The Paternity Proposition(25)

He eased out of bed the next morning while Julie sprawled in naked abandon, arms and legs flung out at ninety-degree angles. Her hair spilled across her pillow. The covers were tangled around her hips. Her soft, breathy snuffles told Alex she'd be out for a while yet.

He jotted a quick note saying he would return with breakfast and propped it on the bureau, leaning against the sun god's velvet box. He made a quick stop at his penthouse condo to shower and shave before walking the few blocks to Cecile's. Once there, he skimmed the chalked breakfast menu and reached for his cell phone to wake Julie and ask whether she preferred quiche or crepes.

"Great," he muttered when he discovered he'd left the phone at his condo. "Guess I'll have to choose for both of us."

He departed the bistro with two, lighter-than-air quiches and carry-out coffee containers brimming with rich, dark French blend. Anticipation thrummed in his veins as he let himself into the guest suite.

Silence greeted him, and emptiness. The purse Julie had tossed on the living room coffee table last night was gone. A half-downed cup of coffee sat on the counter of the kitchenette.

"Julie?"

The silence followed him into the bedroom. The tangled covers were thrown back. The open closet doors showed a row of bare hangars. Shoulders tensing, Alex spotted his note still propped on the bureau. Below his few lines was what looked like a hastily scribbled addendum.

Dusty called, he needs me.

Tried to reach you, couldn't.

I'll get back to you whenever.

Whenever? He appreciated Julie's loyalty to her partner, sensed the urgency implied in her note, but whenever? The vague half promise, half brush-off stung.

Jaw-locked, he popped up the lid of the square box. Viracocha lay nested on his black velvet bed, raining tears of gold.





Twelve

Julie sped west on I-40, replaying Dusty's brief, garbled transmission over and over in her mind. He was in the Texas Panhandle. Some little town she'd never heard of. Floating in and out 'cause of the drugs they'd pumped into him.

They who?

She'd screeched the question twice, trying to pierce his drugged haze while a mental image materialized of two cement-jawed thugs sent to beat or otherwise extract retribution for unpaid gambling debts. The image disintegrated when Dusty mumbled something about swerving to avoid a mule deer. When that was followed by a slurred request for her to come spring him from this cussed hospital, Julie had kicked off the covers and grabbed her clothes.

As the miles whirred under her pickup's tires, she cursed Chuck Whitestone's stubborn refusal to let Agro-Air spring for a mobile phone. The mechanic was closer to the Panhandle, and could have gotten to Dusty faster. She'd briefly considered a quick detour to rev up the Pawnee, but she couldn't haul Dusty home in a single-seater if she got him released from the hospital as he'd begged.

Keeping a hand on the wheel and an eye on the endless stretch of highway rolling out ahead, she flipped up her cell phone and thumbed in Alex's number. Her thumb stilled in mid-jab. The blank screen said she had no service out here in the wide-open spaces.

Correction. She had no power. The solid red battery icon in the upper corner told her the damned thing was completely drained. And of course she didn't have her charger with her. It was back at the hangar, probably still plugged into the wall outlet after her last hurried charge.

With another curse, Julie tossed the phone onto the pickup's dash and concentrated on the hundred and fifty miles of highway ahead.





She hit the Texas state line a little before 10 a.m. With her phone's MapQuest function as dead as the instrument itself, she had to pull into the Welcome Center for a map. The rectangular-shaped center sloped upward from an elevated berm, looking like a WWII bunker plunked down in the middle of nowhere. The place was crowded with weekend travelers going to or returning from summer vacations. Julie darted to the head of the line and snatched a Texas state map from the counter. After a quick pit stop she wrestled a cup of coffee from a bank of vending machines and hit the pay phone to dial Alex's number. He answered this time, thank goodness!                       
       
           



       

"Where are you?"

"In Texas. Dusty's been hurt. A car accident, I think. His message was kind of slurred."

"Why didn't you wait for me? I would've come with you."

"I didn't know how long you'd be."

It was a feeble excuse. Julie recognized that as soon as it came out of her mouth. The truth was that she'd learned to take care of herself-and her personal affairs-swiftly and independently. Charging to Dusty's side was a case in point. She'd rushed out of Oklahoma City fully prepared to provide whatever care or assistance he needed. It hadn't even occurred to her to do more than advise Alex of the situation.

He didn't seem all that pleased with her unilateral action. She could sense his irritation at being shut out. Sense him putting it aside, too, to offer help.

"I'm here if you need me, Julie. You or Dusty."

"I know. Thanks."

Taking her coffee with her, she climbed back into her pickup, and unfolded the map.

"Where the hell are you, Rockslide?"

She finally found the tiny dot in the northwest corner of the Texas Panhandle, less than a spit and a lick from the New Mexico state line. Groaning, she saw the only access was a county road that snaked like an angry diamondback around deep gulches and high mesas.

"What in God's name are you doing in Rockslide?" she asked her absent partner.

Resigned to a tortuous drive, she keyed the ignition and followed I-40 to Amarillo. A half hour after passing a twenty-foot Texan who offered a free six-pound steak to anyone who could gobble it down in less than an hour, she cut north Dalhart on 385. Ten miles out of Dalhart she turned onto the two-lane county road. Mere moments later, the high desert surrounded her.

Red-rock mesas carved by centuries of eroding winds thrust out of the sun-scorched earth. Tumbleweeds skittered across the road. Longhorn cattle grazed on God knew what or clustered around corrugated tin water tanks filled by rusted windmills turning lazily in the breeze. If she hadn't been so worried about Dusty, Julie might have enjoyed the starkly beautiful scenery.

Instead, she was a living, breathing bundle of nerves when she rolled into the cluster of ten or twelve adobe structures otherwise known as Rockslide, Texas. Slowing to a halt on the one road in and out of town, she hooked her wrists over the steering wheel.

"This place has a hospital?" she murmured in disbelief.

It didn't, as she learned during a stop at the town's quick-shop/feed-and-grain store. Apparently the only person with medical credentials within a fifty-mile radius was a retired-vet-turned-rancher the locals called in emergencies.

"I'm still licensed to practice," Dr. Hightower said with a shrug. "Comes in handy on occasion."

Julie could understand why. Out in these parts, the grizzled, gray-haired vet might well make the difference between life and death for two-and four-legged accident victims alike.

Dusty was a case in point.

"Damn fool crashed head-on into a stand of mesquite to avoid hitting a deer," Dr. Hightower advised as she led the way from her living quarters to the surgery. "I got him stabilized, kept a close eye on him until EMSA got here. They patched him up and wanted to haul him to the hospital down to Dalhart. He kicked up a fuss, said he didn't have insurance … "

"He does," Julie countered, her throat tight. "Our company policy covers personal injuries. The deductible's pretty hefty, though."

"Guess he didn't want to run that up. EMSA left him pretty sedated, and I kept him that way. He didn't know who or where he was for days after it happened."

"Will he … ?"

She fought back a thick gob of fear. Dusty was the closest thing she had to family. Dusty and Chuck. Their lackadaisical approach to the business end of flying irritated the heck out of her at times. And Dusty's penchant for gambling raised a tight knot of worry. Yet her heart stuck halfway down her throat as she voiced the fear that had haunted her all the way from Oklahoma City.

"Will he be okay?"

"Should be. He's been in and out since it happened, though. Don't be surprised if he doesn't recognize you," the vet cautioned.

After that dire warning, Julie sagged with relief when Dr. Hightower pushed through a door marked "Private" and a bandaged Dusty opened one bruiser of a black eye to glare at her.

"'Bout time you got here."

"I …  I … "

Her throat closing, Julie astonished herself, the vet and her partner by bursting into loud, noisy sobs.

"Missy! I'm okay. Jest got a few busted ribs."

"And an ulna fractured in two places," Hightower put in, nodding to the plaster encasing his right arm.

"Not a problem. You got … me all fixed up, Doc." Punctuating his sentences with grunts and grimaces, Dusty pushed himself upright. "Soon's as Julie, uh, gets me home, I'll be right 'n-gol dang it!-tight."

The white lines that bracketed his mouth said just the opposite. Aching for him, Julie turned to the vet.