Free The Target by Catherine Coulter

watchfully. She looked strung out and very tired. He said, “You’d think that boiled coffee would rot your fillings out, and it just might, come to think of it, but it doesn’t taste too bad and it does zing your brain. As I said, we’re basic here. We’ve got a small refrigerator and the lights in the living room, due to a generator. But it’s a wood-burning stove and we heat the water for a bath.”
    Emma said, “We toast bread with a metal thing that has a long handle.”
    The woman shook her head, still trying, he knew, to understand what was happening here. “I’d drink anything that passed for coffee at this point. I’ve been sitting out there waiting and waiting for daylight, waiting for you to come outside, but when you did, you had that rifle and I was too far away to do anything with my Detonics.”
    â€œI shouldn’t have left the cabin door unlocked. It was stupid. If it hadn’t been you, it could have been them.”
    â€œWell, it wasn’t. I didn’t see anyone else out there. Who’s them? Who are you talking about?”
    â€œLet’s hold that for just a little bit,” he said, and nodded toward Emma. He poured her a cup of coffee that was still bubbling. “Sit down and try to drink it. If anything it’ll keep you buzzing until noon, when you’ll probably crash. Emma, I’m going to fix you a bowl of Cheerios. You want peaches or bananas?”
    â€œA banana. I don’t really like peaches.”
    â€œBut you’ve eaten them without complaint.”
    She said as she took the cereal box from him and poured Cheerios into her bowl, “I didn’t want to hurt your feelings. But I do like bananas better.”
    He sliced the banana over her cereal while she got the milk out of the small refrigerator. “Look, Mama,” she said,pointing. “It doesn’t have a freezer. We make everything fresh, just the way we do at home.”
    â€œI’ve never seen one that fancy before. It’s neat.” She didn’t know how the words, such ordinary words, had come out of her mouth. She’d passed from blankness to disbelief. Here she’d expected to come in and fight her daughter’s abductor and deal with a hysterical hurt child, and now she was drinking boiled coffee at a kitchen table, looking into a high-tech refrigerator, listening to her daughter chew her Cheerios. She looked at the big man who needed to shave. He’d saved her daughter? He’d protected her with his life? Nothing made sense yet.
    Emma was eating Cheerios with a banana on top, nicely sliced by that stranger. She didn’t say anything more until Emma was down to her last bite of cereal and he was drinking his second cup of coffee, seated across from her at the table. “I’ve been tracking her for two weeks. When I showed Emma’s picture down in Dillinger, I just couldn’t believe it. Several people told me she was Ramsey’s little girl. I didn’t know what to think. I’ve been watching since yesterday, but I couldn’t get to you without taking a chance of hurting Emma. You never came out of the cabin. Neither of you did.”
    â€œWho are you?”
    â€œI’m Molly Santera.”
    Emma looked up as she swallowed a banana circle. “Mama says it sounds like a made-up band’s name—our last name—but it’s real. It’s my dad’s name.”
    Molly smiled at her daughter and leaned close, just to touch her. “That’s true enough. But I’ll bet you there are lots of Santeras in the New York phone directory.”
    â€œI’ve never been to New York,” Emma said.
    â€œWe’ll go when you’re a bit older, Em. We’ll have a great time. We’ll stay at the Plaza and walk right over to FAO Schwarz. It’s really close.”
    Santera. The name was vaguely familiar. He remembered Emma’s drawing of a man