Distinguished Service & Every Move You Make (Uniformly Hot!) Page 32

  She didn’t get it. The night before last he’d told her he owned a tool and die company in Indiana. But how did that tie into private investigating? Why would a man who probably had more money than God want to become a private dick?

  It didn’t make any sense. And given the limit on their time together, she was afraid it might never make sense.

  “There,” Zach said, pointing out the windshield. “Is that Bisbane’s Bluff?”

  Mariah squinted against the sunlight reflecting off the hood of the truck. A half a mile up the road to the left loomed a rocky outcropping in the middle of Texas prairie land. “I think so. It’s been a long time since I’ve been out this way.”

  Zach nodded and opened a professional road map where he’d traced Jock’s map on top of it. “Okay, judging by the map, we need to make a left up here.”

  “Where?” she asked, not seeing any crossroads.

  “There!” Zach pointed to a narrow unpaved opening in the road.

  Mariah put on the brakes and backed up to make the turn. The truck kicked up dust. Trying to decide between slowing down or rolling up the windows, Mariah rolled up her window and indicated Zach do the same. The quicker this was over with, the faster she could get to solving the mysteries of her life.

  “Another left coming up here,” Zach said. “There.”

  Another dirt road that was more like ruts than a genuine road. Mariah tapped the dashboard. “Hang in there, Nelly.”

  She turned to find Zach watching her with a closemouthed grin. “What?” she asked sharply.

  He shook his head. “Nothing.”

  She blew a long breath through her lips, hating that she sounded snappy. She never sounded snappy. She was good ol’ Mariah Clayborn who could handle anything. Had a difficult case to solve? Contact Mariah. Needed to sow some oats before marrying someone else? Contact Mariah. Needed the satisfaction of stomping all over someone’s heart? Mariah was the girl for the job.

  She was surprised by the way her heart responded to her thoughts. It seemed to double in size and press against her rib cage uncomfortably. She absently rubbed the area.

  It seemed strange somehow that she was admitting that her exes’ desertions had been more than mere irritations. They had hurt. Badly. And the admission made the pain all the more acute. The back of her eyes stung and she caught herself making a wringing motion with her hands against the steering wheel.

  She was not going to cry. She was not. Mariah Clayborn didn’t cry.

  Her throat thickened. Yes, well, while that may have been true of the old Mariah—the chin-up, shoulders-squared Mariah who knew that everything would be okay so long as she acted like it was—the new Mariah—the one who had fallen in love with Zach Letterman—realized that all she had been doing was putting off the inevitable. That what bothered her didn’t really go away, it merely camped out in a quiet corner waiting to overwhelm her when she least expected it.

  She laughed without humor and turned her head to hide the tears she suddenly had to blink away. And now was the single most unexpected, not to mention inopportune, moment. They were on a treasure hunt, for Pete’s sake, not going out for some carefree Sunday picnic.

  “Mariah?”

  She took a deep breath and squinted through the window. “What?”

  “Is everything all right?”

  She didn’t dare look at Zach for fear that all the emotions bubbling just below the surface would come pouring out. “Fine.” She lifted her chin. “Some dust just got into my eye, that’s all.”

  “Both of them?”

  “Yes, both of them.” She stared at him. “You have a problem with that?”

  She cringed at the strident tone of her voice, but noted that Zach didn’t react one way or another to her short burst of anger. Rather he was looking at her with concern, with banked desire, and with another emotion marking his handsome face that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

  A car horn sounded.

  Mariah looked around them until she spotted where her father was parked off to the side a short ways back.

  Great. She’d completely missed the spot because she’d been too busy trying to read something into Zach’s expression that wasn’t there.

  She stepped on the brakes then jammed the truck into Reverse, silently counting backward from ten as she did. The action not only helped calm her nerves, it reminded her of the limits set on her and Zach’s relationship. Limits that would not be altered by her professing her true love.

  * * *

  ZACH GLANCED at where Mariah rolled her eyes, kicked at the dusty ground, then walked away mumbling something under her breath.

  “Where you reckon this is?” Hughie asked Zach.

  Zach looked over the older man’s shoulder. “I’d say you’re target on. But given what I know about maps, I wouldn’t put any money on it.”

  Hughie chuckled then stepped over to Old Man Clooney, who appeared to be checking wind direction with a wet finger. What wind direction had to do with treasure was anyone’s guess. But despite Mariah’s skepticism, and his own lack of knowledge in the area, the man who looked like little more than weathered skin stretched over a skeleton fascinated Zach. If Clooney should tell him that he was going to make the Red Sea appear, then part it, Zach would probably half expect it to happen. He shook his head. Looked like age didn’t have anything to do with being a fool.

  Cupping a hand over his eyes, he scanned the desolate area. Not a house or a building or another person in sight. The sound of the summer wind whipping over the plains was almost eerie.

  Hughie had told him all this land belonged to the state now. What with Bisbane disappearing and no blood relatives left to claim his land, the state had stepped in to claim it. That meant anything found on the land would also belong to the state.

  He frowned, trying to compile all the information that had gathered in his mind over the past twenty-four hours. There was the thief who had showed up first at the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Alabama looking for the same suitcase they were. Presumably it was the same thief who had snatched the bag when he and Mariah were on their way to the airport.

  Then there was the whole issue of Peggy Sue having to drop fifty pounds in the next three days if she hoped to fit into the dress in question in time for the renewal ceremony.

  And what of the details Mariah had gathered? That the dress had been worn by a Boston socialite at her wedding a mere two weeks ago? Would a new bride sell her wedding dress?

  He absently rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. Throw on top of that the whole Claude Ray fiasco and you had yourself a mighty fine mess.

  He watched Mariah, who was crouched down close to the earth, smoothing her hand over the soil. To say she’d been quiet during the ride out would be an understatement. Sure, he supposed that Claude Ray’s tying her up and leaving her alone in the kitchen for him to find would ruin anyone’s day. But he suspected her dour disposition was a little more complicated than that.

  He squinted his eyes. And why shouldn’t it be? Everything else was turning out to be complicated as hell. Why should whatever was happening between him and Mariah be any different?

  “Find anything?” he asked as he stepped to stand next to her.

  “No, I was just thinking.”

  “That could be dangerous.”

  She swatted at his leg then stood to her full height. “Very funny. No, I was just considering everything that has happened on this simple case of the missing wedding dress so far.”

  “I was just thinking the same thing myself.”

  She wiped her hands on her jeans. “Okay, so there’s this guy in Odessa who’s been married God knows how long, and he and his wife decide to renew their vows, you know, because a number of years have passed and, well, maybe they forgot them.”

  Zach watched
her begin to pace back and forth in front of him.

  “So he, or his wife, who knows which one, finds the perfect dress to do it in—”

  “A dress that wouldn’t fit if she had a body-sized shoehorn,” he interjected.

  Mariah blinked at him. “You didn’t tell me that.”

  He shrugged. “You didn’t tell me about the bracelet.”

  She made a face and resumed pacing. “Okay, so this couple find the perfect wedding dress, whether it fits or not is immaterial…” She paused. “Only the bag the dress is in gets lost in lost baggage hell.” She stopped again. “Did they tell you where they got the dress?”

  He shook his head. “Irrelevant information.”

  “Yes, of course, because being in a bag on its way to them already denotes ownership, right?”

  “Are you saying the Gawlicks stole the dress to begin with?”

  “I’m saying that the Gawlicks had someone steal the dress. The same someone who showed up in Alabama Unclaimed Baggage Center, then stole the suitcase—sans dress—from you outside the hotel.”

  “Go on,” he said.

  “This same someone, well, if he’s working for Gawlick, then it’s safe to assume that he knows who you are, because Gawlick hired you. Which makes you an easy target to follow.”

  “Yes, but why try to essentially steal the bag from himself? Seeing as Gawlick hired me to retrieve the dress and get it to him, then that’s what you’re saying he was doing.”

  “Because…” She trailed off, obviously thinking.

  Zach looked out on the prairie again, noticing that a vehicle was kicking up dust about a mile or so away. “State land.”

  Mariah stared at him. “What?”

  Zach pointed a finger at her. “Let’s say for the sake of argument that Gawlick did steal the dress. If that’s the case, then he did it not because his wife refused to wear anything else, even if she could fit into it. No. He did it because—”

  “Because he knew about the map on it.”

  “Which means that he was—”

  “On a treasure hunt.”

  He nodded. “Only if the hunt were fruitful, then he just spent a whole lot of resources giving the state of Texas a lot of money.”

  Mariah frowned. “I don’t follow you.”

  Zach stomped his foot against the ground. “This land became the property of Texas when Bisbane died, bit the dust, disappeared, whatever.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So anything found on the land also belongs to the state of Texas.”

  “When the bag was lost, Gawlick hired Jennifer Madison’s agency as a front to find the dress,” she continued, understanding dawning on her face.

  “Then he hired another man, or ordered the thief who was already in his employ, to steal the dress from us. When that happened, so far as we would know, the dress would be lost forever.”

  “And Gawlick would go on to secretly claim the treasure, there would be no renewal ceremony and no one would be any the wiser.”

  They stared at each other for a long moment without saying anything.

  “Awfully complicated.”

  “Oh, no, it’s quite simple, really. The circumstances are what make it complicated.”

  A couple yards away, the old prospector made an odd, throaty sound more animal than human. Zach lifted his brows and he and Mariah simultaneously shifted their gazes to watch the old man lift his arms as if giving praise to some unseen entity, his mouth moving, his skinny barrel chest vibrating.

  Hughie moved to stand next to Zach, cupping a hand over his mouth. “It’s something, watching him work.”

  “Is he Native American?” Zach asked.

  “Nah. Never even been around ’em. Says this is how he’s always worked.”

  “Ah.”

  On the other side of him, Mariah stifled a laugh.

  The old man suddenly dropped his arms, startling the threesome where they stood watching. They all laughed uneasily as Clooney crouched down in a position Zach was half afraid he wouldn’t be able to get back up from, then started hopping on each foot, swooping side to side like an airborne eagle with his feet stuck on the ground.

  Mariah released a long breath next to him. “We probably could have found something quicker with the metal detector.”

  “Assuming the item we’re looking for includes metal,” Zach whispered.

  Another loud sound issued from Clooney and Zach cleared his throat, determining to keep quiet from here on out…after he asked one more question.

  He leaned closer to Hughie. “How long does this usually take?”

  Hughie blinked at him. “How am I supposed to know? It takes what it takes.”

  “You mean you haven’t worked with him before?”

  Mariah leaned against Zach’s side. “Remember, it’s a legend.”

  Oh, great. Here they were standing out in the middle of nowhere watching an old coot imitate something he probably saw on TV, waiting for some sort of divine intervention to find the treasure of a man who had been dead for over a hundred years and who had traced a map of seed pearls onto his ill-fated bride’s wedding dress.

  It suddenly struck him how…bizarre this all was.

  “Where are you going?” Mariah asked, grabbing his sleeve.

  “To get the metal detector and a shovel. You with me?”

  Hughie grabbed his other arm. “Wait. I think he found something.”

  Sure enough, Clooney was bent over at the waist, appearing to stare at the ground with unerring intensity.

  “I think he threw his back out,” Mariah whispered.

  “Here,” Clooney said, pointing a finger at the earth and surprising them all by uttering something intelligible. “It’s here.”

  Zach blinked once, twice, then rubbed the back of his neck again.

  The spot Clooney had pointed to was at least twenty feet from where they had reckoned the X on the map was. Did they start where Clooney indicated? Or where common sense and math dictated?

  Mariah grabbed Zach’s shirtsleeve. She stared at something in the distance. A truck. Black, silver-tinted windows, appearing to emerge from the dust, and rolling up quickly.

  Clooney turned toward Hughie and held out his palm. “That’ll be twenty bucks.”

  14

  “WHAT IN THE HELL is Gawlick doing here?”

  Mariah blinked at Zach’s words as the truck bearing down on them drew to a stop mere feet away and two men climbed out from either side. One was Gawlick and the other looked oddly familiar. Then he realized where he had seen him. In Alabama. More specifically, holding the suitcase he’d taken from him as he ran away.

  Mariah blew out a long breath next to him. “How much can happen in one day?” she whispered, then leaned closer to Zach. “I think he’s about to prove our hypothesis.”

  “What in the hell is going on here?” Hughie asked.

  Having collected his twenty, Clooney walked in the other direction, away from the threesome and away from the vehicles. Zach frowned. What was he planning to do, walk all the way back to town?

  “Letterman,” Denton Gawlick said, coming to stand in front of him.

  “Gawlick,” Zach said back, squinting against the late-morning sun that rested over the other man’s shoulder.

  “Do you mind explaining to me what you’re doing out here, boy?”

  Okay, so the man was twenty years Zach’s senior, but he didn’t much like anyone calling him boy, as his conversation with Hughie the other night attested to. Especially someone he figured had set him up as a patsy.

  Zach took in the man with Gawlick. At somewhere around six feet, he equaled Zach’s height, but had at least thirty pounds on him—in raw muscle if the tight shirt was anything to go by. Zach tried to p
enetrate the mirrored glasses the dark-haired guy wore, but to no avail. He’d have to go with his unsmiling demeanor and set jaw to read his mood, which didn’t look to be too good.

  “Actually, Gawlick,” Zach said, returning his attention to his client, “I was just about to ask the same of you.”

  Denton gestured toward his friend. “I had Allan tail you.”

  Mariah crossed her arms over her chest, drawing Zach’s gaze there. “I would have known if we were followed.”

  Gawlick grinned at her. Zach didn’t like the way he did it. “There is more than one way to tail someone, Miss Clayborn.”

  Hughie puffed out his chest, apparently not liking their visitors any more than Zach and Mariah did. “Just who in the hell are you two and what do you want?”

  Zach grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck. “Hughie Clayborn, this is my client, Denton Gawlick.”

  The two men stared at each other, but it was Hughie who spoke first. “You mean the guy who paid you to find Ellie’s dress.”

  “So you know then,” Gawlick said, looking around the barren location, “though I probably should have figured that out given your location.” He squinted off into the distance. “Bisbane’s Bluff?”

  “How did you know?” Mariah asked.

  Gawlick chuckled. “Everyone knows about Bisbane’s Bluff, my dear. It’s the exact location of Jock’s treasure I was unsure about. Considering that the old man had over two hundred thousand acres, that’s a lot of land to cover without any guarantees.” He stared at Zach. “Give me my dress, Letterman.”