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  She wondered what she was afraid of. She couldn’t remember when there had been a crime in this tiny rural community. Although the road was isolated by the surrounding woods, she had never been afraid out here before. Was she simply spooked because she hated the idea of being without Josh? It would be a very long three weeks if she reacted this way to every unidentified sound.

  She turned the TV back on, deliberately pushing the button that controlled the volume until the words of the people on the screen were distinguishable. She closed the magazine, dropping it on the floor beside the remote and turning down the lamp behind her. She tried to concentrate on the show as she ate her lukewarm meal.

  Gradually she lost the tension, relaxing into the world of the sitcom and into the tranquillity of the familiar night sounds outside. No monsters in the dark, she thought, smiling at her anxiety of a few minutes earlier. There was nothing in her safe, peaceful world to be afraid of.

  She never remembered turning off the TV, but when she awoke, having apparently drifted off to sleep, the house was silent and dark except for the small lamp on the table at the end of the couch. She did remember turning down its three-way bulb to the lowest intensity after she’d decided not to read, and evidently she had gone to sleep with the lamp on.

  She was disoriented for a moment, the contours of the den furnishings unfamiliar in the middle of the night. She didn’t know what had awakened her, discomfort from sleeping in the cramped position the couch demanded perhaps, but she sat up, pushing her hair out of her face, trying to work up the energy to make the trek to bed. Almost subliminally she became aware of the figure standing in the hallway leading to the front of the house. A man, was her first bewildered thought. There was a man inside her house.

  “We’re not gonna hurt you,” he said, his voice deep and richly Southern.

  It was what John Evans had said to her. That strange comment he’d made before he’d kissed her.

  “John?” she questioned softly. He shouldn’t be here, not in the middle of the night, was the next thought that tumbled into her sleep-fogged mind.

  The man, simply a blacker silhouette against the surrounding darkness, turned, and only then did she realize there must be more than one person standing silently in the dark hallway, watching her sleep.

  “You were right,” he said, the statement not addressed to her, but to someone who stood out of sight, someone near enough, however, to hear that low assurance. And then the speaker turned back to face her, his features still hidden by the darkness. “You expectin’ him?” he asked.

  “No,” she denied. “I’m not expecting anyone. It’s the middle of the night. I just…” She wondered why she was explaining her unthinking question. The important one was why they were in her house. Stunned by the unexpectedness of it all, unaccustomed to worrying about the dangers others might live with daily, she was still struggling to understand what was going on.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Don’t you be scared, Ms. Travers. Nobody’s gonna to hurt you. You just got yourself mixed up in somethin’ that…” The deep voice hesitated, and Becki waited, digesting the information that he knew who she was, that he knew her name. This, then, was not a break-in on some random victim. “You got yourself mixed up in somethin’ that don’t concern you,” the man continued. “Somethin’ that’s got nothin’ to do with you.”

  “Then why are you—”

  Her question was cut off by his order, “You just be real quiet and cooperative, and I promise nothin’s gonna happen to you. You just do like you’re told, and this will all be over soon.”

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “We just want to talk to the man next door,” he said, his voice still a near whisper, but there was some shading to his tone that didn’t fit the banal explanation.

  “With John Evans?” she asked. Had they gotten the houses confused in the darkness? she wondered. But he’d said “the man next door,” and he’d known her name.

  “That’s what he’s callin’ hisself,” the man agreed. He turned his head again and said something into the darkness surrounding him. As silently as the shifting shadows they resembled, the shapes that she hadn’t even realized were men began to move from behind him and through the doorway into the room where she was sitting. As they came into the light, they became more distinct but not any less frightening.

  The men moving into her den were dressed in dark clothing, their faces covered by blacking, making the whites of their eyes gleam in the dimness like those of some feral animal. They were wearing boots, she realized, from the noise of their passage over the wooden floors, and they were all carrying guns. Rifles or some kind of automatic weapons. She sat on her own couch and watched her den fill with armed men who stood in a semicircle before her, their continued silence far more menacing than the soft, familiar cadence of their commander’s speech had been.

  The realization of who they must be was sudden, but immensely reassuring. Not robbers. These highly disciplined men must be some sort of law enforcement, maybe even the military. She couldn’t imagine what John Evans had done that required this display of force, but she knew that she had done nothing; therefore, she had nothing to fear from these men. These were the good guys.

  “You’re the police,” she said, still addressing the man who stood hidden in the dark doorway, the one who seemed to be in charge. “Some kind of SWAT team?”

  She heard his soft laughter and was aware of the answering amusement in the relaxed shifting of a few of the men around her.

  “Somethin’ like that,” the leader agreed, his tone indulgent now with her confusion, patronizing. “Some folks might call us a SWAT team. We might prefer some other term.”

  “But you are law enforcement? Or the army?”

  “Ms. Travers, you can be sure of one thing. We ain’t the authorities.” He spat out the word, his voice filled with contempt. “We ain’t gonna rush into your home in jackboots and flak jackets and start shootin’ up the place. We ain’t here to hurt law-abidin’ citizens. We just need you to take a little trip with us. A short little visit next door. You just relax and cooperate, and this’ll all be over before you know it.”

  “What do you want me for?” she asked. Nothing made sense, especially his disclaimer of authority. Who the hell were these people? Her initial panic subsiding, her brain was beginning to function again, but nothing tied together, nothing he’d said.

  “What we got here, Ms. Travers, is a hostage situation.”

  “Hostage?” She repeated the word, examining it. John Evans was holding someone hostage? “But that doesn’t explain why you need me,” she offered, still trying to piece it together.

  Again his laughter drifted out of the darkness of the adjoining room. “Why, ma’am, I’d have thought you’d figured that out by now. We need you to be the hostage. You’re gonna be the bait that’ll lure that ole boy right out of his hidey-hole. We’ve been lookin’ for him for a long time. Lots of folks have. And with your help, we’re finally gonna have us a capture. Yes, siree, we’re finally gonna do the right thing for that boy.”

  “For Mr. Evans?” she asked carefully, making sure she understood who they were after. She knew she sounded like an idiot, but she still didn’t have any idea what they were talking about. How did they think they could use her to get John Evans to do anything? She barely knew the man, but suddenly in the back of her mind stirred the realization that she knew far more about him than anyone else in this town. Things like how his mouth tasted against hers, about the strength of his body holding her. Could they somehow know that? My God, she realized, they know about Sunday morning. That’s why they think—

  “That’s what he’s callin’ hisself,” the leader interrupted her frightening realization, “but that ain’t his name. That man livin’ next door to you is Deke Summers. You ever hear that name, Ms. Travers?”

  “No,” she whispered, shaking her head. She had always known there was something hidden about John Eva
ns, something mysterious and dangerous. Summers, she corrected herself, implanting the name he had said into her memory. Deke Summers.

  “I just thought maybe somebody might ’a mentioned him to you. Your menfolks or somebody.”

  “No,” she said again.

  “Well, it don’t really matter if you’ve never heard of him, ’cause there’s more than enough people who have, and those people won’t ever forget. They got long memories,” he added softly. “Especially for men who kill little babies. You got a boy, don’t you, Ms. Travers?”

  She shivered at the threat in his cold voice. Josh, she thought, automatically afraid for her son, and then she remembered that he wasn’t here. Thank God, Josh is safe. Away with Mike. Even she couldn’t find him if she wanted to—no set itinerary, the men had said again this morning, bragging about their freedom of movement, freedom from schedules.

  “Yes,” she said. Nothing else. She didn’t intend to give them any other information.

  “I know he ain’t here. Don’t you worry about your son, Ms. Travers. Don’t you worry about anything. You just ease up from there now…” He paused, waiting for her to obey, and on trembling knees she did, shivering slightly with reaction. The voice from the doorway went on when she was standing, clearly directing the operation, “And you stay real close to Richard there. Richard, you speak to Ms. Travers so she’ll know who you are.”

  “Ma’am,” said the nearest man, standing almost at her elbow.

  The voice was younger, more like the adolescent timbre of her students’ voices, and more than a little nervous. Surely too young, she thought, to be involved in all this, to be carrying guns and threatening people.

  “Now, the rest of us are gonna go next door and wake up Summers and tell him about your…situation,” the commander went on. “You and Richard are gonna wait real quiet out in the backyard. It won’t be long, I promise you. He ain’t gonna take no chances with you. That ole boy don’t make the same mistake twice. You even look like her, you know. Same hair and eyes. He tell you ’bout his wife?”

  “No,” Becki said, feeling as if she were in the middle of a nightmare. Surely she’d wake up and this would all be over. Things like this didn’t happen to real people. Things like this were the stuff of movies, not reality. At least not her reality. “I don’t even know Mr. Evans—Summers—whoever he is. He built my deck. He lives next door. I don’t know anything about him. He hasn’t told me anything. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Well, I don’t want to seem to be doubtin’ the word of a lady, but that ain’t what we’ve been told. No siree, that ain’t the story we got about you and Summers.” The sarcasm was heavy now. He was laughing at her, enjoying making her afraid, and that made her furious.

  “I don’t know who told you what, but you’ve made some kind of mistake. I don’t know anything about him. I told you—”

  “That ole boy’s been on the run a long time,” he said, breaking into her denial. “I don’t know that I blame him for gettin’ him a little whenever he can. And it’s a mighty convenient setup he’s got hisself here. Gettin’ it from the widow lady next door. I told y’all that boy was smart.” It was obvious by the pronoun that he was directing his observation to his followers and not to her.

  “That’s a lie,” she said hotly, but she sensed their amusement at her vehemence. There had been a couple of responding titters from the men in the den. They were just playing with her, she realized suddenly, and panic rose in her throat so strongly that she was almost sick. She couldn’t allow herself to believe anything they said. None of their assurances about her safety. She was as certain now of their enmity to her as she had ever been of anything in her life. Despite those promises veiled in politeness, these were not nice men. And they didn’t like her one damn bit, because they thought she and Summers…

  Her mind hesitated at putting that suggestion into words. It was so far from the reality of the cold distance Summers had maintained between them. This, of course, was why—because he knew these men were out there, looking for him. And now that they’d found him, they intended to use her to get to him.

  The knowledge of what they believed and of their dislike of her was terrifying, but at least it clarified her course of action. Pretend to cooperate until the opportunity presented itself to get away. Despite what they had promised, they wouldn’t care if she got hurt. Their only concern was taking John Evans—Deke Summers, she corrected herself again—and they believed, with what they had been told about her relationship to him, that having her as their hostage would finally allow them to do that.

  At the commander’s instruction, the men moved out the sliding door and across the new deck, their passage as carefully noiseless now as that into her house apparently had been. It was very dark outside, and unwillingly she remembered the moon-washed night she had stood in the safety of her kitchen and watched John Evans. You even look like her, the man had said. Like Deke Summers’s wife. And she wondered what role that woman had played in the events leading up to tonight’s.

  Under the directions of the man named Richard, made voicelessly with a movement of the weapon he held trained on her with casual efficiency, she walked to the back of the yard to stand under the low branches of Josh’s favorite tree. There were reminders of her son all over this small area—like the crudely lettered sign he’d nailed so carefully to the trunk. She couldn’t read its inscription in the darkness, but she knew it by heart. BAT CAVE—the red letters painstakingly painted with a jar of her craft paints and her best brush, taken and used without permission.

  She blocked thoughts of Josh from her mind and forced herself to concentrate on the here and now, on her situation. She watched the men who had invaded her house creep across the lawn toward the shadowy bulk of the one next door. She was still trembling, her reaction a combination of fear and the effects of the night’s slight chill after being forced to leave so abruptly the warmth of sleep and safety.

  When the last of the men had disappeared, she waited, ears straining against the silence that surrounded her. All the night creatures were aware of the unusual activity, their familiar noises hushed. It was as quiet out here as a tomb. As she thought that, she shivered again.

  The one they had called Richard made a convulsive movement and some sound, guttural and quickly cut off. She glanced into the darkness beside her to watch the man who had been standing there rise, like magic, off the ground. Looking up to follow his body’s ascent, she found Deke Summers carefully balanced in the low vee of the branching trunk of the tree, holding her captor off the ground by the forearm he had fastened around his throat. She watched the man’s eyes bulge at the pressure Deke was exerting, their terror-stricken whites vivid against the black paint that surrounded them. The man fought to relieve the implacable pressure, the combat boots kicking fiercely, rocking his hanging body, and desperate fingers tearing at the corded arm that held him relentlessly. Eventually the struggling figure stilled, his legs straightening again to hang limply, booted toes barely touching the damp grass. As she watched, the body was lowered silently to the ground beside her, and she had to move her bare feet out of the way of its boneless drop.

  He’s dead, Becki thought. She had just witnessed a murder. She looked up from the body sprawled at her feet and into the eyes of Deke Summers. Like the men who were hunting him, he was dressed in clothing that blended with the surrounding night, but his face had not been blackened. Its strong planes and sculpted features were clearly visible, even the color of his eyes. Grasping a branch with one hand, he swung down from his perch, landing beside her with a small thud. His hand found her elbow and gave a small reassuring squeeze.

  “You killed him,” she whispered, her eyes, dilated with shock, locked on his.

  “That’s not likely,” he said softly.

  “But I saw you,” she whispered, jerking her arm from his hold.

  “It takes a more than that to kill a man,” he said. “And I figure we’ve got maybe thirty sec
onds before he comes to.”

  Bending, he quickly looped silver duct tape he had taken from the side pocket of the camouflage pants he was wearing around the man’s head, securely covering the mouth he’d first closed with pressure from his hand under the slack chin. He then taped the limp wrists together and dragged the body further back into the shadowed depths under the tree.

  When he’d finished, he looked up into her strained face. She was shivering uncontrollably. He knew he couldn’t afford to let her go into shock. There was still too much that had to be done.

  “Josh?” Deke asked, trying to make her think about something besides what she’d just watched him do.

  She blinked, but she answered him immediately, despite whatever she believed was going on here. Good girl, he thought. Just keep functioning until I can get you out of this. Just hold on.

  “He’s not here,” she whispered. “He’s with Mike.”

  “Mike?”

  “My brother. They’re on a camping trip.”

  Which explained why he hadn’t seen Josh today, Deke thought. Relieved that he wouldn’t have to go back into the house to bring out the child, he nodded. “Then let’s go,” he said, taking her elbow again and pulling her toward the woods.

  “Go?” she said. “Go where?”

  “Anywhere but here. They’re going to figure out pretty soon that I’m not inside that house, and then they’re going to come looking for us. You want to be here when that happens?” he asked calmly, hiding his impatience.

  “No,” she admitted.

  “Then let’s go,” he said again. Still holding her elbow, he eased into the woods that bordered the back of her yard, guiding her through the thick undergrowth. With his grip on her arm, she had no choice but to follow. He released her when they broke onto more open ground, but they had only gone a few yards when she realized how handicapped she was without shoes. Every twig, rock and pinecone was agonizing to her tender feet as she trailed behind his steadily moving figure. When her toes connected sharply with an exposed root she hadn’t seen in the darkness, she stumbled and almost fell. She gasped aloud with the unexpected pain.