In Plain Sight

He opened a tube of salve and smeared it over the gash on her arm, then fastened it with a neat row of butterfly bandages and wrapped it in gauze.

“Are you allergic to any antibiotics?” he asked her.

She shook her head.

Dan hesitated, then gave her one of the tablets the doctor in Crystal Creek had prescribed for him recently when he cut his hand on some dirty barbed wire and developed a painful infection. He knew it wasn’t smart to use a prescription on another person, but this was an emergency. And, as fearful as she obviously was of being discovered, the woman was hardly going to agree to see a doctor, no matter how he pressured her.

By the time he finished bandaging her arm, she was drifting off to sleep, her wet head lolling drowsily.

“I need to get you a dryer for that hair,” he said.

“Hack it off,” she murmured.

“Beg your pardon?”

“I don’t want to bother with it. I’m too tired.” She looked up at him with bleary appeal. “Couldn’t we just get some scissors and cut it all off?”

“But I can’t—”

“Please,” she said, “it needs to be cut, anyway. God knows, I don’t care how it looks. Let’s just get rid of it.”

With some reluctance Dan got his scissors and razor comb from a drawer and cut her matted, tangled hair, trimming it neatly around her ears the same way he cut Chris’s.

He tossed the damp strands in the wastebasket, then toweled her hair so it stood up around her face in damp little spikes.

“It’s still wet,” he told her. “I’ll need to dry it before you go to bed.”

She examined herself ruefully in the mirror, touching the little spikes. “At least it won’t take long.”

She lowered herself gingerly onto the edge of the tub while Dan stood above her to blow-dry her hair. Now that it was short, it looked considerably darker than it had in the newspaper photograph. And the gamine cut was surprisingly attractive with her delicate features.

“You look nice,” he said.

She didn’t respond, just leaned back with her eyes closed.

“Do you still want something to eat?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Not hungry anymore. Just…so tired.”

Dan helped her up and guided her into his bedroom, tucked her into the double bed and pulled the covers over her body. She looked up at him in exhausted silence, her features washed silver by the moonlight.

“Thank you,” she murmured. “So wonderful. Thank you.”

“Go to sleep,” he told her gruffly.

She snuggled down in the covers and he sat on the mattress beside her, trying to think.

There was no other empty bed in the little house. If he slept on the sofa and the kids found him there, they were certainly going to wonder why. Dan had no choice other than to share his bed with her.

He tidied the bathroom and disposed of the drying curls of hair, then returned to his bedroom, closed the door and slid under the covers next to his unexpected guest. Every nerve in his body was conscious of her slender body curled next to him, the clean sent of her hair and the soft sound of her breathing.

Hands behind his head, he stared at the ceiling and wondered what could have happened to make this beautiful woman drive her car over a cliff. Who was after her, and why was she so afraid of the police?

Either the woman was mentally unbalanced or she was involved in something illegal. In either case he’d probably been a fool to bring her into his house. Again he thought of his children sleeping nearby and felt a chill of alarm.

But even though he’d caught the woman raiding his fridge, she hadn’t seemed like a crazy person or a criminal. Just a woman in pain, and Dan, who spent his life caring for children and animals, had a hard time not feeling sympathy for anybody who was hurt.

Still, he couldn’t take any chances with the safety of his kids. Until he knew what was going on here, he needed to get them away from the house.

Reluctantly, he decided to bundle them all up first thing in the morning and take them over to Mary and Bubba. They could stay a few days, help with the ostriches and have the run of Bubba’s sprawling ranch.

Dan’s uncle and his wife were always pleading with him to let them help look after the kids, but Dan resisted, stubbornly maintaining that the care of his children was his responsibility.

Now, maybe he’d take them up on their offer. Mary could take the kids to the school bus on Monday morning. By then he should know what was going on with Isabel Delgado, and why she’d turned up in his kitchen trying to steal his food.

Slipping noiselessly from the bed, Dan padded into the kitchen to retrieve the folded newspaper from the wastebasket. He switched on the back-porch light and read the article again, then stared for a long time at the woman’s face, her disarmingly lopsided smile and the expensive haircut he’d just demolished.

Finally he went back to his bedroom, carrying the paper, and tucked it away in the top drawer of his dresser. The woman was sleeping peacefully, her face innocent and sweet in the pale moonlight. When Dan settled next to her, she reached out her bandaged arm and touched his shoulder, nestling close to him.

The move was automatic and without seduction. Dan drew away from her gently, taking care not to hurt her injured arm. She smiled in her sleep, the same, crooked smile the newspaper photograph had caught.

He patted her shoulder, then rolled over and lay alone on his side of the bed, wide awake and troubled, wondering what in hell he was getting himself into.

CHAPTER FOUR

SOMETIMES WHEN ELLIE was deeply asleep, noises that were, in reality, happening around her somehow got into her dreams.

She lay in the darkness, only partially awake, and realized the same thing had just happened. She’d been dreaming about running through a dim cavern, where a bottomless river lapped at her feet and she was in constant danger of falling into the water.

Cody Pollock ran just behind her, his jeering young face exultant with triumph.

“I’ve got you now!” he shouted, reaching for her, so close that Ellie could see the inflamed pimples on his cheeks. “Now there’s just two choices, Gibson. You can come and play nice with me, or you can jump into that river. What’s it gonna be?”

In the background of her dream Ellie could hear the voices of other boys and girls who looked on and talked in muffled tones, enjoying her terror.

Frantically she tried to find some way out of the cavern, but she’d reached a blank wall and there was no escape. She saw Cody’s horrible face and cruel hands, then the dark, swollen river…

Sweating and whimpering with fear, Ellie awoke fully and lay staring at the window screens.

It was a dream, she told herself, hugging her thin body. Just a stupid dream. Cody Pollock was nowhere close to her. If he ever came to this farm and tried to hurt her, her father would kill him.

That was when she realized some of the noises from her nightmare were still going on, drifting to her from inside the little house. She could even see a dim light in the hallway, like that partially lit cavern in her dream. And she heard the distant sound of splashing, running water, along with her father’s deep voice and an occasional soft reply.

Ellie frowned, wondering what was happening, then relaxed.

Probably Chris had had one of her accidents, and Daddy was cleaning her up. When their mother had first gone away, Chris used to wet the bed all the time, but she was getting a lot better now and it hardly ever happened anymore.

In fact, Ellie thought drowsily, most of the bad stuff started happening two years ago, right after their mother left.