Dark Paradise (65 page)

else. If someone asked her to compromise now, she thought she would

probably just haul off and punch that person in the mouth.

You're nothing but a hypocrite, Rafferty. You sit up on your big horse

on your precious mountain and pontificate about integrity and personal

accountability. Look in a mirror. I'd say you're about a quart low

on both."

J.D. said nothing. He stood on the deck and watched her go in. A few

minutes later, her Honda started up on the other side of the house and

gravel crunched and popped beneath the tires as she drove out of the

yard.

He told himself it didn't matter. He shouldn't care. It was all for the

best. He had more important things to worry about. He didn't need a

woman in his life, wouldn't let this one in his heart.

An empty ache throbbed in his chest.

Never been a liar, J.D.?

You lying dog.

Samantha lay in the center of the kingsize bed, staring up at the

ceiling, listening for night sounds. There weren't any. Not like there

was in her house in town. No dogs barking. No late traffic from the

patrons of the Hell and Gone on their way home. No grinding groan from

her dinosaur of a refrigerator as it edged its way toward extinction. No

ringing in her ears from straining to hear Will come in when she knew in

her heart that he would not.

Oh, Will. What happens now?

The decision had already been made, she supposed.

Will had made his feelings clear, and she had taken her first step away

from him. A giant step. Onto shaky ground. Her heart beat at the base of

her throat while she waited to take a long fall.

Bryce had made love to her. It seemed like a dream, but she knew it

wasn't. Her body hummed with the aftereffects.

He had told her he loved her.

She should have felt . . . something. Happy. Relieved. Excited.

Vindicated. But she mostly felt numb. She was a naive stranger in

uncharted territory. She didn't know what was expected of her or what to

expect of anyone else.

Bryce had slipped from the bed as she slept. She wondered now where he

was, wondered what he might be thinking. Probably that she was an

inexperienced girl and not very good in bed. If she had been good in

bed, Will would never have left her.

Sighing, her heart weighing heavy in her chest, she sat up and propped

herself against the headboard. There was a stem of purple snapdragons on

the empty pillow where Bryce's head should have been. Beneath the flower

he had tucked a note. She opened it and read it by the soft light of the

lamp on the nightstand.

Samantha, I knew you would want some time to think. Please don't feel

guilty. We followed our hearts; they are seldom wrong.

Bryce

Her heart had steered her wrong more than once. Into Will's arms. To the

altar with a man who had no business being married. She no longer

trusted it. She held her breath now and tried to listen to what it might

tell her, but all she heard was the low buzz of the clock-radio on the

nightstand.

Too tense to be still, she slipped out of bed and into the jeans and

T-shirt that had been discarded. Barefoot, she padded across the thick

carpet and stood staring out the window. The pool lights had been

switched off. A thin sliver of moon turned the water to liquid pewter.

A memory surfaced, sweet and painful. Will grinning at her with a wicked

gleam in his eyes. A pool behind a house in Reno. They were on their

honeymoon - two whole days of unbridled lust. They had blown all their

cash but three dollars and ninety-seven cents playing slots and keno.

Will had finagled a room for their wedding night in the Biggest Little

Honeymoon Motel as a part of the package deal with the Biggest Little

Wedding Chapel, but they had no money for a second night and Will's

MasterCard privileges had been revoked.

Knowing they would be spending the night on the air mattress in the back

of Will's pickup, they had gone driving in search of a scenic, private

parking spot. The night was hot. Samantha had longingly wished for a dip

in a swimming pool. Then there was the pool-shaped like a peanut,

shimmering under the moonlight behind a low-built brick house.

"We'll get caught," she whispered, barely able to contain her

excitement. The high of becoming Mrs. Will Rafferty made her dizzy. The

prospect of doing something forbidden compounded the sensation.

Giggling and shushing each other under their breath, they stripped their

clothes off in the shadows along the garage and slipped carefully into

the cool water. After their swim they lay in the back of the truck and

named the stars and made slow, sweet love.

Tears slipped over Samantha's lashes and rolled down her cheeks as she

brought herself back to the present.

Loss clenched inside her like a fist. At that moment she would have

given anything to have him back. Why did it have to be so hard?
 
Why

couldn't she be what he needed?
 
Why couldn't he love her as much as she

loved him?

She still loved him. The knowledge didn't make her feel anything but

despair. She loved a man who didn't want her, and had given herself to

a man she didn't love.

There was a word for that, but she couldn't think what it was. Bryce

would know, she thought, moving away from the window, but she couldn't

ask him.

Her thoughts chased each other around in her brain until she wanted to

shake them all out. What should she do, what should she say to Bryce?

Did she go on as a hopeless, stupid kid, waiting for Will to come back

to her, or did she take that step into a new world as an adult and start

working on a new life?

The room seemed to press in on her. The questions and recriminations

swirled faster inside her head. Careful not to make any noise, she

slipped out into the hall and crept downstairs and out the French doors

to the terrace. She avoided looking at the pool, going instead to the

low stone wall that edged the area, where she climbed up and swung her

legs over.

Below her, the ground fell away in a steep, rockstrewn, tree-studded

slope, down and down to the valley, where fog crept off the creek and

seeped outward. The air was cool and thick with damp, and Samantha

shivered and wrapped her arms around herself, glad for the distraction.

Far to the west she could make out the dark ridge of the next range, the

snow on the peaks like a strip of white lace in the thin moonlight.

She sat there for a long time. Not thinking. Not deciding. Just sitting

and absorbing the still of the wilderness.

The sensation of being watched crept up on her from behind slowly,

touching like fingertips between her shoulder blades. Then the fingers

trailed lightly up her spine to the base of her neck, and she twisted

around on the wall so quickly that she nearly slipped off.

There was no one on the terrace. The chairs were empty. The lounges

where Uma and Fabian had sunned themselves had been stripped of their

beach towels and lined neatly three feet back from the pool. A soft

breeze toyed with the umbrellas tilted above the tables, but nothing

else moved. No eyes glowed in the night. She looked up at the house,

expecting to see someone staring out at her from one of the windows. But

the windows were vacant.

Must have imagined it. Probably wanted it to be Will.

Stupid kid. He's never coming back to you. You shouldn't want him to.

She slipped off the wall and let herself out through a side gate,

thinking she would walk down to the stables, but the sensation followed

her, hovered around her shoulders like a swarm of gnats. Up in the

towering pines that grew thick around the edge of the grounds, a barred

owl let out a series of low, rhythmic hoots - who cooks for you . . . who

cooks for you . . .

The sound skimmed over her flesh like a clammy hand.

Superstitions from childhood floated up from the depths of her mind.

Owls were bad luck, bringers of omens, the familiars of evil spirits.

Her Cheyenne grandfather, whom she remembered only as a stooped, gnarled

man with a face like tree bark and the sour stink of liquor on his

breath, had told her and her brother Mike that owls brought news of

death.

Silly. Why should she think of death?
 
But the night seemed suddenly too

still around her, and the air seemed suddenly too thick to breathe. The

stables loomed dark too far down the path and the trees closed in all

around.

Fear rose like a scream up the back of her throat. For a moment she

hesitated, hovered between logic and instinct. Then everything seemed to

happen at once and in super-slow motion.

A dark figure stepped out of the shadows as Samantha wheeled back toward

the house. A figure without features, without gender, clad in black with

a mask and gloves. The sight drove terror into her chest like the blade

of a knife. Samantha opened her mouth to scream, but the sound was

caught and snuffed out as a black bag descended over her face and was

pulled tight by a drawstring around her throat. She lashed out wildly

with her fists, with her feet, but the sudden and total darkness robbed

her of her equilibrium and she staggered and fell.

Crushed rock bit into her palms and elbows and knees as she hit the

ground. She scrambled to stand, but her assailant beat her back down

with something that felt like a baseball bat. The blows landed over and

over on her back, on her sides, on her arms. She tried frantically to

crawl out of the path of the club, but the ground sloped sharply down

and she fell and skidded face first, the rocks tearing at her cheek and

chin through the rough fabric of the hood.

Questions pulsed like a strobe light through her brain as she lay there.

Who?
 
Why?
 
What would become of her?
 
Would anybody care?
 
Tears

pressed like fists behind her eyes and leaked out to soak into the hood.

She wanted to sob, to wail out the pain and the terror that was choking

her, but the hood was suffocating her and it was all she could do to

draw in enough air to breathe.

The drawstring tightened around her throat, pulling her head up, hanging

her. Driven by self-preservation, Samantha clawed at the hood. She got

her feet back under her and surged upward, tearing at the string with

one hand, lashing out at her attacker with the other. The heel of her

hand connected with bone and she heard a grunt of pain and surprise.

Then she was trying to run and pull the hood off all at once, and the

world, the night, tilted crazily around her, everything a blur of black

and white. Her legs pumped, her arms swung wildly, but she seemed to go

nowhere.

As in a nightmare, the house looked farther and farther away. Her heart

beat wildly, drowning out everything but the scrape of boots on gravel

behind her.

She glanced back over her shoulder just as the bat swung forward. The

pain was a brilliant orange and red explosion inside her head. Then

everything went black, as if the plug had been pulled, and the world

ceased to exist as the barred owl called.

Marilee walked the streets of New Eden in the predawn gray. Fog shrouded

the buildings and houses, casting everything in an indistinct haze, like

a half-forgotten memory. Somehow the old buildings looked older, the old

businesses obsolete. Quaint traditions hanging on as progress overtook

them. Sweet and sad. Lockhart's Ladies' Shop with its window display of

polyester pant suits next door to the trendy Latigo Boutique. The shabby

old Rexa drugstore with its original soda fountain and special on

Geritol standing shoulder to shoulder with Mountain Man Bike and

Athletic. Monroe Feed and Read combination feed store/bookstore, its