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Chapter 18

"Do you hear us, Jake?" Megan asked. "We're talking about them as though they are real persons."

"Aren't they? Didn't Mattie know their story? Even Sarah knows part of it."

No. This was definitely not the reaction she had expected from him. She felt a small bubble of hysteria rising in her. Jake's warmth and protection surrounding her were her only weapons in fighting it down.

"So what are they, ghosts?" he asked softly. "Have you, and I too, managed to tap into some unhappy spirits lingering near the old homeplace?"

She wasn't the only one having problems with the chaos a few pictures and a notebook had brought to their world. She heard it in Jake's attempt at humor; she felt it in a tremor of his arms.

"Not ghosts," she said. "Mattie's grandfather was still alive the first time she saw them."

He held her pressed so close to him she felt him swallow and draw in another breath. "What then?"

"To go and to have gone are the same in Choctaw," Megan said, repeating Mattie's words. "Do you suppose that what appears to be happening is only the lingering remains of some really strong memories? Or is it possible that somewhere, somehow, what we have seen is still—is just happening?"

He didn't tighten his arms around her; he didn't loosen them. Still, she felt Jake's resistance to that suggestion. "And somewhere in the future," he asked carefully, "a hundred years or so from now, someone walking in the woods or the housing development or whatever happens to this piece of real estate by then will see us as we are now and be scared out of their minds by a couple of ghosts?"

"Or not," she said. "Maybe by then what's happening will be so well understood that no one would be frightened. Or maybe someone would really have to be tuned to us to see us. And maybe only the images of the pivotal points, the times when changes could have been made in someone's life linger."

"And this isn't one of those pivotal points?" he asked.

"Is it?" she whispered.

Slowly he turned her in his arms and cradled her face in his hands. "I think, Megan McIntyre, that everything that has happened since I met you has been a pivotal point."

What she wanted to do was take the one step that would erase the distance that now separated them. What she wanted to do was lift her hands to the back of his head and tug him down as she raised to meet him. What she wanted to do was stay lost in the longing and desire she saw in his eyes.

"I think—" Jake's voice, thickened by the emotions she saw in his eyes, faded. "I think," he said, straightening infinitesimally away from her, "that we had better get out of this house before we give some next-century voyeur a more personal glimpse into our lives than we're ready to share."

Megan didn't move, even though she knew she should; she couldn't move. Not away from Jake, not now. Because this was a pivotal point. When had she fallen in love with Jake Kenyon? The first night he rescued her, the second, or any of the many other times?

And was it love or a reaction to the emotional overload she had been feeling since he stormed into her living room and took her hand and refused to let her succumb to terror?

Jake didn't move either. "Megan, I need a little help with this nobility business," he said hoarsely.

Yes. That was the right word. Jake might be attempting to tease them out of a tense moment, but there was—had been since the beginning—a certain nobility in his actions. Like Sam with Lydia.

You and Sarah have Megan half in love with Sam Hooker.

The memory of Jake's earlier words returned to taunt her. Was she half in love with Sam? Was that coloring what she was feeling for Jake? Was that why she was feeling for him something so strong she had nothing with which to compare it?

"Megan?"

"Yes," she said, twisting away from him and the confusion she now saw in his eyes. "Perhaps we should get out of the house. . . ."

They walked.

Jake spoiled the idyllic picture of two people out for a leisurely stroll with their dog by strapping on a black leather holster containing a twin of the pistol he had given her.

"For bear?" Megan asked dryly.

"Varmints," he answered, equally dry.

And he was right to take it, Megan knew. This was another truth of their life they couldn't ignore any more than they could ignore the truth they tried to leave in the cabin.

They walked past the barn and corral without stopping. Perhaps remembering a terrified Lydia and her journey by horseback, perhaps wondering if Megan had somehow tapped into that years ago and miles away, as Megan wondered, Jake didn't again suggest they ride.

They crested the ridge where Megan had parked, waiting for Jake the day before, and plunged into the wooded hillside. For a while they seemed to be following some sort of animal trail, but within minutes Megan had lost sight of it and knew that without Jake to guide her back to the ridge she would be hopelessly lost.

They came to a small clearing and paused, and Megan looked out over the ridges and hollows spread out before her.

"I can almost see how Mark Henderson made his mistake," she said.

Jake leaned against a nearby tree and offered her the plastic canteen of water. "What mistake?"

She shook her head at the offer of water. "It's inexcusable, I know, because it was his job to know where he was. And the repercussions were almost fatal. But out here, one ridge really does look pretty much like another. What's one ridge in country like this? I'm not sure I wouldn't find myself one or two or even more ridges away from where I was supposed to be. Especially at night."

Jake grimaced and hooked he canteen onto his belt.

"Where were you?" she asked.

Sighing, he walked to her side and reached around her, pointing to a shadowed peak. "About halfway down on the west side of Witcher Mountain."

"So close," she murmured.

"No. Not really."

"And Henderson? Where was he when you needed the cavalry?"

Jake turned slightly, turning her with him, and pointed to a peak more east than south. "There."

More than one or two ridges separated the two peaks. More than a simple mistake had kept help from Jake's side. Megan felt it; she knew Jake must too.

She resisted the desire to lean back against him. Instead, she turned. "I'm sorry, Jake. I know how betrayal feels."

"Yeah," he said. "I know you do."

"But why?" she asked. "Surely he had to know he'd be accused of something, if no more than incompetence."

Jake shook his head. "By the time I was able to start making accusations, Rolley P had been acquitted. He'd gathered his supporters and gotten himself reinstated almost as soon as the word got out that I was going to be out of commission for a good long while. Having just gone through the expense of one grand jury investigation, the county wasn't willing to begin another. Ultimately, Rolley P was the one who investigated Mark's action and found him blameless. He's also the one who hasn't been able to learn anything about the death of my informant or any more about who had been making the drop."

"Drop? You interrupted an actual transaction?"

"Yeah. Or who the gunmen were or where they went after using me for target practice."

"Have you been back to the location to see if you can find anything?"

He shook his head. "No. There are some logging roads that would get me pretty close. Now that I'm able to ride, or have my bones shaken the way they would be in a four-wheel drive, I've thought about going. But it's been months. The chances of finding anything, even the exact location, are pretty much nonexistent."

Without the need for words, Megan fell in beside Jake and they started walking again. And while it might seem like aimless wandering to her, she suspected Jake had a destination or a reason for the generally uphill direction they took.

"I was going to divorce Helen," he said, shattering the quiet mood and startling Megan so that she stumbled. He grabbed her arm, steadied her, and then released her.

"We had talked about it for months, had even come to a tentative settlement agreement. When I woke up in the hospital and found her there, I asked her to go ahead and get the paperwork started. She refused, and for a while, at least until I floated back into consciousness the next day, I thought it was because some remnant of our marriage still remained. Foolish me."

"Jake, you don't have to—"

"Yes, I do. If there's ever going to be anything between the two of us, I have to say it and you have to hear it. The reason she wouldn't go ahead with the divorce at that time had nothing to do with commitment or vows or even the residue of a dead emotion. It wouldn't have been the politically correct thing to do: for her and, by association, for her brother.

"I'm sorry, Megan," he said. "But I didn't care much for Roger Hudson. I blamed him and his manipulations for a lot of the problems in my marriage. It wasn't until the end that I realized that Helen was just as manipulative, just as ambitious, and just as selfish as I had always thought him to be."

Oh, God, she thought. Truth time.

"He was," she said softly.

"What?"

"Roger," she said. "He was manipulative, ambitious, and selfish."

He dropped his hand to her shoulder, touching her again, giving her the needed warmth of contact with him, perhaps needing it himself.

"Somehow I hoped you hadn't realized that," he said.

"It was pretty hard not to after he told me on our wedding day exactly why he had married me."

"God," Jake muttered. "And you stayed in the marriage?"

She had been over this many times in her mind and still couldn't justify why she had allowed herself to be used by Roger for so long, why she had thought herself unworthy of anything more than his neglect and casual abuse, so she took refuge in lashing out. "So did you. Why? Vows, commitment, honor? All of the above or none of it? I had the added benefit of a politically powerful father who convinced me his reelection depended on having a squeaky clean family life, or at least the appearance of one."

He silenced her by the simple but effective means of hauling her into his arms and pressing her face to his chest. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so sorry."

Yes. He was. Megan felt compassion in the way he cradled her to him. Compassion and a return of the darker, more intense emotions that had driven them from the house.

And she was sorry too.

What she wouldn't give to have met this man unencumbered by all the mistakes and disappointments of her past, all the emotional trauma and confusion she had endured and was still enduring. All the self-doubt that seemed to be ingrained. All the history she had of not admitting her emotions, her needs, her desires.

What she wouldn't give to be able to respond freely to what she thought she felt coming from him.

Instead, she pulled away from him, attempting to break their fragile contact, but succeeding only in stepping back, still captured by his hands on her arms. "So am I," she said. "Very sorry. But we all make choices, Jake. And we all have to live with the choices we have made."

"Maybe," he said, looking down into her eyes. "But maybe, just maybe, some of us get another chance."

Maybe they did. Megan smiled tentatively at him. This time, when she stepped away, he let her go.

 

Little remained among the trees and underbrush to mark what had once been a homesite: a few tumbled rocks from an ancient chimney, a few almost petrified posts from a long-ago rotted fence, a surprising cluster of iris and jonquils and old-fashioned day lilies near what must once have been a front stoop.

"Oh." Megan heard her own reluctant moan when Jake stopped beside the unexpected plants with their dead and drying flower stalks.

"Their cabin, do you suppose?" Jake asked. "It's old. A lot older than any of the other ruins I've found on either of our places."

"I don't know," Megan said as she fought a strange reluctance to approach what surely was no more than a pleasant woodland scene. "From what Mattie said, I thought they must have lived closer to your house."

"Actually, it is," Jake told her. "I've pulled a Deacon on you." He pointed toward an area of the woods behind what would have been the back of the cabin. "There's what once appeared to be the remains of a path leading up to a spot behind my barn. A rock slide has partially blocked it. That's why I brought you around the long way. It's maybe half the distance from my house than yours is."

"Far enough away for privacy; close enough for Granny Rogers to help with Lydia when her fears became too much for her to handle alone or for Sam to cope with," Megan murmured.

"Yeah." He frowned at the spot where the cabin had once stood, squared his shoulders almost as if he were preparing to do battle, and reached for her hand.

Surprised at his actions, Megan slid her hand into his and felt his fingers close securely around her fingers. He tugged on her hand and led her into what would have been the largest, if not the only, room in the cabin.

"No," she moaned as the chill slid over her. "Oh, no. No, please."

She jerked her hand, trying to free herself from Jake's grip, but he refused to let her go.

"Get out of here." Megan had no idea where the words were coming from, only that they must be said. "Please, Jake. You have to leave. Now!"

He didn't bother to lead her out or let her go. He picked her up and carried her from the cabin site and the miasma that filled it to a fallen tree and sat rocking her until her tremors faded, until embarrassment and confusion rose up to battle but not defeat the fear, the threat she felt still coming from the peaceful-looking scene in front of her.

"I don't know what that was," she said at last. "I'd hide it if I could; I'd deny it if I could. Apparently I can't do either."

"Fear?" he asked gently.

Megan shook her head. "More than fear. It was—"

"More than fear?"

"Hey, give me a break," she said, attempting humor, anything to dispel the black cloud that still seemed to hover over her and within her. "I know fear."

"Yes," he said, but he didn't smile. "You do."

"And this was—do you believe in instincts, Jake?"

"Yes." He drew a deep breath and settled her closer to him as he rested his cheek against hers. "And I've learned to trust them. They've saved my life more than once."

"That was what this felt like. Like a huge powerful warning, pushing me—pushing you—out of there, before something too horrible to believe happened. Maybe it wasn't their place after all," she offered.

"Twenty-five years ago," Jake said reflectively, softly, "there were still signs of the remains of a barn or shed nearby. I kept digging up pieces of metal and taking them home for my father to identify, which he did. They were the rusted and broken parts of a sawmill and the steam engine that powered it. That wasn't too unusual, I learned later. These hills had been dotted with them before the easy accessibility of commercial lumber. But it was what first got me interested in working with wood, as well as exploring these hills.

"My dad gave up on keeping me at home, so he came down and filled in the old well to make me a marginally safe place to explore. I never liked the place where the cabin had been; not because of any threat but because it seemed, even when I was what?—six, seven?—an incredibly sad place. It still does."

"You didn't feel it?" Megan asked. "You got me out of there so fast, I thought you must have."

"Megan, I saw what something was doing to you, that's all."

"That's all?" For a moment the terror of a moment before was forgotten as she reveled in his admission. "That's pretty remarkable, Jake Kenyon."

He shook his head. "Anyone would have—"

"No. No one has seen what I needed or done what I needed, with or without my asking, ever before. Just you."

"Megan. Oh, Megan."

She felt the tremor back in his arms, felt the tension tightening his body.

"I know it's too soon," he said. "I know you're stressed out and I'm taking unfair advantage of you. But I want to love you. I want to make love to you until neither one of us can remember anything but each other. I want to make love to you until Sam and Lydia and Roger and Helen and Rolley P and that son of a bitch on the telephone this morning don't exist for either of us."

"Yes," Megan admitted, to him and herself. "Yes. I want that too. But not here. Of all the places we could be, not here. Please, Jake."

"And not now," he said.

She heard resignation in his voice as he stood and released her to stand beside him. Resignation as though she had rejected him, not just the location. Resignation as though he had heard that rejection so many times he had grown to expect it. The same resignation Lydia felt when she admitted that Sam would never share her lonely bed.

Jake remained silent for a moment, as though waiting for her to confirm that rejection. She wouldn't. But Megan realized she couldn't deny it either.

"Let's get you back to the house," he said finally. "You must be tired."

She wanted to tell him it was her head that had been battered, not her body, but she realized that his body had been battered, and worse, and if anyone had a right to be tired after their day's—several days'—activities, Jake did.

"Yes," she said, casting one last glance around the ruins of someone's dream. "Let's go."

Back at the house, Jake insisted she nap. She didn't want to, but she suspected it was the only way he'd feel free to rest himself. She took Lydia's journal into the guest bedroom with her, but she didn't open it. When she tried, she found she'd grieved for Lydia all she could bear for a while. Later she would have to return to her; there were too many questions unanswered. But now, in her own life, there were also too many questions unanswered, and she had to try to make sense of one of them: of how—without Lydia, without Sam, without the drama of the last four days—she really felt about Jake.

 

At last the soft rustling and noises from the guest bedroom stopped. Jake stepped to the partially open door and looked in. In spite of her protests, Megan had fallen asleep. She lay on her side with one hand curled on the pillow near her cheek. While he watched, she twisted in her sleep, drawing the other pillow to her side and wrapping an arm around it.

He could be there with her. With only a few words—or lack of them—he could have brought her back to his house and in minutes have persuaded her that, yes, she really did want him. That, yes, making love was the right and natural thing for them to do and not merely another way for her to defend against her fears, her pain, and, he now knew, her insecurities.

Even if he hadn't done that, he could still be with her. If he went to her now, if he slid into the bed, she would welcome him. He knew that. Why couldn't he accept that she really wanted him?

And why didn't he just get the hell out of the house before he did what he really wanted and wound up hating himself?

 

Megan awoke in an empty house. No one answered her tentative greeting when she left her room: not Jake, not Deacon.

Her eyes felt grainy, her head throbbed, and she felt groggy and disoriented from a sleep that had been both too deep and too brief.

She found coffee, lukewarm but drinkable, in Jake's temperamental pot on the stove, but no note telling her where he had gone. A glance out the back door confirmed that both his vehicles were there. He must have brought the Jeep home when he and Patrick returned.

The horses? She couldn't see the corral from the kitchen, but she realized that leaving her alone without a word, especially after the threatening call she had received, was completely out of character for Jake Kenyon.

Had something happened to him?

And then through the open window she heard the whine of one of his power tools and relaxed against the counter, nursing her coffee and her headache and the residue of the emotions she had tapped into at the cabin site.

Whose emotions? In spite of all the new knowledge Mattie had brought her, Megan still couldn't let go of the nagging suspicion they were her emotions. She'd just shared with Jake something she'd sworn never to reveal to a living soul; she'd just felt things with him she'd thought herself incapable of feeling. And wham! Up pops a psychic wave of fear and threat and, yes, guilt, overwhelming her, holding her powerless in its grip, as she had been powerless so many times in her life.

The last thing Megan wanted to do was ever again set foot within the perimeter of that cabin, maybe Lydia's, maybe someone else's.

She closed her eyes, and all the emotions that had swarmed over her at the cabin came flooding back, pressing in on her, pushing to get out of her.

God! She couldn't go back there.

And that was why she had to go back.

Quickly, before she lost her nerve, she set her coffee cup on the countertop, found her hiking boots where she had dropped them earlier, stuffed her feet into them, and stepped out the back door. Jake had brought her home by the most direct route, up the hill, past the rock slide, and into his clearing from behind the barn, so she knew the way back.

She ought to tell Jake where she was going; he'd be furious when he found out she'd gone wandering without him. If he found out. She planned to be gone only a matter of minutes. If she told him where she was going, he'd either try to talk her out of it or insist on going with her.

She glanced toward Jake's workshop when she reached the corral. The power equipment had fallen silent. Was he finishing his task? Or had he begun more of the fine handwork she had finally recognized as his: in the bench under the arbor, in the fireplace mantel of his house, in the trim and cabinets in his kitchen, and in numerous projects in the workshop?

He deserved this time alone with his work, she told herself as she rounded the barn; he'd had little enough of it since she'd been thrust into his life. She knew her thoughts were an attempt at justifying her actions—knew and couldn't help it. She had to make this trip; she had to make it alone; and, God help her, she had to make it now.

She realized just how long her nap must have been when she stepped into the woods and saw the long shadows the trees cast and how dimly the sunlight penetrated the deeper woods. It would be all right, she told herself. Just a few minutes' walk down the hill—and a few minutes at the cabin. She'd be back long before dark, long before any danger of getting turned around in the trees.

She was into it before she knew it: a peaceful glen softened by the shadows of what had in the moment she first entered the woods seemed late afternoon and now appeared to be early evening.

She found nothing ominous here, nothing frightening. But then, she was still outside the cabin, not in it.

Megan walked around the perimeter as outlined by the iris and jonquils to the flat stone that must have served as a stoop. She stopped there, reluctant to go farther, knowing that for her own peace of mind she must.

The birds still sang and made little scrabbling noises as they hunted in the dry fallen leaves beneath the encircling trees. A breeze soughed through the glen, rustling the leaves above and the faded flower stalks of the vestiges of the flower garden.

A vision would be nice about now, she thought, with a flash of wry humor: a nice clear vision to explain what she had felt earlier and why. Or maybe not. The feeling had been too intense to have been generated by anything that could be depicted in a "nice clear" vision.

Steeling herself, Megan stepped across the stoop and into grass-covered memories. Nothing assaulted her; she felt only the yearning of what she had once thought an inexplicable sorrow. Oh, yes. Jake's impression of an incredibly sad place was right on target with what she felt here now, with what she had felt too often in the last few days.

But why, then—she curtailed her musing, suddenly sure she would find no answers here—maybe not even, as Mattie had suggested earlier, the right questions—just a repeat of the ones she had already considered.

Her emotions, or Lydia's?

Her fear, or Lydia's?

But what part did Jake have in what had happened earlier? She had felt strongly that he had been as threatened as she.

By what?

Jake? Or Sam?

Choking back a sob at that unwanted intrusion, Megan whirled and stepped back over the stoop. No answers, not a one.

In the past few minutes, the shadows had grown threateningly long. Megan glanced up at the scraps of sky visible between the trees. "Oh, lord," she murmured. "Jake's got to know I'm gone by now." He'd be worried, she knew; probably he'd be searching for her.

Worried, not angry. Well, maybe angry too, but justifiably.

And searching, not condemning.

Those two contrasts caught Megan by surprise, slowing her steps and opening a familiar but never truly explored line of thought. Well, well, she thought. She'd gotten answers after all. Not answers for which she had been consciously searching but answers she needed as much as she now needed the rapidly fading light.

Jake wasn't Roger Hudson. She'd known that on one level, but on another she supposed she'd thought all men must be like him—or that she would react to all men as she had reacted to Roger. But if she'd learned anything in these past three months it was that she was strong, a hell of a lot stronger than anyone, including herself, had ever given her credit for being.

Strong enough for Jake.

Strong enough to stand up to him. And to stand beside him.

Strong enough to tell him how much she wanted him.

Strong enough to choose the living, breathing, caring man over the romantic—yet ultimately harmless to her—long-dead Sam Hooker.

"Yes." she whispered exuberantly. She grinned. She was strong enough to face his fury that she had gone out on her own, because she now knew him well enough to understand that his worry might well take that form of expression.

She was concentrating so hard on the rough trail in the fading light, thinking so deeply of Jake and his concern, and anticipating what she would say to him later about her return trip to the cabin and the epiphany she had experienced that she had no idea anyone else was within miles of Jake's sanctuary—until she reached the crest of the ridge and saw the rooflines of that sanctuary through the trees.

Until a rough hand clamped itself over her mouth.

Megan fought a soul-blackening moment of déjà vu as she felt herself being dragged backward into the trees. She struggled for breath; she struggled to scream; she dragged her feet and grabbed for branches to cling to and then fought and kicked.

And still whoever held her pulled her backward. Pulled her from safety. Pulled her into the nightmare.

"You know, don't you?"

She heard the harsh whispered words, but they made no sense.

"He told you. I said all along he did. And now you're going to tell him. Or have you already? I watched you today, pointing and talking.

"Well, he won't get it. It's mine. And you, bitch, are going to show me where it is. Now!"

 

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