Wild Wild Death (9 page)

“Did you hear me? I said—”

“Back at the cemetery, you told me you were bringing my bones to New Mexico.”

“Yeah, I did. And I wasn’t lying. We’re in New Mexico, right? Except…” I swal owed hard. “I’m not going to bury you here. I’m not going to bury you at al .”

He waved a hand in my direction. “You’re not talkin’ sense. Why come al the way here if you’re not

—”

I told him. Fast, before I could change my mind. I told him about the ransom note. And about Dan.

Wel , not al about Dan. I left out the part about how before Dan’s dead wife whooshed in and took over my body, I was about to hop into bed with him. Not relevant, and besides, it was embarrassing to think I’d had sweet, geeky—and very hot—Dan stolen away by a dead woman.

I finished up with the bit about the silver watchband. I even got my suitcase out of the trunk and dug through it so I could show him the watchband and the photo of Dan, just to prove I was tel ing the truth. When I was done, I held my breath, and glanced at him. “Are you pissed?”

His expression was unreadable. “You could have told me sooner.”

“Then you would have been mad at me sooner, and I would have had to sit in the car with you al this time and feel bad.”

“Do you? Feel bad?”

“I feel…” I pushed a hand through my hair.

Humidity had always been my friend, curl-wise, and Humidity had always been my friend, curl-wise, and back in Cleveland, humidity was one thing I never had to worry about. Out here in what Goodshot cal ed the high desert, it was a different story. In northern New Mexico, the air felt as empty as the rocky, tree-less, and very brown landscape. Already, my hair hung in my eyes, and I promised myself a trip to the local drugstore for ponytail holders as soon as possible. If…

I glanced around at the scrawny plants poking through the cracks in the beat-up blacktop, a weather-battered trailer a few hundreds yards away, the wasteland that surrounded us.

If, that is, I could even find a drugstore in this back of beyond.

“I feel responsible,” I admitted, wishing Goodshot would just fly off the handle and get the yel ing over with. Then maybe we could put the entire I-told-you-the-truth-but-not-the-whole-truth-and-nothing-but behind us.

Instead, al he did was scrape a toe against the gritty ground. His cowboy boot didn’t leave a mark.

“What would kidnappers be wantin’ with my bones?”

This I didn’t know, and I told him as much. I told him, too, that I’d been over it a mil ion times in my head and that it didn’t make any more sense now than it did any of those mil ion times.

Cal me self-centered (not that anybody ever would), but if we were talking about my bones, I would have gotten a little defensive. I guess it’s only natural people think of themselves as indispensable.

And valuable. To think that our earthly remains were just part of some sicko joke was just too weird for words. The only thing I could think of…

“You cursed the city!” I reminded him, even though I shouldn’t have had to.

“What’d you expect? I just got myself blowed up.

Can’t blame a man for being mad.”

He scratched a finger along the back of his neck. “Don’t make no difference, though, does it?

What you’re tel in’ me is that I’m no better off now than I was back in Cleveland in that mausoleum.

Can’t believe kidnappers are goin’ make sure I get back to the pueblo. They’re gonna dump that bag of bones somewhere, fast. And I’m gonna be right back where I started from. You ain’t goin’ to do me any good.”

Maybe it was just as wel that he was being so restrained. I was emotional enough for the both of us.

“It’s not going to do Dan any good if some crazy kidnappers kil him,” I wailed.

My words blew away on the never-ending wind and were lost in the silence that pressed against us.

Final y, Goodshot lifted his chin. “This Dan, he’s your friend.”

I nodded. “If Dan gets hurt… If he gets… kil ed…

and I don’t do everything in my power to try and stop it—”

“So you’re comin’ to Dan’s rescue. Like the cavalry.” Goodshot’s solemn expression broke into a grin and he held up one hand and said exactly what I was thinking. “I know. Bad joke. Especial y comin’

from an Indian. Sorry. But true, huh? It’s a rescue mission. And you’re helpin’ a friend.” He took a long look around, drinking in every rock and scrawny shrub. “Guess it won’t make that much of a difference. I’ve waited this long to get back to the pueblo, it won’t hurt to wait a little longer.”

I think maybe he saw the tears that fil ed my eyes, because he gave me another wave of the hand and turned his back on me. “You know,” he said, “it’s kind of like a treasure hunt. That ransom note told you to come here. So there must be something here…” His hands out at his sides, Goodshot spun around, taking in the abandoned gas station and the desolate hil s. “You were brought here because you were supposed to find somethin’. And I’m guessin’

the kidnapper chose this place because he figured nobody else was goin’ to find it and nobody was goin’ to disturb you while you looked.”

“I hope you’re right.” Hands on my hips, I looked around, too. “You don’t think Dan is here somewhere, do you?” I started toward the dilapidated coffee shop, but stopped before I got too close. Who knew what was hiding in there! “Maybe they just want me to leave the bones and he’s here and—”

“Too easy.” Don’t ask me how ghostly things work, but I heard Goodshot exhale the words and turned to find him puffing on a fat cigar. He stepped back, blew out a couple smoke rings, and studied the scene. “If I was gonna kidnap some fel a—”

“I’d want to make sure I had the bones in hand before I released him.” He nodded so I’d know I was fol owing where his train of thought was headed.

“Which means…”

“Which means…”

“I’d leave a note. Or a clue of some sort.” Another puff and Goodshot narrowed his eyes. “Here, maybe.” He closed in on a piece of paper fluttering across the blacktop in the wind that hadn’t stopped blowing around the gritty air since I stepped out of the car, but since he was unable to touch it, I was the one who ended up plucking the paper off the ground.

It was just a bit of newspaper, and I dropped it back where I found it and kicked it aside. That’s when I noticed another scrap of paper stuck into the credit card slot on one of the gas pumps.

“Bril iant!” I told Goodshot, and reached for the note.

10 pm

Taberna Antonito, Colorado

After Tuesday?

Then u r too late

Dan is already dead

The words burned into my brain and my fingers trembled against the sheet of paper. It was Monday and I had made it just in time. If I hadn’t gotten there… If I’d arrived after Tuesday… If I didn’t have the bones with me…

I refused to let my brain go there. The important thing now was to fol ow the kidnapper’s directions. I was close. Too close to let a couple little things like panic, worry, and I’m-so-scared-I-can’t-stand-it stop me.

I looked north, back up the highway we’d just traveled south on. I knew that Colorado was about an hour in that direction, and I remembered the town of Antonito, al right. But then, it was hard not to remember the last place I’d seen anything that even sort of resembled civilization.

One main street, a grocery store, a couple bars, dust. Oh yeah, I remembered the dust. Colorado dust was a lot like New Mexico dust.

“And there was a motel back that way,” I said before I glanced around again at the barren landscape. “That might be a better option than trying to find someplace to stay around here.”

“Then what do you say? We’d better get a move on.” Goodshot was already in the car. “I’ve always liked the idea of racin’ in to save the day.”

Yeah, I liked the idea, too. Especial y considering that I was anxious to get this whole thing over with.

Bad enough I had to worry about seeing Dan alive again…

I wheeled the car around and headed back in the direction we’d just come while Goodshot stared out the passenger window, his gaze riveted to Wind Mountain.

Now I had to worry that even after I handed over the bones and saved Dan, I was stil going to feel lousy about letting Goodshot down.

I

t wasn’t like I actual y saw a wolf or a coyote or a buffalo or anything. But the wide-open spaces, rocky hil s, and dusty cliffs around Antonito looked like the kind of place I might, and I wasn’t taking any chances that some wild beast would strol into town. I insisted on a second-floor room at the motel. It overlooked the parking lot. At least I could easily keep an eye on the Mustang. Especial y since mine was only one of three cars there.

The good news was that it was a short walk from the motel over to Taberna, the bar where I’d been instructed to meet the kidnappers at ten o’clock.

Then again, it was a short strol pretty much everywhere in town. Antonito was not exactly a bustling metropolis. Aside from a couple streets where adobe houses and aluminum-clad trailers sat side by side, Main Street was pretty much it.

It was already dark by the time I showered, changed, and headed out. A couple minutes before ten, Goodshot and I stood outside the door of the bar. I had the bag of his bones slung over one shoulder and a feeling in the pit of my stomach that was half nervousness, half guilt.

“If there was any other way,” I told him.

“Don’t worry.” I think he would have patted me on the shoulder if he could have gotten away with it and not frozen me solid. “I understand.”

“But you—”

“Me?” Goodshot didn’t give me a chance to apologize again. With two fingers, he snapped his cowboy hat back on his head. “I’m headin’ over to the local cemetery. I used to know a couple pretty little señoritas in this town. The way I figure it, I just might be able to catch up with them.”

I watched him strol down the sidewalk and heard him whistle some old song. By the time he got to the street, he’d completely melted into the shadows and the last note of his tune faded into the night.

I was on my own.

And if I thought about it much longer, I’d bolt for home. Ignoring the cha-cha going on in my chest, I pushed open the door. Inside the bar, the lights were dim, the country music was loud, and I was one of exactly four patrons. Two of them were old guys slamming down shots and beers at the bar. The other one was a hippie-type with long greasy hair and a scraggly beard. He was sitting by himself near the front window, sipping a beer and reading a book.

None of them looked like kidnapper material to me.

I slid into a booth in the farthest corner from the door and set my tote bag beside me on the vinyl bench.

“What’l you have?” The bartender was talking even before she was out from behind the bar, her voice loud enough to be heard over the wailing of a steel guitar. She was forty or so, a stick-thin woman with bleached-out hair and the tel tale pinched mouth of a smoker. She had a damp rag in one hand and she swiped it over the table, gave me a brief look, and did a careful once-over of the tote bag on the bench next to me. I understood her bag envy; I’d had the same reaction the first time I set my eyes on the glazed canvas bag with the studs on its straps.

The jukebox switched off, and she lowered her voice. “Dol ar beer night,” she said, her gaze stil on the Jimmy Choo creation. “And if Ramon isn’t snoozing in the kitchen”—she swiveled a look from the swinging kitchen door to me—“I can get you wings or a burger.”

My stomach was in no mood for food. I opted for a Diet Coke and she was back in a minute with it.

“My name’s Norma,” she said. “If you need anything, flag me down.”

I knew I wouldn’t, but told her I would. Then I settled back to wait.

According to the time on my cel phone, it was already a couple minutes past ten when the front door popped open and two men walked in. They were both wearing jeans, dark sweatshirts, sneakers. Oh, and plastic Hal oween masks. The kind that stay on with those funny, skinny elastic bands that loop around the wearer’s head.

Green skin. Big, dark eyes.

Aliens.

Yeah, that’s right. I’d driven sixteen hundred miles Yeah, that’s right. I’d driven sixteen hundred miles to meet with a couple guys in alien masks.

They made a beeline across the room and slid into the bench opposite from where I sat.

“Are you kidding me?” I looked from one man to the other. “I kind of thought kidnappers would want to be a little more subtle. You don’t think somebody’s going to notice you two in that getup?”

“This is the Southwest.” The tal er of the two men used a fake, gravel y voice. Somewhere along the line, the elastic band had broken on his mask. The elastic was tied to a paperclip that was bent into a drunken figure eight and poked through one side of the mask. “Nobody around here is going to notice us. Heck, half the people here believe in aliens and the other half are aliens.”

I guess he was right—not about how there are aliens in Antonito but about how nobody was going to notice two guys in goofy disguises—because Norma didn’t bat an eye when she trotted over with a pitcher of beer and two glasses. She poured, spil ed a little, and swiped at the puddle with her bar rag.

Maybe it was the low lights, but I could have sworn that when she did, her hand brushed Tal Alien’s arm, and not in an accidental sort of way. When she walked back to the bar, I kept my eyes on her.