by Jodi Thomas
He smiled slowly. “Is that your question for the night, Elizabeth?”
She blinked and would have stepped back, but he caught the hand that was pointing at him and pulled her toward him.
“I’m lying. My name’s not Mr. Smith. It’s just a name I use for a mail drop.” Before she could ask another question, he pulled her onto his knee and closed his mouth over hers.
For a moment she was stiff in his arms almost as if she were trying to decide whether to fight and make him let her go, or surrender. He loosened his grip, silently telling her he wouldn’t hold her if she wanted to leave.
The slight gesture seemed to be all she needed to make up her mind. She circled her arms about his neck and kissed him back.
Gabe had known a few girls over the years. Most he dated casually until they asked one too many questions or wanted more than he could give. He’d slept with a few one-night stands, but the next morning always made him feel more empty than if he’d never met them. But Elizabeth was different. He doubted he’d ever get tired of the taste of her, the feel of her.
When he walked away from her, he had a feeling he’d ache for her forever. Nothing had ever felt so right.
She made a little sound of pleasure as he ended the kiss and moved to her throat for one more taste of her skin. Her skin was cream as he slid his tongue over her delicate collarbone, then lightly bit down at the side of her throat.
He swore he heard her purr as his hand brushed along her rib cage a moment before he pulled away.
“I have to go,” he whispered an inch away from her throat. He wasn’t touching her, but he knew she could feel his warm breath against her damp skin. “I’ll be back tomorrow night to install the peephole and the bolt.”
Like a pouty child, she climbed off his lap and went to the door. “I wasn’t finished,” she said.
“I know.” He smiled, knowing she’d probably gotten everything she wanted, when she wanted it, since she was born. “Tomorrow night we’ll start with the kiss and save the question for last.”
“Maybe.” She crossed her arms. “If I open the door. I don’t like being lied to.”
“I didn’t lie to you, Elizabeth. I just didn’t correct you when you called me Mr. Smith.” He met her gaze. “I’m not very good at talking about myself.”
She smiled. “No kidding, but I see things when I look in your eyes sometimes.”
He raised an eyebrow.
Laughing, she added, “I don’t know how to explain it. I think I see an honesty about you that frightens and intrigues me.”
Pulling her against him, he kissed her again, deep and long. This time his arms held her close and his hands were bolder, feeling the curves of her. He wanted to tell her that this wasn’t just a game they played, but he guessed she knew it even if they both realized it was too early to say the words.
When he finally pulled away he whispered, “I owe you a question. Now, lock the door behind me.”
He stepped through and closed the door before she could answer, then waited until he heard the click of the lock before he headed down the back stairs.
Chapter 15
WEDNESDAY, 8:30 P.M.
FEBRUARY 6, 2008
BLUE MOON DINER
REAGAN STARED OUT AT THE EMPTY DINER. WHEN THE place was busy, packed with people eating and talking, she didn’t notice how shabby the booths were or how the walls had faded to gray with no one to remember what color they’d once been.
“It’s my birthday,” she whispered to the vacant diner. “And no one knows.”
Last year she hadn’t mentioned it to Uncle Jeremiah. He’d done so much by giving her a home she couldn’t just say, Hey, it’s my birthday, how about a gift? Reagan could never remember really celebrating the day she was born. Her mother probably gave her away that day, and No Name, her father on the birth certificate, was undoubtedly relieved he didn’t have to pay child support.
Speaking of her birth certificate, she’d carried it with her from foster home to foster home and now she couldn’t find it. After she moved in with Uncle Jeremiah, she’d no longer felt the need to look at it every so often to make sure she was alive. With him, she had a family, even if it was only one member.
“His old house is full of junk,” she mumbled as she wiped the cabinet. Jeremiah saved everything. He’d probably put her folder, with all her papers, on a stack of mail. He wouldn’t throw it away; he never threw anything away. At least she’d gotten him to put his bonds in a safe-deposit box. It was just a guess, but she figured if the house ever burned, he’d have enough to rebuild.
Until then, she’d make little changes. He complained, but he never said no to any of them.
Her phone sounded, making her jump. “Hello.” She caught it on the second ring.
“When you coming home, girl?”
Reagan grinned. Her uncle rarely used the house phone she’d made him install, and he never bothered with hello or good-bye. “Ten minutes, tops. I just have to do one more thing, then I’m locking up.”
“You drive careful. The radio says the roads are getting slick.”
“I will.”
He hung up without another word.
She picked up the takeout meal and headed to the back door. It was a little early, but she wanted to go home. No one but Gabriel would be stopping by on a night like this.
At the back door, she didn’t see him, so she grabbed a flashlight in her free hand and walked across the back lot. Thinking more about it being her eighteenth birthday than about the cold, she trudged over frozen weeds to the trees that wound along the old creek bed. This part of town, where old houses and businesses curved along the memory of streams, always seemed odd. People and traffic moved on the streetlight side, unaware that just behind the buildings a wilderness waited.
A huge cottonwood branch swayed, crackling and showering tiny pieces of ice down on her.
Reagan jumped out of the way. Her left foot touched solid ground, but her right slid into the gully that had eroded its way between two trees.
Screaming, she tumbled backward.
The wind carried her cry through the frozen branches. More ice tinkled to the ground, muffling the sounds as she rolled over the hard earth until she finally landed among roots rigid as rocks.
Reagan lay still for a moment, feeling the cold, the uneven ground digging into her back, warm blood washing across her face. She tried to move, but all the world spun in protest. “Help me,” she whispered. “Someone help me.”
One arm was wedged behind her back. Her sweater must have caught on something because it pulled against her throat, choking away most of her air passage. One leg felt as if she’d skinned her knee and to her horror, she couldn’t feel the other knee at all.
“Help,” she whispered again. “Help.”
When there was no answer, Reagan closed her eyes and drifted away from the pain.
Chapter 16
WEDNESDAY, 9:15 P.M.
FEBRUARY 6, 2008
COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE
ALEX MCALLEN WORKED LATE IN HER OFFICE MOST Wednesdays, but tonight the rain turning to ice against her windows kept her nerves on edge.
The middle of the week was usually slow, and she could get to the paperwork that she never seemed to finish. Her being sheriff was more a calling than a job. If law enforcement had old-time revivals, she’d walked the aisle and given her life over to the badge. Some would say she decided on the career the night her brother, a highway patrolman, had been killed, but the job was already in her blood. His death only directed her to come home and run for sheriff.
Leaning back in her chair, she thought of Warren and how he’d been murdered while making a routine stop. No big gunfight, no war, just one shot, late one night on a lonely road and he was gone. She’d read over his files a hundred times, but couldn’t find a way to solve the most important case in her life. Somewhere his killer was still out there, and Alex hoped she’d be lucky enough to face him one day. When she did, she prayed she
wouldn’t hesitate.
The killer had left two clues. Sometimes, she searched cases all across the country that fit the MO. But it had been five years . . . five long years. What were the chances he’d leave the same footprint at a crime scene, or that he smoked the same brand of cigarettes. The pack might not have been dropped by the man who shot Warren, or it might have been tossed from a passing car a day or two before the night her life changed forever with Warren’s death.
“Sheriff?” The night dispatcher drew her out of her thoughts.
“Yes, Jess, what’s up?”
Jess wouldn’t overreact to alien attacks, but for once, he did look worried. “We got a call from Jeremiah Truman out on Lone Oak Road. He said his niece should have been home a half hour ago.” Jess hesitated. “The old guy threatened to come down and beat me to a pulp if we didn’t get out there and find her.”
“He’s near ninety,” Alex said, already pulling on her coat. “But if we don’t locate her, I’d be worried if I were you. Did you get hold of Phil? He should be out that direction with radar tonight.”
“He’s working a fender bender, but he said he’ll be driving the road from their place to the Blue Moon, where she was when Truman talked to her. She’s just a kid. She probably stopped off on her way home at some friend’s house. I tried to tell the old guy not to worry, but he hung up on me.”
Alex nodded, letting Jess know that he’d done right, but that didn’t stop her from fighting down panic. She knew Reagan. She wasn’t the type to stop off somewhere. The girl was as protective of the old man as he was of her. “I’ll start at the diner and work my way toward Truman. Tell Phil to keep his eyes open for tracks. The Truman girl tends to drive fast, and her old pickup could be broken down or might have slid off the road somewhere. Tell him to work his way toward me as soon as he can.”
She shoved her Colt in its holster and snapped the guard. “Call Hank too. He lives on the next ranch. Ask him to go over to Truman’s place. If she’s hurt, I don’t want the old man driving anywhere on these icy roads.”
“Got it,” Jess said as he headed back to his desk. She thought she heard him add, “Who is this kid, the town princess or something?”
Pretty close, Alex thought as she ran out of the office. For more than a hundred years, three families had run this little spot on the map. A hundred years of three families working together, arguing, helping each other. Reagan was the last of the Truman line, and in this place that pretty nearly made her the town princess even if no one had ever thought about it.
Alex’s cruiser was covered in ice. She should have parked it under the carport when she returned from lunch. For a second, she thought of taking her Jeep, but the ice would be thicker on it than on the city’s car.
She swore at the time she wasted cleaning the windshield and waiting for the heater to warm. By the time she climbed in and backed out, she couldn’t feel the tips of her fingers thanks to the cold, but she couldn’t afford the time it would take her to run back inside for gloves.
Five minutes later, she pulled up in front of the diner and saw Truman’s old pickup, which the girl usually drove, parked to the side, out of the storm.
Alex hit her radio. “Jess,” she said when he answered. “Tell Phil to meet me at the diner. The girl’s still here.”
“He’s on his way. Just talked to him. Called in to say Lone Oak Road was clear.”
Call it instinct or maybe it was just knowing the patterns of the folks in her town, but something didn’t feel right. If trouble had a smell, it was in the air as Alex jumped out of her car without turning off the engine and ran for the diner entrance.
The door was unlocked. The lights still on. Alex moved inside very slowly, taking in every detail around her. Halfway through the café, she spotted a backpack on the counter near the phone.
“Reagan?” she said trying to keep her voice calm. “Reagan, are you in here?”
No answer.
She reached the swinging door to the kitchen and pushed it open with one hand while the other rested on the butt of her weapon.
The kitchen was bright and looked clean and shut down for the night, but almost as cold as the outside.
Alex let out a breath and stepped farther in, passing a workstation in the center of the area. Pots and spatulas were lined up in wait for the morning breakfast run.
Cold air blew in from an open back door. Alex tensed at the sight of mud and blood streaking from the door to . . .
For a second, Alex didn’t see the whole scene, but only pieces that didn’t make sense. An old work coat tossed on the floor. White towels stained in blood scattered like Kleenex across the tile. A girl’s snow boot lying on its side, muddy and abandoned. Blood pooling around her head just as it had around Alex’s brother’s on a back road five years ago.
She forced the past aside and stared.
Then she saw it all. A man, bearded and spotted in blood, leaning over Reagan. Her red hair flying around her face covered in blood. Her body lifeless on worn tile.
Alex reacted. “Freeze!” she ordered as she pulled her gun and held it before her with both hands. “Step away from her.”
The man raised his head. He looked slightly familiar, like someone she’d once known, but his eyes were hard, icy blue. Killer eyes, she thought.
“Step away from her or I’ll fire,” she said as she heard someone enter behind her.
“Then shoot,” he barked. “Because I’m not letting go.”
Her cold finger tightened on the trigger as her eyes saw the palm of his dirty hand pressed against a towel at Reagan’s temple. She couldn’t tell if the man was helping or hurting the girl.
“Phil!” Alex yelled.
“Yes, Sheriff.” The door swung. “I’m here.”
Alex kept her gun pointed at the stranger beside Reagan. “Call in an ambulance.” She tried to think of what to do as the deputy made the call. If this stranger was holding a pressure point, keeping blood from flowing, she couldn’t ask him to step away. If she moved closer and he’d done this to the girl, he might try to overpower her.
He looked little better than homeless, but young and maybe strong enough to fight her for the gun. If he won, they could all be dead in seconds. She knew the drill was to ask if he had a weapon but he didn’t look like he’d hand over his ID and a gun right now even if he had one.
“What happened here?” She barked the question.
“I don’t know.” The stranger didn’t look up. He didn’t look afraid either, which frightened Alex even more than if he had a weapon. “I found her like this down in the creek bed.”
“Who are you and what are you doing here?”
“I’m no one. Just get the ambulance here.”
Alex took a step closer but didn’t lower her gun. “Did you drag her in here?”
“I tried to carry her, but my leg wouldn’t take the weight,” he said, only half listening to Alex. “I think her leg’s broke. She’s lost a lot of blood.”
Alex heard the medics banging their way through the front door and Phil yelling at them to hurry. She kept her gun on the stranger as they moved around her toward Reagan.
The stranger slowly stood and let them take over. Without even glancing in Alex’s direction, he headed toward the back door.
“Wait,” she shouted. “You need to come with us and answer a few questions.”
He didn’t stop. Just kept walking as if he had no fear of death.
The medics lifted Reagan onto the stretcher and started moving out. Phil rushed ahead, holding the door.
“Stop!” Alex yelled at the stranger almost to the back door. “Stop or I’ll shoot.”
He hesitated as if debating whether he cared if he lived or died, then faced her, his cold eyes showing just how much he wanted to run. He raised his hands, more in frustration than defeat.
“Tell me what happened here.”
“I already told you. I don’t know,” he answered.
“Got any ID on you?”
“No,” he said still staring at her.
Alex pulled the cuffs from her belt. “Then like it or not, you’re coming with us until we get this straightened out.”
Phil was back. He stepped behind the guy and cuffed him. “Is he under arrest, Sheriff? Should I read him his rights?”
“Not yet. Just hold him until I can see how badly Reagan is hurt.”
Phil pulled the lean man a few feet, and Alex noticed the limp. He hadn’t been lying about his leg.
“If you hurt this girl ...”
“I didn’t.” He almost spit the words.
She waved Phil on. To the stranger’s back, she added, “I’ll have questions for you later.”
He glanced back, telling her he didn’t plan to offer any answers.
She locked the back door, then turned out the lights and locked the front. If this was a crime scene, and it sure did look like one, it would be safe enough for a few hours. Her first concern was Reagan Truman.
She hit speed dial to Hank.
“Evening, darling,” he answered on the first ring. “I’m at Truman’s place.”
Alex gripped the phone tighter, wishing Hank were with her. “Can you drive him over to the hospital?”
“Sure.” His voice cracked with concern. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure.” Alex said the only thing she could think of. “She may have a broken leg. We’ll know more when the doctor sees her.”
“We’re on our way.”
Alex’s hand shook as she closed the phone.
Chapter 17
WEDNESDAY NIGHT
FEBRUARY 6, 2008
MATHESON RANCH
LIZ MATHESON FINALLY BROKE DOWN AND WENT TO DINNER at the family ranch. When she drove up, she caught herself wishing for the thousandth time that the place looked like an antebellum home out of the Old South and not the rambling southwest look of an old mission.
The main body of the house was two stories, with room enough in the roof line for an attic where her sister painted. Her great-aunts’ suite of rooms shot off to the left, surrounded by gardens now gray and bony with winter. Hank’s quarters had been built over the three-car garage. He also claimed the huge office downstairs in the main house. It had an outside entrance complete with porch so any of the hands could ride in and visit with Hank without ringing the main doorbell. Her mother’s studio—built in the old mission style, charming as a painting—sat a dozen yards away from the house. Mom had been a potter all Liz’s life. Some said she was the best in the Southwest, but her mother rarely talked about her work. Her pots might be perfect, but her children always needed advice.