With a sigh, she collected all her things again and put them back inside her purse.
So much for running to the grocery for a quick gallon of milk. I’ll have to run by the school first to get my wallet.
If she put it off till morning, she’d have no milk for her cereal and no breakfast as she was out of eggs. Plus, she didn’t want anyone stealing her wallet. She needed it back in her possession, soon.
Hopefully the wallet is still there. It will only take a minute to run in and get it.
Then she’d head to the grocery. It wasn’t dark yet, but it would be soon. She’d have to hurry to get there before dark.
Going to the school after dark is not a safe thing to do. The last time I did that . . .
Her stomach did a flip because the thought was unnerving. But she couldn’t stay afraid forever.
One of the biggest things she’d learned at Three C’s Ranch was to face her fears. It was time she faced this one.
I can do this.
Grabbing her keys, she squared her shoulders and headed for her car.
More than halfway to the school, she realized she hadn’t brought her handgun. She couldn’t take the gun to school, so she never put it in her purse. Then she’d never forget it was there. The last thing she wanted was an accident with one of her students.
Her gun was still in the right bedside table drawer.
Travis would be upset with me, but I’m more than halfway there now, so I might as well keep going. Next time I’ll remember to take the gun with me after dark.
She’d just gotten used to owning a gun and taking it to the range with Travis to practice, but that had nothing to do with her life as a kindergarten teacher.
Something had happened when Ellen walked into the little elementary school in this small town in Montana. It felt almost like stepping back in time, where old fashioned values still held, and the crime of the big cities was kept far away. Cowboys looked out for their women and children out here, and everyone seemed to know everyone in town, though they lived far apart from each other on big pieces of land.
She had a new boyfriend who was a SEAL, a Brotherhood Protector, and her gun instructor. In this safe new world she now lived in, it was easy to focus on the children and to forget bad men and guns. She’d finally reached the point where she no longer thought about Rigby Mortimer every single day or felt like he was behind every bush.
Travis training her to use the guns had helped her to feel safer and then the safe feeling that living in the little town gave her had wrapped around her like a much-needed warm blanket. She’d relaxed into that and forgotten to be afraid. In her new job teaching school, she was doing what she loved and happier than she’d ever been.
* * *
Rigby Mortimer steppedinto Ellen Young’s classroom and crept up behind her one quiet step at a time.
What could you be looking for, sweet thing?He grinned.Could it be the wallet I have back at my motel room?
How easy it had been to slip into her empty classroom and go through her purse that she’d left in the room.
Such a trusting woman.But he liked that about her.
She was nothing like his grandmother, who’d never trusted him. Though she’d proved right when he’d held the pillow down. She’d had it coming. Tattling on him as she’d done. He could have gone to prison if she’d persisted in yapping her jaw to anyone who would listen. He wasn’t sorry to see her go. She’d never liked him.
He moved closer to Ellen.
Busy at her task, bent under her desk, her mind elsewhere, she didn’t hear him.
Quickly he placed a hand over her mouth so she couldn’t scream and pressed the cloth soaked with chloroform against her mouth and nose. He was taking no chances this time that she might fight him.
Ellen hadn’t found her wallet and was sure it had fallen out, under her desk. As she was groping her it, a hand holding a cloth suddenly closed over her mouth, hard, making her gasp, the chloroform filling her nostrils.
Oh my God, help me!
She knew without looking.
It was Rigby Mortimer. He’d come back. And now he had her in his hands again.
