Triple Exposure (15 page)

Before he’d left for Alpine, he had given the mule and horses extra hay to tide them over, but he needed an excuse, and livestock was as good as any.

“Hang on a minute, then,” Patsy called. “Let me at least pack you some dinner.”

He stepped inside to wait, his gaze taking in the framed family photos that hung on yellow walls and decorated every available flat surface. In a number of them, he recognized Rachel’s budding talent, but the one that captured his attention was a candid shot taken of her as a young teen, her hand half-hiding the tinsel glitter of her braces, her freckles far more obvious than they were now. She was a little shy of pretty, but those big, brown eyes had held promise. Promise she’d grown into beautifully.

“Thanks again,” Rachel told him as she bent to grab her overnight case.

“Hand that over, Rusty.” Her dad swooped in to take it from her. “I’ll put it on your bed. Put you to bed, too, if you’re still feeling puny.”

“I’m better,” she protested.

After fluttering a wave in Zeke’s direction, Rachel followed her father down the hallway, words trailing behind
her. “There’s something packed in there I have to show you. Zeke made me a get-well present.”

Zeke felt heat rise to his face. When Patsy came out to hand him a plastic container with the chili and a foil-wrapped square that must have been the corn bread, her expression told him she’d heard what Rachel had said, too. And she wasn’t pleased about it.

“What on earth are you playing at?” she asked through clenched teeth, keeping her voice low so Rachel’s grandmother, who had drifted toward a game show on the TV, wouldn’t hear.

“Nothing,” he said. “It’s just, I had an errand to run today in Alpine anyhow, and—”

“You took Rachel a
gift
, Zeke. And you hung around the other day to watch her.”

“I had some scrap material around, and—and, yeah, I felt bad about her getting hurt the way she did. Just a friendly gesture, that’s all.”

“When’s the last time you made anybody else a ‘friendly gesture,’ Zeke Pike?” Sarcasm smoldered in the depths of her blue eyes. “I can see what’s going on, and I have to tell you I don’t like it. That girl’s got trouble enough on her plate without some man adding to it. Especially some man who likes to keep to himself the way you do.”

“And here I thought you were warning me off for my own good.” He tried a smile.

She thrust the food toward him. “If you have any sense, you’d think of that, too. But I know men get stupid around pretty women. I might not be one, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know it when I see it.”

“Thanks for the dinner.” He left, wondering if part of Patsy’s problem with her stepdaughter was the fact that Rachel had grown into a face and body that commanded the type of male attention Patsy had never had. Though she was in general nearly as tight-lipped as Zeke about her background, over the years she’d dropped a few hints about a rough, hardscrabble childhood, followed by a brief marriage
to the current sheriff, a man half the county knew had ditched her in favor of a former Miss Teen West Texas runner-up. She’d been securely married to Walter Copeland for as long as Zeke had known her, but he wondered if those early experiences had left her bitter. Or maybe he was imagining such things because of the toll his own youth had taken on his life.

“
Like father, like son
,” he remembered hearing a teacher say after he’d been caught fighting in the halls. Fighting because some shit-for-brains punk had made the mistake of spreading it around school that his dad was buried in a pauper’s grave outside the prison because they lacked the money to bring Joe Langley home.

That happened in another life
, Zeke told himself.
To another
person
. Because that boy had been snuffed out as surely as his father.

But as his truck slipped through the quiet streets, Zeke felt a restless melancholy overtake him, a growing dissatisfaction with the thought of returning to a place that felt cold and hollow compared to the warmth and fullness of the little, brown adobe where the Copeland family were gathered. For the first time in a long time—years, maybe—he couldn’t bear the thought of going home, so instead he turned his pickup to the one place where he knew he could eat in peace within earshot of other human voices.

Nine miles east of town, he found it, the viewing area where locals and visitors alike could wait in the communal darkness for the famous mystery lights to put in an appearance. As he’d suspected, there were several vehicles in the parking area on this clear, Saturday evening.

After digging a wrapped plastic spoon—a relic from a fast food stop during one of his supply trips—from his glove box, Zeke walked up the rise to reach the viewing platform. Once there, he settled on a section of stone wall some distance from the spots staked out by ten or eleven visitors, some in pairs or groups of three, some apparently alone as he was. Whether sitting and talking or standing in silence,
each stared across a dark plain obstructed by nothing but low scrub brush.

A good night for viewing, Zeke thought, not too chilly and plenty dark without the moon’s glow. Not a half-bad night for brooding either, with the soft murmur of conversations taking place around him. Balancing his bowl, he sat there eating, enjoying the flavors of ground bison and black beans and jalapeños and the corn bread and struggling to pretend this no-strings companionship could fill the empty spot within him.

“Look, there’s one.” A middle-aged man with a long ponytail pointed excitedly in the direction of the distant mountains, where a glowing ball of brilliance bobbed a slow path to the west.

“I see it,” a teenaged girl cried and flipped on—rather pointlessly—the flashlight she was holding.

Another man yelled, “Turn that damned thing off, you moron. You’re blinding me, for one thing.”

The harshness of his voice had Zeke glancing his way. He found himself looking at the profile of the same man he’d seen leaving the hangar area after Rachel’s crash.

“Hey,” Zeke called, putting down his food and rising as he pointed. “I need to talk to you a minute about what happened Thursday.”

Perhaps he’d moved too abruptly, or perhaps the man perceived the edge in Zeke’s voice as a threat. Whatever it was, he leapt over the wall and took off running…disappearing into a darkness lit only by the indifferent stars and the pale, receding light.

“Where’re they going?” The blonde girl shone her flashlight after Zeke and the man he chased, but all too soon, both passed beyond the limits of its illumination.

Zeke squinted, struggling to spot movement, and strained to hear the sound of the man’s progress.

Shouts from the viewing area drifted toward him, from “Don’t run that way” to the warning, “You’ll get lost out there.”

Zeke knew they were right. Only a fool went blundering into the desert after nightfall, with its rocks and thorny scrub brush hidden among dry grasses, its cactus and its deceptively uneven ground. At least the rattlesnakes would be inactive during the cool evening, but the nocturnal scorpions and tarantulas, though not fatal, could be damned unpleasant if a man happened to come down on one as he fell.

And fall he would, if he continued running blindly. So Zeke pulled up short, breathing hard.

Cursing, he turned back toward the low, stone wall that rimmed the platform, where people eyed him with suspicion. Several of them had turned on flashlights they’d brought with them.

“Why’d you chase him?” a balding man called.

Uncomfortable with the attention, Zeke shook his head. “Didn’t want him to hurt himself out there, that’s all. Mighty nervous fella.”

“Did you know him?” someone else asked. “You said something to him.”

“Thought he looked familiar, that’s all. But no, I don’t know him.”

A woman with long, brown curls spiraling from the bottom of a knit hat pulled a cell phone from her bag. “Should we call the authorities?”

Zeke wasn’t certain how to answer. Now more than ever, he wanted to speak to the man about the day Rachel had been injured. But the idea of involving the law—of speaking personally to the sheriff—was disturbing. Surely, Harlan Castillo would have long ago come calling if he’d guessed Zeke’s past. But there was no sense tempting fate if he could help it.

“It’s no crime—only stupid—to go running out there,” Zeke said. “Besides, he has to come back. He must’ve left a car or truck here. Unless one of you brought him?”

No one present would admit to having done so.

“Someone ought to wait around to see he makes it back here,” said the woman with the cell phone, “but I’m starting to get chilly, so I’m packing it in for the night.”

She didn’t want to be involved, Zeke figured, or responsible. And judging from the exodus that followed, she wasn’t alone. Within twenty minutes, they had all departed, leaving Zeke to clean up the remnants of his dinner and then check the parking area.

His own pickup was the last vehicle remaining.

“So how the hell did he get way out here?” Zeke asked himself. But the desert returned no answers, only the subtle glow of yet another mystery light.

Through a slim, white telescope, the observer watched and wondered. How hard could it be to scare off a man who acted spooked by everything and everyone already? A man who spoke to few and trusted fewer shouldn’t require a whole lot of persuading to understand he was better off keeping his mind on his own concerns.

With the lights’ return—thank God they had come back, despite the failure that had taken place two days before—it was simple to see clearly. Easy to see how little it would take to discourage Zeke Pike’s interference. A broken windshield, maybe, or, a few items smashed in a workshop that was often left untended.

One of the lights returned then, venomous green and blinking a staccato message that chilled the observer to the marrow. A message that whispered much more would be required—enough to slash through the thorny tendrils of whatever attachment Pike thought that he felt for Rachel Copeland.

The light warned he would be stubborn, as man is on the scent of woman, and that Pike wouldn’t hesitate to use his muscle to get answers, or to punish where he saw fit.

No more punishments
, The Child whimpered. Locked down in the darkness, it picked at scabs from wounds that festered, wounds that never healed. In the cold crawlspace beneath the trailer, it rocked itself for consolation, trying not to whimper when the wasps flew near.

But there had been no peace until the lights came.

And the lights, for all their blessings, at times demanded blood.

No use staying out here any longer, Zeke decided. Either the man he’d sought had hiked someplace up the road or he was lying low, squatting behind some bush and waiting for Zeke to go away. Either a cold hike or a cold wait, since there was no shelter within walking distance and the few drivers who might happen by on their way to or from Alpine wouldn’t be likely to pick up a hitchhiker at this hour. But they might well notify the sheriff of his presence. In such rough and empty country, people tended to look out even for strangers.

Zeke, on the other hand, was annoyed enough, after an hour’s wait, to hope the jackass froze his ass off out here. Why the hell was the man hiding? Could he really have
something to do with Rachel’s supposedly accidental crash, or had he seen something that day at the airport—something he was terrified to divulge for some reason?

But Zeke couldn’t rule out other reasons for the man’s flight. Zeke’s size and the suddenness of his approach could have seemed a physical threat. Or maybe he was involved in something illegal, something such as smuggling drugs or Mexican nationals into the country—though the latter seemed highly unlikely, considering the large number of Border Patrol agents who made their home in Marfa.

Or what if the man was a fugitive from elsewhere, hiding out from a past as dangerous as Zeke’s own? Zeke shivered—from the cold, he assured himself—as he imagined a dark reflection of his own life played out on this same desert. He felt the stirring of compassion, too, a visceral connection to the bone-deep fear, the base, animal instinct for self-preservation that could push such a man to unimagined risks.

“Listen, I’m not looking to hurt you or to poke my nose in your business,” he shouted into the empty darkness. “I only have some questions, a few questions about what I think you might’ve seen. Then if you want, I’ll drop you someplace. Buy you some hot coffee if you need it.”

The only answer was the high yipping of coyotes that echoed from somewhere in the foothills….

And the shot that splintered the still night as Zeke opened his truck door to climb inside.

Zeke dove across the old truck’s seat. Behind him, the driver’s side window shattered, spraying him with glass, and he heard a metallic ping—a bullet perforating the pickup’s side.

Reaching behind him, he pulled the door shut before he ended up getting ventilated, too. Two more shots came in quick succession, causing him to curse the stupidity of his compassion. If he got out of this in one piece, he wouldn’t make the same mistake again.

Eager to put distance between himself and the shooter, he reached into his pocket for his key, window glass raining from him with each movement. He didn’t find it, so he plunged a hand into his other pocket—even as it occurred to him that he had had the key in hand when he’d heard the first shot.

His heart constricted as he realized that he must have dropped it on the ground outside the pickup. Where the shooter waited.

“Of all the damned stupid…” But he lost interest in swearing as his mind replayed the gunfire. How many shots—at least three. No four, or had it been five or six?

“Goddammit.” He couldn’t think, with his brain revving and his pulse pounding. He thought it was possible his attacker had run out—or was about to run out—of ammunition. But that assumed he didn’t have spare bullets, or another clip.

It was one hell of an assumption, one hell of a gamble. Discounting it, Zeke struggled to focus on his alternatives. He could lie here waiting for the shooter to decide to walk up to the truck and head-shoot him through the shattered window. Or he could leave his questionable cover to try to find the key so he could put some distance between himself and this ass-wipe. Alone and unarmed, he had no other choices, though neither of the two he’d thought of sounded like a good bet.

But every moment he delayed left him vulnerable, unless his attacker had decided to settle for taking a few potshots before running off. Zeke decided not to count on it, that it was at least as likely this jackass might be desperate enough to try to kill him for his truck.

Another good reason to get the hell down the road while he still could—
if
he didn’t get shot reaching for the key.

Wishing he’d paid attention when a “friend” had once tried to teach him how to hot-wire an ignition, Zeke sat up, his head ducked as low as possible, then threw open the door and looked down where the light spilled out onto the sand.

He saw it—the worn truck key gleaming like the proverbial brass ring. Reaching down—heart slamming against his chest—he snagged it, then yanked the door shut. In his hurry, he fumbled to jam the key into the ignition—and jumped at the sound of another bullet punching metal.

The engine caught, and he jammed it into reverse and spun out onto the highway, his shoulders hunched and his right foot smashing down against the floorboard. The old truck had edged up to ninety before he realized he’d driven out of range of any further bullets.

Yet he didn’t slow until he’d nearly reached the sheriff’s office in the heart of town. At that point, his habitual caution finally overcame his adrenaline. Should he let this go for fear of eliciting the sheriff’s curiosity?

No, hell no
, he decided as he parked. His truck—a relic he cared for as meticulously as any of his equines—had been
damaged, and he’d nearly gotten himself shot. The shooting added weight, too, to the argument that the stranger might have something to do with Rachel’s plane crash. And if nothing else, the presence of an armed man in the vicinity of the visitor’s center could pose a lethal danger to the next person to pull in.

So Zeke gathered his courage and walked into the sheriff’s office, prepared to make a statement, as any responsible and law-abiding citizen would do.