With a worried frown, Jake watched Megan as she left the kitchen.
"What is it, my friend?" Patrick asked.
"I'm not sure," Jake said. "We talked this morning about some pretty disturbing things for both of us, and some weird dreams she's been having, but I don't—hell!" he said abruptly. "I might as well admit it, if she's going to. This place has been rapidly approaching the reality of a Twilight Zone episode lately, more for Megan than for me, but I haven't been completely immune. I have no idea what she's going to show us, but you can bet the farm it's something she wishes didn't exist."
Megan was gone for a long time before Jake heard her soft footsteps in the dining room as she returned: soft, hesitant, almost shuffling.
She came into the kitchen empty-handed and sat in her chair with her hands clasped together in her lap. Her face had lost the healthy glow it had begun to take on. Now it was pale, almost ashen. Her eyes seemed enormous, and her badly cut hair only added to the impression of refugee, waif, victim.
"Why did your aunt finish the walls in your bedroom with plaster instead of drywall?" she asked in a small soft voice.
"What? Megan, what are you talking about? How do you even know what's beneath all that paint and paper?"
"Because it's all over my bed," she said in that same detached, emotionless voice. She held out her hands, revealing a coating of white dust. "I'll have to change my sheets."
The words took seconds to penetrate, and then he was out of his chair and on his knees beside her, reaching for her hands.
"What?"
Barbara knelt beside him and took Megan's hands. "Go check it out," she said. "I'll take care of her."
Jake heard Patrick behind him as he rounded the corner into the hallway. The light from Megan's bedroom flooded out into the darkness, revealing two small white footprints on the otherwise gleaming-clean wood floor. Jake skidded to a stop in the doorway and looked at what Megan had just discovered.
"Son of a bitch!" he said, and pounded his fist against the door facing.
Rain lashed in through all the windows, now broken, and mixed with plaster dust on the floor. The damage had been done from the inside. Every drawer had been ripped open and its contents spilled out. Clothes had been dragged by the armload from the closet and thrown to the floor, where they had been walked on and kicked around. And someone had fired a shotgun in the room, at the wall behind Megan's bed, shattering the old plaster, revealing hunks of lath and wire, and the plaster had showered in chunks and in dust over her bed, covering her pillows and duvet and the black notebook with its gaping empty rings in a cloud of white.
He heard Patrick's low whistle. "When?" Patrick asked.
"God knows. We left right after Rolley P and Mark did."
"What?"
"Yeah, Patrick." Jake shrugged. "That was why I wanted you to come out tonight, to discuss what had to be a very inconvenient visit for them—they climbed over the gate and walked up from the road—and to share a tape I was fortunate enough to make of Mark conveying Rolley P's threat to Megan."
"That bastard. Do you think—"
"I don't know. We went to lunch, got the horses, and went straight back to my place after I called you. This could have happened any time after noon."
"Go see about Megan," Patrick said gently. "I'll call the report in."
"She's not going to want us to. Don't ask me why, because all I can tell you is it has something to do with her not being believed. It makes no sense to me because she's obviously the victim, as she was in the raid, but—"
"But we have to," Patrick said, "or we just help make Rolley P the tyrant he truly wants to be. She's not alone in this, Jake. Not now. And she won't be ever again, will she?"
Jake turned away from the wrecked room and looked at Patrick, seeing a knowledge in his friend's eyes that he wasn't sure he was ready for. "Aren't you rushing things a little?"
"Am I?" Patrick asked solemnly.
"Roger and Helen have only been dead for three months."
"Yeah, but how long has Helen really been gone? Years? I'd lay odds that Megan's marriage wasn't any better than yours."
"You're psychic now?"
"No, just observant. Someone who's been happy all her life isn't so innocently delighted by little displays of affection and the everyday things Barbara and I and even you, my cynical friend, accept as normal. What's the notebook?" he asked abruptly. "And why would someone be interested in it?"
"Unless I'm mistaken, that's what she was going to show us. It is—" Jake paused and sighed. Megan had enough reason to be shaken without this added blow. "It was the journal she's been keeping since she got out of the hospital. It must have contained a lot of her thoughts about the strange things she's been experiencing."
"But who would care?"
Jake shook his head. "Mark's threat was to expose her as a hysterical woman who overreacts and falsely accuses those in authority, to rake up old mud about previous unfounded accusations."
"Nice fellow, our first deputy. Isn't it amazing how he manages to find his way everywhere he needs to go, and some places he doesn't, but couldn't keep a planned rendezvous with his boss on a clear moonlit night?"
"Yeah." Jake stepped out of the room. "Make the call, Patrick."
Jake found Megan huddled in her chair with her arms wrapped tightly about herself. Barbara knelt beside her, touching her shoulder, speaking quietly, but she looked up when he entered the kitchen.
"Someone trashed her bedroom," he said. "Pretty thoroughly."
"Damn." Barbara gave Megan's shoulder another comforting pat before relinquishing her position to Jake.
He dragged a chair over and sat so close his knees nudged her thigh. "Megan," he said, reaching for her hands.
In response, she hugged herself more tightly and rocked a little, back and forth, back and forth.
"Megan," he said again, more forcefully this time, and held his hands out to her.
She looked at him blankly for a moment and then at his hands. Slowly, cautiously, she released her grip on herself and with tentative care reached for the lifeline he offered. He felt her fingers, slightly rough from her weeks of work, slide across his, then clasp his hands fiercely.
"It's all right," he told her, folding his hands around hers, holding her as tightly as she held him. "I'm here."
"I just want to forget," she said, looking up at him with eyes that had seen too much. "But they won't let me. Why won't they let me forget?"
He gave a tug, freeing his hands. Then, wrapping his arms around her, he pulled her securely into his lap and tucked her cheek against his chest. "Shh," he said. "It's all right."
Over Megan's head he glimpsed Barbara shake her head in a quick negative gesture. "She needs to talk," she said softly. "Cry, maybe scream. She hasn't, you know."
Jake freed one hand from Megan long enough to gesture for Barbara to leave them alone. With a sad, concerned smile for him, she did.
Scream? He'd heard Megan screaming, and it was a sound he never again wanted to hear. Cry? Maybe she hadn't, except in her dreams. Maybe the pain went too deep for the solace of tears. And maybe she knew that if she once started, she might not be able to stop. God knew there were things in his life he'd wished he could put in a box and never have to look at again.
The rain still fell outside, gently now, and its soft pattering rhythm provided an almost hypnotic backdrop for their quiet moment. He ran his hand in slow circles across Megan's back and repeated her name over and over in a murmuring whisper as he felt the strangeness of holding her, the rightness of comforting her. "I won't let anyone hurt you ever again. I promise."
His words echoed in the hushed silence of the kitchen, echoed in his mind, echoed in her heart as something deep within him remembered saying these words to this woman, sometime . . . sometime. . . .
He felt her gathering strength to push away from him, and he didn't want her to leave, couldn't bear for her to leave.
"I'm sorry," she said, her voice muffled, her face still pressed against his chest.
"For what?" He separated them enough to place his hand on her cheek, to turn her face toward his.
"I want to be in your arms," she told him. He saw a terrible honesty in her eyes and wondered how much these words had cost her. "I have since—since we met. But not like this. Not like some damned victim."
He captured her face in both hands and looked deep into her eyes. It was too soon, his conscious mind yelled at him, much too soon, but he wanted her—wanted her with an intensity all out of proportion to the time they'd known each other, all out of proportion even to the trauma they'd shared. Her, Megan. With her cropped hair and baggy clothes and haunted eyes. Not the senator's pretty little girl, not the Barbie doll Roger Hudson had tried to make her.
He felt Megan draw in a hushed breath, felt the thud of her pulse in her temples beneath his fingers, felt the wanting that reflected his own. Saw her lips part slightly in anticipation and invitation.
"Megan," he said on a sigh. Unable to help himself, unable to obey the warnings screaming through his mind, he speared his hands through her hair and bent to her.
"Will wonders never cease?"
Patrick's voice boomed through the room, and Megan jerked away, fighting an embarrassment she shouldn't feel but that he knew she did. Jake refused to let her go. With a gentle but implacable strength he held her close. He glared at the doorway and found Patrick grimacing.
"I'm sorry, Jake." Patrick sighed. "If it's any excuse, my surprise is for our sheriff's office. It seems they have a deputy as close as Prescott. I'm going down to the gate to let him in."
"Deputy?" Megan whispered. "No. Oh, no."
With a concerned glance at Megan, Patrick left.
"What's wrong?" Jake asked, taking Megan by the arms and halting her attempt to scurry away from him. He could understand her not wanting to file a formal complaint against Pierson for the search, but this was different and disturbing. "Why don't you want anyone to know what's happened?"
"Because," she cried. "Because . . ." She stopped struggling and looked up at him. "I don't know." Confusion and doubt twisted her features. "I don't know. Oh, Jake," she moaned as she drew into herself, "am I losing my mind? Is that what's finally happening to me?"
"No. Good God, no!" he said, giving her a little shake for emphasis. "Barbara!" he yelled.
"What . . ."He barely heard Megan's startled whisper, but he did hear Barbara's steps on the wood floor as she hurried toward them.
"You need a pep talk about emotional trauma and its aftereffects," he said, rising from the chair with her still in his arms but lowering her to her feet at arms'-length distance. No more closeness. Not now. She was too vulnerable. He was too vulnerable. "And since I'm not sure you'd believe me, I'm calling in an expert."
Jake whistled Deacon into the house before the deputy arrived and took him through each room; nothing. Only a strange whimper from his dog when they searched Megan's bedroom. Only a frightened cat hiding in the pantry.
The deputy was new, young, fresh-faced, and untrained. He'd also been one of the dozen who had burst into the house with the search warrant. "You'd be safer if you kept that gate at the road locked," he said, as he wiped the mud from his shining black boots on the entry mat.
"It was locked," Jake told him.
"And the house?"
Damn the kid, and damn his superior attitude. "The house was locked too."
"Did you find a means of entry?"
Jake shook his head. "We waited for you. Thought you might want to be in on the search."
A fresh splatter of rain hit the porch roof. The deputy grimaced, then looked around the pleasant, undisturbed living room. "It doesn't look like anything's missing."
Jake remained silent after that almost sneering comment.
"Locked gate. Locked house, so you say. And it doesn't look like anything's been disturbed. Are you sure there was a break-in? Or has Ms. Hudson's imagination been working overtime with her alone all the way out here in the country?"
This kid wouldn't have lasted a minute if he were still sheriff, Jake thought, because he never would have been hired. "Who are you, anyway?" he asked. "Rolley P's nephew?"
The kid puffed up. "I don't see what difference that makes. Do you have a report to file or not?"
Jake glanced over at Patrick, who had stopped just inside the doorway behind the deputy. He was wearing a raincoat, one with big flap-covered pockets in a half dozen places. Jake noticed the almost invisible microphone protruding from one of those pockets. He exchanged a knowing glance with his friend.
"Why don't you come with me," he said to the deputy, "and we'll see just how much Ms. Hudson's imagination has to do with this call."
"Holy shit!" The deputy stopped just inside the room and gaped at the destruction. He took another step into the room, and plaster crunched under his feet. "What do you mean, you didn't find an entry?" he said, gesturing toward the windows. "There's your entry."
Definitely untrained. "That would seem to be the case," Jake said calmly, "except for the fact that these windows are about ten feet off the ground outside. And except for the fact that the glass pattern indicates the windows were broken from the inside."
The boy walked to the bed and picked up the open notebook. Jake bit back an oath.
"That book has the kind of surface you could have gotten prints from."
"Oh." The notebook fell back to the bed with a soft thud.
"Well, I wasn't told to look for fingerprints. We don't all have kits."
"Since when?"
"Look, I was just told to get a report and get back on duty."
"Deputy"—Jake's voice sounded like a harsh growl in the room—"taking this report is part of being on duty."
"Yeah." The kid cleared his throat. "Well—"
"But let me help you," Jake said. "You'll want the names of the witnesses," he prompted, nodding toward the deputy's unopened folder. "Jake Kenyon," he said. "Former sheriff, neighbor." He nodded toward Patrick. "Patrick Phillips, publisher of the Banner, friend."
The deputy swallowed once but grabbed his pen and jerked open his notebook, writing furiously.
"Barbara Phillips," Jake continued. "Doctor at the Choctaw clinic in Fairview, friend. And Megan Hudson, property owner and as of about six weeks ago registered voter in Pitchlyn County. Got all that?"
"Yes, sir. When—"
"Sometime between noon—if you'll check to see when Sheriff Pierson and Deputy Henderson went back on duty and add about five minutes, you'll get the correct time—"
"They were here?"
"—and around seven o'clock. That's when we returned to the house, but no one thought to come to this part of it until just before we called you. Got all that?"
"Yes, sir." The young man swallowed again and looked toward the open notebook. "What—"
"Personal papers were taken," Megan said, stepping into the room.
Gone was the trembling, frightened waif of only minutes before. She hadn't changed clothes, hadn't put on any makeup, but suddenly and completely she was the senator's daughter. Not the pretty little girl Roger had talked about but a confident woman who knew the value of power and how to use it. Knowing how much this display cost her, Jake had never been more proud of anyone in his life than he was of her at the moment.
"Nothing of monetary value to anyone," she said. She stepped closer to the deputy and extended her hand. "I'm Megan Hudson, Deputy—"
"Harrison," he croaked. "Charley Harrison."
Harrison. Jake cataloged the name. The son of Walt Harrison, lumberyard operator and Rolley P's brother-in-law or another of his relatives. Did it really matter?
"Deputy Harrison," Megan continued. "We left the door locked, the windows locked, and my cats outside. When we returned, the doors were still locked but we later discovered that my cats were inside. And, of course, we found this."
"Yes, ma'am."
"This is an outrage," Barbara said, squeezing in past Patrick in the doorway and crowding the deputy farther into the room. "If your office wasn't so busy harassing innocent people, if they'd train you to do your job and let you do it, decent people wouldn't have to put up with these kinds of intrusions."
"Yes, ma'am. Uh—ma'am?"
"What?" Barbara asked, changing tactics in the space of a breath and smiling sweetly at the young man.
"Maybe I'd—maybe I'd better look around outside?"
"Good idea," Jake said. "Look out for broken glass beneath these windows."
"Don't worry, my friend," Patrick said, all good-old-boy innocence. "I'll keep him company and hold the flashlight."
Jake stepped to Megan's side and draped a protective arm over her shoulder. He felt tension thrumming through her, although not one sign of it penetrated the calm mask she wore. "That's kind of you, Patrick," he said. "Real kind. I'm sure the deputy appreciates it, don't you, son?"
The young man glanced toward the window, where the wind whipped the rain into the room. He looked down at his shiny black boots and his crisp tan slacks and visibly paled before he straightened his shoulders and met Jake's knowing smile. "Yes, sir," he said.
To have something to do, Megan cleared away the remains of their dinner and washed the few dishes. Barbara helped her. But after one frustrated attempt to make her sit and wait quietly—what did he think she was going to do anyway, break?—Jake began a systematic search of locks and windows which, too soon, took him from the room and out of her sight.
She had finished the dishes and made a pot of coffee by the time Patrick returned, carrying his camera case with him. "Young Charley's mama's going to have to do laundry for him tonight," he said as he set the case on the pine table and opened it. "How old do you think he was? Twenty, maybe?"
Jake had followed Patrick into the kitchen and now leaned against the door facing. "Not old enough to know what to do with the responsibility of the job or the gun he was wearing. He's probably not a bad kid, but he's way out of his league. Is that the way you read him, Patrick?"
Patrick nodded.
"So," Jake continued, "in spite of the incredible coincidence of having a deputy in this part of the county when we needed one, our boy Charley probably hadn't already been out here tonight to leave this little surprise for Megan?"
"Probably not."
Megan had lifted the carafe from the coffeemaker when Jake's words registered. She set the glass pot on the counter and turned to face him. "Sheriff Pierson didn't—you don't think—?"
His smile carried a trace of sadness and acknowledgment of her continuing disillusionment. "You said it yourself," he told her. "They're horrible people. Someone went to a great deal of trouble today to frighten you. Why, Megan? Pierson's the only one who has anything to gain if you fold up and fly away."
"And the prowlers, Jake?" she asked. "The ones who have been coming onto the property since long before the sheriff had any reason to want me gone? Do they have something to gain?"
"Damn, I hate it when a woman's logical."
"Shame on you, Jake Kenyon." Barbara reached around Megan, lifted the coffeepot, and began filling cups and passing them around. "If you don't mend your wicked ways, I'm going to sick every major feminist group in the country on you." She took a sip from her cup and leaned back against the cabinet. "I think Rolley P's a bag of scum too. And, like you, I hate coincidences. But what if he's not responsible for this?"
Patrick looked over at his wife and blew her a kiss. "Damn, I hate it when a woman's logical."
In spite of the tension, Megan chuckled. "Do we have the Bobbsey twins?" she asked Barbara.
Barbara flashed her an exasperated grin. "Polly and Molly. Frick and Frack. Falter and Fall." Serious again, she studied Jake across the distance of the room. "What do we do now?"
We. After years of being alone, Megan felt that word caress her: We. Not: What does Megan do? Not: Gee it's been fun but you're on your own now, kiddo. Not: I'm not about to get involved with something that doesn't directly benefit me.
"Did you find anything outside?" Jake asked Patrick.
"Lots of mud. And you? Anything inside?"
Jake shook his head. "No sign of forced entry. How about keys?" he asked Megan. "Did Renfro leave all his?"
"I changed the locks." she told him.
"Wise move." Jake nodded. "And I changed the front-door lock yesterday."
"With a lock you bought—" Patrick said.
"—from Harrison's Lumberyard." Jake finished.
"That's circumstantial evidence," Barbara said, seeing the familiar trail their thoughts were leading them to.
"I'll bring new glass for the windows out in the morning," Patrick said. "And a dead-bolt lock set I just happen to have stashed away in our leftover remodeling supplies." He set his cup on the table and picked up his camera. "Now I think I'd better take pictures and get on home, or it's going to be morning before any of us gets to sleep."
"It's obvious you can't stay here tonight," Barbara said to Megan. "You're welcome to come home with us for as long as you want to stay."
"No!"
Megan turned to look at Jake. From the expression on his face, the force of his objection had surprised him more than it had her.
"No," he said again, a little more softly. "I think it would be a good idea if Megan stayed with me."
Barbara turned toward the counter, hiding a small grin that only Megan saw as she rinsed her coffee cup. "Of course you do, Jake," she said easily. "But what does Megan think?"
"I mean—"
"I know what you mean, Jake," Megan told him. "Thank you, Barbara, but Jake is right. I need to stay close to home." And to Jake. Jake, who was becoming more and more synonymous with the meaning of home.
So Jake stood with her on the front porch of her house as they watched the taillights of Barbara's and Patrick's vehicles disappear down the lane. Somehow his arm had gravitated to her shoulder again. She could get used to this. Pathetically, gratefully, used to it.
"You'll need a few things," he said. "Enough for a day or two at least."
"Yes." Fortunately she had some clean clothes in the utility room, folded and not yet put away, so she wouldn't have to force herself to return to her destroyed bedroom.
"We can take the cats if you like," he continued. "I haven't had one in the house since I was a kid, but yours are okay. I—I wouldn't want them hurt."
You're a softie, Jake Kenyon, she thought, as she turned in his loose embrace to face him. A big, dark, dangerous-looking softie. She wanted to reach up and brush her lips across his, but that wouldn't be wise, not wise at all. Not after the brief, stunning kiss they had shared in the kitchen earlier. Not after finally acknowledging to herself how much she had come to want this man. Instead, she lifted her fingertips to his cheek and rested them there lightly. "Thank you."
"Megan." His hand now rested at the nape of her neck. His other one lifted and settled naturally on the curve of her hip. "I'm sorry about what happened here. About the damage to your bedroom, the theft of your diary. This has to seem like the most intrusive of—"
"Oh, my God!" she whispered, tensing beneath his touch. "Oh . . . my . . . God."
"What is it?"
She moved her fingers to his lips, silencing him, attempting to reassure him. "How could I have forgotten? Please," she whispered. "Oh, please."
Turning away from Jake, she hurried into the house, hearing the screen door slam behind her, hearing his footsteps following relentlessly. The door to the green bedroom had somehow gotten shut during the evening. Jake's hand covered hers as she reached for the knob. He pushed open the door, reached around her, and turned on the light before releasing her to enter the room.
The closet door was closed too. Megan opened it and dropped to her knees in front of the box of books. She lifted the top and reached beneath the first stack of papers.
"Yes!" she said, drawing forth the brown leather notebook. She eased open the cover for a hesitant look inside. Neat copperplate handwriting covered several intact pages. She hugged it to her chest. "Oh, yes!"
"Isn't that the note book I saw in your bed this morning?"
Megan nodded. "You were asleep. I didn't want to disturb you, so I put it in here instead of returning it to the drawer in my bedroom. This is what I was coming for when I found the vandalism."
"What is it?"
She rose to her feet, still holding the book close. She had been prepared to show it to him earlier, but the moment had passed. "It's a product of my paranoia," she said reluctantly.
Jake lifted his arm as though to touch her. Megan shrugged and stepped away. "You know, when I saw that notebook lying open on the bed, I didn't suspect Sheriff Pierson or the prowlers on the property. I thought of only one person. I didn't think it could hurt any more than it already did. I was wrong. . . ."
"Who, Megan?" Jake prompted.
"My story really hurt my father politically. Dr. Kent is his friend. When he kept insisting I vent my feelings in that notebook of his, I wondered if he had ulterior motives. I wondered if proving I was more than a little unbalanced wouldn't offset some of the harm telling the truth about Villa Castellano had done. So when the really strange stuff started showing up—"
She sighed and looked up at him. He waited, patient and silent.
"Really strange stuff." She sighed again. "I took it out of the black one and put it in here. So whoever took that journal took about seventy-five pages of instructions and a lot fewer than that of disjointed ramblings and my unsuccessful attempts to be brutally honest with myself."
"And left the book open and empty so you'd know it was gone."
"Who else would do that, Jake? Who else had a motive? Who else even knew about the journal?"
"Only about a dozen other people, including our first deputy," he said. "The night of the raid, one of the officers wanted to take it in for evidence. I took it away from him. It doesn't have to be your father, Megan."
She hoped so. Oh, God, she hoped so!
"It's late," he said gently. "Let's get out of here, go home, and get some rest. Maybe tomorrow we'll be able to look at this clearly."
Home. He said it so easily. Not my home. Just home. As though she really belonged there with him. Did she? Could she?
"Yes," she said. "Let's do that."