Deep in the Heart (16 page)

More than once her eyes had strayed to the kitchen clock over the sink as she prayed for five o’clock to come. But when it had come and gone with no sign of Johnny, it had taken some of her bravado with it.

A sudden fear surfaced. What if the stalker had decided to take out part of his anger on the man who’d stolen her away? What if Johnny’s life was also in danger and they hadn’t suspected?

“Johnny, come home,” she whispered. He needed to know that she’d found the letters. She needed to tell him how much he still meant to her.

Shocked by the panic in her own voice, she took a deep breath and squeezed her eyes shut, only to feel tears trailing down the inside of her cheek past her nose.

Rebel sighed and shifted position beside her, but he did not move other than to scoot his head a little higher along her thigh, nosing toward the hand that rested along the wooden stock of the double-barreled shotgun.

Lost in a half-doze, she didn’t hear the sound of the car driving up. But the footsteps that hit the wooden planks on the front porch and the sharp and sudden pounding that began at the other end of the house brought her upright and shaking in seconds.

She head shouts, but before she could hear what was being said, Rebel began to bark and then all she could hear was his wild, frantic baying echoing in what had, moments ago, been deathly silence.

“Oh my God,” Samantha moaned. “He’s back!”

She struggled to her feet and set the butcher knife on the sill beside her, needing both hands to steady the gun she’d shifted to hip level. If he broke in, maybe she could bluff him into thinking it was loaded. If not, the knife was near at hand. It was all she could do except run, and that time was past. As she waited in fear, a small and unexpected surge of relief came with it. At least the waiting was over.

Everything was a replay of before. The sound of running footsteps along the outside of the house, and then the distinct thud they made when they hit the back porch at a dead run.

Samantha’s hands shook as she stared at the inside of the kitchen door, trying to imagine her stalker on the other side, trying to picture what his intentions must be. But the voice she heard was unexpected and so very, very welcome. Her prayers had been answered.

“Sam!
Samantha Jean!
Are you in there? Dammit, honey, open the door!”

It was Johnny! And from the way he was shouting and knocking, if she didn’t hurry, he would be coming through the door, rather than waiting for her to open it. Rebel danced at her feet as she dropped the gun and staggered over the furniture she’d barricaded at the door.

“Johnny, is that you?”

John Thomas went weak at the sound of her voice.

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” he said, startled to hear the tremble in his own voice, and then leaned his forehead against the rough outer surface of the door and waited to see her face.

He heard the sounds of furniture being moved, his dog’s crazy welcome bark that wouldn’t stop, and the metallic slide of the dead bolt being moved. The door opened, and without giving him time to come inside, Samantha flew into his arms.

“My God, Sam, what’s wrong? What the hell happened to you? You didn’t answer the phone. I was afraid—”

He stopped talking as he began to absorb the terrible shudders of her body and the state of the kitchen behind her. With a firm push, he walked them both inside the house, then closed the door and grabbed her by the shoulders.

“Talk to me.”

She looked up and then started to cry. As the tears fell, the story spilled out of her in achy gulps.

“Someone tried to break in. Rebel kept barking and growling at the front door and then I heard whoever it was come around to the back of the house.”

She took a deep breath and pointed toward the overturned chairs in the room behind her.

“That was when I realized the back door wasn’t locked. I outran him to the kitchen and…almost didn’t make it.”

When he looked down at her skinned knees and the lingering terror in her eyes, he realized how close her call had been.

“Jesus Christ!” The anger in is voice wasn’t directed at her and she knew it, and still Samantha couldn’t stop herself from flinching.

“Oh, honey, that wasn’t meant for you,” he said, angry with himself at the fear he’d put on her face. He opened his arms. She walked into them without hesitation.

“I know, Johnny. But for lack of a better explanation, I’ve just had a really bad day.” She tried to smile and wound up crying harder when he cupped her face and kissed each corner of her mouth with gentle anguish.

John Thomas felt sick. “Why didn’t you call me, sweetheart? Carol Ann said she tried all afternoon to contact you and each time, all it did was ring.”

His hands traced and retraced the contour of her body as he held her. When he thought of how fragile life was and how close he’d come to losing her, he shook.

“The phones are dead, Johnny. I tried both of them. When I knew I couldn’t get you, I just hid and waited for you to come get me.”

“My God.”

It was then he noticed the shotgun lying on the table and caught a glimpse of the butcher knife resting on the windowsill just beneath the curtain. What hell had she gone through waiting for him to come home?

“Sam, that gun is empty.”

“I know.”

Guilt hit him in the belly like a fist. He couldn’t bear to think of how helpless she must have felt sitting alone in the house with a dog, a knife, and an empty gun for protection.

“Wait here, honey. I’m going outside to look around.” After one last hug, he headed out the door with Rebel at his heels.

It didn’t take him long to find the smaller set of footprints beside his own, or notice the way they had circled the house. It took even less time to see that the phone wire had been cut and was lying half covered by the loose dirt. He picked it up and looked at the neat, clean incision that had severed Samantha’s connection with the outside world.

“Son of a bitch.” There was nothing else he could say. While John Thomas had been out playing sheriff and arresting a man who needed to be locked up for life in the nearest rehab center, the stalker had come and played havoc with Samantha’s sanity.

And he had no doubt that the bastard had been playing with her. From the isolation of his house and the fact that Sam had no way of leaving, it was obvious that he could have done with her as he chose, even burned down the place with her inside had he wanted. Evidently he had more torment in mind for her before it came to that.

John Thomas shuddered, remembering the hate mail and the phone threats she’d received, as well as the stalker’s promises that death would cleanse, death would heal. Just who the hell needed healing was no secret to John Thomas, but next time it would be a race to the death if he couldn’t beat the stalker to Samantha.

He cursed helplessly as he headed for his squad car to call for help, unable to believe that his own home was now the scene of a crime.

Deputy Lawler came with Monty. The squall of their siren and the whirling lights atop the county squad car as they pulled into the yard set Rebel off into another round of howling.

“They’re here,” Samantha said, glimpsing the flashing lights through the living room curtains as she slid off of John Thomas’s lap.

It was dusk, but John Thomas had a need to follow up on one more idea before nightfall, and he’d had to wait until help arrived before he could implement his plan.

After giving Samantha a quick hug, he bolted from the couch and out the door.

“Leave your lights on,” he ordered as his deputies parked, “and don’t walk in the area I’ve roped off. That’s where he ran.”

“What happened?” Monty asked. “All we were told was someone tried to break in. Is Samantha all right?”

“She’s fine. Scared to death. But unhurt, except for skinned knees. Right now, I want you two to go over the crime scene. Maybe you’ll find something I missed. I’ve got another plan in mind, and I couldn’t leave until you got here to stay with Sam.”

“We ain’t budgin’,” Mike Lawler said.

“I’ll be back before too long,” John Thomas said.

“Whatever you do, just don’t leave her here alone.”

“You can count on us, boss,” Monty said, and got his flashlight out from beneath the seat.

Samantha walked out onto the porch and tried not to let it show, but the tremble in her voice gave her away. She was still scared to death.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

John Thomas walked back up the steps and took her in his arms. He smoothed the hair away from her face and traced the tilt of her upturned nose with his forefinger.

“I’m going to take Rebel and see if he can track him. If I can find a starting and stopping point, it’ll go a long way toward finding out who it might have been.”

“We’ll be right here with you,” Mike Lawler assured her.

She nodded, satisfied with his explanation and the fact that she wouldn’t be alone. “I’m going to make supper. You guys will stay and eat, won’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” they answered in unison.

When she’d walked out onto the porch, both men had seen the remnants of stark terror and lingering tears. At this point, they would have refused her nothing.

Monty looked away. He couldn’t bear to watch the way the sheriff was holding Samantha. It reminded him too much of his own personal loss. Anger filled him, and then he cursed beneath his breath and stuffed his emotions back where they belonged. He began his own investigation, leaving Lawler to whatever he chose to do.

When Samantha went back into the house, she purposely left the door ajar. Somehow, just hearing the men’s voices so close by, and knowing that she was no longer trapped within the four walls of the house, made it easier to bear.

“Damn!”

John Thomas kicked at a rock on the side road where Rebel’s trail had ended. He knelt, lightly tracing his fingers across the faint tracks of the vehicle that had been parked there earlier.

Whoever it was had been driving an oil burner with a narrow wheel base. From the size of the big, greasy stain on the ground, it leaked like a sieve.

Rebel whined and circled the area, his nose to the dirt in a constant snuffle as he tried to pick up the lost scent.

“It’s no use, boy,” he said, and whistled him home.

“Your prey got tricky. This one didn’t climb a tree on you. He crawled into a vehicle and just drove the hell away.”

Minutes later John Thomas came out of the woods at a jog with Rebel off the leash, yards ahead of him and chasing shadows. The lights of home welcomed him from across the meadow. It looked and sounded like any other warm, summer night.

Crickets were singing. A tree frog had turned up on the creek, and at least half a dozen bullfrogs were in full chorus competition. But it wasn’t like any other night. Today someone had invaded his privacy and threatened his woman, and he was mad as hell.

Then he paused,
My woman? When did I start thinking of her as mine?

But there was no answer other than the one inside John Thomas’s heart. Right where it had been all along.

It was after ten o’clock before John Thomas sent the deputies home. After dinner they had pooled information they’d gleaned from their separate investigations.

All Samantha knew was that the telephone would be fixed tomorrow. Past that, they’d told her nothing. She suspected it was because there was nothing to tell.

She, better than anyone, knew how tricky her stalker could be. He’d fooled the entire LAPD, and depending on which side you took, had made her look either like a fanatic with a vivid imagination, or a nutcase with a persecution complex.

John Thomas watched the men leave, then left Rebel standing guard on the front porch as he came inside, shut the door, then locked it behind him.

“You think that’s going to keep him out?” Samantha asked quietly.

The resignation on her face and the weary slump of her shoulders worried him. She couldn’t give up now.

“Why don’t you go take a bath, darlin’? I’ll clean up the kitchen.”

She shook her head. “When he came…I was taking a bath. I don’t want to go in there by myself again.”

He held out his hand. “Then come on, Sam. You don’t have to do anything by yourself, ever. Remember? That’s why you have me.”

She reached up for him, and as she did, her fingers gently traced the path of the old, faint scar on his wrist.

He smiled.

Their hands clasped and then intertwined just as his words had wrapped around her heart and gave her legs the strength to stand.

“Will you wash my back?” she asked, trying to lighten the moment.

“If you will wash my hair,” he said with a grin. “You haven’t heard the story of me and Lem Marshall fighting in the barnyard, and how I fell headfirst into the cow lot before he tripped on the milk bucket and knocked himself out.”

“You’re kidding!” Samantha had to chuckle at the far-fetched image.

“I wish I was, but I’m not. And what I told you is a secret. No one besides Lem knows what really happened, and he was so drunk he won’t remember all the facts. At least I hope to hell he doesn’t. I’ll never live it down if he starts telling everyone that I was face-first in dry cow manure when he captured himself.”

Samantha’s face broke into a wide grin. “It seems I wasn’t the only one who had a bad hair day.”

Their shared laughter was enough to get them to the bathroom. And it lasted until the water started running. But when it came time for their clothes to come off, neither could find the words to say that would make this work.

“Why don’t you go first,” he offered. “You can leave the door open. I’ll be right outside. When you’re through, we’ll just trade places.”

She nodded.

John Thomas walked out of the bathroom. His heart ached for her. And he was sick and tired of this stalemate between them.

Dammit!
She had been his best friend before she was his lover. He wanted that back now.. and more.

He knew he needed to find a way to tell her he didn’t care that she hadn’t answered his damn letters. That was years ago. What was past, was past. What mattered was here and now, and as far as he was concerned, he was as lost in love as he’d been fifteen years ago.