The Man From Oklahoma. Darlene Graham

“And don’t be obvious about it.”

      “Huh?” Dave’s sarcasm was replaced by genuine confusion. Normally the photographer rolled the camera openly while Jamie let fly a barrage of questions.

      “We’re out here all alone,” Jamie explained.

      Dave winced and tugged on his earring. “So I noticed.”

      Shoving her misbehaving hair firmly behind one ear, Jamie took a deep breath and walked with Dave to the edge of the plateau where they stood in plain sight, looking like a couple of stranded motorists. Jamie checked behind her, down the sloping gravel road. “You’re sure he saw us?” she asked after a few uncomfortable minutes had passed with no sign of the rider.

      “Yeah. Look, the wind’s picking up and the sun’s getting low. Wanna try to finish shooting the teaser?”

      Jamie sighed. “Why not? At least we’ll look like we know what we’re doing.” She stood in her former spot, faced the camera and started to talk. “This is Jamie Evans, and behind me you see the Hart Ranch complex, home of Tulsa oil tycoon Nathan Hart Biddle—”

      “Get off my land.” The voice—deep, powerful and sure—had come from above them. Jamie squinted up the wall of a rocky cliff on the other side of the road. With the sun behind him he stood out clearly, a striking silhouette among the black shapes of low cedars. The curves of his hat, the ragged tail of his hair blowing in the wind, the profile of the paint, all blended into a haunting image that made Jamie shudder.

      The steely-eyed raven-haired man looking down at her seemed eerily familiar. Jamie chalked up the sensation to the fact that she had been studying archival news photos of the Biddles for the past couple of years. His face had surely been burned into her subconscious by now. But the Nathan Biddle staring down at her didn’t look anything like the sleek power-suited young oil-and-gas executive in those old news photos. The man up on that cliff looked…rough…wild, more like the aged sepia photographs she’d found of his Osage great-grandfather, Chief Black Wing.

      She shaded her eyes with a shaky hand. “Hello. I’m Jamie Ev—”

      “I know who you are. Isn’t this story getting a bit shopworn for your kind?”

      Her kind? Well, she’d resent reporters, too, if she’d gone through what this man had. The media had insisted on going for the dramatic tear-jerker angle, focusing on the Biddles’ high-profile marriage—God, that must have been awful for him. Jamie began to feel sorry for the man.

      “Could we talk to you, Mr. Biddle?”

      “No. You are trespassing. Now leave.”

      Jamie’s uneasiness intensified. He wasn’t acting like a man in shock, a man who’d just been given terrible news. But surely the authorities had already contacted him.

      “Mr. Biddle, you really don’t know why we’re out here this afternoon?” She shot Dave a look and saw that the tape was rolling, though he had the camera braced casually under one arm.

      The horse nickered in the answering silence. Then Biddle turned the animal and disappeared into the sun’s rays.

      “What now?” Dave whispered.

      “Just keep rolling.”

      In no time horse and rider appeared around the base of the cliff. Man and animal seemed to move as one unit as they maneuvered expertly around leafless saplings and belly-high bluestem grass. In the saddle, Nathan Biddle looked relaxed, but his intense dark eyes remained fixed warily on Jamie as he rode toward her. Nobody said a word, so that as he reined the horse in, the squeak of leather and the crunch of gravel seemed magnified.

      He stayed in the saddle, high above them. “Turn it off,” he said to Dave without looking at him. Dave made elaborate motions as if doing so.

      “Talk,” Biddle said to Jamie while he gave her a once-over that made her want to run and crouch behind a limestone boulder. The close proximity of the massive horse didn’t help. Jamie had always been scared of horses.

      “I’m sorry, Mr. Biddle,” she started, “we didn’t mean to disturb you. I work for Channel Six, as you know, and we’ve been following your story for some time—”

      “I have my detectives, Ms. Evans. I know all about you.”

      “Of course you do.” So how much do you know?

      “Get to the point.”

      Jamie swallowed and started again. “We’re shooting a teaser—I’m planning to do a package on the ten-o’clock news and—”

      “A package? Why?”

      It didn’t surprise her that he knew the terminology for a feature-length TV news story. “Why?” Jamie’s throat went dry.

      His dark eyes narrowed at her hesitation. “The story of my wife’s disappearance is old, Ms. Evans. It’s…dead.”

      “Well, uh, that’s just it. Something’s happened, I’m afraid. The authorities haven’t contacted you?”

      “About what?”

      “I don’t know how to tell you this.”

      Biddle didn’t move.

      “I don’t have any details, but…” Jamie, who could spew out lines for a snappy stand-up shot with no preparation, was having trouble finding words.

      “What is this about?” Biddle demanded.

      “Mr. Biddle, a source informed me about an hour ago that…that your wife’s…her remains were found this morning. By hunters. I’m…I’m sorry.” Jamie’s voice grew weak and the last word had come out almost soundless.

      For one moment Nathan Biddle sat so still atop the paint that he looked like a statue. He didn’t even seem to be breathing. Then he closed his eyes, swallowed and drew in a tortured breath. “Where?” he said through tightened lips.

      “On a sandbar, a small island, out in the Arkansas River,” Jamie answered softly.

      Biddle did not turn his head, but his eyes moved to the camera. “Use any of that—” he angled the hat subtly toward Dave “—and I will sue your asses off.”

      Dave slid his fingers around and pressed the off button on the camera, this time for real.

      Biddle turned the paint, heading back the way he had come. This time the squeak of leather and the crunch of gravel made an eerie counterpoint to the fading light and gusting evening air. He didn’t look back as he galloped across the road, up the embankment and around the rocky base of the cliff.

      Jamie, with her gift for glibness, could only stare at his back as he rode away, unable to think of a thing to say. But what could one possibly say to a man who had just been told that after three long years, his wife’s remains had been found in this wild lonely country?

      “I promise,” she finally murmured, “I won’t use the footage.” But Dave was the only one who heard her.

      CHAPTER TWO

      ALONE. THE WORD took on a new and terrible meaning as Nathan Biddle stared out at the spectacular sunset he had seen so many times from this broad window. He braced his palms wide on the sill, suddenly remembering the day his grandfather Biddle had installed the majestic expanse of glass in the western wall of the enormous Hart Ranch house.

      “Nathan, my boy,” the old man had said, “your grandmother’s people came from those hills out there. The Osage, a fierce and proud nation. And filthy rich, too!” Gramps had slapped him on the back as if it was a great joke.

      For so long—months after Susie had disappeared—Nathan had waited for a ransom note that never came. Maybe someone was after the Osage oil money, he and his lawyers had reasoned. Such atrocities, in the name of greed, had been visited upon the wealthy Osage people before.