Buried Secrets. Evelyn Vaughn

scooped the keys off of her desk and opened the cell door.

      When he walked by her, his sleeve brushed her shoulder, clean and warm. She took a deep breath, inhaling a scent she’d gone without too long.

      Alive. Safe.

      But that made no more sense than zombies. Jo didn’t look to others for her safety. Never again. That’s why she wore a badge, carried a gun. That’s why she lived alone.

      She said, “You’re welcome.”

      Lorenzo groaned when he realized why Fred was taking off his shoe. He turned back to her as a distraction, which was just as well since she had to return his wallet, his car keys, his mobile phone, his automatic pistol.

      “Look,” he said, sliding a card out of his wallet. It read Lorenzo and Company, Private Investigation, with a P.O. box in Chicago, phone numbers and Internet addresses. “Clearly you don’t want to think about it, much less talk, and hell—that’s your call. But unlike a lot of blind schmucks, you know. You’ve seen what’s out there. Whether you’re admitting it or not, it’s still there. Maybe you can help. Think about it.”

      He pressed the card into her hand, his own hand solid and warm around hers. It made Jo wonder when the last time was that someone had touched her, even that briefly, that casually. Christmas with her brothers, she guessed.

      Lorenzo paid his fine, pocketed the nearly $900 he had left over, and departed the jail like he was shrugging off an unnecessary chore. The man had lost a lot of money and a couple hours’ drive…. On a chore?

      Now that he was gone—mere moments after the door shut—Jo didn’t feel safe at all. She felt like a doctored tooth as the Novocain wore off. Tingly. Worried.

      Braced against certain pain—the downside of feeling alive again.

      “Don’t want to think about what?” asked Fred, halfway through his platter of soggy pancakes.

      “Whatever I don’t want to talk about.” Jo heard an engine purr to life. She waited a moment and then, against her better judgment, stepped into the narrow street to watch a shiny black sports car skim off into the scrub-dotted hills toward Almanuevo, the Sedona of West Texas.

      The air felt strangely warm for this early in the morning. Especially for March. Especially for Spur. Overhead, a hawk swooped by.

      Whether you’re admitting it or not, it’s still there, the private investigator had said.

      “No, it’s not,” murmured Jo beneath her breath. “It’s dead. I killed it.”

      But the stranger had said the magic word, help. That word had power Jo might never understand. So she braced herself—and went back into the jail to ask Fred if he’d heard anything at all about missing persons in Almanuevo.

      Jo James lived with two mongrel dogs in a little ranch house five miles outside the tiny town of Spur. She had big windows, on every side a view of open desert, and she liked it that way. Ever since the cave-in, she’d chosen wide-open spaces over small, enclosed areas. She liked being able to see sky forever, feeling that nobody could sneak up on her.

      Or so she’d thought, until meeting Zack Lorenzo this morning. Zombies?

      She’d told herself she only had to guard against human intrusion. Dangers that could be repelled with guns, fists, dogs—the kind that stayed away from little places like Spur. Now, as she watched the waning moon rise over her backyard, she noticed herself shivering—from more than the night air. That damned detective had stripped away her illusion of safety.

      According to Fred, a couple of folks in Almanuevo had vanished. Enough that the town’s mayor worried about bad press, and an increasing number of their New Age tourists were talking about UFO abductions, which was almost as crazy as…

      As the things she’d seen. Or thought she’d seen.

      Jo whistled for the dogs. As soon as they loped inside, she shut and locked the back door. It was the first time she’d locked her door since her older brother’s visit. He was a security specialist and had insisted on it last Christmas. She loaded the .22 rifle that usually hung in her sparsely furnished living room. After she fixed some chocolate milk she headed back to her bedroom, and made sure to take her revolver and loop the holster on the bedpost of her twin-size bed.

      Dogs or not, the house seemed achingly empty all of a sudden. She felt her isolation in her veins…in her lungs.

      A Navajo medicine blanket covered the wall behind her bed, and an octagonal god’s-eye, strung from yarn and sticks, hung to face the window. The remaining wall space was dotted with framed pictures, mostly of relatives. Only on nights like this did Jo notice how far away her family lived, how few friends she’d made since taking the job in Spur…how many years ago?

      Maybe that had been her plan.

      Her younger brother, Max, was a photojournalist, so she had pictures of her grandparents and her late parents, her aunts and uncles, her older brother, Lee. She had more recent pictures of herself, not quite thirty, looking decidedly average beside her vivacious cousins in East Texas. She had pictures of her dogs, even—of every person who’d ever held importance in her life…except one man.

      Except Diego.

      Jo told herself not to think of Diego. People died. She’d gone on without him and was doing fine by herself.

      She drank the milk and put the empty glass on the barrel that was her night table, rather than carry it back out to the kitchen—but not because she was afraid. Then she turned off the light and tried to sleep. She had work in the morning. She almost always worked, despite the town council’s worries over all the vacation time and sick time she’d been accumulating. And she prided herself in not frightening easily. She’d faced everything from rabid dogs to armed robbers, and she’d defeated them all. She’d even faced—

      No. After all this time, she wouldn’t let one bigmouthed detective make her believe in monsters.

      But tonight the bed seemed awfully empty, too. Small.

      Despite the moonlight glowing through her windows, Jo closed her eyes and tried to sleep.

      In her dream, she saw Diego and jerked awake with a sharp, real breath. Too real. She preferred the half life she’d been living since she moved here; it hurt less. She preferred the Novocain.

      But another attempt at sleep—another gasped return to consciousness—confirmed that the numbness had worn off at just about the same time Zack Lorenzo opened his big mouth.

      “Damn it,” Jo whispered brokenly, sitting up in bed so that her Navajo blankets slid to her waist, dragging her hands through her short hair. She wouldn’t dream of him again. Not tonight. Not now. Not Diego.

      It hadn’t even been real. Except for him being dead.

      But the next morning’s rising sun found Jo sitting at her kitchen table, dizzy from hours of fighting the dreams that haunted her each time she closed her eyes. Both Butch and Sundance lay at her feet, eyeing her with mutual doggy concern.

      She glared blearily at Zack Lorenzo’s business card, on the table in front of her. He’d somehow robbed her of her sense of safety. Business hours or not, Jo meant to take it back.

      She picked up the phone.

      Chapter 2

      Zack was in Hell—Hell with Formica countertops, contoured bedspreads and a window air conditioner that made the carpet smell like wet socks. Almanuevo didn’t rate a Holiday Inn, much less a Hilton. Unless he stayed in a bed-and-breakfast or tourist resort, he was left with the Alpha Inn, a “motor hotel” of unparalleled luxury—if you lived in the freaking 1950s.

      He still stayed awake most of the night, for his own reasons. But even though he was awake ungodly early, taking notes at the pink “kitchenette” table, Zack swore when his mobile phone rang out its programmed Journey riff. It didn’t matter if he was awake or not.