Intimate Secrets

Claustrophobia. It was his only failing. But also the only thing that still aroused him to the point of rapture. The ultimate. The little death. It gave him an edge other people didn’t have. Would never understand.

He couldn’t wait to get inside. He couldn’t wait to find exactly what he was looking for. A hole. Something small enough he would have to squeeze through. A space beyond the hole, far enough off the tour route that no one could find him. A place where he could finish what he’d started.

At the top, he had to wait for the rest of the group. He tried not to be impatient as he stood at the mouth of the entrance and gazed down into the confining darkness. Soon, he thought, soon.

The tour guide led the group through the caverns, pointing out stalactites and stalagmites, flowstone and dripstone. He paid little attention. He knew all about caves. He did listen, though, when the guide spoke about one of the first explorers getting lost, losing his candle and spending three days in the dark, unable to move. The man had been temporarily blind and completely disoriented from the days in total blackness.

More than five hundred feet into the cave, he found what he was looking for. The perfect place to disappear into the blinding darkness.

He hung back in the small room, pretending to admire the iciclelike lime deposits, wondering if the tour guide would miss him. He doubted it, out of a group of more than a dozen. They were all more interested in the rock formations than some nondescript tourist.

The group began to move on. He waited behind a large stalagmite. “Do we have everyone?” the tour guide inquired. No one said anything and the light diminished as the tour moved on, leaving him alone in the dark.

He waited, standing in the dizzying darkness, his face frozen in fear. He loved this part the best. The absolute blackness. The chilling silence. The disorientation that set in within seconds. He thought of the explorer down here without his candle. Trapped. Unable to see anything. Unable to move. And no one to hear his cries for help.

When he couldn’t take another second of it, he snapped on the tiny flashlight he’d brought and shone it into the hole he’d found. Small. Just enough room to barely get through. He got down on his hands and knees, then his belly, and taking a ragged breath, wriggled into the narrow tunnel.

He slithered like a snake, deeper and deeper into the confined cavity, squirming around the tight blind corners. Five minutes in, the tunnel ended in a solid rock wall.

He froze. He couldn’t go on any farther. Nor could he turn around. This would do just fine. The perfect place to hide a small child.

He started to back out, but his body stuck, now suddenly too large for the cramped rock channel he’d wormed through. Instantly, sweat cloaked his already-clammy body. The constant fifty-degree air raised goose bumps, chilling him. He fought for each breath, but let the panic come, the euphoria of fear.

He tried backing out again. If he’d come through it, he could get out, right? Except he’d come through headfirst, and since there wasn’t enough room to turn around, he had no choice but to go out feet first. Feet first like a corpse.

Prostrate, he dug in with his toes, inching backward, squeezing through the tight, constricting passage, the claustrophobia taunting him: “You’ll never get out. The rocks are compressing, the hole contracting, the mountain closing in on you.”

His mouth went dry as dust. He gasped for breath, his heart lunging in his chest. Minutes ticked off like hours. The tiny flashlight banged against a rock, dimmed, almost went out.

He was breathing hard now, but the air seemed too thin. Maybe he’d made a wrong turn. But he knew better. He struggled for each breath, each inch backward, the hole now endless as eternity. Or hell. His hell.

Then suddenly his toes lost purchase. Nothing but air. Air and space. He shoved himself backward with his hands and slipped through the opening, scrambling out of the hole.

Free.

For a few more desperate moments, he stood in the room where the tour group had left him behind, shining the light across the ghostly rock formations, forcing back the claustrophobia the way he forced back the dark.

He didn’t have much time. He gripped the flashlight, suddenly afraid he might drop it. That he might be the one who ended up trapped down here in the deafening darkness.

The irony amused him as much as the bitter taste of his own fear. He stood, just long enough to catch his breath, then hurriedly wound his way through the cold cavity until he was within earshot of the tour group, the worn trail easy to follow. He waited until the guide moved on to the next item of interest before he caught up and fell in with the others.

Then it was over. One last rock-carved wide tunnel and he was back outside again, more than three hundred feet below the entrance, walking down another paved path, smiling smugly, feeling triumphant.

But the euphoria never lasted long.

Fortunately, he’d be back. For the cave’s dark, confined allure. For a well-deserved ending to the two years he’d lost. He’d make up for it. In spades. Once he’d snatched the kid, he’d finally get what was rightfully his.

He chuckled to himself as he looked across the mountainside toward Three Forks, Montana. Wouldn’t Josie O’Malley be surprised when she saw him. Soon, Josie. Real soon.

Chapter One

Josie reined in her horse and looked out at the valley that ran spring green to the still-snowcapped mountain peaks.

“Look at that, Ivy,” she whispered as she hugged the toddler in front of her, resting her chin on top of her daughter’s blond head. “Isn’t it pretty?”

The sun slipped behind the mountains, turning the Montana sky a brilliant orange that radiated across the horizon, making the last of the day glow as warm and bright as any Josie had ever seen.

“Pwetty,” her fourteen-month-old repeated.

Ivy’s hair still had that baby smell, the loose curls a pale blond and down-soft, so much like Josie’s own. Ivy looked just as Josie had at that age. Except for her eyes. Instead of being the color of bluebonnets, they were a startling deep, dark brown—just like the baby’s father’s.

Because of that, Josie never looked at her daughter without being reminded of him—and Texas. Each brought an ache of its own.

As beautiful as Montana was, it wasn’t Texas. This time of year, the Texas hill country would be alive with bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush against a backdrop of live oak. The air would be scented with cedar.

So different from Montana. She stared out at the lush landscape and breathed in the sweet scent of pine. The Buffalo Jump Ranch, surrounded by snowy peaks, towering pines and rocky bluffs, was thousands of miles from Texas—and the past.

But more important, she’d found what she wanted to do with her life here in Montana. For the first time, Josie O’Malley felt truly at peace.

The realization startled her. She’d always felt at odds with the diminutive flaxen-haired sprite with the bright blue eyes she saw staring back at her from the mirror. They said she looked like her mother, but her father and brothers assured her she was nothing like sweet-tempered, soft-spoken Katherine Donovan O’Malley had been.

Instead, Josie had a wild spirit, as wild as the Texas land she’d grown up in, with a rebellious temperament her father said came from her namesake, her great-grandmother Josephine O’Malley.

Josie didn’t mind the comparison to her great-grandmother, who’d been a Wild West rodeo trick rider. In fact, Josie had clung to her rebellious spirit when her father and older brothers had tried to break it the same way they broke their horses—by trying to break her will. In the end, they’d only succeeded in driving her away.

As she hugged her daughter in the fading light, Josie realized with more than a little surprise how far she’d come—and not in miles. For the first time, she really did feel…ready. Maybe now she could do what she’d sworn on her great-grandmother’s memory she would do.

The horse nickered softly beneath them, his ears coming up as he raised his head and sniffed the warm breeze. Suddenly his ears lay back as if he saw something in the trees.

Josie tensed as well, her gaze going past the aspens to the dark edge of pines that bordered the horse ranch to the north. The first shadows of evening had settled in the trees, but she was close enough that she could see him. A man. Standing not fifty feet away. Looking right at her. Watching her and Ivy.

Startled, Josie jerked the reins, making the horse jump to the side, making her lose sight of the man as she held Ivy to her. She steadied the horse, upset with herself for treating the mare with such roughness, and focused again on the pines.

An icy shaft of fear sliced through her, bone-deep, as she stared into the shadows, frantically searching for the man she’d seen. A man she’d recognized.

But no one looked back at her from the shadowed darkness of the trees. Nothing moved. Not the thick, dark branches of the pines. Not the silver-sided, coinlike leaves of the aspens. Certainly not the man she’d thought she’d seen standing there, watching her and Ivy.

The sun slipped behind the mountains, shadows deepening. Suddenly the day no longer felt warm. Or safe.

Josie reined the horse around and, hugging her daughter to her, rode toward the small cabin that had become her home, afraid to look back. At the pines. Or the past.

Afraid to acknowledge who she’d thought she’d glimpsed watching her from the shelter of the trees.

A man who’d been dead for more than two years.

JOSIE WOKE WITH A START, jerking upright, heart pounding, her gaze at once darting to the crib in the bedroom across the hall.

Sun streamed in the window, blinding her. The crib appeared empty. In that instant, the memory of the man she’d seen yesterday in the trees came back, as dark and ominous as an omen.