Harnessed Passions (30 page)

"You won't have to. Julia's
a
tough little filly
, as father used to say. She'll pull through this just
fine."

Neither of them said another word as they
sat there - Daniel in the chair and Jeremy at the foot of the bed -
watching Julia sleep. Her breathing seemed to have eased a little
since last night, but Daniel couldn't be sure, and until she opened
her eyes or began to speak, all he could do was hope…and wait.

The silence brought with it an explosion of
pain when Julia tried to open her eyes. Her mind was spinning and
her stomach jerked, but she couldn't comprehend where she was, or
what had happened to her. She raised a shaky hand to her head, but
dropped it before it reached its destination. The pain was too
great and the confusion was too consuming to allow anything else to
interrupt it. She wasn’t even sure if she was alive or dead.

Dead. Death. Now she remembered; the woman
in white, the feeling of terror, the pain of being struck and then
water. Cold, unforgiving revenge echoed all around her. Her best
friend calling to her, blaming Julia for something she had
convinced herself wasn't her fault. Had she caused Heather's death?
Was she now dead, herself?

"Heather," she whispered, hearing her own
voice in the stillness around her. She tried to open her eyes again
but didn’t seem to have the strength to pull it off. Was she at the
bottom of the pond? Was she doomed to remain there until the end of
eternity?

"I'm sorry," she gasped, pleading softly to
the ghosts haunting her, her voice weak and raked with unshed
tears. "I didn't mean it...please...forgive me." The pain was so
engrossing she didn't hear the voice calling her name, or feel the
hand softly caressing her cheek. She allowed the feelings of dread
and sorrow to carry her back into a state of oblivion.

Daniel watched the anguish and confusion
twist Julia's features. He wiped the tears from her cheeks and
heard the whispered pleas from her dry lips. He listened to her for
a few moments until she again fell silent, her lungs heaving softly
for air.

Who was Heather? Rally Overton had spoken
about her the night they found Julia at the swimming hole; he said
she was Julia’s best friend and that she'd died at the swimming
hole, but why would Julia plead for her forgiveness? Rally said
she’d never forgiven herself for Heather’s death; was Julia somehow
responsible for it? Was that why she was there that night; to make
amends for the past?

There were so many unanswered questions and
no possible explanation for any of them, but then he thought of a
way to find out. There was one place where he could start looking
for the answers; the swimming hole. He had to find out what
happened that night and who had attacked his wife, leaving her for
dead.

With a reluctant, gentle kiss that was
little more than the touch of a fairy's wings, Daniel slipped out
of the bedroom leaving Julia asleep and under the close eye of
Bridget, who had brought more hot water in. He headed down to the
dining room where he found Jeremy and Louise, the remnants of their
dinner still in front of them. He shook his head when offered his
meal; it had proven to be a long emotional and physically draining
three days.

Daniel spent every hour in literal torment;
reliving the nightmare of finding Julia by the water, over and over
in his mind. He thought about what he would have done if he had
found her dead, what life would be like if he ever lost her. He
actually found himself thinking about their countless arguments and
how much he missed them. Perhaps it was how they usually ended he
found most intriguing. Julia always found her way into his arms and
he would supply her with an abundance of passion. His had to stop
thinking about how close he came to losing her and concentrate
instead on the swimming hole.

The doctor seemed to think it was an
accident, but Daniel knew better. He had seen her riding and knew
she could handle a horse; even Victor said she was an expert rider,
so it was very unlikely that Biscuit would have thrown her.
Something, or perhaps someone had caused that wound on her head and
the wet footprints showed that she had been pulled out of the
water. She didn’t do that herself.

After three days of thinking, pacing and
reliving all he had seen that night, Daniel knew there was more
behind this than face value and he had to find out. It could have
been a drifter, perhaps someone hiding out from the law, but he had
to find out. After all, wasn't it written, for every mystery there
was a solution?

"If you don't mind Louise," Daniel began sitting
down and accepting the cup of coffee from Thompson. "I'd appreciate
it if you would stay with Julia for a little while. I have some
things to check out and it can't wait any longer."

"I was planning on staying with her so you
could get some rest yourself. You look like hell, Daniel."

"Thanks, but there's no time," he answered
with a soft chuckle, running a tired hand over his bearded
chin.

"Where are you going?" Jeremy asked, pushing
his coffee cup aside.

"I want to go back to the swimming hole and
have a look around. Maybe there's something there that can tell us
what happened that night."

"Do you really have to go now, it’s late?
Couldn't the sheriff investigate it?" Daniel smiled at Louise's
concern, but he knew there was no waiting on this. If whoever it
was that had assaulted Julia thought for one minute he may have
left a clue, he'd go back and cover his tracks, if he hadn’t
already done so.

"It can't wait for the sheriff. I have to
look around tonight."

"You don’t think it was an accident, do
you?” the older woman asked; the look of concern etched deeply on
her aging face. “Daniel, do you really think someone did this to
her?"

"I don't know, but I'm damn well going to
find out." Daniel stood up from the table and headed toward the
door. “It may be nothing, but I have to know for certain and I
can’t sit around waiting any longer.”

"Wait for me," Jeremy called after him. "If
somebody's out to get my sister, I want to help find out who it
is." The two men left the house and headed down to the stables,
while Louise went to her daughter's room.

The idea of Julia being attacked didn't set
well with her any more than it did with her son or son-in-law. She
remembered what Julia said about her so-called accident the day of
Victor's wake. With everything else going on, she had forgotten to
mention it to Daniel, but she had to remember to talk to him about
it when he returned. If there was someone out to harm her, it may
have been the same person both times.

Louise frowned as she pushed her daughter's
bedroom door open. The thought of a possible lunatic running loose
at Turner Stables, wasn't only frightening it could prove
disastrous if they didn't catch him - or her - before the annual
sales. Julia may not be the only one who could get in the way, if
this maniac was allowed to roam free.

The swimming hole was much as it had been
the night of the accident, with the exception of the setting sun
that peered through the tall treetops. Daniel and Jeremy pulled
their horses to a clearing and tied them to a nearby tree limb,
then walked silently through the brush and trees, down to the muddy
embankment surrounding the small pond. They weren't certain where
to begin searching or exactly what they were looking for, but they
agreed to split up and began inspecting the area all the same.

Jeremy walked cautiously into the bushes as
though he was anticipating trouble, and almost immediately noted a
number of footprints in the thick muck. He couldn’t tell if how old
they were, but somehow felt they were new. If they had been there
for weeks or months, the rain and the wind would have dissolved
them, not to mention the wild animals that stopped by the water for
a drink. There would always be an occasional deer or wolf seen
around the trees, so the fact that the prints were unharmed made
him think they were fresh, though nobody would have reason to be
here.

Since Heather Farnsworth’s death, nobody had
come to the swimming hole that he had been aware of, including
stable hands. With the story of the young girl being killed here,
superstition had taken hold and frightened away the local youth who
had otherwise come by from time to time to swim and cool off during
the heat of the summer. It had been left abandoned and unused by
anything larger than a field rat or bird.

Two separate sets of footprints caught his
attention and peeked his interest, causing a frown to pull his
brows together. One set was large and heavy with a wide stride,
like that of a man's step, in fact very close in size to the prints
Jeremy’s own step left in the dirt. The second was smaller, lighter
and closer together with a distinct imprint of a small heel and
pointed toe.

Both tracks appeared to be heading toward
the pond and looked as though the heavier tracks were made last.
The larger steps nearly fell single file behind those of the
smaller ones, and had in fact overstepped the small prints several
times, leaving only the depth of the heel or point of the toe to
show there had been two. Jeremy's stomach lurched and knotted
uncomfortably; he thought of how those more delicate prints could
have very easily been made by Julia, perhaps moments before her
alleged accident.

Jeremy examined the prints closely noting
how both sets took off in a separate direction, once they came
closer to the clearing. The heavier prints went off around the edge
of the brush and down the small hill on the opposite edge of the
pond, than back out again mingling among the dense shrubs encasing
the area. The second set - those Jeremy believed to have been made
by his sister's foot - went out to the small lake where they became
a shuffled mess, undistinguishable one form another. The only thing
linking the two sets of imprints was the destination of their
direction. Each led straight to the pond's embankment.

Daniel inspected the area where he had found
Julia three nights before. There were several leaves on the ground
tinted with small droplets of dried blood and the imprint of where
Julia’s head had laid in the drying mud. The sight of it and the
memory of the horror he had felt when he found his young wife
unconscious, began to swell up inside his chest. The silence of the
pond’s surroundings made him feel the overwhelming dread he had
felt that night, and for the first time since finding her, he
actually felt nauseous.

He sat down on a small rock not far from
where Julia had laid unconscious and near death, and tried to pull
himself under control. He looked around seeing the boot imprints of
his and Dourn’s footsteps still embedded in the thick soil. He saw
the imprint of where he had knelt beside Julia and the slightly
discolored dirt from the water she had vomited out. He saw the
imprint of Julia's boots near the pond's edge and their decent from
the brush in the same direction Jeremy was investigating. But what
he saw next caused him to forget all about the gut wrenching
feeling he was experiencing, and forced a frown to mold his
brow.

Where Julia had laid was the smooth even
path he had seen the night he found her, obviously made from the
weight of her body being pulled away from the water's edge. Just a
few feet away was the imprint of a single foot. This one was
different from the others. This one had the distinct outline of
toes, instep and heel. Whoever left it was definitely barefoot and
not of a great size or weight, since it was smaller in width and
length, and hadn’t sank as deep into the mud as his own foot
had.

Daniel’s frown deepened as he considered who
might have made it. There were rumors of outlaws in the hills and
several hands at the stables insisted they found signs of
trespassers among the thick brush and trees lining the outer
boundaries of Turner property. Had it been an outlaw or perhaps an
Indian? The Indians in these parts had been peaceful for years and
very rarely seen since before the civil war. It might have been
Julia's, but Julia was found with her boots still on, then again it
may have been a child’s, but there were no reports of any child
missing or seen wondering alone. Who could have left it and why was
it right next to the path where Julia had laid?

Daniel stood, walking cautiously to inspect
the water's edge. There was nothing there, no sign of a tree limb
or rock; nothing could explain how Julia had fallen into the water,
or more importantly, how she could have gotten out. If she had
dragged herself out of the water, there would have been hand prints
in the dirt from crawling or footprints from her walking, but there
weren’t any. There were no other signs of anyone coming or going,
no other prints than those he had already found.

There was no evidence of a struggle, no
signs of a fight, or any visible evidence of a weapon. There were
the mingled mass of footprints nearby that could have explained a
possible struggle, and one set that came into the clearing and
around the other side, then back again, and those appeared to be
have been made by Julia herself.

Daniel sighed, running a large brown hand
through his tumbled hair. He had thought for certain he would find
something that would point to the culprit, but all coming here had
done was to create even more confusion and questions. One thing
Daniel knew for certain, he had found Julia with her head pointing
toward the water and her arms above her head. This seemed to
indicate, that she had been pulled out by her ankles. This may also
have explained the lone footprint, but whom did it belong to.

He drew a deep breath to clear his mind and
began to think logically for a moment. It was a habit he had formed
over the many years of law school and court trials, a trick that
usually worked to sort out the evidence.