Back | Next
Contents

Chapter 21

Jake returned to the location where Deacon had been shot. A few yards farther on, he found the spot where Megan had escaped from her assailant. A few feet away from that, farther along the trail of broken grass and twigs, he found a sprinkling of blood. Good. Deacon had made the bastard earn his escape.

He followed the trail to the old cabin site before losing it in a thicket of briar.

His mouth twisted in a grim smile. The man would have more blood on him than that caused by Deacon's teeth after fleeing through this tangle of blackberry and greenbriar vines. With any luck he'd have picked up a giant dose of ticks and chiggers too.

Jake looked at the thicket. He could probably work his way around it and pick up the trail again. And do what, follow it to where the man had left some vehicle parked? Follow it until he found where another fence had been run down? Then what?

Then nothing. He was at a dead end. Another in a long trail of dead ends.

He thought bitterly of what he had tried to tell Megan. He was the professional; he was supposed to protect civilians from the bad guys. Once he had been more than capable in his job, but not in this morass of intrusions and intrigue and spirits. In this, in what was probably the most important case of his life, he felt no more competent than the greenest rookie.

He was too damn close to it. He'd never understood how being close to a case could do more than heighten an investigator's senses. Now he did. Megan was too important to him. Fear for her clouded his perception.

Parallels, Mattie had said. All right, he'd give her that. But parallels of what? Parallels of a story more than a century old that was too unbelievable to be real, too real to disbelieve? Especially in light of what he had finally forced Mattie to admit that morning. Parallels of the ridicule Megan received when once again it became known she had been a victim? Or even the parallels of Sarah's having—maybe—seen someone from Jake's past, someone who had no business being in Prescott, Oklahoma.

He looked at the sky and at the trail. Had he come so far that he would be unable to hear Megan if she called him?

Face it, he told himself. He didn't want to follow a blind trail to another lost end. He wanted to go back to Megan and lock the doors . . . and make love until all the intrigue and danger swirling around us is just a bad memory.

Jake shook his head to clear it. Had that been his thought or another intrusion? It didn't matter; it echoed what he wanted to do. But he couldn't let himself be lost in loving her. Not while the danger to her still haunted this hillside.

He found the door locked when he returned and the house quiet when he let himself in with his key. Apprehensive and alert, he didn't call out. Instead, he worked his way silently through the rooms.

He let out a tightly held breath when he found Megan sitting at the vanity in his bedroom writing in her journal.

A "form of therapy" was how she had once described that book. A product of her paranoia. A way of putting all the pieces together. Another way to escape. What was it today?

He sat on the edge of the bed and leaned back against the headboard, quiet so he wouldn't disturb her—if anything could disturb her. He watched her reflection in the vanity mirror. She had her lower lip caught between her teeth, but other than that she looked as though she were in some sort of trance.

The longer he watched, the more concerned he became. He sat up on the edge of the bed.

"Megan?" he said softly.

She made no response; she gave no indication she had even heard him.

"Megan?" he said a little more loudly.

Still the pen moved determinedly over the page in front of her: the page in the book that except for the first two pages contained nothing of Megan and everything of the tortured woman they knew as Lydia Tanner.

"Damn," Jake muttered as he crossed the room. He was aware of intruding on Megan's privacy as he looked over her shoulder, but she wasn't aware of it. She didn't seem to be aware of anything, not even the pen she moved across the page.

"Lydia." The word hissed through his teeth as he saw the fine copperplate penmanship fairly leaping off the page—fine copperplate penmanship made all but illegible by the panic that propelled it.

"Megan!" He didn't stop to think, didn't stop to consider the danger of jerking her back to awareness. Jake only knew with gut- level certainty that Megan was in as much danger as Lydia if she stayed trapped in the journal with her. He roared her name and clapped his hand down on her shoulder, spinning her around to face him.

She looked up at him numbly for a moment, as though not really seeing him. Then slowly, much too slowly for his peace of mind, awareness of who she was and where she was returned to her eyes, followed quickly by the memory of what she had just seen or felt or whatever the hell happened to her in Lydia's diary. Her eyes filled with horror; her already pale complexion paled even more; her mouth opened, as she gasped and dragged in air.

Then she crumpled, reaching blindly for him, grasping him with both arms around his waist as she buried her face against him and shook with sobs that racked her slender body.

Feeling completely ineffectual, Jake stood within her embrace and held her, smoothing her hair back from her face, rubbing her shoulders, her neck, her back, forcing himself to let her cry as he remembered Barbara's admonitions, when what he wanted to do was stop her tears somehow, stop the pain that shuddered through her.

"I couldn't get out," Megan said finally against his chest. "I couldn't get out. And she was so scared!"

"Shh," he said, at last daring to speak, at last daring to try to calm her. "It's all right. You're here now."

"Is it all right, Jake? Everything in my life is screwed up. My whole world is crazy, except you. You're the one stable thing I have to hold on to, and I'm dragging you into the mess with me."

"That's enough," he said. "Whatever is happening is not your fault, understand?"

"Then whose is it?"

He sighed and pressed her face to his chest. "God only knows," he said. The open journal lay on the vanity in front of him. He stared at it over Megan's bent head with something like revulsion. With all that was going on around them, they didn't need the added burden of whatever the hell it was coming through that book and however the hell it managed to do it.

He reached over and slammed the notebook shut. "This is supposed to be healthy? Some reputable doctor really gave you this trip to the Twilight Zone and told you these little forays into someone else's terror would heal your own?"

"No." He felt Megan shudder as she drew away from him. She seemed to pull herself upright on the bench, squaring her shoulders, defying the tears that glimmered in her eyes. "No," she repeated. "This has gone way beyond what Dr. Kent gave me. I think his associate who's developing the technique would be appalled at what has happened with my efforts. It's supposed to put me back together, not someone who lived in the nineteenth century."

"Then let's put it away," he said, not bothering to hide his concern for her. "Let's stick it in a closet and leave it there, and leave Sam and Lydia and all their problems with it. We have enough trouble of our own."

"I have to go back."

"What?"

"I have to go back. I can't leave her there like that. I have to get her through what's happening. She thinks Sam is dead; Sam and Peter went to her father's house. It was the night the carbide house blew up. And now someone is outside her house, trying to get in. Don't you see? I can't abandon her now. Not till Granny gets back. Not till she knows for sure."

"Megan." Jake pulled her from the bench and into his arms. "Listen to yourself. There's nothing you can do."

"I can be there. She's telling me this for a reason."

"Megan." He caught her shoulders in his hands and shook her. "Stop it. You can't do anything. It's all been done, long ago."

"But she's so alone!"

"And it's going to get worse."

She looked up at him, and comprehension filled her eyes. "You know what happens, don't you? How do you know?"

He dropped his hands to his sides and turned away from her, unable to watch while he repeated his story. "I called Mattie this morning from the store to check on her, to reassure her if she had watched the newscast, and to tell her what had happened to you yesterday. She told me. She said she had to warn me."

"About what?"

Jake turned around. He looked at the journal where it lay innocuously on the walnut vanity that had belonged to his mother's family, and at Megan, completely contemporary in her cropped hair, faded jeans, hiking boots, and pink long-sleeved T-shirt.

"Maybe you'd better sit down," he said.

She shook her head and remained standing. "Tell me."

It shouldn't have been difficult to do. They were, after all, talking about someone they knew to be dead. But Megan wasn't going to like this. He didn't like it. And he knew why Mattie hadn't wanted to tell either one of them.

"Sam didn't die in the explosion," he said bluntly, knowing there was no kind way to tell her. "Lydia killed him."

The breath whooshed out of her and her knees collapsed. Jake reached for her as she sank onto the vanity bench.

"No," she said, holding her hands out in front of her to ward off his words. "No."

"He went home from the explosion, and she shot him as he walked in the door."

"No!"

"He was found by her brother the next morning. Lydia was gone."

"Gone? But that means . . . don't you see? Whoever was lurking around must have killed him and taken her. Oh, God. Not again."

"Megan. Sam was shot with his own pistol. And Lydia was seen nearby in the woods several times after that but never closely enough for anyone to capture her."

"Capture?"

"She went mad," he said sadly, knowing how she must take this news. "Completely mad. And eventually she just disappeared."

"No," Megan said, whispering the denial he knew she must make. "No, no, no, no, no. She was terrified the night of the explosion, absolutely terrified. But she was sane, Jake. As sane as—"

He jerked her off the bench and shook her until she looked at him. "You are!" he said. "Don't doubt it for a moment. Oh, Megan," he said. "Oh, hell!"

Her lips parted in shocked surprise under the onslaught of his mouth. Too long. He had wanted her too long to be gentle, to be teasing. To coax. He wanted her, not the doll of her Washington days, not the wounded and troubled Lydia: Megan. With her cropped hair and wall-to-wall problems and surprising self-doubt and indomitable strength that right now was undergoing a battering of a different kind from the bombardment he was making on her senses.

Megan. Shy and smart-mouthed. Full of doubt but with a will of iron. Too fragile to have endured all she had been through; but she had.

Megan. With a beauty that haunted him. With soft curves beneath her disguising clothes. With a touch that tormented him. With a breathless, throaty, unendurably sexy voice moaning his name.

Jake made one last effort to reel in his senses. He tore his mouth from hers, lifted his head, and looked down at her. Into eyes that showed a desire as great as the one he felt. At a mouth trembling from his kiss. At a longing he had thought never to see on a woman's face. She lifted her hand to his scarred cheek.

"Oh, yes," she said. "This is what I was going to tell you yesterday. This is what I wanted to happen when I returned from the cabin. And this is what I was afraid I would never be able tell you, after . . ."

After what? But the time for asking was gone. Megan lifted her other hand to his cheek, lifted her body to fit against his, lifted her mouth to his in supplication and demand.

They found their way to the bed, backstepping, stumbling, never releasing each other, and fell onto it in a tangle of arms and legs and moans and even an unexpected soft laugh. The bed where he had lain alone for too many months. The bed where he had taken Megan that first night and wanted to crawl in beside her in spite of her vacations and the trauma she had been through. The bed he had shared with her in frustrated, unrevealed passion two long nights ago.

Jake was shy of his body. He had not been with a woman since the shooting. He had not thought he would ever be with one again in the harsh light of day. But when finally they dispensed with the last of their clothes, when finally he was revealed to her in all his scarred, battered, tarnished glory, when finally he heard her small gasp of dismay, he saw no revulsion or pity in her eyes. He saw compassion. And a fierce warrior's glare.

"I could kill him," she said. "I could kill whoever did this to you with my bare hands."

And he believed that this soft, gentle woman would do just that. Because he knew that if anyone truly harmed her, he would do the same.

And he accepted that had his scars been on her body, he would not have loved her less. Loved her. Yes. That was a knowledge that had been hovering just outside his consciousness until this moment. And it felt more than right; it felt inevitable.

And it felt returned. Although Megan had not said the words, she would. He knew that as well as he knew the desire she felt for him was surprisingly new to her.

She had bent her head to the long scar on his chest where the marks of the sutures still showed in a neat row along each side of the jagged line, had trailed her fingers to his thigh, to the tortured muscle there, leaving warmth and healing each place she touched.

Leaving warmth and healing in a heart that had been too long alone.

Laughing in triumph, Jake lifted her head and gathered her close. Maybe it hadn't been too long for him to be gentle, after all.

 

Megan lay caught close to Jake's side in the aftermath of their passion. Their arms and legs were still tangled together, although he had moved slightly to one side to shift his weight from her. She felt a light breeze through the open window skim across the fine sheen of perspiration covering her body and shivered slightly.

Jake groaned, fumbled for the sheet, and threw it over them.

Amazing, Megan thought. Here she was, stark naked with a man she had known for only five days, and the only need she felt for a covering was to protect her from the chill.

Amazing. She had had sex—had made love—with this same man and for the first time in her life had not been left feeling used or still wanting. She felt a frisson of anger try to work its way into her contentment—anger that it had taken her this long to know how love between a man and a woman should be. Anger that for some reason she had accepted that what she had known was all she was entitled to. She pushed the anger back. She knew she would have to confront many things. But right now all she wanted to do was to lie here in Jake's arms and share this marvelous moment with him.

She slept. As exhausted as they both were, the only thing surprising to Megan about that was that she awoke as soon as she did, just as the dusk of early evening was sliding into the dark of night.

She turned, still caught in Jake's arms, and found him raised on one elbow, looking down at her with his eyes still shadowed by exhaustion, and she knew without asking that he had stayed awake, on guard, protecting her.

"You're a wonder," he said, lifting a hand to trace his fingers along her cheek and jaw, to draw them with teasing slowness across her lips. "Another blessing in a life of undeserved miracles."

"I won't leave you," she promised. She felt a slow flush rising. He hadn't asked her not to. He hadn't asked anything of her. She pushed that away to be considered later, with the anger. He might not have asked her in words, but Jake Kenyon had told her that he wanted her. That he needed her. "You'll have to tie me up and ship me off to get me out of your life now, Jake."

A slow smile warmed his scarred face. "Thank God."

Yes. He wanted her. Forever? He hadn't said, he might not yet know, but to Megan it felt like forever. Had, she realized now, felt like forever from the moment she saw his hand reaching for hers in a roomful of uniformed men.

It had been too long for her: a lifetime of emptiness, loneliness, and unexplained longing. She lifted her hand to Jake's neck and urged him down to her.

"I thought this was never going to happen," he murmured against her throat. "That I would never know your sweetness or your passion."

He would never sleep beside her, that she knew.

Part of Megan wanted to hold on to that thought, to explore it, even to share it with Jake. Another part of her recognized that it came from another time in her life, a time she could not allow to intrude in the now of her and Jake and this moment.

"Shh," she whispered, rising to meet him. "Love me, Jake. It's been so long. Too long." Her words, like her earlier thought, cried for exploration, cried for understanding, but she could not give them that. Not now. "Please, just love me."

 
Where is he? He promised never to leave me to face danger alone again, and now he's gone. Gone to confront Daniel Tanner in a vain attempt to reconcile us when I need him here! Here with me. That's not a raccoon outside, that is a human being.

He's dead. Oh, God, he's dead. Dead because of Daniel Tanner's vanity and my fear.

Dead. And whoever is outside the cabin knows that, knows that without Sam I am defenseless. I don't know. I swear to God I don't know where the gold is. Sam? Sam, I need you. Oh, God, Sam, I am so sorry.

 

When Megan awoke again, the room was dark, lighted only by a spear of light from the hallway. She smelled the aroma of coffee before she heard his footstep and before she felt the bed shift as Jake sat beside her.

She scooted up against the headboard and into the curve of his arm, taking the sheet with her to cover herself, unsure of the etiquette involved in morning after—evening after—encounters. Stop it! she told herself as her insecurities started to spin out of control. This was Jake. And they had just spent magical hours together.

He'd pulled on a pair of jeans but remained shirtless, leaving his scarred chest and back exposed and vulnerable. That, more than anything he could have said, convinced Megan that their emotional closeness had not dissolved with their physical parting. She smiled and took the coffee cup he held out for her.

"We have to talk," he said.

Yes, they did. About many things. Too many things?

"Do you have a dartboard?" she asked. "We could pin topics on various parts and toss to see where we start."

Jake shook his head, and in the shadows Megan saw his jaw tense.

"The first topic has to be your safety, Megan."

"And yours."

She might as well not have spoken.

"Physical and emotional," he said. "I want you to promise me you won't work in the notebook again. At least for a while."

"Why?"

"Because you couldn't get out of it today. You admitted it, but you didn't have to. I called your name several times before I finally shook you."

"But nothing would have happened. Eventually I would have finished the entry."

"What if someone had been breaking in the house or sneaking up on you? Would you have been aware of that any more than you were aware of me? It isn't safe right now." He gave a short bitter laugh. "Later we'll discuss whether it ever will be safe."

"All right," she said.

"Just like that?" he asked.

"I don't like it, but I'm not an unreasonable person. You have a valid point."

He lifted the cup from her hand and set it on the night table, then turned her in his arms, holding her loosely against his chest while he rested his chin on her head. "I have to keep you safe. You know that don't you?"

You were frightened, and I was not there to prevent it. I want the right to be there.

Again her memory of other words and another time tried to intrude. Again she pushed it away. "Yes."

"And that I would never willingly hurt you?"

I'll never hurt you. No one will ever hurt you again.

"Yes."

He let out a tension-laden breath and turned her to lie against his shoulder. "Good."

"Why does that sound as though you're going to say something I won't like?" she asked.

"Probably because you won't. We need to get you out of here, to someplace safe, and the safest place I can think of is your father's place in Washington."

"You're right," she said, knowing where some of his tension had gone; it had come to her. "I don't like that plan at all. Especially if you're going to stay here and play hotshot."

"Megan—"

"What if the plan all along has just been to scare me away?" she asked.

"From what?"

It made no sense, but nothing else did, so Megan threw it out for his consideration. "What if someone has stumbled over the old story of the army gold and believes it. What if that same someone wants me off my property to have the freedom to search for it?"

"Whoever would do that would have to be—"

"Around the bend," she finished for him. "Completely unpredictable to anyone trying to find him. Completely unpredictable if confronted. So if I leave, you leave. We let whoever it is dig up the property until this whole area looks like moon craters, and then we come back together."

"That's a completely unreasonable solution," he said.

"I know. The alternative is that we both stay here and catch this nut. Together."

Jake's arm tightened on her shoulder. He didn't like this idea, but she'd known he wouldn't. "This person has gone beyond eccentric treasure hunter, Megan," he said. "He proved yesterday, if not before, that he is dangerous. And what if he's not after the army payroll? Then what?"

"Then let's look at it. Maybe the two of us, talking about it, can drag up some minuscule little item that might make sense of the whole."

"Maybe," He hugged her tight before reaching for the coffee, taking a sip, and handing it to her. "Okay," he said. "We have the nighttime intrusions onto the property: mine too, but mostly yours."

"Right," she said. "The phone call, the vandalism to my bedroom, and the attack yesterday."

"Max Renfro," he added, "dead in a suspicious hit-and-run before Rolley P executed the search warrant." Jake paused, and Megan knew he had decided to reveal another piece in their shattered puzzle. "And a stranger at Sarah North's store this weekend who might be tied to Renfro."

She digested this news quietly for a moment before adding a piece he would deny but that she knew belonged. "And Sam and Lydia."

"Megan, if we're going to add those two, we might as well throw the attacks on the clinic and on me into the pot and—oh, my God!"

"What? What, Jake?"

He took the cup from her and turned until he was looking into her eyes. His face wore a look of such self-derision it hurt to see it.

"What is it?" she asked in a whisper.

"You told me. You told me the first morning we had breakfast, and I paid absolutely no attention to your words."

"I told you what?"

"You told me Helen and Roger knew the army officer in charge of the attack on the clinic, and he knew them. How? Why would a middle-ranking officer in a tiny little country know Roger and Helen? Why would Roger take one look at him, say 'You,' and know he was going to die? Your words, Megan. Remember?"

Not knowing where he was taking this, not knowing how to react to the intensity now thrumming through him, Megan could only nod. Those had been her words; that had been what happened.

"Carry this a little further, Megan. Why would Roger and Helen, who above all loved their creature comforts, ever have gone to Villa Castellano? Did it make any more sense to you than it did to me?

"And why, considering how much your place is worth even at raw land and mineral prices, did they turn a valuable piece of property into nothing more than a cheap rental for a two-bit drug dealer?"

"Okay," she said warily. "Why?"

"Access, Megan. Access to the privacy of the mountains behind us and the road in front of us. Perfect for that damned pipeline that was starting up before—"

"Wait!" Megan grasped Jake's arm and tried to shake him. "Wait! Are you saying Roger and Helen, my husband and your wife, were involved in some sort of international drug ring? Oh, Jake. Listen to how improbable that is. They didn't need the money. Why on earth would they do that?"

"What did the man say to you yesterday, Megan? 'He told you where it is. I knew he would. And now you're going to tell him.' Who did he mean? Not Sam Hooker or Tyndall Puckett. He'd been watching you and me, so not me. Who, Megan? Who else but your husband? God, I never liked him, and I hate to put this on him. But if not this, what?"

"What are they after, Jake? What would Roger have told me about?"

He looked at her. In his eyes she saw sadness, regret, and above all, a surety that she couldn't doubt and he could no longer deny. "About the location of the drop that went bad the night I was shot."

And now she knew why he wanted to deny it. It was unconscionable, unthinkable. "That too? But wasn't that on Witcher Mountain?"

He nodded. "Two miles away. At least that's where I interrupted it. But I don't know where the contacts went after I was shot, and, as you said yesterday, what's a ridge or two in country like this?"

He closed his eyes, masking his thoughts from her. "Parallels," he said. "Mattie told me to look for them. But, God, this is unbelievable, even for a paranoid like me. There's got to be another answer."

Megan looked away from his bowed head toward the darkness outside the window, looked and tensed. "Then you'd better find one in a hurry," she told him, "because there are lights on the ridge."

 

Back | Next
Framed