The Return

Ginseng.

The crop was worth big money on the Asian markets, even in the raw.

He dropped the roots back in the sack and then stood and offered his hand to Abram Hollis.

“Sorry,” he said. “But in my line of work, a man can’t overlook the obvious.”

Abram hesitated, then shook Luke’s hand. “No offense taken,” he said shortly.

Within minutes, they were gone.

Now Luke and Catherine were alone, and from the expression on her face, she was impatiently waiting for him to take his leave, too.

“Is there anything I can carry into the cabin for you?”

She hesitated, then nodded. “Yes, I suppose so,” she said. “I have a couple of boxes of groceries and my suitcase.”

“Just show me where you want them,” he said, and let her lead the way.

As they entered the cabin, once again he was struck by the fairy-tale quality of the place. It consisted of only two large rooms. One up. One down. But the inventiveness of the builder was evident. Minute nooks and crannies were filled with everything from jars of dried herbs to stacks and stacks of books. There wasn’t an inch of wasted space. The furniture was sturdy, but simple, and the quiet hum of an old refrigerator was the only sound within the room.

Although Catherine was grateful for his help, she was anxious for him to leave. This was the place where Grannie had lived. She wanted to explore it in private.

“Just put the stuff down anywhere,” she said quietly, then walked to the door, holding it ajar for him to exit so that there would be no misunderstanding as to her intent.

Luke did as she asked, then turned, hesitating beside the table.

“I wish you’d reconsider and—”

“Thank you again for all you’ve done for me today.”

Luke frowned. He was being dismissed, and there was little he could do. She was a grown woman, and it wasn’t against the law to be a fool.

“You’re welcome, but if you don’t mind, I’ll stop in sometime tomorrow and make sure you’re all right.”

An expression of relief came and went on Catherine’s face so quickly that Luke thought he’d imagined it.

“There’s really no need,” she said, holding the door back a little further.

He settled his Stetson a little more firmly. “On the contrary, Miss Fane. There is a need. Mine. I won’t rest easy tonight, thinking of you up here by yourself. At least do me the favor of shoving a chair underneath the damned doorknob before you go to bed.”

Then he was gone, moving across the porch and then the yard in long, angry strides. He got into the borrowed truck, backed up and then drove away without looking back. Catherine had the feeling that he was angrier with himself for leaving her there than at her for insisting on staying.

Then she forgot about the kindness of strangers as she turned around, for the first time letting herself into what was left of Annie Fane’s world.

Catherine stared into the fire that she’d built in the fireplace, watching the voracious appetite of the flames as they consumed the dry logs that had been left on the hearth. Even though the night wasn’t all that cool, the fire lent a fake cheeriness to the room. But cheer was lacking in Catherine’s heart. Here, in the place where Annie had begun her life with the man she’d loved, Catherine had expected to find peace. Instead, she felt empty. The legacy of Annie’s love had not been enough to assuage the horror of Catherine’s birth.

A log suddenly rolled against the back of the firewall, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney. Outside, a wind had come up, whining and moaning through the trees and shifting the walls in the old cabin just enough to give an occasional creak. But she wasn’t afraid of the dark, or of what lay beyond these walls. It was what festered inside her heart that she feared the most. The rage she felt at an entire community who’d let a senseless feud play on was making her sick. And the fact that they’d ignored it while shunning Annie was an evil too preposterous to accept. On her deathbed, her grandmother had warned her about their prejudice, but she hadn’t believed—not until she’d seen their faces and heard the accusations and whispers.

Witch.

The notion was so absurd that it was all she could do not to scream. How could ignorance such as this still exist? They were in the twenty-first century, and these people chose to accept an eye for an eye as justice, and believed in curses and spells?

In the midst of her musing, something thudded out on the porch, then rattled across the old wooden planks.

Catherine jumped to her feet, pivoting sharply to face the door, too late remembering Luke’s final warning. With racing heart, she grabbed a chair from beside the kitchen table and shoved it up under the doorknob, jamming it so tightly that she inadvertently pinched her finger.

At the moment of pain, sanity returned.

“Lord,” she muttered, then she took a deep breath, silently berating her panic.

She listened again. The sound was gone. All she could hear was the wind. She made herself calm. More than likely it had been something blowing across the porch. There wasn’t anything—or anyone—out there.

To prove to herself she was right, she kicked the chair away from the doorknob and yanked the door open wide, striding out onto the porch to face the night. Immediately, strands of hair whipped across her face and into her eyes, clouding her vision with stinging tears.

“There’s no one out here but me,” she muttered, then took a deep breath and walked to the edge of the porch. “There’s no one out here but me,” she said louder, letting the wind rip the words out of her throat.

She looked up at the sky. Straggly clouds scudded across the face of a quarter moon, leaving wispy bits of themselves behind as they flew. Something took flight from a nearby tree, cutting briefly across the periphery of her vision. For the first time in her life she was, quite literally, alone. No neighbors down the block. No cars. No lights. No telephones. No sounds of civilization except the sound of her own voice. Her fingers curled into fists as she gazed into the blackness of the tree line. Again she spoke, and this time, it came out in a defiant shout.

“There’s no one out here but me!”

She waited, challenging the darkness for an answer that never came. Shaken in both body and spirit, she spun around and strode into the cabin, slamming the door shut behind her.

A short while later, she climbed the stairs to the loft. When she reached the top, she took a last look down at the big room below, then at the meager lock and the chair beneath the doorknob. Hating herself for being afraid, she crawled into bed, certain she would never be able to close her eyes. Within minutes, she was asleep.

Less than a hundred yards from the house, the hunter crouched among the trees, his expression wary. Someone was in the cabin. It couldn’t be the ghosts that he’d seen there before, because ghosts didn’t need lights. And whoever was in there had not only turned on the power, but had also built a fire. Even though the wind was blowing in the opposite direction, there were brief moments when he could smell the smoke.

Curiosity was a powerful emotion, and the urge to move closer was upon him. But years of solitude and caution kept him hidden from sight. As he continued to watch, the door to the cabin was suddenly flung open. Instinctively, he shrank back into the trees, although he knew it was impossible for her to see him from where he was standing. Her slender form was nothing but a silhouette as the light from within spilled out around her.

When she started to speak, he stared into the darkness, believing that she was talking to someone out in the yard. But the longer he stood, the more certain he became that she was talking to herself, which made him relax. He’d been talking to himself for years.

At first he caught only a word or two of what she was saying, but when she shouted, “There is no one out here but me,” he froze. Even though he didn’t want to know her, at that moment, he knew how she felt.

The wind began to rise, wailing through the trees in a high, mournful sound. His stance became motionless. He tilted his head to listen, as he had done so many times before. Would this be the time? Would his search finally come to an end? His breathing became shallow, his pulse all but nonexistent, as he willed himself to an unnatural quiet.

There! He heard it again—the high-pitched cry of a newborn child. His eyes narrowed, his jaw setting as he disappeared into the night.

Luke tossed aside the latest file on the thefts and then stood up from his desk, stretching wearily as he strode to the window to look outside. Moths and other night bugs made kamikaze runs at the streetlight outside his office as he stared into the dark. But his mind wasn’t on what lay before him. Instead, he kept thinking of the thief, who, like a pack rat, stole one thing, only to leave another in its place. Added to that were the oddities of what he stole—anything from foodstuffs to a pair of overalls drying on a clothesline, as well as odds and ends of small tools. If memory served, the thief had once taken a handsaw rather than the more expensive chainsaw hanging beside it, and left a hand-carved bowl in its place. Another time he’d obviously watched a farmer cutting firewood, waited until the man went inside to eat a meal, then took the ax he’d left in the stump, leaving behind a small, wooden stool. Dogs never barked a warning of his arrival, and to date, no one had even gathered a glimpse of his face. Rumors were starting to spread that it was a ghost. Only Luke knew better. Ghosts had no need of earthly things, and ghosts didn’t wear shoes, especially shoes with a notch in one heel.

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