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If she found any money lying around, she was going to steal that, as well.
She knew the plan wasn’t rational, but she was so hungry and painracked that she couldn’t think clearly anymore. In a weird, nightmarish fashion, her mind kept slipping in and out of reality. Occasionally she had images of being at home, lying in the four-poster bed in her spacious living quarters, while sunlight spilled across the hardwood floor and the housekeeper carried in a tray laden with food.
Isabel closed her eyes and pictured the food on the tray.
Golden crisp waffles swimming in maple syrup, little sausages and a cut-glass bowl of fresh fruit, hot sweet coffee with cream…
She moaned and pushed the seductive images aside, trying to concentrate on the house. She could no longer remember if minutes or hours had passed since the last light had been extinguished, but she knew it was late because the night felt so cold. And the moon was high, spilling a cold silver glow over the landscape, turning the slow-moving river to a stream of hammered pewter.
She heard something crash through the under-growth nearby and looked fearfully over her shoulder. The noise subsided for a moment, then began to recede. Probably a deer or stray cow.
Isabel dropped her chin to her chest, waiting for her heart to stop pounding.
Another dreadful thought struck her.
What if that noise had been made by a dog?
She hadn’t seen any dogs outside with the man and the children, but there could still be one nearby. If so, it would surely bark, maybe even attack her when she sneaked toward the house.
The prospect was terrifying, but she was too hungry and sick to care.
Holding her breath, she crept from the brush and crossed the yard toward the darkened house, moving from tree to tree, a ragged shadow slipping through the moonlight.
No dog raised an alarm, and she reached the back door feeling limp with relief.
She eased the screen open and grasped the handle on the inside door. The knob resisted for a moment, then began to turn.
Isabel’s heart again pounded in terror. Soundlessly she pushed the door open, stepped into a little back porch and paused for her eyes to adjust to the dimness.
After a while she could make out shapes and spaces, faintly illuminated by moonlight spilling through windows. The room seemed to be cluttered with children’s shoes, boots and toys. Rows of jackets hung on pegs. Many of them looked small, and a few were far too large for Isabel.
Still, those big garments would provide some warmth, and she reminded herself to take a few of them as she was leaving.
Through an opening she could see what appeared to be a good-size kitchen. Rows of cabinets, the dull gleam of appliances, a shadowy outline of table and chairs.
So far, so good. Where there was a kitchen, there had to be food.
Isabel paused in the porch, feeling faint and light-headed again. She grasped the door frame and waited for the dizziness to pass, then shook her head blearily, trying to formulate a plan.
The best thing would be to head straight for the tall bulk of the refrigerator. That was probably a lot less risky than opening cabinets one after another, trying to find food.
By now, her brave plans of searching for money and medicine had completely vanished. She didn’t even feel all that hungry anymore, just sick and shaky. It was so terrifying to be in this place, only feet away from other human beings who could wake up at any moment and come after her.
Finally she tiptoed to the rear of the porch and took a big denim shirt from one of the pegs. It was lined with flannel and smelled slightly of engine oil. She longed to put it on her shivering body, but that would have to wait. Carrying the shirt she edged into the kitchen.
When Isabel opened the fridge, she winced at the light that flooded the room. Hastily she spread the shirt on the floor and began to pile food onto it.
Part of a ham, a loaf of bread, three cans of soda, some apples…
At the sight and smell of food, her hunger pangs returned. She had dined in some of the finest restaurants in the world, but she’d never seen a banquet like this. Her mouth watered, and her body trembled with deep spasms. Again she felt dizzy. It was all she could do to concentrate, but she knew it might be a long, long time before another opportunity like this presented itself.
She gobbled a bunch of grapes, blissfully savoring their moist flavor, then tore off some of the ham with her teeth and ate a couple of slices of bread.
At last, trying not to make the slightest noise, she continued to pile food onto her makeshift pack.
DAN HAD ALWAYS BEEN a light sleeper, even more so now that he had the full responsibility of his children. Anything was enough to rouse him, the trace of a cough from Josh, or Chris’s soft whimper during one of her nightmares.
Now he awoke and lay staring at the ceiling, wondering what had disturbed him. There was no sound from the small bedroom next door, and Ellie always slept like a log once she switched off her light.
Still, he had a sense of something alien in his house, a sort of menacing whisper drifting on the silent night air.
There!
He heard it again, the soft creak of a floorboard, a distant muffled sound coming from the direction of the kitchen.
Dan slipped out of bed and moved quietly toward the door. When he reached the hallway, he could see the soft glow of light from the open fridge. A quick glance confirmed that Chris and Josh were both sound asleep in their bunks. Through the living-room window he could see the covers mounded over Ellie’s body.
Then another muffled scrap of sound drifted along the hallway. Dan’s skin prickled, and the hair rose on the nape of his neck. Soundlessly he took a baseball bat that one of the children had left leaning on the arm of the sofa and crept toward the kitchen door. Flattening himself against the archway, he peered in.
What he saw made him suck in his breath and grip the bat tightly in his hands.
A ragged, filthy urchin knelt by the open door of the fridge, wearing torn dark clothes and a baseball cap. Moving with clumsy haste, the boy seized food and piled it onto one of Dan’s heavy work shirts, spread on the floor.
The intruder was so intent on his task that he seemed unaware of any danger. Dan felt a rising anger at this invasion. He stepped into the kitchen just as the thief sprang to his feet and stared, wild-eyed with terror.
Brandishing his bat like a club, Dan gripped the boy’s arm, then looked down in alarm as the kid seemed to faint in his grasp, crumpling slowly to the floor.
By the light spilling from the open refrigerator, Dan realized several things. The slender arm he held was badly gashed and swollen. The pain he’d inflicted when he gripped it had apparently caused the boy to pass out.
Slowly Dan also realized the thief wasn’t a boy at all, but a young woman in a torn jogging outfit. She was filthy and covered with caked blood from many scratches. Her face had a vaguely familiar look, though her hair was matted and dirty, and her features shadowed under the ball cap.
He knelt beside her, automatically putting the food back in the fridge while he kept watch on her, then tugged off the cap to get a better look. When her eyes fluttered open and she stared up at him, he remembered where he’d seen her.
It was the woman whose picture had been in the newspaper, the heiress from San Antonio whose car had plunged off a cliff and into the Claro River the day before.
She tried to scramble to her feet, but Dan grasped her shoulders. Clearly too weak to fight, she subsided, head drooping, and whimpered in terror.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, sniffling. “I was so hungry, and my arm hurts.”
Some of Dan’s anger ebbed, but he continued his grasp of her shoulders. “Why didn’t you just knock on the door? I would have been glad to help you.”
“I can’t…” Her head drooped again, and he could see her chin began to tremble.
“What?” he asked.
“I can’t let anybody see me.” She looked up again with passionate entreaty. “Please don’t call the police. Please, I’m begging you, just let me go. I promise I won’t bother you again.”
“I can’t let you go,” Dan said. “What will you do? Your clothes are in shreds, you’re obviously half-starved and that arm needs some medication right away. Of course I’m going to call the police.”
The woman struggled frantically in his grasp. “No!” she cried. “If you do that, he’s going to find me!”
“Who’s going to find you?”
Her face had drained of color and her lips were blue. She seemed completely irrational. “He’ll get to me for sure this time,” she said. “Even my father is on his side now. Nobody believes me when I try to tell them what he’s like. Please, please, don’t let any of them near me. Oh, God, I’m begging you, please…”
Her voice trailed off and she fell heavily against him. Dan held her in his arms, looking down at her with concern.
She was groggy but still conscious, and badly in need of a wash. He put her gently on the floor, then went to the bathroom and began to run water into the tub, adding some of the bubble bath his girls liked to use. As the tub filled, he went back to the kitchen, helped the woman to her feet and supported her down the hallway.
He knew this was probably crazy, bringing a strange woman into the house with his children. Especially one who seemed to be in some kind of danger. But he was moved in spite of himself by her fear, and the fragile look and feel of her body.
In the bathroom he paused awkwardly, looking down at her pale, scratched face.
“Can you manage in here on your own?”
She nodded jerkily and began to fumble with her tattered clothes. After a moment she forced a grimace that he recognized as a smile. “That bath looks like heaven,” she whispered. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so beautiful.”
“Well, believe me, this place isn’t heaven,” Dan said grimly, standing on the tiles and looking at the welter of plastic toys on the tub ledge.
Still, he was moved by her courage, and felt a sudden lump in his throat. “Look, I’ll bring a chair and sit in the hall just outside the door,” he told her. “Call me if you need anything, okay?”
He left hastily, carried a stool from the living room and set it near the closed door, then listened in silence to the muffled series of small splashes as she lowered her body into the tub.
“Are you all right?” he called in a loud whisper, taking care not to wake the two children who slept just across the hall. “Is the water hot enough?”
“It’s lovely,” she answered. “Thank you so much. I could stay here forever.”
“Stay as long as you like.”
After a few more minutes of silence, followed by a lot of hearty, reassuring splashes, he heard the sound of the woman hauling herself from the tub. Suddenly she uttered a soft cry of distress.
Dan hurried into the bathroom to find her leaning against the wall and clutching a towel loosely around her body. She seemed unsteady and very pale, swaying on her feet.
Dan supported her with one arm, grabbed the towel and wrapped it tight again, but not without catching a fleeting glimpse of her nakedness.
Though cut and bruised, her body was lovely, with long slim legs, a slender, tapering waist and high, firm breasts. She had a golden tan except for the skimpy bikini patches across her nipples and around her hips.
Angry at himself for looking, even so briefly, he turned away and stared grimly at the wall. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Can you manage on your own now?”
“I think so,” she said from behind him. “I just felt so…so dizzy for a minute right after I got out of the water.”
“I’ll find you some clothes,” he said.
Dan went into the adjoining room to get one of his shirts and a pair of boxers, then handed them through the partly opened door, setting them on the hamper.
“Thank you,” she said from within the room, her voice already sounding a little stronger.
Dan hovered anxiously near the closed door and was relieved when she said, “All right, I’m decent. You can come in now.”
The transformation was amazing. Except for the mass of wet hair pulled back from her face, she was exactly like that lovely, thoughtful young woman in the newspaper picture.
“You look a lot better,” he said neutrally.
“Almost human?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far,” he said.
His attempt at humor was rewarded with a weary smile. “Just try spending twenty-four hours starving in the rain and mud,” she said with a brief show of spirit. “See how great you look.”
He sobered, remembering the seriousness of the situation.
“Okay, let’s have a look at that arm, and then you can go to bed.”
“You won’t tell anybody about me?” she asked.
Her eyes were an unusual color, a sort of golden brown, set within heavy dark lashes. For the first time he noticed a faint drift of freckles across the bridge of her nose.
“Will you let me go?” she asked.
Dan hesitated. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” he said.
“Oh, please, you can’t tell anybody I was here.” Her pupils dilated in terror and her body tensed. “Please, if you—”
“Look, don’t start getting all upset again,” he said. “I won’t tell anybody until we’ve had a chance to talk. But you’ll have to stay in the bedroom and keep quiet,” he added, “because I have three little kids living here, and we can’t let them catch sight of you if you want to stay secret.”
“I’ll be really quiet,” she promised.
He opened a tube of salve and smeared it over the gash on her arm, then fastened it with a neat row of butterfly bandages and wrapped it in gauze.
“Are you allergic to any antibiotics?” he asked her.
She shook her head.
Dan hesitated, then gave her one of the tablets the doctor in Crystal Creek had prescribed for him recently when he cut his hand on some dirty barbed wire and developed a painful infection. He knew it wasn’t smart to use a prescription on another person, but this was an emergency. And, as fearful as she obviously was of being discovered, the woman was hardly going to agree to see a doctor, no matter how he pressured her.
By the time he finished bandaging her arm, she was drifting off to sleep, her wet head lolling drowsily.
“I need to get you a dryer for that hair,” he said.
“Hack it off,” she murmured.
“Beg your pardon?”
“I don’t want to bother with it. I’m too tired.” She looked up at him with bleary appeal. “Couldn’t we just get some scissors and cut it all off?”
“But I can’t—”
“Please,” she said, “it needs to be cut, anyway. God knows, I don’t care how it looks. Let’s just get rid of it.”
With some reluctance Dan got his scissors and razor comb from a drawer and cut her matted, tangled hair, trimming it neatly around her ears the same way he cut Chris’s.
He tossed the damp strands in the wastebasket, then toweled her hair so it stood up around her face in damp little spikes.
“It’s still wet,” he told her. “I’ll need to dry it before you go to bed.”
She examined herself ruefully in the mirror, touching the little spikes. “At least it won’t take long.”
She lowered herself gingerly onto the edge of the tub while Dan stood above her to blow-dry her hair. Now that it was short, it looked considerably darker than it had in the newspaper photograph. And the gamine cut was surprisingly attractive with her delicate features.
“You look nice,” he said.
She didn’t respond, just leaned back with her eyes closed.
“Do you still want something to eat?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Not hungry anymore. Just…so tired.”
Dan helped her up and guided her into his bedroom, tucked her into the double bed and pulled the covers over her body. She looked up at him in exhausted silence, her features washed silver by the moonlight.
“Thank you,” she murmured. “So wonderful. Thank you.”
“Go to sleep,” he told her gruffly.
She snuggled down in the covers and he sat on the mattress beside her, trying to think.
There was no other empty bed in the little house. If he slept on the sofa and the kids found him there, they were certainly going to wonder why. Dan had no choice other than to share his bed with her.
He tidied the bathroom and disposed of the drying curls of hair, then returned to his bedroom, closed the door and slid under the covers next to his unexpected guest. Every nerve in his body was conscious of her slender body curled next to him, the clean sent of her hair and the soft sound of her breathing.
Hands behind his head, he stared at the ceiling and wondered what could have happened to make this beautiful woman drive her car over a cliff. Who was after her, and why was she so afraid of the police?
Either the woman was mentally unbalanced or she was involved in something illegal. In either case he’d probably been a fool to bring her into his house. Again he thought of his children sleeping nearby and felt a chill of alarm.
But even though he’d caught the woman raiding his fridge, she hadn’t seemed like a crazy person or a criminal. Just a woman in pain, and Dan, who spent his life caring for children and animals, had a hard time not feeling sympathy for anybody who was hurt.
Still, he couldn’t take any chances with the safety of his kids. Until he knew what was going on here, he needed to get them away from the house.
Reluctantly, he decided to bundle them all up first thing in the morning and take them over to Mary and Bubba. They could stay a few days, help with the ostriches and have the run of Bubba’s sprawling ranch.
Dan’s uncle and his wife were always pleading with him to let them help look after the kids, but Dan resisted, stubbornly maintaining that the care of his children was his responsibility.
Now, maybe he’d take them up on their offer. Mary could take the kids to the school bus on Monday morning. By then he should know what was going on with Isabel Delgado, and why she’d turned up in his kitchen trying to steal his food.
Slipping noiselessly from the bed, Dan padded into the kitchen to retrieve the folded newspaper from the wastebasket. He switched on the back-porch light and read the article again, then stared for a long time at the woman’s face, her disarmingly lopsided smile and the expensive haircut he’d just demolished.
Finally he went back to his bedroom, carrying the paper, and tucked it away in the top drawer of his dresser. The woman was sleeping peacefully, her face innocent and sweet in the pale moonlight. When Dan settled next to her, she reached out her bandaged arm and touched his shoulder, nestling close to him.
The move was automatic and without seduction. Dan drew away from her gently, taking care not to hurt her injured arm. She smiled in her sleep, the same, crooked smile the newspaper photograph had caught.
He patted her shoulder, then rolled over and lay alone on his side of the bed, wide awake and troubled, wondering what in hell he was getting himself into.
CHAPTER FOUR
SOMETIMES WHEN ELLIE was deeply asleep, noises that were, in reality, happening around her somehow got into her dreams.
She lay in the darkness, only partially awake, and realized the same thing had just happened. She’d been dreaming about running through a dim cavern, where a bottomless river lapped at her feet and she was in constant danger of falling into the water.
Cody Pollock ran just behind her, his jeering young face exultant with triumph.
“I’ve got you now!” he shouted, reaching for her, so close that Ellie could see the inflamed pimples on his cheeks. “Now there’s just two choices, Gibson. You can come and play nice with me, or you can jump into that river. What’s it gonna be?”
In the background of her dream Ellie could hear the voices of other boys and girls who looked on and talked in muffled tones, enjoying her terror.
Frantically she tried to find some way out of the cavern, but she’d reached a blank wall and there was no escape. She saw Cody’s horrible face and cruel hands, then the dark, swollen river…
Sweating and whimpering with fear, Ellie awoke fully and lay staring at the window screens.
It was a dream, she told herself, hugging her thin body. Just a stupid dream. Cody Pollock was nowhere close to her. If he ever came to this farm and tried to hurt her, her father would kill him.
That was when she realized some of the noises from her nightmare were still going on, drifting to her from inside the little house. She could even see a dim light in the hallway, like that partially lit cavern in her dream. And she heard the distant sound of splashing, running water, along with her father’s deep voice and an occasional soft reply.
Ellie frowned, wondering what was happening, then relaxed.
Probably Chris had had one of her accidents, and Daddy was cleaning her up. When their mother had first gone away, Chris used to wet the bed all the time, but she was getting a lot better now and it hardly ever happened anymore.
In fact, Ellie thought drowsily, most of the bad stuff started happening two years ago, right after their mother left.
For one thing, Daddy was always upset about how messy the house was. And Chris had been so unhappy she hardly talked to anybody for a while. Only Josh hadn’t seemed bothered by their mother’s absence.
Of course, the baby had been only six months old when Annie Gibson left her family.
“I stayed long enough to have Josh,” Annie once told her eldest daughter, “though God knows I was getting pretty damned anxious to be out of there. But fair’s fair, and your daddy was always real good to me. If he wanted that baby so bad, well, I guess I just had to give him the baby once I went and let myself get pregnant. Didn’t I, Jelly-Belly?”
Ellie had wanted to ask her mother how she could have gotten pregnant when she didn’t love their father anymore, but it was so hard to talk with her about anything serious. Annie’s mind was always darting on to something else before you could even start to take in what she’d just told you.
“You should see my new show outfit,” Annie had told Ellie dreamily, smoothing her daughter’s dark curls. “It’s bright red suede, with fringes hanging down to here. It’s gorgeous, Ellie. I need to lose a few pounds to fit into it, though.”
“Mama, don’t you love us?” Ellie had asked, trying not to cry. “How could you leave me and Chris and a sweet little baby like Josh, and go off singing to a bunch of people you don’t even know?”
“Why, honey, of course I love you!” Annie gave one of her rich, booming laughs and gathered Ellie into a fragrant embrace. “But some women are just naturally cut out to be housewives, and I’m not one of them. I was born to be a star, kiddo.”
And it was true—Annie Gibson was trying very hard to be a star. Her stage name, which she’d invented all on her own, was Justyn Thyme, and she’d already been hired to sing at a couple of big conventions in Nashville, as well as lots of nightclubs. She was earning good money, enough to fly back to Texas and see her children several times a year, and she kept believing her big break was just around the corner.
For Annie’s sake, Ellie hoped it was, too.
She’d long since given up hope that her mother would come back to them if her music career failed. To tell the truth, Ellie wasn’t even sure she’d welcome her mother back for more than those brief visits when she swept in carrying presents and took them all out for treats.
Though Annie’s company was exciting, after a while Ellie got tired of her mother’s constant laughter and chatter and wanted some peace again, the nice feeling of the little farmhouse with just her and Daddy and Chris and Josh, looking after themselves.
Still, it was true bad things had started happening after Annie left them, including Cody Pollock picking on her.