Buried Secrets (18 page)

“Whenever the discussion got a little wild, you were our touchstone. You're also the reason we're together. That's your gift, your prime energy, as sure as empathy is Cecil's and protection is Zack's.”

Jo sighed. “It doesn't sound like much.”

Ashley smiled encouragement. “It's a lot. The more Zack's around you, the more easily he'll probably work out things in his own head, until he can share it.”

But even as she learned to believe in unseen currents and realities, Jo couldn't quite make herself believe that.

 

“Jo's the last person I'm talking to about this,” warned Zack. Cecil had been good enough to cover all of Ashley's windows so that by the time Zack and Jo got back, at least Zack didn't have
that
distraction. But he had Jo.

Curvy and warm, Jo had been distracting him for most of the day, especially during that young couple's live demonstration of what Zack wanted to do with her. His night would've been hell-like even
without
the fear that his dead wife was checking him out from beyond her empty grave…and despaired of what she saw.

“She knows something's wrong,” insisted Cecil, talking to his computer screen. At Zack's request, he'd been looking through the descriptions of the students across the country who'd vanished like Gabriella had. He'd found someone who might match one of the ghosts Jo had seen at the cemetery.

Assuming the fact that one of the missing kids had been blond and lettered in football could be termed a “match.”

“I'm not gonna discuss my wife with my—” But Zack stopped. His what—
partner?
Only on this case.
Girlfriend?
Juvenile.

The woman I felt up in the car?
Too rude for what had happened. There'd been feeling going on, all right—and there'd sure been
up
—but what he'd stolen with Jo, for a few mind-blowing minutes there, had been far more than a hot grope.

“Well, well, well…” murmured Cecil, studying him instead of the computer. “I believe I've missed something.”

“Work,” Zack commanded.

“Four of the missing young men wore glasses,” Cecil retorted, proof of his industry. “One of them was a redhead, twenty-three years old. It could be coincidence. And you do understand that Gabriella is dead, don't you?”

Zack glared down at him. “Like I
missed
that?”

“I mean, you
understand
it,” Cecil repeated. “You're not letting her haunt anything between you and Jo, are you?”

Haunt. Cute.
“Work.”

Cecil looked back at his computer. “For what it's worth, three of the girls had dark hair. Not counting—hello, ladies!”

Ashley and Jo came back into the kitchen, from where they'd been making up Jo's bed in the guestroom. The second guestroom. As opposed to the one Cecil and Zack were sharing.

Probably for the best, what with the danger of distractions.

“Find anything interesting?” Ashley peeked at Cecil's laptop while Jo propped her hip against the counter, waiting. But damned if Zack could talk to her about any of this. They'd moved too fast, gone too far. Just because he liked her, liked kissing her, didn't mean they should have taken it any further.

He had old business to finish up first. Anything else wouldn't be fair to Jo
or
him. Whether Jo liked it or not.

Cecil looked from Jo to Zack, then offered, “We're pursuing a possible link to a different case. Missing bodies still, but not local, and no rumors of animation. They're just gone.”

“That's not so unusual, is it?” asked Ashley.

Cecil nodded agreement. “Except that we've confirmed twenty-one incidents, and fourteen of these missing persons—or ex-persons—had connections to a New Age club that met on college campuses. The specters Jo and Zack glimpsed this afternoon may resemble profiles from this sampling. It's only a hunch—we'd need more examples to pursue it further. But it
is
curious.”

Zack said, “So we get you more details.”

Cecil blinked—then understood. “Go back to the cemetery?”

“Sure. Why not?”

Ashley shuddered. “It's one thing to see them by accident. But to go back looking for them….”

Someone had to. But Zack wasn't paying that much attention to Ashley. He looked at Jo, wishing he had a good excuse not to take her with him this time, knowing he'd lost that possibility in his
nobody goes out alone
talk. “You game?”

“Of course I am.” She stared back as stubbornly as if he'd dared instead of invited her. Considering the way energy seemed to buzz between them, even now, maybe he was daring them both. But at least he knew to worry.

He hadn't lied to King-the-tour-guide.

Jo didn't have the sense to be scared, even when she should.

 

They spent the next morning at the Almanuevo cemetery, just far enough from each other to discourage casual touching, catching half-glimpses of forms and faces until Zack thought he'd go crazy.

And not just from the ghosts. Or even the snakes.

As long as the two of them walked carefully, then stayed safely if irreverently atop the Montoya crypt, the snakes didn't try to threaten them. Neither Zack nor Jo wanted to shoot up a graveyard. But now that the windstorm had passed, the reptiles were out en masse. It was unnerving to see rattlers sunning on top of tombstones, curled around the little lamb-topped markers that denoted dead children, tucked waiting and half-invisible behind vases of faded silk flowers.

“It's like they're waiting for us,” Jo commented, on one of the rare occasions that they spoke. Zack told himself that it wasn't an uncomfortable silence between them. They just weren't disturbing the snakes.

Yet another reason not to reach out to her, draw Jo against him, let himself relax—just a little—around her. That, and the idea that even now, Gabriella might be watching.

“Scaly bastards,” he muttered.

And Jo said, “As long as they don't bother us, I don't mind them.” As if the snakes were what he minded.

After four hours of what had to be the weirdest stakeout in history, they saw nothing definite enough to advance Zack and Cecil's theory about the missing members of Life Force Clubs. Just peripheral glimpses. Flashes. Teases. By midday, Zack suggested they get the hell out of there.

“You're not quitting already, are you?”

Since he was already annoyed, Zack took it as a double-dare.

“We're wasting time,” he reminded her. “There have to be other dead places to go.”

Not that the only other thought they'd had so far—the Eternal Companion Shop—was much of a challenge. But at least Egyptians knew something about necromancy. Zack and Jo made themselves listen to all the grisly details that Sirus could eagerly
divulge about the mummification process. They nodded through the part about different internal organs going into different canopic jars. The part about scrambling a corpse's brains in order to suck them out through its nose. The part about killing the deceased's family and servants, so that he would have helpers in the afterlife.

“Hungry?” Zack asked Jo deliberately, as they left the shop.

“Starving,” Jo retorted. Stubborn!

So they forced down a late lunch, cleaning their plates.

They drove back to the site of Brent Harper's rocky death. But they couldn't even get as far as where Jo had fallen before, because of all the rattlesnakes that writhed out of the desert. Unlike in the cemetery, these snakes coiled, rattled, hissed. One, which had been camouflaged behind a clump of prickly-pear cactus, even struck. If Jo hadn't been wearing leather boots…

Zack didn't like to imagine what could have happened. But it made opening fire, out here in the desert, a hell of a lot easier. So did the pissy mood they both shared.

Shooting at the rattlers that came too close—even killing a few—felt surprisingly cathartic. But it was also useless. Zack had emptied a clip and Jo was reloading her revolver a second time when she said, “They aren't going to let us closer.”

“You can't handle a few little—” He shot another one. It flew backward from the impact. “—Snakes?”

“I'd rather not kill just to kill!”

“You think I like it?” He meant that.

“So we go back to the—look out!” And she shot one that reared up from behind a rock, too close to Zack's hiking boots.

He assumed she meant, back to the car. “After you.”

Jo covered the area on her side of the slope, holding her revolver in a two-handed grip. “No, really, you first.”

If she weren't putting them both in danger, Zack might have found it funny. But she was, and he didn't. “I get it already. You're tough enough to chew nails for fun. Now will you just—”

“On the count of three,” she conceded.

At least they both moved at three, instead of trying to fake each other out. They hadn't descended to quite that level of
childishness. Zack hit the remote lock as they arrived, swinging into the driver's seat as fast as Jo ducked in on the passenger side, then relocked the doors as they closed. Safe.

There in the Ferrari, Zack still wasn't sure whether he wanted to hold Jo or shake her. Especially when she hiked up her jeans leg, on one side, and wiped away a streak of what was clearly venom from the ornate stitching outside her protective boot. Its smear glistened on her finger.

“There's water behind the seat and tissues in the glove box,” he told her, concern coming out as bossiness. “Wipe that stuff off before it poisons you through your skin or something.”

“Yessir,” said Jo, sarcastic.

Then she opened the glove box—and a rattler struck out from its depths, right at her throat.

Jo didn't even scream. But she ducked. Somehow, she ducked. The snake's freakishly wide mouth sank into the leather headrest, fangs first. That kept its triangular head still long enough for Zack to grab it, lower the power window, and throw the writhing length of it out before they'd even drawn their next breath.

Then they sat there, him and Jo, silent except for the hum of the window sliding quickly back up.

Zack wasn't sure what he could even attempt saying that wouldn't end in dragging her into his arms to prove that she was still safe, still okay—like that could happen around him. When he did reach past that invisible boundary, into the passenger side, her eyes seemed downright wary as she tracked his hand.

With his sleeve, Zack wiped away the poison that dribbled down the headrest, beneath two puncture holes in the leather. Then he turned back to the console and twisted the ignition key.

The engine stuttered and died.

Jo released a long, shuddering breath, and for the first time Zack thought she was worried. She should be. If a snake had gotten into the glove box, God only knew where else the things were hiding. Somehow, this didn't seem the safest place to get out and check.

He turned the key again. The engine stuttered once, then
caught. He drove back to town, pulled off at the first parking lot, and made Jo get out so he could search the rest of the car.

He found no more snakes. But when he popped the hood, the engine was spattered with blood.

Jo looked past his elbow and said, “Huh. More than one.”

Then she leaned back into the passenger seat, deliberately opened the glove box, and got out the tissues. Sort of like a silent
screw you
to whoever, whatever was trying to scare them.

At the rate they were going, was it any surprise that when she remembered an old Indian burial ground, forty minutes away, neither of them was willing to suggest they leave it for later?

Even if the shadows were lengthening to almost deformed shapes. It wasn't like the sun would set for another hour or two.

Part of Zack warned that he was being irrational. But a stronger part wasn't about to put the brakes on now. That was the anger, he realized. Anger that Jo refused to stay home and out of trouble. Anger that Gabriella might be one of the trapped souls King-the-tour-guide had talked about. Anger that he shouldn't be falling for the one woman while the other woman…haunted him.

Just because he knew he was angry didn't diffuse it.

They would reach the burial ground before dark, anyway—they weren't idiots. And they had good lights in the snake-free trunk, just in case. They could call Cecil and Ashley from the car, warn that they'd be late.

And maybe one or the other of them, finally, would give.

I
t isn't as if we're walking into trouble,
Jo told herself on the long ride north toward the Guadalupe Mountains. She'd visited these burial grounds twice before—her older brother had an interest in Native American history—and they were so old that all evidence of their funerary past, outside of oral tradition, had vanished. There was even disagreement among the locals about which tribe had once used the grounds—the Comanche, the Apache, even an ancient clan of Navajo back during their warrior days.

Okay, so the general consensus
was
that whoever'd been buried here had been warriors, and vicious ones. That could be a problem. But neither Jo nor Zack meant to disturb their ancient graves. And as for the snakes—that phenomenon seemed focused far closer to Almanuevo. The only snake Jo saw in Spur was Crazy Bud's, and Bud seemed to have brought his own.

There was no reason to be second-guessing her willingness to do this now. And even if there was reason, she wouldn't.

Second-guess herself that was.

If Zack wanted to back off, that would be one thing. He was
the professional, right? But if he was waiting for her to regress into some annoying, damsel-in-distress mode….

Like the woman in the cemetery.

Jo frowned out the window, at the desert sweeping past her. Was that brief link of emotions between her and the dark-haired ghost behind some of her posturing today? True, the woman's desperation had lingered after her image. A longing for someone—
not just someone, a man
—to take care of her….

Jo rejected that option with every bit of strength she had.

They still had some kind of
diablero
to catch—and soon, if Crazy Bud's warnings carried truth. The burial ground was another clue in their investigation, no more. Why should they put off till tomorrow what they could accomplish before sunset today?

But Jo still noticed how long the light seemed to be getting, starting to throw cacti and rocks and scrubby mesquite trees into dark relief against it like some African safari picture. She still noticed the tightness to Zack's jaw, his hand firm on the steering wheel instead of on her.

No, she didn't fear anything at the old burial ground.

She only hoped that she and Zack, uncompromising as they'd become, could sense if something evil really
was
out there.

At least they could clearly see nobody had followed them.

They took the lonely dirt road she remembered and a few times almost bottomed out; it was too rutted and uneven for the Ferrari to comfortably manage. They pulled off at the eroded wooden post someone had long ago sunk as a marker. Then they hiked out toward a rock wall some quarter mile away, into the late-afternoon light. The burial ground lay beyond those rocks, sheltered in a small canyon.

And when they reached its mouth, the rock walls were high enough that the canyon had already filled with shadows.

“This is a burial ground?” asked Zack. Although he spoke quietly, his words echoed back from the thick, tangible darkness.

Earlier on, Jo might have teased him—had he expected feather-crowned corpses laid out on biers, or animal skulls posted as no-trespassing signs? The death that lurked here was so huge, so timeless that even bones proved temporary.

Against that vastness, she took comfort in Zack's life, bright and warm beside hers. The only two living souls here.

Amidst God knew how many dead ones.

The last time she'd visited this place, Jo would have dismissed such thoughts as imagination. Now she knew better. No snakes slithered out of the rocky crevasses to threaten them. No faces appeared or vanished at the edge of her vision. But a throng of ancient dead surrounded them—probably from all three tribes at one time, probably from beyond that—and she and Zack together, with their bodies and their breathing and their beating hearts, were the outsiders.

“Can't you feel it?” she whispered, stepping a little closer to him. The desert around them seemed to be growing actively darker by the second, like a time-lapse film of night falling. There would be no moon tonight. Eerie.

“It's…” Zack hesitated, but also took a side step of his own. His elbow brushed Jo's upper arm. She was wholly grateful for the human contact.

Because this place was filled with death. Eternal. Inevitable. Not the sort of death that plotted against any one person—orphaned children, hopeful fiancées, widowed husbands. This death was larger than personalities, than lifetimes, than generations. This death was a force so vast, so powerful, she could easily imagine ancient peoples naming it as a god.

She could imagine some of the neo-pagans they'd interviewed doing the same thing.

There are trees here, too,
she thought desperately, squinting into the shadows.
Grass.
But why would this great, hulking death deign to even mark such tiny flickerings of life, any more than a horse might notice floating bits of pollen? It was above such labels as good or evil. It was beyond envy at their presence.

Jo didn't think the death here even noticed them, much less wanted them gone. The
wanting gone
was a hundred percent
her.

Somehow Jo managed to swallow. “It's not unnatural.”

“Yeah,” Zack said. “We're looking for something unnatural.”

At some point, they'd begun backing away. Somewhere toward their distant right, a coyote yipped into the deepening night.

“I don't think there's anything here for us,” Jo said.

“Me neither,” Zack agreed quickly. “Call it a night?”

“Done.”

“Good.”

They were backing away more quickly. It didn't feel quick enough. Zack's hand closed around Jo's wrist as they turned out of the canyon, striding quickly across the uneven ground, with its out-of-proportion sense of depth in the twilight, toward where they'd left the car.

The sun had set; how long had they been standing there, for the sun to set? Dusk was quickly fading into night, but it didn't seem as deep, out here. The darkness wasn't as intense. But Jo could still feel the larger darkness, radiating out from behind them, and they did not slow. She had to take three steps for every two of Zack's, lest he drag her—or just throw her over a shoulder and carry her. She was glad to.

She felt marginally relieved to see the Ferrari waiting for them, a bright symbol of technology in the ageless desert. It flashed its lights and beeped once in welcome as Zack triggered the remote locks. In moments they were inside, securing the doors, making sure the windows were up. Like with the snakes.

But it wasn't like the snakes, Jo realized hollowly.

What frightened her this time, no mortal could ever lock out.

 

They just sat there, in their bucket seats, and breathed. Zack found the sensation weirdly exotic, after standing who knew how long at the mouth of that canyon.
Alive.
He wasn't sure what he sensed in there, exactly. Nothing evil, he admitted. No aberration against the natural order of things.

But holy crap, that had felt big.

Based on the tightness in Jo's expression—something he might taunt as fear, if he wasn't feeling it so sharply himself—she'd gotten a similar impression.

“You okay?” he asked, grudgingly aware of the irony. He hadn't wanted her asking
him
that, after all; had even yelled at her about it. Maybe he'd been a little stubborn.

“We're going to die,” Jo said slowly.

He spun to face her in the little car.
“What?”

“You, me, Ashley, Cecil. Fred. My dogs. My family. Everyone, everywhere…we're all eventually going to die, aren't we?”

Oh geez. Zack slumped back against the door and window, glad he didn't have a weak heart. He'd thought she meant,
immediately.
Like, soon enough to pencil into her appointment calendar.

Jo reached past the gearshift and punched him on the knee. “Why do you have to go and
do
that?”

It wasn't as hard as he figured she could hit, not even hard enough to hurt, but it got his attention. “Do
what?
”

“Die!”

Zack wasn't a big thinker, sticking mainly to reviewing cases or judging character. A philosopher, he was not. And this was the kind of thing philosophers worked with, right? “I heard somewhere that it's part of the deal,” he admitted, inadequate.

“Well, the deal sucks.”

He guessed he'd just have to do his best with the brains God gave him. “It could be worse. I mean, we do get to be born and to live and to have all these friends and loved ones and beers and ball games in the first place, right?”

“And then to see them all die,” she reminded him.

“Unless you die first.”

“Breaking their hearts.” Jo shook her head. “It sucks.”

Zack felt himself frown. Not that he wasn't sympathetic or anything—only a day's extended effort kept him from pulling her into his arms for the kind of comfort his words couldn't handle. But she sounded suspiciously like someone crying in hopes that she'd get her ball back.

And she'd been orphaned at what, sixteen?

“You lost someone else,” he guessed. Or predicted. Same difference. “More recently than your folks.”

Jo didn't say anything then.

“Look, if this job is getting personal for you, I ought to know. Especially if your judgment gets…” What was the word Cecil had used? “Skewed.”

“Diego,” she said.

“Who's Diego?” And why did that name sound familiar? He'd have it in a minute—

“He was the foreman at the mine,” Jo reminded him softly, and now he did have it. The foreman was the one who'd survived the initial cave-in, only to die and…

And to turn on her.

Holy crap. “You two were involved?”

He could tell she nodded, because her silhouette moved against the lighter leather interior. “We were kind of engaged.”

He wanted to say he was sorry—hollow words, but sometimes the only ones fitting. He even considered saying that life went on, or she'd see him again in Heaven, in hopes it might prove true. But he fought the temptation because he didn't know for sure, and this was Jo. It wouldn't feel honest.

Hell, some nosy part of him wanted to know how long they'd been engaged, what Diego had been like. If Jo had loved him, he couldn't have been a slouch.

But what Zack somehow ended up saying was, “You couldn't mention that the first time?”

“It wasn't any of your business the first time!”

Never had he met a woman so clear on her own boundaries. Whether he liked them or not, he had to appreciate the clarity.

So instead of fighting it further—God knew they'd done too much fighting today—Zack gave up and reached for her. He drew her gingerly against his side, so that her head could sink onto his shoulder. Gearshift, holster and everything.

Jo came willingly enough that he was glad he did, and not just because it might give
her
comfort. As she nestled her cheek against him, her breasts brushed his ribs and she rested a hand on his sternum, and relief slid through him like a salve. Whatever reason he'd had for trying to keep his distance, it had to be wrong. He needed her touch, her presence. He needed to feel his heartbeat against the palm of her hand.

He needed to be alive. Which they both still were.

“This Diego,” he offered. “Didn't you say that he spent his last hours chatting with you, pretending he was gonna be okay?”

“Yes.” Her voice warmed across his collarbone. “And I
know he was still alive when he stood up to fight the others. I could see it in his eyes. He wanted to protect me.”

“Well, duh.” Okay, not diplomatic. But why wouldn't the guy?

“If he'd just laid there, been careful, he might've survived long enough to be rescued. Instead, he had to be a hero.”

Zack could hear the bitterness in her voice, and some of her behavior over the last week or so started to make sense. He said softly, “There are worse ways for a man to die.”

Except for the part where the man had then been zombified and tried to eat her. He decided not to mention that part.

Jo drew back from him, just far enough to protest, “He didn't have to die at all!”

But she'd already admitted that they all had to, sooner or later. Nobody was giving back her ball, and she knew it.

Zack drew her more decisively against him—at her soft “ow” he let up a little, until she could readjust against the inanimate obstacles—then he held her tighter. He even kissed her hair, short and silken and clean against his lips.
Jo.
“So you think you could have dragged him through the tunnel with you, when you blew the wall, and he would have survived just fine.”

Then he left her alone to think it through. The answer was obvious, but she would believe it more if she said it.

What she said was, “Screw you, Lorenzo.”

Close enough. He kissed her hair again, with a loud “smack” this time. Then they simply sat like that, resting, thinking, their upper halves cuddling despite the Ferrari's impediments. It was almost enough to make Zack wish they had her truck. Almost.

Not quite.

God, but he was tired. The amount of legwork they'd been doing, on top of his worries about Jo, and Gabriella, and everything else, had exhausted him. Jo felt delicious against him—warm and real and alive. Beating heart. Pulsing blood.

Diego and Gabriella were dead, but he and Jo were alive.

His thoughts started to slow down a little, at that. No big thinker, for sure.

“I feel like I should be crying,” she admitted softly. “But I
hate to cry. Besides, it's not just him that's upset me. It's…everything. How temporary everything is.”