by Elle James
“I don’t know if it’s so stupid,” he said. “It makes sense to me. There were so many things happening to you that you couldn’t control. The clothes you wore were one little thing you could control. And the medications, not to mention the brain injury, probably made it more difficult to manage your emotions. Your doctors should have told your parents that.”
“They probably did. But my mom and dad’s way of coping with this whole mess was to pretend nothing was wrong. We’d have these surreal conversations, where Mom would talk about boys I used to date who would be so glad to see me again, and Dad would tell me I should try out for a summer job with the community theater group. After a while, I couldn’t stand it anymore and I’d say something horrible, like no one wanted a freak on stage. Then Mom would start to cry again. It was awful.”
His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “You’re not a freak, you know.”
“I know. But I’m not who I was. I’m still coming to terms with that. I don’t even want that old life anymore—I’m not sure I ever wanted it. But I’m still figuring out what my new life will look like.” She shifted in the seat. “But right now, I’m more focused on figuring out where I’m going to be staying tonight.”
“Carmen made reservations at a motel on the other side of town. We figured the farther from the park, the better.”
The motel turned out to be one of those old-fashioned lodges with rooms lined up in two low-slung wings on either side of the A-frame lobby. “We have reservations for Ricky and Lucy,” Michael told the desk clerk, a fleshy older man with skin the color of raw dough.
He handed over the keys and accepted Michael’s credit card, then they drove down to a room on the end and parked. “Ricky and Lucy?” Abby asked. “Why those names?”
“Ricky and Lucy Ricardo? From I Love Lucy. I love those old shows. When I had to come up with a couple’s names, that popped into my head.”
His reply made her feel a little off balance—as if he really was a mind reader. “I love those old shows, too,” she said. “When I was in the hospital, I watched a lot of them.” Lucille Ball had been a beauty queen who wasn’t afraid to make a fool of herself to get a laugh. Watching her had given Abby hope; maybe she could be more than a pretty face herself. But how could Michael know that?
He unlocked the door to the room next to the one on the end and did a quick tour of the space, then looked into the bathroom and checked out the closet. “What are you searching for?” she asked.
“Any sign that anyone’s been here ahead of us.”
“Why would they have been?”
“Someone might have heard about our plans to stay here. It’s not likely, but it pays to be careful.”
He unlocked the door to the adjoining room on the end of this wing. “Just to make it easier to reach each other in an emergency,” he explained. “You can stay in this room. I’ll take the one next door.”
His room was a copy of hers, right down to the blue-and-green quilted spread and the bottle of water on the dresser. “What now?” she asked.
“Want to order pizza?”
She almost laughed. After everything that had happened today, pizza seemed so ordinary. So safe. “That sounds like a good idea.”
He pulled out his phone. “What do you like?”
“Anything but anchovies and onions.”
He made a face. “Right.”
She returned to her room and arranged her few things on the bed and table, then combed her hair and splashed water on her face. She hadn’t bothered to do more than apply sunscreen this morning and it showed, her brows and lashes pale and unadorned. She thought about putting on makeup, but she didn’t want Michael to get the wrong idea. Circumstances had thrown them together, but it wasn’t as if they were dating or anything.
If she was ready to be in a relationship, he wouldn’t be her first choice. She was glad he was with her now, and that men like him were hunting down whoever had killed the man in the desert, but he was too intense. Too protective. All his talk of fate and seeing meaning in random happenings unsettled her.
She booted up her laptop and tried to focus on the notes she’d made about desert parsley and its habitat. But that only made her think of Mariposa. She pulled out her phone and studied the picture of the beautiful young woman. Where was she right now? Were she and Angelique safe?
When Michael knocked on the door between their rooms and announced that the pizza had arrived, she gratefully shut down the computer and joined him in his room. The smell of spicy pepperoni and sausage, sauce and cheese made her a little dizzy, and she realized she was starving. “This was a great idea,” she said, helping herself to a slice.
“Just what the doctor ordered.” He filled his own plate and sat across from her at the little table in front of the window. He’d drawn the drapes, shutting out the setting sun, and turned on the too-dim lamp behind him. The interior felt cool and cozy.
“Speaking of doctors,” she said, “you seem to know a lot about medicine. Did you consider becoming a doctor?”
“Early on, I thought about it. That’s why I signed up for the PJs. I thought I wanted a career in trauma medicine. I pictured excitement and the adrenaline rush and saving people’s lives.” He fell silent and picked a slice of pepperoni off his pizza.
“What is it?” she asked. “Is something wrong?”
“They don’t tell you that you lose more than you save.” He looked into her eyes. “You were my first save—that’s another reason I remember you.”
She wanted to look away from the intensity of his gaze, but she couldn’t. This man had saved her life; she couldn’t turn away from him. “I wish I remembered you,” she said. If she did, would she feel that connection between them that he seemed to feel?
He shrugged his shoulders, as if shrugging off bad memories. “Anyway, by the time my tour was up, I’d decided I wasn’t cut out for that line of work. I bummed around for a few months, not sure what I wanted to do. After the constant adrenaline rush of the war, civilian life was an adjustment. When my uncle suggested border patrol, I figured I’d give it a shot.”
“Do you like it?”
“I like working outdoors, doing something different all the time. I’m not so crazy about the bureaucracy. And sometimes I question whether I’m really doing much good.”
“You saved me from that snake.” She smiled, letting him know she was teasing.
“If I hadn’t gotten to it, Randall would have shot it.” He took another bite of pizza and chewed, then swallowed. “Or you’d have killed it yourself. You’re tough.”
The words made her feel lighter—taller. She smiled. “You couldn’t give me a better compliment.”
“Is that all it takes?” He grinned, his teeth very white against his olive skin. “Maybe I’ll try that line out on other women. I’ve been doing it all wrong, telling them they were pretty. Not that you aren’t—pretty, that is.”
Her smile faded. “I heard how pretty I was my whole life. And then I woke up and that was gone. At least something like toughness can’t be taken away so easily.”
“You talk as though you’re horribly disfigured. It’s one scar. With your hair down or in profile, it isn’t even visible.”
“I know it’s there, and that affects the way I think about it. I can’t help it. I’m not complaining, it’s just my reality now.”
“Well, just so you know, I think you’re beautiful.”
“You just admitted you say that to all the girls.”
He was about to reply when his phone rang. He set down his slice of pizza and answered it. “Dance.”
“Hey, you and Abby get settled in?” Randall’s voice was hearty, audible from where she sat.
“We’re fine. What’s up?”
“I took that snake by the park rangers’ office and let them h
ave a look at it,” he said. “One of the guys there is a wildlife biologist. He told me something interesting about it.”
“Hang on a minute, I’m going to put you on speaker.” Michael glanced at Abby. “It’s Randall. He found out something about your snake.”
“It’s not my snake.” She made a face.
“Okay, go ahead,” Michael told Randall.
“The snake you killed was a western diamondback,” Randall said. “A common desert species, one responsible for most of the deaths from rattlesnake bites in the United States and Mexico.”
Michael’s eyes met hers across the table. She hugged her arms around herself, her appetite gone. “Why is that so interesting?” he asked.
“They don’t have diamondbacks at this elevation,” Randall said. “They don’t have them at any elevation in Colorado. The only rattlesnakes around her are prairie rattlers—smaller and not as venomous as the diamondback. Whoever boxed up that fellow imported him from somewhere south or west of here.”
Michael frowned. “Could you buy something like that at a pet store—you know, one that sells pythons and tarantulas and stuff?”
“It’s against the law to sell venomous snakes. No, somebody caught this one in the wild and was keeping it around for special purposes.”
“That’s sick,” Abby said.
“I heard about a drug dealer in Tucson who kept his stash in an aquarium with a venomous snake,” Randall said. “It discouraged theft.”
Michael sat back in his chair, legs stretched out in front of him. “So what do you make of this?”
“It tells us something about the people we’re after,” Randall said.
“Yeah, they’re twisted.”
“Twisted, and they won’t stop at anything to protect what’s theirs—or to make a point.”
“Yeah, well, thanks for the information. I’ll talk to you later.”
“I’ll let you know if anything new develops.”
“Yeah. Do that.” He hung up the phone and stuffed it back into the pouch on his utility belt.
“What point are they making with me?” Abby asked.
“You must have gotten way too close to something they want very much to hide,” he said. “First the sniper, then the snake.”
“What are we going to do about it?” She wasn’t going to sit here, waiting to be a target.
“Tomorrow, I want to go back out to where we found the body and look around some more.”
“I want to come with you.”
He shook his head. “I know I said you could go on patrol with me, but this probably isn’t safe.”
“I’ve been in unsafe situations before. I want to go. I want to see if we can help Mariposa and her baby.”
He paused, considering.
“You said I was tough,” she said. “I won’t hold you back or get in the way. And if these people are as dangerous as they seem, you shouldn’t be out there alone. I can watch your back.”
“All right. If I told you no, you’d probably follow me anyway.”
“I probably would.”
“At least this way I can keep you close, and maybe a little safer.”
She started to protest that she didn’t need him to protect her, but the words died in her throat. So far, she had needed him. The idea wasn’t as disturbing now as it had been earlier. Maybe leaning on someone for help wasn’t so bad—if it was the right someone.
Chapter Seven
Belted into the passenger seat of Michael’s Cruiser, Abby couldn’t shake the feeling that she was headed out on a mission, just like the missions in Afghanistan. The darkness here was like the darkness over there, deepest black, unsullied by the lights of houses or businesses. The nearest city, Montrose, was a dim glow on the horizon.
She leaned forward, straining against the seat belt, trying to see farther into the blackness. Her heart pounded and her nerves twitched with the same jumpy anticipation that had defined every trip she’d made off base during the war. They’d often left early in the morning, to take advantage of the cover of darkness. But their enemies had favored darkness, too, which had made every expedition fraught with danger.
The Cruiser’s headlights cut narrow cones into the blackness, enough to illuminate the scraggly trees, jutting rocks and grasses of the park’s backcountry. Once, a pair of silvery eyes looked back at them, and as they drew closer, a coyote stared at them, frozen against a backdrop of reddish rocks.
She shivered and pulled her jacket more tightly around her. Even in summer, it was chilly at this altitude without the sun’s warmth.
“You okay?” Michael asked.
“I’m fine.” She slipped her hand into her pocket and rubbed her fingers across the little ceramic rabbit. Maybe it was silly for a grown woman to put faith in a good-luck charm, but the rabbit had gotten her through a lot of tough times since her injury. She wasn’t ready to give up on it yet.
Michael leaned forward and switched the Cruiser’s heat to high. “Tell me more about the research you’re doing,” he said. “What happens after you gather all these plants and leave here?”
“I’ll take them to the lab and experiment with distilling certain compounds from them, and show the effect of those compounds on cells. For instance, if something inhibits cell mutation, it could help fight cancer, or if a substance encourages nerve cells to regenerate, or nerves to build new pathways, it could combat diseases like Parkinson’s. I’ll have to narrow my research to a single possibility for now, but the prospects for the future are endless.”
“That’s exciting, that you could be helping so many people. I’d like to do something like that.”
She didn’t miss the regret in his voice. “You’re protecting people from danger,” she said. “Making the park safer for visitors, trying to capture people who are hurting others.”
“In theory I’m doing those things,” he said. “But so far I haven’t seen that anything I’ve done has directly made anyone’s life better.”
“Except mine,” she said. “I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for you.”
He reached across the seat and took her hand and squeezed it. “Yeah. I’m glad about that.”
She held his hand for a moment, letting the warmth and reassurance of his touch seep into her. But she couldn’t let sentiment overwhelm common sense. Michael Dance was a good guy, but she scarcely knew him. He wasn’t a knight in shining armor, and she definitely wasn’t a princess who needed rescuing. She pulled away and focused her gaze out the windshield, on the faint band of gray on the horizon. “The sun will be up soon,” she said.
If her sudden coolness caught him off guard, he didn’t show it. “Check the GPS,” he said. “We should be getting close.”
She leaned over to glance at the dash-mounted GPS unit. “Looks like maybe another two miles.”
“I’m going to cut the lights,” he said. “Just in case anyone’s watching.” He switched off the headlights, plunging them into a disorienting void. She blinked, then he pressed a button and a dim glow illuminated the few inches of ground in front of the Cruiser’s bumper. “Sneak lights,” he said. “Mounted under the bumper.”
She laughed nervously. “Good name.”
The Cruiser crawled across the landscape. They’d left the road and followed what was little more than an animal trail—maybe even the same path Abby had followed when she was searching for specimens for her research.
Suddenly, Michael slammed on the brakes. She lurched forward against the shoulder harness. “What’s wrong?” she whispered.
“I saw something out there. Movement.” He waited a moment and she squinted, trying to make out anything. Though the eastern sky showed a faint blush of pink, it was impossible to make out details in the dim light. “Over there.” He pointed up ahead and to the left. He e
ased his foot off the brake and angled the Cruiser in that direction, and turned on the headlights again. An animal ran in front of the vehicle, and then another.
“Coyotes,” she said, and breathed a sigh of relief.
“They’re feeding on something.” His expression darkened. “We’d better check it out.”
“Why? I mean, it’s just a bunch of coyotes.”
“They’re scavengers. They eat whatever they find. For that many of them to be in one place, it must be something good-size.”
Her stomach lurched and she swallowed past the sudden bitter taste in her mouth. “Like a body?”
He stopped the vehicle again and turned to her. “I have to check this out, but you can stay in the truck.”
“Do you think it’s another illegal, like the man we found day before yesterday?” she asked.
“It may not even be a person.” The Cruiser rolled forward again.
“But you think it might be.”
“It could be. But maybe not an illegal.”
“Who, then?”
“A woman went missing in the park a few days ago. At least, she’s missing and they found her car abandoned at one of the overlooks. She’s a news anchor from a station in Denver—Lauren Starling.”
The name sounded vaguely familiar, but Abby couldn’t put a face with it. “What would she be doing way out here?” She looked toward the spot ahead where one lone coyote stood guard, his eyes glittering in the Cruiser’s headlights.
“She might have stumbled into something she shouldn’t have,” he said.
The way Abby herself almost had. “I hope not,” she said.
“She also might not be connected to this case at all,” Michael said. “Some people see the park as a good place to take their own life.”
“Suicide? But why in a park?”
“Maybe they think it will be easier on their families, not having to clean up the mess.” He braked again, and the lone coyote trotted off. In the glow of the headlights she could make out a brown shape on the ground. There was definitely something there. Her stomach roiled again, and she gritted her teeth against a wave of nausea.
