The Judge and the Gypsy Read Online Free Page A

and came to stand beside him. “Is that important?”
    “No, I mean yes. You can’t hike a mountain trail without proper boots. You do have boots in your backpack?”
    Now it was her turn to smile. “No.”
    He shook his head disapprovingly. “Some preparations you’ve made! No matter—they carry hiking and camping supplies inside. You’d better buy a pair of boots.”
    “All right, and tell me what else I’ll need,” she said. “The only thing in my pack is my sleeping bag and some food.”
    “Don’t you know that it can get cool on the trail at night? The weather forecast is fair for the next couple of days, but in this area that can change within hours.”
    “Oh, dear. I guess I ought to confess that I’ve never camped out before.”
On a trail
, she ought to have added. Circus performers spent a lifetime camping out. But she had her own van, with her own bed and supplies. This was different. “Please help me, Crusader.”
    “I suppose I’d better, or I’ll end up rescuing you again.” He laughed, and Savannah found his warm laughter surprisingly sexy. She’d heard of bedroom eyes, but never of bedroom laughter. Yet suddenly she had an all-too-delicious sensation of sharing a cozy bedcover with Judge Horatio Webber. “I’ll makeyou a deal,” he went on. “My help in exchange for some revelations of the truth about you. Agreed?”
    “Revelations about me? All right. There are many truths, Horatio Webber. I’ll reveal mine, but only when the time is right.”
    Savannah followed him inside. He didn’t know it yet, but the die was cast. She would share his journey in exchange for the truth—only she knew that there were no friends to meet her, and that the quest she was embarking on was to claim his soul.
    Rasch felt a tinge of excitement. She’d agreed to tell him what he wanted to know. He wished he felt more confident about the wording of her promise.
    Inside the little store, Rasch picked up white cotton socks, and brown wool ones, then helped Savannah select a pair of boots that felt to her as if she had lead weights on her feet.
    Savannah exchanged the brown socks for red.
    Rasch selected a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and a heavy flannel shirt to go along with the boots. He gathered up packets of food and canned goods and added them to their cache. As the grocer rang up the goods, Rasch shook his head. The truth had already cost him $98.00, even before breakfast, and he had yet to hear a word of it. But to find this woman he would have paid a lot more.
    Savannah wandered into the restaurant side of the building while he paid their bill and carried their purchases to the truck. He found his sultry traveling companion at a corner table between two windows. She didn’t acknowledge his presence; instead, she stared intently out of the window.
    “What are you looking at?” Rasch asked, sliding into a chair across the table from her.
    “There’s a chipmunk out there, beneath that rotten limb by the fence.”
    Rasch looked at the spot she’d described. He couldn’t see anything except brush and trash. “Where?”
    “Be very still, and he’ll come,” she said, reaching across the table, laying her hand across his. At her touch came the same jolt of awareness that he’d felt in the street. It danced across them like an arc from an electrical connection. She looked startled for a moment, then slid her hand away, but in the void left behind there was a shivery feeling almost as concrete as the sound of the bells.
    “Look now,” she whispered, touching him again. Her palm felt rough, as if she’d been cutting wood or using a hammer.
    At that moment the little brown animal scurried out, stopped, and looked up at the window as if he’d been called. After a long, still moment, he turned and darted away.
    Savannah turned her gaze to Rasch. She didn’t speak, but somehow he knew that just as she’d communicated with the chipmunk, she was communicating with something inside him. Yet even as he