Protector of One

“Sorry to drop by like this,” he said. “Do you have a minute to talk?”

“Sure,” she said after a moment’s hesitation. Stepping back, she allowed him to come inside, along with a gust of cold air.

“Winter’s not far away,” he remarked with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“No, but this is my favorite time of year. Autumn is special. Would you like coffee or something?”

“No thanks. I don’t want to impose. Just a brief chat.”

She nodded and led him to the living room, wincing as she saw her solitary, hardly touched meal still sitting on the coffee table. Talk about revealing!

He settled on one end of the couch at her invitation, and she took the rocking chair that faced him kitty-corner. She reached for the remote and then shut off the TV.

“This isn’t official or anything,” he told her. In fact, she thought he looked awkward. “I was thinking as I was getting ready to drive home. How hard this must have been for you. What you saw, and having to tell us, then our reaction to it. I just wanted to make sure you’re all right.”

“All right?” She looked at the table with the microwave tray on it, at the glass of milk beside it, at the TV remote she had reached for because tonight she needed some kind of companionship. She could have called a friend, but that would have meant discussing this morning, the last thing she felt like doing. Then the conversation she wanted to avoid had walked through her door anyway. “I guess.”

“You guess? That doesn’t sound good.”

She shook her head. “No, that’s not what I meant. I just found myself wondering what all right is. I mean…I’ve been coming home to this house for eight years, every night. I make myself a dinner, something usually better than this. Friends drop by. Sometimes I cook for all of us or go over to their places. But tonight nothing feels the same. I’m not sure anything is all right anymore.”

He nodded slowly. “Life does things like that. Without warning, everything’s off-center. It’s like you have to reinvent yourself.”

“That’s a good description.” She looked at him, taking in his attractive features. A little flutter reminded her she was a woman. “Tonight I feel like a stranger to myself.”

“I know that feeling. That’s why I stopped by. I could tell earlier you were having as much trouble with having had the vision as you were with what was in it.”

She nodded, leaning back. “I sure wouldn’t tell anyone else about it.”

“That’s what I wanted to suggest. Keep it quiet.”

She didn’t know if she liked that. Frowning, she asked, “Why? Because everyone will think I’m crazy? Because you think I’m crazy?”

He shook his head quickly, leaning forward. “I don’t think you’re crazy at all. Which is not to say I believe in psychics, but I’ve got an open mind and you obviously picked up on something. But you’re certainly not crazy.”

“Then why?”

“Because, if word gets around, it might put you in jeopardy with the killers.”

Gut-punched. She couldn’t even breathe. Stunned, she tried to absorb his words. Wings of panic started fluttering around the dark edges of her mind. Finally she said, “But I didn’t identify anyone! I couldn’t!”

“Do they know that?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? “Are you trying to scare me?”

“I’m trying to protect you.”

She couldn’t doubt his sincerity. She’d heard that he’d been with the Department of Criminal Investigation before coming here to ranch. Gage apparently trusted him enough to ask for his help in the murder case. But even without that, something in his gaze seemed to reach out reassuringly. “I wasn’t planning to tell anyone. Not even my friends. I keep these things to myself when they happen. Although it’s usually nothing like this. Usually it’s just a quick glimpse of something right before it happens.”

He nodded and appeared to relax.

“I only told Emma because I couldn’t hold it in anymore, and I trust her. She never gossips. Ever. But I couldn’t bring myself to come in alone and tell Gage.”

“Yet you felt you should.”

She nodded. “It was like a pressure. Like something was pushing me, and it wouldn’t leave me alone. Almost like someone was right at my shoulder, refusing to go away until I told you.” She shuddered even now at the memory of that psychic push.

That caught his attention. “I take it you believe in the afterlife?”

Where did that come from? she wondered. “Most people do.”

“I’m more of an agnostic. I don’t know. But…you experienced it?”

She hesitated. Unlike some people, she didn’t tell the story often, but rather hugged it to herself. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “How could I? It’s called a near-death experience, or NDE for short, because those of us who have it come back. The debate is about whether we experienced death at all, or just oxygen deprivation. There are widely separated camps on this.”

“I would imagine so. But you must have made your own decision.”

She bit her lower lip, searching his face, deciding she saw only genuine interest there. “Whatever I experienced, I have no doubt it was real, maybe more real than this chair I’m sitting in right now. I have no doubt that I had a glimpse of something so beautiful that there’s no way I could describe it to you. It changed me. It certainly rid me of any fear of death.”

He nodded, absorbing what she said, not immediately leaping forward with questions or conversation. She liked his thoughtful manner. She liked that he gave things time to settle as he took them in.

“I’m not so sure that’s a good thing,” he said presently.

“What?”

“Not being afraid of death.”

At that she couldn’t repress a smile. “I’m not jumping from airplanes without a parachute, if that’s what you mean. I take reasonable precautions like everyone else. I’m just not afraid of the inevitable outcome of every life.”

A smile creased his face in return. “Good point.”

“We all get there sooner or later. The problem comes when we spend too much of our time and efforts trying to avoid it. I pity people who are obsessively afraid of dying.”

“Anything can take over your life,” he agreed. “That’s a common obsession. Others of us have different ones.”

She nodded, wondering if he was taking this conversation somewhere. At the same time, she didn’t want him to leave. Earlier the house had felt empty and oppressive. Now it felt as home should. Normal sounds, warmth, friendliness. And she was feeling a kind of attraction she hadn’t felt in quite a while. Was he married?

“Let me get you a coffee,” she said. “And a slice of cheesecake. I imagine you spent most of the day outside.” She paused, filled with the need to know. “Unless you need to get home to your family?”

This time he didn’t decline. “No family,” he said. “And coffee sounds really good now. It’s getting cold out there.”

So no family. That pleased her more than it probably should have. As she rose from the rocker, she took her congealing dinner tray to the kitchen, deciding she might as well have some cheesecake, too. Sometimes she needed comfort food, and tonight was a good night for it.

The wind blew some dead leaves against the kitchen window, rattling them as they passed. She stared out into the darkness, but saw only her own reflection in the glass. A lingering whiff of burned bacon wafted past her nose, barely detectable, and soon disappeared in the aromas of fresh coffee and chocolate-caramel cheesecake.

She placed everything on a serving tray, and returned to the living room, setting it down on the coffee table.

“Wow,” he said appreciatively as he eyed the cheesecake. “Did you make this?”

“I get cravings for things like this sometimes. Besides, it’s always good to have something like this on hand for visitors.”

He smiled as she passed him a plate. “I need to drop by more often.”

She laughed, inordinately pleased by the idea. “Just let me know if you mean that. I’ll make sure not to run out of desserts.”

He dug in with relish and complimented her generously. She sat back in her rocker, nibbling at her own slice, enjoying herself for the first time that day. The shadows that had haunted her had dispelled as if Adrian had brought light with him.

Life went on, she thought. Even when terrible things happened, people had to continue living. It was a hardlearned lesson, after her friends died in the accident. Sometimes she still felt guilty, very guilty, despite her experience of the light and her absolute conviction that her friends had gone to a far, far better place.

“Life has its charms,” she said, before she realized she was going to speak out loud.

He looked at her with an arched brow. “It does,” he agreed.

But she detected some kind of hesitancy in the way he said it, a hesitation that convinced her he carried his share of ghosts, too. Maybe that’s why he had gently steered her to talk about her near-death experience. Maybe he needed some kind of reassurance.

He rose suddenly, placing his plate and mug on the tray. “Can I carry this out to the kitchen for you?”

“No, no thanks. It’s not a problem.”

“It’s time for me to be getting home,” he said. “Tomorrow’s going to be another long day.”

“Yes.” She nodded and stood, wondering why his mood had changed so abruptly.

He started toward the front door, then paused and looked back, his gray eyes serious. “Let us know if you sense anything else. Please.”

The request surprised her, but what it hinted at made her shiver. “I hope I never sense another thing.”

“I can sure understand why.” He nodded, opened the door and disappeared into the dark evening as the door closed firmly behind him.

Kerry remained standing, ignoring an urge to get a sweater, thinking over his visit. It had been odd, she realized, about something other than what she had reported earlier.

But whatever had brought him, she was glad he had stopped by.

She heard the heat kick on, and as she carried the tray back to the kitchen, felt the first musty stirrings of hot air.

Time to put it all behind her, she decided. Today needed to be put on the shelf along with the other mysteries of her life, such as why she had survived an accident that had killed her two best friends.

Some questions just couldn’t be answered.

Hours later, after a long, aimless drive, Adrian climbed out of his car in front of the small clapboard house he now called home. Around him spread the small ranch he had bought with his savings just before he retired with disability from the DCI.

The night, undisturbed by city lights, boasted a sky so strewn with stars that it looked like a black sea into which someone had tossed millions of diamonds. The swath of the Milky Way could be seen clearly, and its misty glow provided the answer to why the ancients had often believed it to be a heavenly river.

He loved it out here. The scent of sage and grass out-performed any aromatherapy. The minute he smelled the cool fragrant air, he always felt at peace.

He tried to soak up that feeling now, before entering his house, hoping to banish the day’s images of mayhem. Trying to think of something pleasant.

Cheesecake. Yeah, that was pleasant. Good coffee, a cute schoolteacher…

But as soon as he tried to summon the images, reality called him back. Change that to unnerved and unnerving schoolteacher, pretty or not. For the first time he considered the possibility that being psychic could be real and, worse, it could be awful.

He’d had so-called psychics try to provide information before on his cases. On the rare occasions when they were right, no one knew until they’d developed the information through ordinary means anyway. As a result, he hadn’t given the idea much thought over the years.

All that had changed in a few heart-stopping moments this evening when Kerry Tomlinson had described several unique aspects of the crime scene, aspects that couldn’t have been known to her. Then she had said the bodies had been positioned to send a misleading message.

That statement drew him up short, because it was exactly what he had been thinking about the carefully posed bodies. Something he couldn’t prove without a confession, something that on the face of it was a stretch.

Yet she had spoken his own impression aloud, an impression that he had shared only with Gage.

Impossible.

Except that when he looked up at the night sky, he sensed a universe that brimmed with possibilities that no one had yet imagined. Standing with his head tipped back, looking up at billions of suns, millions of which might have planets, hundreds of thousands of which might have life, he couldn’t deny any possibility.

Certainly not after today.

Of course, he’d given up on the whole idea of anything being impossible when he’d discovered his own partner at DCI had turned on him. The last person on earth he would have ever expected to betray him. If that could happen, anything could.

Then, on the still night air, he heard two pops from far away. He froze, listening intently, wondering if they had been gunshots.

There could be so many reasons for someone to shoot at this time of night. This was ranch country. An injured or sick animal might need putting down. A coyote might have been preying on someone’s sheep or chickens. So many legitimate reasons.

But something made him turn around and get back in his truck anyway.

Kerry turned in the damp sheets, eyes flittering to and fro beneath closed eyelids, her muscles rigid as if fighting to wake her…

“I’m starting to get really worried,” Leah said to Georgia. “The guys should have joined us by now.”

Georgia leaned closer to the campfire, seeking its warmth. “I didn’t think it was going to get so cold so quickly.”

“Georgia!”

Georgia looked up, smiling. “Cut it out, Leah. You’re driving me crazy. The minute you put Hank and Bill into the woods, they turn into Lewis and Clark. We don’t have to get back until Sunday, and neither of them is going to quit until they explore a cave or something. You know that.”

Leah rubbed her jersey-clad arms. Her down vest ordinarily proved sufficient, but not tonight for some reason. “Something’s wrong. I know it.”

Georgia reached for a stick and poked at the fire, stirring up sparks, causing flames to leap higher. “Well, we can’t leave the camp. They won’t know where to look for us. So you’re just going to have to relax until Sunday.”

Leah finally quit pacing and came to sit on one of the dead logs they used as benches by the fire. “They always do this,” she remarked.

“Exactly.” Georgia smiled at her friend. “Every damn time. They say they’ll be back by Friday so we can spend the weekend together, and they never make it. So relax. It just gives us more time for girl talk.”

Leah managed a tight smile. “How many years have we been doing these trips?”

“Well, I know this is our eighth trip, and we always go twice a year so…” Georgia shook her head. “You know exactly how long we’ve been doing this. What are you trying to say?”

“I don’t know.”

Leah hunched toward the fire, wondering why she felt so on edge. This always happened. The guys went off by themselves to take some more rugged hikes while the girls stayed close to camp. The two men always returned late, usually because they’d found something exciting—it invariably surprised Leah what could excite a geologist—and when they marched into camp eventually, they always bubbled over about some find. Meanwhile Leah and Georgia were merely glad to enjoy the break from their jobs and spend a week in the woods with nothing to do but read good novels and relax.

Hugging herself, waiting for the warmth of the fire to penetrate, Leah looked up at the shadowy trees looming over them. “I’ve always loved the woods at night,” she remarked.

“It’s primal,” Georgia said. She had a tendency to explain everything in life in terms of archetypes, genes and human psychology. That one simply had feelings never contented her. There always had to be a reason.

Leah shook her head. “How about I just like it?”

“But don’t you want to understand yourself?”

“Not to the point that I atomize and pigeonhole everything.”

This was an old disagreement, so old that it had become comfortable, and hence provided a good distraction.

Georgia sighed, a sound almost lost in the crackle of the fire. “You have no spirit of adventure.”

“Adventure? Analyzing my every thought against some template is an adventure?”

Georgia grinned. “Then what do you think is an adventure?”

“Sitting in the woods at night around a campfire, listening to an owl hoot, and wondering where the hell the guys have gone.”

“You are single-minded.”

“No, just realistic.” A twig snapped behind her in the woods and she looked around. “Did you hear that?”

“Yeah. Probably a raccoon.”

“Or a wolf.”

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of wolves. Believe me, they’re more scared of us.”

“Then bears.”

By this point both women were grinning at each other, building a story from the crack of a branch. “Yeah, bears,” Georgia agreed. “A mother and two cubs. Hungry. Annoyed because we’re between them and the bacon grease I dumped up the hill this morning…”

“Ooooh,” said Leah appreciatively, “that’s it.”

“Yeah. Are we supposed to run uphill or downhill?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Some adventurer you are…”

Just then a doe poked her head into the circle of light cast by the fire. Her eyes reflected red at them, and she froze.

“How beautiful,” Georgia whispered.

“You’re feeling a purely instinctual prey urge,” Leah started to tease her in a whisper. “No appreciation of the beau—”

The word never fully left her mouth. Before her very eyes, Georgia’s face transformed into a twisted mask as something sprayed from the side of her head. A split second later, a loud crack rent the night and echoed off the cliffside.

Leah froze like the deer had moments before, but the doe chose a different course, darting off into the woods.

Another crack and Leah felt a searing burn in her arm. She looked at it and saw a glistening wetness start to spread.

In the firelight, the wetness looked black.

Before she consciously comprehended what was happening, she turned away from the noise and fled into the night, running faster than she ever had in her life. Faster even than when she had been a sprinter in college.

Her body understood the situation even if her brain didn’t…or wouldn’t.

She had become the prey.

Kerry, who felt as if she had barely dropped off to sleep, woke up screaming from the nightmare. Even in her own ears the terrified sound seemed to echo. She sat up abruptly, feeling breathless, searching her room for a reason, a cause for the horrifying dream. Everything looked as it always did.

Just a dream, she told herself.

But then she switched on a light, climbed out of bed and began to dress. The compulsion could not be ignored.

Chapter Three

There were a lot of ways to make a living, Gage Dalton thought, that didn’t involve climbing out of a warm bed in the wee hours, leaving behind the soft heat of a beautiful wife. His mouth twisted with grim humor at the thought, because all his adult life, with a break for recovery after a car bomb that had killed his first wife and family, he’d been doing exactly this. DEA, Conard County Sheriff’s Office, all the same, just a difference in degrees.

The call from Kerry Tomlinson had sounded nearly panicky, and she insisted there was no time to waste. He was halfway down the stairs, headed for the front door when his cell rang. This time it was Adrian Goddard.

“I heard two gunshots,” Adrian said. “I wish I could tell you for certain where they came from, but it seemed like the same general direction of the vics we found yesterday.”

“I’m on my way to the office. Kerry just called me. Something’s wrong but she could hardly talk and she said she had to get out of her house.”

“I’m already on my way. Another ten minutes.”

“See you there.”

On impulse, as Gage clipped the phone to his belt, he turned around and headed back upstairs. He went to their son’s room, the little boy they had agreed to adopt a couple of years ago. The three-year-old Jeremy at once filled Gage with blazing love and desperate terror. He knew what it was to lose a child. Bringing Jeremy into his life had been an act of faith more difficult than anything he’d ever done.

Peeking in, he saw that the restless child, as usual, dangled one leg over the edge of the bed, and barely had any covers over him at all. Moonlight, thin and weak, barely touched him.

Again on impulse, Gage scooped the sleeping child up. The boy barely stirred. He carried him in to the master bedroom and slipped him under the blankets with Emma.

Emma stirred, murmuring quietly, and with a mother’s native instinct rolled over until she was wrapped around their child.

Gage adjusted the blankets a bit, then left as quietly as he could, sending up a prayer for their protection.

He thought he knew evil. He’d sure as hell seen enough horror. But tonight, somehow, he felt there was something even darker stalking this county.

Kerry waited, shaking, in her locked car outside the sheriff’s office. What was taking Gage so damn long? She drummed her fingers nervously on the steering wheel, while the back of her neck prickled as if a predator watched her. No amount of telling herself it was just a dream could erase the urgency she felt. The terror she felt.

And this time she didn’t care if anyone thought she was nuts.

At last headlights appeared, slicing through the darkness of the quiet main street. The moon, a mere sliver tonight, shed only the palest light, and the street lights, recently changed to stylish Victorian imitations, didn’t seem to do much better. It was as if the darkness refused to give ground.

But at last the sheriff’s SUV pulled into the reserved slot and she saw Gage’s silhouette at the wheel. He climbed out quickly, after turning off his ignition, and came around to Kerry. She rolled her window down as he bent to look in.

“I think it’d be warmer inside, and I can make us some coffee or tea.”

Clenching her teeth so they wouldn’t chatter, she nodded, turned her own car off, and purse in hand followed him into the office.

The lighting was dim. The night dispatcher, a young deputy, half dozed at the console. He jumped when Gage and Kerry entered, but Gage waved him to relax. “Nothing?” he asked.

“Not a peep, just the regular check-ins.”

“Start the coffee, would you? I think we’re going to have a busy night.”

At that the young deputy perked up. “I just made a pot. What’s going on?”

“I’ll know more after Adrian gets here. Just bring us the coffee, please. I need to get Kerry warmed up.”

“Yeah, sure, Chief.”

In his office, Gage turned on a portable electric heater to add its warmth to the air blowing through the vents in the floor. “Never gets warm enough back here,” he remarked. “For myself I don’t mind. That’s what jackets and sweaters are for, but you look like you need to thaw out.”

Kerry nodded gratefully. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt this cold. Ever. And it’s not that cold outside.”

“Adrian’s on his way,” he said again as the young deputy entered and brought them coffee. Kerry suddenly remembered she’d had him in English class only two or three years ago. Calvin Henry, that was his name. “Thanks, Cal,” she said.

He smiled. “Anytime, Ms. Tommy.” The name the students called her. He looked at Gage. “Anything else?”

“Just send Adrian back here. I’ll let you know when I know.”

Cal nodded and walked out.

“Why is Adrian coming?”