Jeannie Watt - Crossing Nevada

She didn’t know if Eddie would go so far as to hire a private detective, but he had a lot of nefarious contacts. Not knowing his reach was one of the things that kept her awake at night.

Tess walked over to the sink and started the tap running into the enamel basin before she opened the back door. The screen door wobbled on its loose hinges as she pushed it open and the dogs raced outside. They stopped in tandem a few feet from the bottom porch step, black ears pricked forward, muscles tensed and ready for action. It was a morning ritual they’d developed since moving into the house thirteen days ago. They were city dogs, still acclimating themselves to the sights, sounds and smells of the country. As was Tess.

She watched and waited until the dogs finally dropped their guard, first Mac and then Blossom. They began snuffling in the grass, checking out the action they’d missed the night before as they headed for the taller grass to do their business.

All clear.

Tess closed the door and filled a glass with water, turned off the faucet and leaned back against the counter. If the dogs were relaxed, she could relax. In theory anyway.

Her heart rate still wasn’t quite normal. Had the caller really been the guy across the road?

She set the glass down and opened the drawer where she’d spotted the printed paper with local phone numbers while unpacking her meager kitchen supplies a few days ago. She traced a finger down the list. Nolan. Zach. Okay. He existed.

But was it him?

Her hand only shook a little as she dialed the number. Halfway through the second ring he answered.

Same voice.

Tess hung up.

* * *

ZACH SET DOWN the phone with a shake of his head. A prank call at eight in the morning was a first, as was the oddly defensive phone conversation he’d just had with the new neighbor. Defensive to the point of rudeness. What the hell?

Let it go. The woman was perfectly within her rights to say no to his offer. She could work on her delivery, but...

Zach grabbed his work gloves off the table, trying to focus on the day instead of how much hay he was going to have to buy to tide things over now that it was pretty damned obvious he’d lost the pastures he’d been counting on.

His index finger broke through the work-thinned leather at the tip of the glove as he pulled it on. This was turning out to be a grand day. He could only imagine what delights the north pasture held for him. And, of course, the duct tape was not in the junk drawer where it belonged. His exposed fingertip was simply going to have to take its chances.

Zach tucked his cell phone into his pocket and headed out the door where he could see his three daughters walking up the driveway to his sister-in-law, Beth Ann’s, trailer. Beth Ann worked at the school as an instructional aid and gave the girls a ride every morning after Zach fed them breakfast and helped gather schoolwork, lunches and other essentials before nudging them out the door. Beth Ann was a stickler for promptness. If the girls were late, they walked the half mile to school. Simple as that.

He stopped and watched for a moment, wondering why his youngest daughter, Lizzie, was wearing his oldest daughter, Darcy’s, old purple coat instead of her own new red one. He made a mental note to ask about it at dinner that night. Maybe Beth Ann had washed it. She was a bit of a clean freak, but he wasn’t complaining. She was doing him a huge favor living on the ranch in the hired-hand trailer, handling the girl stuff that he, the oldest of four brothers, did not feel qualified to deal with.

Benny, Zach’s young Border collie, was waiting for him at the old truck he used for beating around the ranch. The dog jumped up on the flat bed and danced excitedly, staying just out of reach in case Zach had some kind of crazy idea about not taking him.

“Don’t worry,” Zach muttered. “You’re going.” Benny, who seemed to understand every word Zach said, sat his butt down and let his tongue loll out in a canine grin.

By some miracle the ancient rig started first try and Zach headed down the lane leading toward the north hay pasture and the pump that needed to be pulled for repairs. He just hoped that he could fix it himself because if not, with cattle prices the lowest he’d seen them in three years, he’d have to cut yet another corner to make ends meet. He truly hoped that wasn’t the case, because right now he was running out of corners. His cousin, Jeff, had started running some cattle with him last year and shared some of the costs, but it still wasn’t enough to ease the pressure of the medical bills. All he wanted was to give his girls a comfortable life, to help compensate for losing their mom to breast cancer.

It wasn’t working out so well. His daughters wore whatever Beth Ann could find on sale while he duct-taped his work gloves and prayed that the pump could be jury-rigged into lasting another year so he had the bucks to buy hay.

He needed that pasture.

* * *

TESS PUT ON a pot of coffee, checked her email, then let the dogs back inside. Two hours of sleep were not enough, but it’d be a while before she could try again. Her adrenaline was too high, her nerves too jangled by the unexpected call.

Sad, really, that an innocuous phone call from a neighbor could ruin a day.

Tess fed the dogs, dumping copious amounts of the ultrahealthy—and therefore ultraexpensive—food their former owner had fed them into two large stainless steel bowls. Mac dove in. Blossom hung back and waited for him to finish, even though she had her own dish.

“You’re setting a bad precedent,” Tess muttered to the dog as she went back into the bedroom to change into her work clothes, which were actually new, since she no longer fit into her old clothes.

The jeans she put on were just jeans, bought for a reasonable price online and delivered by mail. No fashionable fading, studs or strategically placed frayed areas. The T-shirt was equally plain. Long-sleeved, black and boxy with a crew neck. One hundred percent cotton without a hint of spandex. It hung loosely from her shoulders, even though she’d now gained fifteen pounds and was curvier than she’d been her entire life. The curves were part of her disguise, lame as it was, since there was no way she could disguise the scars across the left side of her face.

Her ex-lawyer and savior, William, had suggested gaining weight in addition to dying her dark red hair dark brown and buying glasses she didn’t need. She’d told William that the last thing she felt like doing was eating. Actually, for the first week after the attack, she couldn’t eat, but instead sipped tiny meals through a straw. And even if she did gain weight, she’d pointed out bitterly, it wasn’t like she could hide the scars.

No, William had agreed in his understated way, but overly skinny people stood out almost as much as redheads and after the attack she’d become alarmingly gaunt. He was too polite to say skeletal.

So during the six weeks she’d hidden out at William’s San Jose home after the attack, Tess focused on gaining weight—no easy task for a model who’d spent the past decade eating the bare minimum and feeling guilty about even that small amount. Depression and fear coupled with healing scar tissue hadn’t made eating any easier, but Tess persevered. Pasta, milkshakes, ice cream. Formerly forbidden foods were now her allies and she choked them down, wishing she could enjoy finally being able to eat whatever she wanted.

By the time the LLC had been formed and William had helped her lease-option and sparsely furnish this place in the Nevada outback—a place where Eddie would stand out like a sore thumb—Tess had, for the most part, outgrown her clothes. She’d celebrated with an online shopping spree since she was too paranoid to shop in stores, and didn’t care if the clothing fit right—which it didn’t. Not in her experience anyway.