Motels, restaurants, the road ahead. Damn, he couldn't examine them all at once. They became a blur and none of the cars straight ahead were even remotely similar to the one he wanted so badly to see.
Sam pressed his brakes lightly, changed lanes and coasted his tired car into the first gas station he came to. Staying far out of the main pattern of traffic, he parked to the side of the lot and disgustedly turned off his ignition.
"For nothing," he murmured dispiritedly. "All for nothing." He rested his aching head in numb hands.
* * *
"Sam?"
Jonna's heart missed a beat as she tentatively opened the screen door.
"Sam?" The door inside stood wide open. That was not like Sam at all.
Grisly visions and waking nightmares filled her mind. What if Sam had been on the receiving end of an insane killer's attack? They hadn't even thought of that possibility. At least she hadn't.
"Sam? I caught an earlier flight." I couldn't stand it anymore. I came home to be with you.
Her footsteps clicked hollowly against the hard wood floor. The old house creaked and seemed to have a life of its own. A nervous tremor feathered down her spine. "Get your act together, Jonna," she said aloud. "Your imagination is working overtime."
She smoothed the wrinkles in her fitted skirt and forced herself to walk like a sane, intelligent person when she wanted to run. She kept expecting someone—or something—to reach for her from one of the dark corners.
The back door was also open wide and Sam's car was gone. She hurried upstairs.
A damp towel lay on the bathroom floor. The bed in Sam's room was a rumpled mess. Pretty normal, she suspected. Nothing to be alarmed by. So why was she alarmed?
His fancy rifle lay on the floor by one window, the binoculars were beneath the other, the one facing her house. She shook off a premonition. Now, she was really being silly. She had no 'woman's intuition.' How could she know to her very soul that something was wrong? Maybe Sam had caught him and was in town with Sheriff Madden, taking fingerprints or giving statements or something.
She hurried out of the chill interior of the house and to the barn.
Both horses were inside. They greeted her with demanding, accusing noise. "Okay, guys, what's going on?" Candy approached her and Jonna patted the soft nose, but Murphy headed straight for the feed trough. "Haven't you been fed?"
Obviously not. She crossed the uneven dirt floor awkwardly in the unfamiliar short heels and performed the bare necessities, promising the horses she'd be back soon to do the rest.
The predicted autumn storm was moving across the sky from the south as Jonna went back outside. One huge cloud blocked the thin sunlight, and it suddenly seemed more like dusk than noon. A gust of wind lifted the lapel of her tailored jacket as Jonna got in her little pickup. She shivered all the way to the top of the hill.
A confused mixture of irritation and nerves possessed her as she opened the garage door and drove in. She decided she'd better save both emotions—and her questions, change clothes and do the chores Sam apparently hadn't done. Her stomach flip-flopped queasily as she lifted her heavy purse.
Where was he? Had her faith in him been totally misplaced after all? Had he done the chores at all since she'd been gone or had he missed just this morning's?
Or had he prepared God-only-knew what kind of surprise for her return?
And for the 757th time, she wondered if Sam was his own obsession. After all, he was hers.
She sighed, lifted her heavy garment bag from the floor of the small cab and started the garage door rumbling down on its tracks.
She let herself out the side door and onto the covered porch leading toward the security and warmth of her home.
Reality sank in slowly as she screeched to a full stop. Seconds seemed like hours as her horrified eyes focused, denied what she saw, then focused again.
The curly mass of reddish-brown and white fur lying a couple of yards from her feet was crumpled and still. A dark wet blob soaked the ground around the form. A brighter red stained some of the soft fur. Blood. Jonna took an automatic step backward, toward the garage. A glassy dark glaze caught her eye, drew her gaze to the seemingly haphazard splotches across the concrete floor. It was also blood. Almost dry. It took her almost a full minute to understand the splotches really weren't haphazard. They were words, painted bloody words.
She dropped the heavy suitcase and tried to scream but it seemed too deeply rooted in her heart and no sound came. She tried to block the gruesome scene from her vision with her hands. But she could see it with her eyes closed.
The calf, the blood, the words.
I've killed the fatted calf to celebrate your return.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Sam rested his eyes for a few minutes, then gassed up his car and bought a monster-size cup of strong, hot coffee. He asked the cashier if he could use their yellow pages and was pleasantly surprised to find them intact.
He hit the jackpot on his first call to the rental company that owned the car he had followed. The employee wouldn't give out any information until Sam came up with a story about accidentally leaving a package in the car. The man hesitated, then said hurriedly, quietly, "Your friend is supposed to return that car to our airport location." He wished Sam good luck in catching him.
I'll need it, Sam thought.
"I'm sorry, sir," said the pretty young attendant at the airport lot when he described the man and the car. "It's against policy to give out information about our customers."
"I don't need information, just a package I left in his car," Sam lied again with a hopeful, pleading smile. "Surely you can check to see if the package is still there?"
She checked, then apologized again. "Your friend must have taken it with him," she said consolingly.
"It's very important," he said.
It must be, he could almost see her think as she looked at him. Though he'd combed his hair and splashed water on his face at the convenience store where he'd bought gas, her expression showed him that he still looked pretty bad.
"You wouldn't happen to know which airline he went to? Maybe I could catch him before his flight."
"I guess it can't hurt to tell you he took our shuttle to the American Airlines gate," she said.
He rushed out, yelling his thanks over his shoulder.
The Wichita airport was small and quiet. Sam haunted the American Airlines loading gates until he was sure his quarry wasn't there. Then he wandered through the rest of the airport, examining each person he saw. No one even resembled the blond-haired man who had left Jonna's farm several hours ago.
It was nearly noon by the time he gave up.
He noted the destinations of the four American flights that had departed since six this morning—the earliest Denise's killer could have arrived.
He checked Jonna's airline. There were no flights due from L.A. but he realized she'd probably been routed through another city. The next flight in came from Dallas at 1:51. He'd bet that was hers.
He got his car out of short-term parking and headed back to Jonna's farm. She'd be home between three and four. On the off chance the monster hadn't left town, Sam couldn't risk not being there.
The thought of seeing her was fast becoming an aching, horrifying need. He had to reassure himself she was all right. But being home with her award would put her in danger. After this morning's fiasco, he could no longer delude himself that he couldn't make a mistake.
From here on in, he wouldn't leave Jonna's side.
* * *
Sheriff Madden came, then the Whitfield police chief, even two highway patrol cars were parked in her drive. It was like a huge, red-letter policeman's circus, Jonna decrided, huddling in the entry of her house. She held Magic in her arms and her tears inside.
She answered their questions when they remembered she was there, listened to their technical directives mixed with speculation and pure gossip. As the sky grew darker with the
approaching storm, the wind colder as it gusted up over the hill, she brought coffee and tried not to see the macabre mess they refused to let her clean up.
She couldn't look at the calf. Somewhere, out there on the range, a mama cow was wandering aimlessly, bellowing a frightened call. She'd seen it before when a calf died or was lost. The hollow ache the scene always left in her seemed to wear Sam's name this time.
Madden took her aside. "Where's the hired hand?"
"Sam?" she asked indignantly. He had a name. "I don't know." She'd changed into jeans and a T-shirt, adding a sweater, then a jacket over the top of that. Her teeth began to chatter again and she considered getting out her winter coat. She wondered if she would ever be warm again.
Madden studied her, as if weighing each word before he spoke. "We're going to have to arrest him, you know?"
"Sam?"
He nodded and touched the tip of his tongue with his finger to remove a wood sliver from the perennial toothpick he chewed. "Yep," he added for good measure. "There's an FBI agent on the way. They called yesterday. They've compared Sam's prints, the ones we took from here, to ones they have on file for the other murders he's been talking about. Sam's matched up on two of them."
"And he's the only suspect they've got," she whispered tonelessly.
"Yep."
"He didn't do this, Rod." The earnestness of her declaration surprised her. And she used his first name. No one had called him anything but Madden for years. "He didn't." Her heart knew with absolute certainty that it was true.
He hefted his thick shoulders. "We'll have plenty of time to prove it, one way or another. The FBI will work with the jurisdictions involved, coordinating full scale investigations, gathering evidence."
Madden ushered her into the house, closing the outer door behind them. "You're freezing. Why don't you stay in here and relax?"
She turned on him. "What will happen next?"
"It’s a long process," Madden said, pouring two mugs of coffee. He put them on the table and herded her to a chair. "I imagine first, several states will file extradition papers." He eased into one of the chairs across from her. "Depending on how hard he fights it and how good a lawyer he hires, that alone could take months, even years. Then, he'll be shipped off somewhere to stand trial. What we have on him here is pretty minor."
"What?" Her numb lips refused to move.
"I haven’t seriously considered it yet, Jonna. Willful destruction of property, breaking and entering, maybe a cruelty to animals charge or two. Mercy, did you see what he did to your calf?"
Her mind wouldn't put Sam and the mutilated animal in the same thought. "Then you won't really be able to hold him for long," she said. "He could arrange for bail—"
"I don't think so, Jonna. I guarantee you, we'll throw every little thing we can find at him. And there will be warrants all over the place before the day is done."
"Please no, Rod," she begged.
His face stretched with disbelief. "This demented sucker told you you're next."
“But Sam... didn't... do it," she protested again, drawing out every word. "And what is going to happen to me? This nut is going to come back. You'll have Sam in jail somewhere where he can't stop him. And you've already said you can't spare the men to watch— "
"What makes you think it isn't Sam?" He turned the tables on her.
"Sheriff?"
They both swiveled. Gary and a man in head to toe black stood in the doorway. "Sheriff, this is Agent Connors, FBI." Gary's eyes were wide, his voice full of awe.
Mike Hardin stepped up behind them and called in his best official voice. "Sheriff, you'd better come."
A crack of thunder boomed, emphasizing Hardin's dramatic pause. The sky flashed bright light behind him.
"We've got him," Hardin said when the noise died away. "They stopped him down at the end of the drive."
* * *
Sam couldn't believe what they were doing. It took five long minutes and the cold metal handcuffs—they stopped him every time he started to move—to convince himself he was really under arrest.
The small road quickly filled with uniforms and cars and flashing blue and red lights. Shock set in as he realized they were all coming, not from the highway or town, but from the top—from Jonna's house.
"Would someone tell me what's going on?" he begged the cop standing closest as another boom of thunder and lightning ripped the sky.
"Sheriff Madden will explain," the officer replied.
Lack of sleep, dismay, relief that whatever had happened, Jonna wasn't here, left Sam weak. He assured himself that he had an hour, maybe two, of fast talking to get himself out of this mess before she arrived.
Sam had a face now. He could offer suggestions on where to start looking.
But what had the bastard done here? he wondered as the hovering deputies parted. Madden ambled through the gap. Sam hoped he was bringing answers. Sam had been impressed with the down-to-earth, teddy-bear of a man, and he started framing the questions in his mind. "Madden," he greeted him.
The sheriff stepped aside and Jonna, white-faced, wide-eyed and terrified, rushed past him.
Sam felt the color drain from his face and was sure his pallor matched hers. Jonna threw herself against him and he reached to catch her, wrenching his wrists.
She looked down at the handcuffs, then back at him. Salty paths of tears marred her satiny skin, and tears welled in her multihued eyes again. He felt an incongruous urge to kiss them away before they could do further damage.
"What are you doing here?" he managed to mumble gruffly.
"I caught an early flight. Where have you been?"
"Good question, Barton." Madden drew their attention.
Sam wanted to brace Jonna against him before he broke the news. "He was here."
"We know, Barton. Why do you think we're here?" Madden asked grimly. "You left quite a mess," the sheriff added with disgust. He pulled Jonna close, sheltering her protectively under his arm—exactly the way Sam had wanted to do—away from him.
Jonna's bottom lip quivered, confirming Madden's statement.
"What did he do?" Sam asked, afraid to hear. He gulped in the sight of her, reminded himself she was live and in person. Whatever the bastard had done, he hadn't—
Voices bombarded Sam with a hodgepodge of facts and details. Blobs of rain punctuated the vivid descriptions. And Jonna stared and nodded soulfully, agreeing with everything that was said.
"This is Agent Connors with the FBI," Madden finally said, indicating a small nondescript man. "He's got a few questions of his own." As Connors returned a mute, hard gaze, the ray of hope Sam had felt dimmed inside him.
The giant drops of rain grew smaller, more frequent. Shoulders hunched, and Jonna's soft hair curled and waved and drooped to match her troubled expression.
"Let's get out of here," Madden said. "We can do this in town, out of the rain." The group began to dispose.
"But I-"
"You'll have your chance to talk when we get to my office," Madden interrupted him curtly.
"I saw him. I followed him to Wichita. I can identify him now," Sam protested. "He has white-blond frizzy hair."
Connors, out of place amid the sea of uniforms and jeans, mumbled gibberish about personalizing an alter ego.
"Take him in," Madden said to the officer who had restrained Sam and hadn't left his side since.
"What am I being held for?" he asked desperately.
"Anything and everything we can think of." Madden frowned at Sam's guard.
"I arrested him for breaking and entering," the man told the sheriff.
Madden nodded approvingly. "We'll add the rest when we get to town."
"You Mirandized him?" the agent asked.
The officer nodded.
"What about Jonna? Who's going to take care—"
"That's why we're taking you in," Madden said grimly and gave his undersheriff a few terse orders about what was left to be do
ne here.
The officer holding Sam's arm tugged him toward the blue squad car at the end of the drive with its doors open. Sam planted his feet, lurching as the officer lost his grip. "Jonna?"
Her dazed eyes swept his face. She came closer and laid her fingertips over his arm.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
"For now," she said dully. "You?"
"I will be."
Her jaw set in fierce determination. "What do you want me to do, Sam?"
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