by Aimée Thurlo
Just as she finished speaking, two patrol cars with flashing red lights turned into the complex and drove up.
Two officers stepped out of the units and walked toward them. “Who’s Patty McDermott?” the taller of the two asked.
“I am, and the guy ran that way,” Patty said, pointing. “I figured you’d want to know since one of your officers, Detective Bowman, lives at the apartment he was planning to break into.”
“Dispatch said you thought the man had a weapon, maybe a knife? Did he threaten you?” the second officer asked.
Patty shook her head. “No. Bitsy and I startled him and he ran. I guess he didn’t want the kind of trouble my dog could give him. As for the weapon…I’m thinking now it may have been a chisel. Whatever it was, I know it had a yellow handle.”
The officer turned to look at the dog, who was still growling. “Ma’am, maybe you should close that door,” he said.
“She won’t move without a specific command—or if she thinks I’m being threatened—but if it’ll make you feel better…”
“It would,” the officer said instantly.
As Patty moved away, the other cop, whose name tag identified him as Officer Murray, turned to Gene. “You’re one of Preston’s brothers, right? The rancher?”
“Yeah,” Gene said with a half smile, then filled him in.
The officer took some notes, then glanced at Lori. “You should have done as Sergeant Chavez recommended, ma’am. Leaving town, at least until we can identify a suspect, is still your best course of action.”
“Like you, Officer, I have a job and responsibilities here,” she said in a harsher voice than she’d intended. Having to defend her reasons for staying annoyed her. She wasn’t the criminal; she was the victim.
As soon as the thought formed, she cringed. To become a bona fide victim, all she’d have to do was start thinking of herself as one. “I’m not the problem here, Officer. The man after me is. That’s who you need to concentrate on.”
“How sure are you that Detective Bowman wasn’t the intended target? After all, this is his place,” the officer said, glancing at Gene then Lori.
“Preston’s in Quantico right now,” Gene said, “so his parking space is empty. Anyone seriously looking for him would have known he wasn’t here. I suppose it might have been a burglar randomly targeting apartments where nobody’s home. But considering that there was also an attempted purse snatching earlier where Ms. Baker was the target, I think we’re pushing the bounds of coincidence.”
“It’s not that unlikely. With the police slowdown, there’s been a rise in property crimes. They know we can’t be everywhere,” the officer said.
“So what now?” she said.
“We’ll do what we can, including checking around the window surfaces, but if the guy didn’t leave usable prints, there won’t be much we can do. We’ll ask around and see if anyone else saw the man in the cap and windbreaker.”
As the officer went to join the other patrolman, who was coming around from the back of the building, Lori looked over at Gene. “When they think one of their own is threatened in any way, they can sure move fast.”
“Theirs is a special brotherhood. They’ve got each other’s backs. They have to. Cops can make some bad enemies,” he said. “But if you’re thinking that they got here double time for one of their own but not for you, you’re not taking one important fact into account. Their suspect was still here when Patty called.”
“And maybe still is?” Lori’s eyes widened and she looked around.
“Let’s go inside,” Gene said with a nod and hurried with her into Preston’s home.
Lori sat on the sofa while Gene stood next to the window, peering outside.
About fifteen minutes later, they heard a knock at the door. Gene let Officer Murray in. “We’ve spoken to some of the residents,” Officer Murray said. “Two people claimed to have seen a dark-colored van driving away. The driver was wearing a baseball cap.”
“The man who’s been after Ms. Baker drives a dark van,” Gene said. “Anyone see a plate?”
He shook his head. “Only that he had a yellow, old, basic state tag. We’ll try to have patrols drive through this area more often, but we’ve done all we can at this point.”
As soon as the officer left, Lori picked up her purse. “I want to go by Bud’s home and check to see if those plates are still on his truck.”
“All right. Let’s go take a look.”
As Gene drove out of the complex, Lori thought of how things might have turned out if Gene hadn’t been driving down that street the other day.
She glanced at him and, seeing the way his big, strong hands gripped the wheel, she swallowed back a sigh. Her gaze drifted over his strong shoulder, then downward. The bulge she’d seen in his jeans when he’d tried to talk her into a night of steamy sex also told her he was extremely well endowed. If truth be told, she’d never been more tempted to have a wild night of sex in her life.
“What’s on your mind?” he asked, a smile hovering at the corners of his mouth.
She drew in her breath, and didn’t look directly at him, wondering if her expression had somehow given her away. “I was just trying to understand you,” she said.
“Uh-uh. That wasn’t it.”
“Oh, be quiet,” she said.
A short while later they entered Harrington’s neighborhood. Gene slowed down to a crawl as he drove past Harrington’s house.
“The plates aren’t on the truck!” she said quickly. “You know that he’ll put them back on, so let’s stick around. He’s bound to show up.”
“At least we know that he’s been here since I last drove by. Either that, or someone stole his mail,” Gene said, pointing.
“But his newspapers are still on the porch,” she pointed out.
“Maybe he needed his mail for business reasons but didn’t want to bother with the rest. I have a feeling that he’s found somewhere else to stay, so he might not come back again for days. Even if we sat here all night, our only guarantee is that you’re going to be real sleepy at work tomorrow.”
She let her breath out in a whoosh. “Yeah, you’re right, and since he already knows your vehicle, he’ll steer clear if he spots us before we do him,” she said. “Our problem is that he also knows where Preston lives—that is, if we assume he was the one there tonight.”
“I’m not ready to conclude that,” he said, “but something still feels off to me. That includes the fact that it doesn’t really look like he’s currently living here.” After a long silence, he continued. “We agree on one thing, though. Going back to Preston’s tonight is too risky. We need a new place.”
“I don’t know where else to go,” she said. “I’m a walking target.”
“Let me drop my truck off at my brother Paul’s place. When he flies out, he always takes a cab to the airport, so he won’t mind us borrowing his Jeep. Then we’ll go to the one place I know your stalker will have a very hard time finding.”
“Where’s that?”
“My foster father’s home in Copper Canyon. Even the locals have trouble finding the place without a map. At night, with no lights for miles, it’s pitch-black around there. Unless you know the terrain by heart, it’s impossible to drive around after sundown without risking your tires, getting stuck or driving into an arroyo. The best thing is that the animals in the area will always let you know when there’s an intruder.”
“You mean like lots of barking dogs?”
“No, more like cougars, coyotes, mule deer and the flocks of birds that live all throughout Copper Canyon,” he said. “The address won’t be listed anywhere, either, because there’s no address to speak of. There’s no delivery service, either, only a rural post office miles away.”
“Just how far away is this place?”
“It’s an hour’s drive there and back, but I can make sure you get to work on time and I can pick you up at the end of your shift. That’ll give Sergeant Chavez more time to com
e up with some answers. I’ll also look into things myself while you’re at work, safe and sound.”
“We’re only open half a day on Saturday, so you’d have to pick me up just after noon, not five-thirty. Are you sure about all this?”
“Yes, I don’t mind the back and forth, but the final decision is yours,” Gene said. “I know you’d probably be more comfortable staying in town, but as you said, we’re running out of options.”
“Living in town has always been a necessity for me. That’s where the jobs are.”
“Are you telling me that you’re a country girl at heart?”
“I might be, I don’t know. I’ve never had the chance to find out. All I can say is that I like open spaces and I love being around animals. I’ve often pictured what it would be like to live on a big ranch, but those are just fantasies.”
He said nothing for several minutes. “Do you do that often?”
“What?”
“Fantasize,” he said.
“More than I should.”
He gave her one of his slow, killer grins, his eyes on hers. That look drew her in and a dozen heart-stopping, deliciously tempting images popped into her head.
She looked away quickly, but not before seeing the even wider grin on his face.
They soon arrived at a popular coffee shop not far from the community college and Gene parked in the back near a blue Jeep.
“Your brother must really love coffee,” she said, glancing around and wondering where, exactly, Paul lived.
“Yeah, he does, but that’s not why he lives here. He’s friends with the owner of the coffee shop, and is getting the upstairs apartment rent-free in exchange for security services. Paul has cameras mounted everywhere, along with sophisticated monitoring systems. That’s why he leaves the Jeep here instead of at the airport, and why I knew my truck would be safe, too.”
They placed her things in Paul’s Jeep, then set off again almost right away, making their way out of Hartley.
“I can’t see anything beyond the headlights, can you?” After leaving town they’d entered a no-man’s-land between little farm communities that were nothing more than small clusters of buildings beside the highway.
“There’s not much to see along this stretch, except dry grassland. That’ll change before too long. I know the route by heart, so all I have to worry about is some large animal, like a cow, straying out onto the road.”
The hypnotic effect of the white line on the highway and the low rumble of the knobby tires made her sleepy. Although she hadn’t meant to, Lori dozed off sometime after midnight. It wasn’t until they hit a bad bump that she woke up with a start.
“Wow, I fell asleep? I’m sorry! I should have been talking and helping you stay awake.”
“You needed the rest,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. Right now this dirt road is so rough there’s no way I’m going to drift off.”
“Yeah, but before, with miles of nothing and more nothing, you could have fallen asleep behind the wheel,” she said, shaking the cobwebs out of her mind. “I’m sorry I let you down like that.”
“You didn’t. This route is special to me. What you described as miles of nothing, I see as the road to and from home. Up ahead is the canyon where Dan and I used to teach our younger brothers hiking skills. Then there’s the narrow, steep cliff beyond there. None of us could ever climb up to the top without help. The only person who could was Hosteen Silver. He could find handholds where all we saw was naked sandstone.”
“I didn’t mean to sound flip,” she said, apologizing quickly. “It’s just that, to me, particularly in the dark, it just seems so empty here.”
“You can always talk straight with me. No offense taken,” he said. “I know what it’s like to look at this place through the eyes of a stranger. I remember the first time I came here. It was at night, like now, when the darkness pretty much swallowed up everything in its path. I felt as if I’d fallen into a hole and I was scared to death I’d never be able to crawl back out. Everything was quiet, and scary.”
“You were a city kid?”
“I grew up in Albuquerque,” he said, nodding. “To me, the Rez was just someplace ‘out there.’ When I said that Hosteen Silver found Dan and me and gave us a new life, I meant every word of it. At first the Rez was like another planet to us—a wilderness. The first few months, we were equal parts scared and exhausted. Hosteen Silver demanded a lot from us, and the fact that he was a hataalii, a medicine man, had us both spooked. We had no idea what to expect.”
“Did you have to attend ceremonies and things like that?” she asked.
“No, he never pushed his beliefs on us. He’d explain Navajo ways, and then let us choose for ourselves whether we wanted to accept them or not. All he demanded was that we show the proper respect,” Gene said. “In time we came to understand that the Navajo way was part of us, just like it was of him.” He paused, then continued. “The most important lesson Hosteen Silver taught us is that everyone and everything is connected. Life, taken as a whole, forms a pattern, and a man can only walk in beauty if he finds his place within that.”
Lori watched Gene closely as he spoke. There was a calm self-assurance about him that drew her. He’d seen the worst and best of life, and somewhere along the way had found himself. “You’re not like anyone I’ve ever met.”
He laughed. “I’m not that different from any other man. I just know what I want and what I need and, unlike some, I know the difference between the two.”
“You found a new identity in this canyon and, after that, charted your own course. That planning and effort paid off for you, but I’ve always been wary of making too many plans. They can hem you in.”
“Plans shouldn’t be set in stone. For me, they’re more like a road map to help me get where I’m going,” he said.
“Where’s that?”
“A secure life—one earned from tending to animals and the land. Both will take care of a man as long as a man takes care of them. That’s all part of the pattern, and respecting it brings harmony.”
“You’ve said that Hosteen Silver was a remarkable man, but you’re pretty amazing yourself.”
He shook his head. “No, I’m just an ordinary guy who has a way with animals, and needs to work outside in the fresh air to be happy.”
“Are you good with all animals, or just horses?”
“I’m particularly good with horses, but it doesn’t stop there. I can read animals. It’s as if a part of me becomes a part of them and that allows us to communicate.” He paused. “It may sound a little crazy, but it’s true.”
“No, it doesn’t sound crazy. I think it’s amazing.”
“Whenever I’m close to an animal, I can read its moods. I know if it’s afraid, or if it’s just being stubborn,” he said, then told her about Grit. “He had Paul pinned to the rails, but Grit was just testing him.”
She laughed, hearing about Paul’s encounter with the horse. “Your ranch, your life sounds just about perfect—horses to ride and train, and a place where you can breathe free and follow your own rules.”
“It’s that sense of freedom that called me, and I never doubted I could make it work.” He slowed, turned a sharp left and drove up a dirt road. “What about you? Where’s your heart leading you?”
She suppressed a sigh. “My father once accused me of just coasting through life, but that’s not true. To find what’s right for me I may have to travel a lot of empty roads. So I live one day at a time. You never know what’s just around the bend.”
“By leaving yourself open to all possibilities, you become more vulnerable than you realize. That’s a lesson I learned in foster care,” he said. “The younger kids would come into the system filled with hope that maybe they’d go back to their parents before long, or that they’d find new adoptive ones who’d love them. They saw every day as a chance waiting to unfold. Slowly, days would turn into years, and hopes into cynicism or anger.”
“I don’t see what I’m
doing as an exercise in hope. To me, it’s about finding my destiny.”
“You’re an unusual woman,” he said softly.
“Thank you. I mean, was that a compliment?”
“Yes, it was,” he answered, laughing. “In your own way, you’re a romantic.”
“Sure I am, but that doesn’t mean I’m looking for perfection—just the right fit.”
“That sometimes means the coming together of opposites. Navajo teachings say that everything has two sides. Light needs dark, just as good needs evil to balance each other. A man also needs a woman, and a woman, a man. By pairing they become whole.”
His words drifted over her like an intimate caress that left her tingling. She drew in a shaky breath. Gene brought an intensity, a sparkle of something she’d yet to define, to every moment. Just being with him made her feel more alive, more vibrant.
At last they arrived at a one-lane wooden bridge across a deep arroyo. Gene slowed to a crawl and they proceeded across, the tires rumbling on the rough timbers below. Ahead, Lori could just about make out the sandstone walls of a high bluff.
Gene came to a stop and switched off the headlights, leaving only his dim parking lights on. He then put the Jeep in low gear, and headed toward a dark area of the bluff. As they drew near, Lori saw that the dirt road they were taking would lead them through a narrow pass flanked by two high cliffs.
“We’re now entering Copper Canyon,” he said.
As they drove between the walls, barely a hundred yards apart, she saw the canyon open up ahead. It widened to the point she could no longer see any details, just dark, high cliffs on both sides. The arroyo lay to their left now.
“It’s beautiful and mysterious,” she said. “But it’s so isolated. You must have felt lonely out here.”
“I know it seems like a big empty box at first, but it’s filled with life. Look ahead,” he said, pointing as he came to a stop.
She leaned forward and drew in a sharp breath. “What is that? A feral dog?”
“No, a coyote. There are a lot of them out here.”
She waited for him to keep driving, but they remained where they were. “The house is farther up?” she asked, and saw him nod. After several minutes she added, “Shouldn’t we keep going?”
