Crossing Nevada

Tess hung up.

* * *

ZACH SET DOWN the phone with a shake of his head. A prank call at eight in the morning was a first, as was the oddly defensive phone conversation he’d just had with the new neighbor. Defensive to the point of rudeness. What the hell?

Let it go. The woman was perfectly within her rights to say no to his offer. She could work on her delivery, but...

Zach grabbed his work gloves off the table, trying to focus on the day instead of how much hay he was going to have to buy to tide things over now that it was pretty damned obvious he’d lost the pastures he’d been counting on.

His index finger broke through the work-thinned leather at the tip of the glove as he pulled it on. This was turning out to be a grand day. He could only imagine what delights the north pasture held for him. And, of course, the duct tape was not in the junk drawer where it belonged. His exposed fingertip was simply going to have to take its chances.

Zach tucked his cell phone into his pocket and headed out the door where he could see his three daughters walking up the driveway to his sister-in-law, Beth Ann’s, trailer. Beth Ann worked at the school as an instructional aid and gave the girls a ride every morning after Zach fed them breakfast and helped gather schoolwork, lunches and other essentials before nudging them out the door. Beth Ann was a stickler for promptness. If the girls were late, they walked the half mile to school. Simple as that.

He stopped and watched for a moment, wondering why his youngest daughter, Lizzie, was wearing his oldest daughter, Darcy’s, old purple coat instead of her own new red one. He made a mental note to ask about it at dinner that night. Maybe Beth Ann had washed it. She was a bit of a clean freak, but he wasn’t complaining. She was doing him a huge favor living on the ranch in the hired-hand trailer, handling the girl stuff that he, the oldest of four brothers, did not feel qualified to deal with.

Benny, Zach’s young Border collie, was waiting for him at the old truck he used for beating around the ranch. The dog jumped up on the flat bed and danced excitedly, staying just out of reach in case Zach had some kind of crazy idea about not taking him.

“Don’t worry,” Zach muttered. “You’re going.” Benny, who seemed to understand every word Zach said, sat his butt down and let his tongue loll out in a canine grin.

By some miracle the ancient rig started first try and Zach headed down the lane leading toward the north hay pasture and the pump that needed to be pulled for repairs. He just hoped that he could fix it himself because if not, with cattle prices the lowest he’d seen them in three years, he’d have to cut yet another corner to make ends meet. He truly hoped that wasn’t the case, because right now he was running out of corners. His cousin, Jeff, had started running some cattle with him last year and shared some of the costs, but it still wasn’t enough to ease the pressure of the medical bills. All he wanted was to give his girls a comfortable life, to help compensate for losing their mom to breast cancer.

It wasn’t working out so well. His daughters wore whatever Beth Ann could find on sale while he duct-taped his work gloves and prayed that the pump could be jury-rigged into lasting another year so he had the bucks to buy hay.

He needed that pasture.

* * *

TESS PUT ON a pot of coffee, checked her email, then let the dogs back inside. Two hours of sleep were not enough, but it’d be a while before she could try again. Her adrenaline was too high, her nerves too jangled by the unexpected call.

Sad, really, that an innocuous phone call from a neighbor could ruin a day.

Tess fed the dogs, dumping copious amounts of the ultrahealthy—and therefore ultraexpensive—food their former owner had fed them into two large stainless steel bowls. Mac dove in. Blossom hung back and waited for him to finish, even though she had her own dish.

“You’re setting a bad precedent,” Tess muttered to the dog as she went back into the bedroom to change into her work clothes, which were actually new, since she no longer fit into her old clothes.

The jeans she put on were just jeans, bought for a reasonable price online and delivered by mail. No fashionable fading, studs or strategically placed frayed areas. The T-shirt was equally plain. Long-sleeved, black and boxy with a crew neck. One hundred percent cotton without a hint of spandex. It hung loosely from her shoulders, even though she’d now gained fifteen pounds and was curvier than she’d been her entire life. The curves were part of her disguise, lame as it was, since there was no way she could disguise the scars across the left side of her face.

Her ex-lawyer and savior, William, had suggested gaining weight in addition to dying her dark red hair dark brown and buying glasses she didn’t need. She’d told William that the last thing she felt like doing was eating. Actually, for the first week after the attack, she couldn’t eat, but instead sipped tiny meals through a straw. And even if she did gain weight, she’d pointed out bitterly, it wasn’t like she could hide the scars.

No, William had agreed in his understated way, but overly skinny people stood out almost as much as redheads and after the attack she’d become alarmingly gaunt. He was too polite to say skeletal.

So during the six weeks she’d hidden out at William’s San Jose home after the attack, Tess focused on gaining weight—no easy task for a model who’d spent the past decade eating the bare minimum and feeling guilty about even that small amount. Depression and fear coupled with healing scar tissue hadn’t made eating any easier, but Tess persevered. Pasta, milkshakes, ice cream. Formerly forbidden foods were now her allies and she choked them down, wishing she could enjoy finally being able to eat whatever she wanted.

By the time the LLC had been formed and William had helped her lease-option and sparsely furnish this place in the Nevada outback—a place where Eddie would stand out like a sore thumb—Tess had, for the most part, outgrown her clothes. She’d celebrated with an online shopping spree since she was too paranoid to shop in stores, and didn’t care if the clothing fit right—which it didn’t. Not in her experience anyway.

The tops didn’t cling to her upper body, the jeans didn’t hug her legs. Everything was loose and comfortable—and made her feel invisible—or as invisible as a person could be with a ruined face.

When Tess came back into the kitchen, the oversize stovetop espresso maker began to gurgle and the dogs instantly ran to the back door to wait while Tess poured coffee into a tall travel mug and added a healthy dollop of cream. She’d fallen into a routine over the past week. Coffee—regardless of what time of day she woke up—a quick breakfast of cereal and milk followed by a protein shake, then several hours in the barn sanding the old oak furniture she’d found there. Not that she knew anything about refinishing furniture, but she had instructions she’d printed off the internet and time on her hands.

Too much time. But dwelling on it made her feel even more like the prisoner she essentially was, which in turn made her determined to fill the hours so she wouldn’t feel like a prisoner. Eddie had destroyed her looks and her livelihood, all because she wouldn’t give him something she didn’t have, something that probably no longer even existed. She wasn’t going to let him destroy what was left of her life. She would hang on to what she had and make what she could of it. Then maybe, once the bastard was caught, she could slip back into the mainstream. Rejoin the land of the living.

But first he had to be caught.

* * *

ZACH RETURNED TO the house about half an hour after the girls got home from school. He’d pulled the pump and managed to fix it with the extra parts he had in his shop and then hauled the clumsy cylinder back to the well and lowered it down the hole. It had obligingly sucked up water and spit it back out through the wheel lines in the field.

Sweet victory.

When he walked into the house, the television was on and the heat was off. The three girls were in the living room wrapped in the afghans Karen had made for each of them during her illness. Emma and Lizzie were watching TV, Darcy was doing her homework at the big oak desk he’d inherited from his grandpa, the dark blue crocheted blanket draped over her shoulders. It’d been an unseasonably cold spring day and the house felt like a tomb.

“Darcy, you need to remember to turn on the heat.” Zach pulled off his gloves and dropped them in the square willow basket next to the door that Lizzie called the mitten box. “I can almost see my breath.”

Darcy looked at him from over the top of her glasses. “The furnace is dead and you won’t let me build a fire.”

Damn. He crossed the room to check the thermostat. Dead as a doornail. “You can build all the fires you want while I’m here,” Zach said as he headed for the basement door.

“That doesn’t do us much good when you’re not here,” Darcy said.

“I guess that’s what afghans are for.” Zach snapped on the hanging light before going down the wooden steps to battle the furnace. One of his wife’s cardinal rules had been no fires, no sharp things without an adult in the house. Darcy had been nine when Karen died—old enough to use sharp things, but she hadn’t. As far as he knew she still abided by the rule three years later.

He spent as much time working on the furnace as he did on the tractors and fully expected another major fight, but for once it turned out to be an easy fix. He replaced the fuse then hit the reset button and the beast roared to life. That was two relatively easy fixes in one day. But they didn’t balance out losing his grazing.

“Way to go, Daddy,” Lizzie said as he came up the stairs. She was still wearing Darcy’s coat, which went past her knees. Zach smiled at his youngest daughter, the one with Karen’s fair coloring and strawberry-blond hair. “Thanks, kiddo.” He knelt in front of her, placed a big hand on each of her small shoulders and gave her an exaggerated once-over. “Where’s your coat, Lizzie?”

The six-year-old shifted her mouth sideways. Not a good sign.

“I put it somewhere. I guess.” She couldn’t quite meet his eyes.

“Any idea where?”

She shook her head. Zach glanced at Darcy, who watched the action from his desk. She instantly went back to her homework. Zach sensed conspiracy.

“I want you to find it.”

“What if I can’t?” Lizzie asked as she twisted a button on Darcy’s coat.

Excellent question. “We’ll worry about that later. Right now I want you to find your coat.”

Lizzie exhaled in a long-suffering way and walked out of the room, feet dragging.

“Where’s Lizzie’s coat?” he asked Darcy.

She met his eyes in her direct way. “Honestly, Dad, I have no idea where it is.”

“She hid it,” Emma said from behind him. “I don’t know where.”

“Why?”