my way!” She crashed her fist on top of the dresser, raised her foot, and smashed the sole of her sneaker into the thing so hard that it rocked back and thumped into the wall with a bang.
She grabbed the drawer pulls and yanked. The terrorized drawer shot out, and she snatched the whole thing free and flung it into the opposite wall, where it struck and exploded in a rainbow spray of underpants and tiny striped T-shirts.
She walked over and looked down at the battered drawer, lying upside down on the floor.
“So there,” she said calmly. “Teach you to get in my way when I have things to think about.”
“Like what, Mam?” said a cautious voice from the doorway. She looked up to see Jemmy hovering there, eyes flicking from her to the mistreated drawer and back.
“Oh.” She thought of trying to explain the drawer but instead cleared her throat and sat down on the bed, holding out a hand to him. “Come here, a bhalaich.”
His ginger brows flicked up at the Gaelic endearment, but he came willingly, cuddling into her arm. He hugged her hard, burying his head in her shoulder, and she held him as tightly as she could, rocking back and forth and making the sorts of soft noises she’d made to him when he was tiny.
“It’ll be all right, baby,” she whispered to him. “It will.”
She heard him swallow and felt his small, square back move under her hand.
“Yeah.” His voice quivered a little and he sniffed hard, then tried again. “Yeah. But what’s going to be all right, Mam? What’s going on?” He drew away a little then, looking up at her with eyes that held more questions and more knowledge than any nine-year-old should reasonably have.
“Mandy says you put Mr. Cameron in the priest’s hole. But he’s not there now—I looked.”
A cold hand stroked her nape as she remembered the shock of the empty hole.
“No, he’s not.”
“But you didn’t let him out, did you?”
“No. I didn’t let him out. He—”
“So somebody else did,” he said positively. “Who, do you think?”
“You have a very logical mind,” she said, smiling a little, despite herself. “You get it from your Grandda Jamie.”
“He said I got it from Grannie Claire,” Jem replied, but automatically; he wasn’t to be distracted. “I thought maybe it was the man who chased me at the dam—but he couldn’t have been here letting Mr. Cameron out at the same time he was chasing me. Could he?” A sudden fear showed in his eyes, and she choked back the overwhelming urge to hunt the man down and kill him like a rabid skunk.
The man had got away at the dam, running off into the dark when the police showed up, but, God help her, she was going to find him one day, and then—but this was not the day. The problem now was to stop him—or Rob Cameron—from getting anywhere near her kids again.
Then she got what Jemmy was saying and felt the chill she’d carried in her heart spread like hoarfrost through her body.
“You mean there has to be another man,” she said, surprised at how calm she sounded. “Mr. Cameron, the man at the dam—and whoever let Mr. Cameron out of the priest’s hole.”
“It could be a lady,” Jemmy pointed out. He seemed less scared, talking about it. That was a good thing, because her own skin was rippling with fear.
“Do you know what Grannie called—calls—goose bumps?” She held out her arm, the fine reddish hairs all standing on end. “Horripilation.”
“Horripilation,” Jemmy repeated, and gave a small, nervous giggle. “I like that word.”
“Me, too.” She took a deep breath and stood up. “Go pick out a change of clothes and your PJs, would you, sweetheart? I have to make a couple of phone calls, and then I think we’re going to go visit Auntie Fiona.”
IT’S BEST TO SLEEP IN A HALE SKIN
ROGER WOKE SUDDENLY, but without shock. No sense of abandoned dreams, no half-heard noise, but his eyes were open and he was fully aware. It was perhaps an hour before sunrise. He’d left the shutters open; the room was cold and the clouded sky the color of a black pearl.
He lay motionless, listening to his heart beat, and realized that for the first time in several days it wasn’t pounding. He wasn’t afraid. The fear and turmoil of the night, the terror of the last few days, had vanished. His body was completely relaxed; so was his mind.
There was something