Dangerous Refuge Read online

  The wind flexed across Tanner and Shaye, bringing with it the smell of evergreens and stone. Like the day, the wind was balanced between sunshine and chill.

  “What if we don’t find out all the answers?” she asked.

  “We will. It’s just a matter of knocking on enough doors.”

  Or kicking them in.

  “Let me see your badge,” she asked.

  “Why?”

  “Because you come in with the wind, and you’re going to blow out just as quick. I’ll still be in the here and now, though. I have to live with all this.”

  With an odd curl of his mouth that was too hard to be called a smile, he pulled a leather wallet from his jacket pocket. A quick, practiced motion of his wrist opened the wallet, revealing a bronze shield and ID card. They gleamed in the light.

  “Detective Tanner Davis. LAPD Homicide,” he said in a voice that had an edge like the wind. “Western B, representing the great Olympic district. When I’m not in the cooler shuffling papers and stiffs.”

  A situation that is going to change when I get back to L.A. I’m a good cop. I should get back to being one.

  Curious, Shaye took the badge and examined it. The metal item was a lot heavier than she thought it would be. She wondered if he noticed its weight. “And you believe that Lorne didn’t die of a heart attack?”

  “I believe that it’s certainly possible. Does that mean a crime was committed? I won’t know until I find out more.”

  He retrieved his wallet, flipped it shut, and stowed it with the automatic motions of someone who has done it countless times.

  “If you really think something was . . . off . . . about Lorne’s death, you should talk to the sheriff.”

  “I couldn’t get past the door with what I have now. The last thing a sheriff wants before an election is an important, unsolved case.”

  “You think the sheriff is corrupt?” she asked, startled.

  “No. I think he’s as much politician as cop. Unless I can come up with a lot more than a few loose ends, the politician will mourn at Lorne’s funeral and the cop won’t look anywhere he isn’t forced to. I’m hoping the gold will be a lever.”

  “What gold?” she asked bluntly.

  “Pirate treasure,” he said with a straight face.

  She considered smacking him like a little brother. But he wasn’t her brother and he certainly wasn’t little.

  “Would that be treasure he dug up while shoveling bull manure?” she asked sweetly.

  Tanner smiled. “C’mon. I’ll show you.”

  After the sweeping views outside, the interior of the old house seemed small. It hadn’t been empty long enough to have an abandoned feel, but it was beginning to need a good airing.

  Shaye kept expecting Lorne to come out from the back bedroom and ask what the hell they were doing in his house.

  “I recognize Lorne,” she said, gesturing to the framed photo on the fireplace mantel. “When I asked him who the other man was, he ignored me. Is it your father?”

  Tanner didn’t even look up from the chimney stone he was poking around. “The one on the right is my dad.”

  “You don’t look like him.”

  “Nope. I’m meaner.”

  “Tougher,” she corrected. “Like Lorne.”

  “Don’t kid yourself. We both got a full helping of mean.”

  She wanted to argue that Marc Nugent had taught her all about mean. Tanner wasn’t. Tough? Sure. But not striking out at every target just because it was there and he was frustrated. Like Marc had.

  Tanner was different. It showed in simple ways . . . like the gentleness of his hand against her cheek even though he knew sex wasn’t on offer.

  I could get used to that kind of man, strong enough to be gentle.

  And that was something she shouldn’t be thinking.

  “Did they argue a lot?” she asked.

  “Lorne and my dad?”

  “Yes.”

  Tanner stopped worrying the stone and leaned against the cold chimney, watching Shaye, remembering just how good she had felt with only a brief touch, wanting to taste her long and deep.

  “Two men,” he said, “one ranch, one boss. Lorne. Dad was much younger. In Lorne’s eyes, he always would be. Lots of friction. But that’s all from an adult perspective. As a kid, I just accepted that they fought through me. I enjoyed the ranch, horses, cattle—hell, even shoveling manure. I worked hard bucking hay and fixing fences, and my uncle taught me how to shoot, ride, drive, drink, and judge livestock. Dad worked in Reno. I loved him, but I didn’t see much of him until we moved to L.A.”

  She thought of what Tanner must have been like, an energetic kid with the whole world to discover. “What about your siblings?”

  “By the time I was old enough to care about the ranch, my two sisters were through with their horse phase and chasing boys. They’re both married and have kids. One lives in D.C. and one in Atlanta. How about you?”

  “Older sister, married, no kids, doing the San Francisco social thing with my mother. Brother overseas, divorced, no kids. My parents have been doing laps about having grandchildren for almost as long as I can remember.”

  “Sounds like family. Never satisfied.”

  “Not in my experience. And you’ve ducked the gold question long enough.”

  His mouth lifted at both corners. “I’m easy. I’ll trade info for a kiss.”

  For a moment both of them looked equally surprised.

  Her breath backed up in her throat. She cleared it. “Speaking of gold,” she said firmly.

  He laughed and gave up teasing her.

  Later, he had some serious teasing and tasting in mind. He could tell that she wanted him, but she was resisting. He respected that.

  And he planned on getting around it real soon.

  Shaye watched Tanner and let out a silent sigh when he turned his attention back to the fireplace. The look in his eyes had made her feel like the sexiest woman alive.

  Hunted, too.

  Wonder when I’ll let him catch me.

  If, she thought quickly. If.

  The sound of stone grating over stone startled her. She walked close enough to look over his crouching body. His hands looked lean and capable as he pulled out one of the river cobbles on the side of the fireplace.

  There was nothing but darkness where the stone had been.

  “It looks empty to me,” she said.

  He straightened carefully. She was close now, close enough for him to smell the clean scent of her hair. No perfume this morning. Just warm, soft female.

  “The coins were kept in here,” he said huskily. “I saw them several times after I turned fourteen. Knowing about the hidey-hole was a Davis rite of passage for the men.”

  “The gold was Lorne’s fortune?” she asked, turning from the black hole to Tanner’s vivid blue eyes.

  Falling into them.

  Yanking herself back.

  “No,” he said, watching her lips. “They were Max’s continuing ‘screw you’ to the government and the crazy idea that he owed it money from land that generations of family had fought and died to hold against Indians, drought, envy, and politicians.”

  “Max? A Davis ancestor?”

  “The original hard-ass,” Tanner agreed. “Lorne learned it best, but my dad was no amateur. The gold was my family’s form of Social Security and Medicare. Originally it was nuggets and dust panned up the mountain or traded for steers. Then Max decided to celebrate a good cattle sale by converting everything into a gold coin that had caught his eye at the poker table. He’d never seen one like it before.”

  “Was it really a Spanish doubloon? Pirate gold?”

  Tanner leaned in closer, close enough to feel her startled breath, smell her warmth, all but taste her sweetness. “The coins were 1932 Saint-Gaudens,” he said in a deep voice. “They were a family relic. Each generation added some. Loans from the hoard were always repaid. It was our independence, our freedom, our solid gold ‘screw you’
to civilization.”

  “Maybe Lorne cashed in the gold when he decided to give the ranch to the Conservancy.”

  “Possible.”

  “But you don’t believe it.” She frowned. “Do you think the gold was stolen during a robbery and then Lorne was somehow killed?”

  The cry of a hawk fell out of the sky like a silver talon.

  She started and saw that the wind had opened the front door. Automatically she headed toward it.

  “Leave it,” Tanner said. “Place could use some fresh air. As for the gold, in L.A. people get killed every day for a lot less than that.”

  Wonder when Brothers will get back to me.

  When he has something, mook, Tanner said to his impatient half.

  Shaye opened her mouth, but said nothing. The thought of him seeing hard ways to die on a regular basis closed her throat. She stared at him, eyes dark and wide.

  “I’ll bet murder happens in Carson Valley, and even Refuge,” he said. “After all, humans live there.”

  She swallowed. “I know. It’s just that . . .” She shook her head. “Seeing that much death must wear you down.”

  Saying nothing, he put the stone back into place, pressing it tight, like he wanted the secret to stay hidden even now that it was out.

  She got the silent message. He wasn’t going to talk about his work.

  “The gold,” she said, “explains why Lorne said that he wasn’t hard up for tax money, so if the Conservancy was waiting for him to get that desperate, they’d wait a long time.”

  “When was that?” Tanner asked, turning to face her.

  “A few months ago, about the time I finally got him to sit down and really listen to what the Conservancy was trying to do for the small ranchers in the valley.”

  “Huh. You actually got to the old buzzard.”

  Shaye winced and remembered vultures condensing out of the dawn. “Not my favorite word right now.”

  “You prefer ‘bastard’?”

  She ignored the choice. “I finally convinced Lorne that we weren’t trying to evict him or sell his land to developers or turn it over to the mustangs.”

  “Mustangs?” Tanner asked, lifting his black eyebrows.

  “Oh, don’t act like that around Kimberli. She’ll bend your ear for hours and have you writing a check just to get her to go away. Mustangs are her special cause.”

  “Why? Mustangs might have had good bloodlines once,” he said, “but that was hundreds of years ago, when they came to the New World with conquistadors on their back. Those horses went feral as soon as they could get away. When settlers came, the feral animals were crowded off into the scrublands and inbred down to something small and tough enough to survive on sagebrush. Like burros.”

  “You sound like Lorne. But to a lot of people, mustangs are romantic. People have become attached to them.”

  “City people, yeah. Ranchers? Not so much. They compete with cattle and game for food.”

  “So do city people,” Shaye said blandly. “Kimberli is city down to her expensive pedicure. She adores mustangs.”

  “She ever been close to one?”

  “The license plate on her car, does that count?”

  He gave up the mustang discussion. “So you convinced Lorne to put the land in trust with the Conservancy? And he’d still work it for as long as he could?” There was an unspoken not real long in his words.

  “Lorne, and six other local families who agreed to put their ranches in trust with the Conservancy. They’re still able to live and work on the land they love and the Conservancy makes sure the land stays as it is, rather than being abandoned or turned into shopping malls. And that’s only ranches in and around Carson Valley. The Conservancy is all over the Intermountain West.”

  Tanner’s fingers did the tattoo thing on his leg again.

  “Come on. Let’s go talk to your Sheriff Conrad,” he finally said.

  “He’s not mine.”

  “Okay.” Tanner held out his hand. “Take a ride with me. You can sit in the car while I talk to the sheriff. Afterward I’ll buy you lunch.”

  “Um, the sheriff is Kimberli’s kind of person.”

  “Yeah, I got that last night.”

  “I’m sure he’s good at his job,” Shaye said.

  “I’m not.”

  Twelve

  I’m coming inside with you,” Shaye said as Tanner parked in Refuge. “Sheriff Conrad will probably be polite to me.”

  “It’s worth a try.” But he smiled to take the edge from his voice.

  Come on, Brothers. Call. I’m going to the sheriff with a double helping of nothing much.

  The county office was small and brightly lit, papered in the kinds of public service posters that made civilians feel that things were completely under control, with all bad guys numbered, known, and destined for justice. There was a door off to one side, leading to a small office. Tanner assumed that if the sheriff was in, he was behind the closed door.

  The secretary’s desk had a nameplate—Ms. Jones—and a man frowning over the phone system like a spaniel confronting a page of quadratic equations. The tag over his right pocket said he was Deputy Feldt. His attitude said he wasn’t interested in visitors.

  “That’s the first deputy on scene at Lorne’s death,” Shaye said in a voice too low to be overheard.

  “The one who didn’t ask about Lorne’s clothes?” Tanner asked quietly.

  “Yes.”

  That, plus the deputy’s attitude right now, told Tanner all he needed to know. He walked up and loomed over the desk like the Sierras over the valley, threatening to slide down at any moment.

  At first Shaye thought he had growled. Then she realized he was only clearing his throat.

  “Yeah?” the deputy said without interest.

  “I’m Tanner Davis. I want to talk to the sheriff about my uncle’s death.”

  Without looking up, the deputy punched a button. He frowned when nothing happened. “Sorry for your loss,” he said, eyes on the phone.

  “So am I,” Tanner said in his cop voice. “Is the sheriff in?”

  No wonder Tanner expected the sheriff to be rude to him, Shaye thought. Cops have it down to an art form.

  “Listen, Mr. whoever-the-hell—”

  A newspaper rattled loudly.

  Tanner glanced to the rear corner of the room. Separated only by a waist-high wooden divider and a gate made of the finest wood laminate that the taxpayers would foot the bill for, another deputy sat with his boots propped up on a tiny desk. He didn’t look up, simply rustled his newspaper again, sharply, making the sound of dry weeds harried by the wind.

  Deputy Feldt straightened like he had been smacked. “Sorry, I hate this damn phone. What’s the name of the deceased?” His gaze shifted to the phone.

  “Lorne Davis.”

  “Oh, of course. Same last name and all.”

  The deputy in back glanced up from his paper.

  Shaye nodded, recognizing him. When Deputy Nathan August wasn’t being an investigator, he often moonlighted as security for Conservancy galas. He had been the second official on scene, but had been called away before he could take pictures with his cell phone.

  “Oh, that Davis,” Deputy Feldt said. He looked as earnest as the spaniel breed he resembled. “I was sorry to hear about that. Lorne was a real . . . uh, real.”

  “Uh-huh,” Tanner said. “Has there been a ruling on the cause of death?”

  “We, ah . . . gimme a moment.” He glanced back toward the other deputy. No response. “I think the sheriff was just looking at the results for that, not sure . . .”

  “I’ll need to see them,” Tanner said in a tone that was just short of a demand.

  From the back of the room Deputy August said, “Not until the sheriff signs off on the report.”

  “Hello, Deputy August,” Shaye said, trying to add some politeness to the conversation.

  “Nice to see you, Ms. Townsend.” He looked from the newspaper to Shaye. A long
look of male appreciation. “You left the party early last night.”

  “Um, it had been a long day,” she said, surprised he’d noticed.

  Tanner wasn’t. He made a sound that could have been a growl. The deputy was giving her a visual pat-down.

  August looked away from Shaye to Tanner. “My sympathies for your loss.” His gaze went over Tanner, sizing him up like a cop.

  Tanner returned the favor.

  The other deputy hurried back to the closed door of the office and disappeared. The light came on. A few moments later he returned to the front, carrying a folder.

  “I’m sorry you were the one to find him,” August said, switching his focus back to Shaye. “That was a grim bit of business.”

  She stood up straighter, shaking off the chill of memories. “It was . . . difficult.”

  Without appearing to, Tanner watched her closely. If she realized that August was interested in her as a woman, she didn’t show it.

  “Okay,” Feldt said, clearing his throat and paraphrasing from the paper he held in his hand. “ ‘It is the judgment of this expert that the deceased, one Lorne Maximilian Davis, residing at’—hell, you know where he lived—‘is hereby ruled to have died from natural causes, likely stemming from cardiac arrest due to the age of the individual.’ ”

  “Bullshit,” Tanner said flatly.

  Shaye gave him a sideways look.

  “Ex-cuse me?” August said, coming to his feet.

  “Can’t be the first time you ever heard the word,” Tanner said, his voice flat.

  “What Tanner is saying,” Shaye said in a calm voice, “is that there are some new facts he’d like to add to the investigation.”

  “Not what I said,” Tanner muttered in a low growl, but only she heard him.

  “Yeah, I figured that out all by myself,” August said. “He must be some kind of city expert come to teach us rural folks how it’s done.”

  Feldt looked very unhappy.

  “It doesn’t take an expert, city or otherwise, to notice my uncle wasn’t wearing a hat,” Tanner said. “You know any rancher in the valley who doesn’t put his hat on before his boots?”

  August said, “Feldt, what’s the time of death there?”