Читать книгу Rain Dance - Rebecca Daniels - Страница 8

Mesa County Sheriff Joe Mountain slammed down hard on the brakes, locking all four tires on the sturdy four-wheel-drive Jeep vehicle and causing it to careen across the wet pavement to a violent stop. His heart pounded in his chest, reverberating in his ears to blend with the frantic rhythm of the wipers as they furiously moved back and forth across the windshield.

“What the hell?” he murmured aloud, leaning forward in the seat. The wind howled, catching the rain and sending it sheeting across the glass in giant waves. He squinted, trying to make out the image coming toward him on the pavement, but his vision was too blurred, too distorted despite the wipers’ best efforts to clear it.

A wounded animal, he thought, rubbing at the inside of the window with the sleeve of his jacket. A coyote maybe, or a mountain lion—or maybe several of them, judging from the size. His gaze narrowed farther, straining to see. A healthy animal would have taken shelter in higher ground long ago.

His hand automatically reached for a switch, bringing the patrol lights alive on the roof of the car, then for the leather strap of the shotgun holster mounted on the dash of the Jeep. Approaching a wounded animal would be too dangerous, even if he did just want to help it, but a couple of shots fired into the air might frighten it off the road. On the highway it posed a hazard and could cause an accident—like the deadly accident he’d just finished investigating and had brought him out to this desolate part of the county in the first place.

But the hand on the holster strap suddenly froze as the moving figure began to take shape and form—and the form it took wasn’t that of a coyote. The figure emerging out of the darkness of the storm and into the glow of his headlights was decidedly human, and decidedly female.

A woman.

She couldn’t stop shivering, even though she’d stopped feeling her arms and legs long ago. Rendered numb by the bitter wind and rain, she was only vaguely aware of the cold now, and yet she trembled. The fear was still there, still lurking in the blackness that had existed for her before the rain.

She had no idea how long she’d been walking, but it had been long enough to crush the initial panic—panic that had sent her running aimlessly through the desert and screaming at the top of her lungs. At the moment she was more concerned about finding someplace dry, someplace safe, than trying to figure out what had happened and why.

She wouldn’t call it a nightmare; it was far worse than that. It felt more like something out of a dark, depressing novel, something existential and surreal and completely without cause—only if it was, she couldn’t remember now. All she knew for certain was she was alive—she had to be. If death was a void, this was too terrifying for that.

There was nothing empty, nothing vacant in the place she found herself. It was filled with harsh, brutal feelings and cold, unyielding reality. It was more a displacement of her life than a dissolution. She had opened her eyes to a time and a place she didn’t recognize, to a world she didn’t know.

“Stranger in a strange land,” she muttered aloud, the harsh wind catching her words and sending them flying. She stopped walking, something flickering in her brain. There was something vaguely familiar about the phrase, something almost recognizable—the first recognizable thing she’d found in this terrible place. But it was vague, and there only for a moment. Soon the familiarity was gone, blown from her memory like words on the wind.

She started walking again, and trembling. Where was she? How did she get there, and when could she leave? Why could she remember nothing, and what had been there before the void and the blackness?

Where had she been before she’d been here?

She glanced down at the corduroy blazer and slacks she had on. They were soaked through, and clung to her exhausted body like a second skin. She felt no ownership, no connection to them. They looked alien and unfamiliar to her, just like this barren world around her.

When the lights first appeared over the horizon, her initial instinct had been to run, to hide, but she fought the fear. Darkness was falling fast, and the thought of being alone in a world of blackness was more terrifying than those small, ominous lights moving over the horizon like eyes of the monster seeking her out.

“Stop,” she said, the word taking more energy than she’d expected. Suddenly she was running, running toward the light, her deadened arms waving above her. “Please. Please stop.”

Joe stepped out of the car, one hand carefully hovering over the holstered gun inside his jacket.

“Stop right there, ma’am. Don’t move.”

“Please,” she said, staggering a few steps forward. “Please…please help me.”

“I said stop,” he demanded, raising a hand up. “Don’t come any closer.”

But she did come closer, stumbling and weaving, her footsteps growing more erratic, more uneven the nearer she got.

“Oh, please,” she pleaded again, ignoring his orders. “Help me. Please help—”

She fell forward, lunging toward him with both arms outstretched. Reflex had him diving forward, had him reaching for her. Procedure would have been to let her fall, would have been not to drop his guard until he’d assessed the situation completely—and this whole thing had the earmarks of a setup. She could have lured him to stop, could have a band of cohorts hiding out of sight, ready to swoop down and jump him the moment his back was turned. Only…for some reason, he had been unable to let her fall. For the first time in his professional life, Joe Mountain forgot about procedure, forgot about suspicion and precaution—and he forgot about the gun in his holster. There had been something in her cry for help, something that couldn’t be faked or fabricated and the look on her face had told him all he’d needed to know. This was no setup, no highway crime in progress. She wasn’t lying in wait, she was terrified and he had to help.

Reaching out, he caught her in his arms, carefully lowering her to the pavement and pillowing her head in his arms. Rain and wind pelted them and he shielded her as best he could.

“Ma’am, can you hear?” He felt for a pulse in her neck and at her wrist. “Wake up. Can you hear me?”

She gave no response, but he could feel the soft, steady throb of a pulse beneath her chin.

He glanced up, looking for signs of a disabled vehicle—skid marks, spilled oil, highway debris, a suitcase, a purse—anything that might explain what had happened to her, but there was nothing.

“Ma’am,” he said again, looking back down at her and giving her cheek a tap with the palm of his hand. “Can you hear me?”

Her clothes were drenched, and her long hair streaked down her face. She looked as though she’d been wandering around out there for a while. Running a hand inside her jacket, and around the pockets of her slacks, he felt for evidence of a wallet, of car keys, but her pockets were empty.

“Ma’am, wake up. I’m a police officer, I’m going to get you to a hospital. You’re going to be okay.” He cupped her chin in his palm and gave her head a small shake. “Can you hear me?”

She breathed out a groan, and her head fell to one side. Then suddenly, with no other warning, her eyes popped open and her head sprang up.

“Logan, no,” she screamed, clutching at his jacket. “No, Logan, Loga—”

“L-Logan?” Joe stammered, overwhelmed by the sudden outburst.

But she didn’t answer him. With her head falling back, she slipped into unconsciousness again.

“Ma’am?” Joe said, giving her a small shake. “Ma’am?”

Only, there was no reaction this time. A sudden bolt from the clouds sent a brilliant flash of white light over everything, and a thunderous roar from the sky above.

Gathering her up into his arms, Joe carried her to the passenger side of his vehicle, carefully lowering her into the front seat. Securing the seat belt around her, he closed the door tightly.

Stepping away from the car, he took a moment to scan the area. But with the wind whipping at the rain and sending it stinging into his eyes, it was impossible to see more than a few feet. Turning, he made his way back around the car, and climbed inside.

“Base station, this is mobile one, do you read me?” he said, flipping on the radio and looking at the woman slumped against the back of the seat beside him. “Ryan, come on, answer damn it. Do you read me?”

He waited a few anxious seconds for his deputy to respond, the water dripping from the brim of his hat making a small pool on the seat. The storm had made the radio useless all day, but he had to try, had to make an effort.

“Base station, this is mobile one, do you copy?” he said, his impatience growing. “Work, you stupid thing,” he growled, giving the radio a slam with the flat of his hand. “Work!” But there was only static on the line, making him all the more furious. “Piece of sh—” He slammed the microphone down, flipping the radio off and shifting the car into gear.

The thick tires of the Jeep squealed loudly against the wet blacktop as he put the pedal to the metal and started down the highway. Glancing at the woman beside him, he swore under his breath.

Where the hell had she come from? What was she doing out here in the middle of nowhere? He needed to investigate, to look around and try to figure out what had happened, but that required time and decent weather—neither of which he had at the moment. What he did have was a useless radio, and an unconscious woman who needed immediate medical attention and about sixty miles of highway between them and the hospital.

As the Jeep picked up speed, he flipped on his siren and glanced out the windows at the nearly dark countryside. It had been a cold, miserable day—starting at dawn with the report of a five-car pileup along the Nevada-Utah border.

Given the choice, he would have liked nothing more than to have weathered the miserable storm holed up in his office—warm and dry and comfortable. But this was Mesa County—his county—and that meant he didn’t have a choice. When something happened in this rugged, remote corner of the state, Sheriff Joe Mountain wanted to know all about it.

He glanced back to the woman on the seat beside him. She didn’t need to be conscious to tell him something had definitely happened out here, something pretty unusual. He may not have lived on the reservation in years, but there was enough Navajo left in him to know something was out of harmony, out of balance. In the dim light of the dashboard, her lips looked blue with cold and her skin was an ashen white. No wonder she’d collapsed. Wandering around in weather like this, she had to be half-frozen.

Wedging his knee against the steering wheel, he shrugged out of his jacket. The buckskin leather was soaked, but the white, wooly lining was warm and dry. With one hand, he covered her with the coat, tucking it around her tight.

Looking at her, he felt something tighten in his chest. This whole thing had him feeling restless and unsettled. Things didn’t fit; she didn’t fit. She didn’t belong here, wasn’t dressed for rough weather and rough country. She looked more like she belonged in a trendy coffeehouse somewhere sipping caffe lattes, or shopping in some stylish boutique.

He reached across the seat, running the backs of his fingers along her cheek. Even against his cold hands, her skin felt like ice. Yet frigid skin and drenched hair couldn’t hide her delicate features. He might be a cop investigating a possible accident or potential crime, but he was also a man, and he would have had to be dead not to notice just how lovely she was. She was a beautiful woman—a very beautiful woman. She had an almost perfect face—delicate, refined, feminine—which only added to his uneasiness. How did someone like her end up in a place like this?

Reaching down, he adjusted the heater vents, directing them toward her, and let his foot press down harder on the gas. Looking through the windshield at the road ahead, he shifted uneasily against the seat. He’d been a law enforcement officer for nearly fifteen years, and he’d seen a lot in that time—tragic accidents, grisly crime scenes. But the fear he had seen in her eyes that moment before she’d collapsed was something he would never forget.

“What’s got you so frightened, rain lady? Is it Logan?” he said, reaching across the seat and running a finger down her cheek again. “Is Logan what sent you running into my county?”

“So what do you think, Doc?”

“I don’t know,” Cruz Martinez mumbled, letting the eyelid of the woman on the gurney gently close and flipping the tiny beam of his penlight off.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Joe insisted, stepping to one side to let two paramedics push past him. “You’re a doctor, you should be able to tell something.”

“You’re right, I’m a doctor, not a fortune-teller,” Cruz said, straightening up. He reached for the end of the gurney and pushed it toward the doors of Mesa County General’s ER. “Joe, come on, give me a break. The woman just got here.”

“Okay, all right, okay,” he conceded, grabbing the other side of the gurney and helping him push it through the doors and into the crowded emergency room. “But she’ll be all right, won’t she? You think she’s going to be okay, don’t you—”

“Joe,” Cruz said, cutting him off. He gestured to one of the nurses, who rushed to assist him. “Give me a few minutes, let me see what we’ve got here and then I’ll let you know.”

“Sure, sure, okay,” Joe said, following the gurney past the nurses’ desk and through the swinging doors to the examination rooms. “But—”

“Joe,” Cruz said in a calm voice, stopping him at the entrance of the examination room. “Let me do my job.” He reached up, catching hold of the curtain and giving it a yank. “So then you can do yours.”

“Right,” Joe said with a resigned sigh as Cruz slid the curtain closed between them. “I’ll, uh, just be outside,” he said to no one in particular.

Turning around, he slowly made his way back through the swinging doors and to the long row of chairs in the emergency waiting room. Sitting down, he slipped off his damp cowboy hat and rubbed at his tired, scratchy eyes.

He knew he was being unreasonable, knew he had to be patient and just cool his heels until Cruz had a chance to examine her, he just didn’t feel like waiting. He’d been waiting for the last hour it had taken to drive back to Mesa Ridge—an hour the “rain woman” had spent unconscious.

Rain Woman. That was how he’d come to think of her—woman of the rain. He lived and worked in the world of the white man, but his mind and his soul were still Navajo, still relating everything to the elemental basics in life—sun, moon, earth, sky, wind and rain. She had come into his world with the rain, so to him she was Rain.

“Rain,” he muttered, thinking of the woman who was as puzzling, as enigmatic as the elements themselves. It was time to balance the scales, to put the world back in its place again. He’d waited, now he wanted action. He had questions, now he wanted answers. It was time for balance.

“You look like you could use this.”

Joe looked up, surprised to see Cruz Martinez’s wife, Marcy, standing in front of him with a foam cup of coffee in her hand. “Marcy, hello. What are you doing here?”

“Well, I was hoping to get my husband out of here at a reasonable hour, but…” She stopped and glanced back at the doors leading to the examination rooms. “You pretty much took care of that.”

Joe grimaced apologetically. “Sorry about that.”

“I’m getting used to it,” Marcy confessed with a resigned sigh, turning back to him and offering him the steaming cup of coffee. “I was just hoping we could have a few hours together this evening since I’ll be taking off for the state capital tomorrow.”

“Giving up the bench for the governor’s office?”

Marcy laughed. “Just hearing a change of venue case up there for a few weeks.” She looked down at the cup in her hand. “Here, drink this before it gets cold.”

Joe smiled up at her. He’d barely known Marcy when she’d married Cruz two years ago, but since then he’d come to not only like her, but admire her as well. In addition to being a devoted wife and mother, she was also a Mesa County Superior Court Judge.

“Thanks,” he said, taking several sips of hot brew, savoring its black, bitter taste.

“Better?”

Joe nodded. “Much.”

“If you don’t mind me saying so, Sheriff Mountain, you look a little like a drowned rat.”

“I don’t mind, Your Honor,” he admitted. “I happen to feel a little like a drowned rat at the moment.”

She gestured back to the examination rooms with a nod of her head. “Accident victim?”

Joe shook his head slowly, glancing at the closed doors, and shook his head. “Got me.”

Marcy frowned. “You don’t know?”

Joe thought of the woman, thought of Rain and the million scenarios that had raced through his mind when he’d seen her step out of the gloom and into the beam of his headlights. He would have found it less puzzling, less unsettling if she’d done something simple, like pull a gun on him. At least things would have been clear then, cut-and-dried. At least it would have explained what she was doing out there.

“No, I don’t,” he said after a moment, his gaze slowly moving to Marcy’s. “I picked her up out on the highway. She was wandering around out there all by herself.”

“In this storm?” Marcy’s brow furrowed. “Poor thing. Where was this?”

“Out on Route 16,” Joe said, remembering the fear he had seen in her eyes. “About twenty miles south of the Hollister place.”

“The Hollister place!” Marcy gasped, her eyes wide with surprise now. “Way up there? What would she be doing wandering around there?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” he said with a tired sigh. The fatigue of a too long day with too little sleep had suddenly begun to take hold. “There was no car, no sign of an accident.”

Marcy’s frown deepened. “You suspect foul play?”

Joe shrugged. “At this point I’m looking at everything.” He slowly stood up, tossing the empty cup into the sand of the ashtray beside the chair. He turned and looked at the closed doors of the examination rooms. “She was unconscious when I brought her in, I’m hoping when she wakes up…” He stopped and glanced back to Marcy. “Well, I’d like to question her when she wakes up.”

“Cruz say what he thought was wrong with her?”

Joe thought of that curtain being closed in his face, and scowled. “Cruz didn’t say anything.”

Marcy smiled. “Yes, well, I know how that go— Oh, wait—here he is.”

Joe had to stop himself from running across the corridor to meet the doctor at the door.

“Is she okay, Doc?” he asked, surprised by the sound of alarm in his own voice. “Is she awake?”

“She’s awake,” Cruz said, spotting his wife and steering Joe back into the direction of the waiting area. “But she’s very weak.” He slipped an arm around Marcy’s waist, giving her a kiss on the cheek. Reluctantly, he turned back to Joe, swiping an arm across his forehead. “And she’s exhausted.”

“But can I talk to her?” Joe asked eagerly.

Cruz turned and looked at him. “I don’t think it’s going to do much good.”

Joe felt something go dead in him. “Why, what’s the matter?”

“She doesn’t remember.”

“What do you mean she doesn’t remember?”

“She doesn’t remember,” Cruz said again. “She doesn’t remember anything.” He glanced down at Marcy, then back to Joe. “What we have here is a case of amnesia.”