In Sight Of The Enemy

She hesitated, torn. Her brother had made no bones about his feelings about Shane when he and Cassie had broken up. But the decision was taken out of her hands, along with the phone.

Ignoring her glare, Shane took a few steps away, holding the cordless to his ear. “Hawk. What the hell’s going on?”

“Get her out of there, Farhold. You’ve got to keep her safe. You owe her that much, at least.”

The censure in the man’s voice didn’t come as a surprise. For all intents and purposes, he’d left Cassie alone and pregnant. Even if he had known about the baby, it wouldn’t have changed what happened between the two of them. Couldn’t change it even now.

“I heard most of what you told her on the phone,” he said evenly. “And there was a car leaving as I came up the lane. You think the couple in it was after her? But why?”

“I’m as certain as I can be. So is the FBI. They’re involved in this case, too. I don’t have time to go into it. Just get her to town and watch her every second. I’ll get there as soon as I can, and the Bureau is sending agents, as well. The danger is real, Shane. Make her believe it. And keep her safe. This guy who’s after her, he’s—” The line went abruptly dead.

“Hawk?” When there was no answer, he clicked off the phone and looked at Cassie. “His phone must have gone dead. Was he calling from his cell?”

“Check the caller ID.” He pressed the button on the receiver that should have displayed the numbers of incoming calls. The screen remained blank.

“Looks like it was your phone that went dead.”

She went to the den and retrieved her cell phone from its cradle. As she reentered the living room, she flicked on the light switch, then stopped midstride when the light failed to go on. She swallowed hard, caught his gaze on her. “The electricity is off.”

A grim mask slid over his expression. “Any chance it happened earlier today and you just didn’t notice?”

She thought for a moment. “I used the microwave and the stove about three hours before you got here. It could have gone off anytime since then, I suppose.”

He went to the window, peered out into the rapidly descending dusk. “There’s no sign of anyone out front. Any other way to get to the ranch without using the lane?”

“Not unless someone got to the main road and cut the fence, came up a quarter mile or so from here and circled around back.” The likelihood of that scenario was remote. But then, the whole scene Hawk had warned her of had a vaguely surreal aspect to it.

“Grab a bag and throw a few things together,” Shane said. “You’re staying with me until we get this figured out.” As he spoke he moved to the door, locked it. She stared at him, swaying a bit on her feet as his figure moved into and out of focus. His words seemed to come from a distance and there was an all too familiar sense of velocity, as though she was being catapulted through space. Her pulse galloped as her vision dimmed, rainbows arrayed beneath her eyelids. The cell phone slipped from her hand, clattered unnoticed to the floor. And then it was as if a giant curtain was slung aside, bits of mental images whirling and colliding before forming yet another scene.

Shane was striding across the room in front of the window. There was the sound of a shot, and the glass shattered, spraying across the room.

“Cass!”

She blinked rapidly, noting the insistence in the word, if not the meaning. Her vision cleared, leaving her feeling weak and limp. She was seated, although she didn’t remember sitting down, and Shane was kneeling in front of her, his hands over hers, his face concerned.

“Are you all right?”

“Fine.” She tried to summon a smile, doubted she pulled it off. Rising, she prayed her knees would hold her. “I’ll get a bag. You’ll need to lock the other two doors.”

Shane got to his feet, still watching her strangely. “I already did.”

Although she had no memory of it at all, she nodded. “I’ll just be a minute.” She took several steps before hesitating, flashes of that last mental image appearing again in her mind. “Come with me.”

He did, driven out of an anxiety he didn’t voice. She was still white, still shaky, and he didn’t trust her to not collapse before making it to her room. But she moved at record speed, dragging a small bag out of her closet and throwing in a change of clothes, then crossing to the adjoining bath to pack some toiletries. He went to the window in her room and looked out, the lengthening shadows making it difficult to see anything. It’d be fully dark in another fifteen minutes. Night never used to hold any particular fears for him. Not until he discovered firsthand how many black-hearted thieves and murderers prowled beneath its mantle. The knowledge was enough to keep his instincts razor sharp.

He looked up as Cassie reentered the room, noted that she’d regained a bit of color. “Let’s go,” he said, taking her elbow and leading her out the door. “We can contact Hawk again once we get to town.”

“I could call him now from my cell.”

“It’s going to take someone with a better hand at electronics than me to put your cell phone back together, if it can be salvaged at all.” At her blank look, he added, “You dropped it. Remember?”

But when she got to the living room and saw the pieces of what had been her phone heaped on the end table, she bit her lip. The truth was, she didn’t remember. Not the moments leading up to the vision, not those immediately following it.

A feeling of unease stabbed through her. The episodes had never before occurred so closely together. She needed to get the ingredients for the tea from the kitchen and pack it for her trip to town. In addition to their increasing frequency, the experiences were also getting stronger.

She was crossing to the kitchen when something made her turn. Her blood froze as she saw Shane close the curtain beside one window, approach the next to do the same thing.

“Stay away from the window!”

Her voice was sharp as she started toward him. He turned his head, frowned, but never broke his stride. “Get the rest of your things, Cass. I’ll feel better once I have you back in town.”

His words were lost on her. Racing across the room, she dove at him, hitting him square in the back and knocking him to the floor. As if on cue, the window above them exploded, tiny shards of glass raining down on them as they lay, panting for breath, on the floor.

She’d landed on top of him when she fell, but the impact had driven the air from her lungs. As she hauled in oxygen, she heard him mutter, “What the hell? Are you all right?”

“Someone…shot at you.” Gulping for air, she raised her head and pointed. He followed the direction with his gaze, stilled when he saw the splintered hole in the side of the entertainment center, which had been directly to his left.

“You saw someone out there?” He grasped her elbows, raised her to her feet, none too gently. “And you still raced over here putting yourself in line of the bullet?” He gave her a shake, his face harsh. “You try something like that again, and pregnant or not, I’ll paddle your ass.”

Her lungs had returned to normal, as had her temper. “You could try, anyway.” Yanking herself from his grasp, she moved cautiously until she was out of the line of vision from any of the windows. Only then did she rise. When she did, she found Shane right beside her. She didn’t remember him being able to move that fast before. Or that silently.

“You don’t want to push me, Cass.” There was a thread of meanness to his voice that was as unfamiliar as the bleakness in his eyes. “I’m not the same man you knew a few months ago.”

Her stomach hollowed out, and the danger surrounding them abruptly receded in the face of the truth in his words. She’d already recognized that, hadn’t she, the moment she’d opened the door and seen him again? There was a far more subtle difference than the scar tracing down his throat. And whatever had caused the difference, she was achingly aware he’d suffered profoundly for it. “Who are you, then?” she whispered, not expecting an answer.

He stared at her for a long moment, before stepping back and turning away. His voice sounded raw when he responded. “Damned if I know.”

Struggling to make sense of his words, she watched as he went to the gun cabinet on the wall. Her jaw dropped open as he opened it and took out a rifle. The sight of Dr. Shane Farhold with a gun in his hands, and, she recognized incredulously, handling it with some degree of familiarity, was incomprehensible. He’d never made any secret of his disapproval of gun ownership. He’d lost too many gunshot wound victims on the operating table, he’d once told her, to have any respect for gun advocates’ argument promoting the so-called right to bear arms. She’d understood the source of his distaste, even if she hadn’t agreed with it.

So it was doubly shocking to see him hefting the rifle to his shoulder, sighting it, before lowering it to ask, “Where do you keep the ammunition?”

It took a couple attempts before she could manage an answer. “Top shelf, hallway closet.” As he strode off, she carefully made her way to the wall, wincing as shards of glass crunched beneath her feet. Sidling along the wall to the window, she reached out, pulled the curtain.

A beam of light appeared, as Shane approached her again. “I found flashlights up there, too.”

“Hawk believes in being prepared.” And so did she. Without a word, she reached out, took the flash-light from him and went to the gun case. If her brother was right, there were two people outside waiting for them. With both her and Shane armed, the odds evened.

“I don’t get it. According to Hawk, the couple who was here earlier has orders to kidnap me.” The words sounded even more ludicrous for being spoken out loud. “So why would they be shooting?”

“The shot wasn’t meant for you. If your brother is right, they’ll want you alive. Right now I’m the only person standing between you and them.” His voice was matter of fact in the near darkness. “By eliminating me, they’ll be a heck of a lot closer to their goal.”

“Like hell,” Cassie muttered. She had no idea what Hawk was involved in, or how it affected her. But she knew intuitively that if the couple outside ever succeeded in their mission, she’d never return to the ranch alive.

Memory flickered, of the dream that had haunted her all her life. The stranger on her doorstep wasn’t the murderer from her nightmares. The two men had different coloring and physical builds. But that didn’t mean that her kidnapping wouldn’t start a sequence of events that would result in the final enactment of the dream.

She may have to accept the finality of her own end, but she’d never accept that for her unborn child.

“Shine that light over here so I can load.”