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  In response to her words, Susannah had given her a quick, grateful smile and had promised to keep her apprised of any decisions she would make.

  “You’ll be the first one I’ll tell,” she’d said. “And probably the only one, too.”

  So where was she?

  Carly looked at Janice, waiting for the woman’s answer since she seemed to be into everyone’s business. But instead of responding, the woman looked up uneasily, making eye contact with someone behind her.

  The next moment, Carly heard Samuel’s deep voice saying, “Please don’t trouble yourself about Susannah.” She turned around to face the man just as he said, “She is where she is supposed to be.”

  That didn’t sound good, Carly couldn’t help thinking. “And that is—?” she pressed.

  Grayson gave her a beatific smile. “—none of your concern,” the man concluded serenely.

  Suppressing a sense of horror, Carly still couldn’t make herself let it go. “And the baby?” she whispered, almost afraid of the answer.

  “Why, with her, of course,” Samuel replied. “Where else would a young child be, but with the woman who had given her life?”

  Carly’s blood ran cold, all but draining from her face. Could Grayson possibly be saying that Susannah and her precious baby were dead? That maybe he had learned that she was vacillating about continuing under his so-called guidance.

  Considering his low opinion of people, Susannah’s doubts about remaining in Cold Plains and involved in the center made her imperfect in Grayson’s eyes, and Carly was beginning to see what the man did with anyone who he deemed imperfect.

  Samuel’s eyes narrowed, and he made no attempt to hide the fact that he was scrutinizing her as if trying to delve into her thoughts. “Why are you so interested in where Susannah is, Carly?”

  “I just thought I could help her take care of the baby,” Carly explained innocently. “She seemed a little overwhelmed.”

  “My perception of her exactly,” Samuel agreed with a vigorous nod of his head. The smile he gave her made Carly feel really uneasy. “We seem to think alike, Carly, you and I.” His eyes were all but holding her prisoner. “I find that very gratifying.”

  Carly knew enough to pretend to look down demurely. It was either that or have him see how much she truly hated him for having brought so much evil to her home.

  He looked as if he was about to suggest that they continue their “talk” and comparison of thoughts in his office.

  She was saved at the last minute. Because just then, someone called to Grayson about needing his final input on several pressing matters involving the construction of yet another new building along Cold Plains’s Main street.

  “Duty calls,” Grayson told her with a heavy, dramatic sigh as he excused himself from her company. Then just before he left, he leaned over and whispered in her ear. “This conversation is far from over, Carly,” he promised.

  As he left the room, the women all looked at her with unabashed envy.

  Feeling as if she had just dodged a bullet, Carly made herself scarce as quickly as possible. She needed to get away from town, away from Grayson, at least until she figured out how to handle all this unwanted attention. The man clearly wanted to brand her with more than just the letter D that he had tattooed onto her thigh.

  “She’s missing,” Carly announced to Hawk when she let him into her house later that evening.

  She had given him a spare key, but Hawk thought it more prudent if he knocked and waited for her to open the door. That way, she would see that it was him, and she couldn’t be caught by surprise by anyone else if they attempted to break in on her.

  “Mia?” he guessed, since she hadn’t mentioned the missing woman’s name.

  “No, Susannah Paul.” Carly could see that the name meant nothing to him. Why should it? As far as she knew, Susannah hadn’t spoke to him. Susannah knew nothing about nothing, so there would have been no reason for her to speak with the FBI special agent. “She told me she was thinking about leaving the community.”

  Well, maybe that was her answer, Hawk thought, following her to the kitchen. Every night since he’d made that first stop to “check” on her, he’d stop to have a little dinner with her and then stay to talk. Except that they hardly ever did. They let their passion do the talking for them.

  “Maybe she did,” he speculated, but he could see why she was concerned. People didn’t just up and leave Cold Plains, not unless Grayson wanted them to. And then it was as if the atmosphere had just swallowed them up.

  Carly shook her head. “Susannah wouldn’t go without telling me. I made her promise she’d let me know first. And there’s something else.”

  Hawk looked at her, waiting.

  “She’s just had a baby recently. She wouldn’t really be up for a lot of traveling.” She glanced at Hawk, but long enough so that he could see the distress in her eyes. God knew, it wasn’t without merit.

  Carly hesitated for a moment, then asked, “Do you think that Grayson could have—”

  “He very well could have, yes, but don’t let your imagination go there yet. There could still be a lot of other plausible explanations,” he told her soothingly.

  But even as he said it, he wasn’t nearly as convinced as he sounded for Carly’s benefit.

  And he suspected that Carly knew it, too.

  Chapter 13

  Carly was running out of time and she knew it.

  Mia’s wedding ceremony was less than three days away. For the past two days, she hadn’t even been able to get near her sister.

  Each time she tried, Mia was either already busy working under Grayson’s watchful guidance, or if her sister appeared to be momentarily alone and she started to approach her, Grayson would somehow suddenly come swooping down out of nowhere, requesting that Mia join him or come see something, or he’d use a dozen and one other diversion tactics to separate Mia from everyone else.

  Mainly her.

  Not that she had much hope of miraculously persuading her sister to give up this absurd idea of marrying a man who was more than twice her age. The last time she had gotten to talk to her alone, she had used every argument she could think of to persuade Mia not to make what she considered in her heart to be a “terrible mistake.”

  Mia hadn’t even let her finish. Her sister had looked at her with open hostility and said, “I don’t care if you like what Cold Plains has become or not, but I do. I like it here, do you understand? For the first time in my life, I have order, I have peace—and I have a place that makes me feel as if I’m important.” She’d raised her chin pugnaciously and declared, “For the first time in my life, I feel happy.”

  For the first time in my life.

  That had stung. Badly.

  Carly tried hard not to make it about hurt feelings, but it was difficult not to. She had sacrificed everything for her sister, especially her own happiness. She had stayed on here in Cold Plains when she would have much rather just taken off and started a brand-new life with Hawk.

  “And you didn’t before?” she had challenged Mia with suppressed anger.

  Mia had tossed her head, her eyes narrowing as she had looked at her defiantly. “No.”

  “And life with me was so terrible?” Carly asked.

  “What ‘with’ you?” Mia demanded, throwing up her hands. She upset one of the decorations that had just been hung up that morning. Angry, she picked it up and lovingly dusted it off before carefully reattaching it. “I never saw you,” she pointed out accusingly.

  How could Mia stand there, throwing that into her face? There was a reason she hadn’t been around and it wasn’t because she was out having a good time, enjoying herself. She had run herself ragged, trying to make ends meet.

  Didn’t her sister understand that?

  Apparently not, she concluded. Sighing, Carly gave it her all, trying one more time to reason with Mia.

  “That’s because I was trying to run the farm and earn some money on the side as a waitre
ss so you could have the little luxuries, you know, like food.” She realized that came out sounding rather sarcastic. She hadn’t meant for it to, but she was still stunned that, given all those years she’d worked so hard so that her sister could have at least a few things that she hadn’t had, Mia wasn’t grateful for any of it.

  “I would have rather had you,” Mia spat out. “I never got to talk to anyone. You were never there for me.” Her eyes became angry blue flames. “All I ever did was clean up after Dad. And I mean that literally.”

  “So did I,” Carly informed her. They stood facing one another, officially at a standoff. “I worked so that you could have regular meals, clothes on your back, a roof over your head. If I hadn’t done what I did, we would have lost the family farm.”

  Mia drew herself up and went back to working on the decorations for her wedding. “So now I hope you and the farm will be very happy together. And if you can’t be happy for me at my wedding,” she added curtly, “then don’t bother coming. The choice is yours.”

  Carly stared at the back of her sister’s head. How could Mia talk to her this way? How could she be so insensitive as not to see everything she’d given up for her?

  “Mia, I—”

  “There you are!” a cheerful voice addressing Mia declared.

  Charlie Rhodes, one of Grayson’s inner circle of handpicked men, who was also going to be best man at the wedding, came up behind them and then took Mia gently by the arm.

  At first glance, Charlie had the features of a sweet-faced angel.

  He probably would have been one of the fallen ones, Carly couldn’t help thinking. In the few, brief exchanges they’d had, Charlie had been nothing but polite to her, but she still couldn’t get over the uneasy feeling she would always get in the pit of her stomach whenever she was around the young man. For one thing, his eyes were flat, as if there was no soul, no conscience, behind them.

  “Samuel’s been looking for you,” Charlie told Mia. “He has something to ask you about those children’s seminars you’ve been giving for him. He seemed pretty busy, so I offered to fetch you for him.”

  Fetch. Just like she was some inanimate object, Carly thought. Mia, wise up! Please!

  “Well, you found me,” Mia declared cheerfully. “Now take me to him.”

  Said the lamb to the wolf as she was led off to the slaughter. Damn it, Mia, don’t you hear yourself? Carly wondered angrily.

  For a moment, she thought about just grabbing Mia’s hand and running, but she knew how irrational that would seem. For one thing, Mia wouldn’t run with her, certainly not willingly. She’d probably just dig in her heels and refuse to go.

  That had been her last one-on-one contact with her sister, almost five days ago. Since then, every attempt she’d made had been thwarted one way or another. She may actually have to kidnap Mia and get her out of the community. There appeared to be no other way to save her.

  That evening when she came home, she was still contemplating the exact logistics of pulling off her sister’s kidnapping. Everything she came up with depended heavily on luck. The only easy part was getting into the compound, and that was because Samuel believed her to be just as brainwashed as the others.

  When she’d resisted moving into town, he’d been a little suspicious at first, his hypnotic eyes all but burrowing into her. But she had pointed out that she needed to keep the farm in business. After all, her chickens did provide breakfast for the masses and her dairy cows kept the children in milk.

  Using that as her foundation, Carly managed to convince Samuel that she could better serve the community by returning to the farm each evening and working it the hours she was not teaching the children.

  So with Grayson thinking she was one of the true believers, she had the element of surprise on her side. That would win her about sixty seconds. After that, she would have to run like crazy, dragging her sister behind her. Either that or get to her just before the ceremony. Ultimately, the plans were the same. One way or another, she intended to abduct Mia before her little sister had a chance to say those fatal words that would seal her doom.

  Carly pulled her car up near the house and looked around. Disappointment nudged its way to the surface and hung there. She worked her lower lip uneasily. There was no trace of Hawk.

  Funny how quickly that man got to be a habit with her. All it took was looking at him, and she was a goner. He’d been her first love and, as it had turned out, her only love. She had never felt anything for any other man. Not that she had actively tried to find someone, but once or twice, she’d gone out with one of the other men in town. Her ultimate goal had been to find some sort of companionship. Maybe even settle down.

  But for her, there was no repeat performance of a magic moment, no chemistry suddenly pulsating through her. Not even the desire to be held and kissed by whoever was taking her out that night.

  And so she eventually came to the inevitable conclusion that Hawk would forever be the one and only man she would ever care about, ever love.

  And he was out of her life by her own doing.

  She had to resign herself to that. So she did.

  Until he’d shown up, Carly thought now, letting herself into the darkened house. He had instantly turned her whole world upside down by coming back into town, looking better than any man had a right to after ten years had gone by.

  This time, she didn’t know how she would survive having him walk away. Because he would. He’d carved out that life for himself that she’d pushed him toward.

  A life that didn’t include her.

  “Don’t think that far ahead,” she chided herself. “He’s still here for now, and all any of us have is now. Make the most of it,” she ordered herself as she went around the house, turning on lights and chasing away the gloom.

  With the house now well lit, Carly made her way into the kitchen to prepare dinner. It seemed rather ironic because she hardly bothered with dinner when she was alone. Usually it meant just grabbing something out of the refrigerator and eating it over the sink while doing three other things at the same time.

  But for Hawk, she prepared dinner. Looked forward to dinner. Even if they didn’t speak, she still loved to sit there beside him at the table, watching him eat what she’d made for him. Doing so gave her a warm feeling of normalcy she’d been lacking for longer than she could actually remember.

  Maybe that was why Mia wanted to get married, Carly thought abruptly. Why her sister seemed to cleave to this sham of a life she saw being offered to her. Because she wanted what everyone wanted. A little piece of the normal life.

  Except that marriage to Brice Carrington wouldn’t be normal. Not in the way Mia wanted in her heart. Mia would be nothing more than a baby machine.

  After taking the roast she’d made yesterday out of the refrigerator, Carly glanced at her watch. What was keeping Hawk? Not that there was a specific time that had been agreed upon. It was just that Hawk was usually here by now.

  Leaving the roast on the counter, Carly suddenly felt an uneasy need to watch for him through the large bay window that faced her private road. The road that led away from the heart of Cold Plains.

  Carly picked up her pace and made her way to the living room.

  She passed by the gun rack where she still kept her late father’s weapons primed and cleaned. They represented the only really good memory she had of the man. On the occasions that he’d been sober when she was a child, her father had tried to take her hunting. When she’d burst into tears the first time because he’d told her they were going to hunt for deer, he’d relented and taught her how to shoot at targets instead. She wound up shooting at pictures of snarling, vicious wolves.

  She knew that her father had hoped to get her acclimated to shooting animals, wanting to make sure she would always be safe because animals could turn on her in a heartbeat, he’d explained, but she never did.

  Eventually, her father began to drink more and more, and those Sunday afternoons in the woods, shooting at
the pictures he’d posted for her, became a thing of the past. But she never forgot how to shoot and, on occasion, still went out to practice on her own. With Grayson and his cronies spreading their scourge here, who knew when that ability—to hit whatever she aimed for—might just come in handy?

  Reaching the front window, she got there just in time to see Hawk pulling up.

  The smile on her lips spread all through her. He was here!

  She was about to hurry to the door to open it when a light in the distance caught her eye. It took her less than half a second to realize that it was actually two lights, not one. Two, like the headlights of an approaching vehicle.

  Had Hawk brought someone with him?

  But if he had, why weren’t they both traveling in his car? And why was he now getting out of his vehicle without so much as a backward glance at the other car? It was as if he had no idea that there was another car approaching in the distance.

  Nerves stretched taut began to dance through her. She had come to realize that she had grown to be a great deal less trusting than she had once been.

  Backing away from the front window, Carly hurried over to the gun rack, the phrase better safe than sorry drumming through her head.

  The last thing she wanted was to be sorry.

  She had just unlocked the chain that she kept threaded through the weapons when she heard it.

  A sound pealing like the crack of thunder.

  Except that it wasn’t thunder. She’d heard it often enough to know the difference between distant thunder and a gunshot.

  There was no hesitation.

  Grabbing the rifle closest to her, Carly hurried back to the front door. With no children in the house to worry about, she knew the weapon in her hand was fully loaded and ready to be discharged.

  Carly threw open the door, then got her weapon ready, just in time to fire at whoever was firing a second shot at Hawk. Carly returned fire even before she realized that Hawk was down, obviously hit by that first shot she’d heard.

  Rushing out to him, her heart pounding madly, Carly kept firing in the general direction of her quarry. She was intent on providing cover for herself and, more importantly, for Hawk, who she now realized was bleeding profusely from his left arm.