No one answered when he entered the kitchen-family room and said, "Anybody home?"
The breakfast he'd cooked and left on the pilot warmer of the gas, stove hadn't been touched. The coffee was still at the same level in the carafe after he'd helped himself to a second cup before heading out to do chores. With a scowl, he glanced toward the closed bedroom door where Smoky acted as if he'd picked up a new scent, waiting poised, ears alert.
"Time to wake sleeping beauty," Shep quipped with a half curl of a smile.
He struck the door with three sharp knocks. "Hey, Slick, day's a wastin'!"
Smoky's lazy-tipped ears cocked as Shep placed his ear to the door. Not a sound. His lips thinned. Deanna's headache had returned when he came back to the house after speaking to Tick last night. Shep fixed her an ice bag for the knot at the hairline of her forehead, scrounged up a pair of new pajamas still in its plastic sleeve, then sent her to bed. Should he have kept her awake? Maybe the concussion was worse than it appeared.
He slammed his fist against the door, shaking it in its frame. "Deanna, rise and shine!"
Smoky, equally emboldened by a sense that something was amiss, added his two cents worth with a bark.
Shep gave his guest thirty seconds to respond before trying the doorknob. It was locked. How, he had no idea, since the old iron box lock had been painted open for decades. He stepped back, preparing to kick the door in when his better sense took over. Why bust the frame and risk injuring his foot in a battle with the time-petrified wood when nothing but a flimsy screen would be far more accommodating?
Rushing outside, Shep made straight for the open bedroom window with Smoky on his heels. Peering in, he made out a still lump of a figure smothered by the covers and pillows.
"Hey, rise and shine!"
The bed never so much as twitched in response. His pulse accelerating with concern, Shep produced his pocketknife and cut away the screen. Slinging it aside, he heaved himself through the window and did a head roll into the room over a pair of discarded high heels. Ignoring the pierce of the heels into the muscles of his back, he came to his feet and stepped toward the bed where a slender arm, swimming in pajamas, curled over a pillow covering what he assumed to be her head.
"Deanna?"
He knelt on the edge of the mattress. But as he reached for the pillow, the mattress shifted without warning from beneath him with an explosive whoosh. Unable to stop his forward momentum, Shep sprawled across Deanna, bringing her to life with a blood-curdling scream. A pillowed fist struck him full across the jaw. A knee came up with alarming accuracy, blanketed but sharp enough to trigger the instinct to retreat.
"It's okay; it's just me!"
A telltale hiss from Shep's left brought him back across the struggling, shrieking figure, pinning her to the bed. Not the pepper spray! With all his strength, he held the threatening sound down with a pillow.
"It's just me," he shouted over Deanna's muffled screams. "I'm not going to hurt you! I promise. Now let the spray go, or we'll both get hit."
A mumbled "What?" came from under another pillow.
"Let go of the pepper spray before it gets us both. I'm not going to hurt you," Shep repeated, his voice taut with strained patience. He'd have sent a male perp to la-la land by now.
It took a few seconds for his words to penetrate the obvious panic of the wildcat struggling in the tangle of blankets and pillows. And like a wildcat, Deanna Manetti packed more punch for the pound than appeared possible.
The kicking, punching, writhing, and hissing stopped.
"L...let me go. I...I'm soaked!"
Soaked? Rather than question what he thought he heard, Shep continued his clipped instruction. "I'm going to roll off you right now. You slip your arm out from under the pillow with the pepper spray and get up." His succinct and calm manner was a far cry from what he was feeling. He wavered somewhere between the urge to strangle his guest and relief that she was evidently fit as a fiddle.
The moment she was free, Deanna scrambled out of the bed. Snagging her foot in a knot of sheets, she stumbled and caught herself on the tall gun cabinet, rattling the contents. The glass doors had cost him a fortune. Thankfully, the metal reinforcement paid for itself, but the rocking of the base on the uneven flooring reminded Shep that he really needed to balance that thing. His focus shifted from the rocking tower of his prized collection to the young woman trying to steady it.
"Great—" she dropped the pepper spray canister to steady it—"I get to be the first gun accident where I'm crushed rather than shot by the bloomin' things."
Speechless, Shep stared at his guest. She was swimming in his pajamas, quite literally where they clung to one arm and shoulder as though she'd been hosed down. Water even dripped on the floor. "You are soaked."
"What, are you deaf as well as dumb?" Deanna snatched something from her ear—a wire of some sort. She cast a furtive glance from the locked door to the window, where remnants of the screen hanging from its frame explained his entrance before he could. "You broke in? Why?"
Shep eased to his feet, eyeing the pepper spray still within reach. "Because you didn't answer me when I knocked." Wait a minute. Why was he on the defensive in his own house? "Why on earth did you lock the door? I thought I'd proved that I wasn't going to assault you."
"New Yorkers know better than to trust anybody... especially if said person seems too good to be true, which is usually not the case."
Her upper lip was stiff, but the lower one gave her away. Not that it needed to. He'd seen the stark terror now thawing in her eyes. He forced the indignation eating at him from his voice. "You had a headache and a nasty lump on your forehead last night. I thought you were unconscious or something when you didn't answer," he explained. "So I broke in, but when I knelt on the edge of the bed to check you—"
Bewilderment claiming him, Shep tossed the covers back. There, lying in a wet circle was the ice bag he'd given her. A hint of humor tugged at the corner of his mouth as the facts all came together. "I guess I put my knee on that and slipped."
He glanced at Deanna to see her staring at the thing as well. She squeezed some of the water out of the pajama on her shoulder before raising her gaze to his with a sheepish grin. It tugged at the cutest nose he'd ever seen. "I didn't hear you because I was using the earphones on your transistor radio to shut out all the noise last night."
The transition of a sleepy, frightened little girl in need of comfort turning to imp played havoc with his thoughts. "What nose... noise?" Her vulnerability and his desire to assuage it made him stammer, setting off alarms along the wall protecting his emotions.
Her mouth twitched in yet another beguiling pose, sending his thoughts and reactions tumbling over each other like inept cops in a silent film. Suddenly, she stared past him, murmuring a startled, "Oh!"
Desperate for any distraction, Shep glanced over his shoulder in time to see Smoky bound through the window. He caught the yapping dog as it lunged up on the bed toward Deanna. "Whoa, boy. She's a friend."
Not that Smoky was acting anything more than excited and friendly. Nonetheless, Deanna appeared relieved and grateful for Shep's intervention, rewarding him with yet another smile.
"Where did he come from?"
"Smoky, meet Deanna Manetti. Deanna, meet Smoky He's Tick's dog. I'm taking care of him till Tick gets back from the Double J's roundup. He's all bark and no bite... least I've never seen any bite in him. The most danger he poses is kissing you to death." Shep's pulse tripped. "Slobber drowning."
Slobber drowning? Sheesh, he was babbling like a pimple-faced boy on his first date. But then, the sight of Deanna standing in his pajamas, her shiny shoulder-length hair tousled, was hard to ignore. Half little girl, half imp, and all woman...
Shep turned away, tugging Smoky gently by the collar. He was thinking like some kind of pervert. "I'll fix you some more breakfast while you get dressed. Then we'll go into town and check on your car."
"More breakfast?" she asked as he str
uggled with one hand to slide the lock to the open position. How in blazes had she broken it loose from layers of paint? It finally gave with a loud click.
"I imagine the egg I fixed earlier is hard as a pine knot. I'll make another."
"Just put it in a sandwich."
"Whatever suits," he said, drawing the door closed behind him as if he couldn't do it fast enough. At Smoky's whine of a sigh, he glanced at the dog's quizzical look. "Don't even ask." Shep let go of the collar and retreated to the kitchen like a scalded hound.
***
The Jeep hit a bump in the road just as Deanna swallowed the last of her sandwich. When she had emerged from the bedroom after the bizarre wake-up call, her host had been eager to be on their way, so she grabbed a cup of coffee to go and ate on the way No matter how hard she tried, she'd been unable to ignore the furry companion that had followed her every step since she left from the bedroom. On her way to the vehicle, she'd parted with half of her food. She couldn't help it. Unable to have pets in her New York apartment, she was a sucker for those pleading eyes.
"There's where you ran off the road." Shep pointed out her window as they drove by a dry embankment that looked as if a bite had been taken from it.
After a good night's sleep and a hearty meal, the surroundings were a far cry from the inhospitable landscape she remembered. All Deanna recalled were road, horse, and wilderness. She'd felt like King David must have when his friends turned against him, the sole living creature in an unfriendly wilderness, wondering why God wasn't hearing his pleas for help. Odd that the story would come to mind now. She hadn't thought of her old Sunday school lessons in years. But then she hadn't been in this much of a mess in years either.
Today the pastureland to the right and left of the dirt road seemed greener than the day before. She even spotted a scatter of cattle grazing on a gradual rise that swept toward the tree and rock covered hills beyond.
"This road leads up to a hunting lodge in the high country," Shep told her. "And dollars to donuts that's where that renegade stallion is right now, running with the mustangs." He shot a begrudging look at the scene fading behind them in the rearview mirror.
"I thought the mustangs were protected." Deanna had read something about that in National Geographic, hadn't she?
"They are, but the red isn't one of them. He was born and bred at Hopewell. He just likes to run with the wild crowd." Shep smirked over his stab at humor. "A lot of ranches let the bulk of their remuda of work horses run in the hills until spring roundup. Then the hands round them up and remind them of their training for a few days before the real work begins."
At her quizzical look, he explained. "Rounding up the cattle and weeding out the nonproductive cows and the calves bound for market."
"Oh." So that explained why there were just a few horses in the corral at Hopewell.
"The stallion and a few others have run wild since Dan took sick, so Tick and I have our work cut out for us."
The Hopewell land ran on forever with its own network of narrow and mostly unpaved roads before they reached a paved county highway. Some were pitted, and jostled the all-terrain vehicle so Deanna had to cling to the door, despite her seat belt.
According to Shep, the cattle she saw grazing here and there were not his but were owned by neighboring ranchers who leased the land from him. That certainly explained how such a large place could have such a meager, not to mention spooky, center of operation. She hadn't mentioned it, but that partly accounted for her trouble sleeping. Who could get a good night's rest in a ghost town?
"So what was the noise you mentioned earlier?" Shep asked, as though reading her thoughts. His knack for doing that was unsettling. "You know, what you tried to block out with the radio ear plugs."
It was the first reference he'd made to his unorthodox wake-up call. In retrospect, it was kind of funny, but he had yet to see the humor in his rupturing an ice bag and scaring the bejittles out of her. But then, neither had she until her mind replayed the incident while she was doing her hair and makeup. She'd been snatched from a sound sleep, not sure if she was being smothered, drowned, or worse.
"Are you kidding? I never dreamed the country was so loud, especially at night with all those loudmouthed animals and insects. When they weren't whistling, they were gargling. When they weren't gargling, they were singing. When they weren't singing, they were squeaking. And I swear I heard at least three frogs being strangled before I turned to the radio to drown it all out."
"Yeah, we don't have fire and police sirens to drown them out like you do in the city."
Deanna cut a sidewise glance at her companion. From the twinkle in his eyes, he was teasing. "Well, in my book it certainly shoots the concept of quiet nights in the country."
"Just Mother Nature's lullaby. All the creatures singing out that all's well or warning of an upcoming change in weather conditions. The more you listen, the more you can tell what's going on in the world."
"You mean like Station Eight's siren is different from Station Twenty-Two's, so you know which district the fire is in?"
Shep grinned. "Something like that."
"But those poor frogs... well, it was just awful."
"They were probably just in love. It does strange things to creatures of all kinds, I guess."
Yeah, like causing an intelligent, well-adjusted career woman to make an utter fool of herself. And she had felt just like the frogs during the police interrogation, choking on the emotion that had led her into becoming the perfect patsy
Shep accelerated to pass an old farm truck on the long, isolated road and waved as they went by The driver responded in kind.
Losing herself in thought, she closed her eyes and leaned back against the headrest. Heavenly Father, what am I going to do? Gram would tell her to trust in the Lord, but Deanna hadn't let go of the controls of her life in ages. Snatched from her hands by circumstance and her poor judgment as they'd been, it didn't look like she had any choice now.
***
"That dame is gone like the wind. I swear, boss, I have no idea how she slipped through our fingers and the cops." The caller in the phone booth off the interstate that led to Great Falls hoped the poor connection combined with the roar of passing trucks would cover the fear cracking his voice. No one disappointed the boss and lived to tell about it.
The ominous silence on the other end thundered in the man's ear. He had to break it. "She musta slipped outta the parking garage when I went to the john. I mean, it was just me, ya know?"
"Were you also in the john when Majors blew himself up in his own car?"
The caller's pulse accelerated. It wasn't his fault. He'd followed the man all over the city and watched in shock as the car exploded for no apparent reason. "Nobody knows what happened there. Nobody... not even the police."
"But they will find out. Then I'll have to find out from them, because my own men are incompetent." His boss's words were as void of emotion as that rabbit-eating snake he kept as a pet in his penthouse suite.
At the moment, it felt like the cold-blooded creature was slithering through the caller's veins, approaching a heart seized still as one of the hapless animals the creature fed upon.
"Look, boss. I can't help it if my partner ate some bad Chinese and I had to answer nature's call."
"Of course not. It's perfectly understandable." The man even hissed his s's like a bloomin' snake when he talked slow like that.
"Yeah, well I appreciate that, sir. I surely do." But did the big man really understand? The caller looked at his reflection on the dirty glass of the enclosure, certain he looked into the face of a dead man. He ought to just hang up and split, head for some place like Florida or Mexico. Except that the man on the other end of the phone had a long reach. Birds of a feather worked together, and this lethal breed lived all over the world.
"I'll take over from here. It's time I called in a favor from a colleague in the DEA. When I know something concrete, I'll contact you. In the meantime, you and you
r partner stand by for my call."
So did the command mean go back and wait for a message by phone or from a gun? The boss man ordered murders with the same tone he asked for coffee refills, which he drank as black as his temperament when provoked.
"Oh, and don't eat any more Chinese food till this is over."
"You got it, boss. I don't even like the stuff."
The man in the booth wiped his forehead, wishing he felt as at ease with things as his tone suggested. With friends on both sides of the law in and out of Canada, there would be no escaping retribution if the man on the other end of the phone wanted it. Sheesh, who could help having a sick partner or going to the john?
"We will find her," his superior said. It wasn't a reassurance. It was stated as nothing less than a fact.
"I'll be waiting to hear from ya." Using his right hand to steady his left, the caller hung up the phone. He shivered, despite the warm spring evening. All the man could do was pray that Deanna Manetti and the money would be found soon, distracting the drug lord from petty matters like him. He might get away with a broken nose or lose a finger, but this Manetti dame was a dead woman walking.
Six
Six weeks at the earliest, 'lessen I can find something else. I been callin' around all mornin'."
Deanna stared at Shep's "shade tree" mechanic in the late morning sun, her expression lying somewhere between a squint and a grimace. The only shade in Charlie Long's automotive junkyard was the overhang of his cabin. At the moment, they were in the fenced-in lot where he'd towed her crinkled car. Six weeks?
Beside her, Shep made some sort of grunt, no more pleased with the news than she was. "Might as well ask about having that faulty airbag replaced, too. Much as this baby cost, it should have worked and repacked itself."
"Dad-gummed foreign cars..." Charlie spat to the side, shaking his head. "They're snazzy enough, but they're biddies to keep runnin'." He chuckled. "Like some women, I reckon."
Winsor, Linda Page 5
