To the Limit (39 page)

"What'd I tell you?" he'd said smugly after he'd iced it down again earlier, then wrapped it with the elastic bandage she'd bought at the local drugstore along with the ibuprofen.

She dragged her mind away from the picture of him, fresh from a shower, unabashedly and beautifully naked as he'd sat on the edge of the bed and let her help him with the bandage. When the waitress stopped by their table with a coffee carafe in hand, Eve shook her head with a "No thanks." Mac did the same and got serious about the map.

"So, which way do we go, O great tracker?"

She angled the map around so they could both see it. "I'm thinking we take One-forty-three southeast until we hit Fourteen, then angle back north on Eighty-nine, stop every time we see a breathing body, and see what we can shake down."

He followed her finger as it pointed out the route, and shrugged. "Better than sitting on our thumbs."

"Who knows? We could get a break."

The look he gave her wasn't exactly optimistic, but since he hadn't come up with any better ideas, he was going along with hers.

They drove until dark, banking their growing sense of urgency with silence and comments on the scenery as the clouds lifted and sunshine poured over the mountain peaks. The area was beautiful—rich with national parks and rusty rose-colored mountain ranges. But they found no signs of Tiffany. No one they talked to had seen her.

Mac was getting frustrated. So was Eve, but she made great pains not to show it. They booked a room in a mom-and-pop motel somewhere on 89 and called it a day. It was noon, the next day, when they pulled into Ruby's Inn, a huge motel complex nestled just outside Bryce Canyon National Park, that their luck changed.

The decor in Ruby's was right out of a
Western Living
home fashion magazine. Huge roughhewn beams crisscrossed a tall peaked ceiling dotted with skylights and wood planking. Mountain prints and cowboy memorabilia hung from the walls. Spotted cowhides were draped over the backs of bulky mission oak sofas and chairs. And blending in beside a booth advertising Canyon Rim Trail Rides was a wrangler, complete with worn leather chaps, a handlebar mustache, a dusty black wide-brimmed hat, and the requisite bowlegs. He wore a new red kerchief around his neck, spurs on worn boots, and Mac could make out a faded round circle on the left hip pocket of his jeans where he kept his Redman chewing tobacco.

The sign above the booth read: Canyon Rim Trail Rides.

Beneath the sign was a schedule.

The wrangler stepped forward and extended a hand. "Name's Dub. You folks looking for a trail ride? Great way to spend an afternoon, and I've got a couple spots left in the three o'clock group."

Mac shook the wrangler's hand. "No thanks, but we are looking for someone. Maybe you could help."

"Lots of folks come through this stop this time of year. Don't rightly know if I could tell one from another, but I'll give it a try."

He was right about the volume of people. The lobby was brimming with people, some wearing shorts, some in jeans, all of them heading somewhere—whether it was the adjacent restaurant or the gift shop or the pool.

Eve fished Tiffany's photo out of her purse and held it out to the cowboy.

The wrangler frowned, scratched his jaw, and studied the photo. "Well now, I b'lieve I mighta seen someone looked something like her," he said at last, "but this girl had different-colored hair. Brownish, sorta. Not so much makeup. And she didn't have them things stuck in her lip."

Eve, looking disappointed, tucked the picture back in her purse. "Well. Thanks anyway."

"Wait now; wait just a minute. Le'me see that again." He drew the photo closer, squinted at it. "That a diamond tattooed on her cheek?"

Eve glanced sharply at Mac.

"A tear," she corrected.

"Tear, you say?" Dub said absently as he studied the photo again. "Thought it was a diamond. Kids. What'll they think of next?"

Mac was two feet away from Eve and he could feel her energy level buzz up several notches. He was getting a little buzz himself. The chances were slim and slimmer that Tiffany and a girl who looked sort of like Tiffany and had a tear tattoo on her cheek weren't one and the same person.

"Are you saying you saw a girl with this exact same tattoo on her cheek?"

"Well, yeah. Ain't seen nothing like it ever before. Wanted to ask her about it, but didn't seem polite."

"You talked with her?"

"Well, not so much with her, but with Billie. Boy's been gone for a while; it was nice catching up."

Eve shot Mac another quick glance, one that said,
We may have hit the jackpot.

"Billie?"

"Billie Campbell. She was with him."

"When was this?"

Another frown. Another scratch to the jaw. "Yesterday, round supper time."

"This Billie. He a tall, skinny kid with a guitar and cowboy hat?" Mac asked, working to keep it casual.

"Man, you got him nailed. That boy's a beanpole, and his guitar goes everywhere he goes. His daddy just shakes his head and smiles."

Beside Mac, Eve almost bounced. "Billie's father live around here?"

"Jasper? You bet. Jas owns Canyon Rim Trail Rides—that and some bucking stock he leases out to some local rodeo promoters."

"So, the Campbell's are locals."

"Born and bred," Dub said absently as he smiled and tipped his hat to a couple who had stopped and were showing interest in the printed brochures lying on the countertop.

"Where could we find Mr. Campbell, do you think?" Mac asked, sensing they were about to lose their source of information to a business transaction.

"Same place you always find him this time of year." Dub inched toward the interested couple, gave them each a flyer and a smile before turning back to Mac. "Leading a bunch of greenhorns on a trail ride round the rim of the canyon— anyway, that's what the schedule says. Like I said, you folks ought to take that ride if you want to see Bryce up close and personal."

"Does Mr. Campbell have an office?" Eve asked.

Dub chuckled. "Oh, he'd like that—bein' called
Mr.
Campbell. Round here, folks just call him Jas. But yeah, he's got an office, if you could call it that."

He walked them toward the front window, pointed across the highway. "See that little log building? If he's not back yet, should be a chalkboard saying when he will be. You can wait for him there if you want. Now if you folks will excuse me..."

They thanked him and headed at a fast walk toward the front door.

"Can you believe this?" Eve asked as Mac took her elbow and guided her across the highway, which was thick with traffic.

"Your hunch paid off."

"Yeah. Who'd have figured?"

He would. That's who. She had amazing instincts. It was only one of the qualities he'd grown to appreciate about her. She was also cool under fire. Dub had never known she was about two breaths away from wringing out the information the wrangler had taken his sweet time relaying. And she hadn't complained, not once, about her injuries from the bombing—and she'd had plenty. He'd seen every scrape, bruise, and cut when they'd employed a little medicinal sex to take the edge off. He'd kissed every scrape, bruise, and cut... and several places in between.

He drew back from the memory while he could still fit in his jeans. There would be time, later, when this was over, to sort things out. To figure out where things were going between them. And they were going somewhere. He was damn sure of that.

Right now, the priority was finding Tiffany and keeping her alive. Since they had to be alive to do it, speed was a priority, too. He'd had that prickly feeling on the back of his neck since they'd left Parowan yesterday. If someone was following them, they were good, because he hadn't been able to make them. In fact, he hadn't been able to pick out a car or a truck or anything that seemed out of place. But his neck still prickled and the ominous knot in his gut kept tightening.

"There they are," Eve said when they rounded the log building.

He followed her gaze toward a wooded area where a string of horses plodded lazily along a worn trail toward the corral beside a lean-to. Buckskins, sorrels, chestnuts, and bays walked in a long, slow line with happy tourists chattering about the exciting ride and in some cases mumbling about their sore butts.

"Mr. Campbell?" Eve asked when what appeared to be the head wrangler had dismounted, said his good-byes to the happy greenhorns, and headed toward the office.

The cowboy stopped with one foot on the office building's steps. He tipped his hat, nodded. "No, sorry. Name's Jed. Jed Barnet."

Barnet was a clone of the cowboy manning the booth in Ruby's—maybe a little younger but still brimming with western hospitality and charm.

"We were told that Mr. Campbell was leading this ride."

Barnet lifted his hat, ran a hand over his hair, then resettled the Stetson. "He was, but we had a last-minute schedule change. Jas called me this morning and asked if I could fill in for a day or two. Guess his boy come home." He smiled. "Billie's been gone for a while, so Jas wanted to spend some time with him. Can I help you folks with something?"

Mac stepped in and extended his hand, introducing himself. "My dad was a buddy of Jasper's. We were passing through the area and I promised him I'd look Jasper up."

The cowboy grinned. "Well, he'll like that just fine. Come on in the office a sec and I'll show you how to get to the home place."

Smiling, if a bit shaky, Tiffany sat across from Billie at a Mission Oak dining room table in a sunny little room that smelled like lemon wax and leather and fried chicken. It wasn't like the dining room table at her father's Palm Beach estate. It wasn't glossy and so massive that you needed telephones to converse with the people at the other end. It didn't have a fresh floral centerpiece that was delivered weekly by a local florist and cost enough to finance a college education. Instead, a green fruit jar sat in the middle of the table, filled with some pretty pink and lavender flowers Billie's mother called summer phlox that she'd picked from her wildflower garden behind the house.

You didn't have to wear designer dining attire, either, or choose from a hundred pieces of silver or a dozen Waterford crystal glasses. There were just plates and water glasses and a knife, a fork, and a spoon. The napkins were paper—with pretty flowers printed on them. There was no butler. There was no maid.

There was just Billie and his mom and dad and her. And a whole lot of warm smiles and easy acceptance.

"Would you like more chicken, Tiffany?"

Tiffany.
She loved the way Miriam Campbell said her name. Her father had called her Tiffany, but it was always with an impression of disdain. When Billie's mom said it, it sounded like she loved the name, like she thought it was pretty, like she thought Tiffany was pretty, and like she enjoyed having her at their dinner table.

Miriam Campbell was pretty. Not model or socialite pretty. Tiffany had heard the term
inner beauty.
Now she knew what it was. Miriam had it. Her face was round and tan and her long brown hair was caught at her nape in a no-nonsense ponytail. Tiffany figured her for somewhere in her forties, yet she moved like a much younger woman in her working jeans and soft blue shirt. She wasn't slim, but neither was she fat. She was nicely round and soft and as comfortable with it as she was riding a horse or cooking in her newly remodeled kitchen that was her pride and joy.

"Better eat up," Billie's father said. "Before that boy beats you to it. I swear, if it's not nailed down, he eats it."

Tiffany smiled at Billie. His cheeks turned a mottled red.

"Not that it shows," Miriam said with a motherly smile. "And don't you be teasing him, Jas. Let the boy eat. He's skin and bones."

"It's in the genes," Jasper Campbell said, smiling at Tiffany. "He's built just like his grampa."

Billie was built just like his father, too, Tiffany thought. Jasper Campbell was a big, tall man. His shoulders were broad, on a long, rangy frame. But there was strength in the muscles that molded to that frame. And there was strength in his hands—gentleness, too, though they were covered with calluses and nicks and scars.

Yes, there was gentleness, too. When Billie had brought her to his home and introduced her to his parents as a friend, Mr. Campbell had extended his hand to hers and shaken it, like she was someone special or something. Miriam had hugged her. Just like that. No request to hear her pedigree, no comment about the way she was dressed in Billie's T-shirt and jeans, not a single odd look because her hands were shaking and she looked—she'd caught a glimpse of., herself in the hallway mirror—like death warmed over.