Cornered In Conard County. Rachel Lee

could be friends,” she finished for him. She turned her face toward him. “I don’t make friends, Cadell. Except for Betty. She’s the lone exception.” She closed her eyes briefly, then snapped them open. “I’m incapable of real trust. Even years of therapy didn’t help with that. So...consider me broken, which I guess I am.”

      Then she rose to her feet. Flash stood, too.

      Cadell gave up on trying to reach her. He’d issued the warning he’d wanted to, but evidently she didn’t need it.

      Closed up, walled in, all because of something she saw as a child. He wished he could say that surprised him.

      He stood, too. “Want to take Flash home with you today?”

      “Betty’s cats might object.”

      “I thought you were moving?”

      “I almost decided to, then changed my mind. Tomorrow, when the internet is installed.”

      Everything settled, returning to normal. Back to business. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll keep him for you and bring him over tomorrow.”

      Flash wanted to go with her when she started toward her car, but she told him to stay. Looking forlorn, he settled on his belly and put his snout between his paws.

      Dory didn’t miss the expression. “Tomorrow, Flash. I promise.”

      Cadell watched her drive away, forgetting himself and standing too close to the penned ostriches. He ducked just in time and stepped away.

      “Dang birds,” he said, but his mind was elsewhere. He’d just learned a lot about Dory Lake, and far from putting him off, it made him hurt for her.

      Damn her brother. If that guy showed up in this county, Cadell was going to feed him to the birds. The big birds.

       Chapter Three

      The next morning, Betty insisted on helping Dory move many of her belongings. Most of it was computer equipment, some very heavy, but Betty brought the clothes and lighter items for the kitchen.

      The house was partially furnished, which made Dory’s life easier, and already contained the items she’d had shipped here, mostly work related office furniture, including the extra battered old chair that tipped back farther than the new one. She loved to sit in it sometimes just to think. Eventually she could spiff the house or her office up if she wanted, but with most of her attention on her job, on creating graphics with her team, she was seldom more than half-aware of her surroundings.

      The pile of clothes on her bed amused Betty, however. Jeans. T-shirts. More jeans. Sweatshirts. “Lord, girl, don’t you ever dress up?”

      “I don’t have any need.” But Dory laughed, too. It did look odd, all together like that. Add the plain undies and the three pairs of jogging shoes and she was sure she would appall most women.

      “We have to do something about your fashion sense,” Betty remarked.

      “Why?” Dory asked. And that really was the question. She worked long days, she had no desire to socialize and the one man who’d managed to pierce her desire for isolation had told her he wasn’t interested because he’d had a bad marriage. She didn’t need a neon sign.

      Betty followed her into her office and watched as Dory unpacked the real center of her life. “You know I love you,” she said as Dory pulled out the first of six monitors.

      “I know.” She braced herself for what she was certain was coming.

      “You need more of a life than your job. Won’t you at least meet one or two people I think you’d like?”

      “I met Cadell,” she reminded Betty. “Nice guy. Also seriously burned by life.”

      Betty sighed, then said a bit sarcastically, “Well, at least you’re a pair, then.”

      “Nope,” said Dory. “Nice and all that, great dog trainer...”

      “And gorgeous as hell,” Betty said bluntly. “At least tell me you’re not blind.”

      Dory paused, a power cord in her hand. “Betty? Please tell me you’re not going to keep pushing me this way. Because if that’s your goal, I’ll stop unpacking right now.”

      The room nearly turned to ice as Betty stared at her. Then almost as quickly as it came, the ice thawed. “No, that’s not my goal. I just worry about you. None of my business, I guess.”

      Betty turned and went to get some more items from the car. Dory stared after her, realizing she had just hurt her only friend in the world.

      Well, take that as a warning, she told herself. All she brought was pain. Whatever lay at her core, it was locked away forever. And that hurt other people.

      She returned to setting up her office, glad to know that soon she’d been in touch with her team, the nerds who were fun and smart and never demanded she get personal about anything. A meeting of minds. Who needed a meeting of hearts?

      As she turned back to her desk and began to connect more cables, she felt herself easing back into her comfortable world where she could control everything she needed to. Even her desk, shipped from her old home, seemed like a warm greeting, encouraging a new life.

      Her life. Then she thought of Flash. Okay, so maybe there was more to it than the digital world she lived in.

      Betty returned, her voice announcing her. She was speaking with someone, and Dory instinctively stiffened. She pivoted quickly to see Betty enter the office space with a woman wearing a tool belt.

      “Dory, this is Rhonda, your cable man.”

      Rhonda laughed. “I’m your cable tech person.”

      Dory couldn’t help grinning. “You get that, too?”

      “All the time. Say, I hear you’re into graphics design?”

      Dory nodded.

      “Then I’ll make sure you have the best connection this company can offer. I’m a gamer. So what graphics cards do you use?”

      Betty rolled her eyes. “I’ll go get the last few things, then make some coffee. I can see what’s coming.”

      Dory and Rhonda both laughed but soon were involved in the nuts and bolts of computing and bandwidth and a whole range of technical subjects. While they gabbed, Rhonda busied herself putting the connectors in the wall, testing them and then adding the routers. “The best we have,” she said, placing the two routers on the desk. “Betty kind of rattled some bars, you know? So you’ll have two broadband connections. That’s what you wanted, right?”

      “As long as they’re not piggybacking and sucking up the bandwidth from each other.”

      “I’ll take care of that at the junction outside. It’s wonderful how far we’re coming. A federal grant is making it possible, you know. High-speed connections in rural areas. You wouldn’t have been able to stand it here a few years ago. We were still with the dinosaurs and dial-up.”

      “Oh, man, dial-up was a nightmare.”

      Rhonda finished quickly, considering all she had to do inside, including hooking up Dory’s TV and converter box, and that was just the beginning. A lot more to do outside. But she took time for a quick cup of coffee with Dory and Betty before getting to it.

      “Hope to see you again,” she said cheerfully to Dory before she zipped out the door.

      “Nice woman,” Dory remarked and went back screwing, snapping, plugging and otherwise turning a collection of expensive hardware into two expensive, smoothly running workstations. Everything top-of-the-line. The max.

      At last, though, she was able to turn everything on and test it. All good. She sent an email blast letting her team know she was