Buried Secrets (8 page)

She liked to think
she
was the reason the snake hadn't bitten them. She liked the sense of competence, of control, of not needing anybody else's protection—and she didn't want to believe the love charm had any real power. But if it did…

“See if we're anywhere near the red
X
I marked,” instructed Zack, about the map. “As for the charms, I wouldn't go skydiving to see if they work. But the woman didn't seem like bad news either. So I'll carry mine, all the same.”

Like avoiding the topic of his late wife—it seemed fair enough.

But he wasn't carrying a love charm.

 

Zack wasn't sure at what point he and Jo James ended up in a pissing contest. Maybe it had started with the snake. Either way, it escalated after they pulled over at a crudely graded scenic outlook, about ten miles out of town. Zack's notes said that Brent Harper, the college kid, had fallen to his death near here. The afternoon was lengthening, but they had sunlight left.

“This isn't so bad,” said Jo as they looked down the rocky hillside. “It's not like we need ropes or anything.”

Actually, there were a few steep stretches where ropes might come in handy. But that would mean going to town to get ropes, maybe rappelling equipment. And that would mean losing the rest of the daylight and putting this off until tomorrow.

It wasn't like they were drunk.

“You want we should check it out?” asked Zack.

Jo lifted her chin. “Sure. Don't you?”

“No, I just like to hear myself talk.
Yes, I do.
”

And the next thing he knew, they were both sidestepping down the rocky slope, complete with sand and cactus and those dried tufts of scrubby grass. At first, Zack
did
distract himself glancing toward Jo, making sure she was okay—by unspoken agreement they were keeping within maybe fifteen feet of each other. But she wasn't exactly tottering across the rough spots. She moved like someone used to her environment, despite wearing smooth-soled cowboy boots. And like him, she was armed.

He almost hated to admit it, but she seemed like a competent
lady. Maybe she'd be more of a help than a hindrance, after all. It was kind of nice, to have company for once. Except…

He hadn't lied, back at the
Bruja's
place. The snake by the car hadn't scared him. The thought of watching it take a bite of Jo or Doña Maria right in front of him…
that
scared him.

But the longer he and Jo searched the hillside in competent, companionable silence, the less often he felt the need to glance her way. At least, not to check on her safety.

The way she wore those jeans, on the other hand…

“Found it!” she called over the wind, and he saw that she'd stepped out onto a particularly large, flat slab of sandy rock and was crouching by its edge, craning her neck to look over it. The crouch did particularly nice things for her jeaned bottom. “At least, I think I have. Beer cans.”

He headed in her direction, sidestepping a clump of low cactus. “How bad a drop is it? Are we gonna need a rope?”

The sky was getting vaguely orangey. He hoped they wouldn't need a rope.

“Hard to say. We can try this side….” And she sat on the edge of the rock, clearly stretching her booted foot downward toward some kind of support.

“Wait up.” He'd almost reached her.

“It's not as steep over here,” Jo insisted with a reassuring grin. The smile was what got him.
She's pretty,
he realized, somehow surprised.

Right before she dropped out of sight.

N
o!
Zack threw himself onto his stomach, across the last few feet, grabbing for Jo as he did. Too late—

But then his hand closed around slim, solid arm. Her sudden weight jerked him, hard, and dragged him closer to the edge—over which he could now look a good twenty feet.

Jo James dangled, staring downward.

Zack glanced downward, too. Her
not-that-steep
path, from the looks of the rocks and pebbles still bouncing down the hillside, had crumbled right out from beneath her.

Zack tightened his grip. “Damn it! Jo, grab my arm.”

She just hung there as he reached, stretching his free hand out and down. Her arm was starting to slip in his dusty grasp. That damned wind ruffled her hair. Was she conscious? “Jo!”

Her head tipped back so that she could squint up at him—she'd lost her sunglasses—and she looked…confused?

After only knowing her a day,
that
scared him.

“Josephine!”
Zack barked. Jo blinked. Her eyes slowly focused on him—then widened. Then, finally, she grabbed his wrist and held on. Noticing his reaching hand, she twisted and managed to catch that, too.

She was holding on tight now. They readjusted their grips until they had each other's wrists. Big guy or not, Zack couldn't have held all her weight with one hand for much longer.

He wasn't sure how long he could do it like this.

Maybe Jo had been in momentary shock. Damned if she wasn't trying to pull herself up alone, now. She wasn't screaming, wasn't crying, just…pulling. Her booted feet peddling empty air. What, even
this
didn't scare her?

But it did. They held each others' gazes, as firmly as each others' wrists, and Zack could see a flare of fear creeping into the blue eyes that locked on to his. It wasn't a frantic fear, not helpless, not uncontrolled, but it was there.
About damn time.

“You did realize we were looking for the site where a boy
plunged to his death,
right?” demanded Zack through gritted teeth, trying to figure how he'd get the leverage to fix this.

So much for not taking care of any more women!

“Uh, yeah….” Again, she tried to pull herself up on her own. Right. Even really muscular women rarely had that kind of upper body strength. Fit though Jo James seemed to be, she was no bodybuilder. “Look, could you…?”

“Hold on a minute while I brace myself,” he muttered, trying to edge his knees forward and under him, trying to keep his grip on her wrists at the same time.

At least she had strong hands.

“Not to sound all woman-in-jeopardy here,” Jo grunted, “But I may not have a minute.”

That was when Zack really noticed a sound that he'd thought—hoped?—was the wind.

It wasn't the wind. It was a buzzing. And it sounded like a lot more than one snake. Maybe even called by the
diablero?
Or, on the bright side, merely venomous. Or rabid.

Peachy.

 

One minute, Jo had been savoring the familiarity of rock beneath her boots—solid earth and standard investigation, no magic or weirdness. The next, she was falling. The earth just disintegrated out from under her. Instinct made her grab for any
thing, everything. When her hands hit rock she clutched at it, tearing her palms, breaking fingernails—

Then she'd stopped, hanging there. Looking down, down, down at the sharp rocks and cactus far beneath her. And for the briefest heartbeat she'd actually thought,
oh, what the hell.

There were worse ways to die. And what would she be losing, really? All she had to do was drop….

But someone was calling to her. She looked up from those obliging rocks to the man she'd only known one day, even if it felt longer. Concern creased his forehead—and he was clutching her arm. Damn. She couldn't die on Zack Lorenzo's watch.

“Josephine!”
he'd yelled. That's when, with a whiff of incense, the strange lethargy of the moment deserted her. Of course she wanted to live. Whether she
got
to was another story.

She felt her arm slip a bit in his painful grip. When she saw his other hand reaching toward her, she somehow managed to strain upward and catch it. His big hand swallowed hers.

In that moment, Zack Lorenzo was life.

They readjusted their grips palm-to-wrist, in unspoken agreement, for a better hold. That's when Jo heard the buzzing of the snakes near her booted feet. She'd never felt such gratitude for someone's assistance, even if he did have to go and be snarky about it—
plunged to his death.
Like the ground wouldn't have been just as eroded if Zack had gone first.

Still, with nothing but her untried faith in him between her and the snakes, she'd forgive snarkiness. She bent her knees to draw her feet closer to safety and said, “Hurry?”

“Almost there,” Zack grunted from above her, his grip tight and steady. “You ready?”

Gee, was she? “Yes!”

And Jo felt herself rising against the rock shelf as Zack lifted her. She slung a jeaned knee over the side of the ledge as soon as she could, not minding the likely bruise. In one more great effort Zack—who'd levered himself onto his knees now—yanked her the rest of the way up.

Suddenly, gravity stopped working against them.

He fell backwards, his grip taking her with him. She sprawled
hard on top of him, her cheek landing on what felt like his collarbone, gasping for breath, too weak to even move.

Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. If he hadn't been there…

Jo swallowed another grateful mouthful of air, newly appreciating the reddening sky above them, the sandy desert stretching off around them, the breeze. And the man beneath her.

That's when she noticed herself breathing again. She noticed the simple movement of her chest against his. She noticed the way energy tingled through her, powerful and alive, and the scent of desert around her, of sandstone and hot air and baking grass—and incense? That one vanished even as she thought it. But mainly she inhaled the scent of clean, sweaty man, panting heavily himself, right beneath her.

Oh
God…

Zack Lorenzo didn't seem to be so appreciative—every few gasps he breathed out a swear word. Jo hoped it was displeasure at her close call, not at the rescue itself.

She should say thank you.
Thank you.
Two easy enough words.

As soon as she caught her breath.

Each time her chest expanded and contracted, it did so against his. Her breasts pillowed the motion and soon Jo wasn't just aware of her breathing, anymore. She was
feeling,
too.

Not that she'd completely lost her sense of touch, over the years. But how long had it been, really, since she'd noticed it this much? And oh, she noticed it. The way a button on his shirt dug into her turned cheek as their mingling breaths rocked her. The heat from his big body, a different and more humid heat than from the rocks. The thick scent of aftershave and sweat and man. The way the denim of her jeans rasped against the denim of his—and the hardness of his thick, muscled legs beneath that.

She savored it, and that unnerved her. That was just feeling this man on the
outside.
How overwhelmed would she be if she ever let that feeling work its way into her emotions?

At some point, while she'd been busy
feeling,
Zack's curses slowed. Any second now, this moment was going to shift from stolen intimacy to major awkwardness.

Thank you.
It was no less than common courtesy, considering what he'd done for her.

With a burst of self-preservation, Jo rolled off the P.I. and onto the rock beside him. Somehow her head ended up pillowed on his flung-out arm—also hard muscled, also hot and damp—but it would seem childish to move again just because of that. Especially while her whole body trembled from the strain she'd put on it. She felt about as strong as your average strand of spaghetti.

She even attempted common courtesy. “Thank—”

“This,” announced Zack over her nice attempt, still panting, “is
exactly
why I work alone.”

What, the full-body contact? The tingling?

Almost too late, she realized he meant the fact that she'd had to be rescued. “So I'm guessing you'd rather work alone?” she panted, taking shelter in the obvious.

“Big surprise?” he groaned, full sarcasm ahead.

“Then
you
could have fallen into the nest of snakes without any help around.” Although really, could she have saved him?

She would have had to watch him fall, maybe watch him die—helpless. She'd been scared this time, scared of the fall and the snakes. But that legitimate fear was nothing against the flush of sheer panic that now closed her throat at the idea of being so horribly helpless, ever again.

“Who says I would've fallen?” demanded Guido the Nature Guy.

At least his conceit allowed her to swallow, to relax more into the idea of his annoyance instead of his heroics—or the memory of his body beneath hers. “You would
so
have fallen!”

“Dream on, cowgirl.”

“Please! You would have seen those beer cans—I'm assuming. And you would have figured this side was the best way down, just like I did. And then you would have dropped headfirst.”

“Even if I did,” he said, “I might've caught myself and pulled myself back up. And if I couldn't, I've got the mobile.”

She considered that, turning her head to better see his profile—hyper aware of his hard upper arm still beneath her cheek.
This was almost like pillow talk, except that he was being obnoxious and they hadn't had sex. It was still more intimate than anything she'd had in years. How sad was that?

“Hanging from the ledge, you would have managed to use your cell phone?” she challenged. Would he even have a signal?

Zack rolled his face toward hers. “I've got speed dial.”

She had to grin. “You are so full of it.”

“Maybe. But you nearly died.” Her sin clearly outweighed his.

“Yeah,” she conceded, noticing how soft his lips looked this close. She noticed the tiny little nicks and scars on his whisker-shadowed jaw, from years of shaving gaffes. His nose had definitely been broken once, maybe more than once, and only his eyes and his smile were truly handsome, but—

But even without the smile, the eyes were dangerously handsome enough.

The sky had turned increasingly orange. They were about to have one hell of a red sunset. West Texas might seem barren, but its sunsets transcended mere beauty, richer and brighter than any romantic could hope—or fear.

It was with fear, and the remembrance of that damned love charm in her pocket, that Jo pushed herself up into a sitting position. “Yeah, well maybe
I
would have gracefully landed and used my desert knowledge to soothe the snakes into—oh, hell.”

“What?” he asked, starting to sit up even as she unsnapped and drew her revolver. She leveled it past his hiking boots, where a current of sandy brown movement resolved into a large rattlesnake slithering right at them. She squeezed the trigger, the gun discharged—and the snake flew back over the drop in a small spray of blood. Ugh.

“Oh, hell,” echoed the P.I., groaning as he stood. He then offered a big, open hand to Jo.

She knew she should stand on her own. When wrestling with her brothers, accepting a hand up had always been a signal of weakness….

Except that she still felt drained, having strained every muscle in her body once today already. Reluctantly, she gave him her hand. Even now, his solid grip felt like life.

He boosted her to her feet as easily as if he hadn't strained every muscle in his body, too.

“Thanks,” she managed, hoping it didn't sound grudging. Did she smell a gust of incense again?

“Sure.” And he reached into his open shirt, drew his pistol, and shot—hitting a second snake. “What are we here, bait?”

“Maybe it's just the sunset,” suggested Jo, glancing behind her before she began to back uphill, toward the car. Cowboy boots weren't the best hiking footwear in the world, but she'd had years of practice. “Snakes like to sleep during the heat of the day, then come out at night. In the summer. But it's been hot.”

Why did the argument taste as moldy as all those years when she'd told herself she'd hallucinated the attack in the mines?

Zack had told her magic hid itself in reality, right?

Now he said, “Or maybe whoever called the one at the
Bruja's
place is calling these, too. Look out.” And he shot something else, past her leg.

“That was a cactus,” said Jo. “Prickly pear.”

“Not just a cactus. Look behind it.”

They climbed the hill like cops, respective firearms drawn and braced, each of them covering his side of the desert in slow sweeps. They heard more snakes than they saw—at least three buzzing rattles sounded out from the lengthening shadows. Jo didn't have to fire again. Zack fired four more times. He killed another snake, but he also seemed to be venting frustration.

In unspoken agreement they checked around the Ferrari, then inside it—under and behind the seats, the floor-mats, even in the glove compartment—before they climbed in and shut the doors.

Power locks snicked into comforting place with a flick of Zack's finger. He and Jo holstered their weapons at almost the exact moment. Then they sat, silent and shaken and relieved.

Life sure had gotten interesting since yesterday morning.

Zack broke the silence first. “So I'm thinking I'll have my partner look up everything he can about local rattlesnakes.”

“Several area cafés serve rattlesnake stew as a tourist attraction,” Jo told him, deliberately gazing out the window. The tinted glass robbed the sunset of some of its flame. “The town
holds regular rattlesnake roundups for the same reason. And the school's mascot is the rattlesnake.” The dozen kids in Spur, grade school and high school alike, got bussed to Almanuevo.