Nightwatch by Valerie Hansen Page A

had watched the whole thing. How could she ever forget, ever view Mitch as someone other than the man who had been kneeling beside her husband as he’d breathed his last?
    They had no future other than as friends. Mitch knew that as well as he knew his own name. He just wished with all his heart that they had met under more favorable circumstances.
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    Jill wasn’t totally panicked. Not yet. But she could feel her heart pounding and had a deep-seated urge to run blindly through the woods to escape from whatever creatures, human or otherwise, were out there with her.
    She held her breath. Strained to listen. There was the occasional chirp of nocturnal insects and the flutter of wings. Since most birds bedded down for the night and she knew an owl’s feathers made no noise in flight, she assumed she was either hearing passing bats or perhaps an early season whip-poor-will.
    Considering the abundance of limestone caves in theOzarks and the number of native species of bats, that was by far the strongest probability.
    Well, bats or no bats, she couldn’t just stand there and let the night close in around her. Was it safe to call out to Mitch again? Suppose someone else was out there besides the two of them? Would she be giving away her position and putting herself in worse jeopardy? After that first crunch of leaves and dead branches she hadn’t heard another thing.
    â€œFather?” she murmured, peering at a tiny patch of dusky sky visible through the thin, upper reaches of nearby oaks. “Now what?”
    It would have been comforting to have heard a booming voice from Heaven delivering precise advice. Jill chuckled at herself. God wasn’t going to talk to her like that. Besides, He had better things to do than worry about a foolish woman who’d managed to get herself lost in supposedly familiar woods.
    Then again, she did recall the scripture in the tenth chapter of Matthew about their heavenly Father knowing and caring when even a sparrow fell. That comparison made her smile. Any dumb bird would do better than she had. At least it would know where it was.
    Huffing in self-disgust she assessed her surroundings. Hilly terrain masked the actual sight of the setting sun, although she could detect its glow in the distance. Therefore, that direction was west. Since she and Mitch had been traveling due east before they’d left the Jeep, she could either turn west and try to return to her vehicle or continue in the opposite direction with the goal of eventually overtaking him.
    Sensibility had little to do with her decision, she realized, chagrined. Above all, she wanted to find Mitch, to know he was close by, to sense his genuine concern.
    She wasn’t kidding herself by imagining that he cared for her in a romantic way. She knew better than to do that. They had even gone so far as to discuss it when he’d begun spending a lot of time with her, so she was well aware of his pure motives.
    â€œPlease understand,” he had said a few months after Eric’s funeral. “The last thing I want is to visit so often that I damage your reputation in town, but the fact is, you need help around here. You can’t just let the pastures grow wild. Once those oak and cedar seedlings get a little bigger I won’t be able to bush hog over them and knock them down.”
    â€œI don’t know anything about farming,” she’d replied. “Eric was…”
    She remembered the pained expression on Mitch’s face and the way his jaw muscles had visibly tensed.
    â€œLook. I can’t change the way things turned out but I can at least lend a hand when you need me.” Mitch had gazed at her intently. “Please? Let me?”
    Jill hadn’t known what to say other than, “Okay.”
    Later, more than once, they had reaffirmed their goal of friendship and nothing beyond. She’d truly believed that was all she’d wanted. In many ways it was still true.