She winked, as if reading his mind. Opening her mouth slightly, she neared until almost touching his lips. Im thinking youre a little rusty when it comes to kissing. How about we start with a little practice?
She didnt wait for an answer. She kissed him again, taking the lead as before, teaching, demanding, making him feel totally alive for the first time in years.
His life had been about his job and raising his daughter. Hed settled for a comfortable kind of loneliness. Eating meals in front of a ball game. Fishing for hours without really planning his day. Never looking for more than he had.
When she first tried to pull away, he didnt let her go. He couldnt. For once he wanted more from life than just settling.
She gently shoved again.
Then he heard someone bumping down the hallway toward her dressing room. Dan nodded once and stepped to the side.
By the time Sorrel tapped on the door, Brandi was sitting in her chair and Dan tried to look as if he was listening while he leaned against one of the storage shelves with his notepad in his hand.
Sorrel let himself in, seemingly unaware that hed interrupted them. I brought your nachos, Sheriff, and a beer.
Thanks, Dan answered without looking at the food.
Its not any trouble. I always bring Miss Malone a sandwich between the last two sets.
Dan flipped his notepad closed and accepted the plate. Ive a few more questions to ask, Brandi. He tried to sound official. Then, when you have time, Mr. Douglas, Id like to ask you a few.
Okay, Sorrel said as he handed Brandi her tray. But give her time to eat. Its a short break, and tonight the crowd is already asking when shell be back.
The bartender turned to Brandi. Now you tell him all about that creep on the back row whos been bothering you. The sheriff needs to know. He turned to Dan. You wouldnt believe all the losers and nuts that think shes singing just for them. The other night after closing one almost knocked the back door down. He was so drunk he thought he had a date with her. Said she was sending him secret messages in her songs.
Dan nodded. He believed the bartender. After Sorrel left, he set his plate down on the table beside her food. Much as Id like to go back to doing what we were doing, I think Sorrel is right. He turned over a box of paper towels over pulled it up as a chair. How about we eat as you talk?
She stuck out her lip in a pout, and he almost withdrew his suggestion.
Before saying a word, she brushed his arm when she reached across and took one of his nachos. Its nothing really. Part of the job. If youre good, the drunks always fall madly in love with you. If youre breathing, some nuts going to hit on you. Its a bar, Sheriff.
She ate while he stared, knowing what he had to do. If she was really in danger, he needed to make sure he was near. This assignment was no hardship at all. Tell me the facts, Brandi.
This big guy in his forties comes in almost every Tuesday and Saturday. He drinks Jack and Bud until he passes out, or gets generally obscene and Hank kicks him out. I think hes a trucker because sometimes he looks like hes put in a long day. He smells of motor oil and fresh-cut wood. Theres no trouble if he only has a few beers. He leaves early, probably going home to his wife, or hes out of money. But when he settles in for the night, hes like a wild boar by midnight.
She shrugged. Im not afraid of him, but I hate that Hank and Sorrel have to deal with him.
Dan brushed her arm when he leaned closer and took half her sandwich. The touch, like hers, had been no accident. There was something very sensual about sharing food. Something lovers did. And if he had more than a few, is that when he bothers you?
No. She smiled, stealing another chip. He bothers me all the time. Staring at me. Making obscene signs of what he wants to do with me. Telling anyone who will listen that Im going to go home with him one night.
When hes drunk, he gets loud and starts saying Im his girl. Thats why Hank started locking the stage door. I step off stage, Hank locks the door from the inside and goes back down the passage to the door by the bar. One night when the trucker tried the door, he pounded so hard they had to throw him out. After that, hes been better, but he waits outside even after we close. Brandi bumped Dans shoulder with her own. How can you help?
I could talk to him, but unless you want to file a restraining order, theres not much the law can do.
She smiled that sad smile again. Like she was forcing sorrow away. Like her whole life was a lie. I dont want to think about it right now. I have another set to do. Ive been hoping youd come back to hear my songs.
Dan couldnt let the problem go. And if hes still here later or waiting in the parking lot?
Then Ill sleep here. Im not driving back to the motel worrying that he might be following. She stood and fluffed her wild hair, painted her lips, pulled on a vest with fringe that tickled her hips.
He watched, fascinated at how she turned into someone else so fast. The hungry eyes hed seen when hed kissed her had frozen to porcelain like a dolls stare, unreadable, cold. He didnt know which Brandi was the real one, but both fascinated him.
Ill stay until you finish and follow you home, just to make sure. He hadnt slept in two days, but Dan knew he wouldnt close his eyes tonight if he thought she was in danger.
She walked past him and opened the door. When she turned back, no smile curved her full lips. If you follow me home, Sheriff, youre not leaving until dawn.
Every cell in his body wanted to pull her to him, but there was no time. The canned music had stopped. Hank must have unlocked the stage door because his voice blared down the hallway.
Dan stared at her, his words low. Im following you home. Youll be safe tonight.
And warm, she whispered back.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Tuesday night
CODY WINSLOW THUNDERED through the night on a half-wild horse that loved to run. The moon followed them, dancing along the edge of the canyon as they darted over winter buffalo grass that was stiff with frost.
The former Texas Ranger watched the dark outline of the earth where the land cracked open wide enough for a river to run at its base.
The canyons edge seemed to snake closer, as if it were moving, crawling over the flat plains, daring Cody to challenge death. One misstep might take him and the horse over the rim and into the black hole. Theyd tumble maybe a hundred feet down, barreling over jagged rocks and frozen juniper branches as sharp as spears. No horse or man would survive.
Only tonight Cody wasnt worried. He needed to ride, to run, to feel adrenaline pumping in his veins, to know he was alive. He rode hoping to outrun his dark mood.
The demons that were always in the corners of his mind were chasing him tonight. Daring him to step over the edge and tumble into deaths darkness. Whispering that he should give up even trying to live. Betting him to take one more risk...the one that would finally kill him.
Run, he shouted to the midnight mare. Nothing would catch him here. Not on his ranch. Not on land his ancestors had hunted on for thousands of years. Fought over. Died for and bled into. Apache blood, settler blood, Comanchero blood was mixed in him as it was in many people in this part of Texas. His family tree was a tumbleweed of every kind of tribe that ever crossed the plains.
If the horse fell and they went to their deaths, no one would find them for weeks on this far corner of his ranch. Even the canyon that twisted like crippled fingers off the great Palo Duro had no name here. It wasnt beautiful like Ransom Canyon, with layers of earth revealed in a rainbow of colors. Here the rocks were jagged, shooting out of the deep earthen walls from twenty feet in some places, almost like a thin shelf.
The petrified wood formations along the floor of the canyon reminded Cody of snipers waiting, unseen but deadly. Cody felt numb, already dead inside, as he raced across a place with no name on a horse he called Midnight.
The horses hooves tapped suddenly over a low place where water ran off the flatland and into the canyon. Frozen now. Silent. Deadly black ice. For a moment the tapping matched Codys heartbeat, then both horse and rider seemed to realize the danger at once.
Cody leaned back, pulling the reins, hoping to stop the animal in time, but the horse reared in panic. Dancing on her hind legs for a moment before twisting violently and bucking Cody off as if he was no more than a green rider on his first bronc.
As Cody flew through the night air, he almost smiled. The battle hed been fighting since he was shot and left for dead on the border three years ago was about to end here on his own land. The voices of all the ancestors who came before him whispered in the wind, as if calling him.
When he hit the frozen ground so hard it knocked the air from his lungs, he knew death wouldnt come easy tonight. Though hed welcome the silence, Cody knew hed fight to the end. He came from generations of fighters. He was the last of his line, and here in the dark hed make his stand. Too far away to call for help. And too stubborn to ask anyway.
As he fought to breathe, his body slid over a tiny river of frozen rain and into the black canyon.
He twisted, struggling to stop, but all he managed to do was tumble down. Branches whipped against him, and rocks punched his ribs with the force of a prizefighters blow. And still he rolled. Over and over. Ice on his skin, warm blood dripping into his eyes. He tried bracing for the hits that came when he landed for a moment before his body rolled again. He grabbed for a rock or a branch to hold on to, but his leather gloves couldnt get a grip on the ice.
He wasnt sure if he managed to relax or pass out, but when he landed on a flat rock near the bottom of the canyon, total blackness surrounded him and the few stars above offered no light. For a while he lay still, aware that he was breathing. A good sign. He hurt all over. More proof he was alive.
Hed been near death before. He knew that sometimes the body turned off the pain. Slowly, he mentally took inventory. There were parts that hurt like hell. Others he couldnt feel at all.
Cody swore as loud as he could, and smiled. At least he had his voice. Not that anyone would hear him in the canyon. Maybe his brain was mush; he obviously had a head wound. The blood kept dripping into his eyes. His left leg throbbed with each heartbeat, and he couldnt draw a deep breath. He swore again.
He tried to move and pain skyrocketed, forcing him to concentrate to stop shaking. Fire shot up his leg and flowed straight to his heart. Cody took shallow breaths and tried to reason. He had to control his breathing. He had to stay awake or hed freeze. He had to keep fighting. Survival was bone and blood to his nature.
The memory of his night in the mud near the Rio Grande came back as if it had only been a day earlier, not three years. Hed been bleeding then, hurt, alone. Four rangers had stood on the bank at dusk. Hed seen the other three crumple when bullets fell like rain.
Only it had been hot that night, not cold like now, and then the air had been silent after all the gunfire. He finally heard movement in the shadows and wasnt sure which he feared more, armed drug runners or demons. If the outlaws found him alive, theyd kill him. If the demons found him dead, theyd drag him into hell. Reality and nightmares dueled in his mind as sanity seemed to drip away with his blood.
Cody had known that every ranger in the area would be looking for him at first light; he had to make it to dawn first. Stay alive. Theyd find him, he kept thinking, until he finally passed out.
But not this time. No one knew where he was tonight. Once he lost consciousness, hed freeze.
No one would look for him tonight or tomorrow. No one would even notice he was gone. Hed made sure of that. Hed left all his friends back in Austin after the shooting. Hed broken up with his girlfriend, who said she couldnt deal with hospitals. When he came back to his familys land, he didnt bother to call any of his old friends. Hed grown accustomed to the solitude. Hed needed it to heal not just the wounds outside, but the ones deep inside.
Cody swore again.
The pain won out for a moment, and his mind drifted. At the corners of his reason, he knew he needed to move, stop the bleeding, try not to freeze, but hed become an expert at drifting that night on the border. Even when a rifle had poked into his chest as one of the drug runners tested to see if he was alive, Cody hadnt reacted.
If he had, another bullet would have gone into his body, which was already riddled with lead.
Cody muttered the words hed once had to scrub off the walls in grade school. Mrs. Presley had kept repeating as he worked, Cody Winslow, youll die cussing if you dont learn better.
Turned out she might be right. Even with his eyes almost closed, the stars grew brighter and circled around him like drunken fireflies. If this was deaths door, he planned to go through yelling.
The stars drew closer. Their light bounced off the black canyon walls as if they were sparks of echoes.
He stopped swearing as the lights began to talk.
Hes dead, one high, bossy voice said. Look how shiny the blood is.
Tiny beams of light found his face, blinding him to all else.
A squeaky sound added, Im going to throw up. I cant look at blood.
No, hes not dead, another argued. His hand is twitching, and if you throw up, Marjorie Martin, Ill tell Miss Adams.
All at once the lights were bouncing around him, high voices talking at once.
Yes, he is dead.
Stop saying that.
You stop saying anything.
Im going to throw up.
Cody opened his eyes. The lights were circling around him like a war party.
See, I told you so.
One beam of light came closer, blinding him for a moment, and he blinked.
Hes hurt. I can see blood bubbling out of him in several spots. The bossy voice added, Dont touch it, Marjorie. People bleeding have germs.
The gang of lights streamed along his body as if trying to torture him or drive him mad as the world kept changing from black to bright. It occurred to him that maybe he was being abducted by aliens, but he doubted the beings coming to conquer the world would land here in West Texas or that theyd sound like little girls.
Hell, he said, and to his surprise the shadows all jumped back.
After a few seconds, he made out the outline of what might be a little girl, or maybe a short ET.
You shouldnt cuss, mister. We heard you way back in the canyon yelling out words Ive seen written but never knew how to pronounce.
Glad I could help with your education, kid. Any chance you have a cell phone or a leader?