Page 10 of Never Stay Gone
Dakota eased his way past Heath’s broad shoulders and waited for him to lock the front door. Dakota had nothing to say.
“I thought you would have come back before now,” Heath said with a sigh.
Dakota followed him to the truck stop, where he got a large black coffee as Heath bought breakfast sandwiches and two vending machine cappuccinos before they drove out along the empty farm road heading south. Other than a few gates leading to ranch spreads, and the back ass of Big Bend National Park, there was nothing out this way.
It was a damn good place to hide a few dead bodies.
Dakota sipped his coffee and felt the caffeine try to tickle his system back to full alertness. The rising sun beat down on the side of his face, finally peeking above the flat tops of the mesas looming over the two-lane road. Millions of years ago, the whole region was an ocean, and those mesas were mountains at the bottom of the sea. He tried to imagine the whole place underwater, tried to picture whales and dinosaurs swimming overhead. Tried to imagine emptying the Pacific Ocean and driving his truck along the dry sea floor from San Francisco to Hawaii. Nothing had ever made him feel as small as driving into the desert reaches, looking up, and seeing ancient, petrified coral reefs embedded in the limestone cliffs.
Nothing except for that one day.
He followed Heath off of 169, then hit the four-wheel drive and bounced over the creosote scrub at a crawl. Dust billowed behind Heath’s truck, obscuring everything but his silhouette against the sun. Dakota dropped back, letting distance build between them so he could see.
Eventually, Heath parked behind a clump of blooming ocotillo. There was another sheriff’s truck parked ahead. “Not far from here,” Heath said, the coffees and the bag from the truck stop in his hands.
Dakota followed Heath, scanning the ground, searching for tread, other boot prints, bullet casings, scraps of fabric. Hell, anything that wasn’t desert. All he saw was the wind and the dust.
“Mornin’,” Heath called as they neared the second truck. “Brought you coffee and breakfast.”
Dakota saw the truck door open out of the corner of his eye, but he was too focused on the tarp-covered ground in front of him, a shock of bright blue like a piece of the sky had fallen, to see the man come out. Too focused on coming up oblique to the grave, lifting a corner of the tarp, and taking a peek.
Yep, that was Jessica. He’d seen the photos Chief Ranger Skidmore had forwarded—thank fuck Amanda hadn’t seen those—and he’d already been pretty damn sure, but seeing the body up close was different than seeing a picture. That’s why people had to ID the dead in person.
“Thanks, Heath,” he heard. “You brought company?”
He knew that voice.
Dakota stilled, every muscle and neuron in his body freezing. Even his heart seemed to stop beating. Oxygen fled his lungs, and he didn’t breathe in. He couldn’t.
He fuckingknewthat voice.
“Yeah, the Ranger they sent overnight to lead the investigation. El Paso should be here soon. Hey, how come you never said he went into law enforcement?”
“Who?”
“Dakota.”
Dakota looked up and saw Heath gesture across the crime scene. There was a man standing beside him in the open doorway of the truck—
Chief deputy. Jesus Christ,he’sthe chief deputy.
Thirteen years. Thirteen years since he’d seen his face or heard his voice, and it was happening here? Now?
Dakota raised his eyes and looked up into the corpse-white face of the love of his life.
Shane looked at him like Dakota was a ghost, like he’d just crawled out of the grave from beneath those dead bodies. Shane’s blue eyes were like the broken sky, with fractures that seemed to run all the way to his soul. “Dakota?” Shane whispered.
Well, he recognizes me, at least.
Dakota nodded. The brim of his hat dipped into his vision, and he almost stayed like that, looking down.
“I thought you two were best friends,” Heath finally said, carving through the thickening air between him and Shane. He eyed Dakota, then turned to Shane. His eyebrows arched up, concern clear in his gaze as he subtly leaned into Shane’s personal space.
Dakota turned away.
“That was a long time ago,” he heard Shane say. “We… lost touch.”
Lost touch. Sure.
