Thunder at Dawn

by Jill Gregory

  The lights had been killed. And the engine. She strained to make out the vehicle or someone inside, but all she could see was that it was a pickup and there was a man behind the wheel.

  Suddenly, the driver’s door was flung open and a tall male leaped out of the car, shouting.

  “Hey!”

  Zach. She stared in astonishment as he took off at a dead run toward the south end of the cabin. What the hell? Her breath quickening, she shoved her feet into her flip-flops and snatched a flashlight from the nightstand.

  Gripping the gun in one hand and the flashlight in the other, she ran out onto the porch, peering in the direction Zach had gone.

  “Zach? What’s going on?” she yelled, shining the beam into the brush.

  She heard running footsteps and braced herself, until she saw it was Zach emerging from the shadow of the woods.

  “Give me the flashlight.”

  “Like hell I will. What are you doing here?”

  “You had a prowler.” He strode toward her. He noticed the gun in her hand but ignored it. “Come on, Faith, I want to look around, see if there’s any footprints or if he dropped something.”

  “I can do that myself. What are you doing at my cabin in the middle of the night?”

  “Damned if I know.” In a movement that took her by surprise, he swiped the flashlight from her grasp and turned back toward the woods. “Go inside. I’ll let you know what I find.”

  “No way. Give that back to me.” She leaped after him, grabbed the flashlight back. He gritted his teeth as she marched ahead of him.

  “Where did you see him?” she demanded.

  “There. By our . . . by the tree.”

  A stone skimmed across the surface of her heart, making ripples. Did he think of it as “our tree” too? She bit her lip and swung the flashlight toward the tree, making a slow circle of the ground around it.

  She didn’t see anything except gnarled roots, dirt, and grass.

  “He ran past the cabin, into the woods. That way.” Zach pointed and she aimed the beam toward the spot, slowly walking forward, shining the light on the star-kissed wheat grass.

  There were no clear footprints: some parts looked like they’d been flattened, but that could have been done anytime, by anyone. Even by her. She’d been taking nightly walks all around the cabin, in every direction. And more than once she’d started those walks from the tree.

  “Are you sure you saw someone?” she asked at length. Zach had accompanied her as she plunged into the shade of the trees, where the night was even blacker. Glancing at him, she saw grim concern on his face.

  “I’m sure.”

  “Maybe it was a fox or a bobcat.”

  “Give me a break, Faith. I know what I saw. I think you should call the sheriff.”

  “The acting sheriff.” She spoke with disdain. “No.”

  She was just as stubborn and headstrong as ever. That knowledge made his gut ache, like hot salt rubbed into an unhealed wound.

  Faith might be a high-powered assistant DA, she might be a lithe, stunningly elegant woman with a brain sharper than a laser—but she still had the spunk and the spirit of the fiery teenage girl who’d once gazed at him as if he were the sun and the moon. That girl was still inside her, an intrinsic part of the slender, formidable woman beside him, the one with a gun in her hand and a sexy tank top outlining her beautiful breasts. Knowing that made him happy, and it made him hurt.

  But Zach knew how to hide what he was feeling. A good portion of his life had been spent learning how to best hide everything that made him appear vulnerable and weak.

  He was a pro at concealing his emotions, his thoughts. He’d found that a valuable weapon in the battle of life.

  As Faith stalked back to the cabin, he fell into step beside her, his face shuttered in the moonlight. Neither of them spoke.

  There was all around them only the sound of their footsteps crunching over the grass, the chirp of crickets, and the whispered rustle of wild creatures scurrying in the night.

  He was the first to break the silence when they reached the porch.

  “I’m going to take a look inside.” He bounded past her up the steps before she could protest. “You left the door open—he could have circled back while we were searching.”

  “Don’t bother. I’ll check myself—”

  But her words fell on deaf ears—or rather, on no ears, because he’d already strode inside and switched on the lights.

  Of all the things that might have happened tonight, Zach McCallum walking through her front door sometime after midnight was not one she would have ever imagined.

  She followed him inside and closed the door, then set the gun and the flashlight down on the coffee table. For some reason she felt close to naked in her tank top and drawstring pants, her feet in slim flip-flops, and she wondered why she’d feel better, more protected if she was wearing a bulky sweater, jeans, and boots. Protected from what? she wondered, her heart skipping a beat. From Zach? Or from herself?

  Her own weak, foolish, stupid self?

  She couldn’t help noticing that when Zach left the smaller bedroom and headed for hers, his tall, rangy body looked as tense and alert as a special forces operative checking for land mines. She tried not to stare at the way his shoulders filled out his light-blue shirt, or at the corded muscles of his arms. Or at the casual, sexy way his dark hair tumbled over his brow. It was bad enough that his jaw was set in a way she remembered all too well, a way that gave her a pang deep in her heart.

  When she looked at Zach, it was as if no time had passed between them. His expressions, gestures, the way he moved, were indelibly engraved into her memory. So familiar, so sexy. So . . . hurtful.

  “Are you satisfied now?” she asked when he appeared at her bedroom door.

  “You’re still as messy as ever, I see.” He didn’t mention that the sight of a black wispy bra slung over the back of a chair, unlaced Pumas beside the bed, and magazines and folders stacked on her night table along with a handful of earrings and a jar of tangerine-scented body scrub had made his muscles clench, not with irritation but with a heat that came from memories so sweet they scalded.

  “No one’s under your bed or behind the bathroom door. I’m going to check the last bedroom. Wait here.”

  He’s making too much of this. It was dark out there, he can’t be sure he actually saw someone. We didn’t find any signs, she told herself as she heard him moving through the third bedroom.

  Yet she glanced uneasily at the window and shivered, half expecting to see a face staring back at her.

  But there was only moonlit darkness beyond. She drew the curtains and hurried to the front door to lock it.

  He found her sitting at the kitchen table, sipping tea from a blue-flowered cup.

  “So did you find a bogeyman hiding under the bed?”

  He leaned against the countertop, regarding her through narrowed eyes. “There was someone out there, Faith. I’d bet my company on it.”

  “Well, whoever it was—if there was someone—he’s gone now.”

  Zach couldn’t help noticing the tension in her neck and shoulders. She wasn’t quite as cool about this as she’d have him believe.

  “Any idea who might want to sneak up on you in the middle of the night?”

  “None at all.” But she wondered if it had been Rusty Gallagher. If he’d been drunk, angry, horny, whatever.

  Or . . . She didn’t like the other possibility that presented itself, so she pushed the thought away.

  “I suppose I should offer you some tea.” How stiff her voice sounded, even to herself. As if she were talking to a stranger. Well, you are, she told herself, setting her cup down with a tiny clink. You don’t know Zach anymore. He’s different—and so are you.

  “Don’t trouble yourself. I’m a coffee kind of guy myself. And this isn’t—wasn’t—intended as a social call.”

  “Oh?” Faith pushed back her chair, stood up. She shoved a lock of hair from her ey
es. “What was it intended as?”

  For a moment Zach gazed at her, at a loss how to reply. He himself didn’t understand what had brought him here in the middle of the night—how could he possibly explain it to her?

  It didn’t help that she looked so sexily mussed from sleep, and beautiful as a sunrise. Not only did the pink tank top deliciously sculpt the outline of her breasts, but those drawstring pants hovered sensuously around hips he longed to touch. Her hair . . . hell, he’d always loved to tangle his hands in her hair. It looked like a silken cloud, curl upon untamed curl. It took a conscious effort not to reach out and stroke those thick curls between his fingers, watching her eyes darken with pleasure as they had when she was nineteen.

  But they probably wouldn’t do that anymore, even if she liked it, Zach thought. Faith seemed to have learned how to guard her expressions. Her face used to reflect everything she was feeling, and he had been fascinated by that. Now what she felt was locked inside her, her outward countenance as lovely, neutral, and cool as a distant waterfall.

  She stood before him, spine straight, sexy as hell, her perfect mouth tightly clenched. The urge to banish that damned distant expression from her face, to touch and soften those set lips was nearly overwhelming.

  But he had learned discipline and self-control in the past ten years as well. He exercised both now.

  “I didn’t come here to see you, if that’s what you think. Call it subconscious insanity. It just happened.”

  “Insanity? That I can believe. You’re the last person I’d expect on Blue Moon Mesa in the middle of the night.”

  “Yeah, well, that makes two of us.”

  “In that case don’t let me keep you.”

  She moved toward the front door and he had no choice but to follow. The sway of her rounded bottom beneath those drawstring pants kick-started his blood.

  As he stepped out onto the porch and she still held the door open, he turned back. Faint moonlight illuminated the soft lines of her face, gilded her full mouth.

  “Did he hurt you tonight? Gallagher?”

  “Of course not. I told you, I could have handled him.”

  “Yeah. I’m sure you could have—if you’d put a tin can on his head and gotten hold of a rock.”

  Now, why did he say that? If he’d been looking for a smile, he didn’t get one. She was tough, this grown-up Faith. She’d told him years ago, proudly, about how her brothers had taught her to hit a tin can target with a rock nine times out of ten. He’d challenged her to a contest, and she’d won, then teased him about it for days.

  But tonight she gave no sign of remembering it, or anything else about that summer. She looked as closed to him as a solid steel wall.

  Zach suddenly had the nearly irresistible urge to melt that steel.

  Go. Just go. With all her might, Faith willed him to leave. Her heart couldn’t return to its normal rhythm, not while he was here. She told herself it was only from the shock of finding him—anyone—on the premises in the middle of the night. And from the hurried search in the woods. But deep inside, she knew that was a lie.

  It was Zach. Purely Zach. He looked so frustratingly handsome—so tough and virile and male. His thick straight black hair and tanned skin contrasted intriguingly with eyes as gray as a moody sea.

  His mouth was thin and hard. At thirty, he was, if possible, even sexier—hotter—than he’d been ten years ago as a rebellious teenage boy.

  But now he was very much a man. A man who would dazzle any woman. And the effect he had on her was indescribable.

  Memories flooded back. She remembered the first time they’d made love, on the hottest day of July, on Snowflake Mountain. She remembered the sun baking their bare skin, the sweet smell of the grass cushioning her back, and the way his hips had moved against hers.

  She trembled inwardly, fighting to stop the flow of memories, but she couldn’t stop wondering if she would burn inside again if they kissed, if he cupped her breast, trailed his hand across her thigh . . .

  No, no, she’d never find out. It would never happen. Never again. She glared at him, proving her own strength.

  He tipped his hat to her on the porch. Pain sliced her heart.

  “I wish I could say it’s been fun,” she said. “Good night, Zach.”

  She was stepping back, starting to close the door, when she saw his eyes darken. Something changed in his face, something that flashed through him like a bolt of hot gold lightning, and she sensed the danger like a clap of silent thunder.

  Before she could move, he reached her. He held the screen door open with his body and seized her face between his calloused palms before she could do more than gasp.

  His gray eyes glinted into hers. His gaze was hard and piercing, and she knew horribly in that one instant that he saw everything . . . her fear and shock—and her desire.

  His head tipped lower, closing in. Then his mouth slanted ruthlessly against hers and Faith’s senses went haywire. The kiss was deep, hard, hot. Like a man sampling, swallowing whole, a delectable treat he’d long been denied.

  The coolness of the almost-autumn night vanished. It was suddenly summer again. Warm, sensuous summer, the air thick with the scent of pine, the world a blur of sunlight and heat, of gold and green, she and Zach on Snowflake Mountain, frantic, breathless, dizzy in love . . .

  His arms went around her as she nearly slid to the ground. He held her up, held her close, the kiss changing, gentling, setting off torpedoes of fire through her blood.

  Then it hardened again, became almost angry, punishing. She moaned, threw her arms around his neck, begged for more. She drank him in, her own mouth frantic with need, but suddenly he put his hands on her shoulders and stopped.

  He just stopped. Just like that. Broke the kiss as quickly as he’d begun it. And stepped back.

  When Faith looked into his eyes, feeling helplessly stunned and naked, she saw that his gaze was dark now. Dark and cool and totally unreadable.

  “Now,” he said quietly as she stared at him, dazed. “Now it’s a good night.”

  He turned and walked away, leaving her standing there without so much as a backward glance.

  Chapter 9

  HIGH UP ON SNOWFLAKE MOUNTAIN, HANK Bayman opened another can of beer and drank deeply. The air was cold as a witch’s tit at that height, but his campfire and khaki jacket kept him warm. So did the beer.

  Tonight had been a close call. Almost too close. How could he have guessed that the Barclay bitch would have company in the middle of the night? Just went to show, no matter how smart and high and mighty she might think she was, she was still a slut.

  Which meant she was going to deserve everything she got.

  Bayman was more than satisfied with the way things had gone ever since he’d landed at the Natrona County airport in Casper a few days earlier. He’d rented a Dodge truck easy as pie and hit the road, never once even spotting a cop car on his way into Thunder Creek.

  Not that he had anything to fear from the cops, he mused, savoring another gulp of beer. Chances were that his dumb-fuck probation officer didn’t even have a clue yet that he’d skipped town.

  Everything was under control, and he was ready to make his move. With his background, scoping out this speck on the map and finding the cabin where Faith Barclay was holed up had been a cinch. So now came the fun part.

  He’d bought enough food and supplies to camp out up here on the mountain until he was finished with her. And that wouldn’t be too long. Once he got her alone in that little cabin of hers, it would be quite easy and very pleasurable to get every bit of information he needed to know.

  There was a sound from the brush nearby, and Bayman’s hand shot to his hip holster, closing on his gun. But it wasn’t a mountain lion or a bear. Only a fox slithering through the brush. He set the gun beside him, took another swig of beer, and stared into the fire.

  He’d just been checking things out tonight. Getting the lay of the land around that cabin, hoping to catch a glimpse of
the whore inside.

  Tomorrow he’d wait and watch until she left, then go in, look around. He doubted Faith Barclay would have Susan’s new address or phone number lying around, but it was worth checking out. And he might just leave her a little present. Maybe a skinned rabbit or squirrel. Something to rattle her. Something to think about in the dead of night when she couldn’t sleep.

  I’m coming for you, bitch, he thought, as the flames danced and swayed in the gusty wind. I’ll be there when you least expect me. First you, then Susan. Then those damned sniveling kids she coddles so much.

  His eyes narrowed, thinking about those brats whose father had run out on Susan five months before he met her. He’d been damned good to those boys, taking ’em to the circus, to baseball games, and all that crap. But did they appreciate it? No, they acted like they couldn’t stand the sight of him. He knew why too. Susan had made wienies out of them. Neither one of them could hit a baseball worth a damn, and they were too puny to ever go out for football. They hated the fact that he was strong and an athlete and that he didn’t hesitate to swat them if they stepped out of line.

  Hell, Curt, the older one, bawled whenever someone looked cross-eyed at him. And he was nearly nine. Jesus. And that little one was nothing but trouble. Him and his stupid nightmares. How many times had Brian burst in during the middle of the night when he and Susan were doing the deed?

  God, he hated those kids.

  But it was Susan’s fault they were the way they were. It was Susan’s fault that everything had gotten screwed up.

  A woman’s supposed to stick by her man, right? But not Susan. She had to cut and run.

  No one leaves me and gets away with it, baby, he thought savagely, picturing her pale face and the dark hair that had been so long and beautiful when he first met her. No one goes until I say.

  Bayman chugged the last of the beer. He got up and pissed into a pile of leaves, then zipped up his jeans, stalked back to the fire, and stared down into the hypnotic gold flames.