Wyoming Strong

by Diana Palmer

  “Okay, I’m listening.” Privately he thought she needed a good psychologist more than a neurologist, but he wasn’t going to say that. She was very young; barely twenty-two if he remembered correctly. “Go ahead.”

  “You were attacked in Arizona by four men, just a few months ago,” she said. Her eyes were closed. If they hadn’t been, she’d have seen Dalton’s suddenly still posture and taut features. “One of the men with you was wearing a paisley shirt...”

  “Damn!”

  She opened her eyes and grimaced as he glared at her.

  “How did you know that?” he asked, moving forward so fast that she backed up too quickly and stumbled into a chair, almost falling. She caught the table just in time. “Who told you?” he demanded, although he stopped going toward her.

  “Nobody...told me. I saw it,” she tried to explain. Heavens, he was fast! She’d never seen a man move like that.

  “Saw it, how?”

  “In my head. It was a vision,” she tried to explain. Her cheeks were flushed. He thought she was crazy. “Please, let me finish. The man in the paisley shirt, he was wearing a suit and you trusted him. There was another man, a man with dark skin wearing a lot of gold jewelry. In fact, his pistol had gold plating and pearls on it...”

  “I only ever told my brothers that!” he said angrily. “Them, and my supervisor and, later, the DOJ guys!”

  “The man in the paisley shirt,” she continued. “He isn’t who you think he is. He has ties to a drug cartel.” Her eyes closed again. “He’s made some sort of bargain with a man high up in politics in this country. I don’t know what, I can’t see it. But I do know this. The other man is running for public office, some very high office with money and political superiority in the balance...” She swallowed and opened her eyes. “He wants to have you killed.”

  “Me?” he asked. “What for?”

  “Because of the man in the paisley shirt,” she explained. “He was with that man who shot you, who’s now second-in-command to the leader of the drug cartel. But it isn’t known. The cartel put up money so he could run for public office, high public office. Once he’s elected, if he is, he’ll make sure the drug convoys get across the border with no interference. I don’t know how.” She held up a hand when he looked as if he might question that. “They’re going to try to have you killed so that you can’t tell on him.”

  “Hell, I identified the shooter to the authorities. They have notes on my debriefing,” he scoffed. “It’s all in there, about the shooter with the gold-plated weapon, the gold jewelry, the lizard-skin boots, the gold tooth with a diamond that he wore for a front tooth—the works.” He laughed curtly. “It’s too late for them to silence me.”

  “I’m just telling you what I saw,” she stammered. “It isn’t about the man with the gold-plated weapon—it’s about the man wearing the paisley shirt. He’s working for the politician. He’s already tried to have a sheriff killed, a man who might have recognized him. The sheriff was shot...” She closed her eyes and squinted, as if her head hurt. In fact, it did. “He’s afraid of both of you. If you recognize him, his ties to the politician will be made public and the politician will end up in prison. So will he. It isn’t the first time he’s killed to protect his boss.”

  Tank sat down. This was intense stuff. It brought back nightmarish memories from the shooting. The impact of the bullets, the smell of blood, the dark-skinned man’s insane laughter while he fired the automatic pistol. There really had been another man there, a man in a paisley shirt, as she said, wearing a suit...

  “Why didn’t I remember that?” he mumbled out loud. He put his hand to his eyes. “There was a man in a paisley shirt. He asked for backup. He said a drug deal was going down, a big one. I drove out there with him. He said he was from the DEA—” He broke off and gaped at Merissa.

  “You hadn’t remembered that,” she said slowly.

  He nodded. His face was ashen. There were beads of sweat just above his chiseled mouth.

  She knelt on the floor beside his chair and held his big hand, the one that wasn’t rubbing his eyes. “It’s all right,” she said in a tone of voice that sounded like he imagined an angel of mercy would sound. “It’s all right.”

  He didn’t like being babied. He jerked his hand away, and then was sorry when she stood up and backed away, looking hunted.

  She couldn’t imagine the memories she’d kindled within him. He was trying to deal with them, and not very successfully. “People say you’re a witch,” he blurted out.

  She didn’t take offence. She only nodded. “I know.”

  He stared at her. There was something really other-worldly about her. She was almost fragile, despite her height; quiet, docile. She seemed so much at peace with herself and the world. The only turmoil was in her big, soft green eyes, which were looking at him with a mix of sympathy and fear.

  “Why are you afraid of me?” he asked suddenly.

  She shifted. “It’s nothing personal.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re very...large,” she faltered. She shivered.

  He cocked his head, frowning.

  She forced a smile. “I have to go,” she said. “I just wanted you to know what I saw, so that you could keep your eyes open and be alert.”

  “We have a fortune invested in surveillance equipment here, mostly because of our prize-winning bulls.”

  She nodded. “It won’t matter. They sent a professional assassin after the sheriff in Texas. He had surveillance equipment, too. Or at least I think he did.”

  He drew in a long breath. He stood up, calmer now. “I know some people in Texas. Where?”

  She shifted uneasily. He towered over her. “South Texas. Somewhere south of San Antonio. I don’t know anything else. Sorry.”

  That should be easy to track down. If there’d been a shooting of a law enforcement official, it would be public and he could search for it online. He wanted to do that, if only to prove her so-called vision false.

  “Thanks anyway. For the warning.” He smiled with pure sarcasm.

  “You don’t believe me. That’s all right. Just...watch where you’re going. Please.” She turned and pulled up her hood.

  He recalled that she’d walked here.

  “Just a sec,” he said. He went to the hall closet, pulled out a shepherd’s coat and threw it on. “I’ll drive you home,” he said, digging in his pocket for his car keys. Then he remembered that he’d put them on the hook beside the back door. With a grimace, he retrieved them.

  “You shouldn’t do that,” she began uneasily.

  “What? Drive you home? It’s almost a blizzard. You can’t even see where you’re going in this!” he said, waving his hand toward the window.

  “Hang your keys there,” she faltered. There was a strange, opaque look to her eyes. “You shouldn’t do that. He’ll find them there and get access to the house.”

  “He, who?” he asked.

  She looked up at him and blinked.

  “Never mind,” he muttered. “Come on.”

  * * *

  THEY WERE GOING into the garage when Darby Hanes pulled up in one of the other ranch pickups. He got out, shaking snow off the shoulders of his wool jacket. He seemed surprised to see Merissa, but he tipped his hat to her and smiled.

  “Hi, Merissa,” he said.

  She smiled back. “Hello, Mr. Hanes.”

  “Been riding fence,” he said, sighing. “I came back to get the chain saw. We’ve got a tree across a fence.” He shook his head. “Bad weather, and more forecast.”

  Merissa was staring at him without speaking. She moved a step closer. “Mr. Hanes, please don’t take this the wrong way...but...” She bit her lip. “You need to take somebody with you when you cut the tree down.”

  He gave her a wide-eyed look. “Excuse me?”

  She shifted, as if she was staggering under a burden. “Please?”

  “Oh, no, not one of those premonitions?” Darby laughed. “No offense, Miss Ba
ker, but you need to get out more!”

  She flushed, embarrassed.

  Tank narrowed his eyes as he studied her drawn features. He turned back to Darby. “Let’s err on the side of caution. Take Tim with you.”

  Darby sighed and shook his head. “Waste of manpower, but if you say so, I’ll do it, boss.”

  “I say so.”

  Darby just nodded. His expression was eloquent. Darby had a degree in physics and was a pragmatist. He didn’t believe in that supernatural stuff. Tank didn’t, either, but Merissa’s worried face haunted him. He just grinned at Darby, who threw up his hands and went to find Tim.

  Tank led the way to his big black ranch double-cabbed pickup truck and helped her up into the passenger seat.

  She looked around with fascination when he climbed in under the wheel, and started the engine.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Can it cook and do laundry, too?” she wondered aloud, her eyes on all the displays and controls. “I mean, it looks as if it can do everything else. Even satellite radio...”

  “It’s a big ranch and we spend a lot of time far away from the house. We have GPS, cell phones, you name it. The trucks are loaded with electronics on purpose. Plus big, expensive V-8 engines,” he added with a wicked glance of dark eyes. “If we weren’t green fanatics who generated our own energy, we’d be singled out for our inexcusable use of gasoline.”

  “I drive a V-8, too,” she said with a shy smile. “Of course, mine is twenty years old and it only starts when it wants to. It didn’t today.”

  He shook his head. “Maybe Darby is right. You do spend too much time alone. You should get a job.”

  “I have one,” she said. “I do web design. It means I can work at home.”

  “You won’t meet many people that way.”

  Her expression went stiff. “I can do without most people. And they can certainly do without me. You said it yourself. People think I’m a witch.” She sighed. “Old Mr. Barnes’s milk cow went dry and he blamed me. He said it was because I lived near him. ‘Everybody knows that witches cause those things,’ he said.”

  “Threaten him with a lawsuit. That will shut him up.”

  She blinked and turned her head toward him. “Excuse me?”

  “Hate speech,” he elaborated.

  “Oh. I see.” She sighed. “I’m afraid it would only make things worse. Instead of that witch woman, I’d be that witch woman who sues everybody.”

  He chuckled.

  She drew in a breath and shivered. She could barely see through the blinding snow as he drove. “I’ll bet you have problems in this sort of weather. They say the old trail drivers used to stay with the cattle herds during storms and sing to them, to calm them, so they were less likely to stampede. The ones I read about were summer storms, though, with lightning.”

  He was pleasantly surprised. “Those old trail drivers did baby the cattle. In fact, we have a couple of singing cowboys who do night duty for us with the herds.”

  “Are their names Roy and Gene?”

  That took him a minute. Then he burst out laughing. “No. Tim and Harry, actually.”

  She grinned. Her whole face lit up. She was very pretty, he thought.

  “Good one,” he told her with a nod.

  They were nearing her cabin. It wasn’t much to look at. It had belonged to a hermit before the Bakers bought it about the time Merissa was born. Her mother’s husband had left suddenly when she was ten. People whispered about the reason. Most people locally thought it was her mother’s eerie abilities that had sent him to the divorce court.

  Tank stopped the truck.

  “Thanks for the ride,” she said, pulling up her hood. “But you didn’t have to do this.”

  “I know. Thanks for the warning.” He hesitated. “What did you see, about Darby?” he asked, hating himself for the question.

  She swallowed, hard. “An accident. But if he takes someone with him, I think it will be all right.” She held up a hand. “I know, you don’t believe in all this hoodoo. I don’t know why I was cursed with visions. I just tell what I know, when I think it will help.” Her soft eyes met his dark ones. “You’ve been kind to us over the years, all of you. When we couldn’t get out because of snowdrifts, you’d send groceries. When the car got stuck one time, you had a cowboy drive us home and get the car out.” She smiled. “You’re a kind person. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. So maybe I’m crazy. But please watch your back anyway.”

  He smiled gently. “Okay.”

  She smiled, shyly, and climbed out of the truck. She closed the door behind her and ran for the porch. Her red cape, against the fluffy white snow, reminded him of the heroine in a movie he’d seen about a werewolf. The red was stark, like blood, in that background of pure white.

  An older woman, with silver hair, was waiting. She looked past Merissa and waved a little awkwardly. Merissa waved, too. They both went inside quickly.

  Tank sat with the engine idling, staring at the closed door for a minute before he put the truck in gear and drove off.

  * * *

  “WHAT IN THE world are you laughing about?” Mallory asked his brother as he came into the living room later. Mallory and his wife, Morie, had a baby boy just a few months old—Harrison Barlow Kirk. They were just now able to sleep at night, to the relief of everyone in the household. Of course, Cane, the middle brother, and his wife, Bodie, were expecting. So it would begin all over again in the spring. Nobody minded. The brothers were all gooey over the baby.

  A huge Christmas tree sat in the corner, with presents already piled up to the first set of limbs. It was an artificial tree. Morie was allergic to the live ones.

  Tank was chuckling. “You remember the Bakers?”

  “The strange folk in the cabin?” Mallory said with a grin. “Merissa and her mother, Clara. Sure.”

  “Merissa came over to warn me about an assassination attempt.”

  Mallory did a double take. “A what?”

  “She says a man is coming to kill me.”

  “Would you like to explain why?”

  “She said it was related to the shooting in Arizona, when I was with the border patrol,” he explained, still uneasy from the memory. “One of the shooters thinks I could recognize his companion and cause trouble for a politician who plans to run for federal office. Drug-related stuff.”

  “How did she know?”

  Tank made a weird sound and waved his hands. “She had a vision!”

  “I wouldn’t laugh too hard at that,” Mallory said strangely. “She warned a local woman about driving across a bridge. She said she had a vision of it collapsing. The woman went over it anyway a day later and the bridge fell out from under her. She barely survived.”

  Tank frowned. “Eerie.”

  “Some people have abilities that other people don’t believe in,” Mallory replied. “Every community has somebody who can talk out fire or talk off warts, dowse for water, even get glimpses of the future. It isn’t logical...you can’t prove it by scientific method. But I’ve seen it in action. You might recall that we have a well because I hired a dowser to come out here and find water for us.”

  “A water witch.” Tank shivered. “Well, I don’t believe in that stuff and I never will.”

  “I just hope Merissa was wrong.” He clapped an affectionate arm across his brother’s shoulders. “I’d hate to lose you.”

  Tank laughed. “You won’t. I’ve survived a war and a handgun attack. I guess maybe I’m indestructible.”

  “Nobody is that.”

  “I was lucky, then.”

  Mallory laughed. “Very.”

  * * *

  DALTON SAT DOWN with his laptop, having recalled Merissa’s statement about a sheriff in south Texas being shot.

  He sipped coffee and laughed at himself for even believing such a wild tale. Until he looked through recent San Antonio news reports and discovered that a sheriff in Jacobs County, south of San Antonio, had been
the victim of a recent assassination attempt by persons unknown, but believed to be involved with a notorious drug cartel across the border in Mexico.

  Tank caught his breath and gaped at the screen. Sheriff Hayes Carson of Jacobs County, Texas, had been wounded by a would-be assassin in November, and later kidnapped, along with his fiancée, by members of a drug cartel from over the border. The sheriff and his fiancée, who was a local newspaper publisher, had given a brief interview about their ordeal. The leader of the drug cartel himself, whom his enemies called El Ladŕon—the thief—was killed by what was described as hand grenades tossed under his armored car near a town called Cotillo, across the border in Mexico. The assassin hadn’t been caught.

  Tank leaned back in his chair with a rough sigh. He was disturbed by what Merissa had told him about his own ordeal, details that only his brothers and members of law enforcement had ever known. She couldn’t have found out in any conventional way.

  Unless...well, she had a computer. She did website design.

  His brain was working overtime. She had enough expertise to be able to break into protected files. That had to be it. Somehow, she’d managed to access that information about him from some government website.

  The difficulties with that theory didn’t penetrate his confused brain. He wasn’t willing to consider the idea that a young woman who barely knew him had some supernatural access to his mind. Everyone with any sense knew that psychics were swindlers who just told people what they wanted to hear and made a living at it. There was no such thing as precognition or any of those other things.

  He was a smart man. He had a degree. He knew that it was impossible for Merissa to get that information except through physical, and probably illegal, means.

  But how did she know that he’d forgotten details of his ordeal, like the man in the suit, the DEA agent, who’d led him into the ambush and then disappeared?

  He turned off the computer and got to his feet. There had to be a logical, rational explanation for all this. He just had to find it.