Always Time To Die sk-1

by Elizabeth Lowell

  "She didn't deserve to be murdered."

  "No one does, but it happens just the same. You want a picture of this headstone?"

  Carly knelt and waited for the autofocus to wake up and get its job done. Light flashed once. She viewed the image, approved it, and turned the camera off again.

  "Do you suppose Susan Mullins was buried here? She was a longtime employee, after all."

  "And her daughter was probably the Senator's bastard."

  "That, too."

  Dan and Carly continued down the fence, searching for depressions in the snow cover that would indicate earth sagging into a grave when the coffin gave way to a combination of time and water. Other than an occasional Sandoval and two Sneads, Dan and Carly didn't find any names they recognized.

  The wind flexed, stretched, ran cold between the white metal bars of the fence.

  Carly stood and looked at the moon-silvered ridgeline that loomed a few hundred yards away.

  "What were you doing up there?" she asked. "It was you, wasn't it, the day the Senator was buried?"

  Dan followed her glance to Castillo Ridge. "Me, my dad, and one of the Sneads. Jim probably. Blaine isn't that good on the stalk."

  "I don't understand."

  "Dad and I parked off the highway and climbed up the back side of the ridge. There's an old trail there. Hunters use it a lot. So does their prey. Anyway, Dad and I watched the whole thing from up there. Neither of us noticed anyone, but when we started walking out, I saw where there were some tracks. Someone else had been up on the ridge with a dog, watching the burial."

  "And you think it was Jim Snead?"

  "He's the only one I know of who can get close to me without giving himself away. I have good senses."

  "Is that why you keep looking up toward the ridge?" she asked. "You think he's up there now?"

  "I've felt watched a few times since we left the house. Then it goes away. Probably just the wind making branches move."

  "Or Jim Snead looking down from the ridge?"

  "Maybe," Dan said.

  "Why?"

  "I don't know."

  And as soon as Dan had Carly in a warm, safe place, he was going to climb the ridge and backtrack, assuming the wind and shifting snow didn't cover everything before he got back here from Taos.

  If he was alone, he'd have climbed that ridge the first time his neck started itching. But he wasn't alone.

  "Can the ridge be climbed from this side?" Carly asked.

  "Sure."

  "Is it hard?"

  "Not if you have good boots."

  "Let's go."

  "What?" Dan said, not believing what he was hearing.

  "I want to climb the ridge and look out over the valley and see the ranch in moonlight and darkness, the way it must have looked a hundred years ago."

  He listened to his inner senses, found nothing that was worth arguing over, and gave in. "I'll break trail."

  Chapter 46

  CASTILLO RIDGE

  FRIDAY NIGHT

  They're coming right toward me.

  Quickly the sniper thought about shooting angles and avenues of escape. He should go to ground and wait for them to drive around the back of the ridge. That was the plan.

  That plan hadn't called for freezing his ass off while the two of them photographed graves and took a midnight hike up Castillo Ridge. If he had to wait much longer, he'd be too cold to shoot straight. Then somebody could die instead of just bleeding a lot all over the snow.

  It wasn't that he minded the killing itself; like everything else, it got easier with practice. But a fatality was always investigated more thoroughly than a simple "accidental" shooting.

  They were still coming toward him. Any closer and he'd have to use his eye rather than the scope. As it was, he couldn't see more than one or two square inches of the target at a time.

  Finally Carly and Dan veered away, following the informal trail horses and cattle used in the summer when they were turned loose to graze.

  The sniper began to breathe a little more easily as the targets got farther away. When he realized they were going to climb all the way to the top of the ridge a few hundred yards from him, he sighted in and recalculated the angles.

  Then he smiled. If they stood and admired the view, it'd be a piece of cake.

  Confident again, the sniper held position except for his eyes. He looked away from his prey, barely tracking them with his peripheral vision. Animals, even civilized ones like people, often sensed a direct stare.

  And from what he'd learned about Dan Duran, that boy was barely housebroken, much less civilized.

  Chapter 47

  CASTILLO RIDGE

  FRIDAY NIGHT

  CARLY FOLLOWED DAN ALONG A TRAIL ONLY HE COULD SEE. WIND FOLLOWED THEM, pushing and pulling and distracting. She shivered, then ached. And she remembered Dan's leg.

  "Okay," she said. "This is far enough. I can-"

  "My leg's fine."

  "Tell me again that you're not a mind reader."

  "I'm not a mind reader."

  "Why do I so not believe you?" she muttered.

  "I haven't a clue. And stop rolling your eyes."

  "How did you know?"

  "I heard them."

  She snickered and slogged along behind him.

  Dan heard, and smiled. He was following the trail as much by instinct as by eye. Animals weren't stupid. They took the easy way, around boulders and clumps of small trees, twisting and turning, slowly gaining altitude. People were mostly too impatient to be smart. They just plowed straight up a slope like there was a stopwatch on them.

  In places the going was easy. The land was nearly bare of snow, swept by the wind of all but a compact crust of snow. That same wind filled the hollows and creases with the kind of icy powder that drew people from all over the world to the high ski slopes near Taos. In the skiing scheme of things, this side of Castillo Ridge was a nonstarter. It was too windswept for snow really to accumulate anywhere but in ravines, and too rocky in the narrow ravines for safe skiing. The other side of the ridge had thicker snow because it was somewhat sheltered from the prevailing wind by the ridge itself. Rocks were mostly buried in snow. Pinons and cedar grew to real size, and true pines had a foothold on the dry land.

  Dan wondered if the trail he and his father had beaten through two feet of snow almost a week ago was still visible or if it had been buried by new snow.

  Just before Dan skylined himself on the uneven ridge, he stopped and searched the moonlight and darkness for any change, any movement, anything that could explain his occasional, uneasy sense of being watched. Like now. Someone was watching him.

  You're paranoid.

  You say that like it's a bad thing.

  "What caused that?" Carly asked.

  "What?"

  "That grim little smile."

  "I was talking to myself," he said.

  "About what?"

  "Paranoia."

  "Was this a general or a particular conversation?"

  "Particular."

  She waited.

  He didn't say anything more.

  "Sometimes getting you to talk is like pulling hen's teeth," she said.

  "Hens don't have teeth."

  "That's what makes them hard to pull. What form did this paranoia take?"

  "Sometimes I feel like I'm being watched," he said calmly.

  Carly's breath came out in a long plume. "Me, too. Usually it's in an old house. So I'm paranoid, too?"

  He laughed softly and finished the last few yards up to the ridge, pulling her along behind him. "You're something else."

  "And that something is paranoid?"

  "No, Carolina May. That something is-"

  Suddenly Dan staggered back and away from her, yanking her with him as he went down the far side of the ridge.

  The sound of rifle fire cracked like edgy thunder down the valley.

  A snow-buried ravine broke Dan's fall. He hit bottom hard enough to make his head spin
.

  "Dan? Dan!"

  Carly skidded to her knees and started clawing snow away from his face. Some of the snow looked black and shiny.

  Dan's eyes opened and he groaned. "Bastard missed."

  "It doesn't look like it from here," she said tightly. "You're bleeding."

  "And you aren't. He missed."

  "You're hurt. Let me help you up."

  When she started to stand, Dan pulled her down into the uncertain shelter of the ravine and put his lips against her ear. There was snow in her hair, and her scarf was more off than on her head.

  "Quiet," Dan murmured, finally starting to think past the ringing in his ears. "He might be coming back to finish the job. I sure hope so."

  Only then did Carly see that Dan had eased off a glove and drawn a gun. She hadn't even known he was armed. She shivered with more than the cold, though the cold was bad enough to make her shake. It felt like a vampire drawing warmth and life out of her.

  You asked for it, she told herself. You could have quit the job and you didn't. Dan paid the price. Now suck it up and deal.

  She would rather have run screaming into the night, but refused to leave Dan behind. Since he wasn't going to leave voluntarily and was too big to carry, she was stuck lying in the snow watching him bleed and knowing the bullet had been meant for her.

  Carly bit the inside of her mouth, hard, then harder, until the urge to scream died to a whimper she couldn't stifle. Her mouth tasted of salt and fear.

  "It's okay, honey," Dan murmured against her ear.

  She turned her head to him and breathed, "Bullshit."

  His grin flashed white against the bloody shadows of his face.

  Dan and Carly lay quietly while blood from a scalp wound ran down his face into the snow. She packed snow against his head, hoping to reduce the bleeding. It helped, but not enough.

  Very slowly, he wiped blood away from his eyes with his free hand. Nothing moved on the ridgeline thirty feet above. No sound came from footsteps crunching through snow toward them.

  Cold bit into him, numbing him until he knew it would be more dangerous to stay than to move. Neither of them were dressed to spend a night in the snow and freezing wind.

  And despite the constantly renewed snow on his forehead, it felt like he'd been hit by a white-hot hammer. When it really thawed out, he would be screaming. Thank God Carly would be there to drive him out.

  "Make me some snowballs," he murmured to Carly.

  "What?"

  "Snowballs."

  She wondered if getting shot made someone crazy, but she carefully began scooping up snow and packing it into hard, rather eccentric balls. When she uncovered some small rocks, she included them in the mix.

  Dan waited, thinking about where he had been when he was hit, where he'd fallen, where the shot probably had come from.

  On the ridgeline, where it bends back toward the valley. Probably that group of boulders to the right. Maybe the trees farther on. Eight hundred feet. A thousand at most. Easy enough shot with a nightscope.

  Impossible without one.

  Cold clenched Dan's body. Without special gear-at the very least a survival blanket-a man had to keep moving to stay alive. That wind was a killer.

  "Here," Carly whispered. "Some of them have rocks in the center."

  "Sweet," he murmured, smiling thinly. "Give them to me first."

  He felt something cold and hard nudge his left hand. He wasn't very accurate throwing left-handed, but that didn't matter. He just wanted to see how jumpy the sniper was.

  In a single motion Dan rose to his knees, fired the snowball in the direction he would have taken if he planned to retreat over the ridge toward the ranch, and dropped back flat in the ravine.

  No shot, no narrow thunder, no motion at all.

  Silence.

  Wind.

  More silence.

  Something hammering in his head and the feel of Carly shivering uncontrollably against him.

  Time to go.

  "Follow me," Dan said.

  "What if he starts shooting again?"

  Then we're dead.

  But all he said was, "Let's go."

  Chapter 48

  CASTILLO RIDGE

  FRIDAY NIGHT

  THE SNIPER TRACKED CARLY AND DAN THROUGH THE NIGHTSCOPE, NOTING THAT Dan took advantage of every bit of shadow and rock and tree for cover. The sniper didn't get a single clean shot at either of them.

  When he was certain they were on their way to the ranch house, he slipped down the back side of the ridge to collect his pay.

  Chapter 49

  QUINTRELL RANCH

  VERY EARLY SATURDAY MORNING

  MOONLIGHT GLOWED IN FRAIL SPLENDOR AGAINST THE WALL OF GLASS FRAMING the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The only light in the front of the house came from the Senator's office, and it was no more than a thin strip of yellow between the bottom of the door and the polished marble floor.

  A shadow slipped down the hallway. Any sound of footsteps was muffled by Persian rugs as the shadow slid to the back of the house. There was a tiny glow beneath the big double doors leading to the suite. Silence, a faint brush of cloth against the wall, a murmur from the heavy hinges on one door giving way to steady pressure.

  The shadow eased inside, leaving the door slightly ajar. A night-light from the bathroom cast a vague illumination that darkened everything not directly touched by light. Winifred lay in the recliner. Every few seconds the oxygen tube took on a faint, shifting glow, sensitive to the movement from the old woman's shallow breaths. Heavy blankets shrouded her body. While she slept, the oxygen tube had fallen away from her nose.

  Easy. They make it so easy for me.

  Gloved hands shifted the blankets, pulling them higher and then tucking them tightly around the old woman. Gently, relentlessly, blankets flattened down over Winifred's face.

  Her nostrils flared, seeking oxygen, finding only cloth too dense to breathe through. Her mouth opened, dry as the pillow itself. Her head jerked. Nothing changed except her body's hunger for oxygen. It raged through her, twisting her. She tried to free her arms, to kick, but it was too late. All she could do was open her eyes and look into the face of her murderer.

  Finally her motions stilled completely.

  Gloved hands pulled blankets back as they had been. Fingers hesitated over the transparent flexible tube connected to the steel oxygen tank. Then the hand passed on, leaving the oxygen tube as it had been found, hissing faintly against Winifred's neck.

  That's two he owes me.

  The shadow withdrew, taking with it a woman's life.

  Chapter 50

  QUINTRELL RANCH

  VERY EARLY SATURDAY MORNING

  PETE MOORE WOKE UP WITH A STIFF NECK AND DROOL MARKS ON THE SPREADSHEET he'd been reading when he fell asleep in the Senator's office. Groaning, he straightened and reached for the mug of coffee that was as cold as the room.

  Now that the old bastard was dead, maybe he could sneak a microwave into the office; he really hated cold coffee. But it was better than no coffee at all. These days Melissa was too busy taking care of Winifred and packing up the house for sale to keep him in hot coffee.

  He took a swig of the bitter brew, shuddered, and took another. The clock struck three. In the silence, the chimes were almost like distant church bells. The Senator had loved that sound.

  Pete stared at the numbers on the spreadsheet he'd used as a pillow. The figures and their meanings were as blurred as his mind. It was time to give up and go to bed.

  He turned off the office light as he went out. In the wide gallery/hallway, moonlight was bright enough to see by. Even if it hadn't been, he'd walked this way many times before at night while the household slept and Melissa waited in their small apartment watching television. The glassed-in walkway was as cold as the night. He walked quickly.

  He opened the door to the apartment and hurried inside, shutting the door behind him. The flickering bluish light and vague colors of the TV screen
lit the room. The laugh track of an old comedy show drowned out the lonely wind and silence of the night.

  Melissa was on the sofa, snoring along with the laugh track. Pete bent down and shook her shoulder lightly.

  "Time to go to bed," he said.

  She woke up and yawned. "I'd better check on Winifred. Did you hear any more shooting?"

  "No. Probably some fool tripped over his own feet with a loaded rifle."

  Melissa shook her head. "Poachers shouldn't drink."

  Pete grinned. "Maybe he killed himself rather than a cougar. But I'll go with you and make sure the outer doors are locked, just in case our poacher has a little winter larceny in mind."

  "Jim Snead would track him down and skin him out like a coyote, and everyone around here with a rifle knows it."

  Rubbing her eyes, yawning again, Melissa followed Pete back to the main house and to the suite of rooms at the end of the house. At every exterior door, she waited while he checked the lock. Finally he pushed open one of the double doors to the suite and went on through to check the outside entrance at the far end.

  "What a smell," he said as he locked the outside door. "Has she become incontinent?"

  "I hope not."

  The night-light gleamed on the steel oxygen cylinder. Melissa walked quietly to the recliner, saw that the oxygen tube was displaced, and reached for it. Winifred's skin felt cool.

  Too cool.

  And the room was too quiet.

  "Winifred?" Melissa asked in an odd voice.

  Pete walked back quickly. "What is it? Is her fever worse?"

  "I think she's dead."

  With a muttered word, he bent over Winifred. No sound of breathing. No pulse in the lean wrist. No tension in the muscles.

  And the smell.

  "Call the doctor," Pete said. "I'll call the governor."

  Chapter 51

  TAOS

  EARLY SATURDAY MORNING

  THE GRAY-BLUE CURTAINS SURROUNDING HOSPITAL BEDS IN THE EMERGENCY ROOM gave an illusion of privacy, but the confusion of the ER surrounded them. Dan and Carly would have been long gone from there, but the sheriff had made it clear that he would be the one to interview them. Then he'd told them it could be at the ER or at the jail, their choice.