by Meryl Sawyer
“I can’t help you, Nevada. Maybe someone else will, but I need an artist with an unblemished reputation.”
Zach waited behind the gallery, knowing Claire closed at five on Sundays. He had questioned Angela Whitmore and her studmuffin whose name was Carleton Cole, about Roofies. They had been at the table closest to Claire and had bought a round of drinks. Angela said she didn’t know what Roofies were, and he believed her.
Cole claimed he didn’t either. Zach would bet a month’s wages the kid was lying. He had a California driver’s license, so Zach had called a buddy on the SFPD and asked him to check various databases in the state.
Claire came out of the gallery, both dogs at her heels. When she turned to lock the door, Lobo spotted the Bronco and flicked his tail quickly, as close as the dog ever came to wagging his tail. Zach put up his hand as if halting traffic, signaling Lobo to stay where he was.
Turning, Claire saw him and stopped. He knew she was thinking about last night. He almost laughed, remembering the look on her face when he’d walked out on her. It was almost worth the sleepless night he’d spent.
“I need you to come out to The Hideaway with me,” he told Claire when she walked toward her Jeep. “I want you to verify a few things before I take down the crime scene tape.”
“All right,” she agreed with obvious reluctance.
“I’ll follow you home, so you can leave the dogs.”
He drove behind her dusty green Jeep out of the plaza area of Taos and through a neighborhood where the yards were enclosed by coyote fences. The tall sticks had been broken off cottonwood trees, then hammered into the ground, providing crude barriers around the adobe houses. Clusters of wildflowers grew between the sticks along with clumps of rabbit brush, its bright yellow flowers in full bloom.
Claire turned down a gravel lane well-known in the area for its rambling haciendas surrounded by acres of meadows. The homes dated back to the previous century but had been purchased by wealthy people and modernized. It was the most secluded, exclusive part of town. Few coyote fences here. No, sir. High adobe walls cloistered these compounds.
Nothing like the Golden Palms trailer park where Zach had grown up.
He parked his Bronco, then waited in the shade of a towering cottonwood while Claire took the dogs inside. He leaned back against the seat and closed his eyes for a moment, wondering if he’d ever catch up on his sleep. He must have dozed off for a second. Suddenly, Claire was at his window.
“Lobo’s gone wild!” she screamed. “He just attacked me!”
Eight
Zach was out of the Bronco in a second, not believing Lobo had actually attacked Claire. But her eyes were blazing, and she was trembling. He fought the urge to put a protective arm around her shoulders, knowing she wouldn’t welcome it.
“He didn’t bite you, did he?”
Claire shook her head, letting out a quick breath. “No, he didn’t actually bite me. I went around to the front gate to pick up the mail. I’d forgotten all about it yesterday. As we were walking up to the gate, Lobo started acting strange. He growled at Lucy and she ran off across the road. Then for no reason, he began growling at me. I said, ‘Easy, boy.’ That’s when he snarled and bared his teeth.”
Suddenly, sweat peppered the back of Zach’s neck. “Lobo was trying to tell you something.” He walked around the oleander bush that had blocked his view of the adobe wall surrounding Claire’s house. In front of the arched gateway leading into the yard was the mailbox. Lobo was standing between the mailbox and the gateway, facing the bushes across the narrow lane. A harsh growl rumbled from his throat directed at Lucy, who was cowering under a bush.
“Lobo,” Zach called. “What’s the matter?”
Lobo stopped growling and trotted up to him, but his hackles were up, raising his thick coat like a brush.
“He’s dangerous and unpredictable,” Claire said. “It’s the wolf in him. He made friends with Lucy, then he turned on her in an instant. After what she’s been through, the last thing Lucy needs is a huge dog terrorizing—”
“Quiet!” Zach dropped to his knees, so he could look into the dog’s eyes. “You were trying to warn them about something, weren’t you?”
Lobo looked past him, his eyes on Lucy. The retriever was crawling out from under the bush. Lobo growled twice, low guttural sounds that sent Lucy scrambling backward.
“That does it! He’s dangerous.” Claire stomped off toward the house. “You get him out of here.”
In a flash of gray fur, Lobo was between Claire and the adobe wall, snarling and snapping at the air. She halted, leveling angry eyes at Zach. In two strides, he was beside her.
“Don’t take another step.” He grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the wall. “He’s trying to warn you. Let me check it out.”
The sun was slipping behind the mountains, casting warm light on the adobe wall, but cloaking the yard in long shadows. Zach put his hand on Lobo’s collar and as he edged through the adobe archway into the yard, Lobo willingly came with him. Zach took two cautious steps down the tiled footpath toward the front door, inspecting the deep shadows and the bushes.
Nothing.
Zach looked over his shoulder at Claire. Naturally, she hadn’t listened to him. She’d crossed the road, which was nothing more than a narrow, unpaved lane flanked by mesquite bushes growing wild. She was trying to coax Lucy out. Lobo saw what was going on and barked once. Lucy burrowed even further under the bush.
“You’re afraid for her, aren’t you, boy?” Zach said to the dog. “Something around here could hurt her, right?”
Lobo cocked his head and looked up at him. Dogs had an acute sense of smell and hearing. Being a quarter wolf, Lobo’s senses were even more finely attuned to danger than most dogs. What was bothering him? It didn’t seem to be in the yard, and the house had a sophisticated alarm system, which hadn’t been triggered. But he clearly wanted Lucy across the street.
Zach returned to the arched gateway, not certain what to tell Claire. As he passed the mailbox mounted on a post, Lobo halted, then took a step toward the mailbox, growling.
Claire walked up beside Zach. “Something’s in there.”
Zach stepped toward the fancy wrought-iron box, and Lobo blocked his way, snarling furiously. “It’s okay, Lobo. I’m not going to touch it.” He backed away and the dog stopped snarling.
Claire touched his arm. “A bomb? Do you think Stegner—”
“Ssssh.” He saw Lobo’s ears twitch, a quick contraction—nothing more. Most people would never have noticed it, but Zach knew what to look for. The dog heard, rather than smelled, trouble.
“The nearest bomb squad is in Albuquerque, isn’t it? That’s hours away.”
“Damnit, be quiet. Let me think.”
Claire stopped talking, but her expression said she didn’t consider him mentally capable of adding two plus two. Zach ignored her, listening to the sound of the aspen’s leaves, which fluttered with the rumor of a breeze. Somewhere a meadowlark called, but what he heard was the increasing silence typical of sunset when the birds stopped singing and the breeze became a memory. From under the mesquite bushes a few crickets were tuning up, but there was nothing threatening in those sounds.
The dog’s ears cocked forward again, and Zach listened intently, guessing what Lobo’s keen ears had detected. “Go stand by Lucy,” he told Claire.
“Aren’t you going to call the bomb squad?”
“Surprise me. Just once do what you’re told without asking a bunch of questions.” He grabbed her by the arm, and hauled her across the dirt road. Lobo followed, then positioned himself in front of the bush where Lucy was hiding, blocking her escape.
Zach rushed back to the Bronco. He kept a high-powered rifle in a rack attached to the ceiling, along with a pair of binoculars. In the glove compartment was the Glock he’d bought when he’d been on the force in San Francisco. He pulled out the gun, then jumped out of the car. He snapped a skinny branch off the cottonwood and hur
ried back to the mailbox.
This time Claire had stayed put, and both dogs were out of the way. He approached the mailbox, the long stick in his left hand, the gun in his right. The last rays of sunlight were on the large mailbox. He stood off to the side and hooked the stick in the latch. His hackles up, Lobo growled, standing on all fours in front of the bush.
With a flick of the stick, Zach snapped open the latch. A glistening blaze of brown and black shot out like a long streamer. A huge diamondback rattler, Zach confirmed his suspicions as it sailed through the air and landed on the dirt with a thunk. He fired, once, twice, but the damn thing was so fast and so pissed off that it was halfway across the road before the third bullet ripped its head off. Even then, it kept moving, sidling sideways toward Claire and the dogs. It stopped at Claire’s feet, stone dead, its rattles still clicking … clicking.
“Oh, my God,” she cried, her hand over her mouth, closing her eyes.
Zach shoved the gun into his belt and walked toward the snake. He breathed a sigh of pure relief. Damn all, he wasn’t nearly as fast as he once was. He’d been in the country too long.
“Six rattles, a big one,” he said, striving hard to sound casual. “Guess he wasn’t too happy cooking in the mailbox in the hot sun.”
“He would have bitten me on the face or neck—”
“Then he would have hit the ground and attacked Lucy,” Zach told her. “I guess Lobo doesn’t look so vicious now, does he?”
“No,” Claire admitted. “You’re a very smart dog.” She turned her hand outstretched, but Lobo had disappeared under the bush. He was licking Lucy’s muzzle and she was licking him back.
“Look’s like she’s forgiven him.” He gazed at Claire. “You might try saying thanks.”
A strange, faintly eager look flashed in her eyes for a moment, but he couldn’t tell what the look meant. “Thanks, I—”
He decided her guard was down and put his arm around her. Claire jerked away as if the damn rattler had bitten her.
“Bam Stegner did it,” Claire insisted. “It’s just the sort of sneaky thing he would do.”
“Okay, hot shot, try proving it.”
The fire was back in Claire’s eyes, even more intense now. “Stegner gets away with so much. It’s sickening. Obviously, you can’t do anything about him, so I’m going to—”
He was in her face in a second, grabbing both arms and hauling her so close their noses bumped. “Listen to me. You’re not doing a damn thing. I have plans for Stegner. I’ll take care of him.”
“How? What are you going to do? I want to be in on it.”
Zach didn’t have a clue about how he’d fry Stegner’s ass, but he’d think of something. The trouble with swearing to uphold the law was that—too often—the law didn’t work. Yet when people took the law into their own hands, all hell broke loose. Still, anger burned, welling up inside him from some dark, primal place. There was no stopping it with words or arresting it with common sense. His feelings for Claire had nothing to do with reason.
She would have been bitten by a deadly snake on a country road where no one would find her until the poisonous venom paralyzed her or killed her. Sometimes he thought she was the only woman on earth who was right for him; at other times, he hated her, despising her snobby attitude.
Still, he dared anyone to try to hurt her. Bam Stegner had crossed that line, and now, nothing but revenge would appease Zach. But he’d be damned if he’d let Claire know how he felt.
“What are you going to do?” she prodded in an irritating way that implied he didn’t have the balls to take on Stegner.
“I’ll let you know when the time comes. Now put the dogs in the house. We’re going out to The Hideaway.”
Claire was certain she appeared calm as Zach drove into the parking lot at Hogs and Heifers. She’d fed the dogs and changed into jeans while Zach had dumped the rattier into the trash bin. Time had done little to calm her; the tightness in her chest remained along with a heightened sense of tension. She could still see the deadly snake hurling out of the mailbox.
She ought to thank Zach and sincerely tell him how much she appreciated what he’d done, but the words wouldn’t come. After the way she’d behaved last night, wantonly kissing him and pressing against his virile body like some two-bit hooker, she might give him the wrong idea if she was too nice to him. And, to tell the whole truth, she was afraid to let down her guard. Being cold was the only way she could cope with Zach Coulter.
She grudgingly admitted he wasn’t all bad. True, he was crude and often vulgar, but he had a few good points. He thought on his feet. Had it not been for Lobo’s warning and Zach’s skillful handling of the situation, the rattler would have bitten her.
“Is Bam here tonight?” she asked as they pulled into the parking lot.
Sunday evening at Hogs and Heifers wasn’t the club’s busiest night. A few dusty pickups were parked in the asphalt lot where weeds flourished between the cracks. It was early yet; she was positive Bam’s diehard crowd would appear later.
“Stegner’s in Santa Fe picking up a new stereo system. He figures he’ll attract a lot of tourists this summer.” Zach put the car in park and came around to her door, a gesture she found oddly gallant considering. She leaped out of the car before he could open the door. “Let’s go around back to the restrooms,” he said, as her tennis shoes hit the ground.
Long shadows darkened the path around the side of the club to the disgusting excuse for a restroom that Claire remembered from her one—fateful—visit to the club.
Zach stopped outside the wooden door with the crudely painted picture of a fat pig wearing a ballerina’s tutu and a sleek heifer with breasts like soccer balls. Disgusting. And so like Bam Stegner who reduced all women to stereotypes—fat pigs or willing bimbos with huge boobs. Claire ignored the Hogs and Heifers sign and faced Zach.
The growing darkness and the shadows concealed his expression except for the glint of his blue eyes. She had the unsettling feeling that he was thinking about the way she’d kissed him last night. Every time she looked into his eyes for more than a second, she was reminded of that scorching kiss. She intentionally studied the toes of her sneakers.
“Okay,” Zach said. “You were standing here when you came out of the restroom and looked for Seth. Do you remember what you saw?”
Claire struggled to concentrate, but it was hard with Zach standing so close. She peered into the deepening shadows made even darker by the shade from the cotton-woods towering over The Hideaway. The sun was nothing but an afterglow on the horizon, the moon visible above Taos Mountain. With the disappearance of the sun, the temperature had dropped, the summer more of a promise than a reality as was usual in June.
“It was cool like it is now, I remember that,” she told him. “I glanced around, but didn’t see Seth. I looked over there,” she pointed toward the shed visible in the distance, partially concealed by a thicket of trees and brush.
“Did you go near the bear’s shed?”
“No. It was after midnight. I knew Khadafi was gone.” She closed her eyes a moment, trying to remember what had attracted her attention. She struggled to straighten out her thoughts but everything was muddled. “I heard a laugh. A man, I think. I walked toward the first bungalow.”
“Where did you see Seth?”
“He was standing down there by the fifth adobe,” she said, clearly recalling the image of him, the moonlight catching his blond hair as he stood by a crumbling adobe bungalow.
“You’re sure? Bungalow number five?”
“Positive. See how it’s at an angle?” She pointed toward the fifth bungalow. “He was standing in front of the door talking to someone inside.”
“Who?”
“I couldn’t see. The person was in the shadows.” Claire waited while Zach evaluated what she said, noting the bright yellow crime scene tape around bungalows two and three.
“What happened next?” Zach asked.
Claire walked toward a cott
onwood whose lowest branches were far above her head. “I walked this far and felt dizzy. I leaned against the tree and closed my eyes. Then I heard a man calling my name. I assumed it was Seth. Later I realized my mistake.”
“Come on,” Zach said. He led her to the bungalow and tore away the strip of yellow tape that was across the door to number two. He motioned her into the room, but she held back, unwilling to actually look at the room again. She remembered it from the cold light of early dawn when she’d awakened alone.
Zach snapped on the light switch, flooding the small room with glaring light. The bed was nothing more than a cot with a tattered chenille spread that had slipped between the bed and the cracked plaster wall that was thirty years overdue for a fresh coat of paint. A single window, its glass painted black, was flanked by heavy plastic blackout drapes. The chair was covered in fabric that might once have been a bright rust but now had faded to a tan with darker stains splotching the seat.
Claire closed her eyes for a moment, struggling to imagine herself in this dingy room with the mysterious stranger. Despite the disgusting setting, it was a powerful, erotic memory. Then a complete blank as if she were looking into a black hole.
“I tried the lights,” she said weakly, opening her eyes. “They didn’t work.”
“The forensic team from Santa Fe put in the bulb,” Zach told her. “Your wallet was found between the bed and the wall, caught in the spread.”
She remembered awakening and seeing her purse in the chair. It hadn’t occurred to her to check for her wallet. “Where were my panties found?”
“On the back doorknob inside the bathroom.”
She groaned out loud, not needing to walk into the small bathroom. Too well she remembered the tiny room with nothing more than a rust-stained sink and a toilet tank without a lid. “I went to the bathroom before I left. I didn’t see my panties.”
“Did you look?”
“The place was so filthy. There was a cockroach on the sink. All I wanted to do was get out of there. I think I would have seen them, but I guess I didn’t.”
