Running Blind

by Linda Howard

  Snow Cream

  Milk

  Sugar

  Vanilla flavoring

  Snow

  Mix the first three together until you like the way it tastes. (Hint: try a fairly small batch at first, so maybe 1½ or 2 cups of milk, then sugar and flavoring to taste.) It takes more sugar than you’d expect. Then fold in the snow until it reaches an un-runny consistency. I don’t know if “un-runny” is a word, but it’s certainly a description.

  Eat.

  If you make too much, you can freeze it. The consistency is different after that, but the taste is still there. Are Southerners the only ones who make snow cream? Surely not, though I admit a lot of people make faces at the idea of eating snow. Of course, they’re from places where the snow is yellow, or gray, or any other unappetizing color. Here in the South, and out in the rural areas, the snow is as white as … well, you know what it’s as white as. And we eat it. —Linda Howard

  Biscuits

  2 cups White Lily self-rising flour

  ⅓ cup Crisco (yep, the solidified kind)

  ¼ teaspoon salt (I add salt because real Southern biscuits have a very faint salty taste)

  Buttermilk—just enough so the dough forms a ball, but 1 cup is about right. You might have to add another tablespoon or so. I don’t even measure it, I just keep stirring until that ball forms and there’s no dry flour in the bottom of the bowl.

  ½ stick (4 tablespoons) butter, melted

  Preheat oven to 425°F.

  Using your hand, squeeze together the flour, Crisco, and salt; it’s easier than it sounds, and a lot faster than using a pastry blender or fork. Stir in the buttermilk until the dough forms a ball in the bowl; I use nonfat buttermilk, and it works just fine.

  Grease a cookie sheet or biscuit pan, but a cookie sheet is about the right size. I use butter-flavored Pam to spray the pan. For that matter, I cover the baking pan with aluminum foil and spray the foil, because I hate washing baking pans! Anything to make cleaning up easier :-).

  Dump the dough onto a floured surface, and sift a very light covering of flour over the top of the ball. DO NOT KNEAD THE DOUGH AT ALL. If you do, it’ll make the biscuits tough. The tenderness of biscuits depends on the amount of oxygen in the dough, and kneading works the oxygen out. Use a rolling pin, the smallest, lightest one you can find, to very gently roll out the dough until it’s about ½ inch thick. Using a medium-sized biscuit cutter, cut out the biscuits and place them on the baking pan so they’re touching each other; this forces them to rise since they don’t have room to spread out. This should make about 8 biscuits.

  Don’t roll the leftover pieces together to try to make another biscuit or two. Just take the dough tidbits and arrange them on the baking pan with the biscuits. They’re odd sizes and shapes, of course, but you’d be surprised how this will turn out.

  Bake in the oven for 8 to 9 minutes. These biscuits won’t be brown on top; if you want a brown top crust, turn on the broiler for a minute, but watch them very closely. While the biscuits are baking, melt the half stick of butter, and as soon as you take the biscuits out of the oven brush the melted butter on top of them, including the odd biscuit tidbits. Tip: Even if you’re using salted butter, which I recommend, you may want to add a dash of salt to the melted butter anyway. The difference to the finished product is amazing. If you follow this recipe, guaranteed you’ll have fat, pretty, incredibly tender biscuits—and kids will love the biscuit tidbits. For that matter, a lot of the adults in my family prefer the tidbits over the actual biscuits. Go figure.

  If you have any biscuits left over from the meal, put them in a Ziploc bag. To reheat, wrap them in a damp paper towel and microwave 15 to 30 seconds, depending on how hot you want them. The damp paper towel restores the tenderness.

  I’ve made it my mission to teach as many people as possible to make biscuits, because it’s a dying art. The most important things to remember about biscuit-making are: don’t mess with the dough, and make sure the biscuits are touching each other in the pan. If you feel an awful urge to knead the dough, then use it to make something else, because the biscuits will be heavy and tough. —Linda Howard

  LJ’s Corn Bread

  3 boxes Jiffy corn muffin mix

  2 sticks of butter, soft

  16 ounces sour cream

  16-ounce can creamed corn

  16-ounce can whole-kernel corn, drained

  4 eggs

  Preheat oven to 350°F.

  Mix all the ingredients together, pour into an 11 × 15-inch pan, and bake for 45 minutes, until good and browned.

  This makes a HUGE amount. I’m sure it can be cut down by half, or even a third, but I don’t have those measurements. I can’t figure out how to come up with ⅓ or ⅔ of 4 eggs. Go ahead and make the whole batch, and forget the math. This is as good as any cake. —Linda Jones

  Never Fail White Cake

  2 cups sugar

  3 cups flour

  ⅔ cup shortening

  ¼ teaspoon salt

  2 teaspoons baking powder

  1 cup water

  4 egg whites

  1 teaspoon baking powder

  1 teaspoon vanilla

  Preheat oven to 375°F.

  Cream first six ingredients in a large bowl, about 2 minutes with an electric mixer. Beat egg whites until frothy. Add baking powder and beat until stiff. Fold the vanilla and beaten egg whites into flour mixture. Pour into greased and floured pans—two 9-inch pans or three 8-inch pans, depending on whether you want thin layers or thick. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes.

  I made this cake when I was seventeen and living at home. My sister broke a plastic fork in it, trying to cut a bite-sized piece. It failed miserably. I never figured out why. This gives a whole new meaning to “write what you know.” Proceed at your own risk. —Linda Jones

  Tuna Casserole

  2 cups cooked rice

  1 to 1½ cups vegetables of choice (mixed vegetables, corn, green beans—whatever strikes your fancy), drained

  1 can cream of mushroom soup

  2 cans tuna, drained

  ½ cup milk

  8 ounces shredded cheese (cheddar, pepper jack, or monterey jack)

  Salt and pepper to taste

  Preheat oven to 350°F.

  Mix together the rice, vegetables, mushroom soup, tuna, milk, half of the cheese, and salt and pepper to taste. Bake for 35 minutes, then sprinkle remaining cheese on top and return to oven until slightly browned.

  When Linda H. said I needed to provide a recipe for the tuna casserole, I was momentarily dumbfounded. A recipe? For tuna casserole? You put together what’s in the cupboard, cover it with cheese, cross your fingers, and bake. We had tuna casserole so often growing up, our mealtime prayer began “Give us this day our daily tuna.” You can use noodles instead of rice, cream of celery soup instead of mushroom, and if you have any other leftover veggies, throw them in. It doesn’t ever have to be the same meal twice! —Linda Jones

  On Thursday, April 21, 2011,

  we lost our best friend Beverly Beaver,

  who wrote as Beverly Barton.

  There hasn’t been a day since

  that we haven’t thought about her,

  heard her voice, her laughter,

  and realized anew that,

  though we have so many memories,

  there will never be enough of them.

  So this one’s for you, Beverly.

  Love you, miss you.

  Make them all behave, up there in Heaven,

  and mind their manners.

  BY LINDA HOWARD

  A Lady of the West

  Angel Creek

  The Touch of Fire

  Heart of Fire

  Dream Man

  After the Night

  Shades of Twilight

  Son of the Morning

  Kill and Tell

  Now You See Her

  All the Queen’s Men

  Mr. Perfect

  Open Season

  Dyin
g to Please

  Cry No More

  Kiss Me While I Sleep

  To Die For

  Killing Time

  Cover of Night

  Drop Dead Gorgeous

  Up Close and Dangerous

  Death Angel

  Burn

  Ice

  Veil of Night

  Prey

  Shadow Woman

  BY LINDA JONES

  Untouchable

  22 Nights

  Bride by Command

  Prince of Magic

  Prince of Fire

  Prince of Swords

  The Sun Witch

  The Moon Witch

  The Star Witch

  BY LINDA HOWARD AND LINDA JONES

  Blood Born

  Read on for an exciting preview

  of Linda Howard’s new hardcover

  SHADOW WOMAN

  Coming soon from Ballantine Books

  Prologue

  SAN FRANCISCO, FOUR YEARS EARLIER

  ELEVEN P.M. THE president and first lady, Eli and Natalie Thorndike, had retired to their hotel suite for the evening. It had been a long day, beginning with the president’s cross-country flight, then going straight into a flurry of campaign speeches—supposedly not campaign speeches, but all of them really were—then culminating in a huge fund-raiser dinner where each plate was ten thousand dollars. The first lady had been by his side the entire time, so she had not only logged the same number of hours, she’d done it wearing three-inch heels.

  Laurel Rose, an eleven-year veteran currently assigned to the first lady’s detail, was so tired she could barely see straight, but at last her shift was over. She hadn’t been wearing heels, but her feet were killing her anyway. She tried her best not to limp as she made her way to the room assigned to her, down the hall but on the same floor as the president’s suite so she would be swiftly available if needed. The on-duty agents were in a room directly across from the suite. She didn’t envy them the graveyard shift, but at least now, with POTUS and FLOTUS in for the night, they could relax somewhat.

  Three entire floors of the hotel had been secured, with the president and first lady in the middle floor. Guests who lived in the hotel had been relocated to other rooms, the stairways and elevators were secured, the hotel staff had been investigated and cleared, the buildings across the street had been secured, all known risks in the area had been contacted to let them know the Secret Service knew about them and was watching, though most of them had been judged incapable of carrying through on their threats. The first couple was as safe as the Service could make them.

  That didn’t mean nothing could go wrong. It just meant they had made it as difficult as possible for anything to happen. There was always an uneasy feeling deep inside Laurel’s gut that reminded her anything could happen, keeping some small part of herself perpetually on edge.

  “You’re limping,” observed her fellow agent, Tyrone Ebert, as he fell in beside her on his way to his own room. So much for hiding how much her feet hurt, she thought wryly. She didn’t bother denying it, because he’d just look down at her with one of those see-through-you-like-glass looks of his. Tyrone had been with the Service for seven years; there was something a bit spooky about him, his dark eyes seeing everything while he himself revealed nothing, but Laurel trusted his razor-sharp instincts. So far he wasn’t showing any signs of burnout, something she deeply appreciated, because she herself was hanging on by a thread.

  “Yeah, it’s been a long day.”

  Nothing was new about that. The days were all long. Since the Service had been moved from Treasury to Homeland Security, in her opinion things had pretty much gone to shit. They hadn’t been great, anyway—Secret Service management was an oxymoron; mismanagement was more like it. But now the long hours were longer, morale was in the crapper, their equipment was shit, and on another subject entirely, her mother, who lived in Indianapolis, was getting older and less able to do things for herself. Laurel had put in for a transfer to the Indianapolis area, but in the perversion that passed for the norm in managing such things, she had little hope in getting transferred even though there was a position open. That wasn’t the way things worked; unless you had some juice and knew someone who could pull strings, you weren’t likely to get the transfer.

  Laurel didn’t have the needed juice. She hated office politics, so she’d never played the games, and now she was seeing far too clearly that her career with the Secret Service was nearing an end. That was another big problem with the Secret Service: they couldn’t keep good people because of their asinine policies. And, damn it, Laurel knew she was a good agent, despite the under-funding, understaffing, outdated weaponry, and increasingly long hours. She just couldn’t take it any longer. Well, for not much longer, anyway. She hadn’t quite brought herself to the quitting point.

  It was such a cool job, in some ways. Not great pay, but cool. She loved what they did, and was able to compartmentalize her emotions so it didn’t matter who sat in the Oval Office: the job was what mattered. She didn’t have to like the first lady; she just had to protect her. The job would have been easier if the Thorndikes had been more personable, but they weren’t; at least they weren’t as horrendous as some of the previous presidents she’d heard tales about. Natalie Thorndike wasn’t rude, or a lush, or hateful. It was more as if she didn’t see the agents protecting her as people; she was proud and cool and remote. Sometimes Laurel wished Mrs. Thorndike was a lush, which would at least have made for more interesting detail work.

  The president was pretty much the same way, cool and remote, disconnected from everything except politics. On camera, or in campaign mode, he exuded warmth and likability, but he was a superb actor. In private, he was calculating and manipulative—not that Mrs. Thorndike seemed to care. Occasionally they were on the outs with each other; the agents could always tell because the typical coolness would become downright glacial, but other than that there was no outward sign of discord, no loud arguments, no verbal sniping, no slamming doors. For the most part, though, the political power couple marched in lockstep. Their unity had already gotten them to the White House, where they planned on spending another term. With the president’s ruthless instincts and the first lady’s powerful family behind them, they would be part of the nation’s inner political circle for years to come, amassing wealth and power, even after he was no longer in office.

  On the other hand, the detail charged with protecting the couple’s son, thirty-one-year-old Carter Eli Thorndike, had their hands full. The spoiled only child of capitol elite, on his mother’s side, and the down-and-dirty politician that was his father, had supposedly never heard the word “no.” He drank, he partied, he hired prostitutes, he did drugs—hell, he sold drugs—he tried his best to ditch his detail, and he whined to his parents every time the Secret Service tried to keep him out of trouble. He’d gotten his way every time, until he roughed up one of his prostitutes and wound up in the back of a squad car, his sneering expression captured by ever-present cellphones. Purportedly it had taken the president’s damage-control team a lot of effort and cost a lot of money to make those photos and videos forever disappear, and since then Carter had been buttoned down tight, his detail practically sitting on him to prevent a recurrence of a potentially explosive scandal that might cost the president a second term.

  Laurel would take protecting a cold fish like Natalie Thorndike, instead of her son, any day of the week.

  “See you in the morning,” Tyrone said as they reached his room.

  “Good night,” she said automatically, a little surprised he’d said as much as he had. He wasn’t much on small talk, or on socializing. She actually knew very little about him, other than that he performed his duties impeccably. She’d worked beside him for two years now, since he’d come on the first lady’s detail, and—come to think of it—she still didn’t even know if he was married or not. He didn’t wear a ring, but that wasn’t necessarily indicative of anything. If he was married, or involve
d with anyone, he never mentioned it. On the other hand, he never hit on her either, or on any of the other female agents. Tyrone was … solitary.

  As Laurel continued to her room, two down from his and on the opposite side of the hall, she realized for the first time that something about him gave her a little thrill in her stomach. She’d blocked it out because of the job, but now that she’d admitted to herself that she probably wouldn’t be here much longer, it was as if she’d given her subconscious permission to bring the attraction to her attention.

  She liked him. He wasn’t a pretty boy, but he was damn striking, in a take-no-prisoners, dangerous kind of way. Tyrone would never blend into a crowd. He was tall and muscled, and moved with the kind of graceful power one saw in professional athletes or trained special forces soldiers. Physically, he did it for her. She liked being around him, even though he wasn’t much of a talker. And she trusted him, which was big.

  She slid her key card into the slot and turned the handle when the green light came on, stepping into the coolness of her room. The bedside lamp and the bathroom light were on, just the way she’d left them. She still took a moment to check her room, because double-checking was what she did. Everything was normal.

  Wincing, she toed off her shoes, then groaned with relief as she rotated each ankle in turn, arching her feet, stretching the ligaments. The soles of her feet still burned, though, and nothing would help that other than getting off them for the next few hours, which she planned to do as fast as possible.

  She stripped off her jacket and dropped it on the bed, and was starting to shrug out of her shoulder holster when she heard a faint pop-pop-pop. She didn’t have to stop and listen, didn’t have to think; she knew what the sound was. Adrenaline seared her veins in a huge rush. She wasn’t aware of leaping for the door, only of surging into the hall and seeing Tyrone right ahead of her, doing the same thing, his weapon in his hand as he charged full speed down the hall toward the president’s suite. They weren’t the only ones. The night shift had erupted from the room they occupied, and the head of the president’s detail, Charlie Dankins, was kicking in the double door.