Fire Brand

“Of the gunman,” she said patiently.

“You want me to take pictures of a dead body?”

She took the camera from him with exaggerated patience and followed Chief Jones into the building.

Gaby’s heart went out to the small pregnant woman, who was white-faced, sobbing, and clearly almost in shock, as she was escorted gently from the building. The gunman lay on the floor. Someone had taken off his shabby jacket and put it over his head. He looked fragile, somehow, lying there like that. Gaby took a quick shot of him without really seeing him. She didn’t photograph the hostage. Johnny could scream his head off, but she wasn’t going to capitalize on a pregnant woman’s terror. Later, she could call the hospital and find out the woman’s condition, or she could get the particulars from Chief Jones. She glanced around the room until her eyes caught the sack with the holdup money in it.

A policeman was carefully picking it up, and she looked inside.

“Twenty dollars,” the policeman said. He shrugged. “Not much of a haul for two men’s lives.”

“Does it look like he was a pro?” she asked him.

He shook his head. “Too sloppy. A witness who saw him kill the storekeeper said he was shaking all over, and the gun discharged accidentally while he was trying to get away.”

She was writing it all down. “Got a family?”

“Yeah. He’s the youngest of six kids. The older brother’s a drug dealer. The mother goes on the streets from time to time to add to her welfare check.” He smiled at Gaby. “Tough world for kids, isn’t it?”

“For some of them,” she agreed. She shouldered the camera and went back to Chief Jones, who’d just finished talking to the hostage. Gaby asked him the necessary questions, picked up Harrington, and drove back to the office in her white custom VW convertible.

“How come you rate a car this fancy?” Fred asked on the way.

She smiled. “I have rich relatives,” she said.

Well, it was the truth, in one respect. The McCaydes of Lassiter, Arizona, were rich. They weren’t exactly relatives, however.

Her eyes drifted to the traffic. Phoenix was a fascinating city, elegant for its spaciousness, with the surrounding huge, jagged peaks of the southernmost Rockies forming a protective barrier around it. The first time she’d seen the city, she had been fascinated by the sheer height and majesty of those mountains.

In fact, Arizona itself still fascinated her. It was a state like no other, its appearance first frightening and barren. But closer up, it had a staggering beauty. In its vastness, it offered serenity and promise. In its diversity of terrain and cultures, it offered a kind of harmony that was visually melodic. Gaby loved it all, from the wealth and prosperity and hustle of Phoenix, to the quiet desert peace of Casa Río, the twenty-odd-thousand-acre ranch owned by the McCaydes.

“Doesn’t one of your relatives have a construction company in Tucson?” Harrington broke into her thoughts. “McCayde—Bowie McCayde?”

Gaby tingled at the mention of his name. “He’s not a relative. His parents took me in when I was in my teens,” she corrected. “Yes, he inherited McCayde Construction from his late father.”

“There’s a ranch, too, isn’t there?”

“Oh, yes, indeed, there is,” she said, remembering with a smile. “Casa Río—River House. It dates to ten years after the Civil War.” She glanced at him. “You did know that most of southeastern Arizona was settled by people from the South—and that during the Civil War, a Confederate flag flew briefly over the city of Tucson?”

“You’re kidding.”

She laughed. “No, I’m not. It’s true. Bowie’s people came from southwest Georgia. The first settler was a Cliatt, who married a Mexican girl. There’s even a Papago in his lineage somewhere—excuse me, a Tohono O’odham,” she said, using the new name the Papago had adopted for themselves. The name Papago was actually a Zuñi word meaning “Bean People,” so the Papago changed it to words in their own language, which meant “People of the Desert.”

“That’s a mouthful,” Harrington murmured as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“I think it’s pretty. Did you know that Apache is a Zuñi word for enemy? And that the word Navajo contains a ‘V,’ and that there is no ‘V’ in the Navajo language? Until recent times many scarcely knew of the word, in fact...”

“Stop!” Harrington wailed. “I don’t want to learn everything about the Southwest in one lesson.”

“I love it,” she sighed. “I love the people and the languages and the history.” Her dark olive eyes grew dreamy. “I wish I’d been born here.”

“Where are you from?” he asked.

It was just a casual question, and she’d brought it on herself, but she quickly changed the subject. “I wonder what they’ll do to Wilson?”

He glared at her, as she’d known he would. “I hope they hang him from the nearest tree. The fool!”

She smiled to herself. “Maybe they will,” she mused.

Her mind wandered as she drove. The rain reminded her so well of a time in her past—the first time she’d seen Casa Río. It was the night she’d met Bowie.

Just thinking of him made her nervous. In a lot of ways, Bowie was her nemesis. He couldn’t be called a brother because she’d never been officially adopted by the McCaydes. She was a stray they’d taken in and assumed responsibility for, but only as a ward. She hadn’t wanted them to adopt her, because then they might probe into her past. But she’d covered herself by giving a very plausible story about having moved every other week with her father, and having no permanent address. That much was almost true.

Bowie was twenty-seven years old the night she showed up at Casa Río in the rain. She had caught first sight of him in the barn, where she was huddled and shivering against the faint evening chill of May.

His sheer size had been overpowering. He was a big, rugged-looking blond man with a physique that any movie cowboy would have envied. He was the head of a growing construction company, and over the years, he’d spent a good deal of his time at building sites, pitching in when deadlines were threatening. That explained the muscular physique, but not the brooding look he wore much of the time. Later, Gaby would learn that he didn’t smile very often. She’d learn, too, that his extraordinary good looks were deceptive. He wasn’t a womanizer, and if he had affairs, they were so discreet as to be almost unnoticed. He was a quiet, introspective man who liked Bach, old war movies, and more than anything else, the land upon which Casa Río sat. Bowie was a preservationist, a conservationist. That, in a builder, was something of an irony, but then, Bowie was full of contradictions. Gaby knew him no better now than she had that first night. He was rarely ever home when she visited his mother, Aggie—it was almost as if he purposefully avoided her.

That long-ago rainy night, he’d been in evening clothes. Gaby’s frightened eyes had followed him as he stared into a stall and rubbed the velvet nose of the big Belgian horse that occupied it. He turned on the light, and she could see that his blond hair was very thick and straight, conventionally cut with a side part, and neatly combed, despite the hour. His profile had been utterly perfect; a strong, very handsome, very definite face that probably drew women like honey drew butterflies. He had a straight nose and a square jaw, and deep-set eyes under heavy brows. His mouth had a chiseled look, and there was something faintly sensuous about it. Gaby tried not to notice sensuality—she was afraid of men.

But masculine perfection like Bowie’s was hard to ignore. She watched him as she might have watched a sunset, awed by its impact. The black suit he’d been wearing clung with a tailored faultlessness to his powerful body, emphasizing his broad chest, the length of his muscular legs, the narrowness of his hips, the width of his shoulders. He bent his head to light a cigarette, and she saw the faint orange flair of the match turn his tanned face just briefly to bronze.

She must have accidentally moved and made noise, because all of a sudden he whirled toward her with an economy of movement. His eyes narrowed.

“Who the hell is that?” he asked. His voice was deep, curt, without an accent, and yet there was something faintly drawling about it.

She hesitated, but when he started toward the empty stall where she was huddled in fresh hay, she stood up and moved out into the aisle, terrified of being hemmed in.

“I’m not a burglar or anything,” she said, trying to smile. “I’m sorry about this, but it’s so cold, mister, and I just needed to get in out of the rain.” She sneezed loudly.

He stared at her quietly, his deep-set black eyes frightening. “Where did you come from?”

Her heart hammered in her chest. She hadn’t expected that question, and she wasn’t used to telling lies. Her father, a lay minister, had drummed morality into her at an early age, and honesty was part of her upbringing. Now, it was hard not to tell the truth. She lowered her eyes. “I’m an orphan,” she said miserably. “I was looking for a cousin, a Sanders, but a neighbor said the family moved years ago.” That much was true. “I don’t have anyplace to go...” Her lower lip had trembled. She was so afraid—not only of him, but of having the recent past come down on her head. Her big, olive-green eyes had stared up into his, pleading.

He didn’t want her around. That much was obvious. She could almost see courtesy going to war with suspicion in his mind.

“Well, I’ll take you inside and let my mother deal with you,” he said then. “God knows, she’s partial to girls, since she never had one of her own.”

She breathed a sigh of relief. She could still see herself as she’d been that night, her long black hair straggly around a pinched white face. Her clothes had been so worn that they had holes in a few places—especially her faded jeans and denim jacket. She’d had only a coin purse with her, which contained a one-dollar bill and some change, and there was a handkerchief in her jacket pocket. There was no learner’s permit, no credit card, nothing to give her away or help anyone trace her back to Kentucky.

“What’s your name, kid?” the big man had asked. He towered over her, enormously tall and powerful. She was five foot six, but he had to be at least six foot three.

“Gabrielle,” she stammered. “Gabrielle Cane.” That was her real name, but she’d deliberately hesitated before she gave him her last name, to make it seem as if it was a false one. “Most people call me Gaby.” Her eyes surveyed the neat barn, with its wide brick aisle and well-kept interior. “What is this place?”

“It’s called Casa Río—River House. In the old days, the river ran within sight, but its course changed over the years. Now you can’t see the river, and there isn’t any water in it for most of the year,” he’d replied. “My parents own it. I’m Bowie McCayde.”

“Your parents live here?” she asked nervously.

“Yes, they live here.” His voice had been curt. “I have an apartment in Tucson. My father is in the construction business.”