“Hey,” Dylan said, “can you take a break or something? Can we talk?” He was in uniform, part of the reason her heart was beating like she’d run a mile. He’d removed his hat as soon as he walked in the door. Now he was moving his hands along the brim, turning it in a nervous circle, though his voice exuded confidence.
“I guess. Let me tell Dad, so someone can cover the counter.” Alex suppressed her curiosity as she knocked on her dad’s door and called through it.
“Dad, I’m taking a break, okay? I’ll be back in half an hour.” That was a bit of a long break, but nepotism did have its privileges.
“Okay, have fun,” he called. Did he see Dylan walk by, or was he just being a dad?
“Thanks!” Alex turned and walked over to Dylan, who turned as well to lead the way to the door. Why was she so nervous? He hadn’t taken her hand, or given any indication this was a social call. Why else would he ask her to leave the newspaper office, though?
They walked around the corner to the coffee shop, where Dylan ordered an iced coffee for himself and a Pepsi for Alex. She corrected the order to iced coffee and he raised his eyebrows.
“Sorry, Alex. I guess it’s still a shock to me you’re not a kid anymore.” He’d clapped his hat back on his head as they found an outdoor table in the shade. The iced drinks were going to be good. It was around 115 degrees, typical for the season. A hint of moisture in the smell of the air foreshadowed the monsoon rains, due any time now. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky at the moment, but it didn’t take long in these parts for a towering thunderhead to form and dump buckets of heavy rain.
Dylan’s words had put Alex on the defensive. She bristled, but he laid his hand on hers. “Settle down, Lexi. That’s a good thing.” She snatched her hand away.
“What do you want, Dylan?”
An expression of sorrow flashed across his face before he schooled it to neutral. “I wanted to thank you for that editorial.”
Surprised, she failed to guard her words, or her feelings. “Oh, so you read the byline this time, did you?” Why was it so important to her that he be impressed with her writing?
He threw her a look of confusion. “What?”
“Never mind. You’re welcome for the editorial.” Her words sounded childish and she winced. Maybe she was still a kid. She didn’t want him to think her feelings were involved with him, but that’s what it sounded like, even to her. She hid her consternation by taking a long drink of her coffee.
Chapter Fourteen
Wednesday July 16
Alex shook off her momentary pique. They were sitting near one of her favorite spots in town, the town square, which was really a park. One of the few places anywhere around there with luxurious green grass and tall palm trees. She always thought of it as an oasis, surrounded by little shops on two sides, the old railroad station at the back, and open to Main Street. Today, it even smelled like an oasis. The sprinklers must have just watered the grass, which was a luxury in the area, but absolutely necessary if the town didn’t want it to become a sandlot.
When Alex looked at Dylan again, he was regarding her with interest. “How old are you now, Lexi? Eighteen?”
Stung again, this time she threw caution to the wind. “I’m nineteen. My birthday is June twenty-third, three weeks after yours, which I remember quite well. Four years ago you told me you were leaving Dodge and never coming back. What are you doing here, Dylan?” Alex was surprised at herself, but worse, she was angry. Why? She’d been over that horrible night years ago, hadn’t she? Why was she furious with Dylan now? It was water under the bridge. Speaking of water, as if she had called it into existence by thinking about it, the wind had freshened and the clouds that were nowhere in sight ten minutes ago were now racing to cover the sun. They were about to get a downpour.
“We’d better get inside.”
Dylan was still speechless at her outburst, and gazed at her mouth as if some kind of poison had just spewed from it. She had obviously interrupted his agenda. The next thing she knew, his lips were on hers, his arms around her, his kiss hot and insistent. Whether from surprise or surrender, her mouth opened, and he took full advantage. Anger morphed to passion, and Alex was kissing him back, urgently. Time and place dropped away as her body responded to the long-suppressed desire she’d held for him.
Dylan’s fingers tangled in her hair as he deepened the kiss and pressed her body to him. She was drowning in it. As quickly as her anger sparked, it died and she melted into him, just as the rain let go and a spear of lightning struck one of the tall palms in the park, not twenty yards from where they were sitting. At first, she thought it was the kiss that crackled the air and made her skin tingle with electricity.
Dylan jumped from the bench and yanked her up, running with her, urging her inside the coffee shop. Alex was still in shock from the heat of the kiss. In just the few seconds it took to get inside, she was soaked to the skin and Dylan hadn’t fared any better. At least his hat kept his hair dry. Hers was dripping down her shoulders and she was shivering uncontrollably. It was crazy how quickly the temperature could drop in these circumstances. Her polo shirt and safari shorts, her typical work wear, weren’t enough to keep her warm, especially when they were soaked. Dylan put his arm around her and pulled her into his warmth.
No one else besides the staff was in the shop, since it was nearly their closing time. The two women stood on the other side of the door, watching the storm through the windows on that side of the shop as Alex and Dylan watched from their side. No matter how often this happened during monsoon, the townspeople soaked it in. Once the rains stopped, they wouldn’t see them again for nine months. For those who grew up in Dodge, rain was fascinating, rare, precious and deadly. They sacrificed the feel of it on their skin and the smell of it in the air for mild winters and endless sunny days until next year.
Dylan and Alex didn’t speak. Their close stance was enough to start gossip. They didn’t need to fuel it by continuing what they’d been doing. Alex still didn’t know what Dylan had wanted in the first place, unless it was that kiss, but that had to have been spur of the moment. Her lips felt bruised.
They’d have to sort it out later. Evidently, what he wanted with her in the first place was something private, because he didn’t bring it up, either. Numbly, Alex watched the rain dwindle as rapidly as it had started, with questions circling in her mind, unspoken. What had she done, kissing him back? Could he tell she still wanted him? Did he still want her?
~~~
Joe Hendricks was beside himself. Driving by the town square on the way to the cop shop, he’d caught a glimpse of auburn hair and long legs that reminded him of Alex. He’d circled back around the other side, near the old railway station, just in time to see it was Alex, all right. And Dylan Chaves, practically ravishing her on a park bench. His fists clenched on the steering wheel.
He was through going easy on the bitch. And Chaves needed a lesson, too. If he didn’t get it soon, Joe was going to step in. Ever since that corpse had turned up, things had heated up. The leader of Los Reyes del Desierto was up in arms, and that wasn’t good. If he couldn’t keep a lid on things, it was going to get nasty. What he needed was a plan.
Joe was driving south now, back on the patrol route he’d interrupted when he spotted Alex in the park with Dylan. He’d barely missed being caught in the fast-moving storm, just catching the edge of it. He leaned over, keeping one eye on the road for flooded spots, and opened the glove box. The flask wasn’t where it should have been, and it took a moment to find it, hidden under some paperwork. Joe pulled it out, uncapped it and took a long pull. Nothing like a little Johnny Red to calm a man down.
He had some vacation time built up. He could handle this, no problem. It would just take a day or two to put the plan in motion. Tomorrow was too soon. He’d have to wait until Tuesday, but that was okay. There wouldn’t be another edition of the paper before then. There was plenty of time.
~~~
When the rain ende
d, Dylan walked Alex back to the newspaper office. She looked like a drowning victim, so instead of going inside, she called her dad from the car to tell him she needed to go home and change. Dylan said something about seeing her later and she nodded, not paying attention.
“Dad, it’s me. I got caught in the rain and I’m soaked. I’m going home to change, okay?” Alex ran her fingers through her drying hair, hoping to avoid serious tangles before she could get it fixed.
“Okay, but hurry back. The phones are blowing up about that editorial you wrote.” Was Dad mad or excited? They got some calls every week about the editorial, but ‘blowing up’ sounded like he meant there were more than usual.
“I will.” Alex turned her key in the ignition, muttering ‘come on, come one,’ until the motor started. Her old Nissan Sentra, a hand-me-down from her dad, was usually reliable, but after the heavy rain, it didn’t want to start easily. She needed a new car, which she’d probably get sometime around five years from now, when she’d finished school and found a better-paying job.
Back in the office after a quick shower and a little attention to her hair, Alex was stunned to find a dozen or more pink slips with phone messages from people who wanted a call back.
“Dad, what are all these messages?” She walked into his office, waving a fan of them in her hand. Her dad looked up from his spreadsheet.
“They want to give you their response personally. The ones with the plus sounded like they liked the editorial. The ones with the minuses may be a little hot under the collar.” Alex rolled her eyes at her dad’s old-fashioned expression.
“Anything you want me to do before I start these call-backs?”
“No, just try to catch the incoming calls. I’m way behind, here.” He inclined his head toward the computer screen, where the ad revenues, sales and some other data he kept danced across the spreadsheet. There were software applications to streamline this task, but Dad’s stubbornness about using his own spreadsheet was typical—just like everything else he was stubborn about.
Alex decided to tackle the minus calls first, so if she got upset, she could balance them out with the plus calls in between.
“Mrs. Ellsworth? Yes, this is Alexis Ward,” Maybe using her full name would make her sound older. “You left a message for me to call?”
“Alex Ward, you don’t fool me one bit, I know who you are! Where did you get these liberal notions about wetbacks?” she demanded. Alex should have known. Mrs. Ellsworth was her first-grade teacher, now retired. She used to think because Alex’s mom disappeared before she had Alex in class that she had some sort of special duty to raise her, apparently even now. Alex gathered her wits to keep from arguing with her.
“I’m sorry you feel that way, Mrs. Ellsworth. I hoped I was balancing the issue.”
“No one is forcing them over the border, Alex. Your sympathies are misplaced.” Her clipped tones suggested that no matter what Alex said, she’d refute it. There was no point in debating it, even if she was dead wrong.
“Thank you for letting me know how you feel about it, Mrs. E.” Alex used the old classroom nickname to let Mrs. Ellsworth know she still had fondness for her, even though they disagreed.
“I hope you’ll run a retraction next week,” she said. Now, that was going too far.
“I don’t think so, Mrs. E. It wasn’t meant to be a factual piece, just an expression of my feelings. Those haven’t changed. Dad will be writing next week’s editorial, and I’ll let him know how you feel. Maybe he’ll address it. I need to let you go, now, but nice talking to you.”
Alex ended the call before Mrs. E stopped spluttering. She’d better count the two piles and see if she could make a plus call in between each minus. Wouldn’t want to say something she’d regret to one of their customers. She picked up a pencil and made a note on a scratch pad. ‘Mrs. E wants retraction’. She wouldn’t get that, but Alex would show the notes to Dad and he could decide if he wanted to get into the debate or not.
By the time Alex finished her calls, it was plain the town was deeply divided. Not surprisingly the thirty percent or so who were of Latino heritage were the most vocal, though not always in favor of her editorial. Responses ranged from ‘what business is it of yours’ to ‘thank you for calling attention to the human side of this’. She wouldn’t be able to use the newspaper to air her opinions on the matter anymore. Dad hated controversy, even though that’s the way some news media drove ratings these days. She knew exactly what he’d say. ‘We don’t need ratings, we need advertising. No controversy!’ He had to know she’d created some, but he said nothing about it at the office.
The last call of the day was from one of her regular gossip-mongers. She relied on them to fill up the About Town section each week. This one was eager to tell Alex one of her classmates had just had an abortion, as if the paper would run that tidbit. When she hung up, Alex leaned over and banged her head on the desk a couple of times. This poisonous town and its gossip were going to kill her if she didn’t get out soon.
As Alex cleared the desk she shared with the other employees who worked when she was off, she considered whether she felt strongly enough to find another way to communicate about the issue. She did. She was going to start a blog. And the first thing she was putting on it was the composite picture of the dead man she’d photographed last week, as soon as she could get it from Lt. Wells.
~~~
When Dylan got home, he found Ange in a state of near panic, and his own heart did a double back-flip. “Is it Mom?” he nearly shouted.
“No, you idiot, it’s you! You couldn’t have called?” she screamed back at him. Dylan glanced at his mom, who sat impassively in her chair as usual. Could she even hear them?
“What are you talking about?” Genuinely puzzled, Dylan stood with his clothes dripping on the floor.
“Every dip in town is running deep. I wasn’t sure you’d get home. You could have been caught in a flash flood.”
By the time she’d answered, Dylan was rummaging in the kitchen for something to eat and beginning to shiver. He needed to get out of his wet clothes and get something warm in him. “I’ll be right back.”
When he came out of his room, Ange was serving up some canned soup and had a pot of coffee on. “Sorry, this isn’t gourmet fare, but I figured it was better to get it in you quick.”
“Thanks, Ange, this is perfect.” Gourmet fare or not, it was what he’d lived on as a bachelor ranger in park housing. He had probably consumed enough salt to pickle him permanently. “I’ll grab some sheets and make up the couch,” he told her. “You take my room.”
“I don’t want to put you out,” she argued.
“And I don’t want to go wading in any flooded roads to pull your car out. You’re right about the flooding. You’re staying here.”
Later, in the dark on the couch, it hit him he never got to tell Alex what he’d gone to say that day. That her editorial had struck a deep chord for him. His little brothers deserved to know what had happened to their dad, someday. When they were old enough to understand some people made really poor choices, and it sometimes got them killed.
Even more, he wanted Alex to know he was touched she’d shown such compassion for people so many saw as inferior. More compassion than he’d been showing for his own people, or people he suspected were his own. Why hadn’t he asked Mom about his father while he still had the chance?
The answer, of course, was no one expected to lose their mother at only forty. When he did the math, he understood for the first time how scared and alone his mom must have been when she had him. She was only eighteen, younger than Alex was now. A deep longing for the woman his mom used to be and a wave of love for her as he remembered from his childhood, before Rufio, hit him like a tidal wave, and then he sniffed as unexpected tears squeezed from under his eyelids without stopping. That mom had been gone for years. Why hadn’t he missed her before now?
He understood Alex’s stake in it now, even if she didn’t. Her mom had be
en gone for years, too. Had she made the connection? His heart cracked a little more, for her. Brave little thing, tilting at windmills, whatever that meant. The girl who’d cried over baby javelinas, whose own mom had disappeared without a trace and left her motherless, would never leave a child lonely and sad. He could do worse when it came to choosing a mother for his boys. Dylan went to sleep with a contented smile on his face. That kiss—wow!
Chapter Fifteen
Thursday July 17
The whole town looked as if it had been put through a car wash this morning. The sun was shining on a world that got soaked last night, but the humidity was gone and things were drying up quickly.
Alex wanted to go back to Tucson and have another face-to-face with Lt. Wells, but it was already too late to do it today, even if Dad could spare her this morning. Dad’s face when she gave him her notes about the call-backs was priceless. They’d received so many calls yesterday that Alex didn’t get anything else done but answer them or return them. She supposed she wouldn’t be doing any guest editorials again.
Worse, though, was Dad had lost interest in the story. The fact the man died of exposure rather than the gunshot wound meant there was very little likelihood there was a shooter in town. More likely, he’d had a run-in with someone else in his group, and then got left behind on their trek. That was Dad’s theory, at least. Alex wasn’t so sure. Where he was found was pretty far north of the border to get to on foot, especially in this season, and especially if you were wounded. She still thought there was more to it, but she couldn’t win the argument.
Since Alex couldn’t take the time to go to Tucson, she called Lt. Wells to ask if he could email the composite sketch to her when it was ready. Before she asked her question, they talked a little more after she asked him how he thought the death happened. His theory wasn’t far off from hers, which was someone picked him up and got through town nearly to where he was found, before an argument took place over something. Maybe his ride wanted him to get out and walk around the BP checkpoint north of town.
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