The Salt Maiden Read Online Free PDF

soldiers to help the horribly burned child she held in her arms.
    And just that quickly, Jay was back there, breathing the bitter smoke stench of that other desert, his stomach cramping as Angie Vanover’s kohled eyes glared out at him from behind a thick, dark veil. Run , he tried to shout at hismen, but the word caught in his throat, and the woman was reaching for the detonator, and—
    “Are you listening?” Dana’s gaze had zeroed in on him. A hunting cat’s eyes, with a patient stillness masking predatory instinct.
    Careful there. His muscles tensing, Jay sucked in a breath to clear his head, reminded himself he was back in the Texas desert and that he had seen Angie Vanover only in mug shots and outdated family photos of an unsmiling girl with long, ash-blond hair.
    “Sorry,” he said. “Little too much sun today, and anyway, it surprised me to hear that your sister was mixed up with radicals.” Slowly and deliberately he drank from a plastic cup as damp with condensation as he was with sweat.
    From outside he heard a car door slam, followed by the rumbling rev of an engine. Estelle leaving, he guessed, though she’d neglected to turn off the building’s air-conditioning.
    “It was mostly in the Northwest,” Dana said, “and they weren’t radicals, just a bunch of college dropouts trying to be heard. I managed to track down one of her old friends from those days. Trent said Angie called a few months back, trying to drum up interest in a lawsuit. He told her he’d left his rabble-rousing days behind him. Sells insurance now in Portland. But Angie barely listened, she was so wound up about some plan she had for getting word out to the media to cover demonstrations.”
    A new chill shook him. Protestors here, and reporters from the outside. What the hell would he do if that happened? If they started digging into his recent history—including the reasons his own police force had declined to welcome him back?
    He shifted in his seat before shrugging. “Rimrock County might be small in terms of population, but we’re big enough to handle a little difference of opinion.”
    Dana looked skeptical. “What are you, the president of the chamber of commerce, too?”
    He tried for a smile. “If we ever get one, I’ll be sure to put my hat in the ring for the position.”
    She didn’t smile back. “I’m not leaving without her.”
    “Then you could be here a long stretch.” Her stubbornness reminded him of the few women who made their homes in Rimrock County, the kind who hunkered down, teeth gritted, and toughed out this tough land. But that was where the similarity ended. Everything else about Dana Vanover, from the silk and linen she wore, to the high-dollar convertible she drove, to the shoulder-length, salon-highlighted hairstyle, bespoke the kind of privilege those born to it took for granted. That sense of entitlement didn’t sit too well with people around here, and, fair or not, they especially didn’t appreciate it in a woman.
    The building’s AC shuddered to a stop, and in the silence that followed Jay caught the tap-slide , tap-slide of Estelle’s retreating footsteps. Must not have been her car he’d heard before. This close to dinnertime it was more likely a couple of oilfield workers or a rancher heading to the café than someone coming in to see him. At least, he hoped that was the case, for with the thought of food his stomach rumbled loudly.
    Dana’s expression eased a little. “Am I keeping you from dinner?”
    “Missed lunch earlier,” he said. “Went out to have a look around the Apache Mesa pour-off.”
    “What’s that?”
    “It’s one of those spots where rain runs down from the mountains, about a forty-minute drive down some pretty bumpy dirt roads.”
    “You mean there’s another kind here?”
    He ignored the comment and the smile that went with it. He might have to deal with the woman for now, but he didn’t have to—and didn’t want to—like her. Didn’t want