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  “WE NEED TO BE THINKING OF A PLAN TO GET OUT OF THIS CAVE,” SHE SAID, EVEN AS SHE BATTLED THE URGE TO WRAP HER ARMS AROUND HIS NECK.

  He pulled her closer, and she went without even a token protest.

  “Know what? Plan or no plan, until the water goes down, we’re stuck.” The warmth of his breath feathered across her lips.

  “We are?” She wanted to bridge the fraction of an inch that separated their mouths more than she had ever wanted to do anything in her life.

  “Unless you were joking about us not being able to fit through that passage.” His voice was husky.

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so.” His nose touched hers. It was a nothing touch, really, quick and elusive, probably accidental. It sent fire shooting clear down to Lynn’s toes.

  “Jess,” she said, and stopped because she had forgotten what she was going to say. One thought filled her mind to the exclusion of all else: She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to make love to him. Badly.

  With a sound that was part moan, part sigh, she slid her arms around his neck and gave herself up to Jess.

  HIGH PRAISE FOR KAREN ROBARDS’S PREVIOUS NOVELS

  HUNTER’S MOON

  “EXCITING … A real thriller and the most wonderful story … Ms. Robards writes with a graceful flair.”

  —The Literary Times

  “THE ENDING IS SO SHOCKING IT’LL KNOCK THE READER BACK WITH SURPRISE … the story line will send shivers down the spine. All of this and steamy passion leaves the reader riveted with action-packed suspense and heartwarming emotions.”

  —Rendezvous

  “Karen Robards has surpassed her own high standards with Hunter’s Moon. Whodunit remains a puzzling mystery until the riveting and surprising climax.”

  —Gothic Journal

  “AN ENGROSSING TALE of passion, intrigue, and murder. Fans of Robards’s previous books will not be disappointed.”

  —Booklist

  “THE SEX IS UNBRIDLED, UNHARNESSED AND UNSTOPPABLE.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  WALKING AFTER MIDNIGHT

  “EXPLOSIVE AND SURPRISING … Once started, you won’t be able to put it down.”

  —Rendezvous

  “Karen Robards masterfully creates a unique and memorable romantic suspense novel. The story is imbued with the perfect combination of humor and supernatural happenings.”

  —Affaire de Coeur

  “Within the first few pages, the reader is hooked.… Robards writes with a brisk, action-packed style.”

  —Baton Rouge Magazine

  “SPELLBINDING … Great romance, a handsome hero, vicious villains and a plucky heroine.”

  —Ocala Star Banner (Fla.)

  “THIS IS A MUST READ.”

  —Cadiz Record (Ky.)

  “AN ENTERTAINING PAGE-TURNER.”

  —Brazosport Facts (Tex.)

  Also by Karen Robards

  GHOST MOON

  THE MIDNIGHT HOUR

  THE SENATOR’S WIFE

  HUNTER’S MOON

  WALKING AFTER MIDNIGHT

  MAGGY’S CHILD

  ONE SUMMER

  NOBODY’S ANGEL

  THIS SIDE OF HEAVEN

  FORBIDDEN LOVE

  SEA FIRE

  ISLAND FLAME

  Published by

  Dell Publishing

  a division of

  Random House, Inc.

  Copyright © 1997 by Karen Robards

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address: Delacorte Press, New York, New York.

  The trademark Dell® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-80150-0

  v3.1

  This book is dedicated to my newest son, John

  Hamilton Robards, born November 16, 1995.

  It is also dedicated, with much love,

  to Doug, Peter, and Christopher.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Epilogue

  PROLOGUE

  June 19, 1996

  3:00 P.M.

  “ARE YOU READY TO DIE?”

  Jess Feldman exchanged glances with his brother, Owen, and tried to sidestep the wild-eyed man who suddenly blocked their path.

  “I said, are you ready to die?” The man stayed with them, his voice rising an octave. One of a group of sign-carrying marchers in front of Salt Lake City’s airport, he was fortyish, balding, wearing a cheap gray polyester suit, a yellowing white shirt, and an ancient-looking black tie.

  “Bug off,” Jess said, not gently, as Owen caught the sleeve of his plaid flannel shirt and dragged him past.

  “Repent!” the man screamed after them. “The end of the world is at hand!”

  “Oh, yeah?” Jess tossed back over his shoulder. Owen towed him forward implacably. “When?”

  “June twenty-third, nineteen ninety-six, sinner! At nine A.M.!”

  A police car with flashing lights pulled up to the curb. The doomsayer turned away.

  “Talk about specific,” Jess said to his brother. “I wonder what happens to these guys when they make a prediction like that and the world doesn’t end on schedule?”

  Owen shrugged. “Predict again, I guess. Come on, we don’t want to be late for the guests. This group’s from a swanky girls’ school in Chicago, remember.”

  “That’s my kind of group,” Jess said with a grin.

  As Owen pulled him through the double doors Jess glanced back. A pair of uniformed cops talked to the marchers. One of their signs drooped his way. Jess read it.

  REPENT!

  THE END OF

  THE WORLD

  IS

  AT HAND!

  Beneath the warning was a bloodred heart, broken in two, with one half toppled over on its side. Under the heart were the words LOVE HEALS.

  “Bunch of nuts,” Jess muttered, shaking his head. Then the big glass doors closed behind him and he forgot all about them.

  1

  June 19, 1996

  11:45 P.M.

  “SOMEONE’S OUT THERE.”

  Sixteen-year-old Theresa Stewart dropped the
edge of the faded yellow gingham curtain and backed away from the window. Her voice was hushed, fearful. Outside, the vast, mountainous wilderness that surrounded the trio of ramshackle cabins had been swallowed up by night. Hidden deep in the folds of Utah’s Uinta National Forest, the abandoned mining camp had felt like a sanctuary. More than once Theresa had overheard her father reassure her mother that they were unfindable.

  Now, for the first time since the Stewarts had moved into the structure eight months ago, there were strangers outside. Moonlight had silhouetted them briefly as they had stepped from the forest into the clearing surrounding the camp. Theresa had seen three of them, possibly more.

  “Probably a bear.” Theresa’s mother, Sally, looked up from the rocking chair where she was nursing Elijah, the youngest of the seven Stewart children. Elijah was six months old, a plump, happy baby, and Sally was in the process of weaning him. But she still liked to nurse him just before putting him down for the night. He slept better that way, she said.

  “Mother, it isn’t a bear. I saw men coming out of the woods.”

  “Probably just some campers then. It’s summer, you know. We don’t have the forest totally to ourselves like we did during the cold weather.”

  Sally sat in front of the fire that was the cabin’s only source of warmth as well as illumination. Despite her reassuring words there was an underlying tension in her voice. She, Theresa, and the four youngest children were alone in the cabin. Michael, her husband, had taken the two older boys and gone to Provo to conduct some business and pick up supplies. He would not be back until the following day.

  “I don’t think they’re campers.” Theresa’s voice was hushed as she moved to stand beside her mother. The cabin was small, two rooms on the ground floor with a sleeping loft above. She stood almost in the center of the large front room, which suddenly seemed alive with shadows, her hands clenching into fists at her sides. Terror, raw and primitive, rose like bile in her throat.

  Theresa didn’t know how she knew who was out there. She just knew.

  “Kyle then. Or maybe Alice, or Marybeth. Or one of the kids, needing to use the necessary.” Marybeth and Alice were Michael’s sisters. Kyle was Alice’s husband. They and their eleven children, who ranged in age from eight to eighteen, occupied the other two cabins. Since the camp had been constructed and abandoned in the late 1800s, there was no indoor plumbing. Anyone needing to answer nature’s call used a shack near the entrance to the old silver mine that had been converted for just that purpose. Or hied himself off to the woods.

  “It looked like a man. Men. More than one. They came out of the forest.” Theresa’s voice cracked.

  “Are you sure?”

  Theresa nodded.

  Sally detached the sleeping baby from her breast and stood up, pulling her blouse closed. “Theresa, honey, it can’t be them. It can’t be.”

  “Mother—”

  A knock on the door interrupted. Theresa and her mother drew closer together instinctively, both staring at the rough-hewn wood panel. The baby whimpered, as if sensing their fear. Sally pressed him closer to her breast.

  Sally knew as well as Theresa did that none of their relatives would ever knock like that. It was a soft knock, so soft it was sinister.

  “Hush, now,” Sally whispered to the baby. Then, handing him to Theresa, she added, “Take him into the back room.”

  The instruction scared Theresa. She realized that her mother, too, felt the evil on the other side of the door. She accepted the baby, clutching him to her bosom, vaguely comforted by his milky smell, the warm weight of him, the feel of his little head brushing against the underside of her chin as he rooted in search of a comfortable position.

  “Go on,” Sally said, giving Theresa a push. “It’s probably just some lost campers, but still …”

  A few steps took Theresa into the tiny dark room that served as their kitchen-cum-storage-room. Turning, she forgot what she was going to say as she watched Sally pick up the double-headed ax that stood in a corner of the front room.

  Clutching Elijah, Theresa backed deep into the shadows as her mother faced the door, hefting the ax.

  There was a thud, a crash, the shriek of splintered wood and broken hinges as the door was kicked in.

  Scrambling for cover, holding Elijah close, Theresa heard the sounds of a struggle, her mother’s scream.

  Then she heard a voice, a voice she recognized, a voice straight out of the nightmare she had tried and tried to forget but never could.

  It was Death’s voice, whispering: “It’s time.”

  2

  June 20, 1996

  5 P.M.

  HER BUTT HURT.

  Lynn Nelson stifled a groan and rubbed the offending body part with both hands. Not that the impromptu massage did much good. The ache did not abate.

  Realizing how peculiar her actions must look, Lynn dropped her hands and cast an embarrassed glance around to see if anyone was watching. Her fellow vacationers—a group of twenty fourteen- and fifteen-year-old girls, two teachers, and two other parent chaperons like herself—all seemed to be going merrily about the business of setting up camp for the night. Nary a watcher in sight. Nor a fellow butt-rubber, either.

  Did they all have buns of steel?

  Apparently. No one else seemed to be walking around as if she had a corncob shoved up where the sun don’t shine. No one else even limped.

  “Did you find what was bothering him yet?” The speaker was a wiry, twenty-something pony wrangler whose name, Lynn thought, was Tim. Dressed in jeans and boots, with a cowboy hat shoved down over his short blond curls, Tim looked every inch at home on the range. Which, Lynn had already guessed, was the idea.

  “Not yet.” Lynn cast a look of loathing at the cause of her misery—a shaggy mountain pony named Hero—and retrieved the metal pick from the ground where she had stuck it moments before while she attended to more pressing needs. Grabbing the beast around the foreleg as Tim had shown her earlier, Lynn tried to pry a muddy hoof off the ground.

  What must have been a thousand pounds of sweaty, stinky horse leaned companionably against her. Its rotten-grass breath whooshed past her cheek.

  Pee-yew. Lynn remembered why she hated horses.

  “Get off, you,” she muttered, shoving the animal with her shoulder, and was rewarded by a soft nicker and even more of its weight.

  Though she pulled with all her strength, the hoof didn’t budge.

  “Here.” Grinning, Tim moved to help her, picking up the hoof with no trouble at all and handing it to her.

  “Thanks.” If her tone was sour, Lynn couldn’t help it. She felt sour. And sore.

  Bent almost double, straddling a hairy, muddy animal leg, Lynn once again stabbed her pick into the mud-packed hoof that was clamped between her knees.

  Hero leaned against her. Lynn contemplated horse-icide.

  “Dig in there a little deeper and I bet you’ll find a rock,” Tim said.

  You’ll learn to take care of your own horse, the brochure advertising the trip had promised.

  Remembering, Lynn thought, whoopee.

  Another dig, and the mess in the hoof popped free. A rock, just as predicted, packed in with a dark substance too malodorous to be mud. Yuck.

  “Good job.” Tim gave her an approving pat (or maybe whack was a better word) on the shoulder. Losing her balance, Lynn staggered backward, dropping both hoof and pick. The pony stomped its foot, snorted loudly, and turned its head to look at her. If the animal had been human Lynn would have sworn it snickered.

  “Oh, sorry,” Tim said, his amusement obvious as he retrieved the pick. “We’ll make a horsewoman out of you yet. You’ll see.”

  “I can’t wait.”

  “Here, give him this and he’ll love you forever.”

  “Lucky me.” Under Tim’s supervision Lynn clumsily fastened a feed bag around Hero’s head. The pony twitched its ears at her and began to eat.

  “Now pat him,” Tim directed. Patting was not Ly
nn’s first choice of things to do to the mangy beast, but she swallowed her less civilized impulses and complied. Hero’s hairy hide felt rough as she bestowed a perfunctory pat. Turning her hand palm up, she looked down in distaste at the dirt and reddish-brown hairs left clinging to her fingers.

  “Good job.” With a nod Tim moved on down the line of the tied string of ponies.

  Dismissed at last, Lynn pushed her fist hard against the aching small of her back and tried not to dwell on the fact that this was only the second day of a ten-day-long wilderness “vacation.” And she tried not to rub her butt again either.

  What had possessed her to come?

  Rory, Lynn acknowledged, tottering toward one of the small campfires that was supposed to provide protection—hah!—from the no-see-ums. Her fourteen-year-old daughter had not asked her to be part of this freshman-class trip. On the contrary Rory had groaned when Lynn told her she had volunteered. But Lynn felt Rory needed her. And she needed time with her daughter, to shore up a relationship that lately felt like it was coming apart at the seams.

  Anyway, the promotional literature advertising the trip had made it seem educational, fun, and the experience of a lifetime, all rolled up in one all-inclusive package deal.

  So she had taken two weeks off from the daily grind of television broadcasting—her first real vacation in three years, and here she was, on the side of some godforsaken mountain in the High Wilderness area of Utah’s Uinta Range, tagging along on a teenage girl’s horseback-riding fantasy trip.

  The question was, was she having fun yet?

  The answer was an emphatic no!

  Lynn collapsed on a bale of hay placed near the campfire for just that purpose and tried to look on the bright side of things. Indulging Rory’s love of the outdoors was at least preferable to dealing with her escalating boy-craziness. This trip—her daughter’s reward for sticking out a whole year at Collegiate, an exclusive girls-only academy—had cost the earth, but it was thankfully male-free.