Page 11

CHAPTER 11

Diana had always found crying humiliating. It was so uncontrollable and involuntary. Also, she had never been a beautiful cryer, releasing a series of perfectly aesthetic tears. She was more of a loud, honking, red-nosed abject sobber.

But for the second time that night, she found herself unselfconsciously wrapped in Costa’s warm, firm embrace. She made one feeble attempt to hold back and then collapsed against his shoulder and wept helplessly.

Her house! It had never really been home the way the ranch had been, but after her parents sold the ranch during her mother’s final illness, everything she had kept with her from that time had come with her to Bisbee. The lumpy, misshapen vase she’d made for her mom in fourth-grade art class. The antique dresser that had belonged to her grandmother. The horseback riding trophy she had won in high school. Her mother’s wedding dress, that she had hoped to wear herself someday.

Diana had never thought of herself as a person who cared all that much about material things, and she had never tended to collect stuff , in general. But she was unprepared for the blow of losing all her possessions in one instant.

She had seen the glow and the smoke in the distance, but she thought it was someone else’s tragedy. It was only as she turned onto her street that shock and panic truly set in.

And it would have been much more of a tragedy if I’d been home.

Normally her car was parked in a carport behind the house. She wondered if someone might not have realized it was gone.

Was it a warning? An attempt on her life?

Or a terrible, terrible coincidence?

She cried herself out and straightened up with a final sniffle, reluctantly unwinding herself from Costa’s arms. He looked at her with a helpless expression that would have made her laugh if she had felt less miserable, then soaked a clean dishcloth at the sink and handed it to her.

“Thanks,” she hiccuped and tried to clean up her face a little. “I must look like a wreck.”

“You look like a very strong, brave woman whose house burned down tonight.”

There was a throat-clearing noise from the open doorway between the kitchen and living room. Caine was lounging against the doorframe, looking tired but amused. “I’m headed home. We’ll see if the lovely Gilly saved the rest of supper for me.” He paused and added awkwardly, “Do you need anything else before I leave?”

“No, get back to your supper and the lovely Gilly,” Costa said with a slight smile and a dismissive handwave. “I really appreciate you coming so quickly. And—the rest of it.”

This stirred Diana to put in, “Yes, thank you. I’ll keep your secret, I promise.”

Caine gave them both a terse nod and ducked out of sight. Diana suspected he was gone almost as soon as they could no longer see him.

“What is he?” she asked as Costa rummaged in a cabinet. “What did he do just now?”

“Sorry, that’s his story to tell. But now you know why he’s a huge asset to the bureau, at least when he’s not being a huge ass at the bureau.”

Diana giggled a little, as she was probably meant to. Costa set out a wine glass and poured her a glass of red wine, while he picked up an open beer from the countertop. Diana wasn’t that much of a wine drinker, but she accepted it, aware that she probably shouldn’t dip into anything stronger in her present state.

“Do you mind talking about it?” Costa asked, sliding onto the stool beside her.

“No, it’s fine.” She was very aware of his presence, the muscular arm almost touching her own—which had been wrapped around her mere moments ago. There was still a damp patch where she had cried on his T-shirt.

“We’ll stop if you need to, but why don’t you start by telling me about the guy who was looking for you today?”

Diana repeated everything Luis had told her, which wasn’t much. “Big, blond, wearing camo, and dangerous-looking. Luis said he didn’t use my name, he just asked about the lady helicopter pilot, but he could easily have found out who I was later.”

Costa started to say something, then abruptly fell silent and looked up. Diana tensed, but he was only listening to the sound of a slightly drunken couple laughing and arguing as they passed outside his house.

“Sorry,” Costa said. “You should be the one who’s paranoid, not me.”

“It’s enough to make anyone paranoid.” Diana took a gulp of her wine. “If someone really is after me, there’s no way they could know I’m here—thanks to Caine. And my car’s still in Bisbee.”

“True.” Costa ran his fingers down the beer bottle. He had barely touched it. “And I’m wondering if we ought to take advantage of our head start. If someone is after you, it won’t take them long to connect you to me. And the kid’s mixed up in all of this too. She could have been with you tonight.”

Diana shivered. “I’ve thought of that.”

“I don’t think you should stay here. I’m thinking about heading out before anyone has a chance to locate you and taking you to my family’s ranch.”

The ranch. She shivered for an entirely different reason. She hadn’t been out to that dry valley that had once been her entire world since her parents sold their spread. “But if these people connect me to you, then they’ll find out about the ranch,” she pointed out.

“Yes, but there’s no more defensible place I can think of. It’s at the end of a single road in or out. No stranger is going to show up without everyone knowing about it. And they’re all shifters out there, plus my female relatives will have some clothes and things you can borrow, as well as stuff for the kid.”

“Sold,” Diana said.

* * *

Costa took a few minutes to pack, while Diana bundled a drowsy Emmeline in a blanket. It was Costa’s idea to make sure Diana didn’t show herself outside; she went straight from the condo down a flight of steps to his car, parked in a narrow garage that barely had room to move around the sides. Diana found that a child’s car seat had been placed in the back, and struggled with the straps until Costa arrived with a military-surplus canvas rucksack over one shoulder, hauling a canvas shopping tote and a cooler, with a travel mug in the crook of his arm. He saw the difficulty she was having and moved in.

“Borrowed from one of Mavis’s relatives,” he explained. “I’ll get it. Here, trade you.” He handed her a warm travel mug. “Leftover coffee from earlier. I heated up what was left of the pot. We’ll probably need it for the drive.”

“Good thing you didn’t have much to drink,” Diana remarked. The wine was a warm glow in her stomach.

“Your groceries are in the cooler. Is there anything you want to stop for on the way? You might be at the ranch for a few days.”

Diana shook her head, unable to speak for a minute. Wordlessly she buckled herself in, and finally managed, “No. I’m good.”

Costa backed the car out. Diana resisted the urge to duck down in her seat. The alley behind his condo was dark and quiet.

“I’m going to circle around a little, have a look at the neighborhood and make sure we’re not followed before getting on the road.”

Diana nodded.

Costa circled the block, then made a wider circle and left his quiet suburban street behind. He merged into expressway traffic, took an immediate exit, and pulled into the parking lot of a chain restaurant, where they sat for a moment.

“What are we doing here?” Diana asked.

“Checking for a tail, but I think we’re good. I’m still going to head out of town the wrong way, then double back.” He snapped his fingers. “Oh, wait.”

While Diana waited curiously, Costa plugged a small attachment into his phone, hopped out of the car and did a quick check of its underside. When he got back in, her mouth was dry with nervous anxiety.

“What are you looking for?”

“Bugs. No sense in going to all the trouble to check for a tail and then leading them right to our safehouse. But it’s fine.” He slipped the device off the phone and dropped it into a pocket of his rucksack. “Do you think there’s any chance your phone or anything you have on you might have been tagged? They have these little RFID trackers that can be slipped into anything nowadays; even an Airtag can do it.”

Diana shook her head. “The advantage of having absolutely nothing on me,” she said with an attempted smile. “And my phone’s been with me the whole time.”

“Go ahead and turn it off so it can’t be tracked, just in case. That’s unlikely if they don’t have malware on the phone or law enforcement connections, but it’s best to be on the safe side.” After she had done so, Costa nodded. “Let’s roll.”

They merged once more into the flow of expressway traffic, and Diana found herself marveling at the idea of all these people, all these bright headlights and red-flashing taillights, headed somewhere in the night. After they had passed through the majority of Tucson, Costa took an exit, drove in a big loop on completely empty side streets, then merged back on going the other way.

“Paranoid? Maybe,” he remarked to Diana, taking the travel mug of coffee they had been passing back and forth. “But we have one opportunity to give you a really good chance of getting away from these assholes, whoever they are.”

“I don’t just plan to sit at the ranch while you investigate. That was my house, Quinn. My stuff. Everything I own.”

“I know,” Costa said. After a moment’s silence, he added, “But at least take a day or two to get yourself straightened out and recharge. And we want to make sure whoever it is doesn’t get their hands on the kid.”

Diana looked into the back, where Emmeline slept in the car seat with her head twisted to the side in the boneless way of young children. “Do you think she’s in danger?”

“I don’t know, but she’ll be safer at the ranch than anywhere else I can come up with.”

They drove on into the night, and after a while, he took an exit and they were in the endless black nothing of a lonely two-lane desert highway. Except now Diana had a true black void to compare it to, wherever they had been when Caine took them to Costa’s place. Here, there were the twin pools of the headlights to guide them, and a bright tapestry of stars overhead.

“Remember how we used to look up at the stars and learn the constellations?” She craned to see out the window. “We’d always try to find the Milky Way. The headlights are too bright, but I know it’s up there.”

“All of that was a long time ago,” Costa said, so low that even her shifter hearing had to strain to hear him over the car’s engine. Diana didn’t answer immediately, unsure if he had wanted her to hear.

Finally she asked, “Do you ever look at the stars nowadays, Quinn?”

“Not often,” Costa said.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t have anyone to look at them with.”

He stopped speaking then, as if he’d given away more than he meant to.

Diana searched for something to say. She needed to stop thinking about those long-ago nights looking at the stars, when stargazing wasn’t all they had done, or all they had dreamed of.

But it was Costa who finally broke the silence. “When was the last time you were back at your old place?”

“A long while,” Diana said shortly. She didn’t particularly want to talk about it, but as the road grew rougher and they got closer, it was hard not to think about it. “My parents sold our ranch—let’s see, let me do the math—twelve years ago, when Mom got sick and they needed to cover the medical bills. I haven’t been back since. Nothing to come out here for anymore.”

She had been to Costa’s family ranch a few times since then for family get-togethers, but it was usually a case of staying as little time as she could get away with. It was simply too painful.

But tonight, after a pause, she asked, “What are the new neighbors like?”

“The Halversons? They’re all right. They aren’t out there much. I think they were developing your folks’ old property as an Airbnb, but ended up running out of money for the renovations and now they only come out for a few weeks in the winter.”

“Oh,” Diana breathed. After a moment, she said, “It’s so strange to think of someone else living there. I don’t know if it’s better or worse that they’re not really doing anything with the place. Having it wildly changed would be even harder than having it abandoned ... I guess.” She gripped the inside door handle as they hit a pothole. The road was generally at its worst in the spring, with washouts and other erosion.

She couldn’t quite bring herself to tell Costa how she had daydreamed of buying the old place back. It never was more than a daydream. Even if she could have afforded it, she couldn’t have lived out here, several hours’ drive from her job. But now, with even the ruts in the road feeling familiar, she ached with nostalgia.

“Here we are,” Costa murmured, braking. The headlights raked across a boulder beside the road with WILD BOAR RANCH painted on it. The road they had been following went on up the canyon, leading to other ranches and small homesteads in the backcountry—the place that had been the Reid spread, now the Halversons’, and other neighbors.

But they turned onto a road that was considerably rougher than the one they had been driving. It was only one lane, although since there wasn’t a lot of vegetation along the road, it would have been possible to pull the vehicle offroad in any relatively flat spot. And they would have to, Diana mused, if another driver came along the other way.

Not that she expected it. They were absolutely alone in the great darkness of the desert. The canyon, or more accurately the network of winding arroyos and wind-sculpted rocks along the sides of the canyon, blocked any view of the neighbors’ lights.

A final twist of the road, and suddenly there were lights twinkling ahead, illuminating the arch of wind- and water-carved driftwood that marked the entrance to the Costa ranch. Ancient, gnarled pieces of pine, rescued from the arroyo and put together into an arch big enough to accommodate a fuel or water tanker, and from the look of it, absolutely unchanged since Diana’s childhood. She peered up at it as they drove through it into the middle of the cluster of buildings that marked the ranch proper.

In daylight, she could have looked across the dry arroyo to the house that her grandparents had built, but tonight it was completely dark over there—abandoned, now, with the new owners absent.

Home.

Or something that had been home, once.

She wondered how true it was that you couldn’t go home again. Apparently, she was about to find out.