Sketch a Falling Star (33 page)

Rory stifled a sigh of relief. “As long as you leave me and mine alone as well,” she said.

“If you renege on any part of this agreement, I’ll bring you down, McCain. I will haunt you for the rest of your life.”

Rory felt like saying, Bring it on, girl—I’ve been haunted by the best. But given the circumstances she said simply, “We’re agreed then.”

Paula lowered her gun. “Get the hell out of here.”

The muscles in her right arm screaming in distress, Rory gratefully lowered her weapon too. But she kept a close eye on the agent as she picked up her handbag and withdrew to the front door. “The irony in all of this,” Rory said as she opened the door, “is that I might never have discovered your mother was the killer if you hadn’t been trying to scare me off the case. You might want to consider that when you’re busy blaming me for forcing you out of a job.” She walked out, closing the door behind her. If Paula had anything to say in reply, she wasn’t interested in hearing it.

With the confrontation over and the danger past, a triumphant high started pumping through Rory’s veins like fine wine, exhilarating and heady. She had to restrain herself from skipping down the street like Eloise. Way to go, McCain, she congratulated herself, since there was no one else there to do it. Too bad the marshal hadn’t been there to witness her victory. The thought put an immediate damper on her spirits. She still couldn’t believe the ingrate had left without so much as a good-bye. Well, she wasn’t going to let his lack of courtesy ruin a great day. She opened the car door and slid behind the wheel. What she needed was an upbeat tune to restore her good mood. She turned the key in the ignition and was hunting for the right song when a familiar voice said, “Well done, Aurora. Well done.”

Chapter 34

W
hen Zeke popped into the passenger seat a second later, Rory didn’t know whether to welcome him back or tell him to take a permanent hike. She was leaning toward the hike.

“How long were you there watching?” she asked.

Zeke’s cheeks hitched up in a broad grin. “Darn near the whole time.”

His response bothered Rory on a couple of levels. “What happened to letting me know you were nearby?” she demanded.

“Well, darlin’, I didn’t want to interrupt. You appeared to have Dorothy under your spell, and you were doin’ just grand.”

Rory was finding it hard to stay angry when he was praising her. Compliments were not his forte. But she wasn’t ready to be sweet-talked out of her irritation. “As I recall, interrupting never bothered you before.”

“I’m tryin’ to be more thoughtful.” His eyes twinkled, challenging her to find fault with that argument.

“Did it ever occur to you that I might not want to be surreptitiously observed?” she asked, neatly sidestepping the trap.

Zeke chewed on the question for a minute. “Can’t say it did,” he admitted. “But it’s not like you were doin’ somethin’ private.”

“Think about how you’d feel if the tables were turned. Let’s say you were out rounding up a couple of cattle rustlers, and you found out that some ghost was hanging around watching you as entertainment.”

Zeke’s smile vanished “Some ghost?” He sounded insulted.

Rory realized that her choice of words had been less than diplomatic and that she’d probably picked them for precisely that reason—payback for letting her think he’d moved on without so much as a backward glance.

“You’re avoiding the issue,” she said, no apology on her agenda. “How would you feel if you were in my shoes?”

“I suppose I might take exception,” he allowed. “But I wasn’t watchin’ you for my amusement. I was there for backup in case things started goin’ bad.”

And there was the second reason she was annoyed. “So you expected me to blow it and need to be rescued.”

“Now don’t go puttin’ words in my mouth.”

“Am I wrong?”

“I know you’re capable of pretty much anythin’ you set your mind to. I was just there in case…. like an extra wheel on a Conestoga wagon that’s headin’ through Indian territory.”

Rory almost cracked a smile in spite of herself.

“But if you feel so strongly about it,” he went on, “I’ll refrain from observin’ unbeknownst in the future. Does that suit you?”

“Yes, thank you,” she said finally letting go of her pique. It had been too good a day to spoil by holding on to her anger. In a calmer state of mind, she put the car into drive and pulled away from the curb. On the ride home, they fell into talking about the particulars of the investigation, where they’d been right and where they’d been completely off track, and how the right bit of information could untangle the most complex case. By the time Rory swung into her driveway, her spirits were once again high. And, as always, Hobo’s delighted greeting added to her good mood.

Dropping her purse on the bench near the stairs and kicking off her shoes, Rory headed toward the kitchen for some celebratory ice cream. Both Hobo and the marshal were waiting when she got there, Zeke at the table and Hobo at the refrigerator like a sentry guarding the royal jewels.

“Am I that predictable?” she asked, plucking a pint of butter pecan from the freezer.

Zeke laughed. Hobo just licked his chops.

“Yeah, well you’re pretty predictable yourselves,” she groused good-naturedly. When she pulled the lid off the ice cream, she decided there was no point in dirtying a bowl. She could eat what was left directly from the container. It always tasted better that way anyhow. She took her seat across from Zeke. Hobo sat beside her, still as a statue except for the trickling of some anticipatory drool.

Rory was raising the third spoonful to her mouth when a remark Zeke had made in the car popped into her mind, demanding her attention. She let the spoon fall back into the container. “When we were in the car before, you used the phrase ‘in the future.’ How did you mean that?”

“After today, from now on,” Zeke said, his brow furrowing. “Is there some other future I don’t know about?”

“But I found out who killed you.”

“My apologies,” he said smoothly and without a trace of sarcasm. “I guess I never thanked you properly. I know you went to a lot of trouble on my account.”

Rory shook her head. “I thought you’d be moving on from here now that you have the answer.”

“Oh, about that…” he said, looking as if he’d rather have all his teeth pulled out than continue the discussion.

“I don’t get it; I thought you’d want to leave.” Although their relationship had had its rough patches—okay, more rough patches than an eighteen-hole golf course after a tornado—she’d be happy to have him stay on as her partner. What she couldn’t fathom was why he would choose to continue existing in limbo.

“I’m afraid it’s a mite more complicated than that,” Zeke said finally.

“But you said—”

“I know,” he cut her off. “I’m pretty clear on what I said. Only it wasn’t the whole story.” He sounded as if he too were haunted, and by far darker demons than she’d ever known.

“Okay,” she said, “then what
is
the whole story?” She figured two treks out to Arizona had at least earned her the right to the truth.

“How about you just trust me when I say you’re better off not knowin’.”

“Not this time. You asked me to find out who killed you, and I was willing to do it, because I thought I’d be helping you move on. I did my part, and I deserve some answers.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way, but if there are things about my life I don’t want to talk about—that’s
my
call.”

Rory heard the defensive anger rising in his voice as if he were circling his wagons and loading his rifle for a showdown at the O.K. Corral.

“I’m not your enemy, Marshal,” she said hoping to disarm him.

“That’s funny, because right now it sure feels like you are.”

“Hey, hold on there,” she said, trying to tamp down her own fire. “You’re the one who drew me into this. And Mac before me.”

“It was the only way to get you and your uncle to stop pushing me to follow the blasted light!” Zeke snapped. “The two of you were cut from the same cloth. I never knew me a more tenacious pair.”

“Then having the name of your killer doesn’t really matter?” Rory asked, bewilderment infiltrating her anger.

“Of course it matters, just not enough to make me change my present circumstances.”

“What is so awful that you can’t bring yourself to tell me? Even if it’s something monstrous, something despicable, what exactly could I do to you? You’re already as dead as you’re ever going to be.”

“You could leave,” he said, looking her straight in the eye. “And that would be worse than death.”

Rory had long believed that selling the house was her only bargaining chip in their relationship, but until now Zeke had never admitted as much. She was grateful for his honesty, but she wasn’t ready to let him off the hook until he’d answered the rest of her questions. He was no fool, so he had to realize he’d just given her the right caliber ammunition to go gunning for those answers. Either he was hoping she wouldn’t use it, or on some level he wanted to be forced into unburdening himself.

“If we’re going to keep living and working together,” she said, “you’re going to have to come clean—no more dark secrets. I need a show of faith. Trust me enough to tell me, or tomorrow I call a real estate agent and put this place up for sale.” There; she’d given him a simple choice. If he refused, he would lose her. No gray areas. She didn’t like having to back him into a corner to get at the truth, but it was the only option he’d left her. Of course, she would wind up losing Mac’s house as a result, but she didn’t allow herself to dwell on that part of the gamble. All Zeke had to do was open up to her, and she’d stay. She couldn’t imagine anything he could have done that was hateful enough to make her run away in horror.

Zeke wagged his head and issued a deeply troubled sigh. “You’re goin’ to ride this horse into the ground, ain’t you?”

“You’d do the same.”

“I expect so.” He was silent for a long while.

Rory struggled to be patient.

“I’m in no hurry to leave here,” he began finally. “Never have been. Sure, I wanted to know who shot me, needed to know, but that wasn’t goin’ to change anythin.’ You said so yourself enough times.” He looked beaten, all the fight and bluster gone out of him. “You want to know why I’m still here, Aurora? Well, it’s because I won’t be goin’ to a good place when I leave—heaven, or whatever you want to call it. That’s not where I’m headed.”

“That’s crazy. Of course you are. You more than most people,” she said, completely baffled by his concern. “You were a federal marshal. You upheld the law. You spent your life catching bad guys.”

“I have the blood of at least five innocent children on my hands,” he said bluntly, the words sounding as if he’d wrenched them straight from his gut. “And likely others I don’t know about.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” she said. “Trask killed those children. You tracked him all the way across the country to bring him to justice.”

“When you read Katherine’s diary, didn’t you wonder why her husband hired someone to kill me? And when that didn’t work, why he left his home and family to find me and finish the job himself?”

“Yes, but I figured he was so distraught over his daughter’s death that he blamed you for not catching Trask before he reached Tucson.”

“He blamed me, and rightly so, because I
did
nab Trask before he got to Tucson.” Zeke hung his head as if he couldn’t bear to look her in the eye a moment longer. “I was full of myself over it too. We rode into town just after nightfall, and I took him straightaway to the jail. The sheriff was off somewhere; only the deputy was on duty. I could tell the man had been drinkin’. He reeked of the whiskey, and he could barely stand upright. I knew I shouldn’t trust him to watch my prisoner. Trask was too smart, too wily by half for the deputy even when he was sober. But I was tired and hungry, and I hadn’t seen the woman I was keepin’ company with for better than a month. So I sold myself a bill of goods dirt cheap—what was I worried about? It was a sturdy jail cell, and far as I knew, the deputy never actually lost a prisoner. And off I went to meet my lady friend. And while I was thus engaged, Trask conned the deputy into unlockin’ the door. At least that’s how the deputy told it the next morning when I found him sleepin’ off his drunk in the cell. That would have been bad enough, but before Trask left town, he broke into the Jensen house right there beside their general store and snatched little Betsy out of her bed.”

“But—”

“No, darlin’, there’s just no way around it. Believe you me, I’d have found it if there were. I’m as responsible for that child’s death as if I’d strangled her myself. Her and all the others he killed after that.”

Rory understood now why he’d refused to tell her. He believed unequivocally that he’d been Trask’s accomplice in killing those children. And for all she knew, back at that time he might have been hanged for his part in their deaths, if not by the law than by vigilante justice. He’d been punishing himself for over a century, the pain becoming part and parcel of who he was. She wished she had the means to ease his suffering. Surely in the balance of things a hundred-odd years should be considered time served.

“You’re only human,” she said softly. “We all make mistakes in judgment. And as awful as this was, you never meant for it to happen. Remorse has to count for something.”

“Remorse I have,” he said looking up at her again, “and plenty of it, but I’m not of a mind to test your theory just yet. So if you can bear to stay on here with me now that you know everythin’, I’d be much obliged. And I’ll do my level best to be of help in your work.”

Rory found herself stumbling over her words. “Of course you can stay; I mean, of course I’ll stay,” she amended with an awkward laugh.

Zeke closed his eyes for a moment, and Rory swore she felt the intensity of his relief like a shock wave breaking and rolling off him.

Hobo chose that moment to lay his shaggy head in her lap and whimper out of empathy or because he hadn’t yet been offered any ice cream. The latter was easy enough to remedy. She stuck two fingers into the container and let him lap off the melting ice cream with one slurp of his long tongue, bringing an unexpected smile to Zeke’s face.