The Cowboy's Secret Son. Gayle Wilson

pervasive chill left from the afternoon storm.

      She hurried down the hall to Drew’s room, the same one that had been hers when she was growing up. She had given him his choice, and that’s the one he’d chosen, which for some reason had pleased her. Of course, the window seat her father had built to her specifications, and which doubled as a toy chest, had undeniable appeal.

      The door to his bedroom was open to allow the old-fashioned heating system to circulate the air better. She stopped in the doorway, looking inside. The small mound of her son, sleeping in a near fetal position as he had since he was an infant, was clearly visible. Nothing in the room seemed disturbed. Nothing had fallen. Obviously, whatever she’d heard hadn’t originated here.

      Turning, she looked back down the dark hallway, and was again conscious of the cold. Maybe she should check to see if the pilot light on the furnace had gone out. After all, she was up, and it didn’t seem likely that she would go back to sleep now. Especially since she hadn’t been sleeping before.

      She walked past the door of her own bedroom, which had been her mother and father’s room. Shivering, she wrapped her arms around her body, rubbing her hands up and down the sleeves of her robe. Maybe it was just jumping out of a warm bed so quickly—

      As she stepped out of the hall and into the main room of the house, which her mom had always called the den, she realized that the front door was standing wide-open. Her first inclination was to rush across and close it, but the trickle of ice that was now in her veins had nothing to do with the cold air rushing in from outside.

      She had locked that door before going to bed. She was sure of it.

      During the last ten years, Jillian had become accustomed to living in apartments. To having neighbors. To law enforcement that responded in much less than half an hour. The kind of isolation inherent in living on a ranch was no longer familiar. It had made her nervous enough to be cautious and to double-check that lock and all the others. The fact that the door was now standing open…

      Her gaze examined the shadows, moving slowly along the perimeter of the room. Although she couldn’t see behind each piece of furniture, nothing seemed out of place.

      She glanced back at the door. Had the wind been strong enough during the night to blow it open? Except she’d been lying awake for at least an hour, and she hadn’t heard any wind. She hadn’t heard anything at all, but that one noise.

      The door hitting the wall? Or someone hitting the door?

      Again she was conscious of the cold. She ought to at least close the door, she thought, turning toward the kitchen now. Given the angle of the wall, she couldn’t see into that room, and she directed her gaze back to the front door.

      For the first time in her life she wished that she had a gun. Although she had grown up around them, she had never thought she was the kind of person who would ever want or need a firearm. Faced with the realities of where she was living now…

      She forced herself to move across the den, tiptoeing so that her slippers made only a slight shuffling noise on the hardwood floor. When she was near enough, she could stand behind the protection of the open door and look through it into the yard. Maybe there would be enough moonlight to allow her to take a look around without leaving the house.

      Taking a deep breath, she took the final step to the door and grasped the knob in her right hand. The metal was cold under her palm, and for some reason, now that she was here, she couldn’t seem to make herself move any closer to the opening. If there was someone waiting outside—

      Idiot, she chided herself. Why kick in the door to a house and then wait around outside? If someone was that eager to get inside, they’d already be here. A thought that was hardly more comforting.

      So why hadn’t she turned on the lights? Why didn’t she now? The switch that controlled them was just on the other side of the doorway. All she had to do was step across, closing the door in the process, and flick it on. All she had to do, and yet she seemed paralyzed, unable to act.

      She drew in another deep breath, gathering her courage, and in the silence she heard movement out on the porch. As if released from a spell, she pushed the door hard, and as it swung closed, she reached across the narrowing opening, intending to flip up the switch.

      A dark shape loomed before her, seeming to spring up from the floor of the porch. The terrifying image lasted only a split second—too short a time for identification—before the door slammed closed. Quickly she turned the lock, putting a barrier, however fragile, between her and whatever—whoever—was out there.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      “PE-EW,” Ronnie Cameron said, wrinkling his nose in disgust and drawing the sound out. He hurriedly closed the black garbage bag, pulling the plastic strings tight.

      A little late for that, Jillian thought.

      “What in the world is in there?” the sheriff asked, carefully laying the bag back on the floor of the front porch.

      “It seems to be roadkill,” Jillian said. “Aged roadkill from the smell. Armadillos and a few less recognizable victims.”

      Her voice was very quiet. Anyone who knew her well could have told the sheriff that she was exerting enormous self-control. Which she was. Now that it was daylight, her fear had been replaced by anger, and much of it was self-directed because she had let herself be so terrified.

      “You’re saying somebody dumped this on the porch and then kicked in your door?”

      “The door was open when I got up to investigate,” she clarified. “I’m not sure it was kicked in. I would think there would be some damage if it had been. But it was open.”

      “You see who it was?”

      “I saw a shape. Nothing else. Certainly not enough to make an identification.”

      She didn’t confess that she had been too frightened last night to realize that if she’d turned on the outside lights and opened the door, she might have been able to do exactly that—make an identification. Instead, she had turned the lock and sagged against the door, trembling all over. It wasn’t until the running footsteps outside faded into the distance that she’d even thought about opening it again and looking out.

      “I plain don’t know what to tell you,” the sheriff said, shaking his head and looking down again on the foul-smelling bag in disbelief. “I haven’t seen anything like this since I’ve been in office. Never heard of anything like it since grammar school.”

      “So who was responsible for this kind of thing back then?” Jillian asked, the edge still in her voice.

      “I didn’t mean that literally. It’s just that this business seems so…juvenile.”

      That was the perfect word, Jillian thought. Juvenile.

      “Any idea why somebody would do this?” Ronnie asked.

      “That’s why I called you,” she said. “Because I don’t have any idea. I thought maybe you did. I was also hoping you could get fingerprints off the bag or something.”

      “That’s not likely. I can guarantee you that whoever put this together was wearing gloves. And not just because everybody who’s going to commit a crime nowadays knows enough from television to do that, but for sanitary reasons. Trust me, nobody would handle the stuff that’s in there with their bare hands.”

      He was probably right, Jillian acknowledged bitterly. She had known that finding usable fingerprints would be a long shot.

      “Not much of a welcome home, I guess,” Ronnie said.

      “You think that was the message this was supposed to convey? That I’m not welcome?”

      “A lot of folks don’t remember your family any too kindly.”

      “What exactly does that mean?”

      “When your daddy ran off, he left a