Desperado: Deep in the Heart, Book 2 (27 page)

“No.” Cody rubbed his chin, thinking. “And I’ve been home a bit today. There was no message, either.”

“That’s strange.” Worry leapt into Annie’s eyes.

“I’ll drive over and get her,” Zach offered, standing.

“No.” Cody held up his hand. “I’ll run back out. You two sit down and eat some dinner. We’ll be back before the beans can cool off.” He tried to sound calm, but his heart was jumping in his chest. Why hadn’t he thought to check at the set? He’d been so full of misery and self-pity ever since he’d seen Stormy with her elderly fiancé that he’d quit thinking right.

“I’ve got a number for the set director I can call,” Annie said, digging through some papers. She punched some numbers into the phone, her eyes holding Zach’s in maternal worry. Cody envied the connection they shared, a soul-uniting that didn’t require words for reinforcement. “No one’s answering.”

“Never mind. It’ll only take me twenty minutes to run over there.” He reached for his hat and went to the door.

“She said the filming would only take an hour to wrap up, then she’d walk to your house,” Annie said, her voice disbelieving, as if she couldn’t accept that it had been five hours since she’d spoken to her daughter.

“Maybe there’s a cast party, or she got hung up talking to some friends. I’ve got my cell phone if she calls you.” He didn’t waste any more words, heading to his truck, trying to ignore the sick feeling in his stomach. Mary didn’t have many friends. She’d been known to take off before.

He had refused to take her to California. His niece was well-acquainted with the location of the bus station. “Surely to God,” he muttered under his breath as he fired the truck engine to life. Surely the lure of La-La Land and its starry glitter hadn’t proven irresistible to the child he loved more than his own life. The image of Mary alone on a cross-country bus filled him with sickening dread.

When he reached the set ten minutes later, breaking a sound barrier for speed, he found it closed up and empty. Even Pick and Curvy had vacated their keg stools. He drove up to his house, in case Mary had let herself in. No one was there, and there was no message on the recorder.

His stomach clenched in a tight fist of apprehension, Cody decided to check with the codgers. They sat on their wooden bench outside the post office, keenly watching the comings and goings of the townsfolk.

“What’s happening, Pick? Curvy?” he asked, using nonchalance to cover his fear.

“Nothing. Slow today,” Curvy replied.

“Seen Mary?”

“Nope.” Pick stuck a toothpick in his mouth in a side space where a tooth was missing. “She finished up early this morning with her part, then the set closed up after that. We’ve been sitting here since then.”

“I see.” He slid a glance toward the bus station. It loomed large and ugly with its gray colors and the smell of exhaust. He thought he might throw up if Mary had left town—and she might have. It’d be best if he checked the outgoing schedules to see if any buses had been heading west. Casually, he said, “Guess I’ll mosey on.”

“Looking for yer niece again?” Curvy demanded, his eyes lit by the first excitement he’d had all day.

“Yeah.” Cody nodded curtly, not wanting to start any gossip about Mary running off again.

“She ain’t been over there,” Curvy told him, jerking his head toward the bus station. “We’d have seen her.”

Relief filled Cody for an instant, before
Where the hell could she have gotten to?
ran through his mind.

“Thanks.” He reached under his hat to scratch at his head. “If you see her, tell her supper’s waiting. I want her to call my cell phone.” Patting his pocket, he reassured himself he still had it. Damn it! Where could the scamp have headed off to?

“Want us to help you look for her?” Pick asked.

“Nah. She’s probably gone over to a friend’s. Just let me know if you see her.” He backed up with a brief wave and jogged toward his truck.
Mary, where are you?

In a trailer on a rarely used area of Cody’s land, Mary watched Sam with terrified eyes. Why had she believed him when he’d told her how grown-up she was? He’d appeared to treat her like an adult just so she would trust him—and she had. Mary’s fearful gaze roamed over the disgusting things Sam had in the trailer. Ropes, which looked like good lasso rope. Lots of gloves. Of course, he was a stand-in stuntman for the film project, and supposedly a regular cowboy the rest of the time—or at least he’d said. Now she didn’t know what to believe.

What she did know was that she was hungry. She was thirsty, and tired, and he wouldn’t let her leave the trailer. He just sat there staring at her with empty jet eyes. Every time she said her folks would be worried about her, he just shook his head. Mary knew Sam wasn’t afraid that they’d find her. Everybody on the set had gone into town to celebrate wrapping up the project and do some last shopping for souvenirs before they started packing up. It could be days before anyone thought to look back here for her.

What was he going to do to her? Mary watched, paralyzed, as Sam got to his feet and walked toward her. He slowly ran his hands through her long dark hair and she closed her eyes, wishing with all her might that Uncle Cody would come busting through the door to rescue her.
Please, Uncle Cody! Hurry!

Perplexed, Cody tapped his fingers on the counter in his kitchen. Knowing she would have called if she’d heard from Mary, nevertheless, he rang the house. “Any word?” he demanded when Annie answered.

“No! Cody, I’m really uneasy about his. I have the strangest feeling that something’s wrong.”

Annie panicking wouldn’t be good for the baby she carried inside her. “Let Zach and me do the worrying,” he instructed gruffly. “I’ll find her.”

“Should you call Sloan?”

“I may go ahead and do that. I’ll call you shortly.” He hung up and called the sheriff to alert him to the situation.

“You don’t really think she’s gone to California, do you?” Sloan asked.

“No,” he said slowly, “she hadn’t been to the bus station.” She’d hitchhiked over to see Stormy at the hotel once, though, and he couldn’t put that out of his mind. “Most likely Mary didn’t have enough money on her to buy a ticket to California.”

“There’s that,” Sloan agreed. “Don’t think she’d be at a friend’s house without calling her mom.”

“No. Not these days.”

“Well, some of the cast are in town. I’ll go check around and see if anybody’s seen her.”

“Thanks.” Cody hung up, unable to put off the one notion that bothered him more than anything. One way or the other, she might have decided to get to California on her own. Racked by indecision, he pulled the two pieces of white paper from the top of the trash and stared at them. There was no way around it. He was going to have to call Stormy; his mind wouldn’t rest until he did.

Resolutely, he dialed, his heart thundering as he waited.

“Hello?”

His insides went to jelly at the sound of her voice.

“Stormy? It’s Cody.”

“Cody!”

“Got a minute?” He hated to think that he’d interrupted anything she and her elderly fiancé might be up to.

“Yes, I do. Is everything all right?”

“It’s fine.” No, it wasn’t. “Lost track of Mary, though.”

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. Why are you calling me?”

He thought Stormy’s voice was a bit cool, somewhat remote. Pressing his palm against the side of the counter so hard it hurt, he tried not to think about how good it was to hear her voice on the other end of the line. He had really wanted to talk to her. “I don’t know. A hunch. You got her all excited with that flighty idea of going to California.”

“And you thought I was hiding her out here?” Stormy’s voice had turned to ice.

“Not hiding her. Thought you mighta heard from her.”

“No. I haven’t. Better check closer to home.”

“I have. The set’s closed up and she’s not in town, that Pick and Curvy have seen. And they see about everything.”

“I can’t help you, Cody,” Stormy said, her voice reluctant and strangely aloof, “but I can tell you that Mary isn’t on her way out here. I wouldn’t encourage her to leave home, anyway, and would call her mother immediately. For that matter, I’d bring her back on an airplane myself. But what makes me mad is that you think Mary would do something so thoughtless, Cody.”

He straightened, taking his palm away from the counter. He didn’t need the pain to keep him from focusing on Stormy now; she’d just sent a barb out that had his complete attention. “What do you mean? She’s run to you before.”

“But she’s changed, Cody! I’m sorry you haven’t noticed. Mary isn’t the depressed, withdrawn little girl I met when I first came to Desperado. She’s happy, effervescent, shining with hope and discovery of talent that’s all hers. That’s why I invited her out to California. Not to get under your skin,” she said sarcastically, “but to give her a chance to succeed. She’s quite special on the screen, not that you probably ever had time—or interest—to find out for yourself.”

“I went around when I could.” He felt very defensive about this.

“Fine. And what did you notice, when you could?” she demanded.

“That she seemed to be having fun.”

“Okay. Did that clue you in to anything? Like maybe, Mary being happy was a far cry from how she was a couple of months ago?”

“No,” he said slowly, hearing the anger in Stormy’s voice more than anything.

“Of course you didn’t! To you, it was child’s play, Mary amusing herself. You were tolerant while she had her fun, weren’t you, Cody? Did you ever stop to think that she might really have a natural talent for acting?”

“No.” He was reluctant to admit it. Sounding like an ass wasn’t pleasant, and that was what Stormy was painting him to look like.

Stormy sighed heavily. “Look. You didn’t take me seriously when you met me. Basically, you thought I was a flighty woman with a squirrelly occupation you didn’t deem important, or worthwhile, because it wasn’t what you were used to. You did the same thing to Mary, overlooking the shine that came over that child because she’d finally found something that made her feel good about herself, gave her something to work for.”

He hung his head, trying to see this new angle. “Maybe.”

“Okay.” She sighed again, this time as if she were drawing in patience. “Mary isn’t here, Cody, because she wouldn’t have run away again. She’s not unhappy. The last time I saw her, I had tears in my eyes for how much she’d changed. Grown up. I’m so proud of her. You need to be, too.”

Rubbing underneath his chin, he said, “I am. You’re right. She was going in a direction with this acting thing I wasn’t comfortable with. I didn’t pay it much attention.” Actually, he’d paid Mary’s newfound excitement damn little attention, waiting it out until the set closed up shop and moved off his land. He’d been counting the days until the project was finished. Obviously, he should have been paying attention to a lot of other things. “So. Got any suggestions as to where she’s off to?”

“Without being there, no. You didn’t have any fights or arguments?”

“No. I mean, I wouldn’t bring her to California, but I think…we didn’t fight about it. I just said no.”

“I see.” Silence on the line seemed to reveal Stormy’s feelings of what she would likely call his pigheadedness. “Then I would call the sheriff and his deputies and every other soul in the town to look for her because if she’s been gone long enough for you to phone me thinking she was coming this way, then something’s wrong.”

Cold fear snaked into his stomach. “You really think so?”

“I damn well think you’d better get off this phone and start hunting for her right there in your own backyard!” she shouted impatiently, uncharacteristic for Stormy. “Do you always need a neon sign, Cody, to tell you when you’re wrong?”

His concentration had shattered. Stormy had convinced him beyond words that he’d been on the wrong track. “I’ll call you when I find her.”

“I’ll be waiting.” A second later, she said, “Hurry, Cody. I don’t like the feel of this at all. She could just be at a friend’s, but I think she would have called if she could have. The director said she’d been on time for every single shoot.”

Slamming the phone down, he ran to his truck to head back into town.

When Sam picked up the scissors, Mary screamed.

“If you do that again, I’m going to bind your mouth,” he said quietly. “I don’t want to tape those pretty lips. I won’t be able to see them. So sit still and let me do my work.”

Gently, he grabbed a hank of her hair, slowly cutting it so that the
sh-sh
sound electrified Mary’s fear. Carefully, he put the handful of shorn hair into a bowl. Picking up another handful, he cut that, too, all the while exhaling soft, excited breaths of air against Mary’s newly exposed neck.

She closed her eyes and prayed.

Chapter Eighteen

Sloan met Cody as he roared onto the set lot. “Heard anything?”

“No. Called Stormy. She hasn’t heard from her.” He got out of the truck and slammed the door. The blast of sound startled some sparrows from the roof of a nearby trailer.