by Ann Major
“I’m hungry,” he muttered, furious at her and at himself.
“Is that all you’re going to say?”
“What the hell do you want me to say?”
“Don’t you want to ask me…something?”
“No,” he admitted in a glum, dark tone. “Not anymore. At least not tonight, anyway.”
“Then when?”
“Don’t chase me, girl.”
“I—I’m sorry I—I searched your bedroom, Shanghai. I had no right…But, look, Matt told me weeks ago you bought the ring.”
“He wasn’t supposed to say anything!”
“I—I was just so curious and excited after he did. Then when you didn’t ask me, I kept wondering if you had another girl maybe in some other city. I started getting scared that maybe you’d given it to her.”
“I don’t have another girl,” he growled, stung. “You’re my only girl. Hell, if you don’t know that by now, we’re in big trouble.”
“Wolf said…”
“Who are you dating—me or Wolf?”
“He talks to me more than you do.”
“Then maybe you should marry him. I hear he’s between wives.”
Her eyes glistened. Her mouth was trembling. She was near tears and it was all his fault. She hadn’t done all that much. He was just ticked. He should take her in his arms and say he was sorry, but his chest felt constricted.
“I’d better check the steaks,” he said.
“Don’t you walk out of this room before we’re done.”
Sometimes Abigail had way too much spirit as far as he was concerned. She had lots of famous clients. He’d thought she was wild at first, but she had a serious, responsible side. Maybe that was why she made demands the girls he met on the road didn’t.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m done,” he said, stomping down the hall.
“Then maybe so am I. Who do you think you are? Oh, I know you’re a rich famous rodeo star, you can have your pick of women. But I’m the kind of woman who wants a guy, who wants only her. Maybe that sounds crazy to you.”
“I don’t think it’s crazy,” he muttered, but he kept on walking.
“You travel all over the country in your friends’ private planes or your souped-up truck,” she said, running after him. “You think you are hot stuff. Everybody’s always clamoring for your autograph.”
“Kids.” He turned. “I can’t say no to the kids.” Not when they came up to him with stars in their eyes and were almost too tongue-tied with awe of him to speak. “Big deal. I sign autographs.”
“Girls chase you, too. You don’t call much or write much when you’re gone.”
It was a fault of his, staying too busy to keep in touch.
“I don’t have to. You always call me,” he said.
“Yes. I do…because I thought you loved me.”
He’d thought so, too. “Hell.”
She raced in front of him, blocking the glass door.
“I’ve got a career, too. My daddy says I should marry a lawyer or a doctor…instead of some rodeo character.”
“Then why don’t you?”
“Maybe I will. Two handsome guys bought the ranch on the other side of mine. Connor and Leo Storm. Connor’s a cowboy. Leo’s a corporate type. Runs a big ranch in south Texas.”
“Go for Connor. He seems more like your type.”
Her eyes that were usually so adoring flashed with resentment. “I don’t want either of them.
“Did you take them a casserole, too?”
She flushed.
“I just wish you’d call me sometimes. Like tonight. Who called who first to set the time for dinner?”
“Who the hell notices stuff like that?”
“I do, Shanghai. My father was too busy saving the world to ever call me. In fact, he never paid any attention to me at all. I—I don’t have a brother…or a sister….” Her voice quivered. “When I marry, I want a strong, loving family…for a change. And a big part of the equation is going to be a strong, loving husband.”
“Hell.”
“Is that all you can say?”
He was getting into trouble with Abigail faster than when he’d caught his boot in the chute three nights ago, and the gate had opened on him before he’d been ready, and that monster, Tilly, had crushed his arm brace.
Love. Sometimes he thought the closest thing he’d ever felt to love was the applause he got after a winning ride. He’d take off his helmet and hurl it toward the sky. Then he’d throw his hands up in the air. There was nothing like the roar of his fans to make him feel big and important.
“Abigail…can’t we just eat….”
Shanghai—
There it was again!
Mia’s voice stopped him cold. He pivoted wildly, his eyes scanning the darkened hall for her ghost.
Her voice kept calling to him, like she was in trouble.
Shanghai!
“Do you hear anything?” he whispered.
She got a funny look on her face. “No.”
“Listen then.”
His gaze focused on the pine paneling. Crazy fool that he was, he felt so powerfully connected to her, he halfway expected to see Mia materialize out of nothing.
But, of course, she didn’t. His stupid, mixed-up brain and heart were playing tricks on him again.
“What’s wrong now, Shanghai?”
“Nothin’.”
This wasn’t the first time he’d felt Mia calling to him. When she was a little girl in trouble, she’d always come running to him. The instant she’d headed his way, he’d known she was coming.
She was dead. He had to get over her.
“Go away,” he whispered, not realizing he’d spoken aloud. “Get the hell out of my life!”
“Go away?” Abigail wailed, sounding truly hurt.
“Not you, honey,” he muttered in utter exasperation as he gazed forlornly down the empty dark hall.
He felt Abby’s arm on his sleeve, shaking him. “Shanghai, are you all right? You’re as white as your shirt. If you weren’t talking to me—then who were you talkin’ to?”
He stared down into Abigail’s inquisitive eyes, hoping they’d ground him.
“I asked you who you thought you were talking to?” she repeated.
“Nobody. Look, Abigail, forget it. I’m sorry I got all bent out of shape. The pace has been a bit much lately. Too many rodeos. Too many motel rooms bunkin’ with Wolf or the guys. Too many Bufferin along with the beers. My arm’s killin’ me. Let’s just forget the ring and this silly quarrel for now. Why don’t we just eat?”
“Who were you thinking of just then when you got that faraway look in your eyes? You do have another girlfriend, don’t you?”
“I was thinking about those damn steaks,” he muttered. “If we don’t get our asses out on that deck, they’re gonna be burnt to crisps.”
She leaned into him and pushed at his chest with both hands, shoving him toward the deck. “Go ahead then. I don’t care about your stupid old steaks! I don’t care about anything, not even you, you big lying lug! And you can flush that engagement ring down the toilet for all I care!”
“What I’d do? You were the one snoopin’.”
“If you loved me, you would have asked me already,” she said. “I wouldn’t have had to snoop.”
“I was going to ask you tonight,” he admitted.
“Then why don’t you?”
“’Cause I’m not in the mood anymore.”
Her face went as white as his. “Well, neither am I.”
“You satisfied now?” he growled.
“Perfectly.” She crossed her arms over her breasts and ran down the hall.
Her quick, strangled sobs cut him to the quick because Abby wasn’t one to cry. He almost ran after her. Then his front door opened and slammed so hard his whole house shook.
He was halfway to the door when he stopped midstride. When her car didn’t start, he knew she was giving him time to chase after her. F
or some reason that he didn’t understand, his broad shoulders sagged, and he stayed put.
Suddenly Shanghai wished he was in a chute in a rodeo arena, his gloved palm tightly wrapped in a yellow rope, about to nod at the chute boss. He craved the excitement of the arena and the adrenaline-jingling moment when the gate swung open. He craved the fans’ shouts, the clanging bell, and the bull’s plunging jumps and wild snorts. He knew what to do when he was in a life-and-death battle to stay on a bull.
Bull riding was easy compared to women.
When Shanghai rode well, sometimes the bull and he became one. On nights he got it right, nothing else mattered, nothing at all.
After Mia had seduced him and then left him for Cole and then had the baby, Shanghai had told himself he’d gotten lucky again, that he was free, that he had his bull riding, his ranch, his horses and his rough stock. There had been plenty of women on the road to make him forget. Only the more women he’d used to forget her, the emptier he’d felt. Even after he’d met Abby, late at night he’d still feel lonely.
He’d ignored his loneliness and had told himself that when he retired he would marry Abby and be a rough stock contractor. He’d settle down and raise the best rank bulls in the business, the best saddle broncs, too. They’d have lots of kids, too. They’d be happy.
Shanghai… Again he felt powerfully connected to Mia’s ghost.
“Leave me the hell alone!” he yelled.
Mia’s voice cut him like a knife.
For a couple of seconds the house was quiet. Then his cell phone rang.
He picked it up and read Abigail in bright blue letters. It rang two more times. She was out in the car, calling him already. Inhaling a deep breath, he flipped it open.
“Hi, darlin’,” he said softly, feeling sorry for her somehow.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“You’re forgiven,” he whispered but in a tight, unconvincing voice. The fight wasn’t really her fault and he knew it. She always called and apologized.
“Are the steaks all burned up?” she murmured.
“If they are, I’ll take you out.”
“I have a better idea,” she said, her voice honey-soft.
He smiled in spite of himself. He knew exactly what she meant. She thought that if she got him in bed, she’d get him to pop the question.
She deserved better. He didn’t know what to say. Feeling doomed, he opened his front door and stood in the doorway. She came flying out of her car and into his arms.
But as his mouth closed over hers, he heard his name whispering in the pines.
Mia’s voice sounded as small and scared as a frightened little girl’s, and it tugged at him on some soul-deep level. She’d used that same voice when she’d pleaded for him to save Spot.
Abigail kissed him. “I want you to love me, just me, Shanghai. If you can’t do that, tell me now.”
Shanghai—
It was Mia again, and when he shuddered in panic he knew he had to be close to some edge.
“Do you believe in ghosts?” he rasped in agony.
“Of course not.”
“Lucky you, darlin’. I’ve got a lot of ghosts.”
“It’s called baggage. Don’t tell me. Just kiss me. I promise I’ll send all your ghosts away.”
But when she kissed him, he wanted Mia so badly he had to push her away.
For a long time they just stared at each other.
“Make up your mind, Shanghai. Even an idiot like me isn’t going to wait forever.”
When he let her go, she turned and ran.
El Paso, Texas
It was late, nearly 2:00 a.m. Outside Terence’s ground-floor apartment, the wind was still howling, which meant the air would be so thick with dust a man could barely breathe.
“Answer, damn it,” he muttered wearily just as an operator’s voice came on and apologized that all circuits were busy.
Attacked by guilt about Rebecca, Terence slammed the phone down and stared at his computer. He still couldn’t quite believe his bad luck—that he, of all people, should be the one to break a story about the Kembles. They were the one family in Texas that was off-limits as far as he was concerned. It was ironic that tomorrow, because of him, folks all over Texas would know that Mia Kemble was alive.
Maybe because of his story, she would die. Still, more often villains operated because truths weren’t told or faced.
Terence had been trying to call The Golden Spurs Ranch to notify Mia’s family about the impending story, but high winds had the phone lines down near the ranch. So far, he hadn’t been able to get through. Personally he didn’t want to talk to them, but he knew what it was to lose a daughter.
Terence rubbed his forehead. The weather was bad all over Texas. There were thunderstorms, high winds, even hail and tornadoes. Not that Terence ever gave much of a damn about the weather—except when he couldn’t get important phone calls through. He’d e-mailed the ranch but hadn’t heard back. There was nothing for it but to call the authorities in El Paso and ask them to notify the authorities in Spur County.
Terence made the call. Then he poured himself another cup of black coffee and swallowed still another antacid tablet.
Time to concentrate on his film. He inserted a DVD into his computer, leaned back and sipped cold coffee while he booted it up.
For a week he’d been working too hard and doing without sleep. He was exhausted, but he was too wired to go to bed. He had a deadline and the headache from hell and he’d maxed out on aspirin. Four cups of coffee on an empty stomach while he chain-smoked had him feeling reptilian.
It had been twenty-four hours since Collins had interviewed Valdez in the limo. In between working on the film, he’d written the article on Mia and Tavio and e-mailed it to the Border Observer.
When the music started playing as the titles ran, the wind began to blow so hard, bits of dirt bounced off the dark windowpanes of the apartment. Not that Terence looked up from his computer screen where men wearing Dalton-Ross uniforms dug holes right by the Rio Grande and then dumped in truckloads of milky-white chemical waste. More grainy footage showed the same men bulldozing over the holes.
As long as they got their paychecks the bastards didn’t care if they contaminated the water supply for everybody who lived in the area as well as for those downstream.
There was some footage of human excrement floating in the Rio Grande. But that was nothing compared to his sequence that dealt with anencephalic births—babies born with partial or missing brains. Next he watched a sequence of young people with facial deformities and mental retardation, whose mothers had worked with solvents and PCBs in the seventies.
It was pretty grim stuff until he got to the shot of the chicken that wobbled up to the river, took a sip and keeled over dead.
Terence laughed out loud. “I’m a sick bastard,” he said to no one in particular.
Sick and getting sicker. Still, if a man didn’t laugh, all he could do was cry. Terence hadn’t cried in years, and he had a lot to cry about. His idealism was as tarnished as the rest of him. He was beginning to believe that men like Valdez had a sharper view of the future, that America was really just a corporate democracy, that America was every bit as cynical as Mexico, that it didn’t give a damn about people or injustice.
Leaning back in his borrowed folding chair, his gaze drifted to his journalism degree framed on the wall. Beneath it was a recent picture of Abigail on her golden horse. The surface of his card table, which served as his makeshift desk overflowed with stacks of books and newspapers. He eyed the blotter that he used to jot notes when he did phone interviews. On top of it lay a picture of the twins together when they’d been kids. He didn’t want to go there. Still he picked it up. In it they wore jeans and identical white blouses. Their hair hung in braids. The photograph had been taken right before Becky had been kidnapped.
He picked it up and stared at Becky’s face for a long time before slamming it down so hard the table wobbled.
Was she dead? Murdered? What was it like to know you were about to die? What had she felt?
If Mia Kemble “disappeared” for good, he’d have another notch on his belt.
He shut his eyes for a long time. Then he yawned and replayed the chicken shot again. He laughed so hard tears sprang behind his eyelids.
His guilt about Becky receded a little.
Was the chicken shot over the top? Was he hysterical? Did the film work as a whole? Was he telling the truth? Who cared about truth in today’s world when it was easier just to go for spin and public relations hype?
He leaned forward to grab his cup of coffee again. No sooner did he guzzle the final bitter dregs than he heard the crunch of a beer can behind him. Thinking it was Sam, his roommate who’d been in the back bedroom snoring earlier, he didn’t bother to turn around.
Collins replayed the chicken scene, hoping Sam would notice. When the chicken sipped and fell over dead, a man’s harsh laugher rang from behind his left shoulder.
It wasn’t Sam.
Terence’s blood turned to ice.
He whirled and saw the glint of gold and the little bones strung together at the stranger’s throat. The man held a gun.
“What the fu—”
Adrenaline surged through his body, but he wasn’t nearly fast enough. Before he could lunge, he was struck from behind.
“Gotcha, gringo,” an amused, heavily accented voice rasped.
The computer screen spun sickeningly as Terence went down facefirst into beer cans and fast-food wrappers, his fall as ignoble as the chicken’s in his film.
Six
Mia was alive! After fifteen months, she was alive!
After more than a year of grief and then acceptance, Joanne Kemble was back on a wild roller coaster ride. One moment she was ecstatic and filled with hope; in the next, she was trembling with fear that Collins’s article, which was all over the Internet, might somehow trigger Morales to act vengefully toward Mia.
When Joanne Kemble had first heard Mia’s plane was missing, she’d prayed for a miracle. Then Cole had been found. After that she’d gone on hoping and praying that maybe, somehow, Mia might be alive somewhere, too. But as the months had passed and there had been no word, her friends had told her to give up. Even after Caesar had had Mia declared dead, deep down, Joanne had never found closure. She’d had constant nightmares about her daughter, and there were still times when the phone would ring, and her heart would leap at the thought it might have to do with Mia.
