Upon a Midnight Clear Read online

  "I do have a really bad habit," he confessed.

  "Oh?"

  "I'm addicted to remote controls."

  "You and about a hundred million other men in America. We can pick up one station here—one—and when my dad watches television, he sits with the remote control in his hand."

  "I don't think I'm that bad." He grinned and reached for her hand. "So, Hope Bradshaw, when conditions are back to normal, will you go out to dinner with me?"

  "Gee, I don't know," she said. "A date, huh? I don't know if I'm ready for that."

  He chuckled and started to answer, but a sunbeam fell across their hands. Startled, they both looked at the light, then out the window. The wind had stopped blowing, and patches of blue sky were visible.

  "I'll be damned," he said, getting up to walk to the window and look out. "I thought the storm would last longer than this."

  "So did I," Hope said, her disappointment more intense than she wanted to show. He had asked her out, after all. The clearing weather meant he would be leaving sooner than she had anticipated, but it wasn't as if she wouldn't see him again.

  She went over to the window too, and gasped when she saw the amount of snow. "Good heavens!" The familiar terrain was completely transformed, disguised by drifts of snow that appeared to level out the landscape. The wind had piled snow to window level on the porch.

  "It looks like at least three feet. The ski resort operators will love this, but it'll take the snowplows a while to clear the roads." He walked to the door and opened it, and the frigidity of the air seemed to suck the warmth from the room. "Jesus!" He slammed the door. "The temperature has to be below zero. No chance of any of this melting."

  Oddly, the improved weather seemed to make Price uneasy. As the day progressed, Hope noticed several times that he went from window to window, looking out, though he would stand to one side as he did so. She was busy, as being confined to the house didn't mean there weren't any chores to do, such as laundry, but doing it without electricity was twice as hard and took twice as long.

  Price helped her wring out the clothes she had washed by hand, then braved the cold long enough to carry in more firewood while she hung the clothes over the stair railings to dry. She checked his uniform, picking up the shirt and feeling the seams, which would be the last to dry. Another hour would do it, she thought, as hot as Price was keeping the fire. The temperature on the second level had to be close to ninety.

  She started to drape the shirt over the railing again when her attention was caught by the tag. The shirt was a size fifteen and a half. That was odd. She knew Price was bigger than that. The shirt had in fact been tight on him; she remembered how strained the buttons had been last night. Of course, he had been wearing a thermal shirt underneath, which would make the uniform seem tighter than it was. But if she had been buying a shirt for Price, she wouldn't have looked at anything smaller than a sixteen and a half.

  He came in with a load of wood and stacked it on the fireplace. "I'm going to clear off the steps," he called up to her.

  "That can wait until the weather's warmer."

  "Now that the wind isn't blowing, it's bearable for a few minutes, and that's all it'll take to clear the steps." He buttoned his heavy coat and went back outside. At least he was wearing a pair of her dad's sturdy work gloves, and if his boots weren't completely dry, at least he had on three pairs of socks. Tink went with him, glad for the chance to do his business outside instead of on a pad.

  With the weather clearing, perhaps she could pick up something on the radio now. Going downstairs, she switched it on; music filled the air, a welcome relief from static, and she listened to the song as she got the beef stew out of the refrigerator to warm it up for lunch.

  The weather was the big news, of course, and as soon as the song ended the announcer began running down a list of closings. Her road was impassable, she heard, and the highway department estimated at least three days before all the roads in the county were cleared. Mail service was spotty, but utility crews were hard at work restoring service.

  "Also in the news," the announcer continued, "a bus carrying six prisoners ran off County Road Twelve during the storm. Three people were killed, including two sheriff's deputies. Five prisoners escaped; two have been recaptured, but three are still at large. It is unknown if they survived the blizzard. Be alert for strangers in your area, as one of the prisoners is described as extremely dangerous."

  Hope went still. The bottom dropped out of her stomach. County Road 12 was just a few miles away. She reached over and turned off the radio, the announcer's voice suddenly grating on her nerves.

  She had to think. Unfortunately, what she was thinking was almost too frightening to contemplate.

  Price's uniform shirt was too small for him. He didn't have a wallet. He had blown it off, but she was certain now that the stain on his pants leg was blood—and he had no corresponding wound. There were bruises on his wrists—from handcuffs? And he hadn't had a weapon.

  He did now, though. Hers.

  * * *

  Chapter Six

  There was still the rifle. Hope left the stew sitting on the cabinet and went into her father's bedroom. She lifted the rifle from the rack, breathing a sigh of relief as the reassuring weight of it settled in her hands. Though she had loaded it just the night before, the lesson "always check your weapon" had been drilled into her so many times she automatically slid the bolt—and stared down into the empty chamber.

  He had unloaded it.

  Swiftly, she searched for the bullets; he had to have hidden them somewhere. They were too heavy to carry around, and he didn't have pockets in his sweat clothes anyway. But before she had time to look in more than a couple of places, she heard the door open, and she straightened in alarm. Dear God, what should she do?

  Three prisoners were still at large, the announcer had said, but only one was considered extremely dangerous. She had a two to one chance that he wasn't the dangerous one.

  But he had taken her pistol and unloaded the rifle—both without telling her. He had obviously taken the uniform off one of the dead deputies. Damn it, why hadn't the announcer warned people that one of the escaped prisoners could be wearing a deputy's uniform?

  Price was too intelligent to get thrown in jail over some penny-ante crime, and if by some chance he had, he wouldn't compound the offense by escaping. The common criminal was, by and large, uncommonly stupid. Price was neither common nor stupid.

  Given her own observations, she now thought her estimated chance of being snowbound with an extremely dangerous escaped criminal had just flip-flopped. What could "extremely dangerous" mean other than he was a murderer? A criminal didn't get that description hung on him by taking someone's television.

  "Hope?" he called.

  Hastily she returned the rifle to the rack, trying to be as quiet as she could. "I'm in Dad's room," she called, "putting up his underwear." She opened and closed a dresser drawer for the sound effect, then plastered a smile on her face and stepped to the door. "Are you about frozen?"

  "Cold enough," he said, shrugging out of his coat and hanging it up. Tink shook about ten pounds of snow off his fur onto the floor, then came bounding over to Hope to say hello after his extended absence of ten minutes.

  Automatically she scolded him for getting the floor wet again, though bending over to pet him probably ruined the effect. She went to get the broom and mop, hoping her expression didn't give her away. Her face felt stiff from strain; any smile she attempted must look like a grimace.

  What could she do? What options did she have?

  At the moment, she wasn't in any danger, she didn't think. Price didn't know she had been listening to the radio, so he didn't feel threatened. He had no reason to kill her, she was providing him with food, shelter, and sex.

  Her face went white. She couldn't bear having him touch her again. She simply couldn't.

  She heard him in the kitchen, getting a cup of coffee to warm himself. Her hands began shak