The Cowboy's Shadow Part 7

Besides, Jenny lingered in the house. He and Kyla must find neutral ground.

"What had you figured? About where we'd do the deed, I mean," she asked. A tingle ran down his spine. Kyla had guessed what he was thinking about. Her eyes wrapped a haze of blue about him, caressed him, encouraged him, even as her face retained an expression of innocence.

His hands flapped helplessly, with no ready reply to her direct question.

"Tomorrow night in Reno? A drive to Bishop some evening? I mean, we won't do a thing until you're sure. I couldn't make hard and fast plans." The innuendo, he swore, came by accident. Hard he certainly was, and when the time came, probably too fast.

"Hard and fast," she whispered, and her fingers spread below his belt buckle.

"Where's our next station on the hantavirus hunt?" Her quick change from flighty to serious calmed him.

"I'd planned to cut through Penny Springs, over the ridge to Malaspina Ranch.

Now we have to go back to the highway and around, close to a hundred miles."

"Then I suggest we get on the road. Can the dog tag along?"

Whit peered into the bed of the pickup. The dog had dragged a dirty saddle blanket into a corner, now curled up, licking a front paw swollen to three times its normal size. A scruffy, light brown dog. If given a bath he might be a bit golden. Not too thin, so he had not been alone in the desert very long.

"He's accustomed to riding in a truck. With that hurt foot I'm not risking a bite by tossing him out. How about you?" She shook her head.

Whit took several deep breaths before he crawled into the cab. Kyla fastened the seat belt nearest the door, which was fine with him, because if she scooted to the middle, his right hand would be between her legs in a flash.

Absolute silence, except for a faint movement of the wind through stiff bushes.

Whit heard the whistle of his own breath, the friction of Kyla's shorts on the upholstery, a scratching as the dog adjusted the blanket.

A human sound, a far-away shout.

He gritted his teeth. Wild desire had so distracted him, that he had forgotten the threat just over the ridge. He propped himself against the edge of the seat, back to Kyla.

"What are you waiting for?" she asked. He put his finger to his lips. A ping from the cooling engine, a faint whimper from the dog. Then, far away, the sound of a motor roaring to life. He climbed in and turned the key in the ignition.

"They didn't spot us coming in because they were driving their own truck, and couldn't hear us over the noise of the engine. I waited until they started their motor before starting ours."

"You think they'd come after us?" she asked, definitely alarmed.

Whit shrugged and smiled to ease anxiety out of his face. "It's just as well that they haven't the slightest idea who spoke to the sheriff."

He offered a hand; she grasped it.

"Not so tight. I'll have to s.n.a.t.c.h my hand away when I need it on the wheel."

Her fingers loosened, but did not let go. He swung his eyes left, to the door mirror, checking the road behind. If he looked in the rear view mirror too often she would know he was worried. Maybe he should get a cellular phone. But in the mountains and valleys of the Great Basin, cell phones never seemed to work when you needed them. He would call the sheriff from the first wide spot in the road, the sheriff would call in a narc squad, and they would clean out Penny Springs.

But until the request worked its way through the county and state bureaucracy, the marijuana field barred him and Kyla from the tool sheds and woodpiles of the ranch.

"Too bad we can't get in there," Kyla said, echoing his own thoughts. The second time today he'd had the feeling she read his mind. "From your description -- plenty of water and acres of vegetation -- I'd say mice thrive in those outbuildings."

She asked his opinion with her amazing cobalt eyes, and his loins contracted. He almost asked, "When?" but was saved by the inability of any sound to pa.s.s through his dry throat.

"Any of that lemonade left?" he asked after he coughed. The top half of an eighteen-wheeler raced south, toward Las Vegas. The highway. Kyla pawed through her tote bag.

"Glenda doesn't approve of you," Kyla announced as she offered the bottle. "She says you're moody and eccentric, living alone in that house without furniture."

"What do you think?"

"That there are logical explanations for everything, and my sister doesn't know about them, since you haven't come to her for therapy. Well, maybe your reasoning isn't reasonable. Love isn't logical."

"You can say that again," he said, too forcefully.

"Whit, who was the woman who made a pa.s.s at you yesterday afternoon, behind the junipers?"

He approached the intersection slowly, waited for another semi and two cars. How much had Kyla seen?

"Moira Chase," he said. He made another check of the empty highway.

"Chase? Related to the doctor? Daughter, or -- "

"Wife." He did not pull out onto the highway, needing to look at her, catch her reaction. Kyla's brows rose; then she laughed. "No wonder you ran. With his nineteenth century att.i.tude toward women, Chase would come gunning for the man who committed adultery with his wife." Whit made the left turn, breathing easier. Kyla had seen the whole thing, including his rapid departure. No jealousy, no irate question. It occurred to him that Kyla might be the proper person to carry his message to Moira.

"Ky, we're pretty close, I mean, I feel I can trust you to keep a secret."

"I'd trust you with my secrets, if I had any worth concealing," she said, managing to embed a sense of mystery in the words, then ruined it all by laughing.

Whit searched for a circ.u.mlocution, found none. "Rod and Moira Chase were lovers," he said bluntly. "You hit the nail on the head yesterday, a woman prowled through Rod's things. She didn't find what she was looking for, but Vince did. I've been trying to think of a way to let Moira know the...thing's been destroyed."

"A photograph," Kyla said without even bothering to pretend a question. A clever and perceptive woman.

"Photograph. Pretty explicit. Could you find a way to speak to her?"

"You think she'd feel better if a woman conveyed the news?"

"Yes. If her husband's the suspicious sort, if someone should see me deep in conversation with Moira and tell him, Dr. Chase might put the wrong spin on things."

Kyla studied her hands. Her fingers wrapped halfway round her thighs, and he wished their hands could change places. No traffic ahead. If it weren't for the seat belt, he could hug her.

"I'll ask Glenda if she knows Moira Chase. That would make it seem natural, one woman introducing another to her sister. But I can't quite figure why she should believe me. Or how I'm to explain how I know about the picture."

"Tell her we're lovers," he suggested, then worried at his own daring. She did not react at all.

"The picture? Too blatant."

"Very much too blatant. One of these days we'll go to the place and I'll take one of you just like it." The thought of Kyla stripped to the waist, unzipping her jeans, intoxicated him.

"Must have been t.i.tillating if you want to imitate it," she said.

"Very t.i.tillating. Just thinking about it makes a man bust his zipper."

Chapter Six.

Whit hunched against the wind-etched gla.s.s of the phone booth, his tight rump poking out, catching the suns.h.i.+ne, while he punched b.u.t.tons on a phone set far too low for him. Kyla dragged her gaze back to the pages from the land catalog.

These were all the clues they had in their search; she should familiarize herself with every mark from Rod's pen.

She shook herself, turned her back on the phone when she found her eyes sidling to the denim-clad rear end. The truck rocked, the door opened, Whit climbed in.

"I'm not sure what county Penny Springs is in, so I called both sheriffs," he said.

"Rod checked Malaspina Ranch twice," she said. She slid the paper across the seat, a finger on the vital line. Whit reached blindly and their fingers collided. What has come loose inside me? Kyla wondered idly. Something jostled about, frequently bouncing off her heart. She had to put up a firmer resistance than this. Monday to Thursday, an indecently short time. Yet this morning she had fitted her hips against that ridged buckle and firm bulge, displaying unharnessed desire. Her display of l.u.s.t had rivaled Moira Chase, and Whit had run off from Moira.

"I packed two ham sandwiches and stale cake," she said. "Will we find a shady place to picnic?"

"I've never been to Malaspina," Whit said, "although I've heard it's a nice spread, so likely there're trees."

She tried to relax, tried to forget the embrace, let the scenery race past, what scenery she could see at sixty-five or seventy miles an hour on flat desert.

Power and phone poles whipped by, all featuring a tan band a few feet off the ground. Sand blasted? No, a few steers cl.u.s.tered about a pole, the only vertical thing in miles, and one scratched his back against the wood.

A gas station and cafe that seemed to have no earthly reason for existence.

Except for the streak of green on the hillside above. A spring. The highway climbed the range of hills, into a scattering of juniper and pinon. Would Whit stop here for lunch? Downhill, out of the trees, the road clinging to the top of a descending ridge in tight curves. Whit slowed at a mailbox with the red flag up, turned onto a road that stretched south, mile after mile, light against the desert. Nothing but the mailbox suggested human habitation. Kyla looked at her watch. Twenty to twelve. Her stomach growled. A bowl of cereal at 4:45 had no staying power.

A muscle in Whit's jaw twitched. Moody and eccentric. The residents of Malaspina were home, judging from the flag on the mailbox. She would ask if they might picnic under one of their trees, in plain sight of the house. That would keep Whit at arm's length, and give her time to contemplate whether she really wanted to start an affair with a moody, eccentric man.

The hills on their left grew into respectable mountains. A quarter after twelve.

The road dropped into a gully, Whit revved the engine as he plowed through a patch of sand, then a steep grade up the far ridge. Before they reached the top she saw green arrow-points against the sky. A row of tall Lombardy poplars.

"Lovely," Whit said when the valley opened below them.

Lovely indeed. The small, old-fas.h.i.+oned frame house had not been replaced by a mobile home. In fact, it glared white from a recent coat of paint. No real barn, but a long shed protecting farm equipment. Between the house and a steep bluff stretched irrigated fields of alfalfa. She caught movement in one of the sheds.

A dog stepped slowly into the suns.h.i.+ne and eyed them warily. Kyla jumped in alarm when the bark came, almost at her ear.

"I'd forgotten the dog," she said.

The ranch dog stood his ground, and the cripple in the bed of the pickup slunk back to his blanket.

"There's a note taped to the front door, so I imagine that means no one's at home," Whit said. He hopped out, one eye on the ranch dog. The dog took one more step in their direction, then stopped. The sun glittered on the links of the dog's chain.

"The dog's tied," Kyla said. "Since our hitchhiker is crippled, I doubt we'll have a dog fight."

"'Jake,'" Whit read, tilting his head to the angle of the note. "'Come in and make yourself at home. An emergency in Reno, will be back about noon Friday.'"

He groaned. "I didn't stop to look for tire tracks, because I was sure these folks were at home. I thought they could tell us if Rod had been here."

"I really doubt we'll find anything on this place," Kyla said, shading her eyes, circling to observe the surroundings. Equipment in precise rows, a neat vegetable garden, a tended border of foxglove that concealed the propane tank.

"Too neat?" Whit said. A cat, trailed by three half-grown kittens, slunk around the corner of the house. "I don't think a mouse has a chance. What a great place! No wonder Rod checked it twice."

On the west side of the house a bay window faced a vista of distant mountains.

Kyla imagined sitting in that window, watching winter storms sweep over the tan desert and dark peaks. Not today, though, only an expanse of blue streaked with jet trails. The long, narrow clouds all seemed to converge on a single point beyond the horizon. Everyone going the same place? San Francisco! To her, Malaspina seemed very distant from her cozy apartment, yet overhead pilots started their approach to San Francisco International. Three hundred and fifty miles shrank with frightening abruptness.

"The folks won't mind if we picnic under those trees," Whit said. He headed for the truck.

"I'll walk," Kyla said. Seven hours on the road, with no exercise but the short stroll above the marijuana farm, and her legs ached. Whit had backed into the shade before she reached the trees, and was rummaging about behind the seat. He kicked twigs out of the way, then spread a gray blanket.

"I'll get the thermos of coffee and the water jug," he said. "We've drunk all the lemonade."

She located the sandwiches, only slightly smashed, at the bottom of her tote.

She ran a finger across her purse, hunting for the sharp corners of the box. It was still there. She unwrapped the sandwiches and laid them out on napkins, to avoid chance contact if she handed one to Whit. The cake was only a bit damaged from bouncing around its plastic container.

"I like this place," he said, and dropped onto the blanket with crossed legs. "A much more comfortable house than I've got. Three or four rooms downstairs, and a cozy attic. See the little window under the eaves? That's where the kids sleep.

The lean-to on the side, that's where they added modern plumbing to replace the outhouse."

"How isolated their life was, back in the days when they depended on horses. It would take days to get to the nearest town."

"Not so isolated as you think. There's a railroad a few miles northwest. No longer a railroad, just the roadbed, but when this house was built the trains ran everyday to Reno, and there you caught a train to San Francisco, or Chicago or New York. We're the isolated ones, in our cars and trucks."

Kyla munched her sandwich and pondered Whit's remark. Much more secure, traveling by rail. A lone woman sat in a car with dozens of other people, and a man who found her attractive would, as a consequence, treat her with excessive politeness.

Whit licked mustard off his fingers and stuck the very last corner of bread in his mouth. Kyla shoved the box of cake across the blanket until it touched his knee.

"Later," he said. He poured coffee into two plastic cups, handed one to her, and she had no alternative but to take it. And he finagled things so their fingertips touched. "A train used to run right into Argentia, every Tuesday and Friday. No ha.s.sle with traffic and self-service gas pumps. You simply amused yourself and let the train crew handle everything. Instead of fast-food hamburgers and bags of chips, youdined . And I would have met you at the station with a team and buggy -- "

"I didn't know you last Tuesday."

"I'd have met you anyway, because I'd have been at the station to pick up the new gear for the sprinkler pump, instead of waiting days for the parcel service." Whit turned the plastic cup in his fingers. Long fingers.

We're talking trivia, but both thinking the same thing. He's wondering how to get the ball rolling, and I'm wondering whether or not to play. Kyla scrambled to her feet and jogged down the row of poplars. Lombardy poplars, natives of Italy, that uncannily flourished in the desert west, if they got their roots into permanent water. Too narrow for expansive shade, reaching up like a tower, like a...She stopped, laid her hands on her cheeks, and the flame of rising blood seemed hot enough to burn her fingers. She should simply march up to him and say, "Whit, let's have s.e.x," and get it done with.

An engine in the distance. The owners of Malaspina were coming home a day early.

But this was a monotone, not the sound of a car or truck pulling the last strenuous mile to the ranch. Not on the road at all, she realized, but straight overhead. The small plane slanted downward, and from Kyla's perspective almost grazed the poplars. She held her breath as it crossed the valley, fearing it headed straight for a smash against the bluff. The plane disappeared, instead of a crash, a light puff of dust as it touched down.

"I think Jake's arrived," Whit said, and Kyla stiffened at finding him beside her. She had been so intent on the plane she had not heard his footsteps. "We'll drive over and explain why we're here, so he doesn't come running with a gun."

"Let's walk. I'm stiff, and my...well, I'm a bit numb in certain places from sitting all morning." He grinned.