Buried Secrets

“You want me to help fight evil or find a missing person?”

He snorted. “Neither. I just want you to tell me about the missing persons you ran into during that cave-in.” His tone took on a patronizing edge. “I wouldn’t want to put you into any scary situations, lady.”

The fact that she didn’t challenge his disrespect proved how upset she was. Jo stood. “Whatever I said to that reporter, I was mistaken. I’m afraid you wasted a trip, Mr. Lorenzo.”

He swore beneath his breath. “Helluva trip to waste! You know how far Almanuevo is from here?”

“Over an hour away.” Jo paused on her way to the filing cabinet, then qualified herself. “Going the speed limit.”

“Real scenic, too,” the prisoner groused, while she opened the top drawer and looked for something, anything, to keep her busy and official. And normal. And sane. “Sand. Cactus. More sand. More cactus. A few rocks. And hey—”

“Don’t you go sassin’ the sheriff,” drawled Deputy Fred as he walked in, two McDonald’s bags in his hand. But Jo had gotten the gist.

“More sand,” finished Lorenzo with a snarl, flopping back onto the cot. “It’s a garden spot, all right.”

“It’s West Texas,” clarified Jo, taking one of Fred’s bags. She fished out an Egg McMuffin and tossed it neatly between the cell bars. “Have some breakfast.”

He easily caught it one-handed. “This is cold.”

“The McDonald’s is in Almanuevo, near the Western Union. The lady who runs our diner is on vacation at Tahoe for three more days.” Jo aimed her own superior smile toward the prisoner. “West Texas.”

Then she turned to Deputy Fred, who was looking mighty uncomfortable. “Did his folks wire him the money?”

He nodded, and Lorenzo whooped. “I get out of this hellhole, right?”

Fred started to say something and stopped. Jo had to lean close before he’d divulge it. “They done sent him one thousand dollars. In cash! I put it in my shoe, just in case I got jumped.”

Jo tried not to smile. Fred was, to put it kindly, a stocky man. In his tan uniform, star on his pocket and gun on his hip, he shouldn’t have to worry—especially not around here. Sand, cactus, etc. What was going to jump him, a jackelope?

Still, it was a pretty piece of money, and at least he cared. He was one of the good guys.

“Good job,” she whispered back.

“Do I get out now, or what?” demanded the prisoner, sounding even more like a pushy city boy. Jo scooped the keys off of her desk and opened the cell door.

When he walked by her, his sleeve brushed her shoulder, clean and warm. She took a deep breath, inhaling a scent she’d gone without too long.

Alive. Safe.

But that made no more sense than zombies. Jo didn’t look to others for her safety. Never again. That’s why she wore a badge, carried a gun. That’s why she lived alone.

She said, “You’re welcome.”

Lorenzo groaned when he realized why Fred was taking off his shoe. He turned back to her as a distraction, which was just as well since she had to return his wallet, his car keys, his mobile phone, his automatic pistol.

“Look,” he said, sliding a card out of his wallet. It read Lorenzo and Company, Private Investigation, with a P.O. box in Chicago, phone numbers and Internet addresses. “Clearly you don’t want to think about it, much less talk, and hell—that’s your call. But unlike a lot of blind schmucks, you know. You’ve seen what’s out there. Whether you’re admitting it or not, it’s still there. Maybe you can help. Think about it.”

He pressed the card into her hand, his own hand solid and warm around hers. It made Jo wonder when the last time was that someone had touched her, even that briefly, that casually. Christmas with her brothers, she guessed.

Lorenzo paid his fine, pocketed the nearly $900 he had left over, and departed the jail like he was shrugging off an unnecessary chore. The man had lost a lot of money and a couple hours’ drive…. On a chore?

Now that he was gone—mere moments after the door shut—Jo didn’t feel safe at all. She felt like a doctored tooth as the Novocain wore off. Tingly. Worried.

Braced against certain pain—the downside of feeling alive again.

“Don’t want to think about what?” asked Fred, halfway through his platter of soggy pancakes.

“Whatever I don’t want to talk about.” Jo heard an engine purr to life. She waited a moment and then, against her better judgment, stepped into the narrow street to watch a shiny black sports car skim off into the scrub-dotted hills toward Almanuevo, the Sedona of West Texas.

The air felt strangely warm for this early in the morning. Especially for March. Especially for Spur. Overhead, a hawk swooped by.

Whether you’re admitting it or not, it’s still there, the private investigator had said.

“No, it’s not,” murmured Jo beneath her breath. “It’s dead. I killed it.”

But the stranger had said the magic word, help. That word had power Jo might never understand. So she braced herself—and went back into the jail to ask Fred if he’d heard anything at all about missing persons in Almanuevo.

Jo James lived with two mongrel dogs in a little ranch house five miles outside the tiny town of Spur. She had big windows, on every side a view of open desert, and she liked it that way. Ever since the cave-in, she’d chosen wide-open spaces over small, enclosed areas. She liked being able to see sky forever, feeling that nobody could sneak up on her.

Or so she’d thought, until meeting Zack Lorenzo this morning. Zombies?

She’d told herself she only had to guard against human intrusion. Dangers that could be repelled with guns, fists, dogs—the kind that stayed away from little places like Spur. Now, as she watched the waning moon rise over her backyard, she noticed herself shivering—from more than the night air. That damned detective had stripped away her illusion of safety.

According to Fred, a couple of folks in Almanuevo had vanished. Enough that the town’s mayor worried about bad press, and an increasing number of their New Age tourists were talking about UFO abductions, which was almost as crazy as…

As the things she’d seen. Or thought she’d seen.

Jo whistled for the dogs. As soon as they loped inside, she shut and locked the back door. It was the first time she’d locked her door since her older brother’s visit. He was a security specialist and had insisted on it last Christmas. She loaded the .22 rifle that usually hung in her sparsely furnished living room. After she fixed some chocolate milk she headed back to her bedroom, and made sure to take her revolver and loop the holster on the bedpost of her twin-size bed.

Dogs or not, the house seemed achingly empty all of a sudden. She felt her isolation in her veins…in her lungs.

A Navajo medicine blanket covered the wall behind her bed, and an octagonal god’s-eye, strung from yarn and sticks, hung to face the window. The remaining wall space was dotted with framed pictures, mostly of relatives. Only on nights like this did Jo notice how far away her family lived, how few friends she’d made since taking the job in Spur…how many years ago?

Maybe that had been her plan.

Her younger brother, Max, was a photojournalist, so she had pictures of her grandparents and her late parents, her aunts and uncles, her older brother, Lee. She had more recent pictures of herself, not quite thirty, looking decidedly average beside her vivacious cousins in East Texas. She had pictures of her dogs, even—of every person who’d ever held importance in her life…except one man.

Except Diego.

Jo told herself not to think of Diego. People died. She’d gone on without him and was doing fine by herself.

She drank the milk and put the empty glass on the barrel that was her night table, rather than carry it back out to the kitchen—but not because she was afraid. Then she turned off the light and tried to sleep. She had work in the morning. She almost always worked, despite the town council’s worries over all the vacation time and sick time she’d been accumulating. And she prided herself in not frightening easily. She’d faced everything from rabid dogs to armed robbers, and she’d defeated them all. She’d even faced—

No. After all this time, she wouldn’t let one bigmouthed detective make her believe in monsters.

But tonight the bed seemed awfully empty, too. Small.

Despite the moonlight glowing through her windows, Jo closed her eyes and tried to sleep.