She strained to listen. Did she hear the almost indistinct sound of music? Or was that all in her mind?
She shouldn’t go closer.
She should go home.
Tell Santana.
But...
Again she clucked softly to Sinbad, and the horse moved forward, then stopped suddenly and snorted, backing up.
“Come on.” She leaned forward.
Was that music? Really? Or was she imagining it?
Still twenty yards away, in the cover of the surrounding trees, she dismounted and tied the reins of the bridle to a tree, then hesitated, listening hard. The snow lay in soft folds all the way to the house. No trail. No tire tracks near the closed door of the garage or on the long lane, at least none created recently.
All her senses told her to go home.
But her curiosity kept her going, so she broke her own path and as quietly as possible walked to the house, to first a darkened window and then to the one where she thought she’d seen light. The blinds or curtains were drawn, but around the edges she could see a slit of lamplight. She leaned forward, peering in, all her muscles tense. Wasn’t this the scene in the movies where the bloody killer tore open the blinds and swung his ax through the window, cleaving the unsuspecting, stupid teen in two?
Heart pounding, ears straining, she leaned close enough that her breath was visible on the glass. Was there someone . . . a dark figure . . . inching toward her? Holy shit! Someone was inside! She started backing up, nearly tripping in the process.
The blinds snapped up and the dark figure of a man was backlit by a single lamp.
She turned as he tapped hard against the glass.
She flashed back. To the abduction. To the feeling of powerlessness. To knowing her life was about to end.
Running toward her horse, she expected to hear
the sound of shattering glass, or the sharp report of a rifle. Any second she could be shot. Why had she been so stupid?
A door creaked open near the garage on the other side of a wide car port.
This was it! She braced herself for the shot. The pain. God, would she die now? After she’d killed the last man who’d attacked her? Frantic, she reached for Sinbad, stripping the reins from the branch, fir needles, cones, and snow falling.
“Bianca!”
Her name rumbled across the icy grounds and she froze.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Santana?
She whirled to see her stepfather marching toward her. His expression was grim, dark eyes beneath the rim of his hat dead serious.
“I was just out riding.”
“Over here?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“No reason,” she said. “I just needed to get out of the house. I was just riding and thinking and . . .”
His expression softened a bit.