Free The Salt Maiden by Colleen Thompson Page B

breeze offered at least the suggestion of comfort.
    The blond tips of her hair stirred as she looked straight at him. “I told you I’d be back, just like I told you I was staying till I find her. I’m starting off by going over this house inch by inch.”
    He shook his head. “This is no place for you. All the sweeping in the world won’t fix that, and neither will that generator.”
    Her lips pursed before she answered. “My sister managed with a lot less, and she lived here for, what, five months?”
    He hesitated before saying, “Your sister might have died here, Dana. And I can’t concentrate on finding her if I have to keep an eye on you, too.”
    “I didn’t ask for a babysitter, Sheriff.” Her voice roughened as she added, “The only thing I want is Angie—one way or another.”
    He leaned forward to watch a scorpion crawl out from a crack in the adobe, lured by the shade into coming out of hiding before nightfall. Rushing forward, the creature seized a centipede with its tiny claws. He could have stepped on both but didn’t bother. Both predator and prey would have enough stinging relatives close by that their annihilation wouldn’t make a difference. And besides, humans were the interlopers here.
    “I said I’ll find her if she’s anywhere around,” Jay told her. “And I’ll do it a lot faster than you will, hobbling around on that bum leg.”
    He gestured toward the bandaged ankle. It looked somewhat swollen, though not as much as he’d expected.
    For a long while Dana said nothing, looking off into the distance as he watched the scorpion thrust its stinger into its victim. The centipede writhed desperately, but soon its movements slowed, and the little hunter dragged it back inside its lair.
    “I never meant to care about her,” Dana said at last, her voice as soft as Dennis Riggins’s had been loud. “Angie’s daughter, I mean. I didn’t want to get involved.”
    “Makes a lot of sense,” Jay told her. “Life hands out enough heartache as it is. Taking on somebody else’s portion—that’s a tough call.”
    “She seems like a sweet kid, but I can’t say I really know her. Not after just meeting her the one time.”
    “So why do all of this, then?” He waved a hand, his gesture sweeping from the run-down old house to the rental. “Why make it your problem?”
    She shrugged, looking like a child herself, tired and defeated. “Her parents…they’re so desperate. You can tellNikki’s their whole world. And my mother—she’s taking it so hard, too. It’s almost as if she’s losing my sister all over. The two of them have been estranged for years now.”
    A chill overtook him, despite the ovenlike heat. “Makes me glad I don’t have kids of my own,” he said. “I’m not sure how I’d stand that.”
    He shook his head and rubbed one of Max’s ears while his mind dredged up the grief of Baghdad, the mothers wailing for dead children. He thought, too, of weeping children, the sons and daughters of his men, who’d learned their fathers wouldn’t come home.
    Dana was quiet for several moments before speaking. “As much as I feel for the Harrisons, I’m not sure that’s why I came either. I think part of it’s avoidance. I have some things I need to deal with that I’d just as soon put off.”
    “Trouble with a man?” he guessed.
    She smiled wryly. “If you could call the jerk that.”
    He smiled back, wondering if maybe on the rebound she could be persuaded…While his better nature called him a slimy opportunist—and far worse—the part of him that hadn’t had a woman in what seemed like forever got down on its knees and prayed.
    “Sorry, but I don’t see you as the kind who hides out from her problems,” he said. “Not the way you’ve been ridin’ my case. If some guy’s giving you garbage, I figure you’d take him on directly—or run his ass out of town.”
    “I would’ve,” she admitted, “but he was already making a sprint for it when I