Free Deep in the Heart by Sharon Sala

and began to curse. It was the last thing he’d expected to hear. The call made him angry. He, Mike Pulaski, was hardly ever wrong. And he hated to be wrong, especially about something like this. The threat to Samantha Carlyle’s safety had suddenly become fact, and at the same time, he had to face guilt and a guilty conscience. So she’d been telling the truth all along!
    It didn’t take Pulaski long to show up at the site of the explosion. And what he learned made him sick. Bits and pieces of what was left of Samantha Carlyle’s home were scattered all over the three-room apartment as well as out into the courtyard.
    He had all the proof he needed that her life was really in danger, because only he knew first-hand that one Miss Samantha Carlyle, late of Los Angeles, California, was now in the safe hands of a Texas sheriff. She’d been thousands of miles away when what was left of her world had gone up in smoke.
    He went back to his office, leaving the gathering of evidence to the experts from the crime lab. He had a call to make, and it was not going to be an easy one. It took him several minutes to locate the card that John Thomas Knight had tossed on his desk, and once he did he had to pause to ponder what he was going to say.
    Daylight came two hours earlier in Texas than it did in L.A., so he knew that the sheriff would be in his office. He took a deep breath and dialed. And while he waited for Knight to come to the phone, he realized that he hadn’t planned on eating his own words for breakfast.

    “When?”
    The question was staccato sharp, and Pulaski winced and held the phone away from his ear.
    “This morning,” he answered, then looked down at his watch. “What would have been about ten o’clock your time.”
    John Thomas inhaled slowly, closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose to alleviate the pressure of a headache that had suddenly appeared.
    “What do you know so far?” John Thomas asked.
    Pulaski sighed. “Not much.”
    “Well, hell, why am I not surprised?”
    “Look! I had that coming. I don’t deny it. But we’ve got a damned good bomb unit. If there’s something to find, they’ll find it.”
    “And while they’re looking through what’s left of Sam’s life, what do you expect me to do? Do you know what this news is going to do to her? Dammit to hell, Pulaski, why didn’t you believe her earlier, before it went this far?”
    Pulaski sighed, remembering how casually Samantha Carlyle’s own bosses at the agency had treated the threats after weeks had passed without an incident to prove her theory. The fact that he’d let their opinion of her behavior color his own judgment didn’t sit any better.
    “I wish I could change what’s happened, but I can’t. Look, Sheriff, I’m only human, you know. We all are. All I can tell you is to be on the lookout for strangers.”
    John Thomas snorted softly. “Well hell, Pulaski, that won’t be hard. With a population of less than twenty-five hundred, around here strangers stand out like cows in a pen full of steers.”
    Pulaski rolled his eyes at the metaphor, assuming that what Knight just said made some sort of sense in Texas.
    “Okay then,” he said. “I’ll call you as soon as I know more. For now, you should work under the assumption that Samantha’s stalker knows she’s gone and is obviously angry.”
    “What makes you think he knows?” John Thomas asked. The warning was unexpected, and he didn’t like its implications. He didn’t like it at all.
    “Because the bomb was placed on her bed, that’s why. And my police psychologist tells me that the location of the bomb can be read two ways. The stalker is angry that she left with you, another man. By blowing up her bed, he’s telling her that leaving her bed to crawl into yours was unacceptable. It’s that, or else it was leaving L.A. altogether that set him off. Either way, the stalker has to know she’s gone.”
    “Oh hell.”
    “My sentiments exactly,”