Page 143 of When We Touch

She looked at him, focused. “His name . . . I don’t know his name!”

“Where are they?” Jamie demanded.

She shook her head. “She ran . . . she hit him and ran. He went after her . . . she was trying to stop him from coming after me. She led him away. He could have . . . he could have butchered the whole house while we slept!”

He could have, Jamie thought with horror, and a truly sinking feeling. But he wouldn’t have done so. He wouldn’t have done so, because it wouldn’t have been enough.

“Which way?”

She pointed straight, out into the darkness.

“How long ago?”

“A while!” Merry said, catching back a sob.

“Get back in. Lock the house up, everything, check every window, Merry.”

The woman nodded, and a shot of steely reserve seemed to come to her. “Yes, yes, there’s the baby, and my sisters!”

She walked back into the house, and Jamie swung Newton around.

Luckily, there had been some rain. And he could see the tracks before him. He nudged the horse on.

The tracks went down the trail to the road. He was able to cover that ground quickly.

Then, at the road, the tracks were harder to read.

He dismounted, moving closer to the ground.

He straightened. Maggie had run across it, and into the foliage beyond. He threw the reins over the horse’s neck, and gave him a slap. “Go on, boy, back to the cottage.”

He moved into the foliage himself.

* * *

Maggie could scarcely breathe, and she was afraid that if anything gave her away, it would be the sound of her desperate breathing.

She knew that she was ahead of him by a good thirty feet. It had taken him some time to realize that she hadn’t circled back around the house, that she had opted for the overgrown wealth of trees and brush on the other side of the road. She realized that she was buying time, and then she wondered why she was bothering.

Then, of course, she knew. It was instinct. Simple survival.

But as she drew him from the house, she knew that she was going to have to do much more if she really wanted to survive.

She watched from the rear of an oak as he came across the road and found where she had crashed through the foliage. There was a low, young branch on the tree, and as he moved, she grasped hold of it, pulling it back.

“Hide and seek, Lady Maggie?” he called. “Hyde . . . Jekyll and Hyde!” he called, and laughed. “That’s me. . . I might have been a Dr. Jekyll, but in all of us, there’s a Mr. Hyde!”

He came closer, and she knew that he hadn’t discovered her exact whereabouts yet.

“Ah, my lady! I can head back for the house, you know!”

She allowed herself a small noise, and he crept toward her. She had to force herself to wait. Wait until, in the misty moonlight, he saw her there. He lengthened his stride, grinning. She pulled back the sapling as hard as she could . . . waited, and let it go.

It slammed him dead center in the chest, and his feet went out right from under him, and he screamed in fury and pain. He must have been winded, because, he went down, and stayed down.

For several long moments. She looked about for a weapon, any weapon, aware that she didn’t dare leave him to rise and come after her again.

Or go back. For the sisters, and baby Ally.