Rustler's Moon (10 page)

His hand reached up and brushed her arm. “I will,” he said, letting his touch linger. “Thanks to you, we may have just discovered the value of this old relic.”

She stepped away trying to understand how this man’s slight touch could affect her so. She couldn’t stop watching the way his hands moved respectfully over the old wood.

Wilkes saw its value even through the dust and decay.

She listened as the men talked in low voices as though they were awaking history. Finally, Wilkes turned to her and looked a bit guilty for keeping her so late.

“We have to go, Yancy,” he said without looking away from her. “This’ll still be here tomorrow and our new curator has had a long day.”

She didn’t argue.

“I’ll walk through all the rooms and turn out lights while you get your things.” He was still watching her. “I’ll check locks.”

She touched the place on her arm where his hand had been. When she looked up, he was still staring at her. Probably reading her mind.

“I’ll be right back,” she whispered, guessing he probably knew how to lock up better than she did.

“No hurry,” he added, probably seeing the exhaustion in her eyes. “I know what I’m doing here. I’ve worked on this display before. Your treasure is safe with us.”

Of course he knew the museum. He was a Wagner. He belonged in this place far more than she did.

As she climbed the stairs, she couldn’t stop smiling. Wilkes was a far more complicated man than she’d thought.

When she reached her office, she noticed the message light blinking on her phone. She hit the button as she grabbed a pen to write down the message.

For a moment, there was nothing. Then, in a low voice, a man said simply, “I know who you are. We need to talk.” Another pause as if he was thinking about saying more, then a click.

Angela couldn’t move. Somehow, someone from her past had found her. She hadn’t been gone three whole weeks and they found her. If they’d been tracking her, they must know that she suspected her father’s death hadn’t been the result of a simple robbery. She could almost hear her angry uncle yelling for one of his assistants to go find the girl and bring her back.

Maybe they thought she took something of value, but all she took was her father’s ledger and the picture of them on a fishing trip twenty years ago. Everything else she left with had belonged to her.

Her logical mind began to list everything she’d packed. Her mother’s quilts, her father’s fishing gear, the ugly cat, her clothes, her small jewelry box with earrings she’d bought herself and her mother’s wedding band and the replica Greek necklace that her father had given her.

The money her father transferred to her account was exactly the amount Uncle Anthony had borrowed years ago. Surely her uncle didn’t think that it was his now that her father was dead.

Angela’s hands shook as she reached for her jacket. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe it was just a crank call. Maybe she had a stalker. There was no one from home who would take the time to follow her. Not for fifty thousand dollars and a few inexpensive pieces of jewelry.

She’d thought she had a stalker once when she was in college, but her mother told her she wasn’t the kind of girl who men chase. Only now someone was watching her. The phone message was proof.

The caller might be outside in the dark watching her right now. Maybe one of the thugs who drove the company trucks back home. Her uncle had never liked her, never trusted her with the family matters, and now he, or one of the hired thugs she’d always been afraid of, had tracked her down.

She turned off her office light and stood in the evening shadows staring out at the night wondering if the man behind the message was out there in the dark, watching, waiting for her to be alone.

The shadow of the old man with his walking stick was outlined in autumn’s pale grass. The sheriff had called him Carter something. He moved slowly toward the tiny RV he’d parked as close to the edge of the canyon as he could get. Somehow seeing Carter there was comforting. Maybe one person would hear her scream if the caller came after her.

Slowly, she walked down the stairs. The voice on the phone could be anyone. Maybe her mother was wrong. Maybe someone
was
stalking her. She’d met several men from town already. She’d even waved at a few fishermen at the lake, and the kid at the grocery store had politely asked why she had moved to Crossroads when he carried her groceries to her car.

When she entered the wagon room, she realized she knew only one thing for certain. The caller was not Wilkes Wagner. He had no phone.

For the first time since she’d met the man, she felt safe around him.

Wilkes introduced her properly to Yancy. The thin man was shorter, maybe a few years younger and not as educated, she guessed from his speech, but Yancy Grey and Wilkes shared an easygoing friendship. Maybe it was because they were both tinkers. They’d found wonder in the workings of an old wagon.

“This belonged to the family who lived in an old house Yancy thinks whispers to him late at night.” Wilkes stepped over a wagon wheel and several boards. He must have seen her wide eyes, because he rushed to add, “We’ll put that back on, don’t worry.”

He touched her arm in reassurance. This time his touch was gentle, reassuring, but she still felt the warmth of it.

“Yancy reminded me that you don’t know the interesting part. How could you? You’re new in town. Everyone calls the place the Gypsy House, so it’s possible the Stanley family came in a vardo.”

“Some folks think the house is haunted,” Yancy added as he dusted off the wagon’s window box. “Others swear it has a curse on it. But Wilkes says it’s just an old house.”

“Those are just stories,” Wilkes said as if he thought they might frighten her. In a whisper, he added, “You all right, Angie?”

She nodded even though she couldn’t stop shaking. She couldn’t tell him about the call, not in front of Yancy. She needed to think about what to do first. “I’m fine. Tell me the stories of the old house.”

Yancy called out from somewhere behind the display. “Some kids got hurt there a few years back. Ask them if it’s cursed. We’ll probably be struck by lightning for just talking about it.”

Wilkes shook his head and whispered, “I don’t believe in curses or blessings. It’s just the luck of the draw, that’s all.”

“I agree,” she whispered. There was no way those long dead could cause any harm. The man on the phone had sounded very much alive.

Yancy was taking apart an artifact and Wilkes was telling her not to worry. If she wasn’t already at worry overload about the phone call, she might have screamed at him. But Wilkes and Yancy’s crime was no more than a breeze in the tornado rolling around her.

She picked out the first of his conversation to build her illusion of sanity on. “I’ve met lots of people who feel called to something in their past.” There, that made sense.

“Once, I met a woman who found a rocking chair at an old secondhand store. She swore it hugged her as she rocked, as if welcoming her home. When she was buying it, I noticed her last name matched the name carved on the bottom of the rocker.

“We discovered the chair had belonged to her great-grandmother. It had been sold in an estate sale twenty years before the woman was even born.” Now she was rattling, Angela decided. That was better than screaming.

Since both men were still staring at her, she added, “As I helped her load it, she said she thought the spirit of her great-grandmother was rocking her.”

“Great,” Wilkes said. “Angie is just as spooky as you are Yancy.”

“I’m not spooky.” Yancy shook his head. “I’m hungry and the museum is almost two hours past closing. Maybe we should talk about this over coffee and pancakes. We owe the lady a meal for letting us stay late, and it’s all-you-can-eat at Dorothy’s tonight.”

“I agree.” She smiled at Yancy, a silent thank-you for the offer. There was no way she was walking out of the museum alone, so her only choice was to go with Wilkes and his friend.

The men agreed to meet at Dorothy’s place. Angie wasn’t sure she was part of the gang, but when she locked the museum and walked out, Wilkes was waiting at his car with his passenger door open. “Ride along with me, and I’ll bring you back.”

She hesitated. “Where’s your old red pickup truck?” The Tahoe didn’t look like something a poor farmer would drive.

“That old piece of junk belongs to Uncle Vern. He usually won’t let me borrow it. Still blames me for wrecking his last one fifteen years ago. He claims if I hadn’t rolled the thing in a bar ditch, it would have lasted another hundred thousand miles.”

She slid into the leather seat, guessing that an SUV like this probably cost more than her annual salary.

As they drove away, she thought she saw the outline of a black car parked near the tree line.

It looked exactly like a Mercury her uncle had once issued to his top employees years ago.

CHAPTER SIX

Wilkes
Dorothy’s Café

W
ILKES
WASN
’
T
SURE
how to handle Miss Angie Harold. If she’d been more his type, he might have flirted. After all, she was single and so was he, and despite her wild hair and boring clothes, she was cute in her short, shy kind of way. He was drawn to her as he could never remember having been drawn to a woman. She was unique in a one of a kind way that fascinated him.

He told himself flirting didn’t require any commitment. He would keep it light until she made the first move. Then, when he knew his advances were welcome, he might move things along fast or do what he usually did when he let a woman get close...run.

If she were beautiful, model thin and black-haired, he would have slept with her without promising anything. He’d found it was easier to walk away when his own lies weren’t slowing him down. Only, the last tall, dark-haired woman he’d slept with after the Houston rodeo last year said that he called out another woman’s name twice in his sleep. Wilkes didn’t want to sleep with a ghost from his past. And for once here was a woman who didn’t remind him of Lexie. Nothing about Angie was the same and yet, for some reason, he couldn’t stop wanting to get closer to her.

Wilkes wondered how long he’d have to live to outlive Lexie’s memory. She hadn’t been what he’d thought she was. She hadn’t loved him as he loved her. He didn’t want to see what she was today. He didn’t care. But he still couldn’t let go of a dusty memory of what might have been.

Damn
, he thought,
I’m a man mourning something that never was.

Logic told him that he should find someone else. He could be happy. Move on with his life. Problem was, no other woman felt right.

Angie was the first woman he’d bothered to talk to in a long time and she wasn’t his type. She didn’t seem to be any type. She was pretty, headstrong in a scary kind of way and intelligent to the point he’d never be able to keep up with her. She was also far too short for him and talked way too fast.

He liked being around her when she was yelling at him, though. Then she was cute as a baby rattler. And he loved the way she fired up at the slightest touch. Angie Harold would never be a woman easy to handle, but damn if a part of him didn’t want to try.

To cool down, he started listing things wrong with the woman. If they were going to be friends, just friends, he needed to change his direction of thought.

She had the irritating habit of writing everything down in a little notebook she carried in her purse. That was another thing. Her purse was big enough to double as a sleeping bag.

Wilkes hated women who carried big purses. First, there was no telling what they had in them: makeup, lunch, a gun. And second, at some point every woman with a big purse asks the man with her to carry it for her. To Wilkes there was nothing dumber than a man standing in the mall with a purse. He looked as ridiculous as a bull in ribbons.

Now, thanks to Yancy’s suggestion, here he was heading to dinner with bossy little Angela Harold next to him. Sunset lights danced in her hair. Folks called her color strawberry blond, but it was really the color of a dying sun. Golden, brown and rich red. She had it tied back but several curly strands were free brushing across her face and curling along her neck.

When they parked in front of the café, he made it around to her door before she got her seat belt undone. “You don’t have to do that,” she said as he slammed the car door closed behind her.

Just get through this
, he thought. Maybe she could be some help to Yancy? Angie wasn’t his type. She didn’t even let him be polite about opening a door. He hated that. Yet right now, walking into the café, he was fighting the urge to reach for her hand.

He told himself he wasn’t attracted to her, but he knew he was lying. Having her within touching distance was strong temptation. What surprised him even more was the realization that she didn’t seem to like him. Hell, everyone liked him.

* * *

Y
ANCY
SLID
INTO
the other side of the booth from them and started making small talk with her almost as if he were flirting. Yancy had lost his longtime girlfriend to a doctor in Abilene and he struck Wilkes as the type of guy who needed a woman in his life.

Unlike me
, Wilkes thought. He’d proved he didn’t need a woman. Hadn’t said “I love you” to anyone in years.

When Angie asked about food on the menu, Wilkes touched her shoulder while he explained how chicken fried steak didn’t have chicken in it. He decided he was sacrificing himself so Yancy would think they were a couple and not get involved with her, but Wilkes had to admit that he did like touching her. It didn’t matter what she wore when he touched her, the feel of her was all woman.

He let his fingers brush a loose strand of her hair off her shoulder while Yancy talked to the waitress.

“Does everyone in your family have red hair?” He kept his voice low.

“No,” she said. “I have no family. My mother died a few years ago and my father passed last month.” Tears floated in her eyes, but she didn’t let them fall.