said.
“Perhaps you imagined you did.” His voice was remote, disinterested, but underneath the polite dismissal she heard a disturbing note that kept her standing on his porch.
“I don’t imagine things. I know what I saw.” She gripped the hoe until her hand hurt.
“Unlike the rest of us, then? How fortunate for you. To know what’s real. What’s not.”
“I saw you. You stopped the dogs from attacking me.”
“Did I? Fascinating.”
Wanting to shake him out of his indifference, needing to make him admit the truth, Josie reached out and grasped his arm. With her movement, the capsaicin cylinder flew out of her pocket and racketed across the porch into the grass. His forearm was all muscle and bone under her fingers.
“Hell.” He doubled over and groaned, yanking his arm free and brushing his hand across his eyes. His hand trembled. “Damn.”
“Are you all right?”
“I suppose it depends on your definition.” He straightened and stepped away from her, putting the edge of the door between them before she could help him.
“Do you want me to call a doctor? Are you sick?” she repeated, concerned about the pallor that swept over his face.
“Sick?” His laugh was humorless and sent a ripple of shivers along her spine. “Spirit-sick, ‘sick almost to dooms-day,’ as the poet put it, but, no, lady green eyes, I don’t believe I need the services of a physician. Thank you for your concern.” Preparing to shut the door, his narrow, long fingers gripped the edge.
Glimpsing the strained white knuckles that tightened as she watched, Josie had the strangest impression that he was falling over the edge of a chasm and holding on with the last of his strength, but she couldn’t let him escape without settling the issue of his animals. “Wait!”
“I thought we were through. Wasn’t that all you wanted to know? About the dogs?” he drawled, his voice bored.
“They’re dangerous. You were there. You saw them start to come after me.”
“So you said.” A flicker of pain stirred in the depths of his eyes. “And I’ve said, they’re not my animals.”
“You controlled them,” she said flatly. “They obeyed you.”
“Ah.” The sound was long, drawn out, a whisper of something disturbing in the heat. “There is that, isn’t there?”
Josie frowned. Standing in front of him, holding her ground against his clear if unexpressed wish that she leave, she had the sense that she was leaning forward into the winds of a hurricane. Pale and gaunt faced, he was like the swirling winds of those storms, the power sweeping out around him, bending everything in its path. “I haven’t seen them since then, but you have to keep them locked up. It’s not safe to let them roam around.” Uneasily she looked over her shoulder and off to the woods behind her and to the left.
“They’re not here,” he said, and his voice was gentle. “I don’t have…pets.”
Odd, Josie thought, the way he echoed her earlier thoughts. Stubbornly she persisted. “I want an explanation.” She tapped the edge of the hoe against the porch boards.
“So do we all.” He smiled at her, a faint stretching of facial muscles that moved like clouds across the gulf. “Want explanations. For something or other, don’t we?” His gaze locked with hers.
“I want your dogs to stay away from me,” she insisted. “Sooner or later, they’re going to hurt someone. I don’t want them anywhere near my property.” As she glared into his hooded eyes, cold waves rolled over her, sapping her strength and dragging her down to darkness. Dismayed by the lethargy sliding through her bones, Josie struggled against the waves of passivity. She banged the hoe again. “Those creatures are as dangerous as a loaded gun. And you know it, Mr. Hayes.”
“I never said they weren’t…dangerous. But I can’t control them.”
“You did earlier.”
“Yes, well, miracles do occur.” His words were ironic and fraught with a meaning she couldn’t interpret.
Josie fought the apathy, fought against the rush of sounds and darkness that enervated her. “Then find another way to make a miracle.”
“I wish I could.” Low and filled with suffering, his drawl wrapped around her, and she felt the beat of his anguish with each beat of her heart. “Believe me, I wish I could.”
His words turned to vapor in front of her, a cool mist surrounding him and brushing against her flushed skin as he continued, his words growing fainter with each syllable. “You need to be careful, Josie Birdsong.” His image blurred.
“Conrad,” she whispered. “Josie Conrad.” He knew her middle name. Her mother’s name. He couldn’t know. But he did. Josie was drowning in cold and darkness and she was terrified, reaching out for his hand. “What’s happening?” she moaned and gripped his fingers, their strength solid in the rolling darkness.
And in that moment as her hand curled around his, from somewhere deep in his house, she heard the cry of a child. Sharp, distinct.
And then gone. Silence.
All rational thought vanished with the sound of that child. Josie yanked her hand free and shoved against the door. Down the dark corridor where she sank, she saw a white flutter, a hand, a face. A shape in the dim hallway of the house. Mellie. Oh, God. “Mellie,” she cried and pushed against the force of Ryder Hayes closing his door in her face. “My daughter’s in there! You have my daughter in your house!”
“No!” he muttered. The hard planes of his face contorted, the angles sharp as a knife, the lines around his mouth white and deep with torment. “No one’s here. No one.”
“Mellie!” she screamed and slapped both fists against the door panels.
His face twisted, and he threw up one hand to shade his eyes, his expression hidden. “For God’s sake, go away!”
In that brief glimpse of his expression as he slammed the door, Josie saw the horror in his eyes. She didn’t understand it, but she knew with absolute, unshakable certainty that his horror was real.
With the slam of his door, cold and darkness vanished. All around her was heat and silence, thick and heavy against the ice that encased her shaking body.
She heard the metallic click, the rattle of a chain, as he shot the bolt.
Motionless on a current of air, a solitary grackle hung in the pale sky.
The house with its shuttered windows and locked door loomed in front of her. Hostile.
“Mellie,” Josie whispered, tears mixing with the dirt on her face.
Bracing his back against the door, Ryder ground his fists against his eyelids and sank to the floor, facing the narrow hallway that led from the front of the house.
He should have stayed away from
