Dangerous Refuge

chapter One


There was no doubt about it. He was dead.

Shaye Townsend swallowed hard, breathed carefully through her clenched teeth, and swallowed again. The sick feeling subsided. The grief didn’t. Although it wasn’t the first time she had seen death, it was the first time she had known the person who died.

Lorne Davis was lying on his back, lean and dark and motionless as the black shoulders of the mountains holding up the western sky. The air had a bite that whispered of summer’s end. The first sunlight of day was caressing the highest icy peaks, but there was no warmth yet. The sky was clear, endless.

No need to feel for a pulse, she thought as tears blurred her vision. No need to cry, either. He died the way he wanted to, boots on, working the land he loved more than anything else.

The deeply slanted sidelight revealed no sign of a struggle around the body or any flailing pain before the end. Death had come quickly. It had taken the scavengers a while longer, but they, too, had arrived. If Lorne had been wearing a hat, it had vanished in the restless wind. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, either. It must have been warm when he died.

Whenever that had been.

The rising sun showed more than Shaye wanted to see, more than enough for her to guess that Lorne had spent at least a day in the open. Probably more.

I can’t even cover his ruined face.

The local deputies would lecture her if she went any closer to the body than she was now. So would her volunteer search-and-rescue unit. Her training had been very clear: If there was no chance of life, the body was to be left undisturbed until the authorities arrived.

He’ll never laugh and call me a skinny city blonde again. Never serve me coffee that would etch glass and silently dare me to ask for sugar or cream. Never stand in the dusty yard next to me and watch night flow like a lover up the mountain slopes.

Roosters crowed from the direction of the barn, telling the hens it was time to get out and scratch for a living. Lorne had enjoyed the busy chickens, and Dingo, his half-wild dog, had known they were off-limits for eating or chasing.

Tears streaked Shaye’s cheeks as she fumbled in her fleece jacket pocket for her phone. The lining of the pocket felt almost hot against her cool fingers.

Her movement sent a rustling through the nearby sagebrush, where the animals that had scattered at her appearance waited for her to leave. Magpies and crows had come with the increasing light. They settled on the rails of the ancient corral, watching, waiting. Two vultures flapped harshly overhead, fighting gravity for a chance to feed.

It was early for the big birds to be flying. Usually they waited for the sun to heat the air enough to raise thermals. Then the vultures would rise on the warming air and do lazy cartwheels, waiting for something to die.

They must have been here yesterday, knew food was waiting for them today.

She choked off an irrational need to scream at the scavengers. They were what they were—nature’s cleanup crew. Nothing personal.

His last words to me were a furious phone message. He died cursing me.

A slow wind blew down from the mountains. It dried the tears on Shaye’s cheeks as it dried everything else it touched. The country on the east side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains was arid, unforgiving, and beautiful in a spare, open way.

She punched in three numbers on her cell phone, waited, and then realized there was no cell service where she was. She thought of the backpack of search-and-rescue basics she always kept in her Bronco. The flashlight, first-aid kit, bear spray, and other necessary tools wouldn’t help her now, but the SAR beacon could.

I could use the locater, she thought. It’s close and has a radio. I wouldn’t have to leave Lorne.

But the beacon was only to be used in a life-or-death emergency. This was urgent, yet it wasn’t an emergency. Death didn’t care about a few minutes or a thousand eons.

She muttered something unhappy, waved her arms wildly to drive the waiting scavengers farther back, and retreated toward the weathered barn across the dusty ranch yard. By some quirk of geography, the barn was one of the few places on the ranch that had any cell connection. Lorne had been disgusted when she had discovered it. He had prided himself on needing nothing from civilization—and giving nothing in return.

The only exception to his daily solitude was Dingo, the tawny mutt with erect ears, curled tail, and dainty feet. Lorne had allowed the dog to share first the edges of his life, then his small home. Like Lorne himself, Dingo was aloof with people, independent, but had a reluctant need for companionship.

Both mutt and man had softened toward Shaye in the last months. In Dingo’s case it was the treats she brought him. In Lorne’s it was the slow understanding that she shared his love for the land in all its enduring, unforgiving grandeur.

A few days. A few days gone and she came back to this.

And all because her boss had never met any paperwork she couldn’t trash.

Shaye turned away and walked quickly toward the barn. The dawn wind flexed, ruffling the feathers of the bald-headed black birds sidling closer to Lorne’s body. She spun around, shouted, waved her arms, and threw rocks. The birds grudgingly retreated. She thought about pulling out the bear spray and blasting them with concentrated capsicum, but that was anger and revulsion talking. Rocks would work better.

Watching them, she touched the three numbers on her cell phone and waited, automatically turning into the wind so that her hair wouldn’t end up in her eyes. Even when she fussed and carefully pinned it up, some of the slippery stuff would always escape to tickle her ears and neck and get in her eyes and mouth.

After hearing Lorne’s message, she hadn’t taken the time for more than pulling her hair into a clasp at her nape. Now it was flying everywhere.

“Nine-one-one. What is the nature of the emergency?” asked a calm voice.

“A death,” Shaye said. Her voice was too hoarse. She cleared her throat and tried again. “I found a body.”