Deep in the Heart (15 page)

“It might help at that,” he said, then grinned and followed the dispatcher back inside.

John Thomas got into his own car and left, lights flashing, siren squalling for all in his path to move aside. He had to beat Lem Marshall to the house before the man did something rash, like taking Lizzy and all seven children hostage for the hell of it.

Noon had come and gone. And as the sun began its descent west, the heat came. The slow, sweltering kind that made bones weak and temperatures rise. Even Rebel had succumbed, and was on his third nap of the day, in the hallway, the only place in the house that still boasted a breeze as well as shade.

The heat and Samantha’s lack of choice in clothing had sent her digging through John Thomas’s closets, hoping to find something to wear that was looser and cooler than what she had. The top shelf of his closet looked promising.

Sam dragged over a chair and then climbed up on it, using the extra height to reach the oversize T-shirts that she’d seen.

In her haste, she pulled too fast and sent the whole stack tumbling toward her, bringing boxes with it as it fell. Muttering in frustration, she climbed down and began to pick up the shirts.

It was when she lifted the last shirt that she saw them, spilling out of an old shoe box that had fallen along with the clothes. Samantha stared, unable to believe her eyes. Letters. Addressed to her, in Johnny’s handwriting. There were so many, and every one of them was unopened and stamped,
Return to sender.

In that instant, fifteen years of disappointment disappeared.

“Oh, Johnny. I thought you hadn’t cared.”

With shaking hands, she gathered them into a pile in the middle of her lap, sorting them one by one according to the date of the postmark. And when she had them all in order, she opened the first. They were, after all, hers to read.

It didn’t take long for the first tears to fall. By the time she’d opened the last letter and read of Johnny’s pain and uncertainty, she felt sick with regret. He had cared. He had written. And in spite of the fact that she’d never answered, he’d still come home to Cotton, expecting her to be there.

She closed her eyes, imagining him at eighteen, in pain and shame. Seeing him alone at his father’s funeral, standing ramrod stiff and unyielding in his uniform as they lowered his father into the grave, and thinking that she’d abandoned him without a care.

“Johnny…Johnny, I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”

She rolled over onto her side, clutching the letters against her chest, and cried. Finally, it took Rebel’s cold nose against her neck to bring her out of her shock.

She put back everything the way she’d found it on the closet shelf, except the letters. They were hers. Just fifteen years late in being delivered. Samantha hiccuped on a sob. If only they hadn’t come too late. How could she make him understand?

She stepped over the dog, and began shedding her clothes as she made her way to the bathroom. She couldn’t go outside to have a swim, but she’d settle for the next best thing. She was going to run Johnny’s old-fashioned, chin-deep, claw-footed bathtub full to the top with tepid water, crawl in, and pretend she was at some secluded California beach.

And for the next two hours, she did exactly that. She soaked until her fingers and toes looked like white prunes, and her body felt both relaxed and rejuvenated.

Rebel whuffed once as she climbed out of the tub. Her heartbeat accelerated as she hurriedly began to dry. Maybe it was Johnny coming home early! That would be wonderful. They could pack a picnic and she could lie on the creek bank beneath that big willow above the spring while he fished and she would find a way to tell him what she’d found. There had to be a way to make him believe she hadn’t known. Afterward they would eat, and then maybe they would…

Her meandering thoughts took a sharp nosedive as Rebel jumped to his feet and started baying loudly. Her nerves skittered as she tried to yank a pair of cutoff shorts up still-damp legs.
What’s gotten into that dog? Why would he be barking like that at Johnny?

Then she realized that, of course, he wouldn’t. It had to be someone else! She ran down the hallway, her T-shirt clinging to her damp body, her bare feet padding softly against the pine flooring

Rebel was at the door in what she could only call a stance of defense. When she tried to get around him to look out the window, he growled low in his throat, refusing to let her pass.

“Rebel. What on earth?”

Samantha bent down and patted him on the head. He acknowledged her touch, yet refused to let her by. A sound on the other side of the door startled her. It sounded like something—or someone—scooting their feet across the wood floor of the porch.

Rebel growled again, and this time added an ear-shattering howl that made Samantha want to cry along with him. And then she heard it, the sound of rapid footsteps moving across the front porch, and then the thump as whoever it was landed on the dirt. She gasped. He was running around the house!

“Oh my God! The back door!”

Samantha was about to stake her life on the fact that she had forgotten to lock it after tossing out the tomato peelings from her lunch. She bolted toward the kitchen, and in her haste, knocked over two dining room chairs. She fell, scraping her knee on the floor. She never even noticed that she left skin behind as she pulled herself up on all fours, half running, half crawling, until finally she staggered upright and reached the kitchen.

Running neck and neck, with only the walls of a house to separate them, Samantha hit the back door at the same time that the sound of footsteps outside hit the back porch.

With shaking hands, she grabbed for the dead bolt and tried to slide it in place. The door was just enough off plumb that the lock wouldn’t catch. Using all her weight in a last-ditch effort, she threw herself against the door just as the bolt slid home.

With breaths coming in hard, aching gulps interspersed with tears of hysteria, Samantha leaned forward, resting her forehead against the solid wood, and heard a similar sound of heavy breathing on the other side of the door…and knew that it was not her own.

She gasped and jumped back, then stared in horror at the doorknob as it turned first one way and then the other. There was no other sound, no other movement, except the knob slowly turning in place.

Then a low, ugly chuckle emanated from the other side of the wall while Sam’s heart forgot to beat.

Behind her, Rebel growled fiercely as her hand dropped to her side, blindly searching for the meager comfort the dog might provide.

She inhaled slowly, then listened while the footsteps moved across the porch. Only after she heard the sound of a soft, muted thump as he landed in the dirt did she exhale, and then she waited as the sounds faded away.

The sudden need to see his face sent her bolting to the window over the sink. With shaking hands, she parted the curtains and peered out between the panels, hoping to catch a glimpse of the intruder. There was nothing in sight but a blackbird flying across the yard on its way to the stand of trees beyond the back fence.

“Oh God! Oh God!”

She buried her face in her hands and dropped to her knees. This couldn’t be happening. She thought she’d left this horror and this hell behind her in L.A. But he must have found her.

“Johnny! I’ve got to tell Johnny. He’ll know what to do.”

Ignoring the tremble in her fingers, she made the call to John Thomas’s office, and then pressed the receiver to her ear while she leaned again, peering through the slit in the curtains just to make sure he hadn’t come back.

But the phone didn’t ring.

“Darn,” she mumbled, and took a deep breath, convinced that in her panic, she must have misdialed. Just as she started to repeat the procedure, she realized that there was no dial tone.

“No! Not that! Please not that! I can’t be cut off from Johnny.”

With Rebel at her heels, she ran to the living room phone. When she lifted the receiver, the only sound she could hear was the swift rush of her own blood pulsing through her body. The line was dead. Just as she would be if she couldn’t get help.

Leaving the house on foot was impossible. The worst thing that could happen would be to go outside and then be unable to elude or outrun him. She pivoted and scanned the room for an answer. There was none. Only the sound of her heartbeat and harsh, ugly gasps for air as she tried to breathe past sobs. Long moments passed while she stood in terror and wondered if this was the day she was going to die.

But something happened as she stood there. She remembered the letters she’d just found, and the wasted years, and got angry all over again at the loss they had suffered.

Her tears dried. The tremble in her lip disappeared as her mouth firmed in anger. If he came again, she would be ready.

With Rebel at her heels, she began moving furniture across the doorway. When she was convinced that it would take an army to get inside, she repeated the process in the kitchen, shoving the table and bracing the chairs by tilting them on two legs. Her barricades were in place.

After satisfying herself that all the windows were locked and the curtains drawn, she began searching the house for weapons. Johnny was a lawman. Surely he had other weapons somewhere in the house besides the one he carried.

She found one on the shelf in the closet with the cleaning supplies: a double-barreled shotgun of blue steel with a smooth, well-polished wood stock. When she lifted it to her shoulder and tried to aim it, she staggered from the size and weight.

But her elation died when she realized that it was empty. And no amount of searching provided a single shell. She slid to the floor, resting her head on her knees. A sob thickened low in her throat, but she refused to let it have its way.

“Johnny, help me. I can’t find the damned ammunition!” And then she beat her fist against her leg in frustration.

But there was no one but Rebel to hear her dismay, and she refused to give up. Dodging windows as she crawled toward the kitchen, she settled into the corner opposite the door with a knife in her hand and the empty gun across her lap, then tried to find a comfortable spot upon the floor.

Moments later, Rebel came and flopped down beside her, resting his head on her knee, whining every now and then as if to tell her she wasn’t alone, that he understood.

With tears in her eyes and a knot in her stomach, Samantha prepared herself to wait. Someone would come. Either it would be Johnny…or it would be the intruder. Whichever, whenever, this time she would be ready.

It was closer to seven than he liked to consider when John Thomas walked back into the office with Lem Marshall in tow, handcuffed and cursing with every step. It was hard to say which of the men looked the worse for wear. Delmar, the evening dispatcher, stared in amazement.

“Damn, Sheriff! I can’t believe you took him alone!”

“Me neither,” he said wearily. “Help me lock him up.”

Delmar ambled out from behind the cubicle wall and then circled the old, grizzled fellow who looked more beast than man. “Exactly where do I get ahold, John Thomas?”

“You just unlock the cell, I’ll do the rest,” John Thomas said shortly, and yanked at Lem’s cuffed hands as he half dragged, half walked his prisoner into the holding cell.

“Delmar, did Carol Ann think to call Samantha and tell her I’d be late?” John Thomas asked, as he unlocked the cuffs and shoved Lem to the back of the cell at the same time that Delmar slammed the cell door shut and locked it.

“Funny thing about that,” Delmar muttered. “She said she never could get through. Said it rang and rang but no one answered. I think she said she called at least five or six times this afternoon.”

John Thomas felt queasy. For a moment, the room shifted and he felt as if he were turning inside out.

“What do you mean, no one answered?”

Delmar frowned. “Just what I said. Shoot, I even stood and watched her make the last call. That was just after I come on duty. Must have been around five, five-fifteen. Something like that. Carol Ann seemed real worried. She said she never could raise you on the radio to tell you.”

“I was otherwise occupied,” John Thomas said, glaring at the man in the cell who just may have cost him more than a good shirt. It was then that he made the decision. “I’m going home, Delmar. I’ll do the paperwork on Lem’s arrest tomorrow.”

“I’ll start it for you,” Delmar offered. “You can fill in the blanks in the morning when you get here. Shoot, by now I know old Lem’s statistics almost as well as my own.”

But John Thomas wasn’t listening. His mind was stuck on the sound of a ringing phone in an empty house and wondering where the hell his lady had gone. Taking the squad car in place of his pickup on the off chance that he might need to use the radio to call for help, he made the run from Rusk to his farm in little under eight minutes and was thankful that he was on the good side of the law. In his youth, he could easily have wound up in jail for pulling a stunt like this.

It was close to dusk as he turned down the driveway. Even from here he could tell that the house was too dark. There was no door opening in welcome, or Samantha’s smile to pull him inside. No dog came bounding out to meet him. There was nothing to prove anyone was inside.

He parked in a skid of flying dirt and gravel and jumped out on the run, praying with every step that she would be there, and then praying that she wouldn’t. At least if she was gone, she might still be alive.

He knocked on the door and then yelled her name but got no answer. With fear lending speed to his steps, he leaped off the porch and began running around the house toward the back door. If he had to, he would break it down.

9

S
AMANTHA’S LEFT FOOT
was asleep and her back ached from the cramped position in which she was sitting. Slumped in the corner of the kitchen, she watched while the afternoon sun fell toward the horizon and then long after the evening shadows had nearly covered the entire floor space.

Her eyes burned and the intense fear with which she’d begun her standoff had turned into steel-lipped determination. The months of living in fear that had nearly destroyed her were gone. Being in Johnny’s company for the past few weeks had given her a whole new perspective on being stalked. She might not be able to stop her killer, but she had spent her last day feeling helpless.