Raising the Stakes

“Well, let’s take a look.” He forced a smile. “Maybe I’ll see something under the hood that means something this time. You want to get inside and release the latch?”

She did, and he peered into the engine like a soothsayer reading chicken entrails. After a couple of seconds, he shook his head.

“Nothing seems out of place or broken.”

“I don’t suppose you have your cell phone with you…?”

He didn’t. He could almost see the damned thing lying on the sofa in his suite, right where he’d left it, but he slapped his pockets just to make sure.

“No such luck. How about I get behind the wheel and try the engine?”

She nodded and stepped out of the car. He got in and turned the key. The engine stuttered, coughed and died.

“Come on,” he muttered, “catch.” But it wouldn’t, and as soon as he checked the gauges on the dashboard, he knew the reason. “Well,” he said, sitting back and slapping the heels of his hands against the wheel, “I know the problem.”

“The ballast resistor thing? That’s what it was the other day.”

He shook his head. “Nothing so complicated. You’re out of gas.”

“What?” Dawn leaned past him and stuck her head in the window. Her hair brushed his cheek. It smelled of sun and of the desert, and he closed his eyes as he inhaled the scent. “That’s impossible! I filled up—I filled up—”

Today, she’d almost said. But it hadn’t been today. It hadn’t even been yesterday. She’d filled the tank just before her world started to come apart, the day she’d had drinks with Gray and he’d asked that terrifying question about her liking children.

Of course she was out of gas. She’d been back and forth to Rocking Horse Ranch since then; she’d gone straight there from the Oasis bar. She’d phoned first, to make sure Tommy was okay. Mrs. Wilton assured her that he was but she’d driven there faster than she ever had before because she needed to see for herself. He was asleep when she arrived and she didn’t wake him. Instead she made up a story about a custody fight to explain her presence to Mrs. Wilton, who nodded and sighed as if she heard such things all the time.

“From now on, no one’s to be allowed to see Tommy except me,” she’d said, and Mrs. Wilton had nodded again and said she understood.

Everybody understood, or thought they did, but how could they when they didn’t know Harman, or what he was capable of? If he found her, there would never be a legal fight over Tommy. Harman would just take him, and if he had to beat her to death in the process, he’d do it.

Dawn had thought about that while she drove a couple of miles down the road, to a motel that reminded her of the one in Queen City. In the morning, she bought a pair of stiff blue jeans, a white sweatshirt and a pair of too-large sneakers at the little general store nearby. Then she’d gone back to the ranch and when Tommy came into the dining room for breakfast, she’d swept him into her arms and kissed him until he squirmed and whispered that all the other guys were watching and would she please put him down?

“Sorry,” she’d said abashedly.

“How come you’re visiting during the day in the middle of the week, Mom?”

It was the first time he’d called her Mom, not Mama, and something inside her chest had constricted. Her baby was growing up, and he’d be harder to protect than ever.

She said she’d wanted to surprise him, and he grinned and gave her a quick hug before he sat down with his pals and forgot all about her.

“Will you be leaving now, Ms. Carter?” Mrs. Wilton had asked politely.

Dawn had taken her aside, embroidered the custody story just a little and said she’d hang around, if that was all right. Mrs. Wilton had agreed, but reluctantly. At night, she’d returned to the motel, phoned Cassie and asked her to say she’d come down with a virus if anyone asked about her. Then she sat in the middle of the sagging bed and gnawed on a fingernail while she tried to figure out what to do next. It was tempting to take Tommy and run but she knew what that would do to him. He’d made friends here. It was the first place they’d lived in long enough for that to happen.

Maybe she’d overreacted. Gray hadn’t actually said he knew she had a child. His comment had been muddled; actually, she couldn’t recall it with any clarity except to know it had suggested she didn’t like children. Or had it? For the last four years, she’d lived in dread. She knew, from experience, that there had been times one word had triggered unnecessary panic. She’d fled Santa Fe because a man had shown up at the diner three evenings in a row and turned down tables she didn’t serve. She’d run, then, in the middle of the night, and only realized months later that the guy had probably just been working up his nerve to ask her out.

By the time morning came around, she’d felt calm again. She’d driven back to the ranch, tried not to notice how Mrs. Wilton’s eyebrows had lifted at the sight of her, kissed Tommy goodbye and set out for Las Vegas. It was a long trip, first on a two-lane dirt road, then on the highway that led home.

She was tired; her eyes felt heavy, and she’d decided to keep herself alert by thinking about Gray.

Yes, she’d definitely overreacted. If there was one thing she was convinced of, it was that Gray and Harman had nothing to do with each other. They might as well have come from different planets. Different galaxies, she’d thought, remembering the first part of the evening she’d spent with Gray, how nice it had been to see his face light up when he saw her. And that teddy bear. What a nice thing to have given her. She’d smiled at the memory…and that was when a car behind her began honking its horn. What did the driver want? He’d been right on her tail, which had scared her…and then he’d pulled alongside, and she saw that the driver was Gray.

All the assurances she’d just fed herself evaporated like a desert mirage. Life had taught her there was no such thing as coincidence. She’d been almost blind with terror, especially when she fled him on foot and he caught her and spun her around…and then she’d looked into his eyes and what she saw had nothing to do with knowledge of Tommy and everything to do with the private hell she’d escaped four long years ago.

Terror had closed over her like a giant wave, choking her, drowning her…

“Dawn?”

She blinked, forced herself back from the edge of that terrible chasm. Gray was trying to open the door and get out of her car. She stepped back and gave him room.