“But,” Rachel said softly, “you are suffering, too. Aren’t you?”
He gave a huff of painful laughter as he looked at the expanse of darkening desert all around them. “Every day,” he growled. “Every day.”
“I don’t just mean because you’re out here in the desert, now, and you hate it—I’m assuming you being here has something to do with what happened?”
“Yeah, something.”
“But that’s not the worst part, is it?” He didn’t look at her, or reply. “I think you must think about it…live with it, every day. And at night you probably—”
“Jeez, what are you now, my shrink?”
“I’m sorry,” she said, because she could see by the stiffness in his neck and shoulders that she’d gone too far.
But I know you have nightmares, Jethro Fox. I know, because I have them, too. About Nicky, and what happened that night. I keep playing it over and over in my head, trying to make it come out differently. And I know you do, too.
Chapter 6
“It’s not much,” J.J. said, “but at least nobody bothers me out here. And like I said, the only ones who know where I live I’d trust with my life. You should be safe here. For tonight, anyway. We’ll have to figure out what we’re going to do after that, but right now, you can at least get some rest.”
She nodded but didn’t say anything. He figured she had to be pretty near worn out, given the day she’d had yesterday, and the fact that nobody ever really gets to rest in a hospital. She’d fallen asleep again, once the talking stopped, until they’d had to stop a ways back when the baby woke up and started fussing so she could nurse him. It was an odd experience for J.J.—definitely a first for him—sitting in the darkness with only the sounds of the desert wind and the occasional yip of a coyote outside the car, and inside, the soft, wet sounds a hungry baby made, nursing at his mother’s breast.
Now, though, she was sitting up straight and alert, staring ahead at the silhouette of his trailer, lonely against the slate-dark sky. A three-quarter moon hung high and bright, bright enough to cast shadows on the desert landscape.
“Moonshine,” she said.
He thought at first she was talking about the moonlight, but then he saw the dog sitting out in the road in front of the trailer, waiting for him. He gave a little laugh and said, “Yeah, and it’s actually her you can thank for saving your life.” He nodded at the baby, now sleeping again in the carrier in the backseat. “And your son’s. I probably wouldn’t have found you without her.”
She nodded but didn’t reply. He pulled up in the bare place in front of the trailer and stopped, but when he started to open the door and get out, she hitched in a breath and said in a nervous, hurried kind of way, “Is she yours? Or, you know…a police dog?”
“Canine Unit, you mean? Nah, she just wandered in here one day and parked herself, didn’t look like she was going to leave, so I let her stay. I call her Moonshine because she always looks like she’s a little bit drunk, which is pretty normal for a hound dog. Now and then she comes in handy, like she did today. Why?” he added, because there’d been that something in her voice. “You’re not afraid of dogs, are you?”
“Not…afraid, just careful.” Her voice was without expression. It had a hollow sound in the dark car. He heard her take another breath. “Carlos has dogs. Dobermans. They have the run of the estate at night, and other times—whenever he wants to make sure nobody comes or goes without his knowledge and consent.”
“Prison wardens,” J.J. said with a snort.
She nodded. “I’ve never had a dog as a…you know, a pet.”
“Not even growing up? What, your grandmother didn’t like dogs?”
“My grandmother liked to garden—flowers, not vegetables. Dogs and flower gardens don’t exactly mix.”
“Ah. Well, Moonshine isn’t exactly a pet. She’s more like a roomy, I guess.” He shrugged and opened the car door. “Anyway, we seem to get along okay.”
He got out, went around and opened Rachel’s door. Moonshine came ambling over to give her a good sniff, then sat back and let him help her out of the car. Rachel managed that part okay, but he could see she was having trouble getting her legs under her and working right, and it hit him again, like a slap upside the head, what she’d been through in the last forty-eight hours or so. He didn’t even think twice about it, tiny as she was, just scooped her up in his arms.
She gave a little gasp and said faintly, “You don’t have to carry me.”
“I think maybe I do,” he said, and felt her body shake with silent laughter.
“Well, okay then, pardner,” she growled in a very bad Duke Wayne impression, which he was pretty certain he did not sound like, at least he hoped not.
He made an ambiguous growling sound back to her and carried her up the steps and into his trailer. He put her down on the couch and was heading back out to get the baby when he spotted a sticky note from Katie stuck on the inside of the door saying she’d made up his bed with clean sheets and stocked the fridge with a few groceries. God bless the woman, because those were two things he hadn’t even thought about himself.
When he opened the back door of his vehicle to unbuckle the baby carrier seat, Moonshine had to come over and go through the sniff-test thing again. Having evidently given the new arrival her approval, she trotted along at J.J.’s heels right up to the bottom of the steps. There, instead of flopping down in the dust for a snooze as was her usual habit, she parked herself on her haunches on full alert, as if she knew whatever was in that carrier was precious cargo and in need of her protection.
“Good girl,” J.J. muttered, and wondered for the hundredth time where the old dog had come from and what kind of stories she could tell if only she could talk.
Back inside the trailer he found Rachel sitting on the couch, hunched up with her arms wrapped around herself, like she was cold. Which reminded him it could definitely get chilly, spring nights in the desert, and she was wearing only a pair of green scrubs the hospital had given her to replace her bloodstained clothes. He set the baby carrier on the floor beside her feet and felt her gaze following him as he turned on the heat, then ducked into his bedroom to find something warm for her to put on.
It felt oddly uncomfortable, having her there, having her watch him. It wasn’t as if sharing his quarters with a woman was an uncommon thing, just…not these quarters. He hated to admit that he minded that he was living in a dinky, shabby old trailer. Or at least it didn’t exactly fit the image he wanted to have of himself, had been accustomed to having of himself.
Not that this woman was somebody whose opinion of him should matter, so why should he care what she thought?
“I’m going to need to buy some clothes,” Rachel said when he handed her one of his sweatshirts—he thought an old girlfriend must have given it to him, because he couldn’t imagine buying anything that had “Life’s a Beach” printed on it. He watched her pull it on over her head and tug the excess down around her hips, and while he waited for her to do it, felt an inexplicable urge to slip his fingers under her hair and pull it free of the neckline of the shirt for her.
“I’ll have Katie bring over some stuff tomorrow,” he said absently, his eyes following the movements of her hands as she rolled up the sweatshirt’s way-too-long sleeves.
She looked up at him, and he felt a weird swimming sensation, looking down into those deep dark eyes. “Katie? That’s the one I heard talking to you on the radio…”
“Right. She’s my…I guess they don’t call them secretaries now. My administrative assistant—that’s it. She runs the office, is what she does. Anyway, she’s got daughters. Ought to have something you can wear. Meanwhile, you can wear that, or I can find you a T-shirt, if that’d be more comfortable to sleep in. Probably come about to your knees.”
“No, no—that’s okay. This is fine.”
“Well, okay then. Is there anything I can get you? Are you hungry?”
“No, thank you. I’m fine.
”
“Uh…you can sleep in the bedroom. Katie put clean sheets on the bed, so I know she meant for you to. So…whenever you feel like it, just…you know, make yourself comfortable.”
“Thank you.”
Her voice sounded breathy and rushed, as if she couldn’t wait for him to go away and leave her be. He couldn’t blame her for wanting some privacy, after the kind of invasions she’d had to put up with, and since he’d run out of things to say to her, or ask her, he gave her a “good-night” nod, got himself a cold beer out of the fridge and took himself outside. Feeling like an intruder in his own house, he sat in an old aluminum folding chair beside the steps, and Moonshine came and flopped down beside him with a gusty sigh, as if she was more than happy to turn over sentry duty to him.
He put his hand on her head, took a big swallow of beer, gave a sigh of his own and growled, “Yeah, it’s been one helluva coupla days, hasn’t it, old girl?”
The dog didn’t reply, so J.J. leaned his head back and looked up at the sky, which wasn’t showing too many stars on such a moon-bright night. He listened for a moment to the sound of the wind shushing through the desert shrubbery, and for some reason felt a little bit lonely.
He thought about Rachel and what he’d seen her do yesterday, and what he was going to try to talk her into doing for him in the near future, and the thoughts made him feel itchy and restless.
Not guilty. No, not that. Why should I feel guilty? She’s an eyewitness to the murder of two federal agents. It’s her damn duty to tell what she knows.
He muttered under his breath, a couple of phrases his mama wouldn’t have approved of, then reached down and unlatched the guitar case that lay on the ground beside the aluminum chair. He took out his guitar, tuned it up and then cradled it against him and began to diddle around. Just chords, at first, and then the chords sort of found their way into a Springsteen song, one from one of his old acoustic albums, kind of mournful, which suited his mood.
He stopped playing when Moonshine suddenly lifted her head up off her paws, and a moment later he heard the door of his trailer creak open. He set the guitar back in its case and watched Rachel come out, silhouetted for a couple of seconds against the light inside before she made her way down the steps, holding on to the wooden railing with both hands. He got up and went to get her, meaning to help her to the chair, but she shook her head and seated herself gingerly on the next-to-bottom step.
“You didn’t have to stop playing. I just wanted to give you this.” She held it out to him—the envelope he’d last seen when he’d copied her name and address off the front, the one she’d had taped to her belly, that he’d removed from her yesterday morning along with her clothes.
He gave a little snort of surprise as he took it from her. “Where’d you have it stashed this time?”
He could barely make out her hint of a smile. “Not on me—I don’t think it would stick. Right now my stomach’s pretty much like a big bowl of pudding. I had it under the cushion in the baby carrier.”
“Well, it must be pretty important,” J.J. drawled. Considering the trouble you’ve gone through to keep it hidden—and safe.
She nodded, and when she spoke, she sounded tense. “It—that letter—is what made me think I could finally get away from Carlos. That’s where I was planning to go.”
He held the envelope, weighing it in his hand. “So…why are you giving it to me now? Does this mean you’ve decided to trust me? A little?”
Again she had her arms wrapped around herself, huddled on that hard wooden step, and her face was turned away and in shadows. Her voice sounded whispery and exhausted. “Please understand…it’s been very hard for me to know who to trust. But—” she exhaled audibly “—as you said, I guess if you’d wanted to kill me and take my baby back to Carlos, it would have been very easy for you to do that. Instead, as you pointed out, I have you—and your dog—to thank for saving our lives. So, since I can’t do this by myself and am going to have to trust someone, it might as well be you.”
“A ringing endorsement if I ever heard one,” J.J. said dryly. He opened the envelope and took out several sheets of paper, some of it heavy and obviously expensive. “You gonna tell me what this is, or let me figure it out for myself?”
“It’s a letter,” she said, in a voice that was suddenly completely devoid of expression. “From my grandfather, Sam Malone.”
“Sam Malone?” He glanced up at her and grinned. “Not the Sam Malone, I suppose?”
She stared blankly back at him. “I didn’t even know there was a the Sam Malone.”
“Come on. Reclusive multibillionaire, struck it rich out here on the desert somewhere during the Great Depression, made a fortune during World War II, hung out with the rich and the famous before he dropped out of sight sometime in the sixties. Not as notorious—or as crazy—as Howard Hughes, but in the same general category. Don’t tell me you never heard of him. My God, I didn’t know he was still alive.”
She shook her head in a bewildered kind of way and said faintly, “I don’t know if he is.”
He stood up and clicked on a switch in a cord dangling down alongside the front door, turning on a string of Christmas lights that looped across the front of the trailer. “From what I recall,” he said as he sat back down in the folding chair, “the guy was quite a character. Worked as a stuntman in old Hollywood for a while—knew all the big stars. I think he married a starlet, or maybe it was a folksinger…” He lost the train of what he was saying right about then, because he was studying the letter.
The first page was a cover letter from an attorney, and he skimmed it quickly before he set it in his lap and moved on to the next one. This was a handwritten letter, written on lined paper torn from a cheap notebook, the kind J.J. remembered writing school reports on when he was a kid, in the days before his folks had been able to afford a computer. The writing was old-fashioned and hard to read, but underneath that, on more of the lawyer’s expensive paper, was what appeared to be a typed version. He pulled that out and began to read.
My name is Sam Malone, though for some reason some have preferred to call me by the nickname, Sierra, and I happen to be your grandfather. I am a very old man now, and I’ve lived a full and interesting life, during which I managed to amass a considerable fortune and squander the love of three beautiful women. As a result, I was not privileged to know my own children, a fact that I deeply regret. But this is not the time for regrets, and I can’t do much to change the past anyhow.
Since I have outlived all of my wives and my children, it is my desire to share my treasure with my grandchildren, any that may chance to survive me, and it is this last wish that has led me to write this letter to you. If you are not too dead-set against me and would care to come to my ranch to collect your inheritance, I do not believe you would be sorry.
I have enclosed a little map, in case you should decide to take me up on my offer. And I’m sure my lawyer will add some instructions as to how to get in touch with my staff, to let them know…
“Wow.”
J.J. looked up, hands full of the pages of the letter, and stared at the small form huddled in the pool of light on his front steps. “Good Lord, woman, do you even know what this means? Do you have any idea what kind of resources you have?”
She lifted her head and gazed back at him, her eyes only dark shadows. “You say he was a movie stuntman in old Hollywood…I guess that would explain why my grandmother liked to watch old Western movies, wouldn’t it? He was probably in some of them.” Her laugh had a liquid sound. “He might even have known him—the Duke. Don’t you think?”
J.J. was trying to get his head around the fact that he’d not only delivered the grandson of notorious crime family boss Carlos Delacorte, but also the great-grandson of Sierra Sam Malone, one of the true legends of the twentieth century.
“Wouldn’t be a bit surprised,” he said.
Rachel gazed out the windows of the anonymous late-model white pickup truck at the d
esert landscape sweeping by, watching constantly changing vistas—scrubby trees and shrubs she didn’t know the names of set on a carpet of golden flowers, juniper and Joshua tree-covered hills, and beyond them mountains layered in shades of purple and blue, canyons with cliffs carved in fantastic shapes and striated in red, orange, pink and cream, plains strewn with black lava rock from eruptions so ancient their sources had long since eroded away. Evidences of human habitation were few and far between, and often in advanced stages of abandonment and decay. Like those long-gone volcanoes, she thought, they’d been unable to stand up to the ravages of heat and sun and the unrelenting wind.
She was sure some people—Sheriff Jethro Fox for one—would find the desert harsh and barren and soulless, but to Rachel the vast emptiness, the endless vistas and boundless sky spoke of freedom. She hadn’t truly understood until hers was taken from her how precious a thing freedom was. Freedom to come and go, freedom to speak and laugh and visit, and most especially, freedom from fear. She wasn’t free in that sense, not yet, but the desert, the openness and emptiness, made her heart lift, made her believe such a thing might be possible for her, after all.
She thought then of what it had taken to bring her to this point, where freedom and a future without fear seemed within her grasp. She thought of the unlikely people who had made her escape possible: the mysterious Sam Malone, her grandfather, whom she had resented and despised as long as she could remember for his abandonment of her grandmother, and the letter holding the promise of a means to create a new life for herself, someplace where Carlos couldn’t find her.
Then there was…this man. Sheriff J. J. Fox, the lawman who might have stepped right out of one of the old cowboy movies she and Grandmother had loved to watch. The lawman who had not only saved her life and her baby’s life, too, but had given her shelter and protection, and now was taking her in his own private pickup truck to find her grandfather’s hideaway.
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