The Lonesome Lawmen Trilogy

by Pauline Baird Jones

  He saw Luke come out of the station carrying a sandwich and a cup of coffee. He held both out to Matt. Matt shook his head. “I’m not hungry.”

  “Eat or I’ll shove it down your throat. And sit down. You burn out before we find her, how you gonna help her?”

  It was his big brother voice, his big brother face. Matt knew better than to argue with either of them. He took the food and propped himself on a railing. The coffee tasted good, the sandwich okay.

  “You should know how to wait by now, bro,” Luke said, watching with his arms crossed, his feet planted.

  “I should, shouldn’t I?” He looked at the sandwich, wanting to toss it. Luke would just pick it up and shove it down his throat. “Never been any good at it.”

  “We should be experts,” Luke said, his eyes going distant. He was quiet for a bit, then he sighed and looked at Matt. “Do you think she’s a witch?”

  “Who, Dani?”

  Luke grinned. “She’ll always be Louise to me.”

  “Why witch?” Matt asked.

  “We talked a bit while you were inside paying for the gas,” he admitted.

  “Is that when you warned her against me?” Matt asked.

  Luke chuckled, sat down next to Matt. “Think she’s the one should come with a warning.” He hesitated, then said, “We talked about Rosemary. Rosemary for remembrance. That’s what she said. That she’d been there and done that.”

  “She has. Her ex is a jerk.”

  Luke looked at his brother. “Ex’s always are.”

  “I’ll get you for that one later. Why does that make her a witch?”

  Luke smiled. “I didn’t realize until later, the crappy part was gone. Only the remembering was left.” His mouth twisted. “This what the idiots call closure?”

  Matt winced. “Don’t say it that too loud, we’re gonna find ourselves on Jenny Jones or Oprah.”

  Luke raised a brow. “You too?”

  “Yeah.” Matt drank the last of his coffee and shoved the cup and the rest of the sandwich in a nearby trash can.

  “So, is she a witch?”

  Matt turned and looked at his brother. “I hope so. It’s a big park and Hayes is a smart whacko. It’s gonna take all we can do and a little magic to pull this one off.”

  “Let’s go do our thing.” Luke slapped him on the back.

  Matt nodded and turned to follow him, then stopped looking at the mountains basking in the morning light. Normally the sight would have put peace in his heart.

  “What?”

  Matt shook his head. “I keep thinking about what the shrinks have to say about Hayes. That his killing has a religious edge to it.”

  “What about it?”

  “Just that I have a feeling that even if Hayes hadn’t grabbed Dani here, he would have brought her here. If I could just figure out why.”

  “I lift mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my strength: from whence cometh my help,” Luke murmured.

  Matt frowned. “What’s that?”

  Luke shifted. “Something from the Bible Rosemary used to have me read to her when the pain got too bad.”

  “Oh.” My strength. Some kind of religious fixation. Matt knew how he felt when he climbed. Like he was breaking free of everything that pissed him off down on the ground. Like he could see farther, see clearer how things were supposed to be. Was this the key to unlocking Hayes’ brain? Could it be that simple? He killed, he climbed? He had wanted to show Dani his mountains. He had been sure when she saw them, she wouldn’t be afraid of them. Might Hayes feel the same way?

  “Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord,” Luke said. “She liked that one, too. I was glad her room looked out on the mountains.”

  “I’m glad, too.” Matt swung around. “I got an idea.”

  * * * *

  It was almost eleven and they were just coming up on the Boulderfield. Spook looked at the sky, then back at Dani who had stopped looking at anything but her feet several hours ago. When she didn’t need her hands to climb, she rubbed at her temples like she had a headache. For some reason the altitude at this point bothered some people. She seemed to be one of them.

  “Let’s take a break,” he said. If she got altitude sickness, she would never make it to the top. He would have to risk the time, get some water and ibuprofen down her. Without answering him she stopped, dropped her pack and half leaned, half sat on a rock. She hadn’t said much since he had kissed her, had withdrawn to someplace deep inside herself. He wanted to punch his way inside. Make her notice him again, make her give him her warmth and love. He needed her spirit broken, needed her to be rebuilt in his image. She couldn’t do that if he broke her so she couldn’t climb. He could bide his time for now. In the end, she would come to him. He would make her.

  “Take these,” he said. “They’ll help your headache.”

  Dani looked at the tablets. She didn’t want to take them. Didn’t want him to know he was right, that she did have a headache, but the pain was getting worse, in her head and her mouth. At some point, Spook had given her an ice pack to put on her mouth. It reminded her of Matt, which started a different kind of pain, one located around her heart. Matt thought she was dead. If Spook had his way, by the time he found out he was wrong, there would be no trail for him to follow. They would be deep in the nether world that Spook inhabited.

  If Spook had his way.

  “Take them, Willow. You won’t be able to plot your revenge if your head hurts.” He sat down beside her. She tensed, but he didn’t try to touch her. He was right, so she held out her hand. When she had taken them, he asked, “Are you still mad at me?”

  Dani stared straight ahead. He might control the physical part of her, but he would find her spirit harder to force into line.

  “Sex is only interesting when it releases passion,” he said. “I’m sorry my passion hurt you.”

  “No. You’re not. You enjoyed it.”

  She was right. He ached to do it again. “It was Camus that said we live to hurt others, Willow. He wanted to live his life without touching anyone. I don’t. I want to touch you every way a man touches a woman. I’ve wanted you so long, I can’t remember when I didn’t want you.”

  “What about what I want?”

  “When this is finished, you’ll want what I want.”

  How different he was from Matt, who had cared more about what she needed than what he wanted. She would take Matt’s friendship over Spook’s so-called love any day. Though here, where she was going to die, she could admit she would have liked more than friendship from him. And more than passion. If she wasn’t already in love with him, then she had been falling his way when Spook removed her so forcibly from temptation.

  For a minute she let herself go back there, let her imagination have free rein to write the scene the way she wanted, with the happy ending waiting in the wings. Just thinking about him made her go soft, weak with longing—No!

  She couldn’t think about Matt. It was too dangerous. She couldn’t afford to be soft. She had to be hard. As hard as the rock of these mountains that both men loved in their very different ways.

  She wouldn’t pretend they could have a life together if she could only somehow survive. She had to do this herself. She had to live or die herself. She had depended on others too much. It’s what got her into this mess. If she hadn’t chatted with Spook—

  He would have killed her in the boarding house.

  She would be dead already, without that time with Matt at his apartment.

  There was that irony again.

  Spook said in her ear, “You hear it, don’t you?”

  Dani had forgotten he was there. Not a good thing to do around a sexually frustrated killer.

  “Hear what?”

  “The silence. And the music in it.”

  “Music?”

  “The music coming out of the rocks and valleys, the hills are alive with it. Don’t tell me you can’t hear it.”

  And here she’d thought they
had gone about as weird as they could go. “I’m not Julie Andrews, Spook. Only thing I hear is my brain asking me what I’m doing up here with a guy who thinks he is.”

  As soon as the words left her mouth, Dani knew that calling a killer a girl probably wasn’t the brightest thing she had ever done. It was hard to be bright at this altitude, with the sun reach-out-and-touch-me close. For really thin air, she was having a terrible time pushing her way through it. Getting oxygen out of it, a critical component for intelligent thought, was like pulling teeth out of someone who didn’t have any. On top of that, gravity, which she should be getting farther from, seemed to be getting stronger, not weaker. She was having to tap into her energy store on credit, which didn’t leave room for real bright. She braced for meltdown, choosing a spot to dig in what was left of the acrylic nails Mama had applied.

  He did kind of rear back. Then he grinned. “Trust me. Before we get up top, you’ll be hearing all kinds of things.”

  “Oh, goody. Just so I can separate it from my impending hallucinations, what exactly will I hear?” She didn’t really care. It was just a reason to keep him talking, so she didn’t have to start walking.

  “It’s not like anything you’ve ever heard or will hear again.” He sank back, his face lifted toward the Peak. A beam of light cut through a cloud and lay across his face, lighting up the lines cutting deep around his eyes and mouth. “When we get to the Keyhole, the pain will be so bad, you’ll think you can’t bear it.”

  News flash, mountain boy, I’m there already. She didn’t tell him that. She was pissed. She was miserable. She wasn’t entirely stupid. To him that would be good news. It meant she was close to breaking.

  “When it’s the worst, then you’ll hear it. Softly at first, like the first quiet notes of a great symphony.” He stood up, his hands slack at his sides. “At first you won’t realize the pain is leaving. You’ll be lost in the music. Slowly, like dying, the music will fade. You’ll miss it, the way you miss life. You might even think it took your heart with it. Until you realize your heart isn’t gone. It’s at peace. Finally, finally at peace.”

  He looked at her and there was a kind of peace in his eyes. She would rather live in torment her whole life than inhabit his kind of peace. She did feel something close to pity for him. Because of the strange place he lived his life and the pain he lived with. He was so alone. At least she had had friends she could turn to when her pain got too big to handle. Knew that she did have a soul and when it left her body, it wouldn’t belong to Spook.

  She would walk away from him, away from the bumps and bruises of this life into the light where Meggie was. She would lay down her burdens, float free of the weight of trying to live and fill her empty arms with her baby again. Smooth back her baby hair, smell her sweet scent, kiss that place on her baby neck until she giggled, and sing her the songs Dani’s mom had sung to her. Then they’d go see her mom and dad and she could be the little girl again, be the one to get her hurts kissed better and told it was all right now, because mom and dad were here.

  There were worse things than dying.

  There would be no contest if it didn’t mean leaving Matt behind, too. She felt the drag of feelings she didn’t want to feel, holding her down, holding her here.

  She looked around. Ahead lay a tumble of boulders, behind a barren stretch of mountain shaped by the howling wind that roared out of the sky. It was terrifying, but beautiful. Like life. She had never done a sad ending. Too literary. Had never not finished something she started.

  Two choices so clearly laid out for her.

  Go up and die. Descend and live.

  Funny, it would be the first time going down might be harder than facing high.

  What was she thinking, Hayes wondered. Her eyes were so deep, so mysterious and sad. He didn’t want her to be sad. “What are you thinking about, Willow?”

  She looked at him, hesitated, he didn’t like that, then said, “My little girl. I was thinking about my little girl.”

  He didn’t like that either. Why would she be thinking about the child she had made with another man? Would they make a baby together? The idea was unsettling, troubling almost. He didn’t want to share her with anyone or anything. But to see her belly swell with his seed, to create instead of destroy? It might be interesting. Could be part of the new pattern. He would have to think about it, decide what they would do later.

  “Let’s go.”

  She nodded. Hayes watched her stand up, assessing how hard it was for her, how much energy she had left. It would be a close thing, which gave out first, the path or Willow. Risk was part of the pattern. If she couldn’t make it, she wasn’t who he thought she was. It was that simple. Though his feelings weren’t quite that simple as he watched her start through the Boulderfield.

  * * * *

  “Tell me I’m right, bubba,” Matt said to Sebastian, after what seemed like an interminable wait for the telephone to ring. He knew he was right. When the tracker found the camp site at Engenia Mine, Luke told Matt he was afraid he was right. They had to be sure before they pulled resources off other possible routes.

  “It’s not good for you, but you are right,” Sebastian said. “I ran the plates like you asked and one is definitely a big time bogus. I know Hayes is a son of a bitch, but he does good work.”

  “I’ll buy you a beer when I get back,” Matt promised, before cutting the connection.

  Luke looked resigned. “Don’t tell me. Wild Basin.”

  Matt didn’t answer, just bent over the map again. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”

  “That’s crazy,” the ranger objected. “She’ll never make it up that trail.”

  Matt looked up and said with instinctive certainty, “She’s never quit anything in her life. If she hasn’t shoved Hayes off a cliff, she’ll be there sometime around noon. We have to be there before that without tipping Hayes that we know they’ll be there. Pay attention, people. Here’s how we’re gonna do it.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Gravity was winning. Dani was losing. It wouldn’t have mattered if gravity wasn’t helping Spook. Unfair of it to take sides. As she grew weaker, she could feel him growing stronger, as if her waning strength was feeding his. She could feel his lust grow, too. It beat against her will, adding its demand to the other forces allied against her.

  Each foot higher, with only trail mix for fuel, made it harder to launch a rallying cry to rouse flagging body and spirits. A good rally required some unhealthy, wholly satisfying junk food. Spook and his mountain were all there was, all there ever would be.

  Though the ear piece for the scanner had stayed in place during most of the hike, Spook hadn’t told her what he was hearing and she had been afraid to ask. Afraid that if he thought she still had hope, he would move to take that away, too.

  Dani saw Spook look at her and lowered her lashes against the invasion.

  She was breaking, Hayes noted with a quick, fierce surge of elation. His body was about to explode from waiting for her. Wanting twisted in his gut like a knife against a neck.

  He scanned the sky. They were late, but so far the weather was holding. He heard a flurry of activity on the scanner and turned up the volume.

  “—no sign of him or the woman at all—”

  So they knew Willow wasn’t dead. He had expected that. The chatter was interesting, and just what he needed Willow to listen to. It was time to administer another dose of reality.

  He smiled. Did she think he didn’t know the hope that lingered in her stubborn heart? Did she think there was anything he didn’t know, or wouldn’t soon know about her? Did she think he didn’t know how to take her hope and turn it to his purpose?

  “Listen to this.” He pulled the headphones plug out and turned up the volume.

  There was no warning for Dani. One moment Spook was speaking, the next she could hear Matt talking.

  “Yeah, our expert thinks he found a likely vehicle at Glacier Basin. We need to start moving our resources t
hat way, form a loose perimeter, get ready to close up the holes when they’re spotted.”

  His voice was balm to her wounds, manna in her wilderness, a gift she never expected to have. Spook couldn’t know how she felt about the lonesome lawman. That was something.

  Alice answered Matt. “I just hope our girl knows enough to duck at the right time.”

  Dani licked her dry lips, as faint hope flared to a wild fire in her veins. Spook’s gaze narrowed to an x-ray point and scanned her face. She had to dig deep to turn it back, wasn’t sure she would entirely succeeded.

  “Glacier Basin?” she asked.

  “It’s a long way from us. In the other direction.”

  The scanner crackled again, this voice unfamiliar to Dani. “We got a lost kid in the Arrowhead, Lake Solitude area. Do you think you can spring a couple of choppers and some men for us to use for a search?”

  Spook frowned. “Arrowhead is just the other side of Long’s Peak.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Matt said.

  His voice dropped out of the discussion replaced by a flurry of transmissions between rangers.

  “Kid’s name is Mary Louise Martin.” A description of the little girl followed, a description that sank slowly into Dani’s exhaustion and added fuel to hope. A description that sounded like someone was reading it straight from her book Don’t Call It Loving. Could it be? Had God answered “sudden and sharp” her prayer?

  Damn Spook and his quotes. She shook it away and concentrated on the words, the hope giving words.

  “Mary Louise?” A voice broke in. “I knew a Mary Louise once. She was a Kelly girl that got fired for making a scene at Buns’n Roses.”

  “Let’s cut the chatter,” the first voice snapped. “We got a kid lost, not a stripper.”

  The sound cut off abruptly.

  Kelly. Buns’n Roses. Louise. “A gauntlet with a gift in it,” if she could just pick it up without Spook noticing.