Land of Entrapment (3 page)

She leaned forward. “And Megan knows you. She likes you. She’s always liked you. Maybe she’ll come back on her own.”

Dammit. I chewed my lip, trying to find an excuse, any plausible reason, to avoid this situation.

“Believe me,” she said, as if reading my thoughts.

“If there was any other way to do this, I would have.”

I watched her as she looked down at the table. She looked like she was going to cry again.

“I would do anything to have someone else do this, but I trust you with Megan’s past.”

In spite of our own, I finished for her. I could hear a slight catch in her voice.

“I’ll pay you.”

I stared at her as if she had just offered to pay me for sex.

“No,” she said, realizing how it must have sounded. “I mean as a researcher. I know you’ve done that in the past. I’ll pay your going rate for research.”

I continued to stare at her. She might as well have just slapped me.

“Plus room and board? Please. It would mean a lot to me. You could use it for your next book. You’re doing research this fall semester, anyway.”

My stomach lurched. “How did you know that?”

She looked away.

“How did you know that?” I said again. She had been tracking me and it bothered me. Why didn’t she just call? Because she knows it’d be harder to say no to her in person. I clenched my teeth, feeling used.

She stood, slightly flustered. “I checked. I needed to know where I could find you.”

“It’s not on my Web site,” I said, testing her.

“I called the department.”

I stood as well and stared out at the fields. By the sun, it must have been almost three o’clock.

Somewhere in the heat and haze I heard a tractor.

And somewhere further away than that I heard the engine of Melissa’s Toyota Camry as she drove out of my life and into someone else’s sunset. Don’t burn your bridges, I heard someone saying. ’Cause you might have to cross the river again.

“On the off-chance—” I started, keeping my eyes on the field, “that there was some other way for you to do this, would you have done it?”

“Yes.” No hesitation.

I shifted my full attention back to her. “What exactly does this entail?”

“So you’ll do it?”

“I didn’t say that. I want to know what it is you’re expecting.”

She went into professional mode. “I want to know who Cody is, what group he’s with, what they’re planning to do, and where they might be.”

“And?”

“Once you get that figured out, I’ll take the next step myself. If she really does want to leave and he’s forcing her to stay, I’ll get the proper authorities involved.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “I don’t want your money, Melissa.”

“I’m hiring you to do research.”

I wondered if Hillary had bought Melissa the same way she was trying to buy me. Here ya go.

Money’ll fix it. I’ll buy your heart and give you a new one.

A mouthful of bitterness accompanied my thoughts.

How much is your sister worth? How much am I worth? I tugged my left earlobe, staring out across the fields again. “If I do this, I don’t want your money,” I said stubbornly.

“Will you at least let me provide the place to stay?

And help with expenses?”

“If I do it.” I sounded petulant.

“Thank you.”

“I’m not sure. Let me think about it.”

“Thanks for hearing me out.” A faint smile lifted the edges of her mouth.

I nodded, feeling numb and cold inside, like I’d been left out in an early fall snow. The silence stretched between us until Melissa broke it when she opened the screen door. “Walk me to my car?” She raised her right eyebrow quizzically, almost playfully, like when she used to flirt with me. I guess I could still fall for it because I examined the outline of her back as she pulled the screen door open and stepped into the kitchen. Even underneath the T-shirt, I could envision her wiry muscles plunging below the waistline of her shorts. I quickly glanced away.

Misdirected lechery, I attempted to convince myself as I grabbed my hat and followed her through the house.

Grandpa rocked slowly on the front porch, his eyes closed. The heat of the day weighed heavily on him and the dogs. Barb and Dan gave Melissa only a cursory once-over as she stopped to say goodbye to Grandpa, thought better of it, and quietly descended the five steps.

I took my time putting my hat back on, waiting for her to slide into the driver’s seat and shut the door, saving me from any inadvertent physical contact.

Sinking my hands into my pockets, I maintained a respectful two-foot distance from the Lexus. She twisted in her seat and fumbled through something on the floor in back. She must have found what she wanted because she resumed appropriate driving posture and fastened her seatbelt before directing her attention at me. Automatically, I stepped closer.

“It’s good to see you,” she said with what sounded like genuine pleasure, though tinged with sadness. She was holding a business card and she wrote something on the back with a black pen. “I know you might think differently, but I’d like to maybe talk sometime.”

I shrugged.

She handed me the business card. “I know you’ll think about this. And I know you’ll call me either way.”

I took the card, glanced at it and shoved it into a front pocket of my jeans. She started the engine. It purred smoothly, powerfully.

“Nice rig,” I said softly. “You must be doing okay.”

She smiled and slipped her shades on before resting her right hand on the steering wheel. I heard Bonnie Raitt issuing from the vehicle’s sound system.

“K.C.,” Melissa said firmly, over Bonnie’s voice,

“no matter what you decide, I’m glad I saw you.” She smiled and shook her head in a “well, hell” motion. “I used to think you were a damn good-looking woman, and I didn’t think it could get any better.” Even through her shades, I could see her eyes sweep over me, from the toes of my boots to my hat. “I was wrong.” And she was backing up before I could retort.

Damn her. Damn ex-girlfriends in general. Dammit. I watched the Lexus until it turned left onto the main road, heatwaves swallowing the sound of its engine.

She was gone again, leaving me staring after her. I guess there were a few ghosts that needed to be put to rest. Out of habit, I glanced skyward. Evening was coming on. I had to finish with the alfalfa.

Chapter Two

MY EVENING RUN lasted longer than usual.

When I returned to the house, darkness was forcing a reluctant sunset behind a gathering thunderstorm.

Rain would be nice. Nights in the old house were nearly as oppressive as the days out of it. I thought I heard a quiet assurance from the distant clouds and I turned to study them. Grandpa’s match scraped in the darkness behind me. He stood on the porch, leaning against the railing. The embers from his pipe glowed.

“I didn’t see you,” I said, searching the dark for his face. “I thought you’d be in bed by now.”

I could almost hear him shrug. “A bit too hot yet.”

I joined him on the porch, feeling a breeze ruffle the sweaty hair around my face. The breeze died as quickly as it had come. The evening felt stuffy. We might be in for some rain after all. “Luke’ll be here in a few days. He’s excited to be coming back.”

Grandpa didn’t reply, but I knew he liked the idea. Luke was his youngest and favorite grandson. I didn’t mind my cousin, but he was a bit too Texas good ol’ boy for my tastes. What was important was that he loved Grandpa and I knew that he’d take care of him.

“I’ll be heading out in a couple of days,” I said simply. I waited for him to say something. Instead, he nodded in the dark. I caught the motion because the embers in his pipe bowl bobbed.

“I asked Luke if he’d install an air conditioner for you. He’ll pick one up at Home Depot and take care of that.”

“Don’t need it,” he said in his gravelly baritone.

“Luke might. He gets used to it at school.”

He didn’t respond. I had let him off the hook with that and he didn’t need to answer.

“I’ll go check on the fences tomorrow,” I added. I knew he needed to say something so I waited, perched on the railing.

“You going to call Melissa, then?”

I didn’t say anything at first. We were a lot alike, he and I.

“Sounds like she needs some help.”

“Yeah. It does.” What a sneak!

“Long way to drive to ask you in person.”

“Twelve hours, maybe.” I picked at a splinter in the wood underneath my hand.

“She did you wrong,” he said softly. I heard him take a pull on his pipe. He smoked tobacco that smelled like vanilla. “And she knows it.”

Does she? Does she really? I stared up at the approaching storm, watching flashes of lightning in the roiling clouds.

“She made a mistake.”

I looked at him, surprised. He couldn’t see my expression in the dark. I tried to read the meaning between his words.

“Forgive and forget.” He exhaled slowly and I caught a whiff of tobacco. “Or the past’ll poison you.”

I clenched my teeth.

“You’ll do the right thing,” he said. “Just remember who you are and where you came from.

It’ll get you by.” It was the closest he would come to saying “take care of yourself,” to saying that he was worried about me and please could I not get myself into a major loony-toon fuck-up situation.

“Yes, sir.” He was old school and I often addressed him as such. I envisioned him smiling in the dark, looking up at the sky. I smelled the tinny, moist odor of rain. “C’mon,” I urged him quietly.

“Let’s get in before it storms.” Wordlessly, he entered the house ahead of me, Barb and Dan materializing simultaneously and darting around his legs into the parlor as the first discontented whispers of thunder caught my ear. I called Jane and Perry in and latched the screen door. I left the heavy inner door open, since Grandpa and I both liked to hear the rain.

Lightning flashed in the distance, big electrical pogo sticks glancing off the plains, and I shivered. God, I hope I do the right thing.

THE MORNING ROLLED in on a stifling fog, residue of last night’s monstrous storms. Leaving the house was like walking into a Swedish steam bath even this early. Muggy, moist, and threatening to get hotter. I hated days like these, when the sun swam in a thick, turgid sky and everything moved listlessly in a humid fishbowl.

Grandpa left the house at seven to check on a couple of fields. He’d said what he needed to say the night before and we both knew where we stood. Too bad every relationship couldn’t be handled the same way. I went to saddle Ol’ Jim up for today’s fencing inspection. “Sorry, Jim,” I muttered as I tightened the cinch and checked his bit. “We’ll get done as fast as we can and come back.”

He might have understood because he grunted softly. I swung into the saddle and coaxed him out into the heat, my legs already sweating underneath my jeans. Dan and Perry decided to accompany us, though after a half-hour, they gave up and headed home. I ended up walking most of the fence lines, Jim following along. We stopped at every watering tank for both our benefits. I drank from the spigots and soaked a bandanna that I tied around my neck.

Nothing out of the ordinary, though I ended up ratcheting a few strands of fencing tighter.

By one o’clock I had nearly finished with the last stretch. Jim munched on some nearby grass while I adjusted the tension on a lower strand. I had spent most of the morning thinking about Melissa and what she had asked me to do. I hadn’t heard from her since the break-up, and all of a sudden, here she was. Still, Melissa was pretty diligent about things. If she felt there was any other way to deal with this situation, she would have done so. I was sure of that. And she didn’t call me or try to e-mail me. She drove down and talked to me in person, even though we had ended on bad terms.

I pulled my gloves off and clicked my tongue at Jim. “Let’s get the hell outta here, buddy.” I climbed aboard and steered him toward home. He didn’t need any extra urging. At the barn, I removed his saddle and blanket and rubbed him down as he munched on what Grandpa called “horse chow.” I made sure the saddle was clean and wiped off before I slung it over the sawhorse in the corner and then I stood and watched Jim eat for a while.

If Megan was mixed up with white supremacists—

and from what Melissa told me, it sounded like she was—what were the options? Megan was twenty-one.

She could run with any group she wanted as long as she wasn’t doing anything illegal. Melissa, however, suspected that this group was on its way to doing something scary. Well, so what? Why was it my problem? I wasn’t involved with Melissa anymore. I didn’t owe her a damn thing. Not after the shit she pulled with Hillary. I sat on a bale of alfalfa and absently chewed a stalk while I tiptoed through that corner of my mind.

My cell phone rang. I stood so I could pull it out of my pocket and check the number. “Hey, Detective Gutierrez,” I answered, rolling the r’s with extra inflection. “¿Como estás, mi amiga bellisima? ”

Chris laughed. “Esa, you crack me up. Spanish and Italian in one sentence. What the hell do you call that?”

“Italish.”

“That’s why I keep you around. Ten years and counting. Jesus. You’re my longest relationship.”

I laughed. “Holy hell, you’re right. That’s my longest, too. Why don’t we just get married?”

“What, and ruin a perfectly good friendship?” she countered, though the warmth in her voice was palpable.

“Good point. Promise me you’ll reserve a spot on your porch for me and my rocking chair.”

“And a pan of green chile lasagna.” Before I could respond, she continued. “Got your message last night but got in too late to call you. What’s up?”

I exhaled slowly, settling into a more serious mode. “Melissa showed up yesterday.”

Long pause. “There? At your grandpa’s?”

“Yeah.”

“What the hell for?” She sounded more puzzled than pissed. Chris didn’t have much love for Melissa after the break-up, but she never directly insulted her.I dug the toe of my boot into a bale of straw.

“Megan’s gone missing and Melissa thinks she’s with her boyfriend.”

“And you’re supposed to care because—?”