“Whatever I said last time is right. The details were fresh then. I hadn’t had time to get confused.”
“I’ve never known you to get your details confused,” he pointed out patiently. “You predicted everything about my cousin Ruth’s baby, right down to the birthmark and which cheek it was on.” He hesitated, then politely, respectfully, asked, “Was there a vision, Ms. Cobbs? Did you really see Christina, or was this an attempt to gain a little attention?”
Winona’s face flushed red. “Oh, no, not at all! Why, if it was attention she wanted—we—I mean I wanted…” Looking miserably flustered, she let the denial trail away.
…if it was attention she wanted… Who? Christina Montgomery? Had she planned her own disappearance to get her father’s attention? While he wouldn’t put it past her, based on what he knew of her, staying away for three months seemed excessive. Letting her family believe she might be dead for so long was cruel, and cruelty didn’t appear to be one of Christina’s shortcomings.
But she and Winona were the only females involved in this discussion, weren’t they?
“Ms. Cobbs, was there a vision regarding Christina Montgomery’s death?” he asked again.
She nodded grimly, worriedly.
“But you didn’t have it.”
After a moment’s obvious indecision, she shook her head.
“Who did?”
Her hands fluttered nervously. “I gave my word I wouldn’t say. This gift has caused her nothing but distress, but the vision was too important to go unreported. I told her I would claim it as one of my own. I told her no one need ever know. I promised her… Oh, dear.”
Movement near the shop caught Sloan’s eye and he looked from Winona to her niece, standing just outside the open door, sending a cool, aloof stare his way. Just like that, he knew. Call it a hunch, call it instinct, but he knew who Winona was fronting for.
It was Crystal who’d had the vision, who’d seen Christina dead, who’d known nothing but distress.
Crystal, who shared her aunt’s psychic gift.
For one moment he put business aside and considered that fact. How strong were her powers? Those few times he’d spoken to her, when she’d tersely brushed him off, had she known that his interest was more than neighborly friendliness? Had she had a clue what he was thinking that time he’d watched her in the market? Could that explain her aloofness, her indifference?
Grimly he turned back to her aunt. “Will she talk to me?”
“I don’t think—”
He laid his hand over hers to still the trembling. “If Christina is dead, the killer and your niece are the only ones who know it. I need to know everything she knows. I need to talk to her, Ms. Cobbs.”
“It’s all been so unpleasant for her,” the old lady said, sorrowfully shaking her head.
“I imagine dying alone on ground soaked with her own blood was much more unpleasant for Christina,” he said dryly. “If it really happened. Tell Crystal I need to talk to her. Ask her if she’d rather do it now or at the sheriff’s office.”
“Oh, you can’t take her in to the sheriff’s office! I promised her no one would know. She’s been through so much… It cost her so much…” She lifted her head, straightened her spine. “You’ll have to make the same promise to me. You’ll have to give me your word that no one will know your information came from her.”
“I can’t do that. This is a police investigation that will hopefully lead to a criminal trial. Everything has to be documented.” Then he relented. “I can keep her name out of it for now. If the lead doesn’t pan out, then I won’t have to say anything. That’s the best I can offer.”
Winona considered it for a time, then reluctantly nodded. “Wait here. I’ll talk to her.”
He watched her follow the path from patio to shop, where she spoke with great animated movements for several minutes. Cool, contained Crystal was animated, too, refusing in every way possible to say no. Twice, she sent cold, stinging looks his way, then at last she made a stubborn gesture, spun around and disappeared inside.
Sloan met Winona halfway along the path. “I’m sorry, Deputy,” she said, dignity in her bearing and her voice. “My niece chooses not to talk with you.”
“Maybe you didn’t try hard enough to convince her. Maybe she’ll listen to me.”
She looked as if she wanted to refuse and send him away. She also looked as if she couldn’t bring herself to do it, either. “She’s in the back room.”
With a nod of thanks, he went inside the shop, letting his eyes adjust to the dimmer light as he made his way down the center aisle. The door to the back was closed, but there was no lock on it. The knob turned easily in his hand.
The room was crowded with inventory. Near the back windows, a space had been cleared for repairing and refinishing furniture before moving it up front to sell. There was a chair missing its seat, a dresser stripped down to bare wood and an oak table getting the sanding of its life. He stood in the shadows and watched as Crystal laid the sander aside, wiped the tabletop with a cloth, then ran her palm lightly across it. He’d already learned that he liked the way she touched things. If he wasn’t careful, he could easily get turned on just watching her long, smooth strokes and imagining the same sure touches on him.
As if sensing that she was no longer alone, Crystal abruptly looked up and wariness came into her eyes. She grabbed a couple half sheets of sandpaper, knelt on the floor and went to work on the nearest leg.
He stepped out of the shadows and moved to lean against the dresser. He wanted to ask a dozen questions—what kind of psychic abilities did she have? Why did she hide them? Why had she asked Winona to lie for her? More, he wanted to say nothing at all and simply watch her try to ignore him. Judging by the intense concentration the table leg required, she wasn’t finding it easy. He’d be flattered if he believed for a second that she was having trouble ignoring him as a man, but he knew too well it was his uniform and deputy sheriff’s badge that bothered her.
He decided to wait her out. He was patient. He could sit for hours on surveillance, or on a riverbank with a line in the water. He knew the value of being still, of watching, waiting, listening.
Minute after minute passed. She finished with one leg and moved to the next. When the third leg was done, she stood, tossed the crumpled paper into a trash can, then glared at him.
Keeping his expression blank, Sloan met her gaze. He didn’t speak, but waited for her to spit out whatever was on her mind. Clearly, she was angry. Hostile. Belligerent. So damn tense that she might shatter into a million pieces right there in front of him. She looked as if she’d come up with a lot of things to say, but not the right one. A moment later, that changed. “I don’t have to talk to you.”
“No, you don’t,” he mildly agreed.
She brushed her hands down her thighs, leaving a trail of dust on her jeans, then folded her arms and clenched her fists. “You can’t make me answer any questions.”
He shook his head.
“And if I ask you to leave the premises, you have to.”
Again he shook his head, but this time to disagree, not confirm. “You’re not the owner of these premises. I’m here with your aunt’s blessing.” That was stretching it a bit, but the old lady hadn’t asked him to leave. She had let him come back here for the sole purpose of talking to her niece.
Crystal clenched both jaw and fists tighter. “Then I can leave.”
He let her walk a dozen feet before speaking. “Unless I’m mistaken, Ms. Cobbs, you don’t own any property in the State of Montana, so there’s no place you can go that I can’t follow, either with someone else’s permission or no permission at all.”
That stopped her in midstride. It also made her angrier. He could see the tension in her body, could hear it in her voice as she slowly turned. “I can’t help you.” Each word was icy, filled with conviction, and left no room for argument.
He argued, anyway. “You can’t know that until you try.”
“Aunt Winona told you everything.”
“I want to hear it from you.”
The look she flashed him was sarcastic, pained, scathing. “We can’t always get what we want, can we?”
This was getting him nowhere and, more than likely, costing him ground. What he needed was to win her trust, or at least some measure of it. If she knew she could count on him to protect her, if she could be persuaded to think of him as on her side and not her enemy, then she might be more willing to help him. “Ms. Cobbs, I— Can I call you Crystal?”
She stared mutinously at him, giving him no response either way. He would take it as permission.
“I understand your need to protect your identity, Crystal. I know having psychic abilities isn’t as easy for some people as it is for your aunt. But this is a serious case. A twenty-two-year-old woman is missing and quite possibly dead. Her family’s worried sick. We have no clues. Right now you’re the only lead I’ve got.”
“Then you have nothing.” With that deadly cold pronouncement, she returned to the table, picked up a new sheet of sandpaper and went to work on the last leg.
If he believed she was that cold and uncaring, he’d walk out the door and never give her another thought. But he didn’t believe it, not for an instant. In fact, he would suspect that her problem was that she cared too much. What was it Winona had said? Her psychic gift had been so unpleasant for her, had caused her nothing but distress and had cost her so much.
“I can keep your identity secret for now,” he promised. “I just want the chance to find out if there’s anything to this vision. If we find something relevant to Christina’s disappearance as a direct result of your involvement, then I’ll have to include your name in my report, but if not… It’s just between you and me.”
If we find something relevant… Crystal mentally snorted. She had seen Christina’s body and the place where she was murdered. In anyone’s book, that was pretty damn relevant.
How had Deputy Ravencrest figured out that she’d had the vision and not Winona? Was her aunt a less capable liar than she’d imagined? Or was Ravencrest smarter than they’d given him credit for?
He looked smart, she acknowledged reluctantly. He looked like a man who paid great attention to detail, who learned more from a single glance than most people did from an endless stare.
He also looked, she admitted just as reluctantly, like her romance-novel fantasies come to life. The cowboy and the city girl. The cop and the psychic. The Indian warrior and the white captive. With his black hair, brown eyes and brown skin, and oh, so masculine aura, he could take the hero’s role in any of them.
But she couldn’t be the heroine.
After another moment or two of silence, he asked, “Have you ever been arrested, Ms. Cobbs?” His tone was mild, his manner friendly, and both were deceptive.
“No. Why do you ask?” So much for “Can I call you Crystal?” The first hint of suspicion entered his mind and he was all business again. Typical.
“I’m just trying to figure out why you’re being so obstructive. Generally, people who don’t want to cooperate with the police can be divided into three groups—those who have been treated badly by them, people who are protecting someone close to them, and people who have been in the system before. Now, I can’t imagine any member of a well-off, old Southern family receiving anything less than respect from any well-trained Southern cop, and you haven’t met enough people here to be protecting one of them, so that leaves a brush with the law.”
He was right on the first two counts. Her family was comfortably well off, their name well established in Georgia’s history books as well as its social structure, and they—if not Crystal herself—commanded respect from everyone in their town, including the police. And she didn’t know anyone well enough in Whitehorn to feel the need to protect him.
She also didn’t know anyone well enough to trust him.
“Or, gee, here’s a fourth one—a desire to be left alone,” she said sarcastically.
He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “Of course, there’s always the possibility that your lack of cooperation has nothing to do with your feelings toward law enforcement and a lot to do with your feelings toward me.”
“And what feelings do you suppose I might have toward you?” This time she went beyond sarcasm into pure snideness.
“I’m Cheyenne—well, half. To most folks, that’s the half that counts.”
He was suggesting that her refusal to talk to him was based on her prejudice and his race. Racial bigotry was nothing new to her, but being accused of it herself was new. It was offensive, insulting, infuriating. Her first impulse was to tell him everything, just to prove to him how wrong he was. Her second impulse was to ignore the first.
A spasm in her hand, clenched tightly at her side, reminded her to flex her fingers. She worked out the cramp, then slowly got to her feet and faced him. “I’ve never been arrested. I’ve been boringly well behaved my entire life. I have my prejudices—we all do—but race isn’t one of them. I’ve been cooperative. I had a vision that appeared to concern your case. My aunt passed the information along to you. There’s nothing more I can tell you. Unless you want me to make up details, that’s it. That’s all there is.” She paused to let that sink in, then quietly added, “And now I want to be left alone.”
Taking a tack cloth from the workbench, she crouched beside the table again, running the sticky fabric over the legs she’d just sanded. The piece had been a mess when it had been brought in—stained, painted, nicked, gouged, burned. It was old—not so old she had to concern herself with preserving any antique value—but it was good sturdy pine, with a lot of years’ use left in it. In its original condition, they would have been lucky to get twenty dollars for it. By the time she finished with it, it would be worth ten times that.
If, she thought with a grimace as she felt the dark gaze centered on her back, she ever got a little peace to finish it.
“What are your prejudices?”
She considered pretending she hadn’t heard him. Going to the trailer and locking the door on him. Ignoring him. Instead, she straightened, then began rubbing the tack cloth over the tabletop. Once she’d removed every speck of dust from the wood, she looked up and gave him a cool smile. “I don’t like cops. Or deputies or prosecutors, or any of the so-called good guys.” They’d harmed her in ways that, months later, still held the power to stun her.
“And what experience caused you to form this opinion?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“You tell me that you’re prejudiced against deputies. I’m a deputy. I think that makes it my business.”
“You think wrong.” She returned the tack cloth to its plastic bag, then crossed to the wooden cubbyholes that filled one wall and held a wide selection of half-used stains and paints. She picked one, shook the can to judge how full it was, then grabbed a screwdriver, plastic refinishing gloves and a handful of old T-shirt remnants.
And the whole time he stood there and watched her. It was unnerving how still he could become, how narrowly he could focus his attention, as if she were the only thing in his world. She could imagine the situation in which such undivided attention could be flattering, even desirable, but right now it simply made her uncomfortable. She wanted to fidget, to hide out of his sight, but she’d be damned if she would let him have the satisfaction of knowing that he could intimidate her.
Finally, after long minutes had passed—ten? fifteen? no, probably fewer than five—he drew a breath. “I give you my word of honor, Crystal—”
“I don’t know that you have any honor.” The cops she knew personally didn’t. They’d used her, then stood back and helped James destroy her. They’d taken her dignity, her pride, her honor, all to save their own. Maybe Deputy Ravencrest was different, better, but she didn’t know that. She could only assume he was the same or even worse.
“I don’t betray people,” he said quietly, intensely.
She me
t his gaze one more time. He looked sincere, honest as hell. If she could trust her instincts, she would believe he was honest and honorable. But she couldn’t trust her own judgment. Hadn’t she believed James was honest and honorable, and that he loved her, to boot?
“I don’t trust cops.”
After another long look, he nodded once and started toward the door. Crystal didn’t pretend to believe she’d won. She didn’t think for an instant that she’d heard the last from him.
Halfway across the room, he turned back. “I don’t like to give ultimatums, but you leave me no choice. I’ll be back tomorrow. You can talk to me or not. That’s up to you. But if you don’t, I’m going to the Montgomery family. I’m going to tell them I have reason to believe that you know something about Christina’s disappearance. Within hours everyone in town will know. You’ll be the new prime topic of gossip in Whitehorn. Is that what you want?”
It was so far from what she wanted that she just might weep. She’d come to Whitehorn to escape all that, to be just a normal person living a normal life. Just a single woman working to make ends meet. Not the nut case or the poor delusional woman. Certainly not the freak.
She stared at him, all too aware of how stricken she looked. For the first time he didn’t meet her gaze—couldn’t, she thought, because he felt guilty for his threat.
But not guilty enough to keep him from carrying through.
He turned on his heel, his boots making hollow thuds on the concrete floor as he strode away. Once the door to the store had closed behind him, once she was sure he was gone, Crystal replaced the lid on the can of stain. She stripped off the gloves, let herself out the side door that provided a shortcut to the trailer and for a moment simply stood there, her face tilted back, her eyes closed. The sun touched her face with its brightness but offered little warmth. To find the degree of warmth she needed, she would have to head for a rain forest somewhere in the tropics.
When the door opened behind her, she didn’t startle. She supposed it could be Ravencrest, come back to make some threat he’d forgotten, but in her bones she knew it wasn’t. He lacked the warm, caring aura that surrounded the newcomer. He could make her feel many things, but never safe, not the way Winona made her feel safe.
Big Sky Lawman Page 2