by Sandra Brown
“He said tomorrow at the earliest.”
“Hmm. Well, there’s not much we can do before we know what killed them, is there?”
“Nope.”
That had been the extent of their conversation. Since finding the dead cattle this morning, Delray had said very little to him and had given him a wide berth. Call him paranoid, but he took that avoidance as a bad sign.
He didn’t see Anna until he turned. She was standing at the entrance to the stall in which he was working. Startled, he almost dropped the pitchfork, exclaiming softly, “Shit.” Then, “Sorry about that. The cussing, I mean. I didn’t hear you.” Then, realizing he had made yet another blunder, he rolled his eyes. “Every time I open my mouth, I put my foot in it.”
To alleviate the heat, he had removed his shirt and hung it on a nail. He reached for it now and put it on. It was little more than a rag. The sleeves had been ripped out ages ago. From countless washings, the armholes were ragged with soft fringe. The cloth was faded, the plaid pattern was blurred. Only three of the pearl snaps remained on the placket. He fastened the center one.
He regarded her cautiously, reasoning that her appearance in the barn could herald only bad news. “What can I do for you?”
She held out a bottle of cold beer to him.
It was so unexpected that he stared at it like he didn’t recognize what it was. He looked at her quizzically. A bit impatiently, she thrust the longneck bottle toward him. “Uh, thanks.”
He removed his yellow leather work gloves, reached for the beer and twisted off the cap, then took a long drink. Nothing had ever tasted as good. He smiled at her as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “That’s great.”
While he had been drinking, she had been writing on a small pad. She turned it toward him. “When I locked the back door, I saw the light in the barn and realized you were still working. I thought you might be thirsty.”
“I was. Thanks. Aren’t you having one?”
She shook her head, making a face. He laughed. “Don’t like it, huh?”
Rather than writing, she signed. “No.”
“That’s no?” When she nodded, Jack set the beer bottle and gloves on a grain barrel, anchored the handle of the pitchfork beneath his arm to free his hands, then mimicked the sign. “Like this?”
“Yes.”
“And that’s yes?”
She nodded. He tried out the signs a few more times, committing them to memory, and she nodded approval as they smiled at each other. Then her gaze moved beyond him to look pointedly at the fresh straw he’d been scattering in the clean stall.
When she looked back at him Jack shrugged self-consciously. “I got the feeling that Delray thought I killed those cows.”
He knew he had hit the nail on the head when she lowered her eyes. He tapped her arm. “Does he think I killed them?”
She wrote on the pad, “He doesn’t know yet.”
“But he suspects me, right?”
She glanced away evasively. “Never mind,” Jack said. “I know he does.”
He drained the beer bottle and tossed it into an empty metal trash barrel. It clattered noisily. He winced, “Sorry.”
She motioned toward her ears and raised her shoulders in a shrug.
Chagrined, he said, “It’s the damnedest thing. I know you can’t hear, but I keep forgetting.”
Nodding understanding, she wrote on her pad. “Everyone does. My parents. Dean. Delray. Even people I live with forget.”
He read the message, and absently acknowledged it. He was curious about her deafness but didn’t want to offend her by asking. “Anna,” he said hesitantly, “it’s none of my business. I’m just curious, is all. And if you don’t want to talk about it, believe me, I’ll understand.”
She signaled for him to continue.
“Well, I just wondered if you have been, you know, deaf all your life. Were you born deaf?”
“Yes.”
“I see.”
Ducking his head, he scratched the vertical frown line between his eyebrows with his thumbnail. It didn’t itch. He just needed something to do so he wouldn’t feel so awkward about his question and her answer.
Finally he raised his head and grinned weakly. “I’m sorry, I’m at a loss. I don’t know what to say next. God knows I don’t pity you, and I don’t want to be a jerk. I just wanted to know.”
She wrote, “I know when a person looks at me and thinks, Poor little deaf girl. I know when a person thinks I’m dumb. You don’t act like that, like stupid people.”
He laughed softly. “That’s a relief. I wouldn’t want to make an ass of myself.”
Grinning back, she shook her head no.
He looked at her a moment, then down at the toes of his boots. “The other night…” Realizing he was talking to the floor, he raised his head and began again. “The other night, why were you against me learning sign?”
She chose her words carefully before writing them down. When she was finished she turned the pad toward him. “I was surprised that you wanted to learn. I acted hateful because I didn’t know how to act. No one else besides Dean has learned my language.”
It wasn’t necessary for Jack to reread the message, but he did so because what she had said was inaccurate. Delray had learned sign, and so had David. Yet she had distinguished Dean Corbett and Jack Sawyer, and he couldn’t help but wonder what he had in common with the man she had married. Why had she linked the two of them in her mind?
It was a question that begged rumination, but not now, when they were standing face-to-face, ankle deep in fresh straw and she was close enough for him to count her eyelashes.
Apparently her thoughts were moving along the same track, because she looked flustered and began backing away. Certain that she was on the verge of telling him good night, he raised his hand and forestalled her. “Wait. Watch this.” After propping the pitchfork against the wall of the stall, he proudly spelled out his name with the manual alphabet.
She was smiling until he formed the last sign, when she made a small negative motion with her head. Signing the letter k, she held her hand up so he could see it better.
He tried again. “Like this?”
Still frowning slightly, she reached for his right hand. Meticulously, she moved his fingers into place, folding his little and ring fingers toward his palm, angling his middle finger, positioning his raised index finger, then placing his thumb against his middle finger, just so. Loosely clasping his wrist, she studied her handiwork, deemed it right, and smiled up at him.
Except that Jack wasn’t smiling.
Quickly she dropped her hands from his and stepped back.
He snatched his hands away and slid them into the rear pockets of his jeans.
The air suddenly seemed thicker, harder to inhale. In any event, it was insufficient. His voice sounded as dry as a husk when he said, “I think I’ve got it now.”
She signed good night, then turned and beat a hasty retreat down the center aisle of the barn. Jack followed her as far as the wide door and stood there watching her as she crossed the yard like the devil was after her and disappeared into the house.
He propped himself against the doorjamb and prayed for a breath of breeze to cool him down. A bead of sweat trickled down his temple into his eyebrow. His heart was beating fast behind his ribs. Even though he’d just finished a cold beer, his throat was hot and dry. He couldn’t have worked up a spit if his life had depended on it.
His hands and fingers were so callused from years of manual labor that it wouldn’t have surprised him if the nerve endings in them were dead. But they were telegraphing sensations to his brain and doing a damn good job of recalling her touch and making him regret that there were only twenty-six letters in the alphabet. She could have dallied with his hand all night and you wouldn’t have heard him complaining. Was his head just full of grain and strawdust, or had having her fiddling with his fingers truly been as erotic as hell?
He was aroused and
breathing hard, and it was Delray Corbett’s daughter-in-law who’d got him that way. This time last week he hadn’t known she existed. Tonight she seemed the most desirable woman in the world. Anna Corbett. Delray Corbett’s daughter-in-law.
Closing his eyes, he expelled a long, deep breath, letting a curse word or two glide out along with it. Leaning back against the door frame, he thumped his head on the old wood.
Fate had fucked Jack Sawyer again.
When he finally opened his eyes and was about to turn back into the barn, he happened to glance up at the second-story bedroom window of the house.
He stood very still and stared for a moment. Then he whispered, “Aw shit.”
Chapter Fourteen
The mailbox read MR. AND MRS. G. R. BAILEY. The house was set well off the road in a grove of trees. It was a large house with two chimneys, a lightning rod, and a satellite dish extending from the roof. There were several outbuildings, including a barn and a pump house. Although it was dark, it seemed to Carl Herbold that everything looked neat and tidy and bespoke rural prosperity.
He glanced across at Myron. “What do you think?”
“ ’Bout what?”
“Jesus,” Carl muttered. Making the decision on his own, he turned the car into the private drive.
He had to hand it to Cecil: The getaway car had been right where he had said it would be. He found it in prime condition, full of gasoline, ready to go. In the trunk were a suitcase of clothes, forty dollars in cash, several guns with ample ammunition, and a few bottles of whiskey, with which he and Myron had celebrated their successful escape.
For a few days they had camped beside a lake, nursing their hangovers, sleeping in the car, sunning themselves during the daytime. At least he had. Myron’s skin couldn’t tolerate the sun, so he’d dozed beneath the shade trees.
After spending years inside walls with only limited periods in the exercise yard, the great outdoors had felt wonderful. But there was a limit, and Carl had reached his this morning when he woke up to find an armadillo rooting beneath their car and a tick burrowing through his public hair.
It was time to find shelter. They set out in search of an appropriate place and had been cruising all day, sticking to the back roads, avoiding major highways, which were more likely to be patrolled by law officers on the lookout for the escaped convicts.
It tickled Carl each time he heard his name on the car radio.
He wished his mother were alive to hear it. She would sob. She would cry her eyes out. That’s what she had done best. His earliest impression of her was one of red-rimmed eyes and a runny nose, saying over and over again into a soggy Kleenex that she didn’t know what she was going to do with them—him and Cecil.
He had no recollection of his father. He had died when Cecil was a toddler and Carl was still in diapers. If he had ever known his daddy’s cause of death, he had forgotten it. He assumed that his old man willed himself into an early grave so he wouldn’t have to listen to her bawling any longer.
She’d worked in a beauty parlor. Carl remembered the ammonia smell of permanent waves that clung to her when she came home in the evenings. He also remembered her whining about how tired she was and begging him and Cecil to be quiet and not fuss and not misbehave so she could rest. But when they didn’t, she was powerless to do anything about it.
Then he and Cecil had begun noticing a change in her. She perked up, and started fixing her hair prettier and wearing lipstick, high heels, and stockings. On Saturday nights she went out on dates. One of his most vivid memories was of the day she brought a man into the house and introduced him as Delray Corbett and told them that he was going to be their new daddy and wasn’t that swell.
Carl took his foot off the accelerator and let the car coast the rest of the way to the house. He turned off the headlights before he even cut the engine. As he tucked a pistol into his belt, he said, “Myron, you stay here out of sight until I get inside, okay?”
“Okay.”
Carl opened the driver’s door and stepped out. Immediately he smelled manure and hay. The odors brought back memories of the forced move out of town to the country. For years his and Cecil’s turf had been the streets and alleyways of Blewer. Each day after school they had met their buddies at a designated spot and gone looking for adventure. There was always something to be tried that hadn’t been experienced before, a new dare to be met.
From older boys they learned to smoke and drink and steal. They were naturals when it came to fistfights. They emulated bullies and scorned wimps. About girls they learned that what they had between their legs was better than candy, and that when charm didn’t work to get you some, intimidation usually did. Carl was a quicker study than Cecil, but Cecil got his share.
Then suddenly they had been yanked from everything familiar: their friends and their environment and the freedom they’d enjoyed. Carl had hated the ranch. He hated the stink and the daily chores, the rules and table manners and Bible readings, hated the punishment Corbett doled out when he or Cecil balked at one of his rigid commands.
The feelings he had for his stepfather had raised hatred to a new level. He despised his mother for inflicting Corbett on them. He had celebrated the blood clot that traveled from her leg to her lung and killed her. The day they buried her, he and Cecil had held a private little party because they no longer had to listen to her sniveling pleas that they be good boys, that they try to get along with Delray, who could be such a good father to them if only they would let him.
Memories of her whining and Corbett’s harsh censure could still twist Carl’s guts into knots.
He raised his fist and knocked on the door, harder than he intended. A few moments later the porch light came on. Knowing he was probably being observed through the peephole, he flinched comically and shaded his eyes against the glare. The front door came open.
“Hey there, Mrs. Bailey,” he said in a friendly tone. “That’s a mighty bright bulb you’ve got in that porch light. Gotta be a thousand-watt.”
“Can I help you, young man?”
She was a slight, bespectacled woman in her seventies, with pale blue hair and a sweet smile. In other words, a piece of cake.
“Sister, who is it?”
A near duplicate joined her in the open doorway, this one plumper, prettier, and even more pleasant.
Carl’s disarming grin stretched wider.
Chapter Fifteen
Jack figured that somewhere between the ranch and the feed store, Delray was going to fire him.
Early that morning, the rancher had handed him a list of chores to do, then he had left in his pickup. He hadn’t said where he was going, but Jack assumed he would check the herd to see if he had lost any more head during the night. Jack did the jobs on Delray’s list, and when he was finished with those he created others to keep him busy.
He saw Delray return in time for lunch, but he went into the house without speaking. It was almost three o’clock before Delray sought him out where he was repairing a bridle in the tack room. “We’re going to the feed store.”
When Jack emerged from the small toilet in the barn after washing his hands, Delray was already in his pickup truck with the engine running. He didn’t acknowledge Jack when he got in. They didn’t make even idle conversation.
Jack was itching to know if Delray had spoken to the vet and what he had learned from the postmortem on the cattle, but he felt the less he said now, the better. So they drove toward town in stony silence. Jack guessed he should be glad Delray wasn’t talking. As long as Delray wasn’t talking, he wasn’t being dismissed.
The hell of it was, he didn’t want to leave.
It was his rule never to form an attachment that he couldn’t walk away from at a moment’s notice. He hadn’t wanted to live like that. That kind of solitary life had chosen him, not the other way around. But he was used to it by now. He went into every situation knowing that it was temporary. He had developed a knack for knowing when the time was right to say good
-bye and move on. Ordinarily he did so without a backward glance and let his nose lead him to his next destination.
But this was no ordinary situation. He hadn’t picked the Corbett Cattle Ranch at random. Nor had he selected the timing of his arrival. That had been determined when Carl Herbold escaped from prison.
He’d broken his pattern. His standard operating procedure didn’t apply. He couldn’t just drive away when he felt it was advisable. If he was basing his decisions on what was advisable, he wouldn’t have come here to start with. But he was here. And until Carl Herbold was recaptured, he wanted to stay.
Of course if Delray told him to clear out, there wouldn’t be much he could do about it except pack up and go.
At the feed store, Delray placed his order with the cashier. His economy of words bordered on rudeness. It was Jack who thanked the man when he handed Delray his receipt. The vendor didn’t offer to help them load the heavy sacks of grain into the pickup and, because of Delray’s brusqueness, Jack couldn’t say he blamed him.
But Jack couldn’t help but notice how hard Delray was exerting himself. “This heat is a bitch. Start the motor and turn on the air. I’ll finish up.”
“Don’t you think I can handle a man’s job?”
Soundly rebuked, Jack let the matter drop. Delray was pissed, and it wasn’t because Jack had offered to do the heavy work for him. It wasn’t entirely because of the dead cows, either. Jack’s money was on Anna and the beer in the barn.
Delray secured the tailgate and they got back into the truck. His face was red and congested. “I could stand something to drink.”
Jack was surprised that the older man owned up to a weakness of any kind, but he said, “Sounds good.”
Delray drove to the Dairy Queen. They went inside to enjoy the air-conditioning, placed their order with the adolescent girl tending the counter, then chose a booth and sat down across from each other. Glancing over his shoulder, Delray frowned disdainfully at the girl. Every feature of her face had been pierced with a hoop or a stud. Even her tongue had been harpooned, and on it sat a black pearl.