Echoes of Danger

CRITICAL PRAISE FOR LENORA WORTH:

“Suitable for CBA readers, this title is also a good pick for romance collections and those who enjoyed Kristen Heitzmann’s Halos or Hannah Alexander’s Hideaway.”

—Library Journal on After the Storm

“Worth takes readers on a thrilling ride….”

—Romantic Times on After the Storm

“…an inspirational romance and mystery thriller rolled into one… For a sweet, heartwarming story that is full of suspense, I recommend After the Storm.”

—Romance Reviews Today on After the Storm

“Talented new writer Lenora Worth combines heart-stealing characters and a tragic secret to make this page turner worth every reader’s while.”

—Romantic Times on The Wedding Quilt

“Ms. Worth puts a most unique spin on the secret baby theme to make this wonderul love story positively shine.”

—Romantic Times on Logan’s Child

“Lenora Worth creates another gem—a great, easy, entertaining read for everyone, inspirational or not.”

—Romantic Times on His Brother’s Wife

Echoes of Danger

Lenora Worth

www.millsandboon.co.uk

The end of the matter; all has been heard.

Fear God, and keep His commandments;

for this is the whole duty of man. For God

will bring every deed into judgment, with every

secret thing, whether good or evil.

—Ecclesiastes 12:13–14

To my friend Jean Duncan.

You’re not in Kansas anymore and you left Louisiana

for Texas. Jean, I miss you and wish you well.

And to Tom Palczynski—

a great teacher and a good friend.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter One

“He’s dead, Dana. Murdered. He’s murdered!”

Dana Barlow looked at her twelve-year-old brother Stephen’s tear-streaked face and wondered how life could be so cruel. She’d always been honest with Stephen, while trying to make allowances for his physical problems. She’d have to be honest with him now.

“I know, Stevie,” she said, looking down at the bloody carcass of one of their two prize Brangus breeding bulls. Thinking of all the money wasted, of all the time spent in caring for this eleven-hundred-pound animal, she wanted to sit down and cry like a baby. But she couldn’t do that. Stevie was watching her; she was the only family he had and she had to stay sane for his sake.

Why, God? she asked silently.

“Who’d go and do a thing like that, anyway?” Stephen said in a voice edged with pain and anger. “Don’t nobody around here act like that, Dana. Everybody knows Otto was my favorite. He won the Grand Championship! Otto was Stephen’s favorite!”

Dana watched as her brother rocked back and forth, holding his hands to his stomach, repeating that same phrase over and over, his mind recoiling into its own little world. A world of autism.

Dana looked around the stark, flat Kansas prairie, her eyes scanning the rippling waves of bluestem for any signs of intruders, but the wind, dancing and prancing with unabashed boldness, was the only thing moving through the tallgrass. Stephen, highly intelligent and highly perceptive, was right. Prairie Heart, Kansas, was about as mid-America as you could get and none of the five hundred or so residents would be so mean-spirited and uncaring as to deliberately kill a prize bull, especially when the whole town knew how important the animal was to Dana and Stephen’s livelihood. Who would commit such a crime?

Dana’s green eyes shifted to the west, where thunderclouds darkened the sky with an ominous intensity, to the distant steeple of the Universal Unity Church. The religious complex bordered her hundred acres of land on two sides. And the church’s leader, a woman named Caryn Roark, had been badgering Dana for months. Caryn wanted Dana’s land.

Only, she wasn’t going to get it.

Could this be Caryn’s way of trying to nudge Dana into selling? Why would the woman resort to such a thing? When the church had taken up residence a few years back in an old farmhouse on the neighboring Selzer place, Dana hadn’t paid much attention to the comings and goings. She was a Christian, and a firm believer in the live and let live theory. As long as the strange cult members left her alone, she’d do the same by them. But lately, Caryn’s followers had been harassing several of the local farmers. And now, many of the small struggling landowners living around Prairie Heart had given in to Caryn’s tempting offers to buy their land.

“We’re the only ones left,” she said out loud, her words flying on the rising wind.

Stephen looked away from Otto’s bloated, bullet-ridden body. “You’ll find them, won’t you, Dana? Dana will find the bad guys.” He rose, sniffing back tears, smearing his dusty face in the process. Jerking his green-and-white Kansas Co-op cap down over his green eyes, he stalked to his sister. “You already know who done this, don’t you?”

Dana kicked at the tallgrass at her feet, scaring a concealed walking stick out of his hiding place. Stephen automatically tried to catch the spindly bug, but the creature sauntered away, so he turned back to his sister.

“Tell me, Dana.”

Dana sighed long and hard. The school counselor and his former teachers at Prairie Heart School, where Stephen had attended before she started homeschooling him, might think Stephen was a slow learner, but sometimes Dana thought the boy was smarter than any of them. His autism was mild, a form of what the doctors termed Asperger’s syndrome. In spite of his odd social behavior and awkward motor skills, he had a way of seeing through the clutter right to the truth, and he was very clever at picking up signs or figuring out puzzles. Since the night three years ago when their parents had been killed in a car accident along the long stretch of state Highway 56 that had once been the Santa Fe Trail, Dana had never lied to him.

But she didn’t have any easy answers for something this awful.

“No, Stevie, I don’t know who did it. But I’m sure going to find out. I’m going into town to talk to the sheriff, then I’ll send Doc Jeffers around to take Otto away.”

Stephen glanced down at the big, dark-skinned animal. “I’ll sure miss you, old fella.”

Trying to find any excuse to take the boy’s mind off his loss, Dana tossed back her chin-length reddish-brown curls and playfully snatched her brother by one ear. “Hey, remember why I was headed to town in the first place?”

Stephen smiled then, his green eyes matching a lone cottonwood tree’s rustling leaves. “Yeah, sure. You gonna buy my new Ruby Runners, right? I get to stay with Mrs. Bailey.”

“That’s right,” she said, leading him to the old Chevy truck that had belonged to their daddy. “They’re on order and should be here today, and thanks to that pig you sold at the spring fair, we’ve got the money now.”

Stephen gave her a lopsided high five. “Yeah, and I’ll run twice as fast, I bet, huh, Dana? I’ll be ready for that track meet over in Kansas City, won’t I, Dana?”

As usual, Stephen’s mind wandered from current pain to future pleasure, so for a brief time, he forgot that big Otto had been brutally murdered. Dana hadn’t forgotten, though. She planned to make a stop on the way to town. It was high time she paid the devout folks at Universal Unity Church a little neighborly visit.

An hour later, Dana waited in the whitewashed reception room of the newly built offices of the Universal Unity Complex, which now consisted of a magnificent glass-and-stone chapel, a long white row of three-storied dormitories and Caryn Roark’s own private quarters—a modern, stark white mansion setting where old Hiram Selzer’s 1885 farmhouse had stood for over a hundred years. The farmhouse was long gone, old Hiram was long dead, and this rambling complex seemed out of place in rural Kansas.

Eyeing her surroundings with distaste, Dana shifted in the white leather chair where a young girl in a flowing blue dress had guided her. Everything in this place was a stark, crisp white. White-on-white carpets and tiled floors, white drapery and heavy silken sheers, white leather and wood furniture. Even the flowers were white—azaleas and gardenias growing in stone pots, petunias and roses cascading out of huge planters—except for one lone, stark amaryllis sitting on the table near Dana’s chair. That heavily blooming flower was white with threads of red and pink stripes shooting out over its lush blossoms. The lily looked strangely out of place.

Dana felt out of place herself in her T-shirt, faded jeans and heavy work boots. But, hey, why should she feel disoriented? This was her home, not theirs. She’d been born and raised here—born in the house she now lived in, and raised by two wonderful, loving people who had met their Heavenly Maker on a rain-slick road in the middle of a cold, dark night. No, she didn’t have any reason to feel out of place, but she had a whole lot of reason to feel cheated and fighting mad.

When she looked up to see Caryn Roark approaching her down a sweep of wrought-iron spiral stairs, she wondered if she’d somehow stepped into the twilight zone. The woman was downright spooky.

Caryn had platinum-blond hair that was coiled up on top of her head and threaded with brilliant golden braids of rope. She wore all white—of course—a flowing sweater-type material that looked comfortable but would probably be hot if she decided to venture out of the cool confines of her air-conditioned palace. Overall, Dana supposed Caryn was an attractive woman, until you looked into her eyes. They were a clear, cold blue, and coupled with the woman’s long, beaked nose, presented a chilling countenance.

Evil. Dana didn’t know why the word popped into her head, but it did. And it stayed with her the whole time Caryn glided toward her to extend a bejeweled hand complete with silvery painted fingernails.

“Hello, Dana Barlow. So good of you to come by. Now, what can I help you with today? Are you interested in attending some of our enlightening services here at Unity?” Caryn stood back, her hand trailing over the amaryllis while she waited, her gaze expectant.

Dana knew instantly that this was no ordinary church, not at all like the small wooden church she’d attended all her life on the outskirts of Prairie Heart. She got the feeling Sunday school here would take on a whole new meaning.

Clearing her throat, Dana got right to the point. “No, Ms. Roark—”

“Caryn, please.”

“Caryn, I’m not here to attend services, but thanks for asking. I came because I’m concerned about something I found on my land today.”

Caryn settled herself on a thronelike chair by a ten-foot window, her face serene, her eyes keen, her slightly foreign accent held in check. “Oh, and what might that be?”

“A dead Brangus breeding bull.”

Caryn looked appalled. “Oh, how dreadful. We’re all vegetarians here, so I do not tolerate hurting God’s creatures.” She gave an exaggerated shudder. “What does this horrible crime have to do with me, my dear?”

Dana leaned forward in the squeaky leather chair. “I believe it has everything to do with you. I think someone from your complex deliberately shot my animal.”

Caryn’s eyes lifted slightly, the only sign that Dana’s direct accusations had affected her. “Tell me who did this, and I will take swift action!”

Dana gave her a skeptical look, wondering if she practiced that stilted, phony voice in front of the mirror each day. “Will you really? Or did you order this slaughter?”

The other woman didn’t move a muscle, but she looked as dangerous as the rolling clouds floating by on the horizon. “Why would I order such a thing?”

Dana tapped the fingers of one hand on the arm of her chair. “Oh, maybe to convince me that I need to sell my land to you after all?”

Caryn rose to stand behind her chair, so she could look down on Dana. “You really should attend one of our services. You seem to be holding a lot of anger inside, young lady.”

Dana rose, too. “I’m angry. That’s a fact. But I’m not one to hold anything inside. And I’m warning you, if I find one more dead head of cattle on my land, I’ll have Sheriff Radford investigate this whole place.”

With that she turned to leave, but Caryn’s shout halted her.

“Miss Barlow, you’ve just made a grave error in misjudging me.”

Dana turned in time to see the look of pure malice shaping the woman’s flawless complexion. “Are you threatening me?”

“I am the law here,” the woman said in a rasping voice. “How dare you talk to me that way!”

“I’m not one of your groupies!” Dana shouted back, her own anger and frustration matching that of the other woman. “You don’t fool me, and you’ll never get my land.”

Caryn’s cackle echoed over the distant sound of thunder. “Oh, yes, I will. You’ll see. Soon, you and that retarded brother of yours will be out on the side of the road.”

Dana could take anything anyone dished out, but nobody picked on her brother. Stepping back into the polished foyer, she glared across the marble floor at Caryn. “You stay away from Stephen. He’s just a boy. He’s never done anything to you or any of your people.”

Caryn’s smile was triumphant. Dana guessed she’d been looking for a weak spot. The woman’s next words proved it.

“If you care about your special little brother, you’ll be careful. I don’t take to false accusations.”

Dana pointed a finger at the stone-faced woman. “And I don’t take to people destroying what’s mine. If I see any of your people on my property, I’ll shoot first and ask questions later.” And forgive me, Lord, for even suggesting that.

With that, she turned and slammed the glass door, rattling the thick panes against their heavy brass hinges.

A storm was brewing. Dana knew enough about Kansas weather to realize it was going to be an ugly one. She could hear the echo of distant thunder miles away, carrying through the lifting wind. She was a mile from town, though, and if she hurried, she could get those Ruby Runners she’d promised Stephen, and maybe have a quick word with the sheriff.

Actually, storm or not, she wasn’t ready to head back to the farm yet. Finding Otto dead, and then the confrontation with that horrible woman, had left her too keyed up to face the mounting problems her little bit of land was causing her. If she didn’t do something quick, they’d lose everything and then Caryn would come in and take Dana’s property. Dana couldn’t let that happen. She’d fought too hard since her parents’ deaths to give up now. And she didn’t like being bullied.

At first she’d thought about selling and moving to Kansas City. She’d majored in business administration at Kansas State, so she had the credentials to find a decent job in the big city, and her sweetheart from high school, Tony Martin, was already there and earning a good living as a computer analyst. They’d been engaged and had big plans to marry and move to Kansas City, until Dana’s parents had died. Tony hadn’t wanted the burden of raising a hyper preteen with learning problems and the mannerisms of a kindergartner.

Now Stephen depended on her, and he loved the farm. She hadn’t wanted to uproot him, so based on some advice from the local bank president, and after consulting with Stephen’s doctors, she’d made a decision to keep the farm. And had instantly gone into debt by borrowing money to raise enough cattle to get a small herd going. She had fifty head of prime Brangus heifers, steers, calves and two bulls—make that one bull now.

Still in shock, she couldn’t believe Otto was gone. She didn’t need this right now, not when things were just starting to turn around. Pulling the old rickety Chevy into the parking place by the general store, Dana glanced at the erratic sky, then rushed inside out of the wind. She’d get the shoes, then go talk to the sheriff.

Not that that would do much good. Sheriff Radford was getting old and he just didn’t care much about random crimes against animals. People didn’t fare much better, but then nothing much more exciting than a rowdy cowboy at the pool hall around the corner ever stirred the mundane daily life of this prairie town. But still, a dead prize-breeding bull wasn’t exactly something to turn the other cheek about.

“Honey, you look like you got the weight of the world on your pretty shoulders,” Emma Prager said from behind the counter and her ample bosom. “What’s eating my little Dana?”

“Just about everything,” Dana said, afraid if she laid her burdens at kind Emma’s matronly feet, she’d burst into tears. “I lost Otto today, Emma. Somebody shot him.”

“Goodness-a-mercy!” Emma exclaimed, bringing up the head of the one other paying customer in the cluttered store, and catching the attention of the regulars at the dominoes table in the small café at the back. “What an awful thing to happen, and you trying to hang on to that place with every ounce of gumption you got.” Heaving a heavy breath, she came around the counter. “I do declare, what’s the world coming to! Did you tell old Radford yet?”

“I’m headed over there now,” Dana said, spotting the blazing red Ruby Runner emblem on a nearby shoebox. Emma had promised to hold the athletic shoes for her. “I came by to get our Ruby Runners—I thought maybe it’d cheer Stephen up, since I promised him I’d get them today.”

“Got ’em right here,” Emma said, turning her bulk to get the pair of shoes she’d saved for Dana. “One size fourteen youth. That child is steady growing, I tell you!”

Emma’s straight, scrawny husband, Frederick, came plowing through the curtained door leading to their living quarters in the back of the cluttered store, the German still in his accent coming out strongly. “Get you home, little girl. Tornado’s a-coming. Spotted it due west about ten miles from here.”

“She don’t have time,” Emma said, dropping the package she was about to hand Dana. “We gotta get in the cellar!”

Everyone started running toward the back of the old store. Confused, Dana searched for her package on the counter at about the same time the other shopper, a young man in grubby jeans and a blue T-shirt, grabbed a similar package and fled out into the storm before Emma could herd him around. The two old-timers who’d been heavy into their dominoes game sprinted for Frederick’s storm cellar.

Dana looked around, then grabbed the only package left on the counter. But Dana didn’t follow Emma and Frederick. “Stephen!” she said, her voice rising. “He’s at home with Mrs. Bailey. I have to get back!”

“He knows what to do,” Frederick shouted over the roar of the approaching storm. “You come in the cellar with us.”

“I can’t,” Dana replied, hoping, praying that Stephen and the frail neighbor woman would be able to get in the cellar and lie down under the blankets they kept down there for just such emergencies.

There was no time for anything else but prayer. The twister was sending its calling card, sucking the old general store into a vortex of rumbling fury. Dana ran to her truck, willing the ancient contraption to crank. The sound of glass shattering and trees snapping left little doubt that this storm was doing some serious damage, but she didn’t heed the storm’s wrath. She planned to outrun it.

And she almost did. But it seemed as if the storm wanted her and her alone. She watched in her rearview mirror as the twister followed her out of town, hurling and hissing like a giant snake as it chased her down the county road.

“Dear God, help me,” she prayed out loud, her heart beating so hard she knew she’d surely die of a heart attack if the storm didn’t kill her first. She knew she should stop the truck and dive for the nearest ditch, but she had to get back to Stephen. Mrs. Bailey was great in helping to homeschool the boy, but the aging senior citizen was a nervous wreck in any little storm. She’d go into a tizzy and be useless, especially with a storm as powerful as this twister headed right toward the farm.

Dana rounded the dirt drive to the farmhouse, her foot pushing the gas pedal beyond its endurance, the truck’s sturdy tires squealing their displeasure at being forced to turn so quickly.

She didn’t make the turn. The truck careened out of control and did a fishhook, spewing mud and rocks toward the tornado like a runt fighting off a bully. Dana screamed and tried to hold on to the swirling steering wheel, but without power-steering the truck got the best of her. The last thing she remembered was the door flying open, then her whole world went black.

She was dreaming, of course. That had to be it. She felt strong arms pulling her down, down into the wet bluestems; she heard a soothing male voice close to her ear, telling her to hold on, hold on. Then a powerful body covered hers, warming her, comforting her, protecting her as the storm swirled around her. Dana kept her eyes tightly shut, afraid to open them and find out if this was really happening.

The storm hit. She could feel the wind sucking at her skin, could feel the debris cutting against her hair and her exposed hands and arms, could taste the dust and rain and power, but somehow she knew she was safe. That strange, lilting voice, that warm, clinging body—who was he and why was he holding her so close she could hear the echo of his heartbeat over the dangerous rush of the storm?

It was all over in a matter of minutes. Nothing seemed real. It was as if Dana was dreaming a bad dream where she’d woken abruptly only to find that she hadn’t been dreaming at all.

She was alive and this was very real. That much Dana knew as she groggily tried to open her eyes. Her head hurt with all the roaring of a tractor-pull. But over the roaring of pain, she heard another more ominous noise. Silence.

Seconds passed, as she listened to the quiet that was even more deadly than the storm’s rumbling rage. Dana didn’t like silence.

“Stephen?” she called, trying to pry herself out of the stranger’s iron grip. “Stephen, where are you?”

She looked up at the brooding, foaming dark sky. This storm wasn’t finished yet. “Stephen?” she called again, trying to raise herself up. A bump on the side of her head throbbed in protest, but she tried again until she realized that the grip on her arms was caused by a set of strong hands holding her down. A man’s hands.

She was flat on the ground, with a big man holding her there. Then Dana remembered how the man had thrown himself on top of her to shield her from the tornado.

“Stephen?” she asked again, hoping the man would tell her something about her brother.

The man lifted his head and looked straight into her eyes. The first thing Dana noticed was that his eyes were as blue-black and cloudy as the storm’s lingering coattails. The second thing she noticed was that he wore all black, from his button-down shirt to his Levi’s and boots. His long dark hair was pulled away from his face in a ponytail, but the wind coming through the open field where they lay was doing its best to unleash his thick mane.

“Who…who are you?” she asked, her voice shaking. “Where’s my brother? Where’s Stephen?”

The big man looked down at Dana. “It’s all right, lass. You’re safe.”