Fair Warning Read online

  Headlights approached from behind, and she squinted as the inconsiderate driver flashed bright beams into her eyes.

  “Don’t even think about it, buddy,” she muttered. No way should anyone try to pass on this winding road, which lacked any kind of shoulder or guardrail. She cautiously applied her brakes, hoping the flash of red lights would translate the message.

  Unfortunately, the boor seemed intent on munching her rear bumper. To her dismay, she caught the glow of approaching headlights over the next rise, as well.

  She adjusted her rearview mirror, unable to read the license plate with the glare in her eyes.

  The oncoming car crested a rise, and bright lights once more flashed in her eyes. The lights quickly dimmed, the car behind her backed away and she relaxed, easing her foot slightly from the accelerator.

  Nothing like a little excitement to chase away the grogginess. She’d be glad to get home, start a fire in the fireplace, kick back with some chamomile tea. A few more curves and she was there.

  But the car behind her got impatient again. Its headlights torched via the side mirrors straight into her face.

  She reached over to make another adjustment. A fraction of a second too late she saw the curve coming. With a squeal of tires she corrected, but something bumped her from behind. She slammed the brakes as her front tires left the pavement.

  Another bump, and her headlights shot across open space to the gleam of water far below. She pumped her brakes, but her tires had nothing to grip. She cried out as her car plunged through an old sign and a bramble patch of brush, then soared out into empty air.

  She slammed into an embankment and tumbled through the blackness with the sound of shattering glass and crumpling metal—and her own desperate screams.

  Graham was startled from his reading by the ring of the telephone. He picked up, expecting it to be Ginger calling to tell him she’d be home late from church. They had committee meetings tonight, and she had just been voted onto the missions committee.

  The caller wasn’t Ginger.

  “Dr. Vaughn? This is Rick Fenrow. I’m calling from the E.R. at Clark Memorial Hospital. You’re friends with Willow Traynor, aren’t you?”

  A sudden chill gripped him. “Yes. What’s happened?”

  “She was just brought in by ambulance from a single-vehicle accident on Lakeshore Drive.”

  “What’s her status?”

  “We don’t know yet. Right now she’s unconscious, and they have her on a backboard and C-spine. Dr. Teeter is with her in the trauma room. Do you want me to ask him—”

  “No. I’m on my way in.” He gave Rick his cell phone number, then scribbled a note for Ginger and raced out the door.

  Willow awakened to the sudden sting of pain in her arm and reached to rub it. Someone caught her hand and pulled it away. She opened her eyes, then closed them again against the bright lights that blinded her.

  “She’s awake.” A deep female voice spoke from above and to her left. “Mrs. Traynor? You’re in the emergency department of Clark. You’ve been in an accident.”

  Willow felt as though someone had their hands wrapped around her throat. Again she raised her hand, and again someone caught her arm and pressed it back to her side.

  She was lying on something hard and uncomfortable.

  “What happened?” she asked, forcing her eyes open once more, despite the glare of the lights. She couldn’t focus on the faces around her, but she was definitely the center of attention.

  “You apparently ran off the side of the road into a ravine,” the woman said gently. “You’re on a long board with C-spine immobilization.”

  That explained the discomfort.

  “Vitals are stable, Dr. Teeter,” someone said from somewhere above Willow’s head.

  “Willow, we’re going to have you taken into radiology to take some films and make sure you can be removed from that nasty old long board,” added a slightly familiar voice. Dr. Teeter. He’d been the E.R. doctor who treated Preston the night of the fire.

  She closed her eyes and felt her bed moving. The next time she opened her eyes, she was being pushed down a hallway.

  She looked up at the man wheeling her to X-Ray. A long, familiar face, smiling. Rick Fenrow. “Are you my guardian angel?” she asked, noting that her words slurred a little. “You seem to always be here when I’m here.”

  His smile widened. “I told you they call me down whenever they’re busy. You have a talent for picking the busiest nights to have your accidents.”

  “Has it been a bad night?”

  “I haven’t seen a good night in this E.R. Don’t worry, they give good care here. I was here when an older man was brought in the other night with end-stage Parkinson’s. The entire staff treated him like royalty. That means a lot to me, since my own father has Parkinson’s.”

  She closed her eyes. The pain in her head seemed to be spreading throughout her body. She felt a hand on her arm.

  “Are you doing okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Good. I’ve never lost a patient on my shift yet.”

  She opened her eyes again. “I’m sorry about your father. It’s hard knowing a loved one is suffering when you’re surrounded by healthy people.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Not that I’m healthy right now, but it seems as if I’ll be fine. I can wiggle my fingers and toes, and I can feel everything—every single ache in my body. Obviously no nerves have been severed.”

  “You have a great attitude. I hear you’re friends with Dr. Vaughn.”

  “That’s right. If things keep going the way they have been lately, he’s going to rue the day he met me.”

  “I hope you don’t mind that I broke the rules and called him. He’s pretty worried about you, and he’s on his way in.”

  By the time Graham reached the hospital parking lot he had been apprised twice of Willow’s condition, had spoken to Dr. Teeter and promised to watch her closely. Dr. Teeter agreed she would be in good enough condition to be released when Graham arrived, or at least soon after. Willow had no apparent serious injuries. Her X-rays had been read as normal, and even her CT scans had been read as negative. She’d been one of the fortunate ones tonight. Seat belts and air bags were lifesavers.

  When Graham walked into the E.R., he saw Dr. Teeter engaged in resuscitation efforts on another accident victim. Graham found Willow in room four, slightly bruised, but not as badly injured as he’d imagined on his drive in.

  “So here’s my patient,” he said as he entered and sat on the chair in front of her. Seeing her once more helpless, with bruises on her face and arms and a cracked lip, he felt an overpowering rush of tenderness.

  “Graham, you have a full schedule tomorrow,” she said. “I told them I’d be fine if I could just get a ride home.”

  “You’re a nurse—you know better. You need to be with someone where you can be awakened every two hours so you can be checked. I told Dr. Teeter that Ginger and I would take care of you at my house, rather than leave you in the hospital overnight.”

  She scowled at him. “Since when did you start making decisions for me? He didn’t ask me what I wanted to do.”

  He took her right hand and examined it, then slowly, deliberately, raised it to his lips and kissed it.

  Her eyes widened, and she looked startled.

  When she made no attempt to remove her hand from his grasp, he continued holding it. “I started making decisions for you as soon as I received a call about the wreck.”

  “Rick told me he called you.”

  “You can’t know what I went through on my way here, and I’m not taking any more chances with your safety tonight. You should just be glad Ginger doesn’t know about this yet, or you’d have both of us to contend with.”

  She blinked up at him, lips parted slightly, but for once she didn’t seem to have an argument for him.

  “Dr. Teeter got you through in record time,” he said. “I saw your X-rays and spoke to one of t
he paramedics who brought you in. God definitely was protecting you tonight. Your car is demolished. Do you remember what happened?”

  Slowly, with apparent reluctance, she withdrew her hand from his grasp at last. “I’ve been told a resident in the area heard a crash and investigated. He called 9-1-1. All I remember is traffic, bright lights, sleeping aids and seeing Preston.” Her eyes widened. “Oh, poor Preston. Does he know about this?”

  “He knows. I’ve reassured him that I’ll take good care of you tonight. You are not getting out of my sight for twenty-four hours. After that, I’d like you to consider staying in Hideaway with us for the next week.”

  She started to shake her head. Once again he took her hand—partly because he wanted to make a point, but mostly because he’d suddenly discovered that he very much enjoyed the feel of her hand in his.

  “Willow, I discovered today that the police found traces of ether on Brittany Jameson’s pillowcase. Someone meant business. You have retrograde amnesia and can’t remember what caused your accident—”

  “I might have fallen asleep at the wheel.”

  “But you might not have. I’m not willing to risk it, even if you do live in a gated community. Fences aren’t enough to protect you from someone this determined.” Again he raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. “Come home with me? I promise not to let Ginger take over your life.”

  A suggestion of a smile touched her lips. “Promise?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Then let’s get out of here.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  A week after the accident, Willow sat up in bed with a cry. She stared into the darkness, her breathing echoing from the corners of the room.

  The room. Her bedroom in Graham’s house at Hideaway. Not in that place of white shadows and strange shapes and sounds that percolated in her dreams until it became almost tangible.

  Still, she watched for that figure from the casket to come rushing at her, as if it could follow her from her dreams into the waking world. In memory, she could still see those ugly, angry eyes, gaping mouth and fingers that groped toward her, looking more like animal claws than human hands.

  This time, however, the face had stripes, as if shadows fell across it…or as if bars kept it from her. The arms reached between the bars, fingers stretched as if to gouge out her eyes. That was what had awakened her. They had come too close.

  A drop of perspiration trickled down the side of her face, and she blinked, her vision adjusting from her dream world to this one. The silhouette of the huge leather chair that faced the dark fireplace was barely visible in the dim gray light that filtered through the large picture window.

  No one was here. She was safe. She caught her breath on a sharp sigh of relief and heard the quiver in that sigh. The lighted numbers of the clock at her bedside stand told her dawn was near. It was Monday morning, April 22. Travis had been killed two years ago today.

  The grief made her want to curl back into a ball and cover her head with the comforter. She’d had, what, five hours of sleep last night? She needed more.

  But she couldn’t face another nightmare, and the significance of today’s date guaranteed more of the same if she closed her eyes. Besides, five hours was more than she’d had on some nights since the accident.

  The final vestiges of the lingering nightmare mocked her from the dark corners of the large bedroom suite—a face of ghostly white seemed to hover just past her field of vision. The bars between them had never been there before. Was it her subconscious trying to tell her she was being imprisoned?

  She blinked again. Stop it!

  In spite of the peaceful week she’d spent here in this house in the countryside that surrounded Hideaway, Missouri, she was still on alert.

  And she couldn’t get Travis out of her mind. Last night she’d gone to sleep trying hard to recall his face, not from photographs, but from memory—just an image of his face. She couldn’t do it. His image often eluded her nowadays, and she found herself forced to rely on photographs.

  Worse, the face that had come to her in her dreams was not Travis. But she felt that, somehow, she should recognize that image. Should she know that man who resided in the white casket and lunged up at her when she least expected it?

  Someone from her past? Someone she knew, but didn’t recognize in her dream state?

  She thrust the comforter aside, trying to throw off the clinging remnants of her dream with it. Time for a shower.

  Standing under the sharp needles of warm water, she tried to dismiss the suspicion that the persistent nightmares might be evidence that she’d inherited the disease that ruined her mother’s life.

  She didn’t even want to think about that today. Life was overwhelming enough right now. Preston had not healed as quickly or as well as the doctors had hoped. The physical stressors of his smoke-damaged lungs, one of them still collapsed; his internal injuries and his burned body, not to mention the metabolic demands of recovering from major surgery, were making progress painfully slow. He was still a guest at Clark Memorial Hospital, a very reluctant guest.

  Closing her eyes, she tried to let the steam from the hot water soothe away her tension, the uneasiness that had escalated every time she considered leaving the house. This was the only place she had felt safe this past week.

  She had no reason to believe that anyone had discovered where she was staying now, though she had thought a dark-colored sedan may have been following her in Branson traffic a few times—or perhaps she imagined she’d seen the same car.

  Lately Willow had even felt apprehensive when she went to the hospital. Consequently, she’d chosen alternating routes to and from Branson. Silly, maybe, but she preferred to take any precautions she could.

  Today her rental car was parked across the lake at the boys’ ranch because yesterday she had taken the southern route out of Branson to Highway 86, along the far shore of Table Rock Lake—that was how cautious she’d become.

  One of the boys at the ranch had brought her across in Dane Gideon’s bass boat. If she needed transportation into Hideaway—a quarter of a mile from here via the shoreline—she also had access to Graham’s jet bike or his canoe. It was much closer to town via the lake than by road, anyway.

  Showered and dressed in a pair of comfy jeans and a bright red cotton sweater, she went downstairs with the intention of catching up on some paperwork for Graham’s rentals. She had slipped into her brother’s job easily under Graham’s patient direction. She spent several hours a week in the roomy, tastefully decorated office, with a view of Graham’s private cove.

  The large, well-appointed kitchen was dark and quiet when she passed through it, but as she reached for the office door to push it open, she heard the sound of squeaking boards coming from the direction of the deck.

  A large human shadow moved across the panes of the French doors, slightly taller than Graham, and broader.

  Willow froze, unable to breathe, as her heart once more kicked into nightmare gear. Had someone followed her here after all?

  Graham sat up in bed, frowning into the gray gloom of his suite on the top floor of the house. He heard no sound now, but a few moments ago he had awakened to the faint swish of water flowing through the house pipes. Either Ginger or Willow had been taking a shower, and he guessed it was Willow.

  Several times in the past week he had awakened in the middle of the night to the sound of faint cries. At first he had dismissed them as coyotes, but then he realized they sounded more like a woman weeping. Each time he heard them, he noticed that Willow was groggy the next day, with dark circles under her eyes.

  Obviously she was continuing to struggle with nightmares. She never mentioned a problem, of course. He hadn’t asked her about it, because he didn’t want her to think he was complaining because she awakened him. She was so sensitive to others, so afraid to disturb anyone or be an inconvenience.

  He hadn’t yet discovered how to reassure her.

  Knowing he would get no more sl
eep now, he rose and pulled on a fresh pair of jeans. He would shower later. Right now he wanted to make sure she was okay.

  The shadowed figure turned. Willow slumped with relief when she recognized Blaze Farmer, the college kid who called the boys’ ranch home.

  As she watched, he pulled a deck chair to the far railing so that it faced east, where the sun had barely begun to peer over the tree-lined horizon. He sat down, placed his feet atop the wooden rail, hitched his chair onto its two back legs and crossed his arms over his broad chest, looking content.

  Willow had spoken to Blaze several times in the past week—or rather, he had gone out of his way to speak to her when he came across the lake to take care of the cattle, horses, goats and chickens on Graham’s property.

  She knew he had a heavy schedule with his college studies and the work program at nearby College of the Ozarks, in addition to his part-time job as a tech at Hideaway Clinic. He also took care of Graham’s animals in order to earn extra money to save for veterinarian school.

  Even so, he never gave the impression that he was in a hurry. He had a way of making a person feel significant.

  Willow strolled through the great room to the French doors, then hesitated. Ordinarily, she would have left him alone so he could enjoy his brief time of peaceful solitude, but this morning, the remnants of her nightmare continued to disturb her. She didn’t want to be alone. Nor did she want to awaken Graham or Ginger.

  She had a feeling she had done so a few times. Graham didn’t always look perfectly refreshed on those mornings after her worst dreams left her sleepless. The problem was, his suite was directly above her bedroom. He was likely to have heard her; several times she had awakened to the sound of her own voice, crying out in fear.

  She unlatched the door and opened it. Blaze turned his head in greeting, his ebony skin a sharp contrast against the growing light.