Jonas (Minnesota Marshalls #2)(8)
Author: Susan May Warren
Before it was absorbed into the nightmare that was Yugoslavia.
Before, even, the first war that ravaged their land.
She pulled up alongside the barn and eyed her grandfather’s tractor sitting outside. A cat jumped from a high fender and scampered away.
She got out. “Dedi?” The air was colder here, touched with a breath of winter, although reaping the pine scent from the surrounding foothills.
She walked up alongside the barn and stood in the drive. The house seemed cold. Dark. Empty. “Dedi?”
Then, from behind her, a cry.
She whirled and froze. Zuma, his prized Drežnica goat, stood in the open door of the barn, bleating at her.
“Oh, you.”
It ran back into the barn.
“Dedi?” She headed to the barn.
And that’s when she grew cold.
Empty. The milking cow, Berta, gone.
His horse, Imbero, also gone, his stall open.
And his dog, the old mutt Lenard, hadn’t appeared to announce her.
She turned and headed to the house. As usual, the door was unlocked, and she walked in.
Her childhood rushed back to her in the familiar smell of oiled wooden floors, the old coal furnace in the corner of the main room, the drying dill and oregano from the small kitchen, and the scent of Dedi’s pipe. She missed the smell of Babička’s sourdough bread.
“Dedi?”
She climbed the open stairs to the two small attic bedrooms, her stomach tight.
Both beds were covered in fraying, comfortable quilts.
She stood there, in his empty bedroom, her gaze on his bureau, and her heart thumped.
His Bible was gone.
She pressed a hand to her stomach. He was fine. Probably.
Outside, a rumble thundered from the road, and she walked to the window.
Military transport trucks, two of them, kicked up dust as they lumbered toward the village of Poče.
And sure, it was crazy, but the old stories, the old whispers suddenly rose, consumed her thoughts, and all she could think as she stood there was Run, Dedi, run.
She had to be around here somewhere, Jonas just knew it.
“She” being weather balloon number four, aka, Frannie, who’d vanished off the radar four days ago near about the time a windstorm swept through northern Slovenia and took off roofs, upended trees, and generally left a wake of destruction akin to a derecho across the plains of the Midwest in America.
No wonder Frannie, and Trixie and Alice, had dropped from the sky, the latter two practically disintegrating in the air to drop into piles of metal and electronics scattered over farmland and wooded areas like Humpty Dumpty. Thankfully, the GPS locators on the black boxes remained intact, and he’d managed to retrieve the radiosondes inside.
Frannie, however, hid from him, her GPS on the fritz, her last known location some thirty klicks from Cerkno, in a valley under the shadow of Mt. Porezen, near a village called Poče.
Just a smudge on the map—maybe sixty inhabitants, total, but large enough to have experienced damage from the storm, not to mention a six-foot dirigible crashing through their main square.
Hopefully not catching fire, since the helium it contained to keep it aloft wasn’t flammable, but he’d seen crazy things happen, and the last thing he wanted was for his experiment to turn tragic.
He’d had enough blame to shoulder.
Now he drove along the rutted, two-wheel dirt road winding through foothills crisp with the October cold, the trees lush with reds and oranges, aflame with autumn, reminding him too much of his home state, Minnesota.
Or maybe that was just a byproduct of his recent conversation with his brother, Fraser.
At least, the conversation he’d had after Fraser had jumped him while Jonas had been busy breaking into his sister’s place in Lake Como, Italy. Okay, not exactly breaking in, because Iris kept the welcome mat out, but he’d forgotten his key. Which had necessitated a B&E trick his dad had taught him with the sliding glass door.
Jonas had never expected to get tackled right there in the living room, although he’d given himself some kudos for reacting fast and getting his brother—a former Navy SEAL, thank you—down on the ground.
And sure, Fraser’s fitness level may have been a little underdone, but still, big bro had skills, and Jonas was just a weatherman, so hoo-yah and a fist pump for him.
But the triumph had been short lived when he’d discovered that Fraser was in country because their kid brother, Creed, was on the lam with a princess he’d met in Geneva.
Way to go, Creed. Except Creed was apparently also a named witness to a murder, so…
Yeah, Jonas had rolled that around in his brain for the past four days since returning to Slovenia.
That and the conversation he’d found himself in after the throwdown with Fraser, about big brother’s injury, his future, and the girl he’d joined forces with to find Creed. Pippa something. Bodyguard.
Fraser liked her—Jonas had spotted that from the first. And yes, he’d pushed a little. Confronted him with a Maybe, if you were honest, you want more.
He’d meant the words for Fraser, really.
Really.
Okay, in truth, it could be he’d been speaking out of his own heart.
More than running after, or into, storms.
More than returning home after a high-stakes night to nothing more than his sleeping bag and a couple power bars. And the shortwave giving him yet another weather update.
Most of all, Jonas could live without the guilt of—
He nearly missed the turn for Poče, a chip-painted sign that pointed east.
It led him around a farm, through a cluster of trees, down a hill, through more farmland, and then, in the distance, he spotted the stone spire of an ancient church, surrounded by a handful of red-roofed buildings.
Poče.
He pulled over to the side of the road and picked up his cell phone. Widened the map area.
The last known location put Frannie just outside the village, about one kilometer to the southeast.
He spotted a farm in the distance settled into the rolling hills, more wooded foothills rising to the east. Taking out the binoculars, he scanned the fields.