The Salt Maiden (25 page)

“Get back inside the truck,” R.C. ordered.

Jay reached past him to help Dana.

“Leave her,” R.C. told him. “We can’t take her. Woman fights like a goddamned hellcat. But we can keep the money between us, in the family.”

Jay heard her death sentence in his uncle’s voice, so he quickly moved between them. She reached up to take his hand, her gaze latching onto his as comprehension passed between them.

And something more as well, a possibility Jay would die to preserve.

“I’m not going anywhere without her,” Jay said. “And before you threaten me, too, you might want to think about the implications of killing the only person with a clue where Angie hid that money. Unless you want to spend the rest of your days stuck right here in Rimrock County, driving that old hunting truck and stewing in your own filth while that money rots where Angie hid it.”

As he leveled the threat he heard a sound off in the darkness, a dead woman’s disembodied laughter.

Or maybe it was his dog, Max, whimpering in pain.

Two nights ago the work was not enough, and neither was the desert—not with everything that’s happened racing through my mind.

After a while the quiet got to me, along with endless grime and lousy food—and that freaking scorpion I stepped on didn’t help things. So I piled into my heap and went looking for a place I’d spotted a while back—found it, too, a bunkhouse where the land’s rapists sometimes put up workers. Pried off the lock and broke in, and damned if I didn’t find what I most wanted but least needed—a full bottle of mescal stashed under one bunk’s mattress.

I never really meant to drink it. I thought I’d take it back to my squat and keep it hidden, a little rainy-day insurance in case I ever really bottomed out. A trophy of sorts, the proof (eighty proof!) that I was strong enough to keep my ass on the straight and narrow.

But halfway home there was this huge clunk from the engine, and that was all she wrote…For what seemed like seventeen years I sat atop the cooling hood with hooch in hand, the seal unbroken.

Then all of a fucking sudden I was introducing myself to the drowned worm on the bottom. I don’t remember much about what happened after that.

—Undated entry (loose page)

Angie’s sobriety journal

(recovered July 10, interior wall, Webb adobe)

Saturday, July 14, 12:37
A.M.

84 Degrees Fahrenheit

Forecast High: 99 Degrees

As R.C. came around the front end after putting them both inside the truck’s cab, Dana whispered, “Have you really fig
ured out where Angie hid the money?” It had occurred to her that Jay might be lying, trying to buy time, as he’d been when he had fallen to his knees, requiring his uncle’s assistance to get back inside the pickup. And Dana also had the queasy feeling that their captor would cut them both to pieces once he figured out he’d been deceived.

Jay looked directly into her eyes. “Maybe I’ve got no business asking at this point, but will you trust me, Dana? Will you trust me with your life?”

There was an intensity in his gaze that sliced straight through her doubt and terror, a brand of confidence that resurrected her own courage. This was a man who had survived both domestic criminals and terrorists abroad, a man who, she had learned in a follow-up news report, had been decorated for valor on the field of combat. She had to think of that and not the brutality his earlier flashback had unleashed.

“Yes,” she told him after only the slightest hesitation.

As the driver’s-side door opened, Jay reached across her to the passenger-door handle.

“Then run like hell,” he ordered, and gave her a firm push outside.

Unprepared and off balance with her hands bound behind her, Dana nearly tumbled down face-first. But the panic blasting through her somehow kept her on her feet—that and the terrifying cacophony behind her. Male shouts erupted, followed by the crack of gunfire, shot after shot shattering the still night.

She ran despite the pain in her side, ran knowing that death could catch her from behind as it had caught her sister. Dana darted around dark clumps that snatched at the fluttering remnants of her shirt, then staggered when she banged against an old fencepost, but there was no going back now that she’d committed to this course.

Or had been committed by Jay’s quick thinking and his
courage. Perhaps his sacrifice as well, for she no longer heard the two men struggling, heard nothing but the echo of the blasts.

He can’t be dead, can’t be dead, can’t be…
The thought repeated endlessly, a prayer cast to the heavens.

A prayer that reverberated with the memory of what Jay had told her when she’d left in tears.
“I’d do anything to make this up to you.”

Even get himself killed in an attempt to save her.

A second round of shots began, and though she’d zigzagged her way through darkness, she heard a rock crack all too near her, followed by what sounded like a bullet rattling through the scrub brush.

Shooter’s closing in—he sees me
, instinct warned her. Without slowing she turned to look behind her, half expecting to spot a flashlight following her flight.

Instead she glimpsed a second set of headlights on the road. Still about a half mile distant, the other vehicle was fast approaching.

Was help coming, or would it be some accomplice of R.C.’s? Before she could decide whether to head back toward the road or keep running farther from it, she tripped again when her foot hooked beneath a stick of some sort.

Without her hands to break her fall, Dana came down fast, her head and upper body slamming against soil as hard as concrete. With the impact, the desert’s blackness rose up to hood her like an executioner.

Jay first felt the vibration of the engine and the bumping of the pickup as it jounced along the rough road. Pain followed, an agony that threatened to split his head wide-open. When he lifted his fingers to wipe blood from his eyes, the effort left him groaning, and each bump made him want to vomit.

The urge subsided as the pickup slowed, then stopped.

“I think we lost ’em—whoever the hell that was.”

Jay looked up toward the sound. Only then did he realize his lower body was crumpled awkwardly on the passenger-side floorboards, while his arms, head, and shoulders leaned atop the truck’s seat.

His uncle sneered down in his direction. “You’re goddamned lucky you’re alive after that stunt you pulled. Didn’t mean to hit you so hard—sure as hell didn’t want to kill you before we get my money—but there’s no way in the world I was lettin’ you get hold of my gun.”

That was it, Jay realized. The barrel of the gun had struck the side of his head not far from the spot where he’d been kicked. He’d been fighting to give Dana a chance to get away. But what had happened? Had she made it, or had he simply gotten her…?

“I’m sorry about your woman. She
was
your woman, wasn’t she?”

Jay’s heart stuttered. He couldn’t answer, couldn’t even speak.

“It wasn’t a half-bad plan,” R.C. conceded. “Probably would’ve worked except for these.”

He touched the binoculars hanging from a strap around his neck. “After last time I got myself a pair with night vision.”

Jay wondered how, since R.C. was presumed dead. Had he risked driving somewhere, or was someone helping him? But what did it matter if R.C. had shot Dana? What did anything matter now that she was dead?

“Why?”
It was the only question he could manage without completely breaking down. And even that one syllable reverberated with his anguish.

“Why what? Why’d I go for the brass ring after all these years of living on the straight and narrow?” The older man’s laugh turned to a dry cough. “After I found out what those assholes were up to I was out to help myself, that’s all, to squeeze out every drop I could. Everything I’ve been missing out on all these years. Good times with a gorgeous woman—
maybe a little hula girl of my own, once that money set me up to retire in paradise.”

Hell’s the closest you’ll get, old man.
Because Jay was going to kill him, one way or another, for what he’d done to Dana.

As if he’d read Jay’s mind, R.C.’s voice softened as he said, “You did her a favor, son. It ended a lot quicker this way. I just walked straight up behind her after she had fallen and
bam
, it was all over. She never even saw it coming.”

Jay’s eyes squeezed shut, and he burst out, “
Jesus
,” without knowing if he meant it as a prayer for her soul or a curse. If he hadn’t shoved her out the door, if he hadn’t taken the decision from her, maybe he could have bought a better chance for her somewhere down the line. Maybe…

“Even if I’d held her for ransom, like I thought I might,” R.C. said, “well…there’s no way I could’ve ever let her go.”

Some measure of Jay’s soul crumbled into ash, one last, resilient stronghold still untouched by either crime or war. That
bastard
—did R.C. think he was
consoling
him?

“So where’s that money?” His uncle’s voice went hard and flat.

Jay hesitated before saying, “It’s at the old Webb place out by Lost Lake.”

The place where he would make R.C. pay for Dana, for all the pain he’d caused.

“The Webb place?” his uncle asked. “Angelina’s squat? But I’ve searched high and low through that adobe.”

“You had to know exactly where to look.”

“Where?”

“You think I’m going to tell you so you can cut my throat and dump my body?” Jay figured that was what R.C. planned for later anyway. But things weren’t going to happen the way his uncle intended.

As R.C. continued driving, Jay envisioned himself overpowering the older man, caving in his head with a rock, then jumping back inside the truck and returning to his ranch to find Dana. She would be alive, unhurt—would tell
him she’d simply dropped down and played possum, that his uncle had only grazed her slightly or, better yet, had missed her altogether.

She would look into his eyes and say that she loved him, that she had since they’d first met. And he’d wrap both arms around her and beg her to let him stay with her forever.

And when she told him yes,
yes
, her answer would drive the darkness from him and leave him worthy of the gift.

“How far would you go?”I used to ask my little sister.

She was annoying sometimes but basically a good kid. A kid who saw the limits and understood the consequences if she pushed too far past them.

However far she dared to go, I always had to take it two steps past that. Because the things I cared about mattered so much to me, I was willing to do anything. Even to die for them, if that was what it took.

—Entry seven, March 12
Angie’s sobriety journal

From her hiding place in the brush, Dana watched the driver climb down from his pickup. Though R.C. Eversole appeared to have been scared off by this truck’s approaching headlights, she leaned her face against Max’s fur and trembled, waiting like some feral, wounded creature who would bolt if she could only find the strength.

An image of Angie flickered like a hologram through her mind. Angie, who had somehow been driven to this same desperate position—or had chosen it in an attempt to make a difference. Perhaps all the time she’d spent as a troubled teen in wilderness programs had convinced her she could survive the desert long-term. Or maybe she’d started with the thought of hiding only a short time before getting out and finding help, but exposure, injury, or illness had left her too weak or confused to do much more than run from place to place.

Dana knew she would never last as long. She had to risk asking for help, not only for herself but for Jay—if he remained alive to save. Which was why she crept in closer,
anxious to identify the man opening the ranch gate, praying she would recognize someone she could trust.

His height marked him as a Hooks, and the dark hair narrowed it down to Wallace. Heart pounding, she decided she had no other choice except to put her faith in him. She crept forward with Max limping close beside her, hobbling on three good legs. “Deputy? Deputy, please help me—”

Her voice rose to a shrill cry as Wallace drew his gun on her and shouted, “Hands up. Keep ’em high.”

“I can’t,” she called. “They’re tied behind me.”

“Don’t you take one step closer. Just turn around so I can see those hands.”

She did as he asked and said, “It’s me—Dana Vanover. Please don’t shoot.”

“Dr. Vanover?” Gravel crunched as he approached her. “Who did this to you? You’re hurt—God.”

“Forget that—I’ll be all right.” She turned to face him, unwilling to waste time. “Jay needs your help,
now
.”

If his uncle hadn’t already murdered him for daring to help her…Panic shafted through her at the thought.

“The sheriff? Where is he? What happened?”

“It was his uncle. He attacked us. Or attacked me, and Jay tried to interve—”

“His
uncle
? How could…
Where?
Where is this person?”

“I don’t know,” she cried. “He took off with Jay in an old pickup when he saw your lights coming. We have to catch up to them.”

“But R.C.’s
dead
. I…I was there when we pulled the body out of his bed. And the medical examiner said…Look, there’s no way it could’ve been him. Jay called me earlier, left a message that he needed to talk. He sounded worried, and I overheard something at ho—Well, I overheard some stuff I wasn’t meant to, and I thought there might be trouble, so I headed straight on over. Maybe I’m too late—”

“That body wasn’t the sheriff’s. Jay recognized his uncle.
I’m sure of it.” She couldn’t bear to spend another moment arguing. “We have to go. Before it’s too late.”

“All right, but let me cut your hands free so you can get up in the truck.” He pulled some kind of utility tool from a pouch attached to his uniform belt.

She felt a hard tug and heard plastic snap before her shoulders loosened. “Thanks.”

She opened the truck door and coaxed Max into jumping onto the passenger-side floor area before she climbed inside. By the time she fastened her seat belt, Wallace was behind the wheel.

He put the truck in gear, but hesitated. “If it wasn’t R.C. in that bed, then who—”

She wanted to rage at him,
Who the hell cares?
But apparently the deputy needed answers to convince him she wasn’t leading him astray. “Isn’t the FBI looking for the husband of the woman we found in the salt cavern? What’s his name? Goldsmith, wasn’t it?”

The old sheriff must have killed him, then used the body to stage his own death. Probably it had happened the same day R.C. had murdered the man’s wife. Had Eversole gotten greedy and tried to squeeze too much out of the couple? Considering how obsessed the man was with the money Angie had supposedly stolen from him, it made sense.

“Christ on a crutch…” Wallace muttered. “Then…well, if that’s right, where would R.C. be taking Jay?”

She nodded, tears burning her eyes and pointed out the direction in which she’d seen the taillights disappear. “All I know is they went that way. I don’t know where they were headed. The old sheriff was half-crazy, ranting about finding the rest of his money.”

Wallace’s head jerked back and his eyes widened.

“He thought I knew where it was,” Dana went on, “thought Angie must’ve told me before he killed her. He…he’d do anything to get it back—probably so he can get clear of the area. He’d kill anybody—right down to his own
nephew. Jay told him he knew where the money was, but Angie never said a word to me about it.”

Wallace nodded and put his truck in gear. “Then we’d better catch up with them.”

“Do you have some idea where they went?”

“Better than that,” he said grimly. “I know exactly where they’re going.”

The shovel Jay had been given bit into the gravel, then rattled an addition to the growing pile at his right. The repeated
scriiitch-rattle
of the work formed a rhythm as surreal as the headlight-lit excavation of the double grave.

While his uncle kept his gun on him from a safe distance, Jay was seized with the notion that this was something from a horror movie…or a Middle Eastern desert.

The pistol trained on him became a machine gun; the darkness cloaking the man who held it morphed into the black robe and headdress of a mujahideen guerrilla. They were forcing him to dig his own grave before they tried to make him renounce his government and beheaded him on a videotape they planned to send to the Al Jazeera network.

They…no…he…There was only one, not many. And the night smelled of West Texas and…

It was the pain that brought Jay to himself: the soreness of his muscles, the sweat-spawned blisters on his palms, and the sick throb of his head. They combined to ground him in a present even more distressing than his past.

His uncle had shot Dana and had him digging beneath the petals, bones, and pebbles Angie had used to mark the old Webb graves. The same sort of decoration that had marked the site where the body he suspected would prove to be Roman Goldsmith’s had been found, where Angie had interred the first fifty thousand.

In the final recovered pages of her journal, she had written of her desire to honor
the ones who came before, who got us where we are now. Not the cheap flash and empty promises
of modern charlatans. That’s the shit that should be buried and forgotten.

Those words, along with the prompting of his subconscious—since he refused to believe he had actually been visited by Angie’s spirit—had convinced him that the money had been split up and moved to at least two other sites, including this one and the salt cavern where Miriam Piper-Gold’s body had been hidden.

If he had guessed wrong, the man standing some six feet away pointing his pistol would surely use the weapon. But come to think of it, he would probably do the same if Jay were right—unless Jay found some way to distract and overpower R.C. first.

Jay
had
to, not for his own sake, but for Dana’s. If there was any chance—any chance at all—that she had survived a gunshot wound to her head, he had to get back to her quickly.

He dug deep into his reserves of strength to summon up an attempt at conversation. “So who’s been helping you?”

The stony soil rattled as it slid down from his shovel. When his uncle didn’t answer, he added, “Somebody had to’ve. That old truck’s not yours, is it? And someone’s picked up supplies and stuff for you.”

“Is this the part where you try to draw me into conversation to lull me off my guard?” R.C. asked him. With a nod, he added, “Guess you
have
learned something since you left here. I would’ve tried the same thing.”

“I learned a lot from watching you,” Jay said, trying not to let his uncle’s comment get to him. “It’s what made me switch my major to criminal justice while I was putting myself through school. I wanted to be like the first man I respected.”

At the moment Jay wanted nothing more than to split the bastard’s skull with the shovel he’d been handed. But with his uncle out of range, he used his foot to drive the blade in deeper.

“Flattery now, huh? They teach you that in Dallas? Or did
they have you ass-kiss ayatollahs while you were over there in I-raq?”

“Maybe you could give me a few pointers on sucking up,” Jay countered. “The way you’ve let Abe Hooks run your office all these years. I know about the way y’all ‘persuaded’ folks you didn’t want around to leave Rimrock.”

Maybe if he pissed off the man sufficiently, his uncle would grow careless enough to drop his guard. Since Jay was standing in the hole he’d dug, the chances of gaining control were worse than slim, so he’d have to act fast to seize on the slightest opening.

But R.C. simply shrugged. “Hell, boy. That’s not Hooks runnin’ me. That’s just the way things are done out here. The way they’ve always been done since back before your granddad and great-granddad did their stints as sheriff.”

“Things were done that way in a lot of departments for a lot of years. But that doesn’t make it right—especially not when people end up dead.”

Jay’s uncle spit. “I’ve heard about that pussification training they make cops take now. All that diversity awareness and such shit. And that might be well and good in those fancy college classes they got the ACLU teachin’. But out here we hold with what works—and that’s still a strong sheriff givin’ bad men till sundown to get the hell out of Dodge.”

Something he’d said rang a bell. His reference to the American Civil Liberties Union, maybe. But Jay was far too distracted to focus on it at the moment. “That hippie squatter you and your buddies burned to death back when I was a kid? I still remember him and his woman wearing those tie-dyed T-shirts from the sixties and making candles and wind chimes to sell at craft fairs. Do you really expect me to believe people like that were threatening the peace? Or maybe they were just a little too different for the people here in Devil’s Claw?”

“Everybody knew those two were illegally harvesting pey
ote buttons. You let that sort of business get a toehold, and before you know it all sorts of—”

Interrupting himself, R.C. frowned and pointed to Jay’s right. “Should have found something by now. Little thing like her couldn’t have dug too deep. Maybe you ought to try a bit farther over that way.”

But Jay’s shovel had already struck something that felt different. Unlike the noisy, pebbled sand he had been digging, the sound was deadened and the steel blade’s bite felt soft.

Far too soft to be explained by the banded packs of cash that he’d expected. As the pungent odor filled his nostrils, dread breached Jay’s levees.

Dread mingled with the bittersweet anticipation of his own impending death.