Sunrise Crossing

by Jodi Thomas

  “Sorry, sir. I overslept.” Fifth climbed the steps and offered his hand to Kirkland.

  Dan nodded once. “I thought you might when I passed the office around midnight and saw the lights still on.”

  “You’re working the kid too hard,” Kirkland said as he shook Fifth’s hand. “Come on inside, Deputy. We’ve got coffee and cinnamon rolls waiting. I need to show Dan the map in my office before we start planning.”

  “Thanks,” Fifth answered politely, grateful that he didn’t have to admit that right now he was far more interested in the rolls and coffee than looking at any map. Caffeine and sugar should wake him up.

  Fifth followed the two men through the massive double doors of the Kirkland headquarters as they talked about the weather. The sound of their boots thumping across the hardwood floor blended with the jingle of spurs Kirkland wore.

  Fifth had been at the headquarters a few times before. A New Year’s party. A meeting of the new city planning committee. He liked the big old home, and it was one of the few places he didn’t have to watch his head. The Kirklands were tall and built their house to accommodate.

  The main room was a forty-foot-long living area built with mahogany and leather. A dining area to the left had a table that would seat thirty. Kirkland’s huge office opened through double doors on the right, and a modern country kitchen was in the back.

  The house reminded him of a remade set from the movie Giant. Pure Texas. Western, all the way.

  Only it didn’t seem like a house that people lived in. It was the headquarters, set up for work and meetings. Fifth had heard that the family lived in a smaller place a few hundred yards away, which made sense. Kirkland had two toddlers, and no one would want to have to chase them all over this amount of square footage.

  Fifth had just begun to feel his muscles relaxing when he turned the corner off the main room and saw Kirkland’s wife, Quinn, sitting at the kitchen table, talking to a woman about his age.

  The stranger had short, reddish-brown hair, naturally curly, and blue eyes; she was dressed in a leather jacket and tan pants with boots laced almost to her knees. For a second he thought she looked like Amelia Earhart. Then he added one more fact as she turned directly to him and glared.

  One look at him and, for some reason, the woman seemed to become angry as hell.

  For a second, Fifth fought the urge to step back, maybe all the way to the door. Maybe farther. He might not have a lot of experience with women, but he could see rage flashing in her icy-blues like white-hot lightning. Take cover or run seemed to be the safest options.

  The anger didn’t fit until he watched her slowly stand. He added one last statistic. Over six feet tall. The possibility they’d both stepped into a match-up trap occurred to him, just as it probably had to her.

  Quinn just grinned, but Kirkland made the introductions. “Fifth, I’d like you to meet my wife’s niece, Madison O’Grady.” Now Kirkland was grinning, obviously unaware that his kin was firing a look that might kill the only deputy for miles around. “We asked her to come in this morning. Thought you two might like to get acquainted.”

  “Welcome, Miss O’Grady.” Fifth removed his hat and offered his hand, hoping she didn’t bite it off.

  The sheriff slapped his deputy on the shoulder. “So...ah...enjoy your coffee and rolls, Deputy. We’ll be back before you finish.” At least Brigman had the sense not to grin.

  Quinn, Staten and the sheriff vanished, leaving him alone with the angry woman. The instinct to run was so strong he couldn’t get his tongue untied enough to speak.

  Without asking if he wanted one, she poured him a cup of coffee and slid it across the table, not seeming to notice, or care, that boiling liquid spilled out.

  He sat down. He’d had women look at him with total disinterest, or sometimes even with fear because of his size, but he’d never been the kind of guy to bring out hate—or passion, for that matter—in anyone. In fact, he’d always kind of thought that women his age viewed him as a friend more than anything else. He guessed he’d be like his two older brothers where women were concerned. He’d marry a woman who was a friend and settle into an easy kind of partnership.

  Fifth drew the plate of rolls close before she decided to shove them over. Maybe if he ignored her she’d calm down. He downed the first roll in two bites. It smelled good, but he swallowed so fast he didn’t bother to taste it.

  The second of Quinn’s famous cinnamon rolls was almost to his mouth when Madison O’Grady spoke.

  “Well,” she snapped as she paced, “where do you want to do it? Here on the table? The couch is long enough but it might not be wide enough for us, or there are several bedrooms upstairs. Pick one.”

  Fifth stared at the roll, figuring she probably wasn’t talking about eating. “Do what?” he said quietly.

  “Have sex, of course. We were obviously brought here to meet. My whole family has been trying to match me up like the expiration date on me is about to run out. Last month it was a six-five trucker who stopped at the café. They thought I should drop everything and come meet him. Thank goodness he turned out to be married or I’d be on an eighteen-wheeler to Des Moines, Iowa, right now.”

  Fifth must have still looked confused because she added, “Why waste time talking or dating or getting married? Let’s just do it right here, right now. We’re obviously meant for one another. We’re both over six feet.”

  Fifth didn’t know what to do. She may have been angry, but damned if she wasn’t the sexiest woman he’d ever encountered. He must be a masochist.

  He’d always been hesitant to have any one-night stands because he feared he might hurt a small woman. Now he wasn’t sure Madison wouldn’t hurt him.

  “Madison!” Kirkland yelled from his office. “You fully gassed and ready?”

  She didn’t take her eyes off Fifth. “I can be in the air in five.”

  “Good.” The sheriff appeared in the office doorway. “Fifth, inhale another bite and follow Madison. I want you two gone as fast as possible.”

  Fifth caught the surprise in her eyes a moment before she grabbed a satchel and ran for the back door.

  He was right behind her. He had no trouble matching her long strides as she stormed toward a helicopter parked on the other side of Kirkland’s barn. “You’re the pilot.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes, and you must be the passenger I came all the way from Wichita Falls to pick up.” She glanced over at him. “You’re the expert on rough terrain they were talking about. I thought—I thought...”

  “I think I know what you thought.” He grinned. “You’re not the only one who gets set up with strangers because of their height.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said as she opened the passenger door.

  “Forget it. How about we start over?” Fifth dropped his hat in the cargo bag and put on headphones. “You’re the pilot and I’m the expert.” He watched her circle the chopper and climb into the pilot’s seat before adding, “Only, I hope you’re a better pilot than I am an expert. I’ve been studying up for months, but I’ve had no field experience.”

  “Climb in,” she shouted as she started the helicopter. “You’re about to have the ride of your life.”

  Fifth folded into the passenger seat, bumping her shoulder as he buckled himself in. “So, I guess sex on the kitchen table is off the agenda?”

  She laughed, then winked at him. “Not necessarily.”

  Fifth froze. Now he was shocked, but by the time his brain cells fired, it was too late to run. They were already in the air.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Peace

  TORI WALKED THE rocky ground behind Parker’s house near Crossroads. The land didn’t look good for much as far as farming. One field near the road was plowed, but the rest seemed like it had always grown wild. Whoever built this house had w
anted peace, she decided. The front porch faced the morning sun. Trees had been planted in a circle out back years ago and now offered a small meadow of shade.

  She already loved it here. Her mind had settled, and she could feel herself growing stronger. When—or if—her stepfather found her, she wouldn’t be the same person as she had been two weeks ago when she vanished.

  She was twenty-four, and it was time she took control of her own life. She should have done it years ago, but her mother kept saying that her new husband, Tori’s stepfather, knew best. He was a businessman, and he would run everything so that all Tori would have to do was paint. When Tori had protested again, at nineteen, her mother had reminded her of how the mixing of business and art had driven Tori’s father mad. He’d loved being the carpenter, working with his hands, but when his carvings began to sell for thousands, he lost the simple joy in creating.

  Tori had backed off, letting her mother win, again. And again. And again. Letting her mother and stepfather handle the business side of her career so she could paint. Only lately she’d felt like a factory, always pushed to produce.

  She twirled in the meadow. “Freedom,” she yelled, then laughed.

  Maybe she’d paint today. Maybe she’d sleep in the sun. Maybe she’d go visit the man at the edge of town who called her Rabbit.

  But, no matter what, she’d do what she wanted to do. She’d live her own life.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Dallas in cadet-gray rain

  PARKER LOVED THE gallery after dark. The lights of a rainy Dallas surrounded her as they glowed through the forty-foot wall of glass that framed the building. Paintings seemed to float between the city and the rich, earthy reds of Saltillo tiles.

  Somehow the art seemed to come alive as shadows bordered each creation’s elegant grace. Her gallery was a still, unpolluted kind of paradise that always made Parker feel safe and comfortable.

  The possibility of dying couldn’t reach her here. She could push the prospect from her mind and just breathe.

  She took one last walk through her world. She almost had everything ready. Her staff believed she had a scouting trip in the planning stages but she was, for the first time in her life, running away to have an adventure. To paint. To live. To help a friend.

  For years, she’d been saying she’d take off when everything slowed down. She’d go to Crossroads, Texas, where she’d bought a farmhouse almost ten years ago. Her someday dream had always been to paint. She’d been driving from Dallas to Albuquerque one summer on the back roads and seen a For Sale sign hooked to a barbed-wire fence in the middle of nowhere.

  On a whim she’d turned off a road that was posted as private. The land, if it had ever been tamed, had gone back to nature. One edge dipped down into a canyon with rich earth shades that took her breath away. The other direction spread over rolling prairie spotted with wildflowers and clusters of trees surrounding small ponds. She remembered seeing the little two-story farmhouse peeking out from behind a huge oak planted at the bend in the lane leading up to the place.

  The old house was perfect. Small, with an unfinished attic that could serve as a studio. High ceilings with good light streaming in. Tall windows in the back with a canyon view. Heaven at the end of a private road. A painter’s hideaway. The rancher next door owned the small chunk of land and had said he needed money to pay taxes. She’d made an offer and he didn’t even bother to counter. Within hours she’d bought the place, hired a couple to clean once a month and headed back to the city.

  Her someday place would be waiting for her.

  A few years later, the rancher offered to lease the small field that bordered his place for a percentage of the profits. She said she would if he’d use the money to keep up her house and the road they shared. “Whatever you pay out, spend it on repairs and paint,” she’d said, knowing she had little time to even think about the farm. She was almost thirty and had had a business to build.

  “Will do, lady,” he’d said.

  A month later he’d called and asked what color she wanted the outside painted.

  “The color of the Texas sky in summer. And, cowboy—” she’d forgotten his name by then “—when you have enough in my balance to paint the inside, don’t bother to call me—just paint each room the color of a different flower that grows on my land.”

  “Will do,” he’d said again and had hung up without saying goodbye.

  But Parker knew the colors didn’t really matter. She’d probably go the rest of her life seeing the place only in her mind. It’d be blue, like the sky. One room would be the yellow of sunflowers, another the violet of morning glories or the scarlet in Indian paintbrush.

  The cowboy never called again, and the house slowly became more of an imaginary place in Parker’s thoughts than a reality.

  Until now. Maybe, with Tori visiting, Parker might actually start creating her own work. She smiled. With her luck, the cranky cowboy would be color-blind and she’d have to repaint the whole house before she even set up a canvas.

  The buzzer on the gallery’s main door pulled her from her thoughts. Parker moved close enough to hear the security guard, but stayed in the shadows.

  “I’ll need IDs,” she heard the guard yell through the glass. “Then I’ll see if Miss Lacey is available.”

  Two men in suits stepped forward and slapped what looked like very official badges on the glass.

  After talking to someone on the phone for a minute, the guard nodded at the suits, but didn’t open the door.

  Parker moved farther into the shadows as he hurried toward her.

  “Miss Lacey, two FBI agents want to talk to you. I can tell them you’ve already gone if you like.”

  “No. I’ll talk to them. Bring them to my office.” Parker smiled; she’d been expecting this. Tori had been gone for over a week, so it was about time they got around to asking questions. And if she wasn’t willing to answer them, she might raise their suspicion. Parker worked with easily a hundred artists, and Victoria Vilanie was only one. There was no reason to believe Parker had anything to do with or knew anything about her disappearance. But she had a feeling it was the press that really wanted answers.

  The guard nodded and turned to the door.

  She watched the two men moving toward her. One was taller, older. The other was beefy, like he’d overdone the workouts. Neither man even glanced at the art on either side of them.

  Ten minutes later, she’d answered all their standard questions. Yes, she’d met Victoria Vilanie in person once at a conference in LA, and she believed they might have been on the same plane back to Dallas. She got off then, but seemed to remember Victoria staying on the flight heading to Detroit. Yes, she knew how talented the woman was. No, she didn’t know if Tori was unstable. No, they were not friends. No, she didn’t know if the artist took drugs. Yes, she did keep Victoria’s number on file.

  She passed them the form that she asked all her artists to fill out. The younger man looked over it and handed the paper back. Obviously, she had nothing that they didn’t already have in their records.

  “Why’d you write ‘Tori’ on the top corner?” the older one asked.

  “She asked me to call her that,” Parker answered.

  “Are you aware that she had death threats before the LA showing? Her parents are very worried that some harm may have come to her.”

  “Yes. I read about it in the paper. If I remember the story, a man had seen her picture and started writing her through the galleries.”

  “Right.” The agent looked bored. “You ever get any of those letters, Miss Lacey?”

  “No.” Parker thought of adding that no gallery that she knew of had got a letter. She suspected the story might have been a lie Tori’s stepfather told or a publicity stunt.

  As she walked them to the door, she asked, “What’s the big deal
? Doesn’t a woman have the right to take a vacation? Maybe she’s lost in her work. Artists tend to do that.” She knew it was more than that, but Tori hadn’t gone into much detail that night at the airport when they’d huddled together in a corner of the crowded terminal and planned her disappearance. She’d just said she wanted to run away from a life she hated, and that she had no one to turn to but Parker.

  At first it had seemed like a game. Planning each step. Even seeing if they could buy untraceable phones. But as they’d boarded their flight, Tori had smiled, as though part of her panic had vanished. Her life was like a rocket speeding out of control, and Parker had offered her an escape hatch.

  Now the game felt real, and Parker had never felt so alive.

  The taller agent looked at her with cold, black eyes. “The press believes Victoria Vilanie to be one of the finest artists in the world. She may have been kidnapped. In fact, according to the press, the stepfather is sure of it.”

  “Or,” Parker tried again, “still, she might just be on vacation. Maybe she doesn’t like all the attention. Maybe she’s shy.” The minute the words were out, Parker knew she’d said too much.

  The older agent suddenly seemed to wake up. He stared at her as if he’d just heard something that would put her on the watch list.

  The beefy guy shook his head. He seemed more interested in arguing than picking up clues. “The press says the public has a right to know, and besides, where would she go? She’s been a recluse for years.”

  “I can’t think of anywhere, but after all, I don’t really know Tori.”

  The agent looked at Parker as if he thought she might be protesting too much. His question came out in a whisper. “What do you know, Miss Lacey?”

  Parker fought to keep calm. “Nothing. I just know artists, and most don’t like to be in public. They are very private people. The creation of a work of art comes from deep inside and has to have a great deal of silence and alone time to bloom.”