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  Perspiration soaked the bodice of her dress, grime smeared her hands and knees, and her hair hung in lank untidiness in her eyes and down her sticky neck. When she heard him move away from her toward the tree line, she edged around the building, careful not to dislodge any stones.

  At the front corner of the building, she noticed a root cellar. Did she dare hide there and risk hemming herself in with no way out? Would he think to search it when he couldn't find her in the orchard?

  She eased the cellar door up carefully. Leaves and broken branches cluttered the top and dirt around it. Dangling with spider webs, the opening appeared unused for some time.

  Emma looked frantically around her. How to throw Machado off her trail? The wind had heightened in the last few minutes, and dust eddies and leaves whirled around her. She dragged the branches closer and obscured her footprints as best she could, leaving the areas disturbed as little as possible.

  Laying them aside, she hiked up her skirts and stepped into the cellar's dungeon-like maw. She eased the door down over her head, holding a single branch in her right hand. As she descended the wooden steps, she scraped it one step at a time across the prints her boots made in the dirt.

  At the bottom, she searched the dirt-floored cellar for a weapon of some kind. There were glass mason jars stacked directly to the right and several were empty. She found a sturdy wooden beam and liked the heft of it in her hand.

  Armed with her two weapons she moved to the farthest corner of the cellar. There she huddled amid the musty smell of potatoes and turnips, waiting for Malachi to rescue her.

  Or for Machado to find her and kill her.

  #

  "You take the right side of the house and I'll go left," Malachi instructed. "Be careful." He placed a reassuring hand on Stephen's shoulder, as much to comfort himself as the older man. "Machado's a desperate man."

  Stephen nodded one final time as he disappeared to the left, and then Malachi continued around to the rear of the dwelling. He paused and listened intently. Nothing. Calm resolve settled over him as he thrust images of Emma at the hands of a mad killer from his mind. He couldn't afford to let his terror for her safety jeopardize his judgment.

  He crept toward the back entry from which an open door swung crookedly in the light breeze. Edging forward, he reached across his body to twist the knob as he kept the pistol at the ready. The steady sureness of his hand gripping the weapon pleased him, and he marveled how he could maintain such calm control in the face of Emma's disappearance and possible death.

  But he must. To panic was to seal her fate.

  Unexpectedly, a large figure leapt from the doorway like a bedlamite in a flurry of motion that nearly felled Malachi. He righted himself and struck out with his firearm, cracking the side of it down on the back of the person's skull and bringing his attacker down clumsily on the hard dirt.

  In a moment he realized his attacker was a woman and knelt to turn her face outward. Phoebe Machado! What the hell?

  The woman lay blinking and stunned on the dirt, a trickle of blood running from her temple. "You – you – " she muttered, apparently unable to complete the thought.

  He looked up just in time to see Stephen sprinting around the other corner of the house, leveling his weapon toward the previously empty tree line and bellowing like a wounded bull.

  When Malachi swung his glance away from Emma's uncle, he beheld the deadly sight of Joseph Machado, Sr., not ten yards to his left, leveling a double-barreled, twelve-gage, double-aught shotgun directly at Malachi 's head.

  "Did you kill her?" Machado roared, advancing maniacally, his wild gaze fixed on Malachi. "Is the gel dead?"

  "Stop, Machado!" shouted Stephen from Malachi's left. "Stop or you're a dead man!"

  "Where's Emma?" Malachi demanded. "What have you done with her, you fucking bastard?"

  Machado turned as if in a trance, swinging his head and the shotgun between Malachi and Stephen. "I've gotta have an heir!" he howled at last, breaking his paralysis. "Phoebe's all that's left! She's my only heir!"

  At last he settled the twelve-gauge on Stephen just as the older man fired a shot that hit Machado square in the chest. He toppled like a felled tree, a thud that reverberated through the dusty distance to Malachi who still crouched beside Phoebe.

  "Where's Emma?" He slapped the woman's face none too gently. "What have you and your father done with her?"

  Phoebe fluttered her lashes in a series of spasms and seemed about to lose consciousness, but Malachi shook her arm roughly. "No, you don't. Where have you put Emma Knight?"

  She moaned and closed her eyes, then whispered, "Don't know. She got away from him."

  "Did she leave the house?"

  "Out the back way ... maybe the orchard?"

  Malachi knew if Emma had gone that way Machado would've caught her, but he didn't think Phoebe was lying. He abandoned her and ran past the fallen body of her father. The man bled profusely, saturating the surrounding dirt, but he could bleed to death for all Malachi cared.

  Stephen hastened right behind him and picked up Machado's dropped shotgun. Together they began to scour the grove, shouting Emma's name at random intervals, wandering farther from the two prone bodies lying near the ramshackle house.

  Frantic with the need to find her – injured, hurt, or worse dead – blood and dread pounded furiously through Malachi's veins. They found nothing.

  Not Emma. Not her body.

  They made their way back to the house and stared at one another, the same helpless expression on Stephen's face that Malachi imagined was on his. He glanced down at Phoebe Machado, lying spent and injured, her breathing still labored, her complexion a ghastly hue, but he couldn't expend any compassion for the woman.

  Her lips worked soundlessly as he knelt down to hear her words. "Maybe ... check the root cellar."

  Chapter 31

  "Perdition catch my soul but I do love thee! and when I love thee not, chaos is come again." – Othello

  Emma felt herself losing consciousness, a roaring tidal wave that began far out in the ocean and finally battered through her with an unstoppable force. The pain was too intense to bear and she wanted only to give up and escape its relentless ravage. Her eyes fluttered in the pungent cellar and she allowed herself to drift away.

  A noise startled her out of her stupor – a thunderous bang like the discharge of a powerful firearm. Had Machado killed the only remaining member of his family? Emma had no doubt the man was mad and this insanity had prompted him to murder nearly every member of his family.

  Then she heard the muffled sound of multiple voices. Male voices, she believed.

  Someone was coming to rescue her! Please God, let it be Malachi.

  Stumbling to her feet, she wended a tenuous path to the cellar hatch, but she spent all her energy on climbing the stairs. When she pushed upward, her strength was so compromised she could not raise the wooden door. She pushed harder to no avail.

  What if they left without her?

  Panicked, she began a feeble pounding on the hard wood, the sides of her palms incurring the pricks of splinters that dug deep. She screamed, but the sound came out rusty and thin like an unused water pump. Her puny efforts demoralized her and she sank to the top step, feeling the sweat and tears dampen her cheeks.

  Moments later the cellar hatch lifted of its own accord and a scraggly stream of light provided slight illumination to Emma's cell.

  "Emma, my God, Emma!"

  Malachi reached for her, his arms strong and hard as they lifted her out and wrapped her in tight bands of comfort. He spoke lightly, but she heard the tremor in his voice.

  "You silly girl, what trouble have you gotten yourself into now?"

  Emma groaned with the pressure of his hands on her, but his scolding had never sounded so sweet. And then the familiar voice of her uncle joined Malachi's and she broke down weeping and laughing at the same time.

  What a fine display of feminine fortitude for such a liberated woman.
<
br />   #

  Sheriff Nathan Butler looked uncomfortable in the delicate wing chair where Emma had ushered him in her front parlor. His size flooded over the delicate angles of wood and the light green damask fabric. He'd removed his hat and now turned it round and round in his big hands.

  "What news, then, Nathan?" Malachi asked, sitting close to Emma on the wide sofa, his arm draped protectively round her shoulders. He had no intention of allowing her to get more than a few feet away from him.

  The steady gaze of the sheriff's gray eyes showed no emotion. "Mr. Machado died before we could get him to Doc Winston's clinic."

  "And Phoebe?"

  "She's recovered and resting at her home. Under guard, of course, until Charlie Fulton sorts this all out."

  A smile hovered around Malachi's lips as he noted his friend's disrespectful use of Fulton's name. "What about Alma?"

  "Released for the moment." The sheriff stopped fiddling with his hat and laid it on the table beside his chair. "She's gone back to Sacramento to stay with her mother."

  Malachi and Emma exchanged a look. He knew Emma would worry what became of Alma Bentley now that she'd been exonerated of first-degree murder. She still faced assault charges for shooting Joseph Machado.

  "Phoebe claims her father told her he saw her mother shoot Joseph," Nate said. "After Alma fled, dropping the Deringer, Frances allegedly picked up the weapon and fired the fatal shot into Joseph's chest."

  "But you can't believe that!" Emma exclaimed. "Mr. Machado killed his son when he discovered that he had not fathered Joseph."

  Nate shook his head. "Probably, but we can't prove any of that now, not with both of them dead."

  "Who killed Aaron?" Emma asked.

  Nate shrugged. "It'd be easy to blame it on Mr. Machado, but a good case could be made against Phoebe."

  "But she could not have made the trip down to Bakersfield and back so quickly," Emma argued.

  "That's something a jury must decide," Nate answered. "It may be hard to prove anyone of them committed the murder. Sheriff Kern will have to investigate that part of the crime."

  "It's sad," Emma said, settling against Malachi's chest. "Phoebe really cared for Joseph. She was the only one in that family who stayed with him and cared for him all those years."

  "Well, it's over now for the most part," Nate said, rising from his chair. "I don't know what will happen to Phoebe. Fulton will likely try to regain some face by making a big deal out of her part in the deaths of all those people. Her being the only one left alive."

  "Sounds like she might need a good lawyer," Malachi said.

  "Exactly what I was thinking."

  Nathan Butler's eyes held a speculative twinkle as he left them alone in Emma's parlor.

  #

  "You are quite the bravest woman I've ever known." Malachi touched her gently, mindful of her scrapes and bruises. Her ribs were bound and often he saw her wince when she made a sudden movement.

  "I was frightened silly." She looked at him from where she sat in her parlor. "I prayed that you'd come rescue me again."

  "Even though you knew I'd poke fun at you?"

  She smiled. "Yes."

  "Ah, Emma, I thought he'd killed you and hidden your body somewhere. I thought – "

  "Shhh, don't dwell on such things."

  "I didn't want to lose your ... investigative services," he quipped to ease the moment.

  "Even though I'm a spoiled, rich girl who has no idea of what indignities women in the world of poverty experience?" she teased.

  "In spite of that." He laughed. "And in spite of your propensity for trouble. And your obstinacy."

  "Hush. Why not dwell on my assets?"

  "And your fine mind," he continued, unchecked. "And your ready wit. Ouch!"

  "Serves you right for mocking me."

  "Jesus Christ, I'd never seriously mock you. You've a lethal punch." He rubbed his shoulder where her pretend blow had landed.

  Her laughter was the high, clear sound of a coloratura singer and he was grateful she'd regained her voice. He sobered for a moment and traced a finger down the yellow-purplish bruises on her neck.

  "Don't think about it," she said.

  He clenched his jaw and felt the familiar anger surge up inside him. "I'm glad he's dead."

  "It's over now."

  He pushed aside thoughts of mayhem and murder, the foul deeds and cover-ups of the Machado family.

  Emma grinned playfully. "We make quite a good team, I think."

  "That we do," he responded. "That we do."

  ###

  The Next Historical Romantic Thriller by Jo Robertson

  Weak Flesh

  Tuscarora City, North Carolina, November 20, 1901

  Nell Carver was a naughty girl.

  If her pompous father had any idea his nineteen year old daughter had crept out of the house this late, he'd be livid. And if he'd known she went to meet a man, he'd thrash her within an inch of her life.

  Behind the poplars and cypress trees that lined the edge of the river, this particular man lurked and spied on Nell for the next several minutes. Although he had no intention of joining her tonight, he enjoyed manipulating her.

  And, really, Nell made it so easy.

  Dusk gave way to nightfall on the banks of the slow-moving Pasquotank River. The shadows and the Spanish moss hanging from the trees hid the man well. He pulled his Homburg lower on his forehead, tugged the velvet collar of his Chesterfield coat around his neck, and continued to watch.

  Now and again he smiled faintly. As he well knew, a wild kind of fire ran through young Nell's blood. She was as feral and rare as the Red Fox along the Carolina coast. Her recklessness fascinated and repelled him at the same time, her white-skinned, fair-haired beauty so at odds with her extravagant disregard for propriety.

  Naughty Nellie.

  He chuckled and fingered his beard. How long would she wait? He leaned against a tree, studying her as she pouted, then worried, and finally paced. She tugged her long brown cloak close to her round body. Even from this distance he saw her shiver, a small, delicate movement of her shoulders that set her breasts jiggling beneath the coat.

  Naughty Nellie.

  He glanced toward the Carver house across the field and set back from the road less than two hundred yards to his left. He could barely make out its dark outline against the pines, but he knew the house at Pine Grove well.

  It squatted like a fat white hen on the roost of its rich green lawn, an elegant old house, but the dingy clapboard and dark shutters sadly needed painting. Turrets and dormer windows angled from the front and a porch wrapped around the ground level. A side door provided another entry off to the right.

  The parlor windows faced the rising sun, and in the early spring the porch was cool for sitting. In the summer's heat the kitchen outbuilding round back, separate from the main house, grew muggy and heavy with humidity. The man knew for certain the thrill of the back room's sticky dankness.

  The perfect trysting place.

  Tonight winter had set in around the banks of the Pasquotank chilled the air with the November mist. Recent northeasterly winds and rains had flooded the area, and the man's shoes sank into the brackish marsh.

  He lit a cigar. Its glow shone eerily through the thick night, while he waited and stared at the shadowy form of Nell Carver.

  #

  The heavy trees and brush that pushed up to the water's edge stood like centurions guarding the dark mystery of the river as Nell had crept from the house after supper. While everyone else in the Carver household prepared for the night, she'd wandered along the bank, knowing full well she shouldn't be here so late with the night coming on and the Pasquotank looking so dangerous.

  But the note had goaded her not to be late this time and had piqued her curiosity. She snorted delicately. Keeping her beaus waiting was a clever woman's most important trick and Nell didn't like the tables turned this way. Still, she'd never kept him waiting. She glanced around and res
umed her pacing, catching her bottom lip with her small teeth.

  She'd felt daring and adventurous sneaking out the back door to race across the field down to the thick foliage near the river. But now the safety of home seemed a thousand miles away. She turned her face toward the house and shivered again, but not from the cold this time.

  The crush of footsteps drew her attention back to the thick copse of trees to her right. She opened her mouth to speak, but thought better of it and waited until her suitor drew closer.

  Moments later she distinguished his outline from among the other shadows. He tossed something into the sodden leaves at his foot and ground downward with the heel of his boot.

  "Oh my God, you!" she exclaimed. "I thought ... " Her voice trailed off in confusion, but she recovered quickly. "It's not nice to keep a lady waiting," she pouted.

  She didn't want him to find the puckishness in her voice amusing so she smiled in an attempt to cover her mistake. "Well, I forgive you, at any rate," she said lightly, tapping her gloved finger against his chest.

  He reached for her, pulling her roughly to him, the smell of tobacco strong on his clothes and breath. "What'd I do? What do you forgive me for?" He laughed and wrapped his sinewy arms around her waist.

  "Ow," she cried, pretending to slap at his hands.

  He smirked confidently. "You know you like it, Nellie-girl. You've always liked what I've got for you."

  Then he tightened his grip on her and pushed his hands beneath her coat and skirt's hem, upward over the silk stockings and under her drawers to clutch the bare flesh of her thighs, cold against his hot hands.

  God help her, she did like it. He wasn't as refined as her other beaus, but the things he did with his hands and mouth drove her crazy. She heard her own soft groan and gave herself over to the moment's heated passion.

  After a while she shoved playfully at him and stepped back. "Wait." She let her skirt and coat fall back in place.