John Saul (3 page)

Now, in the full light of day, he had that same uneasy feeling. Again he called out: “Who is it? Is anyone out there?”

There was still no answer. Ted at last turned back to Sheika, reaching out to take one of the tethers in his right hand while he stroked the horse with his left. For a split second the big mare seemed to calm, but a sound from the door startled her and she jerked her head, yanking the tether from Ted’s hand. Instinctively, Ted turned to see who had come into the barn, but all he saw was a quick flash of movement before the horse whinnied loudly once again, then reared up, her front hooves striking out against the presence in the barn.

Sheika’s right hoof struck Ted Wilkenson in the back of the head, felling him instantly. He was still conscious, but before he could roll away, the horse plunged back down, neighing loudly as the form in the doorway drew closer.

Her great left hoof, shod only the day before with fresh iron, smashed into Ted’s right temple, the bone shattering under the immense weight of the animal.

The horse reared again, finally jerking free of the tethers, then lunged out of the wash stall, her hooves thundering on the thick planks of the barn’s floor as she galloped toward the doors.

A moment later she was gone, racing across a field toward the woods beyond.

Inside the barn, the two remaining horses panicked, whinnying loudly, rearing up, their hooves striking the sides of their stalls as they reacted to the sudden danger. But then the presence was gone as quickly as it had come, and the horses calmed once more, only pawing nervously as they caught a strange coppery scent in the air.

And Ted Wilkenson lay dead on the floor, his head resting in a pool of his own blood.

MaryAnne Carpenter gazed out the kitchen window, her hand suspended over the soapy water in the sink. The scene outside looked for all the world like any normal American family enjoying the end of a late summer day. Alison was clearing the last of the supper dishes off the outdoor table, and the embers in the barbecue were dying away, only a faint wisp of smoke betraying that there was anything but ash left beneath the grill.

Logan and Alan stood at opposite ends of the small lawn, hurling a softball back and forth as if they’d been doing it every evening all summer. And indeed, for the kids, it was almost as if their father had never been gone. They’d fallen into their old patterns, vying with each other for their father’s attention. After a while even MaryAnne had begun to let down her guard, wondering if, after all, Alan might really have had a change of heart.

Except that suspicion, once learned, is difficult to put aside. Despite Alan’s constant reassurances that a return to his family was what he really wanted, how could she be sure that if Eileen Chandler raised her finger, Alan would not happily trot back to her condominium, with its well-equipped gym—which, judging by his trim figure, he had obviously been using—and its swimming pool, which she had steadfastly refused to let Alison and Logan enjoy?

Despite her misgivings, MaryAnne had to acknowledge that she’d enjoyed the day, the easy comfort of having Alan back to tend to the barbecue and produce the perfectly cooked steaks that always managed to elude her, no matter how carefully she timed them. She’d even found herself
falling into his discussion of the improvements they’d make to the house as soon as he moved back in.

“And you’ll get your promotion, so we can pay for it all?” she’d been unable to resist asking.

He hadn’t risen to the bait, and he’d had the good grace to blush with embarrassment at the question, and admit that he deserved the jab.

And now he was playing catch with Logan, as if the destruction of his marriage had never happened. The blissful look on her son’s face tore at MaryAnne’s heart.

“Mom?” Alison said anxiously as she came through the back door, a stack of plates precariously balanced in one hand, four glasses clutched with the fingers of the other. “Are you going to let Dad come home now?”

The question jarred MaryAnne out of her reverie. She reached into the greasy water and fished out the skillet in which she’d fried the potatoes they’d had with Alan’s steaks. “I—I’m not sure,” she said, unwilling to shatter her daughter’s hopes. “There’s a lot to be discussed before that can happen.”

Alison carefully set the glasses down on the counter. “But wouldn’t it be easier to talk about things if he were here?” she asked, her eyes once more avoiding her mother’s, just as they had a few hours before, when she’d broached the same subject. “I mean, Logan and I really miss him, and—”

“And I don’t really want to talk about it right now, all right?” MaryAnne broke in, with more sharpness than she’d intended. “What’s happening between your father and me is very complicated. I—I just can’t discuss it with you right now.”

“Then who should you discuss it with?” Alison demanded, her words taking on a petulant tone. “If you can’t talk about it with me, who can you talk about it with?”

Audrey, MaryAnne thought. I could discuss it with Audrey—except she’s thousands of miles away, and wouldn’t understand anyhow! I marry a man I knew for two whole years, and he ends up cheating on me, and she marries a man she’s known for less than a month, and everything turns out perfect. It’s not fair! Then she caught
herself, realizing that she herself wasn’t being fair. If anyone would understand what she was going through, it would be Audrey, her best friend since they had been children right here in Canaan.

“Aunt Audrey,” she said out loud, with a smile for her daughter. “In fact, I think I’ll call her tomorrow, and see what she has to say.”

Alison’s eyes lit up. “Really? You promise?”

MaryAnne cocked her head at her daughter. “Now why does that please you so much, young lady?”

“Because Aunt Audrey’s crazy about Dad, so she’ll be on our side.”

“Side?” MaryAnne repeated, raising her brows in an exaggerated arch. “Since when are you and Logan taking sides?”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Alison said, backpedaling quickly. “I just meant that Logan and I really want you and Dad back together, that’s all.”

Before the discussion could go any further, Alan strode through the back door, trailed by their son, who was begging for just five more minutes of catch.

“Don’t you think I better help your mother with the dishes?” Alan countered, picking up a towel and starting to dry the pans that were draining in the rack.

“But—” Logan began.

“No ‘buts,’ ” Alan said, cutting him off, snapping the towel at the boy, who leapt out of range. “Now scoot, and let your mother and me have some time to ourselves, okay?”

Logan’s mouth opened as if to reply, but his older sister grabbed him by the arm and almost dragged him toward the living room. “Just shut up, Logan,” Alison said. “For once in your stupid life, try not to say something dumb!”

“Alison, don’t talk that way to your brother,” MaryAnne automatically called to her daughter, but the kitchen door had already swung closed behind her children. And then, before she quite knew what had happened, Alan had slipped his arms around her and begun nuzzling at her neck. Even as words of protest rose in her throat,
MaryAnne felt the familiar warmth of his touch begin to flow through her.

“Now was today so bad?” Alan crooned into her ear. “Come on, honey, admit it—you loved having me here as much as I loved being here. And what happened with Eileen is over. It’s over and forgotten. There’s no one for me but you, and there never will be again. All I have to do is pack up my clothes, and we can be together again.”

MaryAnne wanted to tell him to be quiet, to leave her alone, to give her a chance to think things out, But his words crept into her mind, and his arms held her close, and she thought if she could just forget the last year, just put it out of her mind, things might be the same as they had been before.

He turned her around and pressed his lips to hers, and as the kiss deepened, she realized just how much she had missed him.

“Let me stay,” Alan whispered. “At least let me stay for tonight.”

MaryAnne felt her resolve slipping away, but before she gave in completely, she promised herself that tomorrow, in the clear light of the morning, she would follow through on her promise to Alison.

She would call Audrey Wilkenson.

Audrey would help her figure out what to do.

T
he shadows cast by the Sawtooth Mountains were already creeping down the valley as Audrey Wilkenson approached the gates to El Monte. Though it was almost fourteen years since she’d first seen this spot, she could still remember the moment as clearly as if it were yesterday. Not that the entrance to the property looked as it had back then, when she and Ted had stumbled across it. Where there had once hung only three sagging strands of barbed wire tacked to crumbling posts, with an opening blocked by a rotting wooden cattle guard, there now stood a split-rail fence, four feet high, extending off into the woods in both directions, as far as one could see from the road. The cattle guard had been replaced by a gate, double hung from two columns built of native stone, surmounted by a deeply carved wooden arch announcing the name of the ranch.

Even the forest flanking the road had changed, for during the first two years they’d been there, she and Ted had cleared out the underbrush and thinned the trees so that the most majestic now spread their limbs unfettered by the clutter of saplings that had originally crowded the landscape.

The gates stood open, for the first thing the Wilkensons had done was to sell off the cattle. They had resolved that as much of the land as possible would be allowed to revert to natural meadows and forests. Slowly, almost imperceptibly from year to year, the land had recovered from the farming that had once taken place on it. Now all that remained in cultivation were the two small fields necessary to raise food for the horses. El Monte had become a private park, a quiet refuge not only for the Wilkensons, but for the wild animals that roamed there. The few remaining fences
were no longer designed to keep anything either in or out, but solely to let hikers know where the property began and ended.

Slowing the Range Rover as she started up the winding drive toward the house, Audrey anticipated the familiar sense of well-being that always came over her whenever she came back to the ranch, no matter how short a time she had been gone. But as she made the last turn, and the comforting mass of the rambling log house came into view, that accustomed feeling of security in homecoming failed to settle over her.

Instead, she felt a vague sense of unease, as if something had gone wrong.

Pulling the Rover up in front of the wide porch that fronted the house, she opened its door, dropped to the graveled ground, and slammed the door shut, leaving the keys in the ignition, as did nearly everyone in Sugarloaf. Unaccountably, she paused, staring at the house, a frown creasing her forehead as she tried to identify exactly what was bothering her. Just a feeling. Nothing was visibly wrong at all.

The house looked no different from the way it ever did, its two low wings extending from its two-story center in a welcoming V pattern. Shaking her head as if to toss off the uneasy feeling, she strode up the three steps to the porch, crossed it, and pushed the front door open.

“Ted? Joey?” she called. “Anybody home?”

Silence.

Which was not unusual, she told herself as she dropped her purse on the old wooden pew that sat just inside the front door. Joey was probably still off fishing, and Ted was undoubtedly in the barn, tending to the horses.

Yet the feeling that something was wrong wouldn’t leave her, and her frown deepened as she toured the downstairs rooms of both wings, then started up the stairs toward the second floor.

She stopped short on the third step, her intuition telling her that the second story was as empty as the first floor.

Her strange sense of apprehension growing stronger,
Audrey left the house and started across the yard toward the barn, glancing at the field and the woods beyond.

The field was empty.

No sign of Ted or Joey, nor even Bill Sikes.

She paused outside the open barn door, listening to the horses moving restlessly in their stalls.

If Ted—or even Joey or Sikes—weren’t inside, then why were the doors standing open?

And if Ted
was
inside, then why wasn’t he talking to the horses, calming them as he always did when something made them nervous?

Her apprehension congealing to fear, her intuition shrieking that whatever was wrong was inside the barn, she steeled her nerves, then strode through the open doors.

She saw him sprawled out on his back, his head twisted unnaturally to the right, his hair matted in a dark slime of drying blood.

“Ted?”

The single word slipped almost tentatively from her lips, her mind unwilling to accept the full meaning of what her eyes told her. Numbly, she took a step forward. “Ted!”

Suddenly she was running toward him, screaming his name, and a moment later she dropped down on the floor of the wash stall. “Ted! Ted, say something!”

As Audrey grasped her husband’s shoulders, his head rolled to one side and his eyes fixed on hers. For an instant, just the tiniest moment, she felt a stab of relief.

He was all right!

He’d just fallen and hurt his head, but he was all right!

She grasped at the straw of hope, but as her eyes stared into Ted’s, relief faded as quickly as it had come.

His eyes, a clear, deep blue, had gone flat.

All she could see in them was the unblinking gaze of death.

She froze, her gaze locked on her husband as she tried to understand what could have happened.

When she glanced up, her eyes fogging with tears, she saw the broken strands of leather dangling from the posts at the corners of the stall.

“No …” she breathed, the single word drifting almost
soundlessly from her constricted throat. It couldn’t have happened.

Not to Ted.

Not possibly to Ted.

He had a way with animals, the same way he had of instilling trust in any living creature, which she herself had sensed the moment she’d met him.