Authors: Baxter Clare Trautman
Hold of the Bone (37 page)
Vomit rises to her throat and Frank gags. “Come on, girl,
please
.” She kicks lightly and Buttons inches forward. “Good girl, good girl.”
Frank strokes and clicks, urging her ahead, keeping her going. She is shaking so hard she's afraid she's going to fall out of the saddle. There is nothing she can do but hang on and trust. All she can do is push ahead. Her life is suddenly out of her hands, and she gets with sharp, implacable clarity that if she is meant to live, she willâand if she's not, she won't. It's so dreadfully, mercifully simple she almost laughs. Her fate is as fixed as the mountains and the moon. Nothing will alter the outcome either way.
Frank closes her eyes. She gives herself over to the beast beneath her. Her grip relaxes and the shaking slacks. Buttons picks her way doggedly. After a span of time that seems to elongate into an eon but is probably no more than a few minutes, Buttons turns into the cliff. She gathers her haunches and vaults effortlessly onto a low boulder. In a few strides they have passed through the gap and out onto the broad
portrero
.
The shakes reclaim Frank. She stops and leans, retching until she is empty. Kook licks her face when she straightens back into the saddle. With a firm hold on him, she kicks Buttons into a gallop. She sees as they fly over the meadow that the trees ahead are gaining definition. Night is yielding to yet another perfect, pearly dawn. She kicks Buttons
again. And once more. The mare strains beneath her, hooves punishing the mountain silence. Bone and Cicero struggle to keep up.
As they close in on the pines, she slows to let the animals find the path. They plod while she silently curses and wills them on. The sky pinks as they enter the tall pines. Frank drops from the saddle and ties Buttons. She breaks into a jog, urging the dogs on until they get to the ladder of boulders. She lifts Kook onto the rocks and gives the big dogs a boost. They scurry up the cleft and out of sight. Cicero howls, and Frank bloodies her palms again. She pulls herself up onto the pass to see the dogs wiggling joyously around their master.
Sal sits naked on the ledge. Her hair is loose. The Winchester lies across her thighs. Sal smiles. She is relaxed, happier than Frank has ever seen her. “I thought you might find me. You're a good cop.”
“Come on home, Sal. It doesn't have to be this way.”
“No. It does. The land's yours now. I felt it go at the
abuela
's. You felt it, too, didn't you?”
“I didn't feel anything,” she lies. “Come on. Put your clothes on. We'll go home.”
Sal smiles at her. “I am home.”
“Look. We'll get you a good lawyer. I know lots of 'em. We'll get you off. It was an accident.”
“It was, but lying about it for forty years wasn't.” She shakes her head. “I can't leave, Frank. You understand that.”
“You won't have to.” Frank steps toward her. “I promise we'll get you off.”
Sal rests a hand on the shotgun, her finger curled around the trigger. She arches a pale brow. “You can make those kinds of promises?”
“I can. I swear it. Look, who's to know? You could even say Cass did it, thatâ”
“No. No more lying. I'm all done with that.”
“Okay. Fair enough. But if you knew I was gonna find you, why'd you wait?” Frank indicates the gun. “Why didn't you do it already?”
“I had to wait for that.” Sal points her chin and Frank turns to look into the round, red eye of the sun. “I had to see it one more time.”
Sal stands. The sun flames her body. The sky behind her is translucent. She lifts the shotgun. The barrel rests under her chin.
“Don't do it, Sal. Please.”
Frank takes a step. Sal smiles and tosses the gun. Frank reaches for it, and Sal spins. She pivots slowly on one foot, a ballerina in a timeless music box. But this ballerina plants both feet on the edge of the bench and as Frank lunges, crying her name, Sal executes a perfect swan dive into the fresh, new morning sky.
Frank staggers back. The dogs stand with their heads hanging over. There is no sound but their panting. Frank drops to her knees. One by one, the dogs leave the edge. They arrange themselves around the shallow saddle. The sun climbs and the sky ripens to its true, fat blue. Frank removes her clothes. She folds them next to Sal's. She does not look over the edge.
A black shape slices the azure. A second joins it. With a great flapping the birds land across from her, higher on the curving ridge. They sink into their ebony plumage and settle to the waiting.
“
Zopilote
,” she whispers.
She is small, in a hut of bent willow, caring for a younger child and a baby. Then grown to a maiden, dancing barefoot to a clamor, unaware of the elders watching, murmuring ascent. Dancing again, an older woman in a cloak of great black feathers with a soft, red-painted hide upon her head, and while her body dances her mind soars over the mountains, gathering dreams and wisdom that she may carry them to her people in their fire-bright canyons, and she is old, old, very old, plaiting reeds by a black and depthless pond, smiling at the dark watchers in the air, and she is air and earth and fire and ocean, and forever has been and will ever be.
Bone stands over her, his breath upon her face. Her cheek is wet where he has touched it. Frank stands. She bends and feels in Sal's shirt pocket. The pouch is there. She sits. Bits of rock and twig dig into her skin. She rolls a cigarette and smokes. The sun forges down and her skin reddens.
When she stands, the dogs stand with her. They stretch languidly. Across the way, the featherless heads turn to watch. Frank steps to the ledge and looks down. It is a far, far drop. She stares into the fathomless brush, then west at the black canyons stretching to sea. She closes her eyes, feet side by side, toes over the edge of the warm rock. But for
her heartbeat there is silence. Then a soft stirring, and silence again. She opens her eyes. Bone stands beside her, ears cocked, nub wagging.
Frank steps back. She puts the shotgun on Sal's clothes and tucks her own under her arm. She turns with a lingering look. The birds wait like twin stones. Frank lifts a hand to them. As she does, a small weight settles on her shoulder.
“I'm here.”
She whirls. There is only rock, a scraggly bush, and three dogs waiting to go home. Behind her the dark watchers drop from their perch. They float and turn, rising in slow circles, high over the guardian mountain and sea.
Baxter Clare Trautman
is a Lambda finalist for her
LA Franco
mystery series. She grew up half wild in the Central American tropics, moved back to the States where she continued to haunt favorite treehouses, and eventually settled in a real house on the California coast. Never far from nature, she earns her keep as a wildlife biologist, and lives in the boonies with her wife and a beloved assortment of animals. In addition to the Franco series, Trautman is also the author of
Spirit of the Valley
and
The River Within
. She welcomes you to stop by and say hello at
www.baxterclare.com
.
“a tale full of complex plot lines, fast-paced action, and characters skilled in deception”
â
Library Journal
, Starred Review
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Minneapolis restaurateur Jane Lawless is at a turning point. Thanks to the tanking economy she has scuppered her plans for a third restaurant, and her long-distance romance is on the skids and likely over. Opting for a big change, she takes her good friend A. J. Nolan up on his standing offer to train her as a private investigator.
Jane's first job seems like beginner's luck. All she has to do is find Annie Archer's stepfather. Jane tracks down a likely matchâa man who has made a small fortune in real estate. While she's happy to close her first case, she finds it hard to reconcile the difference between PI workâfinding what people pay you to findâand uncovering the truth, especially when clues in this seemingly simple case point to more threatening family secrets than where Annie's father has been hiding out.
Ellen Hart's
The Mirror and the Mask
is another riveting mystery filled with the deceit and psychological intrigue that fans have come to expect from an author at the top of her game.
Print ISBN 978-1-61294-043-4
Available at your local bookstore or call 734-662-8815 or order online at
www.bywaterbooks.com
“Buttressed by distinctive characters and a splendid Minnesota setting, the well-constructed plot builds to a satisfying conclusion.”
â
Publishers Weekly
      Â
Jane Lawless is nearly dumbstruck when her ex-husband Chester reappears in Minneapolis. After their divorce he swore he would never return and left Jane with enough money to open her first restaurant. Now he's back and penniless, or as he would prefer to say, between fortunes.
But Chester is never without an angle to make more money. This time he is selling a priceless artifact recently looted from the Baghdad Museum. When he wakes up next to the dead body of his buyer with no memory of what happened the night before, Chester panics and flees the scene. Later he returns to cover his tracks only to find that someone has already taken care of that for him, but at what price?
The Cruel Ever After
is filled with the intrigue and cunning that makes Jane Lawless one of the most absorbing series on shelves today.
Print ISBN 978-1-61294-044-1
Available at your local bookstore or call 734-662-8815 or order online at
www.bywaterbooks.com
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Copyright © 2015 by
Baxter Clare Trautman
All rights reserved.
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Bywater Books First Edition: June 2015
Cover designer: Bonnie Liss (Phoenix Graphics)
ISBN: 978-1-61294-058-8 (ebook)
This novel is a work of fiction. The characters and events described by the author are fictitious. No resemblance to real persons, dead or alive, is intended.