Rita Herron - The Man From Falcon Ridge

She combed the stairs, but found nothing. No sign of the ghost of the child she’d thought she’d seen. The noise must have been the wind blowing debris on the roof.

Still shaken, she pushed back the heavy drape and stared into the darkness, searching for signs that someone was nearby. A light burned from the big stone house at the top of the hill.

Rex Falcon.

Her body grew hot just thinking about his dark eyes.

He was big. Strong. A towering specimen of a man with a muscular body that emanated strength and power. The kind of man who could protect a woman.

The kind who could hurt her with those big hands.

She didn’t intend to get involved with him. Men were trouble.

Especially one as dangerous looking as Rex Falcon.

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Award-winning author Rita Herron wrote her first book when she was twelve, but didn’t think real people grew up to be writers. Now she writes so she doesn’t have to get a real job. A former kindergarten teacher and workshop leader, she traded her storytelling for kids for romance, and writes romantic comedies and romantic suspense. She lives in Georgia with her own romance hero and three kids. She loves to hear from readers so please write her at P.O. Box 921225, Norcross, GA 30092-1225, or visit her Web site at www.ritaherron.com.

Hailey Hitchcock—A woman running from a past she doesn’t remember into a future just as terrifying as the nightmares that plague her.

Rex Falcon—A man determined to find the real killer behind the Hatchet Murders.

Randolph Falcon—Rex’s father. He’s spent the past twenty years of his life in jail for killing the Lyle family—but is he really guilty?

Deke and Brack Falcon—Rex’s brothers are determined to free their father from prison.

Thad Jordan—A man obsessed with Hailey. Will he kill to keep her his?

Lawrence Lyle—The man and his family were brutally murdered twenty years ago. Did he carry the secrets of his family’s murder to his grave?

Sheriff Andy Cohen—He arrested Rex’s father for murder, but did he have ulterior motives?

Bentley McDaver—The prosecutor put Rex’s father in jail for life. Did he have reason to rush the trial?

Carl Pursley—Rex’s father’s defense attorney. Did he help frame him for the murder?

Lindy Lou Lyle—She died in the Hatchet murders, but now her ghost is haunting Hailey.

Ava Riderton—She was Lyle’s secretary. Does she know more than she’s telling?

To Kim Nadelson:

Thanks for all your enthusiasm and

support with my first gothic!

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Ten-year-old Rex Falcon stared in horror at the yellow crime-scene tape wrapped around the Lyle house. It was dark now, the night sounds adding to the eeriness. When he’d gotten here, he’d peeked inside the window and seen the gory murders. Then the sheriff and his deputies had pushed him and his brothers and mother into the yard with the other neighbors and refused to let them talk to Rex’s father.

Just because his daddy had found the bodies, they were treating him as if he’d killed the people inside.

His mother hugged the boys close to her. “You boys go on home. You shouldn’t be seeing all this.”

“I’m not going anywhere till they let Daddy go,” Rex said, hands fisted.

“Me neither,” his middle brother Deke said.

His youngest brother Brack jutted up his chin, his eyes wide. “I’m staying, too.”

An image of the dead people flashed into Rex’s head. There was so much blood. It looked like a river on the kitchen floor. The mother lay in it. The boy cuddled beside her. The father, too. It covered his hands and face, and his head….

“Little girl’s dead, too,” a neighbor murmured behind him. “Found her blood near the river.”

“Randolph Falcon.” Sheriff Cohen jerked Rex’s daddy to a standing position and handcuffed him. “You’re under arrest for the murders of the Lyle family.”

“No!” His mother collapsed into a neighbor’s arms, sobbing.

His father’s hawklike eyes pierced Rex as the sheriff yanked him down the steps toward his squad car. “Take care of your mama and brothers for me, son.”

Rex shook his head in denial. His father’s words had sounded so odd, as if he wasn’t coming back. But they couldn’t take his father away and lock him up.

He was innocent.

“Daddy!” His brothers chased after the sheriff, and Rex ran after them.

A bald eagle that had been perched on top of the porch swooped down and soared toward the car, its talons bared. Rex’s father nodded toward the bird. The animal knew what it was like to be caged. He was a bird of prey. He needed freedom.

Just like the Falcon men.

The blue light flicked on, the siren screeched and a cloud of dust rose behind the police car. Rex gathered his brothers and mother and walked them home, but it was dark inside and cold and so quiet the house echoed like a tomb. It was as if his father had just died.

Fear and anger and sadness knotted Rex’s throat. He wanted to do something to get his daddy out of jail. He wanted to make his mother stop crying. And his brothers…they were heartbroken.

But he felt so helpless. He was only ten. A stupid ten-year-old boy. What could he do? He didn’t know anything about lawyers or courts or anything else.

Tears pushed against his eyelids, but he blinked them back. Big boys didn’t cry.

But he had to be alone and think, so he fled into the mountains, silently venting his pain in the midst of the snow-laden pines.

Twenty years later

“You can never escape me, Hailey.”

Hailey Hitchcock inhaled to stifle a cry as Thad Jordan’s hands tightened around her jaw. She desperately wanted to scream, but it was useless. No one would hear.

An icy breeze swirled around her, sending her skirt flapping about her legs. Thad had been so angry with her on the way home from the Christmas dinner party that he’d pulled over on this deserted stretch of highway outside Denver, then half dragged, half carried her down a path in the woods. “It’s freezing out here, Thad, please take me home.”

“You’re bound to me forever,” he murmured.

A shudder rippled through her. His voice was as brittle as the winter wind. Why hadn’t she seen through his charismatic act to the devil that lay beneath? How could she have been such a bad judge of character?