A Cold Night’s Sleep
By Vincent Diamond
Published by JMS Books LLC
This story is included in the print book
Rough Cut: Vincent Diamond Collected by Vincent Diamond.
Copyright 2007 Vincent Diamond
ISBN: 978-1-61152-037-8
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Cover Credits: Paul Picone
Used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.
Cover Design: J.M. Snyder
All rights reserved.
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No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.
This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It contains substantial sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which may be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published in the United States of America.
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A Cold Night’s Sleep
By Vincent Diamond
He’d taught himself to work left handed after the accident, and his sketches of herons, ospreys, and hawks filled one wall of the cabin. He worked in pencil and chalk, and used the fused pinky and ring fingers of his right hand to shade, the sound of his scarred flesh loud against the paper. It was as close to relaxed as Sandy Richter ever got.
When the huge boom shook the little A-frame, it rattled the glasses on the shelves. Sandy grabbed his binoculars and headed for the observation balcony. Even in a blasting Florida thunderstorm, a lightning strike could start a fire, and any fire beyond a controlled burn wasn’t something he wanted to face. In the gray of the mid-afternoon, Sandy saw lashing rain, the oak trees swaying in the wind, clumps of Spanish moss ripped down from their branches. No smoke, no flames.
The lights flickered, and by the time Sandy got downstairs, the power was out completely. He made a quick check of the radio set; its battery would let him call the district office in Ocala if he needed to, but he wasn’t concerned. This early in January, on a Tuesday, no campers were booked into the small state park he rangered, and with the storm, he didn’t expect any drive-ups.
A deep, bass rumble of thunder echoed over the landscape. Then a hard whump of sound, more than thunder. Lightning cracked close by, so close that Marty, the little tuxedo cat he’d adopted a few months back, jumped from his napping spot on the sofa and scuttled under the bed.
“You big wussy. It’s just a thunderstorm!”
Marty offered no defense.
Sandy hauled in two days’ worth of logs and placed them with care in the firebox. Once it was drafting correctly, he set the fire screen in place and hooked it on both sides. Just being careful.
He had the cabin door open to the wide porch. The breeze was cool as the thunderstorm moved away, and the cold front’s rains soaked into the earth. Sandy went back to his sketches, and Marty came out and settled on the desk.
Sandy was just thinking about some hot chocolate when Marty suddenly sat up, whiskers forward, ears high.
Three loud thumps from the porch. A tall man slammed across the deck and skidded to a stop outside Sandy’s front door.
He turned and faced the weather, hands wiping water off his bare skull. Sandy saw a fresh bruise on his left temple as pink-tinted water ran down his neck, blood from a bad cut over his eye. Mud dripped from his clothes.
Sandy rose in silence; his paper drifted to the floor, unnoticed.
His cop instincts pinged at him; even after two years away from the PD, he still assessed everyone like he had to write a field report later on. The stats came easily enough: mixed race or Hispanic, age thirty, six-foot-three, two hundred thirty pounds, heavy build, bald. The other man still faced away from him, and Sandy stood outside of kicking distance when he spoke. “Turn around.”
The man’s broad shoulders went rigid, his muscles tightening in his tank top. Sandy noticed the combat boots on his feet, the fatigues tucked into them. And that build came from hours on a weight bench—hours that only a prisoner had. Sandy smelled the rain and sweat that sluiced down his body.