In Sight Of The Enemy

There was a moment of stunned shock before fury began to boil. He looked at Cassie, a bitter sense of betrayal almost choking him. “No wonder she looks familiar to you. How long did it take for the two of you to cook this thing up?”

Cassie stared at him, a mask of confusion on her face. “What? Shane, this only proves what I’ve been trying to tell you. I knew you shouldn’t go on that assignment. It isn’t too late. You could still back out.”

He took a step away from her. And then another. It was safer that way, given the rage surging through him. “Someone more easily controlled might even fall for this scene. Of course, a more honest woman would never have set up such an elaborate ruse to manipulate a man, but hey, whatever means necessary, right?”

Hurt mingled with determination in her expression, but he wasn’t going to allow it to affect him. Not when it appeared that he’d been the biggest fool of all time. Had he given it a thought, he would have found it ironic that the greatest betrayals in his life had been perpetuated by frauds and fakes who’d pretended to love him.

But he wasn’t much in the mood to appreciate the irony.

“Shane, you have to listen.” There was desperation in Cassie’s voice, in the clutch of her fingers when she laid them on his arm. “If you go through with that assignment, I’m afraid you may not come home alive. I told you about my dream—”

He jerked away from her touch. “You told me. What you didn’t tell me was the lengths you’d go to get your own way.”

“This isn’t about me! It’s about—”

“Finally something we can agree on.” His jaw was tight, his chest felt as if a vise squeezed it. “This isn’t about you at all. Not anymore.”

The older woman was speaking again, but he couldn’t hear her. There was a roaring in his ears, and a fist punching his heart as he turned to leave. The first step felt like a surgical slice, neatly peeling away a part of his life he’d begun to think of as permanent. With the second step, a blessed sort of numbness settled in and he welcomed it, even knowing it wouldn’t last. The lack of feeling made it possible to take the next step. And then the next. Soon he was striding rapidly toward the parking lot where he’d left his vehicle. Away from the charlatan spouting her cryptic psychic nonsense.

And away from the only woman he’d ever loved.

Chapter 2

Three months later

Shane pushed open the door of his house and was immediately assailed by the dual odors of Pine-Sol and stale air. Although his housecleaner had been instructed to keep the place clean in his absence, she’d obviously neglected to air it out regularly.

He walked through the entryway to drop the bundle of mail he’d collected from the Post Office, then went back to the porch to retrieve his bags. He set them down in the hallway, nudging them out of the way with one foot. Leaving the door open, he went back to deal with the mail that had accumulated in his absence.

The place felt foreign, distant somehow. Which was amazing, considering the places he’d been living for the past several months.

Living. That was the operative word. He’d come back to the States alive. There had been times he’d been convinced that would never happen.

Without any real interest, he began sorting through the mail. Half of it was junk, which he set aside to be discarded later. There was an oddly disorienting feeling to be reading advertisements guaranteeing financial success, and catalogs featuring malnourished, scantily clad models, when only twenty hours earlier he’d been in a country where a man was routinely killed for the dollar in his pocket or the half-worn boots on his feet. Where a baby died for lack of ample penicillin. Where the medications that could save lives were bartered by warlords and thieves as lucrative items on a thriving black market.

Like a flick of a switch he turned that memory off and concentrated on the task at hand. Three piles—for junk, professional and personal. The latter was woefully thin, consisting of only a letter that looked to be from his lawyer. Until… His hand faltered when he came upon the plain white envelope without a return address. He didn’t need one. He recognized the handwriting.

Cassie’s.

A memory of her face flashed into his mind, its appearance a bit too easily summoned for comfort. With slightly more difficulty, he pushed the mental image aside. She was out of his life. Had been for three months. Nothing contained in the message would change that.

He let the letter drop from his fingers to land on the top of the third pile, and continued sorting. The wound in his shoulder had stiffened up on the plane and throbbed dully. The bandage needed to be changed, and he’d have to get a new prescription now that he was home. Somehow he couldn’t summon the interest or inclination to do any of that at the moment.

The phone rang, the sound startling in the silence of the house. Shane answered it and, upon hearing the voice on the other end, felt his blood go glacial.

“Shane? Oh, thank the goddesses. Where have you been?”

“Gran.” His voice was flat. “How did you find me?”

He could almost picture the careless wave of her hand. “Oh, that doesn’t really matter, does it, sweetie? What matters is that you’re finally home. Someone at the hospital where you work told me that you were out of the country. Did you enjoy your vacation? I always worry about your working too hard.”

Shane’s mouth twisted wryly. “The vacation was fine. What do you want?”

Her voice went persuasive. “Now, dear, don’t sound like that. I just wanted to say hello, that’s all. Family should keep in touch, and with your dear mother gone we need each other more than ever.”

“Difficult to figure, considering I never needed you at all.” He looked at his reflection in the mirror hanging above the hall table. A stranger stared back at him. Hair that hadn’t been cut in months, three days’ growth of beard on his face, partially hiding a fresh scar that began beneath his chin and zigzagged down three inches to the right. Surface changes, for the most part, with the exception of his eyes. Ghosts lurked there, haunted fragments of memory that he doubted he’d ever shake. But for all the changes, he was still Dr. Shane Farhold.

He just wasn’t certain who that man was anymore.

“Shane? Are you still there?”

“Yes.” With a mental jerk, he shifted his attention back to the woman on the other end of the line and answered her question.

“Well, that’s good, then. I wanted to tell you about the sweetest little shop I’ve set up. I’m selling Wiccan items and teaching some classes. You can’t believe the response I’ve gotten. With my ability for summoning the spirits, there’s a never-ending stream of people who are lonely for a long departed loved one. But not all people are open-minded about that, as you recall.”

He read the underlying message in what she didn’t say. “Run a little afoul of the local law, did you?”

Her tone was just right. A little bewildered, with a touch of the shakiness one might expect in a seventy-year-old woman. Except that Genevieve Fleming had never exuded signs of her age in her entire life. She didn’t admit to it at all, unless it could help her in some way. “They’re hounding me, Shane, treating me like some common criminal. They want a payoff, of course, a bribe to leave me alone to conduct my business in peace.”

“Really.” When he noticed his fist clenching, he consciously relaxed it, continued sorting the mail. “Are you sure it’s a bribe they want, Gran? I believe it’s more commonly referred to as bail.”

There was a moment of silence, while she rapidly regrouped, but only a moment. She’d always been quick to recover. Quick to assess any situation and milk it for all she was worth. Then she gave a martyred sigh, like a woman trying her best to be strong. “You have caller ID, I suppose. Well, as a matter of fact, I hadn’t wanted to alarm you, but for some reason I’ve been put in jail. I don’t know how to handle this. I feel so alone.” Her voice broke.

There had been a time, even a few months ago, when the sound would have tugged at his conscience. Guilt was a habit decades in the making, difficult to break. But right now he felt nothing. No guilt. No compassion. Nothing but a weary sort of irritation that he might have felt for a particularly annoying stranger. His grandmother was little more than that, at any rate.

“Considering your experience with jails around the country, it’s hard to believe you’re totally out of your element.” He tossed a credit card application onto the discard pile. “You have my lawyer’s number. Use it.”

“He hasn’t been helpful at all. Do you know, he expects me to plead guilty? If he was really worth the money you pay him, he’d post my bail and have the charges dismissed. He refuses to get me out of here.”

“Because you’ve skipped bail the last two times you’ve been arrested,” he reminded her. “Leaves us in a rather uncomfortable position when you can’t be depended on to show up for the court date.” His gaze dropped once more to the plain white envelope, its very simplicity inviting him to pick it up. Open it. To delve once again into a morass of emotion that he was reluctant to repeat. There was something to be said for the lack of feeling he’d been experiencing for the past few weeks. Absence of emotion also meant absence of pain. One of those damn silver linings the Pollyanna types always talked about. If he had an ounce of self-preservation left, he’d toss the letter away with the junk mail.

“Shane, if you’d just fly here to talk to me, I’m sure we could work this out. I need to see my only grandchild.” Genevieve’s voice quavered a bit. “Remember when you lived with me what a great team we made? We were inseparable.”

He smiled humorlessly. “Actually, I do remember teaming up with you. I remember everything. Which is why I have no interest in a reunion. I’d recommend that you call my lawyer and follow his advice. There’s nothing more I can do.” He was disconnecting the phone with one hand, even as he picked up Cassie’s letter with the other.

He could think of no better time to read her letter than right after dealing with his grandmother. They had, after all, so much in common. With any luck he could dispense with Cassie’s message as easily, as emotionlessly, as he had with Genevieve.

But that hope was dashed when he read the single line printed on the page.

We need to talk.

There was nothing else. Just four words followed by her neat signature. Nothing to hint at her reasons for contacting him. Certainly their last fight, a few days after the fair, had been passionately final.

We need to talk.

They’d said everything they needed to each other then, and, if truth be told, even more. When he remembered the bitterness with which they parted, regret surged, forging through the shield he’d erected around his heart. But as often as he’d turned it over in his mind, he’d never been able to figure another way for them.

He looked at the postmark on the envelope. It had been mailed after he’d been in Afghanistan for two months. His original assignment had been for four weeks, but he’d made arrangements to extend it. And then he had ended up staying even longer than he could have imagined.

His gaze dropped to the letter again. Whatever she wanted to talk to him about had already waited a month. Maybe she’d written the note in a weak moment, driven by memories and remorse. Perhaps she’d thought better of the missive as soon as it was mailed. At any rate, what would they talk about? If there was one thing he’d learned in the past few months, it was that regret never changed anything. What was done was done. And then one just figured out how to live with the results.

We need to talk.

He didn’t need to talk to Cassie. He didn’t need her on any level. He’d spent three long months learning that. What he needed at this moment was to contact the hospital, get himself back on rotation. To unpack and deal with his wash. Get some medical supplies, including a prescription of painkillers and maybe, if the mood struck him, a haircut so he wouldn’t scare his patients. Those were his priorities right now, and every one of them could be accomplished without dredging up painful feelings that were better left safely buried.

Decision made, he balled the note up in his hand, let it drop to the floor and headed out the door.

Cassie murmured soothingly to the half-wild stallion, not attempting to move any closer to it. Its rolling eyes and flared nostrils told her exactly how agitated it was. Now she’d see how much she’d taught it about trust.

Her hand inched upward a fraction of an inch at a time, even as she kept up a running litany of calming sounds. Her gaze never left the animal’s eyes. That was where she’d see its reaction first.

It whickered nervously, backed up a little, flicked its tail. She moved forward a step and it went still, warning her. She froze, but never stopped her low, soothing monologue. The horse shook its mane and danced sideways, then finally lowered its head and pricked its ears, watching her.

Recognizing that the timing was right, Cassie reached out slowly, stroking its shoulder before easing forward to rub its neck. When it lowered its head further, she snapped a lead rope on the halter and led it quietly toward the hands waiting in the barn’s entrance.

“Damn if I know how she does it.” Lonny, their newest and youngest hand, shook his head. “He was as spooked as I’ve ever seen him.”

“He’s been off his feed,” Cassie frowned consideringly. “Maybe we should get the vet out here to give him a going-over. He could be coming down with a virus.”

Jim reached out to take the lead rope and Cassie stepped back. “You’re getting as good at that as Hawk, Cass.”

She laughed. “No one’s as good as Hawk when it comes to communicating with animals. But I’ve picked up a thing or two from him.”

“You’ve put in a long day. Why don’t you knock off?” The older man handed the horse off to Lonny, who led it away.

Gritting her teeth, Cassie mentally counted to ten before returning evenly, “I’m okay.”

In his forties, Jim Burnhardt was their senior hand, and an invaluable help around the ranch. But he’d gotten into the habit of watching over her like a mama over her chicks in her brother’s absence. Which told her, better than words, that her brother had specifically instructed him to do so.

Jim faced her again, eyeing her shrewdly. “When’s Hawk coming home, anyway?”

“We spoke a few days ago, but he didn’t say when he was returning.” Removing his hat, Jim slicked his hand through his hair. “I was planning on going to town for more feed, but if you’re going to work some more, I can stick around.”

You’d think, Cassie thought aggrievedly, that she hadn’t been working alongside the ranch hands since she was ten. Not for the first time, she wished she could give her brother a swift kick for making everyone around here suddenly see her as an invalid. “Go ahead and pick up the feed. The hardware store called, too, and the rolls of barbed wire we ordered are in. If you leave now, it’s still going to be close to dark before you can get back. Why don’t you just go straight home from town. You can bring the supplies with you tomorrow morning.”

Jim hesitated, clearly torn between the logic of her suggestion and a misdirected sense of responsibility. “That makes sense, but…are you done outside here for the day, then?”

Patience, never her strong suit, abruptly splintered. “For Pete’s sake, Jim, I’m more than capable of—” One look at the man’s stoic countenance had her biting off the rest of her sentence. It was clear from his expression that her outburst wasn’t going to change his mind, and he wasn’t the one she needed to convince, at any rate. Hawk was behind this new suffocating mantle of protectiveness all the ranch hands had donned in his absence. Snapping at Jim wasn’t going to change that.

“Fine.” Her surrender wasn’t managed with particular graciousness. “Tell Lonny and the others they can leave once the chores are done. I’ll go concentrate on paperwork.”

“That’s good, then,” Jim said, plainly relieved. “You probably have plenty of that with the Greenlaurel Horse Sale coming up.”

The fact that he was right didn’t make her feel any better as she headed from the corral to the house. She much preferred spending her time engaged in physical labor. The trouble with paperwork was that it left the mind too much time to think. And those thoughts all too frequently focused on the one man she’d loved, then lost.

At least, she consoled herself, he was alive. The county rumor mill was alive and in good working order. She’d heard Shane was headed home, but details of his health had been maddeningly spare.

She took off her boots in the mudroom before heading through the kitchen toward the den. She’d spent more than a few months caught with emotions swinging wildly between hope and despair. There had been a finality to their last scene that was only partially owed to their breakup. Despite his refusal to believe her, she’d known what he’d been heading toward when he left for Afghanistan.

She just hadn’t known if he’d come back alive.

The dream she’d had about his assignment there had been maddeningly incomplete, a collage of hazy snippets bursting with violence. The shot ringing out in the dead of night…the blood pouring from his body as it tumbled out of the jeep to the ground…

Living for months with those images branded on her mind would be enough to cause stress for anyone. And more than ever she was convinced that the recent changes in her health were due to just that: stress. She’d neither eaten nor slept well following Shane’s departure. The waiting had been agonizing. Surely that was enough to explain the sudden lapses in thought she’d been experiencing the past couple months; the short interruptions in concentration and speech that had gotten Hawk increasingly concerned. Especially after it happened while she was working with the stallions.

She walked to the den and, with a sigh, settled in behind the large desk. She and her twin brother despised paperwork equally, and when he was around, they split the workload. But in his absence, she was forced to shoulder his share as well as her own. It wasn’t a chore she relished.

It was unusual for Hawk to leave the ranch for any amount of time. But when the doctors in Greenlaurel had been unable to come up with a reason for her condition, he’d been determined to find one himself. He’d undertaken the search for their birth mother with the express purpose of discovering something, anything, in their genetic history that would help treat Cassie’s condition.

And he’d been successful, for the most part. He’d managed to trace their birth mother, who was long deceased. He’d even, to her amazement, discovered they had a brother, a triplet, who she’d yet to meet. He’d been stingy with the details. But he had found notes that indicated their mother had experienced spells much like Cassie’s. He’d called Cassie a few days earlier with a recipe for a tea that helped with the worst of the symptoms. The organic drink had accomplished what the endless round of medical tests and medications had failed to do. Unfortunately, she couldn’t convince the hired help of that fact.

An hour went by, and then another. Cassie took a break for a quick dinner of soup and a salad before trudging back to the den. If she stayed at it until bedtime, she’d just about be caught up. With any luck, that would mean she wouldn’t have to do more paperwork until right before the sale, which would be in another ten days. And by that time, Hawk would be home and she just might be able to guilt him into believing it was his turn at the desk.

The Greenlaurel Horse Sale was becoming a major source of income for the ranch. As their reputation as breeders of horses for dressage and jumping had grown, they’d had to do less and less traveling around the country, finding instead that potential buyers were seeking them out. The local sale gave them an avenue to showcase their stock and to place orders. Their sale bills had been circulating for months. Local motels in the area were fully booked for the date. And although Hawk had been vague about when he was returning home, there wasn’t a doubt in Cassie’s mind that he’d arrive well before the event.

She was almost finished double-checking the files on each of the horses they were offering for sale when her fingers faltered, then stilled. A kaleidoscope of colors wheeled past her eyes and her heart began to pound. There was a sensation of speed, as if she were hurtling along atop a locomotive, her surroundings a blur. And then just as abruptly the sensations faded, leaving only brief, fragmented flashes in their wake. The bits formed a confusing mural of images that shifted and swirled before gradually settling into a recognizable form.

When the mental fog lifted, she looked around, disoriented. The first thing she saw was the tea she’d mixed with her dinner and carried in here, unfinished. With a hand that still shook, she reached for the glass, raised it to her lips and sipped.

The glass was set back on the desk and Cassie rolled her chair back, troubled. She hadn’t had an episode since Hawk had given her this recipe, their birth mother’s recipe, to try. Twice a day she mixed it, drinking it with breakfast and dinner. She’d missed her second dose only by a couple hours, and the symptoms had not only returned, but intensified.

She took a deep breath. Well, it wasn’t the end of the world. At least she knew now how important it was to stay on schedule with the mixture. She waited a couple more minutes until her pulse had slowed, before getting up to go to the front door. The bell rang a moment before she reached it, as she’d known it would. And when she pulled the door open, she recognized the strangers standing before her. She’d “seen” them five minutes earlier.

“Cassie Donovan?”

The woman who spoke wore her dark hair long, with no attempt made to disguise the gray in it. She looked to be in her forties, but given the care she took with her appearance, was probably older. There was a look of competence about her, and a shrewd calculation in her eyes.

“I’m Cassie.” Although her tone was friendly enough, she made no move to unlock the screen door between them. Dusk was rapidly approaching, and the place was isolated. Cassie had never feared staying alone at the ranch, but she’d been raised to be aware of the dangers, and took precautions.

“I’m Darla Billings. This is my husband Stan.” Cassie glanced at the large man beside her and thought they made an odd couple. He was bulky with a muscular build that was owed more to pumping iron than to the physical labor found on a ranch. His complexion was ruddy, his blond hair slicked back and his gray gaze inscrutable.

“This is unforgivably rude of us, I know.” At the woman’s rueful voice, Cassie’s attention shifted back to her. “We drove from Kentucky, intending to visit family and then come to Greenlaurel for the horse sale. But since we were passing so close, I couldn’t resist stopping by and seeing whether it would be possible to take a peek at your stock. We’ve been poring over your sale bill for weeks and I’m determined to take at least a couple Donovan Ranch mares back with me.”

“I’m sorry, we don’t do prior sales,” Cassie said.

“Oh, we understand that.” The woman hastened to add. “We just want to be able to narrow down our bidding list so we can concentrate on the stock that really interests us.”

Cassie hesitated. It was an unusual request, but she was well aware of the lengths some people would go to get an advantage over others. And it seemed harmless enough. “Well…maybe you could come back tomorrow. There’s not much daylight left.” Innate caution prevented her from mentioning that her crew had left for the day. There was a niggling sense of discomfort that might have been left over from her earlier flash of this scene. Whatever its source, she had no intention of giving them a tour of the barns this evening.

“We’ll be on the road again tomorrow.” Stan spoke for the first time, his voice gravelly, as if from disuse. “Darla’s folks live in New Mexico and we’re heading there at dawn. We won’t get back until the night before the sale.”