Transfixed by what she was hearing, Angie stood in the middle of the room holding the two drinks. It had been bad enough, earlier that afternoon when her vague suspicions about Tony’s “consultation business” had once and for all solidified into harsh reality. Then, he had broken the television in a blinding rage when he heard the news that Andrew Brady was still alive. Now, with the announcement that the very same man had died, Tony was taking her out to dinner. To celebrate.
With horror, Angie realized that somehow Tony Vargas had gone to the hospital and finished what he had set out to do, just as she had known he would. And by not doing something to prevent it, Angie realized that she, too, was somehow responsible.
And with that sickening realization came another one as well. Angie had always imagined that somehow she’d find a way to slip away from Tony and leave him, but now she understood that wouldn’t be possible. He’d never let her go. And if he ever discovered how much Angie really knew about him, she, too, would be living under a death sentence.
The water shut off, and Tony stepped out of the shower.
“Hey, Angie, where the hell’s my drink?” he demanded as he began toweling himself dry. “I thought you went out to the kitchen to make me a Sea Breeze.”
Taking a deep breath, she stepped into the narrow bathroom beside him. He ran his hands over the bare skin of her buttocks as she set both drinks down on the bathroom counter.
“Nice ass,” he said, then he slapped her hard with the flat of his hand before she could move out of reach. That was something he liked to do occasionally-leave a hand print on her backside just for the hell of it. He liked to see how long the imprint lasted.
Without saying a word, Angie stepped into the shower, pulled the door shut, and turned on the water full blast, hoping the steaming water would somehow clear her head.
As a working whore in L.A., she had been busted more times than she could count-often enough to have learned the cops’ tired right-to-remain-silent speech by heart. In fact, she could recite the whole thing from beginning to end without any prompting.
But now we were talking about murder, and this was far more than just a right to remain silent. Silence was now an absolute necessity. Not only would anything she said be held against her, in the wrong hands, it could also prove deadly.
Silently, standing under the running water, Angie Kellogg began to cry, because, for the first time since that long-ago night in Battle Creek, Michigan, when her father’s unspeakable violation had turned her little-girl world upside down, she was utterly terrified.
NINE
Coming down Tombstone Canyon with Jennifer in the back seat of Ken Galloway’s Bronco, Joanna guiltily remembered their ten head of cattle for the first time. There was plenty of water for them in the stock tank, and she had fed them the night before, but between then and now she hadn’t given them another thought. There was still some forage left over from the summer’s rainy season, but not much. By now they were probably very hungry.
Joanna doubted her mother had thought about the cattle or made arrangements to feed them, either. And why should she? They weren’t her responsibility; they were Joanna’s. Eleanor had made it abundantly clear that she was a confirmed town-dweller who had little patience with Joanna and Andy’s “cockamamie” decision to take over what remained of the Brady family holdings.
Preoccupied with berating herself over neglecting the cattle, Joanna barely noticed when Ken turned off the highway onto Double Adobe Road. Then, as they crossed the first cattle guard onto High Lonesome, her heart filled with sudden dread. Traveling down the dirt road, they were fast approaching the bridge, the place where she had found Andy lying wounded and dying in the sand. Concerned not only about what she might see but also her reaction to it, Joanna breathed a sigh of relief when she realized that in the deepening twilight nothing at all was visible. For now, at least, she didn’t have to look at whatever physical evidence remained of that horrible ordeal.
“Somebody’s here,” Jennifer announced when they caught sight of lights from the house glimmering through the surrounding mesquite. A hundred yards into the ranch proper, Sadie appeared in the slice of head-lights ahead of them, racing toward the Bronco at full throttle. Jennifer rolled down the window and called to her, urging the dog to keep pace. When they pulled into the yard, two extra vehicles were parked next to Joanna’s Eagle in the brassy glow of the solitary yard light-Grandma and Grandpa Brady’s Honda and Clayton Rhodes’ ancient Ford pickup.
Clayton Rhodes, a wizened eighty-six-year old neighbor from up the road, stood on Joanna’s back porch with his thumbs hooked through his belt loops. When Ken Galloway’s car stopped in front of the gate, Eva Lou and Jim Bob Brady, Andy’s parents, came out through the backdoor and joined him. By then Sadie was barking and running around the Bronco in madly joyous circles. As soon as the wheels stopped turning, Jennifer tumbled out of the truck and threw herself at the dog.
For a moment all the adults stood still, watching the antics of the girl and the dog, then Eva Lou hurried forward to greet Joanna while the two men hung back. Tears streamed down the older woman’s round cheeks as she gathered her daughter-in-law into her arms.
“I can’t believe it,” she murmured over and over. “I just can’t believe it.”
Joanna was glad to see Eva Lou. Her relationship with Andy’s mother was far more cordial than with her own. The elder Bradys were rock-solid, salt-of-the-earth-type people whose very presence comforted her.
“How did you hear?” Joanna asked, pulling back from Eva Lou’s embrace. “Did my mother call?”
Eva Lou shook her head, and wiped her tears on the tail of her borrowed apron. “Jimmy and I were on our way home from Tulsa when a police car pulled us over in Lordsburg. At first we couldn’t figure out why they were stopping us, if Jimmy was speeding or what. But then the officer told us what had happened. It was such a shock. Someone from the sheriff’s department here must have called over to Lordsburg and asked them to keep a lookout for us.
“When he told us we were already too late, we just pulled over on the side of the road and bawled like a couple of babies. That young officer was so nice. He waited right there with us and wouldn’t let us leave town without buying us a cup of coffee.”
Ken Galloway had walked up beside the two women and stood there awkwardly, holding Joanna’s single suitcase. “Should I take this on inside?” he asked.
Joanna nodded. “Yes, please. Come on, Jenny,” she called to her daughter. “Leave Sadie out here for now. She’s way too excited to be in the house. Come inside and get her food ready.”
“Oh, we’ve already fed the dog,” Eva Lou said quickly as they trooped toward the house. “After Lordsburg, we didn’t see much point in going on to Tucson. We thought we’d just come on over here and look after things for you. But Clayton got the jump on us. He was here and had the cattle fed and watered. He was about to take Sadie home with him to feed her as well.”
Joanna stopped in front of Clayton Rhodes, a man who had befriended several succeeding generations of owners on the High Lonesome Ranch. A lifelong resident of Cochise County, Clayton Rhodes was bowlegged and bent, with a limp that came from some long ago bronco-riding mishap. Clearly a relic from an earlier age, he was a genuine, old-fashioned cowboy who had spent much of his life in the company of livestock. Small children were drawn to him because of his ability to tell tall tales, and they were fascinated by the set of ill-fitting dentures he usually carried in his shirt pocket, but Clayton Rhodes was terrifically shy around adults.