“You’re trying to take care of me,” she observed in patent chagrin. “But I’m the liaison. It’s supposed to be the other way around.” Skye looked up at him from beneath heavy, tired lids.
“Somebody has to,” an exasperated voice declared from the door, and they turned to see Caitlin standing there, green eyes blazing; her dander was obviously up. “You sure don’t do it yourself, especially this past year.”
Skye’s eyes immediately shot to a small photograph on the corner of her desk, and Holmes noted it was a picture of Skye with an older couple, her parents judging by the resemblance, all of them smiling in front of a large magnolia tree in full bloom.
Ah, he decided. Magnolias are notoriously scarce in the Rocky Mountains. There has been a loss in the last year. And a move. That would explain much.
“I knew you’d come right back here after eating, damn it,” Caitlin pressed, aggravated. “So are you going to listen to Mr. Holmes and go home, or are we going to have to gang up on you?”
“All right, all right!” Skye exclaimed in vexation. “I’m going, already.” She packed her laptop, and with Holmes on one side and Caitlin on the other, headed toward the ultra-secure gate, chatting amiably all the while. All three paused on the outside of the gate. “Morris gave you my phone number, didn’t he?” Skye asked the detective.
“Yes, he did,” Holmes verified.
“And you know how to use the phone?” Caitlin added.
Holmes nodded.
“Okay, call me if you need anything,” Skye added.
“I will be fine, Skye. Rest well.”
“I’ll see she gets to her truck, Mr. Holmes,” Caitlin grinned, pique having gone as fast as it had arrived. “I wouldn’t put it past her sneaking back after you and I leave.”
Skye gave Caitlin a mightily-offended glare, and Holmes chuckled.
“Then you were thinking about it. I am glad to see that will not happen. What are the plans for the morrow?”
Before Skye could respond, Caitlin maintained, “Skye and I are going to do some paperwork. We three are going to lunch, and Skye is going home early. After all, tomorrow is Friday.”
“And the day after, we are going for a horseback ride,” Holmes noted with unconcealed gusto.
“Oh, excellent!” Caitlin exclaimed, pleased. “Meantime, let’s get the two of you ho— back to your quarters,” the project manager corrected herself hastily.
“Oh, okay,” Skye huffed. The others chuckled.
Skye and Caitlin made their way toward the parking lot, while Holmes turned back to his quarters alone, well aware that the only person in this world he might term a friend was miles away within minutes.
* * *
In a dark room, a shadowed, indistinguishable face watched the flickering light of a computer screen. On it, a map of Schriever Air Force Base was laid out. A small red X, with the number 4218 beside it, tracked slowly along the walkways of the base from the main gate. After some fifteen minutes, it stopped in the officers’ temporary quarters. A pale, fleshy hand reached for a telephone.
“Subject has returned to quarters,” a low voice said.
Chapter 3—Familiarities
CAITLIN KEPT FRIDAY’S ACTIVITIES ON TRACK. Holmes was welcomed into their offices several floors above the Chamber, where he saw firsthand the close friendship between them. The two women worked well together, equally matched, without strife and with efficiency and considerable humor. Even Holmes was hard-pressed to maintain a straight face when a brief, but intense, rubber band war broke out in the office.
Upon my word, Holmes observed, spryly dodging one of the elastic projectiles, but Skye is an excellent shot! Ow! as another of the bands popped him smartly in the ribs.
At lunchtime, Hughes herded both Holmes and Skye to the cafeteria, and when Skye showed evidence of nibbling, proceeded to dress her down for being moody, then load her tray with a grilled chicken breast, two vegetables, and a fruit salad. “And if I have to stand over you until you finish it, I will,” she threatened.
Skye meekly accepted the food and did her best to tuck it away, much to Holmes’ surprise.
* * *
While Caitlin went back for a refill of iced tea, Skye, having seen his puzzlement, explained.
“It’s her turn. She had a bad bout of pneumonia back in January and I brought her to my place and took care of her for a week. The snow was too deep to get down the pass to the hospitals, the power was out at her ranch, and her husband had to look after the livestock. So I kept in touch with the doctors and just…took care of her. She has this crazy idea she owes me for it, so when she gets like this, I let her. She’s probably right, I do need to take better care of myself.”
“Ah. Is this a personal quest, this taking care of people?”
“I dunno. I…it’s who I am, Holmes.” Skye blinked, at a loss.
“It seems so.”
Caitlin returned and herded them back to the office. In short order the report on the “Holmes Incident” was complete, and Skye was shooed home.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Holmes,” she told her charge with a smile. “Complete with horses.”
“I am eagerly anticipating it,” he answered, grey eyes twinkling.
* * *
Holmes waited in the Enoch Road visitor center, chatting with the guard about modern security techniques, when the big dually pickup and gooseneck horse trailer pulled up Saturday morning. The rig parked in front of the two huge boulders of pink Pikes Peak granite decorating either side of the gate—and which, unbeknownst to most, had come from the excavation of the Chamber. Holmes bid goodbye to the guard and went outside to meet his liaison.
It was approaching ten o’clock, but Skye had outlined how long it would take her to load the horses and get down the mountain, across Colorado Springs, and to the base. She’d offered to come earlier, but Holmes had calculated it meant she would have had to rise well before dawn on her day off, and thus had refused. So he had slept in, then risen, showered and shaved. Skye had already shown him the clothing to wear, garments she’d gotten for the express purpose, and he was now attired in them, if rather uncomfortable regarding her choices. The lack of a hat—he’d noticed only military men seemed to wear headgear at all anymore—left him feeling particularly at a loss.
* * *
Skye got out of the truck with a smile and moved to the front door of the visitor center, looking Holmes up and down as she did. The detective wore modern cowboy wear: black leather western boots, straight-legged stacked jeans, a black leather belt, and a royal blue short-sleeved t-shirt, as the early April day promised to be unseasonably hot. He also wore Air Force issue aviator-style sunglasses, carried a denim jacket over one arm and a blue bandana in his back pocket, and was watching her scrutiny with a hint of self-consciousness.
Skye herself was attired in a similar fashion, but with a lavender t-shirt, and her belt was elaborately tooled. A black felt cowboy hat rested atop the golden braid, and another was in her hand.
“Here,” she offered it to him. “Good thing I thought to pick this up last night. It’ll keep your head and neck from getting sunburned. There’s less air up here to block the ultraviolet rays.”
* * *
The comment regarding air and ultraviolet made no sense to him, but Holmes took the hat and glanced at the label inside. Recognizing the name Stetson, he grinned wryly.
“I see Christy’s has been forgotten,” he noted, eliciting a puzzled look from Skye. Without further comment, Holmes placed the hat on his head, then adjusted the positioning of the brim. It was a precise fit.
* * *
“Perfect,” was her judgement, secretly noting his appealing rear view; Skye was nothing if not a healthy heterosexual female, and the cut of the jeans emphasized Holmes’ trim waist and narrow hips. “You look dynamite. C’mon, let’s go.”
Skye led him to the passenger side of the truck, discreetly showing him how the door-handle worked. Then she moved to the driver’s side a
nd clambered in herself.
* * *
“Seat belt,” she declared distinctly, getting his attention, and he watched as she pulled the belt from its position beside the door and across her body, latching it slowly and deliberately. Holmes glanced at the door, located the belt, and imitated his companion, buckling himself securely. He’d done all the same things the day before with Jones, but the hardware was slightly different in Skye’s big old truck.
“Okay, here we go,” Skye lilted, reaching for the ignition. The truck’s engine roared to life. Skye put it in gear, nudged the accelerator, and eased forward, allowing the horses in the trailer behind to adjust to the motion. Holmes watched, fascinated, as she deftly looped the empty parking lot with the large rig, and the guard opened the gate for her. She waited until they were out of earshot of the gate, then turned to Holmes. “Freedom!” she cried, grinning from ear to ear.
“Indeed,” Holmes returned the grin. “Thank you for assisting me in its acquisition. I must confess, I am quite elated to see land not surrounded by fence at…last…” His voice died as they topped a small rise, then turned left onto Highway 94. He stared ahead, and his jaw went slack. “Great Scot.”
* * *
The same shadowed face stared at the flickering computer screen. This time the screen contained a layout of Colorado Springs and its local environ. A red X moved at considerable speed along a road on the map. Pale, fleshy hands dialed the phone.
“Subject on the move,” a hoarse voice reported. “Outside base. Headed…” There was a moment’s pause as hidden eyes studied the online map. “Probable destination Garden of the Gods.”
* * *
The Front Range of the Rocky Mountains stretched before Holmes, rugged, majestic, and terrible in its beauty. Central to their view was Pikes Peak, over fourteen thousand feet in altitude, with its distinctive snow-tinged pink granite glowing bright against the rich blue of the Colorado sky. Flat prairie rolled up almost to its very feet, where the mountain range suddenly launched itself skyward. The effect was that of the bastion of some titanic fortress of the gods, and the detective recalled the other name for the line of mountains: Rampart Range.
Holmes fell silent, content to absorb the view and marvel over its raw beauty and power. He had seen tall mountains, had roamed most of the European Alps and even seen part of the Himalayas, in the course of his pursuit of various cases. But the gradually rising foothills and slopes of the parts of those mountain ranges he had visited had precluded such an awe-inspiring view as this, where the mountains seemed to leap abruptly heavenward straight from the plain. It tugged at the artist within. After several minutes, Holmes realized he was smiling, and glanced at his companion to see her watching him with a gentle, understanding face.
“It does something to you, doesn’t it?” she asked softly, and he nodded, returning his gaze to the view. “I still remember the first time I ever laid eyes on those, years ago,” she waved her hand at the mountains ahead. “I suddenly choked up, and my eyes filled with tears. I can’t tell you why. They just grabbed at something inside me. I saw visions of those mountains for months after I went home to Texas. They…called me, I guess.”
“Not a statement I’d expect from a scientist,” Holmes observed without censure, never taking his eyes from the mountains.
“No, I guess not. But a few things in this life seem to awaken the poet in me,” Skye admitted reflectively. “Those mountains are one. It’s why I live in the middle of them now.”
“I can see that. Do you have any artistic sensibilities in your blood, Skye?”
“Nothing I know of. Nothing like your uncle, certainly.”
“Ah, Horace Vernet. Uncle Horace. Great-uncle, actually, but Mycroft and I called him Uncle. Yes, a decided aesthetic streak does run in my family. In me it emerges as a certain bohemian bent, but that has proven a boon to my work, so it cannot be criticised overmuch, I think.”
“It emerges in other ways, too, if Conan Doyle’s stories are to be believed. You have thespian skills, and then there’s the Stradivarius…”
* * *
“Ah. Yes, the Stradivari.” Holmes’ face fell, and he said no more.
“Oh, damn. I’m…sorry,” Skye murmured in contrition. “If I could…” She bit her lip, guilt-ridden for reminding him of all he had lost.
“I know,” Holmes responded, shooting her an artificial smile. “It is better to be alive without my violin, than dead with it, however. And you are responsible for the fact that my brains are not mingled with Moriarty’s and splattered across the Swiss Alps.”
“Then why do I feel like I still didn’t do the right thing?” Skye sighed her discouragement.
“What do you mean?” Holmes shot her a startled glance.
“I dunno,” she shrugged, dispirited. “It feels to me like nothing I could have done would’ve been the right thing. Every way I turned was a screw-up in progress. Let you die—nope, not right. Let you live in your continuum and hose all of spacetime—nope, not right either. Bring you here and make you leave everything and everyone behind, while the general keeps you cooped up in your comfortable little cage—nope, screwed up there, too. It’s this bizarre kind of no-win situation, and I walked right into it, and now you’re paying for my stupidity.” She bit her lip again, blinking eyes that glimmered more than they ought.
* * *
Holmes was stunned. He had recognized she felt guilt, had even—he experienced a moment of intense discomfort—very deliberately added to it. But this…this ran far deeper than he had ever considered.
“Skye—you feel that conscience-stricken?”
“Oh, hell yeah.”
“But—”
“Look there,” Skye pointed ahead. “You could see it before, but now we’ve got a better view. See those red mounds and hogback ridges over there?”
“Yes, I see them.” Holmes looked in the direction she indicated, well aware she had smoothly diverted the conversation.
“That’s a huge sandstone outcropping called the Garden of the Gods. They look small, but only because you’re seeing them in comparison to Pikes in the background. They’re actually several hundred feet tall. That’s where we’re going today. We’ll spend some time riding through the area, grab something to eat at the trading post—lunch or maybe a combination of lunch and tea, depending on when we get there. Then we’ll ride some more. After, we’ll run up Ute Pass and take the horses back to my ranch,” she gave him a delightfully disobedient smirk, and he grinned, “then come back down to the Springs and go to a nice restaurant. I’ve already made reservations.”
“Skye, I am hardly attired for a ‘nice restaurant.’ And I will be less so after several hours on horseback.” Holmes raised an eyebrow.
“Trust me. I planned for this.” Skye’s smirk grew to huge proportions.
“You kept a change of clothing for me at your home?” Holmes studied the gleeful face.
“I did,” she declared triumphantly. “Several, in fact. But you’ve got a nice grey wool suit waiting for tonight. You can borrow my bathroom to clean up.” She turned into the Garden of the Gods entrance, wearing an arch expression. “And since I’m your official liaison and security escort, it’s all perfectly aboveboard.”
“You have a deliciously sly mind, my dear Skye. I might almost—almost—say devious.” Holmes laughed, eyeing the balanced rocks at the park entrance as they passed.
“Why thank you, my dear Holmes. Coming from you, that’s the highest praise.”
* * *
Soon the horses were unloaded and saddled, in English tack in deference to Holmes’ experience. Holmes immersed himself in the activity; it was the first thing he’d done since arriving in this continuum that was totally familiar—even his investigatory work had been surrounded by strange, almost alien, technology. As such, he found the prosaic grooming and tacking of two horses inordinately soothing: The comfort of the commonplace. Holmes wondered if that was why Skye had suggested it. He strongly suspect
ed so. A sudden surge of warmth toward the scientist welled up within, and he glanced at her gratefully. She was busy slipping a bit into her horse’s mouth, however, and didn’t notice.
Skye locked up the truck and the tack room of the horse trailer while Holmes held the horses, then he assisted her in mounting the grey mare.
“Thanks,” Skye said. “This one is Iris, and the bay you’ll be riding is Silver Blaze. Please note he does, in fact, match the description of the racehorse.”
“He does bear a resemblance. Don’t tell me all your horses are named for those in my little adventure.” Holmes snorted in amusement.
“No, just these two. The Percherons have more ordinary names, sort of.”
“And they are?”
“Buddy and Peggy Sue. The one named for a rock and roll musician, the other for the song he made famous. Don’t blame it on me. They were already named when I bought ‘em.”
“Lead on, then,” a chuckling Holmes waved a hand ahead, and Skye nosed Iris onto the trail, Holmes and Silver Blaze right behind.
* * *
The riding trails were fairly wide in most places, and Holmes often rode abreast of Skye. It made conversation easier, and enabled her to point out rock features, flora and fauna, and the occasional rock climber making his way up a face on the red sandstone outcrops. Rounding one of the smaller outcrops, they came upon a tiny meadow filled with blue flowers.
“Oh, oh, oh!” Skye exclaimed in delight. “Look, look!”
“Lupinus?” Holmes wondered, eyeing the plants.
“Yes! My favorite flower!”
“Yes, they are beautiful. I am afraid I do not recognize the particular species.”
“Umm, lemme see,” Skye nudged Iris forward to the very edge of the blue carpet to get a better look, leaning off the side of her horse for a moment. “Okay, that’s what I thought. Lupinus sulphureous, subspecies kincaidii.” She straightened in the saddle.
“Kincaid’s lupine?” Holmes queried from behind her.
The Case of the Displaced Detective Page 9