“We’re looking for his woman, possibly in the company of this man.” Carmen passed the flyer with photographs of Faith and Dane to the white-haired couple camped in a Sprinter van in the BLM camping area.
The wife peered over her husband’s shoulder at the photos. “That’s a nice-looking couple,” she said.
“What did they do?” the man asked. “Why are you looking for them?”
“The woman is a law enforcement officer,” Carmen said. “She may have been abducted by the man.” Carmen turned over the flyer in her hand, which included an artist’s rendering of a long-haired, bearded man with aviator glasses and a bandana around his head—a likeness of the man Carmen had seen staring at Faith at the press conference outside Ranger headquarters. “We’d also like to know if you see this man,” she said. “The woman may be with him or he might be alone.”
“Oh, that’s terrible,” the woman said. “Do you think it’s dangerous for us to stay here? Should we move to another area?”
“I don’t think you’re in any danger, ma’am,” Carmen said. “Call the number on the bottom of that flyer if you see anything.”
She left the couple and headed back to the cruiser, where she met up with Hud. “Any luck?” she asked, nodding to the stack of flyers in his hand.
He shook his head. “We’re not going to find them this way,” he said.
“This was the last place Dane Trask may have been,” Carmen said. “It’s possible he’s moved out of the park and is hiding somewhere near here.”
“It’s possible he’s fled to Mexico,” Hud said. “Not likely, but that’s the whole problem with this case. He’s been hanging around the park for seven weeks and we still have no idea where he’s hiding out or how he’s surviving.”
“Or why he took Faith,” Carmen said.
“Or even if he took her,” Hud said. “Maybe that biker you saw took her. Or someone else.”
“I don’t think it’s a good sign that we haven’t had any kind of ransom note,” Carmen said.
Hud nodded. “If whoever took her killed her outright, they wouldn’t bother with that.”
“We haven’t found her body or any sign of murder,” Carmen noted. She tried to tell herself that was a good sign, but with so many acres of wilderness where Faith’s captor could have taken her, the idea wasn’t much comfort.
“Come on,” Hud said. “There’s one more camper up here. He just pulled in.”
Together, they walked to the van parked beside a rock outcropping. A slender man with close-cropped gray hair looked up from laying a campfire. “Hello, Officers,” he said.
“We’re looking for some people who may have been in this area.” Hud handed him the flyer. “The woman is a Ranger Brigade officer who was abducted yesterday. She may be with the man in the photo next to hers there, or with someone who resembles the sketch on the back.”
The man stood and took his time studying both sides of the poster. He shook his head. “Sorry, I haven’t seen them. But there was a guy here last night who looked pretty rough. Made me a little uneasy, you know?”
“Rough how?” Carmen asked.
“Like he’d been in a fight. He was really banged up. And he was wearing a big pistol, right out in the open. I guess that’s not illegal here, but it didn’t make me want to get too close to him. He just looked mean, you know?”
The hair on the back of Carmen’s neck rose. Some people had good instincts about strangers. Maybe this man was one of them. “Could you describe the man for me, Mr....?” she asked.
“Jackson. Del Jackson.” He tilted his head to one side and closed his eyes. “He was a big guy—maybe six-four, over two hundred pounds. But I got the impression it was mostly muscle, not fat. He was in his midthirties, I’d say. A white guy, with either really short hair or bald. He wore a dirty ball cap and jeans and a chambray shirt. But like I said, he looked like he’d been in a fight—dirty clothes, swollen jaw, scraped knuckles. He was camped back there in an old pickup—that kind of mint green color you used to see in old cars, with a lot of primer.” He gestured toward the far end of the road. “I like to take a walk before I turn in for the night and I passed him and said hello and he just glared at me. Gave me the creeps.”
“Can you give us your contact information, in case we need to get in touch with you again?” Carmen asked.
Jackson gave them his address and cell phone number, and Carmen also noted the plate number on his van before she and Hud retraced their steps through the camp to the last turnout on the rutted road. Tire tracks through the grass showed where someone had parked in the space between two clusters of piñons. Rocks had been piled to make a fire pit, which was littered with half-burned trash: light beer cans, the wrapper from a convenience store burrito and a package that had contained chocolate-covered donuts. Hud knelt beside the fire ring and poked at the ashes. “There’s still some warmth in here,” he said. “He didn’t leave that long ago.”
Carmen studied the ground around the area. The red clay had been stomped smooth by years of campers, leaving no shoe impressions. She paused beside where the vehicle had likely been parked and stared at a trio of brown stains on the ground, each about the size of a quarter. “Come look at this,” she said.
Hud joined her. “That looks like blood. We’d better get a crime scene team out here.”
“Jackson said the camper looked like he’d been in a fight,” Carmen said. “Maybe the blood is his.”
“Maybe,” Hud said. “But we’d better make sure.”
Carmen had learned never to jump to conclusions when conducting an investigation. Let the evidence lead to the right solution. But that dispassionate focus on fact was harder to maintain when the case was personal. If that was the camper’s blood on the ground, had Faith been the one to wound him?
And if it wasn’t the man’s blood, was it Faith’s? Had they been this close to finding her and missed their chance?
“WE’RE GOING TO need a car.”
Faith looked up from the leftover chicken in a tortilla wrap Dane had presented to her for breakfast. “Excuse me?”
“If we’re going to get the photos and video for you to show to the Rangers, we’re going to need a car,” Dane said.
“Where are they?”
“At the Mary Lee Mine.”
“You left them there?” She stared. “Where the people involved in the drug smuggling were supposedly spending a lot of time? Why?”
“Because they would never think to look for the evidence I had against them there.” He scooted closer. “Look, if they were searching for the evidence, they’d look at my workplace, my house and on my person. Maybe with people who knew me, or at a safe-deposit box I had.”
She’d almost forgotten about that safe-deposit box—yet another red herring the Rangers had had to chase down. “You sent your girlfriend a key to that box,” she said. “She thought it was because you had left something important in there.”
“Former girlfriend. And I did that to throw off TDC.” He stuffed the last of his own chicken wrap into his mouth and chewed while she waited for the rest of his explanation. She sipped coffee, trying not to make a face at the bitter taste.
“Let me guess,” he said. “You’re more of a latte gal.”
“I prefer cream and sugar,” she said. It would take a ton of both to make this particular brew palatable.
“I guess I got used to strong and black in the army,” he said.
“Mmm. At least this should keep me awake. Now, about that safe-deposit box?”
“Right. I made the mistake of hinting to Ruffino that I had information about his activities tucked away in a safe place, in case anything happened to me. I thought the threat might induce him to back off. Instead, he went after me and the information, so I decided to divert his attention to the safe-deposit box. And he fell for it. If you remember, one of Ruffino’s henchmen got to the box and opened it before Eve could get there.”
“What was in the box?”
“A bunch of garbled reports about the school building site. I hoped that if Eve retrieved them from the box first, she would turn them over to authorities and someone there would take a closer look. That’s what all of this has been about—trying to get law enforcement to figure out all this on their own. I was trying to provide hints.”
She gave up on the rest of breakfast and pushed it aside. “A direct statement would have been much more helpful,” she said.
“Maybe. But I think my way was safer.”
He would. She was beginning to see that once Dane Trask fixed on an idea, he was reluctant to shift his focus. That kind of determination may have served him well in the military, and even in his career, but it had complicated the Ranger Brigade’s investigation in all kinds of ways.
“So you left the pictures and video at the mine?” she prompted.
“There’s a flash drive with the information hidden in the mine tunnel. Near where they were storing the heroin. But it’s miles from here. We need a car.”
“No,” she said. “First, we need a plan.”
“I have a plan,” he said. “We go to the mine, retrieve the flash drive, I give it to you and you give it to the Rangers. I continue to lay low until the people responsible for all this are arrested.”
“You make it sound so simple,” she said. “Do you have paper and something to write with?”
“Why?”
“If you want my help, you’re going to have to humor me,” she said. “I think better on paper.”
He shoved to his feet, went and dug around in a large backpack and returned with a spiral notebook and a pencil. “Don’t make this more complicated than it needs to be,” he said.
“Says the man who, instead of coming right out and reporting illegal activities when he had the chance, wrecked his truck, abandoned his life and instigated a seven-week manhunt.”
Dane glared at her and she glared right back. “Don’t talk to me about complicated,” she said. “We’re going to do this right, and in a way that keeps both of us as safe as possible.”
She opened the notebook to a fresh sheet of paper. “We need to establish our objective, then list the steps we have to take to get there,” she said. “Then we can think about possible obstacles and how to overcome them. We may have to make adjustments in the field, but this will give us a good start.” She wrote “Objective,” “Steps” and “Obstacles” on the paper. “I’m surprised you didn’t think of this before. You’re an engineer.”
“I had a plan,” he said again.
“Your plan was suffering from tunnel vision.” And maybe a lack of awareness of how other people—namely TDC—were likely to act.
“Do they teach this in the law enforcement academy?” he asked.
“No. Foster care.”
He frowned. “You were in foster care?”
“After my parents died. There was a class on ‘life skills’ that was supposed to help us once we aged out of the system at eighteen and were on our own. For most kids, it was like being thrown into the deep end of the pool without knowing how to swim. They either figured out really quick how to keep their head above water or they didn’t. Someone in the local organization decided to give us classes in things like budgeting, how to handle money, things like that. One day they had a woman come in and talk about goal setting and planning. It struck a chord with me.”
“What was your plan?” he asked.
“My plan for what?”
“For your life?”
Faith pretended to focus on the page, drawing neat lines. “I knew I needed an education. I had a little money my parents had left me and I started looking for scholarships. After I graduated, I went into the police academy then got a job with the Montrose County Sheriff’s Office. It worked out.”
“That’s your career plan. What about the rest of it?” He was closer now, their thighs almost touching as they bent over the notebook. “Life isn’t all about work.”
“Maybe I’m a person who prefers to focus on one thing at a time.” She traced her pencil over and over the words she had written.
“You’re not the kind of woman who has to be alone unless you want to be,” he said. “I’m not saying that’s not a good option for some people, but what you said earlier, about the way I’ve been living sounding lonely, made me think you spoke from experience.”
“Are you saying it’s my fault if I’m not in a relationship?” She told herself she should look at him, to read the emotion behind his words, but the minute she raised her eyes to meet his, she was sure she had made a mistake. The wanting in his expression left her stripped bare. It wasn’t raw lust—though desire was definitely part of it—but rather, a sense of being on the outside, wanting badly to be let in. An emotion that was as familiar to her as breathing.
“I’m not going to pretend I know what’s going on in your head,” he said. “That’s a different kind of violation none of us needs. But when I look at you, I see a smart, attractive, strong woman. The kind of person who would be a real partner in a relationship. Whenever I go through stretches where I’m alone—like now—it’s always because I’m protecting myself from hurt or the effort it takes to be with someone, or frustration at the way things haven’t worked out before.” He shrugged. “You’re not me, but I feel we might have a few things in common.”
Was he coming on to her? Personal confession as flirting? She looked away. No, this was something else. As if...as if he truly cared and wanted to help her. That was ridiculous, considering he’d known her less than twenty-four hours, and for much of that they had been adversaries.
Except, she felt that kind of a connection to him, too. Yes, he was stubborn and had caused her and her fellow officers no end of trouble with his wrong-headed approach to the illegal activities he had—allegedly—uncovered. But she believed he had been trying to do the right thing. And she knew all about protecting her emotions and avoiding complications in her life. It was no secret foster kids had trust issues. It sounded like Dane did, too.
“Maybe we have some things in common,” she said. “That should help us work well together. So let’s get started on our plan.” And stop talking about personal issues. She wanted to focus on facts and strategies, and not think about the crazy emotions he was making her feel.