Читать книгу Dark Moon - Lindsay Longford - Страница 6

It was the sudden silence that made her look up.

Struck by the stillness, Josie paused. Pebbles of dirt spattered from her trowel to the ground as she raised her chin. Dust spiraled up, gritty against her mouth.

She tilted her head, listening.

And heard nothing.

Her fingers tightened against the leaf of the tomato seedling. Uneasy, she rested her trowel on the ground.

All morning she’d been distantly aware of the occasional trill of a mockingbird or the squawks of a blue jay in the pines at the edge of her property, the bird noise a numbing background sound in the July heat.

But now, this silence.

Abrupt and absolute.

Only the stifling darkness of the woods in front of her. Darkness and stillness and the heavy drumming of her pulse in her ears.

Over the pungent scent of the bruised leaf in her hand came a musky scent mixing with the smell of dry soil.

Heat pressed in on her, trickled down her spine.

Something there, just at the edge of her vision. A shape, a form, unmoving in the shadows of the woods.

She blinked, clearing the haze of perspiration from her eyes. Shades of darkness slid into focus, and her heart stuttered and skipped a beat as she saw him.

Ears folded over and stub of a tail jutting out, the dog paused at the edge of the woods and stared at her. Heavy bodied and blunt nosed, he watched her, an intimidating intelligence in his unblinking yellow gaze.

Predator eyes.

Kneeling in front of the straggling tomato plants, Josie gripped the trowel stuck in the sandy soil of her garden and didn’t move.

The dog fixed her with his murky yellow eyes as he slowly lowered his muzzle.

Understanding pierced her heat-stunned brain. Rabid, heat-mad, whatever—the animal was readying himself for attack. Josie swallowed, the sound loud in her ears.

Balancing herself, she flattened her free hand in the dirt, dropping the seedling uprooted by the force of her grip. One broken leaf lay like a green arrowhead against the clumps of earth.

With her barely perceptible movement, the animal, a good two feet or more at the shoulder, stepped forward, his long, sloping shoulders moving with massive power.

Fear sharpening her senses, Josie studied him. He was almost 130 pounds of tight, hard muscle from shoulder to flank. But his eyes—Josie shivered.

His stubby tail, upright now, wagged once.

She might have thought it was a sign of friendly greeting.

She knew better.

Friendliness was not in those eyes.

Not friendliness at all. Something else entirely.

Threat glowed deep in their muddy depths.

An instinct she hesitated to trust whispered, Evil, evil. Another voice, one she knew damned good and well not to trust, murmured seductively, Run!

Sweat dripped down into her eyes as she edged back slowly on her heels, unthinking, reacting at a primal level. Keeping her gaze on the ground, avoiding direct eye contact, she kept the animal in peripheral view.

He lifted his snout, sniffing, and cocked his head, watchful, waiting. His front paws alternated in place, a curious, prancing dance, before he drifted out of view. She carefully turned her head, and through a blur saw the dog pace three steps east along her yard toward the clothesline where her sheets hung limp and still, and then three steps west, observing some boundary invisible to her, a boundary only yards away as he guarded her. His mouth was partially open, his tongue lolling to the side.

Her knees ached with the effort she made not to leap to her feet and run. Behind her, the house might as well have been miles away, light-years from where she knelt shaking and sweating in the dirt.

Smells rose to her nostrils, the salty smell of sweat on her arm, the dry tickle of dirt, the fetor of animal excitement heavy in the still air.

The only moving thing in her universe, the dog stalked slowly in front of her.

Emerging from the darkness of the woods like a shadow, another dog eased to his left. Then a third, both dogs staying slightly behind the lead dog, and all three fixing her with that stare that sent a slide of ice bone-deep.

The trowel was greasy with sweat—slick in her bare hand. Her vision hazy, she saw the first dog stop. Watching her steadily, intently, he closed his rust-colored muzzle.

In all that thick silence, Josie could have sworn she heard his powerful jaws snap. He was thinking, reaching a decision. That, too, she would swear.

If she could wipe the sweat from her eyes, she could—run! Deep in her brain Josie heard the treacherous voice growl.

She thought about it. Her muscles tensed, needing the release of action.

No.

She didn’t dare take off in a race for her house. At gut level, she knew the pack would be on her before she could reach the safety of the porch.

For seven days, the male and four companion animals, all with distinctive rust circles over their eyes, had appeared in the woods, each day moving closer to her yard, her house. Closer to her.

She’d seen them at night, too, their shadows slipping silently through the trees bordering her property, merging in and out of the deeper darkness of the woods before disappearing.

Roaming through her house during the quiet hours as heat and night sounds seeped in through her open windows, she’d had an odd empathy for the animals, longing herself for the cool darkness of the woods, desiring an end, whatever it was, to the waiting that filled her days and kept her wandering through her heat-blasted house at nights. In those unending hours, she’d envied the pack’s oneness with the dark.

She hadn’t seen their eyes at night, though—only the heavy bulk of their bodies loping smoothly and silently before disappearing. She hadn’t been prepared for the brute intelligence that held her captive now.

Across the span of arid yard, the lead animal lifted its lip in a silent snarl. Like sentinels, two more dogs appeared noiselessly, fanning out behind the triumvirate. Sweat trickled into her mouth.

Knowing better than to move in any way that would seem a challenge, she edged backward, still on her knees, inching her way to the house. Passive, she let her body language acknowledge their dominance.

It wasn’t enough.

Again, the alpha dog lowered his head. The animals behind him shifted, restlessly pawing the ground.

In that instant, Josie knew she had no choice.

They were going to attack her if she stayed.

They would attack if she ran.

She had no possibility of reaching her house. Aroused by the chase, the animals would close on her in a frenzy of bloodlust.

In spite of the heat, terror struck her with utter, immobilizing cold.

And in that tick of time when the world hung motionless, everything suspended, even the drop of sweat poised at the tip of her eyelash, she wondered if this cold stillness was how it had been for her daughter. For the other children who’d vanished.

She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. From the hidden spaces of her fears, that unguarded thought slipped fully formed into her mind. Had Mellie been this cold, this terrified? Unbearable, that sly thought. Oh, Mellie, she thought, the ever present grief stone-heavy in her chest. Mellie.

Thinking of her daughter, Josie blinked, and her vision cleared. The earth turned, slowly, with an almost audible hum, and she heard the chambers of her heart open, close, heard the swoosh of her blood through her veins.

And with the roaring of her pulse in her ears, she knew she wasn’t going to be one more victim. She had too many questions she wanted answered.

She owed Mellie those answers.

The first dog lifted one paw and bowed his massive back.

The hot, dusty air carried his low growl to her, the rumble coming from deep within his massive chest, the vibration palpable in the earth under her palm. With one hand Josie gripped the slippery trowel, and with the hand pressed against the earth, she scooped up a fistful of dirt and crouched, her legs shaky as she prepared to leap to her feet and run the sixty yards to her porch.

Incisors showing in a fierce snarl, the huge dog flexed his haunches and laid his ears back. As his powerful neck stretched forward and he lifted his forequarters, Josie saw a darker shadow glide from behind a clump of moss-hung trees, shadow separating from shadow.

The coarse hair on the dogs’ backs stood upright. All five animals growled, a low rumble that raised the hairs at the back of her own neck. Primitive, that response, electric.

Now or never, she thought. Rising jerkily to her feet, she flung the handful of dirt and the trowel toward the dogs now in midleap. In that instant of furious motion, she saw a long arm lift, a hand held palm out, unspoken command in the thin, outstretched fingers. Control in the index finger pointing to the ground.

And faster than she could think, everything happened, changed, in a burst of sound and images. A buzzing loud as a swarm of drought-ravaged hornets in her ears, the yellow-eyed dog twisting in midleap, stopping and then hunching low to the ground, his stub tail between his legs. A drawn-out whine as he slunk off, disappearing as quietly as he’d first appeared, the other animals vanishing behind him.

Sweat streaming down her back, into her eyes, her heart pounding so hard she thought she’d throw up, Josie had an impression of a lean form dressed in jeans and a faded, dark shirt, had an impression, too, in that charged moment of dark, haunted eyes.

Clearing her vision, she blinked, and the tall shape vanished as silently as the animals.

From far away came the beginning chatter of a blue jay, and then, the melody hastily cut off, the woods were quiet once more in the heat, a silent, waiting presence in front of her.

Josie pressed a hand between her breasts. Her chest hurt. She’d been holding her breath and hadn’t known it. Gulping, she inhaled. The air was so hot and heavy with dust that she could feel it coating her lungs, her throat, as she took rasping breaths. The muscles of her legs quivered and shook, straining as if she’d run ten miles.

But remembering those moments when she’d kneeled and seen the dogs coming toward her, been their prey, Josie forced herself to stand upright, anger bubbling sludgy-thick in her throat and stomach as she surveyed the hushed woods in front of her. Secrets there in the thick pines, the undergrowth.

Danger.

Secrets.

Grit clung to her damp hands, and she wiped them down the sides of her shorts. Mixed with her perspiration, dirt smeared the frayed denim.

“Damn!” Shaken and frightened, Josie glared toward the pines. She’d had enough of secrets and unanswered questions to last her the rest of her life.

Stuffing her trembling hands into her pockets, she considered the situation. Man and dogs had all disappeared in the same direction.

“Ryder Hayes,” she murmured, misgivings underscoring her words. Her neighbor. If neighbor was the right term for someone she’d never met. Their two houses were the only ones on either side of the woods, and they were miles from town. No one ever casually strolled near her place.

Josie rubbed her eyes. The man must be Hayes. His property lay to the west of the woods and north of Angel Bay, the town. The dogs had to be his. No one else’s. She scuffed her toes in the dirt as she sorted through her confused memories of the past few months.

Seven or eight months ago, she didn’t know exactly when, he’d returned to the old house that backed onto the Angel River where it flowed into the Gulf of Mexico. She hadn’t seen him.

Until now. She was dead certain that intense, solitary figure was Ryder Hayes, those terrifying dogs his. Keeping her gaze on the woods, she backed up. She wouldn’t let him get away with letting his pets—pets! she thought, outraged—roam uncollared and uncontrolled.

God knew what those beasts were capable of.

What if she’d been a child?

Sweaty and shaky, Josie shivered as the memory of those yellow eyes glazed her burning skin with ice. “You and your damned dogs can all go to hell, Ryder Hayes.” Alarm still whipping through her, she clasped her arms around her waist and swore, the words shocking her with their violence.

She hadn’t imagined the feral calculation in the dogs’ gaze. No. Despite everything she’d been through in the past seven months, she was firmly in command of her imagination. She jammed her hands deeper into her pockets, closing her fingers around the fragment of rippled green glass.

Unlike her emotions, the touch of the weathered-smooth glass caused no pain. Christmas Eve, Mellie had handed her the lumpy package wrapped in a piece of the Sunday comics. “Magic, Mommy,” her six-year-old had said, blue eyes solemn but still not hiding her excitement. “From the woods.” She’d waved her arm vaguely toward the trees and then stuck her thumb into her mouth, her eyes growing wide, her bowed pink mouth becoming an upside-down U.

Mellie wasn’t supposed to go into the woods by herself. Ever.

Christmas.

January.

And now this hellish July.

The shard of glass was cool against her palm, as cool as the translucent watery green of its tint.

A blue jay chattered angrily. In that instant when sounds rushed in, anger battered at her, anger at a world that no longer made sense, anger at the animals that had reduced her to a quivering heap in her garden.

That image of herself wasn’t one she liked at all. She’d be damned if she’d stay cowering inside because of a pack of animals. She didn’t like being helpless. Being a victim.

Damn Ryder Hayes. His animals could—

Fury gave her the strength to turn her back on the trees and shadows and tear into her house, the screen door of the porch slamming behind her. She’d rip a piece off Hayes’s hide, she would. She wasn’t going to let him get away with that kind of carelessness.

But she wouldn’t face Ryder Hayes’s dogs without some kind of protection. Wild, spooky as hell, they were only animals, after all. Nothing more. She could deal with them.

Yanking open the drawer in the kitchen, she pulled out a key chain with a silver cylinder of capsaicin attached to it. She needed something else. Staring wildly at her kitchen cabinets, she threw open a door and whirled the carousel of spices so hard that a bottle of cinnamon flew off. She snatched the can of black pepper and stuffed it into her shorts pocket with the silver capsule. On her way down the sagging back steps, she grabbed her garden hoe. Silt from her morning weeding still caked its metal edges.

The whang of the slamming door echoed in her ears as she left her yard.

Skirting the southern edge of the woods, she went up the west approach, following the faint path in the low brush. Even with her arsenal, she lacked the nerve to take the shortcut through the woods.

In January, though, she’d run screaming like a mad-woman through the moss-shrouded pine trees, the palmetto bushes, and wax myrtle. She hadn’t gone into the woods since.

January.

Mellie.

And the six other missing children, the latest a nine-year-old boy.

And only five bodies.

Oh, Mellie, Josie thought, and her throat closed tight. She scrubbed her face hard with her fists, a desolation beyond words cramping her breathing.

Looking down at the dirt path, she realized for the first time that she’d left her house barefoot. She was so used to going without shoes, she hadn’t even thought of them in the flush of anger. Stupid. Anger had propelled her down this path. Driven by the hot rage that boiled through her as hard as fear had earlier, she hadn’t thought clearly.

She’d had only one idea in her mind. Hayes’s beasts might be responsible for—

Off to her right, the woods had grown silent again as she neared Hayes’s mansion. Eerie, that sense of a gathering intelligence. Half expecting to see one of the animals, Josie raised the hoe and looked behind her. Whirling, she stumbled as she looked up into one of the live-oak trees a few feet into the woods.

Narrowing her eyes, she realized the tree was dead, leafless. What she’d taken for leaves was a thick colony of birds. Every branch of the tree was covered with silent, watching grackles, their black plumage blending into the shadows, their bluish purple heads turned in her direction.

Her heart fluttered against her ribs as she squinted at the tree. She was close enough to see the bronze necks and throats, the yellow irises of their eyes.

Not a wing fluttered. Not one bird made a sound as she took another step down the path, but their yellow eyes followed her every movement.

“Scat, you stupid birds! Leave me alone, you devils!” Spinning in a huge circle, she waved the hoe in their direction, her voice shrill. In a huge, dark cloud, the birds rose, silent as ever, their wings beating as one. Wheeling left, they spread out, their shapes black Vs against the bleached white sky.

Then, as if directed by one mind, they hovered over the treetops, above her.

Josie shuddered. “Go away!” she shouted, waving the hoe toward the sky. “Shoo!”

And still they floated over her shoulder, their presence up there in the sky following her, the silent sweep of their wings drifting across the white-hot sun.

There was something chilling about the sight of the heavy clump of birds moving as one. Unnerved by their silent passage but not understanding why, she broke into a run. Even Ryder Hayes was preferable to this storm cloud of grackles. Gasping for breath in the heat, she came to the turn in the path that led either to Angel Bay or to the Hayes property.

The sickly-sweet branches of a drought-pinched oleander whipped against her shoulder as she pushed them aside and came to the shell drive leading to the Hayes house. Her breath rasping deep in her lungs, she paused. The edges of the crushed shells were sharp against the sole of her foot as she hesitated.

Tilted closed, the louvers of the wooden shutters gave the house a hostile, secretive appearance. In the smothering heat, the house seemed to shimmer in front of her, illusive.

Someone was watching her.

The hairs on the back of her neck rose.

She spun around.

The grackles had flown away.

Nothing behind her but the path.

No dogs there.

No one, in fact, merely that sense of being observed. She looked around and saw nothing, no one.

To her left, the distant curve of Angel River.

And in front of her, the house.

She hadn’t seen it in years. The paint on the tall white columns flaked to gray underneath, and dead vines crawled like spiderwebs against the blank wall of the right side. Decay, rank and ripe, lay heavily over the house.

Walking slowly up the driveway, Josie kept one hand in her pocket tight around the pepper can. With her other hand, she clutched the hoe like a weapon. Shells popped and cracked under her feet. She kept her eyes moving from left to right, half expecting the pack of dogs to come around the corner of the house, to leap at her from the bushes massed at the edge of the porch that circled the front and sides of the house.

As she made her way up the center of the steps, she thumped each one with her hoe, announcing her presence. The smell of rotting wood and insects filled her nose as the wide steps squeaked and splintered. She watched carefully where she placed her feet and tried not to think of what might have taken root or made its home in the recesses under the raised porch. Once more she wished she’d taken the time to slip into a pair of shoes.

Clutching the hoe like a walking stick, she cursed the stubbornness that kept her moving toward the front door of Ryder Hayes’s house when what she wanted was to turn and run as fast as she could away from the oppressive gloom of this house. Her lungs were constricted, leaving her dizzyingly short of oxygen as she trudged across the warped expanse of porch.

Her stubbornness would be the death of her someday. Anybody with half a brain would know when to quit. But she hadn’t had a choice, not really. Not with those dogs running wild—

She shut off her brain. She wouldn’t think of the children.

A prickling awareness made goose bumps on her skin, stayed with her.

Taking one final step, she swallowed as she paused in front of the huge, heavily carved front door and raised her fist, pounding on the grinning faces, the grimy wreaths and grapes chiseled into the wood, unleashing her frustration and terror and grief against the unyielding mahogany.

The door should have creaked. It should have groaned. There should have been cobwebs hanging from the frame and a humped Igor to open the portal a crack.

Instead, the door swung inward, and a gaunt figure appeared in the dim foyer, shading his eyes against the sunlight. A draft of air coiled around her ankles and up her thighs like the brush of an unseen, cold hand.

The door had been opened so silently that she hadn’t heard it, and her fist, still raised to pound against the door, slid against the cool cotton shirt of the man who leaned against the doorjamb. Her knuckles brushed against the thin black T-shirt, against the cords of his stomach, and she heard his swift intake of breath. His head snapped up and his dark gaze met hers.

Ice and heat burned her fingertips.

Josie jerked back, one heel scraping against a splinter. She couldn’t help her reaction. Power rising toward her, threatening to swamp her and suck her under, sweeping her out beyond safety. Coming from him.

Slumped against the door with his aloof burning gaze meeting hers, he looked too weary to speak, too weary to live, and yet waves of energy came from him, battering against her, and she took another step back, stunned by the force of his presence.

“What do you want?” Exhaustion made his low voice gravelly and he shaded his eyes again, taking a step back.

Josie gripped the hoe and stepped forward. The man looked ill. “Ryder Hayes?”

“Most of the time. Usually.” He sank more heavily against the frame as he glanced at her hoe. Slurred in a rough drawl, his words sounded as if he’d dragged them up from some dark cavern within himself. “Unless that’s a weapon?”

“What?” Josie frowned.

With a barely perceptible movement of a long index finger, he pointed to the hoe she held in a death grip. “Have you come, lady of the moss green eyes, like some medieval villager with torch and hoe, to burn me out?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Confused, Josie reached into her pocket for the cylinder of capsaicin.

“I see. Not a weapon, then.” He shook his head and pulled himself upright, almost disappearing behind the shield of the door. “Sorry, but I’m not interested in buying farm tools.”

“Good. Because I’m not selling anything.”

“Of course you are. Everyone’s selling something.” Cynicism curled the edges of his words.

“I’m not. I’m here to see Mr. Hayes.” Josie thumped the hoe emphatically. “Are you Ryder Hayes?”

“I’m afraid I am.” Slavic cheekbones sloped down to a full, sharply delineated mouth that curved down at the corners. “Not that I seem to have any choice about the matter.”

“Then I’ve come about your dogs, Mr. Hayes.”

“My dogs?” Straight white teeth flashed under the hood of his hand as his mouth stretched in a yawn. “I can’t help you.” He edged the door shut.

“You know good and well what I’m talking about.”

“Do I?” His voice became only a drift of sound.

“The dogs that almost attacked me this morning. Those beasts. Your pack of dogs.”

White lines scored his beautiful mouth, nothing more than a minute pull of muscle. He lowered his hand and his dark eyes met hers again, eyes so tortured that Josie dropped the hoe and stretched her hand to him. Clattering to the porch, the hoe fell between them and she bent down to pick it up as he said, “I have no dogs.”

“I saw you with them,” she insisted, stubborn in the face of his denial and confused by the torment she’d glimpsed.

“Did you?”

“Near my house. In the woods,” Josie said.

“Perhaps you imagined you did.” His voice was remote, disinterested, but underneath the polite dismissal she heard a disturbing note that kept her standing on his porch.

“I don’t imagine things. I know what I saw.” She gripped the hoe until her hand hurt.

“Unlike the rest of us, then? How fortunate for you. To know what’s real. What’s not.”

“I saw you. You stopped the dogs from attacking me.”

“Did I? Fascinating.”

Wanting to shake him out of his indifference, needing to make him admit the truth, Josie reached out and grasped his arm. With her movement, the capsaicin cylinder flew out of her pocket and racketed across the porch into the grass. His forearm was all muscle and bone under her fingers.

“Hell.” He doubled over and groaned, yanking his arm free and brushing his hand across his eyes. His hand trembled. “Damn.”

“Are you all right?”

“I suppose it depends on your definition.” He straightened and stepped away from her, putting the edge of the door between them before she could help him.

“Do you want me to call a doctor? Are you sick?” she repeated, concerned about the pallor that swept over his face.

“Sick?” His laugh was humorless and sent a ripple of shivers along her spine. “Spirit-sick, ‘sick almost to dooms-day,’ as the poet put it, but, no, lady green eyes, I don’t believe I need the services of a physician. Thank you for your concern.” Preparing to shut the door, his narrow, long fingers gripped the edge.

Glimpsing the strained white knuckles that tightened as she watched, Josie had the strangest impression that he was falling over the edge of a chasm and holding on with the last of his strength, but she couldn’t let him escape without settling the issue of his animals. “Wait!”

“I thought we were through. Wasn’t that all you wanted to know? About the dogs?” he drawled, his voice bored.

“They’re dangerous. You were there. You saw them start to come after me.”

“So you said.” A flicker of pain stirred in the depths of his eyes. “And I’ve said, they’re not my animals.”

“You controlled them,” she said flatly. “They obeyed you.”

“Ah.” The sound was long, drawn out, a whisper of something disturbing in the heat. “There is that, isn’t there?”

Josie frowned. Standing in front of him, holding her ground against his clear if unexpressed wish that she leave, she had the sense that she was leaning forward into the winds of a hurricane. Pale and gaunt faced, he was like the swirling winds of those storms, the power sweeping out around him, bending everything in its path. “I haven’t seen them since then, but you have to keep them locked up. It’s not safe to let them roam around.” Uneasily she looked over her shoulder and off to the woods behind her and to the left.

“They’re not here,” he said, and his voice was gentle. “I don’t have…pets.”

Odd, Josie thought, the way he echoed her earlier thoughts. Stubbornly she persisted. “I want an explanation.” She tapped the edge of the hoe against the porch boards.

“So do we all.” He smiled at her, a faint stretching of facial muscles that moved like clouds across the gulf. “Want explanations. For something or other, don’t we?” His gaze locked with hers.

“I want your dogs to stay away from me,” she insisted. “Sooner or later, they’re going to hurt someone. I don’t want them anywhere near my property.” As she glared into his hooded eyes, cold waves rolled over her, sapping her strength and dragging her down to darkness. Dismayed by the lethargy sliding through her bones, Josie struggled against the waves of passivity. She banged the hoe again. “Those creatures are as dangerous as a loaded gun. And you know it, Mr. Hayes.”

“I never said they weren’t…dangerous. But I can’t control them.”

“You did earlier.”

“Yes, well, miracles do occur.” His words were ironic and fraught with a meaning she couldn’t interpret.

Josie fought the apathy, fought against the rush of sounds and darkness that enervated her. “Then find another way to make a miracle.”

“I wish I could.” Low and filled with suffering, his drawl wrapped around her, and she felt the beat of his anguish with each beat of her heart. “Believe me, I wish I could.”

His words turned to vapor in front of her, a cool mist surrounding him and brushing against her flushed skin as he continued, his words growing fainter with each syllable. “You need to be careful, Josie Birdsong.” His image blurred.

“Conrad,” she whispered. “Josie Conrad.” He knew her middle name. Her mother’s name. He couldn’t know. But he did. Josie was drowning in cold and darkness and she was terrified, reaching out for his hand. “What’s happening?” she moaned and gripped his fingers, their strength solid in the rolling darkness.

And in that moment as her hand curled around his, from somewhere deep in his house, she heard the cry of a child. Sharp, distinct.

And then gone. Silence.

All rational thought vanished with the sound of that child. Josie yanked her hand free and shoved against the door. Down the dark corridor where she sank, she saw a white flutter, a hand, a face. A shape in the dim hallway of the house. Mellie. Oh, God. “Mellie,” she cried and pushed against the force of Ryder Hayes closing his door in her face. “My daughter’s in there! You have my daughter in your house!”

“No!” he muttered. The hard planes of his face contorted, the angles sharp as a knife, the lines around his mouth white and deep with torment. “No one’s here. No one.”

“Mellie!” she screamed and slapped both fists against the door panels.

His face twisted, and he threw up one hand to shade his eyes, his expression hidden. “For God’s sake, go away!”

In that brief glimpse of his expression as he slammed the door, Josie saw the horror in his eyes. She didn’t understand it, but she knew with absolute, unshakable certainty that his horror was real.

With the slam of his door, cold and darkness vanished. All around her was heat and silence, thick and heavy against the ice that encased her shaking body.

She heard the metallic click, the rattle of a chain, as he shot the bolt.

Motionless on a current of air, a solitary grackle hung in the pale sky.

The house with its shuttered windows and locked door loomed in front of her. Hostile.

“Mellie,” Josie whispered, tears mixing with the dirt on her face.

Bracing his back against the door, Ryder ground his fists against his eyelids and sank to the floor, facing the narrow hallway that led from the front of the house.

He should have stayed away from the woman. Should have stayed away from Josie Conrad. Birdsong came the whisper. Birdsong.

But he’d been drawn to her by a power stronger than his intelligence, stronger than his will. He’d gone that first night and watched her small, strained face float above candle flames through the darkened rooms of her house.

And he’d returned the next night.

The night after that.

“Damn, damn, damn.” Banging his fists against his face, he swore, the stream of curses no relief to the grinding agony inside him.

He should have been able to resist.

But he hadn’t.

No, he should never have gone to Josie Conrad’s house.

Not that first time when he’d watched her from the woods and seen her pacing hour after hour in the candlelit rooms of her house. And especially not today.

It was growing worse.

Something had happened while she stood in the doorway. She’d seen something. She believed she’d seen a child.

He groaned, a raw, animal sound of pain.

He was losing control.

Rising in one jerky motion, Ryder stood and turned around, facing the direction she’d taken. Through one of the louvers in the small window next to the door, he watched her slender figure as she vanished down the path. Her moss green eyes had been unbearably sad. Lost. Underneath her reckless courage, she’d been lost.

As he watched, a long braid of shiny black hair swung like a metronome against the pink of her blouse. The end curl of the braid hung like a comma past the waistband of her baggy shorts. A strip of smooth, tanned skin showed above the waistband and pink blouse edge.

He wanted to run the back of his finger along that small strip of satin skin, wanted to touch his tongue to the tiny dimple at the back of her knee and see if it truly tasted of honey and flowers. He wanted—God in heaven, he wanted—

The wooden louver cracked between his fingers, the sound like a gunshot.

A bead of blood appeared along the side of his palm as he stared down the empty driveway. Ryder leaned his forehead against the shattered strip, pressing hard, reminding himself.

He had to stay away from Josie Conrad. He would make himself leave her alone.

If he could.

Like an echo to the tattoo beat of his heart came that whispering thread of sound.

Birdsong. Birdsong.