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He was a bad boy from Lampasas whose parents weren’t able to control him. When Cody was eleven, they sent him down to their cousin, June Pollock, who lived alone in one of the big old houses in Crystal Creek, since her daughter, Carlie, had gone off to Rice University to study marine biology.
June was a strong, quiet woman who’d worked most of her life as a hotel waitress and chambermaid. Everybody in town liked and respected her. No doubt Cody’s parents thought she could do something with their son.
And Cody hadn’t gotten into much real trouble since coming to Crystal Creek, but nobody knew how mercilessly he tormented Ellie Gibson. The older boy had spotted her almost two years ago when she was just ten years old, and tried to grab her legs when she was on a swing at the park.
Ellie had kicked him, giving him a nosebleed. After that, Cody never left her alone. He took every opportunity he could to trip her or knock her books out of her hands or jab her in the ribs when they passed in the hallways, and usually managed to do so without being seen. In fact, he was always careful not to be seen, especially by June, who had no stomach for bullies. Kinfolk or not, June would have dealt with Cody fast enough if she knew what was happening.
During the rare occasions Ellie ran into him alone, she was terrified. Though she tried not to give any sign of how she felt, it was almost as if Cody could smell her fear, like a dog does, and got some kind of cruel enjoyment out of it.
The situation had grown even worse when Ellie’s body began to mature over the past spring and summer. Cody was thirteen by now, with a pimply face and the shadow of a mustache, and his manner toward her had also changed. Now there was real menace about him, a leering expression in his eyes that frightened her more than ever. When Cody got close to her nowadays, he didn’t only jab her in the ribs, but also tried to grab her growing breasts, which, to Ellie’s dismay, were visible under her loose T-shirts.
Worst of all, he’d gotten his friends involved, a gang of four other rough boys who swaggered across the schoolyard and terrorized everybody with their coarse words and threats of violence.
Ellie was never safe from them. At any moment she could round a corner at school and find Cody and his friends blocking a hallway, keeping her from getting to her next class. Or she would see them in the park, crouching behind bushes to call insults at her, or deliberately jostling up against her on the street when she walked downtown to Wall’s Drugstore.
Ms. Osborne, the middle-school principal, held regular assemblies where she urged kids to report bullies if their lives were being made unpleasant.
Unpleasant, Ellie thought bitterly, scowling at the ceiling. What a stupid word.
Her life was hell, pure and simple. Going to school every day was like running a gauntlet with no idea if you’d ever emerge safely.
“Don’t be afraid to speak to your parents,” Ms. Osborne told the kids. “Your teachers here at school and your parents, working together, can keep you safe from bullies. And those who are threatening you will be punished.”
Ellie rolled over and buried her face in the pillow.
It sounded good, that big promise from the principal, but Ellie didn’t believe a word of it. Her home-room teacher, Mr. Kilmer, was a shy man who was probably every bit as terrified of Cody Pollock and his friends as she was.
Ellie’s father, of course, wasn’t scared of anybody. But Ellie would die of embarrassment if she told him the things those boys said to her and what Cody Pollock threatened to do to her.
Besides, what good would it do, anyhow? Her father couldn’t kill Cody or make him move away, and so the bullying would just go on. Probably it would be even worse because Cody would know she’d told on him.
But tonight, for the first time, Ellie could see the possibility of escape.
She thought about the miraculous fifty-dollar bill she’d found in the river. It was like a present from God, just the same way He’d sent baby Moses floating down the river to lodge in the bulrushes.
And that money was going to give Ellie a whole new life.
She knew fifty dollars wasn’t enough for what she wanted to do.
But she had more than sixty dollars already in her bank account, painstakingly saved over the last two years, mostly birthday and Christmas money from Mary and Bubba. And her father had assured her it was her own money, so she could take the whole amount out of the bank anytime she wanted to.
A hundred dollars was just about all she needed. Ellie tensed with excitement when she thought of having so much money.
Her plan was simple. She intended to go into town one day soon, when her father was busy with the haying and couldn’t pay much attention to her. Ellie would withdraw the money, buy a bus ticket and go to Nashville to live with her mother.
She knew, of course, that Annie didn’t want to be saddled with a twelve-year-old kid when her career was just starting to take off, but she could hardly turn away her own daughter. Besides, Ellie was determined to show how much help she could be. She’d clean Annie’s apartment and cook good meals for her when she came home after singing all night, and she’d never, ever be in the way. And soon Annie would be glad her daughter had come to live with her.
Dreamily, Ellie pictured their relationship in Nashville, a whole world away from Cody and his awful friends.
Of course, she didn’t want to stay with Annie forever, because she’d get too lonely for Daddy and Chris and Josh. Maybe after a while, when Cody Pollock got tired of waiting for her to show up and found somebody else to bully, she’d be able to come home to the farm.
Meanwhile the fifty-dollar bill lay safely in her dresser drawer, a magical promise of better days ahead.
Within the house, the distant sounds began to fade. She heard her father emptying the bathtub, talking to Chris as he got her ready to go back to bed. Then he came striding through the hallway to fetch something from the kitchen, looking big and hairy in his boxer shorts.
Cautiously Ellie raised herself on one elbow and saw him carrying a folded newspaper back to his room. He must be planning to read in bed.
She settled down under the covers, wondering what Nashville was like, imagining her mother’s look of amazement when Ellie turned up on her doorstep. “Hi there,” Ellie would say casually. “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop in.”
Or she could say, “Howdy, ma’am. I heard you’re a big country-music star and I thought maybe you needed a cook and housekeeper.”
Annie was going to like that, Ellie thought drowsily. She always loved being called a star.
As she drifted off to sleep, Ellie acknowledged that she wasn’t really sure how her mother would receive her. With Annie, you never really knew. It depended on her mood, on whether she was gaining or losing weight and what else was going on in her life at the time.
Still, putting up with her mother’s moods was a whole lot better than facing Cody Pollock and his friends every day.
With a final shiver of revulsion, Ellie fell asleep and darkness closed in on the house again.
ISABEL BLINKED in the warm glow of sunlight. She opened her eyes and saw a patchwork quilt over her body, a green wall hung with framed pictures of children, a dusty nightstand and a wicker basket on the floor, piled with laundry.
She had a moment of intense panic, unable to recall where she was or how she’d come to be here.
Breathing deeply, she forced herself to stay calm and concentrate. Like images from some hazy, badly made movie, she saw herself pushing the car over the cliff, then jumping down behind it. She recalled the jarring shock of her landing, the scratches and blood, the hunger and chill and wetness as she fought her way through the brush. And the endless day that followed, when the oppressive heat had emphasized her throbbing pain, hunger and relentless thirst.
And then the sickening terror of creeping into the darkened house and being caught by that hairy giant wielding a club.
Isabel gripped the quilt and looked around wildly. Beyond that encounter, her memories weren’t nearly as clear. She’d been taking some food when he sneaked up behind her and grabbed her. After that she could dimly recall being handled and moved, the sheer bliss of finding herself immersed in warm sudsy water, and later a man giving her clothes while she pleaded with him not to tell anyone about her.
Isabel frowned in confusion and lifted her right arm, examining the neat gauze bandage. The arm was still swollen, though it didn’t feel as tender as it had the day before.
But had she also asked that hard-faced stranger to cut her hair?
Surely not. That part must have been a dream, one of the confused fantasies that kept jostling around in her mind.
Tentatively, she reached to touch her head and encountered the cropped, silky strands around her ears. She raised herself on her elbows in sudden alarm. If that man really had cut her hair, then he must also have been the one who’d helped to cover her nakedness when she almost fainted right after getting out of the bathtub. But who was he, and where was this farmhouse?
She noticed a glass of water and a plastic pill container on the nightstand, sitting on a sheet of paper with some handwriting on it. Isabel lifted the little container and saw it held several oblong yellow pills.
“If you’ve had no adverse reaction,” the note said, “take another antibiotic pill when you wake up. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
The pharmacist’s label was from Wall’s Drugstore in Crystal Creek and read “Dan Gibson: Take one tablet every four hours.”
Isabel hesitated, then took one of the pills and gulped it down with a mouthful of water. She sat upright on the edge of the bed, feeling dizzy again, and dropped her head to her knees until the feeling passed.
When her mind cleared she stood up and looked down at what she wore—a man’s white shirt and plaid cotton boxer shorts.
In a cheval mirror by the dresser, Isabel caught sight of herself and stared in horror. Her face was scratched and bruised, her eyes darkly shadowed, and the cropped hair stood up every which way. With the baggy clothes and her bandaged arm, she looked like a waif, some kind of pitiful refugee from disaster.
“Well, I guess that’s what I am,” she said aloud, almost jumping at the sound of her voice in the quiet house.
Moving cautiously, she ventured to the door of the room and peered down the hallway. She could faintly recall the man saying something about having children in the house, and the need for her to stay out of sight in the bedroom.
But nobody appeared to be home at the moment. The place was silent except for birdsong drifting through the open windows, and the distant sound of the river.
Isabel walked slowly into the messy bathroom, recalling her blissful soak in that tub and later the man standing beside her to cut and blow-dry her hair.
She went into the kitchen and found a pot of coffee on a sideboard. The room appeared to have been hastily abandoned, with dishes stacked carelessly on the counter and in the sink. Evidence of children was everywhere. A smeared high chair sat at the table next to a couple of cartoon mugs with lids and straws, and toys littered the floor all the way into the living room and out to the porch.
Isabel poured herself a cup of coffee and added some cream from the fridge, but gave up looking through the disorganized cabinets for sugar. Instead, she toasted two slices of bread and ate them hungrily.
But by the time she’d devoured a banana and most of the remaining grapes, she was starting to feel guilty. Clearly the people who lived in this house didn’t have a lot of money, yet she was gobbling all their food and had no way of paying for it.
With sudden alarm she rushed back to the bedroom, moving so quickly that her head began to throb with pain again. On the floor near the window she found her jogging pants and shirt. They’d been washed and dried but were both ragged, stained with blood. Under the clothes were her bra and panties, also clean but tattered, along with the still damp leather cross-trainers.
Isabel’s heart sank. She lifted the right shoe and shook it, but she already knew the locker key was no longer there.
“I have the key,” a voice said behind her. “I put it away for you.”
Braced to flee, she turned to face the man. But this wasn’t the hairy, half-naked giant she dimly remembered from the night before. This was a tall, youngish man with light brown hair and green eyes, broad-shoulders and a strong, calm face.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
Isabel stood with the shoe in her hand, at a loss for words.
“Here,” he said, opening a wooden box on the dresser. “This is the key I found in your shoe.”
He held it out to her. She accepted the key, then merely clutched it in helpless silence.
“How about if I put it back?” he suggested gently. “It’ll be right here in this box.”
She nodded and gave him the key. His hands were big and square, with callused palms and surprisingly long fingers.
Nice hands, Isabel thought, remembering how they’d trimmed her hair and bandaged her arm with such gentleness.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you so much for helping me.”
He was watching her intently. “I didn’t have much choice, did I?”
“You could have thrown me out,” she said. “Lots of people would have.”
“That’s not the way we treat folks here in the country.” He moved to the door. “Care to join me?” he asked over his shoulder. “I haven’t had a chance to eat breakfast yet.”
“But aren’t your children…” Isabel began nervously.
“I took them over to my uncle’s place for a few days. None of them have any idea you’re here.”
She followed him to the kitchen and sank into a chair at the table while he poured her another cup of coffee. “Cream and sugar?” he asked.
She nodded and he fetched the cream jug from the fridge, then opened a little ceramic canister shaped like a tomato, handing it to her along with a spoon.
“So that’s where the sugar is. I didn’t think of looking in there,” she told him, trying to smile.
He didn’t smile back, just popped a couple of slices of bread into the toaster and brought some butter and jam to the table.
“Did you take another pill?” he asked. “Let me see that arm.”
She held it up for him to examine.
“The rest of your arm’s not as red and swollen today,” he said, holding her wrist. “How does it feel under the bandage?”
“It doesn’t hurt as much, but it’s getting pretty itchy.”
“Well, that’s supposed to be a sign of healing. I’ll change the bandage after we eat, and put some more salve on it.”
Isabel watched him, marveling at his calm, capable manner. He acted as if there was nothing unusual about a wild-eyed woman breaking into his house and trying to steal his food, then being dumped in his bathtub, sleeping in his bed…
His bed!
For the first time she remembered him lying beside her in the darkness of the night, holding himself away from her, his body so hard and muscular when she brushed against him that it was almost like sleeping next to a block of wood.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, feeling tears of shame stinging her eyelids. “I’ve been such a huge bother to you.”
His toast popped up. “Want some?” he asked. When she declined, he buttered both slices, then fixed his green eyes on her face. “What are you running away from?”
Isabel stared into the depths of her coffee mug. “I’m afraid to tell you,” she said at last. “I don’t want anybody to know who I am.”
“I already do know. There was a picture and an article about you in the paper last night.”
She tensed. “What did it say?”
“It said you were Isabel Delgado, an heiress from San Antonio, and that your car went into the Claro on Friday night, but your body hasn’t been recovered yet.”
Isabel felt sick with fear. “My picture was there, too?”
“I recognized you right away.”
“Oh, no!” She gripped the mug tightly. “I was hoping they wouldn’t do that.”
“I guess it’s pretty big news when a rich girl goes missing. So what are you hiding from, Isabel?”
She glanced nervously around the silent kitchen. “Please don’t call me that!”
“There’s nobody around,” he said. “My nearest neighbor is about a mile downriver.”
“Is this farm anywhere close to where the McKinneys live?”
“That’s him. My neighbor, I mean.”
Isabel felt a return of that strange, dreamlike confusion and panic. “You mean J.T. McKinney is your neighbor?”
“Why? Do you know him?”
“Oh, God,” She dropped her head into her hands. “There’s nowhere to hide.”
“If it’s any comfort,” he said after a moment, “I can tell you that right now you don’t look anything like the woman in the picture.”
“I don’t?” She raised her head to look at him.
He grinned, showing even white teeth. “Haven’t you seen yourself in a mirror lately?”
“Yes, but I wasn’t sure if…”
“Well, my haircut and all those cuts and bruises have done a real job on you. You look like a totally different person.” He watched her thoughtfully. “So what should I call you?”
She pondered. “Call me Bella,” she said at last. “That’s what my…my sister used to call me,” she added wistfully, “when I was a little girl.”
“Okay, Bella. From now on, that’s your name and we’ll never use the other one. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said feeling relieved. “My name isn’t Isabel anymore. It’s Bella.”
“Now, Bella, why don’t you tell me what you’re so afraid of? And then we’ll try to figure out what we can do about it.”
CHAPTER FIVE
DAN STUDIED THE WOMAN across the table. Bella Delgado had none of the arrogance he normally associated with heiresses to great wealth. Quite the opposite. She seemed awkward and unsure of herself, and her gratitude was obviously sincere.
For that matter, so was her fear.
“It’s my ex-husband,” she said at last, looking down at the table. Her eyelashes were dark brown tipped with gold, so long and dense that they cast a shadow on her pale cheeks. “His name is Eric Matthias, and he lives in Austin.”
“What about him?” Dan asked when she paused.
“He’s been stalking me.” She looked up, meeting his eyes directly. “He turns up at a lot of places I go, restaurants and such, even though he works in Austin and I’ve been living in San Antonio for the past couple of years. At least twice in the last month I’ve seen him sitting in a car outside on the street, watching my father’s house.”
“Anything else?”
“He phones me a lot, even after I’ve changed my unlisted number. No matter where I go, and I mean anywhere in the world, Eric calls me within a day or two just to show how easily he can track me.”
Dan watched her thoughtfully. “What do you think he wants?”
“I don’t know for sure, but he scares me.”
“Did he hurt you when you were married to him?” Dan asked.
“Not physically, though he was emotionally abusive all the time. And he terrified me because he was so intense. Mostly he…” Her voice broke.
“What?”
“Eric was crazy with jealousy. I never gave him the slightest cause, but that made no difference. He’d invent things to be mad about, then sulk about them for weeks. After I finally left and went back home to my father’s house, Eric cried and said nobody else would ever have me. I’m sure he means it.”
“What makes you so sure?”
Isabel shivered and hugged her arms. “When I told him I was leaving him, Eric…tried to kill my dog.”
Dan stared at her.
“Afterward he claimed it was a misunderstanding,” she said miserably. “Rufus was a Pekingese, the sweetest little thing. I’d had him ever since I was a girl. He was almost fifteen years old, and stiff with arthritis. I always took such care of him,” she said wistfully. “I adored him. Eric was really jealous of Rufus, about all the time I spent with him.”
“So what happened?”
“We were arguing, and Eric held Rufus over the edge of balcony, ten floors above the street. He kept threatening to drop him, demanding that I grovel and beg. I leaned way out onto the ledge to get my dog back and almost fell myself. Eric just laughed at me.”
“And your dog?”
“Poor Rufus was never the same. He died a few weeks later.”
“Didn’t you report that to the police?”
“Eric’s a detective lieutenant with the Austin police force,” she said wearily. “A fifteen-year veteran and he’s very popular with the other cops. At the time he was distraught over our split, and they all felt sorry for him. He claimed I invented the business with Rufus to make him look bad. It was my word against his.”
“But you’re genuinely frightened of him?”
“I’m terrified.” She met Dan’s eyes steadily. “I saw his face when he…he was holding that poor little dog out above the traffic. Dan, it was so awful. I still have nightmares about it.”
“But why can’t your family help you deal with this man?”
“My father assured me he’d hire some extra security to watch the house, though he couldn’t do anything about the phone calls. Daddy’s always seemed neutral about our split, but a while ago I found out he’s really on Eric’s side. My father is actually helping my ex-husband to stalk me. It’s no wonder,” she added bitterly, “that Eric always knows where I am.”
“Come on, Bella.” Dan felt a rising concern for her emotional balance. “Don’t you think that sounds a little paranoid?”
“I saw them,” she said passionately. “Last month I dropped in at a pub downtown to meet a friend. It was a day when my father thought I’d gone to Houston for the weekend.”
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