Deep in the Heart (5 page)

“Just what I need. A cowboy.”

The cowboy came in without being invited.

Mike Pulaski sat back in his chair, leaning as far as he dared without toppling over, and locked his hands across his ample belly in what he hoped was a gesture of disdain. He didn’t like pushy people.

“You’re in, now what can I do for you?” He frowned as the big man ushered Samantha Carlyle to a seat without answering him.

John Thomas briefly touched Samantha’s shoulder and then turned and gave the cop a long look before pulling his badge. He held it over the desk between them.

“Sheriff John Thomas Knight, Cherokee County.”

Mike Pulaski’s feet hit the floor. It was reflex that made him stand and extend his hand before he’d even thought. Professional courtesy to another law enforcement official was ingrained in everyone on the force.

“Sheriff! Pleased to meet you! But I can’t say that I’m familiar with Cherokee County. What department are you out of?”

“Texas.”

Pulaski was staring. He knew it. He just couldn’t seem to stop. “Texas? You’re from Cherokee County, Texas?” He grinned and scratched his head. “Then what, may I ask, are you doing all the way out here? Chasing outlaws?”

“No.” John Thomas’s answer was short and sharp.

“I came to see why the hell you’re not.”

Samantha inhaled sharply. Johnny hadn’t changed a bit. He still didn’t pull punches. She smiled to herself. And since when did he call himself John Thomas? She’d always called him Johnny, and he had let her, even today.

“Excuse me?” Pulaski asked, and glared at Samantha Carlyle. This was bound to be her fault.

“I don’t think I’m ready to,” John Thomas said shortly. He leaned forward, bracing himself on Pulaski’s desk, and stared straight into the detective’s face. “I want some answers, Pulaski. I want to know why the hell Samantha Carlyle has no police protection. I want to know why someone hasn’t ordered a phone tap and tried to trace calls. I want to know why you have chosen to blow off a woman’s cry for help. You convince me first, then I might be willing to excuse you. Got it?”

Pulaski’s face turned bright red. “You have no right coming into my office, in my department, and trying to tell me how to do my job.”

“I’m not trying to tell you how to do it. I just want to know why the hell you aren’t. And I do have that right.”

“By whose authority?” Pulaski demanded.

John Thomas turned to Samantha, saw the frightened expression in her eyes, and pointed.

“Hers.” He smiled at Samantha and winked. “We’re old friends.” He looked back at Pulaski, daring him to argue.

Samantha shivered.
Old friends?
They were much more than that. Old friends didn’t do what Johnny had done. Old friends sent letters of sympathy, or even money. But they didn’t put their lives on hold and come halfway across the country for someone they hadn’t seen in fifteen years.

She stared at the back of his head, catching a glimpse now and then of the battle of wills going on between the two policemen, and wondered: if Johnny Knight isn’t an old friend, then what is he?

“Old friends. I see,” Pulaski said, and tried not to sneer.

John Thomas caught the innuendo. It made him mad as hell.

“Yes.
Old
friends.” It had been years since he’d had to explain himself and it didn’t sit easy on an already frazzled temperament. Anger was thick in his voice. “I haven’t seen her in fifteen years, but I’ve known her for as long as I can remember. Her father was my grade school principal. We were childhood playmates. We climbed goddamned trees together. I even taught her how to clean fish.”
I’m the first man she ever made love to,
he added silently to himself.

He turned and looked at Sam and knew she could read what he was thinking. At that moment, he didn’t care.

She swallowed her panic as she saw the look on his face. If she only dared believe what she was seeing. But she didn’t. She couldn’t. She’d been hurt too badly once to trust him again. Besides, she was too busy trying not to die to worry about making love.

Pulaski blanched and held up his hands. “I get the message,” he said. “But you’ve got to understand the situation from my point of view. Out here people do crazy things. I deal with druggies and—”

“Samantha Jean, did you ever do drugs?” John Thomas interrupted. He turned and fixed her with a piercing stare.

She gulped and jumped to her feet. The tone of voice was so like the one her mother would have used that the motion was instinctive.

“No! Of course not,” she said quickly, and then sank limply back into her chair.

He nodded, satisfied with her answer, and turned back to Pulaski.

“She doesn’t do drugs. What you’re saying now doesn’t pertain. I want answers to my questions.”

Pulaski sank into his chair and knew that he’d long since lost control of the situation. All he could do was hang on for the ride.

“Just like that? You just turned and asked her and you believe her that easy? I thought you told me you haven’t seen her in years? How do you know she’s telling you the truth?”

“I told you we’re old friends. Besides, Sam doesn’t lie.”

Samantha blinked at the conviction in his voice. The tears behind her eyes burned. The lump in her throat was huge, but the hard knot in the pit of her stomach had just loosened another hitch. She thought she’d long since given up hoping someone would believe her. Hearing the words, from Johnny’s lips, was nearly overwhelming.

Pulaski nodded. It didn’t matter what he said. Obviously the big man wasn’t going to swallow it.

“Look,” Pulaski said. “It’s not so much that we didn’t believe her. It’s just that the facts pointed to a hoax.” He shrugged. If they didn’t like the truth, they shouldn’t have come.

“So your stalker is smarter than you are? That’s not news, Detective. I’m a cop, too, remember? There are plenty of brilliant criminals on the loose and you and I both know it. As for your reasoning, Sam told me about the phone business, as well as her typewriter being used to write the hate mail. Was she the only person who had access to it?” John Thomas asked.

Pulaski frowned. He didn’t like being cross-examined. “Hell no,” he said shortly. “We’re not fools, Sheriff. We checked everyone out.”

“You had to have missed someone.”

Pulaski’s chin jutted. “Well, we didn’t. And she didn’t give us much to work with. A few letters, possibly self-inflicted threats, a few phone calls, always left on a machine, which, for all intents and purposes, indicates she sent them to herself.”

“You never assigned surveillance?”

“We did have someone assigned to watch her. But the whole time he was on the case, nothing happened. We don’t have unlimited manpower.”

“As for
her
not giving
you
enough stuff to work with, Detective. I thought that was your department. I thought that all a citizen had to do was report a crime.”

Pulaski flushed. “That didn’t come out exactly like I meant it,” he said. “I meant that we didn’t have much to go on.”

John Thomas glared. “At my last count, you had twenty-nine separate pieces of hate mail, which, I might add, you handed back to her without blinking an eye. The last of which promised death in various forms and degrees. Where I come from, mister, that constitutes a viable threat.”

“Well, you’re not in Texas,” Pulaski said shortly.

John Thomas straightened and stared. “No, but I’m damned sure going to be soon.” He pulled a card from his pocket and tossed it onto Pulaski’s desk. “If there’s anything further you need of Miss Carlyle, you can reach her through me, at that number.”

“You’re taking her back to Texas?” Pulaski hadn’t expected to feel an impact from the words, but he did. What he also felt, he suspected, was a little bit of guilty conscience.

“I’m taking her home,” John Thomas said.

Samantha’s shock was no less than Pulaski’s.
Texas? I’m going back to Texas? With Johnny?
The implications of that overwhelmed her. And this time, in spite of her determination, tears fell.
Oh God. I’m going home.

John Thomas touched his finger to the brim of his hat, grabbed Samantha’s hand, and together they exited Pulaski’s office without looking back.

When the door flew back against the glass wall with a loud bang, several people looked up with a start in time to see the big cowboy and Samantha Carlyle make their exit.

“What the hell was that all about? And who is that man with the Carlyle woman?” another detective asked.

Pulaski rolled his eyes as he fingered the card John Thomas had tossed on his desk. He began to grin.

“That, I think, is how the West was won. That man was a sheriff. A genuine, pissed-off, Texas sheriff. And if there really is some crazy stalker after Samantha Carlyle and he runs into,” he looked down at the card to refresh his memory, “John Thomas Knight, then I pity him.”

He shook his head, walked into his office, and closed the door, suddenly in need of some peace and quiet.

The traffic and the drive home had done nothing for John Thomas’s patience, nor did the message on Samantha’s answering machine.

The moment they entered the room, her face paled at the sight of the flashing red light. Sensing the ominous threat waiting to be heard, she froze. Then in a useless but frantic display of panic, she began running through the apartment, checking locks and doors as though it would prevent her from hearing what was on the tape. But it was too late to stop what had already been sent. It was there as always. Waiting. Warning. Promising.

She ran, and John Thomas caught her, and for a heartbeat held her gently within his embrace.

“Don’t, Sam. It might not be from him.”

She shuddered and hid her face against his chest. “Oh Johnny. You don’t understand. It’s always from him.”

A shared pain enveloped him at the lifeless tone of her voice.

“Then let’s listen to what the bastard has to say, okay? Only this time, you won’t be hearing it alone.”

She nodded, walked to the machine, pressed the message button, and then leaned against him and stood motionless within his arms as the words slapped and the promises threatened.

I saw you with him. He can’t help you, Samantha. You can run—and you can hide—but you’ll never get away. Not from me. You must pay with your life. Don’t you understand yet? Why do you fight me? Why don’t you just wait and let it come? Blood cleanses as it flows.

The voice had been electronically altered. That was obvious by the computerized sound of the message.

John Thomas felt helpless. He felt rage. And he felt Samantha coming apart in his arms. He reached over and unplugged the entire answering machine without waiting for it to finish, then made her face him.

“Look at me, Sam.” Her body quivered beneath his hands as the blue in her eyes turned a dull, lifeless gray. “Dammit, look at me!” he yelled.

She slowly complied.

“Don’t! Don’t let that sick bastard kill you with nothing but words. That’s all they are, Sam, words! He hasn’t touched you yet, and so help me God, he’s not going to get the chance. Do you understand?” He shook her gently to punctuate his promise.

She bit her lower lip to keep from screaming, drawing desperately on Johnny’s strength because at the moment, she had none of her own.

“Good!” He hugged her once then set her firmly aside.

He could sense how close she was to breaking, and knew that too much sympathy could be all it would take to push her over the edge.

Besides, he had no intention of getting emotionally involved with her again. He’d protect her, but he wouldn’t love her. Not a woman who didn’t know how to say good-bye.

She watched as he began pacing back and forth across the floor. Samantha had a momentary vision of a mountain lion hovering, waiting to pounce.

“We can’t take much,” he said. “We don’t want him to know that you’re leaving. We just want him to think that when we leave, it’s for no more than a day’s outing.”

“What? Take where?” Samantha said, lost for the moment at the turn of the conversation.

“To Texas. Don’t you remember? I’m taking you home.”

Her chin quivered and in spite of the sharp bite she gave the inside of her jaw, the tears still came.

“Well, hell,” he said softly, and pulled her back into his arms. “You don’t have to be so damned happy about it.”

Many hours later, Samantha stirred as the wheels of John Thomas’s truck turned off the highway onto a rough, graveled road. She blinked and opened her eyes only to see darkness all around.

The trip from L.A. to Dallas had been frantic. Storing her car in a rental unit had been Johnny’s idea. They’d gone from there to a bank for Samantha to withdraw money, and then on to a restaurant, where they stunned the hostess by refusing a table, calling another cab, and disappearing out the back door of the same restaurant on their way to the airport.

Once in Dallas, John Thomas had dumped her and her small bag of belongings into his truck, paid the airport parking attendant for services rendered, and headed east out of the city with the sun low at their backs.

Somewhere between Terrell and Tyler, she’d fallen asleep. She never noticed when they passed through Cotton on their way to Johnny’s place. But she did notice, after all sense of sound and motion had stopped, that they were in front of a small frame house.

The darker outline of the building silhouetted against the abundance of trees around it was visible, even though the moonlight was nearly nonexistent. The tension of the last few hours began to seep out of her body as the trees surrounded and protected. The silence of the country enveloped her. Samantha’s heart expanded from the newfound peace.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“Home.”

She’d never heard a more beautiful word. She crawled stiffly from his truck and then stopped and inhaled. Tears sprang quickly as memories overwhelmed her. It might have been years since she’d been here, but forgetting East Texas would have been impossible.

The scent of pine, sharp and tangy, filled the air. Samantha smiled as she also recognized the faint, sweet odors of dogwood and honeysuckle. They had grown outside the bedroom window at her home in Cotton when she was a child, when Johnny Knight had been the Alpha and Omega of her world.