Andy giggled again. “At least she’s buying extra eggs next week. I was thinking maybe we could celebrate by getting ice cream on the way home,” Andy said. “I’ll treat you with my own money.”
“Hmm, that sounds like an offer I can’t resist.”
Minutes later they were seated in the ice cream shop with sundaes before them. “Mom, can I ask you a question?” Andy swirled his spoon through his hot fudge.
“You can always ask me anything,” she replied.
“When did you know Mr. Jake before?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, not sure she understood.
“He said he was an old friend of yours, but I never saw him before.”
“He was my best friend when I was in high school,” she replied.
“So, what happened? Why didn’t you stay best friends?”
“He went away for work, and then I got married to your daddy and Jake and I just lost touch with each other. Why all the questions?”
“I was just wondering,” Andy replied. “I like Mr. Jake a lot. He was so nice to me when we went fishing together.”
She wanted to tell her son not to get too attached to Jake, that ultimately he wouldn’t be in their lives for long. But of course she didn’t say any of that.
In any case, before she could reply, the door to the ice cream parlor swung open and Robert Stephenson and Bobby came in.
Bobby rushed over to where they sat, and the two boys high-fived each other in greeting. “We were just walking by and saw the two of you in here,” Robert said. “Mind if we join you?”
“Not at all,” Eva replied, although she felt slightly uncomfortable knowing that Robert was on the list of people who had bought a knife from Riley Kincaid. She had no idea if Wayne had spoken to him about it yet or not.
Robert and Bobby got their ice cream and then settled at the table with Eva and Andy. As the boys chattered together, Robert smiled at Eva. “You look really pretty tonight, Eva. Red is definitely a good color for you.”
“Thank you,” she replied, even more uncomfortable beneath his intense gaze.
Thankfully Andy and Bobby began speaking with the adults about plans for a sleepover the next weekend. Even though it was Eva’s turn to have the boys at her house, Bobby wanted Andy to stay at their home because the two boys had a big puzzle they were working on together that wouldn’t transport to Eva’s place.
By the time the arrangements had been made, Eva and Andy were finished with their ice cream. “It was nice seeing you, Robert,” Eva said as she and Andy got up from the table.
“It’s always a pleasure to see you, Eva,” he replied.
“Bobby’s dad likes you,” Andy said when they were back in the truck and heading home. “Bobby told me his dad wants to take you out on a date. If you two got married, then Bobby and I would be brothers.”
“Whoa, that’s not going to happen,” Eva replied. “Bobby’s dad seems like a very nice man, but I’m not going to go out on a date with him, and I’m definitely not going to marry him.”
“Maybe you could marry Mr. Jake instead. Then he’d be my dad. That would be so cool. I know you like him and he likes you, and I really, really like him.”
Eva’s heart squeezed tight. “Andy, I can’t just marry somebody to give you a dad. There’s a lot more to a marriage than that.”
“Okay, if I can’t have a dad, then could we get a puppy?” He looked at her appealingly.
Eva laughed with more than a little bit of relief. “Now, that’s something we can definitely think about.”
An hour later Andy was tucked into bed and Eva wandered the house restlessly. It had been a long day, but she wasn’t even close to being ready for bed.
She finally grabbed a house key and a cell phone she kept for Andy. She crept into his bedroom and placed the phone on his nightstand. She stood for a long moment just watching him sleep.
She had fallen in love for a second time in her life the moment Andy had been placed in her arms after birth. He’d been a beautiful, good baby who rarely fussed. His presence in the house had brought great joy to a dying man.
Despite being sick, Andrew had tried to be a present father who had played with Andy and had often read bedtime stories to him. He’d helped Eva with the nighttime feedings and had been thrilled when Andy’s first word had been dada.
The questions Andy had asked about her getting married again so he could have a dad had broken her heart, but that was the one thing she couldn’t give him.
Turning away, she left the room and made sure she had her own phone in her pocket. She locked up the house and stepped outside.
The warm night air wrapped around her, and the sky was filled with a million stars. It wasn’t unusual for her to leave the house at this time in the evening to check on the horses or finish up some chore or another. If Andy awakened, he knew where she was, and he had the phone to call her.
Tonight not only did she want to give her horses a treat, but she also wanted to spend some more time finishing checking the loft for Griff’s knife. If it was up there, she was determined to find it. She just didn’t know if Griff had been telling the truth about it or not.
At least she wasn’t worried about Griff and his friends showing up unexpectedly to party in the barn—not with Griff knowing Wayne had him in his sights.
She opened the barn door and flipped on the light switch. Nothing happened. “Damn,” she muttered beneath her breath. Apparently the lightbulb had burned out, and that particular bulb was a real pain in the neck to replace.
Because the bulb burned out on a fairly regular basis, she kept a flashlight hanging from a hook on the wall just beneath the light switch.
She grabbed the flashlight and flicked it on, shooting a path of illumination ahead of her. She didn’t intend to change the bulb tonight, and that canceled out her plan to do any further search for the knife in the loft. But she could still feed the horses some treats before heading back to the house.
The horses seemed restless, sidestepping in their stalls, and as she drew closer to them, she caught a whiff of something that had no business being in a barn. It was the smell of gasoline.
Her stomach clenched, and her adrenaline shot up. She guided the light all around the area in an attempt to find the source. She took another couple of steps forward and then screamed as a dark figure lunged out of the darkness toward her.
The person wore a ski mask and had a pitchfork in his hands. “Wh-who are you? Wh-what do you want?” she asked, her heart nearly exploding in her chest. Her entire body went cold with a deep terror she’d never felt before.
He didn’t answer. He stood before her for a long moment and then rushed forward and stabbed the pitchfork at her. She screamed and stumbled backward in an attempt to get away from him. He continued to advance on her, and with a sob of terror she turned to run.
Nobody knew she was out here, and there was nobody to hear her frantic cries for help. Die, bitch. The words on the note screamed over and over again in her head.
The flashlight slid from her hand, hit the floor and immediately went out. She headed toward the door in the distance as fast as she could, aware that he was right behind her. Sheer horror ripped through her. Her breaths escaped her on painful gasps.
He was going to kill her. There was no question in her mind that his intent was to murder her. If he caught her, he was going to use the pitchfork to take her life in a painful, horrid way. In her frantic desire to escape...she tripped.
She slid across the floor on her stomach, all the while struggling to get back up on her feet. She looked behind her just in time to see the pitchfork tines coming down. With another scream, she rolled, and the sharp tines thudded into the floor right next to her body.
As her attacker yanked at the pitchfork, she made it to her feet. However, before she could completely get away, the attac
ker hit her with the tines in her lower leg, piercing her with excruciating pain.
She hit the floor on her hands and knees. She scrabbled forward, sobbing and terrified that the pitchfork would strike her again, this time in the back. Instead, nothing happened. Rolling over on her back, she realized her attacker was gone.
“Mrs. Eva?”
The familiar voice came out of the darkness by the barn door. “Oh my God...what happened? Mrs. Eva...are you okay?”
“Jimmy? Jimmy, is that you?” Sobs escaped her, sobs of both pain and relief.
“It’s me, Mrs. Eva.” He ran to her side and crouched down next to her.
“Please...help me up,” she cried. Had the attacker heard Jimmy’s approach and run off? Or was he still hiding out somewhere in the barn? “Please, Jimmy, get me out of here right now.”
She could scarcely think straight. “Did you see him? H-he was in the barn, and he attacked me with the pitchfork.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t see anyone,” Jimmy replied. “I just heard you scream, and I knew something was wrong.”
Fear still torched through her, along with the pain in her leg. Jimmy helped her to her feet and slowly walked with her to the house.
Tears half blinded her as she fumbled to unlock the front door. When it opened she almost fell inside. “You’re hurt,” Jimmy exclaimed, as if noticing the blood on her pants leg for the first time. “What can I do to help?”
“Call Wayne,” she managed to gasp through her tears. “And check out the barn. I thought I smelled gasoline in there. But be careful. Whoever attacked me might still be there.”
“Don’t worry about me, Mrs. Eva. If anyone is out there, I’ll shoot the bastard first.” Jimmy pulled his gun from his holster. “Are you sure you don’t want me to stay here with you?”
“No, I’ll be fine until Wayne gets here.” With her thoughts still so jumbled in fear, she didn’t want anyone in the house with her unless it was Wayne. She couldn’t believe what had just happened to her.
Once Jimmy stepped back outside, she locked the door behind him and hobbled into her bedroom. She got her shotgun from the gun case and then returned to the living room. Tears of pain, of fear, still coursed down her cheeks.
She felt as if she was trapped in a nightmare or had entered some kind of horrible twilight zone. She couldn’t believe somebody had attacked her. She turned her leg to try to look at her wounds.
“Mom?” Andy appeared in the living room doorway.
She quickly swiped at her cheeks. “Go back to bed, Andy.”
“But Mom, you’re bleeding.” His eyes were wide and alarmed as he looked first at the blood on her jeans leg and then at the gun she had leaning up next to her. “What’s happening? Mom, what’s going on?”
“Honey, what I need for you to do right now is go back to your room. I’m okay, and everything is going to be fine.” Dear God, she didn’t want her son to see her this way. “The sheriff is coming to talk to me, and I need you to go back to your room and close the door and go to sleep.”
Andy eyed her worriedly for another long moment and then did what he was told and went back to his room.
She needed to clean up her leg, but at the moment she couldn’t move as an icy chill filled her heart and soul. She still felt as if she were in a nightmare. But unfortunately this wasn’t a dream. It was reality, and the truth of the matter was somebody had just tried to kill her.
Chapter Eight
Jake poured himself a shot of scotch from the minibar and then sank down on the sofa in his suite. He grabbed the remote and turned on his television. Tonight he needed a distraction from his thoughts. It had been a long, emotional day, and even now he couldn’t seem to shrug off thoughts of Eva. He was hoping a silly sitcom would empty his mind or at least make him sleepy.
He’d just found what he intended to watch when his cell phone rang and Eva’s name came up on the caller identification. Why would she be calling him? Maybe she’d heard some news from Wayne?
“Eva?” he answered.
“No, it’s me. It’s Andy. Mr. Jake, my mom is bleeding on her leg and she’s crying. Maybe could you come over here?”
The boy’s voice shook with obvious fear, and his words shot an equal amount of apprehension through Jake. “I’m on my way, Andy. I’ll be there as quick as I can.”
“Okay,” Andy replied with obvious relief. “Thanks, Mr. Jake.”
Minutes later Jake was in his truck and driving as fast as possible to Eva’s ranch. She was bleeding? Had she somehow cut herself? Jake should have asked Andy more questions, like where she was bleeding from? What had happened to her? How badly was she hurt?
He stepped on the accelerator to go even faster, grateful that there was little traffic to get in his way. His heart beat a frantic rhythm. Why hadn’t Eva called him herself? Was she too incapacitated to make a phone call?
What in the hell had happened?
It seemed like it took him forever, but he finally pulled up in front of her place, cut his engine and jumped out of his truck. He raced to the door and banged on it. “Eva...Andy, it’s me. Open the door.”
After a long moment, the door opened and Eva collapsed into his arms. He held her tight as she sobbed into the crook of his neck. Thank God she wasn’t hurt so badly that she hadn’t been able to get to the door and into his arms. But she was obviously hurt, because she was weeping and clinging to him.
He let her cry for a few minutes and then pulled her arms from around his neck, leaned back and looked at her. “Eva, what happened?” he finally asked. Her eyes were dark with unmistakable fear.
He led her to the sofa, and it was then he saw the blood on the back of the lower leg of her jeans and the shotgun leaned against the corner of the couch. “You’re bleeding. Honey, what happened?” he repeated.
“Wh-what are you doing here?” She spoke between barely suppressed sobs.
“Andy called me. He sounded scared and he told me you were bleeding and crying. What happened to your leg?”
“I was attacked by a man with a pitchfork in the barn and I...I think...no, I know he...he meant to kill me.” She began to cry once again.
Between her tears, she told him what had happened from the time she had entered the barn to when Jimmy had helped her back to the house. When she was finished, a rich rage coupled with a chilling fear lodged in his chest.
“Let’s take a look at your leg,” he said. At least she was able to walk.
He knelt down in front of her, and he rolled up her jeans leg so he could get a look at the puncture wounds. There were two, but thankfully they had mostly stopped bleeding. “Maybe we should get you to the hospital to get these checked out.”
“No, that’s not necessary,” she protested. “They hurt, but I don’t think they’re as deep as I originally thought. I was scurrying across the barn floor as fast as I could, and so I guess he only got a quick, glancing jab into me.”
The vision her words created in his head once again filled him with a deep anger. Dammit, who was this person and why would he want to hurt Eva?
“Let me get a warm cloth so we can clean you up. Do you have some antibiotic cream?”
“There’s a medical kit in the hall closet, and there’s some antibiotic cream in it,” she replied.
He stood, but before he could walk to the hall closet to get a cloth, Wayne showed up.
Jake let the lawman into the house, and while he began to question Eva, Jake got the washcloth and the medical tin box and then sat next to Eva to wipe the blood off the wounds and get some antibiotic cream on them.
As she recounted to Wayne what had happened in the barn, his fear for her once again tightened his chest. “Did you get a look at the person?” Wayne asked. “Anything that might help identify him or her?”
“I’m pretty sure it was a male by the brief view I had of his siz
e. But he wore a ski mask, and I couldn’t begin to identify who he was. The barn was dark, and I only had a minute before I lost the flashlight.”
Jake finished tending to her leg and then returned to sit beside her. “I was so stupid,” Eva said angrily. “With everything that’s been going on, I should have never gone out to the barn by myself after dark. When the light didn’t work, I should have immediately turned around and run to the house.”
“Can you tell me anything else about the attack or your attacker?” Wayne asked.
“It all just happened so fast.” She raised a hand to her temple and rubbed it as if trying to alleviate a headache. “He seemed to come out of nowhere. Other than believing it was a male, I can’t think of anything else. I’m sorry. I... I was just so afraid.”
“It’s all right, Eva...take your time,” Jake said. All he really wanted to do was draw her back into his arms once again until he knew there was no more danger to her and no more fear inside her.
“I really believe he would have killed me if Jimmy hadn’t shown up when he did,” she replied. “I sensed a hatred coming from him. At one point if I hadn’t rolled away in time, the pitchfork would have struck me in my back. Why does somebody hate me enough to kill me?”
Jake frowned. “What was Jimmy doing out around there at this time of night?”
“I... I don’t know,” Eva replied with a frown of her own. “Harley told me earlier that he and Jimmy were going to check the fence line around dusk, but dusk was a long time ago.”
“Where’s Jimmy now?” Wayne asked.
“I sent him back to the barn. Right before the attack, I thought I smelled gasoline.”
“Gasoline?” Another alarm shot off in Jake. It would take very little to set a fire that would destroy not only the barn, but also the horses that were inside.
“I’ll call in some men to check out the barn. Do you mind if I bring Jimmy in here to ask him some questions?” Wayne asked.
“That’s fine,” Eva replied.
Jake was definitely interested in finding out why Jimmy had been hanging around the barn at this time of the night. Although he was grateful the attack had been stopped before Eva had gotten hurt even more, he also found it damned odd that Jimmy had been there at all.
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