Dangerous Refuge (7 page)

Nine

E
verything is going well.

Lorne Davis’s death will be certified as natural.

The nephew is an unexpected problem, but not insurmountable. Tanner Davis has no attachment to the ranch, so even if he ends up with it—unlikely—he’ll sell it to the highest bidder.

If that doesn’t work out, or if the inconvenient cop gets in the way somehow, there will be a really convenient, and fatal, accident in his near future. Nobody will care, especially the brass in L.A.

Nobody will miss Rua, either.

Really, killing him will be a public service. The sooner the better.

Ten

T
anner led Shaye close to the flattened patch of grass and brittle weeds where his uncle had died.

“Was Dingo a carrion hound?” he asked.

She flinched and tried not to think of Lorne’s body and vultures sliding out of the air. “Not that I know of. He was more a hot-rabbit-and-fresh-kill kind of canine.”

Tanner smiled faintly.

She watched him study the area where Lorne had died. His eyes were intent, narrowed, looking for or seeing things that others wouldn’t see.

“It’s different, now,” she said.

“How?”

“Full sunlight,” she said simply.

He switched his attention to her. “Was Lorne wearing a jacket when you found him?”

She remembered the scene all too clearly. “No. And the first deputy didn’t ask about that.”

Tanner grunted. He wasn’t surprised. The deputy probably was doing back-to-back shifts just to cover his part of the county. There was never enough money to pay for full coverage, especially in rural areas. An old man dying alone on his ranch wasn’t going to raise enough interest to get much more than a body bag and an obituary in the local weekly.

“The second deputy, Nate August, started to question me about Lorne’s clothes, but another call came in and he had to leave.”

She stared at the beaten grass and reminded herself that Lorne had died quickly, no time to be alone in fear and pain.

“Are you okay?” Tanner asked gently.

“Yes. No. Not really.” She pulled off her ponytail holder and rubbed where some hair had been caught the wrong way. “I know his death was quick. That helps.”

“I don’t want to make it harder on you, but . . .” He shrugged. “It sounds like nobody in the sheriff’s department is paying attention to this one.”

“Everyone is spread thin in the county, and they concentrate on the towns.”

“They’re working the odds. More people, more chances of needing a cop. What makes you say that Lorne died quickly?”

“I’m a volunteer with the local search-and-rescue group,” she said. “They taught us to read and follow disturbances in the land—tracks, broken brush, or trampled grass, anything that was out of place.”

“You could see the ground that well? I thought you found him before sunrise.”

Her eyes narrowed, but she was looking at the past, not at him. He waited, letting her reexamine the picture in her mind of the moment she had first seen his uncle’s corpse. Something, or things, had led her to believe he died a quick, painless death. Tanner needed to know how she had arrived at her conclusions.

“It was the gloaming time,” she said.

“What?”

“Those clean, beautiful moments before the sun clears the mountains across Carson Valley, when the stars are mostly gone and light seems to bloom from an invisible source. There aren’t many details, just darkness at your feet and the day coming up with the sun. You get the same feeling at twilight, after the sun has set and light drains away, leaving the stars behind.”

He watched her, listening to her describe the beauty of the times when night and day passed each other. “Are you a dawn person?”

“I won’t get up to see one, but if there’s another reason to be out, I like that hushed, waiting-for-something feeling.”

“Lorne’s message must have really upset you,” Tanner said quietly, understanding what she hadn’t said—she really hadn’t slept well after hearing his uncle’s anger.

She nodded and closed her eyes. It made no difference. She still saw Lorne’s body condensing from the shroud of night, the marks of scavengers getting clearer and clearer on his corpse with the rising sun.

She opened her eyes. It was too easy to remember how he had looked lying slackly on his back, his ruined face lifted to the merciless sky and his thin silver hair lifting in the occasional wind.

“What are you seeing?” Tanner asked in a low, undemanding voice.

“Lorne. The marks of scavengers. Vultures sliding out of the brightening sky to get their share of the free protein.”

He waited, hating that he had to put her through this. And knowing that the only other choice was to walk away and pretend that everything was as neat as the first deputy’s report, all gaps filled in, certainty crisp in every line, no dangling ends or unanswered questions.

“This kind of ground doesn’t hold footprints well,” she said, “unless the person stays in place for a long time or paces back and forth or drags himself around. I didn’t see that kind of disturbance in the vegetation until they lifted Lorne’s body. Everything beneath him was crushed. His boot heels . . .” She waved her hand. “You can still see the marks. His arms were out from his sides.”

“Sounds like he fell hard.”

So hard his heels bounced.

“Like a puppet without strings.” She cleared her throat. “Sorry, I—”

“Don’t apologize. I asked for what you saw. You’re telling me.” He took her hand and rubbed his thumb across her fingertips.

“Do you console every grieving civilian?” she asked softly.

“No.”

His thumb stroked her palm.

She let out a breath. “He wasn’t wearing a hat. I guess it blew away in the wind.”

Tanner waited, caressing her, saying nothing, silently encouraging her to remember each painful detail.

“I’m not sure I ever saw him without his hat,” she said.

“He only went bareheaded in bed or in the shower.”

She almost smiled. “He wasn’t wearing one of his work shirts or his work pants. It was his go-to-town clothes. And . . .” She frowned, remembering. “The little pouch of chewing tobacco had spilled out over his shirt.”

“The one he kept in his left shirt pocket?”

She nodded. “I could tell he had died well before the scavengers came, because they didn’t draw blood. There were . . .” She drew a deep, careful breath. “Marks, gouges, but no bleeding. No rigor mortis. No bruises on his hands, no grass or dirt under his nails that I could see from ten feet away. Except for the scavengers, I didn’t see any sign of facial injury. Nothing to make me think he’d struggled or fought or anything like that.”

“Like I said, you see better than an overworked deputy. Sheriff wrote it off as a heart attack before he ever looked at the body. If he looked at all.”

Shaye watched Tanner with shadowed, beautiful eyes. “You don’t think that’s what happened?”

“A heart attack is always possible, but in this case it leaves a lot of dangling ends.”

“Such as?”

Tanner started naming the facts that he was having trouble swallowing. “Lorne’s home, but he’s in his town clothes. Shortly before Lorne died, Dingo ate poison. Dingo’s a hunter, not a scavenger, and Lorne didn’t put out poison. Lorne’s dogs—the ones that lasted more than a year, anyway—hunted in the national forest in the daytime, not out of garbage cans at night. Lorne was trying to change his will. If he had lived, the Conservancy would have been cut out.”

“We’ve had a lot of people refuse us,” Shaye said. “They’re all alive and a lot of them had more land than Lorne.”

Tanner nodded. “That’s what I figured. Which leaves the missing gold. Did he say anything about being close to bankruptcy?”

“No. He complained about the price of feed and taxes and what a lousy amount of money he got from the cattle when he shipped to the feedlots, but so does every other rancher I know. He was looking at new trucks, and had just bought a new dress hat and the boots I found him in, so he couldn’t have been that broke.”

Then, as if it had just registered. “Gold? What gold? He had a silver belt buckle or two, but I never saw him wearing gold.”

Tanner watched the sky with the measuring eyes of someone who had grown up where weather mattered. The morning was sunny with puffy clouds, but almost cool. Autumn was settling in, leaching the heat from the ground. Once the sun went behind the mountains in the late afternoon, the furnace went off and things got chilly real fast.

Clouds slid over the sun like gray fingers, threatening rain. But the clouds were being pushed by a hard wind that chased and scattered them before they could get together and cry.

Shaye waited, seeing cloud-shadow and sunlight change Tanner’s face. He looked like a man chewing on something he couldn’t swallow and wouldn’t spit out.

“Sorry, that was my mistake bringing it up,” he said. “So you found him out here?” he asked quickly. “On his back, wearing his new town boots?”

She wanted to pursue the question of the gold, but doubted that he would tell her much more than he had.

All he has is questions to ask, not answers to give.

It irritated the hell out of her. Then she took a better grip on her roller-coaster emotions and said, “Yes.”

“Wonder why,” he said to himself. “He and my dad were raised alike. Dad didn’t change. I’m having a hard time believing Lorne did.”

“What do you mean?”

“On the ranch you had your work boots, then you had the boots you wore into town, and for really special occasions you had a pair of fancy boots. Your work boots didn’t leave the ranch, and you weren’t on the ranch without being in them unless you were heading into town or coming back from town.”

Shaye didn’t know what to say. Obviously the boot thing meant more to Tanner than it did to her.

He sat on his heels and ran his fingers through the dirt, testing the dryness of the soil.

“If you found Lorne here, he wasn’t coming back from his truck or heading toward it,” Tanner said, “yet he was wearing his town boots. With a town shirt. What about his pants?”

She looked at the ground, seeing the past and not wanting to see it at all. “They weren’t work pants. Maybe he was just out admiring his land.”

“He respected the land, but I never saw him stand around and admire it. Did you?”

Wind gusted down the mountain, swirling her hair. Automatically she tucked it back behind her ears. “No. When he was outside, he was always doing something. Mending fences, cleaning the irrigation ditches, checking the cattle, cussing the deer and rabbits that kept raiding his garden, despite Dingo’s teeth. Even when we were talking, his hands were busy oiling a bridle or wielding a hoe or . . . something.”

“Yes, that’s how I remember him.” Tanner stood and brushed his hands off. “No footprints around the body?”

“I didn’t look for any.” Absently she pushed windblown hair back from her face again. “Even ten feet away, it was clear that Lorne was dead. If I can’t give aid, I’m supposed to leave everything untouched for the deputies. I called 911 and chased scavengers until a patrol car showed up.”

And I cried, but I’m the only one who cares about that.

“If it was important, wouldn’t the first deputy have seen it?” she added.

“Not if he wasn’t looking for it,” Tanner said.

She shook her head. “I should have looked. I’m sorry.”

He heard the emotion in her voice and touched her chin. “Why would you? You’re not a cop. And maybe there was nothing to see.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

He changed the subject. “Lorne’s lawyer said that there had been offers on the ranch. Was that something he talked about with you?”

“He laughed about it. Said the idiots thought they could eat the view.”

“If you could, you’d be fat,” he said wryly, waving a hand at the surroundings.

Behind the ranch house, the Sierra Nevada thrust granite spires up into the sky, creating a vast barrier to anything that didn’t have wings. In the winter, winds routinely reached more than one hundred miles an hour on the upper ridgelines, lifting snow like white fire from black rocks. The mountains were a wilderness of tall trees and rushing white streams, hidden valleys and stands of aspens that burned molten gold in the fall.

Below the ranch to the east, Refuge spread out, far enough away to be interesting rather than intrusive. Around the town, sunlight glittered off the groundwater and irrigation channels that were wet even in the driest season. A hundred shades of green fields and marshes shimmered in the sun, surrounding farmhouses and town alike.

Glory Springs and Lorne’s narrow ranch valley lay between the mountains and the main valley floor where Refuge was, part of both but at the same time distinct, aloof. Like Lorne.

“The ranch is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen,” Shaye said quietly. “I wish . . .”

Tanner waited, but she didn’t finish. “What do you wish?”

“That Lorne was alive and the land was safe with the Conservancy.” She turned and faced him. “What are you going to do with the ranch?”

Eleven

A
t first Shaye thought that Tanner would ignore her question as he had the one about the gold. Then he shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he said simply.

“You weren’t in touch with Lorne, you haven’t been here since you were a kid, yet you dropped everything and drove here when he died. Because of the ranch?”

“No.”

“Then why?”

He shrugged. “I wondered myself. I think I was . . . looking for something.”

“What?”

“If I knew, I would have found it by now.” He hissed out a long breath and put his hands on his hips. His mouth settled into a flat line. “Whatever, I’m here now, and I keep tripping over questions. As for the ranch, when I’m sure I understand why you found Lorne lying on his back for a vulture buffet, then we can talk about the land and the Conservancy.”

Because I’m sure I don’t want much to do with the land anymore. Right?

He made an impatient sound. The ranch reminded him of too many things that never had had answers and never would—his father, his uncle, himself.

If she picked up his uneasy thoughts, she hid it well. Or it didn’t bother her.

And why should it? You’re nothing much to her, and while she’s a damned intriguing woman, she isn’t into casual sex—and that’s all I can offer her. She loves life in a place that drove me crazy.

Or was it the teeth-grinding tension of growing up as a buffer between my uncle and my father that made me eager to get out?

Tanner had never thought about that possibility and he didn’t have time or patience for it now. The past was over. The questions about Lorne’s death were here and now.

The wind flexed across Tanner and Shaye, bringing with it the smell of evergreens and stone. Like the day, the wind was balanced between sunshine and chill.

“What if we don’t find out all the answers?” she asked.

“We will. It’s just a matter of knocking on enough doors.”

Or kicking them in.

“Let me see your badge,” she asked.

“Why?”

“Because you come in with the wind, and you’re going to blow out just as quick. I’ll still be in the here and now, though. I have to live with all this.”

With an odd curl of his mouth that was too hard to be called a smile, he pulled a leather wallet from his jacket pocket. A quick, practiced motion of his wrist opened the wallet, revealing a bronze shield and ID card. They gleamed in the light.

“Detective Tanner Davis. LAPD Homicide,” he said in a voice that had an edge like the wind. “Western B, representing the great Olympic district. When I’m not in the cooler shuffling papers and stiffs.”

A situation that is going to change when I get back to L.A. I’m a good cop. I should get back to being one.

Curious, Shaye took the badge and examined it. The metal item was a lot heavier than she thought it would be. She wondered if he noticed its weight. “And you believe that Lorne didn’t die of a heart attack?”

“I believe that it’s certainly possible. Does that mean a crime was committed? I won’t know until I find out more.”

He retrieved his wallet, flipped it shut, and stowed it with the automatic motions of someone who has done it countless times.

“If you really think something was . . . off . . . about Lorne’s death, you should talk to the sheriff.”

“I couldn’t get past the door with what I have now. The last thing a sheriff wants before an election is an important, unsolved case.”

“You think the sheriff is corrupt?” she asked, startled.

“No. I think he’s as much politician as cop. Unless I can come up with a lot more than a few loose ends, the politician will mourn at Lorne’s funeral and the cop won’t look anywhere he isn’t forced to. I’m hoping the gold will be a lever.”

“What gold?” she asked bluntly.

“Pirate treasure,” he said with a straight face.

She considered smacking him like a little brother. But he wasn’t her brother and he certainly wasn’t little.

“Would that be treasure he dug up while shoveling bull manure?” she asked sweetly.

Tanner smiled. “C’mon. I’ll show you.”

After the sweeping views outside, the interior of the old house seemed small. It hadn’t been empty long enough to have an abandoned feel, but it was beginning to need a good airing.

Shaye kept expecting Lorne to come out from the back bedroom and ask what the hell they were doing in his house.

“I recognize Lorne,” she said, gesturing to the framed photo on the fireplace mantel. “When I asked him who the other man was, he ignored me. Is it your father?”

Tanner didn’t even look up from the chimney stone he was poking around. “The one on the right is my dad.”

“You don’t look like him.”

“Nope. I’m meaner.”

“Tougher,” she corrected. “Like Lorne.”

“Don’t kid yourself. We both got a full helping of mean.”

She wanted to argue that Marc Nugent had taught her all about mean. Tanner wasn’t. Tough? Sure. But not striking out at every target just because it was there and he was frustrated. Like Marc had.

Tanner was different. It showed in simple ways . . . like the gentleness of his hand against her cheek even though he knew sex wasn’t on offer.

I could get used to that kind of man, strong enough to be gentle.

And that was something she shouldn’t be thinking.

“Did they argue a lot?” she asked.

“Lorne and my dad?”

“Yes.”

Tanner stopped worrying the stone and leaned against the cold chimney, watching Shaye, remembering just how good she had felt with only a brief touch, wanting to taste her long and deep.

“Two men,” he said, “one ranch, one boss. Lorne. Dad was much younger. In Lorne’s eyes, he always would be. Lots of friction. But that’s all from an adult perspective. As a kid, I just accepted that they fought through me. I enjoyed the ranch, horses, cattle—hell, even shoveling manure. I worked hard bucking hay and fixing fences, and my uncle taught me how to shoot, ride, drive, drink, and judge livestock. Dad worked in Reno. I loved him, but I didn’t see much of him until we moved to L.A.”

She thought of what Tanner must have been like, an energetic kid with the whole world to discover. “What about your siblings?”

“By the time I was old enough to care about the ranch, my two sisters were through with their horse phase and chasing boys. They’re both married and have kids. One lives in D.C. and one in Atlanta. How about you?”

“Older sister, married, no kids, doing the San Francisco social thing with my mother. Brother overseas, divorced, no kids. My parents have been doing laps about having grandchildren for almost as long as I can remember.”

“Sounds like family. Never satisfied.”

“Not in my experience. And you’ve ducked the gold question long enough.”

His mouth lifted at both corners. “I’m easy. I’ll trade info for a kiss.”

For a moment both of them looked equally surprised.

Her breath backed up in her throat. She cleared it. “Speaking of gold,” she said firmly.

He laughed and gave up teasing her.

Later, he had some serious teasing and tasting in mind. He could tell that she wanted him, but she was resisting. He respected that.

And he planned on getting around it real soon.

Shaye watched Tanner and let out a silent sigh when he turned his attention back to the fireplace. The look in his eyes had made her feel like the sexiest woman alive.

Hunted, too.

Wonder when I’ll let him catch me.

If,
she thought quickly.
If.

The sound of stone grating over stone startled her. She walked close enough to look over his crouching body. His hands looked lean and capable as he pulled out one of the river cobbles on the side of the fireplace.

There was nothing but darkness where the stone had been.

“It looks empty to me,” she said.

He straightened carefully. She was close now, close enough for him to smell the clean scent of her hair. No perfume this morning. Just warm, soft female.

“The coins were kept in here,” he said huskily. “I saw them several times after I turned fourteen. Knowing about the hidey-hole was a Davis rite of passage for the men.”

“The gold was Lorne’s fortune?” she asked, turning from the black hole to Tanner’s vivid blue eyes.

Falling into them.

Yanking herself back.

“No,” he said, watching her lips. “They were Max’s continuing ‘screw you’ to the government and the crazy idea that he owed it money from land that generations of family had fought and died to hold against Indians, drought, envy, and politicians.”

“Max? A Davis ancestor?”

“The original hard-ass,” Tanner agreed. “Lorne learned it best, but my dad was no amateur. The gold was my family’s form of Social Security and Medicare. Originally it was nuggets and dust panned up the mountain or traded for steers. Then Max decided to celebrate a good cattle sale by converting everything into a gold coin that had caught his eye at the poker table. He’d never seen one like it before.”

“Was it really a Spanish doubloon? Pirate gold?”

Tanner leaned in closer, close enough to feel her startled breath, smell her warmth, all but taste her sweetness. “The coins were 1932 Saint-Gaudens,” he said in a deep voice. “They were a family relic. Each generation added some. Loans from the hoard were always repaid. It was our independence, our freedom, our solid gold ‘screw you’ to civilization.”

“Maybe Lorne cashed in the gold when he decided to give the ranch to the Conservancy.”

“Possible.”

“But you don’t believe it.” She frowned. “Do you think the gold was stolen during a robbery and then Lorne was somehow killed?”

The cry of a hawk fell out of the sky like a silver talon.

She started and saw that the wind had opened the front door. Automatically she headed toward it.

“Leave it,” Tanner said. “Place could use some fresh air. As for the gold, in L.A. people get killed every day for a lot less than that.”

Wonder when Brothers will get back to me.

When he has something, mook,
Tanner said to his impatient half.

Shaye opened her mouth, but said nothing. The thought of him seeing hard ways to die on a regular basis closed her throat. She stared at him, eyes dark and wide.

“I’ll bet murder happens in Carson Valley, and even Refuge,” he said. “After all, humans live there.”

She swallowed. “I know. It’s just that . . .” She shook her head. “Seeing that much death must wear you down.”

Saying nothing, he put the stone back into place, pressing it tight, like he wanted the secret to stay hidden even now that it was out.

She got the silent message. He wasn’t going to talk about his work.

“The gold,” she said, “explains why Lorne said that he wasn’t hard up for tax money, so if the Conservancy was waiting for him to get that desperate, they’d wait a long time.”

“When was that?” Tanner asked, turning to face her.

“A few months ago, about the time I finally got him to sit down and really listen to what the Conservancy was trying to do for the small ranchers in the valley.”

“Huh. You actually got to the old buzzard.”

Shaye winced and remembered vultures condensing out of the dawn. “Not my favorite word right now.”

“You prefer ‘bastard’?”

She ignored the choice. “I finally convinced Lorne that we weren’t trying to evict him or sell his land to developers or turn it over to the mustangs.”

“Mustangs?” Tanner asked, lifting his black eyebrows.

“Oh, don’t act like that around Kimberli. She’ll bend your ear for hours and have you writing a check just to get her to go away. Mustangs are her special cause.”

“Why? Mustangs might have had good bloodlines once,” he said, “but that was hundreds of years ago, when they came to the New World with conquistadors on their back. Those horses went feral as soon as they could get away. When settlers came, the feral animals were crowded off into the scrublands and inbred down to something small and tough enough to survive on sagebrush. Like burros.”

“You sound like Lorne. But to a lot of people, mustangs are romantic. People have become attached to them.”

“City people, yeah. Ranchers? Not so much. They compete with cattle and game for food.”

“So do city people,” Shaye said blandly. “Kimberli is city down to her expensive pedicure. She adores mustangs.”

“She ever been close to one?”

“The license plate on her car, does that count?”

He gave up the mustang discussion. “So you convinced Lorne to put the land in trust with the Conservancy? And he’d still work it for as long as he could?” There was an unspoken
not real long
in his words.

“Lorne, and six other local families who agreed to put their ranches in trust with the Conservancy. They’re still able to live and work on the land they love and the Conservancy makes sure the land stays as it is, rather than being abandoned or turned into shopping malls. And that’s only ranches in and around Carson Valley. The Conservancy is all over the Intermountain West.”

Tanner’s fingers did the tattoo thing on his leg again.

“Come on. Let’s go talk to your Sheriff Conrad,” he finally said.

“He’s not mine.”

“Okay.” Tanner held out his hand. “Take a ride with me. You can sit in the car while I talk to the sheriff. Afterward I’ll buy you lunch.”

“Um, the sheriff is Kimberli’s kind of person.”

“Yeah, I got that last night.”

“I’m sure he’s good at his job,” Shaye said.

“I’m not.”