CHAPTER EIGHT
BY TEN O’CLOCK the ground had already soaked up most of the moisture from the storm and, other than the occasional shallow puddle, there was little improvement over the dry, sand-colored place the desert had been yesterday.
Gabrielle squinted over her shoulder at the miles they’d come, glanced up at the blazing sun, then trained her eyes on the miles ahead, and sighed. She was already starting to feel the heat. Perspiration made her sticky. She longed for an elastic to tie up her hair and some cool water that tasted better than what she’d salvaged from the monsoon.
“How much farther do you think it’ll be before we find a house or a town or something?” she asked.
Tucker shrugged. She’d tried talking to him several times over the past couple hours, had asked him about his family, where he’d grown up, what he used to do for a living. He’d given her only short sketchy answers that kept his private life very much a mystery and never asked any questions of his own. Once in a while he’d stop, remove the jug from her purse and let her drink. Then he’d take a measured sip and start off again. But that was all the attention he gave her.
Maybe he was trying to play it smart. Blabbing the intimate details of his life to a corrections officer probably wasn’t the wisest thing in the world. But she had no doubt the police already had the answers to the questions she’d asked. In a criminal investigation, it was standard procedure to document a suspect’s background and upbringing. So what was the harm in talking to help pass the time? She was bored and more than a little curious about her companion.
Hansen and the others considered Tucker so terribly dangerous. She’d seen how he could fight, yet he didn’t seem particularly violent to her. He seemed to have a conscience, which was something she hadn’t expected, and it was making her wonder how he lived with himself after killing his wife—or whether he was even guilty.
She hated to believe they could put an innocent man behind bars. The weight of evidence had to be stacked against him, but she knew mistakes were made. She’d once heard a statistic that in the past twenty-five years, more than eighty men had been released from death row after proof of their innocence came to light. Despite all the fail-safes in the system, there was always a chance that Tucker was one of those….
She opened her mouth to ask about the murder, then firmly closed it again. What if he admitted to killing his wife? She doubted she could handle the gory details right now, when they were completely alone and had no alternative but to rely on each other.
“What?” he said.
She stared at the ground, being careful where she stepped. “Nothing.”
“You thirsty?”
She was thirsty, but he’d given her a drink a few minutes earlier, so she said no.
“Then what is it? You keep looking at me as if you have something to say.”
His face was slightly burned. A thick shadow of beard covered his jaw, making him look dark and rather swarthy. But his clear blue eyes contrasted with the black of his hair, eyelashes and whiskers and seemed anything but evil.
“Did you do it?” she asked at last.
He must have known from the tone of her voice what she meant, because he didn’t ask her to clarify. He kept moving for several paces, long enough that Gabrielle assumed he wasn’t going to answer her. Finally he said, “No.”
She waited, expecting a long sob story of being wrongly accused. Most convicts claimed to be innocent and persecuted by the system. But that was all Tucker said.
* * *
HE’D BE RID OF HER soon. Keeping that thought in mind, Tucker continued walking and refused to look at Hadley, refused to speak to her any more than was absolutely necessary. As soon as they reached the first hint of civilization, he’d dump her, be on his way and never see her again, he told himself. He doubted he’d ever forget her, but he wasn’t willing to think about that, either.
His eyes on the horizon, he constantly scanned for any sign of human habitation, and felt a flicker of hope when he eventually caught sight of something that looked promising. Was it a building?
Hadley saw it at the same time. After she’d asked whether or not he’d murdered his wife she’d grown quiet. She’d thrown frequent covert glances at him that indicated she wasn’t quite sure whether or not to believe him. But whatever was going on inside her head was clearly forgotten when she grabbed his arm and pointed. “Do you see that?”
He nodded.
“What do you think it is way out here in the middle of nowhere?”
Tucker didn’t care what it was, as long as it could provide them with food, water and a phone, or any one of the three. “It’s not a convenience store, I can tell you that.”
“It looks like a house.”
Wishful thinking at best, Tucker decided. At this distance he couldn’t tell exactly what they’d found, but it didn’t look like a house.
“Someone could live out here,” she said. “The family I grew up with had relatives that lived off on their lonesome in a shack with a dirt floor and an outhouse and some pigs.”
Tucker didn’t see any pigs. He didn’t see any animals at all—or any other sign of life. “And they did this in the desert?” he asked.
“Well, not the desert exactly, but it was kind of a dry wilderness area most of the year. They had to haul in their water using big metal jugs. That makes it similar.”
Tucker knew she was scrambling to keep her hope alive. She had to realize that the likelihood of finding someone crazy enough to try living out here without irrigation, electricity or plumbing was next to nil. But she’d said something else that caught his attention. She’d talked about the family she’d grown up with as though it wasn’t her family, which made him wonder what kind of childhood she’d had. He might have asked, but he was too focused on trying to remind himself that he didn’t want to know her any better.
They were moving closer to the building. The white adobe walls standing resolutely against a pale blue sky were definitely manmade, but everything seemed so still, so quiet. For his own hope’s sake, Tucker tried to blame the absence of movement or sound on the heat. But deep down, he knew better.
“Maybe it’s a desert observatory or an outpost of some kind,” Hadley said, but the look on her face revealed her crushing disappointment. He knew she saw what he saw—an old church in ruins. The chances of finding water or help at such a place weren’t good, which meant they’d be traveling together a little longer.
Suddenly, Hadley asked for her purse. He gave it to her, and she hurried on ahead of him.
Tucker was glad to let her go. He’d noticed her blinking more rapidly and didn’t want to see her cry any more than she wanted him to. But when he found her several minutes later, sitting in the shade of a wall that looked as though it had formed some sort of outer courtyard, she wasn’t crying. She was staring, trancelike, at the family picture in her wallet.
He stood a few steps away, feeling awkward. He wanted to say something to ease her despair but didn’t know what. He’d just checked the old well that had once supplied the church with water. It was only a few steps away, but the rope and bucket were long gone, and it was dry anyway. The underground aquifers had been so badly depleted by pumps and urbanization that a well had to be very deep and carefully placed to find water here. An old well, especially one this old, would never be deep enough. Tucker had tossed a pebble inside, just to be sure—and heard it thump on solid earth.
“Well’s dry, isn’t it?” she asked without meeting his eyes.
“Yes,” he answered, knowing she must be wondering what insanity had possessed her to risk never seeing her family again by following an escaped convict into the desert. He wondered the same thing. Was she just doing her job when she’d made that fateful decision? Or had fear for his life really drawn her away from safety?
Evidently she didn’t know that the life of a convict destined to spend the rest of his days behind bars wasn’t worth such a sacrifice. At least his own life didn’t mean that much to him anymore—not if he had to live in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
Regardless, the fact that she was here, staring dejectedly at everything she stood to lose, gnawed at his insides, made him angry. He didn’t want to feel anything, least of all her pain. So where was her husband? Why hadn’t he looked out for her? Protected her?
“Your husband’s crazy. I hope you realize that,” he said.
She didn’t raise her eyes again, despite the edge in his voice. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The man in that precious photograph of yours. He had no business letting you become a prison guard. He should’ve looked out for you better, should’ve—”
“Kept me safe? Like you kept your wife safe?” Her eyes sparkled with offense, the exact reaction he’d been hoping for. He was spoiling for a good argument to release some of his own frustration and disappointment. But somehow her words sucked the fight right out of him. A picture of Andrea as he’d once known her, laughing and carefree, as in love with him as he was with her, flashed in front of his eyes, and the old pain returned, along with regret and a terrible sense of failure. He might not have killed Andrea, but he hadn’t kept her safe. Judging by the spatter in their garage, she’d died a bloody death, and now she was gone forever.
He wanted to tell Hadley that he’d tried to protect Andrea, tried to convince her to clean up her life. But even after he’d hired a private detective and gathered proof of the affairs and the drugs—the things she so consistently denied—he couldn’t save Andrea from herself, not even for Landon.
But those were only excuses. Hadley was right. He’d failed Andrea and their son. He had no right to preach to anyone.
Reclaiming her purse, he left Hadley alone as he should have in the first place. They were low on water again. He needed to focus on what really mattered, needed to take advantage of the recent moisture from the storm and the sun’s heat to build the still he’d mentioned to Hadley when she’d given him the idea that morning.
Finding a soft spot, he used a rock to dig with his left hand and quickly reached moist earth. He placed the water jug in the hole, as well as some chunks of cactus he managed to gouge out with the same rock, and covered the jug and cactus pieces with another of Hadley’s plastic bags. Using dirt and rocks to seal the perimeter, he tried to make the still as airtight as possible, then found a small pebble to weigh down the middle, so the condensation underneath would run into the jug, just as the rainwater had slipped down the top side.
Hadley was sitting in the same place when he’d finished. He ignored her and entered the old church, which had enough of a roof left to provide a little shade. They’d get some sleep and wait until night to move on, he told himself, struggling to shove the messy emotions Hadley’s words had evoked back into their tidy compartments in his head. She didn’t know Andrea, didn’t know how spoiled she could be, how determined to have her way.
In any case, what was done was done. He couldn’t change the past. He could only do everything in his power to save his son from paying for it in the future.
* * *
AFTER TUCKER WENT INSIDE the church, Gabrielle closed her eyes and leaned her head against the wall. What had she done? The expression on his face when she’d said that about his wife…he’d looked as though she’d just laid him open.
But he’d asked for it! He’d insulted David and spouted off more of his sexist bullshit, and he had no right. David had always been supportive. Gabrielle couldn’t allow him to be blamed for anything, especially when she was the one who’d screwed up their marriage. She was the one whose life felt like this ill-fated journey through the desert—as though she was stumbling around lost, forever searching for something she couldn’t find.
She sighed hopelessly. None of this was supposed to happen. Being a corrections officer was just a job. But she couldn’t imagine what she should have done differently. Should she have stayed out of it, like Officer Bell, and let Hansen have a free hand? Or let Tucker escape without at least trying to bring him back? He was her responsibility. What kind of person would she be if she shirked her responsibility in favor of her own selfish interests?
Sweat trickled from her temples. She swiped at it and opened her eyes. About three feet away, the shadow of the church wall met harsh sunlight—dark juxtaposed against light in a neat line on the ground. Too bad the shadows of a person’s soul weren’t so easily demarcated, she thought.
Standing, she brushed off her pants. They were too dirty to even bother, but it gave her a moment to gather her nerve. Then she stepped into the church. She had no idea whether Randall Tucker was innocent or not. But if he was, what she’d said was pretty hurtful, and he was human and as capable of sorrow and regret as she was.
The rectangular building was dark on one side, where what was left of the roof provided shelter from the sun. Rubble, mostly brush and dirt and sun-dried bricks from the crumbling walls, littered the open area. Tucker had cleared away a spot in the corner and was lying in the shade.
Gabrielle felt his eyes on her, knew he wasn’t sleeping. “What were you making a few minutes ago? One of those desert stills you mentioned?” she asked, hoping to reestablish the tentative peace they’d known all morning by ignoring what had happened outside.
He took a few seconds to answer her, as though he didn’t really want to. Finally he grunted and Hadley interpreted it as a positive response because going to so much trouble to dig a hole for any other reason made no sense.
“Do you really think it’ll work?”
“I wouldn’t have built it if I didn’t.”
“But how much water can we get from something like that? A few drops at most?”
“Even in the most arid conditions it’s supposed to provide something like a pint a day. And we’re lucky—it just rained.”
Gabrielle took a deep breath and tried to think of some topic that might draw him out. “What kind of church do you think this used to be?”
Tucker didn’t respond.
“Aren’t you going to answer me?”
“I don’t know anything about old churches,” he said. His voice was full of irritation—obviously he wanted her to leave him alone—but Gabrielle wasn’t satisfied. She needed to ease the sick feeling she’d gotten in her stomach when she’d looked into his eyes and realized she’d just added to whatever pain he carried around inside him. Other than that one monosyllabic answer when she’d asked about his wife, he hadn’t proclaimed his innocence, hadn’t explained what had landed him in prison. Tucker hadn’t tried especially hard to convince her of anything. Yet something enticed her to believe in him on such a gut level she had a difficult time reasoning it away.
“I think it might be one of those mission churches,” she went on. “You know, the ones the Jesuit missionaries built in the late sixteen hundreds.”
Again he didn’t answer.
“That would make it over three hundred years old. Amazing it’s still standing, isn’t it?”
No response.
Gabrielle considered leaving him to brood, or whatever he was doing, then tried once more to reach him. “I’ve seen a couple of other mission churches. There’s one in Tumacacori, just south of Tucson, that’s in pretty good condition, and another in Cocóspera, Sonora.”
She walked around the building, pretending to be absorbed by the ruins. “When I was pregnant with Allie, David took me to see them. This whole area used to be the northwest border of New Spain. He said the desert on both sides of the Mexican border is—”
“Am I supposed to care about this?” Tucker interrupted.
Gabrielle let her breath go and shook her head. What was the point in trying to befriend him? Of course he wouldn’t care about anything she said. Why would he? They were both thirsty, hungry, tired and miserably hot.
Cursing whatever weakness had brought her into the church, she turned and headed for the door.
“David’s your husband?” he asked before she could reach it.
Pride tempted her to keep right on going, but she was too much of a peacemaker to reject what might be an offer to let bygones be bygones. “Not anymore,” she said, pausing at the entrance.
“If you love him so much, why’d you divorce him?”
She turned to face him. “What makes you think I did the divorcing?”
“Instinct.” He sat up. “Am I right?”
Feeling defensive again, she tried to fan herself with one hand as she leaned against the lintel, but there was no relief from the heat. “Maybe.”
“That kind of maybe is always a yes. Why did you leave him?”
Gabrielle preferred not to delve into such a personal subject. Tucker still seemed rather combative, and things with David were…complex. He was her ex and yet she loved him dearly. She loved him dearly, yet she’d never go back to him. How could she expect anyone to understand such conflicting emotions?
When she didn’t reply, he scowled. “Oh, so we can talk about me, but your past is off limits?”
“We haven’t talked about you,” she pointed out. “You weren’t interested in conversation, remember?”
He gazed at his injured hand and gingerly moved his fingers. “You asked me if I murdered my wife, and I answered you.”
“Don’t most people want to know the answer to that question? You could be dangerous.”
“You’re the one with the weapon.”
“It certainly hasn’t done me any good,” she mumbled, and slid down the lintel to sit on the floor. With her finger, she drew designs in the hot dirt.
“That’s because you’re judging the situation from your own reality. If someone pulled a gun on you, you’d do what you were told. You still have a lot to lose. You don’t know that some things are worse than death.”
“Like living in prison?”
He sighed. “Like losing the life you knew, losing your child, because of a crime you didn’t commit.”
She wiped the dirt from her finger on her pants and undid the top button of her uniform. She’d kept as much of herself covered as possible to protect against burning, but now she felt as though her clothes were trapping the heat, roasting her.
“I don’t know you’re in that situation. I only have your word,” she said, eager for any distraction.
“I haven’t hurt you. I haven’t even touched you. Doesn’t that tell you anything?”
Gabrielle didn’t want to think about what his behavior told her. He’d been heroic, all things considered. And now that she felt fairly confident that he wasn’t going to hurt her, she hoped he was guilty of the crime for which he’d been imprisoned. There was solace in justice, rightness in appropriate consequences for misdeeds. But injustice…punishing a man for something he didn’t do…
She couldn’t imagine how that would scar a person. If she thought Tucker was innocent, believed it with all her heart, she wouldn’t be able to face knowing what was going to happen to him when they caught him. Wouldn’t be able to face knowing what he’d gone through already.
“I’m sorry I asked about your wife,” she said.
He laughed softly. “You’re finally figuring out that we’re better off staying out of each other’s lives.”
“I figured that out a long time ago. I’m the one who could get fired for overfamiliarity with an inmate.” She tried fanning herself again, but she was still in direct sunlight. It was useless. “And quit calling me Hadley.”
“What do you want me to call you?”
She thought about hearing her first name on his lips. “Never mind. Hadley’s fine.”
He rested his elbow on one knee and let his injured hand dangle. “So why’d you leave David, Hadley?”
She looked up, surprised. “What about taking your own advice?”
“Sometimes I act against my better judgment. Are you going to tell me?”
She lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “I left him because he deserved more than I could give him,” she said, distilling her problems with David into their simplest form.
“So you did it as a favor?”
His sarcasm bothered Gabrielle. “I just wasn’t happy, okay?” she snapped.
He said nothing for a few seconds, then murmured, “Tell me why you weren’t good for him.”
She gave up trying to stir the air and went back to drawing in the dirt. “I just—” she created a smiley face, ruined it and drew a frown instead “—I just wanted to be friends. We work better that way.”
“Does he agree?”
“I think so.”
Tucker chuckled. “I’ll bet.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I can’t imagine him being happy about taking a step back.”
“Why not? You don’t know either of us. What makes you think he wanted anything different?”
He fixed her with an unswerving gaze. “Because I’d want something much different if I were him.”
The gravity in his voice made Gabrielle forget about the dirt. All day she’d scarcely been able to get a word out of Tucker, but she had his attention now—so completely she felt swallowed up in it. “And what would that be?” she asked.
He raised his eyebrows appraisingly. “All of you or none at all.”
All of her…A drop of perspiration ran between Gabrielle’s breasts. She felt its slow descent as though it was Tucker’s finger and could only imagine what giving all of herself to this man might be like. He wasn’t easygoing or fun-loving, like David. He was hard-edged and angry most of the time and usually rather cynical. But there was at least a small chance that he had good reason for the chip on his shoulder, and she didn’t doubt him when he said he didn’t believe in doing things halfway. Being loved by him would, from every indication, be a passionate, all-consuming experience…a wonderful experience if he was as normal as she suspected.
Swallowing hard, she shoved a selfconscious hand through her snarled hair, knowing she must look terrible.
A flash of white teeth told her he’d noticed that she was suddenly aware of him sexually. His eyes held hers, as if he meant to assure her that he didn’t care about a little unruly hair and dirt-streaked skin. Which only added to the tingling sensation that had started low in her belly.
“All or nothing could be interpreted in a lot of different ways. It could be scary if you’re obsessive,” she said. “Do you mean you’d never let a woman leave you?”
He made a sound of disgust and the intensity of the moment eased. “I’m not obsessive. My wife wasn’t about to leave me, Hadley. She needed me to support her habits, and I—I was trying to work things out for our son’s sake. I’ve never hurt a woman. I never would. But then you know that already, or you wouldn’t still be sitting there.”
She hadn’t moved, but the ground and the sun were both too scorching to remain where she was for much longer. Or maybe it was the way Tucker had looked at her when he said “all of you or none at all.” She seemed to be burning inside as well as out. “You told me not to take anything for granted. Maybe I should tell you the same thing,” she said.
A faint smile softened his face. But then he shoved some nearby rubble farther away and stretched out again, and his expression hardened into the sober planes and angles more typical of him. “You’d better get out of the sun and go to sleep for a while. We’ll start moving once we’ve collected some water and it cools off a little.”
Gabrielle stood. Now that she was inside with him, outside seemed that much more barren and lonely. Fear of scorpions and snakes, of the unknown, made her reluctant to let him out of her sight. But after his reaction to finding her in his arms this morning, she doubted he’d be particularly open to sharing his shady corner. He obviously expected her to return to the courtyard.
“I—I’ll be outside,” she said.
Eyes closed, he looked as though he’d already fallen asleep.
“Unless you want me to stay in here with you,” she added hopefully.
He glanced up and scowled, and Hadley got the impression he was about to refuse. But then he surprised her.
“Stay if you want,” he grunted. “It’s up to you.”