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.Dana sneezed twice, which had him stammering more apologies as he tucked the blue cloth in the front pocket of a freshly pressed shirt.“Please don’t do that,” she said.“Say you’re sorry, I mean.I really do appreciate your taking half your day to drive me.”A smile warmed a deeply tanned, broad face that smelled of drugstore aftershave.A decent-looking face, since he’d taken time to clean up.“The pleasure’s all mine.”She nodded before turning in her seat to look out the rear window, desperate for a last glimpse of the place—of all the godforsaken places in the country—her older sister had chosen to call home.Here it was less green than Jay’s ranch, but nevertheless, patches of bright color caught her eye.Jay’s voice flowed from her memory, cool and unexpected as a wellspring in the rocky soil.“Never barren, Dana, any more than you.”She wished he was here now, that he could have put aside his duties to drive her to the airport.Even though she knew it would only make it more difficult to leave him.“If you’re worryin’ about that nutcase coming after us,” Bill told her, “you don’t have to.”He hunkered low and reached beneath the seat between his feet, then drew out the largest pistol she had ever seen.Her eyes widened at the sight of it, as well as at the memory of Angie bleeding, dying, a bullet in her shoulder.“I feel much safer,” Dana said too quickly.“Now could you please put that away?”When he blinked at her blankly, she added, “My…my sister.That’s how she…”His tanned face reddening, Bill shoved the gun back out of sight, his movement so abrupt that she lifted her feet for fear he might squeeze off a shot.He looked disappointed at her reaction, maybe even angry, but he didn’t push her.As the trip wore on she felt guilty for playing the grief card, using it as an excuse to draw into herself for the remainder of their journey.Clearly Bill had harbored hopes of a little conversation.But even for the sake of manners she couldn’t manage such a thing.Not with her heart aching for both the hope and the man she was leaving behind in Rimrock County.Later that same afternoon in his office, Jay talked to Special Agent Steve Petit.With the officious Tomlin busy elsewhere, Petit loosened up a little more as he talked about his years in the town of Monahans, where his father still raised cattle, a living he supplemented by hot-shotting oil-field equipment from site to site in his old pickup.Jay listened, waiting for the other shoe to drop, but Petit never said a word about the news reports regarding the theater incident.Probably the agent already knew far more than the reporters.The bureau could have his medical records opened in a heartbeat, or those of any present or past member of the military.More than likely both Petit’s reticence and his trip down memory lane were tactics meant to ease the local yokel into talking about his uncle’s possible corruption.Still, Jay found himself confessing his suspicions that R.C.’s death might be related to both the Piper-Gold and Vanover killings.As he pulled a couple of sodas from his office fridge, he suggested, “Maybe we could brainstorm together.God knows I want to get to the bottom of this as much as you do.”Petit immediately agreed.“No idea’s too wild,” the special agent said, setting the ground rules for the exercise.“So no calling bullshit on me, saying this old buddy or that neighbor would never do such a thing.”Jay felt a muscle tic in his jaw, but he nodded all the same.However difficult this might be, it would keep him from being shunted aside, then bulldozed by the widening FBI investigation.And it beat the hell out of staring at the clock and wondering if Dana had yet reached the Carlsbad airport, whether she had boarded the plane that would take her out of his life once and for all.He wondered, too, about Bill Navarro, in a truck alone with her for an hour and a half.Would the rough-hewn and short-tempered rancher have it in him to play the gentleman so long? Jay worried that he should have insisted upon taking her himself, in spite of his appointment with Petit and Dana’s insistence that she could handle Bill.“We’ve gotta consider the possibility”—Petit’s voice pulled Jay’s thoughts back on track—“that R.C.Eversole was murdered by Piper-Gold and her husband.Maybe the money wasn’t so much a bribe as blackmail.He could’ve figured out their angle, but eventually he squeezed a little too hard.”Since that didn’t sit well with him, Jay threw in, “Or maybe they killed him after he wouldn’t take their cash.”Petit looked doubtful, which was natural, considering the money buried outside of R.C.’s bedroom window.But he obeyed his own rule, which prompted Jay to mention his earlier suspicion that Angie Vanover had killed his uncle before her own eventual murder.Petit nodded.“Could’ve been her way of shutting down the project, if she believed Eversole was bought off.She could’ve murdered the woman you found in the cavern, too, maybe at the same time.But if Vanover killed one or both, who’d be left to look for her?”“Roman Goldsmith,” Jay guessed.“Maybe after he killed his wife, he figured out she really hadn’t known the location of the money.”“That’s a possibility, especially considering that we’ve linked Goldsmith to an unsolved murder in Miami, where he was running a real estate scam back in the nineties.”“Seems off, though, somehow, doesn’t it, to have a city type traipsing out to a salt cavern in the Rimrock County desert?”“Not necessarily, since Haz-Vestment did a survey of the area around the domes to make their scam look legitimate.Goldsmith could have known about that cavern…Or maybe your uncle had a local partner who wanted to avenge his death.And find the missing money, if Angie was the one who hid it.”“Considering the skull and petals I found in the bedroom, that part seems to fit.”Both men lapsed into silence as they thought for several minutes.Petit spoke next.“Or what if somebody else found out about the money? Someone local with a pressing need for it.”Jay recalled Dennis Riggins’s reaction to the news of Haz-Vestment’s investigation.Remembered, too, Abe Hooks saying, “You don’t really know that bastard [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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