LITMIR.BIZ

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her radio came to life. “This is Birth Place base to unit two. Devon, are you there?”

      She moved around the fender of the truck to answer Trish Linden’s query. In the side mirror she saw Jesse swing Maria up off the tailgate as Sylvia scooped up the sack of hard candy and the bottle of Tylenol.

      She thumbed the toggle. “I’m here, Trish.” She broke the connection momentarily and held out her hand. “Wait, please.” Jesse had already carried his sister several yards back up the path to the mine, but Sylvia stopped at her plea. “Just for a moment.”

      “Devon?”

      “I’m still here, Trish. What’s up?” Devon hoped her voice sounded normal. Deliberately she turned her back on the three children, praying they wouldn’t run.

      “Are you anywhere near Silverton?”

      “I’m right in the middle of it.”

      “That’s what I wanted to know. I’m going to patch you through to Chief Eiden. He wants to talk to you. I don’t do this very often,” Trish continued, “so if I screw up, just hang on, okay?”

      Miguel couldn’t have picked a worse time to try to communicate with her. A series of clicks preceded the sound of his voice. “Devon, do you read me?”

      “Loud and clear.”

      “I thought you were going to stay away from Silverton.”

      “I didn’t say that.”

      “See anything odd up there?”

      “Nothing out of the ordinary.” She turned to face Jesse and his sisters. The trio stood watching her with dark and suspicious eyes. At least Jesse and Sylvia were watching her that way. Maria had laid her head on her brother’s shoulder and looked half-asleep. The Tylenol was probably kicking in, reducing her fever enough to allow her to rest comfortably. It would only last a few hours and then the fever would be back, climbing and becoming dangerously high if she weakened any more from lack of food and water.

      “I was going to drive up there, but there’s a report of a couple of lightning strikes over near Wolf Canyon I need to check out. Don’t want any fires getting out of hand around here.” Thunder rolled down the valley and echoed in the cracks and crevices of the mountain, adding urgency to his words.

      “There’s no sign of anyone having been here lately.”

      “Thanks, Devon. You’ve saved one of my guys some time, and wear and tear on the squad cars. Eiden out.”

      “Did you copy all that, Devon?” It was Trish’s voice again, slightly distorted by background static.

      “I got it all, thanks, Trish.”

      “Thank goodness. I never quite know whether I’m doing it right,” Trish fussed. “I just wanted to tell you not to hurry back if you’re enjoying yourself. Your two-o’clock called and said her car has a dead battery. I rescheduled her for tomorrow.”

      “Thanks, Trish. I’ll see you at three. Devon clear.” She released the toggle and put the radio receiver back in its clip on her visor.

      “She called that guy you were talking to ‘Chief’,” Jesse said. “Does that mean he’s an Indian, not a cop?” His lip curled in a sneer. He tightened his arm around Maria. Sylvia began inching away again, moving farther up the path.

      “He’s both actually,” Devon said.

      “You lied to him about us.”

      She nodded. “Yes, I did.”

      “Why’d you do that?”

      Why had she done that? She hadn’t wanted to lie to Miguel. She wasn’t a deceitful person, and she valued honesty in others and in herself. But she didn’t regret her action. “I gave you my word,” she said.

      Jesse held her gaze a few moments longer, then nodded. “We’ll go with you.”

      DEVON RESTED HER HEAD against the glass of her bedroom window. It was very late, long after midnight. She was tired, but she couldn’t sleep. She looked down the mountain, noticing for the first time that if the branches of the trees outside her window moved just right, she could see a gleam of light from the direction of Miguel’s house. Why hadn’t she noticed that before?

      He was up late, too, it seemed. Probably because he’d been on patrol around the country looking for signs of wildfire started by the thunderstorms that had rumbled through the valley, producing sound and fury, but not much rain.

      She straightened and walked out into the main living area of the cabin. The room was small, but the soaring ceiling gave the illusion of space. Adjacent to her bedroom was a bathroom with both a shower and a tub and a stacked washer and dryer. She could hear the dryer humming away now. She might as well see if the load of towels was dry. She couldn’t sleep, anyway.

      Next to the bathroom was an eat-in kitchen. She’d stopped by both the grocery and the minimart to stock up on food for the children. She hadn’t wanted to arouse suspicion where she usually shopped by buying too much food. The clerk would wonder why a woman who lived alone and ate Lean Cuisine more evenings than not would buy two gallons of milk, two dozen eggs and three loaves of bread. Her refrigerator was full for the first time since she’d moved into the place.

      The dryer buzzed and she hurried to silence it. Above her, in the loft, the three children were sleeping, Jesse on an air mattress on the floor, the girls in the sleeper sofa beneath the window. After she’d broken radio contact with Miguel, she’d gone back to the mine with Jesse and his sisters and helped them pack their few belongings and carry them to the old stable where they’d hidden their truck.

      But that was as far as she’d gotten. Jesse had refused to let her inside the badly listing building with its empty windowpanes and sagging roof, guessing correctly that she would see the license plate and use it to learn more about them.

      They’d ridden into town on the floor of the Blazer, and she fed them cold cereal and scrambled eggs and toast as soon as they’d gotten safely inside her house. By the time she’d found clean clothes for the older siblings—a pair of faded scrubs for Jesse and a high-waisted denim jumper for Sylvia—and one of her smallest T-shirts for Maria, and shown Sylvia how to run her washer and dryer, she was fifteen minutes late for her three-o’clock prenatal. Lydia had not been pleased, but there was nothing she could do about it.

      She returned from the clinic at seven to find the children scrubbed as clean as their clothes. Thankfully their hair had only been dirty, not infested, so a trip to Taos for lice shampoo wouldn’t be necessary. She couldn’t buy that at the pharmacy across from Elkhorn’s Hardware any more than she could buy two gallons of milk and three dozen eggs in one stop. People would notice.

      She pulled warm, clean-smelling towels out of the dryer and carried them to the couch in front of the fireplace, which she’d filled with silk ferns for the summer. She began to fold them, still thinking of the three children. Keeping them safe and fed and secret was not going to be easy. They were runaways. Probably illegal aliens. She still didn’t even know their surname or their ages.

      Keeping their whereabouts a secret was breaking the law. Something she had never done in her life.

      But she had given her word to three desperate and scared children. And she was determined to honor it. Even if it meant she must keep on lying to everyone she knew.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      “I BROUGHT YOU SOME TEA.” Kim Sherman smiled as she held a steaming mug out to Devon a couple of days later. “I thought you might need a boost.”

      “I do.” Devon smiled back at her cousin, although it took some effort to get her tired facial muscles to produce the desired response.

      “I won’t keep you from your work.” Kim stepped away from the table where she’d placed the mug. “I just wanted to let you know I talked Lydia into

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