Smoky Ridge Curse. Paula Graves

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      “No, the soup will keep in the fridge. I’m curious to see this casserole you’ve cooked up.” Delilah spotted a foil-covered glass casserole dish sitting by the refrigerator. She sneaked a peek under the foil, recognizing green beans, carrots, chicken chunks and whole-kernel yellow corn, topped with cheese and fried onions. “You made pantry casserole!” She turned to her mother, a smile playing at her lips.

      “I didn’t have much in the pantry, but I thought it would be nice to fix something for you.” Reesa’s smile held a hint of apology. “Maybe next time you come, I’ll go shopping first and make something from scratch instead of out of cans.”

      Impulsively, Delilah hugged her mother. “Pantry casserole is my favorite. I make it at home all the time.”

      Reesa’s thin arms tightened around Delilah’s back. “You do?”

      “I do. Can’t go wrong—”

      “—with a casserole,” Reesa finished in unison with her.

      “I’ll go outside and get the soup. You get that in the oven and then we can talk while it’s cooking.” Delilah let go of her mother and opened the back door. “Mom, you need to start locking your door.”

      “Nobody ever bothers me up here.”

      “Famous last words,” Delilah muttered as she stepped out onto the sleet-pebbled patio to fetch the soup.

      But the paper bag was gone.

      Delilah froze, scanning the area behind the house for any sign of an intruder. Visibility wasn’t great, between the steady needling of sleet and the cold mist swallowing the top of the mountain. Seeing nothing out of place, she pulled out her flashlight and checked the ground around the patio table. No sign of the bag of take-out soup, but the layer of sleet on the patio had been disturbed.

      She couldn’t say the streaks of bare patio were definitely footsteps—she supposed it was more likely that a hungry raccoon or opossum had grabbed himself a ready-made meal—but a thin film of blood on the edge of the table was troubling enough to send her reaching for her Sig again.

      “Hello?” she called, loudly enough that a faint echo of her voice rang back to her from deep in the woods.

      No answer.

      The cabin door opened behind her, making her jump. “Dee Dee, is something wrong?”

      “The soup is gone.”

      “Oh.” Reesa looked nonplussed.

      “Probably a raccoon or something.”

      “Hope it’s not a bear.” Reesa shuddered. “Pam Colby said she saw a black bear in her backyard just last week, looking for a place to nest for the winter. She shooed it off by banging some pots together.”

      “I don’t think it’s a bear.” Delilah’s gaze settled on the film of blood. “I’m going to take a look around, okay? I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

      “It’s freezing out there. I’m sure it was just an animal, Dee. Why don’t you come back in here where it’s warm? Let the raccoon have the soup. He probably needs it more than we do.”

      “I’m just going to walk the perimeter. There’s some blood on the table—maybe it’s injured and needs help.”

      “Oh, poor thing. Okay, but hurry up. The temperature’s dropping like crazy out here. They’re talking about maybe our first snow of the season.” Reesa backed into the house, closing the door behind her.

      Stamping her feet to get some of the feeling back into her cold toes, Delilah headed out into the yard, keeping the beam of the flashlight moving in a slow, thorough arc in front of her.

      She discovered more blood, spattered on the grass in a weaving line toward the tree line. Following the trail, she spotted a white birch tree with a dark streak of red marring its papery bark about four feet up. The mark seemed to form a long fingerprint.

      She paused and checked the magazine of her pistol, reassuring herself that the Sig was loaded, with a round already chambered. If her mother was right and their intruder was a bear, she didn’t want to face it unarmed.

      Though she listened carefully for any sounds that might reveal an animal or other intruder nearby, all she heard was the moan of the icy wind through the trees. But she felt something else there. Something living and watching, waiting for her to turn around and leave.

      What would happen if she did just that? Would the watcher let her go? Or would he pounce the second she turned her back? Not caring to find out, she backed toward the clearing with slow, steady steps. She kept her eyes on the woods, trying to see past the moonless blackness outside the narrow, weakening beam of her flashlight.

      Only the faintest of snapping sounds behind her gave her any warning at all.

      It wasn’t enough.

      She hit a solid wall of heat. One large arm curled around her, pulling her flush against that heat, while a hand closed over her mouth.

      “Don’t scream,” he growled.

      She didn’t.

      But he did.

       Chapter Two

      Pain gutted him, ripping its way around his wounded side and settling like liquid fire in the center of his stomach. He tried to keep his hold on her, tried to bite back the cry that tore from his throat as she slammed her elbow back into his side again.

      “Delilah, stop.” Adam Brand stumbled backward, struggling to keep his feet as his body instinctively sought relief from her lethal limbs.

      A second later, he was staring down the barrel of her Sig Sauer P229 backlit by the beam of a flashlight.

      “Son of a bitch!” Delilah hit the last word hard and dropped the weapon and flashlight to her side, bending nearly double as if she’d been the one to take the blow to the gut. “You scared the hell out of me, Brand.”

      “I think you reopened my wound,” Brand shot back, his voice hoarse with pain. He pressed his hand to his side and found that the wound, which had finally started to clot, was weeping blood again.

      “Your wound?” Delilah straightened quickly, swinging the beam of her flashlight over him, searching for his injury.

      He turned his side toward her helpfully. “I think it was a thirty-two. I got lucky.”

      In the low light of the flashlight beam, her pretty face twisted with a grimace. “Lucky, huh?” She plucked at his shirt, making him wince as the cotton clung to the drying blood around the bullet furrow. “Where the hell have you been? The police are looking for you.”

      “I know. That’s why I didn’t knock on the door.”

      “What did you do with my soup?”

      “Ate it,” Brand admitted. “I haven’t had anything to eat besides what I could forage for a couple of days.”

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