The Lockwood Legacy - Books 1-6: Plus Bonus Short Stories

by Juliette Harper

  “Book by H. Rider Haggard and the lead character in a wonderfully campy movie with Stewart Granger and Deborah Kerr,” Jenny finished.

  “And the subject of a rather dreadful remake with Richard Chamberlain and Sharon Stone,” Jake supplied. “I see you’re the movie geek in the family.”

  “Don’t even try to trip her up,” Kate warned. “She knows every obscure movie ever made in Hollywood from the dawn of time.”

  “Oh, we’ll have to see about that,” Jake said, waggling his eyebrows in mock challenge.

  “Bring it, Professor,” Jenny commanded. “Any time. Any place.” Then, steering the conversation back on track she said, “This whole lost city thing. Didn’t I just read something about the discovery of an ancient city in Honduras? I think it was on NPR.”

  “Yes,” Jake said. “The team was looking for the legendary White City or Ciudad Blanca. They used a remote sensing technique called lidar that maps an area with reflected light. Kinda James Bond meets Indiana Jones.”

  “So they actually found an intact city down there in the jungle?” she asked. “That’s exciting.”

  “Not a city the way you’re thinking or the way Hollywood would do it,” Josh said. “The researchers did find a cache of artifacts and the remains of man-made urban ruins below the rain forest canopy. Earthen pyramids, stone structures — that kind of thing. What’s exciting is that the city was built by a culture that lived adjacent to the Maya, but about which very little is known. It’s a race against logging and cattle raising in the region to find those sites before they’re destroyed.”

  “Don’t you miss doing that kind of work?” Kate asked. “Being out in the field like that?”

  “Have you ever taken a good look at the size of the bugs that live in the Honduran jungle?” he asked, shuddering. “You need an assault rifle just to slow them down. Thank you, but I’ll stick with my well-furnished mystery stash of Aztec artifacts in the Texas Hill Country.”

  “So, what seems to be the take on what we found in the cave?” Kate asked.

  Over the next several minutes, Jake described the contacts he made in Mexico City, and how their work might intersect the task of unraveling the real story behind Baxter’s Draw. “Right now,” he said, “we have more questions than answers, but it was a good working trip in that my questions are more targeted now. I have some idea of what to look for and then where to go with what I find.”

  “In other words,” Kate said, “you have a working premise.”

  “Several actually,” Jake said. “So the task at hand is to either find the one that is the most promising or discard them all and start over.”

  The trio walked down to the new institute building, which Jake was already calling his “Bat Cave.” It was a small, but serviceable workspace for Jake, with room for one or two visiting scholars at a time, and a secure vault for the artifacts. At the rear of the building, Jake’s living quarters faced the pasture leading up to Baxter’s Draw.

  As he stepped out on the porch, he turned to Kate with a smile. “I take it the porch and the view were your idea?”

  Coloring a little, Kate said, “Everybody needs a porch.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “This is perfect.”

  “So now what?” Jenny said. “What’s next in the mystery of Baxter’s Draw?”

  “Well,” Jake said, “first I have to study each artifact individually, record the glyphs and see if the objects themselves will tell me about their origin. We already have requests, by the way, to loan the pieces to several museums for display. When I’ve had a chance to go through the letters, I’ll discuss them with you. Right now, however, the pieces need to be in the lab for examination. I also have somewhere close to a ton of microfilm being delivered this week.”

  “Microfilm?” Kate asked, perplexed. “Isn’t that a little 20th century?”

  “Since it’s going to put me in squinty little reading glasses,” Jake answered, “I’d say 19th century. I’m just glad that most of the material I need to examine has been microfilmed. The rest the Institute is paying to have copied. It will be delivered later. The budget you gave me is quite generous, and I’m going to be applying for some grants to expand the project. I would imagine by this time next year we can establish that research fellowship we’ve discussed, Kate, and start seeing if the ranch has anything else interesting to tell us about the period when I think the artifacts were put in the cave. My theory about the Spanish patrol is looking more and more probable, but proving that is another matter.”

  “Excuse me for being the practical one here,” Jenny said, “but aren’t you going to need some furniture?”

  Jake looked at her blankly for a moment and then said, “Uh. I . . . I didn’t really think about that.”

  Jenny turned to Kate, “How about you, genius sister of mine? Did you think the man might need a bed?”

  “I haven’t given Jake’s bed any . . . er, I mean . . . I didn’t . . .” Kate fumbled with her words before finally setting her mouth in a firm line. “I am not an interior decorator.”

  Jake gave Jenny a bemused smile and said, “I’ll sleep in the trailer for now.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Jenny said. “Let me go find a tape measure and get my laptop. We’ll figure out what you need and get it trucked out here. For two very smart people, I’m not sure either one of you should be allowed out and about without a keeper.”

  “Humph,” Kate groused. “I need to go find Josh and ask him about . . . something.” She started around the corner of the building and then stopped, looking back at Jake. “Stop by after supper if you’re not too tired,” she said briskly, avoiding looking at her grinning sister. “I have some things to show you from Daddy’s journals.”

  Jenny waited until she could no longer hear Kate’s boots on the rocky ground to turn to Jake and say, “Professor, I think you are making progress. Infinitesimal, slow, no-doubt-maddening progress, but progress.”

  Jake laughed. “Come on,” he said. “I think you and I have some shopping to do.”

  56

  As Jenny closed the pasture gate, she looked toward Jake’s new building and saw the lights were already on in the lab. Two days before, as she directed deliverymen positioning his new furniture, Jenny told Jake about her coming excursion to the draw. He listened thoughtfully and then asked the obvious, but still grating question, “What do Katie and Josh think?”

  “They don’t have a say,” she said, the words clipped.

  To her consternation, the unflappable professor smiled and said, “That’s not true.”

  In the same way that Kate and Josh had built a friendship, Jake and Jenny came to know each other well in the weeks after her sister was shot. Although he never intruded at the main house when Kate was recuperating, Jake often intercepted Jenny in the yard, inviting her to walk with him down the lane toward Mandy’s house and along the path that curved back behind the barn to her studio.

  Jake never mentioned Kate’s explosive temper in those days, although he accurately read its effects on Jenny in her strained face. With low-key conversation and droll comments, Jake quietly and kindly helped her, and a bond formed between them.

  “You think you’re so damned smart,” Jenny said, frowning at him.

  “I am smart,” he agreed amiably. “I have framed pieces of paper that say so.”

  Laughing in spite of herself, Jenny said, “Okay. Fine. Neither my sister, nor my boyfriend likes what I’m doing, but they know better than to try to stop me.”

  “As do I,” Jake replied, with mock academic gravity. But then he added, “He’s not up there, Jenny.”

  Hot words rose to her lips, but Jake held up his hand to silence her. “Down girl. I’m not playing Dr. Phil. Just think about it.”

  Remembering the conversation, Jenny scowled in irritation. Like she did anything but think these days. Did any of them really believe she was anxious to get up to Baxter’s Draw? Especially on the heels of her discovery about Mandy’s birt
h? Okay, to be fair, only Kate knew that added detail, but it was one more thing Jenny did not need rattling around in her mind.

  There just wasn’t any reason to put off going to the draw any longer. It was practical to go now and get it over with, she thought. She was just being practical. Wasn’t she?

  Jenny put her boot in the stirrup and pulled herself back in the saddle. The irony of where she was riding this spring morning, a year after she’d made the same trip for the first time since leaving the Rocking L at 17 years of age, wasn’t lost on her.

  But a year ago, riding two hours to check a column of circling buzzards had simply been easier than spending the day thinking about her father’s funeral scheduled for that afternoon. Now, if Jenny was honest with herself, she was going to Baxter’s Draw to exhume and confront Langston Lockwood. Mainly because the old bastard seemed to refuse to stay in the grave where he belonged.

  After years of living on wounded anger and bitter regret, Jenny wanted what running away hadn’t given her — resolution. As an angry teenager she abandoned these juniper-studded hills, ultimately fleeing as far as the steel and glass ravines of New York City. There, she drew lifeless images that earned her a living but offered no sustenance. She found men too much like her father who salted her wounds but never helped her build a place to heal.

  When Jenny told Josh and Kate about Robert Marino breaking her jaw, she didn’t explain that what really got her up off the floor that night was the brief instant when she actually believed she deserved the blow that put her there. Langston Lockwood never raised a hand to her. In fact, he openly scorned men who hit women, failing to consider the daily damage wrought by his own backhanded verbal attacks.

  Langston didn’t have to hit Jenny to teach her that she wasn’t good enough. Kate was born to be a rancher. Mandy was soft and pretty, blunting their father’s disdain with a sweetness even he could not bear to shatter. But Jenny was too much like him. Too quick to anger, too stubborn in her refusal to bow under his authority or allow him to play witness to her pain. Langston recognized the kindred spirit in his daughter and hated her for it.

  How many nights after one of his screaming tirades had she tucked herself in the back corner of her bedroom closet and shed silent tears through clenched teeth? Langston Lockwood never saw his middle daughter cry again after her mother’s funeral. Jenny left the Rocking L with a jaw set like iron and dry eyes. But now, all these years later, she still took herself into small, dark places to shed her most painful tears alone.

  Jenny knew that if she looked back over her shoulder at this very moment, Josh would be there watching her ride away, so she didn’t look. They were recovering from an almost argument, settled but not resolved. That memory, however, was not something she was ready to dissect. Instead, Jenny cleared her mind and allowed Horsefly’s rocking gait to work its magic on her nerves.

  They were all doing something. All moving forward. Wedding plans and local political work filled Mandy’s days. Running the Rocking L occupied Kate and Josh. Building the Institute consumed Jake. Goals infused every minute of ranch life. Energy fairly crackled in the air.

  For her part, Jenny talked a good line. She went through the motions of her own new beginning, but it was a thin charade and she knew it. She tried to ignore the ghosts of the past, but like that damned photograph that fell out of her father’s sketchbook, specters floated unbidden through her every waking moment.

  Josh knew about their haunting presence. When she let him, he spoke about the phantoms. He gave voice to the fact that Langston Lockwood’s disembodied spirit filled every room. She knew Josh resented that intrusion. He was trying to build a home with her, which was indeed happening physically. But emotionally? Jenny still held him at a distance. Josh was a patient man, but she worried that wouldn’t last.

  Sometimes late at night, lying in his arms, her body alive with the memory of their lovemaking, Jenny watched Josh sleep. Those were the moments when she opened the closed doors of her feelings and really loved him, not because his touch awakened her raw desire, but because his goodness filled her with the most terrifying emotion of all — hope. Why could she never say that to him by light of day?

  That very morning, she’d kept her attention solidly focused on stuffing art supplies in her backpack and said to Josh, “You won’t even miss me,” even though the look on his face told her he missed her already.

  He was leaning against the frame of the studio door, arms crossed defensively over his chest. “I don’t like the idea of you sleeping in that place,” he grumbled, his eyes following her as she worked. “If the nightmares are bad here in your own home, what in the hell are they gonna be like up there inside that damned cave?”

  “For the tenth time, Josh Baxter, it makes no sense to cart camping gear up to the draw. All the furniture is still in the cave. I know how to build a fire. I’m just going to be gone a few days . . . this time.”

  His brow furrowed, “What do you mean ‘this time?’”

  “Honey, I can’t finish a whole portrait in just a few days,” she said, keeping her voice light. “I’m just going to get everything set up and do the preliminary sketches so I can go up there whenever I want.”

  “And when did you come up with this idea?” Josh asked tightly. “I thought the notion was to go up there one time and be done with it.”

  Jenny felt her temper flicker and forced it back down. “It was,” she said. “I’m sorry. I should have told you I was thinking about going up there like . . .. ” She stopped, instantly realizing how the words she intended to use would sound.

  “Like Langston did,” Josh finished for her. “That’s what you were going to say.”

  “I’m not like Daddy,” she bristled.

  “And I’d kinda like to keep it that way,” he answered, his flashing eyes betraying the emotion underlying his calm tone.

  As they stood looking at each other, Jenny became acutely aware of an uncharacteristic distance between them. She was seeing a crack in his unfailingly affable disposition, and a little wave of fear moved through her. Was he going to be like the others? Was she doing it again? She willed herself not to look away as Josh studied her. Jenny knew her own face had not changed. That was a skill she learned long ago, but as he watched her, she saw his expression soften. He blew out a long breath and stood up straight.

  “Okay then,” he said. “You’re a big girl. I reckon you know what you’re doing. Sure you don’t want me to ride up there with you?”

  Relief flooded through her, mixed with equal apprehension. She didn’t think she would be able to stand it if Josh wasn’t who she was starting to think he was — who she was beginning to believe he could be. That unease made her want to run away, the very thing she was trying not to do with this man.

  Jenny put down the art supplies in her hand and walked across the room to him, placing her hand lightly on his chest. “I know you don’t like this,” she said. “I should have told you what I was thinking about doing. I’m not used to having someone in my life who has a right to be included in my plans. I am sorry. Truly.”

  To her surprise, she saw his eyes fill at her unexpected openness. “It’s okay, sugar,” he said, clearing his throat. “It’s just that . . . well, nobody ever comes right out and says it, but Langston wasn’t in his right mind. I don’t want you dancing with his devils. You have enough of your own. It scares me.”

  Jenny looked down again, smoothing the fabric of his work shirt under her fingers, comforting herself and him with the touch. A man who would stand there and admit he’s scared of something. What was she supposed to do with that alien concept? Finally she said, “If I don’t do this, then I won’t ever find out if I have that part of him in me and that will always by my fear.”

  Josh brought his hand up to cover hers, stilling her fingers. “Is that why you’re really going up there?” he asked. “You think you’re going to go crazy like your Daddy?”

  Jenny swallowed and made herself meet his gaze. “My
father committed suicide after having a love affair in his mind with a dead woman for 58 years,” she said. “Clara Wyler told me Mama was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown. Don’t you think I might have something to be worried about?”

  The love in his eyes almost undid her when he said simply, “You’re not like that.”

  “You know that,” she said quietly. “I don’t.”

  “So going in a cave by yourself to find out if you’re sane is the answer?” he asked. “I’m trying to understand that, sugar, but I’m not there yet.”

  “I won’t hurt myself, Josh,” Jenny said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  He frowned. “I’m not worried you’re going up there to kill yourself.”

  “There was a time in my life when I came close,” she admitted. “I was in New York alone, I’d made a lot of bad choices. It was after Robert.”

  “What stopped you?” he asked curiously.

  “I kept thinking about my sisters,” she admitted. “What it would do to them. Now I have you to think about, too. I just wanted you to know that’s not something you need to be worried about while I’m gone.”

  Josh shook his head. “Woman, you think too much,” he said. “I’m a hell of a lot more worried about how you’re going to hurt yourself with your memories and your regrets, because you spend every day doing that already.”

  Jenny didn’t move, but she did rest her forehead on his shoulder. Josh put his free hand on her back, just standing close but not holding her. He’d learned the hard way that sometimes closeness made her feel trapped. They shared the stillness of the moment and then Jenny said, “I have to do this.”

  She never saw the conflicting emotions that crossed Josh’s face as he answered her in his usual, easy way, “Okay if I help you carry your stuff to the barn?”