“He’s not our kind,” she would stress in her best hypercritical-mother’s voice, which meant many things. Not a Southerner in general or an old-moneyed, illustrious-historied Southerner in particular. Not of their social prominence. Not of their financial status. If the occasion called for it, not of their religion or their political persuasion. Definitely not of their race.
Marabeth would look at Sloan and see a minority, a lower-caste civil servant, a commoner working at a common job and living a common life—and generations of inbred self-centeredness enabled her to turn the word “common” into an insult. He lacked Southern roots, a fortune of his own or claim to someone else’s, power and influence and the ambition to gain more power and more influence, and that would make him unacceptable in her eyes.
While in Crystal’s eyes, he was… Handsome. Kind. Appealing. Sexy as hell. Dangerous.
A man who could make her forget everything.
A man who could cost her everything.
“There’s another place, up and around that way.” Sloan gestured with one hand. “Want to check it out?”
“Is there access from the road without coming this way?”
He shook his head, and so did she. “Christina wasn’t here.”
“You can tell that.”
“I can’t explain how. I just know…” If Christina had come this way, she was convinced she would somehow feel it. She wouldn’t be able to stand here with nothing more pressing on her mind than childhood pastimes and her parents’ prejudices.
“Okay. Then let’s head back.”
The downhill trip was easier than going up. As soon as they were buckled into their seats, he pulled onto the highway, driving north. “You still play the piano?”
“Not if I can avoid it.” She loved music, but hated making it herself.
“Tennis?”
“No.” That had been James’s game—that, and golf. She’d joined him at the country club at least twice a month to play one or the other, and hated it.
“Ride horses?”
She stopped her automatic no before it escaped. “I liked riding, but when I was…oh, sixteen or so, my mother made me stop. All that was necessary, she said, was that I know how to ride. It wasn’t proper that I keep proving it.”
“I keep a horse at my dad’s place. We can borrow one of his for you and go for a ride sometime if you want.”
She was supposed to be on her guard with him, she reminded herself, enduring this time together because it was the easiest way to get him out of her life. She was supposed to be satisfied with the life she’d made for herself since coming to Whitehorn—the all-work, no-play, very-few-friends-and-absolutely-no-men life that she’d sworn she would live until she died.
But she wanted to go riding with him.
She looked at him and saw nothing to be wary of. Just a nice guy asking her to go for a ride, not trying to take her for one. “Maybe,” she agreed shyly. If her common sense didn’t regain control before then.
After a few miles the road came to an end and Sloan shut off the engine. This area, she was sure, served as a trail head for hikers. Instead of just the shoulder, there was an actual parking lot—primitive, no markers, room for about six cars. Crystal climbed out of the truck and shivered, certain that the temperature had dropped ten degrees in the last ten minutes.
That was silly, she told herself. The sun had merely gone behind a cloud, though she made the claim while staring at her own shadow. The elevation here was a little higher than the other places they’d been to, even if she hadn’t been aware of the change. She’d just caught a bit of wind blowing down from the north, though everything was still.
But there was nothing silly about the knot in her stomach. It made her feel queasy, made her feet leaden. And there was nothing silly about her increased heart rate, or the tightness in her chest.
This was the place. Christina had come here one evening three months ago, and she had died here.
Just as he had at every other site, Sloan started along one path. After a moment, she forced herself to follow, though she wanted nothing more than to crawl back into his truck, curl up inside his quilt and hide from the world, from her visions, from herself.
The trail required nothing more than an easy stroll at the start, but gradually began to incline. Crystal kept her gaze locked on the ground ahead of her, not noticing the view, not looking to see the road curve out of sight, or the lake—for now she knew that was what it was—shimmering in the afternoon sun.
As the trail grew steeper, she heard the rustle of skittering stones, cascading dirt. Sloan had taken a big step up and the dirt had given way beneath his weight. After catching himself, he leaned against a boulder as tall as he was and bent forward to give her a hand. Once she stood beside him, he kept hold of her hand and took the other hand, too, and she felt his intense gaze lock onto her face.
“You can wait at the truck,” he said at last. “You’ve told me what to look for.”
Without looking at him, she shook her head. “I need to be sure.”
He didn’t argue, didn’t insist she leave the task to the bigger, braver, stronger man. He simply squeezed her hands reassuringly, let go, and resumed the climb.
The part of her that wanted to be as independent and capable as Winona was grateful he didn’t argue. The part that was scared senseless wished he’d made the suggestion one more time. Pride had demanded she refuse once. Self-preservation would have let her flee a second time.
The higher they climbed, the more difficult breathing became for Crystal, but not because of the physical demands. Except for the place by the boulder where Sloan had helped her, it was a fairly easy trail. It was the dark aura that surrounded the area, and the knowledge that in another few minutes she would be stepping right into the scene of her worst vision.
Thanks to Sloan’s broad shoulders and her own refusal to look around, she didn’t see the clearing until they were at the edge. He stopped, then stepped to one side and reached for her hand, pulling her forward.
First she raised her gaze to the vista beyond—the road, the lake, the cluster of buildings on the far side, exactly where she’d known they would be. She skimmed over the two slabs of stone set at a right angle among a tumble of other boulders, and the pines and, finally, the place where Christina had lain.
Seeing only dirt covered with pine needles, she gave a tiny sigh of relief. Somewhere deep inside, she had feared they would find Christina’s body, or whatever remained. Instead there was nothing.
Nothing but the feelings. The fear, the terrible pain, the other woman’s certainty she was dying.
Letting go of Sloan required effort, but she managed, and walked slowly to the place where Christina had lain. Nothing had survived the last three months—no stains that could be blood, no scratches in the dirt where she’d clawed, no tracks, nothing. Gathering courage, Crystal knelt, reached out one hand and stopped, her fingertips centimeters above the ground, struck by sensations so powerful that she nearly lost herself in them. Incredible pain, paralyzing fear, sadness, sorrow, panic. She tried to catch her breath but couldn’t, tried to move, but the pain was too intense, and the hand, the slender, dirty, bloodied hand, reached for her, pleaded with her. Help me, please help me.
With a great cry, Crystal wrenched free of the image. Her breath came in terrible gasps, in heartbroken sobs, as she jumped to her feet and ran blindly back the way she’d come.
“Crystal!”
She shoved past Sloan and raced down the trail, slipping, stumbling. The small part of her mind that remained rational knew she should slow down or risk breaking a limb, but emotion drove her recklessly on. Somewhere she lost the trail, but she couldn’t slow down, couldn’t backtrack to find it again. She simply pushed on through the brush, praying it would lead her back to the parking lot and safety, and thankfully, when her legs were fatigued and her lungs bursting, when her whole body was consumed with shaking, it did. She broke free of the woods and saw the bright red tr
uck ahead.
She was leaning against the locked passenger door, struggling for air and control, when pounding footsteps slowed behind her. “Crystal.” Sloan’s voice was short of breath but quiet and steady, and his hand, when he laid it on her shoulder, was solid and warm. When she didn’t pull away, he slid his arms around her and stood there in silence and held her.
Gasps gave way to sobs which, after a time, gave way to relatively normal breathing. The trembling slowly stopped, and somewhere along the way she traded leaning against the truck for leaning against Sloan. He didn’t seem to mind in the least.
She couldn’t guess how long they stood that way. Long enough for her chills to go away, for her breathing to return to normal, for her fear to become manageable. Long enough to start feeling silly. She released her grip on his arm, subtly tried to pull away, but he was slow to let her go. She faced him, but couldn’t get her gaze higher than his middle. “I—I’m sor—”
Hushing her, he lifted her chin, gently untangled a twig from her hair, brushed his palm soothingly over her short hair to her shoulder. “Are you all right?” He didn’t sound the least bit annoyed, impatient or put out with her emotional display.
James had always gotten annoyed, impatient or put out.
To her dismay, tears welled and overflowed, though whether she was crying for Christina, whom she’d never even met, or herself, she couldn’t say. “It wasn’t fair,” she murmured as he pulled her close again. It wasn’t fair that Christina’s last minutes of life had been so traumatic, that she’d suffered so greatly before her death. And it wasn’t fair that Crystal’s own life had gotten so traumatic, that she’d been abandoned by people who’d claimed to love her, that something beyond her control should cause her such sorrow.
It wasn’t fair, damn it! It just wasn’t fair.
Four
She felt so small and fragile in his arms, Sloan thought as he stroked her hair with one hand and rubbed her back in small circles with the other. Even her tears were delicate and small. No great gasps, no heaving sobs. Just delicate little heartrending tears.
He shouldn’t have made her come. He knew nothing about parapsychology. He had no clue what effect such things would have on the person involved, but he did know that Crystal wasn’t the strongest woman around. Her so-called psychic gift had caused her a great deal of pain before, and he’d had no right to demand that she put herself in a position where it could do so again.
No right…but he’d do it again if it would help locate Christina or her killer.
Before long she quieted. After a time, she raised her head, sniffled, then dabbed ineffectively at the damp spot she’d left on his jacket. She didn’t try to offer another apology. Instead she smiled unsteadily and said, “Thank you. I needed that.”
“Any time. I’ve got two shoulders, no waiting.”
She dried her cheeks with her fingers, then took a deep breath. “I don’t normally cry.”
Not normally. But this made twice in three days, and he was responsible both times. It stirred his guilt. “Maybe you should. Crying is good for the soul.”
“Not when you cry alone.” She pulled out of his arms, then backed up to put space between them. “I—I’d like to go home now.”
He unlocked the doors, then walked around to the other side. By the time he’d settled in his seat, she looked for all the world as if she were in control again. But he didn’t miss the slight tremble in her hands, the occasional quiver of her bottom lip or the tiny catch in her breath.
“Who left you to cry alone back in Georgia? Who, besides your parents, wasn’t there for you?” He asked the questions in a casual, conversational tone as he pulled back onto the road, though he expected no answer. Regaining control for Crystal, he suspected, meant shutting off her emotions, blocking out old hurts and disappointments, living only in the moment. But he didn’t want her shutting off her emotions. He wanted her to open up to him, to trust him with those hurts, to trust him with who she really was, with what she really felt.
After a mile or so had passed, she surprised him with an answer. “His name was James. James Richmond Johnson the Third. Aunt Winona calls him Rich-man.”
Rich-man. Of course. What other kind of man would the marriageable daughter of a prestigious, old-money Georgia family be attracted to?
Not someone who made little more than a living wage. Not an illegitimate nobody who’d grown up poor and was never going to have much. Not someone who’d barely squeaked through his second year of college before chucking it all and coming home to pin on a badge.
“Doctor, lawyer or banker?” he asked dryly.
“Lawyer. How did you know?”
“Call it a lucky guess.” Rich and smart, and probably ambitious, too.
Then she added one more thing that sent his insecurities on their way and roused his curiosity in their place. “He’s an assistant district attorney in the county where I grew up.”
I don’t like cops, she’d told him on Thursday. Or deputies or prosecutors, or any of the so-called good guys. Good ol’ James was a prosecutor, and he’d let her down. How?
“What was James to you?” Friend, boyfriend, lover or—
“My fiancé.” There was that little catch in her voice again. “If things hadn’t fallen apart, we would have been married in June in a quiet little intimate service for six hundred.”
He pretended to concentrate on driving while he envisioned the sort of wedding she was talking about. It probably would have taken place in the garden of some incredible Southern mansion, with Crystal in a one-of-a-kind gown with a train so heavy and long that she would have needed assistance to walk down the aisle. She would have had a dozen or more attendants, a string quartet, exotic flowers from the other side of the world, food and drink to impress the impossible-to-impress. She would have been registered at the finest stores, would have raked in a fortune in gifts, and the whole production probably would have equaled Whitehorn’s budget for the year.
When he got married, it would probably be in front of the preacher at the Baptist church in town, with a backyard party at his folks’ place afterward. His dad would butcher a cow and fire up the smoker, the music would come from the boom box in the kitchen window, and the whole thing would cost practically nothing.
But he had no doubt which ceremony would be more fun. He also had no doubt which marriage would be happier and last longer.
“So you were in love with Rich-man.”
“Yes.”
“Are you still?”
When she didn’t answer, he looked at her. She was gazing at her hands, where the fingers of her right hand anxiously twisted the gold nugget ring on her left hand. He didn’t have to be psychic to know the ring belonged to James. The man had let her down when she needed him, had hurt her so deeply that she’d fled all the way to Montana, and yet she still wore his ring. That was answer enough, wasn’t it?
The knowledge created an uncomfortable emptiness in the pit of his stomach. She wasn’t supposed to be in love with another man. Sloan had enough problems to overcome without adding that to the mix.
After a moment she pulled the ring off and held it up to catch the late-afternoon sunlight that slanted in the window. She turned it this way and that, sending prisms dancing across the dashboard, then slowly returned it to her finger. “No,” she said quietly, confidently. “I’m not in love with him.”
“Then why are you wearing his ring?”
“To remind me.”
“Of what?”
“Of what I had. What I lost. And why.”
So the ring was a daily reminder of James’s betrayal, a reminder to not trust anyone, to not give her heart, to never give anyone the chance to hurt her again. He would have almost preferred that she still love the bastard. It seemed an easier task to win her love from someone else than to overcome her defenses, distrust and hurt.
He would have liked to pursue the conversation further but the Stop-n-Swap came into sight ahead. He wanted to pa
ss it by, to keep driving until the road ran out, and then to set off cross-country to see where they ended up. Instead he pulled into the parking lot, taking a space at the end nearest the trailer, and shutting off the engine. “Thank you,” he said in the ensuing silence.
She looked uncomfortable. “For what? You didn’t find anything.”
“We found the clearing.”
“With no proof that Christina had ever been there.”
He believed she had. He believed those emotions he’d seen cross Crystal’s face back there had been Christina’s emotions. “I didn’t get a chance to look around. I’m going back now.”
“And if you find something?”
“Then I’ll have to write a report.”
The wariness was joined by a tight, pinched look. “With my name in it. My vision.”
“I’ll do everything I can to keep it between me and the sheriff.”
But that wasn’t a strong enough reassurance. She expected the worst from him, because that was what she’d gotten from James. He managed a smile. “Hey, look, there may not be anything there to write a report about.”
“No, I may just be crazy.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I have to go.” Quickly she opened the door, slid out, then started toward the trailer, her long legs eating up the ground. She was at the steps before he caught up with her.
“Crystal, I didn’t say that. I just meant that it’s been a long time. The area’s exposed to the elements. Whatever evidence there was might have disappeared.”
“Well, who knows? Maybe you’ll get lucky.” With a brittle shrug, she unlocked the door and swung it open.
He caught her arm before she could cross the threshold. “Don’t do this, Crystal. What do you think is going to happen if people around here find out you’re psychic? Do you think they’re going to cringe from you in horror? Do you think they’ll snicker and smirk and call you Crazy Crys—”
Big Sky Lawman Page 6