Buried Secrets (22 page)

He wasn't sure about a lot of Jo's life.

He meant to have fun learning.

But first he headed into the bathroom to clean up, leaving the door cracked. Bits of steam on the mirror hinted that she'd had the same idea. After a basic wash-up, with a nice normal bar of soap—none of those little flowers or seashells Gabriella had lived for—Zack shaved with a pink, plastic razor.

He should probably mention this
always
thinking of his. She might want to be in on that. He thought she felt the same, a certainty rooted deep down inside him where he knew that he was meant to protect innocents, that pizza was the perfect food and that there was a God. He felt like he'd known her, been meant to be with her, all along.

But she might fuss about not being asked, all the same.

He'd only just finished rinsing the razor, and splashing stubble down the sink, when Jo's voice called, “Zack?”

He leaned out of the bathroom. “Yeah?”

“Zack?”
Her voice sounded higher than he'd ever heard it.

Zack bolted for the kitchen—then stopped, one hand still on the doorframe, wondering what could be wrong.

A wet-haired Jo stood in the kitchen, dwarfed by his long-sleeved shirt over what otherwise seemed like perfectly good nudity, with a bottle of milk and a box of cereal in her hands. She'd put two empty bowls out on the counter, and spoons—a non-cook's version of getting breakfast, he realized. And she was staring at the sunlit desert outside a window over the sink.

“What?” His fear quickly degenerated into annoyance. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, she coulda given him a heart attack!

Then he realized just how pale she looked, and annoyance faltered. He went to stand behind her, wrapped his arms around her, and it felt good, except for her being upset. “What is it?”

“Did you open these curtains?” she asked, her voice uneven.

“Why would I open your curtains?”

“Oh God,” she said. When he led her to one of the chairs at her plain pine table, she sat without protest. “Oh, Zack.”

She was scaring him again. He crouched beside her. “What?”

Her gaze seemed troubled as it met his. “What color dress was Gabriella wearing when you buried her?”

The question hit Zack in the gut—Gabriella was the last person he wanted Jo thinking about this morning. He straightened up enough to slide into the other chair. Its wooden seat felt smooth under his bare thighs. “Why?”

“Humor me?” she pleaded.

“Blue. It was this silky, knee-length blue thing with big ruffles around the shoulders, kinda like from the forties.”

“And she had a little gold cross,” said Jo. That's when he understood. The certainty of it, even before she explained, sank a hole right into the middle of him. A cold, ugly hole.

“Why?”
This time he didn't ask. He growled.

“I think she visited me last night,” she admitted.

While he tried to absorb
that,
Jo recounted the dream that might have been real. More verses about only him and Jo being able to defeat this thing. Some lunacy about Gabriella and Zack once being able to do it—this was the Gabriella who freaked over pretty much anything that crawled, except babies.

Of course, Jo could have sleepwalked, and only dreamed Gabriella after all. He said, “Blue's not an uncommon dress color.”

“Her hair wasn't straight, like in the picture you carry,” Jo said solemnly. “It was shorter, and curly. Like a new perm.”

The hole inside him expanded as his certainty did. He'd hated her perming that beautiful hair, and now it meant Jo had been visited by his wife's ghost—here, and in the cemetery.

Gabriella wasn't resting in peace—and she'd come after Jo.

And as if all that wasn't bad enough, Zack could hear a faint ringing from the living room. A Journey riff.

“Wait here,” he insisted, going to find his mobile phone—which meant finding his pants. Jo, being a docile and obedient woman—hah—trailed him.

“Some of it was just what Crazy Bud said,” she said. “And the rest—it made sense last night, but now I don't get it.”

If she's trying to kill you, that's probably a good thing.

Zack flipped open his telephone just before it transferred to voice mail. “Yeah.”

“Zack!” exclaimed Cecil. “I hope you rested well.”

Zack narrowed his eyes, hoping that wasn't an insinuation about him and Jo. Yeah, they'd had a wild night. And morning. But he felt more alive than in years. Kinda terrified, since this latest bombshell, but intensely alive all the same.

Even with birth control, sex really was about life.

“
You
called
me,
” Zack snarled, instead of answering the question. Fortunately, his partner moved on. Assuming Cecil had meant anything in the first place.

“Ah. Yes, that. Something seems to have developed.”

Zack hated the pressure to keep making
Go on
noises when Cecil got dramatic. His current choice of a
Go on
noise was, “Don't make me drive back there just to yank it out of you.”

Jo asked, “Yank what?”

“I'm telling you!” Cecil defended. “Are you familiar with the resort dude ranch west of town?
Tierra del Oeste.
”

“Yeah,” said Zack. “Now don't make me drive out there—”

“Someone died last night.” Cecil seemed oddly unsympathetic toward the dead person. Especially for Cecil. “Ashley was called over, but when she arrived the body had vanished.”

“Ah,” said Zack.

“But some busboys seem to have seen him strolling into the desert, toward the caves, shortly before her arrival.”

Now Zack said, “Ah,
hell.
”

“Hell what?” asked Jo. His shirt looked really good on her.

“Dead guy walking at the resort,” Zack muttered. Then he asked, more loudly, “So why didn't you call sooner?” It better not have been to give him and Jo privacy. They didn't need help.

Jo asked, “What resort?”

“I wanted to do a thorough background check on the gentleman first,” Cecil explained, even while Zack leaned over so Jo could stand on her toes and put her ear against the phone, too. Her hair brushed water dampness onto his cheek. She smelled soapy. “It turns out he had connections to terrorism.”

First a child abuser, then a white supremacist, then a Mafia associate—why
not
a terrorist? And Crazy Bud said the necromancer only needed one more servant. “Aw, hell.”

Jo said, “Was it the
Tierra del Oeste?
”

Cecil said, “You two should probably—”

“We're on our way.” Zack straightened, to end the call.

“Wait,” protested Jo, capturing his wrist to take the phone. “Cecil, have you got the promo material we picked up at
Tierra
over there?” Listening, she caught the edge of Zack's tank from the floor with one foot, tossed it upward. “Uh-huh.”

Zack caught the undershirt and put it on. Then his pants.

His shirt, however, was occupied.

“Uh-huh,” said Jo again, much better at
Go on
noises than him. “Good. The map's what I wanted. Would you cross-reference the map to the places they've stopped taking tourists?”

Because of the snakes, Zack remembered as he put his shoes back on.
Tierra del Oeste
had started avoiding certain areas because of the snakes. It was an interesting thought, except that a patron's death hardly put the resort at suspicion, any more than Brent Harper's death put the desert under suspicion.

“Good, thanks. You too.” Jo disconnected, gave Zack his phone, and headed for the bedroom.

Zack followed, appreciating the view. “What's with the map?”

“Tierra del Oeste,”
Jo said conclusively.

“
Tierra del Oeste
to you too.”

He liked how she grinned over her shoulder at him, prettier by the day. “It means ‘Land of the West,'” she translated, opening a drawer to pull out clean clothes.

“Uh-huh.”

“Remember the spirit tour? Indians believe that when they die, their spirits—”

“Go west.” He wasn't sure whether to be annoyed to have missed it, or damned impressed.

She was unbuttoning the shirt, so he chose impressed. “You think this necromancer might be at the
Tierra.
”

“Yup,” said Jo, tossing him his shirt. “Look where the dead things go.”

He missed it on the first grab, being distracted, but shirts fall slowly; he caught it before it hit the floor. “And he may have just completed his collection of evil dead people.”

“Yup.”

“Hurry,” he suggested, sliding his arms into the sleeves.

She pulled a blue T-shirt over her head and rolled her eyes at him. Okay, so she
was
hurrying.

He valiantly kept himself from saying,
Hurry faster.

It felt completely natural to dress together—encouragingly so, considering the excellent scenery. He saw no good openings to swing the discussion from imminent evil back to the fact that he loved her. Imminent evil being pretty important, just now. But their ease with each other spoke volumes.

She dressed fast, too. What wasn't there to love?

In only a few moments, they headed out of her house—and into the stillest damned day Zack had ever known. For the first time since he'd arrived in West Texas, he felt no wind. He heard no animals or insects. It felt as if something were sucking the oxygen right out of the day—something enormous.

He looked at Jo, but Jo was looking west. While she did, the sunlight began to fade into an unnatural, brownish dusk.

“Duck,” she warned, lifting an elbow over her face as she sprinted for the car.

Right before hell hit.

T
he day was too damned still.

When Jo looked toward the southwest, she saw why.

A bruised aura of brown rose over the horizon, and it kept rising in quarters, then a semicircle, darkness filling the sky.

It was a wall of West Texas dirt—breaking speed limits.

“Duck!” Jo turned her face into her arm and ran for the car, but the dust storm outran her. Gale-force wind knocked her over, dirt stinging her hands and face and neck. She gasped as she hit the driveway, inhaled a mouthful of dust and started choking.

Dirt was everywhere! In her eyes, nose, ears, throat. The wind screeched its displeasure, disorienting her further. Then, squinting, she glimpsed a flash of dirt-filtered light.

Zack had unlocked the Ferrari by remote.

Zack.
Jo somehow stood against the wind, stretching out a hand toward where she'd seen the light, still choking on dirt. Dust thickened in her watering eyes until she couldn't even squint. She took a step, feeling for the car in front of her, but her hands touched nothing but blowing sand. Alone. No matter how she'd spent last night, she was ultimately alone here.
Like being buried alive.
Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust—

Then a horn honked, loud and long, to her left. She wasn't alone; she had someone else.
Zack.

Jo flailed in that direction and her hand met fiberglass. The Ferrari's hood! She banged on it, hard, so Zack could hear that she'd found him and wouldn't come looking for her.
God, don't let him do that.
Then she groped her way around it—thumping it with each step, to show her progress—until she felt a windshield, then a passenger window, then a door latch.

Luckily the car itself sheltered her door from the brunt of the wind. She managed to get it open and then, falling inside, even closed it, still choking on dirt.

Zack quickly snicked the automatic locks shut, then grabbed her. Dirt dusted his face, his hair. “Geez, Jo! Don't do that!”

She was still just trying to breathe, hacking like a four-pack-a-day smoker, pinching mud off her eyelashes. “Do…what?”

“Vanish like that. Wait a sec.” And he reached behind her seat, where they carried drinking water, and drew out a bottle. He also pulled a handkerchief from his pocket; he really carried handkerchiefs! “Here, baby. Drink.”

The water helped Jo manage the choking, anyway. Once she could breathe better, she squinted up at him.
“Baby?”

He sighed, splashing water onto the kerchief and moving to wipe her face. “
Sheriff,
then. Hold still.”

When Jo took the cloth from him to do it herself, he shook his head and sat back. But really. Would he want
her
washing
his
face like a child's?

Of all the things Jo wanted from Zack Lorenzo, it definitely
wasn't
to be his baby.

“Good idea, honking the horn,” she said as a peace offering, her voice gritty. She hated to think what would've happened if she'd staggered out into the desert, thinking she was pointed toward the car. Worse, she hated to imagine him coming after her—and he would have. She knew he would have.

At least this time, he didn't have to.
“Great idea.”

“I didn't know how the hell else to find you in this. Is this kinda thing
normal?
”

“I don't know.” When he raised his eyebrows at that, she
widened her eyes back at him. Then she coughed. “Dust storms, sure. But I haven't heard of anything this bad since the '80s.”

“Nature itself,” he muttered.

She chugged more water, then made a muddy streak wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “What?”

“You started to tell me on the Spirit Tour, but King distracted us. Crazy Bud said Nature is ticked off by whatever's going on, right? When did you say that big rainstorm hit?”

It was easy to remember, being the only rain they'd had in months. “Last week in January.”

“When the wiseguy died. Anything last November?”

Jo nodded more slowly. “Freak blizzard.”

Zack blew out a breath. “That would be Brent Harper's.”

She didn't get it. “When someone dies, Nature freaks out?”

“Or whenever someone's
reanimated,
” he suggested.

“So if Mother Nature's upset about that,” Jo said, “and this is how she acts out, how angry do you think she'll be over whatever our
diablero
means to do now?”

“I'd rather not find out.” Zack ducked his head to peer out the window. Dirt hissed and slithered against the side of the car, across the glass, darkening everything past the edge of the driveway. “We can drive in this, right?”

His phone beeped its Journey riff, and he answered it with a dirty hand. “Yeah.” Pause. “Too late, Einstein. It's here.”

Cecil. Jo found a clean corner on the handkerchief, dampened it, and wiped her face again. Not quite so much mud, this time.

Zack said, “Yeah, that sounds right.”

Jo turned down the sun-visor to check her appearance in its mirror—and groaned. Her hair had been damp, so now it looked like it was made out of red clay. She was sexy as a lump of mud, just when it had started to matter. She hated that it mattered.

Whatever was happening out there was powerful enough to affect the weather, and she was worried about her
hair?

Disgusted, she flipped the visor back up.

“Peachy,” said Zack. “No, but Jo won't like it. I'll explain later.” Pause. “Fine.”

Then he hung up, and repeated, “We can drive in this, right? Kinda like a blizzard, but without that pesky freezing-to-death?”

“We can creep, as long as we don't lose the road, and what won't Jo like?”

The Ferrari sighed to life on Zack's first turn of the key. “Cecil has an idea where our
diablero
may have set up shop, if it's really on the
Tierra del Oeste
resort grounds.”

She waited, already bracing herself.

Zack concentrated on backing slowly down the driveway. She felt the asphalt under their rear tires at the same time he must have, because he cut the wheel sharply over, found the road. “It's a cave, Jo. Something
del Muerte.
Apparently that means—”

“Of the Dead.” She hadn't braced enough. Of all the hiding places around here, they were searching for a cave of death.

“Look,” said Zack. “You don't have to come along—”

“Don't even
think
I'm hanging back while you of all people go cave crawling.” The idea would have upset her
before
last night. Now it terrified her.

How could she possibly bear the risks he took
now?

“Me of all people?”
Zack looked insulted as he swerved the car, finding the road's shoulder under the right wheels, keeping pavement under the left. It kept them on the road. Mostly.

“A city boy,” Jo clarified miserably.

He rolled his eyes. “First of all, lady, I'm not a boy. I kinda thought you'd figured that one out last night. Second of all, we do have caves in Illinois, too. Lots of 'em.”

Jo said, “Oh.”

“Not that I've been in any of them.” He grinned. Her return smile felt wan, but it was a start. Apparently it encouraged him, because he said, “Look, let me drop you off somewhere. Just this once. Between Gabriella targeting you, and it being caves…”

“No.”
She noticed how tight his hands were on the wheel as he squinted ahead of them, noticed the speedometer barely registering ten miles per hour. Dirt seemed to rush into the headlights and then part at the last minute, hinting at shapes or faces in its blowing depths. Something about today felt…big.

She wasn't going to let him do it alone. “But we can stop at one place on the way through town—if we can see it. Low, brown building with no windows. Gravel parking lot.”

Spur Blasting's clientele generally didn't need pavement.

 

By the time they left town, they had maybe ten feet of good visibility. Zack sped up to a blistering twenty miles per hour. And Jo was a felon.

At Spur Blasting, she introduced him to an older man named Hank. Hank looked like a cowboy, no big surprise around here, but apparently his true trade was
blowing things up.
And Jo, the woman Zack loved, sometimes worked for him. For fun.

He'd known she was tough. He hadn't realized the extent.

Zack had thought the red tape involved in police work was bad, but explosives? Whatever story Jo murmured to Hank, before the introductions, must have worked though. She got started on the paperwork, apparently falsifying records with abandon, while Hank explained his business in more detail. He blew the occasional basement for houses, got rid of stumps, brought down dilapidated buildings. Sometimes he contracted out of state, decommissioning underground missile silos for the military or blowing back fire lines during a wildfire. Who knew?

It sounded innocent enough—except for the
blowing things up
part. But in the meantime there Jo had stood, grimly filling out forms for the BATF and OSHA and maybe God. Then they had to get the actual goods from separate, double-locked bunkers—explosive agents, blasting caps and a large, hand-held blasting machine.

“Safer than using the car battery,” Jo explained, back in the car, though the word
safer
was probably relative. “And I do still have my license.”

Zack looked significantly at her duffel bag of death.

She said, “Last time I was in a cave with zombies, this stuff saved my life.”

“Did I say anything? I'm just adjusting to being an accessory.” Using her credit card to pay Hank had seemed silly—an unnecessary complication—when he had cash on him.

At least now that she had incendiary devices, Jo seemed a lot calmer. But he'd rather she stayed scared. And home.

Unfortunately, when they finally reached Ashley's place in Almanuevo, the rest of their “team” was no better.

“Since you're taking the truck anyway,” announced Cecil, “we'd best come with you.”

“We're taking the Ferrari,” said Zack—while Jo asked, “Why do you want to come with us?” As if it was even an option!

“We've got a great deal to tell you, for one thing.”

Zack looked at everything they'd collected—boxes, goggles, what looked like a machete—and said, “So tell.”

“Why you two may be meant to defeat our necromancer, for one thing,” Cecil said. “What can best fight evil? Good! Both of you are very good people, protecting and serving and such.”

Zack slid his gaze to Jo's. She looked unconvinced, too. Not only weren't they paragons, here, but— “It can't be that easy.”

Cecil said, “But as a healer, Ashley belongs in that category as well. And hopefully myself, just for being such a nice fellow. So we might provide useful backup.”

Zack said, “Which you can do from here.”

“Some of it, perhaps,” Cecil countered. “But not all, and certainly not medical support, and stop shaking your head, Zack! You sense it too. Whatever is happening, it's happening now.”

“We aren't saying we should go into the cave with you,” said Ashley, which might have cheered Zack up a lot more if he couldn't hear the
but
coming so loudly, he coulda been psychic himself. “But we should be within running distance.”

“In case you do need us,” agreed Cecil.

What Zack needed was to go alone. The idea of leading
Jo
into this sickened him, and at least Jo could shoot and blow things up. But Ashley and Cecil?

“Too bad you won't fit in the Ferrari,” he said. “Now give the map to Jo so we can go after this sonuva—”

“The cave is
here,
Zack,” Cecil insisted, holding up the unfurled map and pointing at the glossy, colorful drawing—not to scale, Zack guessed. “In these hills. Off road by more than two miles, over what appears to be an ancient lava bed and through
a ravine. You'll need the higher wheel-base and four-wheel drive.”

“The truck's more likely to flip over in the wind,” Zack reminded them. Did nobody else here read
Consumer Reports?
“So we'll walk the last two miles.”

Now all three of them stared at him, like he was the crazy one. In the sudden silence, blowing sand hissed across the outside of Ashley's living-room windows, to make their point.

He was outvoted and it pissed him off, even more than normal. What had begun as his own damned job had embroiled a fragile-looking nurse, a friend who was like a kid brother to him—and Jo.

The woman he loved.

They could get hurt, maybe even die, because of him, and he couldn't allow that. Anything but that. “I'm going by myself.”

Ashley, hefting a first-aid chest, looked bemused.

Cecil, opening a package of two-way radios, said, “You mustn't. Everyone says it has to be the two of you.”

And to make Zack's afternoon, Jo just looked pissed.

 

Jo insisted on driving her own truck, which apparently did nothing for Zack's mood. Well, he'd just have to live with it, wouldn't he? She wasn't particularly happy with him, either.

The contrast from this morning's euphoria felt sharp.

Part of her bad mood could be blamed on this driving-into-possible-death business. And part of it was the fact that, damn it, Zack was
still
trying to protect her at his own expense!

I'm going by myself,
he'd said. Jerk.

Sexy, intense, overly protective jerk.

What was it going to take? She'd shot snakes beside him. She'd visited with
Brujas
and
Santeros
and even mobsters beside him. And the way they'd made love—did
anything
about their lovemaking imply that she was some kind of fragile flower? Because she didn't know what else it could be.