“I’m so glad you’re safe,” Madeline said. “I’m sorry I got you into that!”
“It’s okay,” Grace assured her. “Tell me what happened to you.”
“They caught me in the alley.” Madeline lifted her chin. “But I put up a good fight.”
From the bruise on her stepsister’s cheek, that certainly appeared to be true.
Suddenly Madeline seemed to notice the deep scratches on Grace’s bare legs, her hands, her face. “God, look at you,” she said, motioning toward a particularly deep gouge. “You’re even more banged up than I am.”
“I hid in the blackberry bushes down by the creek,” Grace told her.
“They didn’t find you, did they?”
Grace remembered the solid feel of Kennedy’s muscular body as he landed on top of her, the power in his arms as he forced her hands over her head, and felt a very strange response in the pit of her stomach. I didn’t mean to hurt you….
He and his kind always meant to hurt. That didn’t explain why he’d let her go, but…obviously he wasn’t really himself tonight. “No, they didn’t find me.”
“Good. They know someone was with me, but I wouldn’t tell them who. I don’t think they’re interested in pursuing the issue anymore. They know why I was there. They know I didn’t take anything and that I’ll pay for the damage.”
“That’s good,” Grace said, but it was difficult to smile and act relieved when she knew that Kennedy would come forward eventually. Her possession of that Bible revealed far too much.
And she could easily guess what Madeline would think of her when he went public with what he had.
Kennedy sat in his kitchen. The book he’d carried home from the woods was indeed a Bible. But not just any Bible. It had belonged to the Reverend Barker. His name was embossed on the front. His handwriting was all over the inside of it. Kennedy could even remember seeing him take it out of his pocket.
Frowning, he turned the thin pages. The notes in the margins unsettled him because they revealed in very subtle ways a man obsessed with his own power, not God’s. Kennedy had been young when the reverend went missing, but the words he’d been studying for the past hour painted a picture of a man far different from the image he’d always maintained—far different from the pious man most people believed Barker to be.
There was a full page where Barker had written about Grace. He’d noted certain things she said, things she did, how she looked. Some fairly explicit poetry a few pages afterward seemed connected to her, as well. Unless Kennedy was assuming more than was really on the page….
He tried to steer his thoughts in a different direction. Maybe Barker was simply overjoyed to have a new daughter.
But if so, where were his notes on Molly? Why would he single Grace out the way he’d done?
Kennedy couldn’t come up with a good reason. No matter how he interpreted what he read, he got the same feeling. The reverend was obsessed with Grace.
That sent chills down Kennedy’s spine. He closed the Bible and shoved it away from him, but couldn’t take his eyes off the embossed name. Eighteen years ago, she’d been just a girl, the same age as Kennedy.
Standing, he went to the window to peer out at the long drive that led to the highway. He had to be wrong. The reverend was a man of God. It was Kennedy who’d been having sexual fantasies about Grace. Not when they were younger, of course. But now. He couldn’t forget the sight of her naked in that damn window.
Rubbing a finger over his lips, he turned back to see the reverend’s Bible lying on his table. He felt like he imagined King David must’ve felt after seeing Bathsheba. If he had David’s power, if he knew Grace would come willingly, wouldn’t he send for her? Right now? Tonight?
Probably. But, he reminded himself, it was Bathsheba who’d brought about David’s downfall….
With a sigh, he jammed a hand through his hair and walked quietly to the small music room just off the entry. Maybe he was half-crazy with missing Raelynn. Maybe Grace evoked in him a very basic, almost primitive urge to possess her, an urge that was stronger than he’d ever experienced before. But the fact remained that the reverend had gone missing under mysterious circumstances. That Grace and her family had long been suspected of having something to do with it. And that Kennedy had just found this Bible, which had been the reverend’s constant companion, on Grace’s person.
He had to hand it over to the police, didn’t he? He had to let them do their work.
And yet he already knew how things would go. Once word of this got out, almost everyone in town would turn on Grace and her family, and Joe would lead the pack. At best, the Montgomerys would suffer through another lengthy investigation. At worst…
The plush carpet gave silently beneath his feet as he crossed the room. He didn’t want to think about the worst. Especially because there was something out of the ordinary between the reverend and the Montgomerys. Something dark, even sinister. He could feel it. But he hated to venture a guess as to what it was—and doubted Grace would ever tell him.
Circumventing the baby grand piano, he sat in one of two leather wing-back chairs. He’d felt the tremors going through her body when he’d caught her tonight. Yet she hadn’t expected or asked for any kindness from him. She’d lain beneath him, her heart beating as fast as a captured rabbit’s, her body shaking while she waited for Joe as if he carried the executioner’s ax.
Kennedy picked up the telephone on the table next to him. He’d driven past Grace’s house on his way home to find everything dark. Because he’d realized by then that the book he’d found was the reverend’s Bible, he hadn’t gone to the door. He’d wanted some time to think about all this before he spoke to her. But now that he’d had the chance to look at it…
Lifting the receiver, he dialed information.
“City, please,” a woman said.
“Stillwater. It’s a new listing, for Grace Montgomery.”
There was a momentary pause, then, “I’m sorry, I don’t show anything for a Grace Montgomery in Stillwater. Would you like to try somewhere else?”
“No, thanks,” he said and hung up. Grace obviously hadn’t ordered telephone service, which made sense. From what he’d heard she was only in town for a few months. If she had a cell, she wouldn’t need a regular telephone. But he didn’t know how to get hold of that number.