Buried Secrets

“Diego.” But she didn’t look happy about that, either. “Just Diego. And he was badly hurt, though he pretended not to be. He kept insisting that the Safety Response Team would be pulling us out any minute. Then we both heard something. I turned to look—with the helmet light, I could only see one direction at a time—and it was Frank. His fingers were…they…”

And she curled and uncurled her own small, solid fingers, to illustrate. Even without long nails or polish or rings, her hands were clearly female, too. Strong, but small.

“Rigor mortis?” Zack suggested hopefully.

“Except he got up. His neck was broken, and his skull was crushed. He shouldn’t have been able to get up, but he did. I told you that I probably imagined it….”

It occurred to Zack that, if he wasn’t watching Josephine James tell this, he might agree. Even after four years of learning to see this stuff, looking for answers. Maybe she was making it up, or had imagined it all. The line between reality and perception was thinner than most folks admitted. And yet…

He didn’t think so. Her face was pale, her jaw set, her eyes really still like she was focusing on the memory. “So at first I thought, Hey, Frank’s okay! Stupid, I know, but…I really wanted him to be okay. I went to him and took his arm, told him he needed to lie down and wait for emergency response. But his hand felt funny…fake. And his eyes were blank, blank like I’ve only seen on road-kill. It wasn’t Frank, anymore. And he…it tried to bite me….”

She took a deep breath, still pale but otherwise determined. “I pulled loose and grabbed a pickax, and I told it to stay back, but it came at us—at Diego—so I swung. And…” Again, she shrugged. Clearly, she’d made sure Frank wouldn’t be getting up again, friend or not.

Tough broad.

“I think I would’ve thrown up,” she said, “but then Diego shouted a warning, and Gil grabbed me, so I…stopped him, too. Then I just sat there with Diego, waiting, talking about stupid, everyday stuff. He seemed worse, but I heard digging, so I knew we were being rescued.”

Zack took a deep breath as he made more notes, then frowned at a thought and looked up at her. “Newspaper said you were pulled out unconscious.”

Josephine James met his gaze evenly, “I was wrong. The digging wasn’t them coming to pull us out.”

Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Zack stood, started to pace. “You had to fight more?” This was why women weren’t supposed to do dangerous stuff. This was why they should stay safe at home, like his mother and Nona did.

Like Gabriella should have done. She’d died at home, but maybe if she hadn’t been going out, without him knowing…

“One, mainly,” the sheriff insisted. “We had a strange driller working with us that summer—everyone called him Tio. Rumor was, he was some kind of mayombero, into the bad magic. Some of our crew quit rather than work for him. He wasn’t the one doing the digging, but I realized he was in control of them.”

Them. “More zombies?” Zack asked, standing still now.

“If that’s what they were. If it even really happened. They were things, not people. Not alive. I somehow knew Tio was the one who wouldn’t let them die. Don’t ask me how, but I did. I started to fight them off, and Diego managed to get up and stand in front of me, trying to protect me. I thought he’d recovered enough to help. But I was wrong about that, too.”

Merciful God. “He died.” And turned on her.

“I wasn’t thinking real clearly by then, but I knew I had to stop Tio. Even then I didn’t completely believe what he was doing, but there were so many….”

“But you were just a girl.” Zack sank onto the bed at the idea of it. He felt sick. He hated hearing stories like this, watching innocents—women—suffer, unable to reach back in time and help or protect them.

But damned if Sheriff Jo’s chin didn’t come up, if the agony didn’t ease from her gaze in place of grim pride. “A girl with explosives in her pack.”

“You blew them up?”

Jo kind of liked the way Zack Lorenzo stared at her—awed. Maybe finally telling the story, after so many years, robbed it of some of its power. Maybe having someone believe her was what did it. But suddenly, instead of the nightmare owning her, Jo owned the nightmare. She had survived, after all. No matter how awful, even if it had been real—and had it?—she’d survived.

“I didn’t blow them up, exactly,” she clarified. “I dodged through the tunnel they’d come in, and I blew the wall.”

Then she’d lost consciousness, buried in rubble. She hadn’t expected to survive—not the blast, not the toxic gas that explosives emit after detonation, not the…zombies. But miraculously, she’d come-to in the hospital, her older brother asleep in a chair beside her. Since he’d been in D.C. before the accident, she could only imagine how long she’d been out. At first she wondered if she was in an asylum, but no.

Nobody but her seemed to realize that the corpses had died twice.

Sitting here with Zack Lorenzo, the rest of the details—an uncle somehow killed while helping with the rescue, a reporter who appeared while she was still dopey from painkillers—finally eased, far more than when she’d just told herself she’d imagined it all. Jo didn’t believe she was done with the nightmares, of course. But maybe, just maybe, she might sleep for real, now.

For the first time since she could remember.

Except, of course, that there was a big Chicago detective sitting on the only bed in the room, his weight making it dip. His bed. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d thought about a man and a bed in the same moment…Diego, she guessed. She wasn’t sure she appreciated the awareness that fluttered deep in her stomach. She didn’t trust the sharpness of her breath. It felt dangerous in its own right.

Was it possible that she could ever handle dangerous again?

Lorenzo rose from the bed and came back to the table. She took another deep breath as he passed her, big and warm and solid. Some risks were probably better than others. And he didn’t feel dangerous, just the awareness of him did.

Zack Lorenzo still felt remarkably safe, for a stranger.

When he sat on his plastic chair and began scribbling, she waited for him to glance up at her, wanting to see his eyes again. She couldn’t remember what color the detective’s eyes were. He seemed to be avoiding her gaze deliberately.

“I don’t think I even used the word zombies, the reporter did,” Jo admitted, reaching for the partially eaten piece of pie he’d pushed away from him earlier. He’d offered it once, after all. And he didn’t seem to want it. “I could’ve been delirious.”

“Yeah,” he muttered through his note-taking. “Right. You sound like the real flighty type.”

Since he said that sarcastically, she took it as a compliment. She also took a bite of pie, and it tasted wonderful, sweet and syrupy. She actually ventured a question. On the off chance they were both sane, after all. “But zombies are from Haiti, right? Or maybe Louisiana. Not the southwest.”

“Uh-huh,” Lorenzo agreed, still scribbling. When he finally looked up, it was all business. Business with deep, brown-green eyes. “There’s theories about whether real zombies were ever dead or maybe just drugged. Some scholarly types even talk about philosophical zombies…living people who just go through the motions, without thinking anymore, you know? But you’re right. None of that seems to fit with this Tio guy you described. Wasn’t Tio one of the Jackson 5?”

“That was Tito,” she told him, pleased. Who else listened to old ’70s music, anymore?

Lorenzo rolled his eyes. “Well, that’s a relief. So think back. Could he have been into voodoo?”

She swallowed another bite of pie and decided to at least pretend this was possible. Why not err on that side, for once? “Nope. If anything, it was something like Santeria.”

Lorenzo blinked at her. “You couldn’t have mentioned this earlier in the story?”

It impressed her that he knew what Santeria, a form of Cuban witchcraft, even was. Her grandfather was a scholar of this kind of stuff, but most people… “I’m just guessing. Tio wasn’t Mexican, and I’ve heard that a lot of the Brujas have a bias against mixed bloods.”

Zack rubbed a hand down his face, then squinted at her. Something about uncertainty on a face as rugged as his looked downright endearing. “Any chance you know someone around here who could tell me more about local Santeria or Brujeria?” He considered that. “Someone relatively sane?”

Her first urge was to call him crazy. But when she pushed past that urge and thought about it… “Ashley Vanderveer, the nurse practitioner at the Almanuevo clinic.”

The one where the boy’s body had gone missing.

“Peachy.” When he saw the question in her face, Lorenzo added, “I already tried her, asking where the corpse wandered off to, but she wouldn’t talk to me. Said I’d have to hurt myself—and that it wasn’t an invitation.”

Jo laughed. She’d always liked the new nurse…though to be honest, she guessed Ashley wasn’t really new. She’d been running the closest medical facility to Spur for two years now. It was a sign of how strictly Jo had kept to herself, that she’d never pursued that possibility of friendship. “Well, she might talk to me. Or us,” she conceded quickly, at Lorenzo’s widened eyes. Definitely brown-green.

“Us,” he repeated. Like he didn’t want her to help.

“You don’t think I can just go home and forget that all this…this whatever’s-going-on is going on, do you?”

That she could go back to that half life? Sure, it was safe. But that’s all it was. And she’d thought she’d stopped them. On some level she’d really thought…

He stood. Wow, he was a big guy. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I think. It’s my job, not yours.”

“Arguable.”

“This isn’t your jurisdiction. Mayberry is your jurisdiction.” Which was true, sarcasm aside. But Almanuevo wasn’t exactly his jurisdiction either.

Jo stood, too—not that it made a big difference—and folded her arms. “You’re the one who said I could help.”

“By telling me your story, in case there’s any connection. You did, and I’m thinking there isn’t.”

“You also said Ashley won’t talk to you.”

“Yeah, well maybe I just need to turn on the Lorenzo charm.” When she lifted an eyebrow at him, he looked mildly hurt. “Hey, I can be charming!”

“Look,” insisted Jo. “I’m still not sure what to believe. But if there’s any connection between those missing persons and what happened at the mine, I am not letting it go until I find out more. I can either work with you, or on my own. Your call.”

Now he folded his arms. The pose looked impressive on him; probably more than on her. “I don’t want to distract myself baby-sitting you while I’m going after whatever this is, okay?”

Baby-sitting? Luckily, she felt too good to hit him. He looked so serious—and annoyed—that she grinned instead. “And how many monsters have you blown up, tough guy?”

It degenerated into a staring contest, which Jo won. Lorenzo’s eyes were a lot easier to resist when he was being this obnoxious. And watching them kept her gaze off his body.

“Fine,” the detective spat. “Fan-freakin’-tastic. Lemme shower and we’ll go talk to the nurse. Finish the damned pie.”

That last sounded like an order, so Jo resorted to equal familiarity.

“You need a shave, too.” She didn’t just feel good, she felt cocky. Alert. Awake, after having been asleep for far, far too long. Willing to try a risk or two—maybe with him.

Breathing.

Lorenzo began to move a hand—and not to check his jaw—but lowered it self-consciously before disappearing into the bathroom. He’d probably been raised not to flip off ladies.

Jo felt more stunned than if he had. She slowly sank back into her chair. The man was wearing a ring. How long had she been out of the dating world, that she hadn’t even looked until now?

A wedding ring.

She heard the shower come on in the bathroom and forced herself not to think about a big, swarthy, naked Zack Lorenzo. Wet. She tried not to look at the shadowy, rumpled bed.

The man was married. Maybe to the Italian girl pictured in his wallet. Some risks, you couldn’t pay her to take.

Jo told herself that it didn’t matter; they were investigating missing persons, not flirting. In fact, it was probably better that he was married. Safer. It meant she could stay casual with him. It meant she didn’t have to worry about messy romantic complications. The last man she’d been interested in had died and then tried to kill her. In that order.

For the first time in years, she let herself admit that.

But when she phoned Deputy Fred, to let him know she’d be out the rest of the day, Jo felt disappointment dull the bright edge that her life had taken on a few minutes earlier. Because of a man. One she’d barely even been attracted to.

It pissed her off.

Good thing she had something worthwhile to do…even if it might yet prove a little insane.

Chapter 3

It felt weird, showering with the sheriff in the next room.

Hell, it felt weird thinking of Jo James as a sheriff. In Zack’s world, most sheriffs were overweight, balding and—oh yeah—men. He might not agree that’s how it ought to be, but it’s what he was mainly used to. It even seemed safer.

If he didn’t like women, that would be one thing, but he did. Grandmas and toddlers, housewives and businesswomen. That was his problem. He liked women enough that he couldn’t stand by to see one hurt. And if Jo James insisted on “helping” with this investigation, stirring up powers she couldn’t see or believe, the odds were on hurt. Zack didn’t need that responsibility or the guilt of failing at it.

Again.

Having a lady sidekick, even for the few days he was in Almanuevo, wasn’t going to help. It would just distract him.

So he lathered up and rinsed off and did his damnedest to think of Jo James only in terms of her professional role, rather than her small build. Or how crossing her arms plumped her breasts under the plain blue T-shirt she wore. Or how the hip-holster for her revolver—talk about your Old West cliches—emphasized the curve of her hips. A revolver, despite that most law-enforcement officers carried 9mm automatics like his.

Tomayto, Tomahto. It wasn’t like she needed quick reloads or stopping power in greater metropolitan Spur. But distractions were distractions.

She was female.

If he hadn’t had enough proof, her mood swings had confirmed it. By the time he was dressed and back in his tacky motel room, Jo had gone serious on him. Not I-really-survived-a-zombie-attack serious, either. Closed off.

“We’ll take my car to the clinic,” Zack announced as he buckled his shoulder holster on over his shirt, then threw on a light jacket to cover it.

The sheriff nodded, heading for the door with her hat in hand. It seemed too easy.

Zack pushed his luck. “You can help me with Nurse Vanderveer, but after that I’m working—holy crap, is this March?” It took less than two steps out the door to know that he’d overdressed. He turned around and stalked back inside, unbuckling the holster to strip to his white undershirt.

“After that you’re working what?” challenged Jo from the doorway. At least she’d averted her eyes—but her cheeks looked a bit pink. Blushing, or sunstroke?

Distractions. Zack slung his holster back on, using his long-sleeved shirt to conceal it—badly—before heading out again. “How hot is it out here?”

“Eighties…the weather’s been strange this last year. But there’s a breeze. After I help with Ashley, you’re working what?”

“I’m working alone.” He locked the hotel door behind them with a key; key cards were apparently beyond local technology. Actual sand—sandy dirt, anyway—overlapped the edges of the rutted parking lot, and beyond that, reddish-brown rocks and clumps of cactus. No grass, unless you counted some strawlike tufts. Things seemed kind of…dead.

He used his keyless remote to unlock the Ferrari with a beep, then headed for the passenger door. Sheriff Jo reached it first. “We’d make better time working together.”

“You shouldn’t be working this at all.” He swung into the driver’s side while she fastened her seat belt. She had to take her hat off, because of the headrest. Good. “For one thing, I’ve been doing this for almost four years. I know what we might be up against better than you do. For another, you’re…” A woman. But even his sisters would have bristled at that. And the only thing worse than a moody woman would likely be a well-armed moody woman. “Little.”

From the way Jo arched an eyebrow at him, she didn’t like that version of his argument either.

“And none of that matters, ’cause it’s my job,” he finished, smoothly starting the car.

“I’m not asking for payment,” she pointed out.

“Did I say you were? I still work alone.”

“I thought you had a business partner.”

“He’s a silent partner.” He considered young Cecil Taylor, the student who’d first told him Gabriella’s casket was empty and how talkative he could get, then qualified that description, “Technically speaking.”

“Look,” said Jo. “You tell me that dead bodies may be walking off on their own, not an hour away from where I live.”

Funny that she didn’t say, from my home. “Yeah. So?”

“So I’m one of the few people who’ll probably believe you. Since I do, I can’t just ignore that. Especially not if it has anything to do with what happened in the mine. I won’t just drive home and sing la-la-la and pretend it isn’t happening.”

Like she’d done after the cave-in. So the sheriff had something to prove—peachy. Zack squinted sidelong at her, sitting beside him, as he shifted gears. “La-la-la?”

She narrowed her eyes at him.

He said, “Just don’t get in my way.”

“Am I in your way?”

He was tempted to say yes—but she wasn’t. Not yet.

Give her time.

At least she proved useful with Nurse Vanderveer.

“Jo!” exclaimed the tall blonde, peeking from a back room into the empty waiting area. The clinic wasn’t exactly County General. “It is so good to see you again!”

She didn’t say the same to Zack.

“Hey, Ashley,” greeted the sheriff, awkward under the nurse’s friendly, one-armed hug. “Is it still a good time? You said on the phone…”

“Nothing’s come up,” the nurse assured her. “Wednesdays are generally pretty quiet.”

Zack said, “That wouldn’t have anything to do with you misplacing bodies, would it?”

Ashley Vanderveer flared her pale eyes at him. She was a pastel kind of person, especially in the pink smock she wore over her jeans, pure contrast against the smaller, sturdier sheriff. Jo looked more real, more competent…more touchable.

Though equally annoyed. “You really earn a living at this?” Jo asked him.

So maybe he’d been a little over the top. “Sorry,” he admitted, if with effort. “I just want to know what happened, and last time I came by here, Ms. Vanderveer here blew me off.”

“Go figure.” Now the sheriff looked amused.

“Jo said you wanted to ask questions about local Craft activity.” Ashley caught a chain around her neck with one manicured finger and tugged a small pentagram out to show him. She was witchy in more ways than one. “That, I will talk about.”

“But not about the dead boy,” Zack challenged.

“It’s all in the report I filed.”

“Don’t mind him,” said the sheriff in that voice—the condescending voice women use when discussing men right in front of them. “He’s from Chicago.”

“Hey!” he protested, but at least the nurse grinned.

“Come on into the break room, and we’ll talk,” said Vanderveer. “Over tea.”

Zack wasn’t real comfortable with getting this interview on Jo’s credentials, but he wasn’t dumb enough to turn it down, either. Not if he could learn why certain dead people weren’t staying dead around here. “You got coffee?”

A card table and metal folding chairs, two Salvation Army sofas, a sink, a microwave and a minifridge crowded the break room. Not a top-of-the-line facility. Though Vanderveer ran the clinic, she wasn’t even a doctor. From what Zack gathered in their previous talk, before she’d decided to hate him, a doctor visited on Mondays. Any other serious cases were sent to El Paso.

“I’m glad you thought of me,” Nurse Vanderveer assured Jo as they sat with their drinks. The sheriff, like Zack, took coffee. Either Jo didn’t mind instant, or she was good at hiding it, since it was pretty bad. “I’m a Wiccan and a curandera.”

“Which is like some kind of healer.” Zack leaned a cautious elbow on the flimsy card table.

“Which is a healer,” corrected Vanderveer. “Nurses and curanderas are both legitimate healers.”

Did he say they weren’t? Zack had no problem with women being healers. That was something they should be good at, what with all that nurturing and emoting. Women warriors? Barring some TV-show babes, he had to withhold judgment on that one.

Jo asked, “So you know something about the local, well…”

This was always the hard part in the interview, especially when you realized how thin the veil of normalcy really was.

“About local magic,” clarified Zack. “Not so much Wiccans; your type are generally benevolent. Sorcerers. Ceremonials. Wizards. The kind of magic users who aren’t real worried that instant karma’s gonna get them.”

Ashley stared at Zack, sleekly amused. “In Almanuevo?”

“Aren’t there any?” asked Jo, not understanding, and took a brave sip of bad coffee.

Ashley smiled—Zack had met plenty of Wiccans in his time, and she had that wise-woman look down pat. “Finding magic users in Almanuevo won’t be your problem.”

Considering the town’s reputation, Zack wasn’t surprised. “The problem’s gonna be sorting them all out, isn’t it?”

“That, Mr. Lorenzo, is only one of your problems.”

For once, the nurse didn’t sound like she meant it as an insult.

The way Jo James snorted into her coffee indicated she took it that way.

For years, Jo had assumed anybody who heard her story about the cave-in would find her certifiable. She liked that Zack Lorenzo hadn’t doubted her, despite his spotty people skills. He believed things.

The kind of man who makes a woman feel safe.

She pushed away the thought. He’s married.

Despite knowing that Ashley was into herbs and shiatsu, Jo would never have dreamed of walking in and asking the nurse practitioner about Almanuevo’s magic scene. But Zack would. And it turned out the town was crawling with every known flavor.

“The Wiccans really are the biggest group,” Ashley admitted casually, while the P.I. took notes. Jo knew that Wiccans, often called witches, were neo-pagans, but remained hazy on some things.

“Are we talking religion or magic?”

Ashley smiled. “Both. Magic is all about belief, and faith definitely affects beliefs. You don’t need one for the other, but they’re connected all the same. Just among the Wiccans we have Gardnerians, Dianics, Hellenistics, Celtics, faeries, some Hermetics—like the Greek or Egyptian pantheons—solitaries…”

Trying to absorb all this, Jo found herself watching Zack’s big hands, particularly his thick wrists. The sprinkling of dark hair on the back of his hands seemed to thin for maybe an inch, like the cuffs of his long-sleeved shirts had rubbed them smooth. She’d never thought of wrists as sexy before.

She didn’t mean to start now.

“You might consider talking to some H.P.s—high priestesses,” Ashley continued. “Even if they don’t mess with the dark stuff, they may know who does. On another front, there are several well-respected Brujas living in the hills.”

“Mexican folk magicians?” translated Jo cautiously. From what she understood, they were similar to Wiccans, but practiced a different religion. Or a different kind of magic. Or both.

“Mexican and Indian,” clarified Ashley. “And you’ve got your shamans too, though most shamanism around here is modified for the tourists. There’s a debate going on about cultural integrity and Anglos misappropriating native rituals, but either way, shamanism’s a pretty big moneymaker right now.”