prickle of warning that he needed to slow down and keep away from noise and light for a little bit. The other variety tended to leave him incapacitated for hours to days.

  It wasn’t a warning headache, which made Toby grit his teeth even harder. The haziness he could feel around the edges of his eyes was taking over too fast for things to dissipate any time soon. He had pills out in the SUV, but heading back into the sun, even with a decent shade canopy from the trees overhead wasn’t going to happen.

  He had a number of triggers that seemed random. Light was a big one, and the reason why he wore sunglasses most of the time. To verify the inside of the cabin was in mild disrepair, he’d pushed them up to the top of his head. There wasn’t enough sunlight making it into the cabin to need the sunglasses, which led Toby to believe the headache wasn’t from light. Although, he’d never specifically measured how much light it took to set things off.

  If it didn’t feel like someone was driving nails into his head, he would’ve pondered causes to make sure he could avoid them in the future, but the need to find out the bed situation took precedence. Each step forward towards the closed door made what felt like a perpetual grimace on Toby’s face deepen.

  What people had called his pissed face had become permanent after his third concussion. He was on number five, so there was a good chance he’d eventually take the face up to a new level, but he hoped to prevent that.

  That was why he was at the cabin. He told himself it was to make a decision about his career moving forward, but the decision was already made. The getaway from everyone else was to help him come to terms with that fact, even if he wasn’t ready to admit it.

  The admitting part was what Toby thought about as he skipped over finishing the walk to the bedroom. Even with the promise of a bed lurking behind the door, there was too much pain for him to go any further. He dropped to his knees before his body decided to tumble to the floor on its own. He let out a deep sigh as he lay down on the dusty floor with his back to the still opened front door. That was the position he remained in for the next twelve hours.

  Chapter Two

  “So,” Lilly Anne started, stretching out the word to make it feel like it was multi-syllable. “Have you met your new neighbor?”

  Meredith kept her head down, pretending to read the label of the can of soup in her hand. She’d bought hundreds of the same can of soup over the years, so there wasn’t anything interesting to read. Pretending to not know someone was speaking to her was the only defense mechanism she had to try to keep her quick runs to town actually quick.

  It made her seem rude, and she was sure everyone talked about it behind her back, but Meredith didn’t care. The drive to and from town took almost an hour. With a five-year-old always in tow, she just wanted to get her shopping done and head back home. Caleb loved running off the second their old truck stopped in front of the store to play with a few of the boys around his age, which made Meredith feel bad that they lived in seclusion at the top of the mountain. Not bad enough to move closer to town, though.

  The seclusion wasn’t Meredith’s choice. At least not at first. She moved to Keene hoping to blend in and not be noticed, but seclusion was a happy byproduct to the decisions she made. After living with her husband and Caleb alone in their small cabin for years, she enjoyed the quiet. It was better than the questioning stares she always felt in town. The townsfolk didn’t know there was a reward in store for them if they asked the right questions. Meredith was thankful for that much.

  She didn’t even have to look over at the leggy brunette trying to start a conversation to know Lilly Anne had almost a mocking-look to her perfect porcelain face. They all did, especially the ones that felt threatened by Meredith. There was no reason for them to feel that way, but the prettier the woman, the more they appeared to need to belittle Meredith.

  Even when Lawrence had been alive, the people in town looked at Meredith like she’d done something wrong. He’d been a favorite among the people of Keene, though, none of them really knew the man. Lawrence had lived the hermit life long before he’d met the doe-eyed nineteen-year-old new in town. When a chance meeting connected the two, neither one of them looked back, and Meredith had fallen in love with the man and the solitude that went along with him.

  Sometimes she wondered whether love was the right word for what was between her and Lawrence. He kept her safe, whether he knew it or not, and had given her Caleb. With Lawrence gone, she didn’t really feel the loss she thought she should, but inside she liked to tell herself that she loved him.

  “I know you heard me, Meredith. He’s been up there just down the road from you for a week now. You can’t tell me you haven’t accidently run into him.”

  Meredith tried to plaster a smile on her face, but it didn’t manage to reach her bluish-
green eyes. The only time her smiles were ever sincere were for Caleb.

  Looking over at Lilly Anne, Meredith saw the usual glare that asked why in the world she was still around. Even after living in somewhat close proximity for seven years, the townsfolk saw her as a pariah. She’d never figured out why that was, other than her assumptions about stealing Lawrence from one of the other women, but she dealt with the eyes narrowing and hands on the hips that seemed to be the classic stance when anyone spoke to her.

  “Who are you talking about, Lilly Anne? As far as I know, it’s just Caleb and me up on the mountain.”

  Reaching over to put her can of soup in her cart, Meredith tried to regulate her breathing. She always got flustered and a little wound up when a confrontation was at hand. It may have started with just a question, but she didn’t kid herself into thinking it was going to be a friendly conversation about some new neighbor. Lilly Anne wasn’t one of the worst offenders when it came to making Meredith feel unwelcome, but she hung out with some of the people Meredith avoided like the plague.

  The idea of a person living up on the mountain not far from her place wasn’t a relief. It was the first time she’d heard anything about the person, who she assumed wasn’t from around the area. The only other cabin up by her home was the old Tinker place and as far as she knew, it needed some work. It was probably a half a mile from her house, so if any construction was going on, she would’ve heard it because of the way sound echoes up in the trees. She hadn’t been over that way in a while, but Henry Tinker had died long before she’d moved to town and no one had seen to the upkeep of the place.

  “Oh, come on. You’re going to tell me you haven’t seen him up there? I hear he’s built like a house, so he’s gotta run around the woods to keep in shape.”

  Meredith rolled her eyes and looked back to the shelves in front of her. The arrogance clear in Lilly Anne’s voice was something she had to deal with often. Pretty much everyone in town talked down to Meredith. The only time she’d heard them speak any other way was when her husband was directly by her side. Otherwise, they made it clear she wasn’t one of them.