Revisit Conard County for heart-stopping suspense from New York Times bestselling author Rachel Lee

After escaping an attacker who wanted her dead, Nora Loftis is forced to return to Conard County. She needs to heal; she just didn’t expect to do it on Jake Madison’s Wyoming ranch. The full-time cowboy and part-time police chief was her first love, her only love. And now, with her attacker on the loose, he’s her only hope of survival.

Like a vigilant sentry, Jake vows to protect her. Like a tender lover, his arms provide a haven, his kisses a promise. But Nora is a psychologist, and she knows the mind of her attacker. She knows he’s coming for her…to finish what he started.

“You’re scared, aren’t you?”

Nora nodded. “Sometimes it swamps me.”

Jake held her, as if his arms were a defense against the terrifying world beyond them. If only.

“I wish I could promise that he’ll be caught. That you’ll be safe forever.”

But he couldn’t. She was still trapped in the web, and she could still feel it vibrating with threat. She knew her attacker was getting closer.

Jake touched his lips to hers.

Instantly all concern flew from her head. That a kiss could have the power to fill her with heat, to expand the need deep inside her into an aching pool of fire, amazed her.

“You’re not alone,” he said. “And as long as I breathe you won’t be until this is over for good.”

She wasn’t sure how he could keep that vow, but for one moment she almost believed it.

Conard County: The Next Generation

Dear Reader,

Writing Killer’s Prey proved a very difficult emotional journey for me. While I’m grateful to say I’ve never been stalked by a killer, I have experienced many of the abusive kinds of experiences Nora endured. I reached into some painful places to bring her to life. It was, in many ways, a cathartic journey for me and a great reminder of how wonderful my life has grown as the years have passed.

But her fears, her tendency to revert, are what I knew from my own experience. Watching her grow and blossom in this book was like watching a birthing. She took the reins from me early in the story and told it in her own way. It may have started with things I’ve known, but this is definitely Nora’s story.

It’s also Jake’s. Young people often act in ways they can’t explain and have trouble understanding even in hindsight. Those are the things that often keep us from sleeping at night as we recall them and wish we had never done them. Jake’s own struggle to figure himself out held me transfixed.

But with time comes understanding. If we’re lucky, with time also comes self-forgiveness.

And if we’re really lucky, we find the perfect love.

I hope all of you are as lucky as Jake and Nora become.

Hugs,

Rachel

Killer’s Prey

Rachel Lee

www.millsandboon.co.uk

RACHEL LEE

was hooked on writing by the age of twelve and practiced her craft as she moved from place to place all over the United States. This New York Times bestselling author now resides in Florida and has the joy of writing full-time.

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To all the Ugly Ducklings: I know there is a swan inside you.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Excerpt

Prologue

Cranston Langdon sat in the chair in his den, pant leg pulled up so he could study the tracking bracelet that had been attached to him when he’d been released on bail. Just the sight of it made him furious. He was an upstanding member of this community, a business owner. They should have released him without this damn bracelet.

Hell, he wasn’t even being charged with murder. Rape, yes. Aggravated assault, yes. But guys who’d done a lot more than take a knife to a woman had been allowed to walk out of court on bail alone.

But not him. He blamed his soon-to-be ex-wife for that. She’d gone into that hearing and claimed he was a violent man, that the whole reason their child was receiving counseling from Nora Loftis was because of his violence. She had even said she was afraid of him.

He would never forgive her for that. Just as he would never forgive Nora Loftis for surviving. He’d dragged her to a ditch in the woods and she should have rotted away before anyone found her body.

Instead, she had managed to climb out of that ditch hours later and flag down help. So now here he was.

He knew he could cut that bracelet. He’d read about it online. It could be done. He could set himself free. He just had to be sure he did it right, because he wouldn’t have much time.

Ten or fifteen seconds before the alarm sounded at the police station. Five to ten minutes before the cops managed to respond.

So he had to plan it carefully. Very carefully.

Then, one way or another, he was going to take care of that cheating wife of his and finish off the Loftis woman. Two birds. Then off to Canada and parts unknown. He’d already moved his money. He’d taken care of that a long time ago, stocking away most of it in the Caymans.

So he’d be fine. He just had to make sure that he cleared out fast enough. That he dealt with his wife swiftly. Hunting Nora Loftis might take more time, but no one would expect that. No one would even begin to guess how badly he wanted to see her die, not when he’d insisted in the face of the evidence that he’d never hurt her, that they’d been lovers.

No, they’d think his wife was the end of it, because he’d never told them the truth. He’d let them think he was having an affair with Nora. Little did they know that he still wanted that woman’s blood and her essence.

But he knew.

Chapter 1

When Nora Loftis had emerged from a roadside ditch, bloody and beaten, raped and tortured, dazed and half-crazed, she’d at least thought she had survived.

Little did she realize that her battle for survival was hardly over.

Three months later, still healing in so many ways, she arrived at the baggage carousel in the Denver airport to be greeted by one of the last people she ever wanted to see again.

Jake Madison, larger than life, towering over six feet, built like a cheesecake dream, wearing jeans and a loden-green chamois shirt under a light jacket. His hair was still intensely dark, and his eyes were still that peculiar green, a color that seemed to be lit from within. If anything, the years had made him more attractive.... Stronger, broader, more like an oak than a sapling.

And he was still one of the reasons she had avoided her hometown of Conard City. He was a big reason, but not the only reason.

He saw her and nodded, but something about his eyes seemed to narrow.

Well, she looked like hell, and he hated her anyway, and they had a history she would have preferred to utterly forget. Why wouldn’t his eyes narrow? And why had her dad sent him of all people?

She fought down an almost overwhelming urge to turn and run. But while she might need a place to lick her wounds, she had also developed some backbone, and she was damned if she would give him the satisfaction.

“Nora,” he said when she approached. His voice had deepened, too. Everything about him had reached the fullness of manhood while she’d been gone.

“Jake.” She hoped she sounded cool. Inside she felt as if nerves already stretched too tight had just stretched tighter still.

“Your dad asked me to get you,” he said, explaining. “His car is acting up.”

“Thanks.” Short and ungracious. Well, he didn’t deserve any better from her, not after what he had done to her. She’d avoided him for twelve years and Conard City for ten. Now her choices had become limited to one.

She turned to watch the carousel, where the first bags had begun to appear. Maybe she could pretend he wasn’t even there.

“You won’t find the town much changed,” he remarked.

“I didn’t think I would. It never changes.”

“Oh, things change,” he replied calmly. “Lots of things.”

She let that lie. Bad enough that she had to come home without hearing cheery stories about how things had changed for the better. She wouldn’t believe them anyway.

He picked up her luggage for her, leaving her with only her rolling carry-on to tag along behind him out to the parking garage, where he stowed her bags in the back of his tan Jeep. Then she climbed into the passenger seat, looking straight ahead, thinking that if there was one thing she didn’t need now, it was a couple of hours in the car with Jake Madison.

He seemed to feel the same, surprisingly enough, and didn’t offer any kind of casual conversation. Good, she thought. Good. Because she just plain wasn’t up to it.

The doctors had told her she would tire easily for weeks to come, and that she needed to conserve her energy for what was most important. Already she could feel her nerves letting go, simply because she couldn’t maintain the tension. Not now, not for a while.

After Jake paid the parking fee and pulled out onto the exit road, he spoke again. “I heard what happened.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

A mile passed, then another, before he spoke again. “I’m just letting you know that people are talking.

“Surprise, surprise. Apparently that hasn’t changed.”

He glanced at her. “Bitter now, too?”

“Maybe I have cause.”

“Maybe so.” But he let it drop.

Pointedly, she closed her eyes, not wanting to talk to him at all. Then, without warning, fatigue crashed down on her between one instant and the next. She fell soundly asleep before they’d made it all the way out of the suburbs of Denver, and she didn’t wake until they were drawing near her home.

* * *

The familiar state highway into Conard City carried Nora Loftis back too many years. Way too many years. It also carried her to a home she had vowed never to visit again.

The wide expanses of ranch land—brown now as winter drew closer, tumbleweed snared in fences—still looked desolate. Had she ever seen the beauty out here? But the purpling mountains ahead were still beautiful, still drew her as mountains always had. She had missed them during her years working in Minneapolis. Gentler hills were just not the same.

But the rest of it, she assured herself, she had not missed at all. Not the endless roads that seemed to go nowhere, not the outlying ranches or the few small subdivisions. And certainly not the main street, captured in an early twentieth century kind of amber, a mixture of archaeological finds left over from the 1880s to a few newer World War II era buildings. The town had enjoyed a number of booms and a few busts, and the last bust still lingered, a kind of genteel poverty for all but a handful, who managed to prosper anyway.

Outside town, before she faced the sorrow of the main street, she saw a sign announcing the construction of a new ski resort. Another boom in the making, maybe, one that would change the character of the town yet again.

It needed some changing.

She hated coming back, but she had nowhere else to go. Not now.

The speed limit lowered, taking them along a flat stretch of road that boasted little but an occasional roadhouse. Closer to town, she saw the modernity of some new fast-food joints that didn’t appear to be doing well. That much modernity had arrived here, too. Even with so few people and despite the closing of the semiconductor plant that had been this town’s last boom. The ranchers hereabouts were barely enough to keep the place going.

“I saw it in the papers,” her father had said when he phoned, the first words he’d spoken to her in a decade. “Come home, girl.” An offer made too late, but one she had been unable to refuse with her life in ashes all around her.

What else could you do when the big bad world had treated you so horribly you were almost afraid to stick your nose out the door? What else could you do when you’d become famous—or infamous, depending—and the world wouldn’t leave you alone to lick your wounds?

He’d seen it in the papers. Even here. That meant Jake knew, too. All those sordid details.

Her hands tightened into fists until her knuckles turned white and her fingers ached. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Jake as he managed the town streets with the ease of familiarity.

A sharp right turn, then a left, and they were on the main street, a veritable visual essay of the town’s past, most of which seemed to have been a matter of aging as gracefully as possible.

They drove past the hulks of Freitag’s Mercantile on one side and the Lakota Hotel on the other. One busy and surviving, the other barely holding together as a sort of rooming house. Past her dad’s pharmacy, and then past the courthouse square and the sheriff’s office.

Past Mahoney’s saloon, with a history stretching back to the brief boom of the 1880s. No matter how good or bad the times, people always wanted drink. Even more so when times were bad.

Then a sharp left turn onto her dad’s street. Victorian houses, built on long narrow lots, lined the street, along with trees as old as the houses. People who had never lived here found it charming. It made Nora feel claustrophobic.

And finally, Jake pulled into the driveway behind her dad’s car, an old white Caddy he’d been nursing for so many years it was probably now an expensive collectible.

“Here we are,” he said, as if she wouldn’t know.

Only then did Nora realize that she was shaking, physically and emotionally. Stop it, she told herself. Stop it.

On joints that felt far older than her thirty years, she climbed out of the car, stiff and aching from the long drive.

If her dad had seen it in the papers, so had everyone else in town.

No escape.

Jake pulled all three of her bags out of the back of his car and dragged them up onto the porch ahead of her.

She climbed the front porch steps like a stranger instead of using the side door. Wood creaked beneath her weight, which was much less than even a few months ago. Like a stranger, she knocked, then put her fisted hands at her sides, waiting. She could almost feel eyes boring into her from the surrounding houses.

“See you around,” Jake said. She turned her head, watching as he climbed into his Jeep and drove off. Leaving her alone with the rest of her past.

Then the door opened and her dad faced her. The past ten years had taken a toll on him, too. Every one of them seemed to have etched itself deeply into his face, and his rotund figure had become lean. He regarded her steadily from blue eyes just like hers, shook his head a little.

“Come in, girl. It’s getting chilly. I’m making breakfast.”

Breakfast for dinner. His favorite meal. He turned and walked toward the kitchen, so she followed. A kind of numbness filled her as she moved through familiar rooms, the typical “gunshot” design, from front room through bedrooms to kitchen and bath. Only one addition gave any privacy, and it had always been her bedroom. Probably would be again.

“Have a seat,” he said, motioning to the small table with its cracked plastic top and four chairs that were older than she was.

She sat and let him pour her a steaming mug of coffee. He placed it in front of her and she reached for it, realizing she needed some kind of warmth and fortification for whatever was coming.

At last her body began to react to her environment rather than her fear and anger. She smelled the sizzling bacon, the coffee, the bread browning in the toaster. Good smells. Not everything about home was bad.

But very little of it was good.

Her dad kept his back to her as he worked at the gas stove. Rude? Unwelcoming? Or just her dad at his oblivious best? What had she expected? A hug?

Of course not. Too much lay between them, both time and events. Even though she had accepted his invitation with huge reluctance, she suspected he had offered it with even more. Angry words, fights, accusations. Too much history.

And maybe not enough.

She still couldn’t understand why he had called her to come home. The only reason she could imagine was that everyone knew what had happened. God forbid he should look uncharitable to the church that was the center of his life.

“How’s everyone?” she asked finally.

“About the same.” He didn’t even glance her way. Then the first prick. “’Course, you been away awhile.”

“Yes.”

He made up the plates with eggs, toast and bacon and brought them to the table, placing one in front of her. She realized she still wore her coat, so she slipped it off and hung it over the back of her chair while her dad grabbed some flatware.

He sat across from her and bowed his head, saying grace. He didn’t ask her to join him, though once he would have insisted. These days she didn’t feel like giving thanks for much of anything.

Her dad spoke as he spooned marmalade onto a slice of toast. “Jody said you should stop by.”

Jody, her best friend during all the growing-up years until Nora had finally left town for good. Once they had dreamed together of escaping to the larger world. Only Nora had escaped. “How’s she doing?”

“Pretty busy with four kids.”

“Four?”

Her dad let his gaze skim her way. “Two boys, two girls. Married Dave Anson.”

“I remember Dave. That’s a lot of kids in ten years.”

No reply from her father. Fred Loftis had pretty much let his attitude about women’s roles solidify in the Stone Age.

“Why did you send Jake?” she asked. Jake, the guy she had so brazenly offered herself to right after high school graduation only to be scorned in a way that had left a permanent scar.

“He could get away.” A simple response. She wondered if it was really that simple. Fred Loftis wasn’t tone-deaf, he just didn’t listen.

Great. “And Beth?” The girl Jake had scorned her for.

“They divorced. No kids.”

“Oh.” Could she be excused for feeling a twinge of vengeful satisfaction? Of course not. She didn’t have to become an ugly person just because the world was full of ugly people. But that probably explained what Jake had meant about things changing.

Her dad finished his first slice of toast, then used the other to dip in his egg. Nora forced herself to eat a few bites, even though her stomach was so tight there didn’t seem to be room for even a mouthful of toast.

“Not much has changed,” her father said after a bit. “Folks are hoping a new ski resort will liven things up. I’m not sure about that.”

Of course he wasn’t sure about that. Owning the only pharmacy in a hundred miles had made him a secure man, if not a wealthy one. Why should he care that others needed more and better jobs? Besides, growth could bring in one of those chains to compete with him.

She knew all the arguments. She’d grown up with them, and a whole lot of others besides. Arguments about her, mostly, but some about her mom, too. Maybe the ugliest ones about her mom.

She watched her dad wipe his plate clean with a final piece of toast. Only then did he look at her again.

“You need to eat,” he said flatly. “You’re all skin and bones.”

“I just got out of the hospital. It’ll take time.” She didn’t mention having been in jail, falsely accused. She still couldn’t bring herself to say that out loud.

Eventually she managed to choke down the two pieces of toast. The sight of the eggs and bacon sickened her.

And for once he didn’t expect her to do the dishes. He picked them up himself, rinsed them and put them in a dishwasher.

“You have a dishwasher!” She couldn’t believe it. Her mom had wanted one for years, and he’d always refused.

“Don’t have time to wash up myself.”

The bile of anger filled her mouth. Didn’t have time to wash up after himself? Just one person?

Jumping up from the table, she decided to get her bags from the porch. It would have been nice to stomp out and never come back, the way she had ten years ago after her mother’s funeral, but there wasn’t a place she could go. She was stuck. Stuck.

“Your room’s ready,” he called after her.

“Big deal,” she said under her breath, between her teeth. One by one she grabbed her bags and wrestled them to her bedroom off the kitchen. He didn’t offer to help.

Of course not. He never had. Instead he plopped himself down in front of the television and turned on a football game.

No, nothing had changed. Except a dishwasher.

And her entire life.

* * *

A few hours later she woke from a nap feeling a bit better. The trip had evidently taken a lot out of her, but now it was nearly 10:00 p.m. and she felt wide-awake. Her dad would be in bed already, so that meant she could get up, find something to eat that she could manage to swallow and maybe take a short walk. The doctors had insisted on walks to rebuild her muscle strength.

It would be cold out there; it always was at night this time of year, and as winter crept closer the chill would begin to really bite.

She found a bag of pretzels and ate a few. Then she grabbed the spare house key off the peg by the side door and slipped out, wrapped in her coat and scarf, to walk streets that would be quiet now. Utterly quiet, as long as she stayed away from the saloon.

How many nights as a teen had she walked these very streets, troubled by a sense of alienation that had arisen from a lot more than her age?

She tucked her hands into her pockets, and as she strolled under a streetlight realized she could see her breath. Some of the houses she passed had gone totally dark. Others displayed life in the form of flickering light from TV screens. That hadn’t changed.

But she had changed, in ways she had barely begun to understand.

The purr of an engine crept up behind her, and the back of her neck prickled. She turned and saw a police car pulling up beside her. She waited until it stopped, and the passenger window rolled down.

“Cold night for a walk,” said the now-familiar voice of the older Jake. “Want a lift?”

With him? “No. Thanks.”

“Coffee,” he said. “I’m going for coffee, and maybe a roll. Look, Nora, I’m not exactly the same ass I used to be.”

“You’re a new kind of ass?”

Silence issued from the car, then a laugh. “Aren’t we all? Come on. Get in. I don’t bite, and I hate to imagine how alone you’re feeling right now.”

As if he would care. And then there was the whole police-car thing. Her fists clenched as her heart began to pound. “I...can’t,” she said finally.

Silence, then the sound of the motor changed as he put the car in Park. He climbed out of the driver’s side and looked at her across a short distance, but a chasm of years. “I heard about it, Nora. You can sit in the front seat. I swear, we’ll just go to the diner and then I’ll bring you home.”

Why was he pressing her this way? But as much as she wanted to turn her back on him, she realized something else: he was going to keep after her until he got whatever it was he wanted. And he must want something or he wouldn’t be after her like this.

Almost closing her eyes so she could pretend this wasn’t a police car, she walked around the vehicle, reaching for the door handle then sliding in by feel.

At once she wished she hadn’t. Scents had always triggered impressions in her, and in this car she could smell fear, anger, anguish and alcohol, each scent bringing to mind imaginings of earlier passengers in this car. She clenched her teeth, battling down the torrent of feelings.

She kept her eyes closed, seeking the quiet mental sanctuary she had created for herself, a place she visualized as utterly empty and still. A place where the hyperawareness of odors usually couldn’t reach her. Where nothing could reach her.

Jake said nothing as he drove the three blocks to the diner. She couldn’t get out of that damn car fast enough, and she was walking through the door of Maude’s before Jake had finished locking up.

Maude stayed open until midnight, the only place in town that did other than one convenience store and the truck stop. She was by herself, behind the counter, taking care of paperwork. All day long this place was full, but Nora couldn’t help wondering why Maude bothered to stay open this late in a place where the sidewalks rolled up by 9:00 p.m.

Maude straightened on the chair she had pushed behind the lunch counter, blinked as she saw her, then actually smiled. For Maude that was as unusual as Mount Rushmore moving to another state.

“Well, ain’t you a sight for sore eyes, Nora.”

She managed a smile. “Hi, Maude. Keeping busy?”

“Enough to get by, which is more than some can say.” His eyes shifted as Jake entered behind her. “Evening, Chief.”

Chief? In spite of herself, Nora turned to look at Jake. “Chief?” she repeated.

“The town took a wild hair recently. Before you know it, we have a city police force,” Maude answered, her voice souring to her usual grumpy mood. She sniffed her disapproval.

“Really.” Nora slid into a booth, absorbing this information, wondering if she had lost what was left of her mind. Having midnight coffee with a man who had crushed her ego and was now a police chief to boot? Yes, she must have lost the dregs of her sanity.

“It’s no big deal,” Jake said. “The city council decided they needed a little more authority or something. I don’t know. I have six officers, is all, and we spend a lot of time cooperating with the sheriff.” He shrugged.

“I thought you were a rancher.”

“I still am. At the rate things are going, I may be back at it full-time soon.”

“Why?”

Jake smiled faintly. “It was a power grab by the city council. They didn’t like feeling that the sheriff was running everything, the town included. I sometimes think we’re a sort of auxiliary.”

“Useful as teats on a bull,” Maude grumbled.

Nora figured he was minimizing it but didn’t know why. “It must be expensive to have a police force.”

“Not with federal grants. It helped swell the city budget. Maintaining it may prove to be different.”

“So why did you do it?”

“I was already a part-time deputy. This pays a little more. Ranching isn’t what it used to be.”

Little was what it used to be. “Are the politics of it hard?”

“Nah. Gage Dalton is a good man. He doesn’t mind that we help him patrol the streets in town. His budget is tight, too. And I give him someone else for the city council to holler at.”

Maude brought them both coffee and thick slices of apple pie heavily laced with cinnamon. Nora looked around the diner, mostly to avoid looking at Jake, and felt the intervening years slip away. If it hadn’t been for some wear and tear around the edges, she could have believed she was still in high school. Red vinyl booths, a couple of battered wood tables, stools at the counter, some of which had been patched with duct tape.

But finally she couldn’t avoid looking at Jake any longer. God, he was handsome, more handsome by far than in their youth when she had often been content to just stare at him. The years had favored him, and experience, good or bad, had etched a few faint lines.

By contrast, she knew how she must look to him: emaciated, too pale, her once-thick blond hair now thin and lifeless. Stress and mistreatment could do that to a person. Her blue eyes, unfortunately like her dad’s, were three sizes too big for her shrunken face.

“You’ve been through hell,” he said bluntly.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I can understand why,” he answered. He picked up his mug and sipped his coffee. Apparently he still liked it black.

She reached for a little container of half-and-half and poured it into hers. Then she added a second for safety’s sake. No telling how her stomach would react to the assault of Maude’s strong coffee at this time of night, especially when she was feeling wound as tight as a spring.

Her hand was shaking, and Jake took the second creamer from her hand and poured it for her.

“Look,” he said as he dropped the container on the saucer, “I know you have plenty of reasons to hate me. Hate this whole town, I guess, but most especially those of us you grew up with. We were merciless. But we’re not kids any longer, Nora. And most folks think you got a hell of a raw deal.”

“Thanks,” she said shortly.

From the corner of her eye, she saw him tilt his head. She didn’t want to look at him, didn’t want to feel again the impact of his good looks.

He sighed audibly. “All I’m trying to say is that you may find folks here are easier to get along with than it must have seemed to you back in our school days.”

“Really.” She tried to keep the tone noncommittal, even though she wanted to ask him what made him think she wanted to get along with anyone in this town. Funny how painful even the oldest scars could become when faced directly with their source again. In just this short period of time, her distant past had reared up to claw at her nearly as strongly as her recent past.

But then, it all came down to the same source, didn’t it? Everything bad that had happened to her, far past and near past, had happened because she was different. Cursed, as her dad had said more than once.

Jake sighed. Apparently the tone hadn’t been as noncommittal as she had hoped.

“You’ve been hurt,” he said finally. “Badly. And I get as much blame as anyone. I’m sorry.”

She glanced at him then and wished she hadn’t, because with that one look she remembered something she hadn’t allowed herself to think about in more than a decade: Jake had been one of the few kids she had grown up with who hadn’t picked on her throughout her childhood. In the end he had proved to be no better. But for many years he had refrained from the name-calling, the nasty pranks, the ugliness that had framed her days. Not until the very end had she realized that he’d thought the same hideous things about her.

She said nothing, because she wasn’t going to ease his conscience and accept his apology. After what she had been through, apologies seemed like empty words.

“Nora.”

Her gazed skipped back to him, then away.

“Nora,” he said again. “What would you think of me if we didn’t have a past? If we were meeting for the first time?”

“I’d hate you,” she said flatly. “I’d hate you just because you’re a cop.”

* * *

Jake supposed he deserved that. Even without all that had happened to her in the past months, he would have deserved that. But leaving the past out of it, given what she had endured from the police in Minneapolis, he could well understand her reaction.

He left her alone and began to eat his pie, trying to think his way through this, something he should have done before impulsively picking her up and bringing her here.

He’d been a bastard twelve years ago. He knew that. He could still cringe inwardly in shame at the way he had thrown all those epithets she’d been hearing for years in her face when she’d been utterly vulnerable, counting on him, at least, to be a friend. He still didn’t know exactly what had possessed him to be so cruel, but who could understand the mind of a twenty-year-old male anyway? Not even the male involved, evidently. There was more than one stupid act in his youth, although his treatment of Nora probably topped the list.

He ate another mouthful of pie, hardly tasting it, wondering what he could say to start building a bridge he never should have destroyed in the first place. It was clear she didn’t even want to hear an apology.

Finally he said the only thing he could think of. “I wouldn’t have suspected you.”

Her face lifted and she looked straight at him. He felt a pang as he once again saw how thin and pale she had become, how worn she looked. Even her beautiful blond hair seemed to be on the brink of death. He didn’t know, might never know, all that had been done to her.

“Really?” she asked, her voice brittle. “Even my defense attorney wouldn’t agree with you.”

His head jerked a bit, as if she had slapped him. “What do you mean?”

“He agreed with the cops. I’d worked with the guy’s kid, so I must have known him. Must have had an affair with him. Must have tried to conceal his identity to hide the affair. Must have obstructed justice. Never mind that I never met him, only his wife.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sure. Everyone was sorry afterward. But that didn’t get my job back. It didn’t protect me from the endless hounding of the press. It didn’t spare me from people who believed that simply because I was arrested I must be involved somehow. Do you have any idea how that felt?”

“I can’t begin to imagine.” And he honestly couldn’t, although he was trying.

“So they finally let me out, and the D.A. said something to the press about how they had proved unequivocally I was in no way involved with the man before the attack. People avoided me like the plague for all of a week, and then the media were all over me all over again, demanding to know my relationship with the man, what I’d done to make him so mad at me and then...and then...” She stopped, breathing hard, her voice breaking.

“And then he threatened you.”

She looked down, her long hair veiling her face. “Don’t go there,” she whispered. “Don’t go there.”

“You should have had protection.”

“Well, I didn’t. He was an upstanding member of the community, no flight risk... Yeah, I heard it all. Even I didn’t think he’d be stupid enough to make those threats.”

He wanted to reach across the table and take her trembling hands, wanted to promise her a safety no one could promise her.

But before he could say or do anything, she pushed herself out of the booth. “I’m going home. Now.”

Home. The place that had been part of her misery when she had been growing up her. To a dad who had been less than a dad. A dad who had treated her as harshly as her schoolmates.

Maude caught his eye and he saw a frown there as Nora hurried toward the door. Okay, he’d been stupid again, and Maude had heard it all.

Jake hurriedly tossed bills on the table, then followed Nora into the night.

“Wait,” he called after her. “Wait. I said I’d take you home.”

“I don’t want anything from you. Nothing!”

From the looks of her, he doubted she had the energy to keep up that pace, and certainly not for three blocks. Hopping into his cruiser, he did the only thing he could: he followed her.

She didn’t even glance over at him as he drove beside her. She made it to the next street and started up the gentle slope toward her father’s house. Just a couple more blocks.

But she didn’t make it. The small hill defeated her. Her steps slowed, and then she stumbled. He threw the car into Park and climbed out, rushing to her side.

It wasn’t just weakness that was giving her problems, he realized, but the anger, as well. She was gasping as if she’d just run a marathon.

She had enough strength to glare at him, though. He didn’t care. This time he was going to do something right.

Without even asking, he scooped her off her feet and carried her to his car. Ignoring the way her fists pounded weakly at him, he managed to free a hand and open the door, thinking that she couldn’t weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet.

Bending, he put her gently on the seat, and even though she refused to look at him, he touched the side of her face gently.

“Nora,” he said softly. “Nora, honey, you’ve got to take it easy. You’ve been so ill....”

“I’m not your honey!”

Then she coughed, and started panting again.

“Easy,” he said as he would have said to a restless mare. “Easy. I’ll get you home.”

He climbed into the driver’s seat, but before he put the car in Drive, he turned to look at her. “It’ll take time to get your strength back. Give yourself time.”

She gave a short nod, but still wouldn’t look at him.

Okay, he thought. This was it for tonight. He’d just get her home, see her safely to her door, then leave her alone for now.

Everything else would just have to wait.

Chapter 2

Nora awoke with a start in the morning. Confusion filled her momentarily as it often did now that her nights were plagued with nightmares about the attack and the threats to repeat it. Then she recognized the drab, faded curtains on the window, saw the thin slices of a gray morning slipping by them, and knew.

She was at home, at her father’s house. Once the worst place in the world to be, and now only the second-worst place. That didn’t say much for it.

She didn’t want to get up, but she rarely did any longer. She felt tired, lacked energy, lacked the desire to do anything anymore. Depression. Pills for it stood on her nightstand, and she took them only because the alternative was worse. But she had a reason to feel depressed, and she wondered if pills could really help that.

The sheets on her old bed smelled musty enough that she suspected her father hadn’t washed them. They probably hadn’t been washed since the last time she’d been here, for her mother’s funeral. It wouldn’t surprise her.

She listened, hoping it was late enough that her dad would have gone to work. She had nothing to say to him, and he had nothing to say to her. Not anymore.

Unfortunately, the late-night coffee, little as she had drunk of it, insisted she get up anyway. Pulling on her robe and slippers, she left her room and padded to the ancient bathroom off the kitchen. It hadn’t changed. Not one bit. Except maybe the tile had been regrouted. She couldn’t be sure.

A glance at the clock when she emerged told her she was safe, at least for now. It was ten after nine, and her father was surely behind the pharmacy counter now.

It was at once a relief and a disappointment. Being alone with her own thoughts was a bad place for her these days. Too much pain, too much despair, too much anger and no answers in sight.

She reheated some of the coffee that was left in the pot on the stove and sat at the ancient table, cradling the mug, annoyed that her dad hadn’t even remembered that she liked half-and-half.

But that was him. Fred Loftis, penny-pincher extraordinaire. From the way they had always lived, no one would guess he was as successful as any businessman in town. Hand-me-down clothes for Nora, all of them chosen from church rummage sales where he’d allowed the purchase of only the ugliest of them. How much fun it had been to always be the girl in school who looked like a ragamuffin from the Great Depression—or an old lady oddly cased in a young girl’s body.

A twisted young girl’s body. The years of wearing that damn hideous brace for scoliosis hadn’t helped, nor had it helped that when she’d needed eyeglasses he’d always insisted on the cheapest frames. Not one bit of fashion in her life. He’d carped about the cost of them, too, and about the cost of the scoliosis brace and the doctors, but he hadn’t been able to get out of that without gaining the disapproval of the town.

If there was one thing her dad really cared about it, it was his public reputation. He was a God-fearing, righteous nineteenth-century man, whose frequent discourses on sin and vanity in the small church where he was a deacon had managed to convince everyone in town that dressing his wife and daughter in modest, ugly clothes had made sense—given his beliefs.

But that was the thing about small towns. They made room for every kind of eccentric short of the criminal. Their kids, however, were far less tolerant.

Nora squeezed her eyes shut. She had enough to deal with in the here and now, she didn’t need to be wandering to the distant past. Of course, being with her father wasn’t helping that part one bit. She wondered if she had enough left in her savings to find a small place to rent.

But then the fear clamped her so hard she could barely breathe. After that man had attacked her, after his hideous whispered threats on the phone, she couldn’t stand being alone. Even here, in this house that echoed with the past and seemed so far removed from the life she had been building in Minneapolis.

They’d put one of those electronic bracelets on him after the threatening calls. He could only leave his yard to go to work. That should keep him confined, shouldn’t it? Although even her own lawyer couldn’t explain why they hadn’t just jailed him pending trial. Not to her satisfaction, at any rate.

But she was a thousand or more miles away right now, and if he strayed so much as a hundred feet the cops would be all over him. So said that lawyer. But after his threats, it was hard to believe. The guy was crazy. Clearly. He’d had no good reason to attack her in the first place. How could she believe he wouldn’t do something crazy again?

She realized her fingers ached from gripping the coffee mug, and as she crashed back into the present she had to face the fact that her day was empty. Empty hours scared her because they gave her too much time to think.

But how could it possibly have been any better locked up in her old apartment in Minneapolis with that man in the same town?

No, that would have been worse. She needed to find a job, that’s what she needed. If only she felt stronger, and looked stronger. Right now she doubted anyone would want to hire the scarecrow she had become.

Even though her appetite had never come back, she forced herself to look in the refrigerator for something to eat. She was supposed to eat six times a day. Small meals, but six a day until she started to feel hungry again.

Nothing looked good. Nothing. She finally grabbed a package of cinnamon rolls, her father’s one weakness, and cut one roll in half, leaving the other half in the package. If she could get this down, she’d be doing good.

Then maybe she would have the energy to take a walk, something else she was supposed to do every day to recover her strength. Hemmed in by orders, all for her own good, she had to force herself to obey them. She’d have preferred to find a dark corner and curl up.

Except... Well, that wouldn’t be good, either. In a dark corner she’d be even more alone with her thoughts and memories.

Trapped. As surely as a lab rat in a cage, she felt trapped, and she didn’t know how to break out.

She felt a weak sense of triumph when she swallowed the last of the roll. Thank goodness the coffee washed it down or it might have stuck. Going to her bedroom, she found some jeans, a flannel shirt and her walking shoes. She had just pulled her jacket off the peg by the door when the phone rang.

She hesitated. She knew who it had to be. But with a sigh, she answered it.

“Get down here, girl. I could use someone on the register for a few hours.”

Wasn’t that just like her father. Get down there and get to work, just as he had demanded of her in high school. And somehow those words released a surprising and unexpected burst of resistance.

“No. I have to go for my walk. The doctor said.”

Then she hung up and experienced a sense of satisfaction, something she hadn’t felt in a long time.

The phone rang again, but she ignored it. She slipped her jacket on, grabbed the spare key and left the house.

Winter tinged the air. Although there was no snow, nor any sign of it, she could almost smell it coming. Some aroma in the air had changed, something she had never been able to pinpoint, but she could always tell. Conard County was slipping quickly into winter.

And then what? she wondered dismally. Living with her father was apt to drive her even more nuts than it had before after so many years of ordering her own life. He wouldn’t allow her that independence. He’d feel that since he was supporting her she owed it to him to follow his rules in every respect, from how she dressed to working for him and doing chores for him. He wouldn’t give her an ounce of independence. He never had.

He’d claim she owed everything to him. One of the biggest and most momentous decisions of her life had been to go to college on her own. Paying every penny for it herself. Building a life as far away from here as she could get.

Getting contact lenses. Learning to wear more attractive clothing. Finding confidence first through her school achievements and then through her job performance. Then one sicko had come along for reasons known only to him and had stripped all of it away, including her job. Because notoriety had made the school system ask her to quit, with the excuse that parents had questions about her.

Well, why wouldn’t they have when the police had had so many? She wasn’t sure who had wounded her more, her attacker or the damn cops and their doubts.

Or the school administration that had refused to stand by her after her years of excellent work for them. They had promised her a stellar recommendation.

Although she could understand the school, she thought as she walked slowly down the hill toward the more level part of town. Parents were talking, afraid of what their children might hear. The guy might be crazy enough to come after her again. What if he came after her at the school? And besides, she was honestly in no condition to counsel anyone. She couldn’t even counsel herself right now.

In fact, she was in no condition to work at much. Still, it had hurt, but how many months of disability would the school be looking at? How many months before she was capable of providing adequate counseling? How many months before the parents stopped worrying?

And how many months before the trial, while it would never quite fall from the news or people’s minds? Followed by the resumption of her notoriety.

Hell, she couldn’t really blame the school for all of this. Her severance pay sat in the bank, not enough for anything long-term, her disability checks would continue just a few more weeks, but now that she had resigned, they would dry up. Bills continued to roll in, like her credit card and her student loans. It might be months yet before her victim compensation was approved.

She heard the growl of an engine behind her again and didn’t even need to look to guess who it was. Jake. Why the hell couldn’t he just leave her alone? Seeing him was like picking the scab on a wound that refused to heal.

It was Jake, all right. She didn’t even turn to look as he drew up alongside her and slowed down to pace her.

“Wanna go horseback riding?”

That stopped her in her tracks. Slowly she turned and saw that today he was in his tan Jeep. “Riding?” she repeated. Her mind couldn’t quite make the leap.

“Riding,” he said. “I know you used to love horses. Well, I’ve got a couple that could use a walk today. Why don’t you join me? We’ll go out to the ranch and ride.”

“Are you out of your mind?” The words came out sharply.

He cocked his head, still motoring beside her. “Actually, no. Wandering the streets here in town will bore you pretty fast. Being all alone is probably even worse. I’d like the company.”

She really did love horses. Surprised that he even remembered that about her held her rooted. Not that she’d had a whole lot of opportunity to ride in the past, but a couple of times...

The decision was made almost before she knew it. “I’m not dressed right.”

“Jeans are fine. My mom’s boots will probably fit you, well enough to ride anyway. Come on. Let’s blow this town before we grow cobwebs.”

She doubted he could grow a cobweb if he tried, but she well might. Without another word, wondering if her mind had taken a final break from reality, signaling her total descent into madness, she climbed into the car beside him.

This car was okay. It smelled like leather, like hay and like Jake. And he no longer smelled like the guy who’d hurt her so long ago. His scents had grown more subtle, and they weren’t swimming in cologne these days.

“I used to hate that cologne you wore,” she announced. God, had she forgotten the last of her civility?

“Beth gave me a bottle every birthday and Christmas. I should have taken the hint.”

“Hint?”

“That I wasn’t okay just the way I was.”

That jarred her out of her self-preoccupation. “I’m sorry,” she said because she didn’t know what else to say.

“I was, too, for a while. Then it struck me I’d been a fool in more ways than one. At least we didn’t have kids.”

There seemed to be no answer to that, either. But he didn’t seem to expect one.

“I’m still wondering,” he continued, “why she married me. She sure as hell didn’t like ranch life. In the end she didn’t much like me, either.”

Nora, older and more educated now, knew something about that. Jake had been the best looking and one of the most popular guys in school. Dating him was a feather in the cap. Marrying him, maybe not so much. But she didn’t say that. She’d been one of the drooling girls herself. Back then.

Jake at least left her recent past alone. He didn’t ask any questions or offer any useless sympathy. He talked occasionally about the ranch, about the new police department, giving her a sense of what he was about these days. Casual, safe conversation for the most part.

At least she wasn’t thinking about herself. She tried to think of something to say and finally offered, “I really don’t get why they wanted a police department. Wasn’t the sheriff doing okay?”

“Of course he was. But he’s an elected official and doesn’t answer to anyone except the voters. Me, I answer to the city council.”

“That must be a lot of fun.”

“Oh, yeah.” He sounded sarcastic.

“So why did you agree?”

“Like I said, better pay. And by agreeing, we were able to open up five new jobs. We may even add a few more come spring. If so, that’s good.”

“Are you very busy?”

“Busy enough. Drunk and disorderly, speeding, domestics. Mostly small-town stuff, which is fine. If I wanted to deal with the big-city stuff, I’d move.”

“But the ranch isn’t doing well?”

He seemed to shrug. “It’s getting by, but a little extra cash is welcome. The money isn’t in cattle anymore, so I’m thinking about raising something else. I’ve been cutting back my herd size steadily. Something is going to have to replace it. We’ve been talking about it at the Grange, trying to figure out how to adapt. Feed prices are skyrocketing, so we don’t get what we used to when we take the steers to market.”

“Biofuels?” she asked.

“Partly. And commodity traders. Single-family operations are heading the way of the dodo. So we’re thinking about forming some kind of co-op and getting into something else.”

“That’s sad, about family operations.”

“Things change. Times change. The key is to keep up.”

She supposed it was. Right now, though, she wasn’t ready to apply that theory to her own life. She had to find some kind of acceptance before she could move on. Some way to absorb all the blows and knit them into a whole person, not the remnants of one.

She thought about his comment about the police force being a kind of power grab by the city council and realized it almost managed to amuse her to think that he was right. As she recalled, the council had been nearly a nonentity when she grew up here. Basically they had taxed and licensed businesses and put up some cheesy Christmas decorations on the light posts. Had they ever done anything else? Not that she was aware of. So, yes, they’d probably feel a whole lot more important running a police force, however indirectly.

But thinking about that reminded her that she was riding in a car with a chief of police. She wanted to yank her thoughts away from that as a wave of darkness threatened to descend over her once again. Instead, she forced herself to reach for a semblance of normalcy.

“So people in town call you now instead of the sheriff?”

He chuckled quietly. “It doesn’t make much difference to them. We share a switchboard. Whoever happens to have the closest car responds. Mostly that’s the sheriff. I’ve only got six of us, me included. That’s nowhere near enough for round-the-clock coverage, assuming the officers get time to sleep, eat and see their families.”

He swung the car onto a narrow road that led to his ranch. “You could say we cooperate fully. The difference is I have no jurisdiction outside the city limits. The sheriff continues to have jurisdiction in town. Like I said, I feel we’re more of an auxiliary.”

“Would have made more sense to hire more deputies with that money.”

“I won’t disagree.”

Yet he was doing this anyway. More money, he’d said. It troubled her to think of that when she remembered the days when that hadn’t been a huge concern for his ranch.

All of a sudden, panic struck her. No matter where she looked, she saw nothing but fences. Like when she’d staggered out of that ditch in the dead of night far outside Minneapolis. Nothing. There was nothing out here, and she was alone in a car with a man....

“Take me home!”

The panic in her voice must have been unmistakable. He jammed on the brakes, pulling to the grassy shoulder, and rammed the car into Park. “Nora?”

Her heart hammered so hard that she could hardly hear him. She was panting like a runner at the end of a long sprint. Her mouth turned as dry as cotton, her palms gripped the armrest, slippery with sudden dampness.

“Nora?”

She tried to grab on to his voice as the world seemed to shift dizzyingly from then to now and back again. “Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me!”

“I won’t. I swear I won’t.”

She wanted to get out of that car, but a vast wasteland was all that lay out there, offering no safety, no help.

“Nora, can you look at me? Please?”

She knew that voice. Jake. Somehow she managed to turn her head one jerk at a time toward him. He had turned in his seat, one arm on the steering wheel, one on the back of his seat. He had moved as far away as he could get in the confines of the car. Giving her room. His posture unthreatening.

“Jake,” she croaked.

“Yes, Jake,” he said quietly. “I’m Jake. You’re safe with me. I won’t touch you. If you want to go home, I’ll take you right now.”

Home. The image of her father’s house, the emptiness inside it, made her shudder. Being alone wasn’t good. It was never good. “No,” she said finally, a mere whisper. “I don’t want to go back there.”

“Will you be all right? It’s only another mile or so to my place.”

She looked down at her lap. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“Sometimes...I remember.”

“I’d be surprised if you didn’t.” He turned and put the car into Drive, resuming the trip. With each turn of the tires on pavement, her heart slowed down. Her mouth moistened again, and the tension seeped out of her.

She forced herself to think about riding a horse, something she hadn’t done since she’d left here. One of those promises she had made herself, that she’d find a Saturday and some money and go to a stable for a few hours, but had somehow never gotten around to.

As the panic slipped away, a sense of anticipation tried to replace it. Closing her eyes, she recalled the marvelous scents of stables and horses and leather. After all these years, they remained as vivid as just a few minutes ago.

The car turned and she opened her eyes to see the ranch house ahead of her. It looked like a haven—gleaming white clapboard in the bright autumn sunlight, a well-kept barn not far beyond and a paddock where a half dozen horses grazed.

“It hasn’t changed much,” he remarked.

No, it hadn’t. She’d been out here once before, for a hayride with a youth group. Once had been enough for her, but surprisingly she suddenly remembered how Jake had silenced the few who wanted to know why Nora had been invited. At least after that they’d left her alone.

For the first time in many, many years, she felt some warmth toward him.

He came around to open her door for her but didn’t offer a hand, as if he guessed that was too soon. She felt better with her feet on solid ground and looked around, taking in details—from the flowerpots that lined the wide porch, filled now with dying plants that struggled to hang on to just a little green, to the wooden porch swing.

The door opened and a matronly women with pitch-black hair streaked with gray stepped out, wiping her hands on a bib apron. A wide, warm smile creased her face.

“Nora, this is Rosa Gonzales. She and her husband, Al, work for me.”

Rosa came down the steps, her smile fading slightly. She offered her hand, then changed her mind and touched Nora’s shoulder. “You come inside. I have lots of food for lunch, and we can eat a little early.”

Nora didn’t argue, even though the horses drew her gaze again. Six meals a day was a pain, but an order not to be ignored. Right then she’d be more comfortable with a woman around anyway.

The inside of the house hadn’t changed much, either, from what she remembered, but it had been well maintained.

Rosa insisted they use the dining room, over Jake’s good-natured objections that the kitchen table would be fine.

“Not the first time you bring a lady here,” Rosa said firmly.

Sitting at the big polished table, with Jake at its head and her to his right, felt strange to Nora. As far as it would be possible to get from her past experience.

More, Rosa insisted on serving them plates loaded with saffron-flavored rice and pulled pork.

“She’s really putting on the dog for you,” Jake remarked. “She usually doesn’t object to Al and me standing in the kitchen in our work gear eating from the counter.”

For the first time in what seemed like forever, Nora felt herself smile. It was hard not to, since Jake looked uncomfortable with this development. “Just tell me she doesn’t call you patrón.”

At that, a laugh sparkled in his green eyes. “Hell, no. She calls me Jake. Or other things, depending on my latest transgression.”

The rice was perfectly spiced, the best thing she had tasted in forever. The pork was so tender it practically melted in her mouth. “What transgressions?”

“Forgetting to take my boots off when I’ve been in the yard. I have a tendency to think floors are for walking on, but she seems to think we should be able to eat off them.”

“She sounds like a gem.”

“She and Al both are. I’d be lost without them.”

“Where do they live?”

“I don’t know if you ever saw the bunkhouse out back? Well, we fixed it up for them. Their bad luck turned into my good luck.”

“Really?”

“They were homeless and out of work. I needed help. They didn’t even want to be paid, but I won that battle. I think it’s the last battle I won with Rosa.”

And that probably explained his need to make extra cash as chief of police. She stared at her plate, surprised by how much she was eating, reevaluating Jake. At least a bit. And wondering if she should eat any more than she had. She didn’t trust her stomach to hold it down, not when she’d been eating so little for so long.

What the heck, she thought, feeling suddenly reckless. It tasted good. If she got sick... Well, she’d already freaked on Jake. If he could handle that, he could handle her getting sick.

She ate slowly, though, taking only tiny bits onto her fork, awaiting any warning sign that she was making a mistake.

Finally she had to put her fork down and look sorrowfully at the plate, which was nearly three-quarters full. Jake had cleaned his plate and sat back.

“Want to go meet the horses now?”

At least he didn’t try to encourage her to eat more. Her friends back in Minneapolis had driven her nearly crazy by urging her to eat just one more mouthful.

“Yes,” she said promptly and rose. When she reached for her plate, Jake stopped her. “Don’t offend Rosa.”

Offend her by clearing the table? Nora found it hard to imagine, but Jake would know.

Jake grabbed a pair of leather cowboy boots from the hall closet. “Put these on.”

So she eased out of her running shoes and shoved her feet into the boots. They were an almost perfect fit, finely tooled leather. “Your mom didn’t wear these out in the yard,” she protested.

“Actually, she did. She reserved Wellingtons for mucking out the stalls.”

So many things she didn’t know about ranch life. At the moment, though, that didn’t seem terribly important. As they passed through the kitchen, she thanked Rosa for a wonderful meal. The woman beamed at her. “There’s more. You eat some later, okay?”

“Okay,” Nora agreed, not sure whether she’d be around later or back at home with her father. As soon as they stepped outside, she was grateful for the jacket she’d worn through so many Minnesota winters. It seemed to have grown a lot colder in just the short time they’d been eating.

She half expected to meet Al when they went out to the paddock, especially when she saw that a horse had been saddled. He was nowhere to be seen, however.

“I want you to try riding on a lead at first,” Jake said. “I don’t know how strong you are.”

“Not very,” she admitted. And the closer she got, the bigger the horses looked. How could she have forgotten that part? “Maybe I shouldn’t do this.”

“You can try it. Daisy over here is as gentle as they come. She won’t give you any trouble, and if you start to feel tired, just say the word.”

“Daisy? Really?”

“Mom liked to name the mares after flowers. Dad drew the line at Begonia.”

An unexpected laugh escaped Nora and she felt her spirits beginning to rise. The nightmare seemed so far away right now; it was a beautiful day, and the scents of the horses called to her as they always had.

“Where are your parents now?”

“Can you believe they turned into traitors and moved to Florida? To a condo?”

That drew another small laugh from her. “Less work,” she suggested.

“And warmer. Plus, according to my dad, he gets to play golf all year. Mom swears she can’t get him out of the house in the summer to play, but he denies it.”

Jake climbed the paddock fence, pulling a long leather lead from where it was wound around a fence pole. He clucked quietly, and called, “Daisy... Here, girl.”

To Nora’s surprise, the saddled horse, a spotted gray with huge, soft brown eyes, responded promptly. The mare stood patiently while Jake clipped the lead to her halter.

Then he turned back to her. “Now comes the hard part. I doubt you’re strong enough to mount by yourself.”

She eyed the distance between the ground and stirrup and shook her head slowly. “I could try.”

“Or you can just sit on the top of the fence and I can help you. But I’ll have to touch you to do that, Nora. Will that be okay?”

He probably hadn’t imagined that difficulty when he invited her out here. But then neither had she. She closed her eyes a moment, waging an internal struggle. This was Jake, not him.

When she opened her eyes, Jake still waited patiently. “I want to try.” It was important in ways she felt deep inside but couldn’t have named. She knew a lot about psychology, but it didn’t seem to be applying to her own mess.

Determined, she climbed the fence rails and managed to reach the top one, legs inside the paddock, steadying herself. The effort left her feeling weak, and she hated it. Hated the weakness, the slowness of her recovery. She was breathing a little hard, too, and her heart was racing, although she wasn’t sure it was just from exertion.

“Give yourself a minute,” Jake said. He led Daisy closer and began to rub her neck. “Have you ever seen horses nuzzle each other, the way they wrap necks and rub?”

“In pictures or on TV, maybe.”

“They’re very social animals. But they have this spot right here where they nuzzle each other.” He patted and rubbed. “Someone finally got around to studying it. It’s like petting a dog or a cat. It calms them down, lowers their blood pressure, eases their stress. Wanna try?”

Daisy didn’t look stressed to Nora’s untutored eyes, but she wanted to touch the mare anyway. Jake eased her even closer so that Nora could reach out and pat the horse’s neck right where he’d showed her to. Daisy quivered slightly under her touch, then relaxed. The horsehair wasn’t soft like a dog’s or a cat’s; it was much tougher and more bristly. But it still felt good, and at the moment she suspected that petting Daisy was calming her at least as much as the horse.

She began to relax, felt her fears disappearing. “I could do this forever.”

“She’d almost let you, believe me. Unfortunately, like most of her kind, she needs to graze and move, so she doesn’t stand perfectly still for long. Ready?”

“I think so.” Although she still couldn’t imagine how they were going to do this.

But Daisy was now close enough that her side nearly brushed Nora’s knees.

“I’m going to guide your foot into the stirrup,” Jake said. Apparently to try to avoid surprising her by reaching out. The man figured out things quickly.

He told her each thing he was going to do before he did it. As soon as her foot was settled safely in the stirrup, he told her to grab the pommel and try to rise. “Let me know if you need a boost.”

She summoned every bit of strength and determination she had, and not only managed to stand in the stirrup but also to swing her leg over Daisy’s wide back. She had forgotten how wide a horse could be.

“Good job!” Jake said approvingly. Moving around to the other side, he guided her right foot into the stirrup.

“I’m going to shorten them up just a bit.”

She hardly noticed. She was astride a horse for the first time in so many years, and it felt wonderful. Daisy, bless her, didn’t even twitch. Well, her ear twitched, and Nora leaned forward to pat her neck in that important spot.

“All set?” Jake asked when he’d finished adjusting the stirrups.

“Oh, yes!”

“I’m going to take it very slow here,” he advised her. “Just relax and let your body move with her. You’ll find your balance quickly. Keep your weight in the stirrups as much as you can.”

It was the kind of horse ride a child would have gotten at a fair, but Nora didn’t mind at all. Jake kept Daisy on a very short lead, and they ambled their way around the outer edge of the paddock. Every now and then one of the other horses would look up from the scattered hay they were dining on, give it all a disinterested look then lower their heads again.

“If you get tired, let me know.”

“I will.” But what she felt like doing for the first time since the attack was throwing her arms up and shouting for sheer joy. The world looked different up here, and the power of the mare beneath her gave her an unexpected sense of her own power and strength.

“This is wonderful!” She spoke with an exuberance she had doubted she would ever feel again.

“It is, isn’t it?” Jake agreed. “I love riding. As you get stronger, we’ll take longer ones.”

“This must be boring for you.”

“Not at all.” He looked over his shoulder, smiling. “Just seeing you look like you do right now would make me do a whole lot of things a lot more boring than walking around the paddock.”

The statement startled her. What did he mean by that? Probably exactly what he said. She’d certainly been a drag since he’d picked her up at the airport. It must be a relief to see her smiling. Having dealt with many depressed people in her career, she knew how hard it was when nothing you did could make someone feel better.

She resolved to try to at least put a better face on things. And why not? She was away from that man—whose name she could never bring herself to think, let alone say—in a safe place in a town that looked after its own. She was mending, however slowly, and with time even the emotional and psychological damage would heal. Some things left permanent scars, but it was possible to deal with those scars and not let them rule your life. She, of all people, should know that.

It was time, she thought as Daisy carried her around the paddock for the second time, to live in the now, not yesterday, not last month.

Easier said than done, of course, but most things were. She tipped her head back, letting the sun wash her face with its tingly warmth, feeling the chilly air whisper over her skin, listening to the steady clop of Daisy’s hooves and the quiet sound of Jake’s boots.

It was a magical moment, and that man’s madness had no right to deprive her of enjoying whatever good came her way.

Jake spoke, drawing her out of her almost defiant reverie. “Try clamping your thighs against Daisy’s sides. To build up muscle for longer rides.”

God, he was acting like a physical therapist, something she’d had to give up when she lost her job. She obeyed, though, pressing until the muscles began to tremble, then letting go until they settled down. Over and over again.

Then, as if someone had just let the air out of a balloon, weakness and fatigue hit her. She began to shake, and even pressing into the stirrups became too much.

“Jake...”

They stopped instantly. He took one look at her. “I’m going to help you down. Can you handle that? I’m going to reach for your waist as soon as I get your feet free of the stirrups.”

She nodded. Either she let him help, or she was going to slide off.

Daisy stood stock-still, thank goodness. He freed her right foot, then hurried around to release her left foot. Then, something she would have been sure she could never tolerate again happened—he reached up, clamped her waist with strong hands and pulled her out of the saddle.

When her feet hit the ground, she could barely stand. He didn’t release her, he released Daisy. Wrapping a powerful arm snugly around her waist, he nearly carried her to the gate. No climbing the railing this time.

“Al?”

She saw a man emerge from the barn. Tall and almost painfully lean with dark hair that looked as if it had been dusted with powdered sugar, he answered, “Yeah?”

“Take care of Daisy, will you?”

Then Jake focused all his attention on Nora. “Let’s get you inside, get you a warm drink.”

It embarrassed her to be so weak. To be so completely lacking in stamina. She wanted to hide in a hole. And sometimes she wished she had just died.

Chapter 3

Rosa had evidently sized up the situation. After Jake settled Nora in the living room, he went to the kitchen and found Rosa already making her own brand of hot chocolate: very chocolaty, not very sweet and sometimes with a bit of chili pepper.

“No pepper today,” Rosa said.

“I think that would be wise.”

“She’s very sick.”

“Yes, I’m afraid so.”

“Not dying?”

“No, recovering.”

Rosa nodded and began to fill a plate with cookies from the cookie jar she never allowed to run empty. “Maybe I should add some extra milk to her chocolate.”

“I honestly don’t know.” Jake leaned back against the counter. “I like the way you make it.”

Rosa smiled. “My family recipe. I only put in a little sugar for you.”

Jake laughed quietly. He suspected Rosa’s preferred brew would be more like drinking black coffee than anything he had once thought of as hot chocolate. As it was, the way she made it for him it was nearly a bitter brew, saved only by the little sugar and small amount of milk she added for him. And he especially liked it when she spiced it up with a dash of chili powder.

Her version, he often thought, was probably closer to the way the pre-Colombians had used chocolate.

He wound up carrying a tray to the living room, and Nora’s mug had some extra milk and sugar in it. Breaking her in easily, he thought with mild amusement.

He set the tray on the coffee table, then turned to look at Nora. She had curled around herself in the armchair and closed her eyes. Maybe she was sleeping?

He retreated to his own favorite chair and sat, just studying her. He’d felt sorry for her most of the time they were growing up. The way she had to dress, that father of hers, the horrible scoliosis brace that must have been awful to wear...but mostly because there was enough about her that was different that she was an obvious target for the other kids.

He knew he’d damn well been her only protector a lot of the time, except for that other girl, Jody, who was now the mother of four and looking matronly at thirty. But Jody had been a bit of an outcast, too, for some reason or other.

He’d never really understood some of that stuff. At least not until the night Nora had asked him to take her to the senior prom and offered to sleep with him afterward. His own words still had the power to make him cringe, never mind how they had made her cringe. He’d been wanting to apologize for years, but that would have to wait. She clearly had more important issues right now.

Unlike most of the folks who had to depend on news coverage, as a cop he’d gotten a damn good look at the more detailed reports of what had been done to her, including the initial suspicion that she was covering an affair with a student’s parent to protect her job as a school psychologist. Obstruction of justice? A pretty thin thing to hold a woman on when she’d been nearly killed by a brutal rapist.

He couldn’t imagine what those cops had been thinking. But he knew enough of the details not to be at all surprised that she was finding recovery slow. There was just so much a human body could take, and she should have died in that ditch. The psychological trauma had to be beyond imagining. And now here she was, back in her hometown and living with that caveman the town called Deacon Loftis.

It was a good thing Jake had been raised in a different church because if he’d grown up listening to that man, he’d have believed God had abandoned the world to Satan. Or maybe that there was no God at all.

How was she supposed to deal with Fred Loftis on top of everything else?

But he could understand why she had come back here. No job. And worse, that man was out on bail. He couldn’t figure that one, either. How any judge would think Nora’s attacker shouldn’t be in a cell until the trial...

Well, not for him to reason why, but if he were Nora, he’d have wanted to get as far away from Minneapolis as possible, and without a job her options had clearly been limited.

She stirred a little and opened her eyes.

He found a smile to offer. “Rosa made her special hot chocolate for you. I warn you, though, it’s not very sweet.”

She astonished him with her non sequitur. “This chair smells good. Rosa deodorizes it, doesn’t she?”

“Yep. That commercial spray, once a week.”

“I like that smell. I used it all the time...before.”

He didn’t miss the slight hesitation, and wondered if her entire life had become a series of “before” and “after.” Then she stretched a bit, sat up and reached for the mug nearest to her. “Bitter?”

“Not as bitter as what she makes for me, but I’m sure it’s more so than what you’re used to.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

He saw that her hands shook a bit, just a bit, as she brought the cup to her lips. She took a cautious sip, then smiled. “That’s really good. I like dark chocolate.”

“Sometimes she puts chili pepper in it. That’s great, too, but we decided not to hit you with the full treatment your first time.”

“Probably wise. My stomach can react oddly at times.”

As could she, he thought. He was astonished, when he thought about it, that she had allowed him to touch her at all after that incident in the car. He’d even had his arm around her waist. The memory of that darkened his thoughts. He could feel the bones, could feel that she was way too slender for good health.

Her hair, once among her best features, didn’t look very good, either. He supposed that would come back as she recovered, but looking at her right now was enough to make him ache, thinking of the hell she had been through and the hell she still had to deal with.

Thinking about that left him with little to say. He didn’t want to talk about anything that distressed her, and right now that seemed to be about the only thing worth discussing.

“Daisy likes you,” he remarked finally, looking for neutral ground.

“Did she? How can you tell? I liked her for sure.”

“She tosses her head a bit when she doesn’t like her rider. Not that she gets rough or anything. She’s too gentle for that. But you can tell.”

“It was so much fun I didn’t want to stop.”

“Then we’ll do it again. Soon. Maybe even a little later today.”

“I’d love that,” she admitted. Then, more shyly, added, “I get my energy in spurts right now. I’m not wiped out for the day just because I get tired every now and then.”

“That’s good to know. Do you have any directions from the doctor you have to follow?”

“Take a couple of walks every day, as far as I can, and eat six times a day, small meals. I felt so bad leaving all that food on the plate.”

He could imagine where that came from, knowing her father. “Don’t. Rosa can’t imagine serving anything less, and I’m sure she saved the leftovers. You’ll probably go home with them.”

She surprised him with a little giggle. “How do you and Al manage not to gain weight?”

“Hard work.” He smiled back at her.

“So is being chief of police much different from being a deputy?”

“More work and a hell of a lot more politics.” He leaned forward, reaching for his own mug of hot chocolate, then sat with his elbows on his knees. “I think the city council invented new paperwork just for me. Then these guys don’t always get along well, and they try to put me in the middle. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do from there, but they try. The six of them are a private soap opera, but a lot less interesting.”

She nodded. “It seems silly having a separate police department.”

“It is. But Gage likes it. Even though he’s elected and doesn’t report to them, they used to give him a hard time. Now they reserve it for me.”

“Is it worth it?”

“Right now. I could change my mind at any moment.” He winked and was glad to see another smile. “Gage would take me back.”

“It’s good to know that.” She sighed and rested her mug on her thigh. “I’m trying to decide if I should look for someplace to live.”

“Your dad giving you trouble?”

“Not yet. But he hasn’t changed a bit. It’s like...” She bit her lip, clearly uncertain if she should speak, but finally the words burst out. “It’s like exchanging one nightmare for another. It’s like being a child all over again.”

And that hadn’t been a happy time for her at all. He didn’t need her to say it. “That’s not good.”

“But I guess I need to find a job, too. He wants me to work at the pharmacy but I...” She trailed off and shook her head. “I’ll figure out something, but it’s not going to be that.”

He was glad to see the spark in her. “Your father is a handful, all right.”

“He should have been born in the nineteenth century,” she said vehemently.

“I never thought of it that way, but you’re probably right.”

“I know I am. I got away, and amazingly enough there’s a whole world out there where women don’t have to bow and scrape, where people can actually have a good time without feeling like sinners. Of course, I’m just waiting for him to tell me none of this would have happened to me if I’d just stayed home like a good girl. That sin brought this all down on me.”

Rage began to seethe in Jake, and he could feel every muscle of his body tense. “If he ever, ever, says that to you, let me know. I’ll have more than a few words for him.”

Her look grew forlorn. “What if he’s right? What if I hadn’t gone to Minneapolis?”

He cussed then, words he was sure her father wouldn’t like. Maybe words she still wasn’t used to hearing. He didn’t give a damn. “Bad things happen to good people. They just happen because life is random. Blaming yourself for being in the wrong place makes as much sense as blaming yourself for being born. Trust me on this, Nora. It could have happened to anyone, including a nun. So don’t even edge near those thoughts.”

“It’s hard to avoid them.”

He figured it would be. He had ten years of experience in law enforcement, and he’d heard that kind of self-blame before. In Nora’s case it was augmented by the blood-and-thunder pulpit pounding she had grown up with. God rewarded the good and punished the bad.

“I’ve seen a lot of good people get hurt,” he said evenly. “Kids. Kids who never had a chance to do anything wrong. What does a six-year-old do to deserve leukemia?”

She didn’t answer, but sat staring down into the mug on her lap. Finally she asked in a small voice, “Then how do you figure it?”

“Bad things just happen. If there’s ever any fault, it’s with the person who does the bad thing. It certainly isn’t with the people they hurt.”

“But I don’t even know why that man attacked me!”

“You may never know. He may never explain it. His lawyer is sure going to tell him to be quiet about it.”

“So how do you explain people like him?”

“I have to believe there’s something wrong with them. Most of us stop ourselves from doing bad things even if we happen to think of them. A few of us don’t. The whole difference is whether we act on those things. This guy acted. And he’s going to prison for a long time.”

“I hope so.”

He fell silent, realizing that she had to work through this in her own way. Hammering it for her wasn’t going to help.

But it made him furious to think he might take her home today to a man who could blame her for this. Her own father, for the love of Pete. The one person who should be on her side more than anyone else.

The phone on the table beside him rang. “Excuse me.” He answered it and immediately shifted into another gear.

“Nora, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to take you home. Something’s come up at work.”

Something he sure as hell didn’t want to tell her about.

* * *

Nora arrived home with enough rice and pulled pork to feed both her father and herself a large dinner. Rosa had insisted, and Nora hadn’t wanted to argue. It was a generous offer, and might take some of the sting out of her dad when he got home, probably still angry that she had refused to come to work for him today. As if she could have stood at a register for much more than ten or fifteen minutes.

She guessed he thought life was going to carry on as if she had never left. Of course, it couldn’t. Any chance of that had died when he’d blamed her for her mother’s death, claiming she had died because Nora had gone away to college and hadn’t been able to take care of her.

Nora knew better than that, but the ensuing fight after the funeral had been ugly enough for an entire lifetime.

What the hell had she been thinking, coming back here? Surely she hadn’t hoped the man had changed. As a psychologist she knew how unlikely that was. Could she have even for one foolish moment have thought he had? All she knew was that she had become desperate, and maybe she hadn’t been thinking clearly at all.

But she couldn’t stay in Minneapolis, not while that man was still there. Not when he’d whispered more threats on the phone to her. Panic had driven her more than anything. And where else could she have gone? When she got well enough, she was going to find another job, far away from here, but in the meantime... In the meantime, her resources were too limited.

She sagged in a chair at the kitchen table and put her head in her hands. For a little while today, with Jake, she had tasted a normal life once again. She had enjoyed herself riding Daisy. She’d had a normal conversation with someone, although she was still a little surprised it had been with Jake.

Just yesterday she’d been appalled at seeing him, wishing as she had wished so long ago that she never had to see him again. Then today... Well, today had certainly been a surprise.

Although perhaps no surprise that he had offered to defend her against her father. He’d done that kind of thing so often when they were in school. In that regard he evidently hadn’t changed: defender of the weak and picked on.

But she absolutely couldn’t imagine how he could stop Fred Loftis from being Fred Loftis. The man was as set in his ways and his beliefs as if they’d been poured in concrete at his moment of birth.

And she wished something hadn’t come up, that she could have ridden Daisy once more today. Somehow it had carried her out of herself to a place she had almost forgotten, a place where she was glad to be alive.

But Jake had promised they would do it again soon. She was counting on that.

* * *

Jake walked into the sheriff’s office, still in mufti because he hadn’t wanted to upset Nora by putting on a uniform. He was immediately waved back to Gage Dalton’s office.

Gage sat behind his desk, one side overloaded with a stack of papers, the other side burdened by a computer. In between there was a battered nameplate that identified him as sheriff and looked as if it had fallen to the floor countless times.

“You’ve taken an interest in Nora Loftis,” Gage said without preamble.

Well, of course, the whole damn town probably knew by now. If he hadn’t been seen picking her up, if folks didn’t know he’d gone to Denver to get her, Maude still would have mentioned to someone that they’d been in the diner together last night. Life was like that here.

“I’ve known her all my life,” Jake answered, settling in one of the two wooden chairs in front of Gage’s desk.

“I’m not questioning you, Jake. Fact is, I have only a vague memory of her as a child. She seemed to blend into the woodwork and say very little. But I do know Fred Loftis. Nora gets my sympathy for that alone.”

“He’s a harsh man.”

“To put it mildly. Now to the point. After you expressed interest in the case, I very nicely asked the Minneapolis P.D. to keep us informed. They told me that they discovered this morning that Cranston Langdon slipped his bracelet.”

Jake tensed. He’d feared that when Gage had called him in, mentioning that he had a concern about Nora. The concern had been itching along his nerve endings since the call. “I was afraid that’s what you wanted to tell me.”

“He cut it off last night. Then before they could start checking, he was gone. Apart from what he did to Nora, this is one scary guy. He went after his wife last night, presumably because she was able to state unequivocally that Nora had never met the man. Anyway, the wife is unconscious, probably comatose, and our rapist and would-be killer is on the loose.”

“What’s the likelihood he could find her here?”

“Damned if I know. I’ve got the guys in Minneapolis scouring everything they’ve got to find out if it was ever mentioned anywhere in public that she came from this town. They don’t think it’s likely. Are you willing to bet on that?”

“Hell, no. She probably had friends who would know, if nothing else.” Jake’s voice became a low, almost savage growl.

“Me, neither. But I don’t want to scare Nora out of her skin unless it becomes necessary.”

Jake leaned back, squashing his fury, trying to sort through more logical thoughts. Getting angry wouldn’t fix a damn thing, and might lead him to foolish action.

“They’re sending us the guy’s description and mug shots. We can get them out. You know strangers stick out around here.”

“Except at the truck stop.” Plenty of strangers passed through there. “I guess we should give Hasty the mug shot.” Hasty owned the truck stop.

“I guess so.” Gage drummed his fingers on the desk. “I hate shadow boxing.”

“I’d have thought you’d done a lot of it in the DEA.”

“That’s why I hate it.” Gage smiled crookedly, the burned side of his face barely moving. Long ago, as a DEA agent, he’d been targeted by a bomb. “There’s no guarantee this perp will have any idea where to look for Nora. There’s also no guarantee that he won’t. And if he could slip his bracelet, he’s no dummy.”

“My main concern is protecting Nora,” Jake said flatly. “To hell with the rest. Living in that house with her father is hell enough, and he’d be no damn good in a crunch.”

“Stashing her could be good, but stashing her would mean telling her why we want to hide her somewhere. Do you think she could handle that?”

“I think she’s a lot stronger than even she realizes. She should be dead. She survived being accused of obstructing justice to protect herself and her rapist. She’s a mess right now, but she’s a survivor.” Jake shook his head. “You’re right, though. I don’t want to scare her needlessly.”

“Then we got us a problem.” Gage sighed and shifted in his chair, a grimace of pain crossing his face. Jake had gathered that the bomb had done more than burn him. It had also injured his back and left him with a permanent limp.

“I think she’s as tough as you are,” Jake said.

The remark surprised Gage. For a moment he froze. Then he shook his head. “I spent a long time getting to sleep at night by tossing down a couple of whiskeys. I doubt that young woman is drinking anything stronger than lemonade.”

“Not in that house.”

“I don’t know how to figure Loftis in this. Does he care for his daughter? If so, how much?”

“Nora seemed to think that he’s going to blame her for the attack, claiming she sinned by finding a normal life for herself.”

Gage swore quietly. “Somebody tell me why men like that never meet an untimely end.”

That almost surprised a laugh from Jake. He wasn’t used to hearing Gage talk that way.

Suddenly Gage leaned forward. “Okay. I’m going to talk to my wife, Emma. I bet she can offer Nora a job at the library, doing something that won’t wear her out too much. Give her a little income. Maybe she can get out of that house then and she won’t be alone, at least at work. In the meantime, we get everyone to put eyes and ears on for strangers. Quietly. And hope to God we’re wasting our time.”

Jake was far from a happy camper when he left a few minutes later, but he was glad that Gage was taking this so seriously. He sat outside in his car for a few minutes, trying to decide just how much of a threat there really was to Nora. This was damn near the back of beyond, hardly a blip on the map. Truckers came through here only because the state highway provided a shortcut to the interstate.

But it was not totally off the radar. Who could guess how many people Nora might have mentioned her hometown to? Or what sort of information about her Cranston Langdon might be able to access?

Nobody. The guy was clearly crazy. He had to have known that attacking his own wife was only going to deepen his troubles. Apparently he either didn’t care, or wasn’t capable of caring. Hell, if people feared consequences, there’d never be a murder.

Sorely troubled, he sat a while longer, watching pedestrians stride along the sidewalks, everything looking so damn normal he couldn’t believe how much had changed by the insertion of one wounded woman into his life.

Nothing looked the same anymore. Nothing. All because of Nora.

And dammit, he had to do something more to keep an eye on her than rely on the loose cordon Gage was instituting. A whole lot more. But just what? How could he insert himself further into her life? She’d warmed to him a bit over the past twenty-four hours, but he doubted she wanted him camped on her doorstep.

And then there was Fred Loftis. He’d have to find a way around that man or be forbidden to set foot on his property.

He paused in midthought, as it struck him that he seemed like an odd choice for Fred to have sent after Nora. They weren’t friends. Far from it. Fred could have asked anyone from his church.

So why the hell send the chief of police? The more Jake thought about it, the more disturbed he was by what had initially seemed to be nothing but a neighbor’s request.

What the hell was Fred Loftis up to? Did he know something about that long-ago night and what Nora had done? What he had done? Had asking Jake been intended to cause more pain?

Or was it Fred’s way of reminding his daughter that she was a sinner?

Damn! He wanted to pound the steering wheel. He wished like hell he could read minds.

But he couldn’t. And he was beginning to have a horrifying feeling that Nora might be tangled in more than one spider’s web.

He had to figure out something. Anything. And soon.

* * *

Nora sent a few text messages to friends back in Minneapolis, assuring them she was okay but was careful to avoid telling them where she had gone. Denver was the closest she had come to telling them her plans when she left, but she imagined none of them suspected she was here. After all, she’d made no secret of where she had come from, and no secret of her problems with her father. She doubted any of them would think she had come home.

She could hardly believe it herself. What was she doing here in this house, a house that still echoed with angry words spoken so long ago, when her father had insisted her mother had killed herself because Nora had gone away to college to live a sinful life? Him shouting those damning words, and her shouting back that if anything had made her mother suicidal, it had been life with a harsh, judgmental man who wouldn’t even allow her a single thought or act of her own.

A man, she thought bitterly now, who had gotten a dishwasher when he no longer had a woman to clean up after him. A dishwasher! Her mother had asked for one once, when she often had tons of dishes to do after contributing to a church supper, when her hands had become arthritic and the job had begun to pain her, and the answer had been, “Idle hands...”

Yeah, idle hands. Her mother’s hands had never been idle, even when they got so bad she could no longer do her crewelwork or her knitting. Nora had stepped in as much as possible with the chores, but the desire to escape that house had overwhelmed her, too. College had been her way out. There had been none for her mother.

Maybe her father was right. Maybe her leaving had taken away her mother’s last support. Maybe she had left Gretchen Loftis feeling hopeless. Certainly, her mom had been left without anyone to buffer her against her dad.

Nora, at least, had often provided him another object for his endless sermons and criticisms. With Nora gone, Gretchen must have born the full brunt.

God! She couldn’t afford to think that way. She had to remind herself that when she announced she was leaving, her mother hadn’t offered a word of protest. Not one sound, unlike Fred, who had told her she was on the path to hell.

No, Gretchen had helped her daughter pack. Had taken her to the bus station. What wrath that must have brought down on her head.

Nora felt tears seeping out of her eyes but she didn’t wipe them away. Gretchen had wanted her daughter to escape. Of that she was certain. But whether that had anything to do with her mother’s final act of despair, there was no way to know.

So maybe she was responsible, at least in part. But not fully. Never fully. Not with Fred Loftis in the picture.

God, what was she doing here? Had she sunk so low she had to come back here? Couldn’t she find enough strength to stand on her own two feet?

Escaping Minneapolis made sense, at least until that man was in prison. And yes, she was still very weak from her injuries and needed time yet to regain her strength. But surely she could have gone somewhere else.

Agitated, she rose and walked through the house. No pictures of her or her mother remained. They had been erased as if they had never been. Even the wedding photo showing a young Gretchen and Fred had vanished.

Why the hell had her father told her to come back here? Some vestige of genuine caring? Or just the sense that he had to do something that would look good to the people whose opinions he really cared about?

She would never understand that man. Never understand how he could care so much about some things and so little about others. How he had become so hard and implacable.

How had he become so righteous and wrathful and so lacking in compassion? Had he been raised that way? She would never know, as she knew nothing about him except what he showed her in any passing moment. If he had a past he never mentioned it. He might have sprung out of the ground as a fully formed adult for all she knew.

She had to get out of here. A glance at the clock told her he would probably be coming home soon. He generally took an afternoon break then returned to the pharmacy as the evening business picked up and remained until closing.

But where would she go?

Anywhere. Anywhere at all.

Once again grabbing her jacket and the key, she left the house. Walk slowly, she reminded herself. One easy step at a time or she wouldn’t get anywhere at all. There was the library, if she wanted relative quiet, or Maude’s if she wanted coffee.

But there’d be too many people at Maude’s, even at this time of day.

So, walking as slowly as an elderly lady, she set out for the library. She could hole up there at least until her dad went back for his evening shift. It was a much longer walk, but if she managed it, she’d have something to feel good about.

And she desperately needed something to feel good about.

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