“Maybe, maybe not. Even if they do manage to kill me before I can sing, will someone start worrying about
you?
You met Ulrick—I’m telling you that guy’s a nutcase. Being prosecutor types, these guys are good at covering their butts. It wouldn’t take much, in rugged country like this, to have a terrible ‘accident’ while driving a steep mountain road.”
Her expression froze, as if a chill slid down the bumps of her spine.
“You’re just saying that so I won’t turn you in,” she accused.
“Baloney, and you know it. This whole situation has gone way beyond the usual paint-by-numbers law. I don’t mean just your helping me—think about Roger Ulrick’s behavior when he interrogated you. Some people think the guy’s just a squirrel. I think he’s another type of rodent altogether.”
She did think about Ulrick, and she had to agree with Quinn’s assessment of him. She also thought
about her distinct impression regarding Dolph Merriday’s radio and TV remarks—how they seemed designed to hang the no-good label on Loudon, emphasizing his supposedly dangerous criminal nature.
“Why don’t you get some rest?” she finally said, her tone exasperated. “I’m not turning you in. I’m just going to fix you something to eat. I happen to think you’re either telling all the truth or most of it. I…I believe you’re the victim here, although your stubborn nature and bluntness have no doubt contributed to your troubles. I wouldn’t call you a master of diplomacy.”
“Fair enough,” he replied, starting to lose the fight to stay alert. “But I mean it when I say you have to quit worrying solely about my motivations. Until this thing changes dramatically, I advise you to consider your own safety first.”
It was on her lips to retort: “That’s rich, coming from
you.
” After all, he was the reason for this horrible mess that had entangled her like a giant net.
Unless he was telling the truth, she reminded herself, as you profess to believe. In which case he was a victim of the crime, not the author of it.
She felt herself relenting a bit, and for just a few moments the humor of her dilemma struck her.
“Do you realize,” she asked him, “that I’m in more danger if you’re really the decent man I hope you are?”
“Cross your fingers,” he barely managed, half asleep already. “Maybe I’ll turn out to be a liar yet.”
No thank you,
she told him silently as she headed inside for more blankets.
I’d prefer the danger to the lies.
“Morning, Cas,” Hazel greeted her foreman from a cell phone. “Did I wake you up?”
“Would it matter if you did?” grumbled Caswell Snyder. “You caught me in my skivvies, boss, but I’m wide awake.”
“I don’t wonder,” Hazel said, chuckling. “I can hear the bawling over the phone—you’ve got the yearling heifers separated, haven’t you?”
“All ready for the alley,” Cas confirmed. “You want to come on up and supervise?”
Hazel considered for a moment. Usually this waited until after the spring melt. But taking advantage of the late-season grass, the herds had been driven to the outlying summer pastures, up on the lower mountain slopes. That way there’d be grass left down in the valley when the cattle returned to the home range.
For the next couple days the yearling heifers would be worked through narrow corrals while expert eyes decided which to keep for breeding and which to sell to the feedlots. Usually she assisted Cas. This amounted to the two of them praising their own picks while insulting—good-naturedly but vigorously—the other guy’s obvious bad judgment.
This particular morning, however, Hazel was working on a project even dearer to her than selecting the Lazy M’s breedlines. She was helping to form Mystery Valley’s, too, or so she hoped.
“You and Charlie take care of it,” she decided, meaning the Lazy M’s top hand, Charlie Bursons. “Neither one of you tinhorns knows an Aberdeen Angus from a government mule. But I’ve got mischief closer to home to tend to.”
“Good,” Cas fired back. “We can cuss and spit better without a woman around.”
“Why, Cas, there’s cussing every time I come up to line camp.”
“Huh. That’s just Sunday cussin’ you hear. We shame the devil when you ain’t around.”
“I leave you to your conscience then,” Hazel signed off, retracting the phone’s short antenna and dropping the unit into the big front pocket of her sweater. She stood in the doorway that led from her kitchen to the side yard and the mostly empty corrals beyond. She had already been wide awake when the birds began celebrating sunup.
At the moment, however, her attention was focused on a radio clock sitting next to the toaster oven on her S-shaped kitchen counter.
“—vehicle Loudon had allegedly stolen was found abandoned at the same remote mountain cabin where he first allegedly commandeered it and the vehicle’s owner. Tire tracks indicate he may have been picked up by an accomplice.” The newscaster reported smoothly in a pleasant baritone voice. “Authorities report no progress in the search for the fugitive assistant U.S. attorney. However, the search effort has intensified in the mountains surrounding Mystery Valley. According to one federal spokesman, agents equipped with starlight goggles are even scouring the rugged terrain after dark, hoping to locate the fugitive’s infrared heat images….”
“That’s what you say,” Hazel remarked to the unseen newscaster before she moved back inside the house to switch off the radio.
She buttoned her cotton sweater as she went outside into the early-morning chill. The sun was still only a ruddy promise in the east, and nighttime mist
lingered over the surrounding pastures. It had gotten cold enough, last night, to lightly frost the grass.
A day so fresh, she told herself, you just wanted to fill your lungs with it over and over, and thank the Creator for the chance.
Nonetheless, her thoughts lingered on the news report she’d just heard. Like anyone else, she knew only what the law and the media mavens let her hear. But she also sensed another slant to this Quinn Loudon story.
Partly that was because of Connie’s manner. The handsome fugitive with the football shoulders was sure giving somebody fits…
Tire tracks indicate an accomplice.
The line irked Hazel like an unseen nettle.
The exact part the young Realtor had played in the still unfolding drama was still unknown. But Hazel knew that girl was up to something, all right. Connie had been too quiet lately, for one thing.
And other people were being too quiet about Connie. Deliberately quiet.
Whatever she was up to, it smelled like it involved Quinn Loudon. And it was something to which once-burned, twice-shy Connie was having to respond to with her heart—a dicey proposition, at best.
Hazel knew full well what a risk love could be: an auto accident had killed the only man she ever gave her heart to. It took him away less than a year after their wedding and before their union produced a child.
For her, there had been no option but to honor her vows forever. Her passion had been violent and enduring. Even to this day she could remember how his words were rough and determined when he’d made
his proposal: he’d told her she was a McCallum before she married him and she would be one afterward too, and that he didn’t want some namby-pamby female hooking her claws into him, taking on his name and not standing on her own. She was strong and independent in her own right, and that’s why he loved her, and wanted her to be his wife.
So she, Hazel McCallum, had been forced to become even more strong and independent. Because her only love had died. Because she’d fallen hopelessly and eternally in love with the only man to prove her match.
But for all the grief of that unutterable loss, Hazel still believed that some were meant to take the risk. She suspected Connie was taking it now—or about to, although she might not fully realize that yet.
And perhaps she was doomed to repeat the same mistake she made with Doug.
Some people never learn, bless their oft-broken hearts. But at least Connie was rolling the dice, taking her big chance….
And once in a while, Hazel reminded herself, a gamble pays off big.
She herself was gambling on Mystery, for example, at a time when the “nattering nabobs of negativism” swore the little community was doomed to lose its unique frontier character. Doomed to become one more impersonal strip-mall town surrounded by a fast-food jungle.
Hazel’s bright, vital eyes rose to the dusky mountain peaks on her right, and she smiled.
No, she had not forgotten the snows of yesteryear—nor the fiery passions, either. But the world be
longed to the living, and her eye was fixed firmly on the future.
Mystery,
her
Mystery, not some anonymous developer’s, would survive if those who lived here loved this town enough to keep it alive. The way Connie Adams loved it, for one.
Hazel recalled one of her favorite descriptions of God: subtle but not malicious.
She thought—with all due humility, of course—how that same description applied rather nicely to her, too.
Unfortunately, her heart told her Connie faced a dilemma that subtlety alone would not resolve. She sensed it—that girl’s mettle was about to be tested, and tested hard.
Chapter 8
D
espite brief rallying periods, Quinn Loudon battled his fever throughout the long night. Tormented by guilt for not calling a doctor, Constance threw on some warm clothing and hovered over the sick man for most of the night. Exhaustion finally claimed her around 2:00 a.m., and she fell into her bed moments after undressing.
She woke at the first rays of sunlight slanting through the bedroom window. Seven o’clock, according to the alarm clock on her nightstand. For a few blessed moments she automatically geared up for her Monday morning back-to-the-office routine.
Then, in a rush of troubling memories and images, she remembered the fugitive hidden in her garage.
“Quinn Loudon,” she said out loud to the silent bedroom. She switched on the radio on her nightstand, but she’d just missed the state news.
She wrapped a terry-cloth robe around herself and stepped into a pair of flat-heeled slippers.
He might have taken a turn for the worse while she slept, she reminded herself. Or maybe he’d done something
el flippo
again, like steal the rental car.
As she hurried through the silent hallway, she caught a quick glance at herself in an antique cheval glass Hazel had given her as a housewarming gift. Her hair was a tangled thatch, and her complexion looked pale and opaque in the early light.
Her heartbeat quickened when she reached for the door that led into the garage. After all, she didn’t know what to expect. He could be delirious with fever or even…dead by now, she told herself with grim frankness. She might have something worse than a fugitive on her hands—she might have a fugitive’s
body.
The garage was dark and silent when she opened the door. She slapped at the light switch and the unshaded bulb spilled its waxy, pale light.
Quinn Loudon lay silent and still. Ominously so, she thought as she slowly crossed the garage.
“Mr. Loudon?” she called out tentatively. It was chilly out here, but he looked well bundled in covers. “Quinn?”
Nothing. The only noise was a burst of bird chatter from the yard outside. She felt cold dread slowing her even more.
Yesterday she had placed a rush-bottom chair beside the futon. She settled onto it, studying the peaceful set of his face.
“Can you hear me?”
“Yes, of course,” he answered in a wide-awake
voice that made her start so hard the chair creaked under her.
His eyes fluttered open to watch her as he grinned. His voice was weak but clear. “You know, you look beautiful in the morning. I like what you’ve done to your hair.”
“Mr. Loudon, my hair isn’t—”
He held up his hand. “This ‘Miss Adams’ and ‘Mr. Loudon’ business seems ridiculous now that you’ve had my pants down. I’m calling you Connie, Connie.”
She had to wait a moment for her heart to stop racing. “Call me what you want. But I hardly ‘had your pants down’ through any choice of my own. Your wound needed tending.”
“You even said you could’ve cut my pants off.” He gave her a lazy handsome grin. “That’s what they do in the movies.”
“I
wish
this were a movie, Mr. Lou—Quinn,” she corrected herself a bit reluctantly. She was returning toward the kitchen door as she spoke. “A movie would at least be over in two hours. I’ll fix you something to eat.”
She quickly filled the coffeemaker and turned it on to brew. Toast and cereal would take care of breakfast, but the cupboard was definitely getting bare. She pulled a strip sirloin out of the freezer to thaw out for later.
Later…
here she was planning meals for a fugitive while a multistate manhunt unfolded all around her. Even as she mulled her self-inflicted problem, hollow, reverberating thuds reached her ears.
She hurried to the front door and stepped outside into the cool morning air. The discovery of her Jeep,
the day before, had occasioned much stirring and to-do. Now, gazing toward the mountains, she saw the olive-drab helicopter that had started systematically searching the area around the Hupenbecker cabin late yesterday. Time and again the hovering chopper settled on its skids and men poured out to search another grid before moving on.
She wondered, while she took a quick shower, then dressed in matte jersey pants and a knob-button shirt, why no one had been to her house yet to harass her or search the place. Her best guess was that they must believe Loudon had taken to the woods and caves up on the lower slopes.
Once they exhausted that possibility, however, logic told her they’d be paying her a visit.
She managed to eat some toast and marmalade and drink a small glass of juice. Then she fixed a tray and went back out into the garage.
“Can you eat something?” she asked him.
“I better try,” he answered, struggling to sit up.
“Here,” she told him, folding his pillow behind him to prop him up a little better. “You’re pretty weak. It’ll be easier if I just feed you. At least I won’t have to clean up the mess if you spill.”