(1996) Heartbreaker by Karen Robards

Author:Karen Robards [Robards, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, Mystery, Suspense
ISBN: 9780307801500
Publisher: Dell
Published: 1996-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

27

DEATH IS COMING. Theresa heard the words in her mind as plainly as if someone had spoken them aloud.

They roused her from the steady level of fear she’d existed in for so long to a state of acute terror. She had been about to crawl from the hole that was the rear entrance to the mine. Shrinking back against the cold rock wall, she peered out into the world instead with the near-blind gaze of a mole.

The day was dazzling in its brightness. She had spent so many hours in the dark, the light hurt her eyes. At first it was hard for her to see.

She had to rely on senses other than sight, like the inner voice warning her to beware.

The gravel road that led to the outside world was not more than four yards distant. She knew because she had taken this path to it before.

Death was almost as near.

Shivering, Theresa huddled in the darkness as her eyes became accustomed to the brilliance beyond the hole, waiting for the sunlit road to come into focus through the screen of branches. The hole was hidden behind a bank of forsythia bushes. The yellow flowers were long gone. The branches with their slender green leaves swayed in the wind. A tiny stream, a mere trickle of water really, wet her gown at the knees as it ran past her down into the bowels of the earth, where it no doubt fed the subterranean river that had taken over the mine’s lowest level. Fortunately she had recognized the flooding in time to turn back and find a higher passage. From the sound of it the water that had once been no more than ankle-deep was high and fast-moving, swollen with the recent rains.

Elijah slept against her breast, worn out with crying, in a sling she had fashioned for him from cloth torn from her flannel nightgown. Since leaving the root cellar she had had nothing to feed him, though she had let him suck water from a twisted piece of cloth. Still, in the end that had not satisfied him. He had screamed with hunger for what seemed like the last several hours, until he had fallen asleep.

She had not dared to approach the light until he was quiet.

Death had not been in the labyrinthian underground passages with her. He was out here, seeking her in the bright sun.

Theresa felt his presence as strongly as she had felt it outside the cabin door.

Perhaps, she thought, she should stay hidden forever in the dark.

Though if what Death had prophesied came true it would make no difference anyway.

Three people came into view, wading through the knee-high undergrowth, heading toward the road she could now see. Two women, both with bright blond hair, clung together, moving slower than the man, who was tall and whose right arm hung stiffly down at his side, as if it were injured in some way.

Theresa was positive she had never seen the people before in her life.

She had been praying for a miracle, praying nonstop since Death had found her family.

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