To Wear His Ring Again. Chantelle Shaw

knocked again.

      The door cracked open and a woman peered out, keeping the heavy panel between him and her body. “Yes?”

      “My name is Ross Malcolm,” he said, trying to look harmless and smaller than six foot three. “I’m—was—Anne DeLuca’s partner. I’d like to see her, if that’s possible.”

      “What for?” the woman asked. She wore a faded cotton print dress, and her gray hair was pulled into a knob on top of her head. The strip of leg that showed in the crack of the door was bare and unshaven, the foot stuffed into a brown loafer that had seen too much time on that road up the hill.

      Ross shrugged and spread his hands. “I haven’t seen my little girl in a while. I’d just like to hold her. And visit with Annie for a few minutes.”

      The woman gave him a narrow glare, as if searching for a lie hidden in his words. “Outsiders aren’t allowed in. I’ll have to see,” she said, and shut the door in his face.

      Well, it was better than a grenade.

      Ross looked around for somewhere to sit, but there was no comfort provided for visitors. He moved into the scant shadow of the wall as the sun slid over the shoulder of the house. Loose-limbed but alert, he leaned against the unpainted wood.

      If he ever got to see Annie, it would take all his self-control not to shout recriminations at her for bringing Kailey into this. What kind of life was this for a child? There was no love for God here. From what his informant had said about the Sealers, they fostered an atmosphere of paranoia and suspicion, feeding their members the kind of ridiculous lies that only the truly brainwashed could believe. Kailey would know no stability in this environment, because the group moved every time its leader got spooked—part of the reason it had taken him so long to find them—and were so secretive they stuck to rural areas where outsiders wouldn’t bother them.

      Annie could stay if she wanted to. She made her own choices. But she couldn’t make them for Kailey and him. Any love he might have felt for her once had been burned away in his quest to locate them over the last year. If he had to arrest his former girlfriend to get his little girl out of the Sealers’ hands, he’d do it without so much as a quiver of regret for the couple they had been.

      Only one good thing had come of the whole terrible experience. He had been driven back to God, grieving and desperate, and had seen that he couldn’t manage the search for Kailey on his own. He needed strength from a source greater than himself, a source whose power he’d proven time and again.

      He had to have faith that the loving giver of that strength wouldn’t desert him now.

      He shifted, and something glinted in the dust. He nudged the object with the toe of his boot.

      With a quick glance around, he pulled a piece of scrap paper out of his pocket and picked up a shell casing with an odd diagonal dent in the middle. To his knowledge, only one type of gun did that to a shell on its way out of the barrel.

      There were more. Two. Five. He brushed away a pile of dirt. A dozen. More, all with the distinctive dent. Someone had been standing right here and had fired an HK-93 semi-automatic rifle with an illegal thirty-round clip right off the front porch. And when he was done, instead of picking up his brass, he had just kicked dirt over it and walked away.

      Ross fought to be objective, fought to keep his emotions calm as he thought about Kailey somewhere within range of such a lethal nutcase. He picked up a couple dozen casings and distributed them among his pockets, then resumed his relaxed stance against the wall.

      The door cracked open a couple of minutes later, and he levered himself upright, his heart rate kicking into overdrive. Annie stepped out onto the porch, Kailey sound asleep on her shoulder.

      Relief washed over him with such intensity his knees almost buckled. The long search was over. His daughter looked all right. She wore a sleeveless cotton shift that rode up over her little diapered behind, and her arms and legs seemed plump enough, so they must be feeding her. She’d also grown about a foot.

      “What are you doing here, Ross? How did you find me?”

      He looked at Anne for the first time. Like the woman who had answered the door, she was dressed in shapeless faded cotton, her hair scraped away from her face to satisfy somebody’s aesthetic of submissive femininity. Her hands, clasped on Kailey’s smooth baby skin, were roughened with outside work. Her sunburned nose had begun to peel.

      He struggled to find in this stony woman the laughing, savvy blonde that he’d fallen for a month after he’d met her. What an idiot he’d been, with a very young man’s naive ideas about female perfection. He knew better now. Since he’d allowed the spirit of God into his heart, he had a different slant on perfection.

      “I’ve been looking for you both since you left,” he replied, pasting on a smile, his stance loose and unthreatening. The last thing he wanted was to spook her. In a second she could disappear back through that door and unleash a squadron of the faithful to chase him off the property. “You used your credit card for the first time about a month ago, at a hospital around here. I talked to some people and narrowed it down from there.”

      “Kailey had an infection. Moses told me not to do it. I should have listened to him.”

      And if she hadn’t, Kailey might be dead. He should be thankful for what was left of Anne’s independent streak, even if it had led him to a place that made the hair on his neck prickle with uneasiness.

      “I’m glad you didn’t. Mind if I hold her?” His arms ached, his skin hungry for the comforting weight of his child against his chest.

      “She’s asleep,” Annie said, frowning, and hitched the baby higher on her shoulder.

      “I won’t wake her. Please, Annie.”

      Her eyes narrowed as she considered him. Then, with a glance at the door and the safety behind it, she relented. Ross held out his arms and Anne put the baby into them.

      Kailey murmured and he settled her against his chest, rubbing a slow, soothing hand over her back. The casings in his pocket gave a tiny clink, and he settled her more comfortably. With a sigh, the baby slid into deeper sleep. Every cell in his body focused on her, his whole being concentrated on this moment. Slowly, he cataloged the details that would sustain him. The fan of pale eyelashes against her cheek. The whorl of thick hair on the crown of her head. That baby smell that provoked immediate memories of bottle feedings late at night while Annie worked the graveyard shift at the hospital. Living the moment as intensely as he could, he willed the sweetness of it into his memory and the fear of losing her retreated. For the moment.

      He had too few memories. Far too few for the sixteen months of his daughter’s life. He lifted his head to meet Annie’s gaze. “We need to talk.”

      She shrugged. “Here I am.” No softness in her face indicated his emotion had touched her.

      “Not here.”

      “It’s as good as you’re going to get. Outsiders aren’t allowed in, and I’m certainly not going anywhere with you. Whatever you have to say, say it. I’ve got vegetables to weed.”

      He forced his arms to stay relaxed. If the tension in them woke Kailey it would just give Anne an excuse to take her away from him.

      “I’d like to work out some kind of arrangement with you so I can see her.”

      She shook her head. “I don’t see how. Unless you give up the Devil’s government and join us. Allow God into your heart and learn to live for His return at the end of the world.”

      He hated it when she mouthed her doctrine at him. “I know you don’t want to marry me and give her a conventional family. But I’m willing to overlook this last year and just go with occasional visits.” If he thought she’d go for that one, he was wrong. “Come on, Annie, she’s my daughter. I have a petition for custody with me. I won’t allow her to grow up without knowing me.”

      “She’ll grow up knowing her heavenly Father, which is