In the Midnight Rain (43 page)

The relief on his face, even in the dark, was unmistakable. “Much obliged. I won’t be any trouble.”

“Wet as you are, I’ll be lucky if you don’t die of pneumonia before morning.” She sized him up, thinking quickly. “Stay right there. I’ll get you something dry to put on.”

“You don’t have to do that,” he protested.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She headed for the back room, leaving the candle for him. He hovered near the door.

There wasn’t much to choose from, but Celia found an old pair of overalls of her grandfather’s and a shirt she was sure would be too small. Might not fit well, but it would be better than freezing to death.

The stranger still stood right by the door when she returned. A puddle had formed under his feet. His outer garment, a long vinyl poncho, had been shed, and the big pack rested against the wall.

The lights flashed on again, so suddenly they startled Celia. In the blazing, unexpected illumination, she stared at the man by the door. It was only by sheer force of will that she kept her mouth from dropping open. Men like this never walked into her quiet life. They crossed movie screens and album covers; they rode bucking horses in rodeos and raced cars in the Indy.

They didn’t appear on her porch in rural Texas in the middle of a rainstorm.

His hair was black as sin and already curling around his neck and ears. The face was broad and dark, with high cheekbones and heavy brows over thick-lashed eyes. Amid all the masculine angles and jutting corners, his mouth was uncommon and compelling, even with a bloody cut obscuring it. The lower lip was full, sensual; the upper cut into an exquisite firm line.

There was only an instant for her to absorb the lines of his body, for the lights flashed off as quickly as they’d come on.

She laughed a little breathlessly, not quite sure whether the sound stemmed from excitement or fear. “Well, that was fast. I wonder if we’re going to be treated to a light show.”

“Somebody at the plant better get smart quick and turn everything off,” he said, “or there’s likely to be fires all over the county.”

The man shivered and Celia hurriedly gave him the clothes. “I’ll wait in the kitchen.”

Standing there in the dark, nibbling popcorn from the bowl on the table, she wondered if she was completely insane. The world was not the same place her grandmother had lived in, although Celia supposed there had always been serial killers and rapists roaming the countryside. Computers had just made it simpler to track them down. The thought made her smile briefly.

The stranger’s voice, with its odd edge of roughness, sounded directly behind her. “Jezebel’s acting up tonight,” he said.

“Jezebel?” Celia echoed, turning.

He’d brought the candle with him, and the light cast eerie shadows over the hollows of his face. She saw a grizzling of dark beard on his chin and top lip. It added an even more rakish appearance to his rugged face. Celia frowned at the blood on his mouth. “You’re bleeding,” she said, and reached into a drawer for a dishcloth.

Distractedly, he pressed the cloth to the cut, then lifted it and licked the spot experimentally. “I didn’t even feel this,” he commented.

Celia lifted the candle closer to his face, and understanding her intention, he lowered the dishrag. “You probably need a stitch or two,” she said. “But it looks like you’ll have to live without them until morning.”

“I’ve lived through worse.”

There was no boast in the words, just a simple statement of fact. Celia realized she was still standing next to him, the candle held aloft, peering at his face for clues to his nature like the heroine in a Gothic novel. She put the candle on the table. “Who’s Jezebel?” she asked.

“The river. That’s what the old-timers call her.”

“Why?”

“Because,” the man said, cocking his head a bit ironically, “she’s as dangerous as a faithless and beautiful woman.” He spied the popcorn and pointed. “You mind?”

“Help yourself.” Celia ladled up a handful for herself. “Pretty sexist. Why isn’t she like a faithless man?”

A slow grin spread over his face. “Because no man alive can outsmart a wise and evil woman — and the old-timers knew it.”

His voice, low and husky, acted like moonshine on her spine, easing the muscles all the way down. She straightened. “What makes you think she’s acting up?”

“I’ve seen her do it.” He glanced toward the window, as though the river was a banshee about to scream through the night. “Unless it stops raining right now, she’s coming.”

Celia frowned and crossed to the window. It was dark — inky dark. The pond in the hollow had crept up another four or five inches, and she thought she could see a fine film of water all over the saturated ground. “It’s been flooding for weeks,” she said. “Everyone says that happens every year.”

“They like to forget about old Jezebel.” He shifted. “Legends aside, this is a flood plain, and the river runs in cycles. She’s gonna flood and you’d best be on high ground when she does.”

“There’s an attic here if I need it.”

He scooped up another big handful of popcorn. “Is it stocked?”

She shrugged. “Sort of.” She pursed her lips. “Do you think the river’s going to overflow tonight?”

He wandered to the window, and as he stood next to her, looking out at the rain, Celia realized he was much, much larger than she. What if all this talk of a flood was just a way to get her up into the attic to ravish her or something? She crossed her arms over her chest, smelling whiskey and something deeper, a scent of hot nights that she tried to ignore. There was no law that said serial killers were ugly and hard to get along with. In fact, how did any of them get close to their victims unless they possessed a certain — well, animal magnetism that promised erotic rewards in return for trust?

But his voice was so very grim when he spoke again that Celia had no doubt that he was telling the truth. “She’s coming,” he said, the dread in his voice unmistakable.

Suddenly, from the depths of childhood came a memory. Celia had awakened thirsty and padded into the bathroom for a drink of water. On her way back to her room, she heard her father in his office, shouting into the phone. Curious and alarmed, she had paused by the door.

Her father had been a big man, as big as a grizzly, he liked to tell her. That night he hunched in the swivel chair by his desk, with his hair wild and his face buried in his hands. “What’s wrong, Daddy?” Celia asked.

He turned in his chair and gestured for her to come sit in his lap. Then, because it had been his policy to tell Celia the truth, he said, “There’s a flood back in Texas and I can’t get through to make sure Grandma’s all right.”

Celia didn’t really understand anything else about the incident, but obviously, Grandma had been fine. She’d only died last year — in her sleep.

Thinking of it now, though, she realized the river had probably flooded then. “Okay,” she said, taking a breath. “Jezebel’s going to flood. Since you’re here, you can help me lug things up to the attic.” She crossed the room, taking the candle with her, and opened the oak cupboard by the sink.

“What happened to the old woman, Mrs. Moon, who used to live here?” the stranger asked as Celia took cans and boxes from the shelf.

“She died last year.” Celia flashed him a grin out of proportion to his statement. Relief made her sigh. If he had known her grandmother, he wasn’t likely to be a serial killer.

“Are you kin ?”

“I’m her granddaughter. She left me the house.”

He nodded, chewing popcorn. “What’s your name, granddaughter?”

“Celia.” She glanced at the nearly empty bowl. “You made short work of that popcorn. Are you hungry?”

“Celia Moon.” His drawl and the ragged edge of his voice made her name sound beautiful. “I’m Eric Putman and I’m starving.”

She tossed him a box of crackers and found the peanut butter. “That’ll have to do for a little while.” His name sounded vaguely familiar, but when she couldn’t place it, she let it go. There weren’t many names she hadn’t heard on her grandmother’s lips at one time or another. For a nice old woman, she’d been the world’s champion gossip — not mean, for there was always an undercurrent of understanding in the way she told her stories, even when the preacher of the Methodist church fell in love with the choir director, who was then only seventeen, and ran off to Louisiana with her. “You must be from around here,” Celia commented.

“Born and raised.”

A harsh undernote told her he’d been glad to escape. A common attitude. She was the only one who’d run to Gideon instead of away. And the funny thing was, they were running to the very places she had left behind, places whose very names promised glamour. “You’ve been gone awhile,” she said.

“Yep.” He dropped the peanut butter and crackers into the box with the other food. “You have any other candles? I can get some blankets and stuff if you’ll tell me where to look.”

She dug in a drawer, and just as she was about to light the candle, a massive flash of lightning shimmered over the sky, a pale electric blue that seemed to hang for minutes in the darkness. On its heels came a crack of thunder so loud, it rattled the dishes.

As if a hole had been cut in the sky by the violent thunder, the noise of the rain suddenly doubled, then tripled. Celia gasped. “I didn’t think it could rain any harder!” She went to the window and looked out, laughing lightly. “It looks like there’s a thousand garden hoses going at once.”

Eric grabbed the candle. “Where are those blankets?” His voice was gruff.

“Under the stairs.” She pointed vaguely. Her attention was focused on the deluge. It excited her. A part of her wanted to run outside into that beating, pounding rain, just to feel it and taste it. Nature run amok, she thought. Humans were helpless in the face of it. A savage kind of joy raced through her at the thought.

“Come on, woman,” Eric growled. “Won’t take Jezebel long to flash her eyes now.”

Of course, she probably wanted to
live
through whatever was coming. Time enough to observe the drama when everything was safely prepared.

Celia tried to ignore the ripple of excitement that passed through her at the thought of observing the drama with Eric Putman nearby.

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BREAKING
THE
RULES

(Excerpt)

by
Barbara Samuel

PROLOGUE

S
he drove all night. Fast and hard through the emptiness of the Kansas plains, dotted with silos and water towers silhouetted against the clear, starry sky. In Emporia, she clutched her coat around herself and bought a cup of coffee and filled the gas tank.

By morning, she reached Pueblo. Leaving the technically stolen car in the parking lot of a huge discount store where it would eventually attract notice, she fastened her coat around her again and went inside the store. She bought a pair of soft desert boots, jeans and a handful of T-shirts, trying to ignore the collection of stares she received over her wild and incongruous appearance.

From the discount store, she crossed the street on foot to a convenience store that sold gas and food. In the bathroom there, she ripped the tags off the new things and threw her tattered dress in the waste bin. For a moment, she stared at the royal blue taffeta, bloodstained on the side and at the hem. A wave of dizzy nausea washed through her.

Once changed, she assessed herself in the fly-specked mirror. This was the hard part. With trembling hands, she braided her hip-length hair, secured it at the top and bottom, then lifted the shears she’d bought with the jeans.

“Do it, Mattie,” she said to the white-faced woman in the mirror. She did, but resolve and necessity didn’t keep her from weeping as she did so. Her pride and joy. Her hair.

When it was done, she held the three-foot braid in her hand, then looked at herself. The cut was ragged, but not bad, considering. With surprise, she touched her neck and shoulders.

Taking a deep breath, she coiled the braid and nestled it into her bag. No one would recognize her now. No one.

She left the car with its Kansas plates in the sprawling parking lot and hopped on a city bus that took her downtown. At the Greyhound station, she scanned the lists of destinations and impulsively bought a ticket for a little town she’d never heard of because she liked the name.

Kismet, Arizona.

They would never find her there.

Chapter 1

I
n the middle of the morning bustle, with country music playing in the kitchen of the café, and coffee perking and the noise of a dozen men buzzing around the room, Mattie realized that somehow or other, the job she’d taken out of desperation three weeks before was one she had learned to like. No, love.

“Order up!” called the cook. Mattie grabbed the thick porcelain plates filled with greasy eggs and strips of bacon and good white toast. Piling them on her arms, she hurried toward the table of road workers who would gulp the food down and tip her a dollar, no matter how well or poorly she did her job, as long as she kept their coffee cups filled. Bustling back toward the counter, she grabbed the coffeepot and swung through in a circle, touching up every cup along the route, except Joe Harriday’s, who liked to get all the way to the bottom before he started again.

There was a buzz in her muscles and heat in her chest. Her hair fell in her eyes and she brushed it back, feeling the pleasant grime of hard work on her skin.

Loved it.

As the breakfast crowd thinned, leaving behind only a single pair of tourists who’d wandered in off the highway, Mattie made a fresh pot of coffee, mainly for the crew to drink as they cleaned up breakfast and got ready for lunch.

“A woman after my own heart,” said Roxanne, the other waitress, breathing deeply of the scented steam rising from the pot. “You want to take a break first?”