32

If the Boot Fits

There were three men in the construction office trailer, and her.

Mari wore her best white blouse, buttoned all the way to the top, khakis, and her hiking boots because she didn’t have anything else, though she’d carefully wiped all the dust off them.

Marcus, in cowboy boots, jeans, and one of the western shirts he always wore.

Rod, in well-cut chinos and a smile that made her sick to look at.

And a barrel-chested man with dramatic chops of facial hair and a bolo tie. He was apparently the representative from the power company, and Rod’s boss. She’d only ever seen his name before on the signature line of her paychecks: Stanton Davis. It sounded like a brand of cowboy boots.

Stanton Davis was currently going down the list of the evidence against her.

Pictures of the deceased animal, printed from Marcus’s phone into surprisingly sharp eight-by-ten glossies. A baby tortoise only the size of her palm, smashed into the center of a tire track with its shell cracked into pieces.

The traffic report log of all people who entered and exited that access road that day, kept by the biologist who monitored the road.

Her report, stating that she worked at Tower 2123 that day, and that she cleared the area of all biological resources and observed no fatalities.

When he was finished, Stanton tapped the edges of the papers together, then gave Marcus a slight nod.

It had been six days since she and Jack fought and he disappeared. Three since Brad had called her, and two since that first awful meeting when Marcus told her that he had to suspend her while they investigated. Sympathy in his eyes when he said he hadn’t believed it, so he’d gone out and seen the tortoise’s body for himself. He’d been so sure it wasn’t her crew, that he’d find someone else had been on that site. But no one else had been, and now her friend had no choice.

Marcus turned to her with tight lips and sad eyes. “I’m sorry, Mari, but I’m going to have to let you go. I’ll need your access pass and any company equipment you’ve been using.”

It took less than five minutes to lose everything she’d worked for since the divorce.

The job, all the friends she’d made. Any hope of paying her medical bills. She’d already moved out of the motel, which was the only half-assed excuse for a home she had.

At least Jack had left before he could see what she’d done. How thoroughly she’d failed the only job she had on the construction site: to protect the animals she loved. He would have been so surprised and so disappointed.

She could still remember how carefully he held the tiny tortoise he’d found under his own tire. If he’d been at work, he probably would have seen the tortoise she’d missed, and it wouldn’t be dead.

The day it happened, she’d been so distracted, thinking about Jack and then with Brad calling out of the blue . . . She’ checked all the tires, she was sure she had, but she’d been rushing. Maybe she’d glanced past the tortoise and not even seen it. Had it been her tire? Had she even noticed the bump when she ran it over? It was so small . . .

She’d always been absentminded when she was stressed. Had misplaced her keys a thousand times, living with Brad, even after he installed hooks by the front door for her. She thought she’d changed the oil according to the sticker on the windshield, only to find the car was choking and the numbers on the sticker were different than what she remembered . . . She’d been like this for years. How had she thought she could handle a job with so much responsibility?

Brad wouldn’t have been surprised at her failure. She always figured he’d be aghast if he knew her new career. How it all hinged on her being attentive when he always accused her of being thoughtless to the point of stupidity.

“Have to say, I’m starting to wonder if we shouldn’t revisit which company we’re contracting for our biology work.” Rod gave a concerned look to Marcus. “We chose to use experienced personnel specifically so you could save us the sort of take fine we’re about to pay out because of one of your people.”

“I do apologize, sir,” Marcus said, his voice so uncomfortable it didn’t really sound like him. “Mistakes do happen, though, and even the best biologist can miss tortoises. In fact, before California tightened its regulations, many projects didn’t impose a fine for takes smaller than one hundred fifty millimeters, because the statistical probability of finding those animals is so low. That’s nearly twice the size of the tortoise Mari missed.”

“Doesn’t matter what used to be,” Rod said. “It matters what the regulations are holding us to now. Are you saying none of your people can be relied upon to spot the tortoises we’re not allowed to run over?” He pursed his lips and looked to his boss. “If this is the kind of carelessness we can expect from this company, perhaps we need to discuss the tickets this girl has been passing out like Tic Tacs. If she can’t see the animals she’s hired to find, can we trust her judgment about what is or is not a violation?”

“I assure you—” Marcus started in, but Mari didn’t even hear him. All she heard was Brad, laying into her for losing the keys again.

But in the book Jack had given her, it said that abusive men often set up situations to make it appear their victim had messed up, to justify their own anger. And now that Mari thought about it, she realized she had never forgotten an appointment, never forgot to do something. She just got confused when her keys weren’t where she remembered leaving them, didn’t get milk because they had a full carton, found the door unlocked when she swore she’d thrown the bolt last night.

And how easy would it have been for Brad to move the keys, pour out the milk, unlock the door?

Looking at Rod right now, with the tiny gleam of triumph behind his fake-worried smile as he argued with Marcus, Mari remembered her life with Brad so, so well.

She waited for an opening in the conversation, but the men were leaning forward to argue across her as Stanton slouched in his chair behind the desk.

“Excuse me,” she started, but they just talked right over the top of her. Brad used to do that. Interrupt her and interrupt her until she couldn’t remember what she’d started to say in the first place.

Mari stood up.

“I want to see the pictures.” She pointed to the file in front of Stanton. “I remember where every person was parked that day, and I at least want to know if it was me who hit the tortoise.”

“Mari . . .” Marcus winced. “You’re responsible for the site, so technically it doesn’t matter if it was your tires or one of the work trucks. It won’t affect . . . I’m still going to need to let you go.”

“I understand. I just want to know, for myself.” She couldn’t get that pop sound of a crunching shell out of her mind. She’d never heard it in real life, but she could imagine it far, far too well.

Stanton nudged his chair back a touch. “I might duck out, if you’re okay to finish this up, Rod. I need to get back to the main office.”

“You’d better stay,” Marcus said. “The file and the pictures need to go back to the main office with you to be included in the report to the BLM.”

“It’ll only take a second,” Mari promised, covering her twinge of guilt at his impatience by snatching the photos off the top of the file. “My truck was to the left of the driveway to the access road. The two crew trucks were on the right side of the pad.” As soon as she saw the concrete abutment next to the tortoise in the first picture, she frowned. “But . . . this is underneath the tower.” She looked up at the men in the office, appealing to Marcus because he spent the most time on-site, so he’d know. “No one parks under the tower when the crew is working. It’s too dangerous—one dropped screwdriver could shatter a windshield.”

“Listen, honey,” Rod said, “that turtle didn’t run over itself. Somebody must have parked under the tower. Trust me, if those damn linemen could do what they were told, I’d be out of a job. Here, you don’t want to look at those, you’ll just get upset.”

He reached for the photos, but Mari hung on to them. He even started to exert pressure, trying to tug them out of her grasp, but when she didn’t relent, he finally let go, his jaw twitching with tension.

The pictures were hard to look at, with the crushed animal and the tire track in the dirt right over the top of it. The tracks looked wider than those of her Toyota, each mark cleanly pressed into the soil by the tread of a tire so much newer and more aggressive than anything she could afford.

She looked up. “I want to see the road traffic records.”

“We already went over that in the investigation that took place before this meeting,” Stanton said. “There was no one out of the ordinary, and no one else on that road that would have stopped at that pad except your crew and the mobilization crew that came to move the crane—the ones who found the dead tortoise. We already told you everything it said in the summary I gave.”

Her skin prickled with the scrutiny of everyone in the room. Stanton checked the time on his phone, and she knew they all thought she was being ridiculous. But if once, just once, she’d thought to mark the level of the milk with a pen before she went to the store, she wouldn’t have had to wonder if she was crazy. Not once did she ever have enough faith in herself to think that Brad might have poured it out, because he always looked at her with that crushing combination of disappointment and pity. Just the way Rod was looking at her now.

“It’s evidence against me. I want to see it.”

“She has the right,” Marcus said.

Stanton shuffled through the papers and passed over the records, creases deepening at the corners of his frowning mouth.

“I looked at them, too, Mari,” Marcus said in an undertone. “Nobody strange went through.”

She scanned down the records, and it only took her seconds to find what she’d expected.

She put her finger on the name and slid the paper into the middle of the desk. “That’s who ran that tortoise over. Not me. Not my crew.”

All the men leaned in to see, and when Stanton recognized the name, he frowned even more deeply. “If we need to call security to escort you out, Ms. Tucker, we will. We investigated, and you were at fault. Wild accusations aren’t going to save your job.”

Fear fluttered in Mari’s belly, and she started to feel like she wasn’t getting enough air, but she set her jaw and refused to let them see how close she was to a panic attack. “Really? Why was Rod on that road, then?”

“It’s my responsibility to oversee all the tower assembly crews. That’s what being the assembly manager means, in case you don’t understand the term.” His manicured nails drummed on the arm of his chair.

“We were the only crew on that section,” Mari said. “The next assembly crew was down at 2144. The only reason you would have had to be on that section was to come to the tower we were at, to check our work. So you were the last person at Tower 2123.”

Marcus pulled out his phone, and she caught a glimpse of the report-uploading software as he scrolled quickly to the date of the tortoise fatality.

“There’s no need to get hysterical,” Rod said. “I know it’s upsetting to be fired, but you’ll get another job. Not as a biologist, certainly, but you’ll need work. To show you there are no hard feelings, I’ll even write you a reference if you’d like to try for a secretarial position at the offices of our construction company. But if you go making accusations toward your superiors, I don’t think anyone’s going to be too interested in hiring you.”

“She’s right,” Marcus interjected. “The next closest assembly crew under Rod’s supervision that day was at 2144. He was on that road after Mari’s crew left and before the mobilization crew found the tortoise.”

“Those are your tire tracks,” Mari said to Rod, her heart beating stronger and more certainly now. “Both of the crew trucks have bald tires. One of them blew out on the freeway last week. The tire it got replaced with is used, too, and barely has enough tread to hold the rubber together. Three of my truck tires are bald, and narrower than this. But your truck has those brand-new off-roading tires. I bet we could even match the tread to this photo. Measure the width.”

“So, what, we’re supposed to believe you’re some kind of tire specialist?” Rod scoffed. “Look, binge-watching CSI isn’t going to do anything but go straight to your thighs. I suggest you stop trying to sound like an expert when we all know you’re just a disgruntled ex-employee.” He raised his eyebrows at Stanton. “How about that security guard?”

“I’m a tracker.” Mari sat back in her chair, crossed one leg firmly over the other. “And those are your tracks.”

“Of course you would say that! You’re trying to save your own ass.”

She couldn’t help but notice that his volume was climbing. Stanton hadn’t reached for his cell phone to call security, if he even knew the number of the rent-a-cop who patrolled the construction lot during the day.

“It’s not just the tires,” she said. “I know that tortoise. It was about a seventy millimeter, wasn’t it, Marcus?”

“It’s kind of hard to tell when it’s flat,” Rod said.

Mari flinched, but only a little. “That’s the only tortoise that surveys found anywhere near Tower 2123. Its burrow is two hundred meters away from the construction area. That’s pretty far for a little guy like that to move, especially in triple-digit temperatures. But if you check my report, I checked on him and logged him as being in his burrow, face out, at . . . I think around two that afternoon.”

Marcus snatched the rest of the papers off Stanton’s desk and shuffled quickly. “Two fifteen.”

“So if the tortoise was found at four thirty, that means he moved two hundred meters when it was 103 degrees, in two hours and fifteen minutes.” Mari gave a look to Marcus, because those numbers would mean nothing to the workers.

“It’s nearly impossible,” Marcus said. “Two hundred meters is very far for a tortoise that size, and most of them won’t leave their burrows when it’s over 95 degrees. If they did, they’d stop at the next shade they saw.”

“That isn’t the only tortoise in the desert,” Rod said. “You can’t even prove the dead tortoise is that same one. What, are you going to say you recognize his hairdo?” He laughed.

“No, but his burrow is on the GPS maps that we all have access to, including you. I bet if you went there right now, he wouldn’t be in it anymore.” Mari’s stomach churned, because recognizing that tortoise meant something very, very ugly. It helped her case, but even so, it wasn’t something she wanted to think about. “What size shoe do you wear, Rod?”

He rolled his eyes. “Look, if you think I’m going to listen to some girl get all PMS-y and try to blame her mistakes on me, saying she can recognize a road-killed tortoise and—”

“Were you at that tower that day, Rod?” Stanton interrupted. “You were on the road, okay, that doesn’t mean anything. So where did you go? You didn’t stop at that tower, did you?”

“No! I was just driving through. Taking the access road to Tower 2144 to see my other crew, like you said.” He threw a glare at Stanton. “Not that I should have to explain myself. I was doing my job. If she’d done hers, we wouldn’t be here.”

“Tower 2144 is closer to your office than Tower 2123,” Marcus said. “To get to Mari’s tower first, you’d have to leave the yard, get on the freeway, get off on the far exit, and come back around the long way. And according to the road traffic records, you were going the wrong way for that to be the case.” He looked to her. “Mari, what were you asking about shoe size?”

“If we went out to that burrow right now,” she said, “I bet you there would be two sets of tracks to and from it. Mine, from checking when we were working that day. Size seven and a half, Merrell hiking boots. And his. Red Wing work boots like most of the linemen wear, size . . .”

She tilted her head to look at his feet, gaining confidence now that she had Marcus on her side. The facts on her side.

She was right and she damn well knew it. No tortoises had been harmed until he put her on his son’s crew, looking for a free pass, and got a double handful of citations instead.

“Looks like you’re maybe a size eleven? Not much chance of another worker being that far from the construction pad, not with the schedule you keep them on.”

Rod surged forward, not leaving his seat but getting right in her face. “Listen, you little bitch—”

She held his eyes, lifting a hand to hold Marcus off when he jumped up to get between them.

“Go ahead, hit me. I know you’re dying to. I know you’re capable of it.” She stared Rod down ferociously. “You carried that little baby tortoise all the way from its burrow in that heat, put it under the tower, and ran it over.”

She blinked away the angry tears in her eyes to sort through the pictures in her lap, and when she found the right one, she put it on the desk for Stanton to see.

“And after you ran it over, you backed up and did it again, to be sure it was dead. Look, you can see the turnaround marks right here. You didn’t even hit it by accident and then try to shift responsibility. You killed it on purpose, so you could frame me because you were mad that I wrote up your son.”

His nostrils flared and goose bumps jumped out along her arms, a warning trilling through her because she damn well knew when a man was about to get violent, and that’s what he looked like. But she didn’t back down, because she’d had worse. She’d had worse, and she wished she could have fought for herself back then the way she could now.

She wasn’t stupid. And she wasn’t wrong.

“Do it,” she said, rising and leaning right into his face so their noses nearly bumped. “Slap me. I am dying for an excuse to hit you back.”

“That’s enough, Rod,” Stanton snapped. “Ms. Tucker, will you please wait for us outside?”

Ten minutes later, Stanton Davis came out, alone.

“I’m going to need you to sit tight until we sort this out, ma’am. Rod will be remaining in the office, and security will be coming to make sure neither of you have any contact with the other or leave the premises. Marcus and I will be going out to check those tire tracks, as well as to check for those boot prints you alleged. Decisions about your job status are on hold for the moment.”

“Thank you,” she told the executive, keeping her voice calm even though her blood was still running hot from the confrontation. She was so not in the mood to sit still and wait.

Andy from lot security let himself into the trailer, gave her a bashful nod. “Mari.”

“Hi, Andy.” She smiled at him as he went to the coffee machine to pour himself a cup.

Marcus came out of the office, and when Stanton turned to go, Marcus gave her a conspiratorial wink, a smile starting to brighten his face. “His boots were a size smaller than you guessed,” he said. “Turns out old Rod wasn’t as big as he looked.”

The two men left together, and she let out a long breath.

When she’d fought with Jack, she was just sliding back into her old patterns of not trusting her own judgment. She’d compared Jack’s protectiveness to Brad’s spying because experience had taught her that a man would only watch over her because he wanted to control her, not because he truly wanted her to be safe. All along, Jack had been right that Rod was dangerous. But he’d been wrong that she couldn’t handle it.

She’d won.

They’d confirm it when they got back, but she already knew. The last two days she’d been jumping at her own shadow, because even with her number changed so he couldn’t call, she could feel Brad somewhere near. Every night, Rajni took her out in the desert so she could practice shooting her borrowed .357 pistol. Though even her increasing accuracy with the gun hadn’t given her the rush of confidence that winning this battle had.

Before, she’d only ever mustered the courage to fight with Rod when she was shielding someone else: Jack, his crew, or one of the desert animals. Even when she left Brad, she’d been in such a bad place that it was less to protect herself and more to protect him from the consequences of what he might do.

But today, no matter how hard Rod had tried to intimidate her, she hadn’t backed down, and she’d fought for herself. Because she hadn’t done anything wrong, and she deserved to be protected from that jerk every bit as much as anyone else. A smile crept onto her face and Andy smiled back, assuming it was for him.

She gave him a nod, and his folding chair creaked as he took up a spot outside the office where Rod still waited.

She was dying to fly back to the motel and tell Jack that she’d done it, that after all this time, it was she who was finally going to get Rod rightfully fired. But he wasn’t there.

Taking out her phone, she scrolled to Jack’s name. It glowed up at her, the simple, familiar letters as comforting as a warm breeze. Their fight had been silly, a hard moment they could have gotten through easily if they’d talked it out after they both calmed down. Except, in the end, he hadn’t cared enough to stick it out.

It had taken her so long to get to a place where she felt valuable enough to fight for herself, and she deserved a man who knew that, too. Who could stand up for his own worth, and their relationship, and not run away the first time things got hard.

Sure, she’d changed her number since he left, but even Brad had cared enough to track down her number, and it’d be far easier for Jack, if he wanted to. All he’d have to do was ask Marcus, or Gideon. Any of the biologists on the project. And yeah, maybe she was being ridiculous and holding a double standard by expecting him to track down her phone number, but what it came down to was that she was done loving men more than they loved her. Finished with soothing hurt feelings while her own ached in silence. If she was going to risk her heart on anyone ever again, it would be on someone who was willing to risk theirs right back.

She clicked off the phone and turned it facedown in her lap.