The Salt Maiden (Leisure Romantic Suspense)

by Colleen Thompson

  She couldn’t remember dressing in it, couldn’t remember anything after…

  A cry caught in her throat, and an electric impulse quivered through her muscles. No, that couldn’t be. It had to be a nightmare; that was all.

  As she rolled onto her side she pulled her knees toward her breasts. Pain lanced through her muscles, a tearing soreness that made her clamp down on another cry. Had she been hurt somehow? Was that it? Maybe an accident of some kind…Some incident with her car teased the frayed edge of a memory.

  Frowning, she studied the dim shapes of the furnishings around her: the old-fashioned dresser-and-mirror set, the nightstand, the small chair, and the looming presence that turned out to be an armoire in the corner. She twisted the brass key of an electric hurricane lamp. With a click it bathed the room in quiet yellow light. From the rag rug to the crown-of-thorns Jesus picture to the faded, moss green walls, the room remained utterly unfamiliar—and about as far from a hospital as she could imagine.

  Outside the closed door a floorboard creaked beneath a heavy footstep. Moments later a soft tap followed.

  A premonition prickled in her stomach, a sense that whoever came would solve the mystery of where she was and how she’d come to be here, and that the answer to those questions would be far more difficult to bear than curiosity.

  By the time the door cracked open, she was trembling.

  “Dana? Mrs. Lockett thought she’d heard you stirring, and I saw the light under the door.” Jay’s voice floated over her, quiet and reassuring. “Are you awake?”

  She turned toward him, her eyes full of tears that she still could not explain.

  “Hey, now. Dana, I’m so sorry.” He sat on the bed beside her and let her fit herself into his embrace.

  As he rubbed her back and rocked her, knowledge seeped in slowly. The nightmare hadn’t been a mere dream; her sister had drawn her last breath in her arms.

  Tensing, Dana pulled away. “I have to tell my mother. I have to tell her about Angie.”

  “It’s all right,” he assured her. “I’ve already taken care of it. Your father’s with her—”

  “My stepfather,” she corrected without thinking.

  “That’s right, your stepfather. He’s taking care of her. I told them, too, that you refused medical treatment, but you were in no shape to go anywhere. Mrs. Lockett said you’re welcome to stay at her house for as long as you need to.”

  “Mrs…Mrs. Lockett?”

  “Mamie Lockett. Remember the elderly lady from the café the day that you were bitten by the snake?”

  Dana shuddered at the memory of a skinny, gray-haired woman fluttering around the kitchen, searching for the biggest knife she could find. “The one who wanted to carve up my leg?”

  “She meant well, I’m sure of it. Mrs. Lockett doesn’t have a mean bone in her body. Bakes the best cookies in West Texas, too. Would you like me to bring you a couple? Or how about one of those muffins to hold you over until dinner?”

  Dana shook her aching head, her stomach rebelling at the thought.

  He pulled her even closer. “You’re going to have to eat and drink. You’ve slept straight through the whole day.”

  “I didn’t remember anything when I woke up. Couldn’t imagine how I’d gotten here or why I was dressed in this.” She pinched at tiny flowers her sister would have laughed at. She could almost hear a younger Angie teasing, “The nursing home staff called this morning. They want the nightie back, but they’ll let you hold on to the adult diapers.”

  “You were pretty out of it,” Jay said. “I probably should’ve dragged you to the hospital in Pecos, no matter how much of a fit you pitched. But Mrs. Hooks and Mrs. Lockett volunteered to clean you up and put you to bed, and it seemed like the best thing at the moment—”

  “Mrs. Hooks did? Judge Hooks’s wife?” Dana’s face went hot as she remembered snippets of the two women helping her dress. “But I thought Fry Cook and the missus hated me.”

  “Estelle’s got her notions of what’s proper, that’s all, but that includes treating someone who’s been through a bad time with Christian kindness.”

  Dana thought about the way Jay’s neighbors pitched in during times of trouble. But she was an outsider, with a sister who’d caused trouble and whose death would only bring more unwelcome publicity. Dana’s throat tightened, and she felt the salty sting of tears at the corners of her eyes.

  “I tried to hold on to her. Tried everything I could think of to keep her from slipping—”

  “You did all the right things, Dana. It wasn’t your fault—”

  “That I let her die, or that I led him to her?” She struggled free of his arms, the words painful as acid on her tongue. “Because that had to be what happened. He must have followed me from Devil’s Claw when I went out to meet her.”

  “Even if that’s true, you meant to save your sister. You were doing everything you could to—”

  “Tell that to the Harrisons,” she said bitterly. “Tell that to my mother.”

  He looked at her a long time, his blue eyes wells of sadness. “I know what you’re doing, taking everything on yourself. I did it, too, after Baghdad. The other guys, my superiors, they all kept explaining that it was the suicide bomber’s act that killed my men, and I’d shake my head and say, ‘Yes, sir, I understand that.’ But I damned well should have realized she was reaching for the detonator a split second sooner. Should have shouted out a warning so they could’ve stopped her.”

  Dana wanted to tell him that was war and this was different, that in war, death was expected. Not like Angie’s, not like being hunted and helpless in the stormy desert in the dead of night. But the pain in his expression was so present and the fatigue shadowing his eyes so deep that Dana crushed the lit fuse of that impulse. “I’m sorry, Jay. It must have been horrible.”

  He nodded an acknowledgment. “More than I can tell you. But I didn’t say it for your sympathy. I only wanted you to know that what you’re doing, it’s like swallowing a fistful of razor blades. They’ll cut you all to pieces on the inside. Pieces that will bleed where no one sees. If you have to be pissed, be pissed, Dana. Mad as all hell at the son of a bitch who killed her. At me, for not finding her soon enough. Even at Angie, if you have to. But don’t swallow all this down. You’re too…I can’t stand the idea of your hurting yourself any worse than this bastard’s already hurt you.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut. Praying that maybe when she opened them, she’d wake up in her hotel room in Pecos. Or better yet, at home in Houston the day before she’d learned of Nikki Harrison’s existence. Angie would be somewhere, on the lam as usual, always in the back of Dana’s mind but no better or worse than ever. And Dana would spend her day off writing notes, returning gifts, and mailing that jerk Alex a present of her own: a beautifully wrapped, beribboned box of dog shit for his birthday.

  But when she counted to ten and looked again, all she saw was Jay, gazing back at her.

  Time to face this, she thought, for what other option was there? Sadness overpowered her, cloying as the scent of lilies at a funeral.

  “We never even got a chance to talk,” she said.

  “Not at all?”

  “Not about anything that mattered—except…except I said that Nikki needed her. I told her she had to keep trying for her daughter’s sake.” Dana sank into his arms again. “And now she’ll never even get the chance to meet her.”

  “It’s a hard thing. I understand that,” he said as he enfolded her. “Still, I have to ask you: have you remembered any more? Anything about the shooter or his vehicle?”

  Bits of last night came at her, assembling themselves into a warped jigsaw with several pieces missing. “Angie didn’t tell me who. I asked, but by then she’d…” Dana bit her lip as another fragment of memory snapped into place. “There was something about an ATV, I think.”

  “We found it—out of gas. It had been reported missing a couple of weeks ago. We’re guessing that your sister ‘borrowed�
�� it to get around in the desert.”

  “But other than that I don’t remember anything.”

  Jay didn’t try to hurry her. He simply pulled her into his arms and held her, the steady beating of his heart and the rhythm of his slow breaths a guide that she could follow. He pressed a tender kiss against her crown, and before she could stop herself she tipped back her head to meet his lips. Warm and lingering, the kiss settled over her like an unexpected benediction. But the bittersweetness of it tilted into shock as hunger slipped in uninvited. She needed to lose herself in the wet heat of hard kisses, the ripple of muscle beneath tanned skin, the ancient rhythm called up when he had moved inside her. She wanted desperately to bridge the gap between raw grief and the place where the pounding of their two hearts would hammer her emotions flat.

  She withdrew from him once more, shame throbbing through her. She had no right to visit that place, not with Angie lying cold and friendless, shrouded on a slab.

  “Dana.” Jay’s voice was weighted by exhaustion and a longing that made her own name sound foreign to her. But with a shake of his head he dismissed whatever he’d been about to say.

  Unable to meet his gaze, she forced herself back to the only subject that should matter. “I never really saw the shooter, but I’m pretty sure he drove a pickup. Could’ve been an SUV, but my impression was a truck.”

  Within the space of a few heartbeats he struggled back to sheriff mode. “Do you know what make or model the truck was? Did you catch a glimpse of the paint color?”

  She shook her head. “Something on the darker side. I’m not certain, though. And as for what kind, I have absolutely no idea. Even if there’d been light, I’ve never paid a lot of attention to truck styles. Wouldn’t know a Ford from a Chevy from a…well, I don’t know. Who else makes a pickup?”

  “Was it older? Newer?”

  “I’m so sorry. I want to remember it, want to think of something that will help you catch him. But aside from the lightning it was pitch-black out there, so dark he must have fired toward the sound of my voice. He couldn’t even see what he was shooting. If I’d only kept quiet when the thorns caught—”

  “I will get this person, Dana. I swear it to you.”

  In his eyes she saw him beg her to forget that he had also promised he’d find Angie. His fingers glided through her hair and caressed the side of her neck. She wanted to believe him. God only knew she needed to believe in something.

  “Can you tell me,” she asked, “where my sister’s…where’s her body?”

  “El Paso ME’s office. The FBI’s put a rush on the postmortem.”

  Dana tried not to think about the Y incision. Closed her eyes but couldn’t keep back the image of gloved hands lifting out the mass of dripping entrails. She wanted to ask if he could stop it, to beg them not to put Angie through that final assault. But to do that she’d have to hold the horror in her head long enough to form a cogent argument, and she couldn’t bear it. Probably shouldn’t, since Angie’s body might offer up the evidence she could no longer share in words.

  “That’s enough for now,” Jay said as he pulled away. “Why don’t you rest a few more minutes, and I’ll bring you some food and…Do you drink milk?”

  When she didn’t answer he offered a brief smile. “What if I told you it came from free-range dairy cows with all-organic diets, weekly massages, and plush retirement packages?”

  Against her will, she smiled back, and almost imperceptibly the anguish knotted hard inside her eased. “I’d call you a liar,” she managed, “but I’d drink it.”

  “Okay.” He kissed her forehead, teasing the knot a little looser.

  When he pulled away she tumbled headlong into his gaze.

  “I’ll be right back,” he told her.

  As the door closed she stared after him, her teeth pinching her lower lip until it hurt. What she felt for him was gratitude, a knee-jerk response to the kindness any decent person might feel obliged to offer.

  It can’t possibly be love.

  She was smart enough to understand that she was caught up in a perfect storm of conditions guaranteed to obliterate good judgment. Grieving for her sister, on the rebound from a breakup, and recovering from the loss of her fertility, she had no business even thinking of Jay Eversole as anything but a momentary oasis in this hell.

  And no business whatsoever imagining that a man still raw from his own traumas would have any better sense than she did. If she’d glimpsed love in his gaze, it was simply an illusion, a mirage so cunning he couldn’t tell it from reality.

  It was up to her, then, to remember the distinction. And up to her to ramrod some sort of justice for her sister, if she could only find the strength.

  When the knock at her back door came, Mrs. Lockett was ladling vegetable soup into a bowl while Jay threw together a cheese sandwich made with two thick slabs of the homemade jalapeño beer bread famous throughout the county. Without waiting for an answer Estelle Hooks came in, her heels making their familiar click-drag on the tile.

  “Turn on the TV,” she blurted. “Hurry.”

  “If your son’s giving interviews again…” Jay growled, wondering how Wallace could have already forgotten the first-rate ass-chewing he’d gotten the last time. Certainly he’d acted resentful enough to let Jay know his words had made an impact.

  “It’s not Wallace. It’s you,” Estelle said.

  Mamie Lockett scuttled out of the kitchen to turn on the set in her parlor, her movements so swift and unexpected that her orange tabby tomcat jumped off the couch and ran behind it, yowling. With a fleet of knickknacks weighing down the doilies, the room looked like something from the forties, but the television’s reception was a credit to the satellite dish on her roof.

  “What channel?” she asked as she squinted down at the remote. Her reading glasses, as usual, were perched atop her head.

  Estelle snatched away the clicker while Jay protested, “But I didn’t talk to anybody.”

  The station Estelle punched in was running a terrifically annoying commercial for some headache medication.

  Jay wished he had some, then frowned and said, “We must have missed the story. What was it—”

  She shook her head and shushed them. “It’s about to come on, they said. Right before they went to the commercials that pretty little reporter lady promised some exciting new information on the sheriff connected with the Rimrock County Salt Maiden case. Or do you think she could’ve meant my Wallace? After all, it’s not the first time he’s been mistaken for a sheriff. And even Suzanne Riggins had to admit he looked authoritative.”

  Unfazed by her pride, Jay stared at the television. Fear smoldered in his belly while his hands went icy cold.

  Mamie patted his arm. “I’ll bet they’re going to point out that you’re a real American hero, that’s what you are.”

  He nearly choked on disbelief. “A hero?”

  “All our boys in uniform are heroes.” Her gaze drifted to the faded photo on her sideboard of a boyish-looking man wearing sailor’s whites and a cocky grin beneath his tilted hat. Her late husband, Jay remembered, had been a navy squid in World War II. Lost a leg on some Pacific island hellhole after his Japanese captors let it go gangrenous. People had spoken reverently of him for decades, how his actions had saved dozens, how after coming home with every reason in the world to feel angry and defeated, he had never been known to step out his front door without a smile.

  In spite of the medals he had been awarded, it made Jay sick that Mamie Lockett would compare him to a real hero like her husband. That the circumstances of his discharge would bring him anything like honor.

  Yet unearned praise turned out to be the last thing he needed to sweat over. Instead he watched his worst fear play out in slow motion. Noted the sparkle in the anchor’s eye as she heightened the suspense by cobbling a recap out of sound bites. Brave little girl struggling for her life in Houston. Heroic search for the missing birth mother. Mummified body in the salt tomb with its link
s to a well-organized scheme to bilk retirees across the country out of millions. And finally the tragic murder of Angie Vanover herself, under the watch of a sheriff whose “fitness to hold office has been called into question.”

  And then she came right out and told them—told the whole world what had happened in that theater. How a respected professor bringing snacks to his boy had been set upon in an unprovoked attack that smacked of ethnic hatred. How the man sustained a cut requiring seven stitches to the side of his head, from where he’d fallen hard against the armrest of a stadium-style seat.

  The shot switched to a large and frizzy-haired young woman sausage-stuffed into a hot-pink tube top. Izzy Jablonski, Terrified Movie Patron, read the graphic beneath her Lycra-flattened breasts. Her head dipped toward the proffered microphone, her wide mouth opening as if she meant to eat it.

  “The man was a maniac,” she raved, waving her hands and bugging out her bulgy blue eyes for effect. “Totally deranged. I had to go to counseling for the trauma, like they tell you to on Dr. Phil. And I was shaking so hard there was no way I could work over at Hair by Harriet’s on Valley View Lane, where ho-hum hair’s made history. That’s three whole days of pay lost, plus tip money, but after what I saw…”

  She shook her head, her eyes now all but bursting from their orbits.

  You’d last about three seconds on the ground in Baghdad, Jay wanted to tell her as a dark tangle of broken corpses overlaid her pale face, and soul-rending ululations drowned out the whipped-up histrionics. With an effort he tore away the past that filmed over the present.

  “It’s just terrifying.” Good old Izzy was on a roll now, tearing visibly. “Imagine anyone giving a man like that a badge and, worse yet, allowing him to carry around a loaded weapon. What on earth were those people out there thinking?Iwon’t sleep nights worrying about this. I might have to go on disability for my stress! And who’s going to pay for that?”

  “I’m not listening to one more second of this bullshit.” Turning from the screen, Jay felt the women’s stares as he stalked back toward the kitchen. “I’m taking Dana her dinner, but I’ll do my best not to be a damned maniac about it.”