Black Canyon Conspiracy

by Cindi Myers

  “Do you really think it’s that bad?” she asked. “I mean, would he really kill me? Isn’t convincing everyone I’m crazy enough?”

  “We don’t have the proof we need, but we believe he’s had people killed before,” Marco said. “There was his pilot—and don’t forget that fish seller, Alan Milbanks.”

  She nodded. “Milbanks’s death meant the chief source for my story about Richard Prentice was out of the picture. Very convenient.”

  “Not having you around would be convenient for him, too. Do you want to take that chance?”

  “No.” She straightened and lifted her chin, determined. “Do the Rangers have a safe house or something?”

  “No. You can come to my place.”

  “Your place?” She choked back a laugh.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You live in a duplex. With Rand in the other half.”

  “Exactly. You’ll have twice the protection. And your sister’s over at his place all the time anyway.”

  “No, Marco, I can’t. What will people think?” She flushed. “I mean, if your place is like Rand’s, there’s only one bedroom.”

  He liked it when she blushed that way—it did something to his insides that he didn’t want to think about too much. He’d rather enjoy the feeling. “I’ll sleep on the sofa.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Go.” He put a hand to her back and urged her toward her bedroom. “Pack a bag. I know what I’m doing.” His duplex wasn’t ideal, but it was off the beaten path, had only one street leading in and out, bars on the windows and a reinforced door. And it wouldn’t be the first place anyone would look for her. Keeping her there would buy him more time to identify any real threat.

  “If anyone but you tried to order me around like this, I’d tell them exactly what they could do with their bossy attitude,” she said as she headed down the short hallway off the living room. “But you make me believe you really do know what you’re doing.”

  While he waited, he scanned the parking lot in front of the apartment. He focused on a big guy across the street. The man wore a blue-and-white tracksuit and had a pair of binoculars trained on Lauren’s front windows. Marco moved closer to the window and raised the blinds. The big guy didn’t move. Marco glared. No reaction from the guy in the tracksuit. He might have been a mannequin, except they didn’t make mannequins that burly, and after a few seconds, the watcher reached up to scratch his ear.

  Marco moved quickly down the hall to Lauren’s bedroom and stopped in the doorway, stunned at the sight of her up to her elbows in lace and satin. She’d apparently dumped the contents of her dresser drawers on the bed and was sorting through the pile of panties, bras, stockings, negligees and who knew what other items of feminine apparel.

  She glanced over her shoulder at him. “It was easier to just dump everything and sort through them this way.” She grabbed up a handful of items and danced over to an open suitcase in the dresser and dropped them inside, then spent some time arranging them, smoothing them out and humming to herself.

  “There’s a man standing out front, watching your apartment,” Marco said. “He’s not even trying to hide it. He has this huge pair of binoculars, like a bird-watcher would use.”

  “Maybe he is a bird-watcher.” She giggled, a high-pitched, unnatural sound.

  “Come look and tell me if you know him.”

  “All right.”

  She glided down the hall ahead of him, still humming, and went to the window. “Oh, yes, I know him.” She waved like someone greeting a friend at the airport.

  “How do you know him?” Marco asked.

  “He delivered that package.” She waved idly toward the box on the table.

  “All right. Go ahead and finish packing. We should leave soon.”

  “Yes, I’ll do that. I have a gorgeous new dress. I was in the mall yesterday and saw it and just had to have it. I’ll take it in case we go someplace nice.”

  Marco frowned. “Are you feeling all right?” he asked.

  Her smile didn’t waver, though to him it seemed forced. “Why wouldn’t I be feeling all right?”

  “You’ve been under a lot of stress.” He spoke carefully, watching her eyes. Her gaze shifted around the room, as if frantically searching for something. “Most people would be anxious in a situation like this.”

  “Yes. I am anxious.” She twisted her hands together. “I just... I’d love to go for a run now. Burn off some of this extra energy.” She turned to a dresser and began pulling out exercise tops and shorts, adding them to the pile of clothing on the bed.

  Now was not the time for a run. He had to get her away from here, away from the guy in the parking lot, to some place safer. “Would you like me to call Sophie?”

  “No! No, don’t call Sophie! She’s always so worried, worried I’m going to go off the deep end or do something stupid. Something...crazy.” She whispered the last word, standing still with a tank top dangling from one hand.

  “You’re not crazy.” He kept his voice calm in the face of the agitation rolling off her in waves. After he’d met her, after he carried her in his arms out of the collapsed mine on Richard Prentice’s estate, he’d gone online and done some reading on bipolar disorder. He’d learned that stress and even variations in routine could trigger a manic episode. Lauren’s life had been nothing but stress these past months, and she had no more routine—no job or real home or any certainty about the future.

  “Maybe...maybe I should call my doctor.” She looked at the clothes piled on the bed and the open suitcase. “I took my medication,” she said softly. “I always do, even though, sometimes, I don’t like the way it makes me feel.”

  “Maybe the medication just needs...adjusting.”

  She nodded. “Right. I...I’ll call him.”

  He waited in the bedroom while she went into the living room. He wondered if he should remove the clothes from the bed—pack for her. But no. That was too personal. Too patronizing, even.

  He backed out of the room and rejoined her as she was hanging up the phone. “I talked to the nurse,” she said. “She suggested I take more of one of my pills, and she’s calling in another prescription I can take if I need to.”

  He nodded. “Do you need anything from me? Help with packing? Something to eat?”

  “No, I’m good. I’ll just, uh, finish up back here.”

  “I’ll keep an eye on our friend.”

  “Friend?”

  He nodded toward the parking lot. “The bird-watcher.”

  She laughed again, and the sound continued all the way down the hall. The sound worried him a little, but it also made him angry. Why did such a beautiful, vibrant woman have to be plagued with emotions that veered so easily out of control? Why was she at the mercy of a disease she hadn’t asked for and didn’t want? He’d spent his life fighting off physical enemies, first in a street gang, then the military, now as a law enforcement officer. But what could he do to help her?

  * * *

  THE MEDICATION BEGAN to work quickly, a numbing fog slipping over the anxiety and agitation that were the first signs of a climb toward mania. Lauren hated this lethargy and not feeling as much as she dreaded the extreme highs or lows of her disease. Why couldn’t she just be normal?

  She finished packing her suitcase, stuffing in clothes without care, putting off having to go back into the living room and face Marco. This hadn’t been a bad episode. She hadn’t burst into song or taken off her clothes or made a pass at him—all things she’d done before her diagnosis had provided an explanation for her bizarre behavior. But she’d waved her underwear around in front of him, and laughed at the idea of a man stalking her.

  He was so solemn and unemotional. What must he think of a woman who, even on her best days, tended to feel things too deeply?

  In the end, she didn’t have to go to him; he came to her. “Are you ready to go?” he asked. “We can stop and get some lunch on the way.”

  “Sure.” She zippe
d the suitcase closed and looked at the disarray of the room.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “You can clean this up later.” He picked up the suitcase. “Do you have everything you need?”

  “Yes.” She grabbed the two pill bottles from the top of the dresser and cradled them to her chest. “I’m ready.”

  She put the pill bottles in her purse and followed him to the door. Sophie had rented the apartment when she’d decided to relocate to Montrose to be with Rand, and Lauren only stayed there because she had no place else to go. She couldn’t claim to be attached to the place, but still, it felt bad to be leaving so soon, to face more uncertainty.

  Deep breath. Center. She closed her eyes and inhaled through her nose, the way the therapist at the psychiatric hospital had shown her. She could deal with this.

  When she opened her eyes, Marco was watching her. She saw no judgment in his calm brown eyes. “Are you ready?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Is the bird-watcher still out there?”

  “He left a few minutes ago. I guess he’d done his job.”

  “What was his job, do you think? Besides delivering the package.”

  “He was sending the message that you were being watched. His job was to intimidate you.”

  “The note did that.”

  “I guess Prentice likes to cover all the bases.”

  “What about the package?” She looked around for the creepy gift. “I don’t want Sophie finding it when she comes back.”

  “I’ve got it.” He indicated the shopping bag he must have found in the pantry. “I’ll have someone check it out. Maybe we’ll get lucky and learn something useful. Come on.” He opened the front door and started across the lot, toward the black-and-white FJ Cruiser he’d parked closest to her apartment.

  “I’ll follow you in my car,” she said.

  His frown told her he didn’t think much of that idea. “You should ride with me.”

  “I can’t just leave my car. I can’t be stuck way out at your duplex with no transportation.” The idea ramped up her anxiety again, like something clawing at the back of her throat.

  “Then, we’ll take your car and I’ll send someone back later for mine.”

  “All right.” Relief made her weak. When they reached the car she hesitated, then handed him the keys. “You’d better drive. Sometimes the pills make me sleepy.”

  He nodded and unlocked the trunk and stowed her suitcase and the shopping bag, then climbed into the driver’s seat. “What pharmacy do you use?”

  Her prescription was ready. Once they’d collected it, he swung by a sandwich shop for lunch. She wasn’t hungry—another side effect of the medication—but she ordered to avoid explaining this to him. Finally they were on the highway headed to his place. She put her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes. Maybe when they got to his place she’d take a nap. But she’d need to unpack, and she still had to call her lawyer, Shawn...

  “Have you had any trouble with your car lately?”

  She opened her eyes and sat up straight. “No. What kind of trouble?”

  “The brakes.” He pumped the brake pedal, but the car only sped up, down a long incline that curved sharply at the bottom.

  “What’s wrong with the brakes?” She leaned over to study the speedometer, the needle creeping up past seventy miles an hour. “Why are we going so fast?”

  “I think someone may have tampered with your car.” His voice remained calm, but the fine lines around his eyes deepened, and his knuckles on the steering wheel were white with strain.

  She covered her mouth with her hand and stared at the highway hurtling toward them with ever-increasing speed. At the bottom of the hill was a curve, and beyond the curve, a deep canyon. If their car went over the edge, they would never survive.

  Chapter Three

  Marco didn’t look at Lauren, but he could hear the sudden, sharp intake of her breath and sense her fear like a third presence in the car. He tried pumping the brake pedal, but nothing happened. He pressed it to the floor and downshifted to first gear. The engine whined in protest, and the car slowed, but not enough.

  “Hang on,” he said, raising his voice over the whine of the protesting engine. He pulled back on the lever for the emergency brake and the car began to fishtail wildly. He strained to keep hold of the wheel. Lauren whimpered, but said nothing.

  They were well out of town now, empty public land and private ranches stretching for miles on either side, with no houses or businesses or people to see their distress and report it. Not that anyone could do anything to help them anyway. If they had any chance of surviving a crash, he had to try to regain control of the car.

  They continued to accelerate, racing toward the curve at the bottom of the hill. He steered toward the side of the road, gravel flying as the back wheels slid onto the shoulder. The idea was to let friction slow the car more, but the dropoff past the shoulder was too steep; if he kept going he’d roll the car.

  Back on the roadway, the car continued to skid and sway like a drunken frat boy. The smell of burning rubber and exhaust stung his nose and eyes. If they blew a tire, he’d lose control completely; the car might roll. He released the emergency brake and grabbed the steering wheel with both hands. “Brace yourself against the dash and lean toward me!” he commanded.

  She didn’t argue. As she skewed her body toward his seat, he could smell her perfume, sweet and floral, overlaying the sharp, metallic scent of fear. He wanted to tell her everything would be all right, that she didn’t have to worry. But he couldn’t lie like that.

  He came at the guardrail sideways, sparks flying as the bumper scraped the metal rails, gravel popping beneath the tires. The scream of metal on metal filled the air, making him want to cover his ears, but of course he couldn’t. He kept hold of the wheel, guiding the car along the guardrail.

  Friction and a gentler slope combined to slow them, and as the guardrail ended, he was able to use the emergency brake to bring them to a halt on the side of the road. He shut off the engine and neither of them spoke, the only sounds the tick of the cooling motor and their own heavy breathing.

  He had to pry his hands off the steering wheel and force himself to look at her. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  She nodded, and pushed the hair back from her face with shaking hands. “My car isn’t, though. What happened?”

  “The brakes failed.”

  “I had the car serviced before I came out here,” she said. “My mechanic said it was fine.”

  “It sat at that overlook in the park for a few days, and then at the wrecking yard for a few weeks. An animal—a rabbit or something—could have chewed the brake cable.” He didn’t really think that was what had happened, but he didn’t want to frighten her.

  “But I’ve been driving the car for weeks now and it’s been fine.” She turned even paler. “What if this had happened when I was alone?”

  What, indeed? He unfastened his seat belt. “I’m going to take a look.”

  He had to wrench the hood open, past the broken headlight and bent bumper. He fixed the prop in place and stared down into the tangle of hoses and wires. After a moment, she joined him.

  “I couldn’t open my door, so I crawled over the console,” she said. “Can you tell what went wrong?”

  He leaned under the hood and popped the top over the master cylinder reservoir. It was completely dry, only a thin coating of brake fluid left behind. That explained why the brakes had failed, but why had the fluid drained?

  He walked around to the side of the car and knelt beside the front tire. He reached over the tire and grasped the flexible hose that led to the brakes. It felt intact, but as he ran his finger along the hose, he found a moon-shaped slit—the kind of damage that could be made by someone reaching over the tire and stabbing the brake hose with a knife.

  “What is it?” she asked, following him around to the other side of the car.

  He knelt and checked that hose. “Someone punctured
the brake line on both sides,” he said. “The brake fluid drained out, and that caused the brakes to fail.”

  She steadied herself with one hand on the fender of the car. “The bird-watcher?”

  “Maybe. Or it could have been done while we were at lunch.” Big failure on his part. He should have taken the physical threat to her more seriously.

  “The parking lot at my apartment has a surveillance camera,” she said. “I mean, don’t they all, these days?”

  “Maybe, but a lot of places use dummy cameras that don’t really film anything.” He’d bet her apartment complex fell into that category. “And whoever did this is probably smart enough to avoid any cameras.”

  “We should call the police,” she said.

  He glanced around them, getting his bearings. Drying rabbit brush covered an open expanse of prairie, only the occasionally stunted piñon providing shade. Here and there purple aster offered a surprising blot of color against an otherwise brown landscape. “This is the edge of national park land,” he said.

  “Ranger territory.” She completed the idea for him and managed a weak smile. “Well, that’s something. I wasn’t looking forward to talking to the police.”

  He pulled out his phone. “I’ll call someone to give us a ride, then get a wrecker to haul the car to headquarters where we can take a closer look at it.”

  Her hand on his wrist stopped him. He looked down at the slender, white fingers, nails perfectly shaped and painted a soft pink. “Before anyone else gets here, I just wanted to say thank you,” she said. “You saved my life—again.”

  He covered her hand briefly with his own. “It’s going to be okay,” he said. “Everything that happens brings us one step closer to stopping Prentice.”

  “Thank you, too, for not freaking out about my illness,” she said. “I’m getting better at working at controlling it, but sometimes...”

  “I know. It’s okay.”

  Her head snapped up, her gaze searching. “How do you know?”

  “I did some reading.” He shrugged. “I like to understand what’s going on around me.”

  “There’s nothing understandable about this disease.”