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He nodded. His face was ashen. There were beads of sweat just above his chiseled mouth.
She knelt on the floor beside his chair and held his big hand, the one that wasn’t rubbing his eyes. “It’s all right,” she said in a tone of voice that sounded like he imagined an angel of mercy would sound. “It’s all right.”
He didn’t like being babied. He jerked his hand away, and then was sorry when she stood up and backed away, looking hunted.
She couldn’t imagine the memories she’d kindled within him. He was trying to deal with them, and not very successfully. “People say you’re a witch,” he blurted out.
She didn’t take offence. She only nodded. “I know.”
He stared at her. There was something really other-worldly about her. She was almost fragile, despite her height; quiet, docile. She seemed so much at peace with herself and the world. The only turmoil was in her big, soft green eyes, which were looking at him with a mix of sympathy and fear.
“Why are you afraid of me?” he asked suddenly.
She shifted. “It’s nothing personal.”
“Why?”
“You’re very...large,” she faltered. She shivered.
He cocked his head, frowning.
She forced a smile. “I have to go,” she said. “I just wanted you to know what I saw, so that you could keep your eyes open and be alert.”
“We have a fortune invested in surveillance equipment here, mostly because of our prize-winning bulls.”
She nodded. “It won’t matter. They sent a professional assassin after the sheriff in Texas. He had surveillance equipment, too. Or at least I think he did.”
He drew in a long breath. He stood up, calmer now. “I know some people in Texas. Where?”
She shifted uneasily. He towered over her. “South Texas. Somewhere south of San Antonio. I don’t know anything else. Sorry.”
That should be easy to track down. If there’d been a shooting of a law enforcement official, it would be public and he could search for it online. He wanted to do that, if only to prove her so-called vision false.
“Thanks anyway. For the warning.” He smiled with pure sarcasm.
“You don’t believe me. That’s all right. Just...watch where you’re going. Please.” She turned and pulled up her hood.
He recalled that she’d walked here.
“Just a sec,” he said. He went to the hall closet, pulled out a shepherd’s coat and threw it on. “I’ll drive you home,” he said, digging in his pocket for his car keys. Then he remembered that he’d put them on the hook beside the back door. With a grimace, he retrieved them.
“You shouldn’t do that,” she began uneasily.
“What? Drive you home? It’s almost a blizzard. You can’t even see where you’re going in this!” he said, waving his hand toward the window.
“Hang your keys there,” she faltered. There was a strange, opaque look to her eyes. “You shouldn’t do that. He’ll find them there and get access to the house.”
“He, who?” he asked.
She looked up at him and blinked.
“Never mind,” he muttered. “Come on.”
* * *
THEY WERE GOING into the garage when Darby Hanes pulled up in one of the other ranch pickups. He got out, shaking snow off the shoulders of his wool jacket. He seemed surprised to see Merissa, but he tipped his hat to her and smiled.
“Hi, Merissa,” he said.
She smiled back. “Hello, Mr. Hanes.”
“Been riding fence,” he said, sighing. “I came back to get the chain saw. We’ve got a tree across a fence.” He shook his head. “Bad weather, and more forecast.”
Merissa was staring at him without speaking. She moved a step closer. “Mr. Hanes, please don’t take this the wrong way...but...” She bit her lip. “You need to take somebody with you when you cut the tree down.”
He gave her a wide-eyed look. “Excuse me?”
She shifted, as if she was staggering under a burden. “Please?”
“Oh, no, not one of those premonitions?” Darby laughed. “No offense, Miss Baker, but you need to get out more!”
She flushed, embarrassed.
Tank narrowed his eyes as he studied her drawn features. He turned back to Darby. “Let’s err on the side of caution. Take Tim with you.”
Darby sighed and shook his head. “Waste of manpower, but if you say so, I’ll do it, boss.”
“I say so.”
Darby just nodded. His expression was eloquent. Darby had a degree in physics and was a pragmatist. He didn’t believe in that supernatural stuff. Tank didn’t, either, but Merissa’s worried face haunted him. He just grinned at Darby, who threw up his hands and went to find Tim.
Tank led the way to his big black ranch double-cabbed pickup truck and helped her up into the passenger seat.
She looked around with fascination when he climbed in under the wheel, and started the engine.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Can it cook and do laundry, too?” she wondered aloud, her eyes on all the displays and controls. “I mean, it looks as if it can do everything else. Even satellite radio...”
“It’s a big ranch and we spend a lot of time far away from the house. We have GPS, cell phones, you name it. The trucks are loaded with electronics on purpose. Plus big, expensive V-8 engines,” he added with a wicked glance of dark eyes. “If we weren’t green fanatics who generated our own energy, we’d be singled out for our inexcusable use of gasoline.”
“I drive a V-8, too,” she said with a shy smile. “Of course, mine is twenty years old and it only starts when it wants to. It didn’t today.”
He shook his head. “Maybe Darby is right. You do spend too much time alone. You should get a job.”
“I have one,” she said. “I do web design. It means I can work at home.”
“You won’t meet many people that way.”
Her expression went stiff. “I can do without most people. And they can certainly do without me. You said it yourself. People think I’m a witch.” She sighed. “Old Mr. Barnes’s milk cow went dry and he blamed me. He said it was because I lived near him. ‘Everybody knows that witches cause those things,’ he said.”
“Threaten him with a lawsuit. That will shut him up.”
She blinked and turned her head toward him. “Excuse me?”
“Hate speech,” he elaborated.
“Oh. I see.” She sighed. “I’m afraid it would only make things worse. Instead of that witch woman, I’d be that witch woman who sues everybody.”
He chuckled.
She drew in a breath and shivered. She could barely see through the blinding snow as he drove. “I’ll bet you have problems in this sort of weather. They say the old trail drivers used to stay with the cattle herds during storms and sing to them, to calm them, so they were less likely to stampede. The ones I read about were summer storms, though, with lightning.”
He was pleasantly surprised. “Those old trail drivers did baby the cattle. In fact, we have a couple of singing cowboys who do night duty for us with the herds.”
“Are their names Roy and Gene?”
That took him a minute. Then he burst out laughing. “No. Tim and Harry, actually.”
She grinned. Her whole face lit up. She was very pretty, he thought.
“Good one,” he told her with a nod.
They were nearing her cabin. It wasn’t much to look at. It had belonged to a hermit before the Bakers bought it about the time Merissa was born. Her mother’s husband had left suddenly when she was ten. People whispered about the reason. Most people locally thought it was her mother’s eerie abilities that had sent him to the divorce court.
Tank stopped the truck.
“Thanks for the ride,” she said, pulling up her hood. “But you didn’t have to do this.”
“I know. Thanks for the warning.” He hesitated. “What did you see, about Darby?” he asked, hating himself for the question.
She swallowed, hard. “An accident. But if he takes someone with him, I think it will be all right.” She held up a hand. “I know, you don’t believe in all this hoodoo. I don’t know why I was cursed with visions. I just tell what I know, when I think it will help.” Her soft eyes met his dark ones. “You’ve been kind to us over the years, all of you. When we couldn’t get out because of snowdrifts, you’d send groceries. When the car got stuck one time, you had a cowboy drive us home and get the car out.” She smiled. “You’re a kind person. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. So maybe I’m crazy. But please watch your back anyway.”
He smiled gently. “Okay.”
She smiled, shyly, and climbed out of the truck. She closed the door behind her and ran for the porch. Her red cape, against the fluffy white snow, reminded him of the heroine in a movie he’d seen about a werewolf. The red was stark, like blood, in that background of pure white.
An older woman, with silver hair, was waiting. She looked past Merissa and waved a little awkwardly. Merissa waved, too. They both went inside quickly.
Tank sat with the engine idling, staring at the closed door for a minute before he put the truck in gear and drove off.
* * *
“WHAT IN THE world are you laughing about?” Mallory asked his brother as he came into the living room later. Mallory and his wife, Morie, had a baby boy just a few months old—Harrison Barlow Kirk. They were just now able to sleep at night, to the relief of everyone in the household. Of course, Cane, the middle brother, and his wife, Bodie, were expecting. So it would begin all over again in the spring. Nobody minded. The brothers were all gooey over the baby.
A huge Christmas tree sat in the corner, with presents already piled up to the first set of limbs. It was an artificial tree. Morie was allergic to the live ones.
Tank was chuckling. “You remember the Bakers?”
“The strange folk in the cabin?” Mallory said with a grin. “Merissa and her mother, Clara. Sure.”
“Merissa came over to warn me about an assassination attempt.”
Mallory did a double take. “A what?”
“She says a man is coming to kill me.”
“Would you like to explain why?”
“She said it was related to the shooting in Arizona, when I was with the border patrol,” he explained, still uneasy from the memory. “One of the shooters thinks I could recognize his companion and cause trouble for a politician who plans to run for federal office. Drug-related stuff.”
“How did she know?”
Tank made a weird sound and waved his hands. “She had a vision!”
“I wouldn’t laugh too hard at that,” Mallory said strangely. “She warned a local woman about driving across a bridge. She said she had a vision of it collapsing. The woman went over it anyway a day later and the bridge fell out from under her. She barely survived.”
Tank frowned. “Eerie.”
“Some people have abilities that other people don’t believe in,” Mallory replied. “Every community has somebody who can talk out fire or talk off warts, dowse for water, even get glimpses of the future. It isn’t logical...you can’t prove it by scientific method. But I’ve seen it in action. You might recall that we have a well because I hired a dowser to come out here and find water for us.”
“A water witch.” Tank shivered. “Well, I don’t believe in that stuff and I never will.”
“I just hope Merissa was wrong.” He clapped an affectionate arm across his brother’s shoulders. “I’d hate to lose you.”
Tank laughed. “You won’t. I’ve survived a war and a handgun attack. I guess maybe I’m indestructible.”
“Nobody is that.”
“I was lucky, then.”
Mallory laughed. “Very.”
* * *
DALTON SAT DOWN with his laptop, having recalled Merissa’s statement about a sheriff in south Texas being shot.
He sipped coffee and laughed at himself for even believing such a wild tale. Until he looked through recent San Antonio news reports and discovered that a sheriff in Jacobs County, south of San Antonio, had been the victim of a recent assassination attempt by persons unknown, but believed to be involved with a notorious drug cartel across the border in Mexico.
Tank caught his breath and gaped at the screen. Sheriff Hayes Carson of Jacobs County, Texas, had been wounded by a would-be assassin in November, and later kidnapped, along with his fiancée, by members of a drug cartel from over the border. The sheriff and his fiancée, who was a local newspaper publisher, had given a brief interview about their ordeal. The leader of the drug cartel himself, whom his enemies called El Ladŕon—the thief—was killed by what was described as hand grenades tossed under his armored car near a town called Cotillo, across the border in Mexico. The assassin hadn’t been caught.
Tank leaned back in his chair with a rough sigh. He was disturbed by what Merissa had told him about his own ordeal, details that only his brothers and members of law enforcement had ever known. She couldn’t have found out in any conventional way.
Unless...well, she had a computer. She did website design.
His brain was working overtime. She had enough expertise to be able to break into protected files. That had to be it. Somehow, she’d managed to access that information about him from some government website.
The difficulties with that theory didn’t penetrate his confused brain. He wasn’t willing to consider the idea that a young woman who barely knew him had some supernatural access to his mind. Everyone with any sense knew that psychics were swindlers who just told people what they wanted to hear and made a living at it. There was no such thing as precognition or any of those other things.
