Penny was next to a broad-shouldered man in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. He was turned the other way, his head covered by a dark baseball cap. And he was pulling her away by the hand.
No. No, no, no!
Ruth lunged ahead, pushing through the crowd to get to her daughter. “Penny! I’m here!” Up ahead Penny turned back to her. The man shot a quick look back and then moved on.
A crazy pulse beating in her throat, Ruth scrambled past Betty Ann’s Bakery and finally moved around a trio of large, lumbering women to reach her daughter.
“Penny!” She fell to her knees in front of the little girl, whose dark eyes shone wide as saucers. “Oh my Lord. Oh . . . oh. You gave me such a scare.”
Ruth hugged her daughter close, loving the feel of her tiny body in her arms. Then she pulled her to the empty vestibule of an office entrance and checked her over, gently stroking her arms and head. “What happened? I told you to wait for me.”
“I know, but he showed me where the fountain was.”
“Did the man hurt you?” Ruth asked.
“No. He was kind of mean, though. He gave me the stink eye, like Grandma says, and he told me I needed to wash up, that I was a piggy. He had a bag of flags he was selling, and he kept trying to get me to buy one, but I didn’t have any money.” Penny’s brown eyes looked worriedly at Ruth. “I told him I was waiting for you, Mom, but he took me to the fountain . . . it was just across the street, so I . . . I . . .” Her bottom lip began to wobble as her face puckered in a sob.
“Okay, honey. You’re okay.” Ruth pressed her girl against her, running her palm over the coppery sheen of hair as she thanked God Penny was safe. “But you know not to do that again.”
“I just wanted to go to the fountain.” Penny sniffed.
“It’s okay, pumpkin. You’re fine now.” From now on, Penny would not be out of her sight. Later Ruth would have a talk to warn her daughter about trusting anyone in this town. But for now, she wanted Penny to know she was safe.
“Do you want to watch the rest of the parade, or go home?” she offered, trying to restore some normalcy.
“Can we stay? I want to see how Jessica decorated her bike.”
“Okay. But I’m not letting you out of my sight, little bean.”
“Okay,” Penny repeated, clasping her hand tight.
*
After the parade, Penny had some friends over to splash through the hose in the backyard. Watching them through the kitchen window, Ruth mixed red and blue sprinkles into vanilla cake batter to make cupcakes for Penny’s Sunday school class. The plan was to have the girls frost the cupcakes, a task that would keep them busy once they tired of playing in the hose and sprinkler. As she poured the batter into paper-cup-lined muffin tins, she sorted through everything she knew about her attacker that might help identify the man Penny had encountered at the parade.
The flag man.
Something about him seemed a little off. Unlike her attacker, who had seemed more squared away, brazen, and strong-willed. A stubborn cowboy type.
She scraped the last of the batter from the bowl with a spatula, thinking that Kat had been right. Ruth was out of her league in terms of really investigating these people. Maybe she could help with the profiling, and she was going to make sure Kat took a good look at the list of suspects she’d compiled, but operating in the vacuum of her life, Ruth didn’t have access to the background information and details Kat had at her fingertips.
A knock sounded from the front of the house, and she put the mixing bowl down and licked her finger as she went to see who it was. Ethan stood on her doorstep, hands resting loosely on his belt just above the hips, looking as relaxed and handsome as any cowboy she’d ever seen.
“Hey, there.” She opened the door, inviting him in. “You got my text.”
“I did.” He stepped into the screened porch. “How’s Penny doing?”
“She’s a little scared, mostly because I was so freaked out, though I tried not to show it.”
“I got that. But to know that someone’s watching your house, and maybe following your kid around too? That’s scary stuff.”
“And that’s just part of it.”
“I sensed there was more.” He looked into the house. “You got a minute to talk?”
“Come on into the kitchen. I was just about to put cupcakes into the oven.”
He sat at the table, and as she popped the trays into the oven and washed the bowl, she told him about the intruder from last night and the “flag man” from today. She filled in the many details that she couldn’t include in a text message. His questions showed that he took the threat seriously, though he was baffled at what the motive might be. “It begs the question, why you? Do you have any idea who might be targeting you?” he asked.
Ruth took a breath. “The truth?”
“Always.”
“I think this is related to something that happened fifteen years ago. The thing is, when I left Prairie Creek, I wasn’t just going off to college. I was escaping this town.” She turned away from the chatter of the girls in the backyard to gauge his reaction. He nodded, his steady gaze telling her to go on.
“When I was sixteen, still in high school, I was attacked.” As she stared out the window at the girls, she told Ethan the secret she’d held all these years. The whole story, from the innocent escapades of three teenaged girls to the rape, the secrecy, and the shell of a person she’d become until she finally got counseling. “I did seek help when I got to Santa Barbara and found the rape crisis center. There were people there who wanted to help me, people who taught me that I wasn’t to blame and that I could heal and move on with my life.”
Ethan absorbed that with a slow nod of his head. “That explains your dedication to your practice here and the hotline.”
Ruth exhaled, realizing belatedly that she’d been holding her breath. “I can’t let the same thing happen if and when another girl gets raped here. It’s up to me to set up some sort of treatment program that will outlast me.”
“And now that you’re back, and someone is threatening you, you think it might be the attacker from fifteen years ago, still targeting you?”
Ruth lifted her palms. “When I first returned, I was looking for my attacker everywhere, even subconsciously checking men I encountered to see if they had the same features. And then, when Addie went missing and the deputies found Courtney Pearson’s body in the same week, I started to wonder if it could all be related. Could it be the same man, coming upon girls who can’t defend themselves out in the wilderness, sweeping them away to be his captive? If that’s true, he might have done the same to me if Kat and Shiloh hadn’t returned to save me.”
He shook his head. “That’s a big if. But if it’s true, we need to tell Kat.”
“Kat’s made the same connections on her own. She’s been pressuring me to go on the record with what happened fifteen years ago. I’m ready, but my parents are freaking out. I guess the fur still goes flying when folks find out that the family of a minister is human.”
“There’s definitely a double standard there. So, you’ve talked to Kat?”