A Man of His Word. Merline Lovelace

to see the ruins?”

      “If we don’t get any more storms like last night’s, the reservoir should empty down to the river level by noon tomorrow. The cave that contains the ruins is some fifty feet above the riverbed. I calculate the village will start to emerge at approximately 9:24.”

      “Nine twenty-four? Not 9:23, huh? I could probably use that extra minute.”

      He didn’t appear to appreciate her feeble attempt at humor. “I’m an engineer. Precision ranks right up there with timeliness in our book. And safety.” He leveled her a sardonic look. “Try not to drive off any more cliffs, Ms. Scott.”

      “Sydney,” she reminded him, shrugging off the sarcasm as her mind whirled. Thinking of the exterior scenes she wanted to shoot this afternoon and the sequencing for tomorrow’s all-important emergence, she only half absorbed Reece’s deep voice.

      “We’ve detected a stress fracture on the right lower quadrant of the dam’s interior. Depending on my exterior damage assessment, we may have to blast some of the old section and pour new concrete. Check in with me each morning before you come out to the site, and I’ll let you know the status and whether I want you in the restricted area.”

      That got her attention.

      “Each morning?” she yelped. “What happened to your engineering precision here? I need a little more notice than that to plan my daily takes.”

      “Call me the night before, then. That’s the best I can do until we complete the damage assessment.”

      “Okay, okay. Give me your number. My little black book with all my contacts is at the bottom of the gorge right now.”

      Along with all her working files. Thank goodness she always kept complete electronic records of her projects on her laptop, which she’d left back at the motel. She patted her pockets, searching for a pencil before borrowing one from the holder on the desk. Like all the others in the round holder, it was sharpened to a razor tip—another engineering quirk, she guessed.

      “You can reach me at the office, on my mobile, or at the Lone Eagle Motel.”

      Sydney scribbled down the numbers as he reeled them off. “That’s where we’re staying, too.”

      “I know.”

      The dry response brought her head up.

      “Chalo Canyon’s a small town, Ms. Scott…Sydney. That’s the only motel in town.”

      She was well aware of that fact. She was also aware, as well, of the slight chill in his voice. She had a good idea what had caused it.

      “And?” she asked coolly.

      His broad shoulders lifted in a shrug. “And people in small towns like to talk, even to strangers. I’ve been hearing about your return to the Chalo Canyon for several weeks now.”

      “About my departure from said canyon ten years ago, you mean?”

      He leaned back, his long legs sprawled under the desk. The chair squeaked with his weight as he regarded her through eyes framed by ridiculously thick black lashes.

      “That, too.”

      Sydney had come a long way from the hopelessly romantic nineteen-year-old. She wasn’t running away this time, from Sebastian or Jamie or herself. Nor, she decided grimly, from this chief engineer.

      “Listen, Mr. Henderson…”

      “Reece.”

      “Listen, Reece. What happened ten years ago is, if you’ll excuse the lame pun, water over the dam. Something I’d like very much to forget.”

      “Folks around here seem to want to remember it.”

      “That’s their problem, not mine.” She leaned forward, jabbing the air with the pencil to emphasize her point. “And even though it’s none of your business, I’ll tell you that the only reason I came back to Chalo Canyon is to capture the ruins on videotape. I started the project a decade ago. This time I intend to finish it.”

      He studied her through hooded eyes. “Why is this particular project so important to you that you’d spend ten years planning it?”

      Sydney forced down the lump that tried to climb into her throat. Her father’s death was too recent, the scar still too raw, to talk about it with strangers.

      “I’m a documentarian,” she said with a tight edge to her voice. “Like you, I take great pride in my work. By themselves, the ruins emerging from their long sleep make a good story. Supplemented with historical background material on the Anasazi and the legend of the Weeping Woman of Chalo Canyon, I can craft a good story into a great one.”

      She pushed to her feet.

      “Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to hitch a ride back to town. The rest of my crew is supposed to arrive around noon, and I want to be ready to roll as soon as they get here.”

      It was, Reece decided as he watched her drive off with one of his underlings, an impressive performance.

      He might even have believed her if he hadn’t been sitting front row, center stage when she made her grand entrance at the Lone Eagle Café some eight hours later.

      Chapter 3

      L ike the clientele it catered to, the Lone Eagle Café made no pretensions to elegance. Most of its business came from locals, the rest from pleasure boaters and fishermen who passed through town on their way to or from excursions on the vast man-made lake behind the dam. Occasionally work crews hunkered in and made the motel and café their headquarters during visits to the hydroelectric plant powered by the Chalo River.

      Reece had stayed at the motel during his initial site survey last winter and again during the preplanning phase of the dam’s inspection and repair a few months ago. He’d returned three weeks ago to supervise the project itself. By now he pretty well knew the café’s menu by heart, and had settled on the rib-eye steak and pinto beans as his standard fare.

      The beef came from Sebastian Chavez’s spread north of town, or so he’d been told by the friendly, broad-hipped Lula Jenkins, who, along with her sister, Martha, co-owned and operated the Lone Eagle Motel and Café. The pinto beans, Lula had advised, were grown on a local farm irrigated by water from the Chalo River Reservoir.

      “And if you want to keep on shoveling in these beans,” she reminded Reece as she plunked his over-flowing plate down in front of him, “you’d better see that you get that reservoir filled in time for the fall planting.”

      “Yes, ma’am.”

      “Folks hereabouts depend on that water. Depend on the revenues from boaters and fishermen, too.”

      “I know.”

      Inviting herself to join him, Lula eased her comfortable bulk into the chair opposite Reece’s. Her heavy-lidded brown eyes, evidence of the Native American heritage shared by so many in this region, drilled him from across the green-and-white-checkered plastic tablecloth.

      “How long will it take to restock the reservoir with fish after you boys get done messing with the dam?”

      Reece’s nostrils twitched at the tantalizing aroma rising from his steak. He hadn’t eaten since his hurried breakfast of diced-ham-and-egg burritos, wolfed down during the drive out to the dam just after dawn this morning. Despite the rumbling in his stomach, however, he knew his dinner would have to wait a while longer. Lula’s question wasn’t an idle one. It echoed the worries of a small town that depended on the Chalo River Reservoir for its livelihood.

      Reece had prepared detailed environmental-and economic-impact assessments as part of his prep work for the repair project. He’d also conducted a series of meetings with local business and property owners to walk concerned parties through the process, step by step. Slides and briefings didn’t carry quite the same impact for the people involved as seeing their water supply disappear