“By herself?”

“Yep.” The chair creaked again as he leaned back in it and defiantly met his mother’s mildly disapproving look.

“You think that’s a good idea?”

He shrugged and scowled down at the wildflowers, noticing as he did that they were looking somewhat the worse for wear. He picked at a floppy daisy and his heart grew heavier. “Probably not. However, she definitely does not want me with her. She’s grieving,” he said, and took a long breath that didn’t do much to ease the tightness in his chest. “For Mary Kelly.”

“That’s the woman that was killed?” C.J. nodded. “Well,” his mother said after a moment, “she needed to.” She settled herself against the porch railing and hooked her pocketbook over her arm as if she meant to stay awhile. “I expect she’d like some comfort, though, no matter what she told you.”

“It wasn’t what she said,” C.J. said bleakly. “It was the way she looked.” He was surprised when his mother laughed and made a “shame on you” sound with her tongue.

“Son, I’m afraid you don’t know very much about women.”

He didn’t like hearing that, even if it was true. “Well, shoot, Momma,” he said, bristling, “I know enough to know when I’m not wanted-or needed.”

“You do, do you?”

He was getting tired of being the source of his mother’s amusement but knew better than to say so. Instead, he whacked the flowers across his knee without much regard for their condition and muttered bitterly, “That is the strongest, most independent, stubborn and bullheaded-”

“Whoa, now. That’s a lot for one woman to be, and not necessarily all bad.”

“Well, it ain’t all that good, either,” C.J. growled.

“So,” said his mother, ignoring his grammatical lapse, “I guess that means you’d like a woman to be weak, clingy and wishy-washy?”

He snorted, though he could feel a lightening of his spirits and a grin trying hard to break through. “After growin’ up in this family? Momma, I’ve never even met a woman who fit that description.” He paused to think about it, and the heaviness settled back around his heart. “No, I don’t want that. Of course I don’t. I just want-” What any man wants. He stopped, frustrated, because he didn’t know how to say it. Or didn’t want to say it, not out loud. To be needed…wanted. To be, for one person, at least, big shot…superhero…knight in shining armor…the alpha and omega. The light in one particular woman’s eyes.

“You want to be her hero,” his mother finished for him, but her voice was gentle and for once her eyes weren’t smiling.

He let his breath out in a gust of exasperation. “Momma, you’re always sayin’ that, but that’s not what I mean. It’s not what I mean at all.” He aimed a scowl at her and hoped he was going to be able to tell her what he did mean without making a damn fool of himself. No man wants to look like a fool, even to his momma. “I’d be happy just being her friend, if she’d let me. All I want to do is help her get through this. Sure, I’d like to be able to fix everything for her, put everything back the way it was. And, okay, I know I’m not gonna be able to do that, but at least I’d like to-” he swallowed hard, lifted a hand and finished lamely “-be there for her. You know?”

“Calvin.” His mother straightened up and walked over to him. Her hand rested briefly on the back of his neck, then moved to his shoulder and gave it a little squeeze. “What on earth do you think being a hero is?”

He looked up at her and frowned. And what did she do? Just smiled back at him, then turned and started down the steps. He was about to yell at her in protest for leaving him with an exit line like that one, but after the first step she stopped abruptly and hesitated a moment before turning halfway back to him. The protest he’d planned died on his lips; the look on her face was one he’d never seen before.

“Son, your daddy was a hero to me every day of his life. Did I need him to take care of me? I most certainly did not. I was a strong and independent woman when I met him-I had a college degree and a good job teaching school. Did I need him? No more than I needed sunshine, and air to breathe. He worked hard, your daddy did-he was away a lot, driving trucks, and Lord knows it’s a good thing I’m as strong and independent as I am or I don’t know how I’d ever have been able to raise seven children with him gone so much of the time. But he loved me and he loved his kids, and let me tell you, he never thought he was too much of a man to fix a meal or change a diaper or put a load of laundry in the washing machine, either! Lord knows he had his faults. He wasn’t perfect, but that didn’t matter.” She paused, a fierce light shining in her brown eyes and spots of color showing through the face powder on her cheeks, and when she spoke again her voice was husky and uneven. “I’ll forgive a man a lot, for his eyes lighting up every time he sees me.”

She stomped on down the steps and around the corner of the house to where the cars were parked and didn’t look back or wave goodbye.

C.J. sat where he was with his forearms on his knees and a bunch of wilted wildflowers drooping in his hands and watched her car back out onto the lane, then head off toward the highway. After a while he took a big breath and brushed at something that was crawling down his cheeks-some kind of bug, he told himself.

Yeah, that’s what it was. Had to be.


Scaredy-cat, Caitlyn scolded herself. The voice in her head kept time with the scuffing sounds her feet made as they felt their way along the gravel track, like a schoolyard taunt: Scaredy-cat, scaredy-cat, ’fraid of the dark.

She wasn’t afraid of the dark. Or she never had been before, even as a child. She remembered playing with her cousins, Eric and Rose Ellen, on Aunt Lucy’s farm, where, far away from city lights, on moonless nights the Milky Way made a shimmering path across an inky black sky. She remembered playing games of hide-and-seek in the big old barn on nights when clouds hid even the starlight, and the darkness was like a blanket across her face, and they’d taken delicious shivery delight in scaring each other silly.

This is no different, she told herself. It shouldn’t be. Why should it be, just because it’s the middle of the day and I can feel the sun on my face and the autumn breeze in my hair? It shouldn’t be, but it is.

For one thing, the scary things lurking in this darkness weren’t giggling children poised to jump out at her and yell, “Boo!” They were evil men with guns and no compunction about using them to snuff out the life of an innocent young woman…a little girl’s mother. Or mine.

And in this darkness there were no farmhouse windows ablaze with light, beacons to guide her home. In this darkness she was all alone.

You don’t have to be.

The whisper inside her head was enticing…insidious. She squelched it ruthlessly. She couldn’t allow herself to think like that, even for a minute. She didn’t dare.

She wondered now if she’d dreamed of Vasily last night for a reason. Because C.J. had kissed her, because it had felt so good to be held and to walk with his arm around her. Because it was so tempting to give in, abdicate responsibility, let someone take care of her, let someone else take care of Vasily. Only, she couldn’t do that. This was her trouble, her battle, her war, and she couldn’t risk the possibility of anyone else getting hurt fighting it for her.

She could learn to live with being blind, if she had to, but she could not live with that.

The dream remained vivid in her mind’s eye as she shuffled along the lane that ran between fields of hay and stubble, and although the autumn sun was a toasty burn across her shoulders, she shivered. Once again she could hear the bullets making angry zapping sounds as they whizzed past, missing her… Once again she saw the bleached faces of people she loved lying in pools of thick red blood, dead eyes staring up at the sky-Mom and Dad were there and Aunt Lucy and Uncle Mike, Eric and Ellie. It shocked her now to realize that one of the faces was C.J.’s.

What had she been thinking, to run away from him like that?

You wanted him to come after you, answered the traitorous voice inside her head. You hoped he would.

As before, she slapped the voice away, but not before she heard it jeeringly ask, Well, why didn’t he?

I shouldn’t be doing this, she thought, quickly redirecting her thoughts. It was selfish. I shouldn’t be out here alone.

She felt as exposed as a duck in a shooting gallery. What if Vasily’s men were out there now? What if they’d been watching her? Just been waiting for their chance to grab her?

If they get me, she thought, then Jake will have nobody to use as bait to catch Vasily. He’ll get away with it-with killing Mary Kelly. He’ll get away with everything!

I shouldn’t be here. I have to go back.

But where was “back”? She’d long ago lost count of her steps. And now she realized that she wasn’t walking on the gravel lane and that the ground under her feet was spongy with thick layers of fallen leaves. Oh, Lord-she was in the woods, she had to be. She’d never tried to orient herself or count footsteps in the woods-it was too big, too cluttered, too confusing. All the tree trunks felt alike. Now sapling trees slapped at her and their huge dying leaves rustled like dry bones as she brushed them. An exposed root rose up beneath her foot; she gasped and, stumbling, threw out a hand and scraped her knuckles on bark.

It came upon her so suddenly, as if she’d triggered a trap, one of those nets that fall out of nowhere and instantly immobilize: fear. Fear that had nothing to do with stalkers and snipers and nightmare visions of blood. This was fear as old as humankind, instinctive fear of the darkness and the unknown. Icy sweat sprang from her pores and her skin shivered. Fine hairs rose along her arms and shoulders and the back of her neck. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears, so it was a moment before she realized the whimpering sounds she kept hearing came from her.

Something rustled through the branches above her head and fell with a thump nearby. Adrenaline shot through her and in her panic she pushed away from the relative safety of the tree and fled, stumbling through thick drifts of leaves on legs that felt like melting rubber, arms thrown up to protect her face, her breath like sobs. A thorny vine caught at her, tore her clothing and slashed her skin, and she fought it as desperately as if it had been a wild animal attacking her with intelligent intent. Trying to elude it, she turned this way and that, becoming only more hopelessly confused, more terrified, more lost. This was worse than being lost in darkness-she was lost in nothingness, populated by terrors of her own imagining.

How long she thrashed and stumbled through the woods she didn’t know-probably no more than minutes…seconds, even. It seemed like hours. Like forever.

It ended abruptly when her foot sank into a hole left by a long-decayed stump. Pain shot through her; she pitched clumsily forward, half falling, half stumbling as she instinctively fought to forestall the inevitable. Then, suddenly there was an embankment, studded with moss-covered rocks and rotting logs-and down she went. She rolled…and slid…and bumped to a stop.

For a few minutes she lay as she’d landed, on her back, feet downhill on a steep incline. She felt oddly peaceful now; the terror, the nightmare panic, seemed to have vanished as quickly as it had come upon her. Covering her face with her forearms, she began to laugh silently-partly from relief, but mostly with chagrin and shame. She’d panicked-utterly and completely panicked. Never in her life had she done such a thing. She felt unbelievably foolish. Unforgivably stupid.

As she listened to the quietness fold itself around her she realized that it wasn’t silence-she could hear the musical tinkle of running water. She put out an exploring hand and felt cold liquid slide through her fingers. And now…yes, she could feel wetness soaking into her jeans on one side. The creek. She was lying on the edge of the creek, partly in the stream, which was barely a trickle this time of year.

At least, she thought, I know where I am now. She’d been to the creek with C.J. enough times; surely she could find her way back to the lane from here.

But when she tried to stand, the pain she’d forgotten about exploded through her leg. She gasped. Her head reeled and she sat down much more abruptly than she’d intended. Breathing hard and swearing fiercely, she rocked herself back and forth while she took stock of her situation. Oh, yes, she remembered stepping in that hole, now. Stupid…stupid. But she didn’t think her ankle was seriously injured-probably only sprained-and if she could manage to crawl out of the creek bed, she might be able to hobble-No. She mentally slapped a hand over her mouth. Caitlyn, haven’t you done enough stupid things today?