Lisa Jackson's the Abandoned Box Set (37 page)

“All in your mind, O'Rourke,” he told himself as he drove out of the parking lot and toward the center of town. He had hours before his meeting with Brian, so he decided that a stop at the sheriff's office might clear up a few questions he had about Chandra Hill and her abandoned baby.

* * *

C
HANDRA DROVE INTO
R
ANGER
, her thoughts racing a mile a minute. Automatically, she adjusted her foot on the throttle, managing to stay under the speed limit. She stopped for a single red light and turned right on Coyote Avenue. Without thinking, she pulled into a dusty parking lot and slid into one of a dozen available spaces, her mind focused on the infant. Baby John Doe. Already she'd started thinking of him as J.D. Kind of a bad joke, but the child deserved a name.

Lord, who did he belong to?

And that damned Dr. O'Rourke, telling her she shouldn't “hang around” the hospital. That man—kind one minute, cruel the next—set her teeth on edge! Well, the less she thought of him, the better.

Flicking off the ignition, she grabbed her jacket and climbed from the cab onto the sun-baked asphalt. A few blades of grass and dandelions sprouted through the cracks in the pockmarked tarmac, but the neglect seemed only to
add to the casual allure of this tourist town. Most of the buildings, including the gas stations, coin laundry, banks and restaurants, sported a Western motif, complete with false facades, long wooden porches and, at the veterinary clinic, a hitching post.

Years before, the city fathers had decided to mine whatever gold was left in Ranger—not in the surrounding hills, but in the pockets of the visitors who drove through this quaint village in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Those same far-thinking civic leaders had persuaded the town to adopt a Wild West atmosphere, and the mayor had encouraged renovating existing buildings to adopt the appearance of the grange hall, livery stable and old hotel, the only remaining structures built before the turn of the century, and therefore, authentically from the eighteen hundreds.

In the past twenty years, all the businesses facing Main Street and a few more on the side streets reeked of the Old West. Wild West Expeditions had willingly embraced the idea.

Situated near the livery, on the second floor of a building constructed in 1987 and made to look a hundred years older, Wild West Expeditions, owned by once-upon-a-time hippie Rick Benson, was Chandra's place of employment.

She climbed the exterior stairs, noticing a soft wind rush through the boughs of a birch tree, spinning the leaves so that they glittered a silver-green.

The door was propped open. The sign above, painted red and yellow, swung and creaked in the breeze.

“Hey—I heard a rumor about you!” Rick greeted her with a toothy smile. He was a big man, six-two with an extra twenty pounds around his middle. His hair was extremely thin on top and had turned to gray, but he still wore his meager locks in a pony tail that snaked halfway down his back. He had a flushed face, an easy smile and
no enemy in the world. Not even the mother of his children, who, in the seventies, he hadn't bothered to marry, and ten years later hadn't needed to divorce when she took the kids and packed them back to “civilization” in St. Louis.

“A rumor, eh?” Chandra hung her jacket on a peg near the door. The interior of the establishment was as rustic as the rest of the town. Rough-hewn cedar walls, camping equipment, including ancient snowshoes and leather pouches, hanging from wooden pegs, a potbellied stove and a long counter that served as the reception desk. “Only good things, I hope.”

“Something about an abandoned kid. Found by your mutt down near the creek. I heard the kid would've drowned if Sam hadn't led you to him.”

“Well, that's not quite the truth, but close,” Chandra said, thinking how quickly a story could be exaggerated in the gossip-riddled coffee shops and streets of Ranger. She gave Rick a quick rundown of what really happened, and he listened, all the while adding receipts on a very modern-looking adding machine, swilling coffee and answering the phone.

“Why'd'ya s'pose the kid was left in your barn?” he asked once she'd finished with her tale.

She poured herself a cup of coffee. “Beats me. That seems to be the million-dollar question.”

“Must be a reason.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“The army jacket a clue?”

Chandra sighed and blew across her cup. “I don't know. The deputies took it and the blanket, but it seemed to me they think nothing will come back from the lab.”

Rick pushed up the sleeves of his plaid shirt, which he wore as a jacket over a river boatman's collarless shirt, usually cream colored and decorated by a string of beads
that surrounded his neck. “Well, whatever happens with the kid, the press will be all over you.” He scowled, his beefy face creased. “Bob Fillmore has already called.”

“We've met,” Chandra said dryly.

“Watch him. He's a shark,” Rick warned, his light brown gaze meeting hers. He never probed into her private life. Not even when, two years before, she'd shown up on this doorstep and applied for a job as a white-water and camping guide. He hadn't lifted an eyebrow at the holes in her résumé, nor had he mentioned the fact that she was a woman, and a small one at that. He'd just taken her down to a series of rapids known as Devil's Falls in the Rattlesnake River and said, “Do your stuff.” When she'd expertly guided the rubber raft through the treacherous waters, he'd hired her on the spot, only insisting she learn basic first aid and the lay of the land so that she would become one of his “expert” guides. She'd passed with flying colors. As far as she knew, Rick had no knowledge of her past life and didn't seem interested. She doubted that he knew that she'd been married or had been a pediatrician. He didn't care about the past—only the here and now.

Rick rubbed his chin. “Fillmore wants you to call him back and set up an interview.”

“And you don't think I should.”

Lifting a big shoulder, Rick shook his head. “Up to you. Just don't let that piece of slime inside here, okay?”

“You don't like him.”

“No.” He didn't say why, but Chandra remembered hearing that Fillmore had once written a piece about Wild West Tours. The crux of the article had been a cynical evaluation of Rick's alternative life-style, his “sixties values” in the late eighties.

“What've we got going today?” she asked. “There's a group coming in—when?”

“Soon, but I've changed things around a little,” Rick replied, glancing at his schedule. “That group of six from the Hastings Ranch want a medium-thrill ride. I thought the south fork of the river would work for them. But I've got one lone ranger who wants to play daredevil…let's see… the name's McGee. Brian McGee. Young guy. Twenty, maybe twenty-two. He wants, and I quote, ‘the ultimate thrill—the biggest rush' we can give him before he heads back to college. You think you want to deal with him?”

With pleasure,
Chandra thought, recalling the so-called he-men she went to college with. The boys who didn't think she'd cut it in medical school. “Grizzly Loop?” she asked.

“If you think
he
can handle it. I know you can, but who knows what kind of a nut this bozo is. If he wants to play macho man and doesn't know beans about rafting, you could be in a pile of trouble.”

“I'll check it out.”

“Good. He'll be in at eleven.”

“And the other group?”

“Randy and Jake'll handle them. Unless you'd rather—”

“Oh, no,” Chandra replied crisply, noticing the teasing lift of Rick's brow. “Bring on Mr. Macho.” Maybe she just needed to throw herself into her work to forget about the baby and, most especially, Dr. O'Rourke.

* * *

T
HE
S
HERIFF'S
D
EPARTMENT
had ignored the Western motif of the other buildings in town. A single-story brick building, there wasn't the hint of pretension about the place. Inside, the walls were paneled in yellowed birch, and the floor was a mottled green-and-white tile that was worn near the front desk and door.

The receptionist recognized Dallas as he walked through the door. He'd helped deliver her second child
two years earlier. With a grin, she slid one of the glass panels to the side. “Dr. O'Rourke!”

“Hi, Angie.” He leaned one arm on the counter. “How're the boys?”

“Hell on wheels,” she said with a heartfelt sigh. Behind her desk, officers in uniform or dressed in civilian clothes sat at desks and pushed paper, drank coffee, smoked and cradled phones to their ears as they filled out reports. “But you didn't come here to discuss the kids,” Angie said. “What's up?”

“I'd like to talk to the dispatcher on duty early this morning, around one-thirty or two o'clock. A call came in about an abandoned baby.”

“Let me check the log.” Angie's fingers moved quickly over a computer keyboard, and she squinted into the blue light of a terminal. “Let's see… Here it is—l:57. Marla was on duty, but she won't be in until ten tonight.”

“But the call was recorded?”

“They all are. You want to listen to the tape?”

“If it's all right.”

Angie winked. “I've got connections around this place,” she said. “Come on in.” As Dallas walked through a door to the offices, he heard Angie ask another woman officer to cover for her, but his mind wasn't on the conversation. He was, as he had been ever since meeting her last night, contemplating Chandra Hill.

“So, you've got an abandoned kid on your hands,” Angie said, snapping him out of his thoughts. She opened a door to an interrogation room. “Who would leave a baby alone like that?”

“I wish I knew.”

“So do I. I'd personally wring her neck,” Angie said fiercely. “Here, just pull up a chair. I'll get a copy of the tape. It'll be just a minute.”

The room was windowless, with a long table, four
folding chairs and little else. Just the basics. The faint scent of stale cigarette smoke hung in the air, and the two ashtrays on the table had been emptied, but not wiped clean.

He waited less than ten minutes for Angie to return, as promised, with a tape, a player and a cup of coffee, “compliments of the department.”

“Thanks.” He accepted the cup as she slipped the tape into the player.

“All the comforts of home,” she teased, her dark eyes sparkling as she glanced at the bare walls and uncomfortable chairs. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

“Will do.”

She closed the door behind her as she left, and Dallas played the tape. Chandra's voice, at first frantic, calmed as she described the condition of the child. Cool and professional. And the medical terminology was used precisely—hardly typical of a first-aid class graduate. No, Chandra sounded very much like a physician.

Dallas sipped some of the coffee—stronger and more bitter than coffee served at the hospital—and rocked back in the chair. Chandra Hill. Beautiful and slightly mysterious. Sure, she came on strong and she seemed forthright, but there was more to her than what she said.

So what if she's a physician? Big deal. Maybe she just wants a little privacy. And, really, O'Rourke, it's none of your damned business. She brought you a patient, and you've got an obligation to care for him—and not for her.

Yet, as he heard her take-charge voice on the tape, he smiled. What, he wondered, would it be like to kiss a woman like that? Would she bite his lips and kick him in the groin, or would she melt against him, growing supple and compliant? The thought of pressing his mouth to hers caused an unwanted stirring between his legs.

“Damn,” he muttered, angry at the turn of his thoughts. What the hell was he thinking?

Scowling darkly, he rewound the tape and listened to it again, his eyes narrowing through the steam rising from his cup. The tape gave him no more clues to the baby's parentage or to Chandra Hill. In fact, he thought sourly, he had more questions about her than ever.

* * *

“Y
OU'RE THE GUIDE
?” Brian McGee couldn't swallow his surprised grin. He was handsome in a boyish way, with oversize features, large green eyes and a smile that was dazzlingly white. And he was shocked to his socks as he stared down at Chandra.

“I'm the guide,” she quipped.

Brian glanced from Chandra to the counter, where Rick was busily working on the wording of a new brochure.

“I, uh, expected someone more—”

“Male?” she asked, tilting her chin upward and meeting his quizzical, amused gaze with her own steady eyes.

“Well, yeah, I was. I mean, not that you're not capable—”

“She's the best riverwoman I've got,” Rick put in, never looking up from his work.

“But—”

“Come on, Mr. McGee. It'll be fun,” Chandra assured him, though she was beginning to doubt her own words. This young buck definitely had ideas about male-female relationships on all levels. She grabbed a couple of life vests and a first-aid kit. “Believe it or not, you don't need extra testosterone to paddle a canoe.”

He gulped. “Is anyone else going on this trip?”

“Nope. Just you and me.”

McGee glanced back at Rick. “And this is a serious ride?”

Rick slid him a glance. “I guarantee you'll get the biggest rush of your life,” he mocked, chuckling softly.

“That's what I want,” McGee replied with a grin.

“Good.” Chandra was already at the door. “The raft's tied to my rig. You follow me in yours, and we'll drop your car off at the south fork. Then you climb in my Suburban with me and we'll continue up the river. It'll only take about an hour to get there.” She eyed him over her shoulder. “You have rafted before, haven't you?”

“Absolutely.”