Buried Secrets. Evelyn Vaughn

remember the last time she’d thought about a man and a bed in the same moment…Diego, she guessed. She wasn’t sure she appreciated the awareness that fluttered deep in her stomach. She didn’t trust the sharpness of her breath. It felt dangerous in its own right.

      Was it possible that she could ever handle dangerous again?

      Lorenzo rose from the bed and came back to the table. She took another deep breath as he passed her, big and warm and solid. Some risks were probably better than others. And he didn’t feel dangerous, just the awareness of him did.

      Zack Lorenzo still felt remarkably safe, for a stranger.

      When he sat on his plastic chair and began scribbling, she waited for him to glance up at her, wanting to see his eyes again. She couldn’t remember what color the detective’s eyes were. He seemed to be avoiding her gaze deliberately.

      “I don’t think I even used the word zombies, the reporter did,” Jo admitted, reaching for the partially eaten piece of pie he’d pushed away from him earlier. He’d offered it once, after all. And he didn’t seem to want it. “I could’ve been delirious.”

      “Yeah,” he muttered through his note-taking. “Right. You sound like the real flighty type.”

      Since he said that sarcastically, she took it as a compliment. She also took a bite of pie, and it tasted wonderful, sweet and syrupy. She actually ventured a question. On the off chance they were both sane, after all. “But zombies are from Haiti, right? Or maybe Louisiana. Not the southwest.”

      “Uh-huh,” Lorenzo agreed, still scribbling. When he finally looked up, it was all business. Business with deep, brown-green eyes. “There’s theories about whether real zombies were ever dead or maybe just drugged. Some scholarly types even talk about philosophical zombies…living people who just go through the motions, without thinking anymore, you know? But you’re right. None of that seems to fit with this Tio guy you described. Wasn’t Tio one of the Jackson 5?”

      “That was Tito,” she told him, pleased. Who else listened to old ’70s music, anymore?

      Lorenzo rolled his eyes. “Well, that’s a relief. So think back. Could he have been into voodoo?”

      She swallowed another bite of pie and decided to at least pretend this was possible. Why not err on that side, for once? “Nope. If anything, it was something like Santeria.”

      Lorenzo blinked at her. “You couldn’t have mentioned this earlier in the story?”

      It impressed her that he knew what Santeria, a form of Cuban witchcraft, even was. Her grandfather was a scholar of this kind of stuff, but most people… “I’m just guessing. Tio wasn’t Mexican, and I’ve heard that a lot of the Brujas have a bias against mixed bloods.”

      Zack rubbed a hand down his face, then squinted at her. Something about uncertainty on a face as rugged as his looked downright endearing. “Any chance you know someone around here who could tell me more about local Santeria or Brujeria?” He considered that. “Someone relatively sane?”

      Her first urge was to call him crazy. But when she pushed past that urge and thought about it… “Ashley Vanderveer, the nurse practitioner at the Almanuevo clinic.”

      The one where the boy’s body had gone missing.

      “Peachy.” When he saw the question in her face, Lorenzo added, “I already tried her, asking where the corpse wandered off to, but she wouldn’t talk to me. Said I’d have to hurt myself—and that it wasn’t an invitation.”

      Jo laughed. She’d always liked the new nurse…though to be honest, she guessed Ashley wasn’t really new. She’d been running the closest medical facility to Spur for two years now. It was a sign of how strictly Jo had kept to herself, that she’d never pursued that possibility of friendship. “Well, she might talk to me. Or us,” she conceded quickly, at Lorenzo’s widened eyes. Definitely brown-green.

      “Us,” he repeated. Like he didn’t want her to help.

      “You don’t think I can just go home and forget that all this…this whatever’s-going-on is going on, do you?”

      That she could go back to that half life? Sure, it was safe. But that’s all it was. And she’d thought she’d stopped them. On some level she’d really thought…

      He stood. Wow, he was a big guy. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I think. It’s my job, not yours.”

      “Arguable.”

      “This isn’t your jurisdiction. Mayberry is your jurisdiction.” Which was true, sarcasm aside. But Almanuevo wasn’t exactly his jurisdiction either.

      Jo stood, too—not that it made a big difference—and folded her arms. “You’re the one who said I could help.”

      “By telling me your story, in case there’s any connection. You did, and I’m thinking there isn’t.”

      “You also said Ashley won’t talk to you.”

      “Yeah, well maybe I just need to turn on the Lorenzo charm.” When she lifted an eyebrow at him, he looked mildly hurt. “Hey, I can be charming!”

      “Look,” insisted Jo. “I’m still not sure what to believe. But if there’s any connection between those missing persons and what happened at the mine, I am not letting it go until I find out more. I can either work with you, or on my own. Your call.”

      Now he folded his arms. The pose looked impressive on him; probably more than on her. “I don’t want to distract myself baby-sitting you while I’m going after whatever this is, okay?”

      Baby-sitting? Luckily, she felt too good to hit him. He looked so serious—and annoyed—that she grinned instead. “And how many monsters have you blown up, tough guy?”

      It degenerated into a staring contest, which Jo won. Lorenzo’s eyes were a lot easier to resist when he was being this obnoxious. And watching them kept her gaze off his body.

      “Fine,” the detective spat. “Fan-freakin’-tastic. Lemme shower and we’ll go talk to the nurse. Finish the damned pie.”

      That last sounded like an order, so Jo resorted to equal familiarity.

      “You need a shave, too.” She didn’t just feel good, she felt cocky. Alert. Awake, after having been asleep for far, far too long. Willing to try a risk or two—maybe with him.

      Breathing.

      Lorenzo began to move a hand—and not to check his jaw—but lowered it self-consciously before disappearing into the bathroom. He’d probably been raised not to flip off ladies.

      Jo felt more stunned than if he had. She slowly sank back into her chair. The man was wearing a ring. How long had she been out of the dating world, that she hadn’t even looked until now?

      A wedding ring.

      She heard the shower come on in the bathroom and forced herself not to think about a big, swarthy, naked Zack Lorenzo. Wet. She tried not to look at the shadowy, rumpled bed.

      The man was married. Maybe to the Italian girl pictured in his wallet. Some risks, you couldn’t pay her to take.

      Jo told herself that it didn’t matter; they were investigating missing persons, not flirting. In fact, it was probably better that he was married. Safer. It meant she could stay casual with him. It meant she didn’t have to worry about messy romantic complications. The last man she’d been interested in had died and then tried to kill her. In that order.

      For the first time in years, she let herself admit that.

      But when she phoned Deputy Fred, to let him know she’d be out the rest of the day, Jo felt disappointment dull the bright edge that her life had taken on a few minutes earlier. Because of a man. One she’d barely even been attracted to.

      It pissed her off.

      Good thing she had something