“Luther,” Teresa said, surprised he was there.
The smile that warmed his face was simply charming. “You never call. You never write.”
A soft laugh escaped her despite everything.
Carson turned back to me, and I tried to raise my hand to shake hers, but my muscles had completely given out. Though they did twitch occasionally. An officer helped Cookie outside while Agent Carson took my arm to help me, careful not to get too close. Dust still lingered in the air from the latest cave-in.
“I can’t believe you did it,” she said, shaking her head as daylight blanketed us.
“I get that a lot.” My hair was so caked with dirt and rocks, it actually hurt. Then again, I did get pummeled by a boulder the size of Long Island.
“I left the flashlight inside,” Cookie said over her shoulder, suddenly remembering.
“Well, you’d best go back and get it. It’s not like I can get another one at pretty much any store between here and Albuquerque.”
She snorted the likelihood of that happening. I couldn’t wait to tell her about Hardy. I’d have to come back someday, get to know him better — another cave-in sounded down the shaft, sending a wave of dirt billowing out the opening — or not.
I saw Rescue hustling up the trail carrying an aluminum litter, bags of medical supplies, and a flashlight I was certain I could talk them out of. And Rescue was built. All three of them, in fact. Tall. Nice tone. Good overall posture.
“Who’s the help?” I asked Carson.
“Your uncle brought them.”
“Nice of him.”
We stopped a moment to admire the view. “Sure was,” she said. “By the way, I couldn’t get a copy of the message the first Mrs. Yost left on the doctor’s answering machine before she mysteriously died in the Cayman Islands. Apparently, the investigator didn’t actually hear it for himself. Just took Yost’s word for it, since it wasn’t a suspicious death.”
“That’s odd,” I said, my eyes still glued to Search, Rescue, and Just Plain Hot. “I don’t think he had any intention of killing his wife this go-around. Somewhere in their relationship, she caught on. I think he was trying to kill somebody else entirely.”
“Mind if I ask who?”
“Can you give me half an hour to confirm my suspicions?”
She turned to me. “How about thirty minutes?”
I planted my best smile on her. “I’ll take it.”
Luther carefully helped Teresa onto the litter as his other sister, Monica, came running up the trail. My heart lurched at the sight of her. I wanted to run to her, explain what had been happening, but she was really busy.
“Teresa!” she shouted, tears streaming in rivulets down her face. “Oh, my god.” She rushed up to them, threw her arms around her brother for a quick hug, then took her sister’s hand as Rescue strapped Teresa in and started an IV drip. The emotion pouring out of Monica felt like cool water rushing over me, refreshing and pure.
Luther walked back to me then, amazed. My ego was taking quite the beating.
“You did it,” he said.
I grinned as Agent Carson nodded and stepped away. “So I’ve heard.”
He shook his head. “I owe you.”
“You’ll get a bill,” I promised.
He laughed out loud, too happy to care about much of anything other than his sister.
I turned to Cookie and gave her a thumbs-up. “We can totally eat this month.”
“Yes!” she said as Uncle Bob helped her onto a big boulder. “I’ve had my eye on a low-carb diet you’re going to love.”
“I said we could eat. I didn’t say anything about eating healthy.”
Uncle Bob walked up to me. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Did Yost do this?”
“In a roundabout way.” Yost may not have used the ATV and winch to sabotage the mine as I’d originally suspected, but he drove Teresa to desperation, in ways I doubted she was even aware of. I led Uncle Bob a little farther into the trees as everyone worked around us. Talking quietly, I said, “You have to keep an open mind.”
“My mind is always open,” he said, slightly offended. “Twenty-four/seven.” When I offered him my best glare of doubt, he waffled. “Okay, six/five, at the least. What’s up?”
I leaned into him. “I think, and this is a big think, Nathan Yost is doing what he does. He’s trying to control Teresa by controlling her environment.” I put my arm on Ubie’s, begging for an ounce of faith. “I think he’s trying to kill Teresa’s sister, Monica.”
Uncle Bob frowned, looked back toward the crowd before refocusing on me. “That could be hard to prove.”
After releasing the breath I’d been holding, I fought the urge to hug his neck. Displays of affection made him uncomfortable, which was exactly why I utilized them as often as I did. But I wanted him on my side on this.
“I have a plan, but we’re going to have to work fast,” I said as Dr. Nathan Yost hurried up the trail, still in his lab coat.
Angel was behind him, caught sight of me, offered a salute, then disappeared, his job apparently done. I could hardly blame him. He was a teenager, after all. Keeping confined to one place too long was tantamount to torture.
I glanced back at Yost. While the practiced look on his face was one of utter relief, the emotion in his heart was not happiness, nor was it disappointment, as might have been expected had he been responsible for the cave-in. It wasn’t anger or resentment or fear. It was … a whole lot of nothing. No emotion that I could feel whatsoever. At least until he caught sight of Luther and Monica. Then emotion reared within him. And it was most decidedly resentment in the worst way possible. I realized in that instant how he saw them. As enemies. Barriers. Obstacles he had to get past.
Still, if my suspicions were right, Teresa did all this to leave him, which put her in mortal danger. The statement he’d made to Yolanda Pope all those years ago when they were in college rose to the surface of my dirt-covered brain. One stick is all it will take. “She’s not out of the woods yet,” I said to Uncle Bob. “Keep someone on her.”
“Absolutely.” He eyed the doctor with that hard gaze of his I knew and loved so well. Unless it was directed at me.
“Oh, and I need you to gather a few things and meet me at the hospital, including a bottle of flavored sparkling water.”
He glanced back at me. “You doin’ healthy now?”
I grunted. “Not likely. When all this is said and done, I’m heading straight for Margaritaville.”
Since it took me over an hour to get back to Albuquerque, a little over half that to shower and change into clean clothes, then another forty-five minutes for Uncle Bob to get a warrant to search the Yosts’ house, I had to call Agent Carson and give her the bad news. It took me longer to figure out how to prove the doctor’s guilt than the thirty minutes we’d originally agreed upon, but considering travel time and the fact that cleanliness was next to godliness, she said we were still good. Which, whew.
Teresa Yost’s leg didn’t require surgery. They’d set it and wheeled her to a private room when she suddenly needed more tests, thanks to Uncle Bob and his wily ways with the women. Namely a nurse who looked at Ubie like he was a sugary morsel dipped in chocolate.
A couple of cops posing as orderlies wheeled Teresa into a labor and delivery room that contained some very interesting equipment. It made me only slightly less comfortable than that time I got to sit in an actual electric chair. You know, for giggles. As the men left, I stepped inside with a nod and closed the door. The lights had been turned low, and Teresa lay on the gurney half asleep as a result. She’d been covered in pale blue hospital gowns, and her leg, which had been propped up by pillows, had a temporary brace on it until the swelling went down enough for a cast.