High Desert Hideaway

by Jenna Night

  Lily started to feel as if the wintry air brushing the surface of her skin had sunk down into her bones.

  “It’s too dangerous for you to go into town alone,” Nate said. “So I’m going with you.”

  SIX

  “I’ll see you again soon, girls.” Lily stood in Penny’s living room and held the mini dachshunds, Abby and Beatrice, in her arms. She gave each one a light squeeze and a kiss on the head. Beatrice squirmed and tried to return the kiss while Abby gave Lily the stoic look of a dog who’d been betrayed.

  “I will see you soon,” she repeated to Abby before setting both dogs on the ground. Beatrice ran over to Lily’s mom, who claimed she was feeling better even though she was still coughing as badly as she had been last night. Abby remained by Lily’s feet and stared at Nate as if she thought he might steal the kibble.

  They’d left Lily’s car parked on a side street near the sheriff’s department rather than taking it back to the house, where someone might be watching for Lily. Nate had insisted on driving it, just to be safe. Lily had driven his truck. After they’d dropped off the car, Lily had promised Nate she’d keep the visit with her mom short. They’d already been there fifteen minutes, so she hugged Kate and Penny, reassured them, said goodbye and headed for the front door. “I’ll phone you in the morning,” she called out before yanking the door open.

  “Wait.” Nate’s large hand grabbed her upper arm and held her in place. He stepped around her onto the porch and looked up and down the street. “Okay, let’s go.”

  In the truck, Lily gave him directions to Cozy Kitchen Caterers. She worked there several hours a week making sandwiches and baked goods. She had the most fun at that job and she really wanted to keep it.

  “Have you been able to remember anything more about what you overheard?” Nate asked after they’d driven for a while. They stopped at a light and he glanced over at her. She could tell by his eyes that he was back in full cop mode. She wondered if it was even a conscious decision. Maybe when you grew up like he did you learned to always weigh and measure what people said and never assume they were telling you the truth.

  “I heard the random words I already told you about. They were enough to alarm me, but not specific enough to get anybody busted for anything.” If those two idiots had any sense, they would have claimed they were just talking about a movie. She would have believed them. “I definitely didn’t hear anything worth going through all this trouble to try and kill me.”

  She paused and cleared her throat. People were trying to kill her. She could make it all seem matter-of-fact when she thought about it, but saying it aloud made her feel shaky and her voice wavered. “You already have one of the guys in custody. Can’t you learn what you need to know by checking his background?”

  “That probably won’t be enough.” They stopped at a traffic light and waited until it turned green. “What about your former fiancé? Could all of this be some sort of elaborate setup? An attempt at revenge?”

  Lily winced just thinking about Kevin and all the stupid decisions she’d made from the first day she’d met him. He was a jerk, but he wasn’t a killer. And the foolish decisions had been completely her own. “Now you’re being ridiculous.”

  “Just checking every angle. Tell me about him.”

  “My former fiancé is not a criminal,” she said. “He’s an assistant city planner for a small town near Phoenix. And remember, he dumped me. Not the other way around.” And enough water had passed under the bridge for her to be truly grateful about that. She hadn’t realized that until right this minute.

  Nate glanced at the cross streets as he drove. “I don’t like staying in town. I’d rather get you back to the ranch right now.”

  Lily sighed. He didn’t get it. He thought she was foolish worrying about a couple of meaningless, low-paying jobs. It was about the money, but it wasn’t just about the money. “My dad died when I was a kid, like yours did. Only my dad wasn’t a military man. He was a businessman and he had a stroke.”

  She glanced at Nate for a reaction. He was looking ahead through the window, waiting for her to say whatever she had to say at her own pace.

  “Anyway, my mom worked hard for years. I worked hard in school. I wanted to go to college, get a degree and be able to take care of my mom financially.”

  “So that’s why you were so brainy.” He had a slight smile on his lips.

  “Hardly brainy. But I did the best I could. I didn’t win much in the way of scholarship money so I worked for a while after high school, saved my money, went to community college and finally went away to the university.”

  She’d had such a good, sharp, focused plan when she’d left town.

  “Bottom line,” she said briskly. “I’m broke, back home and a burden to my mom. I can’t let that go on. I have to have money coming in. I won’t have my mom paying my way when I should be taking care of her.” And she wouldn’t stop the fight to regain her self-respect.

  He sighed. “When we get to your workplaces we’ll make it fast. We go in, you talk and we get out. Five minutes maximum, each stop.”

  “Deal.”

  “And while we’re driving around, tell me again what you overheard. I know you’re sick of rehashing it, but sometimes people remember a small detail that’s important.”

  “All right.” Lily made herself focus on those frightening moments that had set off the terrifying chain reaction of events. Her heart rate sped up as she remembered walking through the office and hearing the voices. “Early Wednesday. They were saying something about ‘early Wednesday.’”

  “Wednesday?” Nate asked. “Tomorrow? What about it and how early?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know.” She’d just now remembered hearing those words.

  Nate pulled to the side of the road and made a quick call to Sheriff Wolfsinger. Lily could hear their conversation. The end result was that Wolfsinger would have some deputies watch Torrent Trucking starting tonight.

  “You think Bryan Torrent might be involved in the truck hijackings?” Lily asked after Nate disconnected.

  “He claims to be a hands-off owner and that matches what you’ve seen. Maybe someone else is using his facilities and he doesn’t know about it.”

  They reached the catering company and Lily’s boss, horrified to hear what had happened to her, was very understanding about Lily’s need to take a few days off. As they left, Lily felt her spirits rise. Maybe things really would be okay. “It’s no coincidence that my bosses all started their own businesses,” she told Nate as they got back into his truck. “I chose the jobs for that reason. I hope to learn something from them.”

  “You want to open your own business?”

  “Maybe. My mom worked a collection of odd jobs for years, some of them as an independent saleswoman. I felt bad that she had to work so hard, but when I stop to think about it I realize she always seemed happy.” Lily’s plan to climb the corporate ladder had crashed and burned when she’d flunked out of college. She’d needed a new plan and opening her own business one day seemed to be a good option.

  It was a short drive to Ruby’s Plant and Pottery Shop. Perched on a steep hill just a few yards back from one of Copper Mesa’s main roads, the front of the building was a glass-wrapped showroom.

  They went inside and Lily found Ruby.

  “If someone had pointed a gun at me last night, I’d be at home hiding under my bed right this very minute.” Ruby patted Lily’s shoulder. “You come back to work when you’re ready.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  The door opened and Ruby excused herself to help the arriving customer.

  “While we’re here I want get a thank-you gift for Bud and Ellen.”

  Nate pointedly looked at his watch.

  Ruby’s husband, Scott, had been hovering nearby while Lily ta
lked to Ruby. “We’ve got some pretty cool stuff that’s just arrived,” he said. “Let me show you.”

  He led her toward a side door. Behind her, Lily heard Nate answer his phone.

  “Look,” Scott said when they got outside. He pointed down. “Garden stepping stones shaped like paw prints. I’ve put some down on the grass here to show how they’d look.”

  The cold weather had left the grass looking faint, but the stepping stones were still cute.

  “These are adorable,” Lily said, having to raise her voice over the sound of traffic on the nearby road.

  The traffic sounds grew even louder and she glanced toward the street. A car barreled up the driveway to the store. It was going too fast, and Lily realized in a burst of panic it was speeding up and heading straight for her and Scott. “Run!”

  The car jumped the parking lot curb and plowed up the hillside. Lily scrambled to get out of the way, but slid on the grass and fell. Horrified, she watched as Scott tried to get out of the way, too, and the car knocked him down.

  The driver kept going, wheeling the car directly toward Lily. She crawled away as fast as she could, trying desperately to get some traction on the slick grass so she could get up and run. At the last second she dropped and rolled out of the way. The car missed her, but the sharp edge of its cracked bumper sliced across her thigh.

  Her leg felt as if it had been skewered by a red-hot poker. She fought to get to her feet but the searing pain made her head swim.

  The driver tried to turn the car around, but got bogged down. He gunned the engine. The car stayed in place while the wheels smoked and squealed and dug into the dirt and tossed up grass.

  The crazed driver finally let off the gas pedal.

  Then he fired a shot through the open side window of his car, the bullet shattering the plate glass window of the plant shop just behind Lily.

  Through the chaos she heard Nate yelling something, but couldn’t make sense of his words.

  The car door flung open and the gunman from the Starlight Mart, the one who’d later gotten away by running down into the ravine by her mother’s house, got out of the car. Wild-eyed, he looked directly at Lily and raised his gun.

  There was a cluster of trees on the store property and Lily ran for it, her thigh throbbing so painfully she nearly passed out. Despite the adrenaline coursing through her veins, she couldn’t put much weight on her leg and she ended up not moving much faster than a walk.

  “You’re dead!” the man huffed out as he chased her. “You’re finally dead.”

  She could hear him getting closer and she couldn’t move any faster. Straining forward with every bit of strength she had, she was afraid to look back. Her injured leg started to buckle. From behind, grasping fingers reached out and clasped the back of her jacket, jerking her to a stop. She felt the bite of the tip of a gun barrel pressed against her neck. Again.

  Terrified and angry, she tried to spin around. If he was going to shoot her, he’d have to look her in the eyes. But she couldn’t spin around. Couldn’t see him. He had too tight of a grip on her jacket. She could, however, turn far enough to see the tall shadow of a large lawman.

  “Nate!” His name came out sounding more like a whisper than the shout she’d intended.

  Sirens wailed in the distance.

  The gunman loosened his grip and now Lily could turn. She saw Nate with his weapon drawn. And she saw the gunman with his pistol pointed at her, just inches from her head. Still clinging to Lily’s jacket, the gunman tried to drag her farther up the hill. She didn’t make it easy for him. “Cops are here,” she managed to say, fighting for her breath. “You won’t get away again.”

  In a panic she flung out her arm, intent on getting that gun out of her face. To her surprise, she connected hard enough to send the weapon out of the man’s hand and to the ground. She quickly slid her foot, knocking the weapon farther away. The gunman made a move as if to reach down for it, but then glanced past Lily’s shoulder, shoved her to the ground, and turned and ran out of sight behind the storage trailer instead.

  Strong hands wrapped around Lily’s upper arms and pulled her to her feet. “You’re hurt.” Nate wrapped an arm around her shoulder, holding her up.

  Lily looked down at her leg. Her jeans were torn along her thigh and the fabric was soaked in blood.

  The sound of barking caught her attention and she looked up as Deputy Rios and Bubba hustled out of a patrol car. Two more patrol cars pulled up behind them. Nate gestured toward the area where the gunman had disappeared, but Bubba already had a bead on the bad guy and was anxious to go. Rios let him lead the way while she and the other deputies followed close behind.

  Nate held Lily a little bit tighter.

  “I’ll survive,” she said. She looked around. “What about Scott?”

  She looked back toward the store where Ruby’s husband lay on the ground, moaning. Ruby and a customer kneeled beside him. An ambulance pulled up and the EMTs rushed out and hurried toward him.

  Back in the direction of the storage trailer, people were yelling and Bubba was barking. All the action was happening on the other side of the trailer and Lily couldn’t see a thing.

  She heard a single gunshot and her heart froze in fear. In an instant she heard more yelling and the sounds of a struggle. Then it all stopped.

  She held her breath until a couple of deputies appeared around the storage trailer with the gunman in handcuffs. Deputy Rios and Bubba followed, the K-9 prancing with the pride of a job well done.

  SEVEN

  “Obviously the man was desperate.” Deputy Rios folded her arms over her chest and leaned back against a wall. “That lunatic tried to kill Lily in broad daylight in front of multiple witnesses.”

  “I’m just grateful you and Bubba happened to be in town for a meeting when it happened instead of up in Painted Rock covering for Nate,” Lily said quietly.

  They were at the sheriff’s department’s headquarters in downtown Copper Mesa. Ben Wolfsinger’s office was in a historic old stone-block building that had housed territorial prisoners over a century ago. A covered walkway connected it to the modern facility, where the bulk of law enforcement administration was carried out.

  The worn redbrick floor was uneven and chipped from decades of use. As Nate impatiently paced from one end of the room to the other, he had to watch where he stepped to keep from losing his balance. He was grateful for the distraction. It kept him from staring at Lily.

  The woman he’d promised to protect had nearly gotten killed right before his eyes. The EMTs had cleaned and taped up her injured leg and then Nate had driven her to the hospital, where an X-ray had confirmed nothing was broken. After receiving a couple of injections to ward off nasty infections, the deep cut in her thigh had been stitched up and she was released.

  Scott, the co-owner of the shop, was not so fortunate. His condition had worsened and he was in the ICU at the hospital, completely unresponsive.

  Lily felt guilty about Scott’s injuries. She’d said so. Nate tried to get her to direct the blame for what had happened on the gunman, but she blamed herself for leading the gunman to the plant shop. Every time Nate looked at her and saw the haunted expression in her eyes behind those librarian-like glasses, he wanted to wrap his arms around her.

  But comforting someone on such a deeply emotional level wasn’t what a deputy sheriff was hired to do. Nate knew his boundaries. He liked his boundaries.

  Lily sat in Wolfsinger’s padded desk chair at the sheriff’s insistence, her injured leg stretched out straight in front of her. She wore the navy blue sweatpants and sweatshirt Deputy Rios had brought to the hospital for her. She didn’t want to tell her mom about what had happened. Not yet. Nate wasn’t sure that was a wise decision, but it wasn’t his to make.

  Wolfsinger sat in a plain wooden chair, his fingers l
aced together and placed against the back of his head. It was a common gesture for the sheriff when he was strategizing. K-9 Bubba had earned some chew time for his good work. He lay on the floor, a plastic chew toy in the shape of a rainbow trout held between his paws. He gnawed at it with his side teeth, his tail wagging happily as the toy squeaked.

  “The question is, why was that guy so desperate?” Rios said, adding to her earlier comment.

  “Somebody probably put pressure on him to clean up the mess he and his idiot partner made,” Nate said. “They talked when they should have kept their mouths shut and then made a mess of things when they went after Lily.”

  “That would be my guess, too.” Wolfsinger dropped his hands from the back of his head down to his lap. “But we need to give the detectives time to do their work before we decide we’ve got it all figured out.”

  Nate stopped pacing. He very much wanted a shot at interrogating the jerk they’d caught this afternoon, but he was still officially on leave. Sheriff Wolfsinger and a couple of detectives had already tried talking to the homicidal driver, but he hadn’t given up any information. Not even his name. He’d been fingerprinted and photographed, so they’d be able to identify him eventually.

  “I’d like to be at the stakeout at Torrent Trucking tonight,” Rios said to Wolfsinger.

  He nodded. “I was planning on it.”

  “Keep me updated on what happens,” Nate said. He was anxious to get the criminal operation closed down and see whoever was directing the attacks on Lily locked up.

  “We’ll keep you in the loop.” Sheriff Wolfsinger turned to Lily. “You’re still in serious danger. The two men we’ve caught so far are just the tip of the iceberg. Having them in custody will make their criminal employers nervous or angry or both. They’re going to double their efforts to track you down. You can’t let your guard down and you can’t go back to your normal life. Not yet.”

  Nate felt his gut tighten.

  He wanted to keep her safe. Wanted to do something to fix things for her. Frustration stirred up old, bitter memories. There had been so many times in his life when he’d wanted to make things better for someone, but couldn’t. The universe wasn’t under his control and sometimes that was very hard to accept.