Deep in the heart, p.1
Deep in the Heart, page 1
Deep in the Heart
Book Jacket
SHARON SALA
Deep in the Heart
First love is sweetest, because it is new.
When it goes the distance, it is rare.
This book is dedicated to first loves,
and to the lucky few
who kept theirs alive.
Contents
Prologue
FOR ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES, Samantha Jean Carlyle was dead.
1
JOHN THOMAS KNIGHT always knew he was going to hell.
2
“SAMANTHA JEAN, where are you going?”
3
THE RESTAURANT WAS CROWDED, which, in Samantha’s case, made everything…
4
SAMANTHA WOKE SLOWLY. For a moment before she opened her…
5
REBEL BARKED ONCE at the sound of a pickup…
6
JOHN THOMAS PULLED into the driveway at home and parked.
7
NEARLY A WEEK had come and gone since John Thomas…
8
SAMANTHA WAS MESMERIZED by the man standing at the foot…
9
SAMANTHA’S LEFT FOOT was asleep and her back ached from…
10
IN THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED, it became evident that neither…
11
SAMANTHA BURST INTO the sheriff’s office and then stopped…
12
A FEW HOURS LATER, a knock on the door startled…
13
THE MILES BETWEEN Rusk and New Summerfield shortened as Claudia…
14
THE SUN WAS ONLY minutes away from the horizon when…
15
WHITE WALLS LACKED IMAGINATION. John Thomas cursed the hospital’s lack…
16
JOHN THOMAS STOOD on the porch, waving as the preacher’s…
About the Author
Other Books by Sharon Sala
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
FOR ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES, Samantha Jean Carlyle was dead. It was just the when and how of it that had yet to happen.
The floor of her latest apartment was no softer than the last one, but it was where she felt safest. After all that she’d gone through during the last three months, below window level was the closest thing to heaven that she could find.
The proof of her fate lay in a circle on the floor around her, encompassing her with the evil that it contained. The hate mail and answering machine message tapes overflowed with warnings and promises from a stalker who wanted her dead.
Her face was blank. The light in her eyes had been out for weeks. When hope finally died, it had taken Samantha’s will to survive with it. The police had all but accused her of making up the entire story. Her boss had sent her home to get herself and her act together before she was permitted to return. Her friends were gone…and so was her faith in her fellow man.
Samantha’s breath caught at the back of her throat and came up on a sob.
“Oh God, I need help,” she whispered. Her head hit the wall as she slumped against it. “There’s no one on this earth who will believe me. My parents are dead. My so-called friends have abandoned me. If only there was someone left who would…”
The words froze on her tongue. She shuddered as a memory suddenly surfaced—of a boy she’d known, and the man that he’d become—of the vows they’d traded and the promises that they’d made to each other. She traced an old scar on the inside of her wrist and wondered if she’d finally lost her mind.
But the thought wouldn’t go away. Long hours passed while she remembered a young man who’d sworn an allegiance that she thought never would be broken. But as she crawled to her feet and made her way through the shadows in her apartment to the phone, she kept thinking, “What if he’s no longer there? What if he doesn’t even remember me?” Another sob slipped from her lips as she dialed with trembling fingers.
A phone call later, she had the assurance of knowing that there was a number listed in his name. And Cotton, Texas, was so small that a name on an envelope would be all that was needed to get a letter delivered to a resident.
If he was the man she remembered him to be…if time hadn’t changed Johnny Knight to the extent that he’d lost all value for an old promise made, then maybe there was still one person left who cared if she lived or died.
“Dear God, let him come,” she whispered, and began to write the letter, knowing full well it might be her last.
1
JOHN THOMAS KNIGHT always knew he was going to hell. He just never expected to get there in a yellow cab.
Since his plane set down in Los Angeles two hours ago he’d prayed more than he’d prayed in his entire life, and he still wasn’t certain he was going to ever see home again. From where he was sitting, Cherokee County, Texas, was looking better all the time. Here in L A., traffic didn’t flow, it snarled and jammed, and the people who drove in it wore equally snarled expressions.
People have to be crazy to live here, he thought.
As his cab stopped for a red light, a tall, thin man wearing combat fatigues appeared in the median of the busy thoroughfare, seemingly out of nowhere, and proceeded to execute a perfect somersault. He landed on his knees and then began chanting in a language John Thomas couldn’t understand.
“Crazy fool,” he muttered, and tried to imagine the Sam he had known living in a place like this.
The thought of Sam reminded him of why he was here, and of the last time he’d seen his childhood playmate who’d become his first love.
He’d been eighteen and hurting, trying to be a man and not cry as he kissed her good-bye at the bus stop. Samantha Carlyle had been sixteen and so full of their love that he could still remember the sheen of tears in her eyes as the bus pulled away.
He frowned, remembering also that the next time he’d come home—ten weeks later for his father’s funeral—her family had already moved to California without a by your leave or a forwarding address to help him find her.
He traced the thin, hairline scar across his wrist, remembering late summer nights, and blood oaths taken and promises given. Swearing a “cross my heart and hope to die” friendship forever. Nights when the extreme heat of slow summer days had lessened to an acceptable simmer and the only witnesses to their meeting were locusts buzzing a crazy cacophony in the mimosa trees overhead.
His gut tightened as the cab took a turn, and he wondered if it was from fear of traffic, or the pain of remembering the night of her sixteenth birthday, when they’d exchanged a different kind of oath. A promise that ended with them wrapped in each other’s arms beneath the same mimosa trees. He shuddered and shut his eyes, trying to call back the memory of the expression on Samantha’s face as he’d taken her undying pledge of love, as well as her virginity, all in one night. They’d been so happy…and so sure.
And it had ended so swiftly that thinking about it still made him ache.
His mouth curved in a wry smile as he thought back to the dreams of callow youth. Then the smile died when he remembered the letter he’d received at home two days ago. The letter that had sent him flying across the country from Cherokee County, Texas, to L.A. with his heart in his throat. The letter that had him praying he wouldn’t be too late to keep the promise he’d made all those years ago.
He won’t leave me alone, she’d written. And I have nowhere left to run. Johnny…please come get me! Don’t let me die!
The lingering resentment of her unexplained disappearance, and the old, unanswered questions from their youth were not enough to make him ignore her cry for help. Not after all they’d been through together. It was The least he could do for someone who’d been his best friend for the first half of his life thus far.
He shifted in the seat and then frowned, jamming his Stetson tighter on his head as the cabby took a corner like a piss ant hunting dry ground. He wondered if the man drove this way out of repressed aggression, or if it was because he didn’t know enough of the English language to understand the road signs.
“Either slow the hell down or pay attention to what you’re doing,” he growled, flashing his badge across the front seat for good measure. A Texas sheriff’s badge carried no authority in California, but John Thomas was too fed up to care about details.
The cabby’s shocked expression did little toward appeasing the nervous twitch John Thomas felt low in his belly, and he knew that the sinking feeling he’d lived with for the last forty-eight hours had nothing to do with California traffic.
Minutes later the cabby pulled up in front of a pink stucco apartment complex surrounded by palms. The black wrought-iron fence and ornate gate standing ajar told him in no uncertain terms that he was definitely in laid-back L.A.
He crawled out of the cab with his bag in one hand and his hat in the other, then tossed some bills through the open window opposite the driver.
“My God,” he muttered, and jammed his Stetson back on his head. “Pink houses! Back home they’d either slap on some whitewash or burn ’em all down and put them out of their misery.”
“Vat you say to me?” the cabby yelled.
John Thomas just shook his head and waved the cabdriver away. Then he took a slow, deep breath and stepped up onto the sidewalk. He stared straight up into the underside of a towering palm tree and back at the odd, almost garish blending of color and cultures surrounding him. Readjusting his Stetson, he picked up his bag and headed toward what he hoped was the vicinity
By the time he reached the second floor of the complex, he’d encountered two sets of men holding hands, a woman with purple hair who was wearing a tight, pink bodysuit, a teenager walking four dogs—none above the size of a half-grown armadillo—and had been propositioned by a preteen girl young enough to be his daughter.
But when he arrived at the door to Apartment 214, he no longer worried about where he was, but who he was going to see.
He and Samantha were no longer teenagers. But they’d been friends long before they’d been lovers, and in spite of the painful and dramatic way in which they’d parted, he still considered her more than a friend. The twenty-plus years of friendship that lay between them were still as strong as it had been on the night their blood had mixed and their promises had slipped into the silence of the night.
He dropped his bag beside the door, threw back his shoulders and knocked. It was, after all, why he’d come.
There were no tears left to cry. Unmitigated terror had become commonplace for Samantha Carlyle. She was waiting for the inevitable. Day by day the stalker came closer, and there was nothing she could do to stop him.
She could barely remember her life three months ago when she’d been a highly valued member of a Hollywood casting agency, calmly and competently going about the business of fitting the famous and the not-so-famous into starring and supporting roles.
She had thrived on the constant pressure and excitement of finding just the right actor or actress for the part in question. And although she’d been in the business over seven years, she had never gotten used to being the one who also doled out the bad news to the ones who didn’t make the cut. Most of the times the actors and actresses took the rejections in stride. But now and then, there would be one who was devastated by the news. Those were the times that she wished she’d been checking groceries in some supermarket, not ruining someone’s hopes and dreams.
“And look at you now,” Samantha whispered to her own reflection as she stood in the window overlooking the courtyard below. “You have no job. You’re running from the devil and your own shadow. You’re just hiding…and waiting to die.”
Until now, she’d never considered what it meant to be “living on borrowed time.” She looked again at her reflection and wondered what there was about her that could drive a man to insane threats of vengeance.
Her face was no different from many others—heartshaped, but a bit too thin, and framed by a mane of thick, black hair. Her nose was still small and turned up at the world, but there was no longer a jut to her chin. It only trembled. Her lips were full but colorless, and the life that had once shone from her eyes seemed dim…almost gone. She shuddered and dropped the drapes, rearranging them to shut the sun out and herself in from prying eyes.
When the harassment had gone from hate mail to phone calls with spine-chilling messages left in an unrecognizable voice, she’d nearly lost her mind and, soon after, she did lose her so-called friends.
As if that wasn’t enough, she’d moved her residence twice, certain each time she would outwit the culprit. And then came the day that she realized she was being stalked. But by then going back to the police was out of the question. They had convinced themselves that she was concocting the incidents herself. In fact, they had almost convinced her.
Her anger at their accusations had quickly turned to disbelief when they had proved to her, without doubt, that the hate letters she’d been receiving had been typed on her own office typewriter, and that the calls left on her answering machine were traced to an empty apartment that had been rented in the name of Samantha Jean Carlyle. It was enough said. When LAPD reminded her that perpetrating fraud was a crime, she’d taken her letters and her tapes and gone home, having decided to hire a personal bodyguard. Then she’d reconsidered her financial situation and given up on that idea.
That was the day her boss put her on indefinite leave of absence, after reminding her, of course, that when she got her act together she would be welcomed back. The victim had become the accused. At first she’d been furious over everyone’s lack of sympathy for her situation or concern for her life. Then she’d become too busy trying to stay alive.
It was the constant frustration and the growing fear that no one was going to save her, let alone believe her, that made her remember Johnny Knight.
Until the call she’d made in the middle of the night last week, she hadn’t known if he was still in Cherokee County…or if he was even alive. Their last link had been severed years ago when her family had moved away from Cotton. At sixteen, she’d loved him enough for two lifetimes, and it had still not been enough to keep their connection intact after her family moved to California.
But the bond of their lifelong friendship was burned deep within her memory and was strong enough to prompt the letter she’d written. He was her last and only hope.
Her stomach growled now, reminding her that, once again, she’d forgotten to eat. And then she remembered the reason she had not: there was no food in the house, and she was too afraid of the maniac who might be lurking outside to go buy any.
A sharp knock at the door sent her spinning around. She clasped her hand to her throat, felt the blood leave her face, and fought the wave of nausea that hit her belly. Transfixed, she stood in the middle of the room and listened.
For some reason, John Thomas had expected an instant answer to his summons. When it was not forthcoming, he rechecked the address and then frowned as he looked back at the number on the apartment door. They matched.
A picture flashed in his mind of opening the door and finding that he’d come this far only to be too late. Of her lifeless body flung out across the room in careless abandon, left there by the man who’d entered her world uninvited. It made him shake, and it made him angry. The unexpected emotion made his second attempt at knocking sound more like a frontal attack.
But all it did was frighten Samantha into the thought of making one last call to LAPD, knowing full well that they would only blame her for crying wolf.
John Thomas was at the point of looking for the apartment manager when he heard a woman’s voice. It was faint, and a little shaky, and it hit him belly first as he tried to connect the soft, husky sound with the teenager that he’d known.
“Who is it?” she said.
“Sam? Is that you? Let me in.”
Samantha gasped. She didn’t recognize the voice. It was deep and gravelly and echoed beneath the overhanging roof under which he was standing. But there was only one person left alive on the face of the earth who’d ever called her Sam. She ran to the door and peered through the peephole, afraid to look, but afraid not to take the chance.
He didn’t look the way she’d expected, but from the distorted view through the hole, neither would her own parents had they still been alive.
“Who is it?” she asked again, and watched the man on the other side of the door stuff his hands in his pockets in a gesture of frustration.
“It’s me…. It’s…” He almost said John Thomas. But it wouldn’t have been how she’d known him. She’d been long gone by the time he’d decided that being called Johnny wouldn’t do for a fresh-faced marine home on his first leave.
“It’s Johnny. I got your letter. Let me in.” His voice softened as he realized how frightened she must be if what she’d claimed was true.
“Do you swear?” he heard her ask, and then he smiled. He knew what he needed to say to assure her of who he was.
“Cross my heart and hope to die,” he said quietly.
It was what she’d been waiting to hear. Tears came softly. Tears that she thought were lost forever. They came with the relief that flooded through her as she reached for the locks lining the door.
Tumblers turned and chains clinked, and then the door cracked…just enough so that he saw, for the first time in fifteen years, the clear, perfect blue of Samantha Carlyle’s eyes. And then the door swung back, and she stood framed in the opening, and he forgot to breathe.
Woman! She’d turned into a woman! And my God…what a woman! She was beautiful. In his mind he’d known it had happened. But his heart hadn’t been ready for the shock.
“Johnny?”
Samantha stared long and hard at the towering, broad-shouldered cowboy, trying to see a hint of the boy that she’d known and loved in the black hair and sharp cheekbones of the big man standing at her door. The eyes looked familiar and only a little stunned. They were still a rich, warm shade of brown. His mouth was firm, his chin stubborn. But his appearance had changed so much that Samantha knew he could have passed her on the street unrecognized. And then she remembered! The telling proof should still be visible. She reached for his wrist.
