He glanced at the bandage wrapped around his biceps. “I’ll be fine; just a graze. It looks worse than it is.”
“I was worried about you.”
“Yeah? Well, the feeling’s mutual.” Jesse took my hand, and I took comfort in that tiny spark. He raised it gently to his lips; the heat sent shivers all through me.
Shannon pulled off the gravel drive and onto the county road smoothly. She looked small behind the wheel of the SUV, but she didn’t seem nervous. Chance asked her something, and she spared him a glance to answer. I couldn’t make out their words for the rush of the road beneath the tires and the soft crackle of blurry music on the radio. I’d never feel the same about AM/FM stations after meeting her. I wondered idly if she could tune in to the dead in a vehicle too.
For a few moments, I let myself enjoy the heat of his hand in mine, and then I pulled back. Touching him was a distraction I didn’t need.
“Couple things we need to talk about,” Jesse said quietly. “Sheriff Robinson? I got no sense of guilt off him last night. Even when you made your parting shot, all I felt from him was fear . . . bone-deep terror, in fact. Much worse than the night we sprung Chance from jail.”
“So he knows something’s wrong, but he’s not part of it,” I surmised. “Why do you think he threw away those missing persons forms?”
Saldana shrugged. “Don’t know. Maybe he didn’t want proof of his dereliction of duty, but he didn’t want to go poking around out in the woods, either. I’m not infallible.” By his bleak expression, I could tell he was thinking of his dead partner. “But I don’t think I’m wrong this time.”
Frankly, if fear of the forest motivated the sheriff, I couldn’t blame him. I wouldn’t want to lead a search party out there, either. Too bad, because that was exactly what I needed to do. The only way to gather evidence was to go out there ourselves; I didn’t expect to like what we found.
“Good to know. If push comes to shove, Robinson might back us if he wants to get some of his spine back.”
Jesse nodded. “Possible.”
I watched the scenery for a while, green-brown trees passing in a blur. The filtered air felt damp and cool, as if it blew in from the distant sea. Then it occurred to me that I had no idea how the shooter had managed to peg him.
“How’d you get hit, anyway?” I’d thought he had good cover behind the hedge.
For a moment, Jesse studied his hands, seeming unwilling to answer. He said at last, “I stood up to distract the shooter when you went back onto the porch and through the window like a crazy person.”
My breath left me. “You got shot for
He scowled. “I would’ve done the same for Chance or Shannon.”
“I know,” I said, smiling.
That was the kind of man he was. He took his vows to protect and serve very seriously. Living with him might be just as difficult as being with Chance, but for different reasons. When I’d told him that some women had a hard time handling the constant danger their men were exposed to, I hadn’t been exaggerating to make him feel better. The divorce statistics spoke for themselves.
Shannon parked the SUV. “We’re here.”
I clambered out of the Forester and decided she was right. This was the worst part of Kilmer, a section I’d never seen before. It was literally on the other side of the tracks, and the houses built closest must have shaken like blazes when the train came through.
Once more, I deposited Butch on the ground. “You were with me when I went into the gas station, right?”
He yapped in confirmation.
“You remember what the guy smelled like?”
The Chihuahua tilted his head in thoughtful consideration, and it was cute as hell. After a moment, he barked once.
“Can I trust you to sniff around for him?”
Butch yapped twice, but I swear it was sarcastic.
I laughed. “Okay, sorry. I shouldn’t have even asked. Let me know if you find anything.”
He trotted off without deigning to reply.
It would help if we knew what we were looking for. As it was, we strolled through the run-down clapboard houses, admiring the patchy lawns, filthy gutters, and interesting piles of junk. Though I wasn’t inclined to agree with Sandra Cheney on principle, I could almost sympathize with her desire to keep Shannon from hanging around here. The whole neighborhood stank of despair and decay.
“So we had the fire,” Chance said, thinking aloud. “The burnt trees and grass. We found the ‘earthquake’ site. What are we missing?”
“Blood,” I murmured immediately.
“There was blood when I got shot,” Jesse muttered.
Shannon added, “Hail.”
Jesse thought for a moment, and we paused to give him a chance. “Miss Minnie said she saw the four horsemen coming and going.”
“People don’t ride horses through town,” Shannon objected. “Even in Kilmer, it can’t have been dudes on horse-back.”
“So what
Unfortunately, nobody could come up with an answer. We continued in a meandering path around the two streets that made up this country ghetto. I kicked at a clump of pig-weed straggling up at the edge of the road.
“When does the next train come by?” Chance asked Shannon.
“Tuesday and Saturday, just before six a.m.”
I suspected she’d know that only if she’d spent the night with her scruffy “friend” at some point, but that wasn’t our business. Time had gotten away from me, so I mentally tabulated how long we’d been there.
“It’s Thursday?” I asked aloud, none too sure of my calculations.
Jesse agreed with a nod. “So no trains today.”
As we completed the loop and wound up back by the Forester, Chance gave us something else to think about. “We should be looking near the tracks. Right here, in fact.”
I agreed with that. Unless we were totally off target, one of these ramshackle tract houses held something we needed to know. Talk about an exercise in frustration. Only Miss Minnie’s rambling had guided us here, and maybe we were crazy for putting any stock in it at all. It was unlikely that Curtis Farrell had lived anywhere near here.
We paced up and down the street four times before Shannon said, “That one has a red front door. I mean, it’s painted—badly, too.”
I saw what she meant. It looked as though someone had slung a paint can to cover up some ugly graffiti. From some angles, it also looked like splattered blood.
Chance saw it too. “Red as blood,” he noted as we approached the broken cement driveway.
Butch came around the corner of the house, wagging his tail fiercely. He yapped at me to tell me he’d found the house. I stared in astonishment.
“Here? The gas station guy’s been here?”
The dog barked in confirmation, and I gave him a rub. He leaped into my arms, and I stowed him away safely in my bag.
We proceeded with caution. After all, it was early; we were strangers, and most people around here had never heard of gun control. Nothing stirred behind the curtains. While the others made their way toward the house, I paused at the mailbox, hoping to find out who lived here.
