Can't Stop Believing (HARMONY) (25 page)

C
AMERON
WAITED
FOR
C
ORD
AT
THE
BACK
DOOR
OF
THE
old theater like a leftover ghost of movies past. Cord didn’t even see the man until his headlights flashed across him. Without bothering with a greeting, they walked through the narrow theater aisles that smelled of stale popcorn and dust. The seats were in poor shape and the floor sticky, just as Cord remembered it from when he was a kid.

The little guy had made living quarters out of three dressing rooms off the stage. Cord saw into one that looked like a small apartment kitchen with a table and a single chair. He walked into another that must serve as the office for the theater. It had a huge old scarred desk that took up half the space and a file cabinet so full the drawers wouldn’t close.

“I thought I’d better tell you what I found. You need to see the whole picture here.” Cameron jumped up on the desk and smiled, as if delighted to have a guest in his place.

Cord remained standing. He wasn’t afraid, but he felt his whole body go on guard as if from some primal instinct. “Go on,” Cord said, wanting to get the meeting over with.

“I followed Bryce for two days, learning only that he was scum. Both days he left the B&B after breakfast and wandered around like he had no purpose. Coffee shops, bakeries, bookstores, diners. All he bought in each was coffee, and he didn’t even buy that in the used bookstore. The owner of the store talked to him, asking questions. Galloway never gave him a straight answer.”

Cameron rubbed the bridge of his nose with his index finger. “That rented Rover wasn’t too hard to follow. He’d stop at each place and usually strike up a conversation with whoever was around, like he was building an alibi. Then he’d sit somewhere, the park mostly, and make calls. I couldn’t get close enough to hear, but I could tell he was frustrated, and even angry, at whoever was on the other end.”

“Have any idea who he was talking to?” Cord asked.

“Nope.” Cameron lit a cigarette with nervous hands. “The first day he had these three ladies following him. I was so busy watching them tail him, I lost him for a few hours. Picked him up at the bar out by the truck stop. You know, the one with three
X
s on the roof. He parked in the back, but so does everyone who hangs out in that dump. Of course I followed him in, but I didn’t have to worry about him spotting me. It was so dark I could have picked his pocket and he wouldn’t have seen me.

“He mostly just drank and flirted with the ugly girls who were over-made-up and underdressed. I saw him go back behind the curtain with a few of them for a private dance. He always came back smiling like a goon, and they came back looking disgusted. I heard one girl say she wouldn’t give him anything extra no matter how much he paid.”

Cord thought he could guess what was happening. Nevada had mentioned once that her ex liked to hurt her where the bruises wouldn’t show.

Cameron continued, enjoying himself. “When he left there, he drove back to town by way of the road running next to your ranch.”

“My ranch isn’t on the way back from the truck stop.”

“I know. I thought that was strange, but it got stranger. He ate at the diner, making a point to talk loud enough for everyone in the place to notice him. Then he headed over to the show at the mall. After that, he returned to the bed-and-breakfast. The guy seemed to have no purpose, no friends, no life. He’s drifting.”

“Did he go out later?”

“Nope. I slept so close to his car, he couldn’t have started it without waking me up.”

“He could have walked,” Cord snapped, tired of the rambling.

“He could have, but he didn’t seem the type. I thought he was the most boring guy I’d ever followed until this afternoon, when he bought a ticket to the same movie for the third time. I followed him in instead of waiting outside.”

Cameron smiled. “I know my way around dark theaters. He never saw me even when I sat three rows behind him. About halfway through the movie, some guy came in the rear door and sat down beside him. For a second I thought it might be you: same tall build, comfortable in his western clothes. They whispered for a few minutes and then left out the back. I followed them across the alley to a little dump of a house behind the mall. I could see them through the dirty window and took a chance moving closer to hear what they said, but it was muffled.”

Cord fought not to shake the man to get facts. “What happened next?”

“When the stranger opened the front door, I was so close to them the door almost hit me in the nose. I heard Bryce say something about how the guy’s paycheck would never happen because Bryce said he had to do the dirty work himself.”

“Did the man answer? Any clue what it was he didn’t do?”

Cameron shook his head. “The stranger just swore and walked off cussing.”

Cord couldn’t help but wonder, since the man was dressed western, if killing a horse was the one thing he wouldn’t do. “What happened next?”

“Galloway picked up a book, big like a photo album, and walked out the back door. He went straight across the alley and back into the theater. When I followed five minutes later, I took the time to take the tape off the lock. Nothing bothers me more than people sneaking in without paying.”

“What next?”

“Oh, Galloway watched the movie, drove by a takeout place, and went back to the B&B. I hung around until ten, but he never left the place. I thought of driving back to the dump of a house, but I figure it was just where they met to talk. Then I remembered Bryce hadn’t taken the album in. It took me a while, but I unlocked the rental car door and found it under the front seat.”

Cameron pulled an old photo album out from under papers on his desk. “I thought you should see this. I’ll get it back before dawn so Bryce will never know.”

Cord slowly opened the book and began to turn the pages. Photo after photo. All of them were grainy, but he had no problem seeing that they were of Nevada. Riding. Swimming. Walking. Smiling on the steps of her home. He couldn’t see much detail. They were probably taken with a cell phone and blown up on a computer before being run off on plain paper. In a few she looked younger by a few years and her hair was shorter than it was now.

“Bryce is collecting pictures of my wife?” Cord whispered after a few minutes. The last one in the book was of her standing next to him at Marty’s funeral. In the center of the picture, where her arm linked his, someone had cut a hole in the picture.

Cameron frowned. “Someone is obsessed with her. I heard that her ex-husband was in town to try and buy her ranch, but he doesn’t want the ranch back, he wants her.”

“But why would he be causing trouble around the ranch?”

“Maybe he thinks she’ll turn to him?” Cameron shrugged. “If the ranch fails, are your pockets deep enough to bail her out?”

“I don’t even have pockets.” Again the reason she’d married him drifted across his thoughts. She’d said she was low on money and needed a good season or she might lose the ranch. Cord had a feeling that if she’d gone to Bryce, she would have given up far more than the land.

Bryce Galloway wanted her back, and he seemed willing to do whatever it took to get her.

“My only question to you is, which one of these guys do you want me to follow tomorrow?”

“Bryce. The other must be just working for him, and from the sound of it Bryce tried to push him too far.” Cord flipped back through the book, noticing there were pictures of Nevada in every spot on the ranch. “But why the pictures? He was married to her. He knows what she looks like.”

“Not part of my job, figuring out nutcases, but if I was guessing I’d say Bryce is waiting for her to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He wants her in his sights. That much is obvious. Maybe he just wants to talk her into leaving you and going with him. He strikes me as the type who’s always gotten whatever he wants, when he wants it, and you are pushing him, making him go to extremes.”

“Maybe he’ll get tired and quit?”

Cameron shook his head. “He’s like an addict and your wife is his drug. Maybe she’s the only one who ever said no to him. Maybe he thinks she belongs to him. I’ve been around a lot of druggies in my life. If he thinks he has to have your wife, he’s not stopping.”

Cord nodded and moved to the door.

“One other thing,” Cameron added. “I found a couple of high-powered rifles hidden in the trunk of Bryce’s car. They were new, looked like they’d never even been tested.”

“Lots of men in this part of the country hunt,” Cord said, without turning around.

“Yeah.” Cameron’s answer wasn’t reassuring.

Cord walked out of the old downtown theater with more questions than answers. He drove around for a while after he left Cameron. He even stopped in front of the house Cameron had described behind the mall. It was easy to guess which one it was. Just an abandoned house with an old dirt bike parked among the trash near a crumbling carport, a perfect meeting place. No one passing. Not any occupied houses close enough to see a light.

An hour later when Cord slipped back into bed, Nevada rolled in his direction. He held her to him until dawn, knowing that trouble was riding full out toward them and he couldn’t do anything to stop it. He didn’t have enough proof to go to the sheriff, and Cord knew without asking that Nevada wouldn’t run for cover.

But what Bryce didn’t know was that he’d have to go through Cord to get to her.

At dawn, while she dressed, Cord kept his voice casual. “What are your plans today?”

She wiggled into her jeans. “I’m staying around the house this morning.”

He wondered if she was trying to act normal, the same way he was. “I’ve got to go check a few things. If you’ll wait here, I’ll go into the vet’s with you in an hour.”

“Make it two or three hours. I want to start a painting of Starlight for my study. Then we can go check on her and have lunch in town. I’m starting to like the daily special at the diner.”

She moved into his arms, laughing as she kissed him lightly. “I’m getting used to a lot of things lately.”

He tightened his arms around her, wanting to keep the conversation easy but unable to hide how much he needed her close. Part of him could almost understand Bryce being obsessed with her. The woman was addictive. He wasn’t sure that leaving her wouldn’t break him as well. Only, unlike Bryce, if she said good-bye to him, Cord would walk away. He didn’t want to own her or control her; he only wanted to love her.

“I’ll be back before noon,” he whispered against her hair. “Wait here for me.”

“You’d better be back.” She pulled away so she could smile at him. “I’m already starving.”

He could tell by the look in her beautiful blue eyes that her starvation had nothing to do with the special at the diner. He grabbed his hat to stop himself from undressing her. “Bye, Babe.”

He ran from the house, not in a hurry to be away, but in a hurry to be back.

Cord drove out to where he’d seen the dark spots on the earth when they’d flown over. The sun had dried the ground, but he knew he was still leaving tracks an inch deep. Whenever he crossed open land he hated the way his truck tires scarred the earth, even temporarily. The only good thing seemed to be that the land always went back to nature.

Cord spotted burn spots in what had been tall natural grasses. Too many circles of blackened grass for it to have been lightning strikes.

When he walked the burned area, he found a charred pack of matches, as though someone had struck them all aflame and dropped the pack. The grass must have caught fire and burned across the rocky uneven ground, and then stopped suddenly. The only reason he could think of was that rain had put the fires out.

As Cord drove back to town he went over the details. All he knew was that whoever set the fires had done so on a stormy night, hoping the fire would be blamed on the lightning, only they hadn’t planned on a rain coming so soon. Cord grew up with prairie fires. On backland like this they could spread for miles before anyone noticed, and by then they’d be so wide a hundred men couldn’t stop them from spreading. Someone might have noticed Bryce’s rental roaming over the land, but no one would have paid much attention to a man on horseback. Maybe the man Cameron had described as a cowboy had set the fires. He could have parked his truck and trailer on a back road and ridden in from the border of the property.

He drove into Harmony hoping to talk to the sheriff but found Travis Salem in her office instead. The ranger looked the same as he had when he’d investigated the horse poisoning, but Cord no longer found him frightening. For a second when Cord first saw him that day, he stepped back to being seventeen again, but now he remembered who he was. The boy no longer existed.

“McDowell,” the ranger yelled when he saw Cord walk past the dispatcher’s desk. “Glad you came in.”

Cord couldn’t think of any person he wanted to see less. But other than being rude, he couldn’t turn and leave. “Salem. I thought you’d be back in Fort Worth by now.”

“I was just packing up. No leads on your wife’s case. I’ll let you both know if anything turns up. We did find Joey Mason, the trainer, last night. I was planning to call you before I headed back. The trainer showed up on a flight passenger list at DFW and about panicked when he found out everyone was looking for him.”