by Lisa Jackson
“ ‘Bout time,” she said through the open window. Her hair was the color of straw and cut in shaggy layers round her face, but it was shiny and soft-looking, no hint of a dark root showing, and she watched him through a fringe of bangs.
“Hey—the government don’t move fast. How’re ya, Mary Beth?”
“Tired.”
“You look good.”
A ghost of a smile crossed apricot-tinged lips as she tucked her cigarette into the comer of her mouth. “Wish I could say the same for you.”
He threw his duffel bag onto the backseat that was littered with paper wrappers from McDonald’s and Taco Bell. A few used packets of hot sauce lay forgotten, the remnants of red goop congealing on the tufted vinyl where half-a-dozen rock-hard French fries were scattered.
“Where’re the kids?” he asked, sliding onto the bench seat next to her.
“With their dads.”
“Didn’t think your exes were around much.”
“They’re not.” She yanked the wagon into gear. “I guess I just got lucky.” Smoke escaped from her nostrils as she gunned the accelerator.
In a spray of gravel, they were off.
Ross rolled down his window, felt the air rush through the interior and felt ten years of vengeance burn through his brain. He’d fed his hatred each and every day, vowing retribution, and now his time had come. Names whirled through his head, the names of those he’d get even with. Ruby Dee, Caleb Swaggart, Shelby Cole, the Judge, Nevada Smith. Especially Smith.
Cracking his knuckles, Ross stared through the dusty, bug-spattered windshield and studied the vast Texas countryside with new eyes.
The sumacs and prickly pear he’d once taken for granted seemed to display a new-found beauty. The rolling hills of dry range grass were scaled by sheep and goats he’d once ignored, and the sky—Christ, the sky went on forever. His throat threatened to close and he gritted his back teeth together. No reason to get maudlin and start blubbering like a baby. He was a free man and he’d never live again behind concrete walls topped with barbed wire and guarded by silent, humorless men wearing reflective glasses and toting rifles they itched to use. No, sir.
“Where to?” Mary Beth asked as they sped along the highway and crossed the slow-moving Guadalupe River.
“Bad Luck.”
Mary Beth slid him a look from the corner of her eye. “Don’t you think you should start over somewhere else?”
“Nope.”
“Where you goin’ to live?”
“In the folks’ place.”
She shook her head and her fingers gripped the wheel as if she planned to rip it from the steering column. “Hell, Ross, what’s there? Grandpa’s old cabin has just about fallen down. What’s left is rotten and filled with termites.”
“What about the trailer?”
She sighed. “The single-wide’s still there, and I kicked out the renters, like you asked, but it’s a pigsty, believe me.”
“Couldn’t be any worse than where I been.” But Ross glanced into the backseat. His sister’s standards on cleanliness weren’t all that high. In fact, if what they said about cleanliness and godliness were true, it seemed Mary Beth might not have much of a chance of gettin’ through the Pearly Gates when the Lord called her home. Not that Ross cared much. “Gotta start somewhere,” he said as she squashed her smoke in an ashtray already overflowing with lipstick-stained cigarette butts.
“I guess. But there’s a lot of bad blood back there.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder and pretended that she wasn’t watching for a reaction. “Shelby Cole’s back in town.”
Ross couldn’t swallow the smile of satisfaction that crept from one side of his mouth to the other. Shelby? In Bad Luck? Well, well, things were looking up. “Is that right? Go figure.”
“Don’t suppose you had anything to do with it.”
“You forget where I’ve been.”
“Well, you’d best stay away from her,” she warned, then twisted on the knob of the radio, increasing the volume as a song he’d never heard before, some down-and-out country-and-western lament by a woman with a clear voice, filled the interior. Mary Beth sang along with the lyrics and she wasn’t all that bad—a little flat maybe, but Ross didn’t care.
But then he didn’t care about much. Except getting even.
Leaning back in the seat, Ross lapsed into silence as they flew down the highway, letting memories of faces from the past—especially Shelby Cole’s fresh face—surface. Blue, wide-eyed innocence, pert little nose, and a few freckles on a perfect oval of a face. Yep, Shelby was somethin’. He’d have to look her up. They had some unfinished business.
Mary Beth eased up on the accelerator only when they sped through half-a-dozen small towns on their way to Bad Luck. Yep, things were going to be better.
She shook another cigarette from the pack lying on the seat between them and punched in the lighter. He helped himself to one of her Marlboro Lights. “So where’re you plannin’ to get a job?”
Ross twisted the rearview mirror in his direction and rubbed the stubble on his cheeks. He’d once been a handsome man, but the years behind bars hadn’t been kind. Deep grooves etched his forehead and the corners of his eyes. He had a few scars from more than one fistfight, a knife wound in his right thigh and if he moved his right arm just so, he could still feel a knot and tight little pain where Nevada Smith had broken his ribs in their last bout.
The lighter clicked and they each lit up. Smoke laced with nicotine filled his lungs. “Don’t suppose you have anything to drink on ya?” he asked. “Hell, it’s been a long time since I had a shot of whiskey or tequila or even a damned beer.”
“Stay away from liquor, okay?” Mary Beth turned the mirror back so she could look into it. “Keep your nose clean, Ross. I don’t intend to make a career out of pickin’ you up from jail.”
“You won’t,” he said fervently, feeling himself key up a bit as they crossed the river that was barely more than a creek this time of year, then sped by the cemetery east of town. Headstones, some beginning to crumble, stood like odd-shaped sentinels beneath a few scattered shade trees. Ross wondered how many new souls had been interned since old Ramón Estevan met his maker. He didn’t bother to ask.
Bad Luck was just over the next rise.
Taking a final drag on her filter tip, Mary Beth glanced in the rearview mirror. “Oh, shit.”
“What?”
“Looks like you already attracted your share of attention. It’s the cops.”
“Damn it all!” He twisted in the seat and spied a county cruiser, lights flashing, behind them. “I ain’t goin’ back, Mary Beth. No matter what, I ain’t goin’ back. They’d have to kill me first!” Adrenalin fired his blood. His heart went wild, beating furiously.
“Just hold on!” She steered the wagon over to the shoulder and the cop’s car, lights still flashing like the goddamned Fourth of July, followed them.
“What the hell did you do?”
“Nothin’, okay? I did nothin’ wrong!” she insisted. “Oh, crap, it’s Shep Marson.”
Ross’s stomach turned instantly sour. He glanced through the grimy back window and saw a face that was etched in his memory. Shep’s features were grim, shaded by the brim of his hat, and a little jowlier than Ross remembered. “What’s he want?”
“We’re about to find out.” She squashed her cigarette into the tray, fluffed her hair with nervous fingers, then stuck her head out the window and called, “What’s up, Shep?”
Ross heard the crunch of boots on gravel. Sweat prickled his scalp and ran down the back of his neck and he wished to God he had a shotgun in the backseat. He’d blow Marson, his badge and cocky, self-righteous attitude five miles south of hell.
Damn it, no! He couldn’t think like that. A dull roar swelled in his brain. His palms began to sweat and itch. Hold tight. Just play it cool.Through clenched teeth, he managed to take a drag.
A shadow passed over Mary Beth’s face, and Ross trained his ey
es on the open driver’s-side window. All he saw was the uniform—a torso covered with a tired-looking and stained county-issued shirt.
“Do you know your tags are expired?” Shep asked over the thunder in Ross’s ears. The deputy leaned down so that his face was framed by the window, the brim of his hat nearly brushing Mary Beth’s cheek.
“No—I mean, I just haven’t gotten around to—” Mary Beth shrugged and Ross wanted to strangle her. What was she thinking, picking him up in a car with expired license plates? Shit, was she a moron?
“Well, now, I just thought I’d give you a verbal warnin’ this time,” Shep said, and he looked past Mary Beth to her passenger. The weight of his gaze behind those damned reflective sunglasses was almost more than Ross could bear. Almost. “Well, look who you’ve got with you.” With a friendly nod, he said, “I’d like to say it’s good to see you again, McCallum, but we both know that it’d be a lie.”
Ross didn’t respond.
“I don’t want no trouble from you,” Shep said. “This ain’t just a warnin’ to your sister, you understand.” His smile was as tight as his ass. “You. McCallum. You’re walkin’ a thin line, already, son. This here’s my county.”
“I remember,” Ross ground out.
“Good. That’s good. Don’t you go forgettin’.” Shep tipped the brim of his hat at Ross’s sister. “And you, Mary Beth, you take care of them tags.”
“I will,” she said sweetly as he sauntered back to his cruiser. She slapped the old Ford into drive and waited for a truck filled with Mexicans in the cab and piled high with hay to swoosh past. As she gunned the engine, she grumbled, “It’s already startin‘, Ross.” Her face was pale beneath her tan, and her lips drew into a line of disapproval. “Goddamn it, it’s already startin’.”
Yep, he thought, tossing the butt of his cigarette out the window.
And he couldn’t wait.
Shelby snapped off her laptop computer. Curled into a striped chair that was tucked between the window and the bed in her room, she’d been on-line for hours, searching websites that promised to find missing people, posting inquiries on message boards, wracking her brain in her efforts to locate Dr. Ned Charles Pritchart. Her back hurt, her neck ached and her head pounded. Frustration was fast becoming her closest companion.
And then there was Nevada. His image kept floating in and out of her mind, bothering her like a pesky insect that wouldn’t go away. The worst of it was, she still found him attractive—in an earthy, Texan kind of way. Though she’d told herself time and time again that soon she’d need to settle down, that she wasn’t getting any younger, that she needed a rock-steady man who worked nine to five or even longer, a businessman with an easy smile but a hard edge, one who wanted children, a family, a house in the suburbs of Seattle ... certainly not some broken-down cowboy who had walked on both sides of the law.
Just because they’d been lovers, had a child ... and he was as sexy as all get out. “Stop it,” she growled, stretching her legs onto the ottoman. She had work to do. She wasn’t about to be distracted. Not by anyone. Including Elizabeth’s damnably sexy father.
The trouble was, she was no closer to finding her daughter this afternoon than she had been when she’d first gotten the envelope two days earlier. “Get a grip, it’s going to take time,” she said to the pale ghost of her reflection in her bedroom window. Yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that time was running out. She’d already missed nine years of her daughter’s life; how much more could she risk?
She considered hiring an on-line private investigator, but didn’t know which of the dozens listed would be reliable. As for her own efforts, she’d managed to locate a handful of Dr. Pritcharts flung far across the United States—none of whom had turned out to be the Ned Pritchart who had delivered her baby.
He could have hidden himself anywhere. Europe. South America. Or he could be dead.
Don’t think that way.
She glanced down to the backyard and the shimmering aquamarine water of the pool. Inviting. Cool. She hadn’t brought a swimming suit with her, but she could probably scrounge up something she’d left here years ago.
She was on her way to the bureau when she heard her father’s car roll into the drive. A glance at her watch told her it was after three. A busy man, the Judge. He’d come in late last night and hadn’t bothered to tap on her door as she’d expected, though, tossing and turning, she’d heard him arrive. He was gone again at the crack of dawn.
Shelby had been relieved not to have to deal with him, but she couldn’t put it off forever, nor did she want to. She was back in Bad Luck with a purpose, and her father was keeping secrets from her.
Sliding into a pair of sandals, she scooped a rubber band from the bureau, snapped her hair into a haphazard bun and took the back stairs to the kitchen.
“Niña.”Lydia, determined to fatten her up, had a tray of fruit, cheese and crackers sitting on the center island. “I was just fixing your father a drink.” She smiled widely, showing off a bit of gold edging one front tooth. “What would you like?”
“I’ll get a glass of iced tea,” Shelby said, her sandals slapping as she crossed the terra-cotta tile of the floor to the refrigerator.
“Let me slice you a lemon—”
“Thanks, Lydia, really. I appreciate it. But I can do it myself.” Much as she loved the woman who had raised her from the time of her mother’s death, Shelby couldn’t stomach the thought of Lydia doting on her, as if she were a helpless child—or worse yet, the pampered, princess-daughter of a rich man. She’d been independent too long, lived alone and was used to taking care of herself. Ignoring the wounded look in Lydia’s eyes, she tossed a handful of ice cubes into a tall glass, poured tea from a chilled pitcher and sliced her own wedge of lemon before following Lydia onto the back verandah, where her father was already sipping a martini.
“So you decided to stay,” he said, obviously pleased, as she took a chair on the opposite side of the glass-topped table and the paddle fans that whirred overhead.
“I thought it would be easier to talk to you.” She swirled her drink.
Lydia, grumbling about the gardener, pinched off a couple of wilted petals of the petunias overflowing from the huge pots standing near the back door, then hurried into the kitchen as a timer buzzed loudly.
“I thought you didn’t want to talk to me.”
“I didn’t.” She took a sip from her glass. It was lots stronger and clearer than the cloudy liquid Nevada had passed off as tea yesterday. “I changed my mind.” She stared at him over the rim of her glass as she took another bracing swallow. Never a shy child, she was nonetheless intimidated by her father. Some things didn’t change over the years. “I hope you can help me.”
“I’ll give it my best shot.” Plucking a plastic toothpick from his drink, he sucked off one of the olives.
“Good. Then you need to tell me about Elizabeth.” She was calmer this afternoon, though no less determined.
“I don’t know anything about your child.”
“Don’t lie to me, Dad. I’ll go to the police.”
He chewed on the olive, then swallowed. “With what? A picture of a kid who looks like you? An anonymous note?”
“Yes.”
“You’d be opening a can of worms.”
“Already opened.”
He shook his head from one side to the other. “There will be lots of questions asked. Some of ’em you won’t like.”
“I’m not worried. Get this, Judge. I’m not a scared, confused little girl of seventeen who was ashamed that she was pregnant and not married. Not anymore.”
“This is a small town.”
“Amen.”
“It’s not like the city, where you can hide.”
“I’m not hiding, Judge, and I want the truth. You know what happened the night I had the baby. You had to have orchestrated it. No one, including Doc Pritchart or anyone else in the hospital, would have had the guts to pull this off alone. You had to ha
ve bribed them or coerced them somehow.”
“Bribery and coercion,” he said. “Tough accusations.”
She wasn’t going to be derailed. “Look, either you tell me what you know and we save a whole lotta time, or I keep digging on my own and any skeleton that happens to pop out of the Cole family closet will be out in the world for everyone to see.”
“You might think twice about that.”
“I have—and three times, and four and probably a hundred.”
He bit off another olive. “Heard you were with Nevada Smith yesterday.”
“I ran into him on the street.”
Graying, bushy eyebrows rose skeptically. “Fancy that, the first person you meet is the one you should avoid.”
“The father of my child.”
“Maybe.”
She felt her skin flush scarlet as she watched butterflies and bees flit from one overflowing pot of flowers to the next.
“There’s the rub, Shelby-girl. What if the kid isn’t Smith’s? As bad as that would be, it could be worse, y’know.”
She stood slowly and leaned over the table. She couldn‘t, wouldn’t let her father bully her. “The point is that the child is mine. That’s really all that matters. That’s why I’m back here. Now, you have a choice. Either you want to help me or you don’t, but either way I’m going to find my daughter.”
“And if you do?” The third olive slid easily into his mouth, and he stared at her with the same determined gaze that he’d leveled at many a recalcitrant witness from his position on the bench. “If the girl is alive, if she’s yours and if you find her, what then? Are you going to rip her away from the parents she’s known for nine years? Tear her away from a mother, father and siblings, all so you can rest easy? Is that what would be best for her?” He washed the olive down with a long sip from his glass and Shelby felt sick inside. “Or is it what’s best for you?” The very doubts he’d voiced had plagued her from the minute she’d opened the envelope from San Antonio.