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pane of glass,” he said. “But it doesn’t change a thing. Until I say different, you travel with me, and you go where I say.” He didn’t give her a chance to argue, just turned back to the wheel, started the engine and peeled out so she was slung back against the seat by the force of the truck’s acceleration.
    Angel stared at the swiftly passing landscape—bone-dry rolling prairie dotted with mesquite and cactus—and realized she had just missed her best chance to escape from this madman before they arrived at wherever he was taking her. She felt trapped, and she didn’t like it. But Angel had spent her life making the best of bad situations. This was no different. At least that’s what she tried to tell herself.
    â€œDoes your insistence on keeping me with you mean that you believe I’m from the past?” Angel asked.
    â€œI don’t know what to believe,” Dallas admitted. “But until I’m sure one way or the other, I don’t intend to take any chances with you.”
    â€œWhy should you care what happens to me?”
    â€œI’m a lawman. It’s my duty to help the helpless.”
    â€œYou told me yourself you’re on a leave of absence from duty,” Angel countered. “And besides, I’m far from helpless.”
    â€œThen chalk it up to the Code of the West,” Dallas said. “A man protects a woman. That’s just the way things are done—even today. By the way, have you got anything on you that could prove you’re from the past?”
    Angel touched her pants pocket protectively. The paper was still there. “No. Nothing.” Nothing I want to show you .
    Dallas stopped the truck in front of a peak-roofed two-story white frame house. Several moss-draped live oaks shaded the house, which had a covered porch that ran across the front of it. Victorian gingerbread trim decorated the porch and the eaves. Old-fashioned forest-green shutters flanked the front windows, upstairs and down. It was not a twentieth century house—at least not on the outside.
    Dallas stepped out of the truck and helped Angel down. He held on to her hand as he led her up the front porch steps and into the house. He told himself it was because she might need his support. The truth was he felt an unusual sense of possessiveness that made him never want to let her go. He labeled it a delayed reaction to saving her life and tried not to think about it.
    Angel stared at the room, which was a mixture of both strange and recognizable objects. “Do you live here alone?”
    â€œI have since my father was shot and killed ten years ago.”
    â€œI’m sorry.” She turned and her blue eyes met his hazel ones, full of sympathy and understanding. “Indians? Or outlaws?”
    Dallas stared at her for a moment. That was the sort of instinctual response that could only be made by someone to whom marauding Comanches were still a threat. Someone from the past. “Outlaws,” he said at last. “My father also was a Texas Ranger. He was shot trying to save a child who’d been kidnapped.”
    By now Angel had touched almost everything in the room with which she was familiar—the Victorian sofa, the pine trestle table and four chairs, the sideboard, the standing hat rack, the shelves full of leather-bound books and the mantel over the stone fireplace. She had avoided everything else.
    Dallas picked up a black object and punched buttons on it. “Hi, Doc,” he said into one end of the object. “I wondered if you could make a house call. I don’t know if you’d call it an emergency. More like a necessary visit. I can’t explain on the phone. Good. I’ll be here.”
    â€œWhat is that you’re holding?” Angel asked. “Why were you speaking into it?”
    â€œIt’s a phone. It’s used to talk to people who are somewhere else.”
    Angel frowned.