Chained Read Free Page A

be a mistake. She
couldn’t run from this. She must face it.
    As she stared at the light, she thought she saw the shadow
of a man, standing very still.
    Light and shadow. It was very strange.
     She couldn’t see his features. She could only tell he was
tall, with broad shoulders.
    Her hand inched toward the gun as her confused mind
scrambled for explanations. There must be a trapdoor in the floor. The light
had come drifting through. Then the man had climbed up.
    “Hands in the air,” she called out. “I’ve got a gun.”
    The shadow didn’t move.
    “I said, hands in the air.”
    He stayed exactly as he was, his voice floating toward her
like a puff of smoke. “I won’t hurt you.” The sound was raspy, disused.
    She kept the gun steady in her hand. “Who are you?” she
asked, waiting with her heart pounding.
    Long seconds passed, and she wondered if he knew the answer
to the question. Finally, he said, “Matthew Houseman.”
    She gasped when she heard his name, but she managed to ask
the question that had gnawed at her since the wind had called her name. “You’re
his ghost?”
    “Am I?” he asked, sounding uncertain.
    The doubt in his voice made her heart squeeze.
    “If I’m dead, what happened to me?”
    She swallowed hard, thinking he should know the answer.
     “Matthew Houseman was killed five years ago in a raid on a
militia compound in Montana.”
    Again, there was a long pause. “I . . . don’t remember
that.”
    “What are you doing here?” she asked in a halting voice.
    “Guarding this place.” She heard regret lace his tone.
“That’s why I . . . attacked you when you got out of the car. I didn’t know you
were Isabella. Not at first. Then I remembered.”
    “Remembered me?”
    “Yes. I remembered what was between us. It made me happy and
sad all at the same time. Is that possible?”
    “Yes,” she whispered, feeling her heart squeeze.
    She flashed back on the moments when she’d first arrived,
when the wind had come rushing at her. It had picked her up and started to hurl
her at the stable wall. At the last second, it had put her down. Then she’d
heard someone speak her name.
    “Matt, is it really you?” she whispered, trying to come to
terms with what was happening and failing to make sense of this encounter.
    “Yes,” he answered, and she heard relief in his voice.
    Her hand reached out for the flashlight.
    “Don’t.”
    “Why not?”
    “I think you won’t be able to see me any better in the
light,” he answered, his tone filled with sadness now.
    He moved then, coming across the room, not exactly walking
but flowing the way the wind had flowed around her when it had taken her
captive.
    She lay with her heart thumping inside her chest, listening
for his footsteps and hearing nothing.
    Yet she caught his clean male scent—mixed with the smell of
soap and the desert. The scent she remembered from long ago.
    He stopped beside the bed, and she knew he was looking down
at her. She remembered the old rules that had always been between them. He
shouldn’t be in her bedroom. She should order him to leave.
    But she had the feeling that he would do what he wanted no
matter what she said. Or maybe do what he needed to do. She wasn’t sure which.
    She closed her eyes. If she didn’t try to look for him,
maybe she could keep the illusion that he was really in her bedroom.
    Because he couldn’t be here, and this couldn’t be happening.
It had to be a dream. Or was this like when Nana had come to her?
    That notion was comforting.
    As she lay with her eyes squeezed tightly shut, the air
around her stirred, and she felt his breath against her face, like mist, only
it was warm, not cold.
    “You’ve grown into a woman. You were pretty years ago. Now
you’re gorgeous,” he murmured. “Like a beauty in a Velazquez painting.”
    “That’s how you see me?”
    “Oh yes. I always wanted to kiss you, querida . You
knew that, didn’t you?” He called her sweetheart. He had