2 Landscape in Scarlet (15 page)

Juliet took the next turn hot, skidding in the dirt and throwing mud and rock into the air. The Subaru protested but held
to the track
. Behind her she heard a scraping noise, but no fatal crunching. Her follower had hit shrubs, not trees.

Too bad.

It occurred to her that maybe she was overreacting, but this obnoxious stranger had her back up. And anyway, she was enjoying the small bit of vehicular recklessness.
Their little chase was down
payment on a lesson in manners which was likely never to be delivered in full since she had no intention of ever going back to Washington.

But this man could be the surrogate
, the whipping boy
. She needed to get rid of him and to start spackling the cracks before her wall of privacy started eroding. Maybe a report about erratic behavior would keep them away. No one wanted to work with an insane operative.

She flashed by the first geodesic dome covered in weathered shingles. There were two, the second painted up like a cupcake that had begun to look a little moldy with the encroaching moss
marching up the walls
.
The road looked like it was veering left, but just over the crest it jogged right. Juliet wait
ed
to set up for it until the last minute, hoping dust might obscure her follower’s view.

The other car had fallen back. That was fine
.
Juliet just needed enough of a lead to reach
the auto dealership
without being seen and she could park behind the shelter of the old frontier wall that enclosed the parking lot.
If she moved fast enough, she could be out of the car and into the sheriff’s office before he turned onto the main
—
and only
—
street
running
through town.

Fortunately the town was all but deserted
, practically a ghost town,
and Juliet was able to nip into the lot and find a space next
to
the wall and half-shrouded by oleander and yew. She was out of her car and up by the gate only seconds later. She peered around cautiously and finding her path clear, she dashed up to Garret’s office.

There she met with a setback. Garret wasn’t in. She debated for about one second the merits of questioning Deputy Henderson and then decided that it wasn’t worth it.

“Do you know where the sheriff is?”

“I think he’s out by the stables. Or else down at the gallery.”

The stables. Had he thought of something else he needed to investigate
at the scene of the crime
? Some fact the
y had overlooked the first time?

“I’ll try and catch up with him there.”

The stables were closed and looking forlorn and as cold and damp as any building had ever been. Juliet turned the
south
corner and stopped short. The
re was no sign of Garret, but the
gray man was there.
The persistent bastard had headed right for the crime scene as if he knew that was where she would come.

He had his back to her,
facing a large stone. B
ut it wasn’t likely he would contemplate the boulder for long. It was
impressively
large but a rock of limited fascination
in other respects
. And if he looked to the left he would see the repair shop and, from that angle, a glimpse of the back end of the
muddy
Subaru.

He might have already done so and that was why he was waiting where he was.

Juliet called Fate a lot of names in her head but then turned to duck behind the thick yew where the ravens still sat
, living markers of the scene of a crime
. They cawed sharply as she passed them and she heard the gray man spin around to search for the almost human voices.

She waited
just behind the yew
, standing very still
while his eyes traveled
just above
the spot where she hid
. There was a softness to the ground under the trees where the shade was deep as twilight and rotting vegetation held the damp, but he might hear her footsteps crunching if she ran
and that wouldn’t do
.
She wanted him to follow, but not right on her heels.

That she was too old and too sensible to be running around without counting the cost did not occur to he
r. She was too gloriously angry.

He took a step in her direction and the
n
paused. He pulled a cell out of his pocket and looked at the screen and then back at her car.

Had he installed some kind of tracking device on the Subaru?

Juliet bared her teeth.

He wanted to play dirty? So be it. Let the games begin.

Her enthusiasm for the game of leading the gray man into the woods thick with ticks and animal droppings and other tiny traps of the great outdoors began to waver
almost immediately
.
She was
soon
remembering that this was an organization that tended to see dissent as treason
.

As if to assist her in seeing the error of her ways
a
fiery lash flogged the sky, tearing the air the moment
she
stepped foot on the
rocky
outcrop
where she paused to spy on her follower
and catch her breath
. The rain
held back
for the time being
, as if it preferred to
play
lookout from overhead until
it
knew what the outcome of
the chase
would be
, but it was coming
.
The clouds were too heavy to hold it for long.

There was some light hanging about the tree branches but only a little made it to the ground
inside the gully
. The shadows hid her but made hiking at speed difficult and dangerous.

They might have done their job too well. She had been waiting for a couple of minutes and the gray man had yet to appear. Juliet decided that
i
f
there was no sign of him
in the next five minutes
then she would go back.

By a different route.

Taking her thoughts on darkness as a request
for light
, Thor tossed down a bolt of illumination and noise that shook the stone she was squatting on. Juliet gasped and headed for cover.
The strike
had been close enough to make her feel like ants were crawling over her body.
L
ightning chased
her
up the hill
before she did more than catch a glimpse of a gray suit
coming up the draw
.
He was moving fast and looked perturbed.

Rough terrain and lightning hadn’t deterred him.
What the hell did he want
with her
? What kind of orders did he have?

The
vicious flash followed by a vociferous roar
only yard
s
behind them
should have discouraged him
from traveling any further
.
Did he not understand the danger?

Juliet certainly did.
After that first explosion, the storm was an unbroken threnody of dazzling light and deafening thunder that
chivied her every time she paused for breath
. Her muscles were burning oxygen at a tremendous
rat
e and there didn
’
t seem to be enough in the air to replace it.
The hillside would be a bad place to black
out.

Juliet
did her best to avoid the poison oak
which grew lush on the shadowed ground
, hoping spitefully that her follower wouldn’t recognize it
and was highly allergic
. She kept an eye out for holes that could break her ankle
s
and brambles too thick to force her way through
because she was damned if the agency would get a literal pound of flesh from her
, but most of her attention was focused on
her
destination
:
the caves.
That was the best place to wait out the lightening until it moved on. It was also a good place to lose someone
.

The mixed trees
’
remaining few leaves flapped overhead like panicky birds attempting a hopeless flight from
the storm
. They would be
gone
by morning
.

Juliet was almost to the caves when her brain cleared.
Fear had chased away the anger.

Unless she really was going to try her hand at getting away with murder then she needed to stop. Either her tormentor was lost by then or he was not. It was about to rain and dark was coming along with the cold. It was time to call it quits
and face her doom with a polite smile
.

The matter decided, she wasted no time in self-recrimination
for her flight into the forest
.
Juliet made it to the shelter of the small cavern and sat down on a rock. Her knees were wobbly and she was panting like a hot dog. She waited apprehensively, sure that the man would show up, but he didn’t.

The lightning finally moved on and Juliet decided that it was time to head back to town
and face her Nemesis
.
Always supposing the lightning hadn’t killed him.

She selected a different route down the mountain, choosing to sta
y
near the stream which came out near the repair shop. It would be really emb
arrassing to get lost and have G
arret arrange a search party for her
,
and also the deer trail was easier walking
.

Juliet passed a derelict cabin that had
probably
never met the building code
or even had a building permit
.
It was so far advanced along the course of ruin that not even homeless people would use it. Given the state of the cobwebs in the sagging window frames and collapsing roof, even the spiders had given up and moved along, leaving it to the fungi and moss that were consuming it.
There was no shelter to be had there for anything except mice.

There was a ten
-
by
-
ten square that had once been some kind of yard, but it was growing anything except grass. Unless one meant marijuana. It looked as though there might be a few rank stems struggling for survival among the brambles and thistles.

It was a relief when the ground leveled off and Juliet was able to use a form of locomotion that more closely resembled a walk
than
a
monkey’s
crouch and cling. Her clothes weren’t looking great and she had some suspicious stains on her hand, but at least her skin was intact and nothing was broken or fried
by lightning
.

The stream jogged east and Juliet found it easier to follow the water course then to head directly for the fort wall
where her car waited
.

She hadn’t
previously
explored that end of town which had been consigned to the
“
maybe later
”
renovations. The buildings were
still
salvageable, but only just. Given another couple years of neglect it would be cheaper to tear them down and start again.

Davis caught up with Juliet outside of the abandoned American Socialist Party headquarters. The building was small and sad
,
and hadn’t had clean windows since the summer of love.

“It’s not worth it,” he said mildly. “They are really tedious people.”

She turned to stare at her tormentor, taking a small amount of spiteful pleasure in the state of his clothing
and the scrapes on his hands and face
.

“Would it make you leave me alone? Maybe get my clearance revoked all together?” she asked.

“Doubtful. I don’t know why, but someone really likes you.”

His tone indicated that he didn’t
personally
see the attraction. This surprised a small laugh from Juliet.

“Then I guess I won’t do it.”

“Maybe if you joined Green
p
eace,” he suggested, his own face relaxing a little.
Davis was seeing the side of Juliet that attracted Raphael. She wasn’t young or exactly pretty, but there was an intelligence of mind, a resourceful competence leavened with humor that would keep her attractive long after the Miss America years were gone.