Brenda Novak - White Heat

“You’re quiet today. You okay?” Nate asked.

“I’m fine,” she replied, but she already felt tired and dusty. She’d had only a few hours’ sleep and had to settle for a rudimentary bath. With such a limited water supply, a shower had been out of the question.

Somehow, Nate looked none the worse for wear. Dressed in a loose pair of khaki shorts that fell low on his lean hips and a T-shirt tight enough to delineate his rock-hard pecs, he hadn’t shaved and he hadn’t showered. But acknowledging that he could rough it far more gracefully than she didn’t make Rachel feel any better.

An elderly woman with white hair piled on top of her head and turquoise teardrop earrings smiled when she noticed them waiting. “Hello. Two for breakfast?” she asked, scooping up menus.

Rachel smoothed her pink cotton blouse and—thanks to the dust—ill-advised white shorts as Nathan nodded. Resting a hand at the base of her spine, he guided her to a booth along the perimeter. There were ten tables in the restaurant, but only one was occupied—with two ranchers, judging by their cowboy hats and weather-beaten faces.

Once they were seated, the hostess presented them with menus. Glancing out the window, Rachel could see heat rising from the earth in shimmering waves. The temperature here was exactly as Nate had described it—white-hot, hot enough to bleach anything. But with wood paneling and deep awnings, the restaurant provided a cool, shady respite. An oasis.

Thank God.

Of course, they’d have to contend with the heat later on. But in the meantime she accepted a glass of ice water from a young girl of about twelve.

“Thank you.” Rachel tried to catch the girl’s eye so she could get a clearer glimpse of her delicate features, but the child ducked her head and scurried away.

“Abby’s deaf,” the hostess explained. “She can’t hear and she can’t talk, but she’s the sweetest thing in the whole world.”

“Is she any relation to you?” Rachel asked.

The deep wrinkles on the woman’s face easily accommodated a smile. “She’s my grandchild. Unfortunately, her daddy isn’t up to much, so I take care of her every summer. I’d keep her over the winter, too, but she goes to a special school.”

Rachel guessed that the girl was part American Indian. Her bronze-colored, dewy skin was especially beautiful. “Maybe when she gets older.”

“Maybe.” The woman straightened their flatware. “This your first time in Portal?”

Rachel held her menu at the ready but didn’t open it. “Yes.”

“Where you headin’?”

Expecting Nate to enter the conversation, Rachel hesitated—but he was already perusing the list of entrées and didn’t seem to be paying attention.

“Nowhere,” she replied. “At least, not anytime soon. We’re renting the Spitzer place about three miles from here.”

“You’ve moved in? You’re new?” she asked in surprise.

“Yes. We plan to be here for a while. My, um, husband—” she stumbled over the word but made an effort to cover her gaffe by hurrying on “—is a wildlife photographer.”

“Really! Well, you’ve come to the right corner of the earth. We have one of the most biologically diverse areas in America here.”

They were sure hiding it well. So far, Rachel had seen nothing diverse about it. Hot and dry, more hot and dry, and desert scrub mixed with a few other plants that looked about the same. That was it. But she pretended to agree. “So we hear,” she said, and kicked Nate.

Lifting his head, he set his menu aside. “From what I’ve read, you’ve got more than eighty species of mammals.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” the woman responded. “I hear people talk about the wildlife all the time—hooded skunks, mountain lions, black bears, javelinas, raccoons. We even have quite a few different kinds of bats. One of ’em has these really big ears,” she said with a laugh.

“You have a lot of snakes, too, don’t you?” The expression on Nate’s face suggested the question was in earnest, but Rachel knew him too well. He was needling her.

“Oh, yes. Lots of snakes and lizards.”

“What about spiders?” he asked. “I’d really like to photograph a tarantula—a tarantula crawling out of an old outhouse would be a great photo.”

Suppressing a shudder of revulsion at the thought of such a creature living in their outhouse, Rachel kicked him again. “If you want to get started today, we should probably order, honey,” she reminded him.

The woman took the hint gracefully. “Heavens, yes. Don’t let me hold you up. I’m a talker. It’s because of living in such a small community.” She laughed again. “I’ll be back after you’ve had a few minutes to look over the menu.”

“Sure you want to photograph a tarantula coming out of an old outhouse,” Rachel muttered when she was gone.

“I’d rather capture a snake slithering across a woman’s bare stomach, but I only have one woman at hand, and I doubt my trusty assistant would cooperate.”

“Damn right.”

He chuckled under his breath.

“You could’ve jumped into that conversation a little sooner,” she whispered.

“Why? You were doing just fine. No need to overact. As long as what we say makes sense and appears to be true, the less detail, the better.”

“There’s nothing wrong with making friends and opening up, Nate.”

“Except that we’re lying, right?”

He had her there. “Except for that,” she reluctantly agreed.

“So…are you going to ask this woman about the Covenanters, or should I?”

“I will.”

“When?”

Her stomach growled. “After we eat.”

The woman who’d seated them also waited on them through breakfast, eventually introducing herself as Thelma Lassiter. Abby, her grandchild, came around once or twice to fill their water glasses.

After the ranchers left, Nate and Rachel were the only patrons in the restaurant. But they weren’t the only people in the building. Voices drifted over from the store section, Thelma’s chief among them as she greeted her customers like the old friends they probably were.

It wasn’t until they’d finished eating and Thelma had come to get their plates that Rachel brought up the Covenanters. “We’ve been hearing about a cult that’s moved into the area. Do you know anything about them?”

Losing some of her cheerfulness, she frowned. “A little. They live about five miles from here and have occasional meetings where they invite folks in to see the place. But they’re very unfriendly if you show up any other time. Even if you attend the Introduction, you get the feeling you’re just seeing what they want you to see and hearing only what they want you to hear.”

“So you’ve been there? You’ve been to an Introduction Meeting?” Rachel asked.

Thelma cast a serreptitious glance over her shoulder as if she was afraid she’d be overheard. But she couldn’t be worried about Abby. Was there someone else who wouldn’t like her talking about the people of Paradise? “I took Abby about six weeks ago. That Ethan fellow who claims to be a prophet saw her in the store one day and told me he could heal her—that he could make it so she can hear.”

Nate leaned back in the booth. “That’s quite a claim.”

“Chaske—my husband—was skeptical, too. He still is.”

Chaske was obviously the person in back, the one she didn’t want overhearing the conversation. Maybe he was the cook.

“He thought I was crazy for hoping,” she went on. “But…I believe in miracles. There’s got to be more to this life than the tangible things we deal with every day. I thought maybe one reason God sent the Covenanters here was to help Abby.”