He mustered enough energy to give a little snort. “I’d say something sarcastic, but your ironic tone beat me to it.”
“By now,” she told him as she poured another glass of water from a plastic pitcher, “infection from your wound may have spread to your bloodstream. That might explain your fever. If you’re not allergic to penicillin, take these antibiotics. I’ll give you two now and another two every few hours.”
“Yes, Doctor,” he quipped. “Or is it R.N.?”
“My aunt Janet’s the nurse. These are left over from a strep infection last month.”
He swallowed two along with the entire glass of water.
“What day is this?” he asked suddenly as he handed the glass back to her. Their hands brushed as she took it, and both of them seemed momentarily startled.
“Sunday,” she told him. “It’s about 2:00 p.m.”
“You have got to be kidding.” He groaned as he collapsed back onto the futon. “I don’t believe I wasted more than an entire day driving out in the boonies. Driving in circles, at that.”
“Why did you come back to the cabin?”
He ran his hand over his face as if in exasperation. “I figured after I dropped you that you’d tell the authorities I was headed for Billings. That was the last place I wanted to go until the heat wore off. So I came back to Mystery. With no place to go or hide, I found my way back to the cabin. It was my only salvation.”
“Roll over again,” she ordered. “I need to put a dressing on your wound.”
This time she had to help him. While she wrapped and taped the wound, he explained his aborted trip to Billings.
“You must have called in the cavalry on me right away,” he lamented.
“Excuse me, I was still a law-abiding citizen then. Hold still,” she added.
“They had a checkpoint set up before I got twenty miles. I shifted your Jeep into four-wheel and hit the slopes. Man, that thing walks up walls, doesn’t it?”
“I guess it does, now. Please stop wiggling, I can’t—”
“Well dammit, it hurts! Anyhow, I didn’t drive the whole time. I was too tired. I hid and slept for most of it. I followed whatever fire trails I could find, hit a couple dirt roads. God knows how I made it back to the cabin.”
“God knows,” she repeated ironically. “Just awful blessed, I guess. There, it’s bandaged. I put ointment on the dressing so it won’t stick. You can pull your trousers up now.”
“Thanks. You’re a good nurse—nice hands,” he observed as he wiggled his pants over his hips.
“I shall treasure that compliment in the locket of my heart.” Her tone altered, became more serious as she added, “To whom shall I send the bill—Roger Ulrick or Todd Mumford?”
His eyelids had begun to ease shut. Now they snapped wide open. He even tried to sit up, but abandoned the effort.
“You spoke with them?” he demanded.
“Spoke? It wasn’t exactly a coffeeklatch. They woke me up on Saturday morning in my motel room.”
She knew that even if she was wrong about Loudon, even if he was guilty, it wouldn’t matter if she told him what the D.A. and the FBI agent had asked her. He listened carefully, especially when she mentioned Ulrick’s emphasis on what it was that Loudon needed to get in Billings.
“Since those two interrogated me,” she concluded, “someone has been following me. Someone in a gray sedan. I gave him the slip today just before I found you. Whoever it is could be watching my house right now.”
He remained silent for some time after she quit speaking, letting all this soak in, his handsome, beard-scruffed features set rigid as granite.
“Mumford,” he finally told her, “is on the up-and-up. Straight-arrow and by the book. The quiet type who sees more than most people realize. I’ll vouch for him. But Ulrick?”
He paused, his cracked lips twitching into a parody of a grin. “Hearing he’s in the mix worries me. He’s way over his head in debt. First he took a tough hit on the foreign stock markets. Then he went through a messy divorce that’s still being litigated. He’s got some serious debt issues, or that’s the buzz around the office water cooler, anyway.”
“Serious debts? You mean, serious enough that he could be involved in these kickbacks you’ve been investigating?”
Loudon nodded. “Sure. He was on my list to check out—the list they claim I compiled as bribery targets.”
“The news hasn’t mentioned that, I don’t think.”
“TV keeps it simple. But I knew it had to go further than just Jeremy Schrader and Brandon Whitaker. I can see Ulrick getting hungry for a little percentage, then, when the scam goes public, taking…extraordinary steps to cover up his dirt.”
“What would be ‘extraordinary steps’?” she asked.
He stared at her. His only words were, “Cody Anders would know.”
Quinn fell back against the futon while Constance left for the kitchen with the used gauze and cotton. A few moments later he began thinking. None of it settled well with him.
They would toss his apartment in Billings. And his office. That was all right, let them. They wouldn’t find it. He learned from the best. Always hide your hole card.
After all, his evidence boiled down to one computer disk full of geometric accusations and statistical innuendos. The mathematical equivalent, in law enforcement, of genetic match-ups. Probability science applied to routine phone and financial records to establish a pattern of money-laundering by Schrader and Whitaker—and others, if only he could have found time to prove it. Others like Ulrick and perhaps even Dolph Merriday.
He just hoped his evidence wasn’t too high-tech and “academic” for the court system. It lacked the drama of a tearful confession or a crime caught on video.
But once it sank in, it would surely shift the prosecutor’s focus away from him and onto them. With luck, the courts would use his data to subpoena a few key records. That additional data, in turn, could provide scientifically impressive evidence to trump their hearsay and planted evidence against him.
He started, realizing she’d returned from the kitchen. Now she stared down at him with those witchy amber eyes this time filled with inquiry, not hostility.
“What the hell am I doing?” she whispered as if for her ears alone.
“It’s dangerous enough that you’re helping me. But it’s absolutely reckless for me to be telling you what it is they want. I’ve already said too much.”
“Now you’re stricken with conscience?” The warmth of indignation rose in her cheeks. “You tell a lie to lure me into the mountains. You pull a gun out on me—”
“I object. I showed you the gun,” he corrected her. “It was never ‘on’ you. Technically, you know, it’s called ‘brandishing’ a weapon as opposed to a direct threat of force.”
“Listen to the lawyer crank it up,” she mocked him, gathering her medical and cleaning supplies. “No doubt you could lay a feather on a rock and prove it’s a sofa, too. But I won’t sleep on it. You know, you also stole my Jeep. And now, all of a sudden, you’re afraid to get ‘reckless’ with me? Don’t insult my intelligence, Mr. Quinn. I liked you better when you were simply an honest ruffian.”
“If you really feel that way,” he replied quietly, avoiding her angry eyes, “then why not just turn me in? There’s no gun on you now, is there?”
“Maybe I will,” she fired back over her shoulder as she headed toward the kitchen door.
“Go ahead. I’m damned if I’m begging your pity. Tell them I forced you again. Say I raped you, I won’t deny it. You’ll get out of this clean. If you’re awfully lucky, that is.”
She turned, one hand on the doorknob. “What do you mean, if I’m lucky?”
He was clearly tiring again, and it cost him an obvious effort to be heard across the width of the garage.
“I mean that, like it or not, it appears Ulrick either doesn’t believe, or is at least suspicious of, the answers you gave him in your motel room.”
�
�Maybe he’s given up on me,” she pointed out. “Nobody’s been here or even called.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Even if they do manage to kill me before I can sing, will someone start worrying about you? You met Ulrick—I’m telling you that guy’s a nutcase. Being prosecutor types, these guys are good at covering their butts. It wouldn’t take much, in rugged country like this, to have a terrible ‘accident’ while driving a steep mountain road.”
Her expression froze, as if a chill slid down the bumps of her spine.
“You’re just saying that so I won’t turn you in,” she accused.
“Baloney, and you know it. This whole situation has gone way beyond the usual paint-by-numbers law. I don’t mean just your helping me—think about Roger Ulrick’s behavior when he interrogated you. Some people think the guy’s just a squirrel. I think he’s another type of rodent altogether.”
She did think about Ulrick, and she had to agree with Quinn’s assessment of him. She also thought about her distinct impression regarding Dolph Merriday’s radio and TV remarks—how they seemed designed to hang the no-good label on Loudon, emphasizing his supposedly dangerous criminal nature.
“Why don’t you get some rest?” she finally said, her tone exasperated. “I’m not turning you in. I’m just going to fix you something to eat. I happen to think you’re either telling all the truth or most of it. I…I believe you’re the victim here, although your stubborn nature and bluntness have no doubt contributed to your troubles. I wouldn’t call you a master of diplomacy.”
“Fair enough,” he replied, starting to lose the fight to stay alert. “But I mean it when I say you have to quit worrying solely about my motivations. Until this thing changes dramatically, I advise you to consider your own safety first.”
It was on her lips to retort: “That’s rich, coming from you.” After all, he was the reason for this horrible mess that had entangled her like a giant net.
Unless he was telling the truth, she reminded herself, as you profess to believe. In which case he was a victim of the crime, not the author of it.
She felt herself relenting a bit, and for just a few moments the humor of her dilemma struck her.
“Do you realize,” she asked him, “that I’m in more danger if you’re really the decent man I hope you are?”
“Cross your fingers,” he barely managed, half asleep already. “Maybe I’ll turn out to be a liar yet.”
No thank you, she told him silently as she headed inside for more blankets. I’d prefer the danger to the lies.
“Morning, Cas,” Hazel greeted her foreman from a cell phone. “Did I wake you up?”
“Would it matter if you did?” grumbled Caswell Snyder. “You caught me in my skivvies, boss, but I’m wide awake.”
“I don’t wonder,” Hazel said, chuckling. “I can hear the bawling over the phone—you’ve got the yearling heifers separated, haven’t you?”
“All ready for the alley,” Cas confirmed. “You want to come on up and supervise?”
Hazel considered for a moment. Usually this waited until after the spring melt. But taking advantage of the late-season grass, the herds had been driven to the outlying summer pastures, up on the lower mountain slopes. That way there’d be grass left down in the valley when the cattle returned to the home range.
For the next couple days the yearling heifers would be worked through narrow corrals while expert eyes decided which to keep for breeding and which to sell to the feedlots. Usually she assisted Cas. This amounted to the two of them praising their own picks while insulting—good-naturedly but vigorously—the other guy’s obvious bad judgment.
This particular morning, however, Hazel was working on a project even dearer to her than selecting the Lazy M’s breedlines. She was helping to form Mystery Valley’s, too, or so she hoped.
“You and Charlie take care of it,” she decided, meaning the Lazy M’s top hand, Charlie Bursons. “Neither one of you tinhorns knows an Aberdeen Angus from a government mule. But I’ve got mischief closer to home to tend to.”
“Good,” Cas fired back. “We can cuss and spit better without a woman around.”
“Why, Cas, there’s cussing every time I come up to line camp.”
“Huh. That’s just Sunday cussin’ you hear. We shame the devil when you ain’t around.”
“I leave you to your conscience then,” Hazel signed off, retracting the phone’s short antenna and dropping the unit into the big front pocket of her sweater. She stood in the doorway that led from her kitchen to the side yard and the mostly empty corrals beyond. She had already been wide awake when the birds began celebrating sunup.
At the moment, however, her attention was focused on a radio clock sitting next to the toaster oven on her S-shaped kitchen counter.
“—vehicle Loudon had allegedly stolen was found abandoned at the same remote mountain cabin where he first allegedly commandeered it and the vehicle’s owner. Tire tracks indicate he may have been picked up by an accomplice.” The newscaster reported smoothly in a pleasant baritone voice. “Authorities report no progress in the search for the fugitive assistant U.S. attorney. However, the search effort has intensified in the mountains surrounding Mystery Valley. According to one federal spokesman, agents equipped with starlight goggles are even scouring the rugged terrain after dark, hoping to locate the fugitive’s infrared heat images….”
“That’s what you say,” Hazel remarked to the unseen newscaster before she moved back inside the house to switch off the radio.
She buttoned her cotton sweater as she went outside into the early-morning chill. The sun was still only a ruddy promise in the east, and nighttime mist lingered over the surrounding pastures. It had gotten cold enough, last night, to lightly frost the grass.
A day so fresh, she told herself, you just wanted to fill your lungs with it over and over, and thank the Creator for the chance.
Nonetheless, her thoughts lingered on the news report she’d just heard. Like anyone else, she knew only what the law and the media mavens let her hear. But she also sensed another slant to this Quinn Loudon story.
Partly that was because of Connie’s manner. The handsome fugitive with the football shoulders was sure giving somebody fits…Tire tracks indicate an accomplice. The line irked Hazel like an unseen nettle.
The exact part the young Realtor had played in the still unfolding drama was still unknown. But Hazel knew that girl was up to something, all right. Connie had been too quiet lately, for one thing.
And other people were being too quiet about Connie. Deliberately quiet.
Whatever she was up to, it smelled like it involved Quinn Loudon. And it was something to which once-burned, twice-shy Connie was having to respond to with her heart—a dicey proposition, at best.
Hazel knew full well what a risk love could be: an auto accident had killed the only man she ever gave her heart to. It took him away less than a year after their wedding and before their union produced a child.
For her, there had been no option but to honor her vows forever. Her passion had been violent and enduring. Even to this day she could remember how his words were rough and determined when he’d made his proposal: he’d told her she was a McCallum before she married him and she would be one afterward too, and that he didn’t want some namby-pamby female hooking her claws into him, taking on his name and not standing on her own. She was strong and independent in her own right, and that’s why he loved her, and wanted her to be his wife.
So she, Hazel McCallum, had been forced to become even more strong and independent. Because her only love had died. Because she’d fallen hopelessly and eternally in love with the only man to prove her match.
But for all the grief of that unutterable loss, Hazel still believed that some were meant to take the risk. She suspected Connie was taking it now—or about to, although she might not fully realize that yet.
And perhaps she was doomed to repeat the same mistake she made with Doug.
Some people never learn,
bless their oft-broken hearts. But at least Connie was rolling the dice, taking her big chance….
And once in a while, Hazel reminded herself, a gamble pays off big.
She herself was gambling on Mystery, for example, at a time when the “nattering nabobs of negativism” swore the little community was doomed to lose its unique frontier character. Doomed to become one more impersonal strip-mall town surrounded by a fast-food jungle.
Hazel’s bright, vital eyes rose to the dusky mountain peaks on her right, and she smiled.
No, she had not forgotten the snows of yesteryear—nor the fiery passions, either. But the world belonged to the living, and her eye was fixed firmly on the future.
Mystery, her Mystery, not some anonymous developer’s, would survive if those who lived here loved this town enough to keep it alive. The way Connie Adams loved it, for one.
Hazel recalled one of her favorite descriptions of God: subtle but not malicious.
She thought—with all due humility, of course—how that same description applied rather nicely to her, too.
Unfortunately, her heart told her Connie faced a dilemma that subtlety alone would not resolve. She sensed it—that girl’s mettle was about to be tested, and tested hard.
Chapter 8
Despite brief rallying periods, Quinn Loudon battled his fever throughout the long night. Tormented by guilt for not calling a doctor, Constance threw on some warm clothing and hovered over the sick man for most of the night. Exhaustion finally claimed her around 2:00 a.m., and she fell into her bed moments after undressing.
She woke at the first rays of sunlight slanting through the bedroom window. Seven o’clock, according to the alarm clock on her nightstand. For a few blessed moments she automatically geared up for her Monday morning back-to-the-office routine.
Then, in a rush of troubling memories and images, she remembered the fugitive hidden in her garage.
“Quinn Loudon,” she said out loud to the silent bedroom. She switched on the radio on her nightstand, but she’d just missed the state news.
The Lawman Meets His Bride Page 9