And then he became aware of the sounds outside the shelter of the sturdy cabin. The wind was savage, howling through the treetops. Rain hammered the metal roof. Waves crashed and rolled on the rock-lined shore of the lake.
He sighed and felt his muscles relax. He remembered he was home.
His eyes adjusted minutely to the murky darkness and the rough log walls of his bedroom came into focus. The mattress beneath him was firm and comfortable, a plaid bedroom-window curtain flapped and jigged with the wind.
He had gone to sleep with the wind high—raising the waves to ferocious whitecaps on the lake, swaying the treetops, shrieking through the soffit under the eaves—so he knew the wind had not woken him.
Cole had a soldier’s gift for sifting out those noises that were supposed to be there—no matter how chaotic—and sleeping through them with relative ease. But something out of the ordinary, no matter how small, could bring him instantly awake. The sound he thought he had heard was so fragile, so tiny, it was easy to believe he had imagined it.
He waited under the comfortable weight of a down comforter for his sense of safety to return, for his mind to sound the all clear.
He reminded himself that he was virtually alone here at this isolated bay on Kootenay Lake, an enormous body of water located in the shadows of British Columbia’s Purcell Mountains. Unlike most men, he craved solitude and found solace in it.
It was November. The summer people had boarded up the windows of the rare cabins that dotted the inlet and had gone home long ago.
Only the new house—rumored to be a movie star’s—showed signs of occupation. He had noticed fresh tire tracks on the impossibly steep driveway. At night, light spilled from windows of the house high on the point and wove ribbons of gold into the black, restless water beyond the bay.
The new house was a monstrosity of tasteless white stucco that had changed the landscape of Heartbreak Bay forever, and that Cole heartily resented every time he caught a glimpse of it. Still, it was a long distance up the bay, far enough away that his sense of isolation remained safely intact.
Despite how his reasoning mind tried to tell him he was as safe here as he could ever be anywhere, Cole’s deeper mind—that place of pure instinct that had kept him alive so many times—did not sound the all clear. Cole frowned, and then he heard it, suddenly, again.
His frown deepened, and he reached for the light beside his bed. The lamp clicked but did not come on. No power, not an unusual situation in this remote bay that was subjected to cruel weather from November until February. He reached for the flashlight on his night table and played the beam across the ceiling. The light did not persuade him that he had not heard a sound, frail and pitiful, like the mewing of a kitten.
Restless now, Cole threw back the covers, yanked on a pair of jeans, and went and stood at the window. The air was biting against his naked chest.
Tap. Tap. Tap. The hair on the back of his neck rose. The noise was puny, almost lost in the furor of the storm, and yet there it was again. Tap. Tap. Tap.
He followed the sound out of his bedroom, following the beam of his flashlight over rough hardwood floors, past the ragtag collection of cabin furniture in the living room.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The sound was on the other side of the front door. He told himself a tree branch must be scraping it. He reminded himself he was home, in Canada, safe, and yet it was a warrior who flung open the door, ready and fierce.
At first he saw only the night, felt the sting of rain against his face and the cold fingers of wind in his hair. But then that small sound, the kitten mewing, made him look down, and his flashlight beam illuminated a most startling sight.
His jaw dropped.
A small girl stood there, her white nightdress whipping around her, a doll wrapped in a bright blanket clutched tight to her chest.
Perhaps eleven, the child was painfully thin, and her long dark hair tangled, curly, around her head. Her eyes were huge and blue and frightened, and her teeth were chattering. A fine line of blue was appearing around her lips despite the sweater pulled over the nightdress.
The doll she was holding suddenly let out a fierce yell, as frightening as any battle cry Cole had ever heard. He took an alarmed step back and scrutinized the bundle the girl held.
It squirmed, and he realized it was not a doll. It was a baby! His blood went cold, and his mind tried to sort through the hodgepodge of illogical information that was being thrust on it.
The soldier, the commander, stepped in coolly and took charge. It told him job one was to get these kids out of the cold. No matter how startling their appearance on his doorstep, there would be time, later, to sort through the intrigues.
“Get in,” he ordered and was stunned when the child hesitated before the authority in his voice, a voice that men raced to obey.
He saw suddenly her arms were trembling from the effort of holding the baby, and firmly, a soldier doing the thing he least wanted to do, but recognizing his lack of choices, he plucked the baby from her arms.
It stared at him with huge blue eyes just like the girl’s and screwed up its face until the eyes disappeared into a nest of wrinkles. But then, mercifully, instead of crying the baby nestled into him, sighed, plopped a plump thumb into its mouth.
“Come in,” he said, again, trying to take the military snap out of his voice, trying for a note of kindness that might reassure the trembling waif before him.
She regarded him with huge eyes that stripped him to his soul, and then gave a small satisfied nod. But still, she did not step over the threshold to warmth and safety.
She turned on the step and motioned with her arm. A motion any soldier would recognize.
Come forward. The shrubs that formed a border around the small square of yard that surrounded the house, parted.
Cole almost dropped the baby. A toddler, not more than three, obviously female from the foolishness of the lace-trimmed nightdress that tangled around pudgy legs, emerged from the shrubs and tottered across the leaf-and branch-strewn yard.
As if he was not reeling from enough shock, the shrubs parted again, and two small boys, maybe seven and eight, dark-haired, dirt-smeared and pajama-clad, also emerged into the clearing of his cabin.
Cole Standen had faced the types of terror that make a man tremble and reach inside himself to find his deepest reserves of courage.
He had jumped from airplanes, been shot at, dealt with the dread of an enemy concealed by night but so close you could almost feel his breath upon your cheek.
But as those cold, wet, mud-spattered children tumbled by him into his sanctuary, and the warm puddle of humanity that was the baby squirmed against his bare chest, Cole searched his memory bank to see if he had ever faced a terror quite like the one that hammered in his breast now.
He discovered he had not.
Chapter One
“My granny’s dead,” the girl, obviously the oldest of the five, announced. And then, her bravery all used up, her face crumpled as if the air was being let out of a balloon. She began to cry, quietly at first, big silent tears rolling down her face. The silence was but the still before the storm. She built quickly to a crescendo. She uttered a heartbreaking wail.
The four other waifs watched her anxiously, and her breakdown was a lesson in leadership. All four of them instantly followed her example. Even the baby. They screwed up their faces in expressions of identical distress and began to caterwaul. Awkwardly gripping the baby, which seemed unaccountably slippery, Cole escorted the four other howling children into his living room and planted them on the couch.
The older girl held out her arms, and he carefully placed the screaming