Cindi Myers - Black Canyon Conspiracy

“I had a minor manic episode this morning. Nothing big, and it’s under control now.”

“When was this? What happened?”

“After you and Emma left. After Abby left, too. I think it was just the stress of finding out about my job.” Though her life had been nothing but stress for months now.

“What happened?”

“Nothing. I just got a little...giddy. Feeling out of control. Marco was there, and he helped calm me down.”

“Marco was there?”

“I called him when I realized someone was watching the apartment.”

“That must be why he left the café in such a hurry,” Sophie said. “Who was the watcher?”

“I don’t know. Marco didn’t know him, either, and the man left. But there was something else—something I didn’t tell you before.”

“What’s that?” Sophie kept her eyes on the road, her expression calm.

“The guy who was watching delivered a package. Like a gift box, but all it had in it was a dried-up flower and a note.”

“What did the note say?”

“It was like one of those memorial cards you sometimes see at funerals, with the words in memory of written on it. It had my name on it.” She shuddered at the memory. “The Rangers are going to look into it, but I doubt they’ll find anything. Someone was trying to scare me.”

Sophie didn’t say anything for a long while, taking it in. Lauren closed her eyes again.

“I’m glad Marco was with you,” Sophie said. “The guy doesn’t say much, but he’s deep. And any bad guy would think twice before tangling with him.”

That was true enough. Beyond his physical strength, Marco had perfected an intimidating attitude. Which made his gentleness with her all the more touching.

“Hey, I thought you were going to stay with him,” Sophie said.

“I was, but we’ve had a change of plans. He needs to devote himself to the investigation. And now that Richard has gotten the charges against him dropped, I’m no longer a threat.”

“Aren’t you?” Sophie asked. “You aren’t going to give up because of one grand jury’s mistakes, are you?”

“I don’t know.” She was just so tired—of always fighting, of having to be strong when she felt so weak.

“You can’t give up,” Sophie said. “Giving up means he wins—that the lies he’s told about you are true.”

She opened her eyes again and forced herself to sit up straight and look at her sister. “Then, what do we do?”

“We do what we can to help with the investigation,” Sophie said. “We talk to people, find out what they know.”

“Who do we talk to?” Her one contact on the case, Alan Milbanks, was dead.

“Why don’t we start with Phil? We’ll find out if Prentice paid him to tell the press those lies about you.”

The last person Lauren wanted to see was her ex-husband, but Sophie’s reasoning made sense. Talking to Phil was a smart and relatively safe place to start. “All right,” she said. “We’ll talk to him.”

“Do you know where he’s staying?”

She took out her phone and scrolled through her list of contacts until she found the address of the rehab facility in Grand Junction where Phil was staying. She read it off to Sophie.

“Great. We can be there in an hour.” She punched the address into her GPS. “Why don’t you take a nap while I drive? I’ll wake you when we get there.”

Lauren closed her eyes again and tried to get more comfortable in her seat. If only she’d wake up from her nap to find the past few months had been nothing but a nightmare—not the awful reality she had to keep surviving.

* * *

LATER THAT AFTERNOON Marco trained the high-powered binoculars on Richard Prentice’s mansion. The gray stone castle, complete with crenellated towers and a fake drawbridge, was the billionaire’s way of giving the finger to the county officials who had thwarted his plans to sell the park in-holding to them at inflated prices. The castle blocked a park visitor’s best view of the Curecanti Needle, a famous rock formation. Now, instead of marveling at the beauty of nature, visitors standing at the Pioneer Point overlook in the park saw this monstrosity.

“See anything?” Rand asked, crouched next to Marco on a rocky outcropping of land just across the boundary line from Prentice’s ranch.

“Nope.” He swung the binoculars to the left and focused on two muscular men in desert camo, who lounged against a tricked-out black Jeep. One of the men had an AR-15 casually slung over one shoulder. “The troops are taking it easy,” Marco said.

Rand grunted. “Their boss is probably feeling pretty secure since the grand jury let him off the hook.”

“Something tells me insecurity isn’t one of Prentice’s problems, ever.” He shifted the binoculars farther to the left, to the pile of rubble that marked the entrance to the mine where Lauren had been held. No telling what other illegal booty had been stored in the maze of tunnels. Prentice had been worried enough to order his men to set off explosives and collapse the mine, almost trapping Lauren and her rescuers inside.

Rand must have been thinking about that night, too. “Why didn’t the grand jury believe Lauren when she told them what he’d done to her?” he asked.

“People are afraid of mental illness. Prentice and his experts played on that fear.”

“What about you?”

Marco lowered the binoculars and stared at his friend. “Are you asking if I’m afraid of Lauren?”

“Not afraid, but do you worry about getting involved with someone who’s dealing with something like this?”

He shifted his backpack from his shoulder and stowed the binoculars. “I don’t lose sleep worrying about it.”

“Sophie told me you volunteered to be her bodyguard. I thought maybe it was because you were interested in her. You know, romantically.”

Marco zipped up the pack and shrugged back into it. “She needs protecting. I can protect her. That’s all.” That was all there could ever be between him and Lauren Starling.

“So you’re just above all those messy emotions the rest of us mortals have to deal with,” Rand said.

“I don’t have time for them.” Those “messy emotions” brought complications and distractions he didn’t want or need. He turned back to the view of Prentice’s castle. “We have a job to do.”

Rand stiffened and put a hand on the pistol at his side. “What’s that noise?”

The low whine, like the humming of a large mosquito, grew louder. Marco looked around, then up, and spotted what at first looked like a toy plane or one of those radio-controlled aircraft hobbyists flew. “I think it’s a drone,” he said as the craft hovered over them.

Rand scowled at the intruder. “Is it armed?”

“No, but I think it’s spotted us.”

“The captain said Prentice had one of these. What do you think it’s doing?”

Marco trained the binoculars on the craft. “It looks as if there’s a camera attached to the underside, so I’d say it’s taking pictures.”

“Pictures of what?”

“Of us. Evidence that we’re harassing the poor little rich guy.”

“Nothing wrong with being rich.” Rand gave a big, cheesy smile and waved up at the drone.

Marco lowered the binoculars, resisting the urge to make an obscene gesture at the camera. “No, but there’s a lot wrong with being a jerk.” And a jerk who used a beautiful, vulnerable woman in his sick games had to be stopped.

Chapter Five

The low-slung cedar and stone buildings of the Dayspring Wellness Center looked more like an exclusive vacation resort than a medical facility. Fountains and flowers dotted the lavish landscaping, and the few people Lauren and Sophie saw once they’d left their car in the parking lot were tanned and casually dressed as if on their way to a tennis game or setting out to hike in the nearby hills.