A Message for Abby. Janice Johnson Kay

      “I’ll be in touch, Ben.” Letter to Reader Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN CHAPTER TWELVE CHAPTER THIRTEEN CHAPTER FOURTEEN CHAPTER FIFTEEN CHAPTER SIXTEEN Copyright

      “I’ll be in touch, Ben.”

      He nodded and handed Abby his card. “You do that,” he said, then slammed the car door.

      

      She watched him saunter away, strides long and easy, his broad shoulders formidable, his butt—For Pete’s sake, they were working together, not getting involved.

      

      You can admire, a little voice in her head whispered.

      

      “No,” Abby told herself, “I can’t”

      

      Dating was fun. Right up there with the perfect ski run, and no more serious. Ben Shea didn’t smile. He didn’t flirt, and he took her seriously. All of which made him a dangerous man. Abby didn’t do dangerous men. After years as a firefighter, she knew what it meant to get burned.

      

      Anyway, thanks to the shining example of manhood set by Daddy dear, revered police chief, Abby had no desire to bring home a man for good Sometimes her two brothers-in-law gave her pause, but not for long.

      

      Abby put her car in gear and pulled out onto me road, hoping the big dark cop would recede in her thoughts as surely as he did in the rearview mirror.

      Dear Reader,

      

      Two of the most interesting characters I’ve ever written about happen to be in the PATTON’S DAUGHTERS trilogy: Abby Patton and Jack Murray. Both challenged me in unanticipated ways. They’re more complex, more flawed, less obviously “hero” or “heroine” material than usual. Abby, I came to realize as I wrote, had to be deeply troubled. How could she not be, given her abusive father and desertion by her mother and older sister, her mother-surrogate? In defense she had learned not to care, and to manipulate men because she felt that they must all, on some level, be like her father. I found that I cared about her. I wanted to heal her, but in a believable way.

      

      Jack, of course, wasn’t the answer. His entire life has been shaped by one painful, humiliating moment when he wasn’t strong enough to stand up for the girl he loved. One of these days, Jack Murray must be a hero, because that’s the only way he can redeem himself.

      

      As you’re reading A Message for Abby, I’m writing about Jack and finding that I love the challenge of writing about people who aren’t any simpler in their motivations and reactions than you or I are. I’m crossing my fingers that some of you choose to let me know what you think about PATTON’S DAUGHTERS and especially about the brittle, intelligent woman in A Message for Abby.

      

      Thanks for reading my stories. (I invite you to visit my website at http://www.superauthors.com/)

      

      Janice Kay Johnson

      A Message for Abby

      Janice Kay Johnson

      

      

www.millsandboon.co.uk

      CHAPTER ONE

      HER DEAD DADDY’S PICKUP sitting beside the road, smoldering from an arson fire.

      That was Abby Patton’s first thought on seeing the truck—that it was Daddy’s—and now she couldn’t get rid of the willies.

      The pickup wasn’t really his, of course; it couldn’t be. Ed Patton had been dead for three years, his Chevy sold only months after he went in the ground. This one was just the same color, the same vintage.

      Coincidence, is all.

      Abby prowled around the pickup. For sure these plates weren’t the ones that had been on Daddy’s truck—but then, she’d bet ten to one this pair had been stolen from another vehicle anyway. Shiny, tabs new, they didn’t go with the red dust coating the dented, fading green paint of the pickup.

      Firefighters had smashed the passenger side window and pumped foam on the seat, just to be sure a blaze didn’t leap to life later. Wearing their gear and sweating in the hundred-degree heat, they had made a few choice remarks about the dumb ass who’d gone to all the trouble to rip the stuffing out of the seat, soak it with gasoline and set it on fire, only to roll up the windows and lock the doors.

      “Doesn’t every schoolkid know fire needs oxygen?” one of them had asked, shaking his head. A minute later they’d tooted a fare-thee-well and were gone.

      Now, left beside the road with nobody but jackrabbits and the wind to keep her company, Abby said aloud, “And why bother?” Why not junk the truck if it wouldn’t run, sell it on a lot if it would?

      Because setting fires was fun? Because the pickup was stolen and some teenage perp thought he could get rid of fingerprints this way? Or because the arsonist needed to destroy the vehicle for some other reason? There sure wasn’t anything in the rusting bed of the pickup.

      Before taking a closer look, Abby got on the radio to run the plates. While she waited, she leaned against her car door and looked around.

      Barton Road was paved, even had a yellow stripe down the middle, but at the bottom of the gravel banks to each side, gray desert scrub stretched away, bordered by ancient barbed wire attached to rotting fence posts. Cattle must have grazed out here once upon a time, or why bother fencing, but this now looked like the pronghorn country it had once been.

      She guessed she was five miles outside the Elk Springs city limits, east of town where the land got bleak and flat mighty quick. Just a few miles west, ranches started studding the landscape, including her brother-in-law’s, the Triple B. But here no houses were visible, and only three vehicles had gone by in the past twenty minutes. Plus, the arsonist could have seen anyone coming far enough away to disappear in a cloud of dust before the passerby arrived.

      Some teenage boys out here target shooting had used a cell phone to report the fire. Interesting they’d seen flames. Either the fire setter had