Powerhouse

Sometimes they’d get a popular TV series and start watching the first season. Not once a week but two or three episodes a night if they were really hooked. She smiled at the memory as she continued through the empty dining room—and finally into the kitchen.

Matt was standing at the stove, his shoulders rigid, and she saw that every nerve in his body was crackling with tension. Obviously, he’d heard her coming, and he was wondering what the two of them were going to say to each other.

She’d set him on edge, and she wanted to whisper “sorry.” But that wasn’t a very good way to start off this confrontation.

Of course, there was no good way.

As she stopped in the doorway, he turned quickly, and she gave him a long look. She’d been too out of it to really see him earlier. Now she took in his dark, sun-streaked hair, the worried look in his blue eyes, and the tension around his strong jaw.

“How are you?” he asked.

“Okay. Thanks to you. How did you know I was out there?” “I have an alarm system.” “You do?”

“Yeah. I knew somebody was on the road.”

She nodded, wondering when he’d put that in. Her head jerked toward the bunkhouse. “Do your men bed down early?”

He kept his gaze fixed on her. “I’m not working the ranch. Only Ed Janey is over there.”

“Why?”

“Ed’s been here a long time. He doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”

She swallowed, trying to take it all in. It seemed a lot had changed in five years, and nobody had told her. But why would they?

“I mean—why aren’t you working the ranch?”

“I made some good investments, and I pulled my money out before the stock market crashed. I’m living on that.”

MATT WATCHED Shelley’s reaction. She was probably trying to wrap her head around all the changes that had taken place since they’d seen each other last.

He didn’t particularly want to explain his reasoning to her. It would be easier simply to send her away. Not in so many words—but to plant the idea in her head. The way he’d planted the idea of her going to sleep.

But she looked strung out, and not just from getting half frozen. She’d come here because something was badly wrong, and he had to find out what it was—and if there was some way he could help her.

The teakettle whistled, giving him an excuse to turn back to the stove. After lifting the kettle off the burner, he opened the cabinet and took down two packets of hot chocolate.

Still with his back to her, he poured the contents into two mugs, then stirred, stirring up memories as the scent of chocolate wafted toward him.

He and Shelley had sat in the evenings in front of the fire sipping hot chocolate. They’d talked about all sorts of things, and he’d felt so close to her. Well, as close as he could feel to anyone when he had a secret that he had to guard at all costs.

“That smells good.”

“You always liked hot chocolate,” he answered.

When she sat down at the table, he set the mugs between them, careful not to touch her. Then he pulled out the chair opposite her and sat.

Neither one of them spoke.

For something to do, he took a sip of the hot liquid. She did the same, her hands wrapped around the crockery. It looked as though she was holding on for dear life.

He could barely taste the drink as he waited for her to tell him why she was here. She looked so alone and vulnerable that he wanted to reach across the table and grab her hand. But he hung on to his own mug because that was a lot safer than touching her.

Finally, when she didn’t speak, he cleared his throat. “It’s been a long time.” “Yes.”

While she’d been sleeping, he’d let his imagination run wild. She was in trouble. He knew that much. And he’d turned over all the possibilities in his mind. Had her business crashed in the recession, and she needed money? Had a client asked her to do something illegal? Had she discovered someone was cooking the books at a company, and she didn’t know what to do about it? Or was it something personal? He didn’t even want to speculate on what that might be.

Forcing the issue, he finally asked, “What brings you here?”

Suddenly she looked as if she wanted to cry—and as if she wasn’t going to give in to tears.

“You’ll feel better when you tell me.”

“I doubt it.” She swallowed hard, then raised her head and met his gaze. “My son, Trevor, has been kidnapped,” she blurted. “I think you’re the only one who can help me find him.”

Although the words reached his ears, they didn’t really make sense. Maybe because, in a million years, he never would have expected them.

“Did I hear that right? You have a son, and he’s been kidnapped?”

“Yes.”

“Good Lord. I didn’t know … I mean. You have a son?” he said again, totally confounded by the revelation. The obvious thought leaped into his mind, and he felt his stomach clench. “I didn’t know you’d gotten married.”

She continued to meet his gaze. “I’m not married. He’s four years old, Matt. He’s your son, too.”

The shock and confusion was like a body blow, and for a moment he couldn’t breathe. Shaking his head, he tried to clear his brain. He couldn’t be hearing her correctly—could he? “I don’t think I’m getting all of this quite right.”

In a high, strained voice, she said, “I know I’ve shocked you. I didn’t know how else to say it. Five years ago, I left you because you told me you didn’t want to get married. And you didn’t want children. Then I found out I was pregnant, and I wasn’t going to come back and beg you to marry me. So I just….” She let go of the mug and flapped one arm. “I just went it alone.”

He tried to imagine what she’d been through, what she was going through now.

“You’re saying he’s been kidnapped?” Matt said, his own voice turning rough. This was like a nightmare. An old nightmare coming back. Only she didn’t know it yet.

“Yes.”

He asked the next obvious question. “And the police and the FBI are looking for him?”

The scared, determined look on her face tore at his heart. “No! I can’t go to them.”

“You have to!”

“I can’t!” she shouted, then lowered her voice. “Somebody picked him up at day care two days ago. A man, apparently. He made the teacher think he had my permission. But he left a note for me with her. It said that if I contacted the police or the FBI, they’d kill Trevor.”

The revelation tipped her over the edge. It looked as if she’d been holding herself together with strapping tape. Suddenly, all pretense of composure evaporated. She began to cry in great gulping gasps, her shoulders shaking as the sobs racked her body.

Matt shot out of his chair, came around the table and hauled her up. When he wrapped his arms around her, she leaned into him. As he folded her close, he knew he needed to hold on to her as much as she needed to cling to him.

While he rocked her gently in his arms, he tried to process everything she’d just told him. It was too much to take in all at once, but he had to because the past was rushing back to body-slam him.

Shelley gulped, and he could feel her trying to pull herself together.

Now he was the one who was hanging on to composure by a thread.

“You have no idea who took him?” he asked.

“No,” she whispered.

“And you have no idea what they want?”

“No.”

“They didn’t ask for money?”

“I’m telling you everything I know.”

He stroked her back. “Okay. I believe you.” Sucking in a breath, he let it out in a rush, knowing he was going to make this worse for her. For both of them.

“A long time ago, I was kidnapped,” he said.

Her head jerked up, and she stared at him through brimming eyes. “What?”

He had turned the tables on her. Now she had to process what she was hearing. “You were kidnapped?” “Yes.”

“You never told me about it!”

“It’s not something I was prepared to talk about—with anyone.” But now that he’d opened the subject, he knew she had a thousand questions, and he would do his best to answer them. He’d told her she’d feel better when she explained why she’d come. Strangely, he was discovering the truth of his own words. Despite the circumstances, it was a relief to stop lying. Well, lying by omission.

“How old were you?”

“Twelve.” Before she could ask another question, he pressed ahead. “A couple of friends and I had gotten off the school bus. A white van stopped and somebody pulled me inside.”

“Who?”

“I don’t remember!”

“But you got away!” she whispered, and he knew she was grasping onto that fact. He was here. Somehow he’d escaped from his captors.

“I came back three months later. I don’t have any memories of what happened to me while I was gone. The next thing I remember is wandering along the stream on the ranch.”

“You were safe!”

“Yeah. But I made the decision never to have children. Never to put a child of my own in danger. Now I know I was right.”

“Matt, what are you saying?” she gasped, obviously trying to put it all together.

“Shelley, it can’t be a coincidence that I was kidnapped, and then Trevor. It’s got to be related.”

When she stared at him, stunned, he said, “I understand your confusion. Let’s sit down where we’ll be comfortable.”

He led her down the hall to the den where they’d sat on so many evenings long ago. After seating her on the sofa, he crossed to the fireplace and removed the screen. Kneeling down, he struck a long match and lit the kindling under the dry logs in the grate, watching them flame up.

When she turned, he saw Shelley huddled on the cushions, staring at the fire as though the flames held the answer to their problems.

“I tried,” he said. “I tried to keep it from happening again.”

She nodded, and he knew he had to tell her the rest of it.

Still standing with his back to the fire, he said, “I may not remember what happened to me, but I know it changed me.”

Lifting her gaze, she asked, “How?”

He swallowed, because as bad as the first part of his revelation had been, he was just getting to the worst part.

BIG BOYS don’t cry. Trevor Young knew that, but it was hard to keep tears from leaking down his cheeks.

He was cold and hungry, and he wanted to go home. He wanted his mommy.

With a trembling hand, he swiped the tears away.

“Mommy,” he whispered so that the man named Blue wouldn’t hear him. “Mommy, please come get me out of here.” He didn’t think that she could hear him. But he couldn’t stop himself from talking to her because it made him feel a little better.

He was in a cabin in the middle of a field—with trees all around the edges, except where the road cut through. He could look out the window, but he couldn’t see any other houses. Maybe there were some behind the trees. Or maybe not.

He wanted to get away. But the window was locked. And so was the door. And sometimes Blue put a handcuff on Trevor like the police did on TV when they were taking the bad guys to the police station. The cuff was attached to a chain. And the chain was attached to the bed frame. So he couldn’t move very far.

Only it was all backward now. The bad guy had the handcuffs. Not the police.

He lay curled on the bed, hugging his knees. When he heard the doorknob turn, he burrowed under the covers, wishing he could hide.

Footsteps crossed the wooden floor, and he knew Blue was looking down at him. If he pretended to be sleeping, would the man go away?

Instead, he pulled down the blanket, and Trevor couldn’t stop himself from whimpering. “Please, let me go back to my mommy.”

“Don’t give me a hard time, kid.”

“Why are you so mean?”

“It’s my job.”

“What kind of job is that?” “Stop asking questions.”

The hard look in the man’s eyes made Trevor clamp his lips together.

Blue pulled his hand from behind his back, and Trevor saw that he was holding a hypodermic needle.

Trevor cringed away. The man had already given him some shots that hurt a lot. In his back. “Please, please don’t do that to me again.”

“Shut up. The sooner we do this, the sooner it will be over.” As the man grabbed his arm, Trevor started to cry.

SHELLEY STARED at the harsh lines of Matt’s face. The way he said that being kidnapped had changed him scared her.

“You have to tell me what you mean.”

He looked as though he didn’t want to speak.

“You’re the one who brought it up!” she threw at him.

“Yeah. Because of the reason you came here.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, then said, “Shelley, I’ve never told this to anyone. Well, I mean, my mom figured it out. But I never admitted anything—even to her. Especially to her.”

She kept her gaze steady. “I’m still not following you.”

“When I was kidnapped, I was just an ordinary kid. When I came back, I was different.”

She wanted to scream at him. Whatever he was planning to say, he was dancing around it. “Spell it out,”

“Okay. I can make people do things.”

“That’s your terrible secret?” she shot back. “Well, what’s the big deal? I can make people do things, too. I can make Trevor go to bed at bedtime. I can make his nursery school teacher be more sensitive to his needs.” She bit her lip. “Well, I could do those things—before he disappeared. So what exactly do you mean?”

He thrust his hands into his pockets. “I mean that I can suggest a course of action—and the person will follow it. I don’t mean I say or do anything. I just think about it—and they do it.”

“That’s … nonsense.”

His stance turned aggressive. “Oh, yeah? So you think it was all your idea to leave me?” “Of course it was!”

“Not true. I put the idea in your mind—and you did it.” “How?”

“I don’t exactly know. I came back from those three missing months with the power to influence people.”

She stared at him, trying to take that in, and trying to figure out what it meant to him. She’d driven here through a raging storm because she needed his help. Now it seemed as though he’d come unhinged. From the news that he had a son and that Trevor was missing? Or had it started earlier—when he’d walled himself off from the world?

As she regarded him, she started putting a bunch of things together, a bunch of things that added up to very odd behavior. He’d given up raising horses. He had an alarm system to warn him if someone was sneaking up on him. He was holed up here in this house like a hermit. He had a bunch of guns, not just normal rancher’s hardware. And she was locked in here with him.

Suddenly, she was wondering what Matt Whitlock might do if he thought he was cornered.

When he started toward her, she cringed—giving away her fears.

He stopped short, staring at her. “You’re afraid of me,” he said in a flat voice. “No.”

He shook his head. “It’s written all over your face, but I don’t blame you.”

“You say you have this talent—and you never told anyone about it,” she challenged.

“That’s right.” He sighed.

“Why not?”

His expression turned glacial. “For starters, my mother tried to beat it out of me. I’ve told you what she was like. Strict. Absolutely certain of what was right and what was wrong. She used to talk about the neighbors. The people in town. She’d make judgments about them—and nobody ever came up to her standards. She even drove an extra fifty miles to a dry goods store because she didn’t like Mr. Mason, the guy who owned the mercantile in Yuma.” He took a breath.

“When she realized what I could do, she was sure it was the work of the devil. None of that made for an idyllic childhood.”

Her heart squeezed, and she tried to imagine what it must have been like for him—if he was telling the truth.

He sighed. “I see you’re having a little trouble with the concept. Do you want me to prove it?”

“How?”

“We’ll call Ed Janey over from the bunkhouse, and I’ll get him to do something.”

“Maybe it will be something he was going to do anyway.”

He laughed. “I mean, you can choose what you want him to do.”

“Like what?” “Anything.”

She thought for a minute, trying to come up with something Matt wouldn’t think of. Something that wasn’t obvious. “You used to keep cans of vegetable beef soup in the pantry. Do you still?”

“Yes.”

“Tell him to get a can from the shelf—and take it home,” she tossed out, sure that would be the end of the experiment.

To her surprise, Matt said, “Okay. Come back to the kitchen and we’ll call him.”

He walked past her, and she could have refused to go along with this crazy plan. Instead she climbed off the couch and followed him down the hall.

When she stepped through the door, he was holding the receiver of the wall phone and dialing.

“Ed?” he said.

She couldn’t hear the other end of the conversation, but she made sure Matt wasn’t giving his foreman any clues.

“There’s somebody over here who wants to say hello to you. Would you mind coming over?”

“Yeah. In this weather.”

He hung up and turned to her. “He’ll be here as soon as he can get his coat and boots on.” “Okay.”

She walked to the table and picked up the mug of chocolate. It wasn’t very hot anymore, but sipping it gave her something to do while she waited in the kitchen with a man who might be insane. She didn’t want to think about it that way, but she couldn’t stop herself from studying Matt’s blue eyes, his mouth, his big rugged hands. He’d left his gun in the mudroom. Did he have another one in a kitchen drawer?

The clock on the wall ticked off the minutes, and she wondered if Ed was really coming. Or had Matt even spoken to Ed? Maybe this was all a sham. Like in a horror movie. She fought to get that notion out of her head.

When Matt saw her watching him, he went to the window and looked out at the wide expanse of white. A few minutes later, there was a knock at the back door. She heard someone stamping snow off his boots. Then Ed Janey came into the kitchen. He’d hung his coat up and was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt. His shoulders were a little stooped, his hair had gone completely gray, and his weathered face was more lined. But he had the same lean body that she remembered from when she’d lived at the ranch. They’d been friends back then.

“Shelley?” he said as soon as he saw her. “Is it really you?”

“Yes.”

He crossed the kitchen and wrapped her in his arms. “It’s so good to see you.”

She swallowed around the lump in her throat. “And you, too.”

“What brings you here?”

She glanced at Matt, then away. “I needed Matt’s help with something,” she said in a low voice.

Ed stepped back and studied her. “You got troubles, honey?”

“Nothing too bad,” she managed to say.

He looked from her to the window and back again. “Heck of a day for a visit.”

“I was passing by,” she murmured, wondering if he believed her.

They chatted about old times for a few more minutes, and she heard regret in Ed’s voice. Obviously he wished that Matt was working the ranch. Did the foreman feel useless? Probably, and that was a shame, because he’d been such an important part of the work life of the spread. Now he probably felt that he was living here on Matt’s charity.

She wanted to ask him what he did all day now, but she understood that was a topic better left untouched.

When they came to the end of the conversation, he said, “Well, it’s good seeing you, but I’d better be getting back.”

As she watched him take a step toward the door, she wondered what kind of farce they’d been acting out. Did Matt really think he was going to get away with this insane tactic?

Maybe she’d be safer if she went back to the bunkhouse with Ed.

Chapter Three

Shelley’s breath turned shallow as she watched Ed hesitate where he stood in the middle of the kitchen. For a moment, he looked totally confused. Then he made a little burbling sound in his throat and walked past her and into the pantry. When he emerged again, he was clutching a can of vegetable beef soup.

He stopped short, holding the can and looking at it as though it was a foreign object. “What am I doing?” he muttered. His expression changed to one of embarrassment as he glanced from the can to Matt. “This is yours. I should put this back.”

“No. That’s fine,” Matt said. “I know you always liked it. Take it home and have it for dinner.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course.”

Still clutching the can, Ed hurried into the mudroom, and Shelley could hear his coat rustling.

Moments later, the back door slammed, and she was left alone with Matt who was gazing at her with what she could only call a smug expression on his face.

Her pulse was pounding as she looked back at him. She’d thought he was spinning a story—for some reason that she couldn’t figure out. She’d thought maybe he was coming unglued. But he’d told her to pick something to have Ed do—and the man had done it. It had been entirely her choice.

Ed had hesitated at first, like he didn’t know why he was getting the soup, but in the end, he’d followed what must have been Matt’s silent directions.

All at once she was unsteady on her feet. Weak-kneed, she dropped into the nearest chair and grasped the edge of the table in front of her.

Matt stood across from her, his face turned to a mask of tension. “You still think I’m crazy?” “I didn’t say that.”

“I don’t have to be a mind reader to know what was dancing through your head.”

She felt her cheeks flush. “I’m sorry. You’ve got to admit, it sounded … off the wall when you told me about it.”

“Yeah. It takes some getting used to, all right. I sort of came to the realization gradually when I was a kid. At first I couldn’t believe it myself.”

“How did you discover something like that?”

He laughed. “I guess the first time was when I wanted to watch a TV program, and my mom wanted to make sure I’d done my homework first. It was a really important program. At least for a twelve-year old. A Bonanza rerun, I think. I silently asked her to let me watch instead, and she amazed me by doing it.

“Remember, I told you she was pretty strict. So her changing her mind was … unusual. The next time I tried it, I wanted chili for dinner. And I told her to make it—without saying anything out loud. She did.”

“That must have given you a feeling of power.”

“Yeah, but not for long. My mom was the kind of mother who watches for you to do something wrong so she can punish you.”

Shelley winced, wondering what it would be like to grow up like that. Her own parents had always been warm and loving and supportive. They’d raised her to believe in herself and to take responsibility for her own decisions. They’d died before she knew she was going to have a baby, but their confidence in her had given her the courage to raise a child on her own. Sometimes it made her sad that Trevor would never know his grandparents. He’d never make cookies with her mom the way she had, or go fishing with her dad. And every holiday had had its traditions—like fun stocking stuffers at Christmas. She’d made sure to do all those things with her own son. Matt was still speaking.

“Mom was smart. She caught on pretty fast—and started beating the crap out of me when she thought I was—she called it ‘pushing’ her. I guess that’s as good a name as any for what I can do.”

She nodded.

“And then she would go around talking to teachers and other people I knew, finding out if I’d ‘pushed’ them. So I had to be careful if I wanted to use it.” He laughed. “Like once when I should have gotten detention, and I persuaded the teacher to let me off. Mom found out about it and made sure it never happened again.”

Shelley’s chest was so tight she could barely breathe. “I’m sorry. I had no idea about any of that.”