by Aimée Thurlo
“Good night, Gene, and thank you so much for all your help,” she said softly. “If you ever need a friend, you can count on me.”
“I’ll see you again, Lori.” Even as he spoke he knew it wasn’t an idle promise. Something inside told him that he would, and sooner than either of them expected.
As she turned on the porch light and closed the door behind him, he started down the path to his truck. He’d gone only about ten feet when he caught a glimpse of movement off to his left.
It was probably just someone’s stray cat, judging from the barking dog next door, but he needed to make sure. Stopping, he reached into his pocket and pretended to be searching for his keys.
Although he never turned his head, his focus was on the bushes by the house. Next door, the neighbor’s dog continued to growl and bark, its head popping up intermittently as it jumped up and down just beyond the block wall.
A second later Gene saw the bushes beneath one of the windows sway slightly, odd because the breeze had died down after sunset. Uncertain of the threat, he took a few things out of his pocket, glanced down at his hand, then, as if he’d forgotten something, headed back to her door.
Gene walked slowly, furtively, studying the ground to his left in the glow of the yellow porch light. The footprints on the sandy earth didn’t belong to an animal, and were too large to belong to Lori. If he’d had to take a guess, he would have said they belonged to a size ten or eleven boot—not his own size twelve.
Gene knocked on her front door and Lori answered almost instantly. “Couldn’t stay away?” she said with a teasing smile.
“What can I say? You’re great company,” he said, laughing, then leaned over and whispered in her ear. “Don’t react, just go call the police. You’ve got a trespasser out here beside the house.”
Lori pulled him inside. “Come back in,” she said, shutting the door behind him.
“Don’t worry,” he said quickly. “I’ve got this covered. I’m going to slip out your back door and go after the guy. Keep the kitchen lights off and call the police.”
“Are you crazy? You don’t know what you might be up against. He could be armed! Wait here with me for the police.”
“I’ll surprise him before he even knows I’m coming. Stay here.”
Gene opened the door a crack and slipped outside. He knew how to move through the shadows without making a sound. Hosteen Silver had said that his ability was the natural result of always being in harmony with his surroundings. He wasn’t sure about that, but he knew he was a match for whoever was out there sneaking around.
As Gene slipped around the far corner of the house he heard a low scraping sound. He waited, peering into the darkness, allowing his eyes to adjust. Despite the long gray shadows, he could see a shape huddled below the window directly ahead.
Gene moved toward the man cautiously, scarcely breathing and carefully placing each footstep to avoid making any noise. In the muted half-light, he could see the figure ahead. From the sheen and flattened appearance of his face, it was obvious the person was wearing a stocking mask. He could see something in his gloved hand, too, some kind of tool. It was probably a screwdriver, undoubtedly intended to help the intruder pry the window open.
Gene moved even closer, then stopped, hearing slow footsteps behind him. Nobody had ever been able to successfully sneak up on him—that was one skill he’d had as far back as he could remember. More than once, as a kid, that ability had helped him avoid getting beaten up by a bully.
He flattened against the wall of the house, farther into the shadows. A second later, Lori appeared, crouched low and holding something in her hand.
He grabbed her and covered her mouth with his hand as he pulled her toward him.
She slammed her elbow into his gut.
“Be still. It’s me,” he whispered.
The intruder must have also heard, because quick footsteps sounded up ahead.
Gene placed himself between her and the intruder just as something came flying in his direction. Gene blocked the object with his forearm, and it bounced off the house with a loud thud. It was the screwdriver.
“Wait here,” Gene told Lori, then took off after the running man, who’d now ducked around to the front of the house.
As Gene raced around the corner, the fleeing man stumbled over a lawn sprinkler and nearly lost his balance. Seeing Gene closing in, he grabbed a rake from the neighbor’s yard and hurled it at him.
Gene dodged, but it slowed him down, and when he looked up, the man had reached a car parked on the opposite side of the street. Before Gene could narrow the distance separating them, the guy raced off and Gene had no chance to read the plates.
Gene cursed as he stared at the fading taillights. If Lori hadn’t come outside and tipped the guy off, he would have had him for sure. He was crossing back across the street when Lori came out toward him, holding a mop handle in one hand and a flashlight in the other.
“I wish you’d stayed inside,” Gene said, his voice calm now. It was no use getting riled up after the fact. “He heard you coming and spooked.”
“I won’t abandon a friend and you were out here alone. I grabbed the closest thing I had to a weapon, and came to help you.”
The tremor in her voice sliced through what was left of his anger. Although she’d been terrified, she’d risked her own safety to help him. The gesture was touching. With the exception of his foster family, no one had ever done that.
Lori was unpredictable, but she had heart. As he looked at her, he felt the tug in his gut—and lower.
“Give me the flashlight, then stay close behind me,” he said, forcing his thoughts back on to safer channels. “I want to take a look around, but I don’t want you out of my sight again.”
“The police are on their way,” she said.
“Good. Just give me some room. I want to figure out what he was up to out here,” he said, walking back to the house.
Using the flashlight, and careful not to obliterate any footprints, he studied the gouges on the window.
Next, he aimed the flashlight beam toward the ground and quickly located the screwdriver. Hoping there was still a chance of recovering the man’s fingerprints, he left it on the ground and backed away.
“He tried to pry that window open,” he said, pointing. “What’s on the other side?”
“My bedroom,” she whispered in a shaky voice.
Chapter Four
A tired-looking police officer, Sergeant Elroy Chavez, responded to the call ten minutes later. Gene filled him in.
“You didn’t touch anything, right?” Sergeant Chavez asked.
“No. I figured you’d want to check for prints, but I should warn you, the guy was wearing gloves,” Gene said.
“You sure it was a man?” Chavez pressed.
Gene nodded. “I saw his shape and the way he ran.”
“It’s got to be Bud Harrington,” Lori said, looking at both men and trying hard to appear calm. Inside, she felt as if she were unraveling a little at a time. “The creep’s playing with my head, hoping to make me too scared to even go home.”
She and Gene stayed well back as the sergeant collected whatever evidence he could find and took a few photos. “This is all I can do here right now.” Sergeant Chavez looked at her, then added, “I’d advise you to stay somewhere else for a few days, or find someone to keep watch. The few officers we have available are working double shifts and dealing with a lot of extra calls. On top of that, our detectives are up to their necks investigating an organized gang of identity thieves working our area. We’re overworked at every level, so response times are really slow. You’re just lucky the guy didn’t wait until you’d gone to sleep.”
She swallowed hard. “I’ll get an alarm.”
“If it’s personal, that might just make him angrier, and still not be enough in the long run,” Sergeant Chavez said. “We’ll have extra patrols in the area tonight, but you really should consider making arrangements to stay elsewh
ere, at least for a while.”
“This wasn’t the work of a pro. If it had been, he wouldn’t have left one of his tools behind and risk having it somehow traced back to him,” Gene said, thinking out loud. “Taken at face value, what happened tonight makes no sense. A burglar would have waited until no one was home, or Ms. Baker was asleep. At the very least, it would have made a lot more sense to wait until after I’d left.”
“Maybe he didn’t know you were still here, but either way, none of that lessens the threat. Give some serious consideration to what I suggested,” he said, looking back at Lori.
As Sergeant Chavez walked away, Lori’s heart was hammering and her mouth was dry. Fear pounded through her with each beat of her heart. She had absolutely no idea what to do now.
“Would you like me to stick around for a few more hours?”
“Do you think he’ll come back tonight to try and finish what he started?” Her voice rose and her throat tightened.
“Normally, I’d say no, but this guy doesn’t act in a way that makes sense to me. That makes him unpredictable.”
“I won’t be getting much sleep tonight,” she said softly.
“So you’re not going to take the officer’s advice and move out for a while?”
“Move where? How can I possibly justify staying at a friend’s, knowing I could be leading danger right to their doorstep? I could go to a motel, but I’ll be endangering others there, as well.” She took a shaky breath. “But it’s more than that. Allowing fear to dictate what you do is never a good thing. You lose a piece of yourself when you do that. Can you understand?”
He nodded. “I hear you.”
As they stood by his truck, she glanced at his rifle, hung on a rack and locked in place in the cab. “How about letting me rent that from you for a few days?”
“It’s got a powerful kick. Do you think you can handle it?” He unlocked the rack and took it down. “It’s a Winchester .30-30. It’s accurate up to a couple hundred yards. Have you ever handled one before?”
“No, but how hard can it be? Point the barrel and pull the trigger. Just show me how to put bullets in it.”
He shook his head. “No, forget that. If you’ve never used one, you won’t be able to handle it, especially if you’re frightened. You’re more likely to have it taken away and used against you. Maybe someday I can bring you to my ranch and show you how to shoot, but without any training you’re far more likely to hurt yourself or a neighbor. Bullets travel far and have a way of hitting unintended targets. That’s why rifles, by and large, are too dangerous in urban areas.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” she said. “I need to think of something else.”
As she looked at him she had to bite back a sigh. She would have loved hiring him as a guard. Gene was tall, his shoulders broad, his chest muscular. Having a man like him beside her would have practically guaranteed the safety of everything but her heart.
Nothing about Gene was ordinary. His skin was the color of warm caramel, but it was his dark eyes that attracted her the most. Despite his strength, they mirrored only gentleness.
Trying to focus on something safer, she pointed to the braided leather bridle that hung on a hook in the back of the pickup’s cab. “That’s beautiful.”
“That belongs to Grit, my brother Paul’s horse. Our foster father left the animal to him. Grit’s a handful, and Paul’s as stubborn as they come, so those two have a minor war going on now. In all fairness, Grit doesn’t make life easy for anyone. I left the bridle too close to his stall, so he bit through it. I had to have a section replaced.”
“It sounds like he’s going to take careful handling.”
“Grit has problems,” he said, nodding. “So far, I’m the only one who can ride him. Grit’s an old rodeo horse that was about to be sold to a slaughterhouse when my foster father found him. Hosteen Silver never had a problem with Grit, but the horse wouldn’t accept any other rider, not without a showdown.”
“You’re good with horses, I take it?”
“For the most part, yeah,” he said without any false modesty. “Horses, like people, have different temperaments. Each one requires individual attention. Grit enjoys hassling my brothers and me,” he said. “It’s like a game for him.”
“I love animals. I don’t know where my life’s going to eventually lead me, but I’m sure of one thing. Animals are going to be part of the picture.” She wanted the conversation to continue forever. She liked hearing him talk and didn’t want him to go.
As they stood by his truck, Lori noticed Gene’s own reluctance to say good-night. Looking into his eyes, she realized that he was worried about her. The knowledge sent a pleasant rush of warmth through her.
“It’s really getting late. You better call it a day. I’ll be fine,” she said at last. “Sergeant Chavez promised extra patrols in the area.”
“Stay away from the windows and keep my phone number handy. I’m just a call and probably fifteen minutes away.”
Lori went back inside and made sure the door was locked and bolted. Still scared, she went into the kitchen, and taking an armful of pots and pans, stacked them near the windows and the doors. If anyone tried to break in, the pans would fall and make a dreadful racket. That would buy her time to run, or hide and call the police.
Lastly, she took her large butcher knife out of the silverware drawer. She’d be sleeping with that, her flashlight and the cell phone beside her pillow tonight.
As she went into the bedroom, her thoughts drifted back to Gene. Would it have killed her to invite him to spend the night? A man like that would not only have kept the intruder away, he would have made each hour an adventure to remember.
Yet even as the thought formed, she laughed. Casual intimacy just wasn’t her style. Her heart’s needs required more than a few hours of passion. For her, it would have to be all or nothing.
Her mother and father had gone from the perfect marriage to divorce—from love to hate. The shock of learning they were splitting up, and the painful aftermath, had left its scars. She’d never settle for the kind of love that came with requirements, boundaries or time limits.
She wanted it all and was willing to wait however long it took to find it.
GENE DROVE AWAY FROM THE house slowly. There was something about Lori Baker that had definitely gotten under his skin. Though she was afraid, she’d still managed to reach down into herself and find the courage not to back down. That alone was worthy of his respect, but there was a lot more to Lori than just that. From the first moment he’d laid eyes on her, he’d been drawn to her. She was a beauty, and the way she looked at him made him want to take on an army to keep her safe.
He’d spent a lot of years as the underdog and knew the pain and frustration it brought. The fact that he’d been the skinniest runt in the foster home had made him fair game to the bullies, and he’d been on the losing end of a lot of fights growing up.
Time had changed all that. Now he was over six feet tall, as strong as a bull and could stack seventy-pound bales of hay all day, if that’s what he had to do. Work had built up his muscles and he could hold his own in any fight.
Tonight he’d equalized the odds against her, but something continued to nag at him. Making a spur-of-the-moment decision, something rare for him, he pulled over to the curb and called his brother Paul. “So what do you think?” he asked after updating him.
“The incidents could be related, bro, but what the heck are you doing getting involved in all that? No, wait—let me guess. She’s hot?”
“Man, you’ve got a one-track mind. Why can’t she be an ordinary lady who happened to ask for help?”
“Because you’re still worried about her. Face it, bro. Up till now, the only females you’ve been interested in have had manes and tails,” Paul said. “So she must be something special. What’s the lady’s name?”
“Planning on doing a background check?”
“Hey, you called me for advice, so let me do what I do,” he s
aid. “Tell me everything you know about her.”
As Gene spoke, he could hear Paul typing away at his keyboard.
“Okay, I’ve got a description and address on that Bud Harrington guy. He’s five foot eleven, one hundred sixty-five pounds,” he said, then read off the address. “Drive by his house and see if anything in particular catches your eye, like a familiar vehicle. Just don’t go poking inside private property or I may have to bail your butt out of jail.”
Gene drove up the well-lit neighborhood street twenty minutes later. Bud Harrington’s house appeared to be an unremarkable, middle-class split-level home. The front had a well-tended lawn and several mature trees. For a home in town, it wasn’t half-bad.
Slowing down to look things over carefully, Gene noted that the porch light and a front room lamp were both on. He could also see at least three newspapers thrown on the porch, and letters and flyers sticking out of the mailbox. A late-model blue pickup was parked in the driveway, but judging from the leaves atop the cab and a tumbleweed jammed under the rear axle, it probably hadn’t been driven recently.
It was time to call it a day. He’d avoided going to his brother Preston’s apartment long enough. He hated downtime whenever he was away from the ranch because that’s when he’d start thinking of all the chores that needed doing back home.
Tonight was different. He’d have other things to occupy his thoughts. Lori Baker remained at the edges of his mind, tantalizingly out of his reach. He shook his head. The real problem was that he hadn’t had a woman in his life for far too long. That, all by itself, could scramble a man’s thinking. His life lacked balance.
GENE AWOKE TO SUNLIGHT playing on his face. He stretched, working the kinks out. He’d fallen asleep on the sofa, his legs on the coffee table, watching TV. He must have been more tired than he’d thought. As he got up, ready to undress and shower, his phone rang. He reached over and lifted it off the coffee table
