Cowboy Secrets. Alice Sharpe

still wearing Pike’s jacket, which, while way too big for her, looked sexy as hell on her lithe body. Her legs in the jeans and boots were shapely, tantalizing, and just to prove how long this day was getting, he found himself wishing the two of them were on an island somewhere, on a beach, lots of bare skin and warm sunshine...

      “She’s in here,” a nurse said and the fantasy died a timely death.

      Tess was an elfin-like girl with huge violet eyes and sun-streaked short blond hair. She could be very friendly and sweet or she could be testy and secretive, but the last two days were the only time Pike had seen her scared and he hated it.

      Sierra immediately leaned over Tess and hugged her, then smoothed her hair away from her face. Tess looked pale and wasted and about ten years old instead of eighteen. Pike took her hand and squeezed it.

      “I’m sorry I messed up,” Tess said. Her voice was even more hoarse than it had been and her nose was red.

      “Don’t worry about it,” Sierra and Pike said in unison.

      “I take Dad’s pills sometimes, but they must be different.”

      Pike bit back recrimination. They could talk about being stupid on another day.

      Sierra lowered her voice. “Tess, sweetheart, what’s going on?” she asked gently. “What’s the matter?”

      Pike scooted a chair close so she could sit down. He stood on the other side of the bed.

      Tess’s eyes filled with tears and she shook her head.

      “Start with where you went when you left your dad and Mona’s place,” Pike suggested.

      “Danny,” she said.

      “Danny? You mean you ran off with that guy you met last summer?” Sierra asked.

      Tess nodded.

      There was a look on Sierra’s face and a tone to the way she’d said “Danny” that rang a few alarm bells in Pike’s head. “Who’s Danny?” he asked.

      More tears rolled down Tess’s wan cheeks and she sobbed into her hands. Sierra offered the tissue box and met Pike’s gaze, but she didn’t say anything. They waited until Tess calmed down. By now she was sitting up as she was apparently unable to handle the tears and congestion in a prone condition. Her breathing was raspy.

      “My—my boyfriend.”

      “They met at the beach,” Sierra explained. “He’s a lot older than she is and—”

      “He’s dead,” Tess mumbled.

      Sierra sucked in her breath. Pike leaned forward. “How did he die?”

      “Someone—someone shot him.” She buried her face in her hands and cried so hard her whole body shook. Pike hadn’t expended much energy in his life being unsure of himself, but he had to admit that in the face of all this grief he wasn’t certain where to start.

      “Who shot him?” he asked at last.

      Tess shook her head.

      “Drug dealers?” Sierra asked. “Tess, was he dealing again?”

      “I didn’t know he was doing that anymore,” Tess mumbled. “After I found out, he promised he’d quit because it scared me. And then we were in the car that Dad bought me, you know, the blue one? We were going to go for a hamburger. He said he had to talk to a friend and he parked outside a yellow house. He took the keys and left me in the car. I waited and waited but he didn’t come back out, so I went up to the porch. I heard someone yell from inside and then the door opened and Danny was standing there. He looked straight into my eyes. And then...and then I heard a shot and Danny just collapsed like someone let all the air out of him. I knew he was dead before he hit the floor. A man was standing behind him with a gun in his hand. I—I ran away. I didn’t have the car keys, so I just ran and ran.”

      The last part had come out all in one breath while her voice got more and more ragged until, at the end, they almost had to guess what she was saying. After a few seconds of stunned silence, she added, “The man who killed Danny looked right at me.”

      “Who was he?”

      She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

      “What did the police say?” Sierra asked. “Why didn’t someone call Pike or me?”

      “I didn’t go to the police.”

      “Oh, Tess.”

      “All I wanted to do was blow LA. I didn’t know where else to go so I came here. But what if he finds me? He has the car so he knows my name, he could find out about me, he could come here and kill...and kill me.”

      “We have to call the Los Angeles police and your father—”

      “No, please, no,” Tess begged.

      She was shaking so hard by now and crying so pitifully that the nurse showed up at the curtain. “Is everything okay in here?” she asked.

      “Maybe some water and another box of tissues,” Sierra said, putting an arm around Tess. The nurse hurried away and once again Pike and Sierra exchanged bewildered looks. He could imagine what she was thinking because he was thinking it, too. Tess was in trouble and it was up to the two of them to make it go away.

      “You’ll be safe at the ranch,” he assured Tess as she sipped the glass of water the nurse delivered. “We’ve had our share of trouble and we know how to take care of ourselves and our own. You’ll be safe. One of us will be near you all the time.”

      This seemed to calm her, and eventually she drifted into an uneasy sleep.

      “May I speak with you outside the room?” Sierra whispered to him. They walked down the hall a few paces, then stopped. Sierra looked exhausted and he felt for her.

      “I understand where you’re coming from,” she said in a very soft voice. “I want to make it all go away for her, too. But we can’t hide an eyewitness to a murder. She’s going to have to grow up real fast starting very soon, because she’s right about the murderer knowing who she is. Who’s to say he won’t come gunning for her next? And you and I have both lived enough to know that safety is an illusion.”

      “She needed something to hold on to,” Pike said. “It was all I could think to offer.” He ran a hand through his hair. “But I know what you mean. You’re right.”

      “We need to inform Doug, too. Tess is going to need her dad’s support in the months to come. I get the feeling Doug is a path-of-least-resistance type of guy.”

      “He’ll listen to me,” Pike said, and he knew it was the truth. He’d bent over backward to be decent to the guy, both for Tess’s sake and, truth be told, for his mother’s.

      “And I need to talk to the police and find out what’s going on,” she added. “Trouble is, I don’t know if any of this can be adequately accomplished over the phone.”

      “What are you suggesting?”

      “I’m not sure yet. We’ll have a chance to talk to Tess when we drive back to your ranch. We have to make her see she has an obligation to Danny and society and to herself, too.”

      He nodded and tried to look positive about their chances, but Pike realized he might actually know Tess better than Sierra did. He’d be stunned if she agreed to return to LA without a fight.

      * * *

      “NO WAY,” TESS SAID. A few hours had passed and she sounded more like herself, though obviously close to the end of her rope from the stress of the past several days. Her nose was still red and her eyes watery.

      “Be reasonable,” Sierra said gently and reiterated her conviction that they needed to inform Doug and the police in person.

      “I won’t go,” Tess said. “Pike said I’m safe here, and I believe him.”