Shattered Blue: A Romantic Thriller

by Jane Taylor Starwood

  Then they dried each other with thick white towels, made up the sofa bed with fresh sheets and fell onto it in a tangle of clean, warm arms and legs. Matt pulled the down comforter up to their shoulders and in a few minutes they were sound asleep, their bodies relaxed, their thoughts filled with nothing but each other.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Shane awoke to the irresistible aroma of fresh coffee and a body so stiff and sore she could barely swing her legs over the side of the mattress. Everything hurt, from her overworked calves and quads and hamstrings to the scratches on her arms. She hadn’t noticed them last night, but now she looked at them, raw red scrapes and puckered trails where she’d raked her skin along the cottonwood’s rough trunk, trying to reach Matt. Her arm muscles were stiff and sore, too.

  She was stretching her arms over her head, grimacing from the pain along her ribs, when Matt approached with her favorite hand-thrown mug full of that delicious-smelling coffee.

  “Here,” he said, “try this. It helps.”

  She looked up at him, saw the bruises and scrapes on his face, the similar scratches on his arms. They were a matched set: bruised, battered and torn. But here they were, alive, and relatively well, and together.

  Shane smiled and accepted the steaming mug, wrapping her hands around its smooth, bulging shape. Closing her eyes, she took the first heavenly sip, feeling its warmth flow into her, letting the caffeine do its work. Yes, she needed this. And she needed him. She set the mug carefully on the table next to the sofa bed and rose into his arms, then pulled him backwards onto the bed.

  Later, Shane took her reheated coffee from the microwave and watched Matt make a slow tour of her studio. He was standing in front of the big weaving, studying it with his head tilted and a hand on his chin. He looked up to find her watching him.

  “This is amazing, Shane,” he said. “You’re hiding your light under a bushel here. Do you know what you could get for this in L.A.?”

  “Matt, I don’t think—”

  “A good friend of mine owns a gallery on Rodeo Drive,” Matt continued. “He’d go nuts over these.”

  “Matt.”

  He looked up at her, eyebrows raised. “What?”

  “I’m not ready for that.”

  He walked to her and laid a kiss on her forehead. “All right,” he said, “I’ll shut up. But when you’re ready—”

  “If I’m ever ready.”

  “If you’re ever ready, I’m not kidding, you’d do great in L.A. I can see your work on my clients’ walls all over town.”

  “Ex-clients.”

  “Right. Ex-clients. But that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t love to have the latest Shane MacKinnon hanging over their oh-so-minimal fireplaces.”

  She patted his sweatshirt-clad chest. “Let’s just deal with reality for now, okay? And reality says I’m going to have to cancel my first solo show before it even starts.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Have you lived the last twenty-four hours with me?”

  “What’s that got to do with it? You’re here, I’m here, you’ve got everything you need to finish these, right?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Well, what are you waiting for? Get to work.” He planted another kiss on her forehead, let her go and turned toward the kitchen. “I’ll take care of everything else. You can weave all day.”

  Shane stared at his retreating back. Did he really expect her to go on working as if nothing had happened? On the other hand, what was stopping her? Maybe she couldn’t finish the six pieces she needed to make fifteen, but she could ask Beth if a dozen would do for the show. Knowing Beth, she was sure she’d say yes.

  So, really, what was her excuse? Sore muscles? A few scratches? Emotional turmoil? Weaving had always settled her mind, so it would be good for her, wouldn’t it?

  “Matt?”

  When he turned and looked at her, she blew him a kiss. “You’re a genius.”

  Matt laughed. “You just figured that out?” He opened the fridge. “Do we have eggs?”

  Shane was smiling, thinking about the work she had to do, when she dug clean underwear, her favorite jeans and a T-shirt out of the duffle and walked into the bathroom.

  She was out of the shower, wrapped in a towel, her mouth full of toothpaste, when it hit her: They were living together. Shane stared at her reflection in the mirror: a wide-eyed, wet-haired young woman, foaming at the mouth. How long this living arrangement would last, and what it portended for the future, she had no idea, but it was probably bad luck to make too much of it, so she tried to put the idea out of her head. It probably meant nothing. After all, Matt had nowhere else to live at the moment.

  By the time she emerged from the bathroom, refreshed and dressed for a day of weaving, Matt had closed the sofa bed and found the two TV trays she’d stashed in the closet in case she ever actually had guests staying here.

  “Have a seat,” he said, “breakfast is ready.”

  He brought her a plate piled with scrambled eggs and edged with slightly burnt whole-wheat toast. “I couldn’t find a toaster, so I had to use the oven,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind crisp toast.”

  “It’s fine,” she said, forking up a bit of egg. “These are good.”

  Matt sat down beside her with his own plate. “They would have been better with onion and peppers, but our cupboards are kind of bare. After breakfast I’ll drive to San Miguel, get us a few more supplies and order those satellite phones. Oh, yeah, and call off the contractors I had lined up for this week.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Shane said. “I need to call Gram. I really dread telling her about Doug.”

  Matt made an angry sound deep in his throat. “Fucking bastard,” he said. “If he got away with that diamond, I hope he chokes on it.”

  Shane put her fork down; she’d lost her appetite. “The last time I saw it, Jordan had it.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe the diamond was on my mantel the whole time, Matt. What could Ray have been thinking? Why did he send it to me?”

  “I don’t know, Shane,” Matt said. “Maybe he wasn’t thinking, at least not clearly. Maybe his Alzheimer’s had already kicked in.”

  “Or maybe it hadn’t, and he wanted me to have the money so Jordan couldn’t get at it. Maybe he wanted me to turn it in, and then the Alzheimer’s prevented him from telling me what he’d done.”

  She thought about the sequence of events. “He sent me the package with the geodes about a month before Jordan supposedly killed himself. That was about the time Ray started losing it, so the timing is right.”

  Shane forced another bite of egg down her throat, followed it with a sip of coffee. “Anyway,” she said, “that’s what I’d like to believe.”

  “It makes a certain kind of sense,” Matt said.

  Shane smiled at him. “It’s nice of you to humor me.”

  “I’m not,” he said. “From what you’ve told me about him, I think it’s entirely possible that Ray sent you that diamond so you could return the money.”

  She stared at him. There was a tiny bit of egg at the corner of his mouth. “I love you,” she said, leaning in to lick the speck of yellow away and plant a swift kiss on his freshly shaved cheek.

  Before he could respond in kind, Matt heard Shane’s stomach growl and watched her tuck into her breakfast with renewed appetite. He wanted to take her to bed again, but he contented himself with pulling a funny face, making her laugh with her mouth full. His love for her tugged hard at his heart; he’d never imagined he could love anyone so much.

  And he’d almost lost her. The memory of last night jolted into his stomach, stealing his appetite. But he didn’t want to spoil Shane’s good mood, so he tamped down the emotions boiling in his gut and forced himself to keep eating. The thought of Doug—or the con man who called himself Doug—out there somewhere, maybe enjoying the stolen money, getting away with what he’d done to Shane and her grandmother, galled him to the core.

  At least that sick bastard J
ordan Ripley would never come after Shane again.

  In San Miguel, while Matt was in the grocery store, Shane called her grandmother on his cell phone. While she sat in Matt’s truck listening to the phone ring in Gram’s house, she felt sick to her stomach over what she was going to have to tell her.

  After the third ring, Gram picked up.

  “Hello?”

  “Gram, it’s Shane. Shannon.”

  “Shannon! Thank God! I’ve been trying to call you but I couldn’t get through. Is something wrong with your phone?”

  “Yes, it’s— It’s not working.” She took a deep breath.

  “What’s wrong, honey? You sound upset.”

  Shane felt cold and clammy all over. She couldn’t bring herself to say the words she needed to say.

  “I’m fine, Gram,” she said, trying to keep her roiling emotions out of her voice. “There’s something I have to tell you, but first, why were you calling me?”

  Anything to put off the inevitable. Shane knew she was being cowardly, but she couldn’t just blurt it out like that. She had to find a way to ease into it. She heard her grandmother take a deep breath and let it out, and her heart contracted painfully in her chest.

  “Gram? Is something wrong?”

  “I’m not sure. I got the strangest call from Doug last night.”

  Shane’s mind reeled. She shut her eyes tight, and swallowed hard, trying to calm herself. She tried to make her voice as normal as possible.

  “Doug called you? What time last night? What did he say?”

  “It was really late, after two in the morning,” Gram said. “It scared me half to death. You know, a phone ringing in the middle of the night. It always sets your heart racing.”

  “Yes, I know,” Shane said. Her heart was racing so fast at that moment that she could hardly catch her breath. Stay calm, she told herself. Where was Matt? She needed him beside her.

  “Anyway,” Gram went on, “it was Doug, and he sounded funny, not like himself at all.”

  Shane almost let out a nervous laugh. He didn’t sound like himself? He wasn’t himself. “What did he say?”

  “Well, first, yesterday morning he told me he was going to visit his daughter in El Paso for a few days. I was surprised, because it was all of a sudden, you know. But he said she’d called him and wanted him to come down. Some health problem, I gathered.”

  She paused, then went on. “Shannon, I didn’t even know he had a daughter. He’d never mentioned her before. I thought it was kind of odd, but what could I say? I didn’t want to pry into his family business. Maybe they’d been estranged or something, and that’s why he never told me about her.”

  Shane shook her head, thinking about that deceitful bastard weaving his web of lies with a grin on his face.

  “So,” Gram said, “he left around ten Sunday morning, saying he’d be back in three or four days, and I wished him a safe trip. Then, a little after two o’clock this morning, the phone rang and it was Doug, sounding all out of breath. He said there’d been some sort of accident, but he wouldn’t give me any details. Just that there’d been an accident, and he was okay, but he wouldn’t be back for a while. He wouldn’t answer any of my questions, just threw out those words, said he loved me and he was sorry, and then he hung up. It was really odd, Shannon. I don’t know what to think.”

  Shane let out a long breath. “I don’t blame you, Gram. It’s strange all, right. Stranger than you know.”

  “What do you mean? Do you know something about this?”

  “Yes, I do, Gram, and I’ll tell you in a minute. But first, is that why you tried to call me? Just to tell me about Doug’s call?” Stall, stall, stall. She was such a wimp.

  “Well, yes, but there’s more to it,” Gram said. “After I hung up the phone, I checked caller ID, and it was a New Mexico number. I did a reverse look-up on the computer. Doug called me from a gas station just south of Albuquerque. Don’t you find that odd? Why would he be near Albuquerque when he was going to El Paso? It’s in the wrong direction.”

  Now. She had to tell her now.

  “Shannon? Are you still there?”

  Shane took another deep breath. “Yes, I’m here. Gram, this isn’t easy to say, and there’s no way to sugar-coat it, so I’m just going to say it.”

  “Say what? What’s wrong? You’re scaring me, Shannon.”

  “I’m sorry, Gram. I’m so sorry. Doug Galvin is a con man. That’s not his real name. He was Ray’s cellmate.”

  “What are you saying? That can’t be true.”

  “I’m really sorry, but it is. He was working with Jordan, trying to find the missing money.”

  The silence on the line stretched to Shane’s breaking point, and tears started streaming down her face. “Gram, are you okay? Oh, Gram, I’m so, so sorry.”

  “Wait, Shannon, I don’t understand,” Gram said. Shane could hear the pain in her voice and it tore at her heart. “This is so confusing. Jordan killed himself several years ago, didn’t he? Or is my memory going?”

  “No, your memory’s fine. Jordan faked his suicide. He’s been lurking somewhere all this time, waiting for a chance to find what was left of the money he stole.”

  “But I thought the missing money was a myth.”

  Shane sighed. “So did I, but it turns out it wasn’t. I had it all along, I just didn’t know it.”

  She spent the next several minutes explaining everything she knew about the diamond and Jordan and the man who called himself Doug Galvin. In the middle of that time, Matt returned to the truck and climbed in beside her. She took his hand while she finished her strange tale.

  When she ran out of words, a long silence came over the line.

  “Gram? Are you all right? I know this is an awful lot to take in at once.”

  “You’re sure you’re both all right? You’re not hurt?”

  “We’re fine,” Shane reassured her. “Scratched and bruised and a little sore, but fine.”

  “Thank goodness for that,” Gram said.

  “Listen, Gram,” Shane said. “I know you loved the man you thought Doug was, but—”

  “That rat-bastard!” Gram barked. “If I could get my hands on him, I’d— Well, I don’t know just what I’d do, but it wouldn’t go well for him, I can tell you that for sure.”

  Shane was grateful for the fire in her grandmother’s voice. “I know,” she said. “I’d like to have a few minutes alone with him, too. But he did save me, Gram. We have to remember that. He kept Jordan from—from whatever he was planning.”

  “You don’t have to sugar-coat it for me, Shannon. Jordan was going to rape and murder you, and we both know it. Thank heaven he’s finally dead. If I’d known what he was doing to you all those years ago, I’d have done the job for him, only I’d have cut his balls off first.”

  “Gram!”

  “Well, somebody should have, and the rest of his package, too, with a dull, rusty knife. When I think—”

  “It’s all right, Gram, it’s over now. I’m safe.”

  “And I thank God for that. I don’t know what I’d have done if I’d lost you, Shannon.”

  Shane smiled. “That goes both ways,” she said. She glanced over at Matt. “Listen, Gram, why don’t you come and stay with me—us—for a while? After the sheriff releases my house, that is.”

  “I’d love to, darling. But what about those damned reporters? Won’t they be all over this like stinkbugs on crap?”

  Shane laughed. “Yes, I’m sure they will, but I don’t care anymore. We’ll give them an earful and send them packing. Please say you’ll come.”

  “Of course I’ll come. You just let me know when, and I’ll hop a plane.”

  “I will. I hope it won’t be more than a few days. Maybe early next week. I love you, Gram. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “No, I’m not okay, but I will be,” Gram said. “It takes more than a rat-bastard like that to bring this old gal down for long, I don’t care how hunky he is. Oh, I expect I’l
l yell and cry at lot, but then I’ll get over it. Life is too short to let the bastards win. And I still have his ring. He’s not getting it back, no matter what. I think I’ll treat myself to a new wardrobe on him, whatever the hell his name is.”

  Relieved beyond words, Shane said her good-byes, closed the cell and handed it to Matt. “She’s all right,” she said. “She’s really all right.”

  “Of course she is,” Matt said. “She’s tough, just like her granddaughter.”

  He leaned over and gave her a tender kiss on the lips, which she returned with profound gratitude.

  “Now,” he said, “on to the important stuff. I’m out of clean underwear. Where’s that Walmart?”

  Shane laughed and shook her head. “We’d better stop by the sheriff’s office and tell Chief Melroy about that phone call. And then you’ll have to take me home before you go shopping; I need to get back to work. Oh, that reminds me, I need to call Beth.”

  Matt handed her the cell phone and started the truck.

  By the time Shane had told Beth as briefly as possible what had happened, assured her she’d tell her the whole story soon, gently refused her offer to run right over, and then made sure four new pieces were enough for the show, they were pulling into the parking lot of the sheriff’s substation.

  “I have to hang up now, Beth,” Shane said.

  “Oh, hon, are you sure you don’t want me to come out there and stay with you? I hate to think of you all alone after something as terrible as that.”

  “I’m not alone.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No. Matt’s with me.”

  “He’s with you? You mean staying with you? In your studio, where there’s only the one eensy-weensy sofa bed?”

  Shane smiled. “Yes, Beth, that’s what I mean.”

  “Oh. Well. That’s all right, then. That’s just— That’s wonderful, Shane. I guess you’ve got a whole lot more to tell me, then, haven’t you?”