Triple Exposure (31 page)

Light flashed in Zeke’s rearview mirror as an SUV made a U-turn on the highway behind him. Ignoring it, he braked abruptly, then took the curve of a dirt ranch road so fast that he thought for one, wild second that he was sure to overturn. Recovering, he picked up speed and rattled over a cattle guard, an open grate that livestock would not cross.

Peering upward, he scanned the sky for the towplane but saw only puffs of cloud. “Find her, find her, Lili. Where the hell are you?”

He caught sight of the small plane about a quarter mile away. Had he turned in too soon? Should he have taken the next road? But he saw no indication Lili had yet found anything, so he continued on his course, frantically scanning left and right as he bumped over the rutted road.

His rearview mirror showed a puff of rising dust. Castillo must have followed, also betting that this ranch road would be the closest to the site.

The crash site
. His mind conjured images from the days when he’d watched TV. Fiery wreckage, the staccato pulse of red lights, bodies being carried out on stretchers. His rational mind knew that gliders carried no fuel; there would be no smoke, no explosion. But the thought that it was Rachel out here somewhere,
his
Rachel, short-circuited all logic.

If I find you in one piece, I’ll be damned if I let go.

A bright flash drew his eye—light gleaming off a turning plane’s wing. Lili, circling low above a spot off to his right. Praying his old rattletrap of a truck would make it, he cranked the wheel and drove into the ragged grass to cut straight toward the spot.

The first sound to penetrate was the bawling of a calf for its mother, followed by the rumbling of a small plane’s engine. Distant sounds, receding sounds. Noise that faded into the background static of the black void of her awareness.

Some passage of time. A few seconds? A few hours? No way to know before another sound cut through. Hard, metal slam—a door, perhaps? Sharp, urgent call. Familiar, though, and reassuring.

Rachel
knew
that voice. She knew it, even if she could not find her own to respond.

“Rachel. Rachel, answer me,” he called.

Zeke
was calling. Or was he? She had been dreaming, she realized, nightmare images of Kyle. The feel of her sweat-slick palm tight on the gun’s butt. The slide of her finger against the trigger.

And the single shot that saved her. A shot she was finished regretting. Finished, because otherwise, what was the point of surviving?

But as she roused, those images receded. Leaving only the sound of Zeke’s voice. No nightmare, no dream, but real and solid. Here, by whatever miracle ordained it.

So answer him
, ordered her unwieldy brain. Yet her tongue lay so thick in her mouth, she could scarcely breathe around it. Her limbs twitched, but purposeful movement was beyond her.

Still, she heard his voice, his panic marking his progress as he raced toward the sailplane, instead of the spot where she lay, half-hidden by spring grasses. Toward the sailplane, where bees awaited, buzzing fury as they bounced around the closed
cockpit. Panic slicing through her, she barely registered the approach of another vehicle, another door thrown open.

“Don’t open it,” she tried to warn Zeke, a muffled slur of sound she could barely hear herself.
Just turn around. Turn
around and find me. I’m right here, if you’ll only look around
…

“What—what the hell?” she heard him ask. “Wha—
Rachel
! Where the
hell
are you?”

“Here,” she grunted, fighting to open at least one eye and putting everything she had into that one word. Still, it came out muddled. Quiet. A sound lost beneath the call of some bird, the hiss of wind blown through the scant vegetation.

“Rachel? Is that—” Zeke asked, followed by, “Who the hell are—?”

A single gunshot shattered her hopes. A detonation amplified by her remembered shock, the sickening horror of the recoil. Anticipation of the hot rain of blood and brain that would—but somehow didn’t—spatter her skin.

Because this was no flashback, no memory dragged forth from the past by terror. For it was Zeke she heard yelping in astonishment and pain and thumping hard against the fragile glider. The desert breeze brought her a bitter gift of gun smoke, its acrid stench enough to jerk her free from her stupor, from her past, as it sent fresh adrenaline gushing through her.

Because someone had just shot Zeke, and if he wasn’t dead, he would be if she didn’t get him help.

“What the—what the hell is this?” Zeke asked, staring at the woman walking up to him, her handgun pointed at his chest, her blue eyes glassy and unfocused. Filthy and disheveled, she closed in on him, her blonde hair stiff in unwashed clumps.

It was a wonder she hadn’t killed him—hadn’t even hit him—with that first blast. Startled, he’d slammed backward against the glider, then fallen on his ass when his feet slipped beneath him.

Not exactly a testimony to his reflexes, but his concern
for Rachel had short-circuited all else, including the memory of the warning he’d been given last night.

Shaking his head, he stared at a woman in her late thirties maybe, slightly built, and shaking behind the raised weapon. Far too young to be Willie’s mother. But she looked—could she be?

“You aren’t Mrs. Tyler. You—you can’t be, so then—
Marlene
?” It made no sense. Hadn’t it been Marlene who’d come to warn him last night? Why do that if she’d meant to gun him down herself?

“You’ve destroyed my life, you know that?” Distorted with rage, her voice trembled as she closed in. “You were all she could think of, all she knew for so long. My mother stopped loving me the night Willie died. Stopped loving all of us. Forever afterward, no matter what I did, I could never—No one could ever make her look at us.”

“I’m sorry,” Zeke said, but she went on as though she hadn’t heard.

“And my father—my poor daddy. He took good care of her.
Such
good care. Even though she could never love him. And I promised him—we promised we would take care of my mother, too. Broken or not.”

Something had broken in Marlene, also, Zeke knew. Something critical.

“I was an idiot to take your brother to that party,” he admitted, “a damned fool to believe those assholes cared about anything but using me or that they wouldn’t hurt him—”

“They’re all dead. Do you know that? All dead except for you.” A smile ticked at one corner of her mouth, beneath her empty eyes. “She started it. My mother. The first she found was Sam Henderson. Lots of crime in that part of New Orleans. Just another tourist, dead.”

“She killed Sam?” Icy fear swirled in Zeke’s chest.

Marlene nodded. “He was part of it. You all were. In Tulsa, it was Aaron…”

Zeke couldn’t believe it. “Aaron Lynch? She murdered Aaron, too?”

They’d conspired to destroy his life, but Zeke had long since lost the thread of his hatred toward them. They had been kids themselves. Kids who’d compounded one sin with another out of terror, then had to live with the results of their lies.

Now they’d died for them.

“That was where—where I found her, Tulsa. At that motel, and…” Marlene’s head shook back and forth, pain sparking in her blue eyes. “I only meant to stop her, get her home for help, the way I promised. Promised Daddy before he died…”

“Where’s your mother, Marlene?”

“I didn’t mean to, but she pointed the gun right at—I have a
husband
. And two boys—her own grandchildren, for God’s sake. And my own mother would have—She would have shot me like a stray dog.”

“You had to kill her, didn’t you?”

Marlene shook her head, mouth opened in an unvoiced cry of anguish.

“You couldn’t help it,” Zeke guessed. “She didn’t leave you any choice.”

“She
made
me,” Marlene whispered as tears cut paths through the film of dirt on her face. “Made me. And even after—she kept going. Kept—when I went to sleep, she killed again. Aaron Lynch—I found his body crumpled by my bumper, and I—”

“Are you sleep walking now, too, Marlene? Is she making you do this? Last night, you tried to warn me. Do you remember that?”

Marlene stared at him, her tear-clumped lashes accentuating the pale emptiness of her blue eyes. Shaking her head, she said, “I’m not strong enough to stop her. Not until we see it through.”

Alarmed by her ominous use of the word
we
, Zeke noticed some movement from the corner of his eye. Understanding it was Rachel—that she was about to walk into a situation that could kill her—he blurted, “What I did was
wrong and stupid. But I didn’t kill your brother. You have to know I never raised a hand to Willie—”

“I do know that. Aaron was the one who hit him so hard. He told me. He confessed and begged for my forgiveness. Pleaded for his life before I—before
she
killed him.”

“But if you know I didn’t kill Willie, why come after me? Why go after any of the others?”

“Every one of you had some part in it. If you hadn’t taken him with you, if you hadn’t run away and kept the truth hidden, then we wouldn’t have all suffered so long. We wouldn’t—”

He edged closer. “Marlene, this is crazy.”
You’re
crazy.

“Stop it. Stop right there.” Fury vibrated through her words, and lip curling, she lifted the gun a little higher. Preparing to kill him, as she had killed before.

Zeke forced his voice to gentle tones as if to quiet a dangerous but frightened horse. “What can I do for you? What would you like me to say?”

“
I’m sorry
,” she answered, voice shuddering with rage. “I’d like you to say you’re
sorry
. For every forgotten birthday. For the wedding she wouldn’t come to, the sons’ births she ignored. For elevating my goddamned
stupid
brother to a god in her mind. For making me break my promise to my father and putting her in my head and—”

“No,” cried Rachel, off to Zeke’s left. “No, please, you can’t—”

The woman with the pistol spun, and Zeke leaped. Not fast enough to prevent the thunderclap—not fast enough to stop Rachel from falling with a splash of crimson at her chest.

He crashed down on Marlene, so hard he heard the breath explode from her lungs and a crunch that sounded like bone splintering—probably her ribs beneath his greater weight. In spite of what had to be horrific pain, she twisted around, still clutching the pistol, bringing it upward in a speed-blurred arc. Upward, toward his head.

Reacting on instinct, he grabbed for her wrist, not
caring if he snapped it. Not caring about anything but stopping her, disabling her so he could get to Rachel. But even hurt, Marlene was too fast, her finger squeezing off a second round.

The explosion was so damned loud, it rattled his teeth, yet before the noise of it registered in his brain, he was conscience of the heat, the wet, the stink of blood and gun smoke.

But not
his
blood. As Marlene fell limp beneath him, it sank in that, rather than submit—or deal with the murders she’d committed—Marlene Tyler, Willie’s sister, had taken her own life.

Pushing himself off her—heedless of the gore dripping from him—Zeke raced toward where Rachel lay sprawled on her back. She was breathing, thank God. But her breathing was a labored rasp, her face strangely contorted.

“Rachel,” he cried as he fumbled with her bloody shirt, searching for the bullet hole. “How bad is—”

“Not hit,” she choked out. “Not shot.
Stung
. Stung too many times.”

He followed the trail of blood that ran from her nose to her shirt, figured she must have been hurt somehow in the landing. But his relief turned to horror when he saw her swollen right eye, took in the angry red welts on her face, her neck, her arms. Which fit with the bees he’d glimpsed inside the sailplane an instant before Marlene had surprised him.

Bobby Bauer—the fucking lunatic—must have booby-trapped the sailplane. “It was Bobby,” he said. “He’s been arrested. He was after your dad’s business.”

A siren’s wail caught Zeke’s attention.

“That’ll be Harlan,” he told Rachel. “He’ll get an ambulance and you’ll be safe. We’ll both be safe because that crazy woman’s dead and—”

Rachel closed the eye that wasn’t swollen shut. “Then it’s over. Finally over.”

He pulled her wheezing form into his arms and breathed a solemn vow into her ear. “Not by a long shot. Because everything’s just starting for you, Rachel. So help me God, I mean to make sure of that.”

Wednesday, March 26

“He’ll come back. I swear it,” Rachel whispered as she stroked Cholla’s golden neck. “He’ll be back. I know it.”

The big gelding nickered, a rumbling equine statement of support. Not so much for Zeke, who had been transported today—in custody—to East Texas, but for the grain that rattled around the bucket she carried.

From somewhere nearby, an owl hooted a welcome to the extravagant sunset. Could Zeke even see the sky now, or was he locked up out of sight of windows? Would he be safe where he was going, or would he be destroyed by the same past that had come gunning for him in the form of a crazed woman?

At least
she
was no further threat. Rachel felt sorry for the woman’s family. But not so sorry that she wouldn’t have killed Marlene herself to save Zeke.

Zeke
…

As Rachel fumbled with the gate, she teared up, thinking of how deputies had come into her hospital room—the heartless bastards—to arrest him. Thinking of the look he’d sent her over his shoulder. Not scared, but determined as he’d told her to get back in bed. “Take care of yourself. Take care of your dad and Patsy and my horses.
Because I’m coming back for you a free man. A free man or not at all.”

Cholla pawed the earth and gave another throaty rumble, supremely annoyed to be the last of the three equines fed.

“All right, all right already.” Rachel put down his bucket before securing the gate. She moved slowly, weighed down more by sadness than any lingering discomfort. Sadness not only over Zeke’s arrest, but the discovery that someone she had known and trusted—a man her father had done so much to help—had resented her enough to try to kill her.

“
It isn’t just greed and resentment
,” Sheriff Castillo had told her and her family. “
Something’s seriously wrong with that
man’s head. Something that got started years ago. According to his
half brother—who’s got a criminal record in his own right—Bobby
was the scapegoat. Father thought he was a bastard—thought his
wife had a lover—so he beat nine kinds of hell out of the poor kid,
and did God only knows what all to him. What ever it was, it
twisted him up so bad, he’s carrying on about the damned lights
sending him messages, telling him what he has to do.
”

“
The lights
?” she’d asked.

“
The Marfa Lights.
” Castillo’s voice had been grave. “
I’m no
psychologist, but I think he used the lights as an excuse to act in his
own interest. Only way he felt entitled to go after what he wanted.
”

Throat aching, Rachel tried to swallow. According to the confession, Bobby’s campaign to drive her out of town had led to her grandmother’s death. He hadn’t meant to kill her, he’d told Harlan, only to frighten Rachel away by sending a package supposedly from Kyle.

“Selfish son of a bitch,” she said, unable to forgive him. Abused or not, he’d been out to steal from her father—and he’d been willing to do anything, from enlisting his half brother’s help to committing murder, to ensure his place as successor to Walter Copeland’s business.

A business she meant to run herself, with her father by her side. Sharing his decades of knowledge, restoring old gliders for others. He would serve an important role, whether he understood that now or not. He would have a vital, satisfying
life, in spite of the macular degeneration blurring the center of his field of vision.

There was a growl near her feet, and J.D. ran barking toward a silver Range Rover heading down the dirt road. In no mood for the intrusion, Rachel frowned and wondered if she could bring herself to be polite.

Looking elegant as ever, Antoinette Gallinardi slipped out of the SUV, her yapping lapdog struggling at the end of its designer leash. “Hush, Coco,” she scolded.

The noise continued until J.D. strutted over, hackles raised, and growled. While the two dogs sniffed each other, Antoinette cast her a troubled look. “Your father said I’d find you here.”

“So you’ve found me. Why? Did Terri give you some more tips on how to kick me while I’m down?” Rachel knew damned well that Gallinardi’s assistant had relentlessly maneuvered to influence the Blank Canvas Society to kick her out of the showing. All because of petty jealousy—and a high school grudge over a band director who had long since been sent packing.

“Terri Zavala is no longer my employee.” Antoinette glanced down at the dogs but appeared reassured by wagging tails. “I’m only sorry I allowed her…prejudices to influence the board’s vote—and mine as well, I’m embarrassed to admit. I’m coming to ask, can you ever possibly forgive me?”

Rachel looked at her, considering. She let her squirm before giving an answer. “I can forgive you. Because it isn’t worth my energy to stay pissed.”

If Gallinardi didn’t like the language, she could take a hike. Because Rachel’s emotions were far too raw to pretty up for Art Deco Woman’s delicate sensibilities.

“I’m so glad.” Antoinette sounded as earnest as a schoolgirl. “Because I think I can convince them to reinstate you, to publicize the event more widely than ever, invite art critics from all over the country, the world, even—”

“With my
work
as the focus, mine and all the other Marfa artists?”

“Oh, absolutely. The one thing we all do agree on is that at this point, any further mention of that…that ugliness in your past would reflect poorly on the residents’ perception of the foundation. We need to keep the focus on your talent, which, believe me, is more than capable of standing on its own.”

Rachel tried to resurrect the warm glow such praise had once kindled. But Zeke’s absence cast a shadow, especially here, where she half expected to see him every moment.

“I believe—” Gallinardi pursed her lips, then went on “—that if we can steer clear of any additional…unpleasantness or any association with…undesirable elements, I can convince them to proceed.”

“By ‘undesirable elements,’” said Rachel, “you’re referring to what—or whom—exactly?”

“To a fugitive charged with criminal wrongdoing,” Antoinette said flatly. “I know this may be difficult, but I think if you were to…let’s say
distance
yourself from this Mr. Pike—or is it Langley—the board would feel far more secure supporting you. Especially considering our commitment to community education.”

Rachel stared in disbelief. “So you’re saying…?”

“I have a great many connections, Rachel. Connections I am only too happy to use to promote a person of talent and integrity. I’m sure you realize this could be your chance to move beyond the realm of part-time dabbling and develop the gift you’ve been blessed with. It would be my pleasure and my privilege to do it…but I’m afraid my hands are tied if you insist on continuing your involvement with a man who’s surely bound for prison.”

Rachel pictured herself paraded around the foundation’s showing, the jeweled collar around her neck connected to Art Deco Woman’s leash. Rachel had already seen evidence of the scope of Antoinette’s influence. Pleased, the woman
could be the key to realizing all of Rachel’s aspirations; rankled, however, Gallinardi might use those same powerful connections to blackball her “ungrateful” protégé within the fine art world. To a lesser extent, she could also damage the business Walter Copeland had spent decades building. A business Rachel’s entire family was counting on for income.

Rachel weighed these factors carefully, weighed them against the contents of her heart. As the scale tipped, a lump formed in her throat.

A lump of regret that everything of value had its price. And sometimes, heaven help her, that price was a love led trusting to the altar, its throat slashed in a bloody sacrifice.

Wednesday, April 2

“What the hell do you mean?” Zeke stared puzzled at his younger brother, who sat across from him in a small room near the cell block, one reserved for attorneys to meet with their clients. Painted institutional green and furnished with dented metal castoffs, the room was kept ice cold for the “comfort” of its users.

Jason broke into a broad smile that reminded Zeke of their late father. Who would roll over in his grave if he’d learned his second son had become a Preston County prosecutor, complete with shark-gray suit and tie.
Somebody has
to ride herd on the justice system in this county
, Jason had explained,
at least try to keep these assholes honest.

“I mean,” Jason told him, “that you’re a free man. With Shane Drake out of his coma and willing to testify that Aaron Lynch killed Willie and then threatened the other two to stop them from talking—”

“He didn’t threaten them. Didn’t have to. They were all more than willing to pin that murder on a Langley if it would keep them out of trouble.”

“He doesn’t want that to come out in court.”

Zeke shook his head, confused. “
Who
doesn’t?”

“The district attorney. My boss.” Jason leaned over the
table, a shrewd expression on his leanly handsome face. “Who happens to be Shane Drake’s mother’s brother.”

“Oh, I get it,” Zeke said. “Uncle DA would rather let a Langley walk than expose his nephew to criminal charges.”

“There i
s
that,” Jason told him, “along with the election this fall. First time in Herb-the-Nerve’s tenure he hasn’t been running unopposed. Believe me, this is one can of worms he doesn’t want anybody opening.”

“So that’s
it
? After all these years, I’m free if I can keep my mouth shut.”

“You’re free,” said Jason, “and you
will
keep your mouth shut, if Nate and I have to use massive quantities of duct tape to enforce it. For our mom’s sake, of course.”

Zeke thought of the brief, private meeting his brother had pulled strings to arrange, of how his eyes had misted—all right,
more
than misted, at the sight of his mother looking older, yes, but strong and vital as she’d wept throughout their bittersweet reunion.

“For Mom’s sake,” Zeke agreed. “And because I figure that fractures to Shane’s skull and spine are punishment enough. At least since he finally spoke up for me.”

“So what now?” Jason asked him as, after he was pro cessed out, the two of them walked into the green, pine-filtered light of a warm East Texas morning. Beneath the needled canopy that overarched the court house lawn, a few of the town’s namesake dogwoods raised myriad white flags, as if in surrender to the area’s lingering corruption.

“Breakfast, I guess. Didn’t have much appetite after picking the first dozen weevils out of the jail’s corn bread.” As the two of them walked, Zeke stared out at the town’s square, a prosperous-looking downtown lined with quaint antique shops and cafés, a bookstore and a gift shop. Over the past twenty years, progress of a sort had come to this place. Enough that it no longer felt like home.

Would anywhere, now that the world had shifted and he was no longer either Zeke Pike or John Langley, but this strange, new man?
A free man
, free of everything except the
knowledge of the tragedy he had once set in motion, a tragedy that sent shock waves of destruction through Willie Tyler’s family. Deep in thought, Zeke didn’t hear the car until it was almost on him.

“John,” his brother warned, shouldering him clear of the bright red sports car that slipped around a corner and accelerated, its engine growling like a hunting cat.

Growling and then squealing as the tires grabbed the pavement and the car jerked to a stop. A woman leaped out of it, a woman who raced to throw her arms around him and kiss him until East Texas fell away. As a vision of his true home filled him, Rachel Copeland pulled his spirit like a tethered glider to soar among the clouds.