Marsha’s voice was a jagged whisper that made the hair on my arms stand up. “Mark, are you alone?” she hissed, the sound of wind whipping against her phone. I told her I was, asking what could possibly be wrong.
She told me that three men had just appeared on her property, prowling around the empty barn. They didn’t look like neighbors or grieving friends. They were searching for something with a desperate, aggressive energy that terrified her.
My instinct was to drive back and protect her immediately. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes with the truck,” I promised. But her response was a sharp, strangled cry that stopped me dead in my tracks.
“No! Whatever you do, do not bring that truck back here!” she urged. She had overheard them talking from her hiding spot in the house. They weren’t looking for her; they were looking for the vehicle I was standing next to.
She told me to hide the truck deep on my property where it couldn’t be seen from the road. “They kept mentioning a handle,” she whispered before the line went dead. I stood in the dark, staring at the grill of the “gift” I had just inherited.
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