The Night is Watching

3

Sloan’s house wasn’t but a mile down Main Street where it crossed Arizona Highway 101. Although it was in the countryside, it was also within walking distance of the Gilded Lily. Only two properties sat between him and the old town. One belonged to Silvia Mills—eighty-eight and spry—and the second belonged to Mike Addison, who now owned the old sheriff’s office and jail bed-and-breakfast. Mike was seldom at his property; his ranch overseer was a good man of mixed Mexican, American and Indian descent, Barry Garcia. Neither Mike nor Silvia ever had any trouble at their properties.

Sloan’s house was ranch-style and had been built in the 1860s, first as a one-room log structure, and then gradually, as the years had gone by, as a far larger home. The front door still opened into the main section of the house, a parlor with leather and wood furniture, Indian artifacts, a stone fireplace and a stone counter that separated it from the kitchen. Beyond that was a screened-in porch with a pool; to the left were two bedrooms and to the right was a master suite. It was a comfortable home and had always been in his family. Wherever he chose to go in the future, he’d hang on to the house. Johnny Bearclaw, an Apache who’d come to help his grandfather before Sloan made it home, still lived here. Johnny’s wife had died of cancer and he had no children; running Sloan’s property and working with the horses seemed to be a good life for him. He had an apartment above the barn, which was about an acre back on the land. He looked after the house and grounds and the two buckskin quarter horses Sloan kept, Kanga and Roo.

It was late. Sloan had been out far longer than he’d expected, not thinking he’d actually stop by the Gilded Lily for dinner. But as he’d driven through town from the sheriff’s office, the theater had beckoned him—mainly because he was fascinated by their visiting artist.

And he did have to eat. That was a fact. He knew he’d been rude, so maybe taking a few minutes to be...not rude would be a smart idea. He reminded himself that Logan would never have sent him his own Krewe member if she weren’t good. He’d gone to Logan because they both knew there were forces in the world that weren’t obvious, that weren’t necessarily seen by everyone. Logan had sent him Jane, therefore Jane was good.

It wasn’t good that bothered him.

It was the fear that finding the skull was all some kind of catalyst, that something evil had begun—or come to the surface—when the skull was found. Dread had been building within him and he’d sensed it, felt it in the air, almost smelled it...but been unable to pin it down.

Maybe that was why he’d wanted the damned skull out of town!

They weren’t dealing with a current tragedy, accident or murder. Whatever had happened to the living, breathing person they now sought to identify, it had happened way before they could make an arrest or bring any responsible party to justice. So why his concern?

He didn’t know.

He walked into the kitchen and opened his refrigerator. For a moment he froze, brought to full attention as something plopped onto the counter next to him.

He refrained from pulling his gun and smiled to himself, shaking his head.

“Cougar. Where were you? Sleeping on top of the fridge?”

He stroked the pitch-black cat with the huge gold eyes that sidled up to him.

“Sorry, how inconsiderate of me. I’ve eaten, you haven’t. Hang on, okay?”

Sloan found the cat’s bowl, which was shoved up against the cabinets beneath the sink, and filled it with cat food, then checked the automatic water dispenser he had for his pet. It was still almost full.

“You needed sustenance and that comes first. I was just going for a beer.”

The cat meowed; he was darned loud for a cat. Very talkative. He’d found Sloan, rather than the other way around. One day, he’d been on the doorstep and Sloan had taken him in. The fliers he’d posted around town hadn’t produced an owner, nor had the ad he’d placed in the paper. Cougar had become his. He was huge, maybe part Persian or Maine coon, and he deserved the name “Cougar.”

Once the cat was cared for, Sloan pulled a beer from the refrigerator and went back to the parlor.

He eased into one of the two plush leather chairs that sat in front of the fire, although tonight he didn’t have a fire going. He closed his eyes for a minute; when he opened them again, he saw that he wasn’t alone.

The man who sat next to him was ageless. His hair was long and dark and barely graying. He wore jeans, a calico shirt and a cowboy hat. His facial structure was fine and proud, his expression stoic at all times.

It wasn’t Johnny Bearclaw. Johnny never entered without knocking.

It was the “visitor” he’d first met when his grandfather was dying. Longman. In talking, he’d learned that Longman had ridden with Cochise and had been his great-great grandfather on his mother’s side. He had come for his grandson, Sloan’s grandfather—and to see that his great-great grandson learned how to help the living cross the great plain to the great lands beyond.

Only, when Sloan’s grandfather had died and crossed the plain, Longman had not. He chose to remain behind and torment Sloan. At least that was how Sloan saw it.

He managed to keep from groaning out loud. He held his silence, waiting for the spirit of his ancestor to speak.

Longman didn’t say anything for a while. He stared at the hearth as if a fire was crackling.

“Evening,” Sloan said at last, raising his beer to Longman, who nodded gravely, then continued to stare as if deep in thought, mesmerized by dancing flames that weren’t there.

“An artist is doing a rendering of the woman whose skull was discovered up at the theater,” Sloan began. “She’s a very good artist.” She was. “I don’t know why, but I feel I’ve seen the woman in her drawing, and it bothers me. But that’s impossible.” He didn’t add that he was bothered by Jane Everett, as well. She could be all business, and yet courteous at the same time. She’d clearly gone through all the right training. She was truly stunning and he had to admit he was attracted to her in a way that was definitely physical but much more. Maybe it had to do with how she moved and spoke, or the depth of passion and care that seemed to lie beneath the surface.

He was worried about her. Again, he didn’t know why. She was no doubt proficient at protecting herself.

Longman looked at him. “And?” he asked.

“And...and that’s it. Oh, there’s the usual. Caleb Hough is acting like an idiot over his son being arrested. The kid is okay, though.”

“But you’re worried.”

“Yeah, I’m worried.” He didn’t say that Hough wasn’t his major concern at the moment; it was Jane Everett. Strip away the FBI appearance, the tailored business attire, and Jane Everett looked as if she could be a model for an elegant line of lingerie.

That didn’t explain why he was afraid for her. In fact, there was no reason for anyone to be afraid in Lily. The town had kids who drank too much and a few adults, like Caleb Hough, who thought they were money kings. There weren’t even any high school gangs in Lily and, for the most part, Native Americans, African Americans, Hispanics and old Euro-Americans—everyone—got along just fine.

Longman turned back to the hearth. “When you feel the wind, my boy, it means it is blowing from somewhere. Remember that. Too often, we forget that we need to pay heed to the sights and sounds that tease the air. If you feel wind, Sloan, then you must look for the storm, for surely it is coming.”

“A storm? To Lily? When?” Sloan asked.

“A storm, a change, a shake-up. The ground is always quiet before the earth erupts. First, men feel a rumble, and if they don’t heed the warning, they fall through the cracks.”

Great. Really great. All he needed was a cryptic ancestor. Longman was on his mother’s side. His dad’s people had been a no-nonsense mix of English and Norwegian. But, of course, this land had been in his mother’s family for generations. Longman was his mother’s great-grandfather, and it was her father who’d raised him. This house was on old Apache land, it was natural, he supposed, that his last full-blooded Apache ancestor should come to his parlor to watch invisible flames.

Then, of course, his dad’s family had its share of the unusual, as well. The bad, the good—and those who’d just disappeared into thin air.

As if reading his mind, the specter of his dead great-great grandfather looked at him thoughtfully. “You think you’ve seen the woman in the picture because you have. You’ve seen pictures of her many times—even old photographs. In fact, those pictures have been seen by everyone in Lily. You believe they found the skull of Sage McCormick, your father’s great-grandmother.”

Yes, it had been in his mind. Of course!

“You knew her?”

“I often saw her perform from the back of the theater. I was allowed in. We were tolerated in Lily—my people, I mean. When the wars still raged and Native peoples were rounded up, many of us were part of the community here. I remember when Sage McCormick came to Lily. I remember her presence onstage. I remember her laughter, and that she was kind. I remember when she fell in love with your father’s great-grandfather, and I remember her daughter, your father’s grandmother, as she grew up.”

“So that’s it,” Sloan said. “I knew the picture because I’d seen the woman Jane depicted dozens of times. She’s my great-great grandmother. And I’ve avoided acknowledging this—because I never wanted to know how she died. It’s the distant past now, but I guess the stories always made me want to believe she went to Mexico and lived happily ever after in a world where she could be herself.” He sighed. “And if there is a ghost in her room at the Gilded Lily, I wanted to believe that it wasn’t her—or that she returned there after her death. Does that make sense?”

There was no answer. Sloan looked over at the chair. Longman was gone.

Maybe he had never been there. Sloan didn’t know. He had never known if he created spirits with whom he could earnestly debate the dilemmas in his own mind or if they actually existed.

But now...

Cougar, still in the kitchen, suddenly let out a screech. The cat was almost as good as a watchdog. Sloan jumped to his feet. He headed straight to the kitchen and saw that the cat was standing by the door to the screened-in porch, his back arched.

Sloan strode across to the door, set his hand at his waist over his gun, and yanked the door open.

No one there.

He looked out at the far stretches of his property. Sparse trees grew here and there, low and scraggly. His land stretched out in back until it came to a row of foothills that skirted the mesa where Lily was situated. To the left, he saw the stables and the paddocks, and all seemed quiet. A light burned upstairs in Johnny Bearclaw’s apartment. He heard one of the horses whinny.

He had ten acres—a big enough spread if someone wanted to hide there.

He walked out to the stables, turning on lights as he entered. Kanga and Roo whinnied again as he approached their stalls, stepping up to the gates to receive attention. Sloan patted the horses, speaking to them softly. Kanga was almost twenty, and she was as friendly as a dog and loved human interaction. Roo was “the young un,” at twelve. He was Kanga’s only offspring, bred from Fierce Fire, an award-winning running quarter. Sloan wasn’t much on rodeos, but occasionally he brought Roo out to show. He didn’t enter competitions, but Roo could turn on a dime, and Sloan liked to let him strut his stuff now and then.

The horses didn’t seem skittish. Then again, they did like human contact and Sloan had enough visitors out here that they wouldn’t be skittish if they’d heard someone walking around the yard.

Maybe the cat had seen demons that haunted his feline mind.

As he stood by the stalls, his cell phone rang. He answered it quickly.

“Hey, you down there?” Johnny Bearclaw asked.

“Yeah, it’s me, Johnny.”

“You been there awhile?”

“No, I just came out. The cat was freaking out over some noise or other,” Sloan said.

“I was about to come down,” Johnny announced.

“You heard something?”

“It sounded as if the horses were a little restless. I’ll be right there.”

Sixty seconds didn’t pass before Johnny came hurrying down the steps from the overhead apartment. He wasn’t a tall man; he stood maybe five-ten, but he was barrel chested and had broad shoulders and huge hands. Johnny could tenderly serve a dying man soup—or tackle the meanest bronco. His dark eyes were narrowed as he said, “Oddest thing. I just had the feeling someone was around. Strange as hell. Then heard Kanga there neighing and stomping. I saw the light spill out over the paddocks and called you. Does anything seem to be amiss?”

Sloan shook his head. “Let’s take a look around for the hell of it, though.”

“Could’ve been a coyote who thought better of it. ’Course, we don’t have any chickens around here, anyway. A coyote would have figured that out pretty fast,” Johnny said.

“We’ll split up. I’ll go east, and you take the west,” Sloan told him.

Some brush on either side separated Sloan’s property from his neighbors, but like him, his neighbors had paddocks and stables; they all put up picket fences in front of their homes, but they didn’t bother with gates. No one cared if someone rode over someone else’s land.

That meant there wasn’t far to go and not many places to look.

Sloan met Johnny at the rear of the stables. “If someone was snooping around, they’re not here now,” Johnny said. “My money is on a coyote.”

“You’re probably right.” Sloan looked off into the night. Behind them, the foothills were purple in the moonlight.

“’Course, if anyone was around here and they knew the place and wanted to disappear...” Johnny began.

“They could just head out back behind the hills,” Sloan finished.

“Not much there now but desolation,” Johnny said. “The old mine entrances were blown out with dynamite years ago.”

“Coyote,” Sloan said. “Thanks, Johnny. Get some sleep.”

“Yeah, you, too, Sloan. Everything going all right?”

“Yep.”

“That artist come in?”

“Yep.”

“She any good?”

“Yes, very good. Well, see you tomorrow, Johnny.”

“Hey, bring her on out. The horses could use some more exercise.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Sloan agreed.

He waved good-night to Johnny and returned to the house. He seldom set the alarm, but he did that night.

When he lay down to sleep, he felt a thump at the foot of the bed. He smiled. There was nothing unearthly about that thump; it was Cougar, settling down for the night.

He wondered why he still felt so disturbed. He’d probably had a hunch from the beginning that the skull might have belonged to Sage McCormick. The story had seemed off to him—women might leave their husbands, but from what he’d read about Sage, she wasn’t the type to walk out on a child.

Still, she had been dead for a hundred years.

But, like Henri, he was concerned. Why had the skull shown up now? Where had it been?

And where was the rest of Sage McCormick?

He thought that when he slept he might be plagued with dreams of the late 1800s—dreams in which outlaws rode down Main Street in a cloud of dust and flying sagebrush. Or that he’d dream of the Gilded Lily, a dream in which Sage McCormick took the stage, belted out a musical number...and then demanded that he find the rest of her body.

He didn’t dream anything of the kind.

Instead, he saw Longman seated cross-legged on the top of a sand-swept dune. Jane Everett stood next to him. She wasn’t in her bureau suit; she wore a long white gown that might’ve been appropriate in the late 1800s or in a show...like The Perils of Poor Little Paulina. Her hair was flowing around her face and shoulders, caught in the same breeze that swept the white gown around her body. She was listening intently to Longman. Sloan wanted to tell her that Longman wasn’t real, that he was a ghost or a figment of his—Sloan’s—imagination. He was a small portion of all that had made up Sloan’s past, a man he’d heard about from his family, one who was wise and careful and ready to face the world with his slow wisdom, whatever the world might bring.

Jane didn’t know that, couldn’t know it, and yet her features were both troubled and animated as the two conversed. She needed to find something out, and it seemed she believed Longman would help her.

She continued to stand next to Longman, heedless of herself, of her environment.

Sloan was mounted on Kanga, far below them, and as he watched, a shadow composed of desert sand began to sweep out of the earth and form a barrier between him and the other two, Jane and Longman. It grew darker as it rose in a frenzy—and it seemed to form the image of a man as it whirled closer and closer to where Longman sat and Jane stood. He shouted out in warning but they didn’t hear him. He spurred Kanga, but no matter how hard he rode, the danger moved ahead of him. He had to reach them before the swirling dark shadow enveloped them....

He woke with a start. He was sweating as he lay there, as if his physical exertion had been real.

Sloan looked around his darkened room. Nothing had changed. The cat, curled at his feet, stared at him with his wide eyes.

Sloan glanced at the clock on his bedside table and saw that only minutes had passed since he’d gone to bed. Wonderful—he was dreaming about a woman who’d come to town for a few days. Granted, the population here was small. But...

She would be an unusual and striking woman regardless of where she was. He would’ve found her intriguing and sensual, and his libido would have been piqued anywhere he might have met her. He just hadn’t admitted it yet.

With a groan, he threw his head back on the pillow. He was dreaming about Jane Everett. He would’ve expected a great dream about hot sex on a balmy beach. But no, he was dreaming about dark forces swirling around, ready to engulf them all.

It was going to be a long night.

* * *

As usual when she went online, Jane found herself browsing far longer than she’d intended. She discovered that she had a ton of email waiting for her.

One was from Logan. Everything okay out there?

Yes, fine. I’ll finish up in a few more days, she typed. She went on to describe the town of Lily, and the people she’d met. She refrained from saying much about his friend, the sheriff. At the end she added, Anything on the rise? Do I need to be back sooner?

She shut down the computer; if there’d been an emergency, Logan would have called her.

She rose, stretched and looked around the room. Nothing in it had changed, nothing had moved and she hadn’t heard even a creak in the old floorboards around her. The clock on the mantel told her she’d managed to spend several hours on the computer.

Too easy to do.

She stood and walked into the dressing room and then the bathroom.

The mirror was clear; no words remained, not even the hint of a smudge.

Jane slid out of her clothing and into a pair of pajamas that consisted of a tank top and loose trousers. She pulled the bedcovers down and noticed that a blanket lay on the trunk at the foot of the bed. It didn’t seem cold in the room so she left it where it was. The bed stretched out invitingly. She hadn’t lied when she’d told Brian how tired she was.

When she lay down to sleep, she hesitated for just a minute.

“Good night,” she said softly. “And I apologize for anything I might have said about Sheriff Trent. He seems upset about what’s going on. I believe he’s a decent human being.”

Once again, nothing moved or changed in the room. Jane closed her eyes and wondered if she’d stay awake all through the night, waiting to see if something was going to happen.

She tossed and turned and half woke in the wee hours of the morning, feeling a chill. She was too tired to actually get up and do anything about it. She thought about the blanket, but she couldn’t make herself move.

Moments later, she felt warm again and fell into a deep and peaceful sleep.

The alarm on her phone went off at 7:00 a.m.

She woke up. Light was filtering through the drapes and she lay there luxuriously for a few minutes, surprised that she’d slept so well.

Rising, she showered, brushed her teeth and dressed in a black pantsuit, a blue shirt, her holster and gun and jacket.

It wasn’t until she picked up her computer bag and supply box that she looked back at the bed.

The blanket lay there, neatly stretched out over the bedspread. The blanket that had been on the trunk.

The blanket she hadn’t reached for because she’d been too tired to move.

She must have moved. She must have retrieved it in her sleep.

But she hadn’t.

She couldn’t help shivering. Yes, even knowing that some remained behind in spirit when death had claimed their earthly forms, she could still feel that eerie sense of disquiet, of fear.

But she’d learned long ago to accept it.

And really...

What a nice gesture.

“Thank you,” she said aloud. “Thank you so much. I was cold, and you made me warm, and I had a great sleep.”

There was no response, but she hadn’t expected one. Yet as she walked to the door, a rush of cold air swept by her. If felt as if something, someone, was hurrying through the dressing room.

She started to follow. As she did, there was a knock at her door.

She glanced at her watch; she was late. Wonderful. Sheriff Trent had felt compelled to come up and make sure she was ready.

“Just a minute!” she called.

She followed the draft that had seemed to touch her and walked into the dressing room.

This time, there was no steam coming from the bathroom. She didn’t need to go that far.

There was a message on the mirror at the dressing table. It was written in her lipstick; it looked as if it had been written in blood.

TELL THEM THE TRUTH

Puzzled rather than scared, she ignored the chill that seemed to touch her.

The truth about what?

“But I don’t know the truth,” she said.

She watched as the tube of lipstick she’d left out on the table began to float in the air and write out more letters.

YOU WILL

BEWARE

TRICKSTER

“Jane?” a woman’s voice called from outside her room. So not Sloan, after all.

“Coming!” she said.

She hurried to open the door and found Alice Horton. In jeans, a tank top and sneakers—her hair scooped up into a ponytail—Alice looked way more like the girl next door than she did a wicked vamp. But, of course, she was an actress, and she seemed to be pretty good. She could probably play just about any character.

“Hey, Alice,” she said. “How are you?”

“Fine, thanks. I thought I’d come up and get you. Jennie talked Sloan into having a cup of coffee, but he’s getting a little restless,” Alice told her.

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