by Harper Allen
“The little boy who was playing with you—the stranger. He’s my nephew. Do you know where he is?”
Her explanation seemed to reassure the girl, but she shook her head. The boy whom Tess had seen running from the back of the clinic pulled a face.
“The city boy? He’s over there, still hiding.” In a typically Dineh gesture, instead of pointing he pushed out his lips in the direction of a small gully behind the building. “I told him we never go there, but he said he wasn’t afraid.”
“Thank you.” She was going to give Joey a tongue lashing he’d never forget when she found him, Tess thought shakily. Or maybe she would really make him sorry he’d thrown such a scare into her—maybe she’d just gather him up in her arms and give him a hug in front of all his new friends.
“That’ll do it,” she muttered as she jogged toward the gully. “Especially if that little pigtailed girl’s watching.”
But Joey’s dire punishment was going to have to wait. Although the gully was deeper and broader than she’d realized, it was still shallow enough that she should have been able to see him, even with the brushy mesquite growth that provided a thick and spiny tangle at one end of the depression. And he wasn’t there.
“Joey!” She tried to keep the fear from her voice as she shouted his name. She didn’t entirely succeed. “Joey!”
“I…I’m over here, Tess. In the trailer.”
Weak relief washed over her and, following it, confusion. Trailer? About to call out again, she glimpsed a sparkle of metal glinting from the depths of the mesquite brush, and saw the barely visible trail leading toward it.
“Here I come, ready or not,” she said, her tone crisp. The mesquite-lined path ended abruptly in front of a rusted-out travel trailer, probably once used as someone’s high-country summer hogan before being towed here and abandoned. “You know, buddy, I’m a little disappointed in you, taking off like this. You should have realized I’d worry. Get out of that trailer and let’s get back to the truck in case Connor’s looking for us.”
As she spoke she stepped onto the crumbling cinderblock that served as a step up to the abode. The door was ajar, and she opened it fully and stuck her head in.
The trailer was little more than a shell, its interior gloomily dim in contrast with the bright sunlight outside. She could just make out the figure of Joey huddled against the far wall, his legs drawn up to his chest and his gaze not meeting hers.
“No more games,” she said impatiently. “It’s time to go.”
“I…I can’t, Tess.” His voice was a whisper. “I can’t get past it.”
As the child on the playground had done, he twitched his lips. Following his fixed gaze, Tess saw nothing but the stained carpeting that covered the floor of the trailer.
“Past wha—”
The words died in her throat as her eyes adjusted to the dimness and she saw the coiled rattlesnake between her and Joey.
Chapter Fourteen
“Joey, don’t move.” The command came from Tess’s dry throat in a croak. “Even if you think it’s coming toward you, stay very, very still.”
“Tess, get me out of here.”
There was fear but not panic in his voice. That was good, she thought. Now all she had to do was work on her own impulse to give in to hysteria.
“I will, champ. I just have to figure out how,” she replied, steadying her nerves enough to assess the situation.
It was a diamondback and a big one, probably six—no, closer to seven, she revised as the thing shifted slightly—feet long. Brownish gray, its back was patterned with the darker diamonds that gave it its name, each one outlined with lighter-colored scales. The muscular body tapered to a rattle-banded tail ending in a blunt, buttonlike tip.
Moving as slowly as she could, Tess stepped into the trailer. The snake swung its head around toward her. Its pupils, elliptical like a cat’s, seemed to expand, and cold terror washed through her.
She pushed the terror back and studied it, barely daring to breathe.
Its head was larger than its neck, and spade-shaped. Diagonal black lines traveled from those eyes to its jaws, above twin depressions on each side.
She knew enough about rattlers to guess what those depressions were—facial pits, capable of sensing the heat of any warm-blooded body, even one as small as a mouse. In effect, they were sophisticated infrared detectors, Tess told herself fearfully, and right now they were transmitting to the creature a wealth of information about her.
It swung its head away. She let out a cautious breath, and let her own gaze search the floor around her feet.
There was a tumble of tin cans by the door, a rotted scrap of curtain material, and the broken-off end of a broomstick. The stick was little more than a stub, and totally useless for what she had in mind, since she’d heard somewhere that rattlers could strike up to half the length of their bodies. If so, then this one had a strike zone of around three to four feet, and a two-foot length of wood wouldn’t serve as a goad to lure it toward the open door while staying out of range herself.
There was nothing to do but find something outside. Backing toward the entrance, Tess looked at her nephew and willed herself to ignore the coiled menace between him and herself.
“Joey, I need something to—”
Behind her something slammed. Instinctively she whirled around.
The door had closed. She crossed toward it with more speed than caution, and turned the knob. It fell off in her hand.
“Tess, watch out!”
At Joey’s cry she jerked her gaze back to the diamondback. It unwrapped another coil and extended itself toward her, its head stiffly up. For an endless moment she stood frozen against the door, before it shifted its attention from her.
It slithered lazily from the center of the trailer to one side, and again arranged itself into coils, this time against the wall. Now her sight line to Joey was unimpeded.
In the ceiling above him was a skylight—a square of frosted plastic, propped ajar with two thin aluminum struts. It was large enough for an adult to squeeze through, and certainly large enough for a nine-year-old’s body. It was a way out.
“I’m going to come over to your side and boost you up to that skylight, okay?”
Even as she spoke Tess inched her way to the wall across from her, and started sliding slowly along it. At rough estimate, the trailer itself was only nine feet from side to side. That didn’t leave much room, she told herself faintly.
“Okay.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw him watching her. “That door didn’t blow closed, did it, Tess?”
“I don’t think so, champ.” He knew as well as she did that the day outside was windless and still, so there was no point in lying to him. “I think one of the kids you were playing with shut us in here as a joke, and when he or she saw that the knob was broken they probably got scared and ran off.”
She wasn’t entirely sure she believed her own theory. It was obvious Joey didn’t, from his next words.
“Skinwalker shut us in.” His reply held no hesitation, but only hopeless acceptance. “I guess he wants you, too, now.”
“Well, he’s not going to get either of us.” She was directly opposite the snake, and it was as well aware of that fact as she was. Under her T-shirt her body felt slick with sweat. “Don’t talk anymore, Joey. This is the tricky—”
Like oil ribboning through water, the diamondback smoothly uncoiled and began gliding toward her. Pure adrenaline shot through Tess and she shot sideways out of its path. It stopped in its original position, right in the middle of the floor, and she practically fell onto Joey.
Her heart smashing against her ribs, she grabbed him and gave him the hug he had coming to him. He didn’t seem to be taking it as a punishment, she noted light-headedly as two skinny little-boy arms wrapped around her and hugged her back. A rush of love swept fiercely through her, and for a second she squeezed her eyes tightly shut.
She opened her eyes and released him. She tipped his c
hin up with a lightly closed fist, and met his wide gaze.
“You’re going to get onto my shoulders and grab the edge of that opening, okay? Then I want you to hoist yourself through it. When you’re on top of the trailer, start shouting for Connor, but try not to move around too much. I…I don’t want you to slip and fall off, and I don’t think Mr. Snake here likes banging and shaking.”
She saw the urgent question in his eyes, and shook her head before he could speak. “I’m just tall enough to get you out, champ, but I can’t reach it myself. I’ll stay here and wait for Connor. Now, up on my shoulders.”
The rattler hadn’t moved since it had returned to its position in the center of the trailer. As Joey clambered onto her back and Tess straightened to her full height, she saw it watching them with lazy alertness, its forked tongue flickering in and out. She grasped her nephew’s ankles.
“Okay, stand up now. Can you reach the skylight?”
It seemed an eternity before he answered. She felt him fighting for balance, and tried to keep her own legs braced as firmly against the floor as possible.
“Tess?” His trembling voice came from above her head. “It…it’s still too high. Let go of my feet and I’ll jump for it.”
“No!” The word came out more sharply than she’d intended. “Stand right where you are and let me—”
“Hello! Anybody in there?”
From outside came a muffled female voice. Tess heard the sound of the mesquite bushes scraping against the metal skin of the trailer, and light footsteps drawing nearer.
“We’re in the trailer and the door’s broken! I’m trying to get out onto the roof!” Joey’s yell was directed at the open skylight. “There’s a snake in here with us, so don’t shake the trailer or he’ll get mad.”
She had to be one of the mothers from the clinic. Tess raised her own voice.
“Please bring help. My nephew’s right, there’s a rattler here. Tell Virgil Connor at the clinic to come right away.”
“No time for that.”
There was the sound of a foot stepping cautiously onto the roof, and Tess remembered suddenly that the gully had risen up against one side of the trailer. Whoever their savior was, she’d simply climbed the bank of the gully and jumped onto the roof. Metal creaked overhead.
“If there’s one thing I hate, it’s a snake. Come on, Joey, grab my hands. You okay down there, Tess?”
This time the voice floated clearly through the open skylight. Tess looked upward in shock, and saw Paula Geddes looking down at her. The female agent grasped Joey’s wrists, the gold bracelet on her left arm glinting in the gloom.
“One, two, three—up!”
Joey’s feet left her shoulders. Belatedly she made a frantic grab for them, but his legs, kicking for purchase against the lip of the skylight, were already out of her reach. He disappeared and she heard the thump of his body as he fell out onto the flat roof of the trailer.
And then she heard the rattle.
Wrenching her gaze from the skylight, Tess realized the snake was no longer where it had been. The rattle came again, like a burst of percussion, and she saw the diamond-patterned body move slowly along the wall she was standing against.
“Tess, don’t move.”
Paula’s horrified tones came from just above her. Suddenly Geddes was no longer the most immediate threat.
“Don’t worry, I won’t,” she replied. “There’s nowhere I could go anyway. I’m too short to reach the ceiling.”
Restlessly the snake slithered a few feet away again. Tess eased her cramped muscles and carefully raised her head.
Paula’s face was no longer above her. Instead, her body, clad in the same navy pantsuit as yesterday, was already halfway through the opening.
A moment later she dropped lightly onto the floor.
“You’re a shortie-pants, all right.” She grinned. “I think I’ll be able to get myself out after we hoist you through.”
“You mean—” Tess shook her head. “It’s too dangerous, Paula. That thing’s getting antsy, and as tall as you are, you’re going to have to jump for that opening. If anything’s certain to rouse him to strike, that will.”
“We don’t have a choice.” Navy-blue shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Like a fool, I left my gun locked in my car. When I met Del in Last Chance and he told me you and Connor had taken Joey to the Dinetah, I was thinking a nice, relaxing day, not blowing the head off a rattler. Move it, lady.”
Was it possible they’d made a terrible mistake? Tess wondered slowly. Could there be an innocent explanation for Paula’s connection to Vincenzi’s hit man? Could the hand in the picture of the gunman have belonged to some other woman?
She got Joey to safety. She’s risking her life to do the same for me. If she was behind all these killings, it would have been easy for her to throw something through the skylight and goad that rattlesnake into taking care of us for her.
“I…I’m moving.” Tess placed her foot into Paula’s clasped hands, and shot her a smile. “Sorry,” she said softly.
“For what?” Paula grinned. Not waiting for a reply, she grunted in effort and stood a little straighter as Tess gained her balance. “Hurry up, Smith,” she ground out. “Can’t…can’t keep this up for long.”
But already Tess’s fingers were grasping the skylight’s edge. She pulled herself up to a standing position and found her head and torso fitting easily through the opening. With a grunt of her own, she boosted herself onto the trailer’s roof.
From her vantage point she could see Joey running across the field to the clinic. She looked into the trailer.
“One good jump and I think I can reach it.” Paula’s upturned face looked unconcerned, but her eyes were shadowed. Her glance darted toward the snake and then back as she bent her knees and gave a small, flexing bounce. “Here goes noth—”
This time the rattling sound was explosively loud. Even as Paula launched herself upward, the diamondback, moving with incredible speed, obliterated the distance between it and her. In a blur of angry motion its head hurled itself toward her, mouth wide open, knifelike fangs plunging into Paula’s calf just as her fingers locked onto the edge of the skylight.
Paula’s eyes widened in shock and pain. Her neck arched backward. Her mouth opened in a scream and her grip slipped.
Tess grabbed for her wrist, but then saw the big hand that had suddenly clamped around it. She scrambled out of the way as beside her, Connor hauled a limp Paula through the opening.
“You didn’t get bitten, did you?” Fear made his gaze brilliant, but as she shook her head, the fear was replaced by concern.
“Did you see it get her?” he asked tersely, squatting beside Geddes’s seemingly unconscious body. He gathered the navy-clad figure into his arms and stood.
“Once for sure.” Tess ran ahead of him along the trailer’s flat roof and stepped across the small gap between it and the side of the gully. “Connor, she saved our lives. She got Joey out and then she deliberately got into the trailer with that snake to save me. I…I think—”
“I think so, too,” he replied grimly. “We made a mistake somewhere, but we’ll figure it out later. Run ahead of me to the clinic. Tell Joanna to get the extractor and the antivenom ready. I don’t think that bite was dry, but with any luck it didn’t deposit a full dose of venom into her.”
“It wasn’t dry.” Paula’s eyelids fluttered open. “I’m not in the habit of fainting just to get swept up into a manly embrace, Virge. Something’s in me, but it doesn’t feel as bad as it could.”
“Shut up, Geddes.” His growl was accompanied by an uneven grin. “Just lie there and let me get you to Joanna Tahe.”
“And here I was hoping you’d suck it out.”
As Paula’s weak riposte left her lips, her eyelids drifted down again, but by then Tess was sprinting across the field to the clinic.
“THE PROGRAM DIDN’T make a mistake. Petrie’s real name was Harlan Geddes, and I found another photo.” Back
at the Double B, Jess shook his head. “The woman with Harlan in the second photo’s definitely Paula—younger, but unmistakably the woman you carried in a while ago and took upstairs to rest, Connor. I don’t get it, either. From what Tess told me and Del, she didn’t hesitate to risk her own life today to save them.”
Of that there was no doubt, Tess thought, remembering Joanna Tahe’s verdict a few hours earlier at the clinic:
“The extractor pulled out venom, Connor.” She’d glanced at Tess. “It works on a vacuum principle, sucking the poison back through the fang punctures,” she’d explained. “Your friend’s guess was right, she didn’t receive a full dose, but I gave her an antivenom shot just to be on the safe side. I don’t think she’ll suffer any tissue damage, which can be a major concern with diamondbacks, and she’ll probably be back on her feet tomorrow morning. But I don’t like the notion of a rattlesnake taking up residence so close to where my patients’s children play. Would you take care of it, Connor?”
He’d nodded curtly and had left the room.
“You’re Dineh, too, so I know you’d prefer to live and let live,” Joanna had admitted. “But it’s just too risky in this case. I’ll get some men to break into the trailer and remove the carcass, and later on in the week I’ll insist that piece of junk gets towed from the property. It’s pretty clear another child closed that door on the two of you for a joke, but it could easily have ended in tragedy.”
She’d hesitated. Then, as if performing a duty she had no enthusiasm for, she’d spoken again, her tone reluctantly low. “Did Connor tell you I have a great-grandmother?”
“Alice Tahe?” Tess had nodded. “Del’s spoken about her. I’d like to meet her one day.”
Joanna had lifted one eyebrow ruefully. “You might think differently after I pass on her message to you. My cousins refused to, but I find it hard to say no to Nali.” Slight embarrassment crossed her calm features. “Nali says to tell you that you saw what you thought you did on the road that night. She says he wants the boy. Does that make any sense?”