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Chapter One

After three grueling hours, the hike Roxanne Salyer had approached as a means of finding help revealed itself for what it really was: a trek into an inferno.

She should have stayed near her car instead of taking off on foot. Not inside, but near it.

Her car, the victim of the successful attempt to avoid running over a rabbit, was far behind her now, gobbled up by the California desert. Roxanne knew it was up to her to save herself, and if she had to do it wearing half a wilted linen suit and sandals never intended to tackle sand, then so be it.

All in all, not an auspicious beginning to her quest.

A niggling little voice in the back of her head balked at the word quest and inserted instead fool’s errand.

“Oh, give it a rest,” she told that voice as she scanned miles and miles of rolling sandy hills and hazy distant mountains. Sporadic poles strung with wire announced the possibility of civilization, but it sure wasn’t visible from where she stood. No buildings, no phone booths, no nothing.

Didn’t anyone ever drive down this blasted road?

For the first time, fear, and not just annoyance, prickled her overheated skin. People were known to die out in the desert. It happened.

She should have worn less impressive and more durable clothing; she should have carried more water; she should have been prepared.

A big lump suddenly materialized in her throat. She couldn’t swallow it—she didn’t have enough saliva left. There was nothing to do but continue walking, which she did until her fried brain registered the fact that the road had split in two. One track continued in a more or less straight line, the other curved off to the west, leading to the same mountains, only closer.

Two roads, neither looking well traveled. It was a Robert Frost nightmare.

Her gut said the straight road was the right road but her gut didn’t have a great track record. Not today anyway. “West,” she muttered, vaguely comforted by the fact that the Pacific Ocean lay in that direction, albeit a hundred miles away.

That’s when the strap on her left sandal snapped in two.

She stood for a moment on her right foot, her throat as dry as the sandy earth burning through the thin sole.

Now what?

Jack Wheeler frowned at the sight of the white compact abandoned halfway across his access road. Bumping over small rocks and tumbleweed, he pulled around the car, coming to a stop amidst a billowing cloud of sandy dust. He popped open his door and jumped to the ground, both boots hitting the road at the same time.

As he approached the car, he noticed it sported a Washington State license plate and a sticker on the front bumper advocating the practice of random acts of kindness. He couldn’t imagine whom the car belonged to; he wasn’t expecting anyone from Washington. He impatiently strode to the driver’s door and, using one of his gloves as a makeshift pot holder, tried the handle.

Locked. Leaning down and gazing inside, he spied on the passenger seat an empty bottle of water, a sky-blue woman’s jacket, a cell phone and a plastic folder with an unfamiliar logo: a stylized raindrop, inside of which were call letters.

A wave of irritation flashed across the stern contours of his lips. Oh, brother, not another reporter, radio or otherwise.

Maybe just a curiosity seeker.

The logo suggested otherwise.

Jack recalled the last big-city reporter who had tried to cozy her way into the tattered remains of his dignity. He’d caught on to her act just in time, but it hadn’t saved him from her half-truths.

But that had been right after Nicole left, when the public’s curiosity about the whole affair was still white-hot. Besides, this car was parked in a weird spot for a thrill seeker or a writer. It was way too far from the house to see anything, too far from the mountains to provide cover.

Kneeling, he looked under the vehicle and saw a puddle of black fluid and a jagged piece of lava rock, which explained a lot but still left the question: Where was the driver?

He didn’t have time for this, he thought with an impatient glance at the pocket watch his father had left him. He was running behind schedule.

It didn’t matter. You couldn’t leave someone stranded out in the desert. Not even if that someone was a reporter.

On the other hand, he couldn’t leave this car partially blocking the road, either. Swearing under his breath, he flattened out on his stomach and dislodged the rock—no easy feat. Then he took a rope from the back of his truck and looped it around first his hitch, then the car fender. Within a few minutes, the automobile sat harmlessly off to the side, tucked up against a sandbank.

Back in the truck, Jack drove north until he hit the fork in the road. It occurred to him that only someone who knew about the studio would stray from the main road, but he stopped anyway and grabbed a pair of small binoculars from the glove compartment.

The desert heat rippled like airborne ocean waves as he scanned the trek leading to the house and found it empty. Next he tried the west road. Was that a figure up ahead? If he or she was from the car, they’d walked almost five miles. Setting aside the binoculars, Jack gunned the engine and swore under his breath.

Another reporter on her way to snoop around the abandoned studio?

Whoever it was would soon regret their decision to invade his privacy.

A few minutes later, he slowed the truck and gaped at the apparition in front of him. Irritation turned to amazement as he took in the figure of a young woman, her expression just as startled as he supposed his was.

She was tall and willowy, with long, dark blond hair caught in a high ponytail, sunglasses perched on a straight nose, wearing what once must have been a silky white blouse and a perfectly cut light blue skirt. Both articles were covered with a film of dust. The sunburn on her throat and arms extended down two shapely pantyhose-free legs. Her right foot was just barely embraced by a delicate white sandal that looked as alien out here on the desert plateau as an ice cream parlor would look in hell, and on her left foot, she wore…a purse.

That demanded a double take and he gave it one. Sure enough, the woman had stuffed her left foot into a straw shoulder bag. A long strap extended upward, clutched tightly in her left hand. As he stared, she started hobbling toward him, the purse acting as a makeshift shoe.

He jumped out of the truck, a canteen in his hand. As she drew closer, she tried smiling but it apparently hurt because she winced. In that instant, he realized that under the sunburn and the dust she was pretty. Okay, extremely pretty. His defenses immediately went back on to full alert.

“Who are you?” he heard himself bark.

This stopped her in her tracks.

He knew he should show compassion—she looked miserable. Even if she was a reporter, she wasn’t in the best of straits right now. But what he felt was alarm as he registered how, one by one, his traitorous senses were springing back to life. Even the air had a new sharp smell, and the sun, hitting the back of his neck, felt warmer than it had in two years.

“What are you doing out here?” he grumbled, reminding himself that this woman was definitely not his type. He liked small women with fluffy hair. He liked women with more curves, and most importantly, if she was indeed a reporter, he liked women who didn’t get their kicks out of snooping into a person’s life.

“Didn’t you see the No Trespassing signs?” he added.

She gasped, “Is that water?”

He finally got his act together enough to twist off the cap and hand her the canteen, which she immediately upended. He watched her greedily gulping the precious fluid, her throat rippling, water dribbling down her chin, plopping onto her pink bosom and running in tiny rivulets between her breasts, down under the clinging fabric of her shirt.

Jack swallowed hot dry air. “Who are you?” he repeated as she finally lowered the canteen.

“Roxanne Salyer,” she said breathlessly. She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, smearing the fine coat of dust into a minor mud slide.

“Is that your car back there?”

She nodded and tried to return the canteen.

“Go ahead and keep it,” he told her, handing her the cap, “but take smaller sips.” He studied her for a second, his gaze eventually drifting down to her unusual footwear. “Are you hurt?”

Her eyes followed his. She bit her lip and winced again. All she said was, “My shoe broke.”

“Any cramps? Dizziness? Are you nauseous?”

“No, no, honestly, I’m fine. Just really glad to see you.”

Her voice was as rich and warm as spiced honey. She spoke as though greeting a friend after a long absence, which he supposed wasn’t too surprising as she was apparently lost out in the desert and must view him as a savior of sorts. Ha!

“What are you doing out here?”

“I came to find a woman.”

Not so lost after all, and he felt a flush of disappointment he was hard put to understand. She was looking for a woman, huh? Two guesses who that might be, and the second one didn’t count. Just as he’d thought, she was here after a story about Nicole. Or—shudder—him! He said, “I see. Well, my ex-wife is long gone, or don’t you do your own research?”

Roxanne wrinkled her nose which reminded him of his daughter, Ginny. “She’s gone?”

“Yes,” he said, leveling her with an icy stare. “Nicole ran off with the artist I hired to paint her portrait. Last I heard, they were in France. I have a hard time believing you find any of this a surprise. What’s your game? What tabloid are you working for? Or is it a radio station? Who are you?”

She was shaking her head. “I don’t work for radio or a tabloid. I work for a television station—”

“You what? Now just a moment. My private life isn’t fodder for some sleazy—”

“I work for a network affiliate in Seattle, Washington,” she interrupted. “I haven’t the slightest idea who you are. I don’t know anything about your wife. In other words, we can’t possibly be talking about the same woman. Mine is about sixty years old. Her name is Dolly Aames.”

The television thing had rattled him. For one awful moment, he had envisioned his sorry life story spread over one of those nighttime exposition shows. Why couldn’t Nicole have run off with someone less well-known than Jeremy Titus, heartthrob artist to the stars?

On the offensive again, he barked, “You could have gotten into real trouble wandering around out here.”

“I know, I know. Do you have a cell phone I can borrow?”

“Not on me. I saw one in your car.”

“It’s dead.” She looked flustered and edgy as she added, “I used the last of the battery to call my insurance agent. He told me I’m too far away and should call a local towing service. Helpful of him, wasn’t it?”

All this was interesting in its own perverse way, but he was running late. Turning on his heel, he said, “Come on, I’ll give you a lift to a phone. You can call a tow truck.”

“Wait, wait,” she said, limping along behind him. “Do you know Dolly Aames?”

“Never heard of her,” he said, opening the passenger door. As Roxanne paused beside him, he noticed the scalp exposed by the part in her hair was as sunburned as the rest of her. She was going to be in pain—soon, too. He reached into the glove box and came up with a battered bottle of aspirin. Shaking out a couple, he handed them to her. “Take these now. For your sunburn.”

She swallowed the aspirin before climbing past him into the truck. “Shade,” she whispered reverently. Hugging the canteen to her chest with one hand and lifting her sunglasses with the other, she glanced down at him. “Heaven,” she sighed.

He’d expected blue eyes. What with her fair skin and blond hair, her eyes should have been blue. But Roxanne’s eyes were chocolate brown, deep, sensuous, eyes that seemed to absorb the world, eyes that looked kind and full of humor and intelligence. Dangerous eyes.

“Thanks,” she said.

He nodded brusquely as he slammed her door. Pulling his hat off his head and putting it back on again, he walked around to his own door, his stride purposeful as he attempted to stuff this woman’s abrupt appearance in his life into a tiny cupboard under his mental stairs.

Trouble was, it was already pretty crowded in there.…

It wasn’t until the truck was headed in the opposite direction that Roxanne began to relax. Well, that wasn’t totally true, she realized. It was a little impossible to relax with the surly stranger sitting beside her taunting every square inch of her parched flesh.

At first, standing in the road, aware that a vehicle was approaching in a cloud of dust, she’d felt tremendous relief. She was to escape an ignominious demise after all. Hallelujah!

But the tall man who jumped out of the truck had startled her with his intensity, with the way his blazing blue gaze had raked her from head to toe, with the twist of his lips as he studied her face and the timbre of his voice as he barked questions. It wasn’t until she registered the canteen in his hand that she was able to mutter anything.

Glancing over at his profile now, she wondered if she dared impose on him further for lip balm, and decided on a long drink of water instead. The sight of him concentrating on the empty road ahead did nothing to soothe her—quite the contrary. Her heart felt like it was beating double time.

“I don’t know your name,” she said.

He flicked her a short glance. “Jack Wheeler.” What he saw apparently didn’t please him because he looked away at once, his brow set in a frown.

It was obvious the handsome stranger didn’t much care for rescuing damsels in distress. Well, she didn’t much like being said damsel.

Jack looked as though he was about a decade older than her, in his mid- to late thirties. His skin was tanned a warm brown color. No wedding ring, no tan line where one had ever been. His short brown hair was sun-bleached and nearly hidden under a worn Stetson. A battered tan work shirt and equally disreputable blue jeans with leather gloves stuffed in a hip pocket completed his ensemble. His facial features were strong, though perhaps this was just an impression helped along by what appeared to be his habitual expression of weary tolerance.

Judging from his worn clothes and the coils of barbed wire she’d glimpsed in the back of the truck, she decided he was a rancher, perhaps with local connections in politics. No itinerant cowboy would be so worried that a newspaper or tabloid had come a-callin’.…Besides, he’d mentioned commissioning an artist to paint his wife’s portrait.

The desert was probably littered with men like him, she thought. Disillusioned men who had somehow lost what they once had.

Like a wife.

Maybe the missus got tired of living out in the middle of nowhere, even if it was with Jack Wheeler who looked more than capable of providing enough nighttime stimuli to keep the old hearth fires burning.

Her heart fluttered a little with the thought of this man starting fires only he could extinguish. All that energy, all that power, all that size—the thought of him leaning in close to her, of running those brown fingers along her face, down her spine—it sent chills racing across her overheated skin.

It was kind of impossible not to compare this hunk of he-man flesh with the refined presence of her former boyfriend, Kevin, a news anchor at the station where they both worked. Four days earlier, he’d dumped her, flashing all twenty-eight perfectly capped teeth as he smiled like a used car salesman and spat out the hated words, “Face it, Roxanne. You’re just like your mother.”

Good riddance, she’d said, but his words had stung.

She put aside thoughts of Kevin and moved along to the next puzzle: a pink box tied with a pink ribbon sitting on the bench seat between them. Utterly feminine, the box implied a new love interest, which made Roxanne so curious it was all she could do to mind her own business.

Business reminded her why she was there. “I’m looking for Dolly Aames,” she declared once again.

“So you said.”

“Last anyone heard from her, she lived out here—”

“Listen,” he said, cutting her short, “this is the desert. A really remote part of the desert.”

“Not that remote, not by car. Not even half an hour from town if you stay in your car—”

“If your friend lived out here and let connections back home drop,” he said, interrupting her with another flick of his blue eyes, “then I’d be the last person in the world to blow her cover. I’ve never heard of her. Honest.”

“But you wouldn’t tell me even if you had?”

“No.”

“Then how do I know you’re not lying now?”

He shrugged. “I guess you don’t.”

About then, they hit the fork in the road. He turned in the direction Roxanne had decided against.

“Where was I headed?” she asked.

“You don’t know?”

She gestured at her foot, slipping the purse off as she did so. How embarrassing to have a man like this come across her with her foot stuffed in a purse! Digging in her skirt pockets, she extracted the car keys, wallet and micro tape recorder she’d deposited there when her shoe broke. At the sight of the tape recorder, Jack grimaced.

“What’s that for?” he demanded.

She held up the little contraption. “This?”

“Yeah. Who do you plan to record?”

“Dolly Aames, of course,” she said, throwing her belongings back in the now-tattered bag where they belonged.

“You should never have turned off the main highway,” he said, his voice as dry as the landscape. “This is all private property out here. It belongs to the High W Ranch. It’s well marked.”

“I didn’t see any signs,” she told him truthfully, but she suspected that even if she had, she would have taken a chance.

He grunted.

Roxanne indulged in more canteen water. Would a little tin sign nailed to a fence have dissuaded her from turning off the main road and trying to fulfill her grandmother’s fondest wish? Not likely!

“The signs are there,” he said firmly.

“But I didn’t see them. How can this be a ranch? I don’t see a single cow. Even if there are cows, what do they eat?”

“I’m still having trouble imagining someone dressed as inappropriately as you are striking out on her own,” he said, obviously not interested in discussing what the cows ate. “You should have carried water and stayed near your car. At the very least, you could have used your jacket to shade your head. If you were going to walk, then why not head back out to the highway? If I hadn’t come along…”

His voice trailed off. Even though she had thought the very same things, his observations made her bristle. “I’m sorry if I just flunked your version of Desert Survival 101. I’m new at this. I knew the highway was a long way back. The mountains looked closer. Besides, that was the direction I needed to go.”

Digging in her pocket, she extracted a yellowed envelope. “Dolly Aames,” she said evenly, “sent this letter to my grandmother almost forty years ago. See, the postmark on the envelope says Tangent, January, 1964.”

He stopped the truck in the middle of the empty road, then turned to her. Face on, within the tight confines of the truck cab, his presence was overwhelming and she gulped.

“Let me get this straight. You’re trying to track down a woman no one has heard from in forty years? What are you, a private eye? A bounty hunter?”

“I told you, I work for a television affiliate in Seattle. I produce midday news programming.”

“Produce? I would have thought you’d be in front of the camera.”

“The real power is behind the camera.”

“Power, huh? You’re one of those.”

“No, I’m not one of those. I just enjoy putting things together. Besides, I hate makeup, and have more bad hair days than good ones. Now, about Dolly Aames…”

His gaze traveled up to her hair and back again. She could only guess its current condition, but as he didn’t sputter a rebuttal, she imagined the worst. “Is this woman an escaped criminal or a notorious husband killer?” he asked.

“Of course not.”

“Then why did you come all the way from Seattle to find her? Is she a relative?”

“No. She’s an old friend of my grandmother’s.”

“So you traveled almost two thousand miles just to look up an old friend of the family? Why did your grandmother wait so many years to look for her?”

“It’s complicated,” Roxanne said, hedging. She didn’t want to go into the details of her grandmother’s illness just to satisfy this guy’s curiosity. Besides, she could barely stand to think about Grandma Nell’s symptoms and what they might portend. She added, “Grandma wants to reunite a singing group they both belonged to a long time ago.”

“And how about you? What do you want?”

She stared at him, unblinking, then muttered, “I want to help my grandmother.”

“Hmm—” Shaking his head he added, “Has it occurred to either one of you that this Dolly either moved away or died?”

“Of course. But you have to start somewhere.”

He shook his head. “Well, I think that’s pretty incredible. And very naive.”

Opening the envelope, she took out a small, faded photograph of a young woman standing next to a fence. Each rustic post was topped with the bleached skull of a long-horn, making it a rather grisly, if unique, setting. She shoved it under his nose.

He took it reluctantly.

“I stayed in Tangent last night and asked around town—not that it did me much good because most everything was already closed when I got there. Anyway, no one knew Dolly Aames, but the guy at the motel said this photo was taken at the juncture of this road and the highway. He told me how to get out here.”

“Was that Pete at the Cactus Gulch or Alan over at the Midtown?”

“I guess it was Pete. I just stayed there one night and checked out this morning. I can’t believe you know his name.”

“It’s a very small town,” Jack said, handing the photo back. “Okay, I’ll grant you that this photo was taken here, more or less. Those skulls were something of a landmark for a long time until I got rid of them. Still, people came from miles around to pose with the damn things, so I don’t see that the photo means anything. I don’t know who Dolly Aames is.”

“Hmm—”

“Maybe Sal will,” he said slowly, as though hesitant to admit he might have a way of helping.

“Really? Who’s Sal?”

“Sally Collins, but you’re a braver soul than I if you call her Sally instead of Sal. I have to warn you though, she’s not quite as forthcoming about these things as I am.”

“You’re forthcoming? You’ve got to be kidding.”

He cast her a serious look. “Roxanne, has it ever occurred to you that Dolly Aames may not want to be found?”

No, as a matter of fact it hadn’t.