A Man of His Word

“Sorry,” she muttered, working the clutch and the stick again.

After another protesting snnnrck, the gears engaged. With rain pinging steadily against the roof, Sydney eased the Blazer onto the road. She kept her foot light on the accelerator and her eyes on the treacherous curves ahead.

Little more than a dirt track, Canyon Rim Road snaked along the canyon’s edge for miles before joining the state road that accessed the dam. The stone outcroppings that edged the road on the left made every turn a real adventure. The sheer drop on the right added to the pucker factor. The deluge that poured out of the black sky didn’t exactly help either visibility or navigability. Chewing on her lower lip, Sydney downshifted and took a hairpin turn at a crawl.

A few, tortuous turns later she was forced to admit that it might have made more sense to wait until daylight to drive along the canyon rim. She’d needed this time alone with her memories, though. And there’d been no indication earlier that a storm might—

“What the—!”

She came out of a sharp turn and stomped on the brake. Or what she thought was the brake. Her boot hit the clutch instead, and the Blazer rolled straight at the slab of rock that had tumbled onto the road from the outcropping beside it.

Choking back an oath, Sydney swung both her foot and the wheel. With the rock wall on the left and the sheer drop-off on the right, there was no room to maneuver around the obstacle. The Blazer swung too far out before she jammed on the brake and stopped its roll.

To her horror, she felt the road’s narrow shoulder begin to crumble under the Blazer’s weight. The vehicle lurched back, dropped at an angle, stalled. Frantic, Sydney dragged the stick back to neutral, twisted the key.

“Come on! Come on!”

The engine turned over at the exact moment another piece of the rim gave. The four-wheel tilted at a crazy angle and started to slide backward.

“Oh, God!”

Shouldering open the door, Sydney threw herself out. She hit on one hip and twisted desperately, scrabbling for purchase on the rain-slick earth. Beside her the Blazer gave a fearsome imitation of the Titanic. Metal groaned against sandstone. Nose up, headlights stabbing the rain, it slid backward like the great ship slipping into its dark grave, then slowly toppled over the edge.

The echoes of its crashing descent were still ringing in Sydney’s ears when sandstone and muddy earth crumbled under her frantic fingers and she followed the Blazer over the edge.

Reece Henderson slapped a rolled-up schematic of the Chalo River Dam against his jeans-clad thigh. Jaw tight, he waited while the phone he held to his ear shrilled a half dozen times. He’d started to slam it down when the receiver was fumbled off the hook. Reece took the mumbled sound on the other end for a hello.

“Where is she?”

“Huh?”

“Where’s Scott?”

“Whoziz?”

Gripping the receiver in a tight fist, Reece glared at the mirrored calendar on the opposite wall of the office set aside for his use.

“This is Henderson, Reece Henderson. Chief engineer on the Chalo River Dam project. Where’s your boss?”

“Dunno.” There was a jaw-cracking yawn at the other end of the line. “What time izit?”

“Eight forty-seven,” he snapped. “She was supposed to be here at eight.”

The irritation that had started simmering at 8:05 was now at full boil. He’d hung around topside waiting for the blasted woman, wasting almost an hour he could have spent down inside the dam with his engineers.

“Did you, like, try her room?” The kid at the other end of the line sounded more alert now, if not more coherent.

“Yes. Twice. There wasn’t any answer. The motel operator said you were her assistant and would know where she was.”

Actually, Martha Jenkins, who pulled triple duty as owner, operator and day clerk at the Lone Eagle Motel, had provided Reece with more details than he’d either asked for or wanted. Martha hadn’t been on duty when Sydney Scott and her gum-popping, green-haired, multiple-body-pierced assistant Zachary Tyree checked in late yesterday afternoon, but things got around fast in a town the size of Chalo Canyon.

“Hang loose.”

The phone clattered down. The sound of sheets whooshing aside was followed in quick succession by the snick of a zipper and padding footsteps. Long moments later the phone rattled again.

“She’s not in her room.”

Reece rolled his eyes. He thought they’d already established that fact.

“Well, if she strolls in anytime soon, tell her I left my brother’s wedding early and drove half the night so I would make the meeting she didn’t bother to show for. She can call me here at the site. I’ll get back to her when and if…”

“You don’t understand, dude. She’s not here.”

Reece felt the last of his patience shredding. “Tell your boss—”

“The blinds in her room were open and I looked in. Her bed hasn’t been slept in.”

Worry put a crack in the kid’s voice. A different sort of emotion put a lock on Reece’s jaw.

God! He’d been hearing the rumors and gossip about this Scott woman for weeks. How she’d thrown herself at Jamie Chavez ten years ago. How Jamie’s father had all but dragged her out of his son’s bed. How her father had knocked Chavez, Sr., on his butt the next day. Now she was a big, important Hollywood director, coming back to Chalo River to impress everyone with her success…and to try her luck with Jamie again.

Reece couldn’t suppress the disgust that swirled in his gut. The woman had arrived in town only yesterday afternoon and had already spent the night somewhere other than her motel room. Pretty fast work, even for a big, important Hollywood director.

Well, Reece had complied with his boss’s direct communiqué. He’d cooperated with the woman, or tried to, damn near busting his butt to get back here in time for their meeting this morning. The ball was in Ms. Sydney Scott’s court now, and she could lob it at the net from now until next Christmas for all he cared. He started to hang up when the sharp concern in the kid’s voice stilled his hand.

“Syd drove out to the canyon right after we got settled here at the motel yesterday afternoon. She could still be out there.”

“What?”

Reece’s irritation spiked into anger. He’d made it plain to Ms. Scott in their exchange of faxes that neither she nor any of her crew should go poking around in the restricted area behind the dam until he briefed them on the repair project and the potential hazards during the blasting period.

“Syd said she wanted to check the water level in the reservoir and get her bearings. Told me not to wait up for her. You don’t think she, like, got lost or something?”

“I understand Ms. Scott used to live in this area. She should know her way around.”

“That was ten years ago, dude.”

“The name’s Henderson.”

“Right, Henderson. Could you, like, drive around and check on her? She sorta gets involved in her projects sometimes and forgets what day it is. I’d go myself, but I don’t know the geography, and Syd’s got the Blazer, which leaves me, like, without wheels until Tish and the others get here.”

Reece wanted very much to tell the kid what he and his boss could, like, do, but he’d assumed responsibility for this project and all the challenges and headaches that went with it. Including, it appeared, Sydney Scott. If she’d entered the restricted area and gotten her vehicle stuck in the mud after that gully-washer last night, she was, unfortunately, his problem.

“All right. I’ll drive along the rim and look for her. Take down my mobile phone number. If she walks in, call me.”

“Thanks, man!”

After a call down to his second-in-charge to advise him that he’d be on mobile for the next half hour or so, Reece exchanged his hard hat for a battered straw Stetson, legacy of those rare breaks between jobs which he spent at the Bar-H, helping his brother Jake. A moment later, he left the air-conditioned comfort of the office for the blazing heat of a summer Arizona sun bouncing off concrete.