“Leave my mama alone! Leave her—”

Ethan looked over at Autumn. “Listen, honey, Mama needs to talk to me so I can help you, okay? I’m not hurting her, I promise.”

Joanna said, “He’s not hurting me, Autumn.” She drew a deep breath. He’s right, stop it, stop it. She sucked in a shuddering breath, steadied herself. Autumn was making small mewling sounds. She had to get it together; she couldn’t fly out of control. Autumn ran to her, and Joanna hugged her against her legs. “It’s all right, sweetie, I promise. The sheriff will help us, you’ll see. Now, stay strong for me, okay?” She looked at Ethan. “Sheriff, listen to me. Blessed is here. He is very dangerous. He’s not right in the head; he has the ability to look at you and sort of hypnotize you. He can make you do anything he wants you to. You saw yourself what he just did to your deputy. You’ve got to believe me.”

“Okay, say I believe you,” Ethan said, but of course he didn’t. “Who exactly is Blessed? No, forget that for the moment.” He streaked his fingers through his hair, then turned to stare at Ox, who was rubbing his stomach. He still looked confused, and his face was white with pain.

Ethan, voice calm, filled with authority, said, “Don’t bother making another grab for my gun. Now, I want you to take Autumn and Ox back into my bedroom. Lock the door and stick a chair under the knob. I want you to close and lock the windows, pull the drapes so no one can see in. Turn off the lights. I want all of you to sit on the floor on the opposite side of the bed. Don’t move until I call you. Don’t open the bedroom door except for me. Do you understand?”

“But—”

“Do it, now,” Ethan said over his shoulder as he went to the back door, looked out, and slid the dead bolt home. He pulled his grandma’s lacy curtains over the kitchen window and took one last look at Joanna, Autumn, and Ox, still sitting there looking dazed and lost, his jaw grinding because he still hurt. “Turn out the kitchen lights. Autumn knows where everything is. Go!”

Autumn clutched her mother’s hand. “Come on, Mama, we’ve got to hurry.”

Ethan hoped she’d obey him. He didn’t have time to convince her. He turned and ran toward the front of his house.

Joanna patted Ox’s arm as she bent down and picked up his gun. She saw he was still too disoriented to take care of himself. “You need to come with us, Ox. It’s not safe for you to sit here right now, okay?”

Ox raised dazed eyes to her face. “I don’t understand what happened. Why did you all hit me?”

“I’m sorry, but now you’ve got to come with us. It’s dangerous. It’s what the sheriff wants. I’ll take care of your gun until you get yourself together again.” Actually, she had no intention of ever giving up that gun. They turned off lights in their wake as they half dragged Ox to the back of the house, to Ethan’s bedroom. It was dark as a pit once Ethan had turned off all the front lights. Joanna shut the bedroom door and locked it, but she knew, simply knew, that Blessed was outside the window. What was the sheriff doing? What if Blessed killed him? Or made him kill himself?

Ethan stood quietly beside the locked front door. He heard them dragging Ox down the hallway, heard the bedroom door close, heard the lock click. Good. They were safe.

The house was completely dark now. He wasn’t worried about the animals. If they weren’t under his bed, he knew Mackie, Lula, and Big Louie were hiding beneath the desk in his study, all three of them huddled together.

Who was this man they were so frightened of who’d made Ox act crazy-dangerous, like some mad killer? A powerful hypnotist? That’s what Joanna believed. He had to be if he’d made Ox act against everything he was at his core.

The man’s name was Blessed; the name itself sounded crazy. Was he some sort of gifted psycho who wanted Autumn? But why? And both mother and daughter knew him and were terrified of him.

He stood sideways to the front door and slowly, carefully, eased back the corner of the blind to look outside. It was perfectly black, the dark clouds hanging lower now, obscuring the quarter moon. It would begin to rain soon. He stood very still, watching for any shift in the deep shadows, listened for any sound that didn’t belong to the night, but there was nothing except the shimmering of the thick-leafed oak branches in the night wind.

He heard the owl again, then the answering call of its mate.

Nothing else.

Then he heard glass shatter.

8

ETHAN SPUN AROUND so fast he nearly fell. The sound had come from the back of the house—from his bedroom.