Born To Be Wild (2 page)

“Whose side are you on?”

“Ours.” Micah was talking to Bobby but watching Isabel. Her anger was palpable but, thankfully, she was keeping her mouth shut. He changed tactics and looked straight into Bobby’s eyes. “You don’t want to get into it with her brother, Cruz, anyway. You touch his sister and he’d split you open and feed you to the coyotes to get rid of the evidence.”

“I’m not afraid of Cruz Falcon.”

Somehow, Micah kept his cool, which he wouldn’t do if Bobby actually tried to carry through with his threat.

“Bobby, c’mon. Leave it.” He kept his voice friendlier than he was feeling now. “Just go on home.”

“Without you? What about the beer Hank and me owe you?”

“Beer?” Isabel echoed. “You’re not even legal, Bobby, and your brother is just a kid, younger than me. What kind of an influence are you on him?”

Micah cringed inside—did Isabel really want to chance raining trouble down on herself?—but kept in bluff mode as he stared Bobby down. “The two of you don’t even have to buy me the beer you owe me if you just leave well enough alone.”

Bobby thought it over for a moment and then said, “Well, as long as there’s something in it for me…”

Taking the easy way out, Bobby shrugged, gave Isabel one last angry look, and to Micah’s relief, rode off.

Hank was right behind him.

“Walk those horses!” Isabel yelled after the boys. “You need to cool them down!”

“I know you’re an expert on horses, and all.” It had been a point of contention between their families that the Falcons ran a horse ranch directly next to the Wilds’ cattle ranch. “But you could stir up Bobby again.”

“I’m not afraid of him.”

For a moment, he almost believed her. Then he caught a glimpse of doubt in her thick-lashed hazel eyes. And her full lower lip trembled before she caught herself and clenched her teeth together. She really was afraid and determined not to let him see it.

“Sure you are,” he said reasonably, “as you should be. You’re just too stubborn to admit it.”

“Am not.” Isabel returned her knife to the sheath attached to her belt. “And you should be walking your horse, too, to cool him down.”

Like he had to be told.

When she turned her gelding, clucked, “C’mon, Crank,” and walked him off, Micah followed on Slade.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked.

“Making sure you get home safely.” He was almost disappointed when she didn’t argue. For some reason, he enjoyed her prickliness. “At least to the Falcon property line.”

He didn’t dare ride onto Falcon land without expecting some kind of retribution.

They rode in silence together for a few moments, before she said, “You had to work there to call Bobby off. Thanks.”

“No problem.” As an afterthought, he added, “You know I wouldn’t have let him touch you.”

Isabel glanced at him and something in her expression caught and held him. He felt as if a vise were gripping his throat, making it hard to swallow. She was gazing up at him like he was a hero or something. But Micah knew damn well he was nothing but Trouble-with-a-capital-T, as Dad and Gramps kept telling him.

Shaking away the weird feeling, he asked, “You always carry that thing on you?”

“The knife? When I ride out, absolutely.” Then Isabel smiled at him, a smile that showed her perfect white teeth and made his pulse rush a little faster, and said, “After all, I never know when I’ll run into a snake.”

Chapter Two

Isabel hadn’t been able reach Mama, so she’d left a message on her voice mail to please call her. She hadn’t wanted to leave the bad news, and hoped that by the time she heard from her mother, Lucy would be safely home. Then she’d called Poppi and told him. After which she’d cried herself out.

She was back in control well before Micah’s truck pulled up on the other side of the adobe wall that surrounded the house—she could see the dust-covered black vehicle through the walkway opening. She had never let Micah see her tears, and she wasn’t about to start now. A quick look in the mirror revealed that her eyes were a bit red. The tip of her nose, as well. Nothing she could do about it but tough it out.

Going to the window, she watched her daughter’s father get out of the truck and take off the short oilskin duster and hat he’d probably been wearing out on the range. He threw them in the back, then started up the stone path. Taller and broader than his brother and father, Micah exuded the kind of power only a man with his assertive nature could claim.

Indeed, as a mature man, he was an even more potent eyeful than he’d been that day she’d fallen in love with him at Suicide Hill. His shoulders strained his stonewashed denim work shirt and his muscular thighs filled the mud-splattered denim of his jeans. His dark hair straggled around his rugged features, making him look downright dangerous.

Feeling hollow inside, as she had since their breakup, Isabel opened the door for Micah. She hated that he still made her chest squeeze tight every time she saw him. The reason she’d tried her best not to see him at all over the years. She would drop Lucy off at the ranch on his weekends when she was sure he’d still be out on the range. Or if he picked up Lucy here in Santa Fe for some reason, she got Mama to be here while she disappeared. Every time she saw him, she was reminded of what they could have had. Sometimes the memories were too much to bear.

“Any word?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No. Nothing yet. I feel like I should be doing something, but I don’t know what.”

“We could drive around the neighborhood, see if anyone spotted her. Better than sitting around and waiting, right?”

Just staring into Micah’s thick-lashed violet eyes, so at war with the rest of his face, made her angry and determined and sad and unfulfilled. Without him, she still felt lost after all these years. But no matter how much he still stirred her, she couldn’t ever let him know it, couldn’t ever trust him again. Not after what had happened between them.

At least, she couldn’t trust him with herself.

Lucy was a different matter. Their child loved her father unconditionally. And she knew Micah would do anything to protect their daughter.

She nodded. “All right, but you drive. I’m too shaky.”

They spent the next hour cruising the vicinity, stopping to ask any neighbors they spotted if they’d seen Lucy. The answer was always the same. Disappointing. Someone had to have seen something. If they didn’t get a break soon, Isabel thought she might lose her mind.

Before heading back to the house, Micah pulled the truck onto a stretch of wooded area that bumped up behind her property. Private land, but not occupied. They got out to walk through the piñons and cedars and Chickasaw plums, looking for anything that might belong to Lucy, like her book bag or a hair clip. As her boots squished over the still-wet ground, Isabel refused to think of anything more sinister. She wanted to believe that Lucy had just gotten sidetracked and had forgotten to call. That she’d decided to walk home. She’d taken the long way. Maybe she’d gotten lost, but surely she would find her way home soon.

Even as Isabel tried to rationalize, to make things better so she could deal with the situation, horrific images like the stills she sometimes took at disasters or crime scenes for the
Santa Fe Courier
flashed through her mind.

Remembering that teenage girl they’d found facedown in the Acequia Madre that cut through the Historic Eastside, she lost her footing and stumbled.

Micah grabbed her arm and steadied her. “You okay?”

“No.”

Seeing her panic mirrored in his eyes for a brief moment, she froze. They were in the same place for once in their lives. And what a horrible place to be.

“What can I do?” he asked.

You could take me in your arms, tell me everything is going to be all right…

Not something she could say to him aloud.

Still, she was grateful she wasn’t doing this alone. “Keep looking for any sign that she came this way.”

Please let Lucy have come this way…please let her be home when we get there…

They searched every inch of the land, peering beneath bushes, pushing away native grasses, avoiding prickly cacti.

Nothing…nothing…nothing…

“Has Lucy said anything odd about anyone lately?” Micah asked.

“Odd?”

“Anything to alarm you?” he clarified. “Any kids giving her a hard time? Any threats?”

Isabel frowned. “Not that she’s said, and I would know if something was going on. Lucy has been pretty emotionally transparent since the accident.”

“What about the opposite? Maybe some boy has been paying a little too much attention to her?”

A thought that cut through her. “If so, she hasn’t said anything. Micah, she’s only eleven!”

“A mature eleven.”

“Still…too young to be involved with a boy.”

“Kids don’t always see things the way adults do. We didn’t.”

Skirting a sumac, she remembered all too well. “I wasn’t eleven, though. I was nearly legal.”

The nearly part having been the problem.

“Have you given her an opening to confide in you?”

Isabel stopped and confronted him. “What are you saying, Micah, that I’m not paying attention?”

“No, of course not—”

“Because that’s what it sounded like. That you blame me.”

“I swear I’m not pointing fingers, Isabel. It’s just that it’s been hard for me to get anything out of her for a while. I wondered if you were having better luck than I was. I guess maybe that’s the problem with being a part-time father.”

“And whose fault is that?”

Micah looked as if he were grinding his teeth, but he didn’t respond. Isabel closed her eyes and shook her head. What was she doing, trying to start a fight with him? They were on the same side here. They had an equal investment in wanting to find their daughter. Whatever had once been between them was in the past. Lucy was the only thing that mattered right now.

She choked back another rush of tears. “Sorry.”

Micah went all tense. For a moment, she thought he would reach out to her. Touch her. Hold her in his arms the way he had so many years ago.

She shouldn’t let him.

But, oh, she wanted him to…

And then he retreated, moving back away from her as if pulling himself together.

“Maybe we ought to get back to the house. Just in case.”

She nodded. “Right. About Lucy not talking to you… Sometimes she’s not the same girl she was before the bus accident. She doesn’t talk to me much, either. At least not about what’s bothering her.”

“I thought she was getting counseling?”

“She is, but what happened is a lot for an eleven-year-old to absorb in a couple of months.” It would be a lot for anyone to absorb. “She once told me she was broken inside and she didn’t know how to fix it to make things right again. I tried talking to her about it, but she clammed up. We never used to fight, but now, when she gets in one of her moods…” She sighed.

They got in the truck and drove back in silence.

But when Micah saw the Falcon Ranch truck parked in front of the house, he cursed under his breath.

Isabel didn’t say a word. She’d told Poppi not to come, but she hadn’t told him why. Because Micah was here. Now there might be more trouble than she could bear.

So the moment Micah pulled his pickup behind Poppi’s, she flew out of the passenger side and ran into the house. Her family was already waiting for her. Not just Poppi, but her sister, Reyna, and brother, Cruz.

“
Querida
,” Poppi said, holding out his arms just the way he had when she’d skinned a knee or gotten thrown off a horse.

Unable to help herself, she rushed right into her father’s arms and pressed her cheek to his shoulder as he enclosed her in a giant hug, his thick mustache pressing against her forehead. Reyna and Cruz moved closer. Though Cruz was older than her and Reyna younger, they looked more like each other than they did her, their brown hair naturally streaked with gold a shade darker than their eyes.

“Have you heard anything?” Reyna asked, her eyes watery, her narrow face pinched, as if she were about to cry.

“Nothing yet.”

“We’ll find her,” Cruz promised. His hawk-sharp features tightened. “What the hell is he doing here?”

Isabel knew he meant Micah. She glanced back to see him coming up the walk. And he didn’t look any happier to see her family than they were to see him.

“What do you think he’s doing here? Our daughter is missing.”

“He should be out looking for her—”

“That’s exactly what we were doing, Poppi.”

“—not bothering you.”

Micah was, indeed, bothering her, though not in the way her father meant. He was stirring up old feelings that she didn’t want to recognize. The very thing she had feared if she let him get too close.

“Please,” she said in a low voice, “all of you be civil to him.”

“Especially you, Poppi,” Reyna told their father.

Eduard Falcon had never been shy about showing his antagonistic feelings for Micah. Or for any of the Wilds, for that matter.

“He’s as bad as his father,” Poppi said, repeating the litany she’d heard a hundred times before. “Darlene should have been with me. If Jonah hadn’t stolen her away from me, she wouldn’t be dead now.”

“You can’t know that,” Cruz said, giving a stone-faced Micah what Isabel considered an apologetic expression. “And if she had gone with you, what about our mother? And where would we be?”

“I thought you were all here for Lucy,” Micah said. “Not to hash out the details of the damn feud!”

The room went silent, and Isabel held her breath. Micah was glowering at her family members, and she couldn’t blame him. Still, she waited for the responding explosion.

And then Reyna suddenly said, “Micah is right. Poppi, I wish you would start believing things worked out the way they were supposed to, but right now, Lucy is the only important one. You need to forget about your grudge with her other grandfather and concentrate on finding her.”

Poppi merely grunted in a noncommittal manner.

Isabel didn’t say anything and was thankful that Micah let it go. She could feel the tension pouring from him, but he restrained himself admirably considering the circumstances.

She thought about the vast divide that had started with their grandfathers, but had been further exacerbated when their fathers both fell in love with the same woman. Jonah had won Darlene’s heart, and Poppi had settled for Isabel’s mother, Carol. And then Darlene had died in childbirth, and Poppi had blamed Jonah. Mama, realizing he’d never love her more than the woman he couldn’t have, had eventually divorced him and moved back to Santa Fe. So then Poppi had blamed Jonah for that, as well.

“What can we do to help?” Cruz asked Micah directly.

Seeming surprised, Micah said, “Keep looking for her all over this neighborhood. Stop anyone on the street and ask if they’ve seen her.”

“What was she wearing?” Reyna asked.

“Jeans. Her favorite purple long-sleeved T-shirt and a black hoodie with a barrel racer emblem on the back.”

“We should have photos of her with us,” Cruz said. “All I have on me is that one from her ninth birthday.”

“That’ll have to do.” Isabel looked to Reyna and Poppi and indicated a couple of framed photos on the fireplace mantel. “You can take those.”

“I can do better.” Micah pulled out his cell and showed her the screen. A recent close-up photo of Lucy stared back at her. “I took this last month when I bought her that hoodie. I’ll send it to your e-mail account, Isabel, and you can print big color copies for everyone. As a matter of fact, we can make ‘missing’ posters with our phone numbers, in case anyone sees her. You can put them up wherever you can find a public spot.”

“Great idea!” Reyna said. “Isn’t it, Poppi?”

Apparently unwilling to show any positive reaction to Micah, Poppi merely grunted again.

Less than a half hour later, the Falcons left with their flyers, promising to keep up the search until dark. Once they were out the door, Isabel was glad to feel some of the family tension drain away. Now she and Micah could concentrate on finding their daughter. But where to start? She couldn’t focus.

“What now?” she asked.

“Let’s head for the school—”

“You think anyone will still be there?”

Micah shook his head. “Not until morning. But in the meantime, we can talk to people on the street while working our way back in this direction.”

Not having a better idea, Isabel followed him out of the house and into the truck again.
Lucy, where are you?
As they drove, she kept her gaze roaming from one side of the road to the other. They were halfway to the school when her cell phone rang.

Her heart thundered in her chest when she saw the caller ID. Detective Frank Ochoa. She pressed the talk button. “Hello, Detective. Any news?”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Falcon, but no. I wanted to tell you that we weren’t able to track your daughter’s phone. Either it’s turned off or the battery’s dead.”

“But you’re going to keep looking for her, right?”

“We’ll keep searching in a circular grid around the school until dark. Then we’ll start again in the morning. I’m afraid we haven’t gotten any leads. But I’ll keep my team on it.”

“Thank you, Detective.” She clicked off.

“That didn’t sound good,” Micah said.

Her eyes stung from imminent tears. “They couldn’t pick up a signal from her phone. No leads, either.”

“We’ll find her, Isabel. I promise we’ll find our girl.”

Isabel knew how determined Micah could sound when he set his mind to something. The trouble was, he didn’t always follow up on his promises. But this time was different, she told herself. This time, he was a man, not a boy. This time he would come through for her.