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“Why not? You’re a bright kid. You’ll earn lots of scholarships, I’ll bet.”
“Maybe.” But none of them would replace having me help out around here. The sympathetic look in Francie’s eyes made him squirm. Sometimes he wondered if she could read his mind. “Guess I’d better go work the colts for a while.”
“You’ve done a great job with them this year.” Francie bent to put the pup back into its warm nest of blankets in a cardboard box at her feet. “If the Rocking H colts do well at the futurities this year, it’ll mean a lot for the reputation of the ranch.”
He shrugged away the compliment, even as a warm sense of satisfaction slid through him. There was so much more in the world, outside the narrow confines of Fossil Hill. He could imagine it. Feel it. Almost taste the excitement and wonder of traveling far away.
But working with the horses gave him another kind of satisfaction that almost made up for everything else he was missing.
“Maybe someday you can start taking some of these horses out on the show circuit,” Francie ventured. “Wouldn’t that be fun?”
“We couldn’t afford it, and Mom would never have the time.”
“Well, how about the chance to work with a new horse—one of mine?” Her cheeks turned pink. “I asked Tom if he’d go with me to a sale in Denver next weekend and help me pick out a good show prospect. He said he would. If I find a nice mare maybe I could hire you to help me work with her. That way you could earn some extra money.”
“Maybe...if Mom says okay. She’s seemed sorta weird lately. Like her mind is a million miles away.”
Francie gave him a pensive look. “Do you think she’s happy out here—really, truly happy?”
Was she? The thought had never occurred to him. “I dunno. I suppose.”
“If she had a dream,” Francie persisted, “of going anywhere, of being anything, what would it be?”
He raised his palms. “I don’t know.”
“You men,” Francie retorted with a twinkle in her eye, “are all such observant creatures.” The silver bell above the front door tinkled.
She turned and started up the hallway muttering something about fairy godmothers being highly underrated, but Alex couldn’t catch all the words. Weird.
Anyone—especially adults—ought to know that dreams and wishes were a big waste of time.
* * * *
JERRY CALLED ZACH THREE days later. “I’ve got some information you might want,” he said. “I’m not sure how much it will help, though.”
Bracing the phone between his ear and shoulder, Zach grabbed a pen and pad of paper from the kitchen counter of his rental house. He glanced at Katie, who was happily playing on the living room floor with the puppy and lowered his voice. “Ready.”
Before moving their things back into the house, he’d stopped by Dana’s place, and had even driven another half hour east, but hadn’t seen any sign of the old pickup Martha mentioned. Since then, he’d patrolled the streets of Fossil Hill every day, and the highway on either side. He’d seen nothing suspicious. With luck, maybe Jerry had found out something worthwhile.
“I did a tracer on the e-mails you forwarded to me and came up blank. But your retired FBI friend did better. He finally tracked them both to a run-down motel in West Dallas.”
“A guest room?”
Jerry snorted. “Not a place I’d want to be a guest, believe me. I drove out there yesterday. Big old two-story motel, the kind with rooms opening onto an outside balcony. One wing was boarded up. The clerk’s desk was behind bullet-proof glass.”
“Did she give you any information?”
“Only after I slipped her twenty bucks. Most of the clients hanging around there looked like ex-cons, low-end dealers, and other losers. She remembered the guy who rented that room because he was better dressed than most and came back a coupla times.”
“Did you get a name?”
“That’s another reason she remembered him. He paid cash and signed in as Jeff Anderson, but he was Hispanic and had an accent to boot. What are the odds of that? Oh, and he wrote down a phony Texas license plate number that doesn’t match anything in the registration system.”
Of course.
“On the upside, I got a description. She’s got one of those height markers on the entry door to her office. Guess they have a lot of trouble with their clients, because she always writes down extra information about anyone who walks in.” Jerry gave a short laugh. “Probably makes things easier when she has to call in the cops.”
Zach paced impatiently at the end of the telephone cord. “Well?”
