The Stranger Next Door

Langley broke into his frantic rambling. “We need Danielle’s social security number, Samuel. Do you know it or know where we can find it?”

He stopped pacing. “I don’t have it. It’s got to be in her purse. Did you check her driver’s license?”

“My purse was stolen when I was mugged in New Orleans.”

Samuel threw up his hands in frustration. “Of course, I should have realized. If you had your purse or even your luggage, you’d at least know your name and where you live.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “All this has taken me by such surprise. I mean, I never expected to run into anything like this.”

“You can’t be any more confused than I am, Samuel,” Danielle said.

“What about friends?” Langley asked, breaking into the conversation. “Did Danielle have any close friends?”

“Not in Fort Worth. She was…” He hesitated. “She stayed at home a lot after we moved in together. She was going through some hard times.”

“What kind of hard times?” Langley tapped the eraser end of a yellow pencil against the legal pad that rested at his fingertips. “Was she sick? Upset? Give me some specific details.”

Samuel walked over and stood behind Danielle’s chair. He dropped his hands possessively to her shoulders. “I don’t see why we need to go into any of this right now. Danielle has been through enough. I’d just like to take her home.”

“It’s not quite that simple.”

Samuel’s grip on her shoulders tightened as his muscles tensed. “I’d like to know why the hell it isn’t. I don’t know what’s going on here, but Danielle’s obviously the victim, not the suspect. You can’t hold her in this one-horse town.”

Danielle felt they were talking as if she wasn’t in the room, the same way she’d felt the first few days in the hospital. Then, she’d been too weak and confused to protest. She wasn’t anymore. “I’m not being held here, Samuel. I’m staying of my own accord. And I’m not ready to go home with you. Not yet.”

“I see.” Samuel lifted his hands from her shoulders. “That’s fine. If you want to stay here, I’ll take a few more days off work and stay with you.”

“There’s one little complication there, Samuel.” Langley rose from his chair and walked to the front of the desk. “The police believe the man who attacked Danielle might know her. The evidence suggests it could have been an estranged lover.”

Samuel shook his head. “You surely don’t suspect me. I don’t have a violent bone in my body. Danielle can tell you that.” He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “At least she could if she were herself.”

“I’m not doubting you.” Langley leveled a gaze at Samuel. “Not yet anyway. But for now, I think it’s best if you see Danielle only when either I or the deputy can be present.”

Samuel’s stance grew rigid. “And what about you, Danielle? Is that the way you want it?”

Her heart went out to Samuel. It truly did. He seemed like a nice guy and genuinely frustrated. But he was still a stranger. And the New Orleans detective’s theory still sent chills down her spine.

She considered her options. Go back to the Running Deer with Ryder and spend the day cleaning up a humongous mess. Or go back with Samuel and deal with feelings she was supposed to have for a man she didn’t remember. Go back to the ranch and expect him to touch her with at least the familiarity he had shown in this room. Go back to the ranch and wonder if the man she was alone with was the one who’d tried to kill her.

An estranged husband. A jilted lover. The words of the New Orleans detective whirled in her mind.

“You didn’t answer, Danielle.” Samuel repeated his question, his tone bordering on pleading. “What will it be?”

She took a deep breath and hoped she was making the right decision. “I can’t go with you, Samuel.” She somehow managed to keep her voice steady. “And I can’t let you stay with me.”

Samuel started to argue. Langley cut him off.

“The lady said no, Mr. Drummer. If you have a problem with that, you’ll have to take it up with me later. Right now, I’m going to have my brother drive Danielle back to the ranch she inherited and you and I are going to have a talk.”

Danielle observed the semipolite battle of wills being waged between the two men. With one of the men she felt a strange kinship, a trust, a feeling of security as if she had known him for a long time. The other man was a stranger, one whose touch disturbed her. The problem was her feelings seemed to have switched wires and attached to the wrong person.

She fought the impulse to bolt from this small, confining room and run out into the sunshine. For two weeks she’d known nothing but doubts and fears. The only reprieve she’d experienced had been the few hours she’d spent at the Burning Pear.

Langley, Ryder, Mary, even little Betsy, the unofficial Randolph. From them emanated a warmth that reached clear to the frigid chill that had settled in her soul. And Samuel Drummer, no matter what he had meant to her in the past, didn’t project that kind of warmth. Worse, she didn’t have the strength to give him the attention he obviously wanted and probably deserved.

Ryder picked that moment to knock on the door, or more likely, Langley had instructed him when to show up. He ambled inside, sporting his cocky smile and tipping his black Stetson. The tension diminished appreciably. Evidently, Samuel realized that he was outnumbered by Randolphs, and that no matter how guilty he made her feel, she wasn’t about to walk out of the office with him.

She might be sorry later that she hadn’t gone with Samuel. But the only thing she could depend on now was her instinct for survival.

Langley walked to the door as she and Ryder were leaving. She looked up and their gazes locked. Strange, but the look they shared was far more intimate than the touch Samuel had attempted, and yet she didn’t draw away. He was part of a new life, the only life she could remember. He’d become part of the world she was trying to fit into.

“I’ll come by the Running Deer when I’m through here,” he said. “In the meantime, you’re in good hands with Ryder.”

“I know. I just chose a mop at the store that will fit his ‘good hands’ perfectly.”

“Then I’ll hurry. I want to be there in time to see my little brother wield it.”

She walked out the door. All of a sudden, even the mess at the Running Deer seemed like a welcome change.

LANGLEY TRIED the hotel room in Hawaii where Branson was staying one more time. No answer. Finally, a computerized voice came on the line and told him to punch one if he wanted to leave a message.

He didn’t bother. He’d already left a message, one of quiet desperation.

He’d checked out the info Samuel Drummer had given him. He’d verified the man’s address, his phone number, his social security number. He lived in Fort Worth, just as he’d said. He had a checking account, a job as a traveling salesman, a car payment that he was usually late in making. In short, Samuel Drummer existed.

Danielle was a different story. She had no employer except Samuel, who claimed she helped with his sales reports and record-keeping. She had no landlord and no friends he could locate. Worst of all, he could find no social security number that would make it easier to run a paper trail on her.

But the fact that kept gnawing in Langley’s gut was the detective’s theory that Danielle’s attacker had probably known her, that the attack had been too vicious for a mugging gone bad. Judging from what he’d learned from the hospital, he would have come to that same conclusion.

And if he found out Samuel Drummer was the man who’d stabbed Danielle and left her to die on a back street in New Orleans, heaven help him.

Badge or not, Langley was a man, and a man could only stomach so much. He stood up, sending his chair careering backward in the process. He had to get out of Branson’s office for a while, get out of town and see some wide open spaces. Grabbing his hat, he shoved it down on his head and strode out the door.

He crawled behind the wheel of his truck and started the engine. Without even thinking about it, he headed for the outskirts of Kelman and the highway that led toward the Burning Pear. Only he knew that this time it wasn’t his own ranch that was pulling him in that direction.

He was going to the Running Deer. But he had one stop to make first.

DANIELLE SCRUBBED the kitchen wall with a vengeance. Her fingernails were chipped, her hands chapped from strong cleansers, her hair falling from one of Milton’s bandannas that she’d used to bind her flyaway curls into a ponytail.

Stopping to rest, she sucked in a deep breath. The injuries she’d received in New Orleans were still taking their toll, but in spite of aching muscles, she felt better than she had since the assault. Physical labor was obviously good for the soul if not the muscles.

And once she’d gotten started, there was no place to stop. The sofa, recliner, mattress, pillows—in short, every place Milton might have hidden something of value—all had been gutted. The kitchen cabinets had been cleared with abandon, as if someone had just raked his hand across the shelves and sent the contents flying.

But there were still quite a few dishes that hadn’t been broken, as well as a nice supply of canned goods in the pantry. Ryder had made several trips back to the big house at Burning Pear to pick up cleaning supplies, and every time he returned, he’d been loaded with food items Mary thought she might need. On the last trip, he’d even turned up with a sleeping bag and a couple of quilts to ease the discomfort of sleeping on the floor.

She could stay there for a while if it came to that. Of course, there were still some legal details to settle. But Langley had said he would look into the records that had been filed with the courts. It was possible that Milton had put the ranch in her name before he died or that he had filed a will.

As soon as everything was legal, she’d sell the ranch. She couldn’t stay there. Even though she didn’t remember anything specific about her life, she did remember how to do certain things. But absolutely nothing came to mind when she looked at cattle. They were big, especially the bulls. Ryder had pointed out a couple on their way back to the ranch.

She wasn’t exactly sure what a rancher did with bulls, but whatever it was, she had no intention of tackling that chore. Not unless you could do it from the other side of the rows of prickly barbed wire.

Bending over, she dipped her cleaning rag back into the bucket of warm, sudsy water and wrung it nearly dry. One more section of wall and the kitchen would be finished. Two rooms down. It was a start.

She broke into a song, amazed that her uncooperative mind could locate lyrics when it couldn’t retrieve personal facts. And even more amazed that she felt like singing.

She belted one out. No use worrying about disturbing the neighbors. There weren’t any.

A round of appreciative applause sounded behind her and she jerked around, expecting to see Ryder. Instead, it was Langley who stepped through the door.

“Excuse me, Bonnie Raitt, but I was looking for a woman named Danielle Thibodeaux.”

“Bonnie Raitt. Now that rings a bell. A singer, right?”

“You got it.”

“Go figure.” She dropped her rag into the pail of gray water and wiped her hands on the legs of her jeans. “How long have you been standing there?”

“Long enough to decide you’re the best-looking cleaning woman I’ve ever come across.”

His compliment took her by surprise. But this time she didn’t blush or feel ill at ease. The truth was, she liked the way he was looking at her, as if she was an attractive woman and not some medical specimen in a science project.

“You’re efficient, too.” He glanced appreciatively around. “I can’t believe what you’ve done with the kitchen.”

“Ryder helped. Mostly, we just hauled out the trash, but we did enough scrubbing to earn a few blisters.”

“Where’s Ryder now?”

“He’s out back, hosing down the kitchen chairs. But he’s told me more than once that cleaning house is not fitting work for a previous World Rodeo Champion.”

“Oh, he did, did he? Did he also tell you he’s going bonkers sitting this year out while his knee heals? Apparently, life at the Burning Pear is not quite as exciting as life on the suicide circuit.”

She laughed, and the sound of it took her by surprise. It was a new experience. A nice one.

“Lacks excitement. I believe Ryder did mention that,” she said. “Something about a crying baby and bellowing calves, and a severe shortage of beautiful women.”

“That’s Ryder. Ride ’em and rope ’em, and love ’em and leave ’em. He’s made a career of all the above.”

Nice, easy talk, but sooner or later they had to get back to the business at hand. She decided on sooner. “So how did the second half of the meeting with Samuel go?”

“About like the first half. Apparently, he didn’t learn a lot about your past life during the six months you were together. He says you were given to sudden irrational mood swings and periods of depression. Other than that, you were Miss Wonderful.”

Twinges of apprehension dampened Danielle’s good spirits. She was sorry she’d asked about Samuel. It brought all her concerns to the forefront once more. Had she been in love with Samuel? Had she run out on him? Had he found her in New Orleans with another man and gone berserk?

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