Page 13

CHAPTER 13

The wailing of the baby woke Diana with a jerk from uneasy dreams. She was already sitting up when she became aware that Costa was out of bed. In the living room, the crying died down to murmurs.

“Need help?” she called blearily.

“We got it,” Costa answered from somewhere out of sight. “Don’t we, baby bubba?”

It was still early. Dim light came through the gauzy white curtains, suggesting predawn. Diana flopped on her pillow, but as it became clear that she was too awake to get back to sleep, she sat up again.

She pulled on her jeans and socks, and padded into the living room. Costa was making up a bottle in the kitchen, holding the baby in the crook of his arm. For a minute she just stood and watched him. Why it was so captivating to watch him with a baby, she had no idea. But it drew her, especially in her sleepy state, her body still warm from the bed she had shared with him.

Costa looked up and saw her. His smile was quick, soft, and involuntary, and she found the warmth of his regard even more compelling than the sight she had been enjoying a moment ago of the baby nestled in his muscular arm.

If this keeps up, she thought, I’m gonna be in major trouble.

I’m worried I already might be.

Costa’s smile became more guarded, and Diana wrenched her gaze from his face. “Coffee?” she said. “I doubt we’re going back to bed.”

“Coffee sounds great.”

Diana poked through the contents of the kitchen, navigating around Costa as he prepared the bottle. She found both an old-fashioned tin coffeepot and a small (if old) electric coffeemaker, and decided to go with the sure thing rather than making cowboy coffee. Only things in the fridge were a box of baking soda and the handful of grocery items that were somehow, bizarrely, the only things she currently owned.

My worldly assets: half a gallon of milk, a pound of French roast, and some yogurt. Amazing.

At least it meant they could have coffee. She set up the coffeepot, and while Costa sat in one of the armchairs feeding Emmeline, she wandered around the cabin inspecting the rest of the amenities. There wasn’t much to see. Shelves held a few books and games. The closet turned out to be crowded with a variety of items including the sort of things she might expect in an Airbnb (an ironing board, cleaning supplies, a box fan) as well as personal effects that had probably belonged to family members staying over: jackets and shoes, toys, well-used sports equipment. She climbed the ladder to peek into the loft and found it absolutely crowded with boxes of books and toys, old furniture, and something in the shadows under the eaves that looked like it might be a spinning wheel.

Outside the windows, the gray dawn light had turned gold. Diana fixed herself a cup of coffee and took it out on the porch just as the sun rose.

It was a gorgeous sight. The cabin offered a sweeping view of the canyon, currently bathed in pale gold morning light with stark blue shadows. Diana could not quite see her family’s former ranch spread from here; it was concealed at this angle by a curve of the arroyo and bluff that separated the two properties.

The low angle of the morning light also picked out the spring-lush vegetation of the desert landscape. Patches of dusty green and gold vegetation, lit from behind; great sweeping expanses of yellow and pink wildflowers on the hills. The air was chilly enough to raise goosebumps on her bare arms, and filled with fragrant and subtle scents.

Costa emerged from the cabin door with Em bright-eyed and alert in his arms. “Ready to head down to breakfast?”

“And run the family gauntlet, you mean?” she asked. “Into the breach once more, and all of that.” After draining her cup, she left it in the kitchen sink, and they headed down the hill together.

By daylight, Diana saw numerous other signs of occupation that had escaped her notice in the dark. There was a motley array of dusty vehicles in the parking area in front of the main house, and another truck parked by the fence of what was clearly a pasture. Staggered lines of fencing ran across the sloping landscape behind the house, containing some cows, a calf, a few horses, and a couple of sheep.

Costa headed for the main house. They entered to be greeted by delicious cooking smells and a chatter of conversation, mostly female voices.

“I heard there’s a baby!” This was Auntie Lo, who swooped down on them, her long graying hair falling over her shoulders rather than tucked up into her usual bun. “Where’s the baby? Hi, sweethearts.” She kissed Costa’s cheek, and then Diana’s. “Oh, who’s a little darling, who is it? It’s you!”

Em, draped against Costa’s chest, looked around wide-eyed at the room full of strangers. After a little supportive cuddling from both Costa and Diana, she was willing to allow herself to be swept off with the aunts.

“Now then, CeCe, whose baby is she?” Aunt Brill asked, ever practical.

Costa promptly launched into a story, mostly accurate but skipping past a few inconvenient facts. He explained that she was a possibly kidnapped shifter child who had been found at a crime scene, they were currently trying to locate her parents, and they didn’t have a foster home for her yet.

This brought on a full groundswell of “Poor little lost lamb!” from the aunts, and there was little chance of getting Em back now. Costa and Diana both watched with a vigilant attentiveness that Diana herself was surprised by, in both of them, until it was clear that Em was enjoying being the center of attention.

Aunt Lo declared that she should be on solid food, and an argument followed over what sort of solid food, which seemed to be settled in favor of fork-mashed banana. (About which Em expressed clear opinions, mostly by squishing fistfuls of it into her own hair.)

Meanwhile, Aunt Maura—the oldest of the aunts, Costa’s dad’s widowed sister—presided over the griddle and frying pan, churning out pancakes and omelets with thin, iron-hard arms that had been honed to a high degree of fitness by shearing sheep and setting fence posts. Uncle Rodrigo presided over all of it cheerfully from his favorite chair by the kitchen window.

Diana felt a little overwhelmed. At least Costa’s three or four cousins and their families weren’t here, and his brother’s family (what was the wife’s name? Jenny?) didn’t seem to be here either.

But they were completely friendly to her, almost effusively so. Diana dug into a stack of pancakes and eggs, and let the family chatter wash over her. After they ate, she asked if she could use the phone or computer to contact her workplace and let them know what had happened. Costa took her to the computer and showed her how to set it up so she could use wifi for phone calling. Then he went to use the landline to check in with the SCB. Diana fielded a flurry of worried texts from Luis, her boss, and other friends, briefly glanced at her email, and was reading news stories about the fire when Costa hung up and came over to sit down next to her.

“How’s it looking?” he asked quietly.

The house was a total loss. Diana firmly closed the browser window. “Never mind that. What did the SCB say? Any news on Em?”

“No leads on her background, but there are a couple of people from the Seattle bureau flying in this morning,” Costa told her. “One’s a social worker—Nicole Yates. She’s going to help out with getting us a more permanent placement for the kid.”

“Oh,” Diana said. “Yes, of course.” Naturally Emmeline needed a proper foster home. Bouncing her around between working individuals who were unprepared to care for her was unfair.

But somehow, temporarily, she had forgotten. All she could think of was the softness and warmth of Emmeline in her arms, the smell of her crown of baby hair.

She wasn’t sure if Costa was having similar thoughts, but he went silent and pensive for a moment before continuing.

“Anyway, the other visitor is one of their agents who thinks he might know something about the card you and Caine found at the scene. Cat Delgado is picking them up at the airport and driving them out to the ranch.”

“We’re staying here today, then?” Diana asked.

“For now, anyway.” He paused, drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair. “I also asked for the latest on your house fire. No suspects yet, and the details haven’t been released to the media, but it’s definitely arson.”

Diana genuinely had no idea how to react; her mind was blank. “So I—I was a target.”

“It looks like it. I’m sending an agent over to talk to your paramedic friend and get a thorough description and maybe a sketch of the person who was asking about you.”

Anger—anger was what she was feeling, swelling over her blank shock. “What can I do? I’m not just going to sit here twiddling my thumbs, Quinn.”

“For now, I think the best thing is for both of us to do that,” Costa said. “Not thumb-twiddling exactly, but there’s nothing we can do out there that my people can’t do, and the more we come and go, the more we compromise the ranch as a safehouse. Right now, no one knows where we are—or where Emmeline is.”

The words hit Diana’s righteous indignation like a bucket of cold water. “Of course Em’s safety matters most.” She looked across the room at Costa’s aunts, playing with the baby. “But we can’t just stay here forever, Quinn.”

“I’m not planning on it.” Costa put his hand on her arm, and Diana went still, not wanting him to pull away. His hand was strong, sure—comforting. “Once we get up to speed with our new arrivals, we’ll make a plan, and I promise you it won’t involve sitting here for days. But right now, there’s nothing to be gained by all of us rushing back and forth to and from Tucson except to leave a trail back here.” He ran his thumb up and down her arm. Diana was pretty sure he didn’t know he was doing it. “Unless you want to go back to your house and, uh—see if anything can be salvaged. If you do, I’ll drive you.”

Diana shuddered, and at that movement Costa seemed to realize where his hand was and, to her regret, pulled it hastily away. She could still feel the warmth of his palm lingering on her skin.

“Not right now,” she said. “Later, I guess I’ll have to, but I don’t think I can bear to see it yet. I know that probably sounds weak or—or stupid?—”

“No,” Costa said firmly. His hand hovered near her arm once again, but his eyes were locked on hers, sincere and intense. “Not at all. Nobody would be holding up better than you. That being said,” he added thoughtfully, “I think I’ll have Caine stop by my place and check if there are any signs of forced entry or anyone hanging around. He can come and go without being seen.”

Diana nodded and carefully squashed her urge to ask more questions about Agent Caine. She was going to get the full story out of them, one of these days. “So what do we do now? I’m full of energy and have nothing to do with it. When did you say the Seattle agents are getting here?”

“Not for hours.” Costa got up. “But I have an idea for something to keep us busy while we wait. Let me call Caine, and then—how are you at horseback riding these days?”

Diana found herself smiling for what felt like the first time in ages. “It’s like riding a bike, I hope. You never forget.”

* * *

They went up to the pasture and barn that she had noticed on the way down. The horses greeted them with soft noses, nibbling their fingers and looking for treats, and followed them curiously along the fence as they headed for the barn. There was plenty of tack, saddles, and gear, and they picked up two saddles and went to get the horses ready.

Diana was a little surprised to find how her fingers still knew all the moves from her ranch childhood. She occasionally needed to go on horseback for some of her work, but she wasn’t the one handling the horses; they were provided for her with saddles already on.

So this was a pleasure she had nearly forgotten, the inquisitive nose of the horse nudging at her hands, the satisfaction of tightening straps and adjusting stirrup length. With her long legs, Diana needed to make little adjustment, even though the saddle was set for Costa’s tall clan.

She swung up on the back of her horse, a pretty bay mare that Costa told her was called Rabbit. Costa was still making friends with his horse, a leggy roan gelding named Gold Rush, letting the animal nibble his collar and hair while he rubbed the curving neck and scratched the horses’s forehead.

“We should invite Jessie out here,” Diana said. “She turns into a horse, you know.” Normally it was a bit rude to discuss shifters’ animal types with someone who might not know, or at least it was considered uncouth. But she figured Costa already knew the shift types of everyone who worked for him.

Costa confirmed it with a quick laugh. “She’d probably love it; she shifts at the drop of a hat anyway. You know, I never thought about doing a rural company retreat. We have the company picnics, but ... I should invite some people out here one of these days, you’re right.” He looked thoughtful as he gave Gold Rush one more scratch and mounted up. “I’ve always kept my personal life so separate from work that it never occurred to me.”

“Keeping work and personal lives separate is usually considered a good thing.” Diana felt a twinge; she had separated her personal life so thoroughly that she wondered if she still had one.

“I know,” Costa said, and then, seeming to read her mind in that uncanny way he had, “But I figure it’s possible to make it too much of a thing.” He clucked to his horse. “Let’s go. Do you want to take the lead?”

“Go ahead. You know the trails here better than I do.”

“Don’t forget to keep an eye out for utility flags, especially along the boundaries of the ranch.”

They rode away from the corral on a trail that wound its way across the Costa ranch. It was a glorious day, the sun not too hot or strong, the sky flecked with clouds and the rugged landscape covered in new growth and fragrant flowers. Small streams were trickling with water from the hillside, and birds skimmed the air. In a month, it would all be sere and brown, drought reclaiming what was now a beautiful and verdant landscape. For now it seemed as if spring would never end.

As Diana had learned during her desert childhood, the secret to enjoying this landscape of extremes was to appreciate fully everything it had to offer at all times. The all-too-short spring, the fall that brought relief from summer’s oven, the rare and gorgeous dustings of snow during the winter. Even the baking misery of summer had its own charms, blue evenings filled with shadows and the vivid desert stars brighter and clearer than anywhere else on earth.

So she tried to be present in the moment, enjoying the sun on the back of her neck beneath her floppy-brimmed sun hat, the breeze and the spicy-dusty smells of the desert, the birds that rose up to swirl in the wake of the horses and then settled back down again on flower-dotted meadows that would be withered and yellow a few months later.

But for all her efforts to be there in her body, what she kept being drawn to instead was Costa’s straight back and smooth grace as he rode the horse on the trail in front of her. The flex of his shoulders, the rippling muscles of his back beneath a T-shirt already lightly dampened with sweat ... the firm curve of his ass seated squarely and competently in the saddle.

Diana wrenched her eyes away as a quail went up almost under her horse’s feet. Rabbit skittered sideways, and controlling her required Diana’s attention long enough to get her mind back on the business at hand, more or less.

They reached the edge of the flat-bottomed arroyo that separated the two sides of the valley, as well as separating the Costa and Reid ranches. For Diana’s entire childhood, she had looked across the shallow canyon at the Costa cattle and horses, at the threads of blue smoke from the fireplace in the main ranch house. She and Quinn had waved at each other from opposite sides, had crossed the arroyo a thousand times in all weather and all seasons.

Right now, the bottomland was as lush as it ever got. A thread of water coursed a winding path down the center of its wide, shallow basin, and on either side there was a spread of yellow-flowered brittlebrush, poppies, native grasses and flowering cacti. Pools of water supported flocks of waterfowl.

Diana had been told that many years ago, when their families first moved to the valley, the arroyo ran with water nearly all year long. Now it was rare to see it, only at the right times of year, when spring rains and runoff made the desert bloom.

“Want to go over?” Costa asked.

Diana hadn’t realized it was so obvious that she was gazing across the arroyo at the cluster of ranch houses and old fencing where she used to live. “Do you think it’ll be a problem? We’d be trespassing, you know.”

Costa shrugged and leaned one arm across his saddle horn, reins loosely looped in his big, capable hand. “Uncle Rod says they only come out for a few weeks a year, and they haven’t been around in months. No one’s going to know.”

“Amazing,” Diana muttered grimly. “Can’t even be bothered to appoint a caretaker. We’ll be lucky if the house my great-grandfather built isn’t all beer cans and graffiti by now.”

“My family keeps an eye on the place. I’m not saying it’s all right, but there haven’t been any teenagers throwing keggers over there.”

But the way Costa was looking at her was too sympathetic to bear. Spurred by that expression as much as anything else, Diana tugged on her horse’s reins, turning Rabbit’s head toward the descent into the ravine.

There were a number of paths going up and down the sides of the arroyo. Some had been used in the old days by the Costa family’s herd of cattle (now reduced to a couple of milk cows who kept company with the horses). These days, they were beaten down and kept in use by deer and other animals visiting the water holes at the bottom. The trails were scuffed with many small, precise hoof marks. Costa pointed out a flag beside one trail, so they took another one. Now that she was alert for it, Diana noticed several such flags scattered along the edge of the ravine.

“What is he worried about, exactly?”

“Who knows. Aunt Maura reassured me that it’s more along the lines of twine and sharpened sticks than land mines. He’s got a bunch of books on old Native American trap design and he’s having a great time. Every once in a while he traps a jackrabbit or a deer. I suppose there are worse things he could be doing with his retirement years.”

Perhaps catching their riders’ uneasiness, the horses were balky and uncooperative on the trip down to the arroyo. But the horses as well as their riders relaxed on the flat land at the bottom, where there was lush grass and a crisscrossing web of wild animal trails, neat lines of tracks leading to and from the stream and surrounding ponds.

It felt almost like being in a different place entirely. With the side of the arroyo hiding their view of the ranch houses, the cloud-dotted blue sky overhead, it felt as if they were the only two people for miles.

They let the horses pick their own route and pace. Both their mounts stopped occasionally for a mouthful of grass, and paused to drink from the stream. By habit, Diana glanced at the water for any signs of alkali that might poison an unwary animal, even though she knew that it had always been clear and fresh; there were too many springs in the desert that were unsafe to drink from, due to natural poisons in the groundwater as well as old mining contaminants.

Although it had looked flat from above, the channel was rough, crisscrossed with the braided courses of dry waterways and tangles of jammed-up driftwood and sand pushed into minor dams by flash floods. Diana glanced upstream and was aware of Costa doing the same thing. So far, the sky was clear except for scattered puffs of clouds. But this was the time of year when flash floods might happen, sweeping down the canyon and pushing a wall of mud, rocks, and anything unlucky enough to be in their path.

On a pleasant, clear day like this, however, there was little to worry about. They navigated the gully and found a path up the other side. Diana surged ahead, possessed by a breathless excitement that seemed to come on her all at once. Her horse lurched up the last unsteady part of the climb, and then she was on her family’s old property for the first time since she was in her twenties.