Night Thunder (4 page)

And then there was nothing. Ricky had vanished.

Just like she had to do.

She fought down a sob, dragged her suitcase from the closet, and grabbed an armload of clothes.

Two hours later she was at LaGuardia, boarding a plane for Salt Lake City. She had her tote, her suitcase, and her sketch pad, and she made it on the plane in one piece.

That was something,
Josy thought, as the jet taxied down the runway before takeoff.

There was only one place she’d thought to go. A place far from New York, where she could lose herself, lay low, have time to think, to work, and maybe put some pieces of her life together while she was trying to save that same life.

A town where a woman named Ada Scott lived. A town as different from New York as cowhide was from crystal. A town where she could try to recharge what was left of her creative batteries and meet the one living relative she had left in this world.

A town called Thunder Creek.

Chapter 3

AT TEN MINUTES PAST SIX IN THE EVENING, TY Barclay locked up his sheriff’s department office and headed out the door without a backward glance. Dead tired, he shifted his black Crown Victoria into drive and headed for home. He’d been awake since 4 A.M. when he’d started the day with a five-mile run to town and back in the predawn darkness, then he’d worked nonstop at his desk ever since. All he wanted to do now was go home, crash, and not wake up, not talk to anyone, not see anyone until tomorrow.

Then, thankfully, this day—and this night—would be over.

The Pine Hills apartments were on the outskirts of Thunder Creek, five miles south of Main Street, and he passed only one car on his way—the white Ford Ranger driven by his cousin Roy Hewett.

Roy honked at him and gave a wave. Ty managed a brief, automatic nod back, but truth be told, his brain scarcely registered Roy. It was still wrapped up in his work, in the cattle rustling investigation that had been ongoing for several months now without a break in the case, in the bar fight the previous night at the Tumbleweed Bar and Grill, and in the rescue of a couple of tourists lost this morning on Cougar Mountain—not to mention the mass of paperwork that had piled up on his desk when he wasn’t looking.

He had to keep thinking about work in order not to think about Meg. About what today was. And tonight.

He’d only slept five hours the night before, so sleep would come. It better come. He was counting on that. And when he woke up tomorrow morning, his wedding anniversary would be behind him once again.

He swore when his cell phone rang.

“You okay, Ty?” Roy asked.

“Yeah.” He suppressed the impulse to hang up after that single word. He liked Roy just fine—they were good friends as well as cousins, in fact, but he didn’t like being checked up on. And they both knew that was what was going on here.

“Want to come over to my place for some supper? Corinne’s cooking—roast chicken, mashed potatoes, all the fixings. We’ve got plenty—”

“No, thanks. I’m beat, Roy.”

“Yeah, but you gotta eat—”

“Another time.”

There was a silence. “Look, Ty, I know what day this is. I know it’s hard on you. Why be alone? I saw your face when I passed you and you looked grim as death yourself. I mean . . .” Roy broke off and Ty heard the frustration in his voice. He was trying to say the right things. But there were no right things. Not when it came to Meg’s death. And there never would be.

“I’m all right, Roy. No sweat. I’m going to zap myself a frozen pizza and hit the sack. No big deal. Say hi to Corinne for me.”

And he disconnected.

There were times—too many times, he reflected, frowning—when having a big family was a pain in the butt. Like on days like this, the anniversary of his and Meg’s wedding, when everyone thought he needed coddling. Ty doubted very much that he’d get through the day without calls from his brother, Adam, his sister, Faith, and his mother. That’s why he turned off his phone as he pulled into a parking spot at the Pine Hills as the sun began to set over the mountains.

He sat for a minute, his hands on the steering wheel, gazing out from beneath the brim of his Stetson, but he wasn’t seeing the glorious rose and gold and lavender colors of the sky, or the majesty of the Laramies bathed in shimmering light, or even the shadows of nightfall creeping nearer.

He saw only Meg, as she’d looked at the morgue the last time he’d seen her. With all the life and the passion drained from her, with only the cold marble facsimile of beauty making a mockery of the joyously vibrant, red-headed woman who’d been the love of his life for as far back as he could remember. Meg, with her cascading red curls and Irish cream complexion, her rich ringing laugh and eyes the color of a wild sea.

He was thirty years old and he’d loved Meg Campbell since she was seven and he was eight.

And he’d grieve for her until the day he died. Nothing was going to change that. Nothing was going to make him stop, or ease the pain, or make him embrace a life without her.

That was just the way it was.

Ty encountered no one as he climbed the steps to his second-floor furnished apartment. He’d gotten rid of everything after she died—all of their furniture and the stuff they’d received as wedding gifts. What he hadn’t sold or given away, his parents had stored in a basement closet. He knew his mother, the eternal optimist, thought he might want some of it again if he found someone new. Married again.

There wasn’t a chance in hell he ever would.

His answering machine was flickering. Two messages.

He checked caller ID and saw it was his sister, Faith, and his brother, Adam.

Since the messages would have nothing to do with work, he didn’t bother playing them. For the past two years, Faith and Adam had worried about him on Meg’s birthday, the day of her death, and this, May 2, the date of their anniversary. It would have been their fifth.

What did they think, he was going to kill himself? They should know better. Maybe if he’d stayed on at homicide in Philly, in the city where he and Meg had grown up down the block from one another, where they’d gone to school together, eaten hamburgers and shakes together, and eventually worked at the same precinct and hung out with all the same cops at Shorty’s Pub, he might have gone crazy enough to think about doing that. He didn’t like to admit it, but it was true. Being in Philly, working on the force, without Meg, had been a living hell.

That’s why, when his cousin Roy had called him and said that Thunder Creek needed a new sheriff, and suggested a change of scene might be good for him, he’d actually considered and then accepted the idea.

It hadn’t been difficult getting elected, not with Roy’s endorsement and his own record in law enforcement. And there was the helpful fact that no one had run against him. He had family ties to the community, and as a matter of fact, the Barclays still owned a big parcel of land in Thunder Creek, land on Blue Moon Mesa that had been in the family for generations. When they were kids, Ty and Faith and Adam had spent a lot of summers here visiting the Hewett side of the clan, riding horseback, fishing, hiking in the foothills above Thunder Creek.

Those had been good years, good times. And coming back had helped. Things had settled down for him a lot since he’d left Philadelphia and started over here. He liked the town and the people, his job was more laid back than being on homicide in Philly, yet it kept him plenty busy. He’d bought himself a couple of horses, he had time to go fishing now and then, and nobody bothered him much. Roy was here, but he had Corinne, and they’d gotten engaged three months ago, which kept him pretty occupied. Sometimes they all three hung out at the Tumbleweed Bar and Grill, where Corinne worked. And occasionally, Roy and Corinne tried to nag him into dating some of the local women.

But that hadn’t happened, and Ty knew it wasn’t going to happen. Fortunately, Roy and Corinne seemed to have gotten the message and had recently pretty much quit trying to push a social life on him.

It was about time.

He dropped his briefcase on a chair, flicked on a light switch as the sun angled lower in the sky, and went to the fridge in search of a beer.

The sun was a molten ball in the western sky as Josy drove slowly through the town of Thunder Creek. Beside her on the seat of the Blazer was an empty foam coffee cup, half of a chicken sandwich in a Wendy’s bag, and the map that had guided her all the way from Salt Lake City to Wyoming.

Inside the pocket of her jeans was a key to her temporary new home—fresh from the palm of Candy Merck, the friendly young bleached blonde rental agent who had just accepted a month’s security deposit and a month’s rent up front in cash and told her how to find the Pine Hills apartments.

As she cruised down Main Street, headed south, she couldn’t help the surge of excitement rushing through her. For the first time in a week she wasn’t running away. She had arrived. She was in the town where Ada Scott lived, and where her mother had come long ago to learn about her past.

When she saw the brightly lit diner filled with people, emotions flickered through her, running the gamut from delight to pain. All those childhood memories gushed back of the visit to Thunder Creek and lunch with her parents in that same tiny restaurant. Her parents had been gone for so long now, yet suddenly, for just a moment, they felt as close to her as the front booth of Bessie’s Diner.

But only for a moment.

Her hands tightened on the steering wheel as she drove past. This street looked vaguely familiar, but it must have changed some in the past twenty or so years, she realized, glancing from side to side in the shimmering sunset light. She drove past a glass-fronted beauty salon, Merck’s Hardware, a gas station—then suddenly backed up and pulled in at the last minute. She didn’t need gas—she’d filled up some miles back, but she went inside and bought a can of Coke and a bag of potato chips to go with the leftover chicken sandwich that was going to be her dinner.

For a moment longing filled her, but she shook it off. Much as she’d have loved to stop at Bessie’s Diner for a real meal, something hot and homey, tonight wasn’t the time. She’d start her temporary new life in Thunder Creek tomorrow, when she was fresh and rested, when she had her wits about her, not now when she was dead on her feet.

It seemed like months since she’d fled her apartment with one suitcase, her tote, and Ricky’s package in tow. Months since she’d lived through that nerve-wracking taxi ride to LaGuardia, calling Reese hastily on her cell, babbling a voice mail message about taking a leave of absence to work on the sketches and asking Reese to let Francesca know. At the airport she’d withdrawn four thousand dollars, nearly all of her savings, from an ATM, and hurried onto the next flight to Salt Lake City, where she’d stayed only a day, enough time to get her bearings and buy a map and a car. A truck, really, a dented, blue, banged-up 1995 Blazer that had seen better days, but the guy at Ray’s Used Cars had sworn he’d tuned her up three days earlier and she was good to go.

Ha. The Blazer had broken down in Rock Springs, developed a flat tire on the highway outside of Rawlins, and had been making a weird clunking noise for the past twenty miles. But she was here at last and all she wanted now was to get to the Pine Hills apartments and collapse.

By some miracle, she’d gotten safely away from New York. By some miracle, she hadn’t been followed—or caught. Yet.

She felt like she’d been driving forever and her eyes were bleary. Her head hurt. Her shoulders and butt ached from the long hours in the car. But she was here, and in her pocket was the key to a one-bedroom furnished apartment, hers for the next month.

If she needed to stay that long. Maybe Ricky would be in touch in a matter of days, not weeks, and this entire nightmare would be over. Maybe Archie hadn’t really died, maybe he’d been resuscitated by the paramedics, and Ricky had managed to clear his name, and whoever was after this damned package was in jail.

And maybe she was Julia Roberts and this was all just a very bad dream.

She found the Pine Hills apartment building with no problem. The nondescript rectangular building was only three stories high and set back from the road, flanked on either side by a meadow full of bluegrass and wildflowers.

It couldn’t have looked more different from her fiftytwo-story Manhattan high-rise, and she wondered fleetingly what the provided furnishings in her “furnished” apartment would look like.

It’s only for a few weeks, until you hear from Ricky,
she told herself as she parked in the lot facing the balconied units.
You survived foster home musical chairs and two
years with the Hammonds—this will be a piece of cake.

She dragged her suitcase out of the Blazer, secured her tote over her arm, and slammed the Blazer’s door.

Ty Barclay stood in the shadows of his small balcony on the second floor, sipping his beer, alone with his thoughts. He couldn’t miss the brilliant glory of the sunset sky now, but it didn’t soothe him the way it usually did when he was out riding in the mountains or even driving the winding roads through the foothills. It just didn’t matter.

He was thinking about five years ago today, when he’d watched Meg walk toward him down the aisle wearing her mother’s ivory wedding dress, her red hair all pinned up, with just a few curls framing her face, and everyone they both knew in the world filling the seats in the church.

And he felt the tight knot of pain he lived with every day clenching inside him, more painful than ever.

Damn it, baby, I miss you so,
he thought.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Not for us.

A car pulled into the parking lot then, making some kind of clacking sound that penetrated the darkness of his thoughts. In the rosy gold light he saw it was a Blazer, with a dent in the passenger-side door and a low right rear tire. The woman driving it parked right next to his car below, sat for a moment, and then got out.

He watched her automatically, because it was what he did, who he was. A cop. He’d never seen the Blazer before, so she didn’t live here. Either she was visiting . . . or she was a new tenant.