Deadly Promises

by Sherrilyn Kenyon

  "I have." This from Rohit, who'd just walked over from the other side of the creek bed. "I saw him back at camp. He asked me to go get a beer with him, said he was knocking off early today."

  "He's supposed to be working the ossuary," Aaron complained.

  "This is why we have a sign-out sheet." Kelsey checked her watch, annoyed. It was nearly four and Sattler's deputy was just now arriving. He trudged toward them with a sour look on his face and a metal detector in his hand.

  She turned to Aaron. "See if you can reach him by sat phone. If he's in town, maybe his cell is working. In the meantime, I've got to get these bones out of the ground before nightfall."

  Aaron walked off in a huff, but Kelsey didn't much care. She didn't have time to track down truant grad students. The forecast called for rain tonight, which meant the clock was ticking on this excavation.

  "If you're good here--"

  "I am," she told Gage.

  "In that case, I'll help the deputy. Maybe we can locate a shell casing."

  "Start here first." Kelsey glanced around, looking for any unnatural rock patterns. "I think there's another grave."

  "You're saying we've got two victims?"

  She stared down at the remains protruding from the soil. "At least."

  "How do you know?"

  She lifted her gaze to his. "Because this one isn't missing a femur."

  GAGE STOOD IN Kelsey's camper and practiced the SEAL art of making himself invisible. He didn't contribute to the debate. Not because he lacked an opinion, but because no matter what Kelsey and Robles concluded Gage had already decided on a battle plan.

  "I don't see how much more secure it could be," Kelsey was saying. "We've got a sheriff's deputy patrolling the area and a"--she turned to Gage and seemed to bite her tongue on the word "SEAL"--"an armed law enforcement officer right here in camp."

  Robles nodded. "And their presence is appreciated. But I can no longer overlook the situation. Our dig is located near a dangerous highway. Two fresh graves are ample evidence--"

  "Those crimes occurred months ago." Kelsey turned to the stove and stirred the soup she was making. "And what about the students? Some of them are conducting research for their dissertations. They paid good money to attend this field school, and we haven't finished what we came here to do."

  Robles shot Gage a look that seemed to say, "Help me out here." When Gage didn't throw him a lifeline the old man stood up from the table.

  "Dissertations don't matter in the scheme of things, Dr. Quinn." He picked up his gray fishing hat and arranged it on his head. "Given the way you spend most of your professional time, I would think you'd know that by now."

  Kelsey stood silently, her expression a mixture of frustration and acceptance. She knew she'd lost.

  "When the students arrive in the morning we'll start packing. I want all the equipment loaded by ten." Robles nodded at Gage. "Good night, sir. I thank you for keeping an eye on my field supervisor this evening."

  The incensed look on Kelsey's face as he left the camper was comical, but Gage didn't dare laugh. He kept his expression carefully neutral as she slammed around the kitchen.

  "This is bullshit," she muttered. "If I were a man, this wouldn't even be up for discussion."

  "Yeah, but you're not a man," Gage felt compelled to point out. "And he's right. This isn't a safe place to be right now. Ultimately, Robles is responsible for everyone here, and you can't expect him to take risks with their safety."

  "I'm responsible for my safety." Kelsey waved her wooden spoon at him. "I've got my own private security detail. How much safer could I get? And I still haven't finished my work here."

  Gage pulled two soup bowls from the crate where she kept her dishes. He was starving, and he was pretty sure she was in no mood to wait on him. "You were too busy getting mad to listen. Robles didn't say anything about you leaving. He was talking about the field school."

  Kelsey rested a hand on her hip and watched him ladle soup. "You're saying I should continue helping Sattler?"

  He put the bowls on the table and sat down. "Eat," he ordered. "And no, I'm not saying you should do anything. But I know you're going to. I know you're invested in this thing, and you're not going to leave until you've finished. I plan to stick around until that happens."

  She watched him warily, then joined him at the table. "You'll really stay?"

  "I said I would." He scooped up a bite of beef stew. It tasted incredible, and he knew he'd never be able to look at the MRE version with quite the same gusto.

  "Thank you," she said quietly.

  "I've got some rules, though."

  "I knew it."

  "We're moving you into town, starting tonight. You can get a room at the lodge. And you're only going to work during daylight hours. And no driving alone. You can pack after dinner."

  He held her gaze as anger flashed in her eyes. This woman didn't like taking orders. Too damn bad. He wanted her in town, in an actual building, behind an actual door, not camped out in this piece of shit RV.

  Gage needed a break from this place, too. If he had to spend another night in that sleeping bag that smelled like her, all the while knowing she was curled up, soft and warm in that bed just a few feet away, he was going to start howling at the moon.

  Gage considered himself a disciplined man, but he didn't have nearly the willpower he needed to spend another night alone in Kelsey Quinn's sleeping bag. He'd already slipped up once today by kissing her at the creek bed. It had been pure impulse, a gut reaction to something he'd seen in her eyes. It had also been a mistake.

  "What?" Gage asked, as she gave him a peevish look.

  "I'm just thinking it's no wonder you're a lieutenant. You're very comfortable giving orders. Reminds me of Joe."

  Gage watched her get up and take a pair of beers from the minifridge. He realized he knew very little about her background besides the fact that she was his CO's niece.

  As she sat down, he twisted the caps off both beers and slid one to her. "I take it you're from San Diego?" he asked.

  "Not originally, why?"

  "You said you were close to Joe, so I just assumed."

  "We moved down from Seattle when I was nine. After my dad died." She eyed him over the rim of her beer and seemed to read his mind. "Car accident," she added.

  Shit. "That must have been..." He shook his head. "Sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up."

  "No, it's okay." She turned her bottle on the table. She didn't look upset to be talking about it, just... resigned, as if the pain had been processed a long time ago. "It was my birthday. He'd driven up to Bellingham to pick up my present." She glanced up at him and rolled her eyes. "It was a puppy. I'd been begging my parents for months. My dad found a litter of Weimaraner puppies for sale, so he was on his way to get one when a logging truck hit him."

  Gage didn't say anything. But as he looked at her he knew he'd been wrong. The pain was still very real, she'd just learned to mask it.

  "That must have been rough," he said, knowing exactly how inadequate that sounded.

  "We got through it. But I've always felt guilty, you know? Like I caused it." She looked up at him and her expression was thoughtful. "Do you ever wonder how your life might be different if you could go back and change just one thing?"

  Gage stared at her. It was like she'd reached out and slapped him. Had Joe told her about Adam Mays? Or was his paranoid imagination screwing with him again?

  "Sorry. Too much information, right?" She gave him a phony smile. "When you asked about San Diego, you probably wanted to talk about the Padres, huh?"

  The sat phone rang and she jumped up to answer it, saving him from a response. It was the DNA woman, Mia, and Gage distracted himself by listening in on their conversation.

  "That's right, two," Kelsey said. "We discovered the second grave late this afternoon, but I didn't want to start in case we got rain tonight... Yes... Uh-huh. It's been disturbed by animals." She moved to the window. "Say that again? It'
s raining here and my reception's bad."

  Gage watched her talk to her friend. She rested her hand on her hip and tipped her head to the side, as if considering something. She wore shorts again tonight, and he couldn't stop looking at her legs. That first day, he'd thought they were skinny, but now he knew there was nothing skinny about her. She had the perfect body--all long, slender limbs and squeezable curves.

  She caught him staring and he looked away.

  "Gage found it, using a metal detector. It was near some spent shell casings. When we excavate tomorrow, I won't be surprised if we find a slug mixed in with the bones." She turned her back on him and parted the blinds to peer out the window. "Oh. Yeah, he's... he's new on the dig."

  Gage let his gaze roam around her camper as she exchanged shop talk with Mia. Her computer was stowed in the corner, atop a pile of files. Towers of books lined the walls. The sleeping bag he'd used last night had been rolled up neatly and tossed beside a stack of archaeology journals. Gage sighed. This had never happened before. Most of the women he dated tended toward the vapid, cheerleader type, groupies who hung around Coronado for the express purpose of picking up SEALs.

  Kelsey was about the least vapid woman he'd ever met, and she in no way resembled a cheerleader. Gage would be willing to bet she'd spent all of high school with her nose in a book.

  He looked at her legs again. For the first time in his life he'd fallen in lust with a nerd.

  "I'm getting that advice from all sides now," Kelsey told her friend. "I'm moving tonight. I'm sure I'll be safe and sound at the lodge, so you can quit worrying."

  She turned to face him when she got off the phone. "That was Mia. She wants that second set of bones as soon as I get them excavated. The FBI's been calling her."

  "The FBI?"

  "Something about a missing-person's case. Mia thinks the missing person could be one of their agents. They're really pressuring her for an ID."

  The sat phone rang again and she picked it up.

  "Hello?" She listened neutrally for a moment, and then her face clouded with worry. "Are you sure? Rohit said--" She paused, then crossed the trailer and jerked the door open. Rain pelted it as she peered outside. "Well, he's not here. Have you tried the lodge?" She closed the door and shot Gage an anxious look. "Okay, call me if you find him."

  "Dylan's still AWOL?" he said after she hung up.

  "He's not at the bar, the diner, or the lodge."

  "Car trouble, maybe?"

  "No one spotted him on the way into town."

  Gage's gaze settled on the camera that was sitting on a chair beside Kelsey's baseball cap, and something he'd wondered about this afternoon was back in his head.

  "Maybe he never went to town," he said.

  "Where else would he go? There aren't a lot of options around here."

  "I'm not sure." He stood up and grabbed his keys off the table. "But I've got an idea."

  IN THE FADING light the petroglyphs looked oddly modern, like some strange graffiti made by pre-Columbian teenagers. Kelsey stepped back from the rocks, trying to imagine where Dylan would have stood to capture the most impressive angle.

  "Are we sure he was up here earlier?" she asked Gage.

  "You said that, not me. I haven't seen the guy today."

  She surveyed the area for clues. "He said he was coming up here. His research includes these engravings."

  "Well, his footprints are here."

  She turned to Gage.

  "Two sets of tracks, one coming in, one going out. Keen hiking boots, size ten."

  She gaped at him. "You know his shoe size?"

  He shrugged. "It's an estimate. But the boots, I know. I noticed them the other day because I used to have a pair." Gage pointed to a footprint in the dust. The limestone overhang had kept the rain from obliterating it. "See that? The logo's part of the tread."

  She looked at him with a renewed sense of appreciation. Her "hired hunk of muscle" comment had been way off base, and she felt a twinge of remorse. How would she have felt if he referred to her as a piece of meat? But he'd treated her with nothing but respect since his arrival. He was firm, yes, but always respectful.

  Gage was looking out over the valley now. He glanced at her over his shoulder. "Come here for a sec."

  "What?"

  He took her arm and tugged her over, then turned her until she was facing due south. He left his hands on her shoulders and she pretended to be relaxed.

  "What am I looking at?"

  "Same thing Dylan was probably looking at when he was up here with his zoom lens."

  "Okay." She took a deep breath and tried to concentrate on the landscape. It was twilight and everything was washed with periwinkle. No shadows. Just endless desert dotted with scrub brush and the distant vegetation line that marked the Rio Grande.

  "I still don't know what I'm looking at."

  Gage sighed, clearly disappointed with her powers of observation.

  "Hey, I was never an Eagle Scout," she said. "You're going to have to spell it out for me."

  His hands dropped away. "This is the same view we had from on top of that mercury mine the other night. Remember with the night-vision goggles?" He pointed at something straight in front of them. "I was looking right at that mesa. At that same stand of mesquite trees, in fact."

  She turned around. "I was stuck in the cave with all the bats. You were the one traipsing around with the high-tech toys."

  "Okay, point is, what if Dylan was out here taking pictures and he saw the same thing I saw? Maybe he got curious later and decided to drive out there and take a look."

  "You're talking about the vanishing SUV?"

  "Or whatever it was." Gage's attention was fixed on the horizon now. He shrugged out of the backpack he always carried and unzipped it, then pulled out a pair of binoculars. "You see his black Explorer down there?"

  "I can hardly see anything. It's getting dark."

  "I'm thinking maybe he left the dig site to go get a beer, like he told Rohit, then decided to take a little detour first to do some exploring."

  The idea made Kelsey's stomach knot. She envisioned one of her students down in that valley, near where that girl had been dragged from her car and shot. She scanned the horizon, desperate now for any sign of the SUV. Would Dylan really have driven down there?

  Gage passed her the binoculars. "I don't see jack."

  "What about the night goggles?"

  "Not dark enough yet."

  Kelsey peered through the binoculars. The light was terrible. If his car was out there, would she even be able to spot it? She saw a clump of mesquite trees. A twisted oak. A dip in the landscape. More mesquite.

  And then she spied something. Black. Rectangular. Poking out from behind a clump of scrub brush.

  "Oh, God."

  "What is it?" Gage asked.

  "I'm not sure. Probably nothing." But the knot in her stomach tightened because she knew she was wrong. It was something. Something that didn't belong down there.

  Nature doesn't like straight lines.

  "Oh God, Gage." She looked up at him. "I think I might have found his Explorer."

  "MAYBE IT'S JUST a stalled car."

  Gage turned to look at her as the pickup bumped over ruts in the primitive highway. He didn't say anything. He couldn't. He didn't want to encourage her to get her hopes up.

  "Or maybe he had a flat." Kelsey stared straight ahead through the windshield as the headlights lit up the muddy road. "He'd stay with his vehicle, right? I mean, if he couldn't get a cell signal. That's what they say. If you're stranded in the desert, don't leave your car."

  Her voice was firm, confident. As if saying it with enough conviction would make it reality.

  Gage was pretty sure he knew the kind of reality they were going to find when they drove up on Dylan's Explorer. It wasn't going to be pretty. And no matter how many skeletons Kelsey had pulled from the ground, it was going to hurt her. It was different when it was someone you knew.

 
"Try my cell again." Gage fished his phone from the cup holder and handed it to her, mainly as a distraction. "Maybe we'll luck out, get a signal. Sattler can't be doing anything tonight, right?"

  Like a robot, Kelsey dialed the numbers. Again, no dice. She let the phone drop into her lap and just stared out the window.

  She felt responsible, and Gage ached for her. He knew that feeling well, and it sucked. And to make things worse, he knew this was a bad idea. What they should have done was double back for the sat phone and call the sheriff out here. But Gage had seen the look on Kelsey's face after she'd spotted the SUV. No amount of persuasion would have kept her away. If Dylan was out here alive, he probably needed help, and Sattler wasn't known for his quick response time.

  Gage tore his gaze away from Kelsey and focused on driving. This was a crappy road under normal conditions, but with the rain earlier it had become a mud pit. The highway jogged east and Gage slowed as he pulled off. The headlight beams bounced along the pitted terrain, lighting up cacti and rocks and scraggly bushes. He tried to drive by feel, letting his tires find the natural path that had been carved out by repeated use. This was the most basic kind of road--no pavement, not even gravel, just a strip of land made bald as people sought out the shortest distance between point A and point B.

  The headlights flashed over a clump of mesquite trees. He spotted an odd-shaped boulder that looked familiar. This was the spot.

  But no black Ford Explorer.

  Gage rolled to a stop beneath a gnarled oak tree and parked. He reached into the back of the cab and retrieved his rucksack, which contained a collection of weaponry, including his backup gun. He tucked the pistol into the waistband of his jeans as Kelsey watched him, wide-eyed.

  "When I get out, scoot into the driver's seat," he said. She had her radio clipped to her belt alongside her gun, and he reached over her to switch it on. "Keep the engine running. If anyone approaches you, take off."

  "But what about you?"

  "Get your Ruger ready. And don't be afraid to use it if you feel threatened. You got that?"

  "No. I'm coming with you."

  "I need you to stay in the truck," he said. "It's not safe for you to--" She pushed open the door and got out. "Goddamn it, Kelsey!"

  She stalked right over to the stand of mesquite. She did a complete turn and gestured at the trees. "It was just here a minute ago. I saw it. How could it disappear like that?"