2000 Kisses (24 page)

M
ae's cafe was nearly empty at the end of the lunch shift. Only a couple of booths and tables were occupied. T.J. looked around but didn't see Mae or Tess, so he headed for the backroom. He called out and received a muffled reply.

He found Mae at the refrigerator, wiping flour from her hands.

“Where's Tess?” he asked, a chill beginning to ripple upward from the base of his spine. He'd seen Tess walk from the library to the cafe earlier. She should have been here.

Mae continued to work her dough. “Tess took my car up to the ruins in the foothills.”

T.J. hooked his hands on his belt as the chill spread. “When did she leave?” he asked tightly.

“About two hours ago.”

Two hours. Tess alone in the hills, in isolated and completely unfamiliar country.

A muscle twitched at his jaw. “The damned fool. What has she done?”

“Relax, McCall. She's just doing a little sightseeing.” A frown creased Mae's face. “She'll be fine. She's got water and a hat and I drew her a map.”

“I told her not to leave here.” T.J. stared stiffly at
the jagged peaks to the north. “She's in danger, Mae. That's why she came to Almost, I can't give you the details, but there are men who might be looking for her. There are about a thousand good reasons why she shouldn't go wandering off.” He shoved his hat down hard on his head. “And I'm going to see that she learns those reasons right now, even if the irresponsible woman can't sit down for a week.”

He heard the grating in his voice, the rage in his threat, yet all he felt was panic. He chose the rage instead. It would serve him better than panic.

He stalked from the cafe without another word, planning his next move, refusing to acknowledge the images of Tess hurt—Tess lost.

Dear God, Tess captive, at the mercy of criminals.

When he found her, he'd lock her in a damned cell if that's what it took to keep her out of trouble.

It was easy to follow her tire tracks over the deserted dirt road. TJ. was relieved to see there was no sound of any other cars as he roared up into the foothills. But there was no way of knowing if she had been followed from another direction—or even, God help them, if someone had been camped out up there, watching her every move. There were enough damned cults who'd gone to ground in these back-of-beyond canyons. With the right preparation and food and water, a man could hide here for weeks without being seen.

And a woman could be lost up here forever.

The thought sent fresh fear digging into his chest.

He pushed the Blazer hard, banging over boulders
and slamming over dry washes, following her trail with cold precision.

He stopped the Blazer as a form appeared high on a ledge to the left of the ruins. It was Tess's silhouette against the sky. Above her on a different ledge stood another form—a coyote, watchful and still.

How in heaven's name had she gotten up there? T.J. knew three trails up to the cliff, but none of them led that far up.

He felt a prickling at his neck, almost like a warning.

He gunned the motor and shrugged off this odd sense of premonition. He didn't have time for anything but finding a way to get her down. There was at least fifty feet of treacherous slip rock beneath her and no path to be seen anywhere. How was he going to talk her down to a place of safety?

He cupped his hands and called her name, the sound booming off the canyon walls. She tilted her head, standing rigid, her arms crossed over her chest.

She looked down at him—and then right through him.

Dear God, not now, T.J. thought. Not this odd disorientation of hers now, when a single misstep might send her tumbling down to the desert floor.

He jumped from the Blazer and sprinted over the rocky slope, already planning where he would climb up to join her. He dug his way over a wall of fallen boulders and hitched one arm across a gnarled pinon growing out of the cliff face.

He was only twenty feet below her now. He saw her face, pale and blank, as if she weren't really there, as if her body was simply holding her place as she stared down at the valley toward Almost. But her stance was too
rigid, and she was making small, keening sounds that made the hair rise at the back of his neck.

The chill took him over completely. T.J. clamped down hard, driving away all emotion and letting instinct guide him upward with silent steps to keep from startling her.

Only ten feet to go. He could almost reach her, almost touch her.

Something skittered on the ledge above her. The sound of falling rocks split the silence, crashing down the cliff walls. She gave a startled cry at the same moment that he lunged for her.

But he found only air as she lost her balance, her body spinning sideways and tumbling down the treacherous slip rock slope.

Dimly, Tess heard the sound of gravel flying past her head.

She twisted, fighting branches that slapped and clawed at her as she tumbled down blindly. A shout rang through the air.

Tears ran down her cheeks and dirt blurred her vision. There was a ragged line of boulders before her. Then trees and sky bled together as she was thrown headlong down the cliff.

She awoke to splitting pain sometime later. One arm was crumpled beneath her side and her ankle was burning. She whimpered as something dug into her neck.

“Easy there.”

Opening her eyes, she saw a stranger beside her. Yet there was a gruff tenderness in his voice and something almost familiar in the glint of his startling blue eyes.

Dimly, she realized she was still on the ground. “Do I know you?” she rasped.

“You sure as hell do. You must have taken a real bang on your head.” Frowning, he gently ran his hands along her legs and arms. “Tell me where it hurts.”

“There.” She winced as he brushed her ankle.

“Anywhere else?”

“My shoulder.” She had to fight to understand his words. They almost seemed to come in a different tongue.

“You're not bleeding. Thank God, you missed landing headfirst. Can you raise your arm?”

Gritting her teeth, she did as he asked, though cold sweat formed at the effort.

He caught her hand and eased it down onto her chest. “Enough gymnastics for now. How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Fingers?”

He wiped her face with a bandanna soaked in water from his canteen. It felt delicious on her hot skin. He held up his hand. “It works well enough as a general indicator of trauma. Now give me an answer.”

She closed her eyes. “Four.” A very soft, very blurry four.

He ran his hand along her spine and under her neck. “Any pain there?”

“Just below my shoulder. A dull ache. Who
are
you?”

He made a flat sound of anger. “You'll remember soon enough. I don't think anything is broken, but I'm not inclined to take chances.”

Bits and pieces of her memory began to return, more a mixture of sound and colors than lucid memories. And
no matter how she concentrated the picture pieces didn't match, as if they came from two different palettes.

The man with the metal badge pushed to his feet, and she saw him scan the slope to the south. “Did you hear anything before you fell?”

Had there been a cry of a bird or the sound of slipping rocks? Maybe something that moved in the brush? “I'm not sure. Everything happened all at once.”

He stood for a moment, watching the clouds shadow the mountains. “I'm going to get my phone. Try not to move'

She blinked as his face seemed to come into focus. “I know you. You live here.”

He gave a tight smile. “Glad to see your memory's coming back, Duchess.” He fingered his hat, looking anxious. “Your leg looks pretty cut up. It hurts like hell, doesn't it?”

She blinked, tears rushing to her eyes at the tenderness in his voice. “You wouldn't happen to have some more water, would you?” She closed her eyes, fighting back a whimper as a fresh wave of pain shot tip through her hip.

She heard the sound of his boots, then the creak of leather. Things were blurring again, and she decided all she wanted to do was sleep.

Water brushed her lips. “Drink some of this. And I want you to stay awake, so talk to me.”

“About what?” she murmured.

“Anything. Start with why the hell you came up here alone,” he said grimly.

“I didn't think I'd be long. And the mountains kept calling.” She blinked at the sound of her own words. “That sounds crazy.”

“How did you get up so high?”

Something kept her from explaining the strange vision that had begun the moment she'd set foot beneath the ancient pinon tree. “Just a guess'

“Duchess, I've walked these rocks about a thousand times and I never found a trail that runs up that side of the cliff. If that was a guess, then I'm the living, breathing backside of a mule.”

She turned away, hesitant to say more. How could she explain the dream that drifted still, with the low throb of drums and the faint memory of a man's face. To distract him, she turned to her side, looking dizzily up at the shadowed ruins. “I fell from all the way up there?”

“You should have been in
Sports Illustrated,”
T.J. said grimly. “A few more feet to the left and you'd have plunged straight to the bottom of the rocks.”

“That bad,” she whispered, shivering.

T.J. wanted to rail at her, but the sight of her white, drawn face cut off his words. He had to get her down to the Blazer, but he hesitated to move her yet.

Tess stared up the slope of slip rock beneath the shadow of high sandstone walls. She seemed mesmerized by the cave tucked into the cliff and the ruined stone walls that climbed in high, square towers. “Tell me about this place,” she whispered. “Tell me everything.”

T.J. didn't like the urgency in her voice or the way her hands worked back and forth over her arms.

“Please.” She looked at him, as if driven to ask, to understand.

T.J. bit back a protest. “It's probably early Mogollon culture.”

“I beg your pardon?”

He wasn't surprised at her ignorance. “Almost everyone has heard about the Anasazi, Hopi, and Navajo. But as early as
AD
200, the people archaeologists term
Mogollon had flourished in half-buried pit houses in the mountains of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Their ceremonial areas were imposing, but rectangular rather than the circular Anasazi type.”

TJ. offered her a drink from his canteen. “By 1200 the Anasazi and the Mogollon were living nearby and sharing their techniques.”

“What happened to the people who lived here?”

“Everything changed around 1300. In Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, and the villages of Utah, the cliff dwellings were empty. No one knows why, even now.” He stared off over the rows of smoke-blue mountains. “Maybe it was overpopulation and degradation of resources. Maybe sickness and drought. We might never have the final answer.”

TJ. felt the loss personally. As a boy he had stood in the shadows of this cliff, yearning to know exactly what had happened to the mysterious civilization that had clung to the narrow cliff walls.

“Those holes are where the roof timbers used to be.” He pointed up, all the time scanning the slopes for any sign of movement. “Except for a few scraps hem and there, the wood is long gone.”

Tess looked at the worn remains of steps carved into the rock face. “How many people lived here?”

“Four or five families, probably. They knew about rudimentary irrigation and raised corn, beans, and squash. Possibly even native cotton.”

“Can people go into the ruins?”

He shook his head. “Too dangerous. The walls are unstable. Until proper excavations can be completed, no one should go up there.”

Tess raised her eyes to the crown of the cliff and blinked dizzily.

“Take it easy,” he muttered.

To Tess the words seemed to come from a great distance. Something had drawn her there, demanding answers. Even now it held her with relentless force.

She took a deep breath, trying to pull away from the beauty of its dark magic. But when Tess looked up, it was to the man beside her. Strong. Honorable. Infuriating but decent. She remembered all that now.

She wasn't sure what she wanted from T. J. McCall or from this mysterious, beautiful country she'd wandered into. Here it was easy to forget the outside world and her own problem with a million dollars that shouldn't be in her account.