A Man of His Word

by Merline Lovelace

  Hurrying, she reached river level within ten minutes, the ruins in another fifteen. Sweaty from exertion and the muggy dampness of the impending rain, she gave a silent prayer of thanks when the wind started to pick up. The frisky breeze lifted the damp hair off her neck and tossed stray tendrils at will. Within moments, she had the viewfinder to her eye and was trying to find just the right angles.

  Intent on her task, Sydney moved sideways along the river bank, shooting a series of shorts, longs and wide angles that focused on the shadowy window at the top of the square tower. She wished to heck she could climb up to the cave and get inside the Weeping Woman’s supposed prison, but Henry’s grandsons had already picked up the ladders, and there was no way Sydney was going to attempt those shallow handholds dug into the cliff face.

  She finished one thirty-minute Betacam tape, dropped it in her pocket and was just getting ready to insert another when the wind began to whistle down the canyon in earnest. Rising. Falling. A soughing cry.

  Aiiiii. Eee-aiiiii.

  One by one, the hair on the back of Sydney’s neck lifted. It sounded just like the tiny, hollow-cheeked retired schoolteacher turned eccentric, Laura Brent, calling to her. Sydney had already decided to pack it in when the rumble of thunder brought her head up with a jerk. Even as she watched, billowing clouds rolled across the sun. The sky darkened instantly to an angry gray.

  “Whoa! Time to make tracks, girl!”

  Where there was thunder, lightning was sure to follow. Or was it the other way around? In either case, she had no desire to get zapped by those two zillion amps Reece had talked about.

  He confirmed her decision when he called a moment later.

  “Get out of there!” he barked. “Now! The rain’s coming down in sheets north of here.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “Call me as soon as you’re on the path up to the rim.”

  “I will.”

  She was fitting the minicam into its case when another sound carried over the eerie cry of the wind. A faint slide of rock on rock. A heavy tread. She spun around and went rigid with shock.

  Sebastian moved toward her. Slowly. Steadily. His silver hair whipped in the wind, but the evil-looking automatic pistol in his hand didn’t waver. The hatred in his black eyes caught Sydney by the throat.

  “I knew you were lying about leaving Chalo Canyon.”

  She didn’t bother to ask how he knew about her abrupt departure. Gossip traveled at the speed of light in a small town. Besides, she wasn’t sure she could speak around the baseball-size lump in her throat.

  “Your kind always lies.”

  “No, it’s true. I’m leaving. Today. Right now, if you’ll just…”

  She swallowed her disjointed words and stumbled back a pace as he came nearer. Her fingers gripped the strap of the camera case as if it were a lifeline to reality, sanity. Safety.

  “Didn’t you see my car? The Blazer?” she asked desperately. “It’s all packed.”

  “I saw it. That’s how I knew you had come down into the canyon.”

  “How could you miss the suitcases and the equipment in the back? I’m leaving Chalo Canyon, Sebastian. I swear, I’m leaving.”

  He smiled then, a slight rearrangement of his facial muscles that churned Sydney’s mounting terror into bile.

  “That’s what Marianne said.”

  “Who?”

  “My wife. She was a slut, like you. The only thing she did right in our short marriage was give birth to Jamie.” His smile slipped into a fury that was all the more frightening for being so cold, so implacable. “Even then, she taunted me, tried to tell me he wasn’t my son.”

  With a calm detachment that horrified Sydney, he pulled back the automatic’s slide and cocked it. Hands out, camera case dangling from one wrist, she made a desperate attempt to reason with the man.

  “Sebastian! Wait! I didn’t come back to Chalo Canyon to hurt you or your son, only to make a documentary. You have to believe me!”

  “I believe you,” he said grimly. “I’ve believed you all along.”

  “Then what…why…?”

  “Why do I have to kill you? Because I don’t want that film made.”

  Sydney’s hair whipped in her face, stinging her cheeks. She didn’t dare reach up to clear it for fear the movement would trigger a reaction from the man only a few yards from her.

  “My documentary won’t dishonor the Anasazi! If anything, it might stir interest in the Ancient Ones.”

  “You fool! Haven’t you realized that’s exactly what I fear? Your cursed movie will bring a horde of archeologists and anthropologists down on the ruins every time the reservoir drains. Maybe even scuba divers during the years the village is underwater, poking around in the ruins, trying to find artifacts.”

  “But…”

  Suddenly his eyes blazed. “Don’t you understand? I don’t want them up there! I didn’t want you up there, disturbing old ghosts!”

  “You mean the Weeping Woman? But that’s just a legend.”

  The smile came back, so cold, so terrifying, that Sydney’s heart froze.

  “Is it?”

  Her mind went blank for several seconds. Absolutely, totally, completely blank. Then the bits of gossip mixed with local lore she’d picked up exploded into her thoughts, ripping through her imagination like shrapnel.

  “Oh, my God! She’s up there, isn’t she? Your wife? Lula said…” Frantic, Sydney tried to recall the on-camera interview with the Jenkins sisters. “She said she first heard the legend of the Weeping Woman about thirty years ago. From you…not long after your wife disappeared.”

  She wet her lips, her horror mounting as she fit the pieces of the puzzle together. “The story shook Lula so much she never trekked down into the canyon again. That’s what you intended, isn’t it? That’s why you made up the tale about the Weeping Woman? To scare people away from the ruins.”

  “I didn’t make it all up. I’d heard a similar tale as a child and simply embellished it.”

  His lip curled. The face Sydney had always thought of as aristocratic became a twisted mask.

  “Appropriate, don’t you think? Marianne planned to leave me for someone else. I never learned who. When she threatened to take Jamie away with her, I knew I could never let her leave Chalo Canyon alive. She became the Weeping Woman, crying for her lost love.”

  “Sebastian…”

  “She’s been buried under the rubble in that tower for more than thirty years. She would have slept for eternity if you hadn’t decided to poke around in the ruins and make your damned—”

  Without warning, the skies split. Lightning cracked. Instinctively Sebastian hunched his shoulders and whipped his head around for a second to see where it hit. Only for a second.

  Sydney knew that second was all she’d get. In an explosive burst of fear and adrenaline, she fisted her hand around the camera case strap and swung with every ounce of strength she possessed.

  The hard-sided case hit Sebastian’s arm with a glancing blow, knocking it in a wild arc. The automatic flew out of his hand and clattered against stone. Before he could recover his balance, she followed up with another, even more vicious swing. This one slammed into his right temple. He grunted, then crumpled to the earth.

  Her blood roaring in her ears, Sydney stood over him. Panting, gasping, swimming in adrenaline, she hefted the case again, held it high above her head, her arms shaking with the strain, until she felt sure he wasn’t feigning.

  He was out cold.

  For how long, she couldn’t guess. And she sure didn’t intend to stick around to find out. Scrambling in the direction the gun had flown, she searched desperately for a sight of its gleaming blue steel. She didn’t want to leave it behind for him to find if and when he came to and started after her. She’d taken only a single step when her cell phone shrilled, almost stopping her heart.

  Sucking in air, she kept a wary eye on Sebastian, dug in her pockets for the phone and tried to find the damned au
tomatic, all at the same time. Finally she fumbled the phone free and flipped it up.

  “Sydney!” Reece roared. “Where are you?”

  “At the ruins. Sebas—”

  “I told you to get out of there!”

  “I was on my way, but—”

  “You don’t have time to make it to the path. You’ll have to go up the cliff face! Now!”

  She shot an incredulous look at the handholds carved into the rock. “Are you crazy?”

  “Listen to me. I just got a call from the water-monitoring station twenty miles north of here. An arroyo that used to drain into the west mesa crumbled and changed course. Its spill is now pouring into the Chalo. There’s a wall of water and mud eight feet high roaring down the canyon. I’ve called in a chopper for you, but—”

  She didn’t like the sound of that “but.” She didn’t like the sound of any of this!

  “I’ll take the Jeep and get to you as fast as I can. Just get up that cliff face!”

  “Reece, Sebastian’s here.” She wrapped both hands around the phone, her hair whipping wildly. “He tried to shoot me. I knocked him out.”

  “Oh, God!” His breath exploded in her ear. “I’ve got a rope in the Jeep. I’ll come down for Sebastian when I get there. Start climbing, Sydney. Now!”

  Abandoning all thoughts of the gun, she ran for the cliff. Halfway there, she stumbled to a halt. She swung around, panting, to stare at Sebastian’s unmoving form. She couldn’t just leave the bastard there to drown. Could she?

  Cursing a blue streak at her own idiocy, Sydney raced back to the comatose man and grabbed his arm. Grunting, panting, she dragged him toward the cliff. She didn’t have the faintest idea how she’d get him up the sheer rock face.

  She’d figure that out when she got there.

  Down canyon, Reece slammed the phone shut and raced along the dam’s thick, curving base. He’d already activated the emergency flood-warning-alert system, but the responsibility for the safety of the men working on-site as well as the residents of the towns downriver sat on his shoulders like a ton of concrete. He had only seconds to think, to analyze the situation, only moments to decide what to do.

  In a flash flood situation like this, the correct procedure was to close the spillgates and trap the rushing water behind the dam. The massive structure would contain it, keep it from rushing on and ravaging the towns downriver. The dam had been constructed all those years ago for just that purpose.

  In this case, however, the rampaging floodwater would hit an exposed core, one already weakened by stress fractures. The whole dam could give under the sudden, added force.

  And it would! Reece knew it with everything in him. Despite the computer analyses, despite X-rays and geophysical in-situ testing, Reece knew the base wouldn’t hold without some kind of reinforcement.

  Worry and fear for Sydney gnawing at his gut, he raced for the two men conferring at the repair site.

  “Call up top,” he ordered his deputy. “Tell them to close the floodgates. Then I want the dam cleared of all personnel.”

  His second in command nodded, but his eyes mirrored Reece’s own worry. “If we’ve got as much water coming at us as they said, this baby won’t take the added stress.”

  “She’ll have to.”

  The engineer threw a wrenching look at the crater blasted out of the curving base. “Not with her core exposed like that.”

  “We’re not going to leave it exposed.” He shot an order at the contractor. “I want your crane operator to ram his machine up against the hole. Let it take the force of the water, act as a kind of a plug.”

  “That piece of equipment cost fifteen million dollars!”

  “I’ll take full responsibility.” His lips stretched in a grim smile. “If this doesn’t work and the entire dam comes down on top of the crane, they can deduct the cost of a replacement from my paycheck.”

  “Dammit, Reece…!”

  “You got a better idea?”

  The contractor hesitated, shook his head.

  “Then do it!” Already on the run, he shouted again for his deputy to clear the dam.

  “Where are you going?”

  “There are people trapped up canyon. I’ve got to get to them.”

  He had to get to Sydney!

  Flinging himself inside the tiny elevator, he stabbed at the buttons. Every verse of the Bible his mother had drummed into her five unruly sons ran through his heart during the agonizingly slow ride to the top. The moment he shoved open the elevator door, the sound of a helicopter coming in low and fast assaulted his ears.

  The bird set down in the parking lot, its maroon-and-silver logo glistening in the rain. Reece ducked under the whirring blades, yanked open the passenger door and climbed aboard.

  “I heard you called for a rescue chopper,” Jamie shouted over the scream of the rotor. “I came to help.”

  “Let’s go!”

  They lifted off mere seconds later. For the duration of the short ride, Reece listened to the reports from upriver, confirmed that the crane was in place and his men had cleared the dam, and prayed that Sydney had managed to climb up the cliff face.

  Rain pelted down, knifing into her flesh. Panting, Sydney shook her hair out of her eyes and tried to gauge the distance to the cliff. Another ten yards. Maybe fifteen.

  Her breath stabbed at her lungs. Her knees and back were bent with the strain of dragging Sebastian’s dead weight. She had him almost to the foot of the cliff when he groaned.

  “Sebastian!” She dropped to her knees, shook his shoulders. “Sebastian, wake up!”

  He moaned again and put a shaking hand to his temple.

  “You’ve got to climb up to the ruins! Reece says there’s a flash flood…”

  His eyes opened. He stared at her dully.

  “Listen to me!” She shouted over the screaming wind. “We’ve got to climb up to the ruins. Reece says there’s a flash flood up canyon. It’s coming right at us!”

  He staggered to his feet and looked around wildly, as if trying to remember where he was. When his glance came back to her, his face twisted.

  “I can’t let you leave Chalo Canyon alive, you witch. I can’t let you take my son.”

  Still woozy, still off balance from the blow, he lunged for her. Sydney danced away from him easily. Desperate, she tried to think past the fear roaring in her ears of some way to reach him, to make him understand…

  Suddenly, she realized that the roar in her ears wasn’t fear. She threw a terrified glance up canyon. It sounded like a freight train was tearing right at them.

  “Sebastian!”

  All around them the roar rose to a deafening pitch.

  For a moment she stared into eyes blinded by hate. Then Sebastian lurched away.

  “I’ll find my gun. I’ll end this now. You won’t leave. You won’t take my son away.”

  Sobbing, shaking with terror, Sydney stuck her toe into an indentation carved out of the rock. Her scrabbling right hand found a hole just above her head. Her left, another a little higher up. She pulled herself up, scraped her foot across the rock until she found purchase, pulled again.

  She didn’t dare look up to measure the distance to the cave for fear she’d overbalance and fall backward. Nor could she look down to see if Sebastian was climbing the cliff below her or still searching for his damned gun. Her skin crawled with the fear that he would find it. She could almost feel the bullets slamming into her body.

  Sweating, straining, deafened by the howling wind and nerve-shattering roar, she crabbed up the cliff face.

  She was halfway to the cave when a wall of muddy water came bursting around the canyon’s bend. It crashed toward her, under her, slapping upward, sucking at her feet, her legs. Sydney clung to the wall, her face pressed into stone, her nails clawing at rock.

  Then, as fast as it had come, the crest passed. The angry water dropped a foot, a yard, raged on below her. Her fingers numb, her shoulder and calf muscles on fire, she tried to find t
he strength for the rest of the climb. Only then did she hear Reece’s voice amplified a thousand times over, bouncing off the canyon walls.

  “Grab the harness! Sydney, behind you! Grab the harness!”

  Chapter 16

  F or the rest of her life, Sydney would remember the day the Chalo raged through the canyon, bringing with it moments of terrifying fear and blinding joy.

  One of the worst moments came just after Reece hauled her aboard the chopper. As soon as she caught her breath, she shouted over the noise of the blades to Jamie.

  “Your father’s down there!”

  He took his eyes from the controls long enough for her to see the wrenching anguish in his eyes.

  “Reece said he came after you. Tried to shoot you.”

  She nodded, her throat closing at his pain.

  “I did this to him.”

  The words tore out of Jamie’s throat as he stared through the rain-splattered windshield, his arms and legs automatically working the chopper’s controls.

  “I worried him sick about Arlene and me. I made him think that you, that I—”

  “No! It wasn’t you.” Leaning past Reece, Sydney grabbed his shoulder. “It wasn’t you. I’ll tell you everything later…when we find him.” Her fingers dug into his wet shirt. “He may still be alive. We may find him.”

  Even as she shouted the encouragement, Reece shook his head. Sebastian’s son put what Reece didn’t say into flat, hard words.

  “He couldn’t have survived that.” His jaw locked. “And I can’t search for his body now. We’ve got to get back to the dam, see if it’s going to hold. If not, my first, my only priority is to evacuate the ranch, make sure Arlene is safe.”

  The dam! Sydney clutched the edges of the thin, silver solar blanket Reece had wrapped around her. Her frightened eyes sought his.

  “Those stress fractures? The ones you were so worried about? They’re taking the brunt of the river?”

  Incredibly, he flashed her a grin. It was weak and strained around the edges, but it was definitely a grin.