Stonebrook Cottage

She also knew how to skirt the truth with him if it suited her. She’d come right up to the line—if not cross it.

Sam placed one foot on the threshold and narrowed his eyes on her. He saw her lips part and knew she was thinking he might kiss her. He was tired enough that it seemed a natural thing to do, kissing Kara Galway in the doorway of her little house, never mind that she was trying to get rid of him—hiding something from him.

Instead, he tapped her chin with one finger. “I wouldn’t cross me if I were you.”

She shrugged, unintimidated. “Fine. I won’t cross you.”

“If you know anything about the Stockwell kids—”

“It’s a family matter, Sam, not a law enforcement matter. It’s sure as hell not a matter for the Texas Rangers. You’re supposed to assist in major criminal investigations. This isn’t one.”

“Are you sure you never told anyone Mike Parisi couldn’t swim?”

“Go away, Sam. I’m tired.”

“When did you find out? Did he tell you for a specific reason or did he just let it slip? What was he to you? What was he to your godchildren?”

He didn’t expect her to answer his questions. He was simply demonstrating how having the runaway kids of the new governor of Connecticut on the loose in Texas was his business if he decided it was.

Not that it had any effect on her. “Give it up, Sergeant Temple. Mike’s death and Henry and Lillian skipping out of summer camp are at most only peripherally related.”

He stepped back onto the porch, the hot night air mingling with the cool air coming from her house. He remembered her soft, white sheets, one of Eva Dunning’s hand sewn quilts hanging on the wall above her bed. Kara, Kara. What had he done?

He pressed two fingers to his lips, then touched them to hers. “I went too fast with you. I’m sorry.”

“Sam—”

But he straightened, removing any hint of softness from his expression. “If those kids don’t turn up at the airport, I’ll be back.” He started down the porch steps, his back to her as he added, “You can make more popcorn.”

Kara locked her front door behind her and stood in the foyer, her head pounding. A suspicious Texas Ranger was just what she needed. Now what? Sam or the Austin police would find the cabdriver who’d taken Henry and Lillian to Hyde Park. Two rich kids on their own—the driver would remember them.

The effects of her long day ate at her nerves, threw her off her normal manner of doing things. She wasn’t one to panic. When she was nine years old, she’d had to sit motionless next to her dying mother while they waited for the paramedics. Ranger Temple wasn’t getting under her skin. She wouldn’t let it happen.

Except it already had. Her reaction to him on her doorstep had been instantaneous and overpowering, a mix of attraction and desire, frustration, a touch of embarrassment, even fear, although not for herself. Having a tight-lipped Texas Ranger at her house gave weight to what Henry and Lillian had done in running off from the dude ranch, what their lives had become now that Big Mike was gone and their mother was governor.

Tell no one…I’m trusting you with my children…

Kara shook off the words in the letter. Replaying them in her head would get her nowhere, and it was her own damn fault she had Sam on her case. She’d given his name to Zoe West in Connecticut, figuring it couldn’t hurt to have a Texas Ranger vouching for her whereabouts. She hadn’t expected the Bluefield detective to go to the trouble of checking out her story and actually calling him.

Then, after Allyson had told her about Henry and Lillian, Kara immediately drove to San Antonio in a panic. It wasn’t just to see her brother and Susanna and get their moral support. She’d half hoped Sam would be there.

She’d more than half hoped.

She pulled out sheets in the hall linen closet, figuring she might as well make up the couch and at least get some sleep before she had to deal with Sam. Or should she wake up the kids and clear out before he got back here? She couldn’t think straight. She started back to the living room with her armload of sheets.

“Aunt Kara!” Lillian called in a panicked whisper, crab-walking up the short hall from the bedroom. Her face was ashen. “Get down! He can see you!”

“Lillian, good God—”

“Get down!”

Doing as she asked, Kara crouched down with her sheets and made her way to Lillian. “What is it, Lil?” The frightened girl was barely breathing. “Did you have a nightmare? Did you see my friend Sam—”

“It’s the man…” She faltered, unable to speak. Purple splotches spread across her pale cheeks as she gulped in more and more air, not breathing out.

“Lillian…honey, you need to hold your breath for a couple of seconds. You’re not exhaling. If you get too much oxygen into your bloodstream, you’ll pass out.”

She raised her huge blue eyes to Kara and dutifully held her breath for two seconds, then blew out a sharp breath and blurted, “It’s the man from the ranch!”

“What man? Where?”

“Outside. I saw him. Henry said we shouldn’t tell you about him until we get to Stonebrook Cottage, but he’s here. Mom doesn’t even know about him.”

Kara could feel Lillian’s near hysteria infecting her. Wisps of blond hair matted the girl’s damp forehead and temples, beads of perspiration formed on her freckled nose. Kara steadied herself. “Lillian, where? Where is this man?”

“Out front. He’s in a car. I saw him from the bedroom window.”

“Are you sure? This is the city. There are lots of cars—”

“It’s him. Come on, I’ll show you.” She tugged on Kara’s arm, but when Kara tried to stand up, Lillian gasped and dug her fingernails into her godmother’s wrists, almost drawing blood. “Stay down.”

Whatever was going on with these kids, Kara thought, it was serious and undoubtedly more than she could handle alone. She set the sheets on the floor and tried to maintain an outward air of calm, if only to reassure Lillian, who was scared out of her wits. The girl’s hyperventilating wasn’t an act. Kara had seen enough faked fear and panic attacks—on the part of witnesses, clients, even young attorneys before a big trial—to recognize the difference.

Staying low, she followed Lillian to the bedroom. Henry was on his knees at the window, peering over the sill in the dark, an angle of light from outside catching his pale face. He silently motioned for Kara and his sister to join him.

“I wasn’t going to tell you,” he whispered when Kara crouched next to him. “I didn’t want to scare you, but Lillian wouldn’t listen. He’s out there.”

“Who, Henry?” Kara asked.

“Do you see the black car? That’s him.”

She looked up past the neighbor’s house, craning her neck, and saw a black sedan parked on the street. Someone was in the front seat, but she couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman.

“Look,” Lillian said, kneeling down on Kara’s other side, “he’s smoking a cigarette.”

Kara frowned. “I can’t see the cigarette never mind who’s in the car. How do you two know he’s from the ranch?”

“He got out of the car a few minutes ago,” Henry said. “He stared right at your house. Lillian and I got a good look at him, didn’t we, Lil?”

“Uh-huh. He was under the streetlight.”

“Okay, I believe you,” Kara said. “So who is he?”

Henry sat down on the floor, leaning back against the wall under the window with his knees tucked up under his chin. Kara noticed a smattering of small scratches and bruises on his tanned bare legs, a twelve-year-old at summer’s end. How had his and Lillian’s summer come to this?

“We saw him watching us at the ranch,” he said. “Well, I did, and I warned Lillian to look out for him. He showed up the first of this week.”

“Are you sure he wasn’t an employee? He didn’t introduce himself—”

“Sometimes he had on a disguise,” Lillian said. “I saw him with a fake mustache. I thought he looked stupid.”

A fake mustache. It could have been another man altogether and Lillian had just leaped to the conclusion it was her strange man in a disguise. “Did you ever talk to him?” Kara asked.

Both kids shook their heads. “That would have been dumb,” Henry said.

“Yeah,” Lillian said, “what if he dragged us into the woods and chopped our heads off?”

Kara winced, but realized Lillian was serious. Bad things could happen if you talked to strange men. Why hadn’t it occurred to them that bad things could happen if you lit out on your own?

But Kara stuck to the issue at hand. “Did this man ever approach you, ever try to talk to you?”

“No.” Henry was remarkably calm. “He just watched us, usually from where no one else could see him. I asked one of my friends who he was, but the man disappeared—it’s like he knew I was checking him out.”

Kara peered out at the parked car and wondered if the stress of the past weeks—the isolation they’d felt after Mike’s death and their mother becoming governor, coupled with the unfamiliarity of being on a Texas dude ranch—had pushed these two bright, imaginative kids over the edge. They had to be making this stuff up.

“You didn’t tell your counselors about him?”

“I wanted to,” Lillian said, “but Henry wouldn’t let me.”

He pursed his lips, as if contemplating the logic of his decision. “I was scared to say anything. Then Mom told us to come here. I knew something was wrong.”

“Lillian says your mother doesn’t know about this guy.”

“We didn’t want to worry her. She was already worried enough.”

Kara tried to follow his thinking, but he was twelve years old. “Okay—are you sure this is the same guy?”

“Yes,” he and Lillian said simultaneously.

They argued over everything—the rules of a card game, television shows, favorite rock groups, where to sit in a restaurant. Kara had put a stop to their bickering enough times to realize that agreeing, without hesitation, about the man outside had to mean something. She sighed, wishing she could be neutral and objective where Henry and Lillian Stockwell were concerned. If they could successfully manipulate anyone, it’d be her. She loved them unconditionally, and they knew it.

Sam would want to know about the man in the black sedan.

Both kids were back on their knees, spying out the window. The car’s headlights popped on, catching them by surprise. Lillian dived to the floor, sobbing and gulping for air, and Henry ducked down low and went stone-still, as if any movement might give away his position.

Kara touched Lillian’s trembling shoulder. “Stay here. I’ll be right back. Trust me. ”

She ran up the hall into the foyer, tore open her door and shot out onto the porch, catching the car as it moved up the street. It had a Texas tag, but she couldn’t make it out or tell if the car was a rental.

She debated calling Sam. Her brother. 911. Never mind the damn letter—never mind Henry and Lillian’s irrational fear. This was her decision to make. She was the prevailing adult here.

When she returned to her bedroom, her godchildren were hoisting their backpacks onto their shoulders, grim-faced, as if they knew exactly what Kara was considering doing and now they had to go find someone else to help them.

She sighed. “What are you two doing?”

“We’re getting out of here.” Henry spoke calmly, seriously. “He’ll come back. We don’t want him to find us—or you. We have no right to endanger you, Aunt Kara.”

She ignored a sudden, overwhelming wave of nausea and forced herself to focus on the problem at hand. These kids were on the verge of spinning out of control. She had to do something, say something, that would settle them down.

Sam would be back before long. Wouldn’t they feel safe with a Texas Ranger?

Henry straightened, as if what they did next was entirely up to him. “Come on, Lil. Let’s get out of here. If Aunt Kara won’t come with us, we’ll just have to manage on our own. We can do it.”

Lillian seemed less confident, but nodded.

“Listen,” Kara said, “there’s someone I can call—”

Henry shook his head, adamant. “No.” His face had turned a grayish white, and he started to shake uncontrollably, his self-control crumbling. He stiffened visibly, but the shaking didn’t ease. Tears rolled down his cheeks, shining in the light from the street. “Aunt Kara… please, you have to believe us. We’re in danger.”

If they were in danger, there was no question she should call Sam, but she’d never get that far. The kids would bolt. They’d skipped out on the dude ranch and made it all the way to damn Austin on their own—they’d skip out on her, too.

She still had to deal with the letter from Allyson. Did she believe Allyson had written it? Did it even matter at this point? It demonstrated what Henry and Lillian believed was at stake.

And if they didn’t release her from attorney-client privilege, there wasn’t much she could tell Sam, anyway.

“All right.” Kara tried to sound decisive, although her plan was still sketchy, in its early stages—and crazy, every bit of it. “You’re going to have to trust me and let me make some decisions. I’ll get you to Stonebrook Cottage and your mother, okay? I’ll do what she says in her letter.”

They nodded, Henry brushing at the tears on his thin cheeks. Lillian was solemn, very pale.

Kara hugged them both, squeezing hard, smelling the rancidness of their fear. The hell with everything. She had to get them safely to Stonebrook Cottage and their mother and stay one step ahead of anyone who might be after them—no matter the reason, good, bad, real or imagined.

She couldn’t believe she was cutting out on Sam Temple, Texas Ranger.

She smiled suddenly, and she noticed how reassured her godchildren looked now that she was taking charge—and they were getting their way. Well, what else could she do?

“Let me throw a few things together,” she told them. “Then we’re out of here.”

Five

P ete Jericho regarded the stripped logs piled on the edge of the gravel pit with satisfaction. He’d always liked work he could see getting done. Finish one job, move on to the next. Hard, physical work suited him. He squinted up at the hazy August sky, the humidity on the rise, seeping in from the south. He had a lot of work to get done before the first killing frost. Maybe keeping himself busy would put in check his anger and frustration—his sense of loss since Allyson had stepped up to the governorship.

Stupid to fall in love with her in the first place. He’d known it years ago, when he’d see her and Lawrence up at the Stockwell place, around town. She was a few years older than Pete, but that never mattered to him. After Lawrence died, Allyson was so overwhelmed and quiet, and Pete realized what he felt wasn’t just an infatuation. He was truly in love with her.

But Madeleine Stockwell had recognized it before Allyson did—maybe even before he did—and that was his undoing.

He started back to his truck, knowing there was no point in trying to blame Madeleine for his current predicament. Even without the prison record, he suspected Allyson would want to keep their relationship secret. He was the blue-collar guy down the road. He lived on the family homestead and worked with his father chopping wood. The Jericho family had been working their land for seven generations. They used to dairy farm, but now they scraped together a living cutting wood, growing Christmas trees, leasing hay fields to the few dairy farmers left in the area, raising chickens and sheep. Bea Jericho, Pete’s mother, handled the chickens and sheep. She was talking about getting some goats and making her own goat cheese, something Pete’s father wasn’t too keen on.

But these days they earned the bulk of their money managing other people’s property, the trophy country houses rich part-time residents built on ten-acre mini-estates carved out of land once owned by people like Charlie and Bea Jericho.

Pete knew his parents didn’t know about him and Allyson. Otherwise they’d have said something. Just as well, because it looked as if he’d been dumped; she didn’t even plan to call and tell him. He was supposed to figure it out. An affair with Allyson Lourdes Stockwell, lieutenant governor, was difficult enough. Now that she was governor, it was impossible.

Six months in prison eight years ago for a stupid barroom brawl would end up costing him the woman he loved.

He hadn’t been involved with Allyson then. Madeleine Stockwell had done her job and made sure he knew her son’s widow deserved better than a Jericho. She nipped any romantic intentions on his part in the bud. He remembered that bright, cold afternoon when Madeleine stood out on the patio of the only home she’d known since marrying Edward Stockwell and told Pete he had no ambition, no real prospects. “You’ll make a living. You’re a Jericho. That’s what you do. But it’s all that you do.”

She knew he had a “crush” on Allyson, a choice of words designed to further diminish him. And if he loved her, he would understand it was in her best interests that he never act on his feelings.

Furious, humiliated, he hadn’t gone home and hit the heavy bag or chopped wood. Instead, he’d headed to O’Reilly’s Pub in town and intervened when an idiot he’d known from high school harassed a woman. Words were exchanged. Fists flew. A couple of beer bottles. He ended up with torn knuckles and a broken nose, the idiot a cut on his jaw that required five stitches. Pete figured the score was even. O’Reilly went along. He wasn’t looking to see an account of a brawl in his pub in the local papers, and he hated cops and lawyers.

Walter Harrison thought otherwise. He was an off-duty cop who happened to witness the brawl. He made a wimpish attempt to break it up, then pushed to have Pete arrested on felony assault charges.

Stories changed. The woman, who was from out of town, said she wasn’t really being harassed and begged Pete not to get involved. Not true. The former classmate said Pete threw the first punch and smashed the first beer bottle and was generally out of control. Walter corroborated their versions. O’Reilly stayed out of it. Pete was convinced, then and now, and so was his father, that Madeleine Stockwell had her hand in it. A few greased palms, a little intimidation. A criminal record would make any romantic relationship between him and her daughter-in-law that much more unlikely.

He knew he was screwed, but Mike Parisi, a man who understood barroom brawls and the ways of Madeleine Stockwell, recommended Kara Galway, said she was a hell of a lawyer. Big Mike spent a lot of time in Bluefield even after Lawrence’s death, wooing Allyson into state politics; he’d always gotten along with the Jerichos.

Recommending Kara hadn’t worked out, at least in Pete’s estimation. He’d expected her to find a way to bring out the truth. Instead, she suggested he take a plea bargain when it was offered. The odds were against him if he went to trial, she explained. If he was convicted of felonious assault, he could count on spending three years in a nasty state prison. Plead guilty to a misdemeanor, and he was in and out of the local jail in six months.

Pete took the deal. He didn’t like it, but he took it. He supposed it was unfair of him to blame Kara, but he knew he’d lost any hope of having Allyson in his life the minute he heard the jailhouse doors shut behind him. It was as if Madeleine Stockwell had planned it that way.

Then last fall, he ran into Allyson when he was delivering wood up to the barn she and Lawrence had converted. She was alone, the kids off for the weekend with friends, and it was like two old friends suddenly seeing each other for the first time, that old cliché. Since then, they met each other when they could, content to watch television together when she was at the barn alone on weekends. Pete would sneak through the woods so Madeleine and Hatch wouldn’t find out. That was no longer possible now with round-the-clock security.

And a secret affair wasn’t what he wanted. It couldn’t last. He didn’t want it to. He wanted to tell everyone—the whole world—that he was in love with Allyson Lourdes Stockwell. But it was different for her with her high-profile life, her responsibilities, the commitments she’d made.

Madeleine was right, after all. He and Allyson just weren’t meant to be. He was a goddamn jailbird. It stuck to him like rot.

He hadn’t heard from Allyson since Big Mike drowned. Now that she was governor, she was probably wishing she’d never gotten involved with him in the first place. She tried to pretend she wasn’t ambitious, but she was—he liked that about her. She sometimes ranked on her abilities, her self-doubt always a surprise to him, because he believed in her to his core.

Charlie Jericho drove up on his old tractor, and Pete waved at his father, a bandy-legged man in his early sixties. He and Madeleine Stockwell had been feuding for as long as Pete could remember. Lately she was mad at him about the gravel pit, accusing him of having dug it on the border of Jericho-Stockwell property just to goad her. Charlie said he wouldn’t go to such trouble, it just happened to be where the gravel was located. The gravel pit would play out in three years and the land would be restored. She’d just have to live with it.

Charlie climbed off the tractor, wearing his habitual navy work pants and pocket T-shirt. “Madeleine wants us to deliver her cordwood early this year. Says to make sure it’s super-dry. Like we’ve ever given her green wood. The old bat.” He coughed, pulling out a pack of cigarettes as unconsciously as someone else might grab a handkerchief. “We should charge her double for being such a pain in the ass. Call it combat pay.”

Pete laughed. “Why not? She keeps saying she gets screwed by the locals. It’d give her something real to bitch about.”

His father tapped out a cigarette and stuck it in his mouth, fished out his lighter. He had a bad, wet cough, but he had no intention of quitting. He liked to smoke, he’d say, and you have to die of something. When Big Mike drowned, Charlie Jericho had said, “See, would it have made a damn bit of difference if he’d had a two-pack-a-day habit?”

The cordwood was still drying in the August sun. They’d cut the trees over the winter, trimmed them in early spring, before the leaves sprouted, then dragged the logs out here with a tractor and cut them into eight-foot lengths, setting them up on wooden platforms, off the wet ground, to dry. When the weather cooled off after Labor Day, they’d cut them into cordwood, mostly sixteen-inch lengths. It used to be they could sell four-foot lengths and people would cut them down themselves, but that wasn’t the case anymore. Some people even had Pete stack it for them. Hauling it to the wood box was enough of a chore, he guessed.

“Madeleine pays on time, I’ll say that for her.” Charlie puffed on his cigarette and grinned. “And her checks never bounce. Listen, I was out talking to the gravel guys this morning and noticed somebody’s been up on the ridge above the pit. Hunters, kids. Looks like they’ve built some kind of platform in an oak. If it’s kids, it’s dangerous up there. One wrong slip, and they’re in the pit. That sand and rock is unstable.”

“I’ll check it out and dismantle whatever’s there,” Pete said.

“Good. I don’t want anyone getting hurt.”

Pete nodded. “It’s a long way to get help.”

“A short way to the nearest lawyer. People get hurt, they start thinking lawsuits.”

“Pop,” Pete admonished.

Charlie waved a hand and climbed back on his tractor, his cigarette hanging from his lower lip. He could have walked out here, Pete thought. The exercise would have done his father good, but Charlie Jericho’s attitude toward exercise was similar to his attitude toward quitting smoking—not for him.

After he finally puttered off on his tractor, Pete headed across the barren landscape of the gravel pit. No one was working it today. They’d finish taking out the last load of sand and rock this fall, then restore the land in the spring. Right now it looked awful, a gaping hole dug out of the hillside, a desolate stretch of stripped ground, with huge piles of sand and rock, the dump truck, backhoe, rock-crusher and sifter all idle today. Pete could picture what it would look like in a few years, when nature had reclaimed the land.