Courage Under Fire (Silver Creek #2) - Lindsay McKenna Page 0,1

come and murder all of you! I’ll take you down the alley. There’s a nice fruit tree orchard at the other end. I’ll find a safe place for you!”

She opened her eyes, struggled up the trunk, grabbing branches to hoist herself up to the mass of bees.

Without hesitation, Cari gently placed her small fingers into the mass. The bees were humming, but were not upset by her nearness. They felt like warm, living, soft velvet enclosing her as she eased her fingers down, down, down toward the center. The edge of the bee swarm was almost up to her armpit as she slowly, gently, felt around for the large queen. There! She’d found her!

The bees continued to hum, not at all perturbed by Cari’s arm stuck into their swarm ball.

Mentally, Cari told the queen that she would ease her into her palm, close her fingers carefully around her, and slowly draw her out of the center. She felt the queen, who had a much larger, longer body, and cupped her palm beneath her. In a moment, she had the queen and began to ease her hand back, bringing her out of the swarm.

The bees continued to hum, undisturbed by her human presence.

Once her hand drew free, Cari struggled down to the ground, carefully holding the queen, ensuring she would not accidentally squeeze her and kill her. Running for the gate, she unlatched it, moved outside of it, closed it, turned right, and dug her toes into the dirt of the alleyway, running as hard as she could. The wind tore past her, her mouth open, gasping for air as she passed the alleyway and headed into the huge stand of apple trees in the nearby farm orchard. Spotting an easy-to-climb fruit tree, Cari raced over to it, nearly tripping on a small rise of dirt in her path.

Climbing awkwardly, with one hand only, she wriggled up into the tree, spotting a low-hanging Y-shaped branch. Cari was sobbing for breath, tired and worried. What if Mrs. Johnson did a head count and found her missing? That would be very, very bad for Cari. But she had to rescue her bees! They couldn’t be murdered by the firefighters! And the fire department was not that far away from the day care house.

Gasping, her lungs burning with exertion from her run, she twisted a look over her shoulder. There, behind her, was a dark cloud of honeybees flying toward her, following the pheromone scent of their queen, heading directly to where Cari was standing.

She told the queen that she’d be safe here with her family, that no one would find or hurt them. Gently placing the queen on the fork of the branches, Cari pushed off and fell to the ground, landing on her hands and knees. Quickly leaping up, brushing off the knees of her jeans, she raced back toward the alley, opened the gate and slipped in, latching it behind her.

Once inside, Cari hurriedly tiptoed through the supply room, cracked the door to the hall and peered out. She could hear the teacher talking loudly to the firefighters who had just arrived. Her heart felt like it was going to burst out of her chest, and she walked quietly down the hall, edging silently toward the nap room. All the children were gathered together, frightened, some clinging to Mrs. Johnson’s slacks. There were three firefighters standing there, listening to her.

Cari tried to slow down her heart, still breathing through her mouth, trying to remain undetected and quiet. She pressed her back to the hall wall and listened intently.

“Well,” the lieutenant was saying, “we have foam, Mrs. Johnson. We can use that to get rid of the bees. We’ll go look at that fruit tree and assess the situation. We could also call a beekeeper to come and get them. That way, they wouldn’t be killed.”

“I want them killed!” Mrs. Johnson said, her voice high-pitched with fear. Her arms weren’t long enough to hold all the children who were now fully frightened and watching the firefighters with trepidation.

Cari knew the bees would be gone. They followed the queen, no matter where she flew. Leaning down, she made sure her knees weren’t dusty looking, or sharp-eyed Mrs. Johnson would see the patches on her jeans and ask a lot of questions that Cari didn’t want to answer. She straightened and saw the children dispersing from around the teacher, wandering about, not knowing what to do.

Mrs. Johnson had left them and went to the