that was out of the question. He couldn’t do that. He wouldn’t be able to explain the .22 and that huge wad of money he was carrying in his boot. He knew—he didn’t know how he knew, but he did—that he couldn’t tell the police, couldn’t tell any one anything. He couldn’t let anyone know why he was here.
Not that he could have, even if he’d wanted to. He didn’t know why he was here.
So what was he supposed to do?
Check himself into a hospital? He turned his head, gingerly parting his hair to look at the gash on his head. Without yesterday’s fog of pain clouding his eyes, he knew with a chilling certainty that the wound on his head had been the result of a bullet’s glancing blow. He’d been shot, nearly killed.
No, he couldn’t go to a hospital, either—they’d be forced to report his injury to the police.
He dried his face and hands on a small white towel and went back into the main part of the motel room. His boots were on the floor near the bed, where he’d left them last night. He picked up the right one, dumping its contents onto the rumpled sheets. He turned on the light and sat down, picking up the .22.
It fit perfectly, familiarly into his hand. He couldn’t remember his own name, but somehow he knew he’d be able to use this weapon with deadly accuracy if the need ever arose. This weapon, and any other, as well. He remembered his dream, and he set it back down on the bed.
He pulled the rubber band off the fold of money, and the piece of white paper that was fastened along with it slipped free. It was fax paper; the slippery, shiny kind that was hard to read. He picked it up and angled it toward the light.
“Lazy Eight Ranch,” he read. Again, the name was totally unfamiliar to him. There was an address and directions to some kind of spread up in the northern part of the state. From what he could tell from the directions, it was about four hours outside of Santa Fe. The words were all typed, except for a note scrawled across the bottom in big round handwriting. “Looking forward to meeting you.” It was signed, “Rebecca Keyes.”
Mish opened the bedside-table drawer, looking for a telephone book. But the only thing inside was a Gideons Bible. He picked up the phone and dialed the front desk.
“Yeah, is there a train station or a bus depot in town?” he asked when the desk clerk came on the line.
“Greyhound’s just down the street.”
“Can you give me the phone number?”
He silently repeated the number the clerk gave him, hung up, then dialed the phone.
He was going to Santa Fe.
Becca was out front, helping Belinda and Dwayne welcome a van load of guests, when she first spotted him.
He would have been very easy to miss—the solitary figure of a man walking slowly along the road. Yet even from this distance, she could tell that he was different. He didn’t have the nonchalant swagger of the cowboys that worked the nearby ranches. He didn’t carry the bags and sacks of crafts and jewelry that many of the local Native Americans took into Santa Fe to sell. He had only one small bag, efficiently tucked under one arm.
He turned into the Lazy Eight’s long drive, as somehow Becca had known he would.
As he drew closer, she could see he wasn’t wearing the Western gear that was the standard outfit of the Southwest. He had on the blue jeans, but he wore a new-looking T-shirt instead of a long-sleeved Western-cut button-down shirt. His arms were deeply tanned, as if he spent quite a bit of time outside.
His black boots weren’t the kind a real cowboy would wear, and he wore a baseball cap instead of a Stetson on his head.
From a distance, he’d looked tall and imposing. Up close, he merely looked imposing. It was odd, really. He had to be at least an inch or so shorter than six feet, and he was slender, almost slight. Yet there was a power about him, a quiet strength that seemed to radiate from him.
It may have been in the set of his shoulders or the angle of his chin. Or it may have been something in his dark eyes that made her want to step back a bit and keep her distance. His gaze swept across the drive, over the van and the luggage and the guests, over the ranch house, over the corral where Silver was waiting impatiently for another chance to stretch his legs, over Belinda and Dwayne, over her. With one quick flick of his eyes, he seemed to take her in, to memorize, appraise, and then dismiss.
Becca tried to look away, but she couldn’t.
He was impossibly, harshly handsome—provided, of course, that a woman went for the dark and dangerous type. His face was slightly weathered, with high cheekbones that even Johnny Depp would’ve been jealous of. His lips were gracefully shaped, if perhaps a shade too thin, too grimly set. His dark hair was longer than she’d first thought, worn fastened back at the nape of his neck. His face was smooth-shaven, but he had a scar on his chin that added to his aura of danger. And those eyes…
Becca watched as he approached Belinda. He spoke softly—too softly for Becca to hear his words—as he drew a piece of paper from his pocket.
Belinda turned and pointed directly at Becca. He turned, too, and once again those eyes were on her, coolly appraising.
He started toward her.
Becca came down the ranch office steps, meeting him halfway, pushing her beatup Stetson further back on her short brown curls. “Can I help you?”
“You’re Rebecca Keyes.” His voice was soft and accentless. His words weren’t a question, but she answered him anyway.
“That’s right.” His eyes weren’t dark brown as she’d first thought. They were hazel—an almost otherworldly mix of green and brown and yellow and blue. She was staring. She knew she was staring, but she couldn’t seem to stop.
“You sent me this fax?”
This time it was a question. Becca forced her gaze away from his face and looked down at the paper he held in his hands. It was indeed fax paper. She recognized the standard directions to the ranch, caught sight of the messy scribble of her handwriting at the bottom. “You must be Casey Parker.”
He repeated the name slowly. “Casey Parker.”
He didn’t look the way he’d sounded during their telephone interview. She’d pictured a larger, older, beefier man. But no matter. She needed a hired hand, and all of his references had checked out.
“Do you have any ID?” Becca asked. She smiled to soften her words and explained. “It has more to do with filling out employee tax forms than verifying that you’re who you say you are.”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, I don’t. My wallet was stolen night before last. I got into some kind of fight and…”
As if to prove his story, he took off his hat and she could see a long scrape above his right temple, disappearing into his wavy dark hair. He had a bruise on his cheekbone, too. She hadn’t noticed it at first—it was barely discernible underneath the suntanned darkness of his skin.
“I hope you don’t
