BLURB

       A destructive force …

      As Emma Randall prepares to bury one man, another enters her life with the force of the cyclone gathering around them.

       A man fighting for his life …

      Drew Jarrett, his feet and hands torn by nail wounds, stumbles onto Emma's isolated farm, with no clue to the identity of the man who has tried to kill him.

      Within days the killer strikes again.

       An attraction that can't be denied …

      Emma fights to deny her feelings for Drew, but the growing danger surrounding her and this mysterious stranger creates an intimacy between them she could never have imagined.

      As Emma and Drew join forces to find the killer, he holds hostage the most innocent life of all.

      In Dance with the Devil, menace and love meet in a story as suspenseful as it is passionate.

      CHAPTER ONE

      An eerie sky seeped sulphurous light through all-pervading grey, hanging low, seeming to suck the air off the earth like some gigantic sponge.

      The stillness was intense, oppressive. The valley seemed to sink beneath the weight of it, huddling down into itself, pulling in the craggy mountains that reared up on either side. A river that began high in the Great Dividing Range snaked its way down the valley in giant curves, cutting neighbour off from neighbour, itself cut by old wooden bridges of the only access road.

      In one loop of the river, a small homestead sprawled across lush green paddocks and rocky outcrops; the house a lowset Queenslander, aged and neglected. The stables had been modern once, but now they, too, showed signs of lack of care.

      Everything was silent.

      Emma Randall gradually became aware of water dripping from trees, running down slopes in rivulets, plopping into puddles; the sharp tang of eucalyptus from myriad shredded leaves; the sweat trickling between her shoulder blades.

      She became aware that the body she cradled had become heavy. Not just physically. The burden in her arms was light compared to the burden in her heart.

      His forehead was rough beneath her fingertips as she smoothed wisps of hair from the weather-beaten face. His eyelashes lay golden against the mahogany of his cheek. She touched them. Soft as feathers. Funny, she expected them to be tough. Tough and harsh. Like he was.

      She'd never seen him look so peaceful. Even in sleep he had retained the grim, stubborn expression that rarely left his face. But now, in death, the ever-simmering anger had gone.

      She wished she could cry. Had she seen death so often she had forgotten how? She could feel nothing other than an overwhelming sense of failure. Apart from that, there was only numbness.

      A movement in the far paddock caught her attention. A figure, limping, falling, pushing itself up and stumbling again towards the stables where she knelt. She lowered the body to the ground, the training that enabled her to abandon the dead in order to help the living instinctively coming to the fore.

      Her boots splattered mud and slid on the wet grass as she ran. She skirted a fallen eucalyptus tree, its skeletal roots clawing at the gloomy sky. A sheet of roofing iron had arrowed into the ground under the ferocity of the wind, its twisted shape a crazy abstract on the open paddock. For a few seconds it obscured her view, then she was running faster.

      The figure had fallen again, not rising this time. She knelt beside the lean, shorts-clad body, reached down to run assessing hands in a quick examination, and stopped abruptly.

      Bleeding welts crisscrossed his back. No erratic patterning caused by Nature's recent fury, these had been caused by a deliberate hand.

      'You've been whipped.' The stunned whisper escaped her lips.

      The man groaned, tried to push himself up, cursed in pain and fell back. Emma brushed mud from his hands. Only a small sharp intake of breath betrayed her reaction. Swiftly she moved to inspect the rest of his body. Her hands faltered as she reached his feet.

      She had thought nothing could ever shock her again. But she'd been wrong.

      In the centre of each palm, in the centre of each foot, were bleeding circular wounds. Emma had seen them once before, in a country where religious wars had terrorised and destroyed the population.

      The man rolled over, grimacing as his back touched the grass. Piercing blue eyes focused on her face, then hazed, pain tightening his dark-stubbled face.

      'I'm a doctor,' Emma reassured him.

      Surprise flared across his face. He rolled onto his side and tried again to push himself up. As he rose, Emma took as much of his weight as she could. His head slumped and he sagged against her as he started to walk. She saw the glazed look in his eyes, expected him to fall once more, but he shook his head savagely and straightened. He gritted his teeth as he hobbled, and she knew how much pain it was causing him. A nail being driven through might have broken at least one of the twenty-six bones in the foot and, with little fat to provide a cushioning effect, the pain would be excruciating.

      Emma glanced across to the stables and fought back a sudden stab of anguish at the sight of the flaccid stillness of the body she'd lying left in the mud. For a second she hesitated. Then her attention snapped back to the man she was helping. Lean but well muscled, with a strong bone structure and standing a head taller, he struggled forward, his weight hampering her efforts to support him.

      Twice he collapsed, almost throwing them both to the ground. She grasped his wrist, pulled his arm tighter across her shoulders and hauled him to his feet. His jaw clenched against the pain, a feverish determination lit his eyes. Ragged breaths heaved from his chest. Breaths that seemed abnormally loud in the hushed air.

      Quickening her pace, Emma half dragged him up the two steps of the verandah, then through the doorway of her home.

      She kicked open the door to the front room which had been converted into a surgery and helped him lie stomach down on the examining table. As his head touched the pillow, his body slumped into unconsciousness.

      Emma quickly cleaned the mud from her patient, stripped off his sodden shorts, and carried out a more thorough examination. The cuts on his back were deep in places but not enough to require stitches. Quickly she cleaned them and taped a large dressing over the area. Turning him over wasn't easy, but she'd worked in worse situations with heavier patients, and the last year spent on the property had built up her strength.

      His skin was surprisingly warm to her touch. Her hands moved, swiftly but surely, pressing here, palpating there, across his chest, his abdomen, his groin.

      There appeared to be no internal injuries. His blood pressure was good, his pulse strong. But around his wrists and ankles were chafe marks where the flesh was raw. She'd seen marks like that before, and a shiver ran through her.

      Taking advantage of his unconscious state, she cleaned and dressed the wounds on his hands and feet. He groaned several times as she did so, but didn't regain consciousness. She injected him with pethidine, then a tetanus shot.

      The wind whipped up, breaking the silence. Rain spattered. The walls shook as violent gusts buffeted the house.

      The screen door banged loudly, again and again. Emma glanced out the window, across to the body lying in front of the stable door. Her chest constricted. She couldn't leave him like that.

      She looked at her patient, assured herself of his stable condition, then dashed out of the house and into the maelstrom. The wind