my dreams, kid. My nightmares.”
“Let’s not get into this, okay? It’s not the time, or the place. All we have to concentrate on is Mary Theresa.”
His steady gaze called her a liar.
“And whatever you do, Walker, don’t try and second-guess me or psychoanalyze my motives, or read more into my words.” She hooked her thumb at her chest. “I tell it just like it is, okay?”
The waitress returned on hushed shoes. A plastic smile curved her glossy apricot-hued lips as she slid two platters onto the table. “Can I get you anything else?”
Yeah, a one-way ticket back home.
“This’ll do,” Thane said, then quirked an eyebrow at Maggie, inviting her opinion without saying a word.
“Just catsup.”
“Comin’ right up.” She turned, snagged a plastic squirt bottle from the counter, and plopped it in front of Maggie.
“Thanks.”
“If ya need anything, just give a holler.” She motioned to the counter, where a refrigerated case spun slowly, showing off an array of confections. “You just might want dessert, and our lemon meringue pie is to die for. No kiddin’. Baked fresh.” She pivoted on a soft-soled pump and focused her attention on a table of men with round bellies, flushed faces, baseball caps of various colors, and toothpicks wedged into the sides of their mouths.
Maggie ate in silence, and Thane didn’t bother trying to break into her thoughts or making meaningless chitchat. In a small diner where everyone talked, laughed, smoked, and flirted, they ate in stony silence, the past edging into Maggie’s thoughts, eroding her equilibrium while the future towered in a dark mysterious cloud ahead. When they were finished with burgers, fries, and a wedge of pecan pie with ice cream at Thane’s insistence, he reached for his wallet.
Maggie delved into her purse.
“This is mine,” he said, eyeing her as she extracted her wallet.
“No way.”
“I practically shanghaied you to get you to come with me.”
She pulled out a ten and rested her elbows on either side of her half-eaten hamburger and the goo that had been most of her dessert. “Look, Walker, let’s get one thing straight, okay? I pay my own way. Yes, you talked me into coming, but I would have flown to Denver anyway to find out what happened to my sister. So we’ll split everything down the middle.” With that she reached for her ski jacket.
“Is that so I don’t get the wrong idea?”
The tops of her ears started to burn as she stood and shoved her arms down the jacket’s thick sleeves. Quickly, she forced her hands through the gloves that she’d stashed in one pocket. “I guess.”
She wanted to wipe the amused smile from his beard-shadowed chin. “You want to make sure I don’t think this is some kind of convoluted date, right?”
“You’re so damned conceited, it’s unbelievable.”
“It beats paranoia.”
“Barely.”
His smile faded as he tossed a matching bill onto the table. Anger flashed in his eyes. Without another word, he grabbed his jacket with one hand and Maggie’s elbow with the other.
“What’re you doing…wait.”
Silently he pulled, forcing her past the front desk, through double glass doors to the vestibule and into the dark night, where snow continued to fall. A quiet seething rage emanated from him as they strode to his truck. He unlocked the door for her, then climbed into the driver’s side. After tossing his jacket into the space behind the seat where her laptop was stowed, he jabbed his key into the ignition. The engine turned over as she buckled her seat belt. He crammed the gearshift into reverse and backed out of his parking space.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” he said as he threw the truck into first, maneuvered around a semi rolling into the truck stop, and eyed the desolate stretch of highway heading southeast. “I need your help. Period. I don’t expect anything more than your help in finding that damned sister of yours and helping me clear my name.” He clicked his headlights onto high beam, and snow swirled and danced in the glow. “You don’t owe me a thing, so I thought I’d take care of the expenses. This isn’t part of some grand seduction, Maggie, it’s a simple case of paying you back for your inconvenience.”
Her face was hot, her cheeks burning, but hopefully he didn’t notice in the dark cab as he scowled and squinted through the windshield.
He flipped on the wipers, then adjusted the control for the defroster. “Got it?”
“Got it,” she replied tightly, and felt like a fool. Of course he wasn’t interested in her, that wasn’t the point. She thought about holding her tongue, then decided it was best to clear the air. “I just wanted to lay down the ground rules,” she said, slowly forcing her hands from their clenched fists to relax. “It wasn’t that big of a deal.”
“Amen.” A car appeared around the corner, flashing the interior of his truck with white, artificial light. She noticed his profile: Hard. Set. Determined. One hundred percent male. A strong, sometimes fierce man. Someone who didn’t always tell the truth; she knew that from the past. So what secrets was he keeping? What was he hiding? She looked away, through the passenger window to the trees, tall heavy-boughed guardians of the night. Snow clung to their branches, and in other circumstances she would have found them and the steep hillsides they were climbing breathtaking. Tonight they seemed foreboding, casting a spell of fear and desolation.
Where was Mary Theresa? Was she alive? Oh, God, she had to be. Maggie’s throat thickened. Staring into the stormy night, she crossed her fingers and sent up silent prayer after silent prayer for her sister.
Surely Mary Theresa was safe. Surely when they got to Denver they’d find out that the ever-flighty Marquise had just left town for a few days and forgotten to tell anyone. But as much as she tried to convince herself, she felt a chill in her blood that had nothing to do with the weather, and as the snow turned to icy pellets that battered the hood of the truck and slickened the road Maggie couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. Terribly and irreversibly wrong.
Be safe, Mary, she thought, closing her eyes and remembering her sister as she always had been—a free spirit who, though self-centered, was a person everyone fell in love with. Everyone including Thane Walker. Even he hadn’t been immune to Mary Theresa’s charms. But then why would he have been? He had been a man, and all men, it seemed, were susceptible to Mary Theresa Reilly.
Maggie had first noticed it years ago, when Mitchell, their cousin who had been raised as their brother, had been alive. They’d been young then, barely seventeen, only a few years older than Becca was now, but already Mary Theresa was developing her charms, honing them on all the boys they knew, including the one whom Maggie had considered her brother…
PART II
Rio Verde
Northern California
1979
Chapter
