The same bastard who had just happened to magically show up in Ann’s life at around the same time that Marsha Bradley had been murdered. His disguise was apparently so flawless that Ann didn’t have the slightest suspicion that Rankin could be Jenkins!
But the $50,000 question was why? Why was Rankin/Jenkins dating his ex-wife? What could be the reason for it? If he wanted to murder her, why would he go through all of this rigmarole instead of simply doing as he had with Marsha Bradley and Sara Hunt?
Sam had no idea. It made no sense whatsoever. In fact, it made even less sense the more he thought about it.
He pulled out onto the highway and floored the accelerator. Within a mile he was doing over seventy-five and didn’t give a shit. One solitary thought played over and over in his mind as he sped toward Smithtown:
Ann is alone in the country with a murderer and the bastard is going to kill her…
CHAPTER 22
Ann couldn’t help but smile to herself as she caught Jerry glancing down at her legs yet again. A week ago this would have made her feel uncomfortable or perhaps even paranoid. But she realized now how absolutely puritanical it had been of her to get upset over something so trivial and she knew that Karen, as usual, had been right all along. Men are going to stare at you from time to time and it’s certainly nothing to get all up in arms over. Besides the fact that Jerry Rankin was a gentleman and someone she could trust, she’d also discovered that she actually enjoyed teasing him just a little bit. It was nice having a man admire her every once in awhile-it made her feel younger and more appreciated.
The white knit mini dress she was wearing could easily have fit into the fashion scene twenty years ago, in fact, she could recall having one much like it back when she was in high school. Jerry had gone bonkers when he had come by to pick her up and first saw her in it and she realized now that although jeans and a sweater may have been more appropriate for a drive though the country on a chilly fall day, she liked the way the dress made her feel almost like she was a schoolgirl again.
“Are you warm enough?” Jerry asked. “I can crank up the heat a bit if you’d like.”
Ann looked over at him. “No, I’m fine. The scenery sure is gorgeous, isn’t it?”
Jerry glanced out the driver’s side window and replied, “It certainly is. It starts getting much hillier the closer we get to Hocking County. It will be even more breathtaking there.”
“How much longer until then?”
“About twenty minutes or so.”
Ann stared out the window and sighed to herself. She hadn’t felt this content in a long while and she knew she had Jerry Rankin to thank for it. After the incident the night before with Larry Underwood, she’d since wondered how she would ever have handled it if Jerry hadn’t been there. If it weren’t for him, in fact, the Underwood boy would never have been caught in the first place and God only knew what else could have happened.
But her greatest relief was just knowing that she and Amy were safe now-no more worrying about strange noises out in the yard or obscene phone calls in the middle of the night. She had already convinced herself that Larry Underwood had also been the obscene phone caller even though he had denied it. After all, it was just a little too coincidental that the calls started at around the same time that she had thought she’d heard him prowling around in the backyard. She also felt that the calls had seemed to be directed at Amy and not herself, because whenever she had answered the phone, the caller had hung up on her once he realized it wasn’t Amy on the other end. With the exception of the night Jerry had been over when he had called, that is. And that, Ann believed, had been a fluke-most likely because Larry had mistaken her voice for her daughter’s.
What a scary young man, she thought to herself with a shiver.
She was very proud of Amy right now-she had managed somehow to still have a great time at the dance in spite of last night’s nightmarish incident. Plus, she had come home on time-well, only a half hour late-and it appeared that she had behaved herself as well. She had been intoxicated in a sense, but not from alcohol or drugs. Instead, she appeared to be on a natural emotional high from the apparent good time she’d had with Jason on her very first real date. As it turned out, Jason ended up being a very nice, responsible young man and Ann was certainly thankful for that.
It was amazing, she thought, how everything seemed to be turning around for the better ever since she’d met Jerry Rankin. He was always there for her, it seemed, when she really needed someone around. And he knew all the right buttons to push to make her feel appreciated and whole again. Jerry not only respected her but also seemed to know all the right things that made her tick-her likes and dislikes, her innermost feelings about certain things, even obscure little things. Like his suggestion that they go bowling last night. Although Ann hadn’t bowled in over twenty years, Jerry somehow seemed to know that she would enjoy it. It was almost as though he’d known her for years, and yet they’d only just met a few weeks ago!
But what really amazed Ann was the uncanny parallel between the story line of the romantic novel she had just finished reading and her relationship with Jerry. The heroine in the novel had been so much like herself-forty-ish, recently divorced with a teenage daughter to raise on her own. The heroine had moved to a new town to start over again and had just happened to run into a tall stranger and began dating him. The heroine had been hesitant at first in pursuing a new relationship, just as she had with Jerry, but things started happening quickly and before long she’d discovered that she was falling in love with him. In all that time, they had remained platonic until the heroine finally realized that she had put it off long enough.
And where, of all the places, had they finally ended up making love to each other? None other than the stranger’s country retreat!
Talk about coincidences!
This didn’t mean that she had any intentions whatsoever of going to bed with Jerry Rankin today-she was still a very long way from even considering sex with him at this stage of the game. But wasn’t it amazing how similar the book had been to her own experiences? She had been so fascinated by the outcome of the book that she was tempted to ask Jerry if he’d ever read it before. But Ann wisely elected not to. She would only have embarrassed him. After all, men don’t read romance novels!
“Look, Ann!” Jerry exclaimed, suddenly slowing down the car.
Ann looked at where he was pointing off to the side of the road. A deer and her two fawns were scuttling off though the woods.
“Wow, aren’t they beautiful?” Ann breathed. They sat and watched as the deer bounded out of sight.
“That’s the second time I’ve seen deer since we left. The other time was the one I saw lying dead in the road a few miles back,” Jerry said.
“That’s so sad.”
The car sped up again as Jerry floored the accelerator. “It’s a shame that the poor beasts are so ignorant. When they see a car coming at them, they panic and get quite confused. But if they had just an ounce of intelligence, they’d be able to quickly assess the situation and get the hell out of the way before they got plastered.”
“Jerry! What a horrible thing to say!”
He looked over at her and pouted like a child who had just been scolded. “I’m sorry Ann-I didn’t mean to upset you. I was just being truthful-wild animals basically are ignorant.”
“Well, I disagree. I think the problem is us-if we didn’t build these highways and cars that go so fast, the animals wouldn’t be in such danger. They’re only trying to survive and we’ve made it that much more difficult for them.”