Joyce Sullivan – In His Wife's Name (страница 10)
Panic spilled through her like carbonated bubbles. “Luke! Come quick!” she screamed as she leaped toward her daughter and scooped her up in her arms. A second missile hit the sandbox, spewing up sand inches from the spot where Samantha had been playing. “Stop it! You’ll hurt someone,” Shannon yelled as she ran toward the safety of their cottage, every cell in her body determined to protect her daughter. She yanked open the screen door, pulled it quickly closed behind her and secured the lock, her heart threatening to leap into her throat with every breath.
Samantha started to cry.
“Hush,” Shannon whispered. She peered through the screen, scanning the foliage to determine from which direction the rocks had been thrown. Please, God, don’t let it be Rob. The terror of the months he’d stalked her flared in her mind, a recurring nightmare that never left her. The phone calls. The notes filled with pleas, promises, threats and reminders of the vows she’d made to him, which she’d find on her windshield or taped to the door of her office building so that everyone at work could see. Or worse, the love notes he’d given her during her courtship that she’d find in the pockets of her clothes in her new dwellings. The cold dread that had hovered in the background of her every waking moment at the knowledge that she might turn around when she was walking down the street or purchasing groceries or heading for a meeting and find him watching her.
To her relief, Luke came tearing out of the garage, legs and arms pumping like a seasoned athlete.
“Mary? Where are you?”
Shannon had never been so glad to see muscles before. Surely Luke’s construction-honed physique was intimidation enough to make whoever had thrown the rocks think twice before doing something so irresponsibly dangerous again.
“We’re inside,” she called back, hating the fear that invaded her voice. Hating the fact that she couldn’t stop herself from leaping to the conclusion that Rob had somehow found her. “Someone just threw a couple of rocks at me and Samantha. One’s by the planter. I was sitting in the chair, and it came from behind and hit the planter. It almost got me. The other one landed in the sandbox.”
“Stay inside. I’ll check it out.”
Shannon’s heart ricocheted in her chest as Luke took one look at the planter and the chair where she’d been sitting, then ran toward the trees. Seconds later, his navy T-shirt and jeans were swallowed up by shadows and bristly pine branches. She didn’t want to think what might have happened if he hadn’t been here. What if the first rock had struck her and knocked her unconscious? Or the second rock had hit Samantha?
Caution curbed Luke’s movements as he skirted a thicket of chokecherry, searching for signs of Mary and Samantha’s attacker, scanning the trees and scattered clumps of vegetation for movement and listening for sounds of snapped twigs. What the hell had just happened? This second incident on the heels of the slit tire two days before confirmed that Mary and her daughter were in real danger. From whom? Did this Mary know something about his wife’s killer and someone wanted to silence her? His hair rose on the back of his neck. The stand of pine and aspen was eerily silent—no sound of birds chirping, making him think that someone was still nearby. Watching. Waiting.
“I know you’re there,” he said in an authoritative tone. “Come on out and apologize. That was a really stupid thing to do. Someone could have been seriously hurt.”
Silence met his demand.
“Well, if you won’t come to me, then I’ll come to you.” He strode toward a point in the path strewn with embedded stones, presuming the thrown rocks had originated there. Sure enough, two indentations in the sandy soil exposing fresh dirt confirmed his theory. He glanced in the direction of Mary’s cottage. The only thing visible from this position was the roof. Had a kid decided to use the roof as a target? He examined the ground carefully for footprints or items that might have tumbled from a pocket when the culprit had run off. The ground was hard-packed and sprinkled with a layer of dry pine needles.
He jogged down the path in a direction away from Mary’s cottage. There was no one in sight. Still, he continued on to the nearest cottage, where a man in a damp bathing suit, a bad sunburn ringing his neck, was pouring a bag of charcoal into a hibachi. Three kids ranging in age from maybe four to fourteen were fighting over a bag of hot dogs and a plate of buns.
Luke stopped to ask the man if he’d seen anyone pass by on the path in the last few minutes.
“Sorry. We were in the cottage,” the man replied.
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