Deep in the Heart (4 page)

“Okay, cowboy, it’s me and you, all the way. But don’t push your luck. I’ll let you know when…and how far. Okay?”

John Thomas heard her warning, though he certainly didn’t need it. He’d gotten the message years ago, when her letters had all come back, marked
Returned to sender.

3

T
HE RESTAURANT WAS CROWDED
, which, in Samantha’s case, made everything worse. She felt like a sitting duck plastered against the back of the booth. Every time the door opened, she flinched as if she’d already been shot.

Reading the menu was impossible. With each influx of new customers, or an exit of old, she felt compelled to watch. The horror of the situation was that if the stalker walked in and sat down beside her, she would not know him.

“Sam, I know good and well your mama told you it was rude to stare.”

His slow Texas drawl, as well as the wry look in his eyes, distracted her, but only for a moment.

“She also told me, ‘thou shalt not kill.’ Unfortunately my nutcase and I didn’t have the same mother. Otherwise we probably would not be having this conversation.”

John Thomas looked down at the menu. But the words had suddenly blurred across the page. When he looked back at her, Samantha had a sensation of
déjà vu.
It was the same look he’d had years ago when he’d punched Hank Carver in the nose for making her cry. In Johnny’s eyes was something between anger and annihilation.

“I told you, you don’t need to worry any longer,” he said quietly. “That’s why I came.”

She nodded and blinked, then looked down at the menu, suddenly intent on making a choice. But it was hard to see through tears.

“Where are your folks, now?” he asked, for lack of anything else to say. He didn’t really care where they were. They’d hated his guts and told him so on more than one occasion.

The question took her unawares. It was a long way from the subject of murder. And then again…not so far at all.

“Dead. Nearly seven years now. Car accident. You know what they say.” She waved toward the traffic.

“It’s murder out there.”

Remembering what his taxi had driven through, his response came out abrupt and angry. “I can believe that.” Then he dropped the menu onto the table. “Sam…why do you stay?”

She stared out the window onto the street, blind to the melee of humanity that was passing them by. She was remembering the shock of losing both parents in the space of a heartbeat, and the empty sensation of trying to belong when there was no one to belong to.

“I guess it was because I was already here, and I had nowhere else to go,” she finally answered.

“You could have come home,” he said.

She smiled. Slowly.

John Thomas caught his breath. He could have sworn that he just saw a light come on in the back of her eyes and shine out through that pure, clear blue.

Samantha wanted to laugh, but she knew it would hurt too much to make the effort. Something strange was happening inside of her. She was beginning to hope again. And while it was wonderful to know that she’d retained the ability, it was, at the same time, frightening. She knew only too well how quickly hope could be taken away. The fact that Johnny Knight still considered her a part of home was overwhelming. It had been years since she’d felt like she belonged anywhere.

“I was so young when we left,” she said.

“You were sixteen,” he answered. “Nearly grown.”

She slid her fingers across his knuckles, rubbing gently at a nearly healed scrape on the third knuckle of his left hand, remembering that after the love that they’d shared, she’d felt like a woman, but at heart she had still been a scared child.

“For you, Johnny Knight, maybe sixteen was nearly grown.” She smiled to soften her words. “The Sam you knew had no clue about life. Only passion…and young love.”

He flushed at her casual reference to what had been the most important night of his life. And then he frowned as she continued.

“That awareness came later with a knock on my door in the middle of the night. I buried my parents alone. And waited for the world to stop.” She took a deep breath. “But it didn’t, and I somehow managed to find a foothold on sanity, and gradually made a secure niche for myself in life.”

The play of emotions on her face was vivid. He could almost feel the old pain and the new fears swamp her.

“So tell me more about your job at the casting agency. I guess it’s a good one?”

Then she did laugh, but only once. And it was a short, harsh bark of anger, not joy.

“Oh, but yes! I am—I was—one of the best casting agents in the business. Our agency has the reputation of having cast several Oscar-winning films. I have—had—a very good reputation.” She grimaced to hide the pain. “That was before I lost my status as an asset, and became a liability they didn’t want to fix.”

A waitress appeared to take their order.

“I’ll have crow,” Samantha said, and then smiled grimly at the shock on the lady’s face.

John Thomas frowned. This angry, bitter woman was not the Sam he’d expected to find. And then he wondered, what
had
he expected? How else should she be acting? If this had happened to him, he’d be fighting mad, too.

He interrupted before Samantha said anything else extraordinary.

“She’ll have a cheeseburger, well done, uh…fries, and a strawberry malt,” he said shortly. “Repeat it for me, only make my burger a double and leave off the fries.”

The waitress nodded and hurried away.

Her eyebrows rose. “Well thank you very much for making up my mind,” she drawled.

“Someone had to,” he said.

Her eyebrows arched. “You aren’t having fries?”

“I’ll eat yours.”

She caught her breath at the grin on his face and knew that the smartest thing she’d done since she’d moved to this godforsaken city had been mailing that letter to Texas.

Later, Samantha paced the floor in her apartment, alternating between staring at the broad back of the man sitting at her table poring over the stack of hate mail, and wondering how he’d gone from being a town truant to arresting them instead.

“Johnny, where is your father?”

Her question was as unexpected as the old pain he felt in the pit of his stomach. These days he rarely thought of his father, and when he did, he was hard-pressed to remember what he’d looked like.

Her dropped a handful of papers, shoved back the chair he was sitting in, and stood. It took a lot of guts, but he had to be looking at her when he said it. If he wasn’t, he’d always wonder what her first real reaction had been.

“He died in prison.”

Samantha was quiet. The expression on her face never wavered, nor did the look in her eyes. It was still steadfast and sure. He exhaled, slowly.

“When?”

“Ten weeks after I left Cotton.” He laughed once, but it was harsh and filled with pain.

“I didn’t know,” she whispered.

“How could you?” he said bitterly. “When I came back for the funeral, you were already gone.”

Before he knew what was happening, Samantha had walked into his arms and wrapped herself around his heart.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to open up old wounds.” Her voice was faint, a mere whisper. “I didn’t know.”

John Thomas rested his chin on her head, wrapped his hands in the long fall of black hair hanging down her back, and hugged her with a desperation that surprised him.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said.

“Yes. It mattered. It still does. And I wish I’d known.”

“What would you have done, Sam, cried at the funeral? You were scared to death of him and you know it.”

“I would have cried for you,” she said softly.

Oh God, Samantha! And I would have let you, be cause I damn sure couldn’t cry for myself. And why—why did you send my letters back? What the hell did I do that was so bad you wouldn’t even keep them to read?

“I see a pattern,” he said, and stepped out of her arms before he made fools of them both.

“Pattern?” She was lost until he pointed to the letters. “Oh, the letters.”

The abrupt change of subject surprised her. Obviously she’d gotten too close to something he didn’t want to explore.

He drew her toward the table, and then began moving from one side to the other, thinking aloud as he went.

“These seem angry. Just angry.” He pointed to the stack of mail closest to him. “But these,” he pointed to a stack in the middle, “these blame.” He moved to the stack at the farthest end. “These are the ones that scare the hell out of me. These are the ones with the promises. These are the ones that hate.”

She wrapped her arms around herself and shuddered.

“I’d never really thought of them in those terms. I was too busy running from shadows to decipher their contents.”

“What did the police say?” Then he thought of something. “Wait a minute. Why the hell do you have these instead of the police? This is evidence, Samantha. Didn’t you show it to them?”

His anger enveloped her. She began to shake. And because the fear had returned, it made her answer sharper than she’d intended.

“Hell yes, Johnny! They saw it. They saw it all.”

“Then why didn’t they act on it?”

“Because ultimately, they decided it was a put-up job. That I was faking my own threats for some unnamed reason.”

“Why would they think that?”

She wilted before his eyes, and he had an unreasonable urge to comfort her. But he stayed the thought. He needed to get to the bottom of the story, and emotion would just get in the way.

“Because all of the early calls could be traced to a phone in an empty apartment taken out in my name, and most of the letters were typed on the typewriter in my office, that’s why,” she said. “Before you ask, I have no explanation as to how that could be. I damn sure didn’t write them to myself.” She started to shake. “And I’m not crazy. Do you hear me, Johnny? I’m not!”

He shoved his fingers through his hair, ruffling the even black lengths into wild disarray. Once again, he resisted the urge to touch her. She seemed so desperate and so small.

His lips narrowed into a hard, thin line. “But I still don’t get it. What the hell are
you
doing with the actual clues to your case? They should be on file as evidence. It should have been checked for fingerprints, possible sources of—”

“It was. According to the detective in charge, they doubt that the threats were valid. No one ever made a move to harm me physically. I never saw anyone. And they’d checked and ruled out practically everyone I’ve ever met as a possible suspect. All that did was enforce their belief that I’d created the monster who was after me all by myself. When they suggested I see a psychiatrist, I got angry and demanded it all back.”

“And they handed it over, just like that?”

She laughed harshly; the bitterness in her voice was unmistakable as she continued. “Why not? After all, it wouldn’t be the first time someone in Hollywood staged a stunt to promote themselves. Remember, Johnny, this is the land of make-believe. This is California, home of Disneyland, of Hollywood, of Sunset and Vine, and Rodeo Drive. This is where the Peter Pans of the world come to stay. Don’t you know that, Johnny? Don’t you…” Tears poured down her cheeks, but her anger was alive. It was the first time since his arrival that he’d seen even a glimmer of the old Sam he once knew.

“Stop! Dammit to hell, stop it, Sam! I wasn’t blaming you.” He grabbed her by the arms and shook her, rougher than he’d intended. His voice softened as he slowly released his grip and cupped his hand against her cheek instead. “I wasn’t blaming you.”

“Well they did,” she said, and yanked away from his touch. She couldn’t let his sympathy envelop her as much as she wanted or she’d never get a grip on reality again. It would be too easy to just let go in the presence of someone stronger than herself.

“What’s the detective’s name? Who was in charge of your case?” he asked.

“Pulaski. Mike Pulaski.”

“Get your purse,” he ordered.

“Where are we going now?”

“LAPD. To pay a visit to Detective Pulaski. He’s going to tell me what he told you. And I can promise you, Sam, when we leave, I’ll have answers.”

She grabbed her purse and headed for the door. “We’d better call a cab.”

“Hell, no,” he said, remembering his last cab ride in L.A. “We’ll take your car.”

She nodded. “The police station is a long way from here. I haven’t driven much since all this began because I didn’t want to be caught out alone in the car.”

“Give me the keys. You point, I’ll steer. I’m not getting in another damned cab again.”

In spite of her fears, in spite of the knot in the pit of her stomach, she smiled.

The room at the police station was just as Samantha remembered. Rows of desks decorated with everything from stacks of files to three-day-old cups of coffee. There was a sign on the wall that read,
No smoking.
She grimaced as a thick veil of cigarette smoke drifted past her nose. Obviously, someone besides Johnny Knight didn’t like being told what to do.

“Where to?” he asked shortly.

She pointed.

He took her by the hand and started across the room, his gaze fixed on a small cubicle that obviously passed as an office, although what went on inside would hardly have been secret, as the walls were glass.

Mike Pulaski sat behind a cluttered desk, a phone in one hand and a pen in the other. He waved the pen in the air to make his point as he shouted obscenities into the mouthpiece. One could feel his anger, even through the glass partition. His face turned a mottled shade of red as he slammed the receiver down in disgust. When he looked and saw the familiar face of Samantha Carlyle, his expression did not improve.

“Oh great,” he muttered.

Then he noticed she was not alone. The man who was with her didn’t fit the mold of an ordinary run-of-the-mill Californian. The fabric of his blue Levi’s looked soft, well worn and faded. The stark white shirt he was wearing stretched tautly across a flat belly, and his dove-gray jacket was definitely western-cut.

Pulaski’s gaze followed a long length of legs down to boots that were obviously not of Rodeo Drive. They were plain black, in need of polish, bore numerous nicks and scratches, and turned up just the tiniest bit at the toes. The strong stubborn features on the big man’s face were shadowed by the wide brim of a gray Stetson that rode his head with familiarity.