Buried Secrets (2 page)

West Texas—Four Years Later

J
o didn't realize how deadened she'd become until she saw the man in her jail's only cell—and breathed.

Not that she hadn't been breathing all along. But this was the first breath she'd actually
noticed
in years. One quick, sharp inhalation, instead of just monotonous existing.

It unnerved her.

She distracted herself by getting a cup of coffee. Then she half leaned, half sat on her desk, eyeing the stranger and noticing what it felt like to breathe…and wondering why anything should seem different.

The prisoner, who'd sat up on his cot at her entrance, stared expectantly back. For a brief moment, Jo felt like she knew him. Or should. Or would. His broad chest expanded and contracted under his button-up shirt. He was breathing, too.

Then the moment passed, and she just felt silly. Everyone breathed; it was a handy habit. If the air suddenly felt sharper than usual in her lungs, that was probably just spring coming.

“Well, Mr….” She glanced down at the desk, hoping her
deputy had left a note. He had. Fred loved filling out reports.
Speeding…city boy…smarty-pants.
“Mr. Lorenzo.”

She met his dark, intense eyes again, quirked her mouth into a noncommittal smile. “What brings you to Spur?”

Then she took a deliberately casual sip of coffee, which was a mistake because she choked on his answer.

Lorenzo said, “Zombies.”

Jo put her mug down so quickly that hot liquid sloshed over her fingers and onto Deputy Fred's report.
You misunderstood,
screamed the logical part of her brain as she bent over, coughing.
He's using some Yankee slang.
Or maybe he meant drinking; weren't zombies a mixed drink? That would explain the speed at which he'd been driving, even if he
had
passed Fred's Breathalyzer test.

This was West Texas. The man couldn't mean
walking-dead
zombies, could he?

There was no such thing.

And he couldn't know.

“It's pretty early for the late show,” she hedged, catching both her breath and her composure. “You came here
why?
”

She noted wary concern fade from his expression at her recovery—and appreciated it. Lorenzo's solid face fit his big, rangy form. His nose wasn't completely straight; his whisker-dusky jaw looked stubborn; and his dark eyes were unnervingly calm for a guy who'd spent the night in jail for a simple speeding violation.

Much less one who talked horror stories.

This was the sort of man who either made a woman feel threatened, or wholly safe. No in-between. And Jo didn't feel threatened by him.

Breathing and horror stories aside.

So why was she trembling?

“Forget it,” he muttered, scrubbing a splayed hand through shaggy, black-brown hair that licked his collar, a bit longer than her own. “Look, you got any more coffee? That yokel who left me here has been gone for over an hour.”

Jo ignored the slight to her deputy and concentrated on getting a second mug of coffee without her hands shaking. Nothing was
different today than yesterday, last week, last month…last year? No, more. It had been years since she took refuge here, and nothing was out of the ordinary.

Certainly nothing that she'd only imagined. Nothing she'd been trying to forget ever since.

“We'll get you some breakfast within the hour,” she promised, carrying the mug over to him.

She somehow breathed deeper, the closer she got, like a closed-up room with newly opened windows. It wasn't her imagination. So what was it?

When Lorenzo came to the bars, he stood a good head taller than her. His shoulders matched the width of his chest. If she was a room, he felt like a whole house to her—a house painted in pure testosterone.

His strong fingers awkwardly trapped hers when he took the mug's handle, big but careful, so careful of her. She made sure he had a good grip on it before she pried her own fingers loose.

“Real security-conscious around here, aren't you, deputy?” he asked. He took a sip, just like the perfectly normal prisoner he was. “I could've thrown hot coffee in your eyes, or had you against the bars and my arm around your throat, and be out of here before you could think.”

He sounded like a city boy. Swarthy, not like the local Latin or Native American population so much as Greek or Italian.
Lorenzo.
Duh. The collar of his blue shirt was unbuttoned enough to reveal a triangle of dark, hairy chest. His trousers had once been pressed, but not recently enough.

“Most speeders aren't moved to such acts of desperation,” Jo noted, feigning boredom. “And I'm the sheriff. Sheriff James.”

“Ted Bundy only got caught when cops picked him up for traffic violations,” Lorenzo reminded her, clearly an annoying, last-word kind of guy, before sipping the coffee again.

Then he went still, mug to his lips. At least he didn't choke. “James?”

“Yup,” said Jo, heading back to her desk.

“Joe James?” Jo could hear the “e” in his incredulity.

She paused, not liking that he knew her name. The ridiculous
word he'd used earlier—
zombies
—pounded in her head, but she pushed it away. “That's me, Mr. Lorenzo.” Again she consulted Fred's now-stained report. “Zaccheri Lorenzo?”

“Zack. Lady, you're the reason I came to this hellhole! But I was expecting a guy. No offense.”

Deep breath—
again with the breathing.
Jo turned to face him, folding her arms across her chest. “Am I the reason you came to this hellhole at ninety-three miles per hour?”

“Some cars gotta go fast,” he dismissed. “I'm a private investigator, Miss James. My partner found a statement you once made to the press, and I want to ask you some questions about it.”

Spur didn't have a supermarket, much less a press. It wasn't a statement Jo had made anytime recently. And that other time…

She stiffened, her stomach protesting the coffee, but knew she could hide it. She'd learned to hide it. Living in the middle of nowhere helped. “What statement?”

Better a hypocrite than a basket case.

“The reporter told us his source was a Joe James. Seven years ago you were in a mining accident in New Mexico, right?”

Oh.
That
statement. “And if I was?”

“You made some unusual claims about the cause of the cave-in.” Damn, but he had an intense way of looking at her.

Maybe she didn't feel so safe around him, after all.

“I'd been trapped underground for almost two days with no food or water, diminishing air and dead co-workers.” One who had been far more than a colleague. “I think it's safe to suppose I might have been disoriented after my rescue.”

Zack Lorenzo leaned on the crossbar of his cell, as casually as on a fence. He was almost too large to be graceful, but he did have a distracting ease about him. “It's safe to suppose that,” he agreed dryly, but his eyes were more insistent than his voice. “
Were
you?”

“What business is it of yours?” Jo sat in her chair and leaned back, deliberately propping her cowboy boots on the desk. Let the man rot…at least until his fine was wired to him.

“Look, I know this is out of the blue. But I've got my reasons for asking,” he insisted. Now the look of incredulity she cast
toward him was legitimate. “That's right,” he defended with macho peevishness. “And I'm here to get your…”

She waited, intrigued. She had something he wanted?

He had to look away and swallow to choke the word out. “Your help. By getting your story.”

Jo didn't want to think back to the cave-in. She had too much trouble with nightmares as it was. It had been a hallucination. She'd just been disoriented.

But this man struck a chord she'd forgotten, and she drew yet more charged air into her lungs. “Help?”

He grinned. It might be a good-looking grin if it weren't so damned superior. “Yeah. Against the forces of evil.”

Fred had been pretty accurate.
A smarty-pants.

Jo no longer felt guilty for thinking the man was riding a stirrup short. She let her boots and the front legs of her chair thunk to the floor, and she picked up Fred's report again. The blotchy photocopy of Lorenzo's P.I. license looked legit…for what she knew about official documentation for the state of Illinois, which wasn't much.

She took a swallow of coffee and wished it were tequila. “Says you're on a case, next town up the road.” Almanuevo was only a few years into its boom as a center for New Age revelations and so-called vortexes. But Jo saw a pretty clear distinction between exploring one's past lives and hunting down evil.

“I am. Missing persons.” This time his grin was positively grating. “That's where you come in.”

“You want me to help fight evil or find a missing person?”

He snorted. “Neither. I just want you to tell me about the
missing persons
you ran into during that cave-in.” His tone took on a patronizing edge. “I wouldn't want to put you into any scary situations, lady.”

The fact that she didn't challenge his disrespect proved how upset she was. Jo stood. “Whatever I said to that reporter, I was mistaken. I'm afraid you wasted a trip, Mr. Lorenzo.”

He swore beneath his breath. “Helluva trip to waste! You know how far Almanuevo is from here?”

“Over an hour away.” Jo paused on her way to the filing cabinet, then qualified herself. “Going the speed limit.”

“Real scenic, too,” the prisoner groused, while she opened the top drawer and looked for something, anything, to keep her busy and official. And normal.
And sane.
“Sand. Cactus. More sand. More cactus. A few rocks. And hey—”

“Don't you go sassin' the sheriff,” drawled Deputy Fred as he walked in, two McDonald's bags in his hand. But Jo had gotten the gist.

“More sand,” finished Lorenzo with a snarl, flopping back onto the cot. “It's a garden spot, all right.”

“It's West Texas,” clarified Jo, taking one of Fred's bags. She fished out an Egg McMuffin and tossed it neatly between the cell bars. “Have some breakfast.”

He easily caught it one-handed. “This is cold.”

“The McDonald's is in Almanuevo, near the Western Union. The lady who runs our diner is on vacation at Tahoe for three more days.” Jo aimed her own superior smile toward the prisoner. “West Texas.”

Then she turned to Deputy Fred, who was looking mighty uncomfortable. “Did his folks wire him the money?”

He nodded, and Lorenzo whooped. “I get out of this hellhole, right?”

Fred started to say something and stopped. Jo had to lean close before he'd divulge it. “They done sent him one thousand dollars. In
cash!
I put it in my shoe, just in case I got jumped.”

Jo tried not to smile. Fred was, to put it kindly, a stocky man. In his tan uniform, star on his pocket and gun on his hip, he shouldn't have to worry—especially not around here. Sand, cactus, etc. What was going to jump him, a jackelope?

Still, it was a pretty piece of money, and at least he cared. He was one of the good guys.

“Good job,” she whispered back.

“Do I get out now, or what?” demanded the prisoner, sounding even more like a pushy city boy. Jo scooped the keys off of her desk and opened the cell door.

When he walked by her, his sleeve brushed her shoulder,
clean and warm. She took a deep breath, inhaling a scent she'd gone without too long.

Alive.
Safe.

But that made no more sense than zombies. Jo didn't look to others for her safety. Never again. That's why she wore a badge, carried a gun. That's why she lived alone.

She said, “You're welcome.”

Lorenzo groaned when he realized why Fred was taking off his shoe. He turned back to her as a distraction, which was just as well since she had to return his wallet, his car keys, his mobile phone, his automatic pistol.

“Look,” he said, sliding a card out of his wallet. It read Lorenzo and Company, Private Investigation, with a P.O. box in Chicago, phone numbers and Internet addresses. “Clearly you don't want to think about it, much less talk, and hell—that's your call. But unlike a lot of blind schmucks, you
know.
You've seen what's out there. Whether you're admitting it or not, it's still there. Maybe you can help. Think about it.”

He pressed the card into her hand, his own hand solid and warm around hers. It made Jo wonder when the last time was that someone had touched her, even that briefly, that casually. Christmas with her brothers, she guessed.

Lorenzo paid his fine, pocketed the nearly $900 he had left over, and departed the jail like he was shrugging off an unnecessary chore. The man had lost a lot of money and a couple hours' drive…. On a chore?

Now that he was gone—mere moments after the door shut—Jo didn't feel safe at all. She felt like a doctored tooth as the Novocain wore off. Tingly. Worried.

Braced against certain pain—the downside of feeling alive again.

“Don't want to think about what?” asked Fred, halfway through his platter of soggy pancakes.

“Whatever I don't want to talk about.” Jo heard an engine purr to life. She waited a moment and then, against her better judgment, stepped into the narrow street to watch a shiny black sports car skim off into the scrub-dotted hills toward Almanuevo,
the Sedona of West Texas.

The air felt strangely warm for this early in the morning. Especially for March. Especially for Spur. Overhead, a hawk swooped by.

Whether you're admitting it or not, it's still there,
the private investigator had said.

“No, it's not,” murmured Jo beneath her breath. “It's dead. I killed it.”