Megan sat huddled in a corner of the green bedroom. Jake had been gone an hour, maybe two, with a promise to return from town with a new lock for her front door and the necessary supplies to repair the damage to the facing.
She ought to get up—she knew that—ought to change out of Jake's clothes, ought to start a load of laundry because she knew she could never, until she had washed them, put against her body clothes that had been pawed over by careless hands, ought to start tucking back into their proper places all the things that had been nudged and shuffled and displaced by the men who had invaded her home the night before. Ought to. But couldn't.
The cats had followed her into the bedroom, watching while she stood there, holding back all the emotions that hammered behind her eyes and at the back of her throat.
It was still early. Unbelievable. But the light flooding into the room through its many windows was the pale, watery green of early morning sunshine filtered through thousands of still tender leaves on the sheltering oaks and hackberries and wild cherries in the neglected and overgrown side yard. That yard was to have been her next project. After this room.
She'd been painting the floor when they burst in on her, had painted perhaps a quarter of it a clean gloss white, and in one corner had even begun the stenciling pattern. She supposed Jake had closed the paint can when he came back here, had saved that much for her. But that was all he had been able to save. There was nothing clean about her floor now, nothing glossy, nothing white except the smeared footprints tracking across bare wood, a set of them looking as though whoever had made them had stopped and wiped his feet, smearing the green of the stenciling and the white of the floor with the dried mud and what appeared to be barnyard already on his shoes.
They'd all wiped their feet, at least figuratively, on her hopes for this home. Had they destroyed them?
Unable to stay in the desecrated room any longer, Megan scrambled to her feet and searched through her closet until she found a pair of loafers and stuffed her feet into them. The laundry would have to wait. Changing out of Jake's clothes would have to wait. She had to get out of this poor violated house. Later she'd decide whether or not to come back into it.
Jake had long ago gotten involved in a running wager with Patrick Phillips about which traveled faster in Pitchlyn County, good news or bad. Neither of them had been able to come up with a definitive test, so the original money remained unclaimed. But since what had happened at Megan Hudson's place the night before would be judged good or bad primarily by which side of a well-defined political line one stood on, he supposed it didn't matter which moved faster. Because the news would have traveled. Rolley P would play hell trying to keep this mess quiet.
He'd gone back up the hill to his place and exchanged his Jeep for a well-used Dodge pickup before coming into Fairview and had backed the truck up to the loading zone of the feed store/lumber yard/hardware store/garden center. Leaving the key in the ignition, he ambled into the building. Years before, a corner behind the painting supplies had been cleared out to make way for Fairview's version of a spit-and-whittle club, an unofficial coffee shop and unashamed bastion of male-only bonding.
He stood at the counter no more than fifteen seconds before the half dozen men noticed him and fell silent. Yep. Faster than a speeding bullet. Sometimes he wondered, and once after a few too many shared cold beers, he had even asked why Patrick bothered printing the newspaper. Patrick had answered quickly and much too intensely for the mellow mood they had worked so hard to establish: Someone's got to try to find the truth.
"Hey, Kenyon. What brings you to town this morning?"
Jake glanced toward the table. Walt Harrison, owner of the place and brother-in-law of Rolley Pierson, the current sheriff, occupied the chair at the head of the table, the one under the sign that proclaimed POLITICS SPOKEN HERE, and from the smirk on Walt's face Jake could tell that more than politics had been spoken this morning and Walt knew all too well what brought Jake to town.
"Heard you had some trouble out at your place last night," Walt called out.
"Nope, not my place," Jake said. The clerk who came to the counter was new since last week. Jake hoped he had more sense than the last one, but since Walt tended to hire minimum-wage workers and fire them rather than promote them, he doubted it. But he gave him the list he had scribbled on an envelope. "Go ahead and load these in the green pickup out front," he told the man. Then he lifted a couple of boxes of shotgun shells from the counter display. "And bag these with the small stuff but put them on a separate invoice."
Walt stretched just enough to see what Jake had put on the counter. "Going varmint hunting?" he asked.
"Nope."
"Hell, Kenyon, you're just full of information this morning. Grab yourself a cup of coffee and get neighborly while Mack loads up your stuff."
Since Walt Harrison had never been neighborly in his life, Jake interpreted the invitation to mean, Come tell these folks all you know about what happened, so my wife's brother won't get on my ass for spreading the news.
"Sure, Walt, don't mind if I do."
He poured a half cup of sludgy coffee into a foam cup, grabbed a chair, and flipped it around to sit straddling it slightly away from the crowded table. He took a sip and looked at the gathered crowd. He knew most of them as Walt's regular cronies, but he recognized a couple of them as pretty dependable tradesmen and wondered why they were still sitting around in the middle of the morning.
"So," Jake said. "What's been happening in town since the last time I came in?"
"Not much," Walt told him. "Not much. Hear you've got a new neighbor, though."
"Not all that new."
"Hear she's a looker."
"Now where did you hear a thing like that?" Jake asked quietly.
"Hear you took her on up to your place to spend the night last night."
"Damn, things must really be slow in town if you're keeping track of me again." Jake smiled genially as he got up, stretched and tossed his cup into the fifty-gallon drum that served as a trash barrel. "Did you also hear that I'm closing the private road that runs in front of my place and the Hudson place down to the county road? Oh, and just in case anyone's thinking about going hunting out there, both places are posted as of today, because it might be dangerous. My new neighbor"—he purposely mimicked Walt's intonation of the words—"is a little spooked way out there in the country. I figure she'll feel better with a weapon in the house, but I'm not sure she's going to be too careful about what she shoots at; you know how transplanted city women can be. Come to think of it, I'm not sure I'll be too careful either."
"Come on, Jake." Walt slapped the table with his hand. "Aren't you going to tell us what happened last night?"
"Why should I?" Jake asked pleasantly as he looked over at the clerk, who was wrestling with the door Jake had included in his list. "I told Patrick. You all can read about it in another hour when the paper comes out. I thought it would be more important to tell you what could happen—in the future.
"Now if you'll excuse me, I'll help Mack with those supplies. You fellows take care. Enjoyed the visit."
Patrick looked up from helping load bundled newspapers into the back of a minivan. He stretched and waved the driver of the minivan on his way and then walked out to the alley where Jake had pulled his pickup to a stop.
"You work all night?" Jake asked.
Patrick grinned. "Of course not. Do you think my wife would let me abuse this body like that?"
Jake grinned back. He knew damned well that Barbara would let Patrick do just about anything he wanted. "Good. Then you won't mind giving me a hand after you get things squared away here?"
"That depends. Is it thinking or working?"
Jake laughed. "Working. Remember that gate you've been promising for the last year to help me fix?"
Patrick's grin faded. "Are you expecting trouble?"
"Not really. I just thought it might be a good idea to discourage nosy visitors."
"Yeah. How is she today, Jake?"
"I'm not sure. For a while, she seemed all right. Maybe Barbara ought to take another look at her."
"Okay. But it will cost you: dinner tonight at your place. Steaks will be fine if you can't be more creative. I'll call Barbara and have her meet us—where, your place or Megan's? Wherever she finds us. I'll be out as soon as I finish up here."
"You're awfully agreeable, Patrick. I don't always trust you when you give in too easily."
Instead of laughing, Patrick shrugged. "This is a big story. Maybe you'd better prepare Megan, because after these papers hit the streets there's bound to be some interest, at least by the Fort Smith media."
"Damn! That's all she needs."
"I was careful to protect her identity. They might not connect our Ms. Hudson with Senator McIntyre. But even if they do, with your gate up, it's certain they won't be able to get to her without doing some serious trespassing. And you can be sure our good-old-boy sheriff is going to say as little as possible. Has she called her father yet?"
"I don't think so. I don't even know if the phone in her house is in service. Did you notice?"
Patrick shook his head. "Maybe you'd better make sure. The story had to be told, Jake. You know that."
"I called you, remember."
"You called Barbara. I just came along as part of the package."
"I volunteered the story."
"Yeah. But I'm not sure you would if you had it to do over."
"Why would you think that?"
Patrick shook his head, but he was smiling when he stepped back from the truck. "Intuition, I guess," he said. "Steaks. Make mine king-sized if you're going to work my poor body into the ground tonight. Come to think of it, maybe you'd better get the beer too. After all, my labor doesn't come cheap."
By the time Jake had picked up steaks and beer for supper, a few needed groceries, and a couple of take-out burgers for his and Megan's lunch, it was afternoon.
He hadn't been completely honest with Patrick. For a while this morning Megan had indeed seemed all right, spirited even. But that was before he had left her while he went outside to lick his own wounds. Before whatever trip her mind had taken her on while she was alone in his house. Before he had returned her to her own violated home and watched what little animation that remained drain from her.
He probably shouldn't have left her alone. He knew he shouldn't have left her alone. But he couldn't have taken her into town, not without exposing her to more attention than someone much stronger than she could have handled.
He'd left Deacon with her; he wasn't afraid for her physical safety. But at what point did someone as emotionally fragile as Megan Hudson finally stop fighting and surrender to the horror she had faced?
Damn it! He should have kept her at his place, should have had Patrick deliver the supplies he needed to repair the damage those heavy-footed bastards had caused, should have found some other way to warn off would-be sightseers.
He didn't understand the anxiety that gripped him as he turned off the state highway onto the country road, that grew as his truck rumbled across the cattle guard leading from the county road onto his private lane, that had lodged securely in his throat by the time he turned into the Hudson drive and stopped in front of her house.
It was quiet. Too quiet. Not even Deacon came to greet him. Without turning off the ignition, Jake studied the house and surrounding yard. He glimpsed Megan's car through the partially open doors to the barn where she parked it. He saw no sign of an intruder, no evidence that anyone else had been here since he left Megan alone that morning, which meant that the abnormal silence and her continued absence had nothing to do with outside forces and everything to do with her tenuous grip on emotional stability.
He'd turned off the ignition and opened the truck door when he spotted a fleeting motion at the corner of the south side of the house. He slid from the truck, carefully reaching up beneath the seat as he did so for the 9-millimeter pistol he stored there, as in his Jeep, in a specially mounted hidden holster, and kept his eyes trained on the corner.
They came into sight just as Jake's hand found the automatic—Deacon first, allowing Megan's restraining hand on his collar, then Megan, still dressed in his sweats and shirt but clutching a hoe in her other hand as though she meant to do damage to more than weeds.
"Jake?"
He released his grip on the pistol and stepped away from the truck.
"Where's your Jeep?"
Relieved, he realized she had been acting out of caution and not hiding in a corner somewhere, traumatized beyond ever being able to act again. "I'm sorry." He smiled at her. "I didn't realize you hadn't seen my truck yet. I needed the cargo space for your supplies."
She stepped a little closer as he turned back to the truck and lifted a grocery bag from the cab.
"May I borrow your fridge?" he asked. "Patrick and Barbara are coming out for dinner tonight, and I need to store the groceries—either that or go home first and off-load them, and I'd rather not take the time to do that now."
"Sure," she said cautiously, releasing her grip on Deacon's collar and walking closer. "Why did you need a truck for a new lock and a—" She reached the side of the pickup and looked into the bed where he had loaded the new door, the framing lumber, the floor paint and polyurethane and another gallon of the green she had been using for stenciling, as well as brushes and cleaner. "Oh, my!"
"The county will pay for it, Megan."
He noticed for the first time that she wore garden gloves on her hands, that his shirt and sweats and her face were liberally streaked with dirt, and that she had a couple of dead leaves caught in her cropped hair. But her eyes once again held the spark he had seen at breakfast. He shifted the grocery bag in his arms and reached for the other.
"What have you been doing while I was gone?" he asked with a lightness he sensed she needed.
Megan moved around to his side of the truck and took the second bag. "Getting angry," she said, just as lightly, as she turned and started toward the front door.
Jake grinned as he fell into step behind her. "And who have you been taking that anger out on?"
"Not who," she told him, glancing over her shoulder and grimacing slightly. "What. And I'm not sure I won."
The old house with its high ceilings and long porches and tall, shading trees still held coolness from the night and early morning, and would, like his house, continue to do so until late afternoon. Jake followed Megan through rooms that had not been touched since his visit with Patrick the night before, into the kitchen, which still showed every sign of the quickly aborted but careless search.
Megan scooted her bag onto the scrubbed-pine worktable and turned. "I wasn't ready to tackle this yet," she told him. "I didn't know if I'd ever be ready to tackle it."
Jake found a place for his bag of groceries on the white enameled countertop, spotless before its desecration. "And now?" he asked casually.
Megan gave a soft, almost hesitant laugh. "Remember that mess of weeds and bramble in the side yard?" she asked. "Well, I took my frustration out on it. By the time I got down to what looks like the remains of some stone borders, I knew there was no way on earth I was going to let those overgrown bullies chase me away from here."
Her words were braver than her voice, but Jake plucked a can of cold cola from the bag and saluted her with it before handing it to her. "Good," he said. Should he tell her now what Patrick had said about the news media? He made a quick decision not to. It could be hours before anyone picked up the story. There would be time later, after she was a little more firm in her resolve to stay. Then he realized he couldn't wait.
"Have you called your father yet?"
Megan's smile faltered but she recovered quickly, popping the tab on the cola and drinking deeply before she placed the can on the table.
"Megan?"
"No, I haven't. And no, I won't."
"Do you think that's wise?"
She lifted a determined chin and stared at him. For a moment her eyes filled with pain. But then she fought it down and he saw again the fire, the life, the will to live, and the same stubborn, proud determination she'd shown him when she argued with him. He didn't know why it was so important for him to see those things, to know she felt them, but it was. As important, he realized, as coming back to her this afternoon had been. As important as learning she hadn't spent her time alone huddled in a corner.
Wondering where they had come from and why, Jake pushed those thoughts away. They were as alien to his normal reaction to someone, even a woman as attractive and needy as Megan Hudson, as were the emotions that inspired them. But to keep the life in her eyes he would postpone telling her, for a little while, something he was sure would kill it.
Megan sat at the bench of the long pine worktable in her kitchen listening to the combined thunks and gurgles of her washer and dryer and to the industrious sounds of Jake framing the new doorway and hanging the new heavy wooden door he'd told her she needed and insisted the county commissioners would pay for.
Would they? In order to preclude a lawsuit? Little did they know there was no way she would ever sue, would ever invite attention to herself. Not after the debacle she had gone through when she returned from Villa Castellano. No. Her main reason for moving here was to ensure she could keep a low profile. What a hell of a way to begin.
Jake thought she ought to call her father. She supposed she would if she absolutely had to. But right now she didn't. And right now she was in no mood to try to explain to the senator, yet again, how she had been a victim, only to have him, once again, not believe her.
She heard a mutter from the living room and then Jake humming. Humming, not swearing. He'd told her he enjoyed this kind of work when he'd declined her offer to help him, and for the first time she really believed him.
She'd straightened the kitchen while he worked, then bathed away the dirt and sweat of her marathon gardening effort and changed into clean clothes of her own.
She supposed she ought to get up and tackle the green bedroom, but a light breeze came through the open kitchen windows, fluttering the delicate organza curtains she had hung there. The room was in the northeast corner of the house, with tall, double windows on each wall, making it bright and cheerful in the morning but protected from the afternoon heat. In the few weeks she had been there, Megan had painted and scraped and scrubbed until the tall glass-fronted cabinets and the ancient appliances were a gleaming gloss white, pleasant but sterile. Only the addition of selected accents of color would make it truly a home.
The problem here, as in most of the other rooms, was that she didn't know what color. Color reflected the personality and character of the one who chose it, and Megan wasn't sure she knew herself well enough now to make those choices.
The green in the bedroom, yes. For hope. For new growth. But in the rest of the house?
She sighed and stretched, content for the first time in days. She didn't have to choose right away. For now, she could simply enjoy the cool breeze in her clean kitchen, the muffled sounds from her washer and dryer, and the contented noises Jake made as he put her house in order.
She wanted him. She'd wanted him forever. When she thought of him, she saw them in Granny Rogers's cabin, always there, never anywhere else, with their children about them, with her handwork and quilts and dishes marking the cabin as theirs, with him smiling as he lifted a laughing child into one arm while with the other he drew her close to his side.
And she wanted him in other ways, ways she didn't yet understand. Ways that tightened her body, making her ache with a loneliness so great she thought she would die from it. Ways that, were she older, she'd know how to act upon . . .
"Megan? Can you give me a hand in here?"
Startled, Megan jumped up from the bench, banging her hip against the corner of the table.
It had happened again.
What had happened again?
"Jake?"
She heard a slightly frustrated laugh from the front of the house. "There's someone else here?" he asked, but he didn't wait for an answer—thank God he didn't wait for an answer! "I hate to bother you, but I've dropped the hinge pins."
Rubbing her hip, Megan hurried to the living room. Jake had moved a table near the door to hold supplies and tools but had somehow, without her even hearing, knocked it over. Now he stood balancing the heavy door, looking down at three long pins that lay just inches from his right boot.
She scooped them up and stretched to insert one in the top hinge, but Jake took it from her and pushed it into the opening in the center hinge. "Thanks," he said.
"That's all right," she told him. She should be thanking him, for interrupting whatever it was he had interrupted, for bringing her back from wherever she had gone. "I'm glad I could help. Is there anything else I can do? Can I get you some iced tea? Or a cold beer?"
Jake frowned, she supposed because he still held the heavy door. "The other pins would be nice," he said.
"Oh. Of course."
"Megan." He shook his head and devoted his attention to setting the pins, but when he had them secured, he released the door and turned to her. "Are you all right?"
"Yes," she told him, "I am. I really am. I guess I'm just a little shaken by all that's happened. Not badly, you understand, but a little."
Jake's mouth lifted in a quizzical smile that was only punctuated by the slash of the scar on his left cheek. "Then why don't we both have a cold beer and sit on the porch for a while?"
She wanted to ask him about that scar and about the one on his hand; she wanted to ask him about the nonexistent women she had seen in his house; she wanted to ask him about her recurring sensation of having known him, or someone very much like him, but not remembering who or when. Instead, she smiled in relief and went for the beer.
She had almost relaxed, sitting beside him in companionable silence on the steps of the paint-peeled porch, feeling the same gentle breeze that had sought out her kitchen, hearing the easy, friendly sounds of the birds in their late-afternoon search for food and the subtle panting noises Deacon made as he lay beside Jake.
Jake. Funny how she knew him and yet didn't. Helen hadn't talked about her husband very much; Roger had spoken about him even less. She knew he had been a Drug Enforcement Agency agent and had overheard Helen complaining to Roger about Jake's leaving the federal government for a go-nowhere job in Pitchlyn County as county sheriff.
Later, Helen had mentioned with chilling indifference that Jake no longer even had that job, since he had been shot, but she refused to discuss it with Megan—not that that was anything out of the ordinary—and had given no indication that Jake had come as close to death as he must have to have sustained such scars.
He must still have been recuperating when Helen returned to Washington that last time, just before their fateful junket to Villa Castellano. . . .
The honk of a car horn and approaching engine noises jolted her back to the present and memories of the all-too-recent events of the night before.
"It's all right," Jake said quickly, after one look at her. He held out his hand as if to touch her, to hold her in place on the porch, but drew it back quickly. "I'm expecting someone."
A red pickup almost as disreputable as the one Jake drove pulled into what must have once been a parking and turnaround area near the porch and stopped. Deacon looked up from his relaxed pose on the porch but did not get up as a wiry sandy-haired man about Jake's age jumped from the cab.
"No wonder you need help if all you do is loll around with good- looking women, drinking what is probably supposed to be my beer," he said, laughing as he stepped up to the porch. "Hello, pretty lady." He extended his hand to Morgan. "I'm Patrick Phillips. We didn't meet last night because Jake was playing watchdog, but you did meet my wife—Barbara?" he added, in response to her puzzled frown. "Dr. Phillips?"
"Oh, yes," Megan said, at last associating the name with the soft- spoken doctor. She took his hand. "Hello, Mr. Phillips."
"Patrick," he insisted.
He was just as fair as Jake was dark, as open as Jake was taciturn, and Megan felt herself responding to his friendly smile. "Patrick," she said. "And I'm Megan."
"I know. And you have two black kittens and what promises to be a spectacularly beautiful green bedroom."
"Before he learns any more of your secrets," Jake said, while Megan was still trying to decide the best way to ask Patrick how he knew about the cats and the green paint, "you ought to be aware that beneath that good-old-boy routine, Patrick is one fine investigative reporter who just happens to publish the local newspaper."
Megan drew back her hand.
"I'm off duty," Patrick said gently. "At least for the time being." He nodded toward Jake. "I've been drafted by this layabout to help fix a gate he's had down in a ditch since before my first communion." Patrick's smile dimmed. "He didn't tell you, did he. Jake?"
"Oh, hell, don't stop now, Patrick," Jake said with a resigned sigh. "Didn't you bring a copy with you?"
"Yeah. Wait a minute."
Megan watched, more curious than apprehensive, as Patrick jogged to his truck and retrieved something from the seat. Only when she saw he carried a newspaper did she begin to get concerned. But when he unfolded it and placed it in her lap, revealing the headline ILL- CONCEIVED NO-KNOCK RAID GOES AWRY over a picture of her shattered front door with a big muddy footprint beside the remains of the lock, she sank back against the porch post.
"Oh . . . my . . . God," she said on an indrawn breath.