He let the warning drift off, unfinished. But Link didn’t need to hear the warning to know the danger he had placed himself in. “Don’t worry about me,” he told Hank. “Just get me that guest list.”
Isabelle awoke, screaming.
Link was awake and off the sofa and in the bedroom before she could fight her way free of the quilt tangled around her legs. He dropped down on the bed beside her and pulled her into his arms, trying to calm her.
She fought him like a wildcat, clawing at his chest and face with her hands and nails, while deafening him with bloodcurdling screams.
He wrapped his arms around her, successfully pinning her hands and arms between them. “Isabelle. Isabelle!” he shouted to be heard over her screams. “It’s me. Link. I’ve got you. You’re okay. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
He repeated the same assurances over and over again until his voice, at last, penetrated the nightmare that seemed to hold her in its clutches. She grew still, though her body continued to tremble like a struck chord against his, her chest heaving against his with each grabbed breath. He drew her closer, his hands growing damp with the perspiration that soaked her gown and skin.
“It was just a dream,” he told her, stroking a hand down her hair. “Just a dream.”
She drew in a shuddery breath, another, then eased from his embrace and tipped her face up to his. In the darkness, her eyes were nothing but shadowed pools, her features indistinguishable. Needing to see her face, to reassure himself that she was all right, he stretched a hand behind him and switched on the bedside lamp. A soft golden glow spilled over the room, and when he turned back to her, he saw the wildness that flared in her eyes, the fear, and knew the nightmare still held her in its grip. “It was a dream,” he told her again, and dragged a knuckle across her cheek, catching a stray tear. “Just a dream.”
She shivered at his touch, her unblinking gaze locked on his. “Yes,” she whispered, her voice hoarse from screaming. “A dream. A nightmare,” she said on a low moan, and shivered again.
He wanted to draw her back into his arms, comfort her, but thought better of it. Instead, he shifted away, preparing to rise, to put some distance between them. “Are you okay now?”
She grabbed his arm before he could stand. “Please,” she begged, her nails biting deep, her grip on him, as well as her gaze, desperate. “Don’t leave me.”
He sank back down beside her. “I won’t,” he promised. He slipped an arm around her shoulders, shifting her to his side, until their backs rested against the headboard. He stretched his legs out over the quilt still tangled with hers. “I’ll stay with you as long as you want.”
She seemed to wilt beneath his arm at his reassurance, her head dropping to rest on his shoulder. Her fingers found the edge of the quilt and drew it to her waist. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “The nightmare. I don’t have it often. Haven’t in years.” Her fingers curled into the fabric, her knuckles stark white against the colorful squares. “It’s always the same. The men grabbing me, stuffing me into the back of the van.”
A shiver shook her and he tightened his arm around her, held her firmly against his side. “The kidnapping?” he asked, though he was sure he knew her answer.
He felt her head move against his shoulder in silent assent.
“Yes,” she whispered, her voice quivering with the horror of it. “The kidnapping. I was five. They took me to a cabin.” She lifted her head from his shoulder to look uneasily around the room, slowly taking in her surroundings. The scarred chest of drawers. The dark windows with muslin drapes pushed back to let the dim moonlight filter through.
“Like this one,” she said, as if just realizing the similarities. “But much more rustic. There was a bed,” she added, and released her grip on the quilt to smooth a palm over the covers beside her hip. “Nothing more than a bare mattress, really, lying flat on the floor. No sheets. Just a dirty blanket. They kept me there for three days,” she said, then turned her face up to his, her cheeks wet, her eyes haunted by the memory. “Three horrible, terrifying days.”
He could only imagine the fear she must have felt if it was anything close to that which shadowed her eyes. Unable to bear thinking of what she might have suffered, seeing it reflected on her face, in her eyes, he lifted his hand and pressed his palm against her head, forcing it back down to his shoulder. “Don’t think about it,” he ordered, his voice husky. He turned his lips to her hair. “Block it from your mind.”
He felt her stiffen, then she was shoving against his chest and from his embrace. “No,” she said furiously, shocking him with the depth of her emotion. “Not any longer. I want to talk about it. All of it. But my family won’t allow me. Every time I try, they change the subject or pretend they don’t hear.”
“It hurts them,” he said, understanding all too well her family’s avoidance of the subject. “Knowing how much you suffered, how terrified you were, hurts them. Hearing you speak of it would be forcing them to relive it again.”
“But I need to talk about it,” she cried. She pressed her palms against the sides of her head. “The memories are here, in my mind, haunting me, and I need to let them out. To rid myself of them. But nobody will listen. They try to erase it all by pretending it never happened. They always have.”
Her growing fury troubled him, as did her insistence to share the terrifying memories. He didn’t want to hear the details of her kidnapping any more than her parents did, maybe less.
A teenager at the time of the incident, Link had followed the details of the kidnapping on television, along with the other citizens of Pueblo. But unlike the rest of Pueblo’s citizens and the police force who were baffled by the few clues they had to follow, Link had exclusive information regarding Isabelle’s kidnapping…information provided to him by his stepbrother, Joe Razley. Information the police weren’t privy to.
But he’d listen to Isabelle recount the details of her kidnapping, he told himself, if only to ease her mind. “Tell me, then,” he offered hesitantly.
She slicked her lips, inched closer, her gaze on his. “I ran away. Just like I did today.”
He drew his head back frowning, sure that he’d known every detail of the kidnapping. But he’d never heard this one. “Ran away?”
“Yes,” she said, obviously relieved to finally be able to tell it all. “I was angry with my parents because they wouldn’t allow me to spend the night with one of my friends, so I decided to run away. I packed a backpack and snuck out of the house. I walked for miles, not really knowing where I planned to go, but determined to run away, to punish them.” Tears filled her eyes and she dashed her fingertips across her cheeks, swiping them away.
“I made it all the way downtown,” she said as the memories took her. “And I was frightened. More frightened than I’d ever been in my life. I never liked the dark. Always slept with a night-light on. There was a storm brewing. Much like the one today. Clouds covered the moon and stars and there was nothing but an occasional streetlight to relieve the shadows. I’d never walked alone in town, and I lost my way. I was crying, wanting to go back home, but unsure which way to go. A van pulled up to the curb beside me, and a man stuck his head out the window.” She narrowed her eyes, as if, even now, she could picture his face in her mind. “He was young. Nineteen. Or maybe twenty. He had a scar at the corner of his eye.” She touched her own face, demonstrating, then dropped her hand to her lap and gripped her fingers together.
“He asked me if I was lost. If I needed a ride. My parents had lectured me about not talking to strangers, but I was lost, desperate, frightened. I wanted to go home, and he promised that he would take me there. I told him my name and where I lived. I remember him turning to look at the other man, the one who was driving, and they started laughing. Then he opened the door and got out. The next thing I knew, he grabbed me and shoved me inside the van.
“I knew then that I had made a mistake, and I tried to get away. I started kicking and screaming, begg
ing him to let me go, but he slapped me hard across the face and told me to be quiet. He tied my hands behind my back and my feet together at the ankles, then stuffed a dirty rag into my mouth and forced me down on the floor in the back of the van. I remember gagging at the sour taste on the rag. The van’s metal floor was rough and scraped my cheek and knees, making them bleed. I was sure that I was going to die, that they were going to kill me.”
She drew in a long, shuddery breath, before she could continue. “They drove into the mountains, dragged me inside a cabin and locked me in the bedroom, my hands and feet still tied. There was a small gap between the curtains. Just a narrow slit in which I could see the branches of a tree, a slice of sky.”
She angled her head to peer at the window across the room and the dark view beyond the glass. “I heard the men talking, knew that they planned to demand a ransom for me from my parents. I was scared that my mother and father would be angry with me for running away and wouldn’t give the men the money they wanted. With each passing day, I was convinced that was the case.”
Link didn’t want to hear her answer, was sure that he wouldn’t be able to bear it if she confirmed his fears, but found himself asking, “Did the men…hurt you?”
She turned to look at him, then dropped her gaze, obviously understanding what he was asking. “No. Not in that way. They shoved me around quite a bit. Teased me. But they never touched me. Not sexually.”
Relief spilled through him in waves, but he did his best to keep the emotion from his expression.
She lifted her face again to meet his gaze. “The police worked closely with my parents, advised them every step of the way. They set up taps on all the phones. In our home, and at my father’s company, too. Once the call came, they made arrangements with the bank for the marked bills to be offered for my ransom. Of course, I didn’t know any of this at the time. I only knew what I could hear through the closed door. The men were drinking and they would argue violently with each other over how and where the money was to be exchanged, what they would do and where they would go once they had it. I knew that even if they did get the money, they would kill me. I heard them talk about it. How they would do it.”
She sank back on her heels, drawing her hands together on her thighs, linking them tightly as she stared down at them. She drew in a breath and released it slowly, letting it shudder out of her. “I’d be dead today, if someone hadn’t tipped off the police. An anonymous call,” she said, lifting her face to look at him again. “Someone called and told the police who had me and where they could find me. But whoever it was never came forth to claim the reward my parents had offered for information about my abduction.”
She shook her head, as if to clear the oddity of that. “I’ll never forget the morning the police burst in. It was the day my parents were supposed to make the drop. The men were asleep in the front room. It was early. Just after dawn. I could hear birds singing in the trees outside the window. Then, suddenly, the birds stopped singing and everything grew quiet. It seemed as if even the wind stilled. There was only the sound of the men’s snores coming from the front room. I sensed that something was different, that something was about to happen, but didn’t know what. Then there was an explosion, glass shattering, wood splintering. Shouts. Grunts. I remember screaming. Closing my eyes and just screaming.
“The bedroom window behind me shattered and glass sprayed across the floor, pelted the mattress, stinging my legs. I opened my eyes then, and saw a man crawling through the window. He had on a mask. A gas mask, though I didn’t know what it was at the time.
“The man was dressed in black, and he had all this equipment strapped to him. He held a gun, a rifle of some kind, against his chest and he dropped down on a knee beside me. I was terrified. I wasn’t sure whether he was there to kill me or rescue me. He pulled another mask from a belt at his waist and put it over my face, then picked me up and carried me to the window. He passed me through the opening, handing me to another man who waited outside. I remember my first gulp of air,” she said, and closed her eyes, drew in a long, deep breath, as if even now she could savor it. She released the breath on a sigh. “Fresh. Clean. After smelling nothing but sour bodies and whiskey and the musty mattress for three days, it was glorious. As if freedom had a scent.”
She grew quiet, her eyes misting.
“And the men?” he prodded.
She returned her gaze to his and her lips trembled. “They were captured. Put in prison. There was never a question of their guilt. Plus it was discovered that they were guilty of other crimes, which added additional years to the sentences each received.” She turned her face to the window again and hugged her arms around her waist, her expression taking on a haunted look. “I’ve always feared that they would get out,” she confessed quietly. “Escape. Come and find me. Kill me as they had planned to do.”
Link saw the shiver that shook her and reached for her, drawing her back to his side. Tucking her head beneath his chin, he pressed his lips against her hair. “They won’t get out,” he said, his voice husky. “I promise you. Those men will never hurt you again.”
Link knew because he’d made it his business to know, to be present each time the prisoners’ cases came up for review. The other crimes the men had committed had added years on to those assessed for Isabelle’s kidnapping. The two would be old men before they became eligible for release. And, if there was such a thing as justice, the two wouldn’t live long enough to see outside prison walls again.
Three
Isabelle awakened slowly, her mind first, lazily shuffling through the sensations that floated around her like a heavy mist. She felt as if she were snuggled in a cocoon. Safe, warm, protected, cushioned. Such an unusual feeling. So unlike anything she’d ever felt before. She stretched contentedly, enjoying the euphoric feeling—and bumped something hard with her knee. She blinked open her eyes in surprise…and found herself staring into Link Templeton’s sleeping face.
Swallowing a shocked gasp, she stared, the memories of the previous night slowly unfolding in her mind. The nightmare. The terror that had gripped her. The screams tearing through her throat. The haunting memories. Link holding her, comforting her. Telling him about the kidnapping. The sense of release she’d felt to at last be able to share with someone the horror of it all. The strength in the arms that had wound around her, being drawn to a chest hard with muscle, her cheek pillowed by the mat of soft, dark hair that swirled there. The musky smell of his skin beneath her nose. The warmth of his flesh seeping into hers, chasing away the chilling fear. Her eyes growing heavy. Sleeping.
And now, hours later, he still held her. He had one arm draped loosely over her waist. The other was pinned beneath her head, a wide palm curved around the base of her neck. He’d flung one leg across hers, the weight of it a pleasant burden. His scent surrounded her, filled her. That rich, heady, musky male scent that charged her senses with each careful breath she drew.
She shuddered a sigh and snuggled closer, but kept her face tipped up to his, studying the angles, the planes, the scars there. One ran from the corner of his mouth, less than an inch long. A faint line, almost indiscernible unless one looked closely, as she was now. A second scar creased his forehead. A permanent worry line, she decided, just managing to resist the urge to trace it with the tip of a finger. There was a crook in his nose. A slight one. And she found herself wondering if he’d broken it in the line of duty, or perhaps in a fight.
He looked like the type who might have engaged in a brawl or two, before crossing over to the side of the law. Perhaps in his youth? There was a toughness about him, a cocky swagger to his walk, that made her think of a high school bad boy. But this was no boy’s face she looked upon. This was the face of a man. Creases fanned from the corners of his eyes, permanent squint lines that only intensified already ruggedly handsome features. A heavy shadow of beard darkened his jaw and the narrow space between his upper lip and nose. She wondered what it would feel like to brush her lips across
the stubble. Rough? Coarse? Would it tickle…or entice?
Shivering deliciously at the thought, she tucked her hands beneath her cheek to keep from testing her theory with at least a touch. She knew it was probably wrong to stare so openly, so lustfully, but what harm would it do? He was asleep and would never know…and her curiosity would finally be satisfied.
She’d wondered about him, dreamed about him, since that first day she’d seen him after returning to Pueblo from Europe. He’d been standing in front of the courthouse, one hand shoved deeply into his slacks pocket, the other rubbing at the base of his neck, as if easing knots of tension there.
She had watched him unobserved from her car, absolutely spellbound by his rugged good looks, his mouthwatering physique. The wide shoulders, narrow waist that tapered to even slimmer hips, sturdy, muscled legs. But then he’d turned his back to her and walked away, and she’d nearly lost her breath. With his hand still thrust deeply into his pocket, his slacks were pulled tight across his backside, emphasizing firm, rounded buttocks, muscled thighs. His stride was purposeful, confident…his very posture seeming to dare anyone to defy him.
She’d lost her heart that day. As foolishly and carelessly as a young schoolgirl, she’d fallen deeply and madly in love. And with a stranger, no less. But she’d discovered his identity soon after, in a conversation with her brother Riley. They’d been at a political function, one of those boring fund-raisers that her parents attended faithfully. She’d seen him standing at the end of the bar, looking positively rakish, dressed in a collarless black silk shirt and black slacks with flat, precise pleats at the waist. He’d looked as bored as she, scanning the room with a narrowed, jaundiced eye. His disapproval of the people gathered there—or the event, she was never sure which—was obvious in the derisive slant of his mouth.
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