by Ann Charles
“How old is it?” Claire asked, nudging Henry away with her foot.
“He said—” Mac started.
“Ay yi yi, bonita,” Manny’s suave voice came from directly behind Mac. “What sexy legs you have.”
Mac looked at Claire’s legs. Manny was right.
She grabbed the bottom hem of her pajama top and tugged it down, still trying to hold the bone out of Henry’s reach. The beagle had a good four-foot-high jump.
“Stop looking at my granddaughter’s legs, Carrera.”
“Did he find any old fractures?” Claire asked Mac between Henry’s leaps.
“Would you rather I focus on the fact that Claire isn’t wearing a bra?” Manny shot back at Harley.
Mac focused on the new objects of discussion.
“It is a human leg bone, right?” Claire crossed her arm over her chest, doing a very inefficient job of covering that lovely part of her anatomy.
“You should’ve seen the hooters I got up close and personal with last night.” Chester said, sidling up next to Manny. “I could’ve floated across the English Channel on those fun-bags.”
Mac felt laughter bubbling inside of his chest. Now that all the clowns were present, the circus could begin.
“Mac?” Claire pressed, curiosity burning in her brown eyes.
“You can’t float on bags of saline,” Manny said.
“Wanna bet?” Chester goaded.
“How big of bags?” Harley asked Chester.
Mac had a feeling that life with Claire would always be this chaotic. “He said you need to find the rest of the body.”
He felt all eyes turn in his direction.
“And how am I supposed to do that?” Claire asked.
He’d been trying to come up with an answer to that question all morning, an answer that didn’t interfere with his plans in the mines. But so far, only one came to mind: “With my help.”
Chapter Fifteen
Sighing in relief, Mac parked his truck in front of Ruby’s store. Behind the drooping crown of the old willow, the horizon glowed with the day’s last light.
Lately, he cringed every time he stuck the key in the ignition. No amount of what he’d come to think of as his pre-flight inspections eased the tension that tightened his shoulders after flying across Interstate 70 the other night.
Whoever wanted him to stay away from the mines must have noticed he was still poking around. How long until he received another not-so-subtle “No Trespassing” hint?
He grabbed his pack and headed around the side of the store. Bullfrogs croaked their nightly serenades down by the creek, sounding like a symphony of squeaky bed springs.
As he stepped through the back door, a wall of cigar smoke smacked him in the face. Coughing, he waved a path through the haze.
“So I told Fanny it’s only a heat rash,” Chester’s voice rose above Garth Brooks’s, who was crooning about having friends in low places. “But she still wouldn’t touch it.”
Mac grimaced. He didn’t blame Fanny.
“Howdy, Mac,” Ruby called from her seat at the card table. “There’s beer in the fridge and chips on the bar.”
Harley, garbed in his usual cigar and suspenders, card-playing attire, lounged directly across from her. Manny and Chester bracketed her on either side. Each of them had three cards left in their hands.
Food sounded good. Beer, even better. Mine dust still coated his throat.
“Where’s Jess?” Mac asked, grabbing a cold Corona from the fridge. It was too early for her to be in bed already.
“Upstairs,” Ruby said. “Probably plotting against me.”
Where was Claire? The question weighed on his tongue, but any answer from these jesters would be dealt with plenty of ribbing, and his ribs still hurt from this morning’s jabbing.
“Let’s see you try to take this, you lousy bastard,” Chester said to Harley, and flung an Ace of hearts on the table.
“Any trouble tonight?” Ruby asked Mac, her gaze piercing.
She’d made it clear at lunch that she wanted Mac to stop fooling around with the mines. The multiple attempts to deter him hadn’t gone unnoticed, but, like his aunt, obstinacy ran in Mac’s blood.
“Nope.”
“Trouble with what?” Harley asked around his cigar.
“With—” Ruby started.
“Coyotes.” Mac cut in, not wanting to cause alarm.
Harley eyed him for several seconds, then turned back to his cards and threw out a ten of hearts. “Thanks for dealing me such a shitty hand,” he told Chester.
Chester smirked back at him.
“Mac’s a lousy liar, worse than Claire.” Manny tossed a Queen of hearts on the pile.
“Did you finish with Two Jakes?” Ruby asked.
“Almost.” Mac wetted his whistle with a swig of Corona.
Last week, while gathering samples, the ones he’d exchanged for the bone yesterday when he visited Steve in Phoenix, he’d noticed the mine maps he had copied from the library were outdated. Several drifts and chambers near the main adit in Two Jakes weren’t shown, and he’d bet more sections of the mines weren’t mapped, either.
While he waited for feedback on the samples, he planned to fill his time with spelunking and mapping—in addition to figuring out why somebody was so anxious to keep him out of those mines.
Ruby tossed a King of clubs on top of the pile.
“You trumped my ace!” Chester shouted and banged his fist on the table. The cards bounced. “Damn, woman. I thought you said you weren’t any good at Bid Euchre.”
Ruby smiled. “Oops.”
Chuckling, Harley watched Ruby rake the pile toward her.
“Ah, mi amor.” Manny ran his finger down Ruby’s arm. “Have I told you how much I adore feisty redheads?”
Mac caught the glare Harley shot Manny a split-second before Harley masked it behind a tight smile. Blinking, Mac wondered if he’d imagined it.
“Harley, this one’s yours,” Ruby said, leading the next round with a ten of diamonds. She glanced up at Mac. “Claire was looking for you earlier.”
Mac swigged a mouthful of beer. Just the mention of Claire’s name made his gut flop. This had to stop.
Chester trumped Harley’s King of diamonds and pulled in the pile, grinning at Harley as he threw down his last card.
“She has more questions for you about that bone of hers,” Ruby added as she slammed her last card down on top of Chester’s with a victory cry.
“Damn it!” Chester scowled at her.
“Ha! She set you, you blustering jackass,” Harley said, smiling at Ruby. His blue eyes glittered with something more than triumph.
Mac turned back to his aunt. “Where is Claire?” If she was out hiking around those mines on her own in the dark, he was going to shackle her to his side.
“The Shaft.” Ruby shuffled the cards like a Vegas dealer. “She said something about needing to breathe some second-hand smoke. Apparently, this stuff,” Ruby gestured at the cloud of smoke hovering overhead, “isn’t strong enough for her lungs.”
“And you let her go alone?” The last time Mac had left Claire alone in the bar, she’d wound up in a wrestling match with Sophy.
“Of course not,” Harley answered. “Henry’s with her.”
* * *
“Word around town is that you want to talk to me about a bone,” Mac murmured, his voice low, velvety in Claire’s ear. His breath singed her neck as his lips brushed over her skin.
The Shaft’s steady roar of voices, laughter, and jukebox jingles dulled as blood flooded Claire’s extremities.
Mac’s warm, desert scent filled her, sending goose bumps rippling up her arms and making her tingle all over. The Poker Party arcade game she was in the midst of playing blurred as he wrapped his arm around her stomach and pulled her back against him.
Sweet Mary Lou! She reached for her bottle of Bud, needing something to douse the flames suddenly raging under her skin.
“Yes, we
ll, I ...” her words stuck in her throat when he nipped her earlobe. Claire closed her eyes, fighting to keep from jumping the guy right there in the bar’s backroom.
“We have an audience,” Mac whispered, pulling away, taking his fire and her beer with him.
Claire opened her eyes to find Sophy glaring at her from across the room.
Two pool tables and several cowboy hats bridged the distance between them, but the hatred radiating from the other woman had the air crackling. The heat coursing through Claire, thanks to Mac’s touch, tempered.
Mac leaned against the Poker Party game, sipping her Bud, looking delicious in his faded Levi’s and dark green button-up shirt. “You like to play strip poker with the ladies, huh?” He nodded toward the game’s video screen.
“It was this or shoot at Bambi’s mom and dad,” Claire answered, referring to the Big Buck Hunter game next to her. “Removing women’s clothing seemed more environmentally friendly.”
“Nice shirt.” Mac glanced down at her T-shirt. “I’ve always been fond of Daisy Duck, even more so now.” The hungry look in his hazel eyes made her mouth dry. “Where’s Henry?”
“Sleeping in Mabel’s backseat.”
“You want to talk here or outside?”
“Outside—out of earshot.” Claire grabbed her jean jacket from a nearby stool and slid her arms into the sleeves. “But no touching until I’m finished asking questions.”
He grinned, wicked, sexy. “Where’s the fun in that?”
Claire led the way, returning Sophy’s menacing glare as they passed by the tramp in her skin-tight Wranglers, white tank top, and pink cowboy boots.
In spite of her small show of bravado, Claire was happy to have Mac on her heels as she left the place.
Outside, the clean air burned her lungs. The Milky Way filled the sky with a pale band of speckled light, the half-moon dipping toward the horizon. Claire and Mac weaved through pickups and cars toward the shadows where Mabel sat, out of range of the orange nightlight. Mac had parked next to her.
While she checked on Henry, who was busy sawing logs like a veteran lumberjack, Mac lowered his tailgate. “Fire away.” He motioned for Claire to sit beside him.
She complied, keeping a couple of inches between them. “So, was your old roommate able to determine the age of the bone?”
“Not as precisely as you’d have liked, I’m sure. That’s why he’s sending a sample to his ex-girlfriend. She’ll do a chemical analysis of the bone and give a more precise age.”
“What did he say about it?”
“He said it looked ‘fresh’.”
“How fresh?”
“Less than a century.”
Claire frowned. “That’s not fresh.”
“It is if you’re used to dating samples that are at least several thousands of years old.”
“Oh, right. So how do we find the rest of the body?”
Mac shrugged, rubbing his chin, the rasping of whiskers cozy in the cool darkness. “Joe had a metal detector. I think it’s still in the tool shed. There’s a chance that whoever we’re looking for was carrying a piece of metal on him—a button or snap, a filling, or even some coins—when he died.”
“Henry could help, too; use that hound dog nose of his for something besides food for once,” Claire said. “We could take him to where he found the bone and have him help search the area.”
“Good idea.” Mac gently tugged on a tendril of her hair that had escaped her ponytail. “I’ve always had a soft spot for smart women.”
Smiling in the shadows, Claire asked, “How many smart women are we talking about here?”
He chuckled. “How about we start the hunt on Tuesday?”
“Why not tomorrow?”
“I’m busy.”
Doing what? She wanted to ask, but decided not to push it. “Tuesday, then,” she agreed.
But would finding the rest of the body save her grandma’s valley? At what cost? Ruby’s financial ruin? Claire wasn’t sure she could handle the weight of that on her shoulders.
She glanced at Mac and found him watching her, the black of night no shield for his magnetism. “Um,” she fought to net the butterflies flapping around in her chest and shucked her jacket to keep from sweating. “Did your buddy have anything else to say about the bone?”
“That you’re right—it’s a human femur, and based on its size, most likely from a male.” He laced his fingers with hers, scooting closer until their legs touched.
Claire gulped, the reins on her body’s reactions slipping. Too long without a man had turned her into a wobbly blob of Jell-O when faced with Mac’s sexual onslaught.
“Then he asked if you were single and available.”
“Really?” She peeked at him from under her eyelashes. “And what did you tell him?”
“That you were too smart for his worthless ass.”
“Oh,” Claire whispered, staring at his lips, leaning toward him. “Good answer.”
A squeal of female laughter cut through the night, severing the winch tugging her toward him. Claire turned, spotting Sophy climbing into a black Chevy pickup.
“Why does she lock her shed and not her house?” Claire asked the question that had bugged her since her visit to Sophy’s. And what was in that damned shed? Her curiosity escalated every time she ran into Sophy.
“She’s probably just storing more antiques in there,” Mac answered as the truck growled to life, spun out of the lot, and chirped its way onto the blacktop. “Maybe she forgot to lock up that day, and it was just a coincidence that we happened to be out and about, trespassing.”
Bullshit. “Why would she keep all of those expensive antiques closed up in that room? There has to be something illegal about the whole thing. Especially considering her attitude yesterday in the store.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I ran into her at Creekside Supply Company. She warned me off, threatening me with a 12-gauge shotgun.”
“You’re kidding.”
Claire shook her head, aware with every red and white blood cell in her body that he still held her hand in his. “Nope. When I said I was onto her about kidnapping Henry, she went a little crazy, getting all squinty-eyed and Medusa-like. Scared the crap out of me.”
“All because of a dog?” Mac’s question held disbelief.
“Exactly, which seemed a bit much. But back to the shed—what could be in there that would cause such a strong reaction from her?”
“What makes you certain it’s the shed? Maybe it has to do with the kidnapping. If you think back to the night Henry disappeared, he was up by the mine when you lost track of him. Then, later, I found boot prints by the mine, looking exactly like those where you found Henry’s tag. If those prints were Sophy’s, what was she doing in the mine that night?”
Mac pulled something from his back pocket.
“Probably something she didn’t want anyone else to know about,” Claire surmised. It didn’t take a smoking gun to make her suspicious of Sophy’s motives. “Maybe that’s why she took Henry. He’d tracked her once and she knew he could do it again, only with someone in tow.”
Mac squeezed her hand. “That would explain the beef jerky wrappers in both places. She lured him with food and used it to keep him busy while we looked for him in Socrates Pit. You’re pretty good at this detective stuff.”
“Thanks.” His compliment made her heart swell. Flattery would get him everywhere, including into her pants if she wasn’t careful.
“Okay,” Mac said, “so explain this.” He dropped a coin in her palm, the metal still warm from his touch.
She held it toward the light. The shadows hid the details on it. “It feels like a fifty-cent piece, but heavier.” She ran her thumb over the raised surface on both sides. “What is it?”
“A twenty-dollar, Double Eagle, Liberty gold coin. Part of the collection you knocked on the floor in Sophy’s spare room.”
“You took it from her?” That wasn’t Mac�
�s style.
“No. I found it in Socrates Pit while searching for Henry.”
“And you’re just now telling me about it?”
“When I found it, I barely knew you. Hell, I figured some old prospector lost it in there. I had no idea it was part of a set.”
“So, how did it get up there?” Claire had asked herself the same question several times already about the drawer knob she’d found in the Rattlesnake Ridge mine.
Mac shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe she had the whole collection up there at one point. As to why, I have no idea.”
“She could have stolen them from Joe and hidden them up there. According to Ruby, there was no love lost between them.” Claire chewed on her lips. “I need to search inside those mines, see what else I can find.”
“I don’t think so, Slugger. Not alone, anyway. Somebody is doing their damnedest to keep me away from Ruby’s mines right now. I don’t need you out there with a target on your back.”
“Maybe Sophy is the one sabotaging your pickup.” Claire had no qualms about pinning everything on the red-taloned bitch.
“Are you kidding? Have you taken a look at the woman? She has ‘High Maintenance’ stamped all over her. I doubt she’s ever seen a tool, let alone picked one up.” Mac slid off the tailgate and cozied up between Claire’s knees, running his hands over her thighs, leaving a smoldering trail in his wake. “Whoever messed with my pickup knows his way around a vehicle.”
“Who, then?” Claire rasped, her throat suddenly parched.
“I have a feeling folks from the mining company found something in those mines that I’ve missed. Before the signing deadline, I’m going to find whatever it is and make sure they pay Ruby the right amount for the claims.”
Which meant Claire had a week to figure out a way for Ruby to keep the mines and to save her grandma’s gravesite.
She needed to do more digging into Joe’s past. With all of the expensive antiques floating around this dust-bunny of a town, Joe had to have some kind of a nest egg tucked away somewhere.
Mac lifted her hands to his mouth, kissing each of her knuckles in turn before moving to the inside of her wrist.