The Salt Maiden (7 page)

Frowning, Jay shut off his engine and climbed out into what felt like a solid wall of heat. Max burst past him, his whole body wagging in his rush to greet her, though he was usually cautious around those he didn’t know well. His caution made a lot of sense, considering that Jay had found pockmarks on the dog’s side where some mean bastard had used the stray for target practice with a pellet gun.

“Hey, there, boy.” Dana shifted her bottle and reached down to rub the dog’s ears. “How’re you doing, Max boy?”

Jay stood a moment, troubled by the way pleasure punched
through his irritation. So she had a pretty smile and the kind of body that did a clingy little T-shirt proud. He had no business being glad to see her—and no sense for thinking of the things they’d done in those damned dreams that did an end run around his self-control each night. Her presence only complicated an already tense situation. Once the news about Haz-Vestment got out, there were going to be some seriously unhappy folks in Rimrock County. Folks who might not think so clearly in their rush to assign blame.

“You found this place,” he said as he moved nearer. “And you’re walking on that leg.”

“I can certainly see why they hired you as sheriff. You’re an observant fellow, aren’t you?”

“That’s not the half of it. I noticed that it’s hot, too, you’ve been cleaning, and you showed up in a different vehicle.”

He nodded toward the far side of the house, in the direction of a gas generator’s hum. “With some serious supplies. Which means you plan on staying awhile and not just picking up your sister’s belongings and scooting home, like anybody with a lick of sense would.”

Grin stretching, she said, “God, you
are
good. I had to rent the SUV in Pecos. The convertible was too small, and I thought I’d need the higher clearance to get back here.”

“So who gave you directions?” He was surprised he hadn’t heard about it.

“It was, uh, Bill Navarro—you remember, flower guy, snake charmer.” She wrinkled her nose as she said it. “I still had his card, so I called to ask him—and of course to say thanks for the arrangement.”

Jay resisted the temptation to fill her in about the rumors regarding Russian brides and Bill’s history of fighting, not to mention the stories of a painkiller addiction in his past after he had injured his back in some mishap with a steer. For one thing, Bill was always on his best behavior with women. For another, Dana had too much class to string the man along.

“So how’d you get in, anyway?” Jay asked. “Did you pry off my padlocks?”

“That wood’s so far gone, all I had to do was pull a little and it crumbled. And it’s not as if anybody couldn’t crawl in through those windows. But listen, I’ve got some more water inside. Want some while we talk?”

He shook his head, since he’d just finished a bottle. Even so, he squeezed past her into the leaning porch’s shade, eager to avoid the searing sun.

Dana excused herself and ducked inside. In under a minute she returned with a small plastic tub of water, which she put down for Max to drink. After giving him a pat, she said, “Nice dog. A little skinny…”

“We’re working on that,” Jay said. “I found him only a couple of weeks back. Or he found me—jumped inside my RV when I got out at a rest stop. I thought I’d take him to a shelter, but…” He shrugged his shoulders. “He makes for decent company.”

“A stray, huh?” she asked before giving him a more professional appraisal. To the dog she said, “Looks like you’ve had a rough go of it, poor guy. But I don’t see anything a little TLC won’t cure.”

Afterward she sat on one end of a rough-hewn bench as Jay took the side opposite. It was still damned hot here, but she’d run an extension cord to an oscillating fan she’d set up, and its dry breeze offered at least the suggestion of comfort.

The blond tips of her hair stirred as she looked straight at him. “I told you I’d be back, just like I told you I was staying till I find her. I’m starting off by going over this house inch by inch.”

He shook his head. “This is no place for you. All the sweeping in the world won’t fix that, and neither will that generator.”

Her lips pursed before she answered. “My sister managed with a lot less, and she lived here for, what, five months?”

He hesitated before saying, “Your sister might have
died
here, Dana. And I can’t concentrate on finding her if I have to keep an eye on you, too.”

“I didn’t ask for a babysitter, Sheriff.” Her voice roughened as she added, “The only thing I want is Angie—one way or another.”

He leaned forward to watch a scorpion crawl out from a crack in the adobe, lured by the shade into coming out of hiding before nightfall. Rushing forward, the creature seized a centipede with its tiny claws. He could have stepped on both but didn’t bother. Both predator and prey would have enough stinging relatives close by that their annihilation wouldn’t make a difference. And besides, humans were the interlopers here.

“I said I’ll find her if she’s anywhere around,” Jay told her. “And I’ll do it a lot faster than you will, hobbling around on that bum leg.”

He gestured toward the bandaged ankle. It looked somewhat swollen, though not as much as he’d expected.

For a long while Dana said nothing, looking off into the distance as he watched the scorpion thrust its stinger into its victim. The centipede writhed desperately, but soon its movements slowed, and the little hunter dragged it back inside its lair.

“I never meant to care about her,” Dana said at last, her voice as soft as Dennis Riggins’s had been loud. “Angie’s daughter, I mean. I didn’t want to get involved.”

“Makes a lot of sense,” Jay told her. “Life hands out enough heartache as it is. Taking on somebody else’s portion—that’s a tough call.”

“She seems like a sweet kid, but I can’t say I really know her. Not after just meeting her the one time.”

“So why do all of this, then?” He waved a hand, his gesture sweeping from the run-down old house to the rental. “Why make it your problem?”

She shrugged, looking like a child herself, tired and defeated. “Her parents…they’re so desperate. You can tell
Nikki’s their whole world. And my mother—she’s taking it so hard, too. It’s almost as if she’s losing my sister all over. The two of them have been estranged for years now.”

A chill overtook him, despite the ovenlike heat. “Makes me glad I don’t have kids of my own,” he said. “I’m not sure how I’d stand that.”

He shook his head and rubbed one of Max’s ears while his mind dredged up the grief of Baghdad, the mothers wailing for dead children. He thought, too, of weeping children, the sons and daughters of his men, who’d learned their fathers wouldn’t come home.

Dana was quiet for several moments before speaking. “As much as I feel for the Harrisons, I’m not sure that’s why I came either. I think part of it’s avoidance. I have some things I need to deal with that I’d just as soon put off.”

“Trouble with a man?” he guessed.

She smiled wryly. “If you could call the jerk that.”

He smiled back, wondering if maybe on the rebound she could be persuaded…While his better nature called him a slimy opportunist—and far worse—the part of him that hadn’t had a woman in what seemed like forever got down on its knees and prayed.

“Sorry, but I don’t see you as the kind who hides out from her problems,” he said. “Not the way you’ve been ridin’ my case. If some guy’s giving you garbage, I figure you’d take him on directly—or run his ass out of town.”

“I would’ve,” she admitted, “but he was already making a sprint for it when I finally figured things out.”

“So he’s a damned chickenshit, not just a fool.”

She seemed to consider this, then nodded. “I won’t argue over the coward part.”

He looked into her face. “Trust me, if he’s giving a woman like you grief, ‘fool’ definitely applies. And then some.”

She tried for a smile, but it didn’t quite take. “Thanks, but all that’s in the past now. I’ve wasted more than enough time already.”

“That’s good to hear,” he ventured, his heart pounding out a warning that he was about to make a monumental fool of himself.
Oh, what the hell?
“That you’re through with him, I mean.”

She turned her face from his view, but not in time to hide the single tear that broke loose. “Everything’s so screwed up. My personal life, my practice, this business with my sister. This is going to sound stupid, but I thought that if I could fix this one thing for the Harrisons, maybe then the rest would start to make sense. And maybe saving the daughter she gave up would give Angie some purpose, something else besides her own problems to think about.”

He couldn’t help himself. He leaned close enough to pull her into his arms. He meant it as a simple, human gesture, but it had been so long since he’d reached out to offer anybody comfort, he felt as awkward as a boy.

She stiffened and then stood, as if to escape him.

Rising, too, he cursed his clumsiness. He’d crossed a line, a line he’d had no trouble maintaining as a cop in Dallas or a soldier in Iraq. But he’d never met a Dana Vanover in either of those places.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted.

When she merely blinked at him, he wished he could shrink down small enough to follow the scorpion into its crevice.

Shaking his head, he went on, “Wish you’d forget I did that. It’s got to be the heat.”

“Well, it’s for sure not the humidity. But don’t apologize,” she said quickly. “To tell you the truth, it’s a relief.”

He stared a question at her.

She nodded. “I, uh, I don’t want you to take this wrong, but I was sort of hoping that would happen.”

The breath he’d been holding gusted free. “There’s a way to take that
wrong
?”

“Yes, because it’s…it’s such a bad idea.”

Jay didn’t say anything, but any number of
bad
ideas had
flared up—among other things. Instead of speaking, he leaned forward and gave her the gentlest, most restrained kiss he could manage, partly to keep her from looking down.

The diversion worked out even better than he’d hoped. From the moment their lips touched he let go of his awkwardness like a child releasing a balloon. And for just that moment he was again the man he had been before that night in Baghdad: confident with women, sure of his ability to lead and do his job. The National Guard staff sergeant the younger men looked up to. A man who knew his duty and never shrank from imaginary shadows.

Jay Eversole wanted that man back, wanted so badly to be him that he rolled with the emotion, pouring every bit of it into a mouth that feasted on Dana’s acquiescence, into hands that skimmed the curve of her waist and held her when she seemed to weaken.

Seconds stretched to minutes that magnified the heat. Dana’s surrender flared into an urgent murmur as her short nails dug into his back, pulling him tight to her. When her breasts spread against his chest, he thought he’d lose it right there. Unable to control himself, he reached up to find and cup her as his mouth tasted the sweat-salt column of her neck.

She was moaning now, something he’d forgotten how much he liked in a woman. But finally he registered her words.

“No. Don’t.” And she was pushing, pushing back his shoulders, a realization that doused him like a freezing shower.

Jerking back abruptly, he stood staring at her, breathing as hard as if he’d just finished his morning PT. And wondering if that strange expression in her green eyes was terror, if in his eagerness to reclaim the man he’d once been, he had damned near forced himself on an unwilling woman.

A wise woman puts a grain of sugar into everything she says to a man, and takes a grain of salt with everything he says to her.

—Helen Rowland

Dana’s shudder had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the realization that Jay Eversole wanted her here and now.

He saw her as desirable. He saw her as a woman, regardless of the way Alex had felt about her since her surgery.

And she wanted him as well. She’d grown hot and damp at his touch. But that didn’t mean acting on desire was a good idea.

“I can’t do this,” she said, then cleared her throat, embarrassed by the huskiness in her voice. “I’m sorry if I…if you thought I…I never should have…”

Defeated by the tangle of words inside her, she sighed and wished she were the sort of woman who could let him take her healing body for a test drive. Or that she had ever been the type for a casual affair.

Jay picked up his hat, which their embrace had knocked free. As he brushed the dirt from it he asked, “You all right?”

She shook her head, her resolve nearly undone by his concern. “I’m an idiot.”

He winced. “Not exactly the reaction I was hoping for. I’ll grant you I’m a little out of practice, but still—”

“It wasn’t anything you did.”

With a pained look he asked, “This isn’t going to be one of those, ’It’s not you, it’s me’ talks, is it? I might’ve been out of circulation for a while, but I’m pretty sure I remember that one.”

She smiled. “How about, ’It’s not you
or
me, it’s Angie’? Would that make you feel better?”

“Not at all. But I suppose you’re right.” He gave her a look of such intensity her mouth went chalk dry. “Because if I get started on you, Dana, I’m not going to want to come up for air, much less bother with an investigation. And I told you I’d find your sister.”

At the carnal promise in his voice, Dana’s brain misfired, wiping out the knowledge that she was standing on the half-collapsed porch of a grimy old adobe in the middle of a godforsaken desert. For a moment she couldn’t even remember her own name.

“Dana?” He frowned at her. “You all right?”

Dana.
That was it. She nodded, wondering if the heat had melted her common sense. But another glance at Jay’s expression assured her that he and not the temperature was the culprit.

“This isn’t a good time for me. I’m worried sick about my sister and her little girl.” The words tumbled out too quickly, but she couldn’t seem to slow down. “And the jerk who left me cut out three weeks before our wedding. I still have about three hundred stupid notes to write, and everyone’s embarrassed for me, and…”

She felt her control slipping out from under her, felt the first bubble of panic break the surface. She wouldn’t do this, wouldn’t let fear and isolation and Alex’s rejection start her babbling.

Shaking his head, he said, “You don’t have to—”

She couldn’t seem to stop. “And I’m still recovering from surgery, and—”

“You don’t have to make excuses, Dana.”

“Sorry.” Her face flamed. “Sorry I unloaded on you. You didn’t ask for the life story.”

He shrugged. “Sounds like you’ve been through a lot. Sometimes that kind of stuff swells up inside until you just bust open with it.”

When his blue eyes took on a faraway look, she wondered what sadness he was seeing. She remembered that he had recently come back from a war zone, that he must have witnessed suffering on a far grander scale than the ordinary dramas that loomed so large in her life.

His reverie vanished in a blink, and he refocused his attention on her. “You shouldn’t be out here. It’s dirty, hot—the snakebite’s bad enough, but if you’re getting over some kind of operation—”

“It’s no big deal,” she told him, just as if it weren’t. She swallowed hard, steeling herself by imagining how appalled her mother would be to see her on the edge of tears with this near stranger, her mother, who had leaned toward her, arms outstretched, only to pull back at the last instant.

“Well, at least you have your career,”
she’d said.
“And you could always rescue another little dog or something.”
Though Isabel had immediately afterward surprised her with the convertible, the memory didn’t stand out as any kind of hall-of-fame highlight from the annals of empathy.

Back under control, Dana said, “You’re a good guy to worry about me. And if I weren’t in such a bad place in my life, I’d be—”

“Anywhere but six hundred miles from home, in the armpit of West Texas,” he finished for her.

She smiled at him. “True.”

“Maybe I’d better go now. It’s about time to meet my crew,” he said.

“Your crew?”

He nodded and explained how, in the absence of emergency services, Rimrock County residents helped one another get back on their feet whenever disaster struck. The fire that had taken his uncle’s life had badly damaged the interior of the ranch house he’d left to his nephew, so his neighbors had been helping to restore it. “They started on it as soon as I agreed to take the job. Didn’t even wait for me to get here.”

“That’s amazing,” she said. “No insurance, no contractors, just mutual assistance. Sounds almost like the Amish, with their barn raisings.”

He grinned. “I can guarantee the Amish never have to make so many beer runs. But we’re getting there. I’ll be moving in a couple of weeks from now, after we install the cabinets and clean up the debris. And not a moment too soon. I’m more than ready to get out of that old motor home I’ve been using.”

He pulled a small pad of paper and a pen from his shirt pocket and started jotting. “Place isn’t all that far from here. Only about twenty minutes.”

She saw him sketching out a map.

“There’s one of those big, wrought-iron gates with a Texas Lone Star on it across the driveway,” he explained. “Visitors have to get out to unchain it, but I never keep it locked. Long drive back to the house. You have to follow it up a little rise and to the right to reach the house.

“If anyone bothers you out here, you call me,” he said. “Doesn’t matter what time. You still have your satellite phone and my numbers?”

Dana nodded.

“But if you can’t get hold of me for any reason, or you’re feeling nervous, you come right on over. Nobody’s going to think less of you, not after what you’ve been through lately.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I guess I’ll see you around.”

Rather than leaving, he lingered until she thought—and began to hope—that he might try to kiss her again.

Instead he said, “Why don’t I leave Max here with you? I’d feel better if you had him. I doubt he’d bite anybody, but his bark’s pretty convincing. And like I told you, he’s good company.”

She meant to turn him down, but animals had been the one consistent comfort in her life. Though she’d stubbornly resisted Regina Lawler’s persistent offers to join her, Dana
felt queasy at the thought of spending the night completely on her own here, with no locks on the doors and no neighbor for miles around.

“That would be great,” she said, “but the food I brought won’t do for him.”

“He’s already had his dinner, so he’ll be all right until tomorrow morning. I’ll drop off some feed for him on my way to work.”

She looked down at Max. “So how about it, boy? You want to bed down with me?”

When the docked tail wagged in answer, Jay headed toward his Suburban. But under his breath Dana heard him mutter, “That makes two of us, buddy.”

It had cooled down to the eighties by ten-thirty, when Dennis stormed out to his pickup and threw open the door. Jay had waited to tell him until Bill Navarro, Henry Schlitz, and Weevil Jenkins all left. Even though the FBI special agent had asked him to keep news of the investigation quiet, Jay had felt obligated to share what he knew, in part because he needed some sage advice about how to handle folks once word of the situation went public.

“I don’t give a good goddamn what you tell the others,” Dennis hollered before climbing into the cab of his dark green Chevy. “I’ve gotta let Suzanne know. I need to talk to ’er right now.”

Jay rushed to catch up—at six-feet-six, Dennis outpaced him with his long strides—and grabbed the handle of the door before it shut. “It’s not for sure, Dennis. And even if it is true, the FBI is closing in on them. Maybe they’ll recover at least part of the money—”

Dennis glowered through the thicket of his unruly red-gray beard. “Don’t give me that bullshit, Jay. When’s the last time anybody ever caught con artists with their loot? I’m calling back that lyin’ piece of shit I talked to about the equipment, and I’m tellin’ him to expect a visit shortly.”

His right arm slipped behind the seat where, like nearly all of Rimrock’s citizens, Dennis kept at least one hunting rifle.

Alarm pulsed through Jay’s system. “Don’t be stupid, Dennis. Keep your hands where I can see ’em.”

“You’re not the one who needs to worry. It’s those bastards in Albuquerque who’d better—”

“You can’t call them, can’t do anything but hold tight for the moment. You want them to rabbit out of the country so the FBI can’t find them? The agent told me they’re just waiting to move in until they get a bead on the location of Miriam Piper-Gold and her husband. They have the rest of them under tight surveillance.”

“I’d rather dispense some good, old-fashioned West Texas justice than take my chances on the ACLU or one of them liberal outfits gettin’ their sorry asses off the hook.”

“That’s not happening, and besides”—Jay struggled to dredge up a smile—“it would be an all-day job to hunt up a tree around here tall enough for hanging anybody. Come on, Dennis; let’s go back inside and talk awhile longer. I don’t want you tearing off and getting hurt out there, and I sure as hell don’t want you giving Suzanne another heart scare by running in there bellowing about how y’all are ruined.”

Something hardened in Dennis’s expression, a reminder that he didn’t like to talk about his wife’s health. “You just don’t want her callin’ Estelle and lettin’ that loose-lipped Hooks bunch in on this mess.”

Jay nodded. “That
is
a consideration.”

Despite the animosity between the Riggins family and the Hooks clan, Suzanne and Estelle had been close friends before their marriages and somehow managed to remain so. Once Estelle heard about Haz-Vestment she’d tell Abe, and the disaster would be common knowledge within hours. Which meant that anyone with a phone could tip off the criminals before they were arrested.

“I’ll tell Suzanne to keep it quiet,” Dennis growled.

“Something this big tends to slip out. Which means the
word will spread. Dennis, I took a big chance telling you, and I only did it because I appreciate the way you’ve—”

Within the thicket of beard, Dennis’s mouth turned down. “Next time don’t do me any goddamned favors. Now let go, before I end up pinchin’ off your fingers in this door.”

“Careful, Dennis,” Jay warned.

The pickup spun its wheels before rocketing out of the driveway so quickly that Jay heard small stones ping off the RV’s metal side. One popped off his hat, denting its straw brim.

“Wonderful,” he told the full moon, which had risen while they’d been talking in the kitchen. Clear and bright, it shone down like a spotlight on his stupidity.

He’d been an idiot to spill his guts to Dennis. Of course the man would be upset; of course he’d tell his wife. And she would spread the so-called secret to another, who would no doubt spread it even further, with God-alone-could-guess what consequences.

And it wasn’t the only thing he’d done that made Jay wonder if his superiors in the Dallas PD had been right about him.
“The department can’t take the chance”
—his memory twisted the captain’s voice, drenching the measured words in malice—
“that you’re ill-equipped to interact with members of the public. The incident at the movie theater suggests that more treatment is the best course. When the department’s psychologist assures us there’s been progress, perhaps then…”

Jay swore and slammed his fist against the RV’s side, but the damned thing was so rusted, his hand punched partway through the metal. Pulling free he felt the moisture first, then saw a rivulet trickling from a cut near his wrist.

In the full moon’s light the blood dripped as black as crude oil, black as the stained space between the man he’d been as a cop in Dallas and the wreck who’d slunk back to the salt-scrub desert he should have long since left behind.