Adam Then and Now

by Vicki Lewis Thompson

  He gripped the steering wheel. “Why can’t she just trust me without having all the facts?”

  Maybe because you haven’t built a relationship with her, Loren thought, but she didn’t say that. “Because she’s eighteen,” she said. “Hard to take things on faith at that age.”

  “That may be part of it.” His voice grew bitter. “The other part is she doesn’t think much of her father.”

  Loren didn’t know what to say to ease his pain. Perhaps there was nothing to say. As she glanced out the window, she noticed how fast the Geo was hurtling across the mesa, and she leaned over to check the gauges on the dash.

  He frowned at her inspection. “What?”

  “You’re speeding.”

  With a muttered oath, he slowed the car. Then he unexpectedly swerved onto an exit that led to a viewpoint area. One other car was there, and all three occupants were madly snapping pictures.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Just give me a minute. I’ll be fine.” He parked the car, opened the door and got out. Then he walked over to a low rock wall and stood, his hands in his jeans pockets.

  She sat there, debating the wisdom of getting out, of involving herself further in his torment with his daughter. It was unwise. She and Adam had achieved some distance between them, and that was the way she wanted to keep it. But he looked so alone, so desperate for answers.

  She unfastened her seat belt and climbed out of the car. The camera buffs had left. Beyond the wall shimmered layers of shadowed canyons etched in purples, blues and grays. Storm clouds cushioned the horizon. Adam stood facing them, the hot summer breeze ruffling his hair.

  She stood beside him, not touching him, directing her attention to the same distant point on the horizon. He didn’t overtly acknowledge her presence, yet she was sure he was aware of her.

  “She didn’t even ask me to teach her to fly,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “She hired somebody else to teach her. God, I would have given anything to...” He swallowed.

  Needing to do something, Loren put a hand on his arm. “You should tell her that, too.”

  “I don’t...I don’t know how.”

  Her heart wrenched. “Just tell her,” she murmured. “It doesn’t matter how you do it. Just tell her. Don’t worry about your pride or your image.” She rubbed her hand along his arm, offering comfort. “Let down your guard, let her see that you need her, and you’ll be fine.”

  Slowly he turned to her, his eyes unreadable behind the sunglasses. Then he took them off, and she saw a dark flame burning in their blue depths. “Do you have any idea...?”

  Her mouth went dry and she couldn’t speak.

  “God, Loren.” Without preamble he pulled her into his arms and his glasses clattered to the pavement.

  There was nothing gentle about the embrace or his kiss. They seemed forged of a molten substance within him that had escaped the taming influences of civilization. A wildness born of all they’d shared in the past two days took hold of her, too, and with a moan she deepened the kiss and pressed her body against his.

  The heat of the afternoon seared them, bonding them together. His beard rasped against her face as she ran her hands over his back, across his buttocks, down his thighs. He crushed her closer, his tongue delving into her mouth again and again.

  When he released her, they backed away from each other, both gasping.

  He took a long, shuddering breath and ran his hand through his hair. “I guess it would be better...if you didn’t touch me anymore. I know you were only trying to help, but my emotions are pretty raw right now, and I...” He didn’t finish the sentence, but the primitive glow in his eyes finished it for him.

  She brought the back of her hand to her bruised mouth.

  He leaned down and retrieved his sunglasses. “Let’s go,” he said softly, replacing the sunglasses and covering, temporarily, the blaze in his eyes.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THEY RODE the rest of the way to Phoenix in silence, sliding down out of the mountains into the sunbaked outskirts of the city. There was nothing to say, nothing to do but get through this the best way they could, with the least amount of pain. Adam was right, Loren thought. Her touch had been an offer of friendship, but it was too late for that. They’d destroyed any hope of mere friendship the night before.

  The concrete freeways sluiced them through Phoenix traffic along with hundreds of other cars as rush hour wound to a close. Midway through town they left the freeway and Loren gave Adam directions to the photo lab. She’d called before they’d left Sedona and sweet-talked Bill, the lab technician, into a rush job that would mean his having to work overtime. Adam had agreed to any price Bill wanted to charge.

  Bill greeted Loren with a broad smile and looked questioningly at Adam. She introduced him as a client and Bill looked pleased with the information.

  “Just give us a couple of hours,” Bill said, taking the canister of film.

  A couple of hours. Loren realized she’d forgotten about the block of time they’d have to fill until the prints were ready. How in hell would she and Adam get through another two hours together with nothing to do and tension still thick between them?

  She thought quickly as they returned to the Geo and climbed in.

  “Where to now?” he asked, not looking at her as he pushed the key into the ignition. Apparently, he had no ideas, either.

  She thought quickly. They needed to be around other people, but she wasn’t hungry, and strolling a mall window-shopping sounded like a particularly inappropriate way to spend time. Lovers did that sort of thing. Finally, she latched onto a possibility. “Does your plant operate around the clock?”

  “Yes.” He glanced at her. “Why?”

  “How about a tour?”

  He looked startled. “I doubt you’d find it very interesting.”

  “You’d be surprised what I find interesting. Besides, do you have a better idea?”

  He gazed at her for a long time, a flicker of longing struggling for life in his blue eyes. Then it seemed he resolutely tamped it down. “No.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  “All right.” He drove toward an industrial area on the outskirts of town as the sun dipped behind the mountains to the west. Turning off the Geo’s air-conditioning, he opened his window.

  Loren followed suit. The rain that had threatened for most of the afternoon had never fallen, and she watched the blush on the swollen clouds deepen from peach to tangerine. As darkness settled around them, the brilliant sunset colors disappeared. Only a band of terra-cotta remained, etched by the jagged line of mountains as if it were a piece of Indian pottery.

  The steelyard glowed in the distance, lit up by a circle of pole lights. As they drew closer, Loren heard the clank of machinery and smelled the metallic fumes of hot steel. Equipment and storage areas towered three stories high, dwarfing the masonry office building in front of the property.

  They pulled into a parking spot marked Riordan. As Adam turned off the Geo’s engine, metal gates to their right rolled back and a semi came through. The giant front grill glittered in the overhead lights, and the black scorpion logo on the door of the bloodred cab stood out bold as a pirate’s flag.

  The truck’s air brakes gasped as the vehicle paused before entering the street. Loren noticed that the front wheel-well was nearly as large as the Geo. With a thunderous rumble, the truck moved into the street, giving Loren a view of the flatbed trailer it hauled. She recognized the pyramid-shaped load as a stack of ribbed reinforcing bars, except that she’d never before seen any as thick as a man’s forearm and as long as telephone poles.

  She turned to Adam, who was watching her with a bemused expression. “This is quite an impressive layout,” she said.

  “I guess it is.” He didn’t sound particularly proud of his accomplishments.

  “You bet it is.” She couldn’t blame him for being disenchanted with his business success, but she hated to se
e him think it meant nothing. Perhaps this tour had been her instinctive desire to show him the value of what he’d single-handedly built.

  Adam opened the car door. “Come on. Let’s go in.”

  The main office was locked. Adam opened the door and flipped on an overhead light before ushering Loren inside. The receptionist’s, secretary’s and bookkeeper’s desks were vacant, and soundproofing panels muffled the machinery noise. “When I said we worked round the clock, I didn’t mean the office personnel, too,” he explained. “Just the people in the yard.”

  “Oh. Of course.” Yet that was exactly what she’d thought, and now they were in this very quiet office all alone, just what she’d tried to avoid. But a tour would include this part of the plant, too, and she couldn’t insist he take her out of here, as if she were some scared little rabbit who didn’t trust him—or herself.

  “My office is this way.” He led her to the back of the building and turned on another light. Then he leaned in the doorway and allowed her to explore.

  The office was windowless and paneled in dark walnut. She walked over and put her hand on his massive desk, which held several stacks of papers. A framed picture was propped in one corner. Loren walked around the desk to confirm it was of Daphne, probably her high school senior portrait.

  Then she glanced at the wall opposite the desk and froze. On the wall, in a position where Adam would have to see it every day, hung the shot she’d taken of sunrise at Red Rock Crossing, the same photograph hanging over her father’s fireplace. “Where did you get that?”

  His casual pose didn’t change. “Your father had it made for me. I wrote to your parents after I came back from Nam and told them how much I loved that picture. Walt didn’t bother asking you for the negative because he knew you wouldn’t approve of my having this. He just borrowed the negative from your files and had the print made without telling you.”

  “And he still hasn’t told me. I didn’t know he was so good at keeping a secret.” She stood there looking at the picture, unable to comprehend that, because of it, Adam must have thought of her nearly every day for more than twenty years. Her spine tingled, as if she’d seen a ghost. “Did you tell Anita where this picture came from?”

  “Not exactly, but I think she guessed it had some deep significance connected with a woman. She started a campaign to redecorate my office and wanted to throw it out. I wouldn’t let her and finally admitted I’d been there when a friend took the shot, although I didn’t identify you by name.”

  Loren knew why he hadn’t told Anita her name. It was the same reason she’d never spoken Adam’s name to Jack, either, in some show of loyalty that probably made no sense at all. Each of them had wanted to keep their memories private.

  “So you kept the picture.”

  “Yeah.” His mouth twisted. “She gave up the decorating idea. In fact, she hardly ever came down here after that. I think she had the final piece of the puzzle that explained my behavior, but she never probed into it again. I guess she didn’t relish the thought of what she might find out.”

  Loren felt a stab of pity for Anita, who’d tried to fight a phantom lover who seemed to have more hold over her husband than she had. “It’s not so hard to understand why she might have turned to someone else.”

  “No.” Adam looked sad. “I don’t really blame her. And worse luck for her, she chose a crook for a lover. I dread the day she finds that out. But I can’t just let him go because I feel guilty about the way I treated Anita.”

  “No, you can’t just let him go.” She glanced at the picture again. “I had no idea, Adam.”

  He studied her silently. “Someone came into the office once and said the picture had all kinds of power.”

  “Power? I admit it’s a decent shot, but”

  “The technique’s good, but it’s the subject matter that’s supposed to have power. I’m sure you’ve heard of the vortices that are said to exist in Sedona.”

  “I have, but I wouldn’t expect you to pay attention to New Age mysticism.” She remembered Jack had tried to convince her that there were centers of power in the red rocks surrounding the town. She’d been too busy working to support them all to pay attention to his fixations.

  “I keep an open mind,” Adam said. “Especially after this person told me Red Rock Crossing is supposed to be a vortex.”

  She was desperate to break the mood developing between them. They were too vulnerable for this. “It’s just a picture, Adam.”

  He looked at her and his expression slowly closed down. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Ready to go on with the tour?”

  It was either that or lock the office door and hurl herself into his arms. That wouldn’t be fair to either of them. “Yes, I’m ready.”

  * * *

  BARNABY HASKETT was having a bad day. First of all, Anita hadn’t trusted him to handle this little glitch his own way. She’d gone and called their Las Vegas contact. Now Barnaby had to report in—like some little kid—to the Vegas construction office.

  And the news he had to report wasn’t wonderful. He found a pay phone in downtown Sedona and made his call while he wiped the sweat from his forehead with a bandanna. “Yeah,” he said to the guy who answered the phone. “This is Haskett reporting in.”

  He waited while they transferred him to another line. He’d never been given names, just phone numbers. Checks with illegible signatures drawn on out-of-state bank accounts arrived in the mail regularly in return for the steel shipments. The checks had never bounced.

  Barnaby had deposited them all in the account he and Anita had opened last year in the Bahamas. That money had been added to the hefty sum she’d received from Riordan in the divorce settlement. Once Anita sold the Fountain Hills house and added the proceeds to the account, they’d have more money than Barnaby had ever dreamed of having. With Anita’s expensive tastes, it might not be enough, but it was a good start.

  Barnaby stared at the ruddy cliffs that rose across the street from where he stood. He’d always hated those damned red rocks looming over the town. The color was too intense. Made him nervous.

  “What’s the situation, Haskett?” barked a voice on the other end of the line.

  “I’ve run into a few snags,” he said.

  “Like what?”

  “I missed Loren Stanfield. She’d left for Phoenix by the time I tracked down Icarus Enterprises, which is her company. It’s located in a hangar at the airport. I guess they repair planes there, too.”

  “Did you find out when she’ll be back?”

  “I couldn’t go in there. Daphne Riordan, Riordan’s daughter, was hanging around, and she’d recognize me. So I left and called you.”

  “Finally you’re showing some sense. We don’t want Riordan alerted any more than he already is.”

  “I know that!” Barnaby snapped.

  His comment was ignored. “While you’ve been fumbling around, we made some inquiries,” the contact said. “Loren Stanfield’s divorced, with an eighteen-year-old son named Joshua.”

  Barnaby recalled the scene he’d glimpsed briefly in the airplane hangar before getting the hell out of Daphne’s line of vision. “Yeah, that was probably him in there working with Daphne. Some older guy was there, too.”

  “Loren Stanfield’s father, Walt.”

  “Could be.”

  “Keep track of the son,” ordered the nameless voice. “We may need to know where he is.”

  Barnaby was confused. “Why? He doesn’t know anything about this.”

  “Just keep track of him. And don’t approach Loren Stanfield until we tell you to.”

  Barnaby mopped his forehead. “Look, I had a plan, okay? I was going to pose as a guy interested in hiring her, find out where she kept everything she was processing and go back tonight and take the negatives and prints. Simple.”

  His plan was greeted with brief, mirthless laughter.

  “What’s so damn funny?”

  “Keep track of the son. That’s all you have to
do for now.” The line went dead.

  Barnaby held the receiver away from his ear and looked at it. “That’s all you have to do for now,” he mimicked in falsetto. He grimaced and slammed the phone into its cradle. “They act like I’m some friggin’ robot,” he muttered as he stalked to his car.

  But he kept track of the son. An hour later, he reported that Joshua Stanfield, driving a 1981 green-and-white Suburban, had picked up Daphne Riordan at Los Arboles resort. The happy couple had made two stops, one at a McDonald’s drive-through, and one at a gas station, before heading north up Oak Creek Canyon. While the Suburban took on gas, Barnaby had leaned against the station wall pretending to read a newspaper, which concealed his face. He’d overheard Daphne tell the station attendant they were going to an outdoor rock concert in Flagstaff.

  As he reported all this, Barnaby felt quite proud of himself. He received no praise from the voice on the other end.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE PRINTS WERE still warm from the dryer and smelled of developing fluid when Loren and Adam spread them out on the counter at the photo lab. Loren sniffed appreciatively. She always associated the smell with the excitement she felt every time she saw the results of her photographic efforts.

  Bill hung around, looking curious as she and Adam stood side by side at the counter, careful not to touch each other as they started examining the grid pictures and the first shot of the truck. Loren borrowed a magnifying glass from Bill and compared that truck with the one pictured at each intersection. The truck appeared to be the same one she’d photographed in the midst of Las Vegas traffic.

  “You look,” she said, handing the magnifying glass to Adam.

  He positioned the instrument over each print. “It’s the same truck, all right.” His voice sounded controlled and unemotional. “Good job.”