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There was more, a detailed description of the Reis and their lives. But Jefferson’s voice stumbled to a halt. Papers fluttered to the floor. As his gaze lifted to the portrait over the mantel, he recited the only line that mattered in a lifeless voice, “‘It has been determined there could be no survivors.’”
No survivors. The words were a cry in his mind. Words that made no sense. Trying to find sanity in it, he read his own words again. A promise only Marissa would know.
But a part of him couldn’t comprehend or separate truth from fiction. Was it a charade? A ghoulish trick? Or was it real?
If it was real, why was it assumed Marissa had been on the plane? If it wasn’t she who had sent the letter, then who?
His thoughts were a whirligig, going ’round and ’round, always ending in the same place, the same thought, the same denial. No one but Marissa could have sent the letter. It had to be. It must be. For, if she hadn’t, it would mean she was dead.
“No!” Jefferson refused to believe. “I would know. The world wouldn’t feel right without Marissa.”
But how could he be sure? How could he know he wasn’t persuading himself to believe what he needed to believe?
“Satan!” The name was spoken without thought or conscious volition. But as he heard it, Jefferson knew it was the way. Rigid as stone, the dog had watched. Now he came to attention, awaiting the command that always followed his name spoken in that tone. Jefferson smiled, a humorless tilt of his lips. Recognizing the stance, he gave the expected command. “Stay.”
Certain Satan would obey, he returned to his bedroom. Opening the drawer by the bedside table, he drew out a scarf. A square of silk filled with memories.
Marissa’s scarf. A memento of a day never forgotten.
How many times had he seen her wear it? How often had he thought how pretty the bright color was lying against her nape, holding back her dark hair? Why, when he wanted to so badly, had he never dared fling it away to wrap himself in the spill of silken locks?
How could her perfume linger so long, a reminder of the day he’d lived the dream he hadn’t dared?
“The day I made love to Marissa.”
As the floodgates opened, memories he’d never allowed himself to dwell on came rushing in wistful vignettes….
Marissa riding as only Marissa could, her body moving in perfect harmony with the horse.
Marissa with a rifle in her hand, the dedicated hunter who could track anything, but could never pull the trigger.
Marissa picking an orchid to celebrate sighting an eagle.
Marissa that last day. Sad, solemn, walking through sunlight and shadow to come to him. The wistful woman he’d loved for longer than he would admit, wanting him, as he’d wanted her.
Marissa, the innocent, teaching him what love should be. Wishing he couldn’t forget her, and that they would meet again. Leaving with a wish unspoken, a secret he would never know.
Marissa, her hand raised in farewell, disappearing in the blinding furor of a storm.
“Dear God.” Jefferson clutched the scarf. Every moment he’d locked away in the back of his mind was as fresh, as real as the day it happened. Though he truly couldn’t forget on a subconscious level, he’d thought time had eased the bittersweet ache of mingled pain and joy. Proof in point, the portrait of Marissa hanging over the cabin’s single fireplace.
The painting had been a satisfying exercise, one he believed had leeched away regrets, pain, longing.
“Fool.” It would never end. Cristal’s shot in the dark was more intuitive than he’d let himself admit. No matter the games he played, no matter how deeply he hid his head in the sand, what he felt for Marissa was too vibrant to tame into memory.
As the guilt that plagued him for his part in sending his brother Adams to prison, never truly eased. Guilt that ruled and changed his life. Because of his teenage folly and what it had taken from Adams, he was never quite at home with his own family. His peace and refuge was the swamp. Then came the hurt of losing Marissa, and even the swamp was no longer a place of peace.
“Losing her made it all too…” Jefferson didn’t have the right word. Nothing was quite enough. Lashes drifting briefly to his cheeks, he stood remembering regret, helplessness. Pain.
“Too much,” he whispered, understanding at last. He’d never analyzed the truth of why he’d fled the lowcountry the second time. He knew now it had been because of a morass of unresolved guilt and loss and grief. Arizona offered solitude, a different sort of peace. Here there was no one to hurt. No one to lose. No one he might fail. “Until now,” he said softly. “If this is Marissa.”
It was. He knew it in his very soul. But an expert second opinion wouldn’t hurt. “Come, Satan.”
With a surge of impatience, he barely waited for the dog to stand obediently by his side. Bending down, he held the scarf before the sensitive black nose. “Fetch.”
The Doberman bounded away. Jefferson had barely moved to the doorway, when Satan returned. The page from a tablet was clasped in his mouth. Taking it from the sharp teeth, praising the dog with a stroking touch, Jefferson knew Satan’s instincts, and his, had been vindicated. The scent that lingered on the scarf and the message was the same.
Marissa was alive.
Stunned, his mind a morass of grief and relief—relief that she was alive, grief for all she’d been through, all she’d lost—he couldn’t think. Like a sleepwalker, he returned to the table and sat down. How long he sat there, staring up at Marissa’s portrait, he would never know. Time had no meaning. Nothing mattered but that Marissa was alive.
“Why contact me, sweetheart? Why in such troubled times?” The sound of his own voice was a wake-up call. Suddenly, as with a man who lived by his wits, his mind was keen, perceptive, and considering each point and question. The most important was answered by his own promise. This was more than the call of grief.
If ever you need me… “I’ll come for you,” he finished. A promise recalled, but deliberately left unsaid.
Marissa was alive. Given the subterfuge of the message, she was in danger. She needed help. She needed Jefferson Cade. “But where are you, sweetheart? What clue did you…” His voice stumbled as he remembered the scrap of newspaper falling to the floor. Instinct told him he would find the answers there.
Minutes later, Jefferson was on the telephone that had gathered dust during his tenure at the Broken Spur. In rare impatience, he paced back and forth as far as the cord would allow while he waited for his call to be put through.
When Jericho Rivers, sheriff of Belle Terre, responded, Jefferson spoke tersely. “I’m coming to the lowcountry, to Belle Terre. I need to meet with you and Yancey Hamilton.”
Jericho was known for his instincts and Jefferson was grateful for them now. Perhaps it was his tone, that he had called the sheriff rather than his own brothers, or simply that he was returning to Belle Terre, but for whatever reason, the sheriff only asked the particulars—when, where, how soon—and no more.
One step had been taken, leaving two more in the form of local calls. One to Sandy Gannon that would elicit no more questions than the call to Jericho. Jefferson trusted both men to do what was needed, when, and for however long.
The final call was to the airlines. The first stage of his arrangements was complete when he sat before a fireplace without fire. A letter had changed his brother Lincoln’s life. Now a letter had done the same for his. Laying a hand on the Doberman’s dark head, he muttered, “Sandy’s sending someone to look after the ranch and you. But I’ll be back, Satan. I don’t know when, or what will have changed, but I’ll be back.”
On a windswept plain, a solitary woman walked through a waking world. Wind tore at her clothes and tangled in her hair, but she didn’t notice. Had she noticed, she wouldn’t care.
Once she’d been at home and happy in this sparsely populated land. A place of towering mountains and endless deserts, of sprawling plains and rocky coastlines. Once she’d loved the still beauty of wild places sheltered from the wind. Once she’d waited in wonder for that moment when birdsong heralded the incipient day, then fell silent in the breathless trembling time when the sun lifted above distant, wind-scoured hills and bathed the world in a shower of light.
Once she’d loved so many things about this land. Now as she walked, cloaked in a mantle of solitude, waiting for another day that would be no more to her than simply another day, her sense of aloneness intensified. There was no beauty for her grief-stricken eyes. No serenity in a serene world. Not for her.
Never again for Marissa Claire Alexandre Rei in this land called Silver by the first conquistadores.
“Argentina,” she whispered as she paused in this sleepless hour, to stare at an untamed plain that in the half light had no beginning, no end. “A land of grief and loss.”
A hand closed over her shoulder, its warmth driving away the chill of the wind. “Are you all right, little Rissa?”
His voice was deep and quiet, his English excellent and only a little accented by the speech patterns of Spanish, his first language. His touch hadn’t startled her. Before he’d spoken, she’d known he had come to join her. “I’m fine, Juan.” Her brown eyes, turned black in the paling of dawn, met eyes as black. “Fine.”
“Who do you convince, querida?” he asked gently as his hand moved from her shoulder. “Yourself, or me?”
She laughed, a bleak sound. “Obviously no one.”
“You walk now because you don’t sleep,” Juan suggested, moving with her as she began to walk again. “Not because you love the land at dawn as you once did.”
Marissa didn’t speak. She didn’t look at this man she’d known all her life. The first to take her up on a horse, when he was in his teens and she was five. He was the first to instill in her a love of horses and riding. Juan Elia was a modern-day gaucho. A true descendant of Argentina’s famed, wandering horsemen. With the coming of the estancias, the ranches, the wandering had ceased. Gauchos had settled down to work for the families of the estancias, as the Elia family had worked for countless years for her father’s family. The life of the gaucho had changed, but the indomitable spirit hadn’t been lost, nor the horsemanship.
Nor the loyalty that kept him here in a secret camp on the plain, rather than at home with his wife and three-year-old son.
“It isn’t the same,” she answered at last. “Nothing is as it was in the days when you brought me here as a young girl. When we rode like Cossacks over the plain.”
“In the days when you wanted to be a real gaucho and wander the land?” Juan chuckled. “Before your mother and father sent you to the United States to become a Southern lady.”
“Does growing up tarnish everything, Juan?”
He stopped her then. A touch at her cheek turned her to him. The sun was just lifting over the crest of a hill, in the sudden sliver of light his Native American heritage was visible in a face that had gown more handsome with time. “Death and guilt have tarnished this land for you. Deaths you couldn’t prevent. Guilt you shouldn’t bear.”
“I was supposed to be on that plane.”
“But, because of a sick child, my child, you weren’t. You didn’t send your mother and your father and your husband to their deaths, querida. Whoever planted the bomb did that.”
“Because the plane disappeared off radar so abruptly doesn’t mean it was a bomb.” Marissa didn’t want to believe explosives had blasted her husband’s plane from the sky. Believing would lay the blame even more irrevocably at her door.
“I know,” Juan said adamantly. “Just as I know who.” Softly, he added, “As I know why.”
“No.” Marissa tried to turn away. Juan wouldn’t let her.
“This is no more your fault than any of the rest. You were married to a man more than twice your age. If love was lacking, loyalty was not. You have no reason to accuse yourself.
“If a man of power covets all your husband has, his business, his land, his wife, the sin isn’t yours. If he tries to coerce your husband to become a part of something evil, it isn’t your fault. If this man decrees all you love and you must be punished for being honorable and loyal to the principles of a lifetime, it isn’t your dishonor. If he carries out his threat in a way most horrible, the crime is his, not yours.
“My child lives because of your goodness. Your family died at the hand of an evil man. There is no connection.”
“That a bomb caused the crash was a passing speculation, dismissed as quickly,” Marissa reminded him.
“Yes,” Juan admitted. “But there was the threat. And all who knew have been silenced. Or so he believes.”
“Then, if Menendez should discover I’m alive, that would mean he would also have discovered you’ve hidden me and given me shelter. What more proof would he need to suspect you know everything? Then, my dear friend, your life would be at risk, as well.” Fear trembled in her voice for this trusted man who was more like a cherished brother than a friend.
“No, querida,” Juan soothed. “To the world, I am merely a gaucho who lived and worked on your father’s estancia. Who would suspect an enduring friendship begun between a girl of five and a boy of sixteen? Who would believe such a grand lady as Señora Rei helped to bring my long-awaited first child into the world. Or that the name he bears is in her honor?”
“But if they should…”
“You will be gone from here long before that could happen. And when you’re gone, we’ll be as we were. My Marta, Alejandro, and I,” he promised. “And you, Rissa? You will be safe.”
Marissa brushed a forearm across her brow as if she would shield eyes that had known too many tears. “Will Jefferson come? After so long will he remember a promise? Will he care?”
“If he is even half the man you spoke of, he will remember, he will care, and he will come.”
“We can’t be sure he got a message passed through so many hands. If he did, was it too cryptic? The article on the back of the newspaper may mean nothing to him. He might not read it.”
“He will read it, querida. He will read each word over and over again. Because he knows he must understand, he won’t stop until he does. He will see the marks and make words of them. Then, he will come to the estancia, and Marta will do the rest.”
“After that can you be safe, Juan? You or your family?”
“Yes,” he assured her as he smiled at a secret thought.
We will be safe and you, Marissa, will be in the arms of the man you love, at last.
Two
“What the hell is this about?”
If Jefferson expected an answer, the buffeting thunder of the helicopter would have made it incomprehensible. With it, the pilot who had introduced himself as Rick Cahill and a friend of Jericho Rivers’s, though courteous and efficient, was closemouthed. His eyes, cold steel, never wavered from the sky.
As he’d watched the helicopter fly fast and low through the canyon at dawn, Jefferson had known it was in the hands of an expert. When the monstrous machine touched down as gently as a dragonfly, he suspected the pilot could fly anything, anywhere.
“With his eyes closed.” The growled assessment drew the pilot’s attention. A riveting gaze turned. A lifted brow as black as shorn, curling hair, was the only variant in a calm expression.
Leaving his silence unbroken, Jefferson answered the question in those keen eyes with a shrug and looked away. But not before he wondered again at the strange turn of events.
Within hours of opening Marissa’s cryptic message, his ordered life had spiraled into quiet chaos. Plans made, airline reservations secured, the ranch bedded down for the night, he’d been packing a duffel when the telephone rang. Alarmed, he’d answered abruptly. The caller’s voice was familiar, stunned recognition came with Billy Blackhawk’s official preamble and statement of the purpose of his call. Though the sheriff of Silverton was far from a stranger, Jefferson would have questioned the message he’d relayed, were it not for his mention of Jericho.
Even then, he’d found it difficult to forego questions. But on the strength of Jericho’s name and Billy Blackhawk’s reputation, he had. Billy’s promise that everything would be explained when he arrived at an undisclosed destination didn’t ease his wariness. An astute judgment warned that questioning Rick Cahill would be useless. Preserving the silence between them, Jefferson stared out the window. That the helicopter was capable of astonishing speeds was evident. As they flew toward the sun and deeper into the day, one color of the earth segued into another in the blink of an eye.
When the chopper landed on an isolated airfield, Jefferson assumed it was to refuel. Instead, Cahill tossed the duffel to the tarmac, signaled his passenger should follow, and climbed from the cockpit.
In a ground-eating jog, Cahill approached the hangar. With a scarred hand, he signaled Jefferson to wait while he entered a small door and disappeared inside. Sooner than anticipated, the hangar doors rumbled open, and Cahill stepped out, a grin turning the steel of his eyes to smoke. “We made it.”
“Made what?” Jefferson asked as he joined Cahill.
“This destination, undisturbed. Which we hope means no one traced the letter to you or the Broken Spur.”
“Undisturbed.” Blue eyes narrowed. “By whom? Why?”
Cahill’s grin faded. “The same people who shot Paulo Rei’s plane out of the sky. Why can be better answered when we reach our final destination.”
Shuddering in renewed horror, Jefferson kept silent.
“The crew will be back shortly. To return the chopper to its owner, now that its maintenance is finished.” Another grin ghosted over the pilot’s lips. “We should be gone before then.”
“In that.” Jefferson spoke of a small jet. “Which, I suppose, has been sent for maintenance that will never take place.”
“Actually, the jet is for sale. The prospective buyer has taken it for a test flight and evaluation.”
Jefferson nodded. “Too bad he isn’t going to buy.”
“Yeah.” Respect gleamed in Cahill’s eyes.
In the air, Rick Cahill was less guarded, but just as intent. While the jet streaked toward the east and a clandestine meeting, Jefferson thought of a plane the world assumed Marissa was aboard. And that Rick claimed had been blasted from the sky.
Questions teemed in Jefferson’s mind. They went unvoiced. When the jet was traded for another helicopter, time zones had been crossed and daylight had burned away like a candle. But the terrain was green and mountainous now. He needed no answers to know this was the last of a convoluted journey.
Rick flew with the same skill and concentration, skimming through mountain passes as he followed the snaking path of a river. At a waterfall he banked and climbed, then dropped into a valley crisscrossed by creeks and a river filled by another waterfall. The tin roofs of two buildings gleamed in the sun. The helicopter hovered, then set down with an ease that recalled the canyon landing.
Jericho was there, flanked by Simon McKinzie whom Jefferson had met only once. Tall and massive, a lean Goliath whose mix of French and Native American heritage was evident in his chiseled features and gleaming black hair, the sheriff should have dwarfed the older man. But on the strength of that single meeting at Jericho’s wedding, Jefferson had discovered no one could overshadow the silver-haired, bull-shouldered McKinzie. A man who wore the mantle of honor and authority as naturally as most men wore their own skins.
