19. Run

Sarah lay on the braided rag rug, her body limp and crumpled, playing dead.

The crashes and bangs of a fistfight erupted in the next room.

The guy lifted his boot off her shoulder blades.

Sarah cracked her eyelids open, watching her captor's feet walk away through the black bars of her eyelashes.

He was another step away, another step, and looking in the other direction. He leaned out the doorway, intently watching.

Sarah sprang to her tiptoes and flew to the door, flipping the locks with the practiced ease of knowing her own house, and sprinted.

Her fingers clicked the screen door lock as she wheeled around it, letting it shut behind her as she ran.

She sprinted as hard as she could, pistoning her farm-strengthened arms and legs as she raced for the cornfield.

Swearing and rattling followed her because the guy had trouble with the screen door lock.

Sarah reached the first row of corn and dodged inside, finding a row to run down without disturbing the stalks and then turning at a right angle.

The man's shouting faded as she ran farther into the cornfield.

And farther.

Finally, when only the wind sighed through the stalks around her, she paused, panting with her hands on her knees, her breath harsh in her chest as she listened.

Far away, the guy was shouting in Russian, his words sounding like he was saying, "Where are you assholes? She got away!"

Jesus and Mary, she'd done it. She'd gotten away.

She'd played dead and then she'd dodged and evaded, and she'd gotten away.

But Blaze hadn't.

She stood, looking back through the corn toward the house.

Blaze was still in the living room, fighting for his life. Surely that's what the fight was, Blaze coming back for her.

She could run like he'd told her to and hide in the corn in her field, but that would mean leaving him inside.

Inside, where the murderers were.

Blaze had run back inside to save her.

The importance of the farm withered around her, the corn becoming just more feed for livestock that would be poured atop a mountain of other dried corn, mostly from commercial operations draining the lifeblood out of family farms anyway.

The farm wasn't a holy obligation. It was just a failing business model sucking every last bit of life out of her.

She hadn't found anyone to love and marry because the farm demanded too much time. She'd never traveled except for rare shopping trips to Cedar Rapids and short sprints to Moscow during her childhood, but nothing since she was ten years old. Her time with her friends was limited to a quick sip of iced tea in their kitchens because they all had chores.

Sun-up to sun-down and into the night, the farm required everything from Sarah, yet it barely put food on her table in return.

Her parents were dead. She'd promised them she would keep the farm, so they'd died content.

Wasn't that the most important thing, that they had died content?

She didn't owe the rest of her life to the dirt under her feet.

And Blaze was so much more important to her than the dirt.

She turned around, careful not to jostle the cornstalks as she crept back to the house.

Farmers had to be versatile and work with what they had.

Sarah could save him.