Killing Casanova (13 page)

Cassie stopped again, and Jake sat up from the steps.

“Let me guess, he had some lame excuse, and you could tell he was lying so you quit your job and haven’t seen or talked to him since.”

“No, Jake,” Cassie snapped. “He had himself transferred and sent me an empty box in the mail with a note asking me to send the ring back. He didn’t even bother to write the note in Braille so I could read it privately. I had to have one of the people from work read it out loud to me.”

Jake fell silent, and Cassie felt the burning of the familiar rage in her chest as she remembered the day Dylan had humiliated her so thoroughly.

“Fine, Jake, skip the story. The point is even after I managed to find out that he had been picking up girls in bars all along, and that I was the only one who didn’t know, I forgave him because I wasn’t going to let my memories and my past change me in to someone I didn’t want to be.”

“But you left your job in Albuquerque to get away from him.”

Cassie shook her head and turned her face towards him. “No, I didn’t. When Miriam called looking for a specialist in mobility for the blind, it was too perfect an opportunity to pass up. I used to believe I would never leave Albuquerque because eventually Dylan would figure out what he had lost, but I learned that losing something or someone is not a place to stand still. It’s a drop off into a new reality — cold, brutal, painful. But not as bad as teetering on the edge of a past that has no way to go backward.”

Jake stood from the steps now, shuffling discontentedly and shoving his hands into his pockets. “That’s different, Cassie, you had a past that might actually come back to you. Mine is gone. Parts of that old reality no longer exist, and if I go into a new reality then I have to just …”

Cassie stood and leaned on her cane as Jake broke off and turned his back on her.

“I’ll just have to go load that horse, that’s all. I’ll see ya.”

Cassie listened to him walk away and heard the roar of the truck’s engine before she turned for the steps and the ranch house. He wasn’t going any further with her right now. She sighed as her cane found the screen door.

“Jake,” Natalie’s voice tempted. “Why are you out here, alone?”

Jake kept his gaze fixed on the lines of the horses grazing contentedly in the setting sun, the sounds of the benefit dinner rising up behind them. The massive roan stallion dwarfed Starlight’s sleek, glossy figure, and he admired the grace of their movements as they nuzzled each other in the pasture.

“What do you want, Natalie? I’m not in the mood tonight.”

Natalie lost no time perching her long legs on the top rail of the fence and holding on to Jake’s shoulder for balance. “You’re missing all the fun,” she crooned. “Unless you had something else in mind out here.”

Jake stepped away from the whitewashed fence, and Natalie teetered dangerously off balance. Grinning at her he held out his hand, then pulled her down off the top rail.

“Go back to the party, Nat. I’m not going to be any fun tonight.”

“You haven’t been any fun for a while, Jake. You aren’t coming to Mcgoo’s much anymore, and I can never find you anywhere except The Rocking J.”

“I know. It’s been a little crazy since the fire.”

Natalie made a face with the mention of the fire, and Jake rubbed his hand over the tender new skin along his jaw.

“I’m glad it wasn’t as bad as I heard. People were saying your face melted clear off.”

“I was burned, Natalie, but it wasn’t that bad.”

“That’s not what I heard, and I was scared to come look at you like that.”

Natalie gave a little shudder and then grinned at Jake’s tormented features. “It’s gone now, right?”

Jake turned away from her and stared blankly back over the fields. “Yeah, Nat. Something’s definitely gone.”

“Jake. What a wasted night.” Cassie leaned, exhausted on the doorframe of her studio apartment, listening to the blackness before her.

After Jake’s abrupt departure the night before, she had slept restlessly, the sharp edges of old wounds bothering her peace of mind. Summer’s intensity was draining enough without the lack of a good night’s sleep to worsen the feeling.

Her entire day had been consumed with her clients and Jana’s incessant pleadings to accompany her and Lacey to the river party. Silver Creek was swollen with spring runoff, and the local cowboys were taking a shot at wakeboarding from Navajo Canyon Bridge.

Cassie had made no promises, but the prospect of all that water, crowds of unfamiliar voices, and the inevitability of too much alcohol increased her trepidations.

It would be cooler up the canyon, and she could take her laptop and digital voice recorder with her. The girls could swim or flirt or whatever, and she could use her head phones to type up her therapy notes on her computer. Her hand reflexively wrapped around the streaming voice recorder as she listened to the sound of her clock calling out the hour.

Cassie stepped quickly into her apartment, grabbing her laptop bag from her room, and returning to the still-open door. A hot desert breeze brought the smell of creosote and sage along with the sound of Jana’s Jeep honking from the foot of the outer staircase.

“Cass, grab your stuff. The sun goes down on the mountain by eight.”

• • •

Locking her door and finding Jana’s Jeep had taken no time at all, but Jana drove as if they had lost precious hours of daylight.

“Jana,” Cassie said breathlessly. “It’s not even six o’clock. Slow down.”

Cassie’s death grip on the door handle tightened as she felt the car careen around a curve in the dirt road. The energy in the Jeep was charged with expectancy, and Cassie pictured Jana’s face squished into grim determination as she hunched over the wheel.

“I know, I know,” Jana muttered, not easing off the accelerator. “Dan Collins told me if I came tonight, he would personally teach me to wakeboard. If I’m too late and Natalie Harper and all her bar bunny friends show up in their bikini tops, I will lose my chance to get some one-on-one time with him.”

“Dan Collins? I have never heard you talk about him. Who is he?”

The tone of Jana’s voice lifted, and Cassie could imagine a wide smile splashed across Jana’s dark features now more ruddy in a blush.

“I met him at Mcgoo’s a few weeks ago. The old Hudson Dairy went out of business years ago and has been for sale but no one ever thought anyone would buy it.”

“And Dan did?” Cassie asked, bracing herself against another too tight turn.

“Dan’s uncle. I can’t remember his name. He just told Dan if he would come help him make something out of it, the uncle would pay him and eventually will it to him. Evidently the old man is some kind of technology tycoon, and he just bought the place outright and can afford to make it run without profit.”

“So that means Dan will be a semi-if not permanent fixture for a while.”

Cassie heard the smile on Jana’s face again, as her friend’s voice brightened.

“That’s what he says. I hope he is serious. He is cute and sort of shy, and he has these warm chocolate brown eyes.”

Cassie laughed as Jana sighed dreamily but did not ease up on the accelerator.

“He sounds perfect. Hard working, kind, not one of the local boys …”

Cassie missed Jana’s response as the tires squealed around a corner, and the Jeep’s engine roared again.

“... It’s better to spend time with someone who is not looking for summer romance,” she sighed. “These here-today-gone-tomorrow guys get tiring.”

Silence drifted between them for a few seconds before Jana quietly asked, “Do you think Jake is going to become permanent after this summer?”

Cassie’s chin snapped up too quickly as she turned to face Jana with a glare.

“What difference does it make whether he stays or not?”

“Well, none to some people. Natalie and her friends prefer good time cowboys, and Carter might kill someone if he has to share with Jake year round, but I thought it might matter to you.” Cassie shivered at the Carter reference but gave Jana no other response. “Maybe it’s none of my business, but you and Jake seem to be …”

“What? Friends?”

“Maybe just less of enemies,” Jana teased.

Cassie shook her head furiously before she realized it, and then took another shuddered breath.

“Don’t get me wrong, Jana, I actually like Jake. He seems like a good guy, a little tortured perhaps, but a good man. Whether he stays on full time or not doesn’t matter. What Jake needs is a way to understand himself. He has never defined who he is working to become, so what he does or where he goes to do it is insignificant.”

Cassie assumed Jana was nodding her head in understanding as the Jeep pulled to stop beside the rushing water.

Jana’s slight hesitation before jumping from the Jeep was only long enough for Cassie to announce she intended to spend some time working.

“Troy is with the bridled mares tied to the willows. And Lacey is by the Dutch ovens, so you can follow your nose to either of them if you get confused, okay?” Jana’s voice floated back.

• • •

Trying to find a quiet place to listen to her notes turned out to be more of a test of her reflexes than anything else. The murky river water had flooded the banks and receded back between the river’s shores, leaving a slick black mud behind.

As she plunged her cane into the boggy surface, it was thick and heavy, giving it the texture of stability, but Cassie’s flip-flops found only glossy slick surfaces to rest on. And had she not had her cane, she would be covered in the brine.

Finally locating the protruding trunk roots of a weeping willow, Cassie ducked beneath its low hanging branches and rested her back against its trunk. The green wet smell of the river and plants mingled with the pungency of the horses and the cooking dinner. Bursts of laughter, rushing water, and exclamations of triumph as well as defeat greeted her ears, and Cassie smiled contentedly. The sounds became distant and muted as she put in her ear buds, opened her laptop, and pressed the power button to play back her notes on her busy afternoon.

Lost in her sightless world, Cassie worked quickly, typing her notes and recommendations into the laptop. They were too high up on the mountain, and she wouldn’t be able to e-mail them to her constituents, but at least she would be ready once they were back in the desert.

Cassie turned off the playback mode of the recorder and was switching it to record to make a verbal note to check on Heidi, when she heard the sound of someone moving across the swampy ground. Pausing the recorder, she listened, and then tightened her grip on the mechanism in her palm as she recognized a familiar voice midst the sounds.

“I haven’t seen him here tonight. Are you sure you heard him tell Natalie he was coming?”

Cassie instantly recognized the drunken slur of the voice speaking just beyond the overhanging branches of the tree. The reflexive movement of her fingers taking the recorder off pause clicked alarmingly in her own ears, but remained lost to Carter as he hovered somewhere beyond her quiet spot.

“Maybe he’s not here because his little blind friend isn’t, either.”

“Do you want to go check at Caswell Farms?” asked an unrecognizable voice.

Carter made an ugly grunting sound at his companion, and then swore. “Robert Caswell has a fire investigator out there still. If I randomly show up, Jake might remember that I was the last one in the stalls that day.”

Cassie held her breath, afraid that even the sound of her breathing would alert Carter to her presence. She was used to people having quiet conversations around her, forgetting that her ears were particularly sensitive to even slight sounds. She had accidently eavesdropped on more than one conversation when people spoke confidentially to one another, forgetting there was no filter for her ears. That had been how she had learned of Dylan’s true intentions; two women quietly gossiping in that detention center, knowing she was Dylan’s fiancée, and assuming she could not hear them laugh at her.

Cassie bit down firmly on her bottom lip, grateful this time that Carter was either too drunk or too stupid to look around and notice her. She cautiously placed the recorder in the pocket of her shorts and remained as motionless as possible.

“How long will it take for them to close the arson investigation?”

“Who knows? The sheriff is too stupid to figure it out, and it’s not like I left behind proof.”

“You don’t think Casanova has already pointed the finger at you?”

“It don’t matter,” Carter said, spitting into the mud. “There’s not enough time or money to prove anything. No matter what Jake tells them, unless I tell them I set the fire, they’ve got no proof it was me.”

Carter’s drunken laughter at his cruel statement became background clutter as Cassie’s pulse began pounding in her ears.

Carter had tried to kill Jake.
The brutality of the thought sent a shiver of dread across her shoulders.

Carter and his drinking buddy laughed as casually as if they had been discussing the weather. As the two men’s conversation drifted to their plans to hit Mcgoo’s if Jake did not appear, Cassie remembered her still running voice recorder and ended the verbal note. She waited, a little breathless, beneath the willows until the voices moved away before she rose, took a few faltering steps, and then pushed the willows aside.

The pungent odors of the party mixed with the river cleared her tumbling thoughts for a moment, and she suddenly caught the scent of alcohol, sweat, and cattle.

Pausing to tilt her nose toward the smell, Cassie’s nerves tightened, as she heard a curse of realization directly in front of her.

Cassie held her white cane in her right hand and wrapped the fingers of her left slowly around the handle.

“Have you been hiding under that tree all night?” Carter hissed. Cassie stepped back and braced her feet in the mud. “No wonder Diego and I couldn’t find you. You got Jake hidden around here somewhere, too. You his guardian angel now?”

The bitter sneer in the man’s voice made Cassie flinch internally, and she wondered if the expression had crossed her face.