I'll Be There

by Deborah Grace Staley

  “It isn’t likely, but you shouldn’t take unnecessary chances.”

  “I could wear your coat with the hood up.”

  “No.”

  Jenny stood and moved over to the door. She opened it and the rush of cool air made her skin tingle. She closed her eyes and took several cleansing breaths. The door clicked closed. She opened her eyes to find Cord towering over her. “Standing in the doorway is about as safe as standing in front of a window. And you don’t need to get a chill.”

  “Yes, mother.” He gave her a look, but no comment. As usual. She sighed and crossed her arms as she watched him move back to the table and sit. He looked good in a red corduroy shirt with only three pearl snaps fastened and lots of smooth, dark skin revealed. His long silky black hair hung loose around his shoulders. He pushed it back and secured it with a dark, elastic band so it wouldn’t get in the way while he worked. The man was entirely too sexy for her peace of mind. She needed a distraction, badly, but trapped in this cabin, avoiding him was impossible, so Jenny joined him at the table. She plopped into a chair. He was sorting small pieces of metal and stones in front of him.

  “What are you doing?”

  He gave her a dark look. “Occupying myself.”

  Ignoring him, she touched several items on the table: silver disks and bars, different types of stones, something that looked like fishing line, and a few small tools. “What are you going to do with all this? The stones are gorgeous.”

  “Jenny...”

  “Come on, Cord. I’m going crazy here. I’ve read everything there is to read, you won’t let me go outside, and, I might add, I’m not used to being told what to do.” Her voice had risen as she spoke, so she took a breath to check her growing irritation with him. “Just tell me what you’re doing.”

  He sighed. She waited. Finally, he said, “I make jewelry.”

  “No, really. What is all this?”

  Ignoring that, he picked up a silver disk and a hammer and started flattening it. Jenny watched, trying to digest this revelation. A jewelry maker? Cord?

  “I was convinced that you had been a cop. I would have never guessed jeweler.”

  It frightened Cord a little that Jenny could read him so easily. If this threw her off track, then it was a good thing.

  “If I let you watch, does that mean I’ll have endless questions to answer?”

  “Maybe a few.”

  He continued hammering away at the piece he’d chosen, smoothing out the edges of the silver disk.

  “What are you working on?”

  “A pendant.”

  “I noticed that you wear something on a silver chain, but I haven’t gotten a good look at it. Did you make it?”

  “Yes.” He continued to hammer.

  She edged closer. Her scent and nearness made him a little lightheaded. He wasn’t sure he liked the feeling. He’d always been able to maintain control with women, but this woman affected him in strange ways—ways he’d never experienced.

  “May I see it?”

  He’d lost the thread of the conversation when she got up to stand beside him and lean in near his shoulder, but he said, “Sure,” anyway. She reached inside his shirt. Shocked at the bold move, awareness pricked across his skin as he felt her hand against his bare chest. He sucked in a ragged breath, but her focus centered on the pendant she held. His pendant.

  She traced its unusual pattern with the tip of her finger. “Two arrows crossed. It looks like the directions on a weather vane. You know, north, south, east and west.”

  “It symbolizes that everything is connected.”

  “And the stones in the arrows?”

  “The blue is water, the red—fire. The green, earth, the clear, wind.”

  “And the multi-colored stone in the center? It’s very unusual. It sparkles with a life of its own.”

  He looked away, still unnerved by nearness. “The joining of souls when two lives intersect and become one.” He took the pendant from her hand and dropped it inside his shirt. Leaning forward, he began hammering again.

  “Who would have known?” Humor laced her words. “You’re a romantic?”

  “A realist. Life springs from the joining of two people.”

  “Opposites attract, like water and fire.”

  “The elements of water, fire and wind can destroy the earth.”

  “Or strengthen it.”

  “Yes, but only when people live in harmony with the land.”

  “At one with the elements.”

  Cord nodded. She understood perfectly—all but his reason for wearing the pendant. The idealistic teenager who’d created it in his grandfather’s workshop had made two; one for him and the other for the woman who would become his life mate. The second lay tarnishing in a drawer, its promise never fulfilled. Even he didn’t fully understand why he still wore the pendant.

  He held no illusions about finding someone to share his life. His was a life destined to be lived alone in a world where a wife’s dreams couldn’t be shattered by the loss of her mate. The faces of the wives who’d lost their husbands because of his mistakes came unbidden to his mind.

  “May I?”

  Cord looked up at Jenny, surprised to see that she was still only a touch away. She took the hammer from him. The feel of her hand against his tied his stomach in knots.

  “What were you doing to this?” she asked.

  “Smoothing out the edges.”

  She leaned over and touched the metal to get a feel for it, then hammered at the roughest spots until they felt even. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could smooth out our rough edges so easily?”

  He liked to think that hammering away at a piece helped him smooth out the rough edges of his ragged emotions. She might disagree.

  “What type of design will this one be?”

  She sat on his thigh as if it were the most natural thing in the world while she continued to work the metal. Having her so close set off a series of wild fantasies, the least of which was the urge to pull her back against him and taste the fragrant skin at the side of her neck.

  She looked over her shoulder at him. “Cord?” When he didn’t respond, she repeated, “What kind of design will this be?”

  “I don’t know.” Maybe a silvery moon with dark stones that held the mystery of her—of what her life would become.

  “You don’t have the design sketched out anywhere?”

  “No. It emerges from the metal as I work it.”

  She handed him the hammer. “Then you’d better take this back, because I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t want to mess it up.”

  “You couldn’t. This is just preliminary shaping.”

  “Where did you learn to do this?”

  She didn’t move, so he reached around her to hold the silver with one hand and hammer with the other which resulted in settling her against his chest. It didn’t escape his notice that she fit like she belonged there. “My grandfather was Navaho. He taught me. It was a marketable skill that was supposed to give me a means of supporting myself. Keep me out of trouble.”

  “But it didn’t. Keep you out of trouble.”

  Cord laughed. “No.” She was too insightful. He bet she was a hell of a reporter.

  Jenny smiled. “Of course not.” She watched him work silently for a few minutes, then asked, “Do you sell your work?”

  “Yeah. I have standing orders from several jewelers and Native American galleries for whatever I make.”

  “Local?”

  “All over.”

  “What do you see in this?”

  He held the silver disk he’d been working on up to the light. “Beauty.”

  She nodded. “How will you interpret that?”

  “I’ll begin with these sapphires.” He set aside several of the small stones. But first, he would etch out a design in the silver that would allow silvery light to flow through the pendant.

  Cord moved his arm from around her so that he could concentrate on the work with a stea
dy hand. He slipped on safety glasses and warned, “Watch out.” She leaned back as tiny shards of silver flew around his hands. The curved lines were her neck and lips. The ovals, her eyes. The angled lines her nose and cheeks.

  Satisfied, he blew against the surface to clear the remaining dust and fragments. Then he began putting the stones in rows beside the disc, with some deep blue topaz the color of her eyes interspersed among them.

  When he placed the last stone, she said, “Perfect.”

  He looked up at her and agreed. “Yes.”

  “How will you attach the stones?” she asked softly, feeling the same awareness he did.

  “I’ll make settings for them and weld them onto the disk.”

  “Yes, then the light will flow through the silver to give the stones life.”

  “If the darkness from the wearer’s skin doesn’t kill the effect,” he said, feeling his mood dip.

  “Light dispels darkness.”

  “Darkness overshadows the light at the end of every day.”

  “Still, light pierces the darkness when the sun rises.”

  “But the two can’t co-exist.”

  “Dawn and dusk are a mingling of the two.”

  “But ultimately, one overcomes the other.”

  The look in her eyes unnerved him. After a beat of silence, she asked, “Are we still talking about the pendant or have we moved on to something else?”

  Cord grasped her waist and stood. He moved to fridge to get something to drink. He gulped down half the glass of orange juice he poured. Of course, she followed him. Before she could continue her verbal assault, he said, “Take a walk.”

  “What?”

  “Bundle up, use my coat, don’t go far.” When he looked at her, she blinked, but didn’t speak. Clearly, she hadn’t expected him to tell her she could leave the cabin. “Go now, before I change my mind.”

  She took a few steps back, her eyes narrowed, her mind clearly still on their exchange. But she turned and went to the rack where his coat hung. She pulled a knit cap over her hair, slid her arms into his coat and zipped it. Next she stepped into his oversized boots. She looked like a little girl playing dress up with her daddy’s clothes, a comical thought given the fact that the heat flowing between them was far from familial. She still looked sexy as hell, even with all her lines and curves concealed.

  She pulled the dark hood up. Cord turned away. The door opened and closed. He didn’t have to look to know she was gone; he felt her absence. Bracing against the counter, he hung his head and squeezed his eyes shut. He’d been content to be alone all these years, and now, after only a few days, she’d gotten to him. Made him feel something he didn’t want to feel—something he had no business feeling for anyone. The darkness in his soul could only extinguish the light in hers.

  His cell began ringing, the sound of the old-fashioned telephone shattering the silence. Surprised that he’d found a spot with signal inside, Cord pushed away from the counter and pulled the phone out of his pocket. He recognized the number even though he hadn’t seen it in years.

  “Hello?”

  “Cord? Is that you, man?”

  “Yeah. It’s been a long time, Jay.”

  “Too long. How are you?”

  Cord and Jay Kennedy had worked together at the Bureau in Nashville. Before that, they’d both been Naval intelligence officers. Jay had recruited him just after his discharge as a troubleshooting, undercover agent given the most difficult assignments. The ones everyone else had failed at and mostly in the illegal substance division.

  “A witness in a high-profile case was lost on some Godforsaken mountain near you. I heard you might know something about it.”

  “Yeah. I’m holed up with her on a farm outside Angel Ridge.”

  “I’m a little surprised you didn’t contact me.”

  “I didn’t know you were involved. Sounds like a mess. Not typical for you, Kennedy.”

  “How’d you get tangled up in this?”

  “I was on an overnight hike in the area where the marshals lost her.”

  “Lucky for her. I don’t have a man better than you to put on the case.”

  “I’m not on it, Jay. You need to extract her. She’s not safe here.”

  “No. This is good. I’ve talked to the sheriff, and the location where you have her will be damn near impossible to compromise.”

  So he’d talked to Grady. He should have known. “I’m not in the bureau anymore, Jay. I can’t handle her, and you know why.”

  “The U.S. Attorney handling the case has prepared a motion to get her testimony moved up. She’s just waiting for my call to tell her Jenny’s safe. I’ll contact you ASAP with the date.”

  “You’re not hearing me. You have to retrieve her. I can’t protect her here. We’re in an old clapboard house a strong wind away from falling down, and it’s in the middle of open farmland. The position is too vulnerable. We’d be sitting ducks if they found us.”

  No response.

  “Jay—”

  He checked the cell. No signal. “Damn it!”

  He tossed the phone onto the table and raked both hands through his hair. He needed a plan for what he’d do if they were found. He walked over to the window. Jenny stood some distance away from the house making snowballs and tossing them at nothing. She looked so exposed out in the open like that. The snow came nearly to her knees and was still falling. If they couldn’t get out, he had to trust no one could get in. But his mind spun scenarios where these people hiked in from the road, came by horse or snow mobile.

  He’d have to stay alert until the weather broke, then he’d get Jenny out of here. At his cabin, there was a trail that led to the road from the trees behind his cabin. It would be a hard, uphill hike, but it was the best plan. They’d be much safer on the mountain. Until then, he’d have to hope that for the first time since she’d been taken into custody, their luck held and they’d go undetected.

  “Hey buddy, if you’ve got a minute I could use some directions from a local.”

  “Sure thing.”

  The man wearing a faded flannel shirt and dirty blue jeans spit a line of tobacco juice onto the pavement. Ignoring that and the smell, Jackson opened his map and held it up to the door of his utility vehicle.

  “Nice ride, man. Is it one of them there Hummers like they use in the military?”

  “Yeah. I’m looking for a place off this road. Craig Road. You know it?”

  The man peered at the map, tilted his head to one side, then extended a dirty finger to trace a line from left to right. He scratched at a few days growth of beard. “Sure, I do. It’s a few miles outside of town. Ain’t nothin’ on that road ’cept the Craig farm, and the roads that way won’t be passable.”

  “Any trails for off-roading from there?”

  “Naw. That’s private property.”

  “Oh, well, anybody live out that way? Maybe I can get permission from the owner?”

  Surely they weren’t stupid enough to take the woman to a private residence and hide her in plain sight right here in Angel Ridge, but this was definitely where the boss had said she was.

  “I wouldn’t go nosin’ around private property if I was you. That’s good way to get shot around here.”

  “I’ll take my chances. Would you be willing to ride out that direction to show us where the owner of the property lives?”

  “Sorry, man. I can’t help you.”

  “I’ll make it worth your time.” He flashed a hundred dollar bill and the man smiled.

  “Naw, man. I gotta git home to the wife and kids.”

  And with that, he left. Jackson watched the man hunker down and head to his four-wheel drive pickup, then looked at his watch. The parking lot of the diner was deserted, but since the woman who ran it had a room on the second level of the building, he and his men had been able to get a meal and use the bathroom. He signaled, and the boys pushed their coffee cups away and streamed out of the building.

  “What’d you find
out, boss?”

  “Not nearly enough. Load up.”

  “Where we headed?”

  “Huntin’.”

  Chapter 13

  Grady picked up his ringing phone, saw who it was and said, “Hey, Dixie. What’s up?”

  “A band of the slimiest creeps I’ve seen in a long time just slithered outta my diner. I don’t mind sayin’, I didn’t move far from where I keep my gun behind the lunch counter the whole time they were in here.”

  “Why didn’t you call me sooner?”

  “Don’t think the thought didn’t cross my mind, but—”

  “But what?”

  “I don’t like admitting it, but I was afraid they’d get suspicious about who I might be calling, and I just wasn’t up to taking my life into my own hands today.”

  “How many?”

  “Four.”

  “You recognize any of them?”

  “No. Grady, what the hell? You’re scaring me. You don’t seem at all surprised by what I’m telling you.”

  “They say where they were headed?”

  “They asked me about how to find Craig Road.”

  Grady couldn’t keep his voice from escalating. He stood, put on his coat, and motioned to Woody to follow him out of the office. “Did you tell them?”

  “What’s going on?”

  Grady ground his teeth. “Answer the question, Dixie!”

  “Of course I didn’t. I know better than to tell a stranger where someone lives, especially when they are so clearly up to no good. What could they want out at Cole’s place?”

  “What were they driving?”

  “I can’t help noticing that I’m answering your questions, but you aren’t answering any of mine.”

  “I’ll explain later, Dix. Just tell me.” Grady got in his Jeep and Woody slid in beside him. He fired the engine and put it in gear.

  “They had a dark Hummer pulling a trailer that had a couple of four-wheelers on it.”

  “Stay put, okay? I’m going to go check it out. You should lock up and put the ‘Closed’ sign on the door in case they come back. No one should be out in this weather, and anyone who is... well, just close up, okay? I’ll check on you when I get back.”