At Close Range (7 page)

 

Corrie felt as if she couldn't breathe. Her body seemed to thrum at the simple touch of his hand on the small of her back. Men touched women there all the time in the West. Every doorway seemed to call for some kind of touch, a finger to an elbow, the cupping of a shoulder. Every walk became an escort accompanied by some archaic and courtly gesture. But when Mack Dorsey placed his hand on her, she felt it to the very deepest part of her. It didn't seem so much a courtesy as a touch of possession, a branding of sorts.

“Miss Stratton?”

“Yes.” With a hitching breath, Corrie sidestepped Mack's touch, greeted the gray-haired woman, and approached the front desk.

“I'm Mrs. Jackson. All you have to do is sign these papers right here—and show me some identification, of course—and you can take him with you. He's pretty tired and confused right now. Do you speak Spanish?”

“Yes.”

The older woman smiled for the first time. “Oh, good, because Pedro doesn't seem to speak any English. At least, he hasn't so far.”

“How long was he here before his mother was missed?” Corrie asked.

“I honestly don't know. We process about one hundred people in a two-hour period on food-stamp day. He could have been here anywhere from one hour to seven. He was hungry, that's for sure. But all he would eat was a candy bar.”

“Is he asking for his mother?”

“No, that's the strange part. He seems resigned. Sad, but resigned. It's either happened to him before or he knew it was about to. And such a good little boy, too.”

It shouldn't happen to any child, Corrie thought grimly, good or otherwise.

Mrs. Jackson moved to the front doors and inserted a key she turned with a small grunt. “We're closed. Better to be safe than sorry.”

Corrie couldn't help but exchange a glance with Mack. She wasn't surprised his jaw tightened. At his next words, however, she realized he wasn't reacting to the same thoughts she was. “You might be locking someone out, but you're also locking us in.”

“Pedro might take it in his head to dart out the door and look for his mother. Kids can be amazingly fast little creatures.”

“It's a fire hazard,” Mack rasped.

Skin grafts for burns, Corrie thought.
Fire burns.

As quickly as she could, aware Mack was keeping his eyes focused between the keys in Mrs. Jackson's hand and the locked door, Corrie signed the multilayered documents and fished in her purse for her wallet.

As Mrs. Jackson moved to the back to retrieve the little boy, Corrie called Mack's attention from the locked door by simply touching his arm.

“What?” he asked.

“It slays me. All I have to do is sign a piece of paper in triplicate, flash a driver's license, and a scared little six-year-old boy is transferred to my custody. It's harder—and more expensive—to spring a dog from the animal shelter.”

Mack gave her an odd look.

“Are you okay?”

He slowly nodded. “I'm fine,” he said. And raised a hand to cover the one she'd rested on his forearm.

When Mrs. Jackson—“That's Emily to you, dear”—brought a sleepy Pedro Ortega out of a waiting room, Corrie's chest tightened and her breathing felt constricted. Small even for his young age, the little boy scarcely looked old enough to feed himself, let alone be left on his own. The six-year-old's eyes told a hundred stories of fear and worry as he held back just inside the doorway to study these strangers who had come to take him away.

Memories of her rough childhood burned her mind like acid. A man with hands like granite and the size of boulders had dragged her away from the teary-eyed plump woman who had rocked her so sweetly. The granite hands had proved to be extensions of a rocky
heart and an even more heartless soul. Had she stared up at him with such worry and fear in young-old eyes? If so, he hadn't cared.

Her heart wrenched for the little girl she had been and more for the little boy in front of her. She dropped down to her knees so as not to tower above the boy. He shrank back a bit. She settled back on her heels, hoping to let him know she wasn't as much a threat as he might imagine.

In the Spanish she'd learned for her global career and had seldom used to such good effect until she came to New Mexico, she said, “I'm Corrie. I'm glad to meet you, Pedro.”

When he didn't say anything, she waved a hand up at Mack. “And this is one of our teachers, Señor Mack. We live on a big ranch with lots of horses, puppy dogs and a whole bunch of barn cats. A lot of other children live there, too. Would you like to come stay with us for a while until we can find out what happened to your mother?”

The little boy's eyes slowly studied Corrie, Mack and Mrs. Jackson.

Mrs. Jackson said, “Miss Stratton, it's not as if he has any choice—”

“Please, Emily,” Corrie interrupted without looking at her, and continued in Spanish to Pedro. “We have lots of room, good beds and delicious food. Don't you think so, Mack?”

“The food is one of the best parts,” Mack affirmed in fluent Spanish.

Corrie could have kissed him, not for his Spanish, but for the support. When she felt his hand drop to her shoulder, she wanted to close her eyes, to let his touch
flow into her, wrap her in courage. At the same time, the simple gesture inspired a host of noncustodial-type thoughts.

“Rancho Milagro is a great place,” Corrie said, resisting the urge to cover Mack's hand with her own. His touch seemed to radiate out from her shoulder, suffusing her with its warmth.

Pedro stood straighter. “Rancho Milagro?” A look of something akin to fear crossed his face. He'd heard of the place, that much was obvious, but what he'd gleaned might not have been good.

“That's right,” Corrie said solemnly.

After looking from Corrie to Mack and back to Corrie, the little boy finally summoned the tiniest of smiles.

Corrie withheld her sigh of relief and smiled back at him. “It's a place where we eat miracles for breakfast.”

“Sometimes for dinner,” Mack added.

Corrie held her breath, not because of the boy, but because of Mack's seemingly casual remark. He inevitably left the table when the children did, avoiding the adult intimacy as if they carried something contagious. Yet now he was telling a scared little boy they ate miracles for dinner. And there was no mistaking the sincerity in his tone.

“So…do you want to come with us?” Corrie asked, taking off her gloves and holding out her bare hand, palm up. Mack's hand on her shoulder gave an encouraging—or warning—squeeze.

A shutter came down over the boy's face and he averted his gaze only to shrug.

“All you have to do for a miracle is to want one,” Corrie said. “Wanting one is halfway to getting one.”

“No es verdad,”
Pedro mumbled, but he met her eyes again. Then he added, in Spanish, “There's no such thing as miracles anymore.”

“It
is
true,” Corrie said. She held out her other hand for Mack's assistance and he took her hand to pull her easily to her feet in a move as smooth as if they'd orchestrated a dance. Did he hold on to her a bit longer than necessary? Or was she the one clinging to his hand?

Pedro looked up at her, then at Mack. The fear and worry still made his young eyes old, but his mouth was less pinched and some of the tension had slipped from his shoulders. He lowered his gaze to Corrie's still outstretched hand. So slowly she actually ached from the anticipation of that little hand in hers, he inched his fingers forward.

Careful not to grip him too fiercely, no granite-hard grasp for this little one, she gently folded her fingers around his. “And Mrs. Jackson will call us the minute she hears any news, won't you, Emily?”

“Yes, of course,” the woman said, the relief on her face as evident as the thick makeup. She jingled the keys in her hand. She gave another grunt as she released the lock to free them. “Thank you so much for taking him,” she said. “We tried all the usual avenues, but—”

“It's fine, Mrs. Jackson. We're happy to have him,” Corrie said in Spanish. The woman had said the little boy didn't speak English though Corrie suspected otherwise. Mrs. Jackson's using English when she was
able to speak decent Spanish seemed worse than rude to Corrie, it seemed cruel. “Aren't we, Mack?”

“You bet. The more the merrier.” He'd lost at least five years of aging when Emily unlocked the door. He held it for Corrie and Pedro and winked at the little boy as he opened the back door of the Bronco. Light flooded the golden brown interior of the car.

The little fingers in hers convulsed when the boy glimpsed the empty expanse of seat waiting for him.

“It's okay,” she said. She passed off his attack of anxiety as concern over being cold. “We have blankets and a pillow for you. And, knowing Rita—she's our cook out at Rancho Milagro—she's packed a little snack for you.”

“Want me to help you up?” Mack asked when Pedro still hadn't moved.

“No,
señor.
I can do it.” He turned Corrie's hand loose—she could feel how reluctantly—and climbed up the mountain the vehicle must have seemed to him.

“Seat belt,” Mack said.

Proving Corrie's suspicions that the boy knew some English, Pedro searched around, found the device and, after some struggling and a warning look at Mack, managed to cinch it around his small frame. Mack shook out a stadium blanket and spread it over the boy, tucking it in so that his face and hands were free but the rest of him was swathed in soft Polartec fleece.

“How's that?” Mack asked.

“Fine,
señor.
”

“Hungry?”

Pedro shook his head, but his eyes cut to the picnic basket Mack had placed beside him on the seat.

Mack reached over and flipped the lid open. In
Spanish, he said, “Okay, but if you get that way, all this food was packed just for you. And Rita's feelings get hurt if we don't eat lots and lots of her cooking. There's burritos, a couple of
taquitos,
some cookies— I hope these aren't the ones the other kids made for the puppies, nope, they're the good ones—oh, and I see she put in some milk. Help yourself on the way to the ranch, okay?”

Pedro mumbled a thank-you, his wide eyes on the largesse in the basket.

Mack stepped away from the Bronco, locked it, then shut the back door. “All set,” he said, placing his hand at the small of Corrie's back once again to guide her to the driver's seat.

Corrie stared at him for a moment in sheer wonder and wished she were only marginally aware of his touch on her back. He'd made the transfer seem so effortless. She'd only been on one “run” at the ranch thus far and it could only be described as a nightmare. Juan Carlos had pitched a royal fit, had thrown the food out of the window, kicked the blankets aside, bitten Pablo and sullenly refused to talk for the first five hours, unless swearing with uncanny range.

Mack opened the driver's door for her and held his hand out to assist her inside. She felt like Pedro as she hesitated, cautious and hopeful simultaneously, then, slowly placed her palm against his. As she had every time they touched, she felt the shock of contact ripple through her. Inanely she wondered what his silky-soft new hands would feel like against her bare skin.

She used his supporting heft, then, instead of releasing his hand, she added pressure. “Thanks, Mack. You have no idea how much I appreciate your help.”

“De nada,”
he said. He continued to hold her hand.

In English and too softly for Pedro to make out her words, she said, “It wasn't nothing and it means a lot to me.”

Mack looked down at their linked hands, lifted hers slightly, and for a moment Corrie half thought he might raise it all the way to his lips. She stilled, both fearing and wanting him to do just that. Instead, he gave her fingers a little squeeze, nothing more than mere reassurance or possibly simple acknowledgement, then released her.

“What you did in there meant a lot to me, too.”

“Anybody would want to help a little boy,” she said.

He shook his head and lifted a finger to her cheek as if unable to stop himself. “But you also helped a grown man.”

Fire burns,
she thought.

He drew his finger down her cheek and came to rest on her lips, not as though silencing her, but as if kissing her.

T
hey weren't past the river and the beautiful surrounding park, when Corrie heard the rustle of tin foil from the back seat. She turned her head slightly, to make sure Pedro was all right and the tinny crackle ceased abruptly.

“When you're ready back there,” Mack said, not turning around, “would you get me a cookie? And if you're not going to drink it all, I'll take a little bit of that milk, too.”

A few seconds later, Corrie felt a finger tap on her shoulder. “
Señora?
Here's a cookie for the man.”

“Thank you, Pedro. Here you go, Mack.”

Another silence, broken only by the crunch of cookies breaking.

Lights strafed the highway leading out of Carlsbad, brightening the empty expanse of the road to Roswell. An almost-whisper came from the back seat. “Do you want one, too,
señora?
”

Her heart constricted, but she took a leaf from Mack's seemingly casual concern. “No, thanks. But somebody had better eat mine or Rita will think we don't like them.”

“I like them,” Pedro said.

“Good. How about the burritos?”

“Are they very hot?”

“No way,” Corrie said, understanding the question after several encounters with New Mexico chilies. “Rita wouldn't put too many spices in.”

Tinfoil rustled anew and the car was filled with the pungent scent of red chili, cumin and pork and the sound of a hungry young boy eating a late dinner. After a long drink of milk and a satisfied and slightly embarrassed burp, the boy yawned mightily.

On cue, Mack swung around in his seat and shifted the basket to the floor and a pillow to the seat. Once again, he tucked the blanket around the boy, this time covering him for sleep.

Within seconds, the back seat was utterly quiet except for the soft sounds of a tired little boy's rhythmic snoring.

Mack relaxed against the seat. On the way into town, the cab had felt too full of unspoken questions and restless longings. Now, with the addition of a sleeping child, the electricity between them was no less, but the crackling uncomfortable tension had subsided.

Perhaps touching Corrie's back, holding her hand in his had made her seem more approachable, made the chasm he'd created with the kiss the night before seem bridged somewhat, however narrow that passage. Maybe Corrie's awareness of his worry over the
locked door, however she may have misinterpreted it, her helping the little boy in the back seat made it seem possible for him to momentarily ignore the nightmare of his past and deal with this woman in the present.

Mack thought about the reasons for a few additional silent miles, then said, “You handled that beautifully.”

She flashed him a swift smile. Her face had a greenish glow from the dashboard lights, and strangely, instead of detracting from her beauty, they only seemed to make it seem more ethereal. A pixie of a woman with lush, dark hair, coffee-brown eyes that sparkled in the dark, and hands that had trembled in his and while waiting for a child's timid grasp. Talented and beautiful, fearful and vulnerable. She was a potent mix.

Her grin broadened. “You should have seen me with Juan Carlos.”

He chuckled at her description of Juan Carlos's antics at their first encounter. “That kid's a real handful, all right. Trouble is he's smart as a whip.”

“Have you noticed that most of them are?”

“Maybe simple survival makes a child use more brainpower.”

She pondered that for a moment, silent as she took the turn to the ranch road. “I wonder. That could be true in Leeza's case.”

“Leeza? Leeza Nelson?” He couldn't imagine Leeza Nelson ever lacking in survival skills. She was pleasant enough, but her tongue was sharp and her gaze even more so. She looked as if she could chew someone up and spit them out without a backward
glance. He was almost amazed she and Corrie were friends; they seemed such opposites.

“Yes. Didn't you know? All three of us are orphans, too.”

He hadn't known. No one had told him, then he thought, why would they? It was a confidence and confidences were shared experiences; he didn't exactly hold the corner on revealing inner thoughts and life's experiences.

“We met back in college. We became the sisters we never had. What about you—brothers and sisters?”

“One of each. And two parents, though they're not married to each other anymore.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't be.” He almost stopped there, but thought of Corrie's revelation about her past. Remembered the way she'd merely stood there after his brush-off the night before. She deserved more from him. “They're great people, just not with each other. They've both remarried and I like both the new stepparents.”

“Where do they live?”

“All of them?”

“All of them.”

He told her about his brother's vagabond existence on a research yacht in the Caribbean, his sister's recent marriage to a stockbroker in Idaho, and his parents' lives in northern New Mexico and southern Texas.

He liked the way she listened, interjecting laughter when he solicited it and sympathetic murmurs when he touched on topics that naturally called for empathy.

“How long have you been teaching?”

He stiffened somewhat, dreading the inevitable
questions about his past. “About ten years, give or take.”

“You're good at it,” she stated, not inviting argument over her pronouncement. “The kids adore you.”

He didn't want their adoration or even their trust. He just wanted their safety. Not comfortable with continuing that vein of discussion, he asked, “Why did you leave radio?”

She didn't answer immediately as she was leaving the main highway from Carlsbad to Roswell for the gravel road leading to the ranch. She slowed the Bronco down to avoid swerving and sliding on the rocks.

“Why did I leave PBS? I guess you could call it burnout,” she said, making him wonder what
she
called it. “One day it just seemed I'd asked all the questions before. I wasn't editing sound bites for story impact anymore, but because some politico had made a grammatical error.”

“Your fans will miss you.”

“I doubt that,” she said. “There's always some young, starry-eyed kid with a golden voice waiting in the wings somewhere.”

“That describes you to a tee.”

“I'm no kid anymore.”

“You look like one. And, you still have stars in your eyes and a voice that sounds like the low strings of a harp.”

He was watching her face and met her look of pleased surprise with a neutrality he hoped let her know he was speaking nothing but the truth. “You said you were an orphan. Were you raised in an orphanage?”

“Mostly, yes,” she said, but didn't elaborate.

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

“No,” she said firmly, then added, “I'm sorry. But it's long ago and far away and I prefer it to stay that way.” She reached a hand out and lightly touched his arm, not looking at him. He wondered if the gesture was to apologize for not sharing her past with him, or to reassure him that she hadn't been broken by it. She was in the process of pulling her hand away when she suddenly dropped it back down, clutching him. “What is
that?
”

Directly ahead of them on the long, lonely ranch road, a figure draped in black walked alone at the edge of the bar ditch.

Mack felt his heart jerk reflexively and his fingertips tingled as adrenaline shot through his system. Everything in him wanted to yell at Corrie to drive faster, to pass the apparition by, because it wasn't of this realm. The figure could only be a ghost.

Corrie braked hard, breathing shallowly. “If I were Catholic, I'd be crossing myself.”

The headlights centered on the figure in black, slowly walking down the ranch road in the same direction they had been traveling.

“Tell me you see her, too,” she said.

“I see her,” he said tersely, though until she'd spoken he hadn't seen the figure as female. Now, because the car was stopped and the headlights shone directly on the phantom, he could make out the long black skirt, the veiled hair and the ghostly pale face turning to look over her shoulder at the car behind her.

“For a minute, I thought she was a ghost,” Corrie
said on a breathless little laugh that sounded more a gasp.

“I have to admit, the hair on my neck is still sticking straight out,” Mack said.

The woman in black, alone on a thirty-mile stretch of empty road, turned away from the car and continued walking toward the ranch. Again, Mack felt a frisson of reaction creeping down his spine. Every childhood ghost story about La Dolorosa's lonely wanderings flitted through his mind.

“No,” he said aloud, then felt foolish as Corrie hesitated in inching the Bronco forward. He felt his face flush. “I didn't mean stop. I just meant she couldn't be a ghost.”

“You're thinking about La Dolorosa, too, aren't you?”

He gave a ragged chuckle. “Bingo.”

She echoed his laugh but with none of her usual abandon. She drove the Bronco forward until they flanked the woman in black. The woman flicked them a glance from beneath her veil and continued walking.

Corrie nosed the Bronco farther still, pulling to a stop just a few paces ahead of the woman.

“We have to see what she's doing way out here,” she said, as if he needed an explanation. “It's freezing. And supposed to get colder before dawn.”

Mack lowered his window, glanced at the back seat to make sure Pedro was still sleeping, then called out softly in Spanish, “Are you okay,
señora?
”

The woman approached the window at the same even pace she'd been employing before. As she got closer, Mack again suffered a pang of doubt. Would she prove real?

Corrie felt shivers of superstition working their way up her spine. A woman walking the ranch road, thirty miles north of Carlsbad, was impossible enough. Dressed all in black on a fitful night in an unseasonably cold spring, the woman sparked a whole universe of fears that had lived deep within the little girl Corrie had once been.

“Can we help you,
señora?
” Mack asked.

The woman shook her head.

“Did your car break down?” It was a patently ridiculous question; they'd have seen such a vehicle.

The woman shook her head again. Her dark eyes fathomless and unreadable, she looked into the back seat of the Bronco. She stared at the sleeping child beneath the blanket.

To Mack, her eyes looked hungry.

“Do you need a ride?” Mack offered. Say no, he pleaded silently. Just shake your veiled head and disappear into the night.

The woman moved to the back door and reached for the handle. Her hands seemed ghostly pale, then, as she extended one, tinged with red in the glow cast by the taillights.

Corrie couldn't stop herself from reaching out for Mack's shoulder. Whether she'd intended to stop him from unlocking the door, or simply for human contact, she didn't know. All she understood was the need to feel his solid male body.

Mack threw her a quick glance, then lifted the lock on the rear door, and swung it open. Amber light spilled across the woman's angular features, softening them as she stared in at the boy snoring softly. In the light, Corrie could see the woman hadn't been wearing
a black funereal veil, but had simply pulled her long woolen shawl up and around her head. She lowered it now, drawing it tightly around her neck, and lifted her long black skirt to step into the car.

She closed the door after her and stiffly sat back against the seat, apparently careful not to disturb the child beside her.

Corrie envisioned Jeannie and Leeza mourning at a three-way funeral. Jeannie would ask why their friend would pick up a hitchhiker when she had a little boy in the car. Leeza would shake her head and say the police said they couldn't find a weapon; they'd all apparently died of fright.

But the woman staring straight ahead didn't seem menacing. While Corrie could feel the cold emanating from her, the chill of a May night in the desert southwest, she didn't feel a threat other than to her sanity.

When several seconds had passed and Corrie still hadn't released the foot brake, the woman's eyes cut to hers and away.

Corrie gulped air and fought to stifle the hysterical giggles that threatened to escape. Mack clasped her hand and she almost screamed. Until he took her hand in his, she hadn't realized she was still clutching his shoulder.

“I thought you were a ghost,” Corrie said.

The woman said nothing.

“I thought you were La Dolorosa.”

The woman remained silent.

“It's okay. Let's just drive,” Mack murmured. He moved her hand to the gearshift knob, as if she wouldn't have been able to do it without his aid. In
that, he was probably correct for she had to think for a moment how to engage the car.

She looked in the rearview mirror at the woman in back. She'd half expected to see an empty seat, as the ghost stories went, but the woman was there, eyes forward and her thin, pale lips silently moving.

Long-buried memories eddied in Corrie. Every ghost story told at the orphanage, a flashlight in the teller's hand, girls huddled beneath a blanket to hide from the light, seemed to coalesce and re-form right in the Bronco. In almost every country and certainly in most states of the United States, a woman in black walked the back roads and country lanes. Known by a variety of names, she wailed in one place, was silent in another.

In Carlsbad and other parts of the southwest, she was known as La Dolorosa, the Woman of Sorrow, who walked the lonely roads in search of her missing children. According to Rita, whenever she came, bad luck followed in her wake.

Corrie whispered, “I am Corrie Stratton. And if I survived my childhood, I can survive anything.” She slowly eased the car into first, then second, and finally took them up to as normal a speed as nighttime driving on a dirt road allowed.