Careful not to grip him too fiercely, no granite-hard grasp for this little one, she gently folded her fingers around his. “And Mrs. Jackson will call us the minute she hears any news, won’t you, Emily?”
“Yes, of course,” the woman said, the relief on her face as evident as the thick makeup. She jingled the keys in her hand. She gave another grunt as she released the lock to free them. “Thank you so much for taking him,” she said. “We tried all the usual avenues, but—”
“It’s fine, Mrs. Jackson. We’re happy to have him,” Corrie said in Spanish. The woman had said the little boy didn’t speak English though Corrie suspected otherwise. Mrs. Jackson’s using English when she was able to speak decent Spanish seemed worse than rude to Corrie, it seemed cruel. “Aren’t we, Mack?”
“You bet. The more the merrier.” He’d lost at least five years of aging when Emily unlocked the door. He held it for Corrie and Pedro and winked at the little boy as he opened the back door of the Bronco. Light flooded the golden brown interior of the car.
The little fingers in hers convulsed when the boy glimpsed the empty expanse of seat waiting for him.
“It’s okay,” she said. She passed off his attack of anxiety as concern over being cold. “We have blankets and a pillow for you. And, knowing Rita—she’s our cook out at Rancho Milagro—she’s packed a little snack for you.”
“Want me to help you up?” Mack asked when Pedro still hadn’t moved.
“No, señor. I can do it.” He turned Corrie’s hand loose—she could feel how reluctantly—and climbed up the mountain the vehicle must have seemed to him.
“Seat belt,” Mack said.
Proving Corrie’s suspicions that the boy knew some English, Pedro searched around, found the device and, after some struggling and a warning look at Mack, managed to cinch it around his small frame. Mack shook out a stadium blanket and spread it over the boy, tucking it in so that his face and hands were free but the rest of him was swathed in soft Polartec fleece.
“How’s that?” Mack asked.
“Fine, señor.”
“Hungry?”
Pedro shook his head, but his eyes cut to the picnic basket Mack had placed beside him on the seat.
Mack reached over and flipped the lid open. In Spanish, he said, “Okay, but if you get that way, all this food was packed just for you. And Rita’s feelings get hurt if we don’t eat lots and lots of her cooking. There’s burritos, a couple of taquitos, some cookies— I hope these aren’t the ones the other kids made for the puppies, nope, they’re the good ones—oh, and I see she put in some milk. Help yourself on the way to the ranch, okay?”
Pedro mumbled a thank-you, his wide eyes on the largesse in the basket.
Mack stepped away from the Bronco, locked it, then shut the back door. “All set,” he said, placing his hand at the small of Corrie’s back once again to guide her to the driver’s seat.
Corrie stared at him for a moment in sheer wonder and wished she were only marginally aware of his touch on her back. He’d made the transfer seem so effortless. She’d only been on one “run” at the ranch thus far and it could only be described as a nightmare. Juan Carlos had pitched a royal fit, had thrown the food out of the window, kicked the blankets aside, bitten Pablo and sullenly refused to talk for the first five hours, unless swearing with uncanny range.
Mack opened the driver’s door for her and held his hand out to assist her inside. She felt like Pedro as she hesitated, cautious and hopeful simultaneously, then, slowly placed her palm against his. As she had every time they touched, she felt the shock of contact ripple through her. Inanely she wondered what his silky-soft new hands would feel like against her bare skin.
She used his supporting heft, then, instead of releasing his hand, she added pressure. “Thanks, Mack. You have no idea how much I appreciate your help.”
“De nada,” he said. He continued to hold her hand.
In English and too softly for Pedro to make out her words, she said, “It wasn’t nothing and it means a lot to me.”
Mack looked down at their linked hands, lifted hers slightly, and for a moment Corrie half thought he might raise it all the way to his lips. She stilled, both fearing and wanting him to do just that. Instead, he gave her fingers a little squeeze, nothing more than mere reassurance or possibly simple acknowledgement, then released her.
“What you did in there meant a lot to me, too.”
“Anybody would want to help a little boy,” she said.
He shook his head and lifted a finger to her cheek as if unable to stop himself. “But you also helped a grown man.”
Fire burns, she thought.
He drew his finger down her cheek and came to rest on her lips, not as though silencing her, but as if kissing her.
Chapter 7
They weren’t past the river and the beautiful surrounding park, when Corrie heard the rustle of tin foil from the back seat. She turned her head slightly, to make sure Pedro was all right and the tinny crackle ceased abruptly.
“When you’re ready back there,” Mack said, not turning around, “would you get me a cookie? And if you’re not going to drink it all, I’ll take a little bit of that milk, too.”
A few seconds later, Corrie felt a finger tap on her shoulder. “Señora? Here’s a cookie for the man.”
“Thank you, Pedro. Here you go, Mack.”
Another silence, broken only by the crunch of cookies breaking.
Lights strafed the highway leading out of Carlsbad, brightening the empty expanse of the road to Roswell. An almost-whisper came from the back seat. “Do you want one, too, señora?”
Her heart constricted, but she took a leaf from Mack’s seemingly casual concern. “No, thanks. But somebody had better eat mine or Rita will think we don’t like them.”
“I like them,” Pedro said.
“Good. How about the burritos?”
“Are they very hot?”
“No way,” Corrie said, understanding the question after several encounters with New Mexico chilies. “Rita wouldn’t put too many spices in.”
Tinfoil rustled anew and the car was filled with the pungent scent of red chili, cumin and pork and the sound of a hungry young boy eating a late dinner. After a long drink of milk and a satisfied and slightly embarrassed burp, the boy yawned mightily.
On cue, Mack swung around in his seat and shifted the basket to the floor and a pillow to the seat. Once again, he tucked the blanket around the boy, this time covering him for sleep.
Within seconds, the back seat was utterly quiet except for the soft sounds of a tired little boy’s rhythmic snoring.
Mack relaxed against the seat. On the way into town, the cab had felt too full of unspoken questions and restless longings. Now, with the addition of a sleeping child, the electricity between them was no less, but the crackling uncomfortable tension had subsided.
Perhaps touching Corrie’s back, holding her hand in his had made her seem more approachable, made the chasm he’d created with the kiss the night before seem bridged somewhat, however narrow that passage. Maybe Corrie’s awareness of his worry over the locked door, however she may have misinterpreted it, her helping the little boy in the back seat made it seem possible for him to momentarily ignore the nightmare of his past and deal with this woman in the present.
Mack thought about the reasons for a few additional silent miles, then said, “You handled that beautifully.”
She flashed him a swift smile. Her face had a greenish glow from the dashboard lights, and strangely, instead of detracting from her beauty, they only seemed to make it seem more ethereal. A pixie of a woman with lush, dark hair, coffee-brown eyes that sparkled in the dark, and hands that had trembled in his and while waiting for a child’s timid grasp. Talented and beautiful, fearful and vulnerable. She was a potent mix.
Her grin broadened. “You should have seen me with Juan Carlos.”
He chuckled at her description of Juan Carlos’s antics at their first encounter
. “That kid’s a real handful, all right. Trouble is he’s smart as a whip.”
“Have you noticed that most of them are?”
“Maybe simple survival makes a child use more brainpower.”
She pondered that for a moment, silent as she took the turn to the ranch road. “I wonder. That could be true in Leeza’s case.”
“Leeza? Leeza Nelson?” He couldn’t imagine Leeza Nelson ever lacking in survival skills. She was pleasant enough, but her tongue was sharp and her gaze even more so. She looked as if she could chew someone up and spit them out without a backward glance. He was almost amazed she and Corrie were friends; they seemed such opposites.
“Yes. Didn’t you know? All three of us are orphans, too.”
He hadn’t known. No one had told him, then he thought, why would they? It was a confidence and confidences were shared experiences; he didn’t exactly hold the corner on revealing inner thoughts and life’s experiences.
“We met back in college. We became the sisters we never had. What about you—brothers and sisters?”
“One of each. And two parents, though they’re not married to each other anymore.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He almost stopped there, but thought of Corrie’s revelation about her past. Remembered the way she’d merely stood there after his brush-off the night before. She deserved more from him. “They’re great people, just not with each other. They’ve both remarried and I like both the new stepparents.”
“Where do they live?”
“All of them?”
“All of them.”
He told her about his brother’s vagabond existence on a research yacht in the Caribbean, his sister’s recent marriage to a stockbroker in Idaho, and his parents’ lives in northern New Mexico and southern Texas.
He liked the way she listened, interjecting laughter when he solicited it and sympathetic murmurs when he touched on topics that naturally called for empathy.
“How long have you been teaching?”
He stiffened somewhat, dreading the inevitable questions about his past. “About ten years, give or take.”
“You’re good at it,” she stated, not inviting argument over her pronouncement. “The kids adore you.”
He didn’t want their adoration or even their trust. He just wanted their safety. Not comfortable with continuing that vein of discussion, he asked, “Why did you leave radio?”
She didn’t answer immediately as she was leaving the main highway from Carlsbad to Roswell for the gravel road leading to the ranch. She slowed the Bronco down to avoid swerving and sliding on the rocks.
“Why did I leave PBS? I guess you could call it burnout,” she said, making him wonder what she called it. “One day it just seemed I’d asked all the questions before. I wasn’t editing sound bites for story impact anymore, but because some politico had made a grammatical error.”
“Your fans will miss you.”
“I doubt that,” she said. “There’s always some young, starry-eyed kid with a golden voice waiting in the wings somewhere.”
“That describes you to a tee.”
“I’m no kid anymore.”
“You look like one. And, you still have stars in your eyes and a voice that sounds like the low strings of a harp.”
He was watching her face and met her look of pleased surprise with a neutrality he hoped let her know he was speaking nothing but the truth. “You said you were an orphan. Were you raised in an orphanage?”
“Mostly, yes,” she said, but didn’t elaborate.
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
“No,” she said firmly, then added, “I’m sorry. But it’s long ago and far away and I prefer it to stay that way.” She reached a hand out and lightly touched his arm, not looking at him. He wondered if the gesture was to apologize for not sharing her past with him, or to reassure him that she hadn’t been broken by it. She was in the process of pulling her hand away when she suddenly dropped it back down, clutching him. “What is that?”
Directly ahead of them on the long, lonely ranch road, a figure draped in black walked alone at the edge of the bar ditch.
Mack felt his heart jerk reflexively and his fingertips tingled as adrenaline shot through his system. Everything in him wanted to yell at Corrie to drive faster, to pass the apparition by, because it wasn’t of this realm. The figure could only be a ghost.
Corrie braked hard, breathing shallowly. “If I were Catholic, I’d be crossing myself.”
The headlights centered on the figure in black, slowly walking down the ranch road in the same direction they had been traveling.
“Tell me you see her, too,” she said.
“I see her,” he said tersely, though until she’d spoken he hadn’t seen the figure as female. Now, because the car was stopped and the headlights shone directly on the phantom, he could make out the long black skirt, the veiled hair and the ghostly pale face turning to look over her shoulder at the car behind her.
“For a minute, I thought she was a ghost,” Corrie said on a breathless little laugh that sounded more a gasp.
“I have to admit, the hair on my neck is still sticking straight out,” Mack said.
The woman in black, alone on a thirty-mile stretch of empty road, turned away from the car and continued walking toward the ranch. Again, Mack felt a frisson of reaction creeping down his spine. Every childhood ghost story about La Dolorosa’s lonely wanderings flitted through his mind.
“No,” he said aloud, then felt foolish as Corrie hesitated in inching the Bronco forward. He felt his face flush. “I didn’t mean stop. I just meant she couldn’t be a ghost.”
“You’re thinking about La Dolorosa, too, aren’t you?”
He gave a ragged chuckle. “Bingo.”
She echoed his laugh but with none of her usual abandon. She drove the Bronco forward until they flanked the woman in black. The woman flicked them a glance from beneath her veil and continued walking.
Corrie nosed the Bronco farther still, pulling to a stop just a few paces ahead of the woman.
“We have to see what she’s doing way out here,” she said, as if he needed an explanation. “It’s freezing. And supposed to get colder before dawn.”
Mack lowered his window, glanced at the back seat to make sure Pedro was still sleeping, then called out softly in Spanish, “Are you okay, señora?”
The woman approached the window at the same even pace she’d been employing before. As she got closer, Mack again suffered a pang of doubt. Would she prove real?
Corrie felt shivers of superstition working their way up her spine. A woman walking the ranch road, thirty miles north of Carlsbad, was impossible enough. Dressed all in black on a fitful night in an unseasonably cold spring, the woman sparked a whole universe of fears that had lived deep within the little girl Corrie had once been.
“Can we help you, señora?” Mack asked.
The woman shook her head.
“Did your car break down?” It was a patently ridiculous question; they’d have seen such a vehicle.
The woman shook her head again. Her dark eyes fathomless and unreadable, she looked into the back seat of the Bronco. She stared at the sleeping child beneath the blanket.
To Mack, her eyes looked hungry.
“Do you need a ride?” Mack offered. Say no, he pleaded silently. Just shake your veiled head and disappear into the night.
The woman moved to the back door and reached for the handle. Her hands seemed ghostly pale, then, as she extended one, tinged with red in the glow cast by the taillights.
Corrie couldn’t stop herself from reaching out for Mack’s shoulder. Whether she’d intended to stop him from unlocking the door, or simply for human contact, she didn’t know. All she understood was the need to feel his solid male body.
Mack threw her a quick glance, then lifted the lock on the rear door, and swung it open. Amber light spilled across the woman’s angular features, softening them as she stare
d in at the boy snoring softly. In the light, Corrie could see the woman hadn’t been wearing a black funereal veil, but had simply pulled her long woolen shawl up and around her head. She lowered it now, drawing it tightly around her neck, and lifted her long black skirt to step into the car.
She closed the door after her and stiffly sat back against the seat, apparently careful not to disturb the child beside her.
Corrie envisioned Jeannie and Leeza mourning at a three-way funeral. Jeannie would ask why their friend would pick up a hitchhiker when she had a little boy in the car. Leeza would shake her head and say the police said they couldn’t find a weapon; they’d all apparently died of fright.
But the woman staring straight ahead didn’t seem menacing. While Corrie could feel the cold emanating from her, the chill of a May night in the desert southwest, she didn’t feel a threat other than to her sanity.
When several seconds had passed and Corrie still hadn’t released the foot brake, the woman’s eyes cut to hers and away.
Corrie gulped air and fought to stifle the hysterical giggles that threatened to escape. Mack clasped her hand and she almost screamed. Until he took her hand in his, she hadn’t realized she was still clutching his shoulder.
“I thought you were a ghost,” Corrie said.
The woman said nothing.
“I thought you were La Dolorosa.”
The woman remained silent.
“It’s okay. Let’s just drive,” Mack murmured. He moved her hand to the gearshift knob, as if she wouldn’t have been able to do it without his aid. In that, he was probably correct for she had to think for a moment how to engage the car.
She looked in the rearview mirror at the woman in back. She’d half expected to see an empty seat, as the ghost stories went, but the woman was there, eyes forward and her thin, pale lips silently moving.
Long-buried memories eddied in Corrie. Every ghost story told at the orphanage, a flashlight in the teller’s hand, girls huddled beneath a blanket to hide from the light, seemed to coalesce and re-form right in the Bronco. In almost every country and certainly in most states of the United States, a woman in black walked the back roads and country lanes. Known by a variety of names, she wailed in one place, was silent in another.
At Close Range Page 8
