by Alice Sharpe
This time, they ended up in the bed, still damp but oblivious to anyone or anything but each other. And this time he made it last so long that the sheets all but incinerated.
When at last they were both replete, they lay in the dark, wrapped in each other’s arms, tucked beneath the quilt and blankets, warm and content. Sarah had been exhausted when she got off the bus from Reno, but now she felt all tingly and strangely ravenous.
“I didn’t expect you here tonight,” he whispered against her hair.
“I like to be unexpected.”
He kissed her forehead. “Come on, Sarah, tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“Where’s Diana? The last I heard, you felt you had to stay in Reno a day or two to help her get settled.”
Sarah cuddled deeper in the crook of his arm. “Nate, come on, I don’t want to talk about my mother right now, okay?”
The bed shifted as he transferred weight to his side to reach the bedside lamp. Sarah blinked against the light, and when she looked at him again, she found his gray gaze focused on her face.
“Oh, all right,” she said, partially sitting up but keeping the blankets close for warmth. “She refused to stay at the hospital and they said it wasn’t necessary anyway. She wanted to go back to her apartment, so I took her there.” Sarah rested her head atop her bent knees. All the peace she’d discovered in this room with this man seemed to be fizzing away like fragile bubbles escaping a glass of champagne.
“What happened?” he asked, sitting beside her now. He kissed her shoulder, and when she turned her head to look at him, his lips moved to her mouth.
“I took a shower and borrowed some clothes from her. She asked me to go down the block to the store to get something we could fix for dinner, so I did. When I got to the counter, I found I didn’t have any cash.”
“Had Bellows robbed you?”
She shook her head. “I know there was money in my bag when he gave me back my stuff. I saw it. But at the store, I literally didn’t even have a single dollar. I’d paid for Mom’s care at the hospital with a credit card. There was only one person who had been alone with my wallet since then, and you can guess who that was.”
“How much did she take?”
“A hundred dollars or so. I put the groceries on a debit card and went back to her place, but I was on foot, so this all took a while. She was gone when I got there. No note, no nothing. I wondered if those two men had come after her again, or maybe Poulter had heard she suddenly had money.... I don’t know. I was just about to call the police.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because one of her neighbors knocked on the door and asked if she was back yet. He wanted the twenty bucks she owed him. I assumed he’d been aware she was missing for a few days and started to explain, but he stopped me. He’d met up with her while walking down the sidewalk an hour or so before and had asked her for his money. She’d told him she was just going to go get it. She’d be back soon.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Yeah. I obviously went down the same sidewalk. The first place I came to was a hole-in-the-wall bar, and sure enough, there she was, black eye, bandages and all, playing the slots, drinking whiskey and flirting with someone I imagine she saw as a good prospect. Don’t ask me what the guy was a good prospect for because I’m not going to tell you.”
“What did she say when you spoke to her?”
“Who says I spoke to her?”
“You didn’t?”
“Nope. I walked back to her place and left her a note telling her I was going to Shatterhorn to settle things with the police and would bring her car back in a few days. I’m not even sure why I did that much.” She sighed deeply.
“But, Sarah, this is a pattern with her and her addiction, isn’t it? Why did you choose this time to walk away?”
She looked straight into his eyes. “Because of you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. I could tell you were disappointed when I didn’t agree to come back here with you. I could also tell that you were about to walk away from whatever is happening between us.”
He didn’t respond, so she continued. “When I saw her sitting in that bar and going at the slot machine, it all just gelled in my head. Someone is trying to kill you, and there I was, wasting my time with someone who didn’t need me, not really. You’ve done nothing but protect me from practically the moment we met. With you, I can make a difference. I can watch your back. My presence will mean something. With her, I’m just an obstacle on the way to getting what she wants, and that’s been true my whole life. So I chose to go where I could make a difference. I chose you.”
He smiled at her, but was there also a flash of panic in those foggy gray eyes? Maybe she’d said too much. She smiled to lighten the mood. “Honestly, I’m just tired of being angry with her. She sneaks around, she connives and she lies. I’m done.” Sarah chanced another glance at Nate. “Does that make me a horrible person?”
“I’m the wrong person to ask,” Nate said.
“Why?”
He rested his forehead against her shoulder. “I’ve lied to you, too, Sarah.”
“Oh, God, I don’t want to hear this,” she said. “Okay, what are you, still engaged? Oh, no, you’re not already married, are you?”
“No, nothing like that. It’s just that I’m not a cop anymore.”
“That’s it? Why?”
He swallowed and studied his hands. “Why am I not a cop or why did I keep it from you?”
“Both, I guess.”
“I didn’t want to say it out loud. I guess that’s the answer to why I didn’t tell you. As for the other, well, I took a leave to try to figure things out.” He cast her a swift look and added, “The sheriff of our county is a real political type with eyes set on becoming governor. He wants hungry go-getters on his team. When I admitted that didn’t really define me anymore, he encouraged me to run for sheriff when he left. I don’t know if I want that. I don’t know who I am anymore.”
“I know who you are,” she said, looking deep into his eyes as she ran her fingers along his jaw and up into his hair. Her last relationship had ended over a year before, and since then, she’d sworn off men, thinking they were all alike and you couldn’t trust a single one of them.
She’d been wrong.
“You’re kind and generous and sexy as all get-out. You’re strong, Nate.”
“Strong men don’t run away,” he mumbled.
“Do you call what you’ve been doing the past two days ‘running away’? Really? Listen, I read something once that makes sense to me now that I’ve gotten to know you. It was about a study done with people who survive horrendous accidents or incidents. They found that the more a person was actually responsible for the safety of others or perceived themselves to be, the harder recovery was for them. So a pilot or a stewardess suffered a heck of a lot more than a passenger. That’s what you’re fighting, the feeling that you should have been able to subdue Thomas Jacks, when the truth is you were as unarmed as everyone else at that mall.”
“But—”
“No, Nate. No buts.” She kissed his neck. “You know, actions speak louder than words. How about you come closer and I’ll demonstrate what kind of man you are?”
She didn’t have to ask twice.
* * *
THEY AWOKE EARLY the next morning, still tangled in each other’s arms. Nate had wondered if Sarah would feel shy or awkward with him after the night they’d spent, but her eyes and lips were as warm as ever, and a dangerous warmth glowed in his heart.
“You didn’t have a nightmare last night,” she whispered against his neck. “Or did you?”
“No,” he said. “I’m not sure if it’s because I barely got any sleep or because you’re here. Either way, you get the credit.”
>
She kissed his nose. “I’ll put it on your therapy bill.”
He dressed in his new clothes while Sarah put on the white dress that must belong to her mother. It was a little short and loose, but she cinched it in at the waist with her own leather belt. Dressed in the white wool sheath with the boots covering her legs, she looked incredibly put together. Nate fought down the desire to strip her out of her clothes.
They were too hungry to settle for the frozen waffles, tiny boxes of cereal and basket of bananas the motel served as their free breakfast. Instead they walked across the parking lot to the diner where it appeared half the town ate. Nate scanned the parking lot as they crossed, uncertain how best to shield Sarah in such a wide-open spot. In a way he wished she’d stayed in Reno, where she would have been safe.
Oh, hell, who was he kidding?
They ordered pancakes, bacon, coffee and juice and sat side by side at the only two open seats, which happened to be at the counter. It was the first real meal they’d ever eaten together.
Nate had given the place and its patrons a once-over before they sat down. If it had been him looking for an opportunity to pick someone off, he would have staked out this café the night before and would now be sitting behind a newspaper, biding his time, waiting for the opportunity to attack, which would present itself sooner or later.
He could see no one lurking suspiciously behind the morning paper. It might have been a big relief if he had.
Sarah finally had the opportunity to study her father’s notebook as they ate, and she finished scanning the pages as they drove to the sheriff’s office. “It looks like one’s been torn out,” she commented.
“I saw that.”
“That might be important,” she said.
“Or it might be part of his editing process. Maybe he just didn’t like what he’d written.”
She closed the book and wrapped a rubber band around the pages. “I can’t believe the leaps he made. Pearl refers to Pearl Harbor? And he connected a Fourth of July shooting with these other situations. But really, they happened all over the country, didn’t they?”
“Yeah. What they have in common is young shooters who all either killed themselves or were killed, and holidays like the Fourth of July, Labor Day, Veterans Day, the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor,” Nate said.
“And what national holiday is next? Presidents’ Day? That’s, like, tomorrow, isn’t it? I’ve sort of lost track of the date.”
“Tomorrow,” Nate repeated, a little stunned. He’d lost track, too.
“What about the twenty-eight circled in red?”
He shook his head. “Not sure. By the way, have you ever heard of a guy named Morris Denton?”
She seemed to consider his question for a second before responding. “Can’t say I have. Should I know who he is?”
“Not necessarily. I’ve heard his name mentioned in connection with a support organization focused on youth.”
“Dad didn’t mention him, too?”
“Not in those pages, which seems odd.”
“Maybe that’s the page he ripped out.”
“And maybe he just discounted the guy. Maybe, maybe.”
“What about Washington and a memorial?”
Nate cast her a quick glance. “I’m wondering if he meant ‘monument,’ as in the Washington Monument.”
“Oh, no. Nate, who do we warn? Maybe there’ll be another shooting tomorrow. We’ve got to try and stop it.”
“This is all suppositions and connecting dots that may or may not go together. Just because there’ve been several events on weakly linked days doesn’t mean the explanation is a huge plot. What would be the point of such a thing? Anyway, your dad was trying to make this point, but no one was listening to him. No one took him seriously.”
“Not even his own daughter,” Sarah said with a shake of her head.
“If it helps anything, I didn’t score high on the list, either.”
“At least you came when he called.”
“I didn’t come for him. I told myself I did, but it’s not the truth. Anyway, we have a full day ahead of us. First the sheriff and then the editor of the paper.”
“You’re going to ask Netters what he and my dad talked about?”
“Yeah.”
“I wonder how Jason is doing. I heard he was at the mall that day and that a couple of his friends were shot—” She stopped abruptly.
Nate knew his whole body had tensed as she spoke.
Her hand floated over to touch his thigh. “Me and my big mouth,” she whispered. “For a second I forgot you were there with them.”
“I wish I could forget,” he said, and they finished the drive in silence.
* * *
SHERIFF GALLANT GREETED them with the news that he’d released both cars, and as he spoke with Sarah privately, Nate arranged to have the vehicles towed from the ranch while one of his deputies went out to catalog the damage to the rental. He was lucky the garage was willing to tow on a Sunday—a lot of small-town businesses shut down completely on the weekends.
Nate joined Gallant and Sarah after an hour or so. He was relieved to discover Sarah had been totally honest about everything, including the coins. Her father’s will lay on Gallant’s desk and the sheriff informed them they would all drive out to the ranch to clear up a couple of issues.
“The tech guys were out there all night gathering evidence,” he said. “Looks like your attacker was shooting a .22. As for the coins, I don’t see that the coins your father left you had much to do with anything. Still, best we recover them and get them someplace safe until this is all figured out.”
“How did Peter Jacks’s mom and dad take the news?” Nate asked, but if there was a dumber question in the world, he didn’t know what it was. How many times had he had to tell someone’s parents they’d lost their child, and how did they always take it? The fact Peter had been killed while attacking people only made it harder to hear, let alone understand.
“Pretty bad. I had the doctor come out and give Betty Jacks a tranquilizer. Peter’s dad is just sitting there like a zombie.”
“I wish I hadn’t had to kill him,” Nate said.
Sarah touched his arm. “You had no choice unless it was to let me die, and then he would have come after you.”
“Sarah’s story confirms what you told us, so we’re not bringing any charges against you, Nate. The team that went over the cabin crime scene found out where Peter had been waiting over in the rocks, probably a couple of hours or more. There were a half dozen cigarette butts and some binoculars. If he hadn’t been downwind from you, you probably would have known he was there because of the smell of the smoke.”
“I wonder why he didn’t just burst into the cabin while we were sleeping,” Sarah said.
“I think he was working up his courage,” the sheriff said, “but he might have also worried Nate was armed and wanted you out in the open to use as leverage.”
Nate thought about it a moment and realized he’d probably never know the truth. The only man who knew was dead.
Wait—was that so? If it was, who had shot at him a few hours later in Carson City?
“Funny that Peter Jacks wasn’t carrying any identification on him,” the sheriff added. “Same with his brother, you know.”
“Yeah.”
“His folks say he’s been out of town, just got back the night before he was killed.”
“Did the M.E. find any gunshot wounds on Peter’s body?”
“No. If you wounded someone out at the ranch, it wasn’t him.”
“Did his parents say where he’d been?”
“No. They say he’s been hanging around with the Netters boy, Jason. I’ll talk to him later. Still, I don’t get the timing and I don’t get the vendetta
against you. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Did you hear back from the cops in Carson City?” Nate asked.
“Yeah, but there wasn’t much to tell. By the time they got there, rooms eight and twelve had been wiped clean of prints. It’s not even clear who owns the property. The gunman wasn’t still hanging around the parking lot next door—no one thought he would be. And there are no neighbors to speak of, so no witnesses.” Gallant paused before adding, “The police would like to ask you a few questions. They asked me to tell you to come on back and help them clear this up.”
“I’ll settle with them later,” Nate promised. He had no idea what he could tell them—he simply didn’t know much.
Revisiting the ranch was a gloomy, depressing affair. As Sarah had reported, the scorched house still stood. Mike’s body had been removed the night before by the sheriff’s department, but his ghost hovered just the same, tangled in the crime-scene tape, mingled with ashes, blowing in the breeze. Sarah got more and more withdrawn as they retraced the movements of two days before. The signs of their struggles—the broken glass, discarded saddle rifle, bloody bandages, bare walls and turned-up carpets—all looked garish in the cool light of day.
She’d grown up here, and in the past two days, her dad had been gunned down in cold blood and her mother had imploded. When they entered Skipjack’s empty stall, her gaze went to the corner under the feed rack. By the time it was necessary for Nate to leave in order to meet up with Stewart Netters, she’d walked outside and stood staring up at the sky.
“Do you want to come to the newspaper office with me?” he asked her.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “Sheriff Gallant says he’ll help me get the rest of the coins into town. He’ll keep them safe in a police vault until the bank opens tomorrow, then I’ll transfer them until the will is probated and all this legal stuff is worked out. That means I need a lawyer, too. I wonder if everything will be open on Presidents’ Day.”
“I don’t think the banks are open,” Nate said.
“Then I’ll wait around until the day after tomorrow.”
“Which begs the question of what we’re going to do about this perceived threat your dad danced around concerning Washington and Presidents’ Day,” Nate muttered, as though talking to himself. He came up with an answer. “I’ll call Dan Perry. He works with me, well, worked with me when I worked. His brother is an FBI agent. Maybe Dan can get him on board. I don’t know.”
