'Crystal clear.'
'If Elizabeth believes you, then I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. I'm checking you out, Landry, and if I find out you've been lying, I'll personally cut your heart out.'
'And if you find out I've been telling the truth?'
'Then I'll do whatever Elizabeth wants me to do to help you. Now put Elizabeth back on the phone.'
Reece handed her the phone. 'He wants to talk to you again.'
'Sam?'
'I'll call you tomorrow and let you know how much I've been able to find out. Until then, for God's sake, be careful.'
Elizabeth breathed a sigh of relief. Sam was going to help them. 'Thank you, Sam. You can't know how much this means to me.'
'What I want to know is how much Reece Landry means to you.'
'I'm not sure, but...' Elizabeth glanced at a scowling Reece. 'Just call us tomorrow with whatever information you can find. Reece is going to have to leave soon, and he needs something to go on.'
Returning the telephone to its cradle, she faced Reece. 'Sam is going to help you.'
'I think I should leave as soon as possible.' Reece glared at her, the distrust glowing in his eyes. 'I don't dare trust Dundee. For all I know he's calling the sheriff to turn me in right now.'
Elizabeth grabbed Reece by the arm as he turned from her. 'You don't have to leave. Sam isn't going to call the sheriff. He would never break a trust. He's an honorable man.'
'I'll stay until morning,' Reece said, all the while damning himself for a fool for taking a chance by trusting his beautiful witch. 'On one condition.'
'What condition?' Elizabeth asked.
'I want my gun back.'
Elizabeth nodded agreement. 'If I go get your gun and give it to you, you promise you'll stay until Sam calls tomorrow?'
'I'm probably a fool for agreeing, but I agree.'
'I'll need to put on my coat. I hid your gun outside, between the compost bins.' Elizabeth walked out of the living room, through the kitchen and onto the back porch. When she reached for her coat on the rack by the door, Reece grabbed her by the shoulders, twirling her around. She stared at him, uncertain what he intended to do.
'I would never hurt you. You know that, don't you? The gun is for my protection against the police.'
Elizabeth swallowed the knot in her throat, but she couldn't slow the rapid beat of her heart. 'I understand.'
Reece traced the lines of her jawbone with his fingertips. 'I don't want you to be afraid of me.'
'I'm not afraid of you, Reece. I'm only afraid of what might happen to you.'
Elizabeth pulled away from him, put on her coat and went out into the cold February afternoon alone. It was at that moment she made her decision. When Reece Landry left her mountain, she was going with him.
We're not going to discuss this anymore!' Reece stuffed cans of soup and sandwich spreads into the duffel bag Elizabeth had given him. 'When I leave this mountain, I leave alone.'
'But you don't know the back roads. If I'm with you, you're less likely to get caught. We could even get through the roadblocks with me driving. I could fill the back of the Jeep with flowers from the greenhouse and tell the police that I'm on a delivery run. You could hide under a blanket or something.' Elizabeth handed Reece a loaf of bread and a carton of saltine crackers.
'You've seen too many movies. This isn't a game. This is for real. If you go with me, you could get yourself killed.' Reece eyed the 9 mm lying on the kitchen table.
'And without my help, you could get yourself killed,' she said.
Reece looked at Elizabeth, the woman who had saved his life only a few days ago, the woman who wanted to join him in his fugitive's journey. She wasn't small and fragile. She wasn't a whining, helpless female. Mother Nature had put Elizabeth Mallory together like a work of art-round, full-bodied, solid. She possessed an inner strength as well, a strength that attracted Reece as much as her physical beauty. Braless and with her hair tumbling freely down her back to her waist, Elizabeth presented a picture of earthy sensuality.
Elizabeth was the type of woman who could plow a field, cook three meals a day from scratch, shoot and skin her own game, give birth to a baby and be ready to fight off an Indian attack the next morning. Pioneer stock.
'Why are you looking at me like that?'' she asked.
'I was just picturing you fighting off an Indian attack,' Reece said.
'What?'
'Just thinking about how much you're probably like your ancestors who settled these mountains.' Reece stuffed the stack of clean clothes Elizabeth had given him into the duffel bag. More of Sam Dundee's clothes.
'For your information, my ancestors didn't fight off the Indians. My Scots-Irish ancestors married Indians, they didn't kill them.' Elizabeth laid her hand atop Reece's where he gripped the handle of the duffel bag. 'If you let me go with you, I can get you to Newell safely, and... and I can help you find your father's murderer.'
Reece looked her directly in the eye. 'What do you intend to do, go through the whole town reading everyone's mind?' Reece pulled away from her, dropping the duffel bag to the floor.
'I could meet the people who knew your father. Possible suspects. Members of his family.'
Picking up the gun, Reece slid it into the pocket of the leather jacket Elizabeth had given him. 'I need to check the Jeep.' He walked toward the door leading to the back porch. 'You said it has a full tank of gas. That means I shouldn't have to stop on the way.'
'Reece, please don't leave until after Sam calls.' Elizabeth followed him to the back porch.
'I won't, if he calls in the next hour.' Reece opened the door. A puff of cold air hit him in the face. Turning, he smiled at Elizabeth. 'How will you explain about your Jeep being gone?'
'I'll think of something.'
Elizabeth stood on the screened-in back porch, watching Reece until he rounded the side of the house. He would never agree to her going with him. She had to think of an alternative plan. Without her, Reece didn't have a prayer of finding B. K. Stanton's killer.
Reece could never understand the type of sacrifice she was willing to make for him, and it was probably best that he didn't know. Leaving the sanctuary of her home in the mountains meant having to face the world, to be bombarded with people's thoughts and feelings, to see into the futures of strangers. She had spent her entire life trying to control her abilities, and to some degree she had achieved that goal-but only to a degree. Often she had no control whatsoever over the visions, over the intense emotions coming from others, over the premonitions that sometimes only a look or a touch from someone triggered within her mind.
Her special talents were as much a curse as a blessing. Thank God her family had brought her to Aunt Margaret instead of trusting her future to scientists who would have used her as a guinea pig, or to charlatans who would have used her in money-making schemes.
She had chosen her solitary life here in her ancestors' Georgia mountains. Surrounded by nature, shielded from the thoughts and emotions of a town filled with people, Elizabeth found peace and purpose. Nothing and no one had ever tempted her to venture far from Sequana Falls since her college years, except one necessary visit to Sam six years ago to bring him home from Atlanta-a trip she wasn't eager to repeat.
And now she was preparing to go back out into the world, to follow a man she barely knew, to expose herself to the trauma of mixing and mingling with people. How could Reece Landry have come to mean so much to her in such a short period of time? But five months wasn't a short period of time, was it? For some people it was a lifetime. She had known Reece in her heart far longer than the few days he'd spent at her cabin.
A higher power had sent Reece to her. She knew that fact as surely as she knew Reece Landry was her destiny, and she his. No one had ever needed her the way Reece did. Not only did he need her to help him prove his innocence, he needed the warmth and caring she could give him to vanquish the loneliness he had endured his whole life.
Just as Elizabeth heard the telephone ring, she saw Reece coming around the house, heading for the back porch.
'That's Sam calling,' she told Reece, then ran inside, racing toward the living room. Breathless and nervous, she picked up the telephone. 'Sam?'
