what you say is important!”
Lucy saw that her captor’s T-shirt read, HELL IS HOT FOREVER.
The woman stormed out and slammed the door shut with a resounding bang, plunging the room back into a musty darkness.
Lucy’s face went from being numbed by the blow to stinging dully as she lay there stunned by the sudden burst of unprovoked violence. The woman was obviously mentally unstable and probably dangerous. She mustn’t do anything else to provoke her. There was no telling what she and the others were capable of doing if they got mad.
Surely her father had called the police.
The police would surely come.
They just had to come.
Lucy wished Walter was there.
Walter would know what to do.
All she could do was wait and see.
Lucy squeezed her eyes shut and lay still. She couldn’t afford to make these people angry.
6
After the picnic ended, the group made their way back down to the house. Faith Ann and Rush led the horses to the barn to put the animals away.
While Sean put Olivia down for her nap, Winter and Alexa took cups of the coffee and went into the small den they called the office because there was a desk in it when they bought the place.
“Fallen Angel Farm is an interesting name,” Alexa said, raising a brow. “Some sort of a statement?”
Winter shook his head. “There’s an old graveyard that dates from 1806 just on the other side of that hill where we had lunch. Family members and workers who died here were buried there-slaves in a nearby plot. Most of the headstones are still there. There was a hand-carved stone angel there. During the Civil War the wrought-iron fence around it was melted down for ammo. Late in the war a company of Union cavalry used the angel for target practice. After they got bored with chipping hunks off her, they knocked her over on her back. She’s still lying where she fell, looking up at the sky.”
“Sometimes I wish all I had to do was to be lying out in the grass, looking up and watching the clouds drift by,” Alexa said. “I guess I was always too ambitious to relax. Or remember how to, if I ever knew.” She sipped coffee. “I was thinking the other day about prom night.”
Winter nodded. He remembered the night as clearly as if it had been weeks before instead of almost two decades back. How many times had he relived it?
“Why didn’t you call to let me know you were coming?” he asked Alexa.
“You start hunting again?” she asked. She was frowning up at a deer head mounted on the wall.
“While back. Rush, Lydia, and I like venison and Lydia said I needed to get off and clear my mind. I have Daddy’s old rifle and I enjoy the woods, the company of friends. Mama bought a cookbook with like nine hundred venison recipes in it. We were working our way through it one season at a time. Sean isn’t as fond of venison as the rest of us are. I missed the last two years and looks like I won’t make it this year. My friends may stop asking me to come if I don’t go soon.”
“You’re good about remembering your friends. I’m sort of counting on that being the case with you and me.”
“You need something, Lex, just ask.”
“I figured maybe you left the service because you wanted to get away from the. . excitement.” She smiled crookedly.
“I was a little tired of seeing the darker side of people. Last year Faith Ann’s mother was murdered for no more reason than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. When Millie was killed, Faith Ann saw the car run her and Hank over. And I was forced to kill someone.”
“I know the killing weighs heavily on your soul, Winter. Eleanor used to tell me about what the Tampa thing did to you.”
He shrugged. “You can get a bloody mouth before you know it.”
“Bloody mouth?”
“A perfectly good farm dog kills a chicken and he gets a taste for the blood. There’s nothing to do about him because it’s something that becomes part of his nature.” Winter tried to smile, but failed. “The weight a kill puts on your soul is a good thing because it means you’re human. What made the difference-why I really retired-was that last time I killed I didn’t mind it-I didn’t even feel remorse. It’s not that I liked it, but I didn’t feel any more than if that person had been a deer.”
He smiled, because just saying it had lifted a burden. He smiled, too, because after twenty years of not doing so, he was telling Alexa things he couldn’t bring himself to tell Sean or Hank or anybody else. She seemed to sense that and she smiled, too, and put her hand on his wrist. Time melted away and the Alexa he was looking at was again the skinny sixteen-year-old castoff he had loved with all his heart.
“Luckily, I’ve never taken my weapon out of the holster except on the range,” she told him. “Winter, I came to ask you for something that you might not be able to say yes to. If you can’t, I’ll understand.”
“Tell me what’s wrong, Lex.”
“I need your help for a few days.”
Winter nodded, still waiting for the request.
“It’s a job.”
He was silent.
“Yeah,” Alexa said. “See, I’m trying to save the lives of a woman and her infant son. In the process there could be the kind of trouble you have dealt with in the past. I need your instincts, your. .” She faltered.
“My gun?” Winter felt a hollow burning in his stomach. His ability with a weapon was a natural talent; it was also a curse.
“Yes, that, but also your instincts, your man-hunting skills. I need what makes you exceptional at this sort of thing.”
“Alexa, the Bureau has plenty of people who can do what I used to do far better than I can.”
“Nobody in the Bureau can touch you, Massey. We both know exactly how good you are. I don’t deserve your famous modesty crap. Save it for somebody who doesn’t know you.”
Winter felt himself bristling at her accuracy. He had been very good at being a deputy U.S. marshal, and circumstances had demanded that he go far beyond the parameters of that job in handling some very sticky situations. His skills had kept him alive, but he’d also been extremely lucky, which wasn’t a skill anybody could call on. “Lex, your Immediate Response Team can handle anything you face.”
“Damn it, Massey! If I could call in the IRT, I wouldn’t have come here to beg you to help me with this. Do you think I would pull you into a dangerous situation if I had any other choice?”
“Lex, last time out, I could feel the odds shifting, and a professional who should know warned me that I was operating out of my depth in a world of monsters like him. And I knew he was right about part of it, and wrong, too. I am fully capable of operating in his world, but I had to decide whether I would let go and join his world-with the monsters-or stay in this one. I know how good at this crap I am, Lex. But I owe it to Sean, Rush, and Olivia to stay alive.”
“You’re right, Winter.” Alexa smiled weakly as she searched his eyes with hers. “You have too much here to chance sacrificing it for two strangers. But I had to ask. It all seemed so perfect in my mind. The two of us side by side again. The only person I know I can totally trust with my life. Someone who will stay on goal and succeed no matter what other people throw at him.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” he asked again.
“Wasn’t something I could discuss over the telephone. And because I guess I thought you couldn’t refuse me if I was sitting with you when I asked.”
“Alexa, I’m a civilian now. No badge. Even if I wanted to help you, I couldn’t do it legally. Why can’t you
