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“Getting some coffee first.” Cord rested his elbows on the rail. “The new guy, Jesse, how’s he doing?”
Manny’s tanned face crinkled with confusion. “Thought you’d be asking about the new woman in town.”
His neck tensed. “Why? What should I know?”
“She stopped me when I was at the end of the drive, grabbing the mail.” Manny held out a hefty stack of bills. “She wanted some information.”
“Get to the point.” Cord stomped down the steps and accepted the various envelopes. “What did she want?”
“Directions to Haggerty.”
Alarm flooded Cord’s system, sending his pulse racing and chasing away any lingering tiredness. “I take it she’s going alone?”
Manny pulled off his straw cowboy hat and ran a red bandanna over his forehead. “Sure seemed like it. I told her not to go, that it was dangerous, but she ignored me.”
“That woman’s nothing but trouble.” Cord’s fingers clenched, crinkling the mail.
Did she expect to reach Haggerty on her own? The ghost town sat in the middle of a desert mesa. There were no roads leading the way and certainly no signs to guide her. His gut knotted. If she ran out of gas or, worse, got lost, the consequences could be dire.
“Well, boss,” Manny settled his hat back on his head, “what’re you gonna do?”
“Me? Why should I do anything? If that woman is brazen enough to trespass and go hiking alone in the middle of nowhere, she has no one to blame for what happens but herself.”
His speech sounded good, but it did nothing to calm the unease he had over her safety. He’d warned her not to go out there alone. Manny had told her not to go. Why should he have to forfeit his morning to go rescue her from her own stupidity?
Manny sighed and shook his head. “I just keep thinkin’ ‘bout those inexperienced hikers that nearly died last summer out in Red Devil Canyon.”
His foreman had a valid point, but Cord wasn’t her designated babysitter. She was a big girl. “I’m not responsible for her.”
Manny didn’t say a word. He just adjusted his hat and averted his gaze.
The nagging worry that something bad could happen to her ate at Cord’s gut. Even a frustrating, pushy businesswoman didn’t deserve to be lost in the desert. “How long ago did you see her?”
“Just a few minutes ago. She can’t have gotten far.”
Cord turned to head up the steps.
“You goin’ after her?” Manny called out.
Cord nodded but kept moving.
“You want me to go with you?”
Cord paused and turned. “You can help me out by handling any problems that crop up here.”
Manny gave him a two-finger salute. “Will do, boss.”
Cord checked his wristwatch. Not quite nine. “I’ll be back by lunch, at the latest.”
“Good luck.”
Lexi was the one who needed the luck. His back teeth ground together as he thought of the naïve woman out there on her own. Out in the harsh terrain, Mother Nature didn’t take pity on anyone, especially the inexperienced.
???
Where was it?
Alexis pulled her SUV to a stop at the edge of a dry gulch and ran the back of her arm across her forehead. The ghost town shouldn’t be much farther. She’d been following a map and directions jotted out by one of Cord’s men, but this obstacle wasn’t mentioned on either document.
