"But you just got here," she protested. "Can I get you anything to drink?" she offered, thinking she ought to have asked earlier.
"No. Thank you." He headed straight for the door. "I came to see how you were holding up," he muttered with his back to them. "Sorry that I don't have better news for you."
Frances and Marvin both struggled to their feet, chasing Garret to the door to see him off. He was already down the steps, heading toward a nondescript rental car. "Thank you for your thoughtfulness," Frances called, lifting a hand in farewell.
He didn't even turn to acknowledge it.
She watched him wrench his car door open, stoop to climb inside, then roar away.
"Strange," she murmured, pondering his odd behavior.
"What did you say?" Marvin asked.
"Didn't you find his behavior strange?" she asked him, loudly.
"Yes," he agreed with a disapproving frown. "He behaved as if he expected to find Sara and Kendal here."
An arrow of insight pierced Frances's consciousness, speeding her heart. A sudden dizzy spell had her groping for her husband, who caught her in his arms. Heavens, had Bartholomew been implying that Sara and Kendal ran away?
Oh, thank God! For if they had, then they were still alive!
But why hadn't Sara come to them if she needed help?
Venturing onto the front porch, Sara discovered that the rain had moved on, trailing cooler weather behind it. With no fall clothing to put on, she hugged herself for warmth, even as she watched Chase drag a plywood contraption along the grass that edged the driveway, leaving lines in the heavy dew.
What is he up to?
she wondered.
The door creaked open behind her, and she turned to see a puffy-eyed Kendal greet the new day. His gaze went first toward the hump of earth beneath the pecan tree where Jesse lay. But then he spotted Chase setting the structure on its base by the curve in the driveway. "What's he doin?" he asked.
A giant bull's-eye had been painted on a sheet of plywood with the stain Chase was using to coat the house. "Maybe he wants to practice shooting," Sara suggested.
Together, they watched him retrace his steps. His gaze caught and held Sara's and her pulse quickened with awareness and admiration for his heroism.
"Mornin'," he called, snatching up a rifle that was hidden in the grass. He turned his back on them, aimed his gun at the target, and fired eight shots in quick succession, hitting the center of the bull's-eye every time.
Sara and Kendal gawked in amazement.
And then Chase was crossing the driveway toward them. "Your turn," he called to Sara, giving her a familiar, challenging look.
She shook her head. "Oh, no."
"Come on down," he invited, absolutely serious. "You're not goin' to Dallas till you know how to protect yourself."
They were planning to leave for Dallas later today. That didn't leave much time.
"Why can't we just stay with you?" Kendal demanded, wresting Chase's attention.
The question rocked Sara briefly on her heels. If that were an option, then it would probably be her first choice, she realized. "We can't, honey," she answered on Chase's behalf. "Chase has to go back to his job, you know that."
"Why can't he quit?" the boy cried, on an emotional note. Without waiting for an answer, he spun around and flew into the house, slamming the door behind him.
Sara winced. "Sorry," she said to Chase, who frowned at Kendal's outburst. "There have been so many changes. He's just looking for some solid ground."
"You want me to explain the terms of my enlistment to him?" he offered.
"Maybe that would help," Sara agreed. Curiosity got the better of her. "What, uh, are the terms?" she asked.
"I reenlisted three months ago, while I was overseas. I have four years left till retirement," he said, with a grim set to his jaw.
Four years! The chilly breeze licked over Sara's bare arms. What were the odds of a sniper's getting killed in that span of time?
"Come on down here," he invited again.
"No," she said, eyeing the rifle. "I really don't think it's a good idea."
"It's a lightweight semiautomatic buck rifle that Linc used to hunt with." He hefted it to show her how light it was. "You won't have any problem handlin' it."
"It's just not my thing to shoot people," she said without thinking.
He went perfectly still. "It's not my thing either, Sara," he retorted, with a flicker of anger in his eyes.
She hadn't meant it like that, and yet, what he did for a living put a gulf between them—though it wasn't so much what he did as
where,
and for how long.
"I need to feel better 'bout sendin' you off alone," he explained. "Please, just do this for me."
Well, when he put it that way, she really didn't have much choice, did she?
With a sigh of surrender, Sara descended the steps and followed him across the driveway to the place where he'd shot those eight bull's-eyes, at least twenty-five yards from the target.
"This rifle can shoot up to a mile," Chase informed her.
"Mmmm," Sara hummed, pretending to be impressed.
"This is how you release the magazine to chamber a new one," he added, handling the gun with daunting competence. "This rifle will give you eight consecutive rounds per clip. Here's how you empty the magazine." He showed her. "Go ahead and take it out."
Feeling as inexperienced as a baby, Sara released the empty magazine. He took it, handing her a new one. "Slide it in till you hear a click. This here's the safety," he continued, touching the lever by her thumb. "Keep it on till you plan to shoot."
No problem.
"You ready?"
"Not really."
Ignoring that, he positioned her into the proper front-and-back stance. He lifted the butt of the rifle against her right shoulder. "Bend your elbows. Loosen up your shoulders; I don't want any tension in 'em."
It was his proximity that was making her tense. If he touched her much more, the rest of the lesson was going to be a complete waste of time.
"Sight down the barrel and center the crosshairs on the bull's-eye. You doin' that?"
"Yes," she said, shutting one eye and squinting through the lens with the other.
He bent down to inspect her aim. "Go ahead and release the safety. Then squeeze the trigger."
Tamping down her awareness of him, Sara flicked the safety off and squeezed the trigger.
Boom!
The rifle kicked, ramming against her shoulder and sending her flying back into Chase's arms. "You didn't say it was going to do that!" she accused, whipping her head back to glare at him.
He chuckled at her outrage. "So, now you know," he said reasonably. "Try again. I think you hit a squirrel."
With a groan for her shoulder, she readied herself a second time.
"Check your stance."
Sara widened her stance before sighting down the barrel again. She squeezed her eyes shut and pulled the trigger.
Boom!
She staggered back a couple of steps.
"You got to keep your eyes open," Chase chided, with a smile in his voice.
"I can't do this," she said, not referring so much to shooting the rifle as to standing so close to him and not melting into his arms.
"Sure, you can," he argued, unaware of her private dilemma. He positioned her back in the proper stance. "This time keep your eyes open."
Sara blew out a breath, widened her stance belatedly, and peered through the scope to fire again.
Boom!
"I missed."
"Try again."
Boom!
"I think I hit something."
"Yep, the ground. One more time."
Sarah whimpered. Her shoulder felt bruised where the rifle butted it.
Boom!
"Maybe you need some help," he conceded, stepping closer. With that short notice, he fitted his larger body, front to back, against hers.
Sara's senses screamed.
This is going to help?
"Ready?" He murmured the question in her ear, sending a rush of anticipation through her.
"Yes," she breathed.
"Focus on the target."
She could scarcely see out of her heavy-lidded eyes, yet alone pinpoint the center of the bull's-eye. All she could focus on was Chase's warmth, his cedarlike scent, and the zipper of his jeans pressed intimately against her backside.
"Pull the trigger."
She did, with a burst of excitement similar to the onset of an orgasm.
Boom! Crack!
She heard the bullet rip into the target. By then she'd been driven too deep into Chase's arms to care. She had no idea where the gun went, only that it disappeared. Chase caught her chin, angling her lips toward his. And suddenly he was kissing her with so much focused hunger that her rational faculties ground to a halt.
There was a reason why she ought not to welcome the heat of his palms burning a path toward her breasts. She couldn't remember what it was. Desire pooled with a warm gush, accompanied by a desperate craving for more.
She twisted in his arms, crowding closer, hips pressed to the unyielding column of his zipper.
A single, rational thought penetrated her sensual haze:
Kendal might be watching out the window.
What message would it send to see his mother kissing Chase like there was no tomorrow? The wrong message. The message that she and Chase had a future together.
Didn't Kendal realize that Chase was ephemeral? All it took for Chase to disappear was for Uncle Sam to crook a finger. It had been just like that in the past, with Chase gliding in and out of Sara's life, ever elusive.
It was that realization that made her drag her lips from his, even as she issued a moan of regret.
He kept tight hold of her, his breathing fast and deep. "Come in the house with me," he urged, his eyes so blue she could hardly look at them.
"We can't," she reminded him. "Kendal's in there."
"Stay one more night, then."
She considered the futility of intimacy. "It's pointless, isn't it?"
"How's it pointless to make a memory worth keeping?" he retorted.
Worth keeping, yes, but not worth the heartbreak that would come after. The world needed Chase. She had no right, no way to keep him.
"I can't," she repeated.
Her decision rendered him mute.
"Let me go," she added, with the tiniest concern that he might not.
But he did, instantly. He turned away, bending to snatch up the gun that was lying at their feet, his scowl thunderous.
Sara watched with an apology stuck in her throat.
Suddenly, Chase's head whipped toward the tree line. The muscles in his back flexed. "Car's comin'," he warned.
She couldn't hear anything, but she didn't waste a second in hurrying toward the house.
It was bad enough that Linda Mae Goodner couldn't get enough answers to satisfy her curiosity last night.
Sara couldn't afford to show her face to everyone.
From the shadow of the porch, she noted the white police cruiser with blue and gold decals creeping around the bend in the driveway. A sense of foreboding rose up in her.
Surely her true identity hadn't become public knowledge already.
Chase angled the buck rifle over his shoulder and waited for the Broken Arrow Police Department cruiser to pull up beside him. He recognized its single occupant as Dean Cannard, a former high school classmate and peer.
The two men took stock of each other before Cannard broke the silence. "Mornin'," he said. "Good to see you again, Chase. Been almost twenty years, now, hasn't it?"
"Eighteen," Chase answered, stepping over to the driver's door to extend a hand. "You look the same." Cannard's dark good looks had made him popular in high school. Chase, on the other hand, had been a rangy loner, respected for his wilderness skills.
"You've changed," countered the man taking in the breadth of Chase's shoulders. "I heard you came back to claim your land."
"Yep." Chase nodded, noting from the corner of his eye that Sara had shut herself inside the house.
His terseness left Cannard no choice but to get to the point of his visit. "The BAPD got a call last night that took us over the Reeves place. Ran into a couple a skinheads totin' rifles. They said they got 'em from you."
Chase allowed himself a sneer. "They left them here in Linc's study," he admitted. "I disabled most of 'em after they shot my dog. Did you arrest them?"
"I brought them in," Cannard confirmed. "But all I could charge them with was trespassing. It ain't illegal to carry rifles in this state. Had to let them go this morning."
Chase ground his molars in disgust. He should've gone back there last night to teach those boys a lesson, regardless of Sara's persuasions. "How many did you arrest?" he asked, suddenly suspicious that Will, the leader, had gotten away.
"Just two," Cannard confirmed. "Les Wright and Timothy Olsen. You know either one?"
"No," Chase said shortly.
"They happened to mention a lady friend of yours, though," the cop added, notching Chase's tension tighter. He reached into his shirt pocket and produced a ring. "This belong to her?"
It was Sara's wedding band. He wondered how it had come to fall off her finger. "Might," he hedged, holding out a hand to receive it.
"I'd like to talk to her, if you don't mind," Cannard requested.
Refusing him would look suspicious. Chase managed a careless-looking shrug. "She's inside," he said. "Why don't you come in? Linc's friends left some stuff that you might want to look at."
Getting out of his car, Cannard followed Chase into the house. As he stepped inside, he let out a low whistle.
"Place looks a good sight better." The comment told Chase that he'd visited a time or two while Linc was living.
Sara had withdrawn into his mother's bedroom. Chase went to get her. "You left this behind last night," he said, handing her the ring, which she took back with a grimace. "You want to tell me how it fell off?"
"Tim was going to ... tie me to a chair, but Will called him off."
His temper flickered that she hadn't mentioned that last night. Of course, he definitely would have wreaked some havoc then. "Sergeant Cannard wants to talk to you," he said quietly. "Just tell the truth 'bout what happened, but not much more."