“Are you up for a hike?” he asked.
“I suppose so. I haven’t had any more dizzy spells.”
“There’s a road on the other side of that hill. If we climbed up there, we could get pretty close to the back of the farmhouse without being spotted—close enough to use the glasses anyway.”
“Then let’s do it. We’re not going to get anywhere by sitting here.”
“Uh-oh,” Sam said suddenly, “someone’s coming.”
Kate turned around and saw a pickup approaching them from behind, its turn signal indicating that it intended to enter the lane.
“Sam, that’s-”
“Get your head down,” Sam instructed as he unfolded the map again.
She did as told. “It looks like the same truck I saw after my tire was shot out! Try to get a look at the driver.”
Sam pretended to stare at the map, then abruptly folded it when the pickup pulled up to them. Kate was about to risk a peek when Sam rolled down the window.
“You lost?” a man’s voice called.
“No, I’ve located where we are now,” Sam replied. “Thanks.”
She waited until Sam had pulled out and straightened up, then turned to look through the rear window. She saw the man only briefly. But she couldn’t be sure.
“What did he look like?” she asked Sam.
“Nondescript,” Sam replied. “Brown hair, kind of lean face. About forty or so.”
“I think it was him. Was there a gun rack in the truck?” She hadn’t been able to tell because the sun was reflecting from the truck’s rear window.
“Uh-huh. With a rifle on it. It’s a Ford, too.”
“At least he didn’t see me,” she said with a sigh of relief, then stared at Sam. “But he might have recognized you.”
“Unfortunately,” Sam agreed.
“So what do we do now?’’
“Just what we were going to do before. Even if he recognized me, he isn’t likely to be expecting us to come over that hill.”
They stopped at a Burger King in a small town that seemed to consist of about an equal number of churches and bars, and not much else. Kate pointed out that if it was indeed the same man, then they at least knew there was a connection between the farmhouse and New Leaf.
“Yeah, that’s if you’re right about having seen him at New Leaf.”
“I’m right,” she stated firmly, although she hadn’t been sure before. There came a time when one just had to stop hedging and proceed with certainty. Damn the doubts and full speed ahead.
“But you said that Tony didn’t recognize him from the description you gave him,” Sam reminded her.
“I know, and that bothers me. I remember thinking at the time that Tony seemed sort of uneasy. I wonder if he guessed who it might be, but didn’t want to say for some reason.”
“You can’t rule out the possibility that Tony is involved in all this.”
“He isn’t. But you said yourself that the man is nondescript. It’s possible that Tony didn’t recognize him from my description—or at least that he just wasn’t sure enough to tell me.”
“Yeah, but think about this. How did that guy find you? It would have been easy for him to lie in wait if he already knew that you were going to be visiting Tony.”
“I just can’t believe that Tony would be a party to something like that. That would mean that all the time he was talking to me, he knew I was likely to be murdered as soon as I left.”
“It could also explain why he called you the other night. Maybe he was trying to find out if you were going to take it any further.”
“In that case, wouldn’t he be home when I called him back?” she asked testily. “He told me to call him then.”
“Okay, okay. All I’m saying is that we can’t trust him right now.”
“I do.” But did she? Sam had succeeded in planting a tiny kernel of doubt, and that irritated her because she’d always trusted her instincts about people. “I hate it when you do that,” she muttered.
“Do what?”
“Question my judgment.”
“How can I not question your judgment? After all, you divorced me.” He turned to her with that killer smile.
“This is business, Sam.”
“Uh-huh. But one of these days, we need to get personal.”
“You’re pushing again.”
“And I’m going to keep on pushing until you admit that you can’t live without me.”
“I’ve already proved that. I managed for three years just fine, thank you.”
“No, you didn’t. All you did was work.”
“That’s all I ever do, so what’s new about that? Have you been going around asking questions about my private life?”
“I didn’t have to ask any questions. You know how it is with me. You said yourself that people just seem to tell me things.”
“Okay, so I didn’t find anyone, but I wasn’t looking. I was focusing on my career. And anyway, it’s obvious that I’m far more discriminating than you are.”
“I was the wronged party. My male ego was bruised.”
“What a crock! Your ego couldn’t be bruised by a nuclear missile.”
He sighed theatrically. “Sometimes, Kitty-Kat, I really think you don’t know me very well.” He put on the turn signal and pulled off the road.
“Why are you stopping?” Kate’s nerves began to jangle. “This isn’t the time to be…”
Sam took the map she’d been holding. “I think we’re about opposite the farmhouse. If I figured the mileage right, it should be just over that hill.”
“Oh,” she said, shifting mental gears with some difficulty. She didn’t know which was worse—these brief discussions or a serious talk. Then, sneaking a look at Sam as he bent over the map, she wondered if he could possibly have told the truth. And she continued to think about it as they got out of the car.
Sam hadn’t really protested when she’d said that she wanted a divorce, other than to suggest that they seek some counseling, which she’d refused to do. In fact, she’d felt at the time that he was glad to be rid of her, and that’s why he’d been so generous. Then her thoughts were abruptly cut off when she saw a gun in Sam’s hand.
“What are you doing with that? Where did you get it?”
“I borrowed it,” he said calmly as he slipped it into the back of his waistband. “It’s easier to carry than that gun of yours. Whoever these guys are, they’re playing for keeps now, Kate.”
“You told me once that you’d never even fired a gun.”
“I have now. I went to a range.”
“Sam, maybe we should give up on this and go to the police with what we have.”
He stopped and stared at her. “You’re changing your mind just because I’m carrying a gun?” he asked incredulously.
“Yes…well, maybe. I don’t know.”
“Look, why don’t you just wait in the car and I’ll go up there. You’ll be safe enough here. Or you can go back to Burger King and wait.’’
“No!”
He planted his hands on his hips. “You’re just proving my point, Kate. You jump into things without thinking them through. But what I don’t understand is why it took the gun to make you see that.”
“I just don’t want you to risk your life over my story,” she said, knowing even as she spoke just how foolish she sounded.
“You’re not making any sense, but you don’t need me to tell you that.”
They climbed the hill together in silence. But Kate’s thoughts were anything but quiet. Self-examination was the last thing she wanted to engage in right now, but she knew that the reason the gun had affected her so strongly was that she was suddenly afraid not for herself, but for Sam.
I kept a tight lid on those fears for the past three years, she thought. Now it seems that the lid is off and they’re all pouring out. The truth was that she simply couldn’t envision a life without Sam—even though she was the one who’d sent him away.
She
recalled all the times she’d seen him on TV in some war zone, and about the time she’d seen that photo of him with the model. Even then, confronted with indisputable evidence that he’d found someone else, she’d always known that he belonged to her.
Lost in her murky thoughts, she failed to see an exposed tree root and stumbled. Sam caught her just as she began to fall.
“Are you okay?” he asked, still holding her close.
She nodded. She wasn’t okay—not by a long shot. The heat from his body merged with hers and threatened to engulf them both. And when she raised her head and met his gaze, she saw that he felt it, too.
“Pine needles make a nice soft bed,” he murmured with a smile and gestured at the pine trees all around.
She smiled, too, further warmed by the unspoken shared memory. They’d once made love in the pine forest not far from the cabin. It was their first weekend there together, the weekend they became lovers. Pure magic. Making love in the outdoors had seemed so wonderfully wicked.
“It was magic, Kate. You can’t deny that.”
Her eyes widened in surprise and he laughed, knowing she must have thought he was reading her mind. “That’s what you said, remember? You danced around the forest, stark naked, and told me it was all magic.”
She remembered. “I’d had too much wine—that awful stuff that Rob makes.”
It was his turn to widen his eyes in feigned shock. “Are you suggesting that I took advantage of you?”
“As I recall, it was a bit late for me to be claiming that,” she replied dryly.
“It’s still magic, you know,” he murmured as his mouth covered hers, teasing, tormenting, melting her all the way through.
“Yes,” she admitted finally, when he backed off a bit, his lips just barely touching hers. “It is.” But when he looked meaningfully at the needle-strewn ground, she moved away, then tugged at his hand. “We’re on a mission, remember?”
“Right. Let’s get going.”
They resumed their climb up the hill and finally reached the top, then stopped, surprised to discover that the farmhouse was now closer than they’d expected.
“It’s a good thing we’re both into drabness today,” Sam remarked. “But we’d better stay low, just in case.”
She nodded. Sam was wearing khakis and an off-white shirt, while she wore pleated pale camel challis trousers—now showing snags from the blackberry bushes—and a matching T-shirt.
They began to make their way down the hillside, following a circuitous path that kept them in the deepest cover. The slope was uneven, at first dropping sharply and then leveling off at a point midway down.
When they reached the level spot, which was thickly covered by blackberry bushes, they stopped in unspoken agreement that they had gotten as close to the farmhouse as they dared.
They crouched low behind a thick clump of bushes. Sam got out the binoculars while Kate stared at the house. No one was visible, either on the small rear porch or in the yard. From this vantage point, she couldn’t tell if the two boys were still out front.
“Stakeouts are the worst part of this business,” Sam said disgustedly.
“How many stakeouts have you been on?” she asked in surprise.
“None, but that’s what they always say in the detective stories I read.”
She laughed. “Isn’t there always a diversion to move the action along?”
“Right. Why don’t you take off your clothes and run down the hill? That ought to do it.”
“And run naked through those blackberry bushes? I never knew you had a sadistic streak. We should have brought along the cell phone. Then we could phone in a bomb threat.”
Sam handed her the binoculars, then stretched out on the ground. “Wake me up if anything happens.”
“I’m the one who’s supposed to be recovering,” she reminded him.
“And I’m the one who’s pushing forty. Us old guys need our rest—especially when we’re being seduced all the time by younger women.”
“Oh?” she asked, arching a brow.
“Well, okay. Only one younger woman. But she’s insatiable. Probably trying to make up for three lost years.”
“You’re really getting off on that, aren’t you? Did it ever occur to you that I might have been discreet?”
“Were you?”
“That’s really none of your business, is it?”
His eyes searched her face solemnly. Then he shook his head. “You’re right. It’s none of my business.”
He closed his eyes and Kate sat there staring at him and cursing herself for thinking about that model again. It was ridiculous. She was treating this like some sort of sick competition. He had his model, so she had to manufacture a lover for herself.
Sam slept—or pretended to—and Kate sat there considering their tangled relationship. She was so lost in thought that she’d been staring at the figure in the garden for several seconds before it dawned on her that they finally had something to see down there.
She picked up the glasses and brought them into focus. The boy wasn’t Charles Scofield. But neither was it one of the boys she’d met during her visit.
She studied him carefully as he moved slowly through the garden in that same stiff, ungainly walk she’d noted on the other boys. He was overweight and his skin had an unhealthy pallor as well as a puffiness. When he bent over one of the plants, he nearly fell, then suddenly sat down and began to cry.
Kate smothered a cry. Her heart lurched sickeningly. What had happened to these kids? Surely they didn’t have to live like this! She was about to wake Sam when the middle-aged woman she’d met earlier suddenly appeared and sat down beside the crying boy. She took his hand and talked to him, then finally helped him to his feet and led him back to the house.
A few minutes later, another boy appeared and Kate’s senses went on full alert. His back was to her at first and she waited impatiently for him to turn her way. But when he did, she could see immediately that it wasn’t Charles.
Then the boy’s head jerked up abruptly and he turned to face the house. From this distance, Kate could hear nothing, but it seemed that something had drawn his attention. He stood there for a long time, apparently staring at a second-floor window, one of the ones directly over the back porch. Then he began to weed the garden, using the same slow, deliberate movements Kate had seen before—the actions of an old man in a teenage body.
Instead of awakening Sam, who apparently was asleep, Kate sat there thinking. What could have drawn the boy’s attention? She thought about the cries and shouts she’d heard before. But she was sure that they had come from a front bedroom, while the boy in the garden had seemed drawn to one in the rear.
The longer she sat there, the more she became convinced that Charles was here. Now if she could only prove it.
Her gaze traveled consideringly over the slope between her and the yard behind the farmhouse. At about the midway point, there was a huge old tree with a bifurcated trunk, surrounded by thick clumps of blackberry and other bushes. With a quick glance at Sam, who would definitely not approve, she began to make her way carefully down the hillside, staying low in an uncomfortable crablike crouch.
As she crept down the slope, she kept her eyes on the house, ready to flatten herself against the ground if anyone appeared, or if the boy in the garden turned her way. And then, when she was nearly to the tree she’d chosen as a hiding place, the boy, who had been kneeling in the garden as he weeded, began to rise slowly to his feet.
Kate literally dived for the tree, sliding down the remaining few yards with the blackberry thorns ripping at her clothes and her bare skin. She barely had time to huddle behind the trunk when she heard the shouts from inside the farmhouse.
They were muffled and unintelligible, and in the intervals between them, she could hear a low voice speaking in soothing tones—the woman’s voice. It was a repeat of what she’d heard before. Then suddenly, there was a loud crash, as though something heavy had fallen over—a piece
of furniture, perhaps.
The woman’s voice became very clear to her now when she shouted, “Joe! Get up here!” That was followed by more shouts from the male voice she’d heard before, and then another male voice could be heard, but one that was speaking in normal tones.
After a few more shouts and cries, all was silent. Kate turned her attention to the boy in the garden, who was now making his slow way back to the house, this time not even glancing up at the windows.
Her gaze was drawn back to them, though, when a man appeared in one of them, his features indistinct behind the screen. But Kate recognized the plaid shirt. It was the man with the pickup they’d met earlier. She huddled behind the tree, praying that he hadn’t seen her. Then, remembering Sam, she turned, half-expecting to find him coming down the hillside after her. But he was nowhere in sight, and when she risked another peek, the man was no longer in the window.
Kate stayed where she was, listening for any sound that would indicate that the man was coming after her. Then, when enough time had passed for her to feel relatively safe, she began to make her way back up the hillside. Recalling that rifle in the truck, she imagined a bullet striking her in the back at any moment. But nothing happened, and when she at last reached Sam, he was still sleeping—snoring even.
She shook him awake, angry with him for falling asleep and equally angry with herself for having taken such a chance. His blue eyes came slowly into focus. Then he stretched and yawned and asked if he’d missed anything. She lost no time in telling him exactly what he’d missed.
“Dammit, Kate! Why’d you do that? Can’t I even take a nap without your trying to get yourself killed?”
“Some reporter you are,” she replied scornfully. “Taking a nap in the middle of a story.”
“With you as a partner, I’d have to stay awake twenty-four hours a day just to make sure you didn’t do something stupid.”
“Well, I did it, and we’ve learned something. Charles is there, and the man who tried to kill me is named Joe.”
“You don’t know either thing,” Sam said, getting to his feet. ‘‘It’s all pure speculation.” Then, when he saw the look on her face, he spread his hands in a pacifying gesture. “Okay, it’s good speculation, but that’s still all it is.”
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