“No,” Jo insisted. “No, no, no…”

This wasn’t happening again, she told herself, looking to see how badly Zack had been hit. Head wound. Oh, God. Blood was fingering down across his unshaved cheek.

One moment, Jo had been doing a perfectly fine job at taking cover, watching for a chance at opportunity fire. The next moment, Zack had wedged himself between her and danger.

Had she asked him to? Had she wanted him to? This was the exact opposite of what she wanted from him!

“No!” Every man she ever wanted, ever kissed, was not going to end up dead from protecting her, damn it.

Dear Reader,

This month we have something really special on tap for you. The Cinderella Mission, by Catherine Mann, is the first of three FAMILY SECRETS titles, all of them prequels to our upcoming anthology Broken Silence and then a twelve book stand-alone FAMILY SECRETS continuity. These books are cutting edge, combining dark doings, mysterious experiments and overwhelming passion into a mix you won’t be able to resist. Next month, the story continues with Linda Castillo’s The Phoenix Encounter.

Of course, this being Intimate Moments, the excitement doesn’t stop there. Award winner Justine Davis offers up another of her REDSTONE, INCORPORATED tales, One of These Nights. A scientist who’s as handsome as he is brilliant finds himself glad to welcome his sexy bodyguard—and looking forward to exploring just what her job description means. Wilder Days (leading to wilder nights?) is the newest from reader favorite Linda Winstead Jones. It will have you turning the pages so fast, you’ll lose track of time. Ingrid Weaver begins a new military miniseries, EAGLE SQUADRON, with Eye of the Beholder. There will be at least two follow-ups, so keep your eyes open so you don’t miss them. Evelyn Vaughn, whose miniseries THE CIRCLE was a standout in our former Shadows line, makes her Intimate Moments debut with Buried Secrets, a paranormal tale that’s as passionate as it is spooky. And Aussie writer Melissa James is back with Who Do You Trust? This is a deeply emotional “friends become lovers” reunion romance, one that will captivate you from start to finish.

Enjoy! And come back next month for more of the best and most exciting romance around—right here in Silhouette Intimate Moments.

Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Senior Editor

Buried Secrets
Evelyn Vaughn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

EVELYN VAUGHN

believes in many magicks, particularly the magic of storytelling. She has written fiction since she could print words, first publishing a ghost story in a newspaper contest at the age of twelve. Since then, along with four Silhouette Shadows novels (recently republished as Dreamscapes), she has written four historical romances and a handful of fantasy short stories, some under the name Yvonne Jocks. She loves movies and videos, and is an unapologetic TV addict, still trying to figure out both how to time-travel and how to meet up with some of her favorite characters. Even as an English teacher at Tarrant County College SE, in Fort Worth, Texas, Evelyn believes in the magic of stories, movies, books and dreams. Luckily, her imaginary friends and her cats seem to get along.

Evelyn loves to talk about stories and characters, especially her own. Please write her at Yvaughn@aol.com or at P.O. Box 6, Euless, TX, 76039. Or check out her Web site at www.evelynvaughn.homestead.com.

This time around I owe particular thanks to:

• Kelly, for Zack, for sharing the world and for her encouragement.

• Lisa, for liking explosives better than diamonds.

• Kayli, for Ashley, and for being the flow queen.

• Sarah, for good sense, fast eyes and happy faces.

• Toni, for Cecil, and for being Cliffy.

• Matt, for plotting so well that some of it rubbed off on me.

• Deb Stover and Maureen McKade, for friendly professionalism—or professional friendship. Probably both.

• And to Leslie Wainger, my editor, and Paige Wheeler, my agent, both of whom had a hand in resurrecting me.

This book is dedicated to the memory of

Kevin Tod Smith, the best god of war ever,

1963 to 2002. I hope the time was as good for him

as for all the rest of us.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Prologue

If his in-laws hadn’t reached the cemetery first, Zack Lorenzo might never have learned the truth. Not about evil. Not about magic. Not about himself.

But when he rounded a corner in the old Santa Teresa Cemetery and saw the cluster of Romanos by his wife’s three-day-old grave, he ducked behind an angel statue, shutting his eyes against the close call.

He was a big man, a cop. Until last week, he’d thought he could face anything. But he couldn’t face this, or them.

He’d made it through the viewing, the rosary and the finality of the funeral in pure shock. His beautiful Gabriella…dead? They’d had their problems, yeah, but what couple didn’t? They would’ve worked them out, same as his parents, her parents, their neighbors and grandparents always had, right?

Now it was too late. Done. God didn’t grant do-overs.

They’d argued that night about her weird new ideas. He’d taken a double shift, to stay away from her. And now…

Zack couldn’t face her parents yet. Sooner or later someone would ask why he hadn’t protected his precious wife, and he wouldn’t have jack to tell them. He didn’t know, himself.

“Best leave the family to their grief, eh?” asked an accented voice, and Zack opened his eyes to see who else was avoiding the Romanos. The scrawny young man had two-toned hair and carried a backpack with the logo of a local college. “Pardon my intrusion. Are you here to see…somebody?”

Zack hadn’t brought flowers. In his pocket he had a blue beanbag bunny that had once been Gabriella’s favorite; he’d won it for her on a date. She stopped carrying it everywhere sometime during their first year of marriage, he guessed, but he’d thought maybe wherever she was, she might want it….

To distract himself from the idea of putting a stupid toy bunny on his wife’s new grave, Zack challenged, “Are you?”

“Oh no, I’m doing schoolwork, actually. This cemetery’s my semester project. Did you know, Santa Teresa has served the Little Italy area of Chicago since…”

Zack let his grief mute the kid’s ramble. How was it people still attended college, took vacations, planned futures when his young wife was dead? Dead because he hadn’t loved her better.

The student—British, Zack guessed—blathered on about tombstone rubbings and epitaphs and how different cultures ensured peaceful rests for their loved ones. Egypt’s mummies. Mexico’s Day of the Dead. Burial versus cremation. Then he said, “Like that new one over there, where that poor family is.”

That new one?

“What about it?” Zack challenged, dangerous.

“That grave, Gabriella…” The student drew some battered note cards from his pocket. “Gabriella Francesca Bianca Lorenzo, buried just last Saturday. Isn’t it interesting, how people can take comfort in burying an empty casket?”

For a long moment, Zack could only stare, strangely dizzy—like part of him knew something the rest hadn’t figured out yet. The wind off Lake Michigan shook the trees and made a Mylar balloon on a nearby grave bob and struggle at its tether. Finally, he went with the obvious. “Her casket’s not empty.”

“Oh, I think it may be. My equipment…” But the young man’s face paled with comprehension. “Ah. You knew her. My apologies for intrud—”

Too easily, Zack had the student face-first against the Gallo mausoleum, skinny arms behind his back. Now he just had to decide how bad to hurt the little ghoul. “Who are you?”

“My apologies.” Marble muffled the kid’s voice. “Cecil Taylor. How do you do? I’m studying Urban Archeology, and—”

“What the hell are you doing, desecrating holy ground?”

“Pardon?” Even with his face smooshed, Taylor sounded insulted. “I’ve desecrated nothing—if anybody respects the dead, it is I! Now if you would be so good as to—”

“You said equipment.”

“Ah. Yes. That.” Taylor remained surprisingly composed. “I apologize. I was taking readings on a different grave, you see—Ugo Casale, 1914–1978. I used nothing invasive—a metal detector and a, well, a portable sonar of sorts. It’s rather like a fish-finder. I did not even stand on the grave. But as I turned away, I noticed readings from Ms. Lorenzo’s…plot…which indicated the absence of a corpse, so I made note of it. That’s all.”

“Well you’re wrong.” Belatedly, Zack released his hold on the guy’s skinny arms. “And don’t call my wife Ms. anything. Gabriella wasn’t one of those feminist types.”

She hadn’t even worked outside the home. Until a few months ago, she hadn’t even had friends who weren’t his friends, too. That’s how things worked in their neighborhood. Then she’d up and decided to attend community college. She’d begun to explore New Age crap that had made Zack’s Nona mutter under her breath.

He felt guilty for still hating those things even though she was dead.

“I am sorry for your loss,” said Taylor gently, as if Zack hadn’t just made a love connection between the student and marble. “And for intruding. But if you are indeed her husband, you should know that the casket buried in that plot is very likely empty.”

Like hell it was!

Or was it?

Once the Romanos left, Zack made the Englishman use his equipment to show him those so-called readings, both on Gabriella’s grave and others…and he half wished he hadn’t. It convinced him enough to risk the wrath of his friends and family by having Gabriella officially exhumed. Her father protested—but Zack was her husband. In this, at least, he had final say.

Nobody would stand with him for that except his elderly grandmother, the priest and Cecil Taylor, the latter as if seeing some unplanned duty to its proper conclusion. Zack set his jaw as the casket was opened, half afraid, half hopeful—for what, he still wasn’t sure. Maybe just to see her one more time.

But somehow he’d failed her again. Even before Nona began muttering under her breath, either prayers or incantations, Zack knew that much.

The silk-lined casket was empty.

And when they reburied it, all it held was the last of Zack Lorenzo’s peace of mind—and a blue beanbag bunny.

Chapter 1

West Texas—Four Years Later

Jo didn’t realize how deadened she’d become until she saw the man in her jail’s only cell—and breathed.

Not that she hadn’t been breathing all along. But this was the first breath she’d actually noticed in years. One quick, sharp inhalation, instead of just monotonous existing.

It unnerved her.

She distracted herself by getting a cup of coffee. Then she half leaned, half sat on her desk, eyeing the stranger and noticing what it felt like to breathe…and wondering why anything should seem different.

The prisoner, who’d sat up on his cot at her entrance, stared expectantly back. For a brief moment, Jo felt like she knew him. Or should. Or would. His broad chest expanded and contracted under his button-up shirt. He was breathing, too.

Then the moment passed, and she just felt silly. Everyone breathed; it was a handy habit. If the air suddenly felt sharper than usual in her lungs, that was probably just spring coming.

“Well, Mr….” She glanced down at the desk, hoping her deputy had left a note. He had. Fred loved filling out reports. Speeding…city boy…smarty-pants. “Mr. Lorenzo.”

She met his dark, intense eyes again, quirked her mouth into a noncommittal smile. “What brings you to Spur?”

Then she took a deliberately casual sip of coffee, which was a mistake because she choked on his answer.

Lorenzo said, “Zombies.”

Jo put her mug down so quickly that hot liquid sloshed over her fingers and onto Deputy Fred’s report. You misunderstood, screamed the logical part of her brain as she bent over, coughing. He’s using some Yankee slang. Or maybe he meant drinking; weren’t zombies a mixed drink? That would explain the speed at which he’d been driving, even if he had passed Fred’s Breathalyzer test.

This was West Texas. The man couldn’t mean walking-dead zombies, could he?

There was no such thing.

And he couldn’t know.

“It’s pretty early for the late show,” she hedged, catching both her breath and her composure. “You came here why?”

She noted wary concern fade from his expression at her recovery—and appreciated it. Lorenzo’s solid face fit his big, rangy form. His nose wasn’t completely straight; his whisker-dusky jaw looked stubborn; and his dark eyes were unnervingly calm for a guy who’d spent the night in jail for a simple speeding violation.

Much less one who talked horror stories.

This was the sort of man who either made a woman feel threatened, or wholly safe. No in-between. And Jo didn’t feel threatened by him.

Breathing and horror stories aside.

So why was she trembling?

“Forget it,” he muttered, scrubbing a splayed hand through shaggy, black-brown hair that licked his collar, a bit longer than her own. “Look, you got any more coffee? That yokel who left me here has been gone for over an hour.”

Jo ignored the slight to her deputy and concentrated on getting a second mug of coffee without her hands shaking. Nothing was different today than yesterday, last week, last month…last year? No, more. It had been years since she took refuge here, and nothing was out of the ordinary.

Certainly nothing that she’d only imagined. Nothing she’d been trying to forget ever since.

“We’ll get you some breakfast within the hour,” she promised, carrying the mug over to him.

She somehow breathed deeper, the closer she got, like a closed-up room with newly opened windows. It wasn’t her imagination. So what was it?

When Lorenzo came to the bars, he stood a good head taller than her. His shoulders matched the width of his chest. If she was a room, he felt like a whole house to her—a house painted in pure testosterone.

His strong fingers awkwardly trapped hers when he took the mug’s handle, big but careful, so careful of her. She made sure he had a good grip on it before she pried her own fingers loose.

“Real security-conscious around here, aren’t you, deputy?” he asked. He took a sip, just like the perfectly normal prisoner he was. “I could’ve thrown hot coffee in your eyes, or had you against the bars and my arm around your throat, and be out of here before you could think.”

He sounded like a city boy. Swarthy, not like the local Latin or Native American population so much as Greek or Italian. Lorenzo. Duh. The collar of his blue shirt was unbuttoned enough to reveal a triangle of dark, hairy chest. His trousers had once been pressed, but not recently enough.

“Most speeders aren’t moved to such acts of desperation,” Jo noted, feigning boredom. “And I’m the sheriff. Sheriff James.”

“Ted Bundy only got caught when cops picked him up for traffic violations,” Lorenzo reminded her, clearly an annoying, last-word kind of guy, before sipping the coffee again.

Then he went still, mug to his lips. At least he didn’t choke. “James?”

“Yup,” said Jo, heading back to her desk.

“Joe James?” Jo could hear the “e” in his incredulity.

She paused, not liking that he knew her name. The ridiculous word he’d used earlier—zombies—pounded in her head, but she pushed it away. “That’s me, Mr. Lorenzo.” Again she consulted Fred’s now-stained report. “Zaccheri Lorenzo?”

“Zack. Lady, you’re the reason I came to this hellhole! But I was expecting a guy. No offense.”

Deep breath—again with the breathing. Jo turned to face him, folding her arms across her chest. “Am I the reason you came to this hellhole at ninety-three miles per hour?”

“Some cars gotta go fast,” he dismissed. “I’m a private investigator, Miss James. My partner found a statement you once made to the press, and I want to ask you some questions about it.”

Spur didn’t have a supermarket, much less a press. It wasn’t a statement Jo had made anytime recently. And that other time…

She stiffened, her stomach protesting the coffee, but knew she could hide it. She’d learned to hide it. Living in the middle of nowhere helped. “What statement?”

Better a hypocrite than a basket case.

“The reporter told us his source was a Joe James. Seven years ago you were in a mining accident in New Mexico, right?”

Oh. That statement. “And if I was?”

“You made some unusual claims about the cause of the cave-in.” Damn, but he had an intense way of looking at her.

Maybe she didn’t feel so safe around him, after all.

“I’d been trapped underground for almost two days with no food or water, diminishing air and dead co-workers.” One who had been far more than a colleague. “I think it’s safe to suppose I might have been disoriented after my rescue.”

Zack Lorenzo leaned on the crossbar of his cell, as casually as on a fence. He was almost too large to be graceful, but he did have a distracting ease about him. “It’s safe to suppose that,” he agreed dryly, but his eyes were more insistent than his voice. “Were you?”

“What business is it of yours?” Jo sat in her chair and leaned back, deliberately propping her cowboy boots on the desk. Let the man rot…at least until his fine was wired to him.

“Look, I know this is out of the blue. But I’ve got my reasons for asking,” he insisted. Now the look of incredulity she cast toward him was legitimate. “That’s right,” he defended with macho peevishness. “And I’m here to get your…”

She waited, intrigued. She had something he wanted?

He had to look away and swallow to choke the word out. “Your help. By getting your story.”

Jo didn’t want to think back to the cave-in. She had too much trouble with nightmares as it was. It had been a hallucination. She’d just been disoriented.

But this man struck a chord she’d forgotten, and she drew yet more charged air into her lungs. “Help?”

He grinned. It might be a good-looking grin if it weren’t so damned superior. “Yeah. Against the forces of evil.”

Fred had been pretty accurate. A smarty-pants.

Jo no longer felt guilty for thinking the man was riding a stirrup short. She let her boots and the front legs of her chair thunk to the floor, and she picked up Fred’s report again. The blotchy photocopy of Lorenzo’s P.I. license looked legit…for what she knew about official documentation for the state of Illinois, which wasn’t much.

She took a swallow of coffee and wished it were tequila. “Says you’re on a case, next town up the road.” Almanuevo was only a few years into its boom as a center for New Age revelations and so-called vortexes. But Jo saw a pretty clear distinction between exploring one’s past lives and hunting down evil.

“I am. Missing persons.” This time his grin was positively grating. “That’s where you come in.”

“You want me to help fight evil or find a missing person?”

He snorted. “Neither. I just want you to tell me about the missing persons you ran into during that cave-in.” His tone took on a patronizing edge. “I wouldn’t want to put you into any scary situations, lady.”

The fact that she didn’t challenge his disrespect proved how upset she was. Jo stood. “Whatever I said to that reporter, I was mistaken. I’m afraid you wasted a trip, Mr. Lorenzo.”

He swore beneath his breath. “Helluva trip to waste! You know how far Almanuevo is from here?”

“Over an hour away.” Jo paused on her way to the filing cabinet, then qualified herself. “Going the speed limit.”

“Real scenic, too,” the prisoner groused, while she opened the top drawer and looked for something, anything, to keep her busy and official. And normal. And sane. “Sand. Cactus. More sand. More cactus. A few rocks. And hey—”

“Don’t you go sassin’ the sheriff,” drawled Deputy Fred as he walked in, two McDonald’s bags in his hand. But Jo had gotten the gist.

“More sand,” finished Lorenzo with a snarl, flopping back onto the cot. “It’s a garden spot, all right.”

“It’s West Texas,” clarified Jo, taking one of Fred’s bags. She fished out an Egg McMuffin and tossed it neatly between the cell bars. “Have some breakfast.”

He easily caught it one-handed. “This is cold.”

“The McDonald’s is in Almanuevo, near the Western Union. The lady who runs our diner is on vacation at Tahoe for three more days.” Jo aimed her own superior smile toward the prisoner. “West Texas.”

Then she turned to Deputy Fred, who was looking mighty uncomfortable. “Did his folks wire him the money?”

He nodded, and Lorenzo whooped. “I get out of this hellhole, right?”

Fred started to say something and stopped. Jo had to lean close before he’d divulge it. “They done sent him one thousand dollars. In cash! I put it in my shoe, just in case I got jumped.”

Jo tried not to smile. Fred was, to put it kindly, a stocky man. In his tan uniform, star on his pocket and gun on his hip, he shouldn’t have to worry—especially not around here. Sand, cactus, etc. What was going to jump him, a jackelope?

Still, it was a pretty piece of money, and at least he cared. He was one of the good guys.

“Good job,” she whispered back.

“Do I get out now, or what?” demanded the prisoner, sounding even more like a pushy city boy. Jo scooped the keys off of her desk and opened the cell door.

When he walked by her, his sleeve brushed her shoulder, clean and warm. She took a deep breath, inhaling a scent she’d gone without too long.

Alive. Safe.

But that made no more sense than zombies. Jo didn’t look to others for her safety. Never again. That’s why she wore a badge, carried a gun. That’s why she lived alone.

She said, “You’re welcome.”

Lorenzo groaned when he realized why Fred was taking off his shoe. He turned back to her as a distraction, which was just as well since she had to return his wallet, his car keys, his mobile phone, his automatic pistol.

“Look,” he said, sliding a card out of his wallet. It read Lorenzo and Company, Private Investigation, with a P.O. box in Chicago, phone numbers and Internet addresses. “Clearly you don’t want to think about it, much less talk, and hell—that’s your call. But unlike a lot of blind schmucks, you know. You’ve seen what’s out there. Whether you’re admitting it or not, it’s still there. Maybe you can help. Think about it.”

He pressed the card into her hand, his own hand solid and warm around hers. It made Jo wonder when the last time was that someone had touched her, even that briefly, that casually. Christmas with her brothers, she guessed.

Lorenzo paid his fine, pocketed the nearly $900 he had left over, and departed the jail like he was shrugging off an unnecessary chore. The man had lost a lot of money and a couple hours’ drive…. On a chore?

Now that he was gone—mere moments after the door shut—Jo didn’t feel safe at all. She felt like a doctored tooth as the Novocain wore off. Tingly. Worried.

Braced against certain pain—the downside of feeling alive again.

“Don’t want to think about what?” asked Fred, halfway through his platter of soggy pancakes.

“Whatever I don’t want to talk about.” Jo heard an engine purr to life. She waited a moment and then, against her better judgment, stepped into the narrow street to watch a shiny black sports car skim off into the scrub-dotted hills toward Almanuevo, the Sedona of West Texas.

The air felt strangely warm for this early in the morning. Especially for March. Especially for Spur. Overhead, a hawk swooped by.

Whether you’re admitting it or not, it’s still there, the private investigator had said.

“No, it’s not,” murmured Jo beneath her breath. “It’s dead. I killed it.”

But the stranger had said the magic word, help. That word had power Jo might never understand. So she braced herself—and went back into the jail to ask Fred if he’d heard anything at all about missing persons in Almanuevo.

Jo James lived with two mongrel dogs in a little ranch house five miles outside the tiny town of Spur. She had big windows, on every side a view of open desert, and she liked it that way. Ever since the cave-in, she’d chosen wide-open spaces over small, enclosed areas. She liked being able to see sky forever, feeling that nobody could sneak up on her.

Or so she’d thought, until meeting Zack Lorenzo this morning. Zombies?

She’d told herself she only had to guard against human intrusion. Dangers that could be repelled with guns, fists, dogs—the kind that stayed away from little places like Spur. Now, as she watched the waning moon rise over her backyard, she noticed herself shivering—from more than the night air. That damned detective had stripped away her illusion of safety.

According to Fred, a couple of folks in Almanuevo had vanished. Enough that the town’s mayor worried about bad press, and an increasing number of their New Age tourists were talking about UFO abductions, which was almost as crazy as…

As the things she’d seen. Or thought she’d seen.

Jo whistled for the dogs. As soon as they loped inside, she shut and locked the back door. It was the first time she’d locked her door since her older brother’s visit. He was a security specialist and had insisted on it last Christmas. She loaded the .22 rifle that usually hung in her sparsely furnished living room. After she fixed some chocolate milk she headed back to her bedroom, and made sure to take her revolver and loop the holster on the bedpost of her twin-size bed.

Dogs or not, the house seemed achingly empty all of a sudden. She felt her isolation in her veins…in her lungs.

A Navajo medicine blanket covered the wall behind her bed, and an octagonal god’s-eye, strung from yarn and sticks, hung to face the window. The remaining wall space was dotted with framed pictures, mostly of relatives. Only on nights like this did Jo notice how far away her family lived, how few friends she’d made since taking the job in Spur…how many years ago?

Maybe that had been her plan.

Her younger brother, Max, was a photojournalist, so she had pictures of her grandparents and her late parents, her aunts and uncles, her older brother, Lee. She had more recent pictures of herself, not quite thirty, looking decidedly average beside her vivacious cousins in East Texas. She had pictures of her dogs, even—of every person who’d ever held importance in her life…except one man.

Except Diego.

Jo told herself not to think of Diego. People died. She’d gone on without him and was doing fine by herself.

She drank the milk and put the empty glass on the barrel that was her night table, rather than carry it back out to the kitchen—but not because she was afraid. Then she turned off the light and tried to sleep. She had work in the morning. She almost always worked, despite the town council’s worries over all the vacation time and sick time she’d been accumulating. And she prided herself in not frightening easily. She’d faced everything from rabid dogs to armed robbers, and she’d defeated them all. She’d even faced—

No. After all this time, she wouldn’t let one bigmouthed detective make her believe in monsters.

But tonight the bed seemed awfully empty, too. Small.

Despite the moonlight glowing through her windows, Jo closed her eyes and tried to sleep.

In her dream, she saw Diego and jerked awake with a sharp, real breath. Too real. She preferred the half life she’d been living since she moved here; it hurt less. She preferred the Novocain.

But another attempt at sleep—another gasped return to consciousness—confirmed that the numbness had worn off at just about the same time Zack Lorenzo opened his big mouth.

“Damn it,” Jo whispered brokenly, sitting up in bed so that her Navajo blankets slid to her waist, dragging her hands through her short hair. She wouldn’t dream of him again. Not tonight. Not now. Not Diego.

It hadn’t even been real. Except for him being dead.

But the next morning’s rising sun found Jo sitting at her kitchen table, dizzy from hours of fighting the dreams that haunted her each time she closed her eyes. Both Butch and Sundance lay at her feet, eyeing her with mutual doggy concern.

She glared blearily at Zack Lorenzo’s business card, on the table in front of her. He’d somehow robbed her of her sense of safety. Business hours or not, Jo meant to take it back.

She picked up the phone.

Chapter 2

Zack was in Hell—Hell with Formica countertops, contoured bedspreads and a window air conditioner that made the carpet smell like wet socks. Almanuevo didn’t rate a Holiday Inn, much less a Hilton. Unless he stayed in a bed-and-breakfast or tourist resort, he was left with the Alpha Inn, a “motor hotel” of unparalleled luxury—if you lived in the freaking 1950s.

He still stayed awake most of the night, for his own reasons. But even though he was awake ungodly early, taking notes at the pink “kitchenette” table, Zack swore when his mobile phone rang out its programmed Journey riff. It didn’t matter if he was awake or not. Who the hell called at dawn?

He snatched up his phone. “Whaddaya want?”

“Mr. Lorenzo?”

A woman? “Yeah, this is Lorenzo.” So whaddaya want?

“This is Sheriff James, from Spur.”

He guessed the sheriff counted as a woman. Cocky, yeah. Butch even. But Josephine James couldn’t hide being female, even from a man who wasn’t particularly interested. Jeans and short-sleeved cotton tops just fit differently over feminine curves. Her shiny brown hair, shorter than some men’s, had bared the nape of her neck. Zack never really thought before then about how soft and vulnerable napes looked. And her pixie nose had undermined her no-nonsense, I’m the sheriff attitude.

So, now, did the caffeinated strain in her voice. He felt a twinge of guilt for maybe giving the lady a fairly sleepless night, but he fought it. Gotta break a few eggs, yada yada. This was his job. Worrying about other people wasn’t, not anymore.

He wasn’t any damned good at it, anyway. “What can I do for you this morning? It is morning, right?”

“Look, Mr. Lorenzo, I’ve changed my mind. I’d like to talk to you. If you’re still in the area, I mean.”

The area. Yeah. Right. “I’m still in the state, anyhow. You want I should drive back down there?”

“No,” she said quickly, then paused. “It’s a small town, and I don’t want questions. I’ll drive up and meet you.”

“You know,” he pointed out, “as many car accidents are caused by exhausted drivers as by drunks.”

“I’m a good judge of my own limits.” He’d heard that before. It was usually a lie.

“I’d make better time,” he insisted.

“I’m sure you would. Where are you staying?”

Stubborn, wasn’t she? “The Alpha Inn. Room 7.”

“I’ll be there by lunch.” And she hung up, which Zack found annoying, even though he generally did the same thing.

“I could be there by breakfast,” he muttered, and went back to his note-taking so he could maybe catch a nap before Little Jo moseyed on into town.

A nervous woman. Great. Even the well-rested ones were trouble.

He hoped she had something worthwhile to tell him.

Relieved to have that decision made, Jo managed a quick nap on the cot in the jail’s cell before she left Fred in charge for the day. She couldn’t help remembering that the last person to stretch out on that cot was one rangy, thirty-something Chicago P.I. Despite having changed the sheets, she imagined that she could smell the faint scent of aftershave. Or was that just the whole “breathing again” business?

Either way, she slept better.

She drove her old Bronco into Almanuevo a little after 11:30 a.m., marveling at how quickly the once-deserted little town had risen from the dead. Was it even five years since some real-estate developers started marketing the area as an Eden for psychic enlightenment? Not that it wasn’t pretty in its red-rocked, desert-y way—Big Bend National Park lay several hours south of them and the Guadalupe Mountains almost as far to the north. But when the closest metropolitan area was El Paso, how could Jo not be surprised by Almanuevo’s success?

And it was, against all probability, succeeding. Billboards advertised vortex tours, psychic readings and even a dude ranch that offered everything from chakra alignments to rattlesnake roundups. The signs were set too far back to shade the two-lane highway as she drove into town, her windows open to the unseasonably warm March sunshine. But they were entertaining.

She knew the Alpha Inn, with its pitted parking lot and faux-adobe bungalows. It was one of the oldest businesses in town. Its first incarnation had been as the Tumbleweed Motel, before interstates had put the original town out of business. Jo spotted Lorenzo’s black Ferrari, a rental with New Mexico plates, and she parked her battered blue Ford beside it.

God, she was tired.

For a moment, right after she killed the engine, she let her head fall back and wondered what the hell she was doing here. The sensation felt very much like panic, but at what? The story she finally was going to tell?

Or the man she meant to tell it to?

Since she never allowed herself to panic, Jo grimly shook it off and got out of the truck, sand crunching between her boots and the warm, worn asphalt. At least her cowboy hat—stained white straw, for summer wear—kept the worst of the sun off.

She knocked on door #7. Then she waited, squinting even through the shade of her hat brim and sunglasses. She noticed the drapes were closed.

She knocked again, harder. Nearby a snake of some kind flowed off a flat rock and into the desert. Jo thought she might just fall asleep on her feet out here.

Then the door swung open, and she found herself surrounded by a burst of air-conditioned coolness and nose-to-hairy-chest with the P.I.

Lorenzo had obviously just woken. His thick, dark hair was messy, his shirt was halfway open, his jeans partly unbuttoned, and he was barefoot. For a long moment, Jo just stared—breathing again. She forced her gaze slowly upward. From the small, gold medal nestled in his chest hair to his throat, his shadowed jaw, finally his intense eyes squinting down at her against the glare of Texas sunlight. The awareness that whispered through her from his proximity surprised her. It was another sensation she didn’t generally allow herself to feel.

When Lorenzo covered a wide yawn and waved her in—“Nice hat”—Jo entered his cool, dark cave. She didn’t like caves.

Yet it was so unlike anyplace she expected a man who drove a Ferrari to stay that she found herself grinning. “Pink Formica?”

He snorted. “You got something against Formica?”

But her attention had moved on to the rumpled, king-size bed. It looked particularly inviting, more than this morning’s cot had, and Jo hid her own yawn as she took off the hat and sunglasses. “It’s kind of dark in here,” she hinted.

“Oh yeah. Sorry.” Lorenzo flipped on the lights.

Accepting that as the best she’d get, Jo sank into one of the hard plastic chairs by the paper-strewn table. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

“No problem.” Belatedly, Lorenzo buttoned his jeans, then sprawled with his odd, lumbering grace into the other chair. He dwarfed it. “I’m gonna send out for lunch—you want anything?”

She tried not to look at the bed, wishing she didn’t feel so…so alert, around this man. “Almanuevo has delivery now?”

“Not exactly.” He smirked at the rotary phone as he dialed, as if something about it amused him, then said, “Yeah, this is Lorenzo at the Alpha. Send me the usual, and….”

He widened his eyes, waiting on her.

“Just coffee,” she insisted.

“Toss in a slice of apple pie and an extra coffee. Yeah.” And he hung up. “Delivery in Almanuevo is me saying I’ll give five bucks extra to whoever carries my order across the street from the Ambrosia Café. Sometimes it’s a waitress, sometimes it’s another customer.” He shrugged at the quirks of small-town life. “So you thought about what I said yesterday?”

“I thought about the cave-in,” she admitted.

“Want to tell me about it?” It wasn’t exactly concern, but she appreciated his pragmatism. Concern might make her want to cry, or say something embarrassing, and she didn’t need that. Lorenzo found a legal pad buried amongst the pile of loose pages on the desk and fished a pen out of the mess as well.

Jo hesitated. She hadn’t told anyone what she’d seen—thought she saw—since the reporter, and she’d been doped up on painkillers at the time. Since she’d been quoted as an anonymous source, she doubted even her brothers knew she was the one who’d started the rumor about zombies.

A laptop computer sat on the kitchenette bar, plugged into a phone jack, and paperwork covered the table. But did she really mean to recite the whole, unbelievable story to a stranger from Chicago?

She was here to make the dreams stop, that was all.

“You changed your mind again,” guessed Lorenzo, sagging back in the chair and looking ceilingward.

“I’d just like to know more about why I’m telling it,” Jo challenged. She’d been more comfortable in her jail. Now in his motel room, his messy bed sprawled beside her and his chest hair staring her in the face, she felt distinctly out of her league.

Like the world had started vibrating at a faster speed. But to hear some folks talk, maybe that was just Almanuevo.

He seemed to consider the request, then shrugged. “Right. I can handle that. What I do, Miss James—”

“Ms. James,” she corrected easily. “Or Sheriff.”

He stared at her, then tried again. “What I do, Mzzz. James, isn’t the usual private investigation stuff. I do that too—cheating spouses, skip-traces on bounced checks, crap like that. A guy’s got to make a living, no matter how well-off his partner is. But our specialty is the weird stuff. Cults. Curses. Ghosts.”

Zombies. Jo’s discomfort settled into her gut as she pursued the less remarkable claim. “You believe in ghosts?”

“My partner does. Me, I’m careful not to disbelieve in anything nowadays. What with the Internet, it’s pretty easy for people with, let’s call ’em special requirements, to find me. Most of them are major flakes, by the way, same as the assholes who generally suck them in. But a few of ’em aren’t.”

And that, apparently, was important.

He shifted in his seat, though it looked a bit small for him to get truly comfortable, then continued, one hand sculpting the story out of air. “So a few weeks back, we get a call from a mother whose son vanished, maybe four months ago, in Almanuevo. Not a child—a college kid. Thing is, he vanished dead. Seems he and his buds tried rock-climbing under the influence of God-knows what, with the expected, pancakelike results. No biggie.”

Jo didn’t bother to hide her scorn. “No biggie?”

He was unfazed. “So one minute his remains are safe in the town clinic, toe-tagged and body-bagged. Next thing you know—” He snapped his fingers. “Gone. Like he got up and walked away.”

“But clearly,” said Jo, “he didn’t get up and walk away. Corpses have been stolen before….” Though not around there. That she knew of. “Haven’t they?”

Lorenzo’s rugged expression stilled. Then he frowned.

When a knock sounded at the door they both jumped—then avoided each other’s eyes. “Lunch,” the detective said, rolling to his still-bare feet. He checked the peephole before cracking the door, more cautious than Jo would have expected. He was a big guy, after all. And his automatic pistol lay on the bedside table.

It was lunch. He handed the kid some bills, then shut and chained the door and carried the bag back to their table.

“Yeah, corpses get stolen,” he agreed finally, exhuming cardboard cups and Styrofoam containers of food and laying them on top of his papers. “But usually their buddies don’t claim to see them wandering around a few days later. Have some pie.”

He got the pie for her? “I only asked for—” Did he say wandering around? “—coffee,” Jo finished lamely.

“Have pie anyway. I can’t eat if you aren’t eating.” Considering how he tore into his hoagie, she questioned that.

“His friends saw him wandering where?” she demanded.

“That,” said Lorenzo, covering his mouth behind his thick wrist until he could swallow, “is the tricky part. They don’t know for sure. Not our best or brightest, they were having a memorial out in the desert, honoring their fallen comrade—no pun intended—when whaddaya know? They see him ambling along in the distance. They take off after him, lose him in the rocks, then decide not to report it to the cops because they weren’t exactly smoking Marlboro 100s out there. But later they feel guilty and admit it to the kid’s mom, who then calls—” And he pointed a thumb at himself.

Jo hesitated. She didn’t want to insult the man, but…. “And these guys don’t fall under the category of flakes?”

Lorenzo grinned full agreement with her conclusion. He had a great grin, wide and honest. It almost turned him handsome.

Almost.

“Like Christmas snow,” agreed Lorenzo. “And along with their sterling testimony, the kid’s mother has contacted a psychic who says the kid’s neither alive nor dead. As probably won’t surprise you, this upsets her. Thing is—” And he wiped his mouth with a paper napkin, turned more serious. “The psychic she contacted is one of the most reputable in the country.”

Jo hadn’t fully realized that some psychics had better reputations than others. Better publicists, sure. But… “So you looked into it?”

“And found out that this kid’s not the only stiff to go missing in the area. Not all of ’em are from Almanuevo, but close enough that the Chamber of Commerce is no-commenting on the issue. Also, he’s not the only John Doe to be sighted wandering the desert in a daze, though others weren’t recognizably dead at the time. This, I had to look into. So I flew into Albuquerque, and here I am.”

Bingo. “El Paso’s closer.”

“Yeah.” He took another big bite of his sandwich, then muttered through it, “But it has a smaller airport. Lousy selection in car rentals.”

She shook her head as she took a sip of coffee, still ignoring the pie. The way her stomach cramped up at the very thought of telling her own experience, she meant to continue ignoring the pie. “Still, you can’t think that this kid—these missing persons—are the walking dead, can you?”

She wasn’t sure which she wanted more—for him to say no, and keep her safe, or yes, and prove her sane. Besides, it wouldn’t prove her sane. It would just make him another flake.

Lorenzo shrugged. “Guess I won’t know until I meet up with one of them. But it’s my job to think outside the box, so on that outside chance…”

That was her cue. He’d told her his story; now he wanted to hear about the zombies…or what could maybe have been, but surely weren’t, zombies. Part of Jo wanted to trust him, maybe to be believed or, better yet, to have everything explained at last. But if it turned out he couldn’t believe her either…

“Can I see your P.I. license again?” she asked.

With exaggerated patience, he leaned to the side in his chair, fished his wallet out of his jeans’ tight back pocket, and handed it to her. It was still warm with his body heat.

She wished she knew what a real State of Illinois private investigation license should look like. She also wondered who the pretty Italian girl displayed next to it was. It looked like a high-school graduation picture.

“Anything else?” Lorenzo asked as Jo handed back the wallet, and she shook her head.

“The cave-in,” she began hesitantly, and he slid his pad loose from beneath his lunch. “There’s so much I can’t be sure even really happened. How much do you want to know?”

He groped through stray papers until he reclaimed his pen. “As much as you’re willing to tell me—whether you’re sure of it or not.”

So she did.

She hadn’t looked scared once, not even during his undead-frat-boy story, and that one still made Zack’s partner, Cecil Taylor, shudder like a wet cat. Zack liked that about Josephine James. He liked feeling he didn’t have to sugarcoat what he did. He could almost stop thinking of her as a woman and just think of her as a law-enforcement colleague. For whole minutes at a time.

The hat had helped.

Then, as she readied to talk about the mine cave-in, damned if Jo James didn’t start looking all female and vulnerable after all…despite how her story began.

“During summer break after college, I worked as an underground blaster in a New Mexico coal mine,” she admitted. “I calculated quantity of explosives to tons of rock, loaded and tied-in blast patterns. Stuff like that.”

“Damn.” Zack sat back in his chair. “I’m impressed.”

She narrowed her eyes, suddenly less vulnerable. “I grew up with brothers, Mr. Lorenzo. I’m not exactly a frail flower. Anyway, it’s good money. Surface blasting pays well, underground blasting even better.”

“And I said I’m impressed. So what happened?”

“The insurance companies blamed it on an earthquake. I’m not sure what to believe. One minute I was walking along with Frank and Gil—and the second foreman, Diego—in the third-level tunnel. The next, we all just…stopped. Dead-still. It was eerie.” She swallowed, hard. “We looked at each other, without even knowing why. And then…”

She shrugged, fidgeting with an unpainted fingernail, looking vulnerable again. And small. She was small—Zack had finally noticed that today. The sheriff didn’t walk small or talk small. But when she’d stood directly in front of him, at the door, the top of her white cowboy hat had barely reached his collarbone.

He felt more comfortable when he thought of her as tough. As it was, when he prompted her—“And…?”—he felt like a bully.

“And…” She narrowed her eyes, as though to recall the events as accurately as possible. Maybe she was tough after all. “I heard bits of dirt trickling onto our hardhats, and then the world exploded into this blast of dust, too dark to imagine….”

He thought maybe he would shudder like a wet cat. Instead he suggested a less immediate description. “It caved in.”

“Yeah,” she agreed gruffly. Her blunt lashes lifted long enough for her to meet his gaze with something like gratitude.

Her eyes were blue. Pretty. Definitely a woman’s eyes.

They both looked back at the table. “It was dark when I regained consciousness. Mr. Lorenzo, have you ever been underground with the lights out? The dark’s so thick, it’s as if you’ve been swallowed. You feel the weight of all that…that rock above you. I was trapped under something heavy, it turned out to be Gil—I think he must have thrown himself on top of me. I turned on my helmet-lamp and got loose and tried to help him, but…” She stopped again.

“He died,” Zack finished.

“And then Frank, and farther down the shaft…”

Great. Resenting his chivalrous impulse, he still tried to nudge her past that particular catalog of corpses. “Did you find anyone alive?”

“Diego.” But she didn’t look happy about that, either. “Just Diego. And he was badly hurt, though he pretended not to be. He kept insisting that the Safety Response Team would be pulling us out any minute. Then we both heard something. I turned to look—with the helmet light, I could only see one direction at a time—and it was Frank. His fingers were…they…”

And she curled and uncurled her own small, solid fingers, to illustrate. Even without long nails or polish or rings, her hands were clearly female, too. Strong, but small.

“Rigor mortis?” Zack suggested hopefully.

“Except he got up. His neck was broken, and his skull was crushed. He shouldn’t have been able to get up, but he did. I told you that I probably imagined it….”

It occurred to Zack that, if he wasn’t watching Josephine James tell this, he might agree. Even after four years of learning to see this stuff, looking for answers. Maybe she was making it up, or had imagined it all. The line between reality and perception was thinner than most folks admitted. And yet…

He didn’t think so. Her face was pale, her jaw set, her eyes really still like she was focusing on the memory. “So at first I thought, Hey, Frank’s okay! Stupid, I know, but…I really wanted him to be okay. I went to him and took his arm, told him he needed to lie down and wait for emergency response. But his hand felt funny…fake. And his eyes were blank, blank like I’ve only seen on road-kill. It wasn’t Frank, anymore. And he…it tried to bite me….”

She took a deep breath, still pale but otherwise determined. “I pulled loose and grabbed a pickax, and I told it to stay back, but it came at us—at Diego—so I swung. And…” Again, she shrugged. Clearly, she’d made sure Frank wouldn’t be getting up again, friend or not.

Tough broad.

“I think I would’ve thrown up,” she said, “but then Diego shouted a warning, and Gil grabbed me, so I…stopped him, too. Then I just sat there with Diego, waiting, talking about stupid, everyday stuff. He seemed worse, but I heard digging, so I knew we were being rescued.”

Zack took a deep breath as he made more notes, then frowned at a thought and looked up at her. “Newspaper said you were pulled out unconscious.”

Josephine James met his gaze evenly, “I was wrong. The digging wasn’t them coming to pull us out.”

Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Zack stood, started to pace. “You had to fight more?” This was why women weren’t supposed to do dangerous stuff. This was why they should stay safe at home, like his mother and Nona did.

Like Gabriella should have done. She’d died at home, but maybe if she hadn’t been going out, without him knowing…

“One, mainly,” the sheriff insisted. “We had a strange driller working with us that summer—everyone called him Tio. Rumor was, he was some kind of mayombero, into the bad magic. Some of our crew quit rather than work for him. He wasn’t the one doing the digging, but I realized he was in control of them.”

Them. “More zombies?” Zack asked, standing still now.

“If that’s what they were. If it even really happened. They were things, not people. Not alive. I somehow knew Tio was the one who wouldn’t let them die. Don’t ask me how, but I did. I started to fight them off, and Diego managed to get up and stand in front of me, trying to protect me. I thought he’d recovered enough to help. But I was wrong about that, too.”

Merciful God. “He died.” And turned on her.

“I wasn’t thinking real clearly by then, but I knew I had to stop Tio. Even then I didn’t completely believe what he was doing, but there were so many….”

“But you were just a girl.” Zack sank onto the bed at the idea of it. He felt sick. He hated hearing stories like this, watching innocents—women—suffer, unable to reach back in time and help or protect them.

But damned if Sheriff Jo’s chin didn’t come up, if the agony didn’t ease from her gaze in place of grim pride. “A girl with explosives in her pack.”

“You blew them up?”

Jo kind of liked the way Zack Lorenzo stared at her—awed. Maybe finally telling the story, after so many years, robbed it of some of its power. Maybe having someone believe her was what did it. But suddenly, instead of the nightmare owning her, Jo owned the nightmare. She had survived, after all. No matter how awful, even if it had been real—and had it?—she’d survived.

“I didn’t blow them up, exactly,” she clarified. “I dodged through the tunnel they’d come in, and I blew the wall.”

Then she’d lost consciousness, buried in rubble. She hadn’t expected to survive—not the blast, not the toxic gas that explosives emit after detonation, not the…zombies. But miraculously, she’d come-to in the hospital, her older brother asleep in a chair beside her. Since he’d been in D.C. before the accident, she could only imagine how long she’d been out. At first she wondered if she was in an asylum, but no.

Nobody but her seemed to realize that the corpses had died twice.

Sitting here with Zack Lorenzo, the rest of the details—an uncle somehow killed while helping with the rescue, a reporter who appeared while she was still dopey from painkillers—finally eased, far more than when she’d just told herself she’d imagined it all. Jo didn’t believe she was done with the nightmares, of course. But maybe, just maybe, she might sleep for real, now.

For the first time since she could remember.

Except, of course, that there was a big Chicago detective sitting on the only bed in the room, his weight making it dip. His bed. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d thought about a man and a bed in the same moment…Diego, she guessed. She wasn’t sure she appreciated the awareness that fluttered deep in her stomach. She didn’t trust the sharpness of her breath. It felt dangerous in its own right.

Was it possible that she could ever handle dangerous again?

Lorenzo rose from the bed and came back to the table. She took another deep breath as he passed her, big and warm and solid. Some risks were probably better than others. And he didn’t feel dangerous, just the awareness of him did.

Zack Lorenzo still felt remarkably safe, for a stranger.

When he sat on his plastic chair and began scribbling, she waited for him to glance up at her, wanting to see his eyes again. She couldn’t remember what color the detective’s eyes were. He seemed to be avoiding her gaze deliberately.

“I don’t think I even used the word zombies, the reporter did,” Jo admitted, reaching for the partially eaten piece of pie he’d pushed away from him earlier. He’d offered it once, after all. And he didn’t seem to want it. “I could’ve been delirious.”

“Yeah,” he muttered through his note-taking. “Right. You sound like the real flighty type.”

Since he said that sarcastically, she took it as a compliment. She also took a bite of pie, and it tasted wonderful, sweet and syrupy. She actually ventured a question. On the off chance they were both sane, after all. “But zombies are from Haiti, right? Or maybe Louisiana. Not the southwest.”

“Uh-huh,” Lorenzo agreed, still scribbling. When he finally looked up, it was all business. Business with deep, brown-green eyes. “There’s theories about whether real zombies were ever dead or maybe just drugged. Some scholarly types even talk about philosophical zombies…living people who just go through the motions, without thinking anymore, you know? But you’re right. None of that seems to fit with this Tio guy you described. Wasn’t Tio one of the Jackson 5?”

“That was Tito,” she told him, pleased. Who else listened to old ’70s music, anymore?

Lorenzo rolled his eyes. “Well, that’s a relief. So think back. Could he have been into voodoo?”

She swallowed another bite of pie and decided to at least pretend this was possible. Why not err on that side, for once? “Nope. If anything, it was something like Santeria.”

Lorenzo blinked at her. “You couldn’t have mentioned this earlier in the story?”

It impressed her that he knew what Santeria, a form of Cuban witchcraft, even was. Her grandfather was a scholar of this kind of stuff, but most people… “I’m just guessing. Tio wasn’t Mexican, and I’ve heard that a lot of the Brujas have a bias against mixed bloods.”

Zack rubbed a hand down his face, then squinted at her. Something about uncertainty on a face as rugged as his looked downright endearing. “Any chance you know someone around here who could tell me more about local Santeria or Brujeria?” He considered that. “Someone relatively sane?”

Her first urge was to call him crazy. But when she pushed past that urge and thought about it… “Ashley Vanderveer, the nurse practitioner at the Almanuevo clinic.”

The one where the boy’s body had gone missing.

“Peachy.” When he saw the question in her face, Lorenzo added, “I already tried her, asking where the corpse wandered off to, but she wouldn’t talk to me. Said I’d have to hurt myself—and that it wasn’t an invitation.”

Jo laughed. She’d always liked the new nurse…though to be honest, she guessed Ashley wasn’t really new. She’d been running the closest medical facility to Spur for two years now. It was a sign of how strictly Jo had kept to herself, that she’d never pursued that possibility of friendship. “Well, she might talk to me. Or us,” she conceded quickly, at Lorenzo’s widened eyes. Definitely brown-green.

“Us,” he repeated. Like he didn’t want her to help.

“You don’t think I can just go home and forget that all this…this whatever’s-going-on is going on, do you?”

That she could go back to that half life? Sure, it was safe. But that’s all it was. And she’d thought she’d stopped them. On some level she’d really thought…

He stood. Wow, he was a big guy. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I think. It’s my job, not yours.”

“Arguable.”

“This isn’t your jurisdiction. Mayberry is your jurisdiction.” Which was true, sarcasm aside. But Almanuevo wasn’t exactly his jurisdiction either.

Jo stood, too—not that it made a big difference—and folded her arms. “You’re the one who said I could help.”

“By telling me your story, in case there’s any connection. You did, and I’m thinking there isn’t.”

“You also said Ashley won’t talk to you.”

“Yeah, well maybe I just need to turn on the Lorenzo charm.” When she lifted an eyebrow at him, he looked mildly hurt. “Hey, I can be charming!”

“Look,” insisted Jo. “I’m still not sure what to believe. But if there’s any connection between those missing persons and what happened at the mine, I am not letting it go until I find out more. I can either work with you, or on my own. Your call.”

Now he folded his arms. The pose looked impressive on him; probably more than on her. “I don’t want to distract myself baby-sitting you while I’m going after whatever this is, okay?”

Baby-sitting? Luckily, she felt too good to hit him. He looked so serious—and annoyed—that she grinned instead. “And how many monsters have you blown up, tough guy?”

It degenerated into a staring contest, which Jo won. Lorenzo’s eyes were a lot easier to resist when he was being this obnoxious. And watching them kept her gaze off his body.

“Fine,” the detective spat. “Fan-freakin’-tastic. Lemme shower and we’ll go talk to the nurse. Finish the damned pie.”

That last sounded like an order, so Jo resorted to equal familiarity.

“You need a shave, too.” She didn’t just feel good, she felt cocky. Alert. Awake, after having been asleep for far, far too long. Willing to try a risk or two—maybe with him.

Breathing.

Lorenzo began to move a hand—and not to check his jaw—but lowered it self-consciously before disappearing into the bathroom. He’d probably been raised not to flip off ladies.

Jo felt more stunned than if he had. She slowly sank back into her chair. The man was wearing a ring. How long had she been out of the dating world, that she hadn’t even looked until now?

A wedding ring.

She heard the shower come on in the bathroom and forced herself not to think about a big, swarthy, naked Zack Lorenzo. Wet. She tried not to look at the shadowy, rumpled bed.

The man was married. Maybe to the Italian girl pictured in his wallet. Some risks, you couldn’t pay her to take.

Jo told herself that it didn’t matter; they were investigating missing persons, not flirting. In fact, it was probably better that he was married. Safer. It meant she could stay casual with him. It meant she didn’t have to worry about messy romantic complications. The last man she’d been interested in had died and then tried to kill her. In that order.

For the first time in years, she let herself admit that.

But when she phoned Deputy Fred, to let him know she’d be out the rest of the day, Jo felt disappointment dull the bright edge that her life had taken on a few minutes earlier. Because of a man. One she’d barely even been attracted to.

It pissed her off.

Good thing she had something worthwhile to do…even if it might yet prove a little insane.

Chapter 3

It felt weird, showering with the sheriff in the next room.

Hell, it felt weird thinking of Jo James as a sheriff. In Zack’s world, most sheriffs were overweight, balding and—oh yeah—men. He might not agree that’s how it ought to be, but it’s what he was mainly used to. It even seemed safer.

If he didn’t like women, that would be one thing, but he did. Grandmas and toddlers, housewives and businesswomen. That was his problem. He liked women enough that he couldn’t stand by to see one hurt. And if Jo James insisted on “helping” with this investigation, stirring up powers she couldn’t see or believe, the odds were on hurt. Zack didn’t need that responsibility or the guilt of failing at it.

Again.

Having a lady sidekick, even for the few days he was in Almanuevo, wasn’t going to help. It would just distract him.

So he lathered up and rinsed off and did his damnedest to think of Jo James only in terms of her professional role, rather than her small build. Or how crossing her arms plumped her breasts under the plain blue T-shirt she wore. Or how the hip-holster for her revolver—talk about your Old West cliches—emphasized the curve of her hips. A revolver, despite that most law-enforcement officers carried 9mm automatics like his.

Tomayto, Tomahto. It wasn’t like she needed quick reloads or stopping power in greater metropolitan Spur. But distractions were distractions.

She was female.

If he hadn’t had enough proof, her mood swings had confirmed it. By the time he was dressed and back in his tacky motel room, Jo had gone serious on him. Not I-really-survived-a-zombie-attack serious, either. Closed off.

“We’ll take my car to the clinic,” Zack announced as he buckled his shoulder holster on over his shirt, then threw on a light jacket to cover it.

The sheriff nodded, heading for the door with her hat in hand. It seemed too easy.

Zack pushed his luck. “You can help me with Nurse Vanderveer, but after that I’m working—holy crap, is this March?” It took less than two steps out the door to know that he’d overdressed. He turned around and stalked back inside, unbuckling the holster to strip to his white undershirt.

“After that you’re working what?” challenged Jo from the doorway. At least she’d averted her eyes—but her cheeks looked a bit pink. Blushing, or sunstroke?

Distractions. Zack slung his holster back on, using his long-sleeved shirt to conceal it—badly—before heading out again. “How hot is it out here?”

“Eighties…the weather’s been strange this last year. But there’s a breeze. After I help with Ashley, you’re working what?”

“I’m working alone.” He locked the hotel door behind them with a key; key cards were apparently beyond local technology. Actual sand—sandy dirt, anyway—overlapped the edges of the rutted parking lot, and beyond that, reddish-brown rocks and clumps of cactus. No grass, unless you counted some strawlike tufts. Things seemed kind of…dead.

He used his keyless remote to unlock the Ferrari with a beep, then headed for the passenger door. Sheriff Jo reached it first. “We’d make better time working together.”

“You shouldn’t be working this at all.” He swung into the driver’s side while she fastened her seat belt. She had to take her hat off, because of the headrest. Good. “For one thing, I’ve been doing this for almost four years. I know what we might be up against better than you do. For another, you’re…” A woman. But even his sisters would have bristled at that. And the only thing worse than a moody woman would likely be a well-armed moody woman. “Little.”

From the way Jo arched an eyebrow at him, she didn’t like that version of his argument either.

“And none of that matters, ’cause it’s my job,” he finished, smoothly starting the car.

“I’m not asking for payment,” she pointed out.

“Did I say you were? I still work alone.”

“I thought you had a business partner.”

“He’s a silent partner.” He considered young Cecil Taylor, the student who’d first told him Gabriella’s casket was empty and how talkative he could get, then qualified that description, “Technically speaking.”

“Look,” said Jo. “You tell me that dead bodies may be walking off on their own, not an hour away from where I live.”

Funny that she didn’t say, from my home. “Yeah. So?”

“So I’m one of the few people who’ll probably believe you. Since I do, I can’t just ignore that. Especially not if it has anything to do with what happened in the mine. I won’t just drive home and sing la-la-la and pretend it isn’t happening.”

Like she’d done after the cave-in. So the sheriff had something to prove—peachy. Zack squinted sidelong at her, sitting beside him, as he shifted gears. “La-la-la?”

She narrowed her eyes at him.

He said, “Just don’t get in my way.”

“Am I in your way?”

He was tempted to say yes—but she wasn’t. Not yet.

Give her time.

At least she proved useful with Nurse Vanderveer.

“Jo!” exclaimed the tall blonde, peeking from a back room into the empty waiting area. The clinic wasn’t exactly County General. “It is so good to see you again!”

She didn’t say the same to Zack.

“Hey, Ashley,” greeted the sheriff, awkward under the nurse’s friendly, one-armed hug. “Is it still a good time? You said on the phone…”

“Nothing’s come up,” the nurse assured her. “Wednesdays are generally pretty quiet.”

Zack said, “That wouldn’t have anything to do with you misplacing bodies, would it?”

Ashley Vanderveer flared her pale eyes at him. She was a pastel kind of person, especially in the pink smock she wore over her jeans, pure contrast against the smaller, sturdier sheriff. Jo looked more real, more competent…more touchable.

Though equally annoyed. “You really earn a living at this?” Jo asked him.

So maybe he’d been a little over the top. “Sorry,” he admitted, if with effort. “I just want to know what happened, and last time I came by here, Ms. Vanderveer here blew me off.”

“Go figure.” Now the sheriff looked amused.

“Jo said you wanted to ask questions about local Craft activity.” Ashley caught a chain around her neck with one manicured finger and tugged a small pentagram out to show him. She was witchy in more ways than one. “That, I will talk about.”

“But not about the dead boy,” Zack challenged.

“It’s all in the report I filed.”

“Don’t mind him,” said the sheriff in that voice—the condescending voice women use when discussing men right in front of them. “He’s from Chicago.”

“Hey!” he protested, but at least the nurse grinned.

“Come on into the break room, and we’ll talk,” said Vanderveer. “Over tea.”

Zack wasn’t real comfortable with getting this interview on Jo’s credentials, but he wasn’t dumb enough to turn it down, either. Not if he could learn why certain dead people weren’t staying dead around here. “You got coffee?”

A card table and metal folding chairs, two Salvation Army sofas, a sink, a microwave and a minifridge crowded the break room. Not a top-of-the-line facility. Though Vanderveer ran the clinic, she wasn’t even a doctor. From what Zack gathered in their previous talk, before she’d decided to hate him, a doctor visited on Mondays. Any other serious cases were sent to El Paso.

“I’m glad you thought of me,” Nurse Vanderveer assured Jo as they sat with their drinks. The sheriff, like Zack, took coffee. Either Jo didn’t mind instant, or she was good at hiding it, since it was pretty bad. “I’m a Wiccan and a curandera.”

“Which is like some kind of healer.” Zack leaned a cautious elbow on the flimsy card table.

“Which is a healer,” corrected Vanderveer. “Nurses and curanderas are both legitimate healers.”

Did he say they weren’t? Zack had no problem with women being healers. That was something they should be good at, what with all that nurturing and emoting. Women warriors? Barring some TV-show babes, he had to withhold judgment on that one.

Jo asked, “So you know something about the local, well…”

This was always the hard part in the interview, especially when you realized how thin the veil of normalcy really was.

“About local magic,” clarified Zack. “Not so much Wiccans; your type are generally benevolent. Sorcerers. Ceremonials. Wizards. The kind of magic users who aren’t real worried that instant karma’s gonna get them.”

Ashley stared at Zack, sleekly amused. “In Almanuevo?”

“Aren’t there any?” asked Jo, not understanding, and took a brave sip of bad coffee.

Ashley smiled—Zack had met plenty of Wiccans in his time, and she had that wise-woman look down pat. “Finding magic users in Almanuevo won’t be your problem.”

Considering the town’s reputation, Zack wasn’t surprised. “The problem’s gonna be sorting them all out, isn’t it?”

“That, Mr. Lorenzo, is only one of your problems.”

For once, the nurse didn’t sound like she meant it as an insult.

The way Jo James snorted into her coffee indicated she took it that way.

For years, Jo had assumed anybody who heard her story about the cave-in would find her certifiable. She liked that Zack Lorenzo hadn’t doubted her, despite his spotty people skills. He believed things.

The kind of man who makes a woman feel safe.

She pushed away the thought. He’s married.

Despite knowing that Ashley was into herbs and shiatsu, Jo would never have dreamed of walking in and asking the nurse practitioner about Almanuevo’s magic scene. But Zack would. And it turned out the town was crawling with every known flavor.

“The Wiccans really are the biggest group,” Ashley admitted casually, while the P.I. took notes. Jo knew that Wiccans, often called witches, were neo-pagans, but remained hazy on some things.

“Are we talking religion or magic?”

Ashley smiled. “Both. Magic is all about belief, and faith definitely affects beliefs. You don’t need one for the other, but they’re connected all the same. Just among the Wiccans we have Gardnerians, Dianics, Hellenistics, Celtics, faeries, some Hermetics—like the Greek or Egyptian pantheons—solitaries…”

Trying to absorb all this, Jo found herself watching Zack’s big hands, particularly his thick wrists. The sprinkling of dark hair on the back of his hands seemed to thin for maybe an inch, like the cuffs of his long-sleeved shirts had rubbed them smooth. She’d never thought of wrists as sexy before.

She didn’t mean to start now.

“You might consider talking to some H.P.s—high priestesses,” Ashley continued. “Even if they don’t mess with the dark stuff, they may know who does. On another front, there are several well-respected Brujas living in the hills.”

“Mexican folk magicians?” translated Jo cautiously. From what she understood, they were similar to Wiccans, but practiced a different religion. Or a different kind of magic. Or both.

“Mexican and Indian,” clarified Ashley. “And you’ve got your shamans too, though most shamanism around here is modified for the tourists. There’s a debate going on about cultural integrity and Anglos misappropriating native rituals, but either way, shamanism’s a pretty big moneymaker right now.”

“Shamans,” repeated Lorenzo as he wrote it out. While his head was bent, Ashley caught Jo’s gaze and slanted her eyes toward him, clearly questioning.

It had been so long since Jo had hung with female friends, it took her a moment to understand the signal. Did Ashley want to know if she was interested in him?

Jo held up her left hand, just over the edge of the card table, and waggled her empty ring finger. He’s married.

Ashley frowned and shook her head, which didn’t make sense. Of course Lorenzo was married—and, now, looking up at them expectantly. At least he didn’t seem to have caught their exchange. “Other than shamans?” he prompted with mock patience.

“Rumors of Santeria, but that’s low key. A biker couple outside town practices Asatru. But there doesn’t seem to be any Candomblé or Quimbanda in the area.”

Jo fought the urge to dismiss all this as craziness.

Lorenzo shifted his weight in his chair. “Any voodoo?”

“Surprisingly, yes.” With a grace Jo had never possessed, Ashley brushed her hair back. She was the kind of woman who kept her nails polished, who wore earrings and perfume, who somehow managed to look accessorized even in a medical smock. The kind of woman who made Jo feel vaguely like a lawn gnome. Maybe Ashley was interested in Zack Lorenzo. “Good Vibrations—one of the local supply shops—has a Vodoun priestess who does rituals every other Friday. I don’t think she’s particularly powerful, though.”

“Maybe.” Lorenzo tapped his notebook with the pencil eraser, looking amused. “But if we’re dealing with…”

He caught Jo’s gaze knowingly. Zombies.

She nodded, catching on. “Good point.”

Ashley looked from one of them to the other. “Hello? If we’re dealing with what?”

“Too bad you don’t want to talk about the missing body.” Lorenzo had the nerve to look smug as he took a sip of coffee.

Jerk. Jo said, “One of the possibilities Zack suggested was….” Then she hesitated too. Up until now, they’d been talking about real religions—on the fringe, but legitimate all the same. Nothing downright fantastical.

But she’d committed herself now. “We’re wondering about…something like…zombies.”

Ashley stared at her blankly, just like she’d feared.

Then, instead of questioning Jo’s sanity, Ashley said, “But zombies aren’t really dead, they’re just given a neurotoxin to seem dead. Believe me, that boy who vanished was dead dead.”

Lorenzo said, “Yeah, well, that whole business about tet…tetro…”

“Tetrodotoxin,” supplied Ashley.

“—doesn’t mean there can’t also be living-dead zombies.”

The nurse shook her head. “In any case, Vodoun priestesses don’t create zombies, Vodoun bokors do, and I’ve never heard of a bokor in the area. Not that they advertise.”

“How do you know the priestess isn’t also a bokor in secret?” demanded Lorenzo.

Ashley rolled her eyes. “Oh please! How do I know you aren’t one yourself?”

Jo was risking a stiff neck, looking from one to the other. “I’m having trouble believing this and you two are arguing it?”

“You could just go home,” suggested the P.I. immediately, then grinned. He still looked almost handsome when he grinned, even when he was being an ass. “And sing.”

Ashley squinted at him. “Sing?”

“Inside joke,” explained Jo. “And no, I’m not going home, so stop trying to make me.”

“I’m not working with you if you’re gonna freak out.”

“I’m not even close to freaking, I’m just…disoriented.” Jo took another sip of the coffee. The instant stuff wasn’t good, but it had the benefit of at least being coffee. “This isn’t the sort of thing you expect normal people to discuss over drinks.”

“What isn’t?” Lorenzo held her gaze, daring her.

She lifted her chin. “Real magic. The walking dead.”

There. She’d said it. No qualifiers. No hesitation.

Neither he nor Ashley so much as gave her a strange look. Ashley appeared concerned, sure—the walking dead should concern a person—but all she said was, “I’d be more suspicious of a certain Santero who’s rumored to live a couple of hours out of town. He might be into big magic.”

Lorenzo held Jo’s gaze a moment longer, almost approving. It eased something that seemed stuck inside of her—for a moment, anyway. Why did Ashley think he wasn’t married?

The P.I. turned back to the nurse. “If it looks like a duck and smells like a duck and quacks like a duck, at least let me interview a few ducks. Call me crazy, but when I think zombie, I think voodoo.”

Jo and Ashley both obediently said, “You’re crazy.”

He closed his eyes and sighed, scrubbing a hand down his face in exasperation. It was his left hand, complete with wedding band. Jo noticed Ashley notice her noticing.

Not married, the nurse mouthed. Then, Ask him.

Jo shook her head. Yes, she wanted to stop feeling guilty about watching Lorenzo’s wrists—or at least enjoying it. But to ask about his marital status would show interest. She refused to be interested.

She’d just barely joined the living, again. She wasn’t anywhere near ready to think about dating them.

Not that she dated the dead.

No, she mouthed firmly back at Ashley. You ask.

She didn’t expect the nurse to say, “So, Mr. Lorenzo, why do you wear a wedding ring if you aren’t married?”

Jo especially regretted it when the P.I. stiffened, then leveled a look of pure annoyance at her friend. “To fend off nosy broads like the two of you?” he suggested. “Now, can you give me some phone numbers for these magic users we’ve been talking about, or am I wasting my time here?”

Ashley made a face as if to say, touchy! Jo, uncomfortable to have been lumped into the nosy broad category, wasn’t sure she agreed. Life was easier when people minded their own business.

“Just the ones you think will be okay with us visiting,” Jo suggested, more politely. “If there are any you’re unsure about, feel free to contact them first, to clear it with them.”

“You’ll go along and make sure this guy doesn’t turn the entire occult community against us, right?” Ashley walked to one of the filing cabinets that held up the break room’s sidebar. “Because it’s bad enough when the mundanes are ticked off.”

“I promise,” said Jo.

“Us again.” Lorenzo sighed. “Great.”

“So are you two best friends or something?” asked Zack, reaching the Ferrari a step ahead of Jo. Her hand collided with his as they reached to open her door.

She didn’t pull back, just met and held his gaze. Stubborn.

He let go first and she opened her own door. Did nobody outside of Little Italy learn how to be a gentleman, anymore? Or did the women in Texas just no longer appreciate it?

“To tell you the truth, Mr. Lorenzo,” said the sheriff after he got in on his side, “I don’t have a lot of friends.”

“Zack,” he corrected, bringing the sports car to life with a twist of his fingers. “Now the ice queen, I could understand. Not that you’re the pink of perfection, but compared to that one…”

“And you’re such a judge of congeniality?” But at least she came close to smiling. He liked that expression better than that worried look she’d been wearing in the clinic.

Not that it was any of his business whether Josephine James worried or not. Or whether she had friends. Or whether she, like Nurse Vanderveer, gave a rat’s ass about his marital status.

“Look, when I mentioned I wasn’t married the other day, it was no big deal. At least she didn’t go fishing with stupid comments about what my wife thinks, or where she is.” That had annoyed him even before Gabriella’s death; did a wedding ring mean nothing anymore? “But this time, that was just nosy.”

He turned a corner onto the old highway, in the direction Jo indicated.

“She could be my friend,” cautioned Jo, lest he criticize the ice queen too heavily. “If I start making friends again.”

He almost asked, Why wouldn’t you?

Luckily he caught himself. Taking care of her wasn’t his job, even if he did like her better than Mzzz. Vanderveer. And he did; unpainted nails, uneven tan and all. Jo James was solid, and real—and a distraction.

“All I’m saying is, you might want to aim a little higher for companionship.”

“I didn’t ask you,” she reminded him, stubborn.

“Your loss.”

“I’ll survive.”

He grinned and continued to drive toward the first address on Ashley Vanderveer’s short list. This lady, she’d claimed, was a Bruja who would talk to anybody who came by.

Even, Jo had teased, him. Which Zack kind of liked. The sheriff was a lot safer to deal with on an antagonistic level. If he didn’t glance over at her, he could almost pretend she was one of the guys. And if she was one of the guys, he wouldn’t have to worry about her.

Well, not as much.

They were heading out into the middle of nowhere to interview what sounded like Jo’s first, full-fledged witch.

Chapter 4

The last fifteen miles to the Bruja’s house were on a dirt road. State-of-the-art suspension or not, the car bounced enough to make Zack’s classic-rock CD skip. Almanuevo was so far out, the only radio stations that came in were AM. Pushing the scan button landed the radio on Spanish stations, sermons, commentary and—heaven help them—polka music. So they stuck with the CD.

Not for the first time, he wondered how the hell Josephine James lived out here. Then he reminded himself that, oh yeah, living hadn’t exactly been the lady’s priority. It sounded like she’d pretty much retired from life after that mining accident.

He guessed she’d been going for safety. But most safety-conscious women wouldn’t leave her mobile phone in her truck.

“I forget I have it,” she’d explained, after she caught him sliding his glance toward her lap, looking for a belt-clip, and demanded an explanation. “It’s personal anyway. My brother signed me up. Spur doesn’t provide extras like that.”

Extras?

So if they got into trouble it would be up to him, his Nokia and the Ferrari to get them out. Peachy.

Zack was used to visiting scary, out-of-the-way places by now. He doubted Jo, what he and his partner called a “civilian,” was as prepared. Even if she was as tough as she made out, this was no thief or drug dealer. This was a witch. Old school. Unlike Wiccans, Brujas weren’t above the occasional curse.

Something about owls eating out one’s innards came to mind.

Not a standard stop on the safety-conscious tour of Texas.

Zack kind of hoped the old crone would scare Sheriff James right out of helping with his investigation. But he also hoped Jo would get over her fright without losing years and moving to an even smaller town—if such a thing existed—to do so.

At least he had a life…albeit one devoted to hunting down and killing things most people didn’t even believe and therefore didn’t see. Things he once hadn’t seen or believed himself.

Gabriella’s young death, even her body’s disappearance, hadn’t been enough to open Zack’s eyes. First he’d tried investigating through normal channels—despite the lack of witnesses, security footage, fingerprints or hair. Only when that proved a dead end did he turn, reluctantly, to the death itself.

He’d found her drowned in their bathtub. The front door had been locked and her clothes were where she had always hung them. Even in shock, he’d noticed those things; he’d been trained to notice. He’d dragged her from the water, so strangely beautiful even in death, and he’d called 9-1-1, her long black hair soaking him, and he’d cried, wanting her back, barely believing—but some damned cold part of him had still noticed the other details. Nothing pointed to suicide or murder. An autopsy revealed that she’d had some kind of mild heart attack and passed out. If she hadn’t been in the bath… If he’d just been home… It was an accident.

Or was it?

Her corpse’s disappearance upped Zack’s suspicions. He began to ask the M.E. how a bright, healthy woman of twenty-three could have even a mild heart attack, and whether it could have been drug induced, and whether drugs existed that were new enough to not show up in the tests. Then, needing more answers, he went after her new friends. The Life Force, they’d ironically called themselves. He hadn’t known she was even in a club until some of its members, other college students, showed up at her funeral. And if the death hadn’t been an accident…

Murdered women generally die at the hands of family or friends, not strangers. Zack had known Gabriella’s family his whole life. But these new kids—they were into reincarnation and near-death experiences, stuff he’d laughed at while Gabriella was alive. Was that why she hadn’t told him? With her dead, he found himself tracking her friends down and asking so many questions that they began to whine about police harassment.

His captain told him to let it go, and Zack quit to become a private investigator. There was something suspicious about the Life Force, even if most of its members were goofs.

Something dark. Something beyond the normal world, even.

And at the point that Zack finally tracked down the club’s president, that something tried to kill him. Either that, or in one weekend he developed the worst luck in human history. Three car accidents. A runaway bus. An electrical fire. Dizzy spells. A nurse in the E.R. came within a needle-prick of giving him penicillin, despite his chart labeling him as deathly allergic. His Nona began to babble about the evil eye. After his pistol went off by itself, grazing him and barely missing a three-year-old nephew, Zack didn’t dare disbelieve.

Out of possibilities, he’d turned to impossibilities—and to Cecil Taylor, the young man he’d met at the cemetery. Instinct said to trust Mr. If Anybody Respects the Dead, It Is I, and Zack’s instinct proved right. Taylor knew some honest-to-God, twentieth-century, Windy City magic users who managed to break the curse that was haunting him.

Barely.

When Zack went back to find the sonovabitch who’d run the Life Force Club—certain that nobody would freakin’ curse him unless they were guilty of something—the boy had vanished.

Unlike Gabriella, he’d done it alive.

He’d been searching ever since, Cecil’s help becoming a partnership. That’s when he’d learned that once you started looking, really opening your eyes, monsters and dark magic lurked everywhere. Lorenzo Investigations began to specialize.

Bringing him here. With a civilian woman.

Pulling up in front of the Bruja’s adobe hut, braking to avoid some scrawny chickens, Zack made a grudging stab at shielding Jo. “Wait in the car while I see if she’s home.”

“Hah,” said Jo, climbing out unaided.

So much for that plan.

Jo doubted she’d ever met Doña Maria Ruiz, but in her job as small-town sheriff she’d visited several homes like this one—dry, sparse and proudly neat for a house made of baked clay. The curtains in the open window were white and starched.

So this was how Brujas lived.

Zack knocked on the wooden door, and Jo rubbed her hands nervously down her jeans. These old Latin ladies could be pretty disapproving of a woman in pants, even in this day and age. It was daunting even when they weren’t witches.

The door cracked, revealing only a narrow shaft of the shadowy interior. One rheumy eye regarded them from a visible strip of dark, craggy face—classic witch. A potpourri of candles and herbs and something strange wafted out, something that sent shivers of warning through her. “Quién es?”

“Uh, hi,” said Zack. “Do you speak English?”

The one rheumy eye seemed unimpressed.

So he didn’t need help, huh? Jo stepped closer. “Buenos dias, Señora. Estoy…él está…nosotros…” I am, he is, we are—freshman conjugations! She hoped her pidgin Spanish was up to the occasion. “Buscamos a la Bruja. Por favor.”

We seek the witch, please.

“La Bruja?” That one eye looked plenty suspicious.

Zack slanted a dry gaze down at Jo, as if she’d peed in his yard. “Si,” he mimicked awkwardly. “Bruja.”

The woman asked, “Por qué?”

“She wants to know why,” translated Jo quietly. It’d been hard enough asking about magic at the clinic. Now she had to do it in Spanish?

Before she could try, Zack said, “Look, ma’am, we think there’s something evil in Almanuevo. We think it’s desecrating the dead. If it is, I’m gonna stop it. Can you help?”

“You can pay?” challenged Doña Maria cagily. So she understood English after all.

“Twenty dollars,” offered the P.I.

The Bruja eyed the Ferrari. “Fifty.”

Well, he was the one who insisted on the expensive toys.

“With all due respect,” Zack said dryly, “thirty.”

After a moment’s pause, the old woman nodded—and opened the door wider. “Come in,” she granted, so solemnly that Jo wondered if they could have entered without permission. Trying to think magically was starting to mess with her head, wasn’t it?

The mix of abnormal scents was almost overwhelming.

“Thank you, ma’am,” said Zack, extending one long arm to hold the door open for Jo to go first. For a pushy guy, he sure was polite about doors.

Then Jo noticed the older woman nodding satisfaction to herself at the gesture. Ah.

Suck up, she mouthed at the P.I., who grinned.

Instead of the apple-peddling wicked witch from Snow White, the Bruja now looked more like Aunt Bea from the Andy Griffith Show…if Aunt Bea were Mexican. She wore a long, embroidered white dress, a black lace shawl piously covering her neatly braided white hair.

“Mi santuario,” she directed, taking them through her portrait-lined kitchen to what looked like a lean-to or pantry—or it did until they entered. Then Jo, again going first, saw that it was some kind of magic room, complete with a wooden table covered with a black cloth, shelves of strange-looking supplies and a shrine to what she assumed was the Virgin Mary.

Other statues of saints, as well as little cards with religious pictures, were set neatly about the room alongside flowers and candles and several rosaries. Though no expert on Brujeria, Jo knew it was a Mexican religio-magical system that worshipped Mary as Guadalupe. Just this afternoon, Ashley had suggested that Guadalupe stood for a more ancient Aztec goddess, providing a safe way for native women to continue their worship after their long-ago conquest by the Spaniards.

Ashley had also suggested not casually mentioning that theory to the Brujas, many of whom considered themselves devout Catholics, not goddess worshippers.

Jo noted the stranger items in the room—old jars holding mysterious mixtures, sewing needles and what looked to be three dead and partly mummified hummingbirds. A human skull in one corner startled her. A second look showed it to be plastic.

Not that this made it normal or encouraging.

“Are these your grandchildren?” asked Zack from the kitchen, and the old crone, in the doorway between them, smiled.

“Si,” Doña Maria said, and began to list children and grandchildren alike. She’d gone through at least twenty names before she and the P.I. deigned to join Jo in the santuario.

Not that Jo needed Zack here. But she felt more at ease in his presence, anyway. She’d already sat, but when Zack settled onto the bench beside her, she felt his size and warmth and presence like an anchor in otherwise unsteady waters.

It occurred to her that the strange feelings might in fact be magic, filling the room, surrounding them. Was that possible?

“We were wondering if you’d noticed—” Zack began, but the Bruja held up a commanding hand, then bowed her head and began to pray.

“Ave Maria, gratia plena…”

It took Jo several more lines to recognize the Latin version of the “Hail Mary.” At the end, Zack crossed himself when the witch did.

Jo tried crossing herself, but—not being Catholic—sensed that she’d done it in the wrong order. She glanced at Zack, who shook his head. Then she glanced uncertainly back at the witch—

Whose head snapped up so suddenly, Jo stiffened.

“The Virgencita shows me great evil,” announced the Bruja in a hollow voice.

Could She could be a little more specific? Since that would come out more sarcastic than she meant it, Jo kept her tongue.

Zack asked, “Can the Holy Virgin help us learn more about this evil?” Look who’d just grown some people skills!

The older woman’s words sounded hollow, distant. She rocked slightly on her bench, as if focusing on something only she could see. “You will not find your way to this malvado, this evil, through Nuestra Señora La Guadalupana, nor of her angeles or santos. This is not of their working. This hides from their light. They can only provide protection for you.”

“That’s nice,” said Zack. “Protection from what, exactly?”

The old lady startled Jo again by suddenly grabbing her hand. The Bruja’s hand felt dry, strong for her age. “You wear the disguise of a marimacho,” she murmured. “But you are not evil. You think because you were robbed, you have nothing, but Guadalupana sees the truth in your heart. She wants for you what all virtuous women want.”

“That being…?” asked Jo, wary. She didn’t know the word, marimacho. She wasn’t sure how she’d been robbed. Diego…?

But the old woman was turning to Zack, using her free hand to take his. “You too were robbed of your life,” she murmured, still rocking. “But you, you chase it. You are a good husband, but you seek too far, too deep into the darkness. You strain even the protections of Nuestra Señora in this chase.”

Jo felt torn between concern and confusion. Zack had been robbed of his life?

“Still, Guadalupana smiles on you both,” the woman continued. “For you must face this darkness together.”

Zack slanted a look down toward Jo, less than enthusiastic.

“I will make you a protection,” announced the Bruja, releasing their hands. Even her normal voice felt tinged with power. “By the grace of Nuestra Señora and her santos and her angeles, a powerful protection against the evil you seek.”

“Thanks for that,” said Zack, while she stood. “But what we could really use is some idea of who or what we’re hunting.”

Doña Maria lit a candle, murmured a prayer over it, then set to work. She took a wooden bowl from her cupboard and began to add ingredients from unlabeled jars. She measured the way Jo’s grandmother had cooked, by practice and guess. A pinch here. A dollop there. “You are facing a diablero.”

“A devil,” translated Jo uncertainly. “The devil? No, that would be a diablo, right?”

“The diablero works the magic of El Diablo,” explained the older woman, still mixing and measuring. Jo only half watched, not wanting to know if any dead hummingbird got added.

“So it’s human, anyway,” said Lorenzo, as if that had even been in question. Or maybe it had.

“Perhaps,” hedged the Bruja. “Or no. Hombres son brutos.”

“Men are beasts,” translated Jo, trying not to grin.

“Thanks a lot,” said the P.I.

The older woman finished her mixture, then measured dollops of it into two squares of red silk, tying them with red cord.

“Keep these with you,” she instructed, giving a pouch to both Jo and Zack. “Pray the Ave Maria on them every night and morning, and together you may carry enough of the Lady’s light to shine upon and destroy this evil. You understand, si?”

“Sure.” But Zack warily sniffed the pouch.

“Si,” agreed Jo politely. “We understand.” Then she mouthed at Zack, Pay her. Which he did.

As they moved to leave, the Bruja stopped Jo with a hard grip. “For you,” she whispered, pressing a second pouch into her hand. This one was made of white silk.

“What is it?” asked Jo, watching Zack go ahead.

“A charm of love,” murmured the witch. “Pray to lead him from his darkness.”

To lead…Zack Lorenzo?

“Oh no,” said Jo quickly. “I mean, that’s nice of you, but I’m not interested….” The woman’s dark eyes brooked no deception. “Not in that way,” Jo qualified weakly.

Watching the man’s body and feeling safe around him had nothing to do with loving him or leading him from darkness!

“Hombres son brutos,” repeated the Bruja. “But this strengthens them, si? Protecting us, it raises them from the animals. It is our calling to keep them holy in return.”

Jo looked more closely at all the photographs lining the kitchen, almost covering the front wall. School pictures. Family portraits. Clearly that was how Doña Maria had led her life, witch or not. But Jo had once tried for a normal life, once let a man protect her.

Never again.

“Say the prayers,” insisted the Bruja, releasing Jo’s hand.

“I’m not even Catholic.”

“Do not be afraid of life, marimacho.”

“Hello?” called Zack, partway to the car. The Ferrari chirped and flashed its headlights as he approached it. That’s when he stopped still.

Jo awkwardly thanked the woman, then hurried to catch up—until Zack said, “Stay where you are.” Even over the unending Texas wind, she heard the sharpness in his voice.

“Why…?”

But then she heard the snake.

Chapter 5

Zack had always thought rattlesnakes rattled. This one buzzed, coiled in front of the Ferrari—way too close to him. It was the biggest snake he’d ever seen outside the zoo.

At least he stood between it and the women.

“Stand still,” advised Jo, approaching from behind. Great. If anything, the snake buzzed more loudly. “No sudden movements.”

“You’re the one who’s moving,” he said, slowly reaching under his outer shirt.

“You might shoot the car.”

“I buy the insurance for a reason.” He aimed. The Ferrari was just beyond the snake.

“We’re over thirty miles out of town,” Jo reminded him. “And I don’t see any other cars here.”

She was getting closer! “Will you stay the hell back!”

“I know rattlesnakes,” she continued, low. “You don’t.”

Okay, that was it. Now he was pissed. So Jo hadn’t let the old witch shake her? Kudos for her bravery in the face of grandmotherly Brujas. This was a freakin’ rattlesnake, and he didn’t need her showing off how tough she could be just now!

Besides, men were beasts, right? He liked killing things that threatened his life.

“Just leave it alone a minute,” Jo soothed, now right beside him, “and it should go away. It’s a lot more frightened of us than we are of it.”

“Oh,” he challenged. “So you’re scared of it, huh?”

He felt her stiffen beside him. “Not particularly. But it would make sense if you were. Being a city boy and all.”

Right. Like cities didn’t have snakes right alongside the rats. “News flash. First, I’m no boy. Second, I’m not exactly crumbling under the pressure here. I’m just trying to keep you out of harm’s way while I calculate how to avoid the gas line.”

But when Jo touched his wrist, staying him, he knew she would get her way. Wasn’t that just like a woman? He couldn’t aim his pistol now without shaking her off, which he was pretty sure counted as a “sudden movement.”

For a moment they just stood there, facing down a snake that was clearly more frightened of them than they were of it, since it turned out neither of them was scared. Jo continued to hold his wrist, her hand soft and steady, and Zack noticed again that she was smaller than he generally thought she was. Not that he had reason to think about her. Incense from the Bruja’s sanctuary clung to Jo’s short, shiny hair. The Texas heat felt magnified, with her so close, despite the wind. He began to feel flushed.

It didn’t seem to have anything to do with the rattler.

Finally, just as the sheriff had predicted, the snake’s buzzed warning softened. It began to lower its triangular head.

Then, in a sudden whiplike movement, it slithered right at them. It was not scared!

Zack elbowed Jo away from him to raise his pistol, but she was already stepping between him and his target—damn it!—and stomping.

Like that, she was standing with a cowboy boot firmly planted on the snake’s head. She crouched, a jackknife in her hand. In a sure, firm movement, she cut right through its neck.

Zack lowered his pistol to point at the desert floor and started to breathe again.

Backing away, Jo lifted one foot to wipe her blade on the sole of her boot first and then—the worst gone—on her jeans. If she’d had hair of any real length, the cocky little lift of her head when she looked at him would have tossed it. “There.”

She’d blocked his shot, risked her life, and that’s all she had to say? There?

He stared at her, short and solid and smug. More protests than he had words for pushed up into his throat before he gave them up and stalked past her to the dead reptile. He knelt, picked up the long, headless body, and stood. The thing was so thick around, his fingers didn’t meet his thumb as he held it. It had to be at least five feet long. Unless he held his arm up almost shoulder height, its rattle dragged in the sand.

He’d seen a lot of postcards about everything being big in Texas, but—Jesus, Mary and Joseph!

“Watch out for the head,” cautioned the sheriff, behind him. “The fangs are still poisonous.”

Her words were tough, but her voice was still a woman’s.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Zack demanded, turning on her. “It could have killed you!”

“Not likely,” she assured him, slipping her knife back into her pocket. “There’s antivenin in town.”

“But possible. And what happened to it going away? Maybe I’m just some dumb city guy, but I’ve got to ask—do snakes normally charge at people like that?”

Jo had the grace to look uncomfortable. “Actually…no.”

He waved the headless snake closer to her. “Exactly!”

To her credit, she didn’t flinch from the gory trophy. Any of his sisters would. Gabriella would’ve fainted by now; she’d always needed him to deal with the creepy-crawlies.

Then again, Jo was the one who’d beheaded the thing.

“You know,” she murmured, leaning closer to the reptilian corpse, “that was exactly what a snake shouldn’t do. Snakes don’t get rabies, do they?”

He shrugged. “Like I should know?”

Then their gazes met. They both knew who might. Ashley Vanderveer.

Doña Maria strolled past, startling them both. The old woman, her white skirts not quite brushing the rocky ground, bent low over the abandoned snake head.

Zack considered warning her that the fangs were still poisonous, but she lived out here. She probably knew.

When she produced a large cooking knife and skewered the thing, lifting it on the point of the knife, he was just as glad he’d kept his mouth shut—unlike some women he could name.

“Señora,” said Jo after a moment, following as the Bruja carried the snake head back toward her adobe house, “Do you—or the Holy Mother—consider snakes as evil omens or anything?”

Since it was a good question, Zack followed. Besides, who knew what trouble the sheriff might get into otherwise?

“No,” assured Doña Maria, circling the house. “Spiders, si. Wolves. But snakes, they are medicine animals.”

Well, that’s a relief, thought Zack—until they rounded the corner of the house and saw the old shed back there, its wooden wall papered with nailed strips of what he realized were snake-skins, undulating in the constant breeze.

There had to be…ten…thirty…fifty…?

How many snakes had the old lady skinned? And why?

“But these,” continued the Bruja, moving the lid of a large, clay jar and dropping in the fanged head. “These have been called, I think. They answer the diablero.”

Zack said, “Our diablero?”

“Say your thanks to Guadalupana for protecting you,” Doña Maria suggested, heading back to the house.

“But what about the snakes and the diablero?” asked Jo.

The old woman went into her house and shut the door behind her. So much for that line of questioning.

“Is…?” Zack looked over his shoulder at the wall of reptiles. “Never mind.”

He stalked back toward the car with their headless snake.

“Is what?” demanded Jo, following him.

He’d been going to ask if this was normal, but when had he started wanting backup? “This can’t be normal. The number of snakes she’s put under the knife isn’t, and the way this thing came at us definitely isn’t. We’ll take its body back to Vanderveer. If we ask nice, maybe she’ll test it for rabies.”

“Wouldn’t she need the head to check for rabies?” asked Jo. It annoyed him that he hadn’t remembered that much.

“You wanna go fishing in her jar-o-venom for it?” he challenged, then regretted it. Jo James might turn around and go back, in some feminista show of courage.

Instead, she caught up with his longer stride and gestured toward the body. “We might as well leave this too.”

“Maybe I want to keep it,” he said, aware that he was just being contrary now. “Make a belt or something.”

She shrugged, all suit yourself.

Though he doubted the rental agency would appreciate snake guts in the trunk any more than they would’ve liked him shooting the car, insurance or no insurance.

Then he heard another rattle—and the headless snake writhed in his hand!

With a yelp, Zack threw it. The thing arced awkwardly through the air like a heavy rubber hose, landing on a flat rock. It wriggled some more, still headless, while he slapped his hand against his pants to wipe off the traces of the cursed thing.

“What the hell was that?” Magic?

Then he heard a snort, and guessed not. If it was magic, Jo James wouldn’t be trying—unsuccessfully—not to laugh. Another quick glance into the desert proved how uncoordinated the dead snake’s movements were. The adrenaline in his system eased back to a trickle, allowing normal thought.

“Rigor mortis,” he guessed out loud, even more disgusted.

“Same thing happened to me once,” Jo assured him, which just annoyed him further. Like he wanted her sympathy!

“Oh really?” he challenged, swinging himself into the driver’s seat. He let her open her own damned door.

“When I was twelve,” she agreed, climbing in. Her lips were pressed together, but her eyes danced with mirth. When he turned to glare down at her, Zack knew he was in trouble.

Even keeping things antagonistic, he couldn’t pretend Jo was one of the guys.

As they drove back toward Almanuevo, Jo rolled the second “charm” the Bruja had given her in her hand, hidden from the driver’s seat by her body. A love charm, huh? It felt lumpier than the protection charm did. Now that they’d left the incense and the props, neither bag seemed particularly magic. But would they? Did she expect them to glow, or tingle or something?

Would she want them to? Would she want them to work at all?

The protection charm, maybe. But the love charm? Jo wasn’t looking for any man, hadn’t looked in years. Even if she did, the last thing she needed was a guy like Zack Lorenzo, who reeked of testosterone like cheap aftershave, to fall in love with her.

Except that his aftershave smelled expensive, not cheap, in the close confines of his powerful car. Rich and delicious.

“So you’re widowed, huh?” she asked finally, rubbing her trigger finger over the silk of the bag. The callus on her finger caught against the fine fibers.

“More or less,” admitted Zack. Sort of. “Why?”

Jo made a face. No magic was powerful enough. “Do you think that’s what the Bruja meant, saying we’ve both been robbed?”

“Could’ve been.”

Not big on personal answers, was he? “You aren’t still sulking about the snake, are you?”

“I don’t sulk.”

She raised a hand to fend off his vehemence. “Just asking.”

“Just because a guy doesn’t want to talk through every detail of his life doesn’t mean he’s sulking. Geez!”

“Forget I asked!” And she leaned her seat back a little farther, braced a boot against the dash, and made herself comfortable.

Finally he said, “I don’t like talking about my wife.”

“Fair enough,” she said, and for a while they just listened to classic rock. He had a good ’80s mix—Journey, Cheap Trick, The Eagles—and a better sound system. She could do with less air-conditioning, though. It was only March.

“Do you think it works?” she asked. “Spells and stuff?”

Casually steering with one hand, Zack said, “Yeah.”

“I thought a lot of these people were flakes.”

“A lot are. But some are scary powerful.”

“Do you think Doña Maria is powerful?” She’d been scary, that was for sure. In an incongruous, matronly way.

Zack considered that for a while. “I think she’s legitimate, anyhow. Powerful’s harder to tell. She didn’t give us much.”

True. But they hadn’t left empty-handed, either.

Jo’s fingers curled more tightly around the secret gift. She’d never had magical amulets, before. “It seemed so normal,” she admitted. “I mean, not normal normal. But it wasn’t…”

“No special effects,” Zack translated, to her relief. So she wasn’t the only one who’d ever noticed that, huh?

“Yep.”

“Look, I’m no expert either—I investigate the stuff, I don’t practice it—but I’ve seen magic work, and it…it’s like it hides itself in reality. I’ve never heard of a spell yet that couldn’t be called coincidence by some mean-spirited dweeb with a hard-on for skepticism.”

Jo admired the metaphor, but was vague on the point, “Uh-huh…?”

“Say someone does magic for money. He’s not gonna open his eyes and find a pile of money on his coffee table, you know? He probably won’t even win the lottery or have a relative drop dead and leave him an inheritance. More likely he’ll get offered a second job, or a lot of overtime, or his tax return will come early, or he’ll finally sell that old car that’s been sitting dead in his driveway for a year. So is it coincidence? Hey, get the map out of the glove box.” He considered it. “Please.”

Jo guiltily pocketed her love charm and retrieved the map. “Hard to say if it’s coincidence or not.”

“Exactly. But either way—” He glanced toward her for a split second, just long enough to convey his earnestness. “He does get the money.”

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