Читать книгу The Guardian - Cindi Myers - Страница 10

Chapter Three

Having a total stranger announce to a bunch of other strangers that you’d come back from the dead didn’t rank high on Abby’s list of experiences she wanted to repeat—or to ever have in the first place. From the moment she’d entered the trailer parked alongside the park ranger’s office, she’d felt the tall, dark-haired officer’s gaze fixed on her. She couldn’t decide if he was rude or just overly intense; she hadn’t spent a lot of time around law-enforcement types, so what did she know?

And what did she care? Except that the agent—Michael Dance—had made her care. He knew things about her she didn’t. He knew what had happened in the hours and days she’d lost to unconsciousness and trauma. That he’d seen her ripped open and clinging to life by a thread felt so personal and intimate. She both resented him and wanted to know more.

As for Michael Dance, he seemed content to keep staring at her, and when she’d agreed to take the officers to the body she’d found, he’d slipped up beside her and insisted she ride with him.

“You could ride with me and Graham if you’d rather,” Carmen, the only other woman in the room, offered, perhaps sensing Abby’s unease.

“No, that’s all right. I can ride with Lieutenant Dance.” Alone in a vehicle, maybe she could ask him some of the questions that troubled her.

But now, as they cruised along the paved South Rim Road through the park, she felt tongue-tied and awkward.

He took a roll of Life Savers from the pocket of his uniform shirt and held it out to her. “Want one?”

“Okay.” She took one of the butterscotch candies, then he did the same and returned the roll to his pocket.

“I’m addicted,” he said. “I quit smoking last year and took up the candy as a substitute.”

“Good for you for quitting,” she said. “I knew a lot of soldiers who smoked, but I never took it up.”

“Smart woman.” He settled back in the driver’s seat, gaze fixed on the curving ribbon of blacktop that skirted the park’s main attraction—the deep, narrow Black Canyon.

Abby tried to relax, too, but curiosity needled her, overcoming her natural shyness. “How do you possibly remember me after all this time?” she blurted. “It’s been years, and you must have only seen me for a few hours, at most.” Had he been an orderly in the field hospital, a medic or a pilot, or simply a grunt tasked with transporting the wounded?

“I was a PJ. We saw hundreds of casualties during my tour—but you were the only woman. And you were my first save. It made an impression.”

PJs—pararescuers—were bona fide superheroes. Members of the US Air Force’s rescue squadron swooped into the thick of danger in Pave Hawk helicopters, often under heavy enemy fire, to snatch wounded soldiers from almost certain death. They performed critical lifesaving procedures in the air, long before their patients reached the doctors at field hospitals. Abby remembered none of this, but she’d seen a special on TV and watched with sick fascination, trying to imagine what it was like when she was the patient, being patched together by young men she’d likely never see again.

“I...I don’t know what to say.” She plucked at the seat belt harness, feeling trapped as much by her own emotions as by the confining cloth strap. “Thank you doesn’t seem like enough.”

“I was glad you made it. We lost too many soldiers over there, but losing a woman would have been worse. I know it shouldn’t be that way, but it was—I won’t lie.”

She nodded. Though women weren’t authorized for combat roles back then, the army needed female soldiers to interrogate native women and to fill a variety of noncombat roles, from resupply to repairing equipment that constantly broke down. Women soldiers stood guard and went on patrol, and sometimes got caught up in battles, in a war with no clearly defined front line, where every peasant could be friend or foe. But for all the roles they filled, women made up only about 10 percent of the ground forces in Afghanistan. As a female soldier, Abby hadn’t wanted to stand out from her fellow grunts, but she couldn’t help it.

“I still can’t believe you remembered my name,” she said.

He winced. “I made it a point to remember it. Later, I tried to look you up—just to see how you were doing. I’m not a stalker or anything. I just wanted to know.”

“But you didn’t find me?”

“I found out you’d gotten transferred stateside, but that was about it.” He adjusted his grip on the steering wheel of the FJ Cruiser he drove. A second Cruiser followed a few car lengths behind, with Graham and Carmen; for all Abby knew half a dozen other vehicles full of more law-enforcement agents came after that. “But now I know. You look good. I’m glad.”

She resisted the urge to touch the scar. “Thanks for not qualifying the compliment.”

He frowned. “I don’t get it.”

“Thanks for not saying, ‘You look good, considering what you’ve been through.’”

“People really tell you that?”

“Sometimes. I also get ‘That scar is hardly noticeable,’ which I know is a lie, since if it was so unnoticeable, why are they bothering to point it out?” Had she really just said that? To this guy she didn’t even know? She didn’t talk about this stuff with anybody. Not even the therapist the Army had sent her to. Waste of money, that.

“So you’re studying botany?” Maybe sensing her uneasiness, he smoothly changed the subject.

“Environmental science. And to answer your next question, which I know from experience is, ‘What do you do with a master’s degree in environmental science?’ I’ll probably end up teaching ungrateful undergrads somewhere. But all that is just to support the research I want to do into developing medicines from plants.”

“You mean, like herbal remedies and stuff?”

“I mean, like cancer drugs and medicine to cure Parkinson’s or diabetes. Plants are a tremendous resource we’ve scarcely begun to explore.”

“So there are plants in this park that can cure diseases?” He motioned to the scrubby landscape around them.

“This might look like desert to you, but there are hundreds of plants within the park and surrounding public lands. It’s the perfect place for my research.”

“A big change from the war,” he said.

“Everything is a big change from the war,” she said. “Didn’t you feel it, after you came home? That sense of not knowing what to do next? Of being a little out of place? Or was that just me?”

“It wasn’t just you,” he said. “Every day over there you had a mission—a purpose. Life over here isn’t like that.” He stared at the road ahead for a long moment, then added, “I thought about going back to school after I got out, but sitting in a classroom all day—that wasn’t for me.”

She shifted toward him, feeling more comfortable scrutinizing him for a change. He was good-looking—no doubt about that—with dark eyes and olive skin and a hawk nose and square chin. His broad shoulders filled out his short-sleeved tan shirt nicely, and slim-fit khakis showed off muscular thighs. “How did you end up working for border patrol?”

“They were at a job fair for veterans and it looked like interesting work. It was a lot of independent work, outdoors. I liked that.”

She nodded. She understood that desire to be outdoors and alone, away from other people. After the noise, chaos and crowds of the war, the wilderness felt healing.

“It’s great that you found work that’s important,” he said. “I mean, what you’re doing could make a big difference in peoples’ lives someday.”

“Someday, maybe. But yeah, I do feel as though it’s important work. Don’t you think what you’re doing is important?”

“Sometimes I do. Sometimes I’m not so sure.” He checked his mirrors and crunched down on the candy. “You said this guy you found is Mexican?” he asked.

Back to the reason she was here. Guess they couldn’t avoid that subject forever. “Well, Latino. He had dark hair and brown skin—like you.”

“My mom is from Mexico. My dad’s from Denver.”

“Do you speak Spanish?”

“I do. Comes in handy on the job sometimes.”

“Do you run into a lot of people from Mexico in the park?” she asked, thinking of Mariposa and Angelique.

“Some.” He slowed as they reached the end of the paved road and bumped onto a rougher gravel surface. “How much farther from here?” he asked.

She checked her GPS. “About nine miles.”

“You weren’t kidding—remote.”

“The best specimens are usually where they haven’t been disturbed by people or grazing animals.”

“Right. You haven’t seen anything else suspicious while you were out and about this week, have you?”

She stiffened, again thinking of the Mexican woman and child. “What do you mean, suspicious?”

“A bunch of marijuana plants, for instance? Or a portable meth lab?”

“No. Should I have seen those things?”

“Probably not, if you want to stay safe.”

“Is that why border patrol and the FBI and BLM and who knows who else are meeting in a trailer at park headquarters?” she asked. “To go after drugs in the park?”

The seat creaked as he shifted his weight. “We’re an interagency task force formed to address rising crime in the park and surrounding lands—much of it drug related.” He cut his eyes to her. “Just be careful out there. Good idea to carry that Sig.”

“When I applied for my backcountry permit at the ranger station, they told me to watch out for snakes. No one said anything about drug dealers or murderers.”

“Most tourists will never know they’re there. And how many people who visit the park ever step off the main road or popular trails?”

“Not many,” she said. “I almost never see anyone when I’m out in the backcountry.” Which had made her encounter with Mariposa all the more remarkable. “If I do see anything suspicious, I’ll stay far away,” she said. “All I want to do is collect some plant specimens and get back to my research.”

They both fell silent as the Cruiser bumped over the rutted, sometimes muddy road. Though it was already early June, most of the usually dry arroyos trickled with snowmelt, and grass that would later turn a papery brown looked green and lush. Abby spotted several small herds of deer grazing in the distance, and a cluster of pronghorn antelope that exploded into life as the vehicles trundled past, bouncing away in stiff-legged leaps.

Finally her GPS indicated they were near the area where she’d found the body. “Pull over anywhere,” she said. “We’ll have to walk in from here.”

Michael stopped the Cruiser alongside the road and Graham slid his vehicle in behind them. The officers opened up the backs of the Cruisers and pulled out packs, canteens and, in Graham’s case, a semiautomatic rifle. They were going in loaded for bear, she supposed in case they ran into any of the bad guys.

Graham indicated she should lead the way. GPS in hand, she set out walking. The officers fell in behind in classic patrol formation. Abby’s heart raced. She slipped her hand into the front pocket of her jeans and wrapped it around the rabbit charm. Nothing to worry about, she reminded herself. You’re in Colorado. In a national park. No snipers here.

But of course, the dead man she’d found earlier reminded her that the serene landscape was not as safe as it seemed.

They walked for an hour before they came to the patch of desert parsley she’d harvested earlier. She noted the freshly turned earth where she’d dug up her specimen. “There’s the boulder I hid behind.” She pointed to the large rock, then walked over to it, trying to remember everything she’d done in those moments before she discovered the body. “I started walking this way.”

She led the way, the other three moving silently behind her. A few minutes later she spotted the pink bandanna she’d left tied to the branch of a piñon. “There.” She pointed. “The body is by that tree.”

She stopped and let the three officers move past.

She watched from a distance as they surveyed the body. Carmen took a number of photographs, then they fanned out, searching the ground—for clues, she supposed. She stood in the shade of the piñon, wishing she were anywhere else. She’d thought she’d put killing and bodies behind her when she left Afghanistan. The wilderness was supposed to be a place of peace, not violence.

Michael returned to her side. “You doing okay?” he asked.

She nodded. “I’ll be fine.”

She felt his gaze on her, but he didn’t press, for which she was grateful. “Which direction did the men you saw come from?” he asked after a moment.

“From over there, near that wash.” She nodded in the direction of the shallow depression in the terrain.

Graham joined them. “We’ll need to seal off this area and send a team out to collect evidence.”

“We need to figure out where he came from,” Michael said. “There might be a camp somewhere nearby.”

“Where are you camped, Ms. Stewart?” Graham asked.

“I’m in the South Rim Campground.”

“Let us know if you decide to move into town or return to your home, in case we have questions,” Graham said.

“I’d planned to stay here for another week to ten days,” she said. “I’ve only just begun collecting the specimens I need.”

“This part of the park will be off-limits to the public for most of that time, I’m afraid,” Graham said. “Until we determine it’s safe.”

He was going to close the backcountry? “That really isn’t acceptable,” she said. “I’m not some naive tourist, stumbling around, but I really need to collect these specimens to complete my research.”

“You’ll have to find them somewhere else. Until I decide it’s safe, this section of the park is closed.”

The three officers studied her, expressions impassive, implacable. She turned away, and her gaze fell on the body on the ground. All she could see was the feet, but they lay there with the stillness of a mannequin. Lifeless, a cruel joke played out in the desert.

She hated having her plans thwarted, but she knew Graham and the others were right. Until they knew who had killed this man and why, they had to err on the side of caution. “Fine. There are other places in the backcountry where I can look for specimens.”

“Let us know...”

But Graham never finished the sentence. Bark exploded from the trunk of a tree beside her. “Get down!” Michael yelled, and shoved her to the ground as bullets whistled over their heads.