Wild Wild Death

by Casey Daniels

  For one crazy moment, I thought of calling Jesse. He was dependable, and good in a crisis. I could still feel the warmth from where he’d held my hand all the way to the hospital. Oh yeah, Jesse would be good to have along when I went out to meet the kidnapper, all right. And he knew the lay of the land.

  I already had my hand on my phone when a voice started chattering inside my head. It went something like this:

  You’re on your own now. For real. No backup. No ghosts. And if you’re going to prove that you can handle kidnappers and curses and anything else the Universe throws at you…

  I didn’t call Jesse. Instead, I checked the clock and smiled. I had until eight o’clock to get back to New Mexico.

  That gave me plenty of time to head over to Tom’s Laundromat and rescue my jeans.

  I was bound and determined to solve this case on my own.

  That didn’t mean I didn’t get the heebie-jeebies when I turned onto that rutted and rocky road to nowhere heading out to meet I-don’t-know-who I-didn’t-know-where. By that time, the shadows were long and the evening sky was darkening in the east to an inky color that reminded me of the jeans I’d retrieved from that dryer at Tom’s. I will say this much for the folks of Antonito—they are an honest bunch. That, or maybe no one of my height who wore a size as small as mine had happened upon the jeans before I got back there to scoop them up. Either way, I was grateful, even though I hadn’t bothered to change into them. I’d been in the foothills of Wind Mountain before, remember. Now that the jeans were safely back in my possession, I wasn’t taking the chance of having anything happen to them in the way of dust, rips—or blood.

  Not exactly what I wanted to think about so I was actually kind of grateful when a coyote streaked in front of my car and I had to grab on to the wheel with both hands and jam on the brakes. I can’t say for sure, but I don’t think the critter noticed (or cared about) the hand signal I gave it to show what I thought of its dirt road–crossing skills. It disappeared into the scrubby bushes, and a moment later, I heard it yipping. The sound was lonesome and way eerier than any of the ghosts I’d ever met, and it sent an icy shiver over my shoulders. I only hoped the coyote wasn’t sending out a report to its friends about the fresh meat making its way up the mountain.

  The terrain looked all-too-familiar. It should. I was just about at the spot where my tires had been flattened and I hoped while the cops were out there saving my car and towing it to the repair shop that had fitted it with new tires I couldn’t afford, they’d gotten all the nails. Evidence, right? And cops are good about collecting evidence.

  That didn’t keep me from holding my breath. I didn’t let it out again until I made it past the place where my poor car had spent that night.

  I was on unfamiliar ground now. Here, the sloping contours of Wind Mountain were more imposing than ever. The closer I got, the more I could see that, like the landscape around me, the mountain was pocked with outcroppings of jagged rocks and decorated with shaggy gray sage bushes. I drove over a dried streambed lined with about a million little rocks, which made my car sway and lurch. I slowed down even more and kept both eyes on the road. When I maneuvered around a boulder bigger than my car, the shadows on the other side were thick. I turned on the Mustang’s lights.

  Up ahead, the road—and oh, how I use that word loosely—swung around to the left, through what looked like it might once have been a pasture and then through the center of more nothing. It shot off to the right, and I bounced along, heading up the side of Wind Mountain. Another fifteen minutes of inching along, and I was surrounded by scraggly trees. Piñon pines, I remembered someone in Antonito calling them, and don’t picture Christmas trees when I say this. These pines were short, dark green, and as shaggy as that coyote I’d seen a while back. Their shadows hugged the road, and I cringed when their branches brushed the car like fingernails on a blackboard.

  Another turn, and I was out of the trees and back to barren, rocky terrain. I edged around a rut that dropped off into a narrow gully alongside the road, turned one more time, and—

  I was at a dead end.

  Hoping kidnappers weren’t into symbolism and this didn’t mean more than it should, I slowed the car, stopped, and got out.

  It was quiet up there near the clouds. So quiet that when a bird flew over, I heard its wings flap.

  “Weird,” I told myself, mostly just to hear my own voice and convince myself the altitude hadn’t resulted in some sort of freaky deafness. While I was doing that, I took the chance to look around.

  As rendezvous places went, this one pretty much had it all—there was an outcropping of boulders as big as houses about two hundred yards to my left, and a cliff directly ahead of me that looked to rise at least… I tipped my head back to see the top, but since doing that made my shoulders hurt, I decided it wasn’t all that important to know how high the cliff was, and gave up.

  Over on my right, the ground fell off into a shallow but steep arroyo. Oh yeah, as hard as it is to believe, I knew the word, all right. On our drive to New Mexico, Goodshot had pointed out that an arroyo is a steep-sided gulch with a flat bottom. In rainy weather, arroyos fill with rushing water. Not a problem. At least not for me. From the looks of the dust already coating my boots, I’d say it hadn’t rained in those parts in about a hundred years.

  By now, the sky to the west was an amazing mixture of reds and purples, and I stopped for a moment to admire it, wondering how the colors might translate to silk, if Saks ever carried anything in the same palette and if a redhead could get away with it. I was just envisioning a wrap dress with a plunging neckline and a sash belt when I heard the coyote start up again. This time, his mournful cry was echoed by his friends.

  Out there, the wide-open part of wide-open spaces had a whole new meaning, and it was hard to judge distance by sound. Were the critters miles away? Or right around the corner? I couldn’t tell, and I wasn’t taking any chances. I decided to wait in my car. With the doors locked.

  I was almost there when a man stepped out from behind the boulders. It was right at the spot where the last of the sunlight played with the shadows and I leaned forward, trying for a better look.

  Short. Slim. Brown hair. Jeans. Yellow T-shirt with red letters on it: taos.

  Nondescript. And it took me a moment to place the face.

  Arnie.

  The fact that it was one of Brian’s friends who Quinn and I had met at the Indians game didn’t come as much of a surprise. I called out and waved. Yeah, like he’d miss a redhead in gorgeous boots in the middle of the nothingness.

  Arnie looked over his shoulder before he stepped toward me, but me, I didn’t waste any such time. I’d already waited long enough.

  I skirted a straggling sage bush and closed the distance between us. “Where’s Dan? What have you guys done with him? And what about the bones? Norma had them, you know, and Brian must have known it because he went to Norma’s, and he’s got my Jimmy Choo bag, damn it, and I need answers, Arnie. Fast.”

  Unfortunately, fast turned out not to be fast enough.

  Before Arnie could say a word, a sound like the pop of a giant champagne cork exploded in the quiet and echoed along the rocks that surrounded us. Startled, I jumped back, and it was a good thing I did. That way, when Arnie’s eyes went wide, his arms flew out at his sides, and a spurt of liquid the color of the lettering on his shirt gushed out of him, I didn’t get any on me. Before I could process what had happened, and even before I could scream, his body hit the ground.

  Just a heartbeat later, a second shot pinged against a rock near my left foot.

  “Hey, new boots!” I screamed in the nanosecond before I realized I didn’t have to worry so much about the boots as I did about the body wearing them. It was too far to the car, and there wasn’t nearly enough cover in that direction, so I darted toward the outcropping of boulders where Arnie had been hidden when I arrived. Protection from whoever was taking potshots at me, sure, but it took me about a second and a half to
realize this wasn’t the best place for me to hide. Those boulders were in front of me—between me and the shooter—but there was a steep, rocky rise to my right and, to my left, nothing in the way of cover.

  If I stayed where I was and the shooter decided to come around at me from either side, I’d be trapped. Good strategy on the shooter’s part. Not so good news for me, and I was just trying to decide what to do about it when a shower of tiny rocks skittered down the hill to my right. The dust flew and I squeezed my eyes closed. Too bad. I have a feeling I missed a pretty spectacular entrance.

  “Get behind me, quick!”

  Like anybody could blame me when my eyes popped open and I stared like a crazy person? What else was I supposed to do when Jesse slipped down that hill along with those pebbles? He shoved me behind him, leveled a rifle on his shoulder, and peeked around our rocky barricade.

  “What?” I dared to try to look past those broad shoulders of his long enough to see that I couldn’t see anything worth seeing. “What’s going on?” I asked him.

  “Just what I was going to ask you.” Another shot clumped into the ground ten feet in front of where we were hidden, and instantly, Jesse returned fire.

  I covered my ears with my hands, but that wasn’t enough to block out the sound of the blast or the curse he mumbled. “Wherever he is, he’s got great cover. I can’t even see him moving.” He took another shot.

  When it stopped reverberating in my ears, I offered the tiniest of logical commentaries. “If you can’t see him, what the hell are you shooting at?”

  The smile he tossed over his shoulder was grim. “Just thought I’d let him know he doesn’t have the upper hand. See, he figured you were back here all alone, and that you’d be easy to pick off. I’m just sending a little message, that’s all.” He took another shot, then glanced around, taking in the lay of the land. My guess was that he came to the same conclusion I had: if we stayed there, we were sitting ducks.

  “You’re going to have to make a run for it,” he said at the same time he took my hand and tugged me closer to where the safety of our cover ended and the hey-I-dare-you-to-miss-hitting-a-redhead-in-all-this-nothing began. “See? Over there?” He cast a glance across what looked to be a hundred yards or so of barren space to another, much smaller, rocky outcropping. “On the count of three”—he put a hand to the small of my back—“you head that way. I’ll cover you.”

  “What? We’re in some bad Western movie now?” I slapped his hand away. I would have screeched with or without our attacker taking another shot, but when he did, and when the bullet pinged into the dust right where Jesse was asking me to go, I scuttled backward and folded myself into the farthest corner from the opening. “I’m not just going to run. Not out there. And you’re not just going to cover me. There’s a crazy person out there. A crazy person with a gun.”

  “Exactly.”

  The way he said it—so calm, so self-assured, so completely not as crazy and panicked as me—made me suck in a sharp breath. Maybe forcing me to stop and think was what Jesse intended all along. Or maybe he hoped to accomplish that with the look in those brown eyes of his. It was iron-willed, sure, but in a way that made a startling lump block my throat—one that had nothing to do with how freaking afraid I was.

  It was the wrong place and really the wrong time for sexual tension, but if there was one thing I’d learned over the years, it was that these things aren’t always convenient.

  I did my best to ignore the heat. Not so easy considering that when I blinked myself back to reality and forced myself to concentrate, I sounded as if I had a five-pack-a-day habit. “You’re… you’re going to cover me.”

  It wasn’t a question, but he nodded to assure me.

  “And I’m…” I gulped and glanced at that rocky outcropping that looked so far away. “I’m going to wait over there for you. And you…” I think this was about when I realized I had one of Jesse’s sleeves bunched in both my hands. “You’re not going to let anything happen to you. Promise me.”

  A slow smile flickered in his eyes. “Because then you wouldn’t know where to get the best boots.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I already know where to get the best boots.”

  This time, the smile touched his lips. “Then maybe it’s because you care.”

  I smiled, too. Or at least I tried. But then, like I said, I’d played this game before. He should have realized that and known I wasn’t willing to let him have the upper hand. At least not yet. “Because then you wouldn’t be able to tell me why you followed me and what the hell you’re doing here.”

  Another shot, and he sprang into action. At the same time he pushed me forward, he wheeled around and squeezed off a few shots. And me? I scurried like a redheaded bunny, and if I looked like a goofball, darting and ducking, I didn’t care. All that mattered was that I made it to that outcropping of rocks. As soon as I did, I dropped to my knees and prayed like I’d never prayed before that Jesse wouldn’t get shot on his way over to join me.

  It couldn’t have been more than a minute but it felt like forever before he darted out from behind those big boulders, shooting and running. A few yards away from where I was huddled, he dropped to the ground and slid like a ball player nearing second base, and I swear my heart stopped beating. If he’d been hit… If he’d been shot…

  When he rolled to his knees and scooted beside me, I pressed a hand to my very thankful heart.

  He peeked over the edge of the rocks, and I could tell by the relentless way he scanned the landscape that he still didn’t have a bead on the shooter. He took a couple shots anyway, just to show the guy he meant business. When he was done, he darted a look at me out of the corner of his eye. “So… you were going to tell me what you’re doing here.”

  “Was I? I thought you were going to tell me why you followed me.”

  One corner of his mouth twisted into what might have been a smile. It was kind of hard to tell since his face was streaked with dirt and he wasn’t the smiley sort to begin with. “Give me some credit. I didn’t have to follow you.”

  Okay, so I was a bit off my game, what with the running and the being scared to death and all. I still didn’t get it. “Because…”

  “Because I got here before you did, of course.”

  My stomach jumped into my throat, and this time, it had nothing to do with the crazy attraction that sizzled in the air between us. If Jesse knew I was coming here… If he was here waiting for me… If this was some sort of ambush…

  Pikestaffed by my own logic, I jumped to my feet and pointed a shaky finger at him. “You… you’re one of the kidnappers!”

  I found myself back on my knees just as quickly. But then, Jesse’s hand was like a vise on my arm. “Stay down!” he yelled, just as another shot smacked into the dirt in front of us. And another.

  Even that wasn’t enough to make me crouch down and cover. I was too busy being outraged, staring at Jesse when he returned fire.

  He shot me a look. “I’m not one of the kidnappers,” he growled.

  “But—”

  “But nothing. There’s more than one way to figure out what a person is up to, and you’re not exactly Mata Hari.”

  “Who—”

  “She was executed for being a spy during World War One. And that doesn’t matter. You—” As if his words had been snipped with scissors, Jesse stopped. He tipped his head, listening. I guess he must have bionic hearing because after a minute or so, he slapped a hand to his thigh and stood.

  “Son of a—”

  That was when I finally heard a truck engine rev, somewhere far down the arroyo. “He’s gone?”

  Jesse’s mouth pulled into a thin line. “He’s gone.” He offered me a hand up. “My cruiser’s parked over that way,” he said, and when he took off for it, he tugged me along at a double-step. “I’ve got to radio in and get somebody out here fast.”

  “Not before you explain.” I braced my legs and refused to budge an inch and he had no choice but to
stop and whirl to face me.

  “Funny,” he said, “that’s exactly what I was going to ask you to do.”

  “You first.”

  “All right.” He looked me up and down. “What were you doing at the cemetery last night?”

  “That’s not fair. I said you had to explain yourself first. Asking questions doesn’t qualify as explaining yourself. And the cemetery—” I realized exactly what was going on, and my breath caught. “You’ve been watching me.”

  “Like a hawk.”

  “So when you called me last night…”

  “I was sitting out in the parking lot. Under that one light that wasn’t working. I guess it was a pretty good move because you didn’t even notice my car when you dragged your suitcase out there. So now you can explain. You know, about why you decided not to leave, and why you had to go to the cemetery first, and what any of this has to do with kidnappers.”

  “No, no, no!” Okay, I stomped my foot in the dust. It was a childish thing to do, but justified. So was the fact that I raised my voice. Jesse obviously wasn’t listening to a thing I said, so I figured I needed to be a tad more forceful. “You said you didn’t follow me, but you obviously knew I was coming here. And you wouldn’t know I was coming here unless—”

  “I read the note, of course. The one from that guy.” His brows low over his eyes, he looked over to where Arnie’s body lay in a pool of blood. “The note he slipped under your motel room door.”

  This time, I couldn’t even find the words to express my outrage so I stammered for a while. Finally, I propped my fists on my hips. “You read—”

  “Oh, come on!” I could practically see the sarcasm dripping from those luscious lips. You didn’t expect me to do nothing, did you? First you show up from out of nowhere—”

  “Cleveland isn’t exactly nowhere.”