Dangerous Refuge Page 23

Tanner hit redial four times, got nothing four times, and pulled out of the gas station fast enough to make the tires bark. He drove Lorne’s truck like it was a wide-stance sports car until a red light stopped him just before he got on the freeway. He thought about blowing through it, but there was too much cross-traffic. As he waited, he punched in the number of the sheriff’s office, hit the speaker, and put the cell phone on the seat.

  By the time he got August, the light was green and Tanner was breaking every speed law he could get away with.

  “Glad you called,” the deputy said. “The sheriff has been crawling up my ass about Lorne and Shaye and how he doesn’t need that kind of grief right now. What the hell is going on?”

  “Shaye’s in trouble. She called me, tried to say something, and then made a sound like someone kicked the breath right out of her. The phone went dead a second or two later. I called four times and got nowhere. Then—”

  He broke off, laid on the horn, and shot through a slot between two cars. One driver gave him the middle-finger salute. The second slammed on the horn and brakes at the same time.

  “Where the hell are you and what are you doing?” August demanded.

  “Just getting on the freeway north of Reno. All the traffic is like me, southbound. It will take me an hour to reach the place I left Shaye—Mountain View Motel, room twenty-three. Ask for a welfare check. Then call and—son of a bitch!”

  A red Caddy and a station wagon held together with duct tape and rust were blocking both lanes ahead. Tanner got in the Caddy’s business and flashed his high beams while leaning on the horn. The Caddy guy hit his own horn and flipped Tanner off, but sped up just enough for him to squeeze through.

  “Good thing there was a five-car pileup with injuries northbound about twenty minutes ago,” August said blandly. “Otherwise you’d have cops all over you like flies on fresh shit. As it is, southbound ahead of you will slow because all the yahoos just have to have a look at the pretty flashing lights and hope to see some poor citizen’s fresh blood. Now tell me which hornet’s nest the two of you kicked over.”

  “Welfare check. Room twenty-three.”

  “I can multitask,” August said. “The closest patrol unit will take about twenty, thirty minutes. We’ve got a wildfire in the mountains.”

  “Whoever is with Shaye has already killed two people.”

  She could already be dead.

  But Tanner refused to believe that. “Get someone’s ass down there now!”

  “Can you prove that?” August asked hopefully.

  “No time.”

  “The sheriff told me to stay put and shuffle papers,” August said, sounding angry and disgusted. “And he made it damn clear that everything to do with Lorne, Shaye, or the Conservancy goes through him first.”

  Tanner made a sound too savage to be human. “Call the motel. Find out if anyone signed in or out after Mr. and Mrs. Davis in room twenty-three. And if the sheriff asks, you’re trying to find me, not her.”

  “I’ll call you back.”

  “Thanks.”

  Without giving August his callback number, Tanner disconnected. He knew that calls to the sheriff’s station were automatically logged by time and number as they occurred.

  He wove in and out of increasing traffic. August had been right. Although the pileup was across the freeway, every idiot just had to slow down and goggle at someone else’s bad luck. Using horn and brakes, he got through the slowdown and went across the rest of Reno at eighty. Apparently there were a few cops not busy with the accident or the fire, because he just missed getting nailed by an officer with a radar gun on the overpass. The three chase cars working with the cop on the overpass were already busy writing tickets.

  Then he was out of Reno and on the miserable stretch of 395 that wound through tiny ranches, junkyards, and tourist shops. One car in front of him, someone made a bad left turn, heading across the busy highway for an antiques store. Tanner saw what was coming and aimed for the side of the road where there was just enough room to squeeze by between a stalled driver and a cottonwood tree.

  There was a rending, metallic sound as he slid by the tree. The wheel bucked hard, then settled. He shot out of the narrow gap minus the mirror on the passenger side and a few coats of paint.

  Behind him, traffic slowed to walking pace.

  No harm, no foul.

  The mirror hadn’t come completely free. It hung down and banged on the door like someone trying to get in. Tanner ignored it and the unhappy rattle of a fender. He watched the oncoming traffic ahead of him, searching passing cars for any hint of Shaye.

  It was a long shot, but when that was all you had, you didn’t sneer at it.

  His phone rang. He laid off the horn long enough to take the call. It was August, and he was on a private phone.

  “Nobody checked in or out after you,” the deputy said. “The sign outside the room requested maid service, so the kid at the front desk went in. Nobody there. No possessions left behind. He figures the guest took off in the old orange Bronco he saw on his way into the parking lot. Two blondes in the front seat. Couldn’t see if anyone was in the back, but a lot of those old Broncos don’t have a backseat. The blonde drove like it was her first time with a shift car.”

  “Shaye owns an old orange Bronco, but she knows how to drive a shift. The other blonde could be Kimberli. Put out a bulletin on the Bronco.”

  “I’d have to go through the sheriff.”

  “Why?” shot back Tanner. “I borrowed Shaye’s car and it was stolen from the motel parking lot. Nothing to do with nothing important, so why bother him? Get her license number and—”

  “On it already,” August said. “But doing you favors is going to get me fired.”

  “Working for Sheriff Conrad, breathing could get you fired.”

  A rusty chuckle came out of the speakerphone. “I’ll keep you posted, but unless I get something solid, I don’t think the sheriff is all that interested in helping you out. He’s got other dogs in this hunt. Hill, Campbell, and Mason have called him today. Whatever they said didn’t make him happy.”

  “Huh. They call him often?”

  “Sure. Helped him get elected. Paid for it, actually, along with Desmond and some other casino owners. Conservancy even kicked in.”

  “And I’m betting someone in that group is good for murder one.”

  Silence, followed by a hissing curse. “Davis, you are a great big helping of shit, you know that? I’ve put out the BOLO on Shaye’s orange Bronco. Now I’ll start looking for work. Don’t call except on my private cell, which should be in your call log now.”

  August disconnected.

  Tanner drove like he was in second place on the last lap of the Indy 500.

  Thirty-seven

  Shaye sat motionless. The unnatural position made her stiff, but since her feet were busy trying to push apart the Velcro closing of her backpack, she didn’t complain. What really irritated her was that her shoes were made for trails, not for finessing sticky cloth apart. After a frustrating amount of time, she managed to hold down the backpack with one foot and scrape the top of the backpack open with the other.

  But that was all she could do until Ace got tired of kneeling on metal and let go of her chin.

  As the sun descended behind the Sierra Nevadas, the scattered developments that failed to connect Carson City and Refuge gave way to ragged hills rising above the eastern valley. Wind stirred dust across the landscape like a series of small campfires. Behind them, something bigger than a campfire spread like a smudge across the sky.

  “Take the next right turn,” Ace said.

  Kimberli jumped, startled by the end to silence. “Does that mean it’s okay to talk?”

  “Sure,” Ace said. “You’re driving fine now.”

  Shaye warily stretched her neck. When his hand didn’t reappear, she decided that he had been as uncomfortable as she had been. She scratched her lower leg, testing how much freedom Ace would give her.

 
He tossed his hat aside and rubbed his head like it itched.

  “I’ll be glad when the first hard frost comes and kills the mosquitoes,” she said. “I got covered in bites out hiking.”

  Apparently he didn’t care about the bugs one way or another.

  They’d probably die if they drank his blood.

  Pretending she was scratching, she slid her hand into the open backpack. She knew right where the emergency locater was. It was just a matter of getting it and turning it on without being killed.

  She bit her lip against bubbling laughter, recognizing it as the first signpost on the way to hysteria.

  Deep breath.

  Yoga breath.

  Her fingers reached the locater beacon. The SPOT 2 wasn’t much bigger than a pack of cigarettes or an iPod. She just had to be sure she hit the right button. She really didn’t want to activate the talk function and give away her best hope of getting out of this mess alive.

  Her sweaty fingers slid over the face of the device. Her heart stuttered when she almost pressed the wrong button. Finally she found the recessed switch that activated the beacon’s soundless pings.

  Kimberli hit a hole in the deteriorating road.

  The SPOT 2 squirted from Shaye’s fingers. It seemed like forever before she found it again, but it had only been a few seconds since she first bent over. Adrenaline was screwing up her sense of time. Her finger slid off the switch, returned, and held it down long enough to activate the beacon.

  “Are you all right?” Kimberli asked.

  “Little nauseated,” Shaye mumbled, stuffing the beacon deep under the front seat, wedging it out of sight. “Light-headed.” She put her head farther between her legs as she felt for the bear spray. It was designed to convince six-hundred-pound bears that the human they were charging wasn’t really worth it. The pepper-based liquid was powerful enough to shoot its spray more than fifteen feet. She’d practiced with a water version, but knew that moving targets were a lot trickier. Especially intelligent human targets.

  There, in its loop on the side of the backpack. Smaller than a water bottle but not by much.

  “Think I’m coming down with something,” Shaye mumbled. She slid the spray canister free and hid it under her feet. “Haven’t felt good all day.”

  “Sit up where I can see you,” Ace said sharply. “Kimberli, watch the road. It gets worse in half a mile.”

  With a muffled sound, Shaye sat up. “Can I open the window?”

  “A few inches, no more,” he said.

  She rolled it down and drew some slow, deep breaths. The air tasted of dust and sage beneath fading sunlight. She had thought she would feel relieved after she had activated the locater, but instead she felt tighter, like a spring being compressed and then compressed ever more until it quivered on the edge of flying apart.

  Where are you, Tanner?

  Why did I find you only to lose you?

  There was no answer but her memory of Lorne’s body and scavengers closing in.

  She did some more deep breathing. The cylinder of bear spray felt comforting under her feet. The spray wouldn’t kill Ace, but if she scored a direct hit, it sure would make him lose his focus.

  “Now that you’ve had a chance to settle down and think,” Kimberli said to Shaye, “you can see our point, can’t you?”

  Is she on crack?

  “Kimberli’s right,” Ace said. “No need to let personal baggage get in the way of business.”

  Personal baggage? Does he mean Lorne?

  Carefully Shaye shrugged. “I’m not sure just what the business is that we’re talking about.”

  “Guess,” Ace said.

  “Since it all started with Lorne backing out of the Conservancy deal, I’ll guess the business is his land.” Mentally crossing her fingers, she said, “In the right hands, his ranch would make a beautiful—and beautifully profitable—resort.”

  “I knew you’d understand,” Kimberli said, relieved and eager at the same time. “The whole thing is bigger than one old man and a run-down ranch nobody wants, including the one who supposedly inherits it. These small-town, small-time ranchers just don’t get the big picture.”

  “Lorne sure didn’t,” Shaye said. That, at least, was the truth.

  “He was just letting this incredible opportunity go to waste by being so stub—”

  Abruptly Kimberli stopped talking long enough to make the right turn, miss second gear, and have to slow enough to start all over again in first. As if to make up for the mistake, she gunned the engine and jerked through the gears.

  “Take it easy,” Ace said. “This piece of crap is more than thirty years old. We’ve got a ways to go yet.”

  Not to mention getting back from wherever you’re going, Shaye thought bitterly. But I don’t need to worry about that little thing, do I?

  “Anyway,” Kimberli said with determined brightness, “we can put Lorne’s land to work for everyone now. I just wish he’d had his heart attack after he initialed the contract and signed the letter of intent.”

  “Inconvenient of him,” Shaye said neutrally.

  “Exactly. See, Ace? I told you she’d understand. There’s no need for all the rough talk. Shaye is our friend.”

  Kimberli half turned to glance at him in the backseat. The movement made the rhinestones on her silk shirt swirl like a mass of tiny suns shooting out her large, unlikely breasts.

  “Lorne was at the end of the road,” Ace said, his voice bored. “He just didn’t know how close it was. Nobody ever does. There’s no point in wailing over an old man’s death. Emotion is a waste of energy anyway. The Conservancy traffics in nostalgia, but it’s one thing to believe and another to use beliefs.”

  Kimberli blinked and turned her attention fully back to the road. “That sounds so . . . cold.”

  “Give me cold over stupid every time,” he said. “Just up past those fences and over the cattle grate, turn left.”

  “I don’t see a road,” Kimberli complained. Her expression said she wasn’t happy at the turn of the conversation.

  “It’s not much, but it’s there. Follow my directions and you won’t even have to use low range.”

  Kimberli gripped the wheel tighter. “It will be dark soon. You know I don’t like night driving.”

  “You think I like banging my butt in the cargo space?”

  She pouted.

  How stupid are you, Kimberli? Shaye thought. Do you really believe that Lorne died of a heart attack and that this is all just talky-talk business? A little seamy, a lot cold, but still, just business?

  “Stupid people live in the past,” Ace said as if he had been reading Shaye’s mind. “Smart ones live in the present and plan for the future.”

  Kimberli nodded.

  “Like a high-end resort on low-rent land,” Shaye said.

  “Among other things,” he said. “The present always becomes the future. The intelligent choice is to understand that and not get tangled in emotions and the past.”

  “There’s always a cost,” she said, easing forward again as though to scratch her leg.

  Her fingertips brushed the backpack. She flipped the top closed but didn’t fasten it.

  “Sure,” he said with a smile. “Take notes, Kimberli. Your blue-jeaned protégée is about to name her price.”

  Shaye started to deny it, then realized how dumb that would be.

  “Sure,” she said, echoing his tone. “I want a job.”

  He laughed. “I was right all along. You were just stirring things up to see if there was a better payday in it for you. Self-interest is at the heart of every idealist.”

  “I’ve never met an idealist, so I wouldn’t know,” she said.

  She doubted Ace had, either.

  Thirty-eight

  Tanner drove into the Mountain View Motel’s parking lot the same way he had driven since the gas station—too fast. The first thing he saw was a champagne Lexus parked opposite number twenty-three. He pulled in next to it.

&nbs
p; The Nevada license plate on the Lexus showed a rearing horse. The plate itself said SAVE IT. The plate holder said NEVADA RANCH CONSERVANCY.

  A chill settled deeper into Tanner’s gut. Despite everything, he still had hoped he was wrong, that Shaye was just asleep, safe, a cell phone with a dead battery on the night table beside her.

  Now he knew that for the fool’s dream it was. This was one too many in the string of coincidences clouding Lorne’s death.

  Okay, so Kimberli isn’t just into conning rich men. She has a sideline in kidnapping. Or did she somehow talk Shaye into taking a drive? And where did Kimberli meet Rua? Did she pay him with sex? Can she even hold a handgun well enough to hit him at close range? Is she cold enough for murder one?

  Tanner didn’t particularly like Kimberli, and he knew that if pushed hard enough, anyone could kill, but he was having a hard time seeing her as having the brainpower or the sheer stones to pull off swindling Lorne, hiring out a murder, and then killing the murderer herself.

  The important thing is to find Shaye and keep her safe. With me.

  He reached under the front seat and hauled out his pistol in its belt holder. He kept the weapon in hand and clipped the holster to the back of his jeans. Nevada didn’t require a license to carry a weapon in plain sight, so he wasn’t worried about pulling his shirt out to cover the gun.

  The air smelled vaguely of woodsmoke. Tanner didn’t hear any sirens, so he ignored it. Keeping his pistol along his right leg, he climbed the stairs. The tag requesting maid service dangled in the fitful wind. Left-handed, he fished the key card out of his jeans pocket, unlocked and threw open the door to number twenty-three.

  No sound.

  No shots.

  No body.

  The room’s stale air felt clammy after the dry, late-afternoon air outside. He breathed in cautiously but thoroughly. No scent of blood and human waste.

  Thank God.

  Tanner went through the two rooms with the speed and care of the cop he was.

  Empty.

  His pulse beat heavily as he put his pistol in its holster. Shaye wasn’t dead or hurt inside the room, but that didn’t make her being safe and alive anywhere else a certainty.