Dangerous Refuge

chapter Thirty-seven



Shaye sat motionless. The unnatural position made her stiff, but since her feet were busy trying to push apart the Velcro closing of her backpack, she didn’t complain. What really irritated her was that her shoes were made for trails, not for finessing sticky cloth apart. After a frustrating amount of time, she managed to hold down the backpack with one foot and scrape the top of the backpack open with the other.

But that was all she could do until Ace got tired of kneeling on metal and let go of her chin.

As the sun descended behind the Sierra Nevadas, the scattered developments that failed to connect Carson City and Refuge gave way to ragged hills rising above the eastern valley. Wind stirred dust across the landscape like a series of small campfires. Behind them, something bigger than a campfire spread like a smudge across the sky.

“Take the next right turn,” Ace said.

Kimberli jumped, startled by the end to silence. “Does that mean it’s okay to talk?”

“Sure,” Ace said. “You’re driving fine now.”

Shaye warily stretched her neck. When his hand didn’t reappear, she decided that he had been as uncomfortable as she had been. She scratched her lower leg, testing how much freedom Ace would give her.

He tossed his hat aside and rubbed his head like it itched.

“I’ll be glad when the first hard frost comes and kills the mosquitoes,” she said. “I got covered in bites out hiking.”

Apparently he didn’t care about the bugs one way or another.

They’d probably die if they drank his blood.

Pretending she was scratching, she slid her hand into the open backpack. She knew right where the emergency locater was. It was just a matter of getting it and turning it on without being killed.

She bit her lip against bubbling laughter, recognizing it as the first signpost on the way to hysteria.

Deep breath.

Yoga breath.

Her fingers reached the locater beacon. The SPOT 2 wasn’t much bigger than a pack of cigarettes or an iPod. She just had to be sure she hit the right button. She really didn’t want to activate the talk function and give away her best hope of getting out of this mess alive.

Her sweaty fingers slid over the face of the device. Her heart stuttered when she almost pressed the wrong button. Finally she found the recessed switch that activated the beacon’s soundless pings.

Kimberli hit a hole in the deteriorating road.

The SPOT 2 squirted from Shaye’s fingers. It seemed like forever before she found it again, but it had only been a few seconds since she first bent over. Adrenaline was screwing up her sense of time. Her finger slid off the switch, returned, and held it down long enough to activate the beacon.

“Are you all right?” Kimberli asked.

“Little nauseated,” Shaye mumbled, stuffing the beacon deep under the front seat, wedging it out of sight. “Light-headed.” She put her head farther between her legs as she felt for the bear spray. It was designed to convince six-hundred-pound bears that the human they were charging wasn’t really worth it. The pepper-based liquid was powerful enough to shoot its spray more than fifteen feet. She’d practiced with a water version, but knew that moving targets were a lot trickier. Especially intelligent human targets.

There, in its loop on the side of the backpack. Smaller than a water bottle but not by much.

“Think I’m coming down with something,” Shaye mumbled. She slid the spray canister free and hid it under her feet. “Haven’t felt good all day.”

“Sit up where I can see you,” Ace said sharply. “Kimberli, watch the road. It gets worse in half a mile.”

With a muffled sound, Shaye sat up. “Can I open the window?”

“A few inches, no more,” he said.

She rolled it down and drew some slow, deep breaths. The air tasted of dust and sage beneath fading sunlight. She had thought she would feel relieved after she had activated the locater, but instead she felt tighter, like a spring being compressed and then compressed ever more until it quivered on the edge of flying apart.

Where are you, Tanner?

Why did I find you only to lose you?

There was no answer but her memory of Lorne’s body and scavengers closing in.

She did some more deep breathing. The cylinder of bear spray felt comforting under her feet. The spray wouldn’t kill Ace, but if she scored a direct hit, it sure would make him lose his focus.

“Now that you’ve had a chance to settle down and think,” Kimberli said to Shaye, “you can see our point, can’t you?”

Is she on crack?

“Kimberli’s right,” Ace said. “No need to let personal baggage get in the way of business.”

Personal baggage? Does he mean Lorne?

Carefully Shaye shrugged. “I’m not sure just what the business is that we’re talking about.”

“Guess,” Ace said.

“Since it all started with Lorne backing out of the Conservancy deal, I’ll guess the business is his land.” Mentally crossing her fingers, she said, “In the right hands, his ranch would make a beautiful—and beautifully profitable—resort.”

“I knew you’d understand,” Kimberli said, relieved and eager at the same time. “The whole thing is bigger than one old man and a run-down ranch nobody wants, including the one who supposedly inherits it. These small-town, small-time ranchers just don’t get the big picture.”

“Lorne sure didn’t,” Shaye said. That, at least, was the truth.

“He was just letting this incredible opportunity go to waste by being so stub—”

Abruptly Kimberli stopped talking long enough to make the right turn, miss second gear, and have to slow enough to start all over again in first. As if to make up for the mistake, she gunned the engine and jerked through the gears.

“Take it easy,” Ace said. “This piece of crap is more than thirty years old. We’ve got a ways to go yet.”

Not to mention getting back from wherever you’re going, Shaye thought bitterly. But I don’t need to worry about that little thing, do I?

“Anyway,” Kimberli said with determined brightness, “we can put Lorne’s land to work for everyone now. I just wish he’d had his heart attack after he initialed the contract and signed the letter of intent.”

“Inconvenient of him,” Shaye said neutrally.

“Exactly. See, Ace? I told you she’d understand. There’s no need for all the rough talk. Shaye is our friend.”

Kimberli half turned to glance at him in the backseat. The movement made the rhinestones on her silk shirt swirl like a mass of tiny suns shooting out her large, unlikely breasts.

“Lorne was at the end of the road,” Ace said, his voice bored. “He just didn’t know how close it was. Nobody ever does. There’s no point in wailing over an old man’s death. Emotion is a waste of energy anyway. The Conservancy traffics in nostalgia, but it’s one thing to believe and another to use beliefs.”

Kimberli blinked and turned her attention fully back to the road. “That sounds so . . . cold.”

“Give me cold over stupid every time,” he said. “Just up past those fences and over the cattle grate, turn left.”

“I don’t see a road,” Kimberli complained. Her expression said she wasn’t happy at the turn of the conversation.

“It’s not much, but it’s there. Follow my directions and you won’t even have to use low range.”

Kimberli gripped the wheel tighter. “It will be dark soon. You know I don’t like night driving.”

“You think I like banging my butt in the cargo space?”

She pouted.

How stupid are you, Kimberli? Shaye thought. Do you really believe that Lorne died of a heart attack and that this is all just talky-talk business? A little seamy, a lot cold, but still, just business?

“Stupid people live in the past,” Ace said as if he had been reading Shaye’s mind. “Smart ones live in the present and plan for the future.”

Kimberli nodded.

“Like a high-end resort on low-rent land,” Shaye said.

“Among other things,” he said. “The present always becomes the future. The intelligent choice is to understand that and not get tangled in emotions and the past.”

“There’s always a cost,” she said, easing forward again as though to scratch her leg.

Her fingertips brushed the backpack. She flipped the top closed but didn’t fasten it.

“Sure,” he said with a smile. “Take notes, Kimberli. Your blue-jeaned protégée is about to name her price.”

Shaye started to deny it, then realized how dumb that would be.

“Sure,” she said, echoing his tone. “I want a job.”

He laughed. “I was right all along. You were just stirring things up to see if there was a better payday in it for you. Self-interest is at the heart of every idealist.”

“I’ve never met an idealist, so I wouldn’t know,” she said.

She doubted Ace had, either.