She crinkled her nose at him. “Well you can’t. You’ve been in the sun too long, remember?” she said playfully.
He frowned, then nodded. “We’ll talk later. But know this, Ana. I never forgot about you. I never stopped missing you. If you ever need anything, if Ty doesn’t treat you right, you can always come to me.”
“Thank you,” she said finally, not knowing what else to say.
When he was gone, she got up and saw movement out of the corner of her eye. It was Becky Montes. How long had she been there? And why hadn’t she announced herself?
The girl smiled and waved. “Hi, Ana.”
“Did you want to talk to me about something, Becky?”
“No.” She held up a ball. “I let it get past me.”
“Becky! Come on!” a voice called. Three of the other girls waited down the hill.
Becky waved. “See you later, Ana.”
“See you later,” Ana said softly, then made her way toward the stables so she could meet Ty. During their stay he’d periodically disappeared to scour the property for anything suspicious. So far, he’d found nothing and she could tell his frustration was growing in proportion to her relief. Even so, as she walked Ana couldn’t stop thinking about her conversation with Miguel. She went over everything he’d said and weighed it against everything she’d seen thus far. She tried to be objective and fair.
Nothing had changed. There was still no proof that Miguel or Gloria were involved in illegal activity or that anyone’s human rights were being violated. Based on what Ramona Montes had told her, her husband was a complete liar.
However, she was another step closer to believing that Miguel wasn’t the man she’d thought him to be. She’d never allowed herself to think of their one time together, the day he’d jumped her into the gang, as rape, but now that she was older … Now that Ty had classified it as rape … Well, that’s technically what it had been, right? Statutory rape. Someone older taking advantage of someone younger, even if there had technically been consent. And if she could have been so wrong about him, wasn’t it possible that maybe, just maybe, she could be wrong about her sister, too?
At the stables, Ty helped Ana mount a chestnut quarter horse before swinging up on his own palomino.
“They know their way home. Don’t worry about getting lost,” the stable hand said, about to retreat into the huge aluminum-sided barn. The stables were recently built and held multiple stalls, but there were only two horses besides his and Ana’s. Why? To make it harder for anyone to leave?
“Thanks. I won’t.” Ty turned to look around at Ana, who lifted her head and gave him a nod.
Ty guided his horse out of the paddock, hearing the metallic clang of the gate closing once Ana had passed through, too.
Silently, he turned the palomino toward a path on the edge of the fields. Before them, the golden land was drenched in the long rays of the setting sun. The compound was many miles from the nearest town, nestled into a valley between hills that weren’t as low as they looked. There was no view of anything else. Salvation’s Crossing was a world apart.
Ana had balked at the suggestion of an evening ride, since she’d never ridden Western before and didn’t know the first thing about neck reining. He’d raised his eyebrow at her and finally she’d understood: the twilight horseback ride was a chance for Ty to explore more of the land, but it would also serve as a cover so they could talk.
Soon into their ride, Ty spotted an aboveground valve for the irrigation system and rode toward it, with Ana some distance behind, going more slowly as she and her horse got used to each other.
She caught up with him by the time he’d dismounted. Ty was kneeling on the ground, using a fence slat to dig down.
“Whatcha doing?” she asked.
“Checking the system. That’s the reason I gave for being out here.” The slat hit metal. “Sounds like a pipe to me.” Ty scraped at the ground and revealed a section of heavy, curved gray metal. “And it looks like a pipe.”
“So you’re an irrigation expert, too?”
Ty grinned and sat back on his haunches. “I do my homework.”
Ana rolled her eyes, clearly unimpressed.
“I think Miguel’s trying to scam me. My guess would be that the system works fine. You can hear the water gurgling.” He dug a somewhat wider hole. “Now what is that doing there?” A section of white plastic pipe ran parallel to the metal one.
Ana dismounted by the fence and tied up her horse next to the palomino.
“Don’t ask me,” she said. “I’m from the Bronx. Water comes from water towers.”
He looked at her blankly. “Those barrel things on top of the buildings?”
“That’s right. And I have no idea how it gets up there.”
Ty dug some more. He pressed his hand to the white plastic pipe. “There’s no water in this one.”
Ana glanced at the ground he’d opened up, her hands in the pockets of her jeans-clad hips. “Maybe there’s something wrong with the irrigation system after all,” she said. Then she looked up at the sunset sky, rocking back on her boot heels. “Let me know when you’re done, Sherlock.”
Ty stood and kicked the dirt back over the two pipes. “Let’s keep riding while there’s still light. I want to see where these pipes end up.”
Ana shrugged and went to untie her horse. They rode single file for a while, then Ty made a right turn. After a while longer, they came out past tilled land that hadn’t been planted.
Ty stopped his horse under an ancient oak whose massive branches nearly touched the ground, providing a perfect hiding place. “Look at that,” he muttered when Ana stopped beside him. “I was thinking there’d be a pumping station.”
There was a paved lot. And a nondescript cinder-block structure painted white, big enough for small trucks to drive into. There weren’t any.
But there were several armed guards.
“Looks like a storage facility.” She narrowed her eyes. “And that has to be a loading bay. Those doors roll up.”
“I don’t think Salvation’s Crossing is selling spring water, do you?” Ty asked in a low voice.
She scowled. “They’re not pumping blood through pipes that size, either,” she said.
“Maybe not blood in its liquid form, but what about containers, vacuum tube propulsion—”
Ana’s response was tense. “That’s quite a theory. The question is can you prove it. The answer is no.”
He glanced at her and sighed. Fuck. He’d known this was coming. Could see with every day that went by, each time he came back from a scouting mission without incriminating evidence, she was convincing herself she’d been right—that Miguel and Gloria were innocent of wrongdoing. That there was no cult. That Belladonna was wrong. “Give me a chance,” he urged. “We haven’t been here long enough to rule anything out. They’re vampires. They work with vampires. Where there are vampires, human blood is bound to be a big business.”
“I want to go.”
“Ana, listen to me—”
Only she didn’t. She dug her heels into the chestnut’s sides and galloped away. It was Ty’s turn to follow.
Once they were over the large hill and into a grove of oaks, he yelled, “Stop, damn it.” When she didn’t, he galloped up to her and grabbed her horse’s reins, bringing it to a gradual stop. Both their horses’ flanks were heaving from the hard run.
Ana immediately bounded off her horse and began walking back toward the compound.
Ty dismounted and grabbed her arm. “I need to tell you what I learned from Carly—”
“Fuck you. Fuck her.”
He shook her. “You might be interested in what she had to say. She had news about Ramona and Becky Montes—”