“Then comfortable is what you get,” he said, kissing her on the forehead.
“Tell me we’re going to find her,” Kate said.
“We’re going to find her,” Jake promised. “Now go to sleep.”
“Jake?”
“Yes, honey?”
“Don’t go to work early in the morning. I want to wake up with you.”
“Darling,” he said fondly, “you know you’re always up before me.”
“Just be here,” she said, already half asleep.
“I’ll be right here,” he promised.
The next morning in the kitchen, Jake poured fresh coffee in Kate’s cup before going back to the bacon he was frying on the stove. “Feel better this morning?” he asked.
“I actually slept last night,” she said. “I think I have you to thank for that.”
“I imagine it was more that you were exhausted,” he said, “but you’re welcome.”
“How much do you all have left to do on the playground?” she asked, as he carried two plates of bacon and eggs to the table.
“About half of the rubber tiles, and then just clean up the area,” Jake said, putting pepper on his eggs. “Everything will be perfect when Mandy and the girls get here.”
“Until I tell her what’s going on with Jenny,” Kate replied. “I’m going to get her off by herself to do that. No sense upsetting Sissy and Missy. They’ll find out soon enough.”
A tap at the back door made Kate look up. Dusty was standing on the porch. Kate motioned for her to come in.
“Morning,” Dusty said.
“Morning, yourself,” Kate answered. “Pour a cup of coffee and sit down.”
“Have you had breakfast?” Jake asked. “I can fry you an egg.”
“No, thanks,” she said. “I’ve been up a couple of hours. Just thought I’d stick my head in and see if there’s been any word from Jenny.”
Kate shook her head. “No,” she said. “Josh crashed on the couch last night. He was gone when we got up. Left a note on the table saying he was going to go down and have breakfast with Joe and Phil.”
Dusty pulled back one of the kitchen chairs and sat down, crossing her long legs. “I like Phil,” she said. “Kind of an old hippie. Sweet guy. Joe Bob told me Phil talked to Josh yesterday and that it seemed to help him.”
“It did,” Jake agreed. “They talked during lunch, and Josh was more himself for the rest of the afternoon. Phil’s got this Zen thing going. Probably all those organic vegetables.”
“Or organic something,” Dusty grinned. “Guy has too many Grateful Dead t-shirts not to enjoy the herbal lifestyle.”
Kate laughed. “I could care less what the man smokes,” she said. “We could use a mellow influence around here.”
“If we can’t figure out where Jenny is and get her home soon,” Jake said, “we may have to get Josh to light up to keep him from going out of his mind. What are you two doing today?”
“We’re taking a ride into town,” Kate said.
“On a Sunday?” Jake asked. “What for?”
“The rest of Dusty’s stuff got here yesterday,” Kate said, “but the UPS truck broke down in town. The guy called and I told him to leave everything at Lura Lee and Bill Wilson’s. With Mandy in Houston and Joe Bob hip deep in construction, somebody needs to go check on them.”
“Okay,” Jake said, leaning down and kissing her. “I’m off to join the big kids at the playground. See you all later.”
“Bye, honey,” she said. “Keep your hat on. You know how bad you are to burn.” As Jake exited, she looked over at Dusty who was grinning broadly. “What?” Kate said irritably.
“I like you all domestic,” Dusty said. “It’s cute.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Kate said. “Stop.”
“I mean it,” Dusty said, the teasing note gone from her voice. “You deserve this. And I like your professor. He’s not hard on the eyes and it seems like he’s good to you.”
In spite of herself, Kate grinned. “He’s good in lots of ways,” she said.
“Hot damn,” Dusty said, slapping the tabletop. “Finally. Talk!”
Kate rolled her eyes. “Come on,” she said, standing up. “We can talk and drive at the same time. You haven’t changed one damn bit, Dusty Jackson.”
“Well, hell, darling,” Dusty said, following her down the hall, “I’m not dead yet.”
Although the talk on the drive into town wasn’t as revealing as Dusty might have hoped, the two old friends were enjoying their conversation so much, they paid no attention to where they were on Main Street when Kate stopped the truck to let a throng of churchgoers cross.
That is until one barrel-chested man in a dark suit stopped directly in front of the truck and glared openly at Dusty.
“Shit,” she said under her breath. “That’s Rafe.”
“Look straight at him,” Kate said. “You do not blink.”
Under the combined and unflinching stares of them both, Rafe Jackson backed down, but not before he turned a murderous expression in Kate’s direction.
As he stalked up the front walk of the Methodist church, Dusty said, “You’re gonna be getting a phone call.”
“Let him call. He has no say about what we do on the Rocking L.”
“Rafe thinks he has a say about everything,” Dusty said darkly. “Be careful, Katie. Don’t cross him. He’ll try to hurt you just to hurt me.”
“Better men than him have tried,” Kate said. “And they haven’t gotten very damned far.”
Mandy watched the scene in the yard through her kitchen window. Jake and Joe were pushing Sissy and Missy in the swings, and Dusty had climbed up the ladder to the clubhouse, throwing her legs over the side of the deck. She was looking down at the laughing little girls, her own face relaxed and smiling. Even Josh was joining in, sitting on the glider with Phil Baxter.
The instant she got out of the Range Rover, Mandy had known something was wrong, but she saw Kate give a slight shake of her head. The message was clear. “Don’t ruin this for the girls.” For their part, Sissy and Missy let out happy squeals, throwing their arms around Joe and showering him with their thanks for the playground.
“Uncle Josh and Uncle Jake helped me build it,” Joe said, laughing as the twins tackled the other two men.
Josh caught Missy and lifted her up, twirling her around. “You like it, Twin?” he asked teasingly.
“Don’t call me Twin,” she said. “I’m Missy!”
“Well, Miss Missy,” he said. “Do you like it?”
“I love it!”
“It was all Aunt Mandy’s idea,” Josh said. “Go thank her.”
That sent the girls careening back toward Mandy, who bent and hugged them. “Go on now,” she said. “Try it out. I’m going to go in the house with Aunt Katie and make some lemonade.”
As soon as the door was closed behind them, Mandy said, “Tell me. What is it? Where’s Jenny?”
She listened as Kate described the events of Friday night. “I’ve been calling her cell phone for two days,” Kate said. “She won’t answer me. It just goes straight to voicemail.”
Mandy turned toward her with a fearful expression. “Katie, you don’t think she would . . .”
“No,” Kate said. “I don’t. That’s not why she left.”
“Have you looked in all the places she used to go?”
“Yes,” Kate said. “And I called her friend, Gretchen, in New York. She hasn’t gone back there.”
“What about her debit card?”
“How would I look at that?” Kate asked, frowning.
“It’s on our joint account,” Mandy said, crossing to her computer and calling up the bank site. She ran her finger down the column of charges and said, “This is strange. She hasn’t used it for a week.” Then something caught her eye and she began scrolling back through the account.
“What are you doing?” Kate asked.
“Hold on a minute,” Mandy said. “I need to look
at some old statements.”
After flipping through a few more screens, Mandy said, “I think she’s been taking cash out of the bank. Not a lot, and spread out over several months. But that would explain why she hasn’t been using her debit card. My God, Katie, has she been planning this?”
“No,” Kate said, sitting down at the table. “But she’s Langston Lockwood’s daughter whether she likes it or not. Don’t you remember how Daddy kept wads of cash at the house ‘just in case the damned world comes to an end?’ I think Jenny has been doing the same thing.”
Mandy swiveled the desk chair around. “If that’s true,” she said, “we can’t track her. Especially if she has her cell phone turned off.”
Kate shifted in her chair, grimacing as she moved. Mandy saw it and asked, “Is it bad today?”
Her sister nodded. “I’m all wound up. It’s worse when the muscles are tight. Jake and I have been trying to keep Josh from going straight out of his mind. He fell asleep on the couch up at the ranch house last night. Do you have any bright ideas about what we can do to find Jenny?”
“Have you looked at the browser history on her computer?” Mandy asked. “Maybe it would give us some clues to what’s been going through her mind.”
“She took her laptop and her iPad with her,” Kate said.
“Oh, that doesn’t matter,” Mandy said. “Jenny uses Chrome. We can see the browser history for all her devices. It all syncs up.”
Kate grinned. “Baby Sister,” she said, “you are getting smarter by the minute.”
Mandy grinned back. “I have to,” she said. “I have two very smart little girls now who are not above trying to pull the wool over an old person’s eyes.”
“You’re just 29,” Kate laughed.
“Yes,” Mandy said. “And when the subject of age came up this weekend, Sissy heard that and said, ‘Wow, really Aunt Mandy? I didn’t know you were that old.’”
“God,” Kate said. “Don’t tell them I’m 38 or they’ll start calling me grandma.”
“I don’t want them to know anything’s wrong,” Mandy said. “Let’s just get through supper and when they’re in bed, you and I will go have a look at Jenny’s desktop computer in the studio.”
“Okay,” Kate said, “but just us. We’ll make some excuse to run up to the main house. I don’t want anyone to know what we’re up to. Promise?”
“Sure, Katie,” Mandy said, “but why?”
“I’ll tell you when we’re alone,” she said. “Just trust me, Baby Sister. I have a good reason.”
99
The first day Jenny did nothing but drive. She made San Angelo by a little after 6 a.m., grabbed breakfast in a pancake house, filled the SUV up with gas, and started driving again.
She wound up on 87, which went to Big Spring, and then she found herself driving through Lamesa with no conscious memory of the passage of time.
The country around her was flat and barren, dotted with pump jacks. The desolation suited her mood. She drove in silence, staring at the road ahead, trying not to think, but doing little else.
Finally, in Brownfield, she stopped and called up a map on her iPad. Like most Texans, as long as Jenny was between the Red and the Rio Grande, she didn’t consider herself to be lost, but she was also fast approaching the Panhandle with no particular destination in mind.
She finally decided to make for Roswell, New Mexico. By the time she stopped to eat again and got checked in somewhere, it would be a little better than 8 hours since she left the Rocking L. She’d put about 400 miles between herself and the ranch, and she desperately needed some sleep.
She hadn’t remembered that New Mexico was on Mountain Time, so it was barely noon when she pulled into the Holiday Inn in Roswell.
The desk clerk took one look at her and said, “I think we can go ahead and get you in a room, Ms. Lockwood. We have one at the back away from the pool where it will be quiet. How does that sound?”
“It sounds wonderful,” Jenny said. “I’ve been driving since 4 a.m. and I’m exhausted.”
“Well, we have free wifi,” the woman said. “We have a restaurant or you can just call room service. There’s take-out menus in the room, too. I’m Lawanda. I’ll be working the rest of the afternoon, and then Tammy comes on at 7. You just call us if you need anything.”
“Thank you, Lawanda,” Jenny said. “I’ll do that.”
She rolled her bag onto the elevator, which carried her to the fourth floor. Her room, as promised, was in the back corner of the building, and once she turned the fan up on the air conditioner, no sounds from the outside filtered in.
Jenny put her bag up on the suitcase stand, opened it, took out a pair of pajamas, and changed out of her clothes. She had two sodas left from the drive that she put in the refrigerator, along with a convenience store sandwich for later. She opened one of the bottles and washed down two Tylenol PM tablets.
With that, she crawled into bed, turned out the lights, and fell into a deep sleep for the next six hours, awaking with a slightly fuzzy head and a grumbling stomach. Flipping on the lamp, she called room service and ordered a burger, fries, and iced tea.
“Do you have any dessert?” Jenny asked the pleasant sounding woman on the other end of the line.
“Yes, ma’am,” she said. “We have peach cobbler and chocolate cake.”
“The cobbler will be fine. No ice cream, please.”
“You sure?” the woman asked. “We can put it in a dish on the side.”
“Okay, sure,” Jenny said. “Go ahead.”
After a few minutes, a polite knock sounded at the door and Jenny answered it, allowing the bright-faced young attendant to set the tray on the desk. She signed for the meal, then closed and bolted the door. Carrying the tray to the bed, Jenny ate slowly, considering what her next move should be.
She had no doubt that her cell phone was full of voice messages from Katie, and possibly Josh as well, but she wasn’t ready to deal with that. Instead, she needed to figure out where she could stay for a few days and get her head together. Her messenger bag was lying on the end of the bed, so Jenny pulled out her iPad, started Google Earth, and considered her current location.
A quick search told her she was roughly 500 miles from Denver, Colorado. The mountains. The idea appealed to her. Cool, soft air. Maybe a trout stream. It was late in the summer season. Surely she could find a cabin rental. Using the phone by the bed and charging the calls to the room, she started making inquiries. On the third call, she hit pay dirt.
“It’s about 20 miles outside of Denver,” the owner said. “The last summer renters moved out two weeks ago and we’ve been empty ever since. How long would you like it?”
“Can I start with a week and then let you know?” Jenny asked.
“Of course,” the man said. “How will you be paying?”
“I’ll secure the reservation with a credit card, but I’d prefer to give you cash when I arrive tomorrow. The full amount for the week in advance, plus the security deposit, if that’s okay with you?” she asked, already knowing the answer.
“Why, yes, of course,” he said, sounding startled, but pleased. “Our house is 5 miles from the property. I’ll give you directions, and you can stop by and leave the money on your way to the cabin.”
“Perfect,” she said. “I’m in Roswell right now. I’ll leave at dawn.”
“That’s an awful long driving day,” he said. “If you decide to stop somewhere for the night, just call and let me know. I’ll hold the cabin for you.”
“I won’t be stopping,” Jenny said firmly. “I’ll see you tomorrow evening. Would it be at all possible if I paid extra for you to put a few things in the refrigerator for me?”
“Sure,” he said. “Let me get a pencil.”
Jenny dictated off a few basics, read her credit card number to him, offered her thanks for his helpfulness, and hung up. So, she knew where she’d be for a week. That was about all she could handle right now.
Pushin
g the empty plate away, she peeled the plastic wrap off her still-warm cobbler, clicked on the TV, and channel surfed, finally settling on a Jaws marathon. By the third movie, the stupid one in the theme park, she was rooting for the sharks.
But for as much as she wanted bad cult classics to dull her mind’s razor focus on the last year-and-a-half of her life with Josh Baxter, it wasn’t working. What had she missed? What had she failed to see? Were there obvious clues or was he just that good at hiding his true nature? Or did she know his true nature and these thoughts were her old fears lying to her?
She remembered the first time she saw him, lying flat on her back up in Baxter’s Draw the day of Langston’s funeral when Josh’s ATV spooked Horsefly and he bucked her off. Then there was Josh’s steadying presence the day John Fisk was killed, and the comfort of his arms the night Katie was shot and Jenny had been so afraid her sister would die.
In the long weeks when Kate was recovering, Josh ran the ranch single handed. His patience with Kate’s temper was incredible. And then there had been the night he’d taken a pistol from Jenny’s hand and stopped her from killing Robert Marino in cold blood.
And there were other images, private images. The first kiss. The first time they made love. The nights when she awakened in terror and Josh held her and soothed her. In all those months there had only been one argument, and it was so slight, really nothing more than his worried objection to her going up to Baxter’s Draw alone.
Had it all be contrived and controlled? He was a Baxter, after all. Was his real motive to get the Rocking L? Jenny swore aloud at that thought. “Get the hell out of my head, Daddy!” she demanded, pounding at her own temples. “Just stop it!”
But Robert had been kind and understanding, too. He’d coaxed confidences from her and worked to make her feel safe. The thought that Josh could be the same kind of man twisted at her gut.
She didn’t want it to be true. She willed it not to be true. But then she saw Josh hurl the stubborn piece of hardware across the barn again. She heard him swearing. Watched him storming around in anger.
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