Deep in the Heart (2 page)

“And look at you now,” Samantha whispered to her own reflection as she stood in the window overlooking the courtyard below. “You have no job. You’re running from the devil and your own shadow. You’re just hiding…and waiting to die.”

Until now, she’d never considered what it meant to be “living on borrowed time.” She looked again at her reflection and wondered what there was about her that could drive a man to insane threats of vengeance.

Her face was no different from many others—heartshaped, but a bit too thin, and framed by a mane of thick, black hair. Her nose was still small and turned up at the world, but there was no longer a jut to her chin. It only trembled. Her lips were full but colorless, and the life that had once shone from her eyes seemed dim…almost gone. She shuddered and dropped the drapes, rearranging them to shut the sun out and herself in from prying eyes.

When the harassment had gone from hate mail to phone calls with spine-chilling messages left in an unrecognizable voice, she’d nearly lost her mind and, soon after, she did lose her so-called friends.

As if that wasn’t enough, she’d moved her residence twice, certain each time she would outwit the culprit. And then came the day that she realized she was being stalked. But by then going back to the police was out of the question. They had convinced themselves that she was concocting the incidents herself. In fact, they had almost convinced her.

Her anger at their accusations had quickly turned to disbelief when they had proved to her, without doubt, that the hate letters she’d been receiving had been typed on her own office typewriter, and that the calls left on her answering machine were traced to an empty apartment that had been rented in the name of Samantha Jean Carlyle. It was enough said. When LAPD reminded her that perpetrating fraud was a crime, she’d taken her letters and her tapes and gone home, having decided to hire a personal bodyguard. Then she’d reconsidered her financial situation and given up on that idea.

That was the day her boss put her on indefinite leave of absence, after reminding her, of course, that when she got her act together she would be welcomed back. The victim had become the accused. At first she’d been furious over everyone’s lack of sympathy for her situation or concern for her life. Then she’d become too busy trying to stay alive.

It was the constant frustration and the growing fear that no one was going to save her, let alone believe her, that made her remember Johnny Knight.

Until the call she’d made in the middle of the night last week, she hadn’t known if he was still in Cherokee County…or if he was even alive. Their last link had been severed years ago when her family had moved away from Cotton. At sixteen, she’d loved him enough for two lifetimes, and it had still not been enough to keep their connection intact after her family moved to California.

But the bond of their lifelong friendship was burned deep within her memory and was strong enough to prompt the letter she’d written. He was her last and only hope.

Her stomach growled now, reminding her that, once again, she’d forgotten to eat. And then she remembered the reason she had not: there was no food in the house, and she was too afraid of the maniac who might be lurking outside to go buy any.

A sharp knock at the door sent her spinning around. She clasped her hand to her throat, felt the blood leave her face, and fought the wave of nausea that hit her belly. Transfixed, she stood in the middle of the room and listened.

For some reason, John Thomas had expected an instant answer to his summons. When it was not forthcoming, he rechecked the address and then frowned as he looked back at the number on the apartment door. They matched.

A picture flashed in his mind of opening the door and finding that he’d come this far only to be too late. Of her lifeless body flung out across the room in careless abandon, left there by the man who’d entered her world uninvited. It made him shake, and it made him angry. The unexpected emotion made his second attempt at knocking sound more like a frontal attack.

But all it did was frighten Samantha into the thought of making one last call to LAPD, knowing full well that they would only blame her for crying wolf.

John Thomas was at the point of looking for the apartment manager when he heard a woman’s voice. It was faint, and a little shaky, and it hit him belly first as he tried to connect the soft, husky sound with the teenager that he’d known.

“Who is it?” she said.

“Sam? Is that you? Let me in.”

Samantha gasped. She didn’t recognize the voice. It was deep and gravelly and echoed beneath the overhanging roof under which he was standing. But there was only one person left alive on the face of the earth who’d ever called her Sam. She ran to the door and peered through the peephole, afraid to look, but afraid not to take the chance.

He didn’t look the way she’d expected, but from the distorted view through the hole, neither would her own parents had they still been alive.

“Who is it?” she asked again, and watched the man on the other side of the door stuff his hands in his pockets in a gesture of frustration.

“It’s me…. It’s…” He almost said John Thomas. But it wouldn’t have been how she’d known him. She’d been long gone by the time he’d decided that being called Johnny wouldn’t do for a fresh-faced marine home on his first leave.

“It’s Johnny. I got your letter. Let me in.” His voice softened as he realized how frightened she must be if what she’d claimed was true.

“Do you swear?” he heard her ask, and then he smiled. He knew what he needed to say to assure her of who he was.

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” he said quietly.

It was what she’d been waiting to hear. Tears came softly. Tears that she thought were lost forever. They came with the relief that flooded through her as she reached for the locks lining the door.

Tumblers turned and chains clinked, and then the door cracked…just enough so that he saw, for the first time in fifteen years, the clear, perfect blue of Samantha Carlyle’s eyes. And then the door swung back, and she stood framed in the opening, and he forgot to breathe.

Woman! She’d turned into a woman! And my God…what a woman! She was beautiful. In his mind he’d known it had happened. But his heart hadn’t been ready for the shock.

“Johnny?”

Samantha stared long and hard at the towering, broad-shouldered cowboy, trying to see a hint of the boy that she’d known and loved in the black hair and sharp cheekbones of the big man standing at her door. The eyes looked familiar and only a little stunned. They were still a rich, warm shade of brown. His mouth was firm, his chin stubborn. But his appearance had changed so much that Samantha knew he could have passed her on the street unrecognized. And then she remembered! The telling proof should still be visible. She reached for his wrist.

At the touch of her hand, he shuddered. And when he realized that she was moving aside the band of his watch, he knew what she was looking for. He stilled, and then waited, letting her call the shots.

Samantha held her breath as she looked down. Intent on her search, she didn’t see his expression darken. When her fingers felt and then traced the hard ridge of tissue beneath his watchband, all the breath went out of her body in a long, slow sigh. She had found the scar.

The pale, thin reminder of their childhood pledge was still there. It had to be him! She looked up and smiled. It was her first smile in months, and its rarity made it all the more precious.

“It is you!” she whispered. “You came!”

Within his next heartbeat she was in his arms. John Thomas felt himself losing a grip on reality as he held her close. And when he would have loosened his hold, he felt her arms tighten in a desperate response. It had been so long—too long. Although he remembered her rejection of him years ago, he wondered if it had been long enough.

When he could think past the soft, womanly body pressed intimately against him, he realized that the last time he’d held her like this, she’d given herself completely and then within weeks had disappeared without a word. A draft of hot air circled around the back of his neck like demon’s breath.

He remembered why he’d come.

“Wait a minute, Sam.”

He grunted, then shoved his bag through the open door of her apartment with the toe of his boot as he kicked it shut behind him. She didn’t speak, and he didn’t want to. Well aware of her desperation, he let her cling to him. There would be time later to talk, but for now, remembering was all they could do.

2

Cotton, Texas, 1974

“S
AMANTHA
J
EAN
, where are you going?”

Sam rolled her eyes and sighed.
Darn!
If Daddy would only have oiled that hinge on the back door, Mama wouldn’t be able to hear her.

“Just outside,” she answered vaguely.

“It’s nearly dark,” her mother warned.

“I know, but I’ll be with Johnny.”

She missed hearing her mother’s snort of exasperation, and even if she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have been swayed by the fact that her mother thought Johnny Knight was too big and tough for an eight-year-old girl. At the ripe old age of ten, he’d already gained a reputation in their tiny town as a “street kid.”

His old man had been a widower for several years, and had long since left Johnny’s caretaking up to whoever cared to notice. By the time Johnny Knight was eight, he’d earned the respect of older boys in the neighborhood by taking none of their guff. But what had stunned the entire community was the strange friendship that had sprung up between the school principal’s little girl and Cotton’s only truant.

Samantha’s small bare feet pounded against the dry, dusty earth as she flew down the alley toward the town park. A dog barked in a yard two houses over and a cat darted across her path, but nothing slowed her down. She patted the pocket of her dusty jeans just to make sure that she had everything Johnny had told her to bring. This was too important a night to mess up. And Johnny’s approval was too important for her to lose.

Long, blue shadows slipped across the wooded area of the grassy square. Samantha dodged a night moth as it swooped across her line of vision. She didn’t gasp or squeal, although the urge to do so was strong. It was nearly dark, and without Johnny’s presence, Samantha wasn’t as brave as she might have been.

And then he was there, stepping out of a line of trees and jogging toward her with a smile on his face and his shaggy black hair in forgotten disarray. He waved as she swerved and turned in his direction.

“Did you bring the stuff?” he asked.

Samantha nodded and pulled nervously at her faded T-shirt, her elfin face oddly solemn.

“You still wanna do this?”

She nodded again.

He slapped her on the back, and grinned. “Then come on, Sam. Injun Tommy told me how this was done. So if we’re gonna do it, we gotta do it right.”

Dusk was upon them as Johnny led the way into a bank of trees hidden deep within the town park. He’d already cleared a place beneath a heavily flowering mimosa and Samantha’s belly flopped nervously as she knelt and began emptying her pockets.

Darkness enveloped them as nightfall began to emerge. Johnny worked swiftly, spreading the assorted tools he would need to work their magic before Sam’s mom began yelling her name, calling out into the darkness as she did every evening for her little girl to come home. It had never occurred to Johnny to be sad that no one ever called his name, that no one seemed concerned that darkness was upon him. At ten, he was a most self-sufficient little man.

“Okay,” he said, looking down into Sam’s wide blue eyes, and peering closely just to assure himself there were no tears showing. “I’m ready.”

“Me too,” she said, and offered her arm.

“You want to go first?” Johnny asked, surprised by Sam’s unexpected show of courage.

She nodded.

He shrugged. “Here goes.” He took her wrist and held it firmly. “You can close your eyes if you wanna.”

Although the urge to do so was strong, she shook her head no.

The slice across her wrist was quick, and little more than a sting. She gasped, and looked down in time to see Johnny work a similar cut into his own wrist below the base of his thumb.

A small stream of bright red blood seeped and then began to flow down her arm. Samantha’s heart knocked against her rib cage, but she willed herself not to cry. This was too serious for squeamish bellies and crybabies.

“Now,” Johnny said softly, and grasped her arm once again. As their wrists met and their blood mingled, he spoke. “Repeat after me.” And she did.

“Friends forever in need and in deed.”

“Friends forever in need and in deed.”

Samantha echoed his pledge in a soft whisper, shocked by the sticky feel of their blood mixing and running across each other’s hands.

“Secrets are kept and no promises broken.”

“Secrets are kept and no promises broken.”

The locusts in the tree beneath which they were sitting broke into a crazy humming buzz, a cacophony of ecstasy that made Samantha jump with fright.

Suddenly what had begun as a game became more than the children could comprehend. That night, a bond was formed between them that would take more years than they had at this moment to understand.

“I do so swear.”

“I do so swear.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

They looked at each other and then smiled. It was done.

Johnny’s dark brown eyes and thick hair—always in need of a cut—were comfortably familiar to Samantha, as was the square, angry thrust to his jaw. Yet she knew that tonight their relationship had changed. Now she was no longer the little kid he let tag long. Now she belonged. She belonged to Johnny Knight…and he belonged to her.

Johnny saw Sam’s blue eyes widen apprehensively as their arms separated. Even he felt a twinge of panic at the sight of all of the blood on both their wrists. Nervously, he swiped at her arm with the tail of his shirt to clean a spot, then tore open a Band-Aid and quickly applied it to the cut on her wrist. He opened another Band-Aid, and then handed it to Sam, watching closely as she applied it to his own cut.