TAMING JESSE JAMES

by Reanne Thayne

  A victim.

  As much as she wanted to stay silent, she knew tonight's events had taken that choice out of her hands. She had to tell Jesse everything. He had to know the ugliness she had somehow unleashed on his town, however unwittingly.

  She tied her robe tightly and went to find him.

  The first creature she met outside the bathroom was the huge golden retriever he had introduced as Daisy. The dog was lying in the hall, chin on her paws, as if waiting for Sarah. Sarah found great comfort in her presence, like having a big shaggy guardian angel.

  At the sight of her, the dog wagged her long tail and rose gracefully to her feet, then led the way down the hall.

  Jesse was in his kitchen, a surprisingly efficient nook with pine cupboards and wood floors that opened to a larger, carpeted living area. He was barefoot, she saw, and couldn't for the life of her figure out why she found that so appealing.

  "How was your shower? Did you have enough hot water?"

  There probably wasn't enough hot water in the whole town to keep her warm. "Yes," she lied. "Plenty."

  "Good. I was just brewing you some tea. My sister, Cass, swears it's the cure for everything, from hangnails to PMS. Why don't you sit down and I'll bring you a cup?"

  She nodded and, with her retriever shadow, walked to the sitting area next to the kitchen.

  Even though the night was mild, Jesse had lit a small fire in the stone fireplace, and tears stung her eyes at his thoughtfulness. The warmth washed over, enfolded her like a thick quilt, seeping into her chilled bones as she sat down on a couch covered in fabric of dark blues and greens.

  Daisy immediately settled into what looked like her customary spot, atop a braided oval rug in front of the fireplace.

  "Here we go." Jesse brought her tea in a mug with a leaping trout on the side. "Can I get you anything else? I can make you a sandwich if you would like."

  The thought of food made her stomach churn greasily. "No. I … no. Tea is fine."

  He took a seat in the wide recliner that was obviously his customary spot and watched until she took a sip of the strong herbal tea. To her surprise, it did make her feel somewhat better. She could feel the panic recede just a little further.

  "It's good," she murmured. "Thank you."

  They talked for a few moments about innocuous things—the weather, the sports team he liked, his sister, Cassie, who had decorated the house for him when he bought it the year before. He was trying his best to put her at ease, she realized, touched by his efforts.

  She was almost tempted to just stay there sipping tea, savoring the hiss and crackle of the fire, blocking out any of the ugliness of the evening or of that morning so many months ago in Chicago.

  But she couldn't put it off. She had to tell him.

  It was so much harder than she thought it would be. Like the story she read her class of squeezing water from stone.

  "Jesse, I have to tell you something," she finally just blurted out.

  He frowned at her tone. "What's wrong?"

  "I … I lied to you earlier."

  His frown deepened. "You what?"

  "I lied. I told you I don't know who might have been responsible for vandalizing my house."

  "But you do?"

  She took a deep, shuddering breath for strength. "His name is Tommy DeSilva. I don't know how it's possible, but I think he must have found me somehow and followed me from Chicago."

  "Why would he do that?"

  She couldn't look at him. She couldn't watch the pity and revulsion she knew would appear on those strong, masculine features.

  She felt a quick, sharp pang of loss, knowing that after she told him, he would definitely never kiss her again as he had the day before on the mountainside.

  Not that she expected him to, but this would definitely make such a likelihood impossible.

  "Because my testimony sent him to prison for rape and attempted murder," she answered.

  He was quiet for a long time and when he finally spoke, his voice sounded strained. "Who was his victim?"

  He knows, she thought. She could hear it in his voice, that thin thread of pity and shock already filtering through. But still he needed to hear the words. She needed to say the words.

  She looked at her tightly laced fingers, at the glossy fabric of her robe, at the oatmeal weave of his carpet. At anything but him.

  "Me," she finally whispered. "Eighteen months ago, Tommy DeSilva attacked me and … and raped me and left me to die."

  * * *

  Chapter 10

  « ^ »

  At her stark words, Jesse froze, his breath a tight and heavy ache in his chest.

  A million emotions surged through him: shock, dismay, sorrow. Most of all, a fierce, overriding fury at the son of a bitch who had hurt her.

  He should have guessed her secrets before. A fine cop he was. She had thrown out enough clues to stop a damn train.

  Maybe he had suspected it, deep in his subconscious. He'd seen enough crime victims over the years that he must have picked up at least some of the signs.

  But maybe he hadn't wanted to see what was right in front of him, to face the grim reality that someone as good and decent as Sarah could suffer such brutality.

  So many things about her now made sense. Those dark shadows in her eyes, her skittishness around him and just about every other man he had ever seen her with. That slight, subtle limp. He started to speak and had to clear the raw choke-hold of emotion from his throat before he could get the words out. "Is your knee injury from the attack?"

  Her head barely moved when she nodded.

  She watched him out of those serious green eyes and he knew she was waiting for some kind of reaction from him. What the hell was he supposed to say to her after a bombshell like that?

  I'm sorry? She had to know he was.

  I wish it had never happened to you? The words were a vast understatement.

  I'd like to find the bastard who hurt you and rip him apart with my bare hands? He sensed the ragged ferocity of his emotions would only upset her more.

  So what was he supposed to say? To do? He wanted to go to her and pull her from the couch and into his arms. He wanted to hold her close and whisper soft kisses into her hair and promise he wouldn't let anybody ever hurt her again.

  But he didn't have the right to promise her anything. "Do you want to know about it?" she asked quietly at his continued silence.

  Did he? No. He wanted to pretend it had never happened, that something so ugly had never even touched her. Every instinct in him wanted to urge her to stay quiet.

  Somehow he knew that the telling would change both of them.

  But he couldn't give in to those strident voices. It had happened. She had been brutally attacked. And she had survived. It seemed small and selfish of him to want to pretend it had never happened, just because he wasn't sure he could handle hearing about it.

  Besides that, he sensed she needed to tell him.

  "It might help us in our investigation, if this guy is really in town." He tried to keep his voice even, hoping like hell the jumble of fury and reluctance and heartache he was feeling didn't filter through.

  She was quiet for a moment, her hands wound tightly in her lap. The only sound in the house was Daisy's snuffly breathing and the snapping fire on the grate. Then she finally spoke.

  "I taught third grade in Chicago," she began. "Eight- and nine-year-olds. It was a poor, inner-city school, in quite a rough area. My parents couldn't understand why I didn't take a job in Evanston closer to Northwestern, where they both are professors, but I loved my job. The children were so eager to learn, just fascinated by everything I taught them." Her soft smile damn near broke his heart.

  She paused for several seconds and he sensed she was trying to gather her courage to reach the crux of the story. "I … I had a student named Beatriz DeSilva. I know teachers aren't supposed to have favorites, but I have to confess, she was always one of mine. She had these beautiful long, glossy brai
ds and the sweetest smile."

  That soft smile of remembrance teased at her mouth again, but quickly fluttered away. She swallowed hard. "One day out on the playground, I told her to put on her mittens. It was a really awful day, with a bitter wind blowing off the lake. Other than that, it seemed like just a normal day."

  Her voice took on a faraway quality. "It seemed as if everything moved in slow motion. Bea reached into her pocket for her mittens, just as I had asked her to do, but when she pulled her hands out, something else fell out as well and landed on the blacktop. A small bundle containing several packets of dirty white powder."

  "Cocaine?"

  She shook her head. "Heroin. With a street value of nearly two thousand dollars."

  Children in third grade shouldn't even know what heroin looked like, let alone carry it in their pockets along with their mittens. He was disgusted, but not really surprised. Unfortunately, he had seen and heard much worse. "What did you do?"

  "Bea was wailing and shaking, terrified out of her wits that I had seen the drugs. I pulled her into the classroom and made her tell me everything. I've never seen a child so frightened." Sarah folded her hands together tightly. "She finally broke down and told me that her older brother Tommy fancied himself a big-time dealer in the area. He was all of eighteen. He sometimes used her to drop small shipments for his clientele, forcing her to do it with threats that he would hurt their baby brother if she didn't."

  She cleared her throat before continuing. "Bea was supposed to have delivered the drugs that morning before school, but for some reason she didn't. We were having a special assembly first thing that morning and she didn't want to be late for it. I never would have found out what her brother was putting her through if not for that."

  She clamped her lips together and he watched her pulse quiver in her throat. "I was so furious. She was only a child. Just a sweet little girl doing what she was told to protect her baby brother. I immediately called the police. Bea and her little brother were turned over to social services while officers went looking for Tommy."

  "They didn't find him?"

  "Oh, they did." Her bitter smile held no mirth. "He was arrested and charged, but released on bail six hours later."

  "And he came looking for you." A statement, not a question. He knew enough about the criminal mind to know that sometimes vengeance came before anything else. Food, drugs, sex. They all paled in comparison to getting even.

  Beneath her robe, her shoulders trembled just a little with her shudder. "He broke a window into my classroom and was waiting for me the next morning when I arrived at school."

  His retriever whimpered at the distress in Sarah's voice, then rose from her spot by the fire and padded to her. Jesse was about to order her down, but he stopped, sensing Sarah was drawing a comfort from the dog he wasn't sure he could provide.

  Daisy rested her chin on Sarah's knee and she patted her absently, her fingers working through the long yellow fur like worry beads.

  "I was there early to catch up with some work," she finally continued. "If I had been a half hour later, the other classrooms in that hall would have been filled with teachers and I could have called for help. But there was no one else there."

  "What happened?" The words felt like tiny sharp stones in his raw throat.

  "I think he was more upset at losing the drugs than anything else. He kept saying he owed people and now I owed him. Stupid me, I was more angry than scared at first. I told him he was worse than an animal for endangering a child."

  She blew out a breath. "I shouldn't have baited him. That's when he hit me. He—he had a gun and he hit me on the side of the head with it. The impact stunned me and I fell to the floor, and I can remember lying there on that faded, dirty tile, thinking I was going to die. That this punk—this stupid, hopped-up gangbanger—was going to kill me."

  He couldn't even begin to imagine the horror or the courage it must be taking her to tell him about it. "He didn't fire the gun?"

  "No. I'm not sure why. I guess he must have realized that would have brought people running. He used it to hit me, though. He just kept hitting me and hitting me with whatever he could find. The gun, a chair, a stapler, a chair, his fists."

  Stop. Enough. He couldn't stand hearing any more. He growled a harsh oath, intending to beg her to stop this grim recital, but she didn't seem to hear him, lost in the past.

  "It seemed like it lasted forever, but it was probably only a few moments. Eventually I stopped fighting and came close to passing out. That's when he … he raped me, then he left. I was terrified he would come back, but after a few minutes I somehow managed to crawl out into the hall and the custodian found me."

  She paused. "I remember feeling so grateful that at least my students didn't have to see me that way."

  This time her tiny smile did break his heart. He felt it shatter into jagged shards.

  "Oh, Sarah. I'm so sorry." He couldn't keep silent any longer, whether he said the wrong words or not.

  She blinked at him and he watched her click back into the present. Color soaked her cheeks and she became suddenly fascinated with Daisy's fur. "DeSilva must be in Star Valley. He's the only one I know who … who hates me enough to do something like that to my home."

  "Can you describe him so I can tell my officers what they might be looking for?"

  She closed her eyes as if picturing him in her mind, and he was struck again by her delicate features, by soft skin stretching over the hollows and curves of her face. He wanted to skim his fingers over that face, to trace the dark smudge of her lashes and the thin bridge of her nose.

  How could a woman who seemed so vulnerable have survived such an ordeal? Maybe that was the reason for her fragility, because she had survived and was still trying to find her way in the aftermath.

  "He was big for eighteen," she said. "Probably your height, muscled like a body builder. He had a small beard back then, just a little fuzz on his chin. I remember thinking he barely seemed old enough for facial hair. He might have shaved it off by now."

  He hated making her relive any more details, but the more information his officers had, the better the chances of finding the bastard if he was indeed in Star Valley. He almost hoped DeSilva was dumb enough to come after her. If he was here, Jesse would find him.

  "Any other defining characteristics? A tattoo or anything?"

  "Nothing very original. He had a snake twining around his arm and a four-lettered obscenity tattooed across his knuckles."

  "That will help. That kind of thing is pretty rare around here." He rose, grateful to be able to take some action, no matter how small. "I'll call this description in to my officers and the sheriff's department and also get someone on the phone to Chicago so they can fax us a mug. Are you okay here for a few moments while I do that?"

  She nodded, and watched him cross the room toward the phone with quick, restless movements. He was like a dark storm cloud, simmering with barely contained energy.

  What was he thinking? She wished she could read his emotions better. She knew he was upset. By the time she'd finished giving him the ugly details, he had been barely breathing, as motionless—and dangerous—as a rattlesnake poised to strike. But she couldn't read much more into his features than that.

  Everything would be different now. He knew the truth and they could never go back to the casual, friendly place they had been before.

  She could hear him on the phone describing Tommy DeSilva to his officers, a hardness to his voice she seldom heard. She found it oddly comforting.

  Jesse would keep her safe.

  No matter what wild creatures clawed at her subconscious, he would hold them at bay.

  Daisy settled a little deeper into sleep, her weight heavy on Sarah's bare feet like one huge furry slipper. Despite the tumult of her emotions, she had to smile. Apparently Jesse wasn't her only self-appointed protector. Anyone who wanted to get to her would have to make it past not just one very large and dangerous man but his ferociously amiabl
e golden retriever, as well.

  Jesse ended the call a few moments later and returned to the sitting area. "I put out the word that we're looking for any suspicious strangers in town. It's a little too early in the season for many tourists to be passing through on their way to Jackson Hole or Yellowstone, so if this DeSilva is anywhere around, he'll stand out like a Christmas tree in July."

  "Thank you."

  He shrugged. "For what? I'm just doing my job."

  "For that and for letting me stay here. I'll try to get out of your hair as soon as I can."

  He narrowed his gaze. "You're not going anywhere until we catch whoever did a number on your house tonight, so you might as well just accept it."

  Her spine stiffened, vertebra by vertebra. She appreciated his protectiveness—it warmed a small, cold place inside her. But she had been a victim long enough.

  She refused to completely surrender her life.

  If DeSilva wanted her badly enough, she knew he would find her, whether here or at her own place.

  "I'll stay until I can get someone to clean up the mess and replace the windows. When the house is ready again, I'll move back."

  He opened his mouth as if he were gearing up for a fierce argument, then closed it again. "If we're no further along in the investigation by that time, we can talk about it."

  "All right." She was suddenly exhausted. So tired she could hardly move, and her knee throbbed viciously.

  Jesse picked up on it instantly. "Why don't you get some rest? You can sleep in tomorrow. I can have Cassie come over, if you'd like."

  "No. I have school."

  "Seems to me you have a good excuse to find a substitute and take the day off."

  Chuck Hendricks would just love that. "No. I need to be there. We're having a test in math later."

  He sighed at her stubbornness. "Come on, then. I'll show you to the guest room."

  Sarah tried to stand, but having seventy-five pounds of dog sleeping on her feet made it a challenge.