The Ties That Bind (35 page)

"He got us from behind," River said. He was on my right, arms crossed. "A pretty good hit."

I looked over at him. He was wearing sunglasses, so I couldn't read what might have been in his eyes. He scratched his cheek before he started talking again. "Just plowed into us. I was thinking that Sage shouldn't brake. Weird, the shit you think about in a crisis." He sucked his breath through his teeth, making a whistling sound. "The dirt killed some of our speed, but the front end hit that little rise there--" he brushed past me and made his way to the passenger side of the vehicle, pointing toward the bumper. "That was a good jolt," he said, loud enough for me to hear over a passing semi.

I clenched my teeth together and pulled my phone out of my pocket, checking the screen. I had talked with Chris that morning for a good hour and managed to dissuade her from leaving Albuquerque to drive up and bring every pickup truck owner in a hundred-mile radius into the Farmington Police Department for questioning. She was "on call" with the situation, however, and I knew that meant she'd be texting or calling at "reasonable intervals" to make sure I was okay. I put the phone back in my pocket. No service out here. Maybe it was time to switch carriers. Of course, it wasn't like I made a habit of spending lots of time in remote areas of the country, trying to solve strange murders and locate pickup truck hitmen.

River scrambled up the embankment, his cowboy boots slipping a bit in the loose soil. He brushed his jeans off and glanced back at the car. "We sat there for a little bit after we stopped," he continued. "I asked Sage if she was okay, if anything was broken. She said no and we both got out then. It was still evening, so it wasn't like we had to do this in complete darkness. Fuckin' balls on that guy, running us off the road when it was still light out."

"Anything about the truck?"

"Dark blue. Maybe an early nineties model. I think it was a Ford. Lots of trucks look like that, unfortunately. But right about now, it'd have a bashed-up front bumper."

Which might make it easier to find him, if he's local.
"Front plate?"

"Nope. Must be local. Unless he's from a state that requires those and he took it off."

He didn't sound convinced. I wasn't, either. "Did you get a look at him?"

"Not really. It was a guy, dark hair, dark sunglasses. I remember those. They looked like aviator sunglasses. From how he was sitting, I got the impression he might be a big dude. Light-colored shirt. Maybe tan. Maybe whitish. Seemed he's kinda broad across the shoulders."

Like he uses his upper body a lot? Like on a drill rig?
No way was this a random act of violence. I glanced over at my car, pulled off the right-hand side some thirty yards ahead. In front of it sat Maria Simmons' police-issue car. She was standing between the two cars, talking to Sage. Kara lurked nearby, away from the highway. All three then started toward me and River. Dark blue pickup
.
Something about that stuck in my head, but I wasn't sure why.

"I'll take some photos," Simmons was saying as they got within earshot. "And get some numbers." She was carrying one of those distance-measuring wheels that survey crews used and she had a camera slung around her neck. She nodded at me as she passed, headed north, away from Sage's car.

"The tow truck driver should be here in about a half-hour," Sage said, coming to stand next to me. She put her hand in mine and I squeezed it.

"How are you doing?" I asked, wanting again to find the driver of that truck and make sure he knew what it meant to mess with someone I loved.

"Okay." She chewed her lower lip, which meant she was working up to saying something more. I gave her room to do so, knowing it might not come for a while, and watched as Simmons walked toward us, rolling the measuring device in front of her. She stopped and I held out my free hand. She transferred the handle of the measuring wheel to me and opened a small notebook and wrote something down, which I presumed was the distance from where she estimated Sage's car started leaving the highway. Simmons was dressed casually today, wearing faded jeans, plain blue tee, and hikers. Her hair was tied behind her head in a ponytail. Like all of us, she wore sunglasses.

"Thanks," she said, putting the notebook in her back pocket and taking the wheel from me. We all moved aside and watched her click off the distance from the highway's edge down the embankment to the Toyota's rear bumper. Simmons leaned the measuring instrument against the fence behind her and made another notation in her notebook. She then took several photos from various angles of the car and its surroundings, then she took photos of the embankment, photos of the highway in both directions, and photos of the car from the highway, writing in her notebook after each one. Thorough, this Simmons.

When she finished, she retrieved the measuring device and peered into the car through the driver's side window. "Hey," she said, looking up at us. "There's a note in here."

"Son of a bitch," River said. "Left us a calling card." He started down the embankment, the rest of us on his heels.

"Don't touch it," Simmons ordered. "Let me go get something to put it in. And don't touch the door handles," she added as she started toward her car. I looked through the windshield. A piece of white paper about six inches long and four inches wide lay on the driver's seat. A message in what might have been black Sharpie was hand-printed on its wrinkled surface.

Kara leaned close to the driver's side window.

"What does it say?" River tried looking over her shoulder.

"Wait...oh, shit." She straightened and looked at Sage. "It says 'go home. Don't do anything with the notebook. We are watching. Next time you won't be so lucky.' "

"Son of a bitch," River repeated.

Sage's expression boded ill for whomever had left the note. I'd seen it when she talked about facing down Megan's white supremacist boyfriend, and I'd seen it when she talked about standing up to her father's abuse and alcoholism. If whomever left that note wanted to scare her, he'd ended up doing the exact opposite.

"Excuse me," Simmons said, breathing heavily from jogging back. She held a fingerprint kit and a manila envelope. We got out of her way as she dusted the car door and handle--something I'd seen Chris do quite a few times over the years. She then dusted the passenger door on the driver's side and the front passenger door before closing her kit and setting it on the car's hood. Then she opened the rear passenger door on the passenger's side and reached around the driver's seat so she could pick up the note with tweezers.

Smart, I thought. The asshole might've used the front passenger door or the door behind the driver's seat to put the note in there.

In this awkward position, Simmons looked at the paper then maneuvered it into the manila envelope. From my discussions with Chris, I figured she didn't want to put it in plastic until it had been processed. Moisture built up in plastic bags, Chris had explained, and could ruin fingerprints. Simmons withdrew from the car and shut the door then looked at Sage. "I'd like the car towed to the station so I can have a lab tech go over it."

Sage nodded her assent.

"When you get there, come in and ask for me. I'm heading back right now." To demonstrate that, she picked up her kit. "I'm sorry about all this. As if you didn't have enough to deal with." She looked at each of us in turn, then went back up to the highway and walked to her car. We all stood in silence for a few minutes until Sage broke it.

"It's time to go home."

River, Kara, and I turned to look at her on one accord, like in a cartoon.

"We need to be back in Albuquerque." She hugged herself as if she had caught the same chill that had sunk into my bones earlier. "It's not safe for us to stay in Farmington."

"I'd agree," River said. "How do you want to work it? You want to all leave at once?"

"No, because I have to finalize things with my car."

Which meant calling the insurance company, having someone come out and appraise it and say,
"Well, Ms. Crandall, the damage sustained exceeds the current Blue Book value of your car."

"But I don't have to be here for that," she continued. "I just need to make sure the car's where it can get looked at, unless the police want to hold on to it for a while."

"Okay," Kara broke in. "How about this? River and I will take K.C.'s car back to Albuquerque and you and she can do a one-way rental from here. In the meantime, River and I will hold down the fort and field phone calls and mail and keep an eye on things there. Kase, will you call Chris and give her my number?"

I nodded, thinking that it was a good plan. Kara must've learned something about organization with her enviro-groups. "Yeah. Give me your phone and I'll program her cell in."

"So you guys leave today, after you drop us off at the motel," Sage said while I took a few moments to figure out Kara's cell then put Chris's number into her contacts list. "And K.C. and I will come back tomorrow sometime, once we get a car rented and make sure my car is in a place where I can leave it for a while. If we have to, we'll stay another day." But her tone told me that another day was one too many. I handed Kara's phone back to her just as the tow truck pulled up.

"Good plan." River nodded once, touched the bandage on his head, and started up the embankment, Kara behind him.

"You okay with this?" I asked Sage, searching her face for any sign of what she might be thinking.

She hugged me. "I'm so tired. I'm tired of all the shit Dad's death stirred up, I'm tired of Ridge Star, tired of shitheads trying to scare us, and I just really need to be home with you."

I held her close for a few moments. "Then let's go home, honey."
And let Detective Maria Simmons take it from here.
I released Sage as the tow truck driver, a gregarious young cowboy-type, came down from the highway to assess the situation. In another day, we'd finally be out of here.

Chapter Twenty-One

"YOU SURE YOU don't want me to drive up?" Chris asked over the phone. "Maybe we could have a dance party in your motel room, lighten the mood. It's your last night in Farmington, after all."

I smiled, rubbing my forehead with my free hand at the same time. "Tempting, but no. Enterprise is picking us up tomorrow at eleven and we'll leave around noon. Simmons told us we could leave Sage's car in the police parking lot until the insurance guy tells us what we already know. But it's got to be official and shit for the claim. Plus, the police report needs to accompany the claim for responsibility and all that." I sighed and leaned back on the bed, listening to the water running in the bathtub. I heard Sage moving around in the bathroom. She had said she was a little stiff and sore and wanted to soak.

"Shit,
esa
," Chris said, echoing the frustration that I still felt. "I don't know what the fuck to say or do."

"That's a first," I teased, trying to lighten the mood.

"Nice. I see you haven't lost your edge."

"And which edge would that be? The one on my ass? Or the four that come together to form the point on my head?"

Chris laughed. "It's good to hear this side of you. I've been worried about you."

"Same here. Did you get
Abuelita
to fire up her candles for us?"

"Maybe," she said. "Dayna's doing it."

"She's not even Catholic," I retorted with a laugh.

"Since when do you have to be Catholic to enjoy a good jar candle? With a kitschy picture of a saint? I think that shit appeals across all kinds of boundaries."

"What about you,
mujer
? Got a candle going for us?"

"I have
La Virgen
fired up. What else do you want me to burn?"

"Saint Jude. He's always good for stuff like this. Lost causes and all."

"I'll call
Abuelita
, make sure she has one," she said. "On a more serious note, how are you really?"

"Shaken up. Tired. Pissed. Relieved to be going home. But also a little worried about what these assholes might try next. Chris, for real. Are we going to spend the next few years looking over our shoulders? Should Sage and River have police protection?"

She didn't answer right away. When she did, she was in copserious mode and I knew whatever she would say might be scary, but it would be an honest assessment based on her experience. "I can't say definitively, but let's look at the situation. The guy who did this to Sage and River most likely knows something about Bill's death. Hell, he might even be responsible for it. That means chances are, he's tied in to Ridge Star and thus a local boy. Guys like that can't just leave their jobs to go set up harassment central in a city over a hundred miles away from base."

"But it's a possibility," I said.

"Yes. It's a possibility that this
cabrón
will try to find you in Albuquerque. However, if he wanted Sage and River dead, he would've taken care of that last night."

Jesus. Chris--"

"I'm not saying that to be callous. You know that. But if this guy was interested in more than just a warning, he would've gone back to the car after he ran it off the road and finished the business."

Holy shit.
An image of a broad-shouldered man in aviator sunglasses aiming a pistol at Sage jumped into my brain. I wanted to scream but instead I clenched my teeth together so hard my jaws hurt. In the bathroom, I heard Sage get into the water. Had the fucker done what Chris said, I would never have heard another sound from her. I jerked my focus back to Chris.

"I think he wanted to scare all of you. It worked. But I think he and whoever else is in on this--I'm leaning toward Clint Monroe-- would prefer that this all just go away and as long as they think they've got you running scared and quiet, it will. They don't know that Simmons has Bill's notebook, after all. And the guy who ran Sage off the road had to have searched the car last night, looking for it."

"So what's next? I don't want to have to hire bodyguards to follow us around all over hell and gone."