Perfect Touch (20 page)

“I'll take care of it. Want me to send them back up to Fish Camp to truck out those paintings tomorrow?”

“No,” Sara said instantly. Then to Jay, “I'd like to oversee their repacking, if that's all right. Every bit of damage is a ding on the potential sale price.”

“So you're selling them?” Henry asked.

“Thinking real hard about it,” Jay said.

The foreman nodded, put on his hat, and headed for the back door.

“Why didn't you tell him the rest of it?” she asked in a low voice.

“The rest of what?”

“That the future of the ranch is riding on these paintings. Especially
Muse
.”

“There's nothing he can do about it,” Jay said, “so why add to his load? Liza is a loose cannon rolling around on the deck. Sooner or later something will get crushed.”

Is that what happened at Fish Camp? Liza lost control?

He shook his head at his own thought. Liza couldn't use a knife for cutting anything but steak.

“This is all my fault,” Sara said, her voice thinned to breaking.

Jay listened. He couldn't tell if Henry had left.
So I keep to the worried act.

“Even if you and I had never met, Liza would have found something else,” Jay said, “some bit of the past she could use as blackmail, and Barton would still try to sell the land to anyone willing to cut fences to look at it. And none of that matters anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“Even if I knew all this was coming because we'd met, I'd still go running toward you. Hell, I'd have run even faster if I'd known what was waiting.”

She put her arms around him and hugged him hard. “I—” She shook her head and tried again. “I—”

“Don't cry,” he murmured. “I thought I'd survived everything intact, and then you walked into my life and I realized how much of myself I'd left overseas. Liza can sue me and blackmail me until hell freezes over, and I'll never regret meeting you.”

Holding on, feeling like she was wrapped in living sunlight, Sara
finally sighed, accepting what he said. “You're a good man, Jay Vermilion. So good. God, what I wouldn't give to strangle that bitch.”

“She's not worth going to jail for, which is why she's still running around loose.”

Something in his tone made Sara's eyes widen. “You've thought about it, too.”

“When I first got back, yeah. The lawyers were taking so much money that the ranch was failing. And I know a lot of ways to kill.”

They held each other for a long time before he let go enough to tip up her chin.

“I can tell you're thinking,” he said.

“Maybe it's just Henry burning the trash.”

Jay laughed. “Damn, woman, you're good for me. Until you, I'd pretty much forgotten how to laugh.”

She touched the dimple in his chin with her tongue. “I like the sound of your laugh. Maybe I should tickle you.”

“Remember payback is a bitch.”

She sighed. “Do you suppose it's in the attic?”

“Payback?”

“
Muse
.”

“If we had an attic,” he said, “I'd look. I searched the ranch when Liza was first on the warpath. If
Muse
was here, I'd have found it. Same for Fish Camp. But we can look again when we go back to pack up the paintings.”

“And if it isn't at Fish Camp . . . ?” She bit her lip.

“Don't worry.” He lowered his voice. “I'm only going to waste a few days on Liza's silliness. I'll start on the buildings the ranch owns in town, which weren't mentioned in Liza's suit so I never searched them. In the ranch house, JD hung Custers everywhere but the bathrooms.
When he got tired of looking at paintings on the ranch, he'd put them in buildings in Jackson or rotate them to Fish Camp for storage.”

“Do you think there are more Custers in town?”

“Custer was living on the ranch for a decade before I was born and he didn't leave until I was close to thirteen. That's enough time to paint a lot of landscapes. And burn them.”

“Some of them probably deserved it,” she said. “No artist gets it right every time, or even a lot of the time. There are paintings hanging in private collections that have a world-class pedigree and very ordinary results.”

Jay looked at the watch he hated wearing unless he was going to town. With an impatient motion he stripped it off and dumped it on the desk. “Let's get Fish Camp wrapped up.”

Sara froze. A single thought had kept haunting her, but she didn't want to bother Jay with it.

“What is it?” he asked softly.

“Sheriff Cooke talked about an ambush,” she said reluctantly. “What if they . . . what if . . .”

“It's possible they'll make another try,” Jay said, “at the ranch, at Fish Camp, in town. Anywhere.”

She shuddered. “I'm not used to being hunted.”

“I am. That's why I'm always armed.”

T
HE LATE-AFTERNOON LANDSCAPE
was both desolate and beautiful against the hammered-silver sky. Clouds coiled darkly but moved by too fast to leave much rain or snow behind. Clinging to the edge of the mountain, the big Ford truck hauled a closed black trailer and crept slowly down the rough road.

“It's a lot scarier going down than up,” Sara said, eyeing the drop-off on her side.

“On the way back, you're on the outside looking down,” Jay said, handling the truck and double horse trailer with experienced ease.

“Way down,” she said. “Who built this—well, I guess it's a road?”

“The Weiss brothers blazed it on behalf of the Vermilions around two hundred years back. Can't imagine running cows over it, but trucks do just fine.”

“Trucks don't have vertigo,” she said, glancing down a slope of tumbled stones that looked like pulled teeth.

His phone bawled like King Kobe. Jay fished for it in one of the many pockets he had in his work pants, which were really army fatigues that he'd grown to prefer over jeans when he wasn't riding. The sound of Velcro being torn open as he searched was almost lost in the road bumps and the bawling phone.

Sara steadied the wheel for him with her left hand.

“Thanks,” he said, and finally came up with the phone. “Yeah, Henry. What's up?”

“God damn it, Jay, I've been calling and calling and—”

“Hello, Barton. Try the radio next time. Cell coverage is spotty unless you're on a ridgeline, which you'd know if you spent any time working the ranch.”

“Where the hell are you?”

“On the old Weiss road. What's the problem?”

“Someone broke into the storage facility in Jackson!” Barton shouted.

“What?” Jay lifted his foot and braked gently, coming to a halt while Barton talked.

“They cut the lock and rolled in pretty as you please. Then they went through the place and took whatever they liked.”

“What did they get? And when did it happen?”

“Early this morning,” Barton said loudly. “And we don't know yet what was stolen. Sheriff wants you to come down and check it out, get an inventory.”

“I'm on a dirt track a long way from town. You deal with Cooke.”

“Fish Camp again, huh? Getting a little somethin'-somethin'?”

“Get some of your own and you won't be so interested in mine,” Jay said. “Now put Henry on before I forget we're related.”

“He's getting the car warmed up so we can do some actual work. Maybe you ought to think about doing some, too. Don't hurry back.”

The line went dead. Jay hissed a word under his breath and put the phone back in his pocket.

“That was Barton,” Jay said.

“I heard. Didn't that boy come with a volume control?”

“None that I've found. Our storage facility in Jackson was robbed.”

“I heard,” she said unhappily. “Bad luck all around.”
Or bad people.
But she didn't say it aloud. Jay had enough troubles already.

“That's why you're not going anywhere without me,” he said.

She could tell from the sound of his voice that the captain was back in charge. “Is that an order?”

“Until I know better what's going on, it is.”

She leaned across the bench seat of Jay's old, rough-country truck. Closer to him now, as close as the seat belt would let her be, she slid her left hand between his jacket and work shirt, savoring his warmth.

“The storage robbery isn't a coincidence, is it?” she asked.

“Twice might be coincidence,” he said. “Third time is war.”

What really bothered him was that this kind of war was waged by amateurs. Unpredictable as spring avalanches and just as likely to kill. The way the Solvangs had been killed, with no need other than cruelty, the blood-filled certainty that life was fragile and death was final.

Jay lifted his foot from the brake. The heavy-duty truck began crawling over the rough road again. On the ridgetop, with land falling away on all sides, he felt like he was driving over the stony remains of an animal that had died when the world was born.

After uncounted, bumpy miles, he hit the button and sent his window down. Cold air rolled in like thunder.

Sara gave him a sideways look and pulled her collar higher.

“I'm going to check the hitch,” he said as he stopped and turned off the engine. “Something sounds odd.”

“Can I help?”

“Just sit tight and stay warm. It won't take me a minute.”

Before he got out, he unlocked the rifle, but left it in its rear window rack with just the snaps holding it in place.

She went very still, so tight she vibrated. Then she forced herself to breathe.
He carried the rifle at Fish Camp, too, and nothing happened to us. Fish Camp is behind us now. Custer's paintings are all tightly packed and bumping along behind us in the horse trailer.

Everything is fine.

Jay got back in the truck and started up again. He left his window down as they bumped along the road.

“Is the hitch okay?” she asked.

“It's good.” He hesitated, then said, “I thought I heard a helicopter. But with the wind swirling around and all the rattling on the road, it's hard to be sure. Could be just my imagination.”

She tried not to shiver in the cold wind. The words he had spoken were uninflected. Information only. No emotion.

Captain Vermilion was back and in charge.

“But you don't think it's imaginary,” she said.

He didn't answer. His face looked the same, but that internal radar had flicked on, reaching out all around, trying to sense the enemy. His navy blue eyes were both restless and probing.

Suddenly he tilted his head, listening intently.

She could only hear the trailer rattling and the wind outside trying to talk the clouds into a stormy party.

“You'd have to be crazy or desperate to be in a helo up here on a day like this,” he said. “Gusty winds and cold air pockets are deadly when you're flying the nap.”

“Nap?”

“Down close to the ground, below any radar. Plays hell with sound direction, bouncing off ridgelines and echoing through canyons.”

“Maybe the helicopter is in trouble.” She leaned closer to her window and looked up.

“Possible. Let me know if you spot it before I do.”

The road twisted down, and the landscape around them began to change, giving way from a rocky ridgeline to a steeply sloping meadow with scattered stands of aspen and evergreens. The clouds were sullen steel turning to deep blue black along their bottoms. The wind bent grass and trees with equal ease.

She sat up straight and opened her window. “I can hear—” she began.

“I hear it, too,” he cut in. “Rotors. Which way do you hear the sound from?”

She paused, frowned. “Behind, maybe more on my right side. I can't tell. It sounds odd, not quite like the sheriff's helicopter.”

“It's the echo,” Jay replied. “Sound slaps right off the mountainside. But it's low, coming in fast.”

As he spoke his eyes were searching the area for cover. Nothing big enough to hide in but a thick stand of trees, and it was at least a mile away. At the speed they were going, those trees might as well have been on the moon.

They would never be able to reach them before the chopper caught up.

Slowly, evenly, he accelerated. The road fought him every foot of the way, sending the truck lurching and grinding from side to side of the dirt track. And still he increased the speed until Sara was hanging on to anything she could grab to stay in one place.

The sound was overtaking them.

“Maybe it's a medical flight,” she said. “Just because it's a sound you associate with bad news doesn't mean—”

“A medevac chopper saved the lives of a lot of my men,” he said. “Mine, too.”

He glanced at the passenger-side mirror for an instant. Green and white flashed over the big rectangular mirror. A buzzing sound rolled over them. Bullets stitched into the ground near the road. One tore through a corner of the side mirror, shattering it.

“Get down!”

Sara stared at him and started to lie across the seat.

“All the way into the foot well,” he said. “Move, move,
move
!”

She unclipped her seat belt and threw herself below the dashboard. “What about you?”

“
Stay down.
It will be rough,” he said. “Moving targets are harder to hit.”

“But—”

“My phone is in my right pocket,” he cut in.

She reached for the pocket along his leg.

“Call 911,” he said. “If that doesn't work, use the radio.”

“Why not use it now?” she asked as she yanked out his cell phone.

“Cooke's office tracks cell phones using 911.”

As he spoke, the helicopter roared overhead with shattering speed and noise. Jay cranked hard left, then right, sending the truck forward in an erratic zigzagging motion.

Despite being shaken like dice in a box, Sara managed to stab out the three numbers.

The helicopter pulled up and around, away from the mountainside, arcing slowly into the air.

Jay figured the trajectory as fast as the pilot did. He turned hard left, barely holding the bucking wheel.

“We're going off road,” he warned as he fought the wheel. “Did you get through?”

“Once, but it dropped. I'm trying again.”

The truck bounced over the uneven terrain so hard, Jay's butt barely touched the seat. Sara braced herself as best she could. The phone flew out of her hand just as the 911 operator picked up. When she made a try for the phone, she was jerked away from it as the truck hit a rock.

“Is it safe to sit up?” she asked, her voice like her body. Too tight.

“Stay down there,” he said. “Sounded like a .22 Uzi pistol, full automatic.”

“What does that mean?”

“It burns through ammo fast, and they'll have to come closer to kill us.”

She wondered if that was good or bad, but instead of asking she searched around on the dark, bouncing floorboard for the phone.

“We have to get under cover,” he said. “They have the advantage until we can make those rocks.”

“Do you recognize the helicopter?”

“No. But I'll bet we crossed its trail at Fish Camp.”

Jay spun the wheel and swiftly worked the brakes and accelerator to keep the truck right side up while moving as fast as possible over the rough ground.

The sound of the chopper hammered down on them.

“Get as close to me as you can without getting in the way,” he said.

Sara inched along the foot well. She could feel as much as hear the helicopter now, the sound an assault on her senses that made her want
to scream. Frantically she scrambled to brace herself in the pitching truck.

“Get ready,” Jay shouted over the noise. “We're going hard right.”

The helicopter grew louder still, its relentless noise swallowing the rattle of the truck, rotors screaming the end of the world.

Heart racing, palms slippery with sweat, Sara watched Jay's face for a cue as to what might come next. For all the emotion he showed, he could have been cut from the granite itself. The truck careened over a small boulder, sending the phone sliding within her reach. Grabbing it, she braced herself with her feet and elbows as she punched in the three numbers again.

The phone made a connection but dropped it just as quickly.

She tried again.

“Now!” Jay yelled as he cranked the wheel hard, not letting up on the speed one bit.

Bullets stitched in a deadly silence that became a sharp metallic tattoo on the back of the truck bed. The downdraft pushed against the truck like a giant hand mashing them into the ground.

“Can we outrun it?” she shouted, watching his face.

“Not even if we could ditch the trailer,” he said. “This truck was built for bad roads, not speed.”

The truck groaned as the trailer pulled at the hitch and the back end swayed. The helo pulled up hard, tail down and cutting its turn just short of the mountainside.

“This guy's more likely to kill himself than us,” he said.

“That's good, right?” She punched in the three numbers again.

“Only if he hurries up about it. Or his gunner runs out of ammo.”

With a fast glance Jay checked the position of the .30-30, kept in place by just one strap now.

“I don't want to depend on them screwing up to save us,” Sara said. Then, “
Damn it.
The connection keeps dropping. How far are we from cover?”

“Good news is they're taking a very long time to make this turn. Bad news is it won't be long enough for us to make it to the trees.”

She stabbed the numbers again and prayed that the connection would hold.

It didn't.

WHAM!
A bone-cracking sound rang through the truck, centered right under Sara's ear. It jolted her so hard that the phone went flying. She snatched at it and got lucky. She looked at Jay.

“You okay?” he asked without looking away from the rocky terrain. “Too many rocks to miss all of them.”

“Can't we run faster than this?” she asked, her voice sounding odd to her abused ears.

“No. And the truck is better armor than your jacket. You okay? You sound funny.”

“Whatever you hit was right by my head.”

“Sorry.” His eyes swept the landscape and found little joy. The laws of physics hadn't been suspended. They weren't going to get to the trees. “We have to split up. The helo will stick to me. You take the phone and hide in the rocks.”

“I'm not leaving you, remember?” The phone in her hand shook. She gripped it tighter, so tight that her bones ached.

“They're finishing their turn now,” Jay said. “The pilot has gone cautious all of a sudden.”