Triple Exposure

by Colleen Thompson

  “Not much of a talker,” he said by way of explanation.

  “Could there have been a fight with one of the horses? Little corral scuffle?”

  “That’s the first thing that came to my mind.” Zeke shook his head and pointed out the six-inch gash, now stitched and crusted over. “But this is no horse bite or kick. Vet didn’t think so either.”

  “Then what?”

  “At first, I thought maybe a mountain lion. Could be that one ranged out of the foothills looking for easy pickings—maybe a younger cat trying to claim territory. That would explain why the animals were all so spooked.”

  “But that wasn’t it, either?” She must have surmised as much from his tone.

  “Doc says there’d be multiple claw marks if it had been a lion, and probably puncture wounds on Gus’s neck from the fangs. Besides, the other night I—”

  Rachel shuddered. “I know they hardly ever bother people, but those things still scare the heck out of me. So if it wasn’t a lion, what could’ve hurt him like this?”

  Zeke tamped down his smoldering anger and forced his mouth into a grim line. “Vet thought it looked like a stab wound. From a knife. I haven’t left my animals alone since.”

  Rachel’s eyes widened. “You mean a person did this? Someone sneaked in here while you were gone, and…Did you leave your front gate open?”

  “Closed and locked, like today. But if you could climb it with some food, someone else could do it with a knife.” He went ahead and told her what had happened at the viewing area.

  Rachel’s face turned pale, making her few freckles stand out, and she looked in the direction of his truck, whose side window had been covered with duct tape and thick plastic—a temporary fix until he could spare the time to have it repaired correctly. “He could have killed you. Why didn’t you say something earlier?”

  “Sheriff didn’t think it had anything to do with you, and I figured you have enough to worry about just lately.”

  Shaking her head, she said. “I know the world’s a tough place sometimes. But this is Marfa, Texas. How could someone evil enough to do this live around here…”

  Her voice trickled down to nothing as, nearby, the mockingbird trilled from the scrubby juniper it had claimed.

  “No,” she said, clamping down on whatever fear had gripped her. “I was thinking for a moment—but it couldn’t have been my caller. For one thing, she’s a woman, and the sheriff’s checked all over the area. He doesn’t think she’s still here, if she ever was.”

  “I didn’t think of her,” he admitted.

  Rachel shrugged. “No reason you should have. I’m the one she’d been threatening, so it doesn’t make any sense that she’d randomly run around the county taking potshots and slashing people’s livestock.

  “Do you have any other enemies?” she went on. “Anyone you can think of who would want to hurt you through your animals? What about their previous owners? Could someone be upset with you for any reason?”

  He hesitated, then dismissed the thought of the past he had outrun. If anyone from those days knew where he was, he’d be the one hurting, not his mule. “My manners might not be anything to write home about, but I can’t imagine anybody caring enough to bother. Could be that fellow from the airport didn’t want to be seen for some reason, and then he thought I was coming after him. I still can’t figure out where the devil he went.”

  “The Marfa Lights do draw their share of strange souls.” A smile tugged at one corner of her mouth. “Maybe he figured you were the alien leader, wanting to abduct him. You weren’t humming that riff from Close Encounters, were you?”

  When she mimicked the five tones from the old movie, he snorted. “Yeah, sure. And wearing my aluminum foil spaceman hat, too. But if he was just some random nut job, what was he doing at the airfield that day? And why’d he want to track me down and go after my animals?”

  “Have you talked to Harlan about the mule?” she asked.

  Zeke had hated to deepen his involvement with the law, but with his animals involved—and even the slim possibility of a connection to Rachel—he hadn’t felt there was a choice. “Deputy came by. He thinks it’s some sort of accident.”

  “I hope he’s right,” she said before glancing down at the bag she was still holding. “Oh, almost forgot about this. It’s green chile stew. My grandma doesn’t cook much anymore, but she got a wild hair this afternoon. Made a huge pot—must have put a whole pork loin and a sack of potatoes in it. Can’t imagine what army she imagined she was feeding. Then I thought of you.”

  “It smells great,” Zeke said, regretting that he’d already filled his stomach with canned soup and some slightly burned quesadillas he had slapped together using leftover chicken, cheese, and stale tortillas. “I’ve had dinner, but that’ll make a first-class breakfast.”

  “Breakfast?”

  He grinned at her scandalized expression. “Damned fine one on a chilly morning. Let me put it in the fridge…Oh, and thank your grandma for me, will you? And thank you for bringing it.”

  To his surprise, she followed him inside. When he pulled out a bowl, meaning to transfer the stew, she lifted a lidded plastic bucket from the sack. “Don’t bother with that. Grandma’s got a million of these old ice cream containers. Which sort of makes a person wonder, since she’s a diabetic.”

  He put away the food, all the while wondering why she had climbed the gate and walked the long, curved track to get here. Wondering why she’d followed him inside. But he was afraid to ask her. Afraid to say anything that would change her mind and scare her off, regardless of what he’d told her by the corral. He hated the thought of pushing away the only person who’d ever cared enough to come and check on him here.

  “Want something to drink?” he asked, staring into a white refrigerator far older than he was. “I have water, beer.” A single longneck, anyway. He wasn’t much of a drinker, but still, he had West Texas standards to uphold. “I need to make a grocery run. I’ve just been nervous about leaving.”

  “I could pick you up a few things.”

  “I appreciate that, but I can’t sit at home forever. Before you got here, I was thinking of taking a short ride before the light goes.”

  “Sure, Zeke.” She retreated toward the door, looking ill at ease. “If you have to go now—”

  “Thought you might like to come along,” he said, then chased the invitation with the best excuse he could think of. “I’m not leaving the other two behind. And it’ll be easier leading one animal than two. So if you’d ride the pinto, if you’ve got the time, that is, and you want to…”

  Her eyes brightened. “I’d love it. It’s been a while, but I miss riding.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll take it easy. Walking’ll be good for Gus’s shoulder.”

  Once outside, he was embarrassed to remember he didn’t have a saddle for the new mare. He dragged out two bridles, Cholla’s saddle, and a blanket, then said, “I’ll try this saddle on the pinto. Not sure it’ll fit her, though. She’s quite a bit smaller than Cholla here.”

  Rachel shook her head. “I’ll ride bareback, since we’re just going to be walking.”

  “Wouldn’t be as stable. And if you haven’t ridden for a while—”

  “Come on, Zeke. I’ll be fine. I used to ride a lot back in the day. Bareback, often as not.”

  “Maybe you should take Cholla. He can be a handful, though, and—”

  “He’s the perfect size for you.” She tactfully didn’t point out that he was too heavy for the delicately built mare, but the implication lingered. The pinto was filling out nicely, and he’d tried her around the corral just to see how she moved. But she would never be a sturdy enough animal for a big man.

  Conceding defeat, he readied both horses and tied Gus’s lead line to Cholla’s saddle. “You want to borrow a sweatshirt or something? It could get pretty chilly once the sun drops.”

  Rachel patted the sleeve of her denim jacket. “This’ll be okay for now.”


  “Then how about a leg up?” he asked Rachel.

  She stroked the mare’s brown-and-white neck and checked her over appreciatively. “She’s looking a lot better these days.”

  Zeke boosted her up onto the pinto’s back, then handed her the reins. “Ought to. She’s eating up a storm. She’s good natured, easy as anything to handle. Be a nice horse for you to start back up with.”

  “Does she have a name?”

  The saddle creaked as he swung up onto his buckskin. “I was thinking Yucca. Kind of goes with Cholla—desert plant.”

  “Yucca? Ugh, that’s really awful. You might as well call her Creosote…or maybe Bastard Toadflax,” she said, referring to two even less attractively named species.

  “So do better.”

  “Shouldn’t be hard. How ’bout…” She glanced back toward the ghostly letters on the side of the building. “How about Candle—short for Candelilla. That’s a plant, too. And it sounds a whole lot prettier than Yucca. You like that better, don’t you, Candle.”

  “If you say so.” Zeke doubted horses cared what anybody called them. But if it pleased Rachel to name the mare, he didn’t see the harm. “Candle it is, then. But if I ever get myself a dog, I’ve got dibs on Bastard Toadflax.”

  “I can think of only one dog deserving of the honor,” she said as the newly christened Candle followed Cholla and the pack mule. “My grandma’s Boston terrier’s mad at me for spoiling his reign of terror. And having him neutered.”

  “Hell, woman. Remind me never to cross you.”

  A wry smile tilted across her pretty face. “That’s a very good idea.”

  The crunch of shod hooves on the hard ground, the creak of leather, and the snorts of the animals curtailed their conversation. Cholla was more full of himself than usual, dancing and bucking as his passage startled a bright blue Mexican jay from a clump of smaller piñons.

  “Looks like he wants a gallop,” Rachel suggested.

  “Probably needs one after being stuck in the corral,” Zeke admitted as he settled the buckskin, “but I’m not risking Gus’s stitches—or your seat—by letting him have his head.”

  As herding animals, both horse and mule would try to follow Cholla’s lead.

  “Your confidence in my riding ability is a real inspiration,” Rachel said.

  “Aren’t you still getting over having your brain rattled last week?” he asked, causing her to grimace in reply.

  As the pinto walked, Rachel shifted uncomfortably and said, “Bony as this horse’s back is, I have a feeling it’s not going to be my head that’s sore once this is over.”

  Zeke wished he could allow Cholla a good workout. Anything to distract him from thinking of the body parts her innocent words had painted in his guilty mind.

  After all this time, it was almost impossible to remain so close yet still stay quiet. Hands trembled, and the field glasses they were holding shook, too, as did the murderer brought into focus.

  A murderer who smiled, even laughed. A killer out for a pleasant ride with an attractive companion. In the distance, mountains formed a scenic backdrop, while the first hints of a fiery sunset stained thin, stippled clouds. The vegetation, too, added to the beauty, the shrubs and pale, yellow grasses clothing the dry land in deceptive softness.

  The image jerked as the watcher’s hands spasmed at the injustice, the fucking wrongness of the scene. Where were the lost boy’s smiles and laughter? Where were his twilight rides, his dates, and his enjoyment of a crisp, late winter evening? She imagined herself taking snapshots, putting them into an album.

  His murderer had robbed her of that, of that and all the countless happy memories they would have made together. Had robbed her of her family, too, as she had dashed it all to pieces against the rocks of grief.

  But to night, this very night, she was going to balance the scales of those injustices in a way the legal system had been too corrupt or cowardly to do. And her way would be more satisfying, she suspected, already relishing the soothing balm of blood upon her hands.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.

  —The Holy Bible (King James version)

  Job 30:29

  As the sun consorted with the Chinati Mountains, jackrabbits nibbled at tender new shoots, early harbingers of spring.

  “Better eat quick, before those big-ass owls come calling,” Rachel encouraged, thinking of the shredded-fur and picked-bone remnants left by the pair residing at The Roost. Pellets, too, when their prey were smaller creatures, whose indigestible remains were neatly packaged and coughed up.

  Zeke turned to look at Rachel, amusement flickering in his pale green eyes.

  “Do you always talk to the animals?” he asked.

  When he looked at her like that, his smile lazy and his posture relaxed aboard the huge horse, Rachel wanted to pull out her camera and take a photo of him burnished by the amber light. She knew better than to try it, knew his ease would tighten into anger if he even guessed what she was thinking. But that didn’t stop her from aching with the beauty of the moment.

  “You have to admit,” she answered, “the jackrabbits are only slightly less likely to answer me than you are.”

  “Hell, I run on at the mouth like a babbling idiot around you.”

  “You need to get out more if you call what you manage babbling, or even halfway sociable.”

  “Why muck up a good ride with a lot of chatter?”

  The rough path they were following opened out into flat, grassy rangeland dotted with only a few small junipers and jutting clusters of spine-tipped agave, many of which sported dried stalks that rose like ships’ masts from their centers. Rachel touched her heels to the mare’s sides, prompting Candle to trot around Gus and come abreast of Cholla.

  Rachel’s heartbeat quickened as she told Zeke, “I’ll tell you why. Because it’s how two people get to know each other.”

  Instead of looking at her, Zeke’s gaze tracked what appeared to be a line of mule deer trotting over a low ridge to avoid them. “Can’t see why we’d need to do that, Rachel. Since things aren’t going any further.”

  “Is there a woman somewhere?” she asked so quietly, the words were nearly trampled beneath the shuffling hooves. “Some woman with a claim on you?”

  Zeke snorted. “Have to be a mighty patient woman, being as how I’ve lived alone in Marfa for the past fourteen years.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “Why?” He looked at her sharply. “Why does it matter?”

  “Gee, I can’t imagine.” The words came out sarcastic, even angry, but she couldn’t seem to stop them. “Could it be because you had your damned tongue halfway down my throat and I liked the way you touched my breast? Because I’d like to feel—I’d like to feel more, need to feel more than the freaking stress and grief and worry I’ve dealt with this past year.” She wanted to prove, too, that she could feel, that she was ignoring Dr. Thomas’s and her new attorney’s repeated messages only because she’d moved on with her life.

  “But as much as I want that, Zeke,” she continued, “want you, I won’t have it if you’re married, or if you ran out on a kid or three to stay ahead of child support. I’m not living with that sin, too.”

  He tugged the reins to stop dead and fix her with a flinty stare. “Is that who you think I am? Some irresponsible bastard who would leave my own—”

  “I don’t think it. But I’ve been wrong before, so badly wrong you can’t imagine. I thought Kyle was harmless—maybe a little vain, a little too smooth for a kid his age. But it never occurred to me that he was interested in anything but taking pictures, maybe even making art. And instead he…” Her eyes snapped shut, screwing tight against the memory of the first set of pornographic images she’d been forced to look at—the images he’d sent to everyone he knew after his attempts to manipulate her failed.

  “I’ve never married, never had kids.” His voice was tight, controlled, belying the tens
ion that seemed to dance beneath his skin. “But don’t assume your situation gives you a free pass on the questions. Patsy’s right. This can’t work between us, and I’ve been a damned fool to imagine I could—”

  She held up one palm. “Even a damned fool needs a friend from time to time. And if that’s all you want, I’ll accept—”

  “It’s sure as hell not all I want,” he snarled, the rough edge of his voice enough to make Cholla dance sideways. “I want—I want what I have no right wanting. And what you’d have to be a fool to settle for.”

  Candle was a responsive mount, turning on a dime at Rachel’s bidding. Turning back toward Zeke’s place.

  “Then I won’t waste any more of your time.” She must be insane, thinking there was something more between them than a foolish physical attraction. People had been right to warn her. Zeke Pike liked the prison he had made for himself, with his monklike cell and his stupid Vow of Gruffness.

  “Rachel, please don’t—”

  Both horses and the mule swung their heads toward a clatter: the hooves of the deer rushing over the rise, bounding with their strange, stiff-legged leaps. On spotting the riders, the deer swerved to the east, yet their fear—even some thirty yards away—was infectious. Gus brayed and leaned back against the rope, Cholla tried to turn toward home, and Rachel was nearly unseated as the pinto bolted.

  Remembering a decades-old riding lesson, Rachel pulled the mare’s head sideways until she trotted in tight circles and then slowed to a stop.

  Zeke, who had gotten the other two in hand, asked, “You all right? Thought you’d fall for sure.”

  “Me, too, for a moment,” Rachel told him. “What do you think scared the deer like that?”

  “Coyotes, maybe. Or…could be the vet was wrong and there’s a wild cat around here after all.”

  Rachel’s heart fluttered, and she pictured the cougar toying with them the way a cat played with its victims. “Let’s go back then. The horses are all freaked out, and we’re losing the light anyway. Besides, I’m—”