You Can't Escape (14 page)

“Yeah. One of the cameras wasn’t working and hasn’t been for quite a while,” he admitted, easing himself to his feet. “But there are cameras across the street on a couple of the buildings. They’re mostly small range, only catch the person right at the door and maybe a little further, but not all the way to the Saldanos’ property. Still, you never know what you’ll catch. We’re checking ’em one by one.”

“You are, or the feds?”

“I’ve got Geoffrey working on it. The feds are breathing down our necks, but he’s going to come to me first.”

“Like I said, it’s not our case, and it’s definitely not yours.”

“Should be,” George piped up, sounding put out. Since he didn’t do much more than act like a dispatcher, September was half-amused by his proprietary tone.

“Saldano Industries has corporate offices in Portland as well, and since I’ve got a foot in both departments, my lieutenant’s allowed me a few days,” Auggie said.

“And the feds?” September asked.

“Don’t have to like it, but that’s their problem. The bomb was at the front of the building, not the warehouse in the back, so it seems like more of a warning. If they’d wanted to sabotage the inventory, they placed it in a strange position.”

“At least no one was killed,” September said, heading into the hall.

Auggie followed after her. “That reporter, Danziger, was hurt the worst. What exactly did he say to you when you interviewed him?”

“That he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” She stopped at the break room, conceding, “There really wasn’t much more. Both he and the wife were clear that they felt the bombing had nothing to do with him, and that his being there was a matter of unfortunate timing. They were anxious to just get out of the hospital. I thought he looked like he coulda stayed in a day or two longer, but what do I know. Whole thing had to have shaken ’em up.”

“Danziger’s done some pretty dangerous reporting in the past,” Auggie reminded her. “Brought to light some ugly corporate secrets.”

“He’s never gotten hurt until now,” September said.

“What was he working on? Did he say?”

“Nope.” She shook her head.

“He’s good friends with Maxwell Saldano.”

“And Maxwell’s sister is his wife.”

“Maybe there’s something there,” he mused.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. The whole thing looks like it’s straight against the Saldanos, but Danziger’s been a goddamn terrier on this kind of thing with other companies. Gotten a couple of CEOs jailed. I know the Saldanos are his family, but . . .” He frowned, his jaw tightening, giving him a harder, more dangerous look. Her brother had been a chick magnet for years, but had been aloof to most women, that is until last year, when he’d met Liv Dugan.

“What do you know about the Saldanos?” September asked him curiously. Something in Auggie’s tone had caught her up.

“Unsubstantiated rumors, mostly. The same you’ve probably heard.”

“You don’t think they’re into drugs with that import/export business?”

He grimaced. “Supposed to be only art pieces, but how do you know? What was the wife like? Carmen Saldano.”

“Eager to get away from me,” September said. “I kept thinking she was going to bolt.”

“I’ve seen pictures of her. Tight dresses and long legs.” He grinned wolfishly.

“Yeah, right. Like you can see anything past Liv.” She walked to her locker, then hesitated a moment, looking back at Auggie, who was leaning a shoulder against the break room doorjamb. “You know, it’s funny. She’s not nearly as openly sensual in person. She’s actually kind of coltish.”

He barked out a laugh. “You gotta be looking at her through a woman’s eyes, little sister. That woman sets off heat sensors when she struts by.”

“Believe what you want to believe, dear brother,” she retorted. “Carmen Saldano is very pretty and she looks great in a tight dress, but she sure as hell doesn’t know how to walk in high heels. Not that I do, either, I’m just sayin’.” She grabbed up her bag and jacket and messenger bag and slammed the locker shut, which made him choke with amusement.

When she got to the door, he didn’t move. Just stood there grinning, which kind of pissed her off. He said, “I’ve never known you to be jealous, but it’s either that or you’re blind if you don’t think she’s smokin’ hot.”

“Actually, she reminded me a lot of Liv,” September said, pushing him in the chest to get him to move out of the doorway. “Sexy enough, but quite a few degrees away from ‘smokin’ hot,’ if you know what I mean. Maybe you’re the one blinded by love. Now get the hell out of my way . . . and stop
laughing
.”

When Jordanna returned to Braxton’s Pharmacy to pick up Dance’s prescriptions, she was unlucky enough to get Margaret Bicknell again. Inwardly groaning, she put on a false smile as the older woman pursed her lips and said, “That’s a powerful painkiller,” as she took Jordanna’s credit card.

“Very true,” Jordanna answered.

“Remind Mister”—Margaret looked at one of the bottles, though Jordanna suspected she knew the information by heart—“Danziger to take all the antibiotics. Everyone wants to stop early and it just makes the bad bugs more resistant. We gotta kill ’em before they infect the rest of us.”

“I’ll remind him.”

As soon as the transaction was complete, Jordanna quickly walked away from the counter and headed over to the grill. She’d shared peanut butter sandwiches with Dance at noon, and then she’d hung around the house for a few hours with him, but in the end she’d found herself struggling for conversation. Every topic was either one he didn’t want to talk about, or one she didn’t want to discuss. She’d asked him about his pain, but he’d assured her, rather testily, that he could wait until she returned with the new prescription. It had been almost a relief to finally leave. She wasn’t really hungry yet though, and it was too early for a stint at the Longhorn, so she ordered a small basket of fries and a diet cola at the grill counter. The employee who’d been reading the newspaper earlier—Loretta, per her name tag—asked, “That all you want, dearie?” Jordanna nodded and checked the battery life on her phone. If she was lucky, she might just make it until Pacific Power showed up tomorrow.

She dawdled over her fries and cola for nearly an hour, ignoring the two times that Margaret Bicknell came to the end of the pharmacy counter, ostensibly just in the course of working, to stare at Dayton Winters’s infamous middle child. Jordanna just kept eating her fries and pretended to be checking her phone. When she was finished, she headed into the Thriftway next door and stood lost in thought for a few moments. In the end she bought a bottle of cabernet, a six-pack of sparkling water, and two limes. Until she had some electricity, there wasn’t that much to buy that she hadn’t already brought with her. Tomorrow wasn’t that far away. She could just come back.

It was just after five when she returned to her SUV, hours before Rusty was likely to be at the Longhorn. Deciding it was best to get Dance the prescriptions, just in case she decided to stay out later than planned, she drove back to the house, a forty-minute trip. Once inside, she realized that Dance was already in his bedroom and the door was closed, so she left the bottles on the kitchen counter, next to the peanut butter jar, which was pressed up to what was left of the loaf of bread. She set the sparkling water and limes next to them, along with the bottle of red, then found the wine cork and placed it in plain sight as well. There were coffee crystals available, too, and she took the time to mix up some tuna with mayonnaise for a future meal. It wasn’t gourmet, but it was what they had, and so far he hadn’t been complaining. As a last errand, she fed another large chunk of fir into the woodstove.

When she stepped back outside, she could feel a bit of spring warmth in the air and she inhaled deeply. The sky was a dusky blue, just beginning to darken around the edges. She could be gone a while longer, and she supposed Jay Danziger would be just as happy on his own. She’d already suspected he was tired, and he’d practically bitten her head off when she’d tried to help him move around, so she’d given up on that. He was grouchy as a bear with a sore paw, and though she’d heard that was a sign of healing, it sure didn’t make it any picnic to be around him.

Climbing into the RAV once again, she drove back into Rock Springs and down the street in the direction Rusty had said the Longhorn now resided. Just outside of town, she saw the place and wheeled into the side lot, parking in front of a hitching post made from a fir tree limb. The bark was peeled away and the wood sanded and lacquered to a soft shine beneath a string of small, round white bulbs that hung from the overhead porch, making the place look surprisingly inviting. There were no horses tied up, though in this town one never knew. However, there was a bicycle chained to the rustic post.

After she parked, she sat for a moment, looking through the windshield at the board-and-batten-sided building with its grayed wood, taking in the whole rustic, western style. Like the hitching post, the trusses that held up the entrance’s porch were made from rough-hewn fir limbs.

“Okay,” she said aloud, then stepped from the SUV.

The Longhorn’s front door was a slab of black oak, and Jordanna shouldered it open with an effort. She then had to push through the saloon doors at the far side of the vestibule. Beyond lay an oblong room divided by two posts in the center, both stripped and lacquered fir tree boles as well. Three wagon-wheel light fixtures hung in a line overhead, and the bar itself was a masterpiece of carved walnut, stained and nicked and lined by bar stools with spoked backs on swivels, the kind that punched you in the kidney when you tried to dismount.

She didn’t see Rusty anywhere, but then she was probably still too early for the kind of late-night barfly she suspected he was. She wasn’t hungry after the fries, so she bellied up to the bar and ordered only a light beer, which won her a cold look from the bartender, who truly had a handlebar mustache and muttonchops. Had he been wearing suspenders over a loose-fitting white shirt, the image of the old west barkeep would have been complete. As it was, his green golf shirt and Dockers kind of spoiled the effect.

“You don’t serve light beer?” she guessed.

“Not unless we have to, missy, and I haven’t had to in a long time.”

“What would you suggest?”

“A diet cola,” he said, taking her measure, which sort of deflated her. She almost asked for sassafras.

“Give me Jack and seven,” she responded heedlessly. In response, she got an indifferent shrug and, a few minutes later, an old-fashioned glass with the asked-for drink.

She had the insane desire to knock it back, but managed to just sip it. There weren’t many people in the bar, just two tables were occupied, but the soft click of pool balls said there were more patrons in the far room. As she sipped at her drink, the jukebox suddenly filled the room with Patsy Cline’s “Crazy.”

The song brought back memories of her father and mother dancing in the living room. She could still see them, moving around in front of the woodstove, swaying and smiling at each other. There had been love between them once, before her mother had gotten sick, but it was a long time ago.

Jordanna drew in a long breath and exhaled it carefully. The illness was supposed to linger, a slow decline like in Alzheimer’s. But her mother’s progression had been fairly rapid, and Gayle Winters had had a tendency to hike into the hills and wander if she wasn’t watched closely. Then came the day that she hadn’t been watched closely enough. Her father had had an emergency, and Jordanna and her sisters had been at school, and Gayle had trekked into the hills and gotten lost. They’d found her a day and a half later and taken her to the hospital in Silverton, but she hadn’t made it.

The downhill spiral that had begun when Gayle Treadwell Winters had first showed symptoms, a slide Jordanna’s father had solemnly told his three daughters would end with her death, had worsened faster than anyone had predicted. After her death Dayton had tried to act like everything would go back to normal as a matter of course, but that sure as hell hadn’t happened. Kara had grown ever more distant and spent time in her room alone, or anywhere she could jump onto Wi-Fi once she had a smartphone, and then she’d left for faraway places as soon as she was old enough. Jordanna had written stories and tried to tamp down a seething anger that at first had had no direction, except for her journal, and Emily had begun staying out late and sneaking back into the house in the wee hours of the morning, placing her finger over Jordanna’s lips whenever she tried to ask where she’d been.

Emily . . .

Jordanna’s thoughts turned back to her older sister, who’d been beautiful and oddly otherworldly. She’d been a sleepwalker, and more than a few times Jordanna had woken up to find Emily wandering in and out of her bedroom, eyes open yet unseeing. It had freaked her out the first time, but then she’d grown used to it—and also impatient with her sister.

“Wake up!” she’d yelled more than a few times when Emily had wandered into her room, clapping her hands or throwing a pillow at her wraithlike sister, who’d slept in long nightgowns while Jordanna wore oversized T-shirts. Sometimes it had worked, sometimes it hadn’t, but even when it had, her sister would blink at her in shock and then break down and cry. Jordanna had dragged a pillow over her head even while she felt like a heel.

When Emily started sneaking out, Jordanna had been torn. A part of her had been frightened because that was the way their mother had died: walking on a solo trip into the Cascades. The other part had cheered on her sister’s rebel spirit, something she hadn’t even known existed. Jordanna had talked to Kara about it, but Kara hadn’t really wanted to hear it.

“She’s seeing someone,” Kara had told her one night, when Jordanna had been in the bedroom she shared with her younger sister and they’d indulged in a tete-a-tete. “She’s always been crazy about guys. She’s screwing half the high school.”

“What! That’s not true,” Jordanna had sputtered. “You always say stuff like that!” Emily was the prettiest of them and Kara had always suffered jealousy over Emily’s looks. It came out in mean ways, and Jordanna refused to listen.