Fatal Refuge: a Mystery/Thriller (The Arizona Thriller Trilogy Book 2)

by Sharon Sterling

  A sound intruded. Scratching on the other side of the door then a low “woof.”

  “Zayd,” she whispered. “He usually sleeps by my bed.” Then, “No, Zayd! Go lie down.” They stood paralyzed. A pause, then the click of his toenails on the hardwood floor. He was obeying.

  She was committed now. She turned around and they kissed. It was a long time before their lips parted and she could open her eyes and look into his. The tenderness transforming his sharp features struck her to the core. “My knees feel weak,” she said. “I think I’d better lie down.”

  She took a few steps back and sat down on the forest green spread covering her double bed. Gently, he put his arms under her knees and lifted her legs onto the bed, then pulled off her shoes and socks, slipped off his own shoes and climbed onto the bed to kneel beside her. He looked into her face as he pulled off her shirt and undid her bra.

  “You are so incredibly beautiful,” he whispered, slipping the straps off her shoulders and pulling away the bra. “More beautiful than I imagined.”

  She felt frozen and yet her body was aflame. He explored her breasts with his mouth and tongue. A gasp burst from her throat but she didn’t move. He pulled off her jeans, leaving her cotton panties, and she held her breath. The light filtering through the blinds was only moon-glow, but he saw the round, silver-dollar size scar on her upper thigh anyway.

  Now the moment in time froze. Very softly, he asked, “Is that a bullet wound?”

  “Yes.”

  • • •

  Chapter Eighteen

  On his knees on the bed, breathing hard, he stared. The pale pink flaw on her upper leg told a story she didn’t want to remember. He traced the circle of scarred flesh with his finger tip. Lightning bolts of desire shot from his finger and pierced her pelvis but didn’t penetrate the terror in her mind.

  “Tell me about it.” His voice was soft, intimate.

  “No. I can’t.”

  “Try.”

  She desperately needed something solid at her back. She pushed herself up against the headboard. “It happened a couple of years ago. It’s an ugly scar, isn’t it?”

  “Nothing could spoil the way they look. Your legs are a work of art. An artist should paint or sculpt them. I want to know who did this to you.”

  “It was nothing. He was nothing. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  The horizontal furrows in his brow disappeared and his mouth softened. “Water under the bridge then. If you want to you can tell me about it after…” His hands slid from her ankles over her knees, caressing, then moved upward to the inside of her thighs, pushing her legs apart.

  Suddenly she wasn’t here on her own bed. The hands she felt were the hands of someone else. The body with a bulge in its jeans was the body and the erection of that someone else. Fear and revulsion overwhelmed her. She recoiled. Her mouth opened to scream but what came out was a guttural “Uhhhhh!”

  Lon reacted instantly, rising bolt upright on his knees then moving backward off the bed as quickly as if she had yelled “rape.” The astonishment on his face brought her back to the present. Now he was Lon again but clearly confused and surprised. It stung her like a slap in the face.

  Damn, damn, what have I done now? She pushed back, pressing herself against the wooden headboard until it hurt. Focused on the pain and on his face, she willed away the flashback and spoke through gritted teeth. “I…I’m sorry. It’s just…I can’t.

  “You can’t?”

  “I…I don’t know how.”

  Lon’s face went blank, as if he hadn’t heard or hadn’t understood. “What do you mean, you don’t know how?”

  No answer.

  “How to – to make love? You don’t know how to have sex? Kim, what are you saying?”

  Silence.

  “Are you saying – you haven’t done this before?” His tone grew incredulous. “Never? That you’re a virgin?”

  “Yes.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-six.”

  “Oh. I see.” But his words were a question and in his voice only confusion. He shook his head slightly. He rubbed his face with both hands then reached down to adjust himself. He sat down on the bed and reached his hand to her.

  She rolled away and off the opposite side of the bed to stand facing him. Her knees began to tremble again and she pressed them against the mattress to steady herself. She would not try to cover her naked breasts because it was not her body she felt ashamed of. How could she tell this officer of the law she respected so much that she had attempted murder? Silence. Finally she said, “There are other things you don’t know about me – and maybe you don’t need to know.”

  He hesitated. “But I want to know everything about you.”

  No response.

  “I guess I can understand if there are some things you don’t want to talk about yet.”

  No response.

  “This is a lot to take in for one night, even for me. But I have to ask you another question.”

  “What?”

  “Did getting shot at tonight have anything to do with getting shot before? Are you still in danger from whatever happened back then?”

  “No, not at all. Not possible.”

  “Good!” The questions in his eyes faded while he looked at her, at her face. A shake of his head. “Or maybe not good. How could anyone want to harm you?”

  She shrugged.

  “So where do we go from here, my lovely friend?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Maybe this isn’t the right time for us. Maybe you were right to begin with and we need to get the person who murdered Cindy Cameron first.”

  She sat down with one leg on the bed and one still on the floor. “Maybe so. Are you okay with that?”

  “If that’s what we need to do it’s more than okay with me. But how is it going to be different then, from now – I mean, will we be alright together, in bed?”

  “I want us to be. That’s all I can tell you.”

  “But finding out who shot at you tonight is important now. Two mysteries to solve. In the meantime, things between us might go back to the way they were before. You think?”

  “For now.” She drew a deep and regretful breath that pulled her shame and fear back into the deepest part of herself, and along with it her passion for Lon, this man who belonged to a species entirely different and exquisitely superior to that of the man who had molested her when she was a child.

  Lon nodded. “I still want to stay here tonight. I’ll sleep on the sofa and Zayd can have his usual place on the rug by your bed.”

  “Thank you.” Relief flooded her, but more, overwhelming gratitude. He accepted her, he was okay with her, wounds, secrets and all.

  “I can tell you’re just about done in. You need to sleep. But I don’t want to leave you like this. Come here, will you?”

  She didn’t hesitate. She walked around the end of the bed and into his arms. She felt the roughness of his shirt against her naked breasts and the soft rub of worn denim against her bare legs was good. For a strange moment she wore his clothes, as if her own arms and chest and legs were inside them and she and he were one and the same person.

  He didn’t hold her for long before he raised his hands to her cheeks, then smoothed back long strands of black hair, grasped the whole thick handful of it at the nape of her neck and brought it over her shoulder to rest against one breast.

  “My Warrior Woman,” he said. “Whatever battles you’re fighting, I'll fight with you. Your enemies are my enemies. Your friends are my friends. And I promise you, you will never have to fight me.”

  She felt the truth within her. Her head dropped forward to rest against his shoulder. A chuckle bubbled from his throat. “Who knows which of us would win in a fair fight, anyway?”

  “Good point,” she whispered, and when she looked up she was smiling, too.

  He turned to leave the room then hesitated. “I have a blanket in the car, so don’t bother with
bedding or anything else. When I come back in I’ll set the dead-bold and make sure all the windows are locked.”

  “Thank you. But I’m not worried. You’re here, and Zayd is here.”

  “Get some rest, then.” When he opened the door Zayd rushed past him into the room, wagging and obviously expecting his owner to greet him just as joyously.

  “Lay down!” she commanded. He went to the rug and lay down, looking up at her from solemn eyes without lifting his head.

  “Oh, crap, it’s not your fault.” She patted him, then walked to the clothes hamper and pulled off her panties. She used them to wipe the moisture from between her legs before tossing them in the hamper and padding back to fall into bed.

  Some warrior woman I am. A three hundred pound man who’s fallen and wedged between the toilet and the sink, I can pry out of trouble then heft him onto the gurney. I can hold down a football player in a wicked grand mal seizure but I can’t do what most normal woman my age do as naturally as putting on lipstick.

  Zayd woke her in the morning with a series of polite but insistent chuffs telling her she must get up and let him outside for his toilet. She pulled on a thin flannel robe that covered her to the ankles, and went out to the living room. Lon’s blanket lay folded on the arm of the sofa but he wasn’t there. She heard him stirring in the kitchen. She let Zayd out and went back to her bathroom to shower and dress. By the time she finished and went to the kitchen, Lon had set two mugs of steaming coffee on the worn oak table.

  “I guess we’re all addicted to this stuff,” she said, feeling strangely shy.

  “It’s the least I could do,” he said, “because I couldn’t find enough to make breakfast. And good morning.” He stepped over and gave her a quick, firm hug then sat down at the table, stretching his long legs under it and slouching just a bit in the round-backed oak chair. He held his mug in both hands and just looked at her.

  She sat down. “Did I hear voices just a few minutes ago?”

  “The crime scene tech. He’s out there finishing up. He took some photos of the tire tracks the guy left last night when he pealed out. Most of it blurred, but a couple of patches might be identifiable.”

  Kim sipped her black coffee. “People in my job don’t usually make enemies. The only person I can think of who obviously doesn’t like me is Amos Wagner.”

  “My first thought too, but he was supposed to be on duty last night. I’ll check it out but it doesn’t seem likely to me even if you do have a personality clash. Not the kind of thing would make a man want to kill a woman. Unless there’s more to it.”

  “No, Lon, no. We never had a relationship. I barely know the guy but he has it in for me. From what he said to me that day, I think he just doesn’t like Indians, and in particular, Apaches.”

  Lon plunked his mug on the table, hard. “He is an ignorant, obnoxious… But never mind. He’s allowed to be a juvenile prick, but if it was him last night we will nail him to the wall.”

  “What about the guy who killed Cindy Cameron? I’m wondering if he’ll get away with it. And I’m still wondering if it was Winston Verbale.”

  “Before we go there, I want you to promise me something. I want you to call me every morning when you get up, and every night before you go to bed.”

  Kim didn’t answer, wondering why the thought was alarming, seductive and reassuring at the same time.

  “I need to know you’re safe, Kim. When we can’t be together, I need to hear from you. But I don’t want you to promise unless you’re sure you’ll do it. I don’t want to break speed limits racing over here – or where-ever you are – just to discover you forgot.”

  “Of course I won’t forget. Do you think I’m a ditz?” She turned her mug up to her face so he couldn’t see the tears in her eyes, and quickly blinked them away.

  “Okay. About Cindy Cameron. We’re working on it, Kim, I promise you. The coroner did some testing with the maggots on the body but he can’t come up with anything more exact than a twenty-four hour window for when she was killed. Theoretically, it would give Verbale time to kill her and drive back to hop on a plane to Costa Rica. It would be a good alibi, if the timeline excluded him completely. If he used his car his GPS would tell us he was at Kofa within the twenty-four hour window. But so far we have no evidence that would allow us to get a search warrant.”

  “What about Cindy’s car?”

  “In her garage. It told us nothing. No GPS. She certainly wasn’t killed at home, no evidence of that and whether the car went to Kofa that day is anybody’s guess. We’re questioning the neighbors about what they might have seen. It’s the usual slow-moving, methodical steps that sometimes actually pay off. We haven’t found a mobile phone, but we have her computer and we’re checking who she’s been in contact with. We’re questioning her massage clients, especially the few men. She participated in a couple of computer chat rooms for bird-watchers. I’ve learned more than I thought there was to learn about yellow-rumped warblers and vermillion flycatchers.”

  • • •

  Chapter Nineteen

  As she gets into the station wagon Sara realizes she is frightened or maybe just a little apprehensive. It is not a familiar feeling and she dislikes it intensely. She reminds herself that the brave aren’t those who feel no fear; the brave are those who are fearful but proceed anyway. Her job tonight requires that kind of courage.

  She pulls out and drives toward Yuma, tires marking her path on the dirt road. Most times when she goes into town, she stops alongside the agricultural fields where crops of lettuce, broccoli, and other vegetables grow according to the season. After the harvest she often walks the rows looking for enough remains to serve as her dinner, reminding herself of women in the bible who gleaned in the fields. She has never gone into an un-harvested field to pick vegetables. It would be stealing.

  Today, from her camp at Betty’s Kitchen, it takes her thirty minutes to drive down Laguna Dam Road, connect with Highway 95 west and then head south on Avenue 3-E and onto County 13th Street. The abandoned gas station she spotted on an earlier reconnaissance makes a perfect place to watch and wait for dark. She parks on the north side of the building, where she and the truck will be in shadow even before the sun sets.

  It is almost cool here, with all the windows rolled down. The sheen of perspiration on her face, arms, and legs picks up each puff of breeze and helps to cool her. She listens to the silence and deeply inhales the desert perfume of sage and creosote and baked earth.

  She gazes at the horizon. It has just sliced the bottom off the sun’s yellow orb and is sucking it down into darkness. She is deep in thought while she waits for the fullness of night. She wonders who might be found tonight, who might be redeemed, and who might die. She is thinking she is not immortal. This could be her final attempt to rescue the world, in spite of her companion’s reassurance she will survive. When she told him, “You know I’ve got to get my message across to the heads and parts,” her companion knew she spoke metaphorically, that by “heads” she meant heads of state and politicians, and by “parts” the military and others they influence. Why had she felt she had to explain herself to him: “We have to stop them before they reach the point of no return with their schemes.”

  Now her self-justifying thoughts continue. It wouldn’t have come to this if they had let me on the base, those uniformed robots they call Marines. That one at the main gate looked so thin and sharp and well-pressed when he came to the truck. He reminded me of one of Ruth’s dolls, that Ken-doll, too perfect to be real. He was polite, but gruff about it, too. That gun he had on his hip was real, a boy like that with a gun, a whole platoon inside that forbidden zone with guns.

  She shakes her head. But it isn’t their fault, those Ken-doll Marines. They’re only protecting what their masters don’t want real people to see, them preparing for the destruction.

  She grits her teeth and closes her eyes. I’ll stop them. They’ll come to reason when they read my words. The first ones didn’t do it, but
if I keep it up, they’ll learn. And this one is good.

  Sara has spent the day preparing her declaration in verse and then laboriously handwriting three copies, one for the chief honcho of the base, one for the man they call the public information officer, and one to tape to that war jet. They display that obscene death machine right at the entrance, with no shame at all.

  She handles the four pages gingerly, careful not to smudge the pencil lead. The original page. . . she decides to leave it here, where it confirms her ownership and includes the truck in her efforts for good.

  In the fading light, she re-reads the message one more time. The last lines are the most direct, “Your callous attitudes could jeopardize: One nuclear war will all earth martyrize!” She nods with satisfaction. This is her most direct and most eloquent plea. Surely they won’t ignore her now.

  Looking at the pages she realizes the light has faded so she can no longer see the words. Out on the desert floor, only outlines of cactus and shrubs are visible against the pale glow of a darkening sky and the defunct gas pumps nearby masquerade as hulking monsters crouched in a row. Now that the dark is her ally, it is time.

  She starts the motor and drives away, toward the base. Soon she pulls onto a gravel road more closely paralleling its southern boundary. The pale sliver of a waning moon has just slipped surreptitiously from under the horizon.

  A bumpy and dusty mile later she switches off the headlights and jerks the wheel to the right, propelling the truck off the road, jolting onto unpaved desert terrain that provides an even rougher ride. This is risky. Vicious cactus spines can pierce a tire or a jagged rock she hasn’t seen can tear out the vehicle’s underside.

  For three minutes she and the pickup truck jolt over rock and cactus. Her muscles are tense, teeth clenched and chin jutting with determination. At one point she suddenly realizes she is holding her breath and coaches herself to breathe normally.

  In five more minutes she applies the brakes, puts the truck in park and switches off the engine. It dies with a hiccup and a sigh of relief, as if in communion with its owner. The only sounds are an occasional muffled roar of a commercial air plane taking off from Yuma International Airport and her own breathing. The Marine Air Station shares the airport runways and facilities, but tonight the military jets and helicopters remain on the ground.