Maybe she could go inside and call him right then, before her father arrived. Skye looked at the door. It was nearly eight and shadows were forming everywhere.

Before she could get out of the car, her father braked his old blue pickup next to her and walked toward the entrance cradling a shotgun. “Stay in back of me.” Jed was not one for idle chitchat.

Skye trailed a few steps behind her dad, feeling like a child. She shouldn’t have waited for him. The police had checked out the house and it was safe. She should be doing this by herself.

Jed held out his hand for the keys. Skye rummaged through the inside zippered section of her purse for the spare set since she had given Officer Quirk the ones she normally carried on her ring. Jed tapped his foot impatiently.

After he opened the door, Jed whispered, “Wait here until I check things out.”

“Officer Quirk was already through the place once,” Skye whispered back. “Let’s just go in, I’ll pack, and we can get out of here.”

“After I take a look.” He gave her a stern look. “Stay.”

Skye was leaning against the railing, thinking that if he spoke to his dog, Chocolate, the way he had just spoken to her, maybe he could finally train the animal. Then she heard gunshots.

Without thinking she rocketed through the door, slamming into her father in the foyer as he charged out of the living room. Both of them stumbled back. Jed sat abruptly on the hall bench and Skye fell sprawled to the wooden floor. Without speaking, Jed struggled to his feet, grabbed Skye by the back of the collar, and dragged her out the door. She felt like a crab walking backwards.

Outside, he continued to pull her behind him, not stopping until they were in his truck with the doors locked.

Skye gasped for breath. “What happened?”

“Saw someone in your front room. Came toward me and I shot ’em.” Jed snatched the mike from his CB and put in a call to the police.

“But I heard more shots. Did they shoot back?” Skye looked anxiously at her father.

“Yup. That’s when I hightailed it out of there.” Jed took a red hanky from his pocket and wiped the sweat off his face.

Only a minute or two passed before Quirk’s squad car squealed into the driveway, lights flashing and siren screaming.

Quirk and a man dressed as a sheriff’s deputy jumped out of the cruiser, conferred briefly with Jed, then approached the cottage. Skye watched them split up, the deputy going toward the back. Quirk peeked into windows and crept around corners.

He finally entered the house after shouting, “Police!”

Moments later, Quirk and the deputy emerged holding something that glinted in the headlights.

“Mr. Denison, I believe this is what you saw.” Quirk motioned to the deputy and they held the object up between them.

It had once been a bouquet of giant Mylar balloons. The brightly colored spheres now dangled, deflated and full of holes, from the small sack of sand designed to keep them from floating to the ceiling.

Skye’s brows met over her nose. “How did that get inside my house?”

Quirk looked uncomfortable. “It was delivered when I was here looking at your window damage. I let the guy put it in the living room. He set the arrangement on the floor since it was so big. The balloons floated about five feet from the ground.”

“The sound of the balloons popping when Dad shot them must have been what we thought was someone returning fire,” Skye offered. The men nodded. “What he thought was a person coming at him was probably the balloons swaying forward in a breeze from the broken windows.”

The deputy rocked on his heels. “Yup. It could have happened that way.”

They stood in silence until Skye said, “I wonder who the balloons were from. Was there a card?”

Shrugging, Quirk rested his hand on his gun. “I didn’t see one.”

“I’ll check with Simon. They were probably from him.” Skye turned to Quirk. “Is it okay to go in now? I need to pack a few things. I’m going to stay with my parents until the windows are fixed.”

The men communed silently. Finally, Quirk spoke. “I think the chief would be less likely to chew my butt off if I escorted you. Try to make it quick, all right?”

Skye readjusted the strap of her canvas briefcase over her shoulder as she climbed the steep steps to the high school’s front entrance. Her head ached from lack of sleep after having stared at the ceiling all night, trying to figure out who hated her enough to slash her tires and break her windows.

She fought waves of nausea and a headache caused by a breakfast too large, a morning too hot, and a firing squad waiting for her behind the glass doors.

May had insisted Skye eat every bite of the many dishes she had prepared. Being accustomed to only tea and toast in the morning, Skye felt as force-fed as a calf about to become veal.

Once again Skye had tried to take a day off by using a personal day, but this time she’d been told the superintendent wanted to see her at nine sharp. A parent had made a complaint against her.

Nervously clearing her throat, Skye made eye contact with the superintendent’s secretary, a tall, voluptuous woman in her late forties with wavy red hair floating over her shoulders. Everyone insisted that she was having an affair with her boss, but no one could prove it.

Skye tried smiling. “Hi, Karolyn. I understand Dr. Wraige wants to see me.”

Karolyn arched a perfectly plucked eyebrow and made a show of flipping the pages in her appointment book. “Yes, I see you’re down for nine.” She looked up at the clock and tsked. “You’re a few minutes early and he’s on the phone.”

Having not been offered a seat, Skye stood off to one side watching the minutes tick by. The outer office was old-fashioned, with dark wood paneling and matching furnishings. The computer terminal on the back wall looked out of place.

She was about to ask to use the adjoining rest room when the phone buzzed and Karolyn rose from her desk. She unlatched the waist-high gate and allowed Skye into the inner office. Knocking once, Karolyn opened the door slightly and stood back.

As soon as Skye squeezed her way through, the door was pulled shut. The superintendent sat in a huge leather chair behind a massive walnut desk. Matching onyx in-box, pencil cup, and blotter were the only items on its smudgeless glass top.

He gestured for Skye to take a seat in one of the wing chairs facing him.

Dr. Wraige laced his fingers across his chest and stared through watery blue eyes. His gray hair, swept back in a pompadour, was the exact shade of his suit and skin. After a few moments of intimidating silence, he spoke. “Miss Denison, we seem to have a little problem.”

“Oh?” Skye knew how to play the waiting game, even if she didn’t enjoy it.

He drummed his fingers on his stomach. “It seems that one of your recent decisions has caused an upset for some parents.”

Her mind raced. Which ones? The Yoders, Mr. Doozier, the Underwoods? I can’t let on there is more than one. “I see. What exactly is the problem?”

“Don’t play coy with me. It’s Mayor Clapp’s son.” The superintendent leaned forward. “He was not happy with the results of your evaluation.”

“Why?” Skye was truly confused.

This had been a strange case all along. Cray Clapp was a senior with good grades and a top five-percent ranking in his class. When Skye had first received the referral, she had turned it down since the boy did not seem to have any characteristics that would suggest a learning disability. His IQ and achievement seemed to match, and if he had any processing problems, they weren’t interfering with his learning.

The high school principal, Homer Knapik, had ordered her to do the assessment regardless. So, she had wasted three hours of her time and the student’s. And as she’d suspected, he’d shown no sign of having a learning disability.