by Joanna Wayne
“Looking for something, Darlene?” Bledsoe’s voice was edgy.
“No. Just disposing your cat’s ratty lunch.” She said goodbye, all but bursting with the news she had to share with Clint as soon as they were out of Bledsoe’s hearing range.
If that piece of fabric was actually McCord’s shirt, then Bledsoe had been lying through his teeth about not having seen his good buddy since the attack. And if he lied about that, he could be lying about everything.
The second Clint pulled away she burst into a detailed account of her find. She’d expected him to show a little excitement, or at least tell her what a great job she’d done. But his expression never changed.
“I take it you don’t think that was McCord’s shirt.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt it was his shirt. McCord probably showed up here the night of the attack for first aid. Truth is, he probably called Bledsoe to come and pick him up. I could kick myself from here to Austin that I didn’t come looking for him here then.”
“All the same, we need to retrieve that shirt. You go back in, make some kind of excuse, like you forgot something. While you keep him talking, I’ll dig the shirt out of the trash can.”
He accelerated, hitting a bump in the road and knocking her toward him. She straightened up fast.
“So you’re not even going to check out the shirt?” she complained.
“What will it prove, except that McCord’s been there? He isn’t there now.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“The dishes.”
Exasperated, she exhaled a slow breath, a common habit now that she’d started hanging with the sheriff. “Explain yourself.”
“Bledsoe’s dinner dishes were in the sink. One plate, one glass, one fork.”
“Maybe he outsmarted you. He could have washed McCord’s dishes.”
“Possibly, but the bathroom had only one towel hanging on the rack and only one wet cloth.”
“That still doesn’t guarantee McCord isn’t around. I think we should sneak back, hide in the brush and watch the house.”
“How long do you recommend we sit out in the dark watching?”
“All night if we have to.”
“A stake-out in the dark sounds intriguing, but it’s not in your job description as a witness in protective custody.”
“You know, Sheriff, I’m not just your ordinary civilian victim. I’m an FBI agent. I may not remember whom I slept with last—as Bledsoe so crudely pointed out—but that doesn’t mean I’m not a trained agent. I can call the Bureau and request this investigation be given top priority, and I just may do that. Have this case yanked right out of your hands. We’re talking about a U.S. senator, you know.”
The authority in her voice surprised even her. Her memory might or might not be returning, but she was getting some spunk, showing a little Texas grit. Maybe her real personality was beginning to surface.
She turned her full attention to Clint. He was finally displaying a little emotion—the wrong emotion. His eyes were dancing, and his lips curved in that crooked, heart-stopping smile he had perfected to sinful levels. She refused to be charmed.
“I think you should assign someone to watch the house and make sure McCord doesn’t show up here. If he does, you can apprehend him and demand he tell you what’s going on.”
He laughed out loud, and she realized it was the first time she’d heard him really laugh. The sound was seductively masculine, deep and intriguing. He slowed the truck and stopped, right in the middle of the deserted road. Circling her shoulder with his right hand, he tugged her closer.
“Welcome back, Darlene.”
He tucked a thumb under her chin and lifted, holding her face inches from his. Her breath caught. She couldn’t be charmed? What a crock. She was so charmed that parts of her body—ones she had no idea were even erogenous—were trembling in anticipation. She waited for what seemed an eternity before he finally touched his lips to hers....
The kiss was hot, hungry and over all too fast. He pulled his mouth away and brushed an errant strand of hair from her cheek, tucking it behind her ear. “I think we better get out of here while we still can,” he said.
“You should have told me that asserting myself with you is such an aphrodisiac. I might have tried it sooner. And, by the way, I still think I’m right about having someone do a stakeout at Bledsoe’s, just to make certain McCord or even the killer doesn’t show up out here.”
“I agree. And I’ll have someone on it right away. But you’re not that someone.”
He drove another quarter-mile before turning the truck off the road and circling back toward the area they’d just left.
“Where are you going now?”
“To a spot where I can watch Bledsoe’s house and determine the best opportunity to sneak through the brush and raid his garbage can.”
“So you’re not going to just drive off and leave the shirt.”
“Of course not.”
“Then why didn’t you let me go back and get it?”
“I hate to be outdone by an FBI agent—a female one at that.”
He was teasing, of course. He was doing it this way because it was smarter than her way. She could see that now. He hadn’t wanted Bledsoe to suspect she’d seen anything she shouldn’t, so he’d kept a poker face while she’d talked in the driveway and then driven far enough that if Bledsoe was watching, he’d believe they were headed back to town.
He had bettered her. Still, she found herself smiling. In spite of his insistence that there was no “we” in this investigation, they were almost a team.
Strange, but she had been born again Monday evening. All memories left behind, she’d entered into a world of frightening shadows where murderers lurked around dark corners. And yet right now, she couldn’t imagine that she would rather be anywhere else in the world than sitting in the cab of Sheriff Clint Richards’s pickup.
THE GARBAGE HEIST went off without a hitch. And the garment was indeed McCord’s. One sleeve was ripped off. Bloodstains splattered the other sleeve and the front of the garment.
The bloody piece of evidence was now stashed behind the seat of the truck, in the same spot where Clint had stashed the gun he’d given her to hold when he’d gone to pillage Bledsoe’s garbage.
The mystery of who shot the senator was heating up, but no closer to being solved. Like Darlene’s memory, McCord was elusive and enigmatic. A puzzle that defied completion.
The only positive thing in her life right now was the sheriff—a man who obviously wanted her and yet couldn’t, or wouldn’t, let himself give in to that need. Yet every second she was with him, she felt more entangled in the relationship they must have shared.
Even now her memories of him were riding so close to the surface that she could all but taste them. They must have driven like this before, alone in his truck with the first stars of the evening glittering through the trees, and silvery moonbeams dancing in the air like fireflies.
She closed her eyes and let her thoughts ramble, hoping they’d return to a time when she and Clint had been years younger, and when the constant threat of a murderer had not hung over them. A young couple newly in love, kissing the way they’d kissed this morning. His touch searing her flesh the way it had done through the thin wet fabric of her shirt when the rain had sent them scurrying for shelter.
The attraction she felt for Clint was so strong, and yet she knew it hadn’t all developed this week. The feelings between them were new but they touched something of the past, a silken cord of desire that had tied them together in the past.
And now Clint wanted her to walk put of his life again, to fly back to Washington and renew a life that didn’t include him. To give up on them.
She touched his arm. “I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier, Clint, about my flying back to Washington.”
“We’ll talk about it later.”
“There’s no need. My mind’s made up. My memories were lost here, and this is where they�
�ll resurface. Whatever happened involves the people of this town, especially McCord. If necessary, I’ll ask Mary if I can stay at the Altamira.”
“The Altamira?” His muscles grew tense and hard beneath her hand. “Still McCord’s girl—and you don’t even remember the man.”
His words took her by surprise; they were so bitter that they hit her like a slap to the face. She rode in silence until the truck jerked to a stop at the gate to exit Borrowed Time.
“I’ll get it this time,” Clint said. “You’ve had a long day.”
She lay her head against the back of the seat and closed her eyes. She was tired, not so much from the visit to Bledsoe as from the confrontation with Clint. Every time she thought she was beginning to understand him, another facet of his personality surfaced and left her staggering in its wake.
The rusty hinges of the gate squeaked open. She glanced up just in time to see a man on horseback step from the overhanging branches of a sycamore tree, the moon glinting off a rifle he held in his right hand.
Chapter Ten
One minute Darlene was trembling, paralyzed with fear; the next she was hanging over the back of the truck seat, stretching to reach the revolver. Her mind gyrated in panic, but her reflexes were those of a robot who’d been programmed by a higher order.
Gun in hand, finger on the trigger, she shoved the door open and jumped to the hard ground. “Come any closer, and I’ll shoot.”
Clint spun around, losing his hold on the gate. It swung back into place with an ear-shattering clang. The gunman stopped a good twenty yards away from them, sitting high in his saddle but holding the rifle away from his body and waving his left hand above his head in surrender.
“Drop the gun,” she ordered with authority. She had no idea the words were going to come out of her mouth until they’d spiked the cool night air.
“Mind if I just slide it into its holster? Darn thing’s liable to go off if I drop it. Liable to spook my horse as well, and I’m not looking to get thrown.”
“Make it slow and easy. Then ride in closer with your hands where I can see them.”
“Yes, ma’am. I wouldn’t want to rile a lady with a loaded weapon.”
The man rode in a few yards closer, whistling. It was to keep her from losing her cool, she suspected, though it wasn’t working. Her trigger finger was steady, but inside she was shaking so viciously she was afraid she was going to be sick. She turned to Clint, but he was silent, just standing back near the gate and watching her, a crooked smile tugging at the corners of his lips.
The truth seeped in slowly. The man riding toward them wasn’t a stranger to him. He hadn’t planned on gunning them down and leaving their bodies for the buzzards. The breath she’d unknowingly been holding rushed from her lungs in a deflating whoosh.
“What the Sam Hill?” the man said when he was close enough to speak to them without raising his voice. He spit a stream of something grungy on the ground, and turned to get a better look. “You haven’t gone and gotten yourself some female gun-toting deputy, have you, Clint?”
“No, but I might, if she’s applying for the job. She sure put the skids on your reins.”
“I thought you were...” She quit talking, shaking her head in exasperation when the explanation on the tip of her tongue grew too burdensome.
“Don’t worry, Darlene.” Clint stepped in closer, his body profiled in the twin beams of light from the truck. “You have every reason to be jumpy.” He took the gun from her. “If I hadn’t recognized my dad’s cousin Leon, I’d have pulled my gun on him too. Knowing him like I do, it still isn’t a half-bad idea.”
The older man laughed, but his faced tensed as if he didn’t really find the statement funny. “You wouldn’t have been the first guy today to pull that stunt.”
“Yeah?” Clint stepped in closer. “I thought you gave up chasing skirts years ago. What’d you do to get in trouble now?”
The man twisted in his saddle, checking the open pasture to the north and the wooded area to the west before turning back to Clint. “I caught some fool hunter trespassing. Told him to hightail it off my land unless he had a printed invitation, and I hadn’t mailed any out. He smarted off right back at me, and then out of nowhere just reared back and pulled a pistol on me.”
“Looks like you talked him out of using it.”
Leon chuckled nervously. “Not before I swallowed a choking wad of tobacco. The man had me scared as a struttin’ rooster when the preacher comes a-calling. He backed down, though, when I told him a buck’s rack on his wall wasn’t worth spending his life in prison.”
Clint propped a foot on the front bumper of his truck. . “Mighty aggressive behavior for a Bambi slayer.”
“That’s the reason I rode back out here tonight, just to see if the man was hanging around out here somewhere. I don’t go looking for trouble, but I get in a tailkickin’ mood when someone pulls a gun on me, especially on my side of the fence.”
“Do you have any idea who he was?”
“No one I’d ever seen before. That’s why I figured him for a hunter. One of those city guys that thinks posted signs are part of the landscape and everything on four legs is wild game. I had a young steer shot last year by a guy down here from the Midwest. At least he had the decency to fess up, though.”
Clint walked around to the driver’s side of the truck. Reaching in, he flicked the key in the truck’s ignition, killing the engine. The silence that followed darkened the mood as quickly as Darlene’s actions had stopped the cowboy a minute ago.
“Can you describe this man?” Clint asked, stepping back to the front of the truck and leaning on the fender nearest Darlene.
Leon climbed down from his horse and looped the reins over one of the gateposts. “Why do I get the feeling your interest’s been roused by more than my tale of a trespassing hunter? There’s not some escaped convict loose in these parts, is there? If there is, I have a right to know. I have a wife to protect.”
“No escaped convict that I know of.”
Leon buried his fingers in his back pockets, the stance adding a little dimension to his scrawny chest. He was tall, wiry, with thin hair as silvery as the moon that reflected off it. “So, what brought you out to see Jeff Bledsoe?”
“A little trouble back in Vaquero. I thought Bledsoe might know something. He didn’t.”
“Nothing serious, I hope.”
Serious as death. The thought bore into Darlene’s brain, but she didn’t say it. She just sucked in a breath as she felt again the all-too-familiar tightening in her chest.
“What kind of trouble you chasing down?” Leon asked, when Clint didn’t offer any further elaboration.
Clint lay a hand on Darlene’s shoulder. “My would-be deputy here is Darlene Remington. She was visiting in Vaquero when someone ambushed her a few nights ago, a few miles out of town. We’re looking to find out who did it.”
Leon directed his gaze toward Darlene. “No wonder you were so quick on the draw tonight.” He stepped closer, his face acquiring new and deeper worry lines as he squinted to get a better look at the bandage on her head. “Looks like you took quite a blow.”
Darlene shook her head. “It’s all right now. I’m just looking for answers as to why I was the chosen victim.” She was aware that Clint hadn’t mentioned her connection with McCord, or that her attacker had tried to kill her while she lay in a hospital bed She followed suit, giving out as few of the details as possible.
Leon rocked back on his heels, his expression indicating he wasn’t completely buying their story. “I still don’t get it,” he said. “What brought you to Prairie? And why are you so interested in the man I had the run-in with?”
“I just wanted to check out some possibilities with Jeff,” Clint explained, keeping his voice level and reassuring. “He has a good head for this sort of thing.”
“He was in the business long enough.”
“I still need a description of the hunter,” Clint insisted.
&nb
sp; Leon looked Clint square in the eye. “You’re thinking the man was out here to ambush the two of you, aren’t you?”
“It could be.”
Leon took off his hat and slapped it against his leg. “You’re damn right. And that makes a lot more sense, now that I think about it. He had his truck parked behind that clump of brush just over there.” Leon pointed to a cluster of overgrown bushes with a couple of cacti spiking out of the middle. “All he had to do was stay out of sight until you came by on your way back from Bledsoe’s and stopped to open the gate.”
Darlene shuddered, the hard truth sinking into her mind. The man who’d cracked open her head and stolen her memories, the man who’d been in her hospital room, who’d had his hands around her neck, squeezing away her life, had been in this very spot—waiting for them.
“You’d have been a sitting duck, Clint.” Leon let out a low whistle and a string of mild curses.
“We’re dealing with speculation, Leon.”
“Speculation, my ass. ’Scuse me, Miss Darlene. But this bums me up one side and down the other. He was probably expecting you to be the one to get out and open that gate. He’d have shot you down like a dog, and then all he had to do was take out a couple of Clint’s tires. He would have taken off in his truck, and you would never have been able to catch him.”
“You’re letting your imagination run away with you, Leon.”
“No, I don’t think so.” The rancher yanked a bandanna from his back pocket and swiped it across his brow, gathering a row of moisture that had popped out like measles. “I should have shot the man on the spot. Do you think he’ll come back? I’m not afraid for me, but I’ve got my family to think about.”
Darlene read the fear in his eyes, understood it, even felt the chill of it. Murders were in the news every day, commonplace occurrences. And yet, when it came so near you could smell the vileness, it took on new dimensions of terror.
“I don’t think you need to worry, Leon. This isn’t a serial killer, at least I don’t think he is. He’s just trying to make sure Darlene doesn’t live to tell what she knows or to identify him.”