Chapter Thirteen
Sarah gasped. “Slashed?” Her breath strangled in her throat. “As in cut? Like with a ... knife?”
“Looks like it,” he said. “Easy now. I’m at the truck. Chief King is on his way over.”
“Who could have done this? Was it Ridley Kemper? And—and did anybody see anyone doing it?”
“Doubt there were witnesses. In this dense fog, probably none of the town parking lot’s video cameras will be able to capture good images.”
“I’ll come over to the lot right now.”
“No! Sarah, listen. Is your dad still in the diner?”
“Yes, he’s here.”
“Go sit with him and stay there. Tell him what’s happened. Do not leave. Understand?”
Sarah shivered. “Yes, all right.”
“After the Chief examines the truck and the scene, he’ll want to have the video feed checked, just in case. Then, I’ll have the truck towed to a garage for replacement tires.”
“Thank you for doing that,” she said. “Let Bernard Simmons know. He’s our local mechanic. Tell him to send me the bill.”
“I’ll call Simmons, but I’ll pay. This happened on my watch and that pisses me off. When it’s finished, I’ll get you.” He drew a hard breath. “Even if a hurricane blows the town away or an earthquake levels every building, do not leave the diner.”
Promising to stay put, Sarah took a stool beside her dad and made a whispered explanation. She didn’t want to alarm the whole place.
His face darkening, Big Jim glowered around the restaurant as though the perpetrator might be lurking in a booth. “Whoever this bastard is bedeviling you, I’ve a mind to ventilate him with my .45.”
“I know, Dad.”
“Want me to drive you home? You’re safer there.”
“No, Ben will pick me up when he’s ready. I need to stay here. With you.”
“Oh, I’m not going anywhere until he gets here.” His brow furrowed, he cast another suspicious glance around the diner. “I just wish the jackass threatening you would make a move when I’m there.”
“I don’t want him to make any moves at all.” She folded her arms tight about her body.
“We’ve got Ben now,” Jim said. “He’ll get to the bottom of this crap. Rio sent the best.”
Milly came out of the kitchen carrying loaded plates of food. When she saw that Sarah was still there, she delivered the plates and came over. “What’s got you both frowning so hard?”
Quickly, Sarah filled her in.
Appalled, Milly gave her a tight hug.
****
An hour and a half later, Ben finished dealing with the Chief of Police, had new tires put on Sarah’s truck, and pulled up to the diner to collect her.
Fortunately, this time she’d obeyed orders and was still inside, accompanied by her father, who came out with her.
“I don’t like this,” Big Jim growled to Ben. When Sarah jumped into the passenger seat, Jim leaned in her open window.
“Me, either,” Ben said. “This guy, whoever he is, is escalating.” He ticked off the transgressions. “First emails, then phone hang ups, then a note. Now he’s cut her tires. Next will be physical violence.”
Sarah shuddered.
“He’s getting bolder,” Jim said. “I’ll see you back at the ranch. I’m heading over to pick up a tractor part, and then I’ll be there.”
Jim strode away and Ben scowled grimly. He turned to Sarah.
“This means that from now on, I’m stuck to your side.
Wherever you go, I’m with you. I’m talking about on the ranch, too.
You don’t even go to the barn without me.
When you’re in the kitchen, I’m in the kitchen.
When you go to the restroom, I’m outside the door. ”
She looked surprised. “You don’t think the ranch is safe?”
“There’s a lot of open space there. A lot of places to hide.” He pulled out and started down the highway. “This guy is ramping up. We can’t take chances.”
“I just wish I knew who was doing this. And why.”
“If it’s Ridley Kemper, we know why. He’s bat shit crazy. Insane people do insane things.”
She chewed a finger. “I’ll never forget that day he attacked me. It’s branded in my brain, every second, like a movie I’ve seen a thousand times. In slow motion, it scrolls past my mind, frame-by-frame, in awful detail.”
“You experienced trauma. Your mind won’t let you forget.” As they drove, some of the fog lifted and a few spears of sunlight slanted through the mists. “But in time, the memory should start to fade.” He hesitated. “He didn’t actually injure you that day, did he?”
“Just some pretty bad bruising, nothing serious. I was so lucky the neighbor guys were there to stop him. I can’t help thinking about what might have happened if they hadn’t been home.”
Ben’s hands tightened on the wheel so hard his knuckles turned white. “Wish I’d been there.”
****
When Ben pulled up to the ranch gate, Sarah gasped.
Ben swore out loud. “Goddammit to hell!”
As one, they stared ahead. Instead of closed and locked in place as it should have been, the automatic gate gaped wide open.
“Your dad is running an errand, so this wasn’t left open by him.” Ben leaned out his window to inspect the security panel. “Doesn’t look broken. Looks like somebody opened it on purpose.” His features hardened. “Where’s Willie?”
Sarah felt the blood drain from her face. “He’s supposed to be building the new chicken coop. At the barn.”
Driving fast, Ben hurtled the truck in record time down the long driveway to the house. What they saw there was even more shocking than the open gates.
A news van with antenna on top beside two passenger vehicles was parked head in.
At least eight people filled the yard. A couple of men in khakis and loud shirts sat on the corral fence like they owned the place.
Another with a Mohawk dyed purple snooped into the open barn doors.
Three young women sat on the porch petting the dogs and another man hefted a television camera.
The last man, older than the others and wearing a loudly striped suit and fedora, turned to smile at the approaching truck.
Ben stared. “What the hell?”
“Oh no,” Sarah breathed. “The press. This is the first time they found the ranch.”
“Know any of them personally?”
With a sinking heart, she looked at their faces and didn’t see anyone familiar. But she recognized the breed.
Eagerly, they spotted her in the cab, and with avid expressions common to their kind, they pointed and a few started for her, the man in the striped suit leading the way.
“Stay in the cab,” Ben growled. “When I get out, lock the doors.”
“Wait, Ben!” She grabbed his arm. “Don’t tell them I’m being stalked.” She sure didn’t need to see that headline in the tabloids.
Ben slammed out of the truck. He came around the hood. He met the three men who approached Sarah by standing between them and the vehicle.
With her window cracked, Sarah could hear everything.
“It’s her. It’s Sarah. There she is,” one called out, grinning. He carried a clipboard and a pen. “Super Sarah, when are you coming back? Your public needs you. We love you!”
The man with the camera raised it to his shoulders.
Ben stood, legs spread, hands on his hips. “This is private property and you’re trespassing.”
“Please forgive the intrusion,” the man in the suit said, his smile never abating. Appearing to be in charge, he halted before Ben. “I’m Yancy, senior editor of the news magazine Starstruck! Perhaps you’ve heard of it?”
“No. How’d you get past the security gates?”
“We just want a word with Sarah.” Yancy took off his fedora and used it to gesture at her in the truck.
“It’s such a thrill to find her. Since she’s fallen off the face of the earth these past months, our readers have been demanding news.
And here she is, hidden away in this quaint place.
” He raised both arms, encompassing the clapboard house, the corral, the alfalfa field. “Imagine! The old-timey country.”
Behind him the camera started whirring, capturing everything for the cable television edition of Starstruck! When Yancy moved to do an end-run around Ben headed for Sarah, Ben stepped in his path. He grabbed the man by the front of his fancy suit.
Showing a ferocity she hadn’t seen in him before, Ben shook the other man like a rag doll. “I said, how’d you get past the gate?”
Yancy’s face turned pink, then purple. He sputtered, choked, dug at Ben’s hand to no avail. On the porch, the women made little screams of protest and came down the steps.
“It—it was open,” Yancy got out. “Unlocked.”
Ben shook him again, rattled his brains. “You’re lying, Yancy. That gate is always locked.”
The three women had by now reached Ben. They were both tattooed and scantily dressed.
“No, it’s true,” one girl cried out. “Through some Internet digging we found out about this place—that Super Sarah grew up here. The last time we came looking for her we went to the local town. They told us she’d moved to Australia to train crocodiles.
Of course we didn’t believe them, and this time we were determined to find her.
And we did! The gate wasn’t closed, so we drove up. ”
Letting Yancy go with a little shove, Ben returned his hands to his hips. “All right,” he said. “Get off the property. Now.”
The man with the clipboard braced Ben. “Look, we just want a word with Sarah. To see if she’s all right. She’s a public figure, you know. She owes the world an explanation for her sudden disappearance from the public eye.” He flicked a glance at Sarah.
“She doesn’t owe you or the world shit. Now, get off.”
The man stepped forward, nose-to-nose with Ben. “Not until we hear from Sarah herself that she—”
That was the last word he got out.
Ben grabbed him by the shirt collar just as he’d done to Yancy, but he didn’t just shake the other. He slammed the man into the truck’s hood, making it rattle. His body bounced off, and Ben followed up that move by getting in his face. Ben’s features solidified, his eyes turned pitiless.
Watching from inside the truck, even Sarah was frightened.
“Somebody’s about to get hurt,” Ben said with a composure belied by his violent action. “Bad. Guess who?” With both hands, Ben pulled the man off the truck and slammed him back again. The man yelped.
Again, Sarah rocked in her seat.
She’d seen and felt the tender, gentle side of Ben Paxton. Now, she observed the other side. She saw the fierce warrior quality which also defined him.
“Get. In. Your. Vehicles.” Ben bit off each word.
Muttering bitterly amongst themselves, the crowd one-by-one climbed into the news van and passenger cars and began rolling away.
Out his window, Yancy said, “You can’t hide her away here forever.”
Ben watched them disappear down the drive. Coming around the hood, he waited for Sarah to unlock the doors and he leaped inside. “We’ll follow to make certain they’re off the property and the gate’s properly closed.”
She nodded.
As they approached the gate, the last sedan drove through. Waiting outside was Big Jim in his pickup. When he came through the gate, it closed behind him.
He held up a hand to Ben and pulled his truck adjacent to the window. “Trouble in town. Local woman was just attacked. Happened in a dark alley behind the pharmacy.”
Sarah gasped and Ben’s frown deepened.
“What happened?” Ben asked.
“The woman was stabbed. The man assaulting her called her Sarah. Her name isn’t Sarah. It’s Annie.”