A Man of His Word

by Merline Lovelace

  “Stay here,” he ordered quietly. “Let me check it out first.”

  Sydney considered herself a feminist and thoroughly competent in any number of ways, but respected the inarguable differences between the sexes. She had no problem at all with letting a tough, well-muscled male nudge her bedroom door open, flip on the lights and do a quick check before she ventured inside.

  “You’d better get in here,” he called.

  Her heart pounding, she stepped through the door. She barely got a foot over the threshold before she froze. Shock constricted her veins, made each beat of her heart an agony. A low, animal cry rose in her throat.

  “No!”

  Cassettes littered the bed and the floor. Empty cassettes. Someone had ripped their guts out. Yard after yard of shiny brown tape formed a tangled mound in the middle of the green shag carpet.

  Shattered, Sydney dropped down on her knees beside the mound. Her trembling fingers reached out, caught the end of a piece of videotape. It came free of the pile, less than a foot in length. Swallowing, she dug her hand into the tangled mass and grabbed a fistful. Loose ends fluttered like ribbons.

  Three days work…destroyed. She’d lost the all important, once-in-a-decade emergence sequence. The rainbow footage. The first view of the glistening ruins. The interiors.

  She wanted cry. She would have…if she hadn’t used up a lifetime supply of tears during the months of Pop’s illness. Now she could only close her fist over those tattered bits of videotape and squeeze until the knuckles showed white.

  “Sydney, I’m sorry.”

  Reece came down on one knee beside her. Concern darkened his eyes. Anger etched deep grooves on either side of his mouth.

  “Did you make any backups?”

  It took a moment before she could speak. Her throat worked, forcing out the words.

  “Of course. But they’re working copies, not good enough to print from.”

  “I see.” He eyed the tangled mess in her hand. “Any chance you can splice it together?”

  “The person who did this made sure he didn’t leave enough for me to salvage.”

  “He?”

  “Sebastian,” she hissed, fury slicing through her dismay.

  Wave after wave of hot anger spilled into her. Scalding, raging, a conflagration that consumed her. Her hand shook so badly the ends of the tape danced.

  “Sebastian told me I wasn’t welcome here, that he wanted me gone, but I never thought he’d stoop to something this…this vicious!”

  “We don’t know for sure he did it.”

  “I know,” she said savagely.

  She looked so wild, so fierce…so damned hurt…that the need to comfort her grabbed Reece right by the throat again.

  Before he could give in to that need, she surged to her feet. The air around her almost vibrated with the force of her anger.

  “I’ll check with the others on my crew. Maybe they saw something.”

  “Good idea,” Reece said, reaching for the phone. “While you do that, I’ll call the sheriff.”

  The group that gathered outside Sydney’s room over the next half hour included not only her crew and Deputy Sheriff Joe Martinez, but Martha Jenkins, proprietor of the Lone Eagle Motel, her sister, Lula, and several of Reece’s engineers and construction workers, drawn by the noise and the flashing strobe lights.

  No one, it turned out, had seen or heard anything. But Tish, to her boss’s profound relief, reminded Sydney that she’d taken a handful of cassettes to her room. She had the all-important emergence sequence reels and a few of the exterior shots in her possession.

  Sydney pounced on them like a hen would a missing chick. “Thank God!”

  Clutching the cassettes to her chest, she thought furiously. She could reshoot everything else except the rainbow…if Reece gave her unlimited access to the ruins and if the rains held off and if she worked herself and her crew dawn to dusk for the next six days straight.

  She’d have to fly back to Chalo Canyon after the reservoir refilled to shoot the exteriors across the water. If that didn’t fit with Tish’s schedule, she could shoot that footage herself. That would push her deadline for finishing the first cut up several weeks, and not give her as much time as she’d wanted for the fine cut, but she might still make her October viewing with PBS.

  Her eyes narrowed with grim determination. She could do it! She had to do it!

  She’d invested all her personal resources, everything she had left after her father’s hospital and funeral bills in this project and in her new studio. If pressed, she could give up the studio and try to recoup some of the outlay for all that expensive equipment, but she’d staked more than money on this documentary. She’d made a promise to her father and put her professional reputation on the line with her backers. She wouldn’t allow anyone to stop her. Anyone!

  She swept the small crowd, saw Reece talking to the deputy sheriff. The same man had taken her statement about the Blazer she’d sent to the bottom of the gorge. His brows had climbed when he’d unfolded his rangy frame from the sheriff’s vehicle and seen who waited for him.

  Sydney had told him what she could about tonight’s incident, but the deputy had aimed more questions at Reece than at her. Probably because Reece had checked the door and windows for signs of forced entry. He was the one who found the jimmied lock on the bathroom window, prevented the others from entering her room and generally kept his cool while Sydney had come so close to losing hers.

  Reece had understood her fury, though. Those moments inside the room when they’d knelt knee-to-knee on the floor, she’d heard the sympathy in his voice, seen the outrage on his face. If she was another kind of woman, if this was a different time or place, she could easily have leaned into him, howled out her anger and frustration, drawn from his strength. She’d hidden her feelings for so long, though. Been strong for herself and for her father.

  Now…

  Now more than ever she had to stick to the decision she’d made back there at the falls. She couldn’t let Reece distract her, couldn’t give in to this crazy urge to lock the door on the shambles in her room and lose herself and her worries in his arms for a few hours.

  “Guess I have all I need here,” the deputy said a few moments later, flipping his notebook shut. “I dusted the bathroom window and cassettes for prints. We’ll match them against the samples you and your crew gave us, Ms. Scott. In the meantime, you might want to move your things into another room. Martha, you got one available?”

  The motel proprietress huffed. “Until that reservoir fills up again, Joe, we’ve got more empties than I want to think about. I’ll go get a key.”

  “We never had a break-in before,” her sister added, her black eyes lively. “You sure do generate your share of excitement round these parts, girl.”

  The dry observation was accompanied with such a sympathetic hug that the perpetrator of all this excitement could only smile.

  “Not by choice, Lula.”

  She edged past the café owner to speak privately to the deputy. “When do you plan to interview Sebastian Chavez?”

  Martinez knuckled his straw sheriff’s hat to the back of his head, clearly not looking forward to the prospect of asking the county’s most powerful landowner to account for his whereabouts tonight.

  “I’ll drive out to the Chavez place first thing in the morning.”

  “Let me know what he has to say.”

  “Yes, ma’am. In the meantime, I need you to come up with an estimated value of the destroyed property.”

  Frustration added its bite to Sydney’s still-simmering anger. In dollars and cents, the actual value wouldn’t run to more than the cost of a dozen replacement cassettes. In lost time and footage, the figure could easily reach five figures.

  “I will.”

  He pulled his hat down onto his forehead, tipped it politely. “Ms. Scott. Reece.”

  “Get your logs,” she told her crew as the squad car pulled out of the parking lot. “We’ll do a
damage assessment and work out a new shoot schedule as soon as I get the key to another room.”

  Reece opted to wait beside Sydney until Martha returned.

  “You okay?” he asked quietly while the others dispersed.

  “Yes.” She blew out a breath, still raw, still tense, but no longer shaking with fury. “I’ll have to hustle to make up the lost footage.”

  He got the message. She was going to be busy from here on out. Even more to the point, she wanted unlimited access to the area behind the dam. Unfortunately Reece couldn’t grant it.

  “I should have a decision on my recommended repairs to the dam by tomorrow,” he told her, hoping it was true. “I’ll let you know as soon as I can how long you’ve got to shoot. In the meantime, press ahead.”

  “Thanks.”

  Her eyes were solemn, bereft of the dancing light that made them sparkle like sunlight refracted through green quartz. He hated leaving her like this. Hated the idea that someone had gained such easy access to her room. Wondered how the hell her safety had become his personal responsibility since the morning he’d pulled her from that piñon tree.

  The memory of her near tragedy curled his hands into fists…and sent a sudden, icy chill into his chest. He went still, thinking back, seeing in his mind once more the hairpin turn, the rain-softened shoulder, the slab of sandstone that had tumbled into the road.

  He needed to go back, check that site again before he voiced any suspicions or raised more doubts. In the meantime…

  Martha’s bustling return broke into his racing thoughts. Reece had time for only a final touch, a brief caution. His hand came up, tucked a wayward strand of mink-colored hair behind her ear. His knuckles brushed her cheek.

  “Be careful out there.”

  “I will.”

  He waited while the two women inspected Units Twelve and Fourteen.

  Sydney opted for Twelve, then bade him good-night. To her continuing consternation, his touch lingered on her skin long after she’d moved her things into her new room.

  Dawn hadn’t yet broken when Sydney stood at the bathroom sink the next morning, already outfitted in her working uniform of high-topped canvas boots, fatigue pants and a ruby-red stretch top layered with a sweater that would tie loosely around her hips when the sun rose. She’d drawn her hair back, pulling the tail through the back of her ballcap to keep it out of her face. All she needed was moisturizer to protect her skin and she was ready to start over.

  She slathered it on, her busy fingers slowing when they reached the spot on her cheek Reece had touched last night. For a big man, his touch was surprisingly gentle.

  Regret flowed, sharp and stinging, before she shrugged it aside. She had work to do!

  One by one her crew dragged out of their rooms and began ferrying equipment to the van and the Blazer. They had the vehicles almost loaded when Henry Three Pines drove up in his rusted pickup. Sydney didn’t really need the services of a guide any longer. By now, she knew every rock and twist in the path leading into the canyon. When she’d hinted as much to Henry yesterday, however, he merely smiled and said he wished to honor his old friend’s memory by aiding his daughter in her quest.

  This morning it appeared he wished to do more than honor a memory or merely act as guide. Reaching into the truck, he lifted out a rifle and tucked it in the crook of his arm.

  A sleepy-eyed Zack came awake fast, dancing back a step when he spotted the weapon. “Whoa, dude! Is that thing, like, loaded?”

  “Why would I carry it if it wasn’t?”

  “You, er, haven’t forgotten how to handle it, have you?”

  Henry’s seamed face folded into a smile at the folly of youth. “Some things a boy must learn and a man never forgets.”

  “If you say so,” Zack conceded doubtfully, edging around the barrel to dump his load in the van.

  Sydney, too, made a cautious circuit of the gleaming gun barrel. She hadn’t yet succumbed to the stereotypical L.A. resident’s predilection for powerful cars and even more powerful personal handguns.

  “What is this?” she asked Henry. “Why are you armed?”

  “Reece called me last night and told me what happened. He and I agreed we must remain wary until the one who destroyed your film is caught.”

  She didn’t bother to point out that she was using videotape, not film. Such distinctions meant nothing to people outside the industry.

  “Remaining wary is one thing, having you ride shotgun is another. I’m not sure about this, Henry.”

  “You look to your film,” he replied with unruffled calm. “Reece and I will look to you.”

  Sydney wasn’t sure she wanted to be “looked to,” even by this longtime friend. The placid expression in Henry’s black eyes told her it was a waste of time to argue, however, and time was her most precious commodity right now. The eastern sky already showed the first purple streaks of dawn. She wanted to be in place at the ruins to catch the full sun when it broke over the eastern rim.

  She’d talk to Reece later, she decided, make sure he understood that she wanted in on any further decisions regarding her or her crew. Right now, though, she had to get her team ready to roll.

  Long fingers of sunlight and shadow slanted across the canyon rim when Reece pulled up at the switch-back turn where Sydney’s vehicle had parted company with the road. His men had removed the slab of tumbled limestone blocking the road and added a temporary metal guardrail to keep vehicles a safe distance from the shoulder. The road was passable again, but it wasn’t the makeshift repairs that interested Reece.

  His eyes grim and intent, he climbed the striated cliff that edged the road. It took a few moments to find the scar left when the smaller projection had broken free. As yet unweathered by wind or rain, the slash showed pale white against the salmon color of the cliffs.

  Reece fingered the scar, followed it up one side, down the other. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he sure as hell knew when he found it.

  His jaw tightening, he traced the small gouges. They could have been made by a falling rock hitting against the surface. Or by a chisel or crowbar positioned at precisely the right angle to pry loose a slab of stone and send it tumbling to the road below.

  He studied them for long moments before climbing down to the road. Back at the Jeep, he pulled out his cell phone, put in a call to the county offices and settled down to wait for Joe Martinez.

  The deputy took almost an hour to arrive at the scene. In the interim, Reece received two calls from his on-site engineer and placed one to his boss. The Bureau of Reclamation’s supercomputer had kicked out the latest analysis using the revised data Reece had provided after his visual inspection of the exterior. The powers-that-be didn’t feel they warranted a modification to the fix as currently designed and contracted for.

  “We’ve spent most of the night going over the specifications and design,” his boss said wearily when Reece got him on the phone. “The specifications that you helped draft, I might point out.”

  “Those were done using computer-generated models and X-ray scans made by underwater divers. My gut now tells me these stress fractures run deeper than we’re seeing.”

  “The revised data you sent us doesn’t support that gut feel. We need to move on this project, Reece. The heavier-than-expected rainfall this summer has elevated water levels all along the Colorado River System. We’ve got to get this dam up and fully operational again before the next flood season.”

  “You’re not telling me anything I don’t know here, Mike.”

  His long-suffering supervisor vented some of his own frustration. “I’m taking all the flak I can handle on this project, Reece. Every day the dam is out of service is costing the government megabucks in lost power generation and water income. I can’t justify additional delays without something more specific than your intestinal rumblings.”

  It was an old dilemma, one Reece had struggled with since he’d joined the Bureau of Reclamation. Whenever a dam went down, disruptin
g power and water supply, pressure mounted hourly to get it back in service.

  Still, safety was and always had been the first consideration. Reece had worked with Mike long enough to know he’d go toe-to-toe with the Bureau’s commissioner, the secretary of the interior, even the president himself if he had the facts and figures to support him.

  That Reece hadn’t been able to supply those facts or figures churned like acid in his stomach.

  “All right,” he conceded reluctantly. “I’ll notify the contractors to proceed. But I reserve the right to halt work if I find anything at the core that worries me.”

  “Of course. We want this done, but we want it done right.”

  Reece flipped the phone shut and tucked it in his shirt pocket. The need to get back to the dam pulled at him. He had to go over the blasting schedule a final time, make sure the subcontractors were ready to roll with the hundreds of cubic yards of cement needed for the repairs, brief the civic leaders in the area…including Sebastian Chavez.

  The thought of Chavez kept Reece sitting right where he was. Was the old man behind the destruction of Sydney’s videotapes? Had he made those chisel marks in the limestone? Were they chisel marks?

  Chapter 9

  “I don’t know,” Joe Martinez muttered when he finally arrived at the site of Sydney’s near slide into oblivion. Squatting on his heels, he fingered the marks in the limestone. “Could be cuts. Could be gouges made by falling rocks.”

  “Can you test the surface of the stone for metal traces?”

  Martinez pushed his hat forward to scratch the back of his head. “I’ll have to check with our crime-scene technical unit, but I doubt they’ve got that kind of sophisticated equipment. We might be able to send samples to the State Forensics Lab. Depending on their workload, it could take weeks to get an answer.”

  Reece had expected that answer. “Maybe I can speed things up a little. I worked a mine-flooding problem with a metallurgist on the governor’s Science and Advisory Board a few years ago. She has access to a scanning and transmission electron microscope that would pick up even microstructural traces of metal. Maybe I can talk her into taking a look at this rock.”