HIS TENDER TOUCH

by Sharon Mignerey

  Instead of heading back down the way they had come up, Gray led her up the trail he had investigated yesterday when they first arrived. They reached a notch at the top where the view was breathtaking.

  Snow-covered mountains in one direction, and the expanse of the valley in another. He didn't give her any time to enjoy it, though, as they picked their way down a steep talus slope. Gray remained only a couple of steps ahead, offering his hand when the going was particularly rough.

  When they were halfway down the hillside, the sun came up, brilliant and warm. Off to the south, low clouds hugged the ground, threatening rain.

  When they reached the bottom, she looked back. Above them, a cliff towered, and from here it was obvious that at some point, part of it had given way. She shuddered, imagining the rockslide that had created the nearly vertical ridge they had just descended. Gray offered her water from the canteen before taking a sip himself.

  Her stomach rumbled, but she didn't ask if he had anything left to eat. If he had, he would have offered it already. She sat down on one of the boulders, took off her shoes one at a time, emptying the bits of rock from the insides before putting them back on.

  They began walking again, their pace brisk. They didn't talk much, and she found herself listening for the vehicle they had earlier heard. There was no cover, no way for them to hide, and she knew Gray was right. If they had taken this route yesterday, Howard would have found them.

  What seemed like hours later to her, they ducked through a barbed-wire fence. In the distance, horses grazed.

  "If we have any kind of luck at all," Gray said, "now is the time." Then he whistled, a shrill, piercing sound. In the distance, the horses lifted their heads.

  "See that big sorrel," he said, pointing, "the one coming toward us? That's D.J."

  "Our transportation?"

  Gray nodded. "If he'll be a gentleman and let me catch him."

  "I would have thought this guy's name would have been Cat," she murmured. "Since you have a cat named Horace."

  He grinned, the first smile he'd given her all day. Knowing how rare they were, she cherished each one.

  "So what does 'D.J.' stand for?"

  The grin widened. "Don Juan."

  "Ah," she teased. "A family name."

  "Not even."

  Within moments, they were surrounded by a half-dozen horses, including D.J. He seemed happy enough to see Gray, but shied away each time Gray reached for him.

  "How come the hero's always able to leap on the back of his horse in the movies?" she asked.

  "Because they forget a horse's basic nature. He's a herd animal. And much as he likes me, his instinct to stay with the herd is stronger."

  Movement at the edge of the field caught her eye—a horse, this one saddled. "Someone is coming," she announced.

  Gray turned to watch the approach, his posture becoming even more alert.

  As the rider came closer, Audrey recognized Hawk. When he was a couple of hundred yards away, the horse's trot became a lope, which scattered the horses that had been walking with them.

  Hawk brought his horse to a skidding halt. He looked from Gray to Audrey and then back again.

  "It's really you," Hawk said.

  "Who else would I be?" Gray retorted.

  "I thought you were dead."

  "Dead?" Gray repeated.

  He dismounted and slapped Gray on the back. "As a doornail. Man, am I glad to see you."

  Possibilities raced through Gray's mind. Why would Hawk think he was dead? There were no bodies. Even with the fire in Audrey's car, there would have been a skeleton. So…

  "Aw, damn," Hawk muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. "You shouldn't find out this way…"

  "Find out what?"

  "Your cousin … Richard shot himself last night."

  Cold disbelief slithered down his spine even as he asked, "What happened?"

  "He committed suicide."

  "That doesn't make any sense."

  "I hear you," Hawk answered. "But there's not much doubt about it. He left a note. Which is why we thought you were dead."

  "A note?" In his experience, suicide notes were damned convenient and didn't necessarily prove anything. He felt Audrey move closer to him, her small hand sliding within his, squeezing in reassurance. "What did it say?"

  Hawk shrugged. "That he had shot you and Audrey."

  "My God, why?" Audrey asked.

  Hawk shrugged. "He didn't say why, only that he had made a huge mistake and that he couldn't go on living."

  "That makes no sense," Gray said. "Where'd this happen?"

  "In his quarters."

  Gray wanted to see the room. He didn't believe for a minute that his cousin had killed himself.

  "Were you able to reach the Denver office?" Audrey asked.

  Hawk shook his head. "Nope. The telephones are still out."

  "Has the sheriff been notified?" Gray asked.

  Hawk tipped his Stetson back. "Well, as it happens, I'm headed over to John Toosla's place to use his phone. Since the bridge is out, I need to rely on good old-fashioned horse power." He patted the horse on the neck.

  "Did you find Richard's weapon?" Gray asked.

  "Sure," Hawk responded. "It was in his hand."

  "What about a rifle?"

  Hawk shrugged. "All we found was a .38 revolver." Gray turned away and stared into space. To the best of his knowledge, Richard had never been much of a hunter. Somewhere, hiding out, was a man who was. There was no way the person who had been shooting at them could have been Richard. None. He wouldn't have thought so even if they had not seen Howard Lambert. Gray frowned, the pieces forming a new puzzle he didn't like at all.

  He and Audrey weren't dead. And his cousin hadn't committed suicide.

  Richard had been murdered.

  * * *

  Chapter 11

  « ^ »

  "You can't be serious about ruling Richard's death a suicide," Gray told the county coroner some seven hours later.

  He had bullied his way into Richard's quarters, ignoring the doctor's protest and dismissing the deputy for the kid he was.

  Gray was in no mood to be reasonable, and he had questions he didn't trust anyone else to provide answers to. It had been a long horseback ride back to the pueblo where Gray had stashed Audrey with Francie. He hadn't wanted to leave Audrey, but he didn't want her anywhere near a murder scene, either. And Francie was the one person he trusted to keep Audrey company until he had seen for himself where Richard died.

  Then he had gone back to the ranch while Hawk rode across the river to find a working phone. A helicopter carrying the coroner and a young deputy arrived a couple of hours after they were called.

  "That's the way I see it." The doctor made a couple of other notes, then looked at Gray. "I can understand how difficult this must be for you—the deceased being family and all—but he did take his own life."

  "I've seen my share of suicides, and I'll tell you, no one shoots themselves in the chest—"

  "Perhaps … the gun discharged prematurely."

  Gray knew the good doctor was a family practitioner, not a pathologist. If the coroner had investigated a murder at all during the past year or five, Gray would have been surprised. He sure as hell didn't know how to read a crime scene.

  The deputy, who looked as if he should still be in junior high school, was no help, either. The closest the kid had probably ever come to a murder was textbook pictures when he attended the law-enforcement academy. Assuming he had even that much training.

  The doctor's gaze fell to where Richard's hand was wrapped around the pistol. "And then there is the matter of the note."

  "Yeah, he left a note, all right. Which is pretty damned vague." Gray stalked across the room to the dresser, where the note had been found. "‘I've made a terrible mistake,’" he read without touching the paper. "‘After I killed Gray Murdoch and Audrey Sussman, I realized I could no longer go on living.’"

  "People contemplati
ng suicide are often not rational," the doctor said in tones meant to be placating.

  "He wasn't suicidal," Gray stated flatly, pinning the doctor with a hard glance. "He had no motive for murdering me. And as you can see, I'm not dead!"

  "And Miss Sussman?"

  "She's not dead, either," he snapped.

  "Mr. Murdoch—"

  "He was murdered," Gray insisted. "Check for powder residue on his hands. I'm willing to bet he didn't fire this gun."

  "Of course, that will be checked as part of the autopsy. But, I'm telling you, there's nothing here to indicate anything other than a suicide."

  "I'd like the sheriff to take a look at the scene," Gray said.

  "He's on vacation for the next two weeks," the deputy responded.

  "And you two are the experts—"

  "As close as you're going to get," the coroner countered, his voice rising to match Gray's. "This isn't a big city, but that doesn't mean we don't know what we're doing."

  "When was the last time you investigated a murder?" Gray asked.

  "That's irrelevant in this case—"

  "It's exactly the point."

  "And how the hell would you know?" the doctor returned. "I know you're upset—"

  "I was a detective on a homicide unit for six years," Gray said, his voice clipped and a thousand times more calm than he felt. "I've investigated more murders than I can count, and I'm telling you. This is no suicide."

  "You see what you want to see," the coroner said with a shrug. "Because you're related, and we never want to think a loved one is capable of this. Because of your training, you think along certain lines automatically."

  "That's a crock."

  Within minutes, the coroner had finished up his job. They loaded Richard's body into the helicopter. The deputy and coroner climbed aboard, and the chopper took off in a cloud of dust.

  Gray went back inside and found himself at the doorway of Richard's quarters. The stench of death hung heavily in the air, and a dark red stain marred the Navajo rug in the middle of the floor. Gray opened a window. A billow of fresh air flowed into the room, reminding him of the ancient custom of leaving a window open so the departing soul could escape.

  From ghastly to surreal, Gray thought, wondering if Richard's spirit had made it on to the next world or if it would hang around and haunt this one, becoming another ghost of Puma's Lair.

  "Not much else to be done here," Hawk said from the doorway.

  "Not much," Gray agreed, continuing his study of the room. Surely Howard Lambert had left a clue somewhere that would nail him.

  "I can see why you thought your cousin was murdered," Hawk said, stopping just inside the doorway. "Richard didn't know much about guns. In fact, he used to hate the hunting trips Lambert insisted on when he came down. But maybe the coroner's got it right."

  "Let's hope so," Gray finally said.

  Hawk lifted an eyebrow.

  "If he's not," Gray stated, as though he were explaining a hypothetical case, "there's someone out there who wants Audrey or me or both of us dead."

  He rolled his shoulders, realizing the adrenaline that had kept him going the past day was beginning to wear off. He glanced down at his jeans and shirt, both of which were filthy. "I want to shower and put on some clean clothes before I go get Audrey."

  "I'm going to head back," Hawk said.

  "See you in a while," Gray responded, watching the other man stride down the hallway. Relieved to no longer be suspicious of Hawk, he nearly called out. Instead, he quietly closed the door to his cousin's quarters. He headed for his room, uncomfortably aware that he was alone in the sprawling hacienda. Gray stopped just inside the doorway of the room he had been using. Nothing was obviously out of place, but he would bet his last dime the room had been methodically searched. Pulling his weapon from the back waistband of his jeans, he silently moved toward the closet and, standing to one side, opened the door. No one was inside the closet, but that didn't keep his heart from pounding. Gray snagged a pair of chinos and a shirt off a hanger, then pulled underwear out of a drawer.

  Even though he wasn't ready to confide in Hawk, Gray wondered if he should have asked the man to wait. If he were Howard, he would be looking for just this kind of opportunity. There would be no witnesses, just as there hadn't been for Richard.

  Almost as an afterthought, he picked up a straight-back chair, which he took to the bathroom. After locking the door, he wedged the chair back under the door handle. It wouldn't hold if someone was really determined to get in, but it would give him warning.

  He figured Lambert's plan hadn't been all that bad. Kill them, then blame it on Richard. It was an easy way to explain two dead bodies plus removing any opposition to his plans. Only Lambert should have made sure he and Audrey were dead before he killed Richard. Things were messier now. Unpredictable. Men desperate enough to plan and carry out a murder weren't the most predictable sorts of people. And Gray didn't like that a bit.

  Setting the weapon within easy reach, Gray stripped and stepped into the shower. He finished showering and dressing without hearing anything out of the ordinary. Gray stole quietly through the vacant hacienda, listening to each nuance of sound, but heard only the usual creaks and groans of the old building.

  Outside, he headed for the corral, where he saddled D.J., then he headed across the open valley between the ranch's hacienda and the few dwellings of the pueblo where Hawk lived.

  The ride to the pueblo was only a couple of miles, which to Gray was a couple of miles too many. The longer he was separated from Audrey, the more he worried that Lambert had somehow found her.

  The sun was scant minutes from setting by the time Gray reached the pueblo. The ruins cast long shadows across the plaza. A number of people in native costume stood in small groups, talking. Men with blackened faces, wearing buffalo skins and horns, indicated to Gray the buffalo dance had been performed during the afternoon. Gray dismounted and led the animal into a corral near Hawk and Francie's house. After he unsaddled the animal, he went looking for Audrey.

  The tense, edgy feeling that had ridden him all day intensified. He scanned the small clusters of people talking here and there without finding her, then methodically searched the group again.

  He found Francie first, with a young woman dressed in off-white and a couple of young men who seemed intent on explaining the significance of their costumes. Gray's gaze returned to the young woman.

  Audrey.

  Her hair was loose around her face, and he imagined easing his hands around her head, feeling the silky strands against his fingers. He wasn't the only one who had showered and had a change of clothes. She was wearing a full tiered off-white skirt and a tunic similar to Francie's.

  She smiled at something one of the men said, and Gray heard her chuckle ripple across the plaza toward him. Though he loved her laughter, he hated the thought that she was laughing with someone else. Stopping short, Gray cursed at himself. Someone else, hell. Admit it. A man.

  The feeling that rushed through him was new, but he knew it. Jealousy. The monster twisted through his gut, making his breath grow short and his temper even shorter.

  Gray slowed his stride, then finally stopped. If he followed the primitive impulses surging through him, he would sweep her away from the two men, knock them both flat for even looking at her and make sure she knew she was his. An impulse he had hoped he would never feel, had vowed he would never act upon.

  His gaze slid over her face as he remembered how soft her skin felt, how her eyes became very black as her climax approached, how she had wrapped her arms around him and held him as though he meant everything to her. She was the sum of all he had ever dreamed of having … and she was not for him. No matter how jealous he was. Especially because he was so damned jealous.

  She didn't need this. No woman did.

  And so help him, Audrey deserved better. Long years of solitude flashed before him, stark counterpoint to one vivid day of being surrounded by her laughter, her ho
nesty, her newly awakened passion, her trust. The last hit him like a blow. Trust.

  And he rewarded that with searing jealousy that she'd done nothing to invite.

  He was on the verge of walking away when she looked up and saw him. Her smile became even brighter, punching him in the gut with need and wanting he could not deny. He clenched his jaw when she patted one of the men on the arm before murmuring a goodbye.

  She made her way toward him, the skirt swirling around her bare legs.

  "You look beat," she said, giving him a hug, smelling clean and fresh.

  Her open arms, her easy hug—both were a woman's gesture of welcome to her man. Convulsively, Gray's arms tightened around her until he lifted her off her feet. She felt … so damned good. He forced himself to loosen his hold on her, letting her slide down his body.

  "I am," he admitted, letting go of her, mostly to prove to himself that he could.

  "I saw the helicopter come."

  "The coroner— As soon as the autopsy is finished, Richard's death will be ruled as a suicide." Telling Audrey the coroner was an idiot wouldn't do any good, so Gray kept his mouth shut. Besides, he didn't want to talk about Richard, didn't want her thinking about his death.

  She seemed to sense how bothered he was because she ran a hand down his arm in an unspoken gesture of sympathy.

  "Hawk called Lambert Enterprises and let them know about Richard," Gray added, pausing until she looked at him. "And I had him call a friend of mine who runs a charter helicopter service in Albuquerque. He'll come get you and take you to Albuquerque. From there, you can catch a flight to Denver."

  "Trying to get rid of me, huh?" she said lightly, laying her doubled fist against his arm.

  "That's right," he returned, his voice gruff, knowing he had never told a bigger lie in his life. If he had wanted her gone, really wanted her gone, he would have insisted she leave with the coroner and the deputy. But he didn't, so he rationalized she would be safer with him until they figured out where the hell Howard Lambert was.